The Graysons Part 7

"I wouldn't buy any book just now," said the master, seeing the drift of her thoughts. He went to one corner of the school-room, and, standing on the bench, pushed aside one of the boards laid loosely over the joists above. It was here, in the dark loft, that he kept the few articles not necessary to his daily existence in boarding 'round. Reaching his hand up above the boards, he found a copy of a school text-book on algebra, and brought it down with him, rapping it against his hand and blowing the dust off it.

"Use that for a while," he said.

"Oh, thank you!" said Barbara, taking hold of the book with a curious sense of reverence, which was greatly increased as she turned the leaves and regarded the symbols, whose nature and use were quite inconceivable to her. Here was a knowledge beyond any that she had ever dreamed of looking into; beyond that of any schoolmaster she had ever known, except Mason. "It looks hard," she said, regarding him.

"Take it home and try it," he replied, as he took up his ruler to call the scholars to books.

A closer companionship now grew up between the master and the pupil.

Both of them antic.i.p.ated with pleasure the coming of recess time, when the new study could be discussed together. Henceforth the boys looked in vain for Mason to take a turn with them in playing soak-about.

To a man of high aims nothing is more delightful than to have a devoted disciple. Even the self-contained Mason could not be quite unmoved in contemplating this young girl, all of whose tastes and ambitions flowed in the same channel with his own, listening to him as to an oracle. If he had not been so firmly fixed in his resolve that he would not allow any woman to engage his affections before he had completed his college course, he might have come to fall in love with her. But all such thoughts he resolutely put aside. Of course, teaching her was a delight; but who could help feeling delight in teaching such a learner? Moreover, he was particularly fond of algebra. But he could hardly lay all of his enjoyment to his liking for algebra, or his pleasure in teaching a quick-witted pupil. He could not make himself believe that it was his enjoyment of algebraic generalizations that made his hand tremble whenever he returned a slate or book to Barbara Grayson.

Barbara, for her part, was too intent on her work to think much about anything else. She had more than once caught sight of the furtive, inquiring glance of her teacher on her face before he could turn his eyes away; she was pleased to note that his voice had a tone in addressing her that it had not when he spoke to the others; and she took pleasure in perceiving that she was beyond question the favorite pupil.

But Barbara was averse to building any castles in the air which she had small chance of being able to materialize.

One evening, as she was going briskly toward home, she was overtaken by Mason, who walked with her up hill and down dale the whole long rough new-country road through the woods, carrying her books, and chatting about trivial things as he had never done before. He contrived, half in pleasantry, but quite in earnest, to praise her diligence, and even her mind. She had hardly ever thought of herself as having a mind. That Tom had such a gift she knew, and she understood how important it was to cultivate his abilities. But she was only Tom's sister. It seemed to her a fine thing, however, this having a mind of her own, and she thought a good deal about it afterward.

When Hiram Mason reached the place where Barbara was accustomed to leave the main road, in order to reach her home by a shorter path through a meadow, he got over the fence first and gave her his hand, though he wondered afterward that he had had the courage to do it. Barbara had climbed fences and trees too, for that matter, from her infancy, and she was in the habit of getting over this fence twice a day, without ever dreaming that she needed help. But a change had come over her in this two-miles' walk from school. For the first time, she felt a certain loneliness in her life, and a pleasure in being protected. She let Mason take her hand and help her to the top of the fence, though she could have climbed up much more nimbly if she had had both hands free to hold by. Hiram found it so pleasant helping her up, by holding her hand, that he took both her hands when she was ready to jump down on the meadow side of the fence, and then, by an involuntary impulse he retained her right hand in his left a bare moment longer than was necessary. A little ashamed, not so much of the feeling he had shown as of that he had concealed, he finished his adieux abruptly, and, placing his hands on the top rail, vaulted clean over the fence again into the road. Then he thought of something else that he wanted to say about Barbara's new study of algebra,--something of no consequence at all, except in so far as it served to make Barbara turn and look at him once more. The odd twinkling smile so habitual with him died out of his face, and he looked into hers with an eagerness that made her blush, but did not make her turn away. Blaming himself for what seemed to him imprudence, he left her at last and started back, only stopping on the next high ground to watch her figure as she hurried along through the meadow gra.s.s, and across the brook, and then up the slope toward the house.

