Cressy

“Them jay birds out there is mighty peart, coming right up to the school-house! I reckon they think it sort o’ restful too.”

“But if you really mean it, couldn’t you use these books, Uncle Ben?” said the master cheerfully. “I dare say there’s little difference—the principle is the same, you know.”

Uncle Ben’s face, which had suddenly brightened, as suddenly fell. He took the book from the master’s hand without meeting his eyes, held it at arm’s length, turned it over and then laid it softly down upon the desk as if it were some excessively fragile article. “Certingly,” he murmured, with assumed reflective ease. “Certingly. The principle’s all there.” Nevertheless he was quite breathless and a few beads of perspiration stood out upon his smooth, blank forehead.

“And as to writing, for instance,” continued the master with increasing heartiness as he took notice of these phenomena, “you know ANY copy-book will do.”

He handed his pen carelessly to Uncle Ben. The large hand that took it timidly not only trembled but grasped it with such fatal and hopeless unfamiliarity that the master was fain to walk to the window and observe the birds also.

“They’re mighty bold—them jays,” said Uncle Ben, laying down the pen with scrupulous exactitude beside the book and gazing at his fingers as if he had achieved a miracle of delicate manipulation. “They don’t seem to be afeared of nothing, do they?”

There was another pause. The master suddenly turned from the window. “I tell you what, Uncle Ben,” he said with prompt decision and unshaken gravity, “the only thing for you to do is to just throw over Dobell and Parsons and Jones and the old quill pen that I see you’re accustomed to, and start in fresh as if you’d never known them. Forget ‘em all, you know. It will be mighty hard of course to do that,” he continued, looking out of the window, “but you must do it.”

He turned back, the brightness that transfigured Uncle Ben’s face at that moment brought a slight moisture into his own eyes. The humble seeker of knowledge said hurriedly that he would try.

“And begin again at the beginning,” continued the master cheerfully. “Exactly like one of those—in fact, as if you REALLY were a child again.”

“That’s so,” said Uncle Ben, rubbing his hands delightedly, “that’s me! Why, that’s jest what I was sayin’ to Roop”—

“Then you’ve already been talking about it?” intercepted the master in some surprise. “I thought you wanted it kept secret?”

“Well, yes,” responded Uncle Ben dubiously. “But you see I sorter agreed with Roop Filgee that if you took to my ideas and didn’t object, I’d give him two bits[1 - Two bits, i. e., twenty-five cents.] every time he’d kem here and help me of an arternoon when you was away and kinder stand guard around the school-house, you know, so as to keep the fellows off. And Roop’s mighty sharp for a boy, ye know.”

The master reflected a moment and concluded that Uncle Ben was probably right. Rupert Filgee, who was a handsome boy of fourteen, was also a strongly original character whose youthful cynicism and blunt, honest temper had always attracted him. He was a fair scholar, with a possibility of being a better one, and the proposed arrangement with Uncle Ben would not interfere with the discipline of school hours and might help them both. Nevertheless he asked good-humoredly, “But couldn’t you do this more securely and easily in your own house? I might lend you the books, you know, and come to you twice a week.”

Uncle Ben’s radiant face suddenly clouded. “It wouldn’t be exactly the same kind o’ game to me an’ Roop,” he said hesitatingly. “You see thar’s the idea o’ the school-house, ye know, and the restfulness and the quiet, and the gen’ral air o’ study. And the boys around town ez wouldn’t think nothin’ o’ trapsen’ into my cabin if they spotted what I was up to thar, would never dream o’ hunting me here.”

“Very well,” said the master, “let it be here then.” Observing that his companion seemed to be struggling with an inarticulate gratitude and an apparently inextricable buckskin purse in his pocket, he added quietly, “I’ll set you a few copies to commence with,” and began to lay out a few unfinished examples of Master Johnny Filgee’s scholastic achievements.

“After thanking YOU, Mr. Ford,” said Uncle Ben, faintly, “ef you’ll jest kinder signify, you know, what you consider a fair”—

Mr. Ford turned quickly and dexterously offered his hand to his companion in such a manner that he was obliged to withdraw his own from his pocket to grasp it in return. “You’re very welcome,” said the master, “and as I can only permit this sort of thing gratuitously, you’d better NOT let me know that you propose giving anything even to Rupert.” He shook Uncle Ben’s perplexed hand again, briefly explained what he had to do, and saying that he would now leave him alone a few minutes, he took his hat and walked towards the door.

