A LESSON IN HISTORY
The square north parlor of the century-old Spellman homestead was
furnished with few concessions to modern taste. In summer it was
carefully darkened, and during the colder months exhaled that penetrating
chill that is still more or less characteristic of the traditional “best
room” in rural New England. There was also a mingled odor of sanctity
and dried rose-leaves that filled the soul of the young exile with a
secret awe. She understood perfectly that children were not expected to
enter that room uninvited; even the family reserved it for occasions
of ceremony; and it was with a thrill of conscious guilt overborne by
an irresistible attraction, that she had stolen in alone on this keen
October morning before Miss Sophia was up, and while her sister was
capably engaged in preparing breakfast in the large, cheery kitchen.
It was not the ornaments, wonderful as they were, upon the high
mantel-piece—the pallid wax flowers under glass, the waving pampas plumes
and pink-lined tropic shells dear to romance—no, not even the mysterious
closed piano—it was those ghostly crayon portraits in their tarnished
gilt frames that drew this little unrelated fragment of humanity with
a fascination that she did not in the least understand. She only knew
that to gaze upon their white, shrouded faces was to yearn for even the
staring, pictured counterparts, even the chill, clustered gravestones of
her own vanished forebears. Vanished, indeed, since not even a name or a
memory remained to their wistful and solitary descendant!
And these Spellmans and Russells—these revered ancestors of her dear
“Mother” Waring as of the thorny and unapproachable Miss Sophia—their
by-gone greatness had been so impressed upon her by allusion and
suggestion that in the secret world of her imagination it reached heroic
proportions. So this child of two races, the one by birth, the other
by associations quite as real and vital, well-nigh forgot the shadowy
demi-gods of her people while she bowed at the shrine of the commonplace
county Judge who was the greatest of all the Russells, and fancied a
beauty as of the moon and stars in the conventional portraits of his wife
and daughters, with their uncovered necks and pallid, simpering faces.
Only a few stolen moments of gazing, and Stella crossed the dark hall on
noiseless feet—for even in the black-leather boxes of civilization she
had contrived to keep her native lightness of step—and softly opened the
dining-room door.
With its cheerful morning sunshine streaming over the chromoed walls
and gayly-carpeted floor, and with the canary singing his prettiest in
the south window, above the row of thrifty geraniums and begonias, this
room was the strongest possible contrast to the gloomy one she had just
left behind. Ah! and that very minute the wonderful bird came out of the
clock on the mantel-piece and seven times called “Cuckoo!” while, as if
in answer to the call, the door into the kitchen opened, letting in the
heartsome odor of frying ham and eggs, and Mother Waring with the smoking
coffee-pot.
Stella flew to bring the dish of oatmeal and the hot plates, and then
busied herself with the neat tray that was regularly carried up to Miss
Sophia’s chamber with her morning coffee and toast. To be sure, the elder
sister was only five years older than Lucy, who owned to fifty-two, and
who, folks said, had always been “kinder pindlin’,” and in truth was
now much worn with hard work and recent grief. But we know that there
are always people who contrive to be waited upon, and others to whom it
naturally falls to do the waiting.
Housewifely traditions were closely adhered to in Laurel, where but few
even of the “first families” kept a maid, and it was now Stella’s duty,
together with dishwashing and dusting and such of the lighter household
tasks as Lucy would allow her to undertake, to carry up Miss Sophia’s
tray. Even that lady had grudgingly conceded that “the child wasn’t as
clumsy and heavy-footed as you might expect,” though why you shouldn’t
expect anything of the sort it would have taken a better ethnologist than
Miss Sophia to explain.
The little ceremony ended, and the hard old eyes met with a low-voiced
“Good morning,” and a rather frightened smile, the two ate their own
substantial breakfast with a hearty appetite, and directly afterward
“flew ’round” to get dishes and other “chores” out of the way before
school-time. At a quarter to nine, Stella put on her neat jacket and
knitted red tam-o’-shanter, hugged her kind foster-mother, and set out
with cheerfulness upon her morning pilgrimage, glancing about shyly at
the first corner for a possible glimpse of demure Doris tripping along
the sidewalk, or scatter-brained Cynthia flying breathlessly down the
hill.
Laurel, like many another village of its ilk, was an odd mixture of
modern democratic conditions with the elder social inheritance. In
the village school, the children of European peasants, the earlier and
quick-witted Irish, the later Poles, with their broad, heavy faces, two
or three brilliant, undersized young Jews, and the dark-brown scions
of several long-established negro families, sat side by side with the
severely self-respecting descendants of the earliest Puritan stock. The
six and seven-year-olds knew no difference, and flocked indiscriminately
together at recess, but it must be admitted that the caste idea grew with
their growth, and that in grammar-school and academy circles the lines
were drawn more definitely than in many larger places, to the end of
needless resentments and heartaches.
