Part 9 (1/2)
”Stories mixed with other things,” I insisted, gently; and was then compelled to wonder how many of those ”other things” had found their way into the literary appointment of my trunk.
”I'll try,” said Rebecca.
”Come to the Ark, after school, and look over the books I have. We will talk some more about it, and you shall select as you please, or I will select for you, if you desire,” I said, looking at Rebecca with kindly though severe penetration.
”I'd rather you would,” said Rebecca, obediently.
To inflict this particular sort of patronage was a delightfully new experience for me. The glaring inconsistencies which confronted me at every turn only gave a heightened zest to the pursuit.
When I went to the door to blow the horn I felt that Rebecca already regarded me as her patron, guide, and spiritual mentor, and I was seriously resolved to fill these positions hopefully for her and with credit to myself. With respect to the rest of my flock, I felt a different sort of interest--the wide-awake concern of one who finds himself suddenly perched on the back of a mettlesome, untried steed.
Any one member of that benighted corps, taken as the subject of pruning and cultivating effort, would have occupied, I believed, the faithful labors of a lifetime. Considered as a gloriously rampant ma.s.s, the aspect of the field was appalling.
I was especially impressed with this view of the case when I went to toot them in from those free and reckless diversions in, which their souls expanded and their bodies became as the winged creatures of the earth.
The horn was still an object of terror to me, though experience had made me wise enough to inst.i.tute, on all occasions, a careful preliminary search for b.u.t.tons.
Its blast, freighted with baleful meaning to the ears of sportive innocence, found a melancholy echo among the deeper woes of my own heart, and, if it chanced to be one of Aunt Lobelia's singing days, the ”Dar' to be a Dan-yell! Dar' to be a Dan-yell!” which floated across the lane, had but a doubtfully inspiriting effect.
I felt, indeed, like a Daniel doomed to convocate my own lions, and lacking that faith in a preserving Providence which is believed to have cheered and elevated the spirit of the ancient prophet, I confidently expected, on the whole, to be devoured.
Gathered into their den, my lively herd gasped some moments as though suffering the last loud agony of expiring breath, and then, bethinking them of that only one of their free and native elements now obtainable, they sent up a universal cry for ”water!”
Ah! what to do with them through the long hours of the day--beautiful creatures! by no means unlovable, with their bright, clear eyes, their restless, restless feet, their overflowing spirits; their bodies all alive, but with minds unfitted by birth, unskilled by domestic discipline, to any sort of earnest and prolonged effort. Long, weary hours, therefore, not of furnis.h.i.+ng instruction to the hungry and inquiring mind--ah, no!--but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted school-room, tired, tired, tired!
The parents of the children ”dropped in” often at the Ark, and savored the lively and varied flow of their discourse with choice dissertations on methods of discipline.
”I want my children whipped,” said Mr. Randall Alden. ”That's what they need. They git enough of it at home. It won't skeer 'em any--and I tell the folks if they'd all talk like that, they wouldn't be no trouble in the school.”
”Ye can't drive Milton P.,” said that hopeful's mother. ”He's been drove so much that he don't take no notice of it. If coaxing won't fetch him, nothin' won't; and I tell 'em if they was all like that they wouldn't be no trouble in the school.”
”Well,” said Emily Gaskell, the matron of the painted house, a tall, angular woman, with the hectic of the orthodox Yankee consumption on her cheeks, and the orthodox Yankee twinkle in her eye; ”ye can manage my boys whatever way ye please, teacher. I ain't pertickeler. They've been coaxed and they've been whipped, but they've always made out to mind by doin' pretty much as they was a mind to. They're smart boys, too,” she added, with sincere pride; ”but they don't take to larnin'. I never see sich boys. Ye can't git no larnin' into 'em no way. They'd rather be whipped than go to school. Sim had a man to work on our cranberry bog, and he found out that he was first-rate in 'rithmetic, this man was, and so Sim, says he,--I'll give ye the same ye git on the bog,' says he, 'to stay up to the house and larn my boys 'rithmetic,' says he; and the man, he tried it, and in the course of a day or two, he come around to Sim, and wanted to know if he couldn't go back to clarin' bog again.”
Emily took in the broadly contemplative expression on Grandma Keeler's benign features, and then winked at me facetiously: ”I tell 'em if they was all like that,” said she; ”and I guess they be, pretty much, they might as well be out o' doors as in, and less worryin' to the teacher.”
It might have been the third day of my labors in Wallencamp that a man, having the appearance of a lame giant, entered the school-room, and advanced to meet me with an imposing dignity of mien. He held captive, with one powerful hand, a stubbornly speechless, violently struggling boy. I recognized the man as G.o.dfrey Cradlebow, the handsome fiddler's father, and the boy was none other than the imp whose eyes, scorching and defiant now, had first sent mocking glances back at me while their light-limbed owner kicked out a jaunty rigadoon from under the encircling folds of his sacerdotal vestments.
”Miss Hungerford, I beg your pardon,” said the elder Cradlebow, with a distinct, refined enunciation foreign to the native element of Wallencamp, whose ordinary locution had something of a Hoosier accent ”After a good deal of trouble in catching him, I have finally succeeded in bringing you in this--a--this little dev”--he made an impressive pause, patted his fiery offspring on the head with fatherly dignity, and eyed him, at once doubtfully and reflectively.
I was interested in observing the aspect of the two faces.
”The little boy resembles you, I think,” I said.
The lame man struck his cane down hard upon the floor and laughed immoderately.
”If you knew what I had in my mind to say!” he exclaimed--”ah! that was well put, well put!--though but dubiously complimentary, but dubiously so, I a.s.sure you, either to father or son!”
The idea still continuing to tickle him, he laughed more gently, beating a sympathetic tattoo with his cane on the floor.
”To pursue directly the cause of my intrusion here,” he went on, at length, ”this little--well, for present purposes, we will call him the _Phenomenon_. I confess it is a name to which he is not totally unused.
This little phenomenon, whom you see before you, is the youngest but one in a flock of thirteen. Some of that beautiful band--” here Mr. Cradlebow raised a very shaky hand for an instant to his eyes, and although a fitting occasion for sentiment, I was compelled to think of what Grandpa Keeler had said about G.o.dfrey Cradlebow's ”sprees”--”some of that beautiful band rest in the graveyard, yonder. Some of them already know what it is themselves to be parents. Some of them still linger in the poor old home nest. I see you have here, my Alvin, and my Wallace, and my youngest, the infant Sophronia. Well, you find them good children, I dare say. Ah! they have an estimable mother.” Again, he lifted his hand to his eyes. ”Mischievous enough, you find them, probably, but amenable--there it is, amenable--but this lad”--Mr. Cradlebow paused again, shaking his head with a meaning to which he gravely declined further expression.