THE NEW SCHOLARS.
“AND how are the two new scholars doing?” asked the trustee.
The principal smiled, and then sighed, and shook her head. “They are
doing extremely well,” she said; “but—”
“But?” said the trustee.
“I don’t make them out at all,” said the principal. “That is,—oh, the
little boy, of course, is just a good little fellow, not too bright,
but with the sunniest, sweetest disposition in the world. It is the
girl that puzzles me. It is incredible that she should know as much as
she does, if she has been always deaf; yet it is evident that she has
been taught no lip-reading; and her signs are none of the regular ones,
but a language of her own, that she carries on with the little brother.
She will not answer any questions that we put in writing; just smiles,
a kind of thrilling smile, that goes to one’s heart,—I don’t know
how to describe it,—and puts out her hand and strokes yours, and—and
somehow, one doesn’t ask her anything more. She comes from an island,
she writes, and the parents are dead, and she and the boy are wholly
alone.”
The trustee mused.
“You had some kind of reference with them,” he asked. “Tell me all
about it, will you? I have been away, you know, and only heard of the
matter at third hand.”
“It was about a month ago. I happened to be crossing the hall myself,
on some errand, and heard James, the porter, talking to some one. He
saw me, and called me to come. There on the steps stood these two
children,—well, the girl is hardly a child in stature, being tall and
slight, but she seems very young,—hand in hand. The girl held a note,
and was trying to make him read it; James was asking question after
question, and at each one she shook her head quietly. She made none
of the usual signs, and he never thought of her being a deaf-mute. I
took the note, and found it was addressed to me; it was from a young
woman I know, a divinity student. She was appointed a travelling
missionary this summer to sail about the coast, teaching and preaching,
and, on some wild island or other,—I forgot its name,—she found these
children. She asked me to be kind to the children; said that Isla was
an interesting girl, and that her one desire was to have her little
brother taught to speak. She said nothing about Isla herself learning;
possibly she thought her too old for the school, or else that she would
plead her own cause; and she has certainly done it. She is a strange,
wild creature, but there is something unspeakably winning about her.
Oh, and there was another thing that was very curious. I think James
himself must tell you about that.”
She rang the bell, and the porter appeared, a good-natured looking
Irishman, not perhaps too clever.
“James,” said Miss Stewart, “I want you to tell Mr. Upton about the
strange man who came here just after I had taken the Heron children
up-stairs, the day they first came.”
James looked uneasy, and shuffled on his feet.
“Sure, he was a crazy man, sir!” he said. “There did be no sense in the
things he said to me, at all.”
“No matter; let’s hear them, James. If we never heard any remarks but
those with sense in them, we might live in silence a good part of our
lives. Out with it!”
James shuffled again, and looked over his shoulder, as if expecting to
see some one behind him.
“Well, sir, I’ll tell you just as it befel, and, if you don’t believe
me, it’ll not be my fault, nor yet I’ll not be blamin’ ye. I thought
strange of those two youngsters, coming all by their two selves that
way; and, after Miss Stewart took them up-stairs, I went out on the
steps and looked up and down the street a couple o’ times. ‘It might
be like this,’ says I to myself, ‘that somebody wanted to get shut on
’em,’ I says, ‘and has turned ’em over, poor dumb things, where they’ll
be taken care of, and now stealin’ off wid himself!’ I says. And that
minute, if I didn’t catch sight of a feller skulkin’ behind the corner,
and eyein’ me round it, for all the world like a sneakin’ spy, Miss
Stewart, ma’am. I’ll not deceive you, sir, that I didn’t like the look
of him at all. If he’d been a common mortal man, like you and me, sir,
and no offence, I’d ha’ had him out o’ that by the collar before he
could wink, and asked his business. But he was an on’arthly piece; I
don’t know what he was like, at all; but his face was all patches, and
his mouth the whole way round it, so it was; and the way he looked out
of his two eyes,—well! I thought I’d be goin’ in, whether he was a man
or a pixy, the way we see thim in Ireland. But I couldn’t turn round,
till he was up on the steps, and had me by the collar, and the two eyes
of him gogglin’ in my face, fit to turn me to stone. And he put his
face up close to mine, that never was near such an ugly thing before,
God be good to me! and he says, and it half a whisper and half a yell,—
“‘You’ll take care of that young lady!’ he says. ‘Are you the boss
here?’ and me no chance to answer, wid his hand in the neck of me, and
me voice choked in me throat,—‘You’ll take care of that young lady!’ he
says, ‘I want you to know,’ he says, ‘that she’s not alone, that young
lady ain’t. There’s them as is watchin’ over her, and that’ll know if
she ain’t treated good. And if they find out she ain’t, see here! I’ll
come here myself, and I’ll wring your neck!’ he says. ‘I could do it
as easy as I would a chicken’s, and ’twould be nothing but a pleasure.
