knew just how far it was proper for him to go, and never once did he
overstep those bounds. He held the respect and fear of his juniors
without making any open breach with the teacher. But in one way William
Bellus had been peculiarly favored. His predecessors had to deal with
Perry Thomas, and in spite of his gentle ways and intellectual cast,
Perry is active and wiry. He is a blacksmith by trade, and is the
leading tenor in the Methodist choir. This makes a combination that for
staying powers has few equals. My biggest boy's predecessor had been
utterly broken. Even the girls jeered at him until he quit school
entirely. But William had another problem. It was the disappointment of
his life that Perry Thomas retired just as he came into power. He had
declared at a mass-meeting behind the woodshed that it was a gross
injustice on the part of the directors to put a crippled teacher in
charge of the school. Where now was glory to be gained? They would have
a school-ma'am next, like they done up to Popolomus, and none but little
boys, and girls not yet out of plaits, would be so servile as to suffer
such domination. Mark Hope, the soldier, he honored! Mark Hope, the
veteran, he revered! Mark Hope, the teacher, he despised; for his
crutches made him a safe barricade against which no Biggest Boy with a
spark of honor would dare to hurl himself. There might be in the school
boys base enough to charge that he lacked spirit in his attitude of armed
neutrality. Let those traducers step forward, whether they be two or a
dozen. What would follow, the Biggest Boy did not say; but he had pulled
off his coat, and there was none to dispute him. His position was
established. Thereafter he assumed toward me a calm indifference. He
was never openly offensive. He always kept within certain carefully laid
bounds of supercilious politeness. At first he was exasperating, and I
longed to have him forget himself and overstep those bounds, that I might
make up for his disappointment in being cheated out of Perry Thomas. But
he never did.
To-day William Bellus really opened the school, for not till he had
buried his face in his book did the general buzz begin.
That buzz was maddening. For three long hours I had to sit there and
listen to the children as they droned over and over their lessons. Yet
this was my life's work. To my care Six Stars had intrusted her young,
and I should be proud of that trust and earnest in its fulfilment. But
Tim's letter was in my pocket. It was full of the big things of this
life. It told of great struggles for great prizes, and the chalk dust
choked me when I thought of him, and then turned to myself as I stood
there, trying to demonstrate to half a dozen girls and boys that the
total sum of a single column of six figures was twenty-four. Tim had
been promoted and was a full-fledged clerk now. There were many steps
ahead for him, but he was going to climb them rung by rung; and what joy
there is in drawing one's self up by one's own strength! I was at the
top of my ladder--at the very pinnacle of learning in Black Log. Even
now I was unfolding to the marvelling eyes of the children of the valley
the mysteries of that great science, physical geography. I was
explaining to them the trend of the Rockies and the Himalayas, and of
other mountains I should never see; I was telling them why it snowed, and
unfolding the phenomena of the aurora borealis. Alexander with no more
worlds to conquer was a sorry spectacle. We pedagogues who have mastered
physical geography are Alexanders. But if I was bound to the pinnacle of
learning so that I could neither fly nor fall, I could at least watch Tim
as he struggled higher and higher. And Mary was watching with me! That
was what made my work that day seem doubly irksome and the hours trebly
long; for she was waiting to hear from him, and when the sun seemed to
rest on the mill gable I should be free to go to her. So the minutes
dragged. It made me angry. Ordinarily I speak quietly to the scholars,
but now I fairly bellowed at Chester Holmes, who was reading in such a
loud tone that he disturbed me and called me to the real business of the
moment.
"Don't say Dooglas!" I cried.
"That's the way Teacher Thomas used to say it," retorted Chester, sitting
down on the long bench where the Fifth Reader class was posted.
"D-o-u-g--dug--Douglas," I snapped.
"'Douglas round him drew his cloak.' Now, Ira Snarkle, you may read five
lines, beginning with the second stanza."
Ira was very tall for his sixteen years. His clothes had never caught up
to him, for his trousers always failed by two inches to grasp his
shoe-tops, and his coat had a terrible struggle to touch the top of his
trousers. For the shortness of the sleeves he partly compensated with a
pair of bright red worsted wristers. When he bent his elbows the sleeves
flew up his arms, and these wristers became the most conspicuous thing in
his whole attire.
Ira was holding his book in the correct position now, so I saw a length
of bare arms embraced at the wrists by brilliant bands of red.
