THE BLAB BOY
Meantime, Mr. Rowantree (who loved teaching) was having his experiences.
He had been in the habit of instructing his own children, who, from early
infancy had been taught to listen and to learn. Indeed, there was
nothing they would rather do. They knew almost all of the great stories
for children that have been written by the different peoples of the
world, and they were so used to having their father speak partly in
English, partly in Latin and partly in French, that they did not mind
that at all. Very likely he may have ventured to throw in a little
German or Italian now and then—he certainly could have done so if he
wished. Then, too, he had taught them their notes in the music book; and
he had made figures seem like a game to them. Really, he had done little
else since they were born but train them and teach them, and their minds
answered to his as the strings of a harp respond to a piano.
Imagine then, his feelings, when he was left alone to deal with the
twenty-one pupils—including Mrs. McIntosh—of the Ravenel school. He
tried his best to realize how little they knew, but he really could not
do it. He had begun with Skully Simms because Azalea had particularly
begged him to look after the boy, owing to the peculiar circumstances
under which he had come to school, and he set him a little reading lesson
to con. Then he turned to Mrs. McIntosh, whose eagerness to learn, grown
woman as she was, seemed to him very touching. But he was interrupted by
Skully, who in a high-pitched voice and a wild singsong something like
that used by the traveling preachers at a camp meeting, was going on:
“T-h-e, the, c-a-t, cat, s-a-w, saw, a r-a-t, rat—”
“What do you mean by that noise, sir?” thundered Mr. Rowantree. “Can’t
you study to yourself?”
Skully looked terribly embarrassed and buried his scarlet face down
behind his book. Mr. Rowantree regarded him something as a king looks at
a cat—a stray, wayside cat—and resumed his instruction, only to hear a
moment later the wild, high notes of Skully breaking out again.
He turned on the little boy in his most majestic manner.
“Will you have the goodness to tell me—” he began. But he was
interrupted by a chorus of explanatory voices.
“He’s been to a blab school, sir,” the other children declared. “He
don’t know how to study no other way. Once you’ve got the blab way o’
l’arning, you can’t do no other way.”
Mr. Rowantree grasped the meaning of the statement. He had heard of the
“blab schools” where each pupil studied his lesson aloud, often at the
top of his lungs. He looked about him expecting to see the Coulter crowd
doubled up with scornful mirth. But he saw nothing of the sort. The
children there understood the difficulties of Skully. Nay, they firmly
believed that when once the blab habit was settled on a person it could
not be got rid of. They expected to see the schoolmaster fall into a
terrible rage and they naturally looked forward to it with a not
altogether innocent glee. But Mr. Rowantree, it seemed, could be a
surprising person.
“I beg your pardon,” he said to Skully politely. “I didn’t understand.
It will be rather bothersome for you to break off the habit of studying
aloud, but of course you must, for it puts other people out very much,
don’t you see? This morning I will allow you to move your lips as you
study, but you must not speak aloud. By to-morrow I shall hope that you
can study without even moving your lips.”
“Yessir,” said poor Skully, and he tried as hard as ever he could with
his untutored, eager little mind, to do as he should in the school which
he so very much wished to attend. But it was hard work, and from time to
time his high-pitched singsong voice would break from the whisper to
which it was held in leash and would cause Mr. Rowantree to hold up a
warning finger. Then, Skully, scarlet-faced and wretched, would try
again.
This, however, was not the only excitement of the day. Just before noon
the instructor was surprised to see a very long, very thin, very
dust-colored man appear in the doorway. It was not only his homespun
clothes which appeared dust-colored. His hair and skin, even his eyes,
had a faded yellowish hue.
He leaned forward, peering in the room curiously, his high, arched nose
seeming to smell out what his eyes did not at first discover. Then he
shot out his long arm and pointed at little Mrs. McIntosh, where she sat,
her worn yet girlish face white with nervousness, and said:
“I want you-all to git out of this.”
For a moment no one spoke. The woman had not arisen. A little look of
trembling bravery shone in her eyes. She seemed to be seeking for some
words in which to express her thoughts and not finding them.
“You hear?” cried the man. “You-all git out of that thar seat and come
to home whar you belong. Thissen ain’t no place for a married woman.
You hear?”
