Cape Cod Folks Part 30

Dr. Aberdeen was truly of the mildest disposition imaginable. He had never been known to kick. He had never even been known to open his mouth and snap at a fly, but the expression of his countenance, if it might be so called, when he was on the chase, was vicious and determined in the extreme, and by no means betrayed the purely facetious nature of his intentions. During school hours he seldom wandered from the immediate vicinity of the school-house, where he appeared to be waiting for the children to come out to play. Often have I looked up to see him gazing in at the windows with a gleam of evil expectancy in his melancholy dun brown eye.

With the joyful advent of the spring came, also, Tommy's tame owl and "Happy Moses." Tommy's owl emerged from his winter-quarters, and took up his daily post of observation on the fence on the shady side of the school-house. He was blind in one eye, which eye was always open, the other was always closed. Yet with that one gla.s.sy, unblinking orb, Tommy's owl seemed to me, as I lifted my eyes to the window, to be reviewing the past with an indifference as calm and all-embracing as that with which he sent his inexorable gaze into the future; and to take in me and the pa.s.sing events of the school-room as a mere speck in his kaleidoscopic vision of the ages.

What was the winter's thraldom from which Happy Moses had escaped, I never learned. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, six feet in height, with a beard like flax, and a sunny, ingenuous countenance. What term should have been applied to his eccentricities in politer circles I cannot say, but in Wallencamp, he was artlessly designated as "the fool." Whether it was on this account, that with a certain rashness of perception peculiar to the Wallencampers, they always prefixed the adjective "happy" to his name, or merely on account of the transparent sunniness of his disposition, I cannot say, either.

Happy Moses played with the children. He regarded me, as one of the cla.s.s of those who presume to teach, with mingled scorn and aversion. When I went to the door to blow the children in from their play, he invariably turned his back upon me, c.o.c.ked his hat on one side of his head, and walked away with an air that was palpably reckless, defiant, and jaunty.

When he reappeared, it was usually with his knitting-work, to which he devoted himself in a desultory way, reclining on the school-house steps.

But sometimes he sat on the fence with the owl, and then it was noticeable that while the gaze of the one was transient and silly, the gaze of the other seemed to grow the more unutterably searching and profound. So, at last, the new term was fairly established with these three--Dr. Aberdeen, Happy Moses, and the owl.

Hulled corn and beans had now become but as a dream of the past in Wallencamp, and for a brief season before the accession of lobsters, life was mainly supported on winter-green-berries, or box-berries, as they were called. These grew in large quant.i.ties at "Black Ground," a section of the woods which had been burned over. Daily I met happy groups of Wallencampers, with baskets and pails in their hands, going "boxberry plummin.'"

We had boxberry bread, boxberry stews and pies, and one day, I caught a glimpse of Grandma, in her part of the Ark, frying boxberry griddle-cakes.

Grandpa, when I met him, at this time, wore an air of deep dejection; yet he bore his woes in silence, doubtless avoiding any concession that should suggest the need of another clarification of his system. Once, when n.o.body was looking, he cautiously withdrew a handful of sc.r.a.ped birch bark from his pocket and gave it to me, remarking that he thought it was "a little more bracin' than them tarnal woodsy plums."

Next in the order of events, as the Modoc stood in her place in the reading-cla.s.s and slowly enunciated each separate syllable of the lesson in a tone as remarkable for a loud distinctness as it was for a total lack of meaning and modulation, from that side of her dress which had been sagging most heavily, something fell with a crash to the floor. It was a boiled lobster of anomalous proportions. The pocket had given way at last under its overpowering burden, and now appeared ignominiously upborne on the claws of its former prisoner. The Modoc seized the crustacean with glittering defiance in her eyes, and at recess, I saw that turbaned Amazon devouring it, with a group of wistful and admiring faces gathered round. The boys were out in the bay "setting pots" and "trolling for bait." Soon, not a child at Wallencamp was lobsterless. I discovered two under the infant Sophronia's desk one morning, and afterwards kept a sharp eye in that direction. Sophronia's conduct throughout the session was in an unusual degree exemplary. I detected no guilty blush on her countenance, I heard not the crackling of a claw, but when she went out, I observed that she took no lobsters with her.

Investigating the place where she had been sitting, I found a wild confusion of claws and sh.e.l.ls, as carefully denuded of meat as though they had been turned inside out for that purpose.

What was my surprise and mortification to find a like collection at nearly every seat in the school-room, and all the while my flock had seemed unusually silent and attentive; such proficiency had those children acquired in the art of dissecting lobsters.

I saw how many they devoured day by day, and how much water they drank, and I fancied that they themselves grew to partake more and more of the form and character of marine animals. I believed that they could have existed equally well crawling at the bottom of the deep or swimming on its surface.

