Cape Cod Folks Part 8

"There's the old grannie, Aunt Sibby they call her. Lord, she's got a head on her like a picter! They're high-bred, too, I reckon. To begin with, why, G.o.dfrey--G.o.dfrey Cradlebow--that's Lute's father, teacher; he's college bred, I suppose! He had a rich uncle thar', that took a shine to him, and kind o' 'dopted him and eddicated him, but G.o.dfrey, he took a shine to a poor girl thar', dreadfully handsome, she was, but yet they was both of 'em young, and it didn't suit the old uncle, so he left him to shift for himself. And G.o.dfrey, he tried one thing and another, and never held long to nothin', I guess, and finally he drifted down this way, and here he stuck.

"He's got a good head, G.o.dfrey has, but he wasn't never extry fond o'

work, I reckon, and he's growed dreadful rheumatiky lame, and he has his sprees, occasionally.

"Liddy, that's his wife, teacher, she was full good enough for him when ye come to the p'int. Oh, she's a smart wife, and she's had a hard row, so many children and nothin' to do with, as ye might say. Why, they've had thirteen children, ain't they, ma?

"Le' me see--four on 'em dead, and three on 'em--no! four on 'em married, and three on 'em--How is't, ma?"

Grandma then took up the tangled thread of the old Captain's discourse, with calm disdain, and proceeded to disclose an appalling array of statistics, not only in regard to the Cradlebow family, but including generations of men hitherto unknown and remote.

When I signified a desire to retire for the night, Madeline informed me, with a brisk and hopeful air, that my room was "all ready now."

She led the way up a short and narrow little staircase into a low garret, where, amid a dark confusion of objects, I was forcibly reminded of the rows of hard substances suspended from the rafters. Turning to the left, the rays of the candle revealed a small red door framed in among the unpainted boards of the wall.

There, Madeline bade me a flippant and musical good night, and I entered my room, alone.

Within, the contrast between the door and the brown walls was still more effectively drawn.

The bed, neatly made, stood in a niche where the roof slanted perceptibly downward, so that the sweetly unconscious sleeper (as I found afterwards) perchance tossing his head upward, in a dream, was doomed to bring that member into resounding contact with the ceiling, I judged something of the restless proclivities of the last occupants of the room by the amount of plastering of which this particular section had been deprived. In this, and in other places where it had fallen, it had been collected and tacked up again to the ceiling in cloth bags which presented a graceful and drooping, though at first sight, rather enigmatical appearance.

The chimney ran through the room forming a sort of unique centre-piece.

This and more I accepted, wearily, and then sank down by the bed and cried. Outside, before the one small window, stood a peach tree.

Afterward, when this had grown to be a very dear little room to me, I looked out cheerfully through its branches, warm with sunshine, and fragrant with bloom; but now it was bare and ghostly, and, as the wind blew, one forlorn twig trailed back and forth across the window.

For an hour or more after my head touched the pillow, I lay awake listening to the unaccustomed sound of the surf and those skeleton fingers tapping at the pane.

CHAPTER IV.

THE TURKEY MOGUL ARRIVES.

I studied Becky Weir in school, the next day, with special interest. She was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, with the stately, substantial presence of one of nature's own G.o.ddesses. She had a fresh, constant color in her cheeks, a pure, low forehead, and eyes that were clear, gray, and large, but with a strangely appealing, helplessly animal expression in them, I fancied, as she lifted them, oft-times, to mine.

She was distinguished among my young disciples by the faithful, though evidently labored and wearisome attention, she gave to her books.

Her glance, bent on some small wretch who was misbehaving, had a peculiarly significant force. The little ones all seemed to love her and to stand rather in awe of her, too.

Entering the school-room in the morning, she discovered a network of strings, which one Lemuel Biddy had artfully laid between the desks, intending thereby to waylay and prostrate his human victim, and stooping down, she boxed the miscreant, not cruelly but effectively, on the ears.

I was surprised to see that the boy seemed to regard this infliction as the simple and natural award of justice, bowed his head and wept penitently, and was subdued for some time afterward.

To me, whose earliest years had been guided and illuminated on the principle that reason and persuasion alone are to be used in the training of the tender twig, this little occurrence afforded food for serious wonder and reflection. I doubted if the logic of the sages or the wooing of the celestial seraphim would have wrought with such convincing power on the mind and ears of Lemuel Biddy.