"'My manors, halls, and bowers shall still be open at my soveryne's
will,'" chanted the boy.
He paused, and to illustrate the imperious humor of the Scot, he waved
his fingers and a red wrister at me. The gesture unnerved him for a
moment, and he had to go thumbing over the page to find his place. He
caught it again and chanted on--"'At my sover-sover-yne's will. To each
one whom he lists, however unmeet to be the owner's peer.'"
Again the boy waved the fingers and the red wrister at me. Again he
paused, gathering himself for the climax. That gesture was abominable,
but at such a time I dared not interrupt.
"'My castles are my king's alone from turret to foundation stone,'" he
cried. The red wrister flashed beneath my eye. Ira had even forgotten
his book and let it fall to his side. He took a step forward; paused
with one knee bent and the other stiff; extended his right arm and
shouted, "'The hand of Dooglas is his own, and never shall in friendly
grasp the hand of sech as Marmyyon clasp.'"
[Illustration: "'At my sover-sover-yne's will.'"]
Well done, Ira! The proud Marmion must indeed have trembled until his
armor rattled if the Scot bellowed at him in that way and shook a red
wrister so violently under his very nose. Excellent, Ira; you put spirit
in your reading. One can almost picture you beneath Tantallion's towers,
drawing your cloak around you and giving cold respect to the stranger
guest. But why say "Dooglas"?
"S-o-u-p spells soup," answered Ira loftily to my question. "Then
D-o-u-g must spell doog."
"I tell you it's Douglas. 'The hand of Douglas is his own,'" I cried.
At the mention of the doughty Scot I pounded the floor with my crutch and
repeated "Dug--dug--dug."
"But Teacher Thomas allus said Doog," exclaimed Chester Holmes.
"I don't care what Teacher Thomas said," I retorted. "You must say
Dug--Dug--Douglas."
"But Teacher Thomas is the best speaker they is," piped in Lulu Ann
Nummler from the end of the bench.
"I don't care if Teacher Thomas can recite better than Demosthenes
himself," I snapped. "In this school we say Douglas." My crutch
emphasized this mandate, but I could not see how it was received, for
every scholar's face was hidden from me by a book.
"Now, Abraham, six lines."
Abraham Lincoln Spiker was two years younger than Ira Snarkle, but he
seemed much taller and correspondingly thinner. In our valley the boys
have a fashion of being born long, and getting shorter and fatter as they
grow older. Abraham's mother in making his clothes had provided against
the day when he would weigh two hundred pounds, and consequently his
garments hung all around him, giving him an exceedingly dispirited look.
His hair relieved this somewhat, for it was white and always stood gaily
on end, defying brush and comb. Daniel Arker, a sturdy black-haired lad,
would have done fuller justice to the passage that fell to Abraham, for
the Spiker boy with his gentle lisp never shone in elocution; but our
reading class is a lottery, as we go from scholar to scholar down the
line. The lot falling to him, Abraham pushed himself up from the bench,
grasped his book fiercely with both hands, and fixed his eyes intently on
the ceiling.
"Go on," I commanded kindly.
"'Fierth broke he forth,'" lisped the boy.
"Louder. Put some spirit in it," I cried. "'Fierce broke he forth!'"
And my crutch beat the floor.
"'Fierth broke he forth, and durtht thou then to bared----"
"To beard," I corrected.
"'Bared the lion in hith den--the Doog-dug-lath----'" Abraham stopped
and took a long breath. I just gazed at him.
"'In hith hall,'" he shouted. "'And h-o-p-hop-e-s-t-hopest thou then
unthscathed to go?'"
The boy's knees began to bend under him, and he was reaching a long, thin
arm out behind hunting for the bench. He was fleeing. I knew it. I
warned him.
"No--go on--read on."
Abraham sighed and drew his sleeve across his mouth from the elbow to the
tips of his fingers. Then he sang:
"'Noby--Thent Bride--ofBoth--wellno--updraw--bridgegrooms--whatward--erho
--lettheportculluthfall!'"
Young Spiker collapsed.
"'Lord Marmion turned; well was his need,'" I cried, "if Douglas ever
addressed him in that fashion."
"Now watch me, boys," I added. And with as much fire as I could kindle
in so short a time and under conditions so dampening, I thundered the
resounding lines: "'No, by St. Bride of Bothwell, no! Up drawbridge,
grooms--what, warder, ho!'"
