THE MISSION SCHOOL
'Twas some days ere Belle-Ann fitted her mood to her strange
environments. The Mission School at Proctor was a beautiful place--a
great rambling structure on the apex of a hill overlooking the
picturesque Kentucky River. The building was girded with a continuous,
spacious porch, and hemmed about with flowers, the identity of which was
unknown to her. The grounds behind were unstinting, and reached half a
mile back to the mountain abutting it.
Flanking the building proper, on the verdant esplanade, stood a superb
statue of Daniel Boone, embellished with a gurgling fountain which the
State had recently reared on this spot where Boone had built his
historic fortress.
Belle-Ann was allotted a cozy little room with white enamel furniture,
and pretty curtains, and quaint Japanese matting, the like of which had
never met her admiring eyes.
Withal, Belle-Ann was deeply pleased with her new surroundings--with the
other scholars and with the teachers. But so much had been crowded into
her young life of late, coupled with the pang of parting from her home,
that it was days before her mood aroused itself to the necessity of
application.
When she did begin her lessons, it was with an assiduous energy and
receptive aptitude that not only attracted the teachers, but the other
pupils likewise. From the outset, she developed an inordinate thirst for
grammar. Indeed, a great part of the time out of study hours, she
carried her grammar about with her, peeping into it anon, spelling,
repeating, and pondering over its phrases--never tiring of its dawning
mysteries and vast possibilities.
The Mission School, familiarly designated as the Chapel, was not an
academic institution of classics and national renown, but it was of
State-wide repute and an oasis of preparatory learning amidst the barren
lives of mountain youth, hitherto isolated and deprived of the
advantages of his more fortunate Blue-Grass cousins.
Miss Virginia Worth, in charge of the Chapel, was as agreeably impressed
with Belle-Ann as the girl was pleased with the charming teacher. Miss
Worth was a woman of thirty-seven, with an abundance of perfectly white
hair and the fresh, smooth face of a girl of twenty. Upon this benign,
wholesome countenance there dwelt an ever-present sympathy and love for
mankind. In her gray eyes was a look of succor that beckoned suffering
to her. Oddly enough, a woman of private wealth, she had made the uplift
of the mountain folk her life work.
Moreover, Miss Worth was a woman of deep and unerring penetration,--of
careful and soothing diplomacy--she had made a life study of the ways of
the human heart. With true divinity, she had stepped out into the world,
smiling, amidst the trivialities and dissensions, and weaknesses that
assail and tempt and twist and scar the lives of humanity.
In the fountain of her spontaneous Christian soul, she had a lotion for
them all. From the first, it was this benevolent woman's smile that drew
Belle-Ann to her--a look that reminded the girl keenly of Maw Lutts'
perennial smile, and spread an aftermath that carried her back to days
of utter happiness.
Ill things of the soul are oft concealed through the measures of a
lifetime. Thus, when its tenancy is predestined,--but when a spirit is
unmated to evil, its odious residue gravitates like cork to the surface
and speedily floats in the eyes.
From the beginning there was an indefinable underlying something
permeating this sweet-faced girl that had come to her from out of the
wilderness--a something that sorely puzzled the good Miss Worth. It was
like a single elusive carbon spot hidden away in the core of an
otherwise perfect diamond--a spot that reflected through the eyes in
fleeting transitory glints--a mote-flash that could not be
located--baffling discernment only under powerful, expert analysis.
Miss Worth loved the girl. She loved her straightway from the minute
that she had held her small, shapely hand, and listened to the timbre of
that shy, dulcet voice. She had never seen eyes tinted like these. She
marvelled at her curls. Her perfect delicate, Grecian features filled
Miss Worth with a lasting wonder.
Through the Reverend Peterson she heard the tragic history of the girl's
comely mother, but she could not conceive a heredity sufficiently
generous to give the beauty made adorably manifest in this girl of the
hills. In every movement her natural artless grace was as a rhythm of
poetry.
Miss Worth then recognized an extraordinary character--the fibre of a
beautiful, wonderful, lovable womanhood--a girl who could, with the
embellishments of education and adornments of fashion, go into the
sphere of any secular circle of society in any municipality and create a
furore. She was quick to foresee an interesting future for her new
protegee, if she could only discover the elusive defect that she could
not name, but which was palpably present to her keen senses, versed in
thought reading and the pathology of organic character ailments.
Very many times, as the days slipped by, she observed flashes of that
sober, mystifying light in Belle-Ann's eyes--a sudden quick, almost
vindictive dropping of the sweet lips that showed, otherwise, a dimpled
upturn. It followed that Miss Worth devoted extra care to Belle-Ann's
tutorage--all the while bent upon deftly angling for that alien,
shifting thing that a casual observer would have passed unnoticed.