If Rebecca perchance, after painfully protracted exertions, succeeded in working out some simple problem in arithmetic, her slate containing the solution was freely handed about among her unaspiring comrades; so that I judged her to be "weakly generous" as well as "plodding,"--qualities not of a high order, I esteemed, yet by no means insuperable barriers to friendship when found to enter more or less largely into the composition of one's friends.

There was something in my novel relation to the girl as her teacher peculiarly fascinating to me. At recess she remained in her seat and kept quietly at her work.

I went down and stood over her. "Can I help you, my dear?" I said.

Whatever might have been the pedantic or obtrusively condescending quality of those words, Rebecca seemed to find nothing distasteful in them. She looked up with a "Thank you," and a pleased, trustful face like a child's. "I can't do this one," said she. "I've finished the rest, but this wouldn't come right, somehow."

It was a sum in simple addition. I could not help a feeling of deep surprise and commiseration that one of Rebecca's age should have stumbled at it at all, but I essayed to examine it very closely and worked it out for her as slowly as possible. "Do you see your mistake?" I said.

She blushed painfully. The tears almost stood in her eyes.

"Yes, and I knew you'd have to find out how dull I was," she said; "but I dreaded it. When Miss Waite was here, mother was sick and I didn't go to school at all, and Miss Waite took me for a friend; and I told mother I'd most rather not go to school to you, for Miss Waite said you'd be a real friend, and I knew you wouldn't want me when you found how dull I was."

I looked at the girl, and a bright, hesitating smile woke in her face.

"Do you know, Rebecca," I said, "I don't choose my friends for their mental qualifications--for what they know; I select them just as people do horses--by their teeth. Let me see yours."

Rebecca laughed most musically, thus disclosing two brilliant rows of ivories. I had noticed them before.

"You'll do!" I exclaimed, lightly. "I take you into my heart of hearts.

Now, what is your standard of choice? What charming characteristic do you First require in a friend, Rebecca?"

"Oh!" said she, gasping a little and speaking very slowly; "I--don't--know. I--don't--think--I've got any."

"Don't be afraid lest you shall guess something that I have not, my dear," I said; "You can hardly go astray. Begin with modesty, if you please, truly the chief of virtues."

Rebecca caught quickly the meaning in my tone, and answered with a low ripple of laughter. When I urged her, she grew gravely embarra.s.sed.

"Well," said she; "I don't think I should want anybody that I thought I couldn't ever help them any, you know. That wouldn't ever need me, I mean, and I know," she went on more hastily; "it seems funny to say that to you, because it seems as though there wasn't anything that I could ever do for you--because you--you seem--not to need anybody--but I didn't know but some time--there might be something--I thought--maybe--some time."

Rebecca paused and looked up at me with that pitifully beseeching expression in her eyes.

"Oh, yes," I answered, still carelessly; "no doubt I shall be a great burden to you in time. But you do help me now, dear, by your conduct in school. You helped me this morning when you boxed Lemuel Biddy's ears.

I shall have to take boxing lessons of you."

"You be the scholar," Rebecca answered quickly, her lips parting again with a merry outburst of laughter.

"Wretch!" said I, well pleased but affecting a tone of deep severity; "you must not be saucy to your teacher! I shall keep you in the rest of your recess for that.

"Do you like to study, Rebecca?" I added presently.

"No-o," said she, much abashed at the admission, and yet evidently incapable of speaking otherwise than according to the simple dictates of her conscience. "I don't think I should care anything about it if it didn't make you so dull not to. I mean," she continued; "perhaps I might 'a' liked it if I'd been to school right along, but we never did. And I was to the mills up to Taunton. I didn't stay long there. Then mother was sick. They don't any of the scholars be let to go very regular. Sometimes they're wanted to work out. So they forget. So they don't care much, I think. They get to dreading it. I wanted to tell you so you wouldn't think it so much blame--our bein' so backward."

"It is the faithful improvement of what opportunities we have, Rebecca,"

I began and then paused, somewhat confused by the throng of lively reminiscences which suddenly crowded my mental horoscope. "You are young yet, my dear," I concluded gravely, with a resigned sigh for my own departed youth; "you can make up for lost time. It is pleasant to give, but there may be circ.u.mstances in which it is our duty imperatively to receive. You must let me do all I can for you this winter. I do want you for a friend, but I would rather it should be on these plainly implied conditions."

Rebecca had been studying my face, thoughtfully, with a still expression of wonder.

"I'll try to learn," said she, slowly. "I'll do anything you want me to."

"Do you like to read?" I inquired, in a brighter tone.

"Stories?" said Rebecca, a sparkle waking in her eyes.