Part 7 (1/2)
The one-roomed, log-built schoolhouse stood a mile from the road across the mountains, upon a higher level, in a fairy meadow below the mountain clearings. A walnut tree shaded it, Thunder Run leaped by in cascades, on either side the footpath Allan had planted larkspur and marigolds.
Here, on a May morning, he rang the bell, then waited patiently until the last free-born imp elected to leave the delights of a minnow-filled pool, a newly discovered redbird's nest, and a blockhouse in process of construction against imaginary Indians. At last all were seated upon the rude benches in the dusky room,--small tow-headed Jacks and Jills, heirs to a field of wheat or oats, a diminutive tobacco patch, a log cabin, a piece of uncleared forest, or perhaps the blacksmith's forge, a small mountain store, or the sawmill down the stream. Allan read aloud the Parable of the Sower, and they all said the Lord's Prayer; then he called the Blue Back Speller cla.s.s. The spelling done, they read from the same book about the Martyr and his Family. Geography followed, with an account of the Yang-tse-Kiang and an ill.u.s.tration of a paG.o.da, after which the ten-year-olds took the front bench and read of little Hugh and old Mr. Toil. This over, the whole school fell to ciphering. They ciphered for half an hour, and then they had a history lesson, which told of one Curtius who leaped into a gulf to save his country. History being followed by the writing lesson, all save the littlest present began laboriously to copy a proverb of Solomon.
Half-past eleven and recess drawing on! The scholars grew restless.
Could the bird's nest still be there? Were the minnows gone from the pool? Had the blockhouse fallen down? Would writing go on forever?--The bell rang; the teacher, whom they liked well enough, was speaking. _No more school!_ Recess forever--or until next year, which was the same thing! No more geography, reading, writing, arithmetic, and spelling; no more school! Hurrah! Of course the redbird's nest was swinging on the bough, and the minnows were in the pool, and the blockhouse was standing, and the sun s.h.i.+ning with all its might! ”All the men about here are going to fight,” said Allan. ”I am going, too. So we'll have to stop school until the war is over. Try not to forget what I've taught you, children, and try to be good boys and girls. You boys must learn now to be men, for you'll have to look after things and the women. And you girls must help your mothers all you can. It's going to be hard times, little folk! You've played a long time at fighting Indians, and latterly I've noticed you playing at fighting Yankees. Playtime's over now. It's time to work, to think, and to try to help. You can't fight for Virginia with guns and swords, but every woman and child, every young boy and old man in Virginia can make the hearts easier of those who go to fight. You be good boys and girls and do your duty here on Thunder Run, and G.o.d will count you as his soldiers just the same as if you were fighting down there in the valley, or before Richmond, or on the Potomac, or wherever we're going to fight. You're going to be good children; I know it!” He closed the book before him. ”School's over now.
When we take in again we'll finish the Roman History--I've marked the place.” He left his rude old desk and the little platform, and stepping down amongst his pupils, gave to each his hand. Then he divided among them the scanty supply of books, patiently answered a scurry of questions, and outside, upon the suns.h.i.+ny sward, with the wind in the walnut tree and the larkspur beginning to bloom, said good-bye once more. Jack and Jill gave no further thought to the bird's nest, the minnows in the pool, the unfinished blockhouse. Off they rushed, up the side of the mountain, over the wooded hills, along Thunder Run, where it leaped from pool to pool. They must be home with the news! No more school--no more school! And was father going--and were Johnny and Sam and Dave? Where were they going to fight? As far as the big sawmill? as far away as the _river_? Were the dogs going, too?
Allan Gold, left alone, locked the schoolhouse door, walked slowly along the footpath between the flowers he had planted, and, standing by Thunder Run, looked for awhile at the clear, brown water, then, with a long breath and a straightening of the shoulders, turned away.
”Good-bye, little place!” he said, and strode down the ravine to the road and the toll-house.
The tollgate keeper, old and crippled, sat on the porch beside a wooden bucket of well-water. The county newspaper lay on his knee, and he was reading the items aloud to his wife, old, too, but active, standing at her ironing-board within the kitchen door. A cat purred in the suns.h.i.+ne, and all the lilac bushes were in bloom. ”'Ten companies from this County,'” read the tollgate keeper; ”'Ten companies from Old Botetourt,--The Mountain Rifles, the Fincastle Rifles, the Botetourt Dragoons, the Zion Hill Company, the Roaring Run men, the Thunder Run--'
Air you listenin', Sairy?”
Sairy brought a fresh iron from the stove. ”I am a-listenin', Tom.