We had lobsters, too, at the Ark. For the first day or two of this dispensation, Grandpa's face perceptibly brightened. At the end of two weeks it was longer than ever before.

He came over from his potato patch, I remember, and leaned on the fence, as I was going by to school.

"It's be'n a mild winter on the Cape, teacher," he observed, studying the heavens with an air of utter abstraction. Then his glance fell as it were inadvertently in the direction of the house, and he immediately continued with a peculiar spark of animation kindling in his eye; "I've et so many o' them 'tarnal critters, teacher, that I swon if I don't feel like a 'tarnal, long-fingered, sprawlin' sh.e.l.l-fish myself! But it's comin' nigh time for ale-whops. They're very good, teacher, ale-whops are--very good, though they're bony as the--they're 'tarnal bony, teacher. They're what we call herrin's in the winter."

Grandpa then laughed a little and showed his teeth.

"I was goin' to tell ye, Bachelder Lot, here," he went on; "he was a'

askin' Captain Sartell what kind o' fish them was that it's recorded in the Scripters to 'a' fed the mult.i.tude, and then took up so many baskets full o' leavin's; and the Captain told him that as to exactly what manner of fish them was, he hadn't sufficient acquaintance with the book of Jonah to say, but, as near as he could calk'late, he reckoned they was ale-whops.

"And the Bachelder told him that it seemed to him he was right, and had solved a mystery, for it stood to reason that there wa'n't no other fish _but_ an ale-whop, that they could feed five thousand folks out of seven little ones and then take up twelve bushel baskets full of bones!

"And the Captain was pleased, and kind o' half owned up that he hadn't felt no ways sure as to his surmise to begin with, but he said when the question was put to him, he didn't think no man ought to hesitate to come down strong on a doctrinal p'int.

"Wall, as I was a sayin', teacher," concluded Grandpa, his teeth still skinned and gleaming, "it's be'n a mild winter on the Cape."

CHAPTER XIV.

RESCUED BY THE CRADLEBOW.

The ship in which the Cradlebow expected to take flight was to sail from New Bedford on the twentieth of June. Meantime, having abjured my friendly relations with Rebecca, and missing the quiet sustenance hitherto supplied my vanity in the girl's thoughtful devotion, I found a measure of relief for my wounded spirit in the companionship of this other--my boyish and ardent ex-pupil.

Many times, after my last interview with Rebecca, had I regretted that I did not leave Wallencamp at the close of the first term. The school grew continually more irksome to me. I was not so strong as when I had first undertaken it, and no longer overlooked the discomforts of my situation in the delight I had then experienced in its novelty. Often I longed to get away from it all, to rid myself abruptly of the perplexities and distasteful duties which bound me; and yet, all the while, there was a truer impulse, a deeper longing within me, to stay. Had I not been, all my life so far, forsaking my unfinished tasks, quitting an object as soon as it seemed any the less attractive. I willed to stay, and labored, still blindly, under the conviction that my regenerating work among the Wallencampers (not theirs in me; ah, no!) was not yet accomplished.

Toward Rebecca I had not softened. I was bitterly disappointed in her.

She had been the formless, pliable clay, on which I purposed to prove my pet theories for development and culture. I had taken her as a perfectly fresh and untainted being, navely unconscious even, of the elements, either good or bad, of which her own nature was composed, waiting only for the hand of a wise and skillful modeller, like myself, to bring her up to the highest condition of manners and morals.

This elegant superstructure, a purely mental product of my own, had fallen away, revealing the erring, pa.s.sionate nature beneath. But, deeply as I mourned the fall of my idol, I felt still more keenly a sense of personal injury, because the inner structure on which I had been building, had not spoken out and said, "I shall contaminate you. I am not fit for the touch, of your fine hands."

Clearly there could no longer be any sympathy between Rebecca and me. I avoided any occasion for private interview with the girl. Meeting her casually in the lane, or at the neighbors' houses, I acknowledged her presence with a nod or a smile, colder, I knew, than as if I had ignored her utterly.

She understood; she was quiet and un.o.btrusive. She made no attempt to break down the wall thus established between us. And I was determined, on the whole, to be more than just with Rebecca. I would be kind to her in her disgrace. I would palliate her weakness as far as I could consistently with a pure and high standard of action. I even congratulated myself on the magnanimity of my intentions, except when I met the clear, sad gaze of those dispa.s.sionate eyes. Then I experienced an unaccountable sensation, as though I had received a blow inwardly, that staggered me, for an instant, in my fine conceptions of honor, and set my conclusions out of order.

