THE STORM BREAKS
The thing, however, which rankled deepest in Posey’s mind, and caused
her more bitter feelings than everything else, was that for all Mrs.
Hagood’s promise, which she herself standing by had heard, that Posey
should go regularly to the near-by school, she had not been allowed
to attend even for a single day. At first she had waited expecting
something would be said about it every day, and at last had ventured to
ask when she was to begin.
Mrs. Hagood heard the question with an air of surprise. “School!” she
repeated, “and all the house-cleaning, and spring and summer work
coming on, I wonder how you think I can spare you to go to school. One
would think that with all I’m doing for you, and the work you make,
that you’d want to help what little you could.”
Posey choked back a lump in her throat; in her own mind she was
sure that she was doing more work than she made, and earning all she
received or she wouldn’t be kept; at the same time it was plainly
evident that school, at least for the present, was not for her. “If
I can’t go this spring term, can I in the fall?” she asked somewhat
anxiously.
Mrs. Hagood was busy making pies, and fall was far in the future. “Yes,
I guess so,” she answered, glad to get rid of the matter so easily.
“If you are a smart girl to work this summer you can go to school next
fall.”
So summer went by, and all through its days Posey bore this promise in
mind; many a time it was an incentive to her when she would otherwise
have flagged; and a spur to endeavor without which she might have been
negligent. Autumn came, apples grew ruddy in the orchards, grapes
ripened on the vines, and the woods changed their summer’s dress of
green for one of yellow and scarlet. Yet Posey, who all through the
spring and early summer had watched with longing eyes the children
passing to and fro, saw the opening of the fall term draw near—delayed
by repairs on the schoolhouse far beyond its usual time—without a
single word or sign as to her going. And the day before it was to begin
Mrs. Hagood said to her, “Posey, I want you to pick the green tomatoes
to-morrow morning, then after dinner you can chop them for the mixed
pickle.”
Posey’s heart sank with dismay. The ambition the teacher at the Refuge
had awakened, had grown with her own growth; more still, an education
seemed her one hope of escape from the life of a charity dependent, and
she determined to risk a great deal rather than give it up. “Hadn’t
I better pick the tomatoes to-day?” she asked not without an inward
trembling of the heart. “You know school begins to-morrow.”
Mrs. Hagood paused in the pantry door. “Well, what if it does?”
“Why, you promised me, don’t you remember? that I should go to school
this fall.”
“I don’t remember, no, and I can’t spare you to go, anyway. There’s all
the pickles to put up, and apples to dry, and apple butter to stir,
and the pig to be killed, with lard to try out, and sausage to make,
and potatoes to be sorted over, and Brother Solon’s wife coming for a
visit. You don’t much more than earn your salt now, and to go to school
you wouldn’t be worth anything. All you care about it anyway is just
for an excuse to race and run and get rid of work.”
“It isn’t, either,” Posey protested hotly, “I like to study. Ask my
teachers at the Refuge if I didn’t have my lessons. Besides I want to
go to school so I can be a teacher myself some day.”
“A teacher,” with a scornful laugh that sent the blood to Posey’s face,
“a pretty teacher you’d make.”
“And when I came here with you,” Posey went on, sticking to the point
in issue, “you promised that I should go to school.”
“I can teach you all you need. And for a poor girl who has to depend on
charity for her bringing up, to know how to work is a great deal more
account than a little smattering of books, and a lot of high-flown,
silly ideas that will never amount to anything.”
“Then you don’t mean that I shall go to school at all?” Posey’s voice
trembled a little as she put the question. She had grown pale around
the mouth, and her eyes had become wide and dark.
“I don’t know as it’s any of your business what I intend,” was the
answer in Mrs. Hagood’s most decided tone. “I’ve told you that you
couldn’t go now, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
Posey laid down the ball of carpet rags she had been winding and faced
Mrs. Hagood, her slim figure very erect and a spot of red burning on
each cheek. “You are a wicked woman, and a liar,” she cried shrilly,
all the gathered disappointment and bitterness of months breaking out
in a sudden burst of fiery passion. “You promised Mr. Mott, at the
Refuge, that I should go to school; I heard you, and I shall write and
tell him just what you have done.”
“You will, will you?” scoffed Mrs. Hagood. “And who do you suppose will
believe what you say, a deceiving medium’s child?”
“I wasn’t her child, as you know well enough,” retorted Posey. “And
whatever she was, she was better than you. She sent me to school, and
didn’t make me work every enduring minute of the time. And my own
mother was the most beautiful lady that ever lived; you are no more
like her than you are like an angel. You are a bad, cruel woman, that’s
what you are.”
Posey had been so repressed with Mrs. Hagood that when her long
smoldering resentment leaped into wrathful words the latter stood for a
moment in bewildered astonishment. It was only for a moment, however,
a color so deep it was fairly purple mottled her face; glancing around
her eye rested on a small wooden rod she had taken from a curtain, and
seizing this she turned on Posey, “You vile little beggar. I’ll teach
you to talk that way to me!”
With the first blow that fell Posey sprang forward and fastened her
sharp white teeth in Mrs. Hagood’s hand. But the latter’s greater
strength shook her off before anything more than a deep mark had been
made, the pain of which, as well as the insult of it only adding to the
storm of blows the hand rained. “There,” she exclaimed, as breathless
with anger, excitement, and exertion, she gave Posey a final violent
shake, and whirled her into her little bedroom with such force that
she fell in a heap on the floor, “you’ll stay in here till to-morrow
morning, and we’ll see then if you will talk in any such way, and
fly at me like a wildcat. If you do you’ll get something that you’ll
remember as long as you live, I can tell you.” And with this parting
threat she shut the door with a bang.
Left alone, throbbing with a rage of resentful passion, into which the
physical pain entered as a part, Posey threw herself on the bed and
buried her head in the clothes with the old cry, “Mamma, my mamma,” and
then as a gust of stormy sobs shook her frame. “Why can’t I die, too,
oh, why can’t I?”
But her tears were not of penitence, far from it, and it was well
that Mrs. Hagood had not demanded of her any expression of sorrow for
her offense, or of submission for the future; for in Posey’s present
mood she would have been beaten to death before she would either have
confessed or yielded. As it was she sobbed as softly as she could, and
kept her face well in the pillow that Mrs. Hagood might not have the
pleasure of knowing that she was crying, and under her breath she
repeated over and over, as though it gave her some relief, “I hate you,
oh, I do hate you, you bad, cruel woman!”