ROSE MEETS DR. THATCHER
The school-house in Dutcher's coule, like most country school-houses,
was a squalid little den. It was as gray as a rock and as devoid of
beauty as a dry goods box. It sat in the midst of the valley and had no
trees, to speak of, about it, and in winter it was almost as snow-swept
as the school-houses of the prairie.
Its gray clap-boarding was hacked and scarred with knife and stone, and
covered with mud and foul marks. A visitor who had turned in from the
sun-smit winter road paused before knocking and looked at the walls and
the door with a feeling of mirth and sadness. Was there no place to
escape the obscene outcome of sexual passion?
Dr. Thatcher had been a pupil here in this same school-house more than
twenty years before, and the droning, shuffling sound within had a
marvelous reawakening power. He was a physician in Madison now, and was
in the coule on a visit.
His knock on the door brought a timid-looking man to the door.
"I'd like to come in awhile," said the Doctor.
"Certainly, certainly," replied the teacher, much embarrassed by the
honor.
He brought him the chair he had been sitting on, and helped his visitor
remove his coat and hat.
"Now don't mind me, I want to see everything go on just as if I were not
here."
"Very well, that's the way we do," the teacher replied, and returned to
his desk and attempted, at least, to carry out his visitor's request.
A feeling of sadness, mingled with something wordlessly vast, came over
the Doctor as he sat looking about the familiar things of the room.
He was in another world, an old, familiar world. His eyes wandered
lovingly from point to point of the room, filled with whispering lips
and shuffling feet and shock-heads of hair, under which shone bright
eyes, animal-like in their shifty stare. The curtains, of a
characterless shade, the battered maps, the scarred and scratched
blackboards, the patched, precarious plastering, the worn floor on which
the nails and knots stood like miniature mountains, the lop-sided seats,
the master's hacked, unpainted pine desk, dark with dirt and polished
with dirty hands, all seemed as familiar as his own face.
He sat there listening to the recitations in a dreamy impassivity. He
was deep in the past, thinking of the days when to pass from his seat to
the other side of the room was an event; when a visitor was a
calamity--for the teacher; when the master was a tyrant and his
school-room a ceaselessly rebellious kingdom.
As his eyes fell at last more closely upon the scholars; he caught the
eyes of a young girl looking curiously at him, and so deep was he in the
past, his heart gave a sudden movement, just as it used to leap when in
those far-off days Stella Baird looked at him. He smiled at himself for
it. It was really ludicrous; he thought, "I'll tell my wife of it."
The girl looked away slowly and without embarrassment. She was thinking
deeply, looking out of the window. His first thought was, "She has
beautiful eyes." Then he noticed that she wore her hair neatly arranged,
and that her dress, though plain, looked tasteful and womanly about the
neck. The line of her head was magnificent. Her color was rich and dark;
her mouth looked sad for one so young. Her face had the effect of being
veiled by some warm, dusky color.
Was she young? Sometimes as he studied her she seemed a woman,
especially as she looked away out of the window, and the profile line of
her face could be seen. But she looked younger when she bent her head
upon her books, and her long eye-lashes fell upon her cheek.
His persistent study brought a vivid flush into her face, but she did
not nudge her companion and whisper as another would have done.
"That is no common girl," the Doctor concluded.
He sat there while the classes were called up one after the other. He
heard again these inflections, tones, perpetuated for centuries in the
school-room, "The-cat-saw-a-rat."
Again the curfew failed to ring, in the same hard, monotonous, rapid,
breathless sing-song, every other line with a falling inflection. The
same failure to make the proper pause caused it to appear that "Bessie
saw him on her brow."
Again the heavy boy read the story of the ants, and the teacher asked
insinuatingly sweet questions.
"What did they do?"
"Made a tunnel."
"Yes! Now what _is_ a tunnel?"
"A hole that runs under-ground."
"Very good! It says that the ant is a voracious creature. What does that
mean?"
"Dunno."
"You don't know what a voracious creature is?"
"No, sir."
And then came the writing exercise, when each grimy fist gripped a pen,
and each red tongue rolled around a mouth in the vain effort to guide
the pen. _Cramp, cramp; scratch, scratch; sputter!_ What a task it was!
