Atlantic Narratives Part 9

'Did you ever teach, Mr. Miles?' I asked, for the sake of seeming civil.

'Yes, I did. So I know there's a secret to teachin' you prob'ly ain't got yet. I dunno as I could help you to it. It ain't likely. An' yet--'

Unlikely indeed! I thought. Aloud, I said politely, 'I'd be glad to hear your views.'

'I know what you feel!' he said with extraordinary energy. 'My Lord!

Don't I know what you feel? You want to make 'em sense things as you sense 'em. You want to make 'em work as you can work. You won't be satisfied until you've given 'em the thirst to know and the means of knowing. Yes, I know what you feel!'

I stared at him, dumbfounded. I knew what I felt, too, but it wasn't much like this.

'There are pictures in your brain that you must show 'em. There's a universe to cram inside their heads. G.o.d has been workin' for a billion years at doing things--and just one little life to learn about 'em in!

To feel you're on His trail, a-following fast, and got to pa.s.s the feeling on--I guess there's no wine on earth so heady, is there, boy?'

I couldn't pretend I didn't understand him. I have had it too--that wonderful sensation we pack away into two dry words and label 'intellectual stimulus.' But it hadn't come to me that I could, or should, pa.s.s it on. I thought it was an emotion designed for my private encouragement and delight. And what was old Seth Miles doing with intellectual stimulus? I would as soon expect to unearth a case of champagne in his cellar. But, however he got it, undeniably it was the real thing.

A dozen questions rushed to my tongue, but I held them back, for he was looking me up and down with a wistful tenderness that seemed to prelude further revelation.

'I'm going to tell you the whole story now,' he said with an effort. 'I promised your father I would. He told me to. And I'd better get it over.

Mebbe there's something in it for you--and mebbe not. But here it is.'

II

'I've lived right here since I was a little shaver. My father cleared this land on the Ridge, and as I grew up, I helped him. We were a small family for those days. I was the only boy. There was one sister, Sarah, who keeps house for me now--and Cynthy. Cynthy was an orphan my folks took to raise for company to Sarah. My father was her guardeen and she had two thousand dollars, so it wasn't charity, you understand. She was the prettiest child, an' the gentlest, I ever see, with her big brown eyes, her curly bronze hair, an' her friendly little ways. I made it my business to look after Cynthy, the way a bigger boy will, from the time she come to us. Sometimes Sarah, being larger an' self-willed, would pick on her a little--an' then I'd put Sarah in her place mighty sudden.

P'raps Cynthy was my romance, for she was a little finer stuff than we were. But I wasn't a sentimental boy. Quite the other way. Mostly I was counted a handful. You ain't got anybody in your school as hard to handle as I was when I was a cub.

'When I went to school, I went for the fun of it, and to torment the teacher. I hadn't another thought in my head. If I didn't get a lickin'

once a week, I thought I was neglected. When I was sixteen, I'd been through Dayboll's Arithmetic, and I could read and spell a little for my own use, but my spelling wasn't much good to anybody else. That was all I knew and all I wanted to know. You see, the little I learned was all plastered on the outside, so to speak. It hadn't called to anything inside me then.

'One fall there come a new teacher to our school, a young fellow earnin'

money to get through college. He got on the right side of me somehow. I can't tell how he did it, because I don't know. But first he set me studying and then he set me thinking. And I began to work at books _from the inside_. They weren't tasks any more. He made me feel like I had a mind and could use it, just like I knew I had strong muscles and could use them. Seemed 's if when I once got started, I couldn't stop. I got up mornings to study. I studied nights an' I studied Sundays. There couldn't nothing stop me. I thought I'd found the biggest thing on earth when I found out how to make my mind work! Jerusalem! Those were days! I was happy then! Sometimes I wonder what the Lord's got saved up for us in the next world as good as that tasted in this.'

He stopped, threw back his head and drew in a long, ecstatic breath, as though he would taste again the sharp, sweet flavor of that draught.

'I studied like that for nigh two years. Then a new idea struck me. It was one spring day. I remember father and I was ploughing for corn. I said, "Father, if I could get a school, I guess I could teach." He hadn't no more idea I could teach than that I could go to Congress, not a bit; but I finally drilled it into him I was in earnest, and that fall he helped me get a school near home.

'I never did any work as hard as that. It was against me that I was so near home, and everybody knew I'd never studied until just lately. I could tell you stories from now till bedtime about the times I had with the big boys and girls. But I never let go my main idea for a minute--that it wasn't just so much grammar and 'rithmetic I was tryin'

to cram into them, but that I had to show 'em how to sense it all. By and by, one after another found out what I was after. The bright ones took to it like ducks to water. It was just wonderful the work they'd do for me, once they understood.

'A notion took shape in my head. For all I could see, the things to learn were endless. They stretched ahead of me like a sun-path on the water. I thought, "Mebbe I can go on learning all my days. Mebbe I can teach as I learn, so young folks will say of me as I said of my teacher, _He showed me how to sense things for myself._" That notion seemed wonderful good to me! It grew stronger an' stronger. It seemed as if I'd fit into such a life the way a key fits in its lock. And I couldn't see no reason why I shouldn't put it through.

'So I spoke to father. He didn't say much, but I noticed he didn't seem keen about it. He'd bought the store at the Corners two years before, and it seemed to me it would work out pretty well if he sold the farm and just tended store and had a little house in Garibaldi, as he and mother got along in years.

'I thought likely Sarah would marry, and anybody might be sure Cynthy would. She an' Sarah had had two years' schooling in Oatesville by this time, and they held themselves a bit high. Cynthy was grown up that pretty and dainty you caught your breath when you looked at her. There's some young girls have that dazzling kind of a look. When you lay eyes on them, it hardly seems as if it could be _true_ they looked like that.