'Pears to me I ain't done nothing but listen sence last December! It's got to be sech a habit that I ketch myself waking up at night to listen.
But I've got to iron as well as listen, or Allan Gold won't have any s.h.i.+rts fit to fight in! Go on reading, I hear ye.”
”It's an editorial,” said Tom weightily. ”'Three weeks have pa.s.sed since war was declared. At once Governor Letcher called for troops; at once the call was answered. We have had in Botetourt, as all over Virginia, as through all the Southern States, days of excitement, sleepless nights, fanfare of preparation, drill, camp, orders, counter-orders, music, tears and laughter of high-hearted women--'”
Sairy touched her iron with a wet finger-tip. ”This time next year thar'll be more tears, I reckon, and less laughter! I ain't a girl, and I don't hold with war--Well?”
”'Beat of drums and call of fife, heroic ardour and the cult of Mars--'”
”Of--?”
”That's the name of the heathen idol they used to sacrifice men to.
'Parties have vanished from county and State. Whigs and Democrats, Unionists and Secessionists, Bell and Everett men and Breckinridge men--all are gone. There is now but one party--_the party of the invaded_. A month ago there was division of opinion; it does not exist to-day. It died in the hour when we were called upon to deny our convictions, to sacrifice our principles, to juggle with the Const.i.tution, to play fast and loose, to blow hot and cold, to say one thing and do another, to fling our honour to the winds and to a.s.sist in coercing Sovereign States back into a Union which they find intolerable!
It died in the moment when we saw, no longer the Confederation of Republics to which we had acceded, but a land whirling toward Empire. It is dead. There are no Union men to-day in Virginia. The ten Botetourt companies hold themselves under arms. At any moment may come the order to the front. The county has not spared her first-born--no, nor the darling of his mother! It is a rank and file different from the Old World's rank and file. The rich man marches, a private soldier, beside the poor man; the lettered beside the unlearned; the planter, the lawyer, the merchant, the divine, the student side by side with the man from the plough, the smith, the carpenter, the hunter, the boatman, the labourer by the day. Ay, rank and file, you are different; and the army that you make will yet stir the blood and warm the heart of the world!'”
The ironer stretched another garment upon the board. ”If only we fight half as well as that thar newspaper talks! Is the editor going?”
”Yes, he is,” said the old man. ”It's fine talking, but it's mighty near G.o.d's truth all the same!” He moved restlessly, then took his crutch and beat a measure upon the sunken floor. His faded blue eyes, set in a thousand wrinkles, stared down upon and across the great view of ridge and spur and lovely valleys in between. The air at this height was clear and strong as wine, the noon suns.h.i.+ne bright, not hot, the murmur in the leaves and the sound of Thunder Run rather crisp and gay than slumbrous.
”If it had to come,” said Tom, ”why couldn't it ha' come when I was younger? If 't weren't for that darned fall out o' Nofsinger's hayloft I'd go, anyhow!”
”Then I see,” retorted Sairy, ”what Brother Dame meant by good comin'
out o' evil!--Here's Christianna.”
A girl in a homespun gown and a blue sunbonnet came up the road and unlatched the little gate. She had upon her arm a small basket such as the mountain folk weave. ”Good-mahnin', Mrs. Cole. Good-mahnin', Mr.
Cole. It cert'ny is fine weather the mountain's having.”
”Yes, it's fine weather, Christianna,” answered the old man. ”Come in, come in, and take a cheer!”
Christianna came up the tiny path and seated herself, not in the split-bottomed chair to which he waved her, but upon the edge of the porch, with her back to the sapling that served for a pillar, and with her small, ill-shod feet just touching a bed of heartsease. She pushed back her sunbonnet. ”Dave an' Billy told us good-bye yesterday. Pap is going down the mountain to-day. Dave took the shotgun an' pap has grandpap's flintlock, but Billy didn't have a gun. He said he'd take one from the Yanks.”
”Sho!” exclaimed Sairy. ”Didn't he have no weapon at all?”
”He had a hunting-knife that was grandpap's. An' the blacksmith made him what he called a spear-head. He took a bit o' rawhide and tied it to an oak staff, an' he went down the mountain _so_!” Her drawling voice died, then rose again. ”I'll miss Billy--I surely will!” It failed again, and the heartsease at her feet ran together into a little sea of purple and gold. She took the cape of her sunbonnet and with it wiped away the unaccustomed tears.
”Sho!” said Sairy. ”We'll all miss Billy. I reckon we all that stay at home air going to have our fill o' missing!--What have you got in your basket, honey?”