Mr. Rowantree had been stroking his long ruddy mustache with his white
hand, waiting, it seemed, for developments. But now he came forward,
bearing upon his handsome face a look not unlike that he had turned upon
Skully a while before.
“Mrs. McIntosh is your wife, I suppose,” he said in his easy, pleasant
way.
“You jest bet she is,” said the man defiantly, “and I want her to home.
She’s making me the laughing stock of the hull place.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Rowantree, quite politely. “What are they laughing at?
Excuse me if I don’t quite understand.”
“They’re laughing because a married woman leaves her home and sets in
school with childer, l’arning like she was five years old.”
“They probably are not aware that men and women of the most learned sort
go to universities until they are much older than Mrs. McIntosh.
Naturally, they wouldn’t know that, would they? It’s not the kind of
thing that folk here on the mountain would be liable to hear about.”
“We know ’nough,” said the man sullenly. “We ken git along without
nobody’s help.”
“Now, really,” said Mr. Rowantree in a pleasant tone, “you _don’t_ get on
very well, you know. You couldn’t get on with men beyond the
mountains—wouldn’t measure up with them in any way, except perhaps, in
the use of a gun. And that’s because you don’t know the things your
excellent wife is trying to learn. She already knows her letters, writes
her name, and is beginning to read books. Of course that puts her quite
a way ahead of you, Mr. McIntosh.”
Mr. Rowantree still stroked his mustache with a white hand and smiled.
“I don’t allow no woman belonging to me to know more than I know,” said
Mr. McIntosh in what was meant to be a very manly manner. “What knowing
thar is around our house is for me.”
“Too late, too late,” cried Mr. Rowantree, waving his hand magnificently
in the air. “You see, she knows more than you this very minute. She’s
got the key to the puzzle. You can’t stop her now. She’s got something
you haven’t—something that puts her in line with the world beyond these
mountains—something that will comfort and amuse her as long as she lives.
That’s the wonder about learning; once you get it in your head, nobody
can take it away from you.”
Mr. Rowantree regarded the mountaineer with an unflinching eye.
“I reckon I ken take it out o’ her,” said the man, his eyes flashing.
“No, you can’t,” retorted Mr. Rowantree. “You may think you can, but you
can’t. She’s got hold of a secret that makes her more powerful than you,
though of course your muscles are much stronger than hers. Mark this,
Mr. McIntosh: No matter how things go with her, she’ll always have a kind
of happiness that no one can take away.”
There was a little pause and then Mr. Rowantree went on.
“What’s more, she’s getting something that she’ll not want to keep to
herself. That’s the way with folk who learn. They want to pass their
knowledge on. She’ll be passing it to her children and they’ll come up
in the world. You can’t tell anything about _how_ far they’ll come up.
They may get to be the best known and most useful men and women in the
state. They say children take from their mother, and your children have
a good mother, Mr. McIntosh. She’s a woman with a clear, sensible mind,
who wants to lift herself up out of poverty and ignorance. That’s the
sort of a wife you have, sir, and I congratulate you.”
The preposterously pleasant Mr. Rowantree advanced upon the glowering
McIntosh and held out his hand. In bewilderment the mountaineer took it
and received a grip that surprised him.
“Aren’t you proud of her?” demanded Mr. Rowantree. “I know what it is to
be proud of a wife, sir. I have one that’s much too good for me, and I
realize it. Yes, it’s a great thing for a man to have a wife he can be
proud of; one that can do something he can’t.”
“I ken do what she’s doing,” said Mr. McIntosh defiantly. “Thar ain’t no
reason that I ken see, why I can’t do it as well as her.”
“I doubt it,” said Mr. Rowantree, shaking his head, “you might—but I
doubt it, Mr. McIntosh.”
“I’ll bet you a young shote that I ken!” cried the man.
“I’ll bet you a brace of my ducks that you can’t,” retorted Mr.
Rowantree.
“Done!” said Mr. McIntosh. “Give me a book. Set down and tell me about
this here l’arning.”
Mr. Rowantree turned to the school.
“A brace of ducks against a young shote that Mr. McIntosh cannot learn to
read,” he said gravely. “You are the witnesses. Coulter, kindly bring
me a primer from that closet. You will all observe that I play fair. I
shall do my best to teach him, but I frankly confess I have my doubts.