The December afternoon sun struck in at the windows, and fell across the
heads of the busy scholars, and as he looked, Dr. Thatcher was a boy
again, and Rose and her companions were the "big girls" of the school.
He was looking at Stella, the prettiest girl in the district, the
sunlight on her hair, a dream of nameless passion in her eyes.
The little room grew wide as romance, and across the aisle seemed over
vast spaces. Girlish eyes met his like torches in the night. The dusty
air, the shuffle of feet, the murmuring of lips only added to the
mysterious power of the scene.
There they sat, these girls, just as in the far-off days, trying to
study, and succeeding in dreaming of love songs, and vague, sweet
embraces on moonlight nights, beneath limitless star-shot skies, with
sound of bells in their ears, and the unspeakable glory of youth and
pure passion in their souls.
The Doctor sighed. He was hardly forty yet, but he was old in the
history of disillusion and in contempt of human nature. His deep-set
eyes glowed with an inward fire of remembrance.
"O pathetic little band of men and women," thought he, "my heart thrills
and aches for you."
He was brought back to the present with a start by the voice of the
teacher.
"Rose, you may recite now."
The girl he had been admiring came forward. As she did so he perceived
her to be not more than sixteen, but she still had in her eyes the look
of a dreaming woman.
"Rose Dutcher is our best scholar," smiled the teacher proudly as Rose
took her seat. She looked away out of the window abstractedly as the
teacher opened the huge geography and passed it to the Doctor.
"Ask her anything you like from the first fifty-six pages." The Doctor
smiled and shook his head.
"Bound the Sea of Okhotsk," commanded the teacher.
Thatcher leaned forward eagerly--her voice would tell the story!
Without looking around, with her hands in her lap, an absent look in her
eyes, the girl began in a husky contralto voice: "Bounded on the
north--" and went through the whole rigmarole in the same way, careless,
but certain.
"What rivers would you cross in going from Moscow to Paris?"
Again the voice began and flowed on in the same measured indifferent way
till the end was reached.
"Good heavens!" thought the Doctor, "they still teach that useless
stuff. But how well she does it!"
After some words of praise, which the girl hardly seemed to listen to,
she took her seat again.
Rose, on her part, saw another man of grace and power. She saw every
detail of his dress. His dark, sensitive face, and splendid slope of his
shoulders, the exquisite neatness and grace of his collar and tie and
coat. But in his eyes was something that moved her, drew her. She felt
something subtile there, refinement and sorrow, and emotions she could
only dimly feel.
She could not keep her eyes from studying his face. She compared him
with "William De Lisle," not deliberately, always unconsciously. He had
nothing of the bold beauty of her ideal. This man was a scholar, and he
was come out of the world beyond the Big Ridge, and besides, there was
mystery and allurement in his face.
The teacher called as if commanding a regiment of cavalry. "Books.
_Ready!_" There was a riotous clatter, which ended as quickly as it
begun.
_Kling!_ They all rose. _Kling!_ and the boys moved out with clumping of
heavy boots and burst into the open air with wild whoopings. The girls
gathered into little knots and talked, glancing furtively at the
stranger. Some of them wondered if he were the County Superintendent of
Schools.
Rose sat in her seat, with her chin on her clasped hands. It was a sign
of her complex organization, that the effect of a new experience was
rooted deep, and changes took place noiselessly, far below the surface.
"Rose, come here a moment," called the teacher, "bring your history."
"Don't keep her from her playmates," Thatcher remonstrated.
"O she'd rather recite any time than play with the others."
Rose stood near, a lovely figure of wistful hesitation. She had been
curiously unembarrassed before, now she feared to do that which was so
easy and so proper. At last she saw her opportunity as the teacher
turned away to ring the bell.
She touched Thatcher on the arm. "Do you live in Madison, sir?"
"Yes. I am a doctor there."
She looked embarrassed now and twisted her fingers.
"Is it so very hard to get into the university?"
"No. It is very easy--it would be for you," he said with a touch of
unconscious gallantry of which he was ashamed the next moment, for the
girl was looking away again. "Do you want to go to the university?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"Why?"
"O, because--I want to know all I can."
"Why? What do you want to do?"
"You won't tell on me, will you?" She blushed red as a carnation now.
Strange mixture of child and woman, thought Thatcher.