“Then you reckon,” said Uncle Ben slowly, regarding the work before him, “that I’d better jest chuck them Dobell fellers overboard?”

“I certainly should,” responded the master with infinite gravity.

“And sorter waltz in fresh, like one them children?”

“Like a child,” nodded the master as he left the porch.

A few moments later, as he was finishing his cigar in the clearing, he paused to glance in at the school-room window. Uncle Ben, stripped of his coat and waistcoat, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up on his powerful arms, had evidently cast Dobell and all misleading extraneous aid aside, and with the perspiration standing out on his foolish forehead, and his perplexed face close to the master’s desk, was painfully groping along towards the light in the tottering and devious tracks of Master Johnny Filgee, like a very child indeed!

CHAPTER II

As the children were slowly straggling to their places the next morning, the master waited for an opportunity to speak to Rupert. That beautiful but scarcely amiable youth was, as usual, surrounded and impeded by a group of his small female admirers, for whom, it is but just to add, he had a supreme contempt. Possibly it was this healthy quality that inclined the master towards him, and it was consequently with some satisfaction that he overheard fragments of his openly disparaging comments upon his worshippers.

“There!” to Clarinda Jones, “don’t flop! And don’t YOU,” to Octavia Dean, “go on breathing over my head like that. If there’s anything I hate it’s having a girl breathing round me. Yes, you were! I felt it in my hair. And YOU too—you’re always snoopin’ and snoodgin’. Oh, yes, you want to know WHY I’ve got an extry copy-book and another ‘Rithmetic, Miss Curiosity. Well, what would you give to know? Want to see if they’re PRETTY” (with infinite scorn at the adjective). “No, they ain’t PRETTY. That’s all you girls think about—what’s PRETTY and what’s curious! Quit now! Come! Don’t ye see teacher lookin’ at you? Ain’t you ashamed?”

He caught the master’s beckoning eye and came forward, slightly abashed, with a flush of irritation still on his handsome face, and his chestnut curls slightly rumpled. One, which Octavia had covertly accented by twisting round her forefinger, stood up like a crest on his head.

“I’ve told Uncle Ben that you might help him here after school hours,” said the master, taking him aside. “You may therefore omit your writing exercise in the morning and do it in the afternoon.”

The boy’s dark eyes sparkled. “And if it would be all the same to you, sir,” he added earnestly, “you might sorter give out in school that I was to be kept in.”

“I’m afraid that would hardly do,” said the master, much amused. “But why?”

Rupert’s color deepened. “So ez to keep them darned girls from foolin’ round me and followin’ me back here.”

“We will attend to that,” said the master smiling; a moment after he added more seriously, “I suppose your father knows that you are to receive money for this? And he doesn’t object?”

“He! Oh no!” returned Rupert with a slight look of astonishment, and the same general suggestion of patronizing his progenitor that he had previously shown to his younger brother. “You needn’t mind HIM.” In reality Filgee pere, a widower of two years’ standing, had tacitly allowed the discipline of his family to devolve upon Rupert. Remembering this, the master could only say, “Very well,” and good-naturedly dismiss the pupil to his seat and the subject from his mind. The last laggard had just slipped in, the master had glanced over the occupied benches with his hand upon his warning bell, when there was a quick step on the gravel, a flutter of skirts like the sound of alighting birds, and a young woman lightly entered.

In the rounded, untouched, and untroubled freshness of her cheek and chin, and the forward droop of her slender neck, she appeared a girl of fifteen; in her developed figure and the maturer drapery of her full skirts she seemed a woman; in her combination of naive recklessness and perfect understanding of her person she was both. In spite of a few school-books that jauntily swung from a strap in her gloved hand, she bore no resemblance to a pupil; in her pretty gown of dotted muslin with bows of blue ribbon on the skirt and corsage, and a cluster of roses in her belt, she was as inconsistent and incongruous to the others as a fashion-plate would have been in the dry and dog-eared pages before them. Yet she carried it off with a demure mingling of the naivete of youth and the aplomb of a woman, and as she swept down the narrow aisle, burying a few small wondering heads in the overflow of her flounces, there was no doubt of her reception in the arch smile that dimpled her cheek. Dropping a half curtsey to the master, the only suggestion of her equality with the others, she took her place at one of the larger desks, and resting her elbow on the lid began to quietly remove her gloves. It was Cressy McKinstry.

