Dawn of the Morning Part 26

At her desk opposite the schoolroom door, Dawn heard this deliverance, as he intended she should, and her eyes grew bright. She understood that Daniel b.u.t.terworth was her champion, and felt her courage grow stronger at the thought. In a moment more she stood at the school-house door, looking out. Daniel looked up from his whittling and met her gaze. She was smiling, and he felt that she no longer considered him a baby. The diminutive had rankled in his heart, and henceforth his purpose was to prove to her that it was undeserved. If good behavior and hard study alone could do that, then he would behave and study, though it was a new mode of procedure for him.

The most interesting fact of the morning was that Daniel b.u.t.terworth had given in to the new "school-marm," and all the school knew it.

"Teatcher, thshe licked Dan b.u.t.terwuth," announced the precocious A-B-C scholar that evening, as she devoured her supper of mush and milk.

"Thshe licked him real hard-jetht thlapped hith fathe an' eyeth an'

earth eth hard eth ever thshe could."

Her father dropped his knife and fork on his plate resoundingly. He was the selectman who had unlocked the school-house. He felt in a measure responsible for the new teacher.

"The teacher whipped Daniel b.u.t.terworth!" he exclaimed. "Well, that settles her hash, I s'pose. I didn't much think she'd do, such a little whiffet tryin' to manage great lunkin boys. It ain't in conscience to expect it. We need a _man_. I told Parson so, but he insisted we try her, an' this is how it comes out. Well, it's no more'n I expected. Of course Dan'l's father'll never stand that."

"What did Dan do?" inquired the A-B-C.'s mother practically. She knew how to get at the root of the matter.

"He jeth thet thtill an' took it."

"Dan'l b.u.t.terwuth set still an' took a whippin' off'n a girl-teacher!"

exclaimed the mother. "Are you sure you're tellin' the truth?"

"Yeth, an' then teatcher, thshe thaid he wath a _great big baby_, an' he jeth thet thtill an' got red, an' then he took Bug Higginthon an' thet him down hard where teacher thaid, when he'd thaid, 'I won't' to her.

An' then he filled the water-pail fer her, an' licked all the other boyth."

"Well, I snum!" said the selectman gravely. "Mebbe she'll do, after all. If Dan'l's took up fer her, there's a chance."

CHAPTER XX

Dawn went back to the Golden Swan that evening tired but triumphant.

She had had a most successful session of school, and she knew it. She felt the victor's blood running wildly through her veins, and longed to have the minister know how well she had succeeded.

The teaching part had not troubled her in the least. Fresh from school-books, blest with a love of study and a gift for imparting knowledge, she entered into the work with a zest. The problem of discipline, which had bade fair in the morning to shipwreck her hopes, had resolved itself into a very simple matter since she had conquered the school leader. It puzzled her a little to know just how she had done it, and why he had succ.u.mbed so easily, yet she felt a pleasant elation in recognizing the power she had over him. As she lay in her little room, after the candle was out that night, she pondered it, and resolved to try to help Daniel to be a fine fellow. Perhaps some day he would grow to be something like Charles. He never could be as fine and n.o.ble, of course, for he was a rough boy, uncultured and ignorant; but he had nice eyes, and he might develop good qualities if he were helped.

Dawn would have been horrified if she could have known that instead of loafing with the men at the grocery, where he usually spent his evenings, Daniel was at that moment standing in the dark of the kitchen porch of his home, behind the cool morning-glory vines, looking out at the stars and thinking with wonder of the delight it had been to have her soft hands strike his face, and her dainty personality flash down upon him, even in her beautiful wrath.

Daniel b.u.t.terworth was only a boy yet, but new thoughts were stirring in his heart, and an absorbing admiration for her had entered into his soul to stay. Hitherto he had been a big, good-natured, rollicking animal.

His mind had been upon either fun or practical matters, never upon books. He had not been taught to think. His surroundings had been rough, easy-going, and practical. Nothing beautiful had ever touched him before, yet his soul had responded quickly now that it had come, and in one brief day Daniel seemed to have grown beyond his seventeen years and to have come suddenly face to face with manhood.

And the cause of his sudden awakening had been the new teacher's hands, so small and soft, and yet so strong. As he thought about them, they seemed to have been made of finer stuff than most women's hands; to have been tinted like the inner leaf of a half-blown rose, and to have borne a subtle perfume upon his senses. How he could have seen their color when the "rose-leaves" were smiting stinging blows upon his closed eyes, he did not stop to reason. He leaned his face against a great morning-glory leaf in the darkness, and its coolness against his fevered cheeks reminded him of her hands, and thrilled him in a way he did not understand. He looked up at the stars, between the strings on which the morning-glories twined, and wondered at himself, and thrilled again with a solemn joy. But all he knew was that he liked the new teacher, and meant to study hard, if that would please her, and that he would lick any boy that dared molest her or disturb her gentle rule. So much the little hands had accomplished in their first quick, decisive battle.