"Why, certainly not."
They stood over by the blackboard; the other girls were pointing and
snickering, but she did not mind them.
"I guess I won't tell," she stammered; "you'd laugh at me like everybody
else--I know you would."
He caught her arm and turned her face toward his; her eyes were full of
tears.
"Tell me. I'll help you."
His eyes glowed with a kindly smile, and she warmed under it.
"I want to write--stories--and books," she half whispered guiltily. The
secret was out and she wanted to run away. The Doctor's crucial time had
come. If he laughed!--but he did not laugh. He looked thoughtful, almost
sad.
"You are starting on a long, long road, Rose," he said at last. "Where
it will lead to I cannot tell--nobody can. What put that into your
head?"
Rose handed him a newspaper clipping containing a brief account of "how
a Wisconsin poetess achieved fame and fortune."
"Why, my dear girl," he began, "don't you know that out of ten
thousand--" He stopped. She was looking up at him in expectation, her
great luminous grey-brown eyes burning with an inward hungry fire which
thrilled him.
"She may be the one in ten thousand, and I'll help her," he said to
himself.
The bell ringing brought the boys clattering back into their seats,
puffing, gasping, as if at last extremity. For a couple of minutes
nothing could be done, so great was the noise.
While they were getting settled he said to her:
"If you want to go to the university you will have to go to a
preparatory school. Here is my card--write to me when you get done here,
and I'll see what can be done."
Rose went back to her seat, her eyes filled with a burning light, her
hands strained together. This great man from Madison had believed in
her. O, if he would only come home and see her father!
She painfully penciled a note and handed it to him as she came past to
the blackboard. He was putting on his coat to go, but he looked down at
the crumpled note, with its Spencerian handwriting.
"Please, sir, won't you come down and see pappa and ask him if I can't
go to Madison?"
He looked at the girl, whose eyes, big and sombre and full of wistful
timidity, were fixed upon him. Obeying a sudden impulse, he stepped to
her side and said: "Yes, I'll help you; don't be troubled."
He stayed until school was out and the winter sun was setting behind the
hills. Rose sat and looked at him with more than admiration. She trusted
him. He had said he would help her, and his position was one of power in
her fancy, and something in his face and dress impressed her more deeply
than any man she had ever seen save "William De Lisle," her dim and
shadowy yet kingly figure.
On his part he was surprised at himself. He was waiting a final hour in
this school-room out of interest and curiosity in a country school girl.
His was a childless marriage, and this girl stirred the parental in him.
He wished he had such a child to educate, to develop.
The school was out at last, and, as she put on her things and came
timidly towards him, he turned from the teacher.
"So you are John Dutcher's daughter? I knew your father when I was a lad
here. I am stopping at the Wallace farm, but I'll come over a little
later and see your father."
Rose rushed away homeward, full of deep excitement. She burst into the
barn where John was rubbing the wet fetlocks of the horses he had been
driving. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks were a beautiful pink.
"O, pappa, he said I ought to go to Madison to school. He said he'd help
me go."
John looked up in astonishment at her excitement.
"Who said so?"
"Dr. Thatcher, the man who visited our school today. He said I'd ought
to go, and he said he'd help me."
Her exultation passed suddenly. Somehow there was not so much to tell as
she had fancied, and she suddenly found herself unable to explain the
basis of her enthusiasm. The perceived, but untranslatable expression of
the Doctor's eyes and voice was the real foundation of her hope, and
that she had not definitely and consciously noted--to explain it was
impossible. If her father could only have seen him!
"I guess you'd better wait awhile," her father said, with a smile, which
Rose resented.
"He's coming tonight."
"Who's he?"
"Dr. Thatcher. He used to live here. He knows you."
John grew a little more intent on her news.
"Does! I wonder if he is old Stuart Thatcher's son? He had a boy who
went east to school somewheres."
Rose went into the house and set to work with the graceful celerity
which Mrs. Diehl called "knack."
"Rose, you can turn off work when you really want to, to beat anything I
ever see."
Rose smiled and hummed a tune. Mrs. Diehl was made curious.
"You're wonderful good-natured, it seems to me. What's the reason,
already?"
"We're going to have company."
"Who, for Peter's sake?"
"Dr. Thatcher."