So now you know. That young lady’s name is Heron: Isly Heron her name
is, and she’s wuth more money than there is in your city and Noo York
wropped together! I know Herons, and you’d better know ’em too, and
treat ’em as is right and proper. And my name’s Brazybone, and don’t
you forget the sound of it; Brazybone, do ye hear? And when Heron’s
near, just you be sure Brazybone ain’t fur off! You be sure of that,
and mind your lobster-pots! That’s what I say to you!’
“And then, Mr. Upton, he give my collar a twist, sir, as near broke my
neck, it did; and shook his fist in my face, and put his own ugly mug
right up, grinnin’ at me till I thought the eyes would rowl out of his
head. And then dropped me, and goes shamblin’ off round the corner.
There! Now I’ve told it, Miss Stewart, and don’t ask me to tell it
again no more, for the chills go down my back, they do, when I think of
it.”
James was soothed and dismissed, and went off, muttering, to his den.
“It is true that he was terribly frightened, poor fellow,” said Miss
Stewart, laughing. “We found him as white as a sheet, and for a long
time he would not say a word about what had happened. Indeed, I have
never heard the whole of it before. Do you think the man was a lunatic?”
“Perhaps; or perhaps some Caliban of an islander, who had been sent to
guard the two children. My curiosity is thoroughly roused about them, I
confess. Can I have a peep at them before I go, or are they already in
bed?”
Miss Stewart led the way up-stairs.
“We have given them a room together,” she said apologetically. “It is
hardly according to rules, but they have never been separated in their
lives, and it seemed so terrible a thing to them, that we thought we
might strain a point, and let them be together for a while, till they
grew accustomed to the new surroundings. There was a vacant room, which
was not in use.”
The trustee nodded. “I like india-rubber in my cast-iron, too!” he
said, sympathetically. “It wears much better.”
They went silently up the second flight. At the landing, Miss Stewart
paused, and beckoned to her companion to come up; unconsciously she put
her finger to her lips, which was absurd, if there were none but deaf
children near by. The trustee came up, and looked over her shoulder.
The door of a large room opposite the stairs stood open. No furniture
was in the room, save two beds and a chair or two. In one bed a little
boy sat upright, clapping his hands and making soft sounds of pleasure;
his voice was unmodulated, but had no harsh, unnatural tone, rather a
low, rustling murmur, like leaves touched by a light wind. His eyes
were fixed on a figure that instantly caught the eyes of the two
beholders, and held them.
Isla was circling round and round the room with light, swift motions,
like a bird’s; her arms were outspread, her finger-tips brushed the
walls as she sped by, and it was like the brushing of wings. Her long
russet hair, unbraided, waved about her shoulders; her eyes seemed to
lighten the dusky room, where the twilight was already falling. Now and
then she turned to smile at Jacob, to flutter to the bed and take him
in her arms for a moment; then turned again to her bird-like flight,
skimming the ground as a swallow skims the sea. You would have said,
a bird imprisoned in human form, shut within walls, and trying with
all its wild nature to escape its bonds. Her face turned bright on the
little brother, but, when it was away from him, the loneliness, the
longing, were pitiful to see. The trustee, standing well back in the
shadow, touched his companion on the arm with a glance of inquiry; what
did this mean? She shook her head, and he was glad to see her eyes full
of tears. His own heart ached, as if he were watching a sylvan creature
in pain.
Suddenly the girl paused, tired, or desperate, hung for a moment at the
window, gazing out at the roofs and chimney-pots, and the strip of blue
sky above them; then dropped on the ground and sat bowed together, her
face in her hands, rocking to and fro.
Miss Stewart stepped into the room, and laid her hand gently on the
child’s shoulder. At the first tread, Isla raised her head, then
dropped it again. A strong shudder went through her, and her breath
came fast; but only for an instant. It was a different face that she
raised to Miss Stewart now, in answer to the kindly pressure, the
troubled sign of inquiry. Gentle, quiet, a little anxious, perhaps,
with a smile that sought to propitiate; this was the Isla that Miss
Stewart knew. At the teacher’s sign, she rose quickly, and came forward
to greet the stranger. She took the hand he held out, and gazed at him
intently; her eyes were full of liquid light, but behind the light,
what shadow lay? suspicion, fear, expectation, as of something long
dreaded? What could it be? And as the trustee looked in amazement into
these gleaming, watchful eyes, that braved, yet shrank from him,—why,
what was this? He had fancied it all! The girl’s look was only winning,
only timid, anxious to please, perhaps a little shy of a stranger;
assuredly the sweetest look he had seen in human eyes.
“God bless you, my dear child!” he said, hastily. And the principal
felt that Isla was certainly improving in lip-reading, for she
brightened at the words, and smiled more joyously, and led the way to
little Jacob’s bed.