Irritated and disturbed at the girl’s unceremonious entrance, the master for the moment recognized her salutation coldly, and affected to ignore her elaborate appearance. The situation was embarrassing. He could not decline to receive her as she was no longer accompanied by her lover, nor could he plead entire ignorance of her broken engagement; while to point out the glaring inappropriateness of costume would be a fresh interference he knew Indian Spring would scarcely tolerate. He could only accept such explanation as she might choose to give. He rang his bell as much to avert the directed eyes of the children as to bring the scene to a climax.

She had removed her gloves and was standing up.

“I reckon I can go on where I left off?” she said lazily, pointing to the books she had brought with her.

“For the present,” said the master dryly.

The first class was called. Later, when his duty brought him to her side, he was surprised to find that she was evidently already prepared with consecutive lessons, as if she were serenely unconscious of any doubt of her return, and as coolly as if she had only left school the day before. Her studies were still quite elementary, for Cressy McKinstry had never been a brilliant scholar, but he perceived, with a cynical doubt of its permanency, that she had bestowed unusual care upon her present performance. There was moreover a certain defiance in it, as if she had resolved to stop any objection to her return on the score of deficiencies. He was obliged in self-defence to take particular note of some rings she wore, and a large bracelet that ostentatiously glittered on her white arm—which had already attracted the attention of her companions, and prompted the audible comment from Johnny Filgee that it was “truly gold.” Without meeting her eyes he contented himself with severely restraining the glances of the children that wandered in her direction. She had never been quite popular with the school in her previous role of fiancee, and only Octavia Dean and one or two older girls appreciated its mysterious fascination; while the beautiful Rupert, secure in his avowed predilection for the middle-aged wife of the proprietor of the Indian Spring hotel, looked upon her as a precocious chit with more than the usual propensity to objectionable “breathing.” Nevertheless the master was irritatingly conscious of her presence—a presence which now had all the absurdity of her ridiculous love-experiences superadded to it. He tried to reason with himself that it was only a phase of frontier life, which ought to have amused him. But it did not. The intrusion of this preposterous girl seemed to disarrange the discipline of his life as well as of his school. The usual vague, far-off dreams in which he was in the habit of indulging during school-hours, dreams that were perhaps superinduced by the remoteness of his retreat and a certain restful sympathy in his little auditors, which had made him—the grown-up dreamer—acceptable to them in his gentle understanding of their needs and weaknesses, now seemed to have vanished forever.

At recess, Octavia Dean, who had drawn near Cressy and reached up to place her arm round the older girl’s waist, glanced at her with a patronizing smile born of some rapid free-masonry, and laughingly retired with the others. The master at his desk, and Cressy who had halted in the aisle were left alone.

“I have had no intimation yet from your father or mother that you were coming back to school again,” he began. “But I suppose THEY have decided upon your return?”

An uneasy suspicion of some arrangement with her former lover had prompted the emphasis.

The young girl looked at him with languid astonishment. “I reckon paw and maw ain’t no objection,” she said with the same easy ignoring of parental authority that had characterized Rupert Filgee, and which seemed to be a local peculiarity. “Maw DID offer to come yer and see you, but I told her she needn’t bother.”

She rested her two hands behind her on the edge of a desk, and leaned against it, looking down upon the toe of her smart little shoe which was describing a small semicircle beyond the hem of her gown. Her attitude, which was half-defiant, half-indolent, brought out the pretty curves of her waist and shoulders. The master noticed it and became a trifle more austere.

“Then I am to understand that this is a permanent thing?” he asked coldly.

“What’s that?” said Cressy interrogatively.

“Am I to understand that you intend coming regularly to school?” repeated the master curtly, “or is this merely an arrangement for a few days—until”—

“Oh,” said Cressy comprehendingly, lifting her unabashed blue eyes to his, “you mean THAT. Oh, THAT’S broke off. Yes,” she added contemptuously, making a larger semicircle with her foot, “that’s over—three weeks ago.”

“And Seth Davis—does HE intend returning too?”

“He!” She broke into a light girlish laugh. “I reckon not much! S’long’s I’m here, at least.” She had just lifted herself to a sitting posture on the desk, so that her little feet swung clear of the floor in their saucy dance. Suddenly she brought her heels together and alighted. “So that’s all?” she asked.

“Yes.”