"What's he come here for?"
"To see pappa," said Rose, as she rushed upstairs into her attic-room.
It was cold up there, warmed only by the stove-pipe from the
sitting-room, but she sat down and fell into a dream in which she
recalled every look and word he had given her.
She came suddenly to herself, and began putting on her red dress, which
was her company dress. When she came downstairs in her creaking new
shoes Mrs. Diehl was properly indignant.
"Well! I declare. Couldn't you get along in your calico?"
"No, I couldn't!" Rose replied, with easy sharpness, which showed the
frequent passages at arms between them.
When Thatcher came in with the teacher he was quite startled by the
change in her. She looked taller and older and more intricate some way.
She took his hat and coat and made him at home in much better form than
he had reason to think she knew. She on her part watched him closely.
His manner at the table was a source of enlightenment to her. She felt
him to be a strong man, therefore his delicacy and consideration meant
much to her. It suggested related things dimly. It made her appreciate
vaguely the charm of the world from whence he came.
Dr. Thatcher was not young, and his experience as a physician had added
to his natural insight. He studied Rose keenly while he talked with John
concerning the changes in the neighborhood.
He saw in the girl great energy and resolution, and a mental
organization not simple. She had reason and reserve force not
apprehended by her father. The problem was, should he continue to
encourage her. Education of a girl like that might be glorious--or
tragic! After supper John Dutcher took him into the corner, and, while
Rose helped clear away the dishes, the two men talked.
"You see," John explained, "she's been talkin' about going on studyin'
for the last six months. I don't know what's got into the girl, but she
wants to go to Madison. I suppose her learnin' of that Bluff-Sidin' girl
goin' has kind o' spurred her on. I want her to go to the high school at
the Sidin', but she wants to go away"--he choked a little on that
phrase--"but if you an' teacher here think the girl'd' ought to go, why,
I'll send her."
The younger man looked grave--very grave. He foresaw lonely hours for
John Dutcher.
"Well--the girl interests me very much, Mr. Dutcher. It's a strong point
in her favor that she wants to go. Most girls of her age have little
ambition beyond candy and new dresses. I guess it's your duty to send
her. What she wants is the larger life that will come to her in Madison.
The preparatory work can be done here at the Siding. I believe it is one
of the accredited schools. Of course she will come home often, and when
she comes to Madison, I will see that she has a home until she gets
'wunted,' as you farmers say."
The teacher came in at this point full of wild praise of Rose's ability.
"She's great on history and geography. She knows about every city and
river and mountain on the maps."
"She's always been great for geography," confirmed John. "Used to sit
and follow out lines on the maps when she wasn't knee-high to a 'tater."
A tender tone came into his voice, almost as if he were speaking of a
dead child. He too had a quick imagination, and he felt already the loss
of his girl, his daily companion.
The matter was decided there. "You send her to me, when she gets ready,
and I'll have Mrs. Thatcher look after her for a week or so, till we
find her a place to stay."
Rose was in a fever of excitement. She saw the men talking there, and
caught disconnected words as she came and went about the table. At last
she saw Dr. Thatcher rise to go. She approached him timorously.
"Well, Rose, when you come to Madison you must come to our house. Mrs.
Thatcher will be glad to see you." She could not utter a word in thanks.
After he had gone Rose turned to her father with a swift appeal.
"Oh, pappa, am I going?"
He smiled a little. "We'll see when the time comes, Rosie."
She knew what that meant and she leaped with a joy swift as flame. John
sat silently looking at the wall, his arm flung over the back of his
chair. He wondered why she should feel so happy at the thought of
leaving home, when to him it was as bitter as death to think of losing
her for a single day out of his life.
Thenceforward the world began to open to Rose. Every sign of spring was
doubly significant; the warm sun, the passing of wild-fowl, the first
robin, the green grass, the fall of the frost, all appealed to her with
a power which transcended words. All she did was only preparation for
her great career beyond the Ridge.
She pictured the world outside in colors of such splendor that the
romance of her story-papers seemed weak and pale.
Out there in the world was William De Lisle. Out there were ladies with
white faces and heavy-lidded, haughty eyes, in carriages and in
ball-rooms. Out there was battle for her, and from her quiet coule
battle seemed somehow alluring.