The Wallencampers were quick to note the estrangement between us, and affirmed that "Beck was mad, and wouldn't speak to teacher, along o'

teacher's goin' with Beck's beau."

This gratuitous solution of the mystery was not evolved in my presence.

Still I knew, that all through those lonely, suffering days, it was often repeated to Rebecca; that those who had borne the girl any grudge, or deemed that she was taking airs above them, took pains, now, that the taunt should reach her ears; and even the children, who had always loved her, uttered it before her with childish thoughtlessness.

But, for the Cradlebow; his bright dream of seeking his fortune over wide seas and in distant lands, his dreadless enthusiasm in the belief that he should find so much waiting for him in that unsounded world, his determination, above all, to acquit himself truthfully and bravely--all these made him, to my mind, ever an object of more inspiring and romantic interest.

He seemed, somehow, to have divested himself entirely of the old, heedless irresolution. His speech expressed little of doubt or hesitancy.

It was full of a bold, bright affirmation; and his step, in these days, had none of the ordinary slow, smiling, philosophical Wallencamp shuffle.

He brought to my weariness and dejection such an atmosphere of vigorous, tireless life; he was so confident, helpful, unselfish; I was so faithless and disheartened a burden-bearer; that I grew almost unconsciously to find for myself a certain rest in his strength, which, whatever high and heroic qualities it may have lacked, developed, at least, rare resources of patience, constancy, and forbearance.

He did not say: "You have changed your mind, you will wait for me, teacher, till I come back from over the seas?" but his eyes were eloquent. What if I was moved, I had grown so weak, to answer their question, at last, with a half-involuntary admission in my own.

Ah, no! I a.s.sured myself that my att.i.tude towards the Cradlebow was sisterly--sisterly, merely--although I might have reflected that the yearnings of that amiable affection had never, hitherto, in the ordinary walks of life, constrained me to hem so many as a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs for my brothers, which irksome task I cheerfully performed as a surprise for the sailor boy, not to speak of a pair of scarlet hose which I had already begun to knit, under Grandma's tuition.

And now the life in Wallencamp seemed never like real life to me, even in the broadest daylight. It was like a dream--the sweet, warm, brightening of the landscape; the vines growing over the low, brown houses; the lazy, summer voices in the air; the skies, too, were a dream--and Luther, with his ideally beautiful face and his quaintness and ardor and unworldliness, was a part of the dream. I knew that when he went away, I should follow him long in my thoughts, and wonder much concerning him; that at home again with my own people, in gayer, different scenes, I should never hear the wind blowing up strong at night, or see the winter settling down gloomily, or watch the opening of another spring-time, without following him afar and wondering, with a vague, sorrowful, tender regret, what chance was befalling him in the world.

Then an incident occurred which changed, not me, perhaps, but the complexion of my dream.

One afternoon, at low tide, I wandered down to the beach and ensconced myself comfortably, with book and shawl, on the roof of Steeple Rock. The rock was an old acquaintance of mine by this time.

There was a group of children playing, a little farther down the beach.

My eyes turned ever to them from the written page, following them with a languid pleasure, as they revelled in the sand at the water's edge with their bare brown feet and legs. I had a sense of safety, too, in their proximity. I knew that they generally returned home pa.s.sing by the place where I was.

It was warm on the rock. I was very tired. As I lay there, I became only conscious, at length, that my book was slipping out of my hand, and down the shelving side of the rock, and I was too listless to attempt to reclaim it. I heard a little, dull thud on the ground below, and a faint flutter of leaves--and the long, white beach, the ragged cliffs, the laughing children, had faded from my sight.

Then I dreamed, indeed, in the ordinary sense of the word; I was back again in Newtown, in my own home, in my own white bed, and I was very glad, looking at the pictures on the wall, and out on the familiar hills.

I was glad to hear my sister playing for me down stairs, only it was the same tune always, and I wished that she would play more softly.

And the pillow was hard, but I did not mind that so much, for my mother stood over me, looking very sweet and grave, and she said: "Why didn't you tell us that the pillow was hard!"

My father was there, too, and repeated the same question, and my brothers,--they all kept saying: "Why didn't you tell us that the pillow was hard?" and seemed to be pitying me and admiring me at the same time, until John Cable came in, friend of the old Newtown days, and his face was hard and stern.

"Why didn't you tell me the pillow was hard?" he said. "Now, I can't wake you! Don't you see, I can't wake you, now?" and he shook his head and would not look at me. So they took him out of the room, and went on pitying and admiring me, but my sister kept playing louder and louder, and it troubled me so that I could not rest. Then I heard a voice, that was not in my dream, calling to me in a sharp, clear, cheering tone, "Teacher! Teacher!" and I looked up to see Luther coming towards me in a boat, his face aglow with excitement.