He has looked down on book-learning and that is against him.”
Mr. McIntosh made no reply. He had hung his hat on a nail and now he
drew his one “gallus” a little tighter as if to prepare for a struggle.
At the opposite corner of the room from his wife, he bent over his book.
Mr. Rowantree drew a chair up beside him.
“We will give our attention, if you please,” he said in his mellow voice,
and in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, “to the first letter of the
alphabet.”
Young Mrs. McIntosh bent very low over her page and only the children
sitting next saw her shoulders shaking with laughter. The children
themselves, determined not to spoil sport, kept their mirth till they
should be upon the mountain paths. Then they would have their chuckle
there over the way McIntosh “was tricked into l’arnin’.” Now they
devoted themselves to their own lessons, and away in the backs of their
minds a new idea was growing. Why shouldn’t their own fathers and
mothers come to school? Why shouldn’t they all know how to read? It was
just as Mr. Rowantree said; they couldn’t “match up” with the men and
women beyond the mountains. They were different—terribly different. Oh,
yes, proud as they were, these children of the mountain clans, they knew
that. Their sisters weren’t like Miss Azalea and Miss Carin—not at all
like them. Their fathers weren’t like Mr. Rowantree; and though in some
ways Mr. Rowantree was not liked by them, and his disinclination to work
was noted even by these folk of easy-going ways, still, he was different.
He knew about the great world beyond; about what people were doing in the
cities; he was acquainted with what other men thought and wrote, and he
could talk in a wonderful way. Just see how he had come it over
McIntosh, and taken the “meanness” out of him!
It was the red-headed boy, Dibblee Sikes, the most sociable child in the
school, who put into words the thing that had been stirring in the
children’s minds. He came up to Mr. Rowantree at the nooning.
“Please, sir,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about something.”
“You look as if you had,” said Mr. Rowantree cordially. “Well, I always
count it a pleasant day when I have a new idea. What have you thought
of, Sikes?”
“Why, seeing Mrs. McIntosh take up with books, sir, and Mr. McIntosh set
down to beat her out in learning, made me think of having a school for
the grown folks. They need it just as much as us young-uns.”
“They certainly do, Sikes, and do you know, the same notion has been in
my head ever since McIntosh joined us? Just look at him, will you? He’s
sitting over there on the ground, studying like a good fellow. Can’t
even stop to eat.”
“Maybe he ain’t got nothing _to_ eat, seeing he didn’t count on staying
when he come.” Sikes grinned at his instructor, and Mr. Rowantree
returned the smile, accompanying it with a gentle wink of the left eye.
“Yes, his wife offered him half of her luncheon, though she didn’t have
much.”
“Then I reckon he’s eating with one hand and studying with the other,”
said Dibblee blithely. “But how about that school, Mr. Rowantree?”
“Well, I suppose it would be impossible for most of them to come in the
daytime. They have to attend to their work, don’t they?” Mr. Rowantree
asked the question rather vaguely. It was a subject about which he was
not very well informed.
Dibblee nodded. “Sure they do,” he said in the language he had picked up
from some “tourist” boys at Bee Tree.
“What we need here, then, is a night school. Everything could be made
safe in the homes, the big children could be set to look after the little
ones, and then the fathers and mothers could come here. What do you
think of that, Sikes?”
“It would be a mighty good thing, Mr. Rowantree, but there’s one thing
stands in the way.” Dibblee wore a “studyin’” look which sat oddly on
his round, smiling face.
“And what is that, pray?”
“Well, you see, half the time it’s darker than a hat on the roads, with
the trees growing over them and all. Some folks around here ain’t even
got lanterns, and anyway, if they had, they wouldn’t want to go out such
pitch black nights.”
“Then they could come on moonlight nights,” cried Mr. Rowantree
triumphantly. “We’ll have a moonlight school, Sikes. Moonlight will be
a sign and token that school has taken up. What do you say to that?”
“I say it’s just the very thing,” cried Dibblee Sikes. “Then my ma can
come, can’t she? Why, she’s jest as knowing as she can be—keeps me
laughing at her purty near all the time I’m home. She’s got more rules
for cooking than anybody hereabouts, and she can remember the greatest
songs—about fifty verses long, some of them be—about things that has
happened in this here country. But she carries it all in her head. She
can’t read, jest because she ain’t been taught. If she could read she’d
be the smartest woman anywhere, almost.”