The second Sunday following Belle-Ann's arrival at the school, Miss
Worth presented to her an elderly gentleman of distinguished mien and
marked personality, and of whom the girl was destined to see much
thereafter. This engaging personage was Colonel Amos Tennytown, who
resided down Blue-Grass way, and who visited the school, sometimes
during the week, but most generally on a Sunday.
Belle-Ann ever remembered her first meeting with this man, whose
deferential manner was rich with little original courtesies which were
innate manifestations of gentility that were born with the man. And his
voice, in particular, carried a charm that was soothing and totally
irresistible.
All this appealed to a certain latent delicacy that wove its hereditary
fibre through this untaught mountain girl's being and stirred a response
which had hitherto been dormant. She had known true hearts, honest and
courageous, but she had never known polished mannerisms in men.
She recalled the radiant face and the suppressed tremor in Miss Worth's
voice when that lady glided into Belle-Ann's room and announced that she
wished to introduce her to a gentleman friend. Belle-Ann remembered her
poignant embarrassment as she stood before him on the porch, shyly and
acutely conscious of her own glaring deficiencies and simple gown, and
of her determination at that first instant to excuse herself quickly and
slip away--and of the manner in which she was instantly reassured.
Later, she recalled the keen interest he took in her at this first
meeting, and how her case of blues vanished temporarily as she listened
to his pleasing voice and was distracted by his courtly, cheery, easy
manner. Her shyness forsook her straightway and she experienced a sense
of having always known him. He came, ostensibly, to see Miss Worth, they
being friends of long standing, and Belle-Ann remembered how he had
gallantly bowed to Miss Worth, on leaving that first day, when he
laughingly removed the nosegay from his lapel and stuck it into
Belle-Ann's curls.
She remembered that she was sorry when he departed, and stood on the
porch with Miss Worth's arm around her, and helped her tutoress watch
the tall, commanding figure of the Colonel receding down the sinuous
path toward the ferry.
Many months had elapsed since that day, and it had come to pass that now
Belle-Ann looked forward to Colonel Tennytown's coming with an eagerness
that rendered her almost wistful. This had grown upon her in a subtle
way, and in these days he was seemingly a vital connecting link between
herself and some indefinable but palpable mystery that hung over her
life, veiled by the opaque future.
Tom-John Benson had always, in his rough way, been thoughtful of his
only child. Of late years, through necessity, he had been compelled to
be away from her, working for a paltry wage. The Kentucky spirit, ever
ready to give, is slow to take and, though sorely pressed, stands aloof
from charity.
Long since, the good Reverend Peterson of the Diocese of Lexington had
volunteered to give Tom-John Benson a free scholarship for his girl--an
offer influenced mainly by the Christian spirit of his true missionary
heart, and partially because he was sympathetically familiar with the
pathos that enveloped the life of Belle-Ann's beautiful mother, who had
deserted a luxurious home in Lexington and immured herself in the
cloister of the Cumberlands, never to emerge. But free scholarship did
not appeal to Benson. His pride was less crude than his exterior. He
bided his time, and by dint of saving from his meagre wage, paid in full
for Belle-Ann's schooling.
The fruits of Belle-Ann's close application to her studies were now made
manifest in a way little short of marvelous. It was plain from the
outset that she possessed a natural aptitude for the tasks set before
her. She developed a love for books that grew into such ceaseless,
indefatigable zeal that Miss Worth and Miss Ackerman, her under teacher,
were often obliged to remonstrate with her. While the other girls were
at tennis or some other diversion after hours, Belle-Ann was poring over
her books with as deep absorption as if it were play. Very many times in
the night Miss Worth, knowing her propensity for night study, would slip
into her room and implore her to retire. She was fast winnowing out her
mountain dialect, but there were some words that clung to her tongue
tenaciously, despite her efforts to eliminate them.
She was the recipient of a letter each month from her father, always
containing a small sum of money, calculated to maintain her simple
wardrobe. Then one day she was delighted to receive a postal order for
fifty dollars from her father, who stated that the company for whom he
worked had given him entire charge of the mill at Catletsburg, and had
advanced his pay. He stated, furthermore, that he wished her to buy some
nice clothes with the money accompanying the letter.
Miss Worth, having three other schools to supervise in different
sections of the county, was unable to spend more than two or three days
at a time at Proctor. She being absent now, Miss Ackerman accompanied
Belle-Ann across the river to Beattyville, where they purchased two very
neat and becoming dresses for Belle-Ann, together with various other
needful articles. And now being able to write an intelligent and
commendably legible letter, Belle-Ann indited an epistle to her father
which abounded with original expressions of love, and wherein she
expressed her gratitude to him, describing at length the things she had
purchased with the money he had so thoughtfully allowed her.