Then Daniel kicked off his boots noisily and tiptoed up the creaking stairs to his attic chamber, to make his mother think he had been at the village store, as usual. Not for the world would he have her know he had spent the evening among the kitchen morning-glories, thinking about a girl! And she a schoolmarm at that! He blushed deeply in the darkness at the thought.

After that first day of getting acquainted with her scholars, and finding out who were in the various cla.s.ses, Dawn fashioned her school on the model of Friend Ruth's as nearly as was consistent with existing circ.u.mstances. The rules she laid down were stricter than the village school had ever known before, and went more into detail. A code of ethics was gradually formed among the scholars, who followed the lead of Daniel b.u.t.terworth and succ.u.mbed to the leadership of the new teacher.

Her beauty and her youth combined to make both boys and girls fall victims to her charm. They fairly worshipped at her shrine, and went long pilgrimages after berries or rare flowers and ferns, that they might be rewarded with the flash of grat.i.tude in her lovely eyes. They suffered torments in refraining from their usual mischief, that they might escape the flash of steel from those same eyes, for once that was felt, they had no desire to re-experience it. It became the fashion to treat her as a sort of queen, and Dawn was very gracious to her subjects, though always masterful. She smiled upon their offerings impartially, even upon Bug Higginson's small sister's donation of moistly withered dandelions. Yet when she discovered some deviation from the laws she had laid down, she was severity itself, almost flying into a pa.s.sion with them, outraged goodness in her eyes, and impulsive intensity in her every motion. At such times she seemed to have a special gift of speech, coming directly to the point and saying the things that would most cut the culprit.

Once behind a stump fence in the woods she came upon a row of her boys placidly smoking corn-cob pipes, in imitation of the village loafers-or of their respected fathers, each of whom had threatened dire things to his offspring if he was ever caught at the practice. Her horror and disgust quickly blazed into words, until every boy wished that a hole would open in the ground wide enough to swallow him for a little while.

Dawn had no convictions or principles about the matter. She was moved by an innate dislike of the practice, intensified by the fact that Harrington Winthrop had once smoked in her company while walking with her in the woods, and had never even asked permission. The smell of tobacco smoke ever after gave her a sickening sense of dislike.

The boys threw their pipes away, and Daniel b.u.t.terworth, rising from the root of the tree on which he had been seated, commanded:

"Fellers, if she don't like it, we quit! D'ye understand? We quit entirely. I'll thrash any boy that breaks the rule."

The pipes were thrown away, and seven boys with very red cheeks and downcast eyes entered school a trifle late that noon and sheepishly slunk to their desks.

The next morning Daniel b.u.t.terworth was found tacking up on the blackboard a clipping from a newspaper, in which was set forth how a certain Eliphalet Howe, a guest at the Tremont House in Boston, had been arrested for breaking the law which declared that there should be no smoking on the streets. The said Eliphalet had been found guilty and fined twenty-five dollars for the offense, though he had pleaded in defense that the sidewalk where he stood to smoke was in front of the Tremont House, and that therefore, as he was on the premises of the house where he was stopping, he was not breaking the law.

At recess the scholars filed solemnly around and read the item, and looked with awe at Daniel, who read the papers and knew so much about affairs. Dawn smiled to herself to see how Daniel was helping her.

But Dawn knew nothing of the thrashings her champion gave to the smokers whose habits were not easily broken up, nor how they were forced to find other quarters for their secret meetings, or scatter by themselves in hiding to pursue the practice. Public opinion had turned, and it was no longer popular to do anything the teacher disliked. Daniel was even known to send two boys home one day as they entered the school yard, because they smelled of smoke and he had told them the teacher did not like it.

It was not to be supposed that in so large a school everything would always be pleasant and easy, nor that the scholars would always be angels. They had their noisy days, and their mischievous days, and their stupid days, and now and then Dawn felt disheartened and discouraged. But matters were made far easier for her than she perhaps fully realized, because of Daniel b.u.t.terworth and his devotion to her.

Dawn was grateful to the boy, and in return for his championship she let him carry her books home, walking a little way behind with some of his devoted boy followers, while she was escorted by an eager group of little girls.

At first there was a sort of jealousy of her among the older girls, who were inclined to toss their heads, and whisper among themselves that she was no older than they, so why should she put on so many airs? They suspected her of taking the attention of the boys away from them; but as the days went by, and Dawn entered into her work with enthusiasm, planning debates and plays and readings for them, and making even the dullest lessons glow with interest because she really seemed to like them herself, opposition melted away and they succ.u.mbed to her charm.