Mr. Rowantree was a man with his own faults, but for every fault he had a
virtue, and now his eyes were alight like the boy’s.
“Right you are, Sikes,” he said. “And we’ll teach her. A moonlight
school we shall have, and with the permission of Miss Carson and her
friend, I will teach it. I’ve been a happy man, Sikes, but I haven’t
been a particularly useful one. So now I’ll surprise myself by turning
over a new leaf. I’m going to be useful, if teaching my neighbors what I
know is—”
“Oh, Mr. Rowantree,” interrupted the boy, “I wisht school was over so I
could run home and tell my ma. I know she’ll want to come, and she’ll
make other folks want to come, too. You’d be real surprised the way my
ma can get folks to do things.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Rowantree; “not if she’s like you, Sikes. You
can get folk to do things, too. You’ve got me to take a job, and by
Jove, I didn’t know it was in me to do such a thing.”
The laziest man in the community smiled at the red-headed boy, and the
boy grinned back, and in doing so revealed three vacancies in the two
rows of teeth. It was “tooth-dropping” time with him, and he was not
beautiful.
The afternoon, it must be confessed, seemed rather tedious to Mr.
Rowantree. He wondered where Azalea and Carin had found their patience.
Nay, it took something more than patience to sow the seeds of knowledge
in these uncultivated minds. Yet he had to admit, that though
uncultivated, they were not rocky and sterile soil. On the contrary,
beneath all their shyness, the children were wild to learn. Paralee was,
of course, not present that day, so he missed the pleasure of instructing
the one pupil who treated books as if they were food and she a
starveling.
One last odd incident closed the day of strange experiences for this new
teacher. In spite of his utmost efforts, poor Skully had broken out
every once in a while with his “blabbing.” The children, rather strained
and excited by the presence of their very learned instructor, finally
“got the giggles” after the fashion of tired and nervous school children
the world over. Even the gentle Mrs. McIntosh could not keep from a
foolish “snicker” now and then as the wild cadences of Skully’s voice
broke on the air and were choked back by a grimy hand clapped across his
mouth. The poor little “blab” boy was covered with confusion, and
finally, in despair, dropped his towseled head upon his arm and softly
wept.
The children, ashamed and sorry, did the very thing they did not want to
do, and giggled all the more. And at that, up rose Bud Coulter, the
hereditary enemy of little Skully.
“Look a-here, you-all,” he said defiantly. “I said that there kid should
come to school and no harm should be done him. What I say I mean.
Nobody but a Coulter ken take the stuffing out of a Simms, and this here
Coulter is going to see that this here Simms is give a chanct.”
“Go home, Skully, my lad,” said Mr. Rowantree kindly. “It’s been a hard
day for you, but you’ve done wonders. Practice studying to yourself
awhile this evening, and be here to-morrow morning with the rest. You’ll
come out ahead. Miss Azalea was very happy that you were to be in her
school. You see, she and Miss Carin have given up a good deal to come up
here to help you young folk along, and they want everybody in the country
round about to get some good out of the school. They want you to make
their sacrifice and hard work worth while. So you’ll come to-morrow,
won’t you, son?”
Skully lifted a tear-stained face and looked at the teacher with weary
eyes.
“You bet, sir,” he said sadly.
“And please be so good as to run over to Miss Azalea’s house to see how
they are getting on there, and bring me back word.”
Skully cast a look of gratitude at the man who was making his escape
easy, and finding his battered corn husk hat, fled from the school.
Incredibly soon he was back again.
“Miss Zalie says for you to come over to the house soon as ever school
closes, sir,” Skully reported. “She says to tell you Mis’ Rowantree is
there and Mr. Keefe is mighty poorly, and Mis’ Rowantree wants to take
him home with her.”
An hour later when school closed, the teacher found Skully sitting on a
log, book in hand, studying with one finger acting as monitor to his
lips.
The children pretended not to notice and slipped away after their fashion
down the mountain paths. Mrs. McIntosh walked with her little daughter,
but while Mr. Rowantree watched, he saw McIntosh stride forward, throw
his little girl pick-a-back over his shoulder, and lope down the trail
behind his wife.