"'Let the portcullis fall!'" This last command rang from the back of the
room. Perry Thomas stood there smiling.
"I couldn't have done it better myself, Mark," he said. "It's a splendid
piece--that Manny-yon--ain't it--grand--noble. I love to say it."
"Teacher Thomas, Teacher Thomas," came in the shrill voice of Chester
Holmes, "ain't it Dooglas?"
Perry was at my side, smiling benignly on the school. He really seemed
to love the scholars; but Perry is a pious man, and seeks to follow the
letter of the Scriptures, and the command is to love our enemies.
"Doogulus--Doogulus," he said. "Of course, boys, it's Doogulus."
The word seemed to taste good, he rolled it over and over so in his mouth.
"Teacher Hope says you ain't such a fine speaker after all," cried Lulu
Ann Nummler from the distant end of the bench.
She is fifteen and should have known better, but the people of our valley
are dreadfully frank sometimes, and this girl spoke in the clear, sharp
voice of truth that cut through one. Perry turned quick as a flash and
eyed me.
For a moment all I could do was to thump the floor and cry "Order!
Silence! Lulu Ann Nummler, when you want to speak, you must hold up
three fingers."
The three fingers shot up at once and waved at me, but I pretended not to
see them and turned to my guest.
"I said, Perry, that you were not quite so great a speaker as
Demosthenes," I stammered. Chester Holmes had three fingers up and Ira
Snarkle was waving both hands, but I went calmly on: "They were telling
me how beautifully you recited, and I was trying to instil into the piece
a little of your spirit. But now that we have you here, I insist on your
showing me and the school just how it is done."
Perry frowned fiercely on Lulu Ann Nummler, and the three fingers
disappeared. On me he smiled.
"It's a great pleasure to me to be able to recite," he said. "To be able
to repeat great po-ems at will, is to have a treasure you can allus carry
with you while your voice lasts." All this was to the scholars. "There
are three great arts in this world--singin', hand-paintin', and last but
not least, speakin'. I try my hand at all of them except hand-paintin',
and I wish to impress on all you scholars what a joy it is to oneself and
one's friends to have mastered one of these muses. Singin' and speakin'
are closely allied, startin' from the same source. And hand-painting it
allus seemed to me, is really elocution in oils; for a be-yutiful picture
is a silent talker. What suggestions it brings to us as we look upon a
paintin' of a wreath of flowers, or fruit, or a handsome lady! This art
is lastin'. Speakin' and singin' is over as soon as they is done. So I
have often thought that had I only time I'd hand-paint; but bein' a busy
man I've had to content myself with but two of the muses."
Perry paused a moment to rub his hands and smile. I did not miss this
opportunity to break in, for I had no intention of listening to a
dissertation on art as well as to a recitation.
"Now let us have your 'Marmion,'" I said.
He had forgotten all about "Marmion," and came back to the knight with a
start and a cough. Then he gazed long at the floor. The school buzz
died away, and you could hear the ticking of my little clock. Perry
coughed again and I knew that he was started, so I settled down in my
chair and gazed out of the window.
"'But Doogulus round him drew his cloak,'" Perry was buttoning the two
top buttons of his Prince Albert as his voice rang out. "'Folded his
arms and thus he spoke.'"
Annagretta Holmes is only three years old. They send her to school to
keep her warm and out of mischief. She sat on the very front row, right
under Perry's eye. The poor child didn't understand why Teacher Thomas
should stare so at her, and she let out one long, unending bleat. This
gave me a chance to send Lulu Ann Nummler out of the room in charge of
the infant, and I rested easier when Perry drew his Prince Albert around
him once more and spoke.
A grand figure Perry would have made in Tantallion's towers. I forgot
the school, and the village and the valley, as I sat there looking out of
the window into the sky. I am in those towers when Marmion stops to bid
adieu, but in place of the proud Scottish noble, Perry Thomas stands
confronting the English warrior. What a pair they make--the knight armed
cap-a-pie, at his charger's side, and Perry in that close-fitting, shiny
coat that has seen so many great occasions in the valley. There is a
gracious bigness about the Englishman forgetting the cold respect with
which he has been treated and offering a mailed hand in farewell. But
Perry buttons his Prince Albert, waves his brown derby under the very
vizor of the departing guest, rests easily on his right leg, bends the
left knee slightly, folds his arms and speaks. "Burned Marmion's swarthy
cheek like fire." Little wonder! If Perry Thomas spoke to me like that
I'd cleave his head. But Marmion spares proud Angus. He beards the
Doogulus in his hall. He dashes the rowels in his steed, dodges the
portcullis, and gallops over the draw. And Perry Thomas is left standing
with folded arms, gazing through the chalk-dust haze into the solemn,
wide open eyes of the children of Six Stars.