Yellow Star added one more ingredient to the racial melting-pot. But
whether because of a certain aboriginal dignity, or the name and
protection of a family as much respected as any in Laurel, at any rate
nearly everybody found it possible to accept her with excellent grace,
and it might have been something personal to herself that bid fair to
complete her conquest of the village. Two of the very “nicest” girls
in Laurel, Cynthia, whose father was supposed to be the “best fixed”
merchant in town, and Doris, the busy Doctor’s only child, were already
her devoted friends.
Notwithstanding the fact that she had promptly taken her place among the
best scholars in the room, the girl from Dakota had not yet lost her
sense of audacity in rising to recite before so imposing a company.
“Why, Stella! you don’t have to dig at your books the way you do; it’s
absurd! Look at me; I haven’t opened a single one since Friday afternoon,
and _I_ get along,” argued happy-go-lucky Sin.
“But you belong here, and you have been to school always. It is different
with me. This is my one chance of really _belonging_.” And, contrary
to all advice and precedent, Stella persisted in regarding school as a
privilege to be lived up to, and failure in recitation as deep disgrace.
The first thing after recess was American History review.
“How did the early settlers treat the Indians? Mary Maloney,” began Miss
Morrison.
“They treated them fine,” declared the auburn-haired Mary, with a sly
glance over her shoulder at the unreasonably popular new arrival.
“What did the Indians do? Rosey Bernstein.”
“The cruel and treacherous savages turned upon the defenseless settlers
with fire an’ ax,” Rosey glibly recited. “They now began a series of
frightful massacres.”
“They stove the babies’ heads in, right in front of their mothers’ faces,
and then made the mothers walk hundreds of miles barefoot in the deep
snow,” eagerly amended woolly-headed Pete Holley, and all the boys wagged
their heads and grinned with satisfaction.
“After they had scalped all the fathers by the light o’ their burnin’
buildings,” finished Rosey complacently.
Several hands went up, but Yellow Star in her excitement quite forgot to
wait for the teacher’s permission.
“Who says that the settlers were kind to the Indians?” rang out in
challenging tones.
More hands madly clawed the air, and Miss Morrison rather unwillingly
nodded to Rosey, who read from her open book:
“‘They treated the Indians for the most part with justice and kindness,
notwithstanding which the cruel—’”
“That will do for the present, Rosey,” interrupted her teacher, and
was hastily casting about in her own mind for a basis of compromise
between warring factions when a certain black-eyed little heroine rose
precipitately to her feet, and delivered her soul without fear or favor.
“Was it treating them with justice and kindness to take their lands away
from them, and give them only a few beads and knives for thousands of
acres? Was it fair to give them whiskey to drink, and knives to kill
people with, and then when they were drunk and angry and killed some bad
white men, to punish the whole tribe by burning their villages and wives
and children?” demanded her people’s advocate.
“Did the ‘cruel, treacherous savages’ take away all the white people’s
guns and then shoot them down, women with little babies and boys and
girls smaller than us? Did they chase them all over the prairie and kill
them while they begged for mercy, and then call it a _battle_? That’s
what your soldiers did to us, and _I was in it_! Maybe, if we wrote the
history books, there wouldn’t be so much in them about the ‘treacherous
Indians!’”
Breathless and darkly flushed, the girl from Dakota sank into her seat,
and there was an awful hush.
Cynthia was staring at her friend with open-mouthed admiration, and
tender-hearted Doris had her face hidden on her desk, while most of the
children, horror-struck, yet thoroughly enjoying the situation, looked
hopefully to “Teacher” for summary vengeance on the daring rebel against
constituted authority.
That personage, however, gazed straight before her with expressionless
face, until the silence had grown positively fearsome in its explosive
quality. Then she simply remarked:
“Close your books, children! Our lesson in history is over for to-day.”
“APPLE-TREE HOUSE, MONDAY.
“DEAR MOTHER-OF-MINE, I love Miss Morrison she never said a
word though I was bad to-day and talked right out in school.
The book was wrong and I was right but that didn’t make it
proper for me to talk did it? But Miss Morrison is a Angel and
Doris Brown cried because she was sorry for the poor Indians. I
love her too. How many kind people there are in the world! I am
so happy I almost feel as if I could love Miss Sophia but not
quite. Your Little Girl.”