Cynthy was one of that kind.

'My plans took shape in my mind the second winter I taught. I set my heart on teaching one more year and then going to school somewhere myself. I got the State University catalogue and began to plan the studying I did nights so it would help me enter.

'It was just then that I ran against the proposition of teaching Greek.

A boy from York State come out to spend the winter with an uncle whose farm joined ours. He'd lost his father, and I guess his mother didn't know what to do with him. I don't mean d.i.c.k wasn't a good boy, but likely he was a handful for a woman.

'Living so near, we saw a lot of him. He was always coming in evenings to see the girls, and he pretended to go to school, too. He was sort of uppish in his ways, and I knew he made fun of me and my teaching, all around among the neighbors. What did he do one day but bring me some beginning Greek exercises to look over, with his head in the air as if he was sayin', "Guess I've got you now!"

'I took his exercises and looked at 'em, awful wise, and said those was all right, that time. Bless you, I didn't know Alphy from Omegy, but I meant to, mighty quick! I walked seven miles an' back that evening to borrow some Greek books of a man I knew had 'em, and sat up till two o'clock, tryin' to get the hang of the alphabet.

'Well, sir! I just pitched into those books an' tore the innards out of 'em, and then I pitched into that fellow. You'd ought to have seen him open his eyes when he found I knew what I was talkin' about! He got tired of his Greek inside of two weeks. But I held him to it. I made him keep right on, and I did the same, and kept ahead of him.

'It interested me awfully, that Greek. I borrowed some more books and got me some translations. I don't say I got so I could read it easy, but I got on to a lot of new ideas. There was one book about a fellow who was strapped to a rock for a thousand years for bringing the fire of the G.o.ds to mortals. Probably you've heard of it. I liked that.'

All this sounded to me a good deal like a fairy-tale the old gentleman was telling. Of course, all education is so much more rigid nowadays, that the idea of anybody pitching in that way, and grabbing the heart out of any form of knowledge was novel to me. Yet I'd read in the biographies of great men that such things had really been done.

Only--Mr. Miles wasn't a great man. How, then, had he come to accomplish what I understood was essentially an achievement of genius?

The thing staggered me.

'"Prometheus Bound,"' said Seth Miles meditatively. 'That's the one. You may think I was conceited, but it seemed to me I knew how that man felt.

To make them look up! To kindle the flame! Didn't I know how a man could long to do that? Wouldn't I, too, risk the anger of the G.o.ds if I could fire those children's minds the way my own was fired?

'You see, it's this way, Richard: a feeling is a feeling. There are only just so many of 'em in the world, and if you know what any one of 'em is like, you do. That's all.

'When I spoke to father about my plans again, he looked as if I'd hurt him. A pitiful, caught look came in his eyes, and he said, "Don't let's talk about it now, Seth. I--I reelly ain't up to it to-day."

'There was something in what he said, or the way he said it, that just seemed to hit my heart a smashing blow. I felt like I'd swallowed a pound of shot, and yet I didn't know why. I couldn't see anything wrong, nor any reason why my plans wasn't for the best, for all of us. But those few words he said, and the way he looked, upset me so that I went off to the barn after school that afternoon and climbed into the hay-mow to find a quiet place to figure the thing out. I hadn't been there long before I heard voices down below, and Cynthy's laugh, and somebody climbing the ladder. It was Cynthy and d.i.c.k. Sarah had sent 'em out to hunt more eggs for a cake she was bakin'.

'I didn't think they'd stay long, and I wanted to be let alone, so I just kept quiet.

'Now I want to say before I go any further that d.i.c.k would have been a great deal more no-account than he was if he hadn't admired Cynthy, and it wasn't any wonder she liked him. Besides what there was to him, there was plenty of little reasons, like the kind of neckties he wore and the way he kept his shoes shined. There was always a kind of style about d.i.c.k.

'They rustled round, laughing and talking, till they got the five eggs they was sent for, and then Cynthy made as if she started down the ladder. d.i.c.k held her back.

'"Not till you've kissed me!" said he.

'"I'm ashamed of you," said she.

'"I'm proud of myself," said he, "to think I know enough to want it.

Why, Cynthy, I ain't never had one, but I'd swear a kiss of yours would be like the flutter of an angel's wing across my lips."

'"That's foolishness," said she; but she said it softly, as if she liked foolishness.

'Mebbe you wonder how I remember every little thing they said. It's like it was burned into my brain with fire. For I no sooner heard 'em foolin'

with one another that soft little way than something seemed to wring my heart with such a twist that it stopped beating.--d.i.c.k kiss Cynthy?

Why--why, Cynthy was mine! She'd always been as close to me as the beat of my own heart. From the minute I first laid eyes on her I'd known it, in the back of my mind. I'd never put it into words, not even to myself.

But that was the way it _was_. So now my soul just staggered. n.o.body could kiss Cynthy but me. That was all.

'"Foolishness!" said d.i.c.k; his voice was sort of thick and blurry, and, of a sudden, I could hear him breathing hard. "Foolishness! I guess it's the only wisdom that there is!--My G.o.d!--My G.o.d!--_O Cynthy, just one kiss!_"

'"d.i.c.k! Why, d.i.c.k!"

'Her little voice sounded like the birds you sometimes hear in the middle of the night, just that soft, astonished, questioning note.

'I suppose I was across that mow and beside 'em in five seconds, but it seemed to me I took an hour to cross it. I never traveled so long and hard a road, nor one so beset with terror and despair.