[Illustration: Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior.]
IX
Perry's head was close to mine, over my table. The school was studying
louder than ever, and our voices could not have gone beyond the
platform; but my friend was cautious. The scholars might well have
thought that the whispered conference boded them ill; that the new
teacher and the old teacher were hatching some conspiracy against them.
It must have looked like it. Perry's elbows were on the table, and my
elbows were on the table. My chin rested in my hands, but his hands
were waving beneath my chin as he unfolded to me the plot he had just
discovered against his hopes and his happiness. But the school was
good. The second grammar class had been relieved from a recitation by
this confab, and somehow Perry had a subduing influence. Even the
Biggest Boy opened his desk quietly and never once looked up from his
geography except for a cautious glance out of the corner of his left
eye.
"There was a pile of 'em that high, Mark," said Perry, waving his hands
about a foot above the table. "There was some books of po-ems and
novels and such. He'd sent them all to her in one batch--all new, mind
ye, too--and it pleased her most to death. Well, it made me feel flat,
I tell you--so flat that when she asked me if I didn't think it was
lovely of him, I burst right out and said it was really. What I should
'a' done was kind of pass it off as if it didn't amount to much."
"Who is the young woman?" I asked.
"I ain't mentionin' names," Perry replied, "and I ain't givin' the name
of the other man; but I have an idee you could guess if you kep' at it."
Our valley does not bloom with beautiful young women. We always have a
few, but those few can be counted on one's fingers. Our valley does
not number among its men many who can supplement their sentimental
attentions with gifts of books. I knew of one. So it did not require
much guessing on my part to divine the cause of Perry's heart-sickness;
but as long as the other persons in his drama were anonymities, he
would speak freely, so I relieved him by declaring solemnly that never
in the world could I guess. I had always supposed him a lover of all
women, a slave of none.
Perry smiled.
"I have kep' a good deal of company," he said. "On account of my
fiddlin', and singin', and recitin' I've always had things pretty much
my own way. It's opposition that's ruination. That's what shatters a
man's heart and takes all his sperrit. As long as the game's between
just a man and a girl there's nothin' very serious. One or the other
loses, and you can begin a new game somewheres else. But when two men
and one girl get a playin' three handed, then it is serious; then it's
desperate. A man has to th'ow his whole heart and mind into it, if
he'd whip, and he gets so worked up he thinks his whole happiness to
the end of time depends on his drivin' the other fellow to drownin'
himself in the mill-dam."
"In other words, if you had not found another laying piles of books and
such gifts at the feet of this fair one, whose name I can never guess,
you would have fiddled to her and sung to her and recited to her until
she said 'I love you.' Then you would have sought new heavens to
conquer."
"That's about it," said Perry, smiling feebly. His face brightened.
"You know how it is yourself, Mark. Mind how you kep' company once
with Emily Holmes and nothin' come of it. She went off to normal
school in desperation--you mind that, don't ye?--and she married a
school-teacher from Snyder County--you mind that, don't ye? Now
supposin' you and that Snyder County chap had been opposin' one another
instead of you and Emily Holmes--I allow her name would have been
changed to Emily Hope long ago, or you'd 'a' drownded yourself."
"But I never had any intention of marrying Emily Holmes," I protested.
"I know you didn't," Perry replied, thumping the table in triumph.
"That's just the pint. If the world was popilated by one man and one
woman, they'd be a bachelor and an old maid. If there was two men and
one woman, then one of the men would marry the old maid sure."
"Your meaning is more clear," I said.
Though Perry did not know it, I was meeting the same opposition that so
aroused his ire. In part there was truth in what he said, for while
opposition does not increase one's love, it surely quickens it. I
doubt if I should have been making a journey nightly up the hill if I
had not expected to find Weston there. Of Perry I had no fear, and it
was not egotism in me to be indifferent to him. He lives so far down
the valley. It's a long walk from Buzzards Glory to Six Stars, and the
road has many chuck-holes. Perry is our man-about-the-valley _par
excellence_, but he is discreet, so it had chanced we met but once at
Warden's, and that was on the night when we heard the story of Flora
Martin and the famine in India. He knew me still as a friend, and not
regarding him as a rival, I treated him as a companion in arms. To be
sure, I could not see where he could be of much assistance; but we had
a common aim and a common foe. That made a bond between us. With that
common foe disposed of, the bond might snap. Till then I was Perry's
friend.