For one so young and inexperienced, it was wonderful what she could do with those girls and boys. The parents began to talk about it, the minister saw it with gratification, and pleased himself by thinking his child might have been like that if she had lived. Presently the whole town was proud to own her as a kind of public inst.i.tution, like the doctor and the minister.

There were a few old ladies who shook their heads and wondered how it was that she had come so far, from that wicked city of New York, to teach their school, without there being a single relative in the vicinity. The village seamstress, with half a dozen pins in one corner of her mouth, would talk about it wherever she went to work, and say, "What I'd like to know is, who knows anything about her? What is she?

Why doesn't she tell about herself?"

But in spite of all, Dawn walked calmly back and forth to her school, and managed the scholars with a degree of dignity and skill that would have done credit to a far older teacher. The whole town gradually began to love her. It was a nine days' wonder that Daniel b.u.t.terworth had been so changed by her influence. His mother never could get done thanking the new teacher, sometimes with tears running down her cheeks.

Often she would send to her by Daniel a paper of fresh doughnuts or a soft ginger-bread, or even a juicy apple-pie, as a token of her thankfulness.

Dawn was "boarding round," and the days she spent at the b.u.t.terworths'

comfortable, weather-beaten old farmhouse were one continual jubilee for the family, and a season of triumph for the teacher. The best dishes and the finest table-cloth were got out, and a fire was built in the solemn front room. There, after the supper, which was composed of all the nicest things Mrs. b.u.t.terworth knew how to concoct, the family would gather around the teacher to listen while she talked or read to them.

And Dawn, because she wanted to help Daniel, and also because she thoroughly enjoyed the admiration and attention she was receiving, entered into it all, and hunted out stories to read to them, and finally gave them a taste of Shakespeare, which she read with remarkable understanding and dramatic power, considering that she had never had any interpreter but herself.

A new world was opened to the house of b.u.t.terworth. Even the old farmer sat open-mouthed and listened, watching the wonderful change of expression on the beautiful girlish face.

There were flowers in a tumbler on the dinner-table, stiffly arranged by Daniel's oldest sister, Rachel. Daniel wet and combed his tawny hair before he came to meals. It was unusual, and the smaller children noticed and followed suit.

It was one day when Dawn sat at the table, talking and laughing and making them all forget the common-placeness of life, with her cheeks as red as the late pink aster tucked in among her curls, that Daniel's mother noticed with a heart of satisfaction the look on her boy's face.

That Daniel should take to a girl like that was all and more than her mother heart could wish. And why not? Were not the b.u.t.terworths well off? Was not their farm the largest and most flourishing in the whole country? True, they had not painted their house in a long time, and didn't go in much for fancy dressing, but that was easily changed; and the barns had always been kept in fine repair, which was a good test of prosperity. Thus Mrs. b.u.t.terworth meditated in the watches of the night, but she never mentioned the matter, even to the boy's father, for John was "turrible easy upset of an idea, an' it was just as well to let things take their own way, 'long's it was sech a good way for once."

But Dawn had no idea that any such notion had entered the good woman's head, and enjoyed her stay at the b.u.t.terworths' heartily, going on to the next place with regret.

There were places where boarding round was not altogether agreeable; where the rooms were small and cold and had to be shared with younger members of the family; where the blankets were thin, or the feather-beds odorous; where the morning's ham sizzling in the spider on the kitchen stove below came up through wide cracks in unappetizing smoke; where the master of the house was gruff, and her welcome was grudgingly given.

Many a night she cried herself to sleep in these places, and wondered why she had been born to suffer so, and to be so lonely.

The thought of Charles, and of the day of her wedding, was growing to be like a dim and misty dream. She still hugged it to her heart, as a most precious treasure, but day by day it was becoming more unreal to her.

However, take it all in all, Dawn was perhaps happier than she had been since she was a tiny child with her mother. She was interested in her work, enjoyed the companionship of many of the children, and was pleased to feel that she was independent and self-supporting. Of her own private fortune she never thought. She had been told that there was money left to her by her mother's father, but it made little impression, and she had never cared to ask how much. It was just a part of the world she had left behind her when she ran away in her attempt to undo mischief she had never meant to do. She kept herself much more strictly than Friend Ruth had ever succeeded in doing, feeling as she did her responsibility, now that she was a real teacher. But she allowed herself many a playtime as the winter drew on and the snow-falls made coasting and skating possible. There was a hill behind the school-house where at noon she coasted with her scholars, shouting and laughing with the rest. Each boy strove to have the honor of her company upon his sled, but she distributed her favors impartially.

It was only when she went home with "Bug" Higginson, to spend her week, and discovered to her dismay where he got his nickname, that her heart failed her entirely, and she felt she had met with something she could not bear. However, that experience did not last forever and Dawn went cheerily on her way, brightening the whole town with her presence, which, now that she was set free from the confines and oppression that had always been about her, seemed to grow and glow with a beautiful inner life.