"I agree with you partly," I said. "Still, it seems to me a man should
love a woman for herself--wholly, entirely for herself, and not because
some other fellow has set his heart on her."
"You are right there, in part," Perry answered. "I have set my heart
on a particular young lady, but the fact that another--a lean,
cadaverous fellow with red whiskers and no particular looks or
brains--is slowly pushing himself between us makes it worse. It
aggravates me; it affects my appetite." Perry smiled grimly. "It
drives away sleep. You know how it 'ud have been if that Snyder County
teacher had been livin' in Six Stars when you was keepin' company with
Emily Holmes."
"I don't know how it would have been at all," I retorted hotly.
"Well, s'posin' when you'd walked four miles to set up with her, and
thought you had her all to yourself, s'pose this Snyder County teacher
with red whiskers, and little twinklin' eyes, and new clothes, come
strollin' in, and stretched out in a chair like he owned her, and begin
tellin' about all the countries he'd seen--about England and Rome, Injy
and Africa--and she leaned for'a'd and looked up into his eyes and just
listened to him talk, drank it all in like--s'pose all that, and then
s'pose----"
"I'll suppose anything you like," said I, "except that I am in love
with Emily Holmes and that the Snyder County teacher is cutting me out.
For example, let us put me in your place. I am enamored of this fair
unknown--of course I can't guess her name--and this second man, also
unknown--he of the red whiskers, is my rival. Let us suppose it that
way."
"If you insist," Perry replied. "Well then, you are settin' up with
her. You've invited her to be your lady at the next spellin' bee
between Six Stars and Turkey Walley, and she has said she'll think
about it. Then you've told her that there is something wrong with you.
You don't know what it is, 'ceptin' you feel all peekit like for no
special reason; you can't eat no more, and sleep poorly and has sighin'
spells. Then she kind of peeks at you outen the corner of her eye and
smiles. S'posin' just then in comes this man and bows most polite, and
tells you he is so delighted to see you, and makes her move from the
settee where you are, to a rocker close to him; and leans over her and
asks about the health of all the family as if they was his nearest and
dearest; inquires about her dog; tells her she looks just like the
portrates of his great-grandma. S'posin' she just kind of looks at the
floor quiet-like or else up to him--you'll begin to think you ain't
there at all, won't you? Then you'll concide that you are there but
you oughtn't to be, and kind of slide out without your hat and forget
your fiddle. I tell you, Mark, it's then love becomes a consumin'
fire."
[Illustration: "You'll begin to think you ain't there at all."]
Perry looked at me appealingly. Men hesitate to speak of love--except
to women. He had already shown a frankness that was surprising, but
then with a certain deftness he had placed me in the position of the
sentimental one with a problem to solve. He was seeking for himself a
solution of that problem, and was appealing to me to help him.
"Suppose again," said I, "that going another day to see the girl, I
found her poring over a pile of books--all new books--just given her by
this same arrogant interloper." Perry was silent, but when I paused
and looked at him, I saw in his face that I was arguing along the right
line. "Then the question arises, what shall I do?"
Perry nodded.
"What would you do?" he said. "That's it exact."
"I'd meet him at his own game," I answered.
"With what?" he asked.
"With what?" I repeated.
There was the rub! With what? I sat with my head clasped between my
hands trying to answer him.
"With what?" I repeated, after a long silence.
"S'posin' I got her a wreath." Perry offered the suggestion, and in
his enthusiasm he forgot that in our premise I was the person
concerned; but I was not loath to let him take on himself the burden of
our perplexity.
"Is she dead?" I asked.
"I needn't get one of that kind," he solemnly replied. "Somethin' in
autumn leaves ought to be nice."
"You might do better."
"A hand-paintin', then," he ventured timidly.
I smiled on this with more approval.
"They have some be-yutiful ones at Hopedale," he said with more heart.
"The last time I was down I was lookin' at 'em. They've fine gold
frames and----"
"Why send her a picture of a tree when the finest oak in the valley is
at her door?" I protested. "Why send her a picture of a slate-colored
cow when a herd of Durhams pastures every day right under her eye?"