There were several other evenings not very different from this one. The master would wait until all the pupils had gone, and then overtake Barbara. He solaced his conscience by carrying a book in his pocket, so as to study on the way back; but he found a strange wandering of the mind in his endeavors to read a dead language after a walk with Barbara.

He still held to his resolution, or to what was left of his resolution, not to entangle himself with an early engagement. What visions he indulged in, of projects to be carried out in a very short time after his graduation, belong to the secrets of his own imagination; all his follies shall not be laid bare here. But to keep from committing himself too far, he drew the line at the boundary of Mrs. Grayson's farm,--the meadow fence. He gave himself a little grace, and drew the line on the inside of the fence. He was firmly resolved never to go quite home with his pupil, and never to call at her house. So long as he stopped at the fence, or within ten, or say twenty, or perhaps thirty, feet of it he felt reasonably safe. But he could not, in common civility, turn back until he had helped her to surmount this eight-rail fence; and indeed it was the great treat to which he always looked forward. There was a sort of permissible intimacy in such an attention. He guarded himself, however, against going beyond the limits of civility--of kindly politeness--of polite friendship; that was the precise phrase he hit on at last. But good resolutions often come to naught because of its being so very difficult to reckon beforehand with the involuntary and the uncontrollable. The goodman of the house never knows at what moment the thief will surprise him. One evening Mason had taken especial pains to talk on only the most innocent and indifferent subjects, such as algebra. On this theme he was the schoolmaster, and he felt particularly secure against any expression of feeling, for _x_, _y_, and _z_ are unknown quant.i.ties that have no emotion in them. Though Barbara was yet in the rudiments of the study, he was trying to make her understand the general principles involved in the discussion of the famous problem of the lights. To make this clear he sat down once or twice on logs lying by the roadside, and wrote some characters on her slate showing the relation of _a_ to _b_ in any given case, while Barbara sat by and looked over his demonstrations. But in spite of these delays, they got to the fence before he had finished, and the rest was postponed for another time. It didn't matter so much about the lights after all, whether they were near together or far apart; it does not matter to lights, but there _are_ flames much affected by proximity. As Mason helped Barbara down from the fence, his pa.s.sion, by some sudden a.s.sault, got the better of his prudence, and looking intently into the eyes shaded by the sun-bonnet, he came out with:

"It's all the world to a fellow like me to have such a scholar as you are, Barbara."

The words were mild enough; but his eager manner and his air of confidence, as he stood in front of her sun-bonnet and spoke, with his face flushed, and in a low and unsteady voice, made his speech a half confession. Startled at this sudden downfall of his resolution, he got back over the fence and went straight away, without giving her a chance to say anything; without so much as uttering a civil good-bye. The precipitation of his retreat only served to lend the greater significance to his unpremeditated speech.

Mrs. Grayson complained that there was "no sense in a girl's studyin'

algebra, an' tryin' to know more 'n many a good schoolmaster ever knowed when I was a girl. Ever since Barbary's been at that new-fangled study, it's seemed like as if she'd somehow'r nuther gone deranged. She'll say supper's ready when they ain't knife nur fork on the table; an' she's everlastin'ly losin' her knittin'-needles an' puttin' her thimble where she can't find it, or mislayin' her sun-bonnet. Ef her head was loose, she'd be sh.o.r.e to leave that around somewheres, liker'n not."

If Hiram Mason's half-involuntary love-making had not brought Barbara unmeasured pleasure she would not have been the normal young woman that she was. He filled all her ideals, and went beyond the highest standard she had set up before she knew him. She was not the kind of a girl that one meets nowadays; at least, that one meets nowadays in novels. She did not have a lot of perfectly needless and inconceivably fine-spun conscientious scruples to prevent the course of her fortune from running smoothly. She did find in herself a drawing back from the future which Mason's partiality had brought within the range of her vision. But her scruple was only one of pride; she exaggerated the superiority of an educated family, such as she conceived his to be, and she reflected that the Graysons were simple country people. She felt in herself that she could never endure the mortification she would feel, as Hiram's wife, if the Masons should look down on her good but unlettered mother, and say or feel that Hiram had "married below him." If, now, Tom should come to something, the equation would be made good.

But the very day after Mason had spoken so warmly of the comfort he found in such a pupil was that disagreeable Sat.u.r.day on which Tom had come home plucked in gambling, to ask for money enough to pay the debt he had incurred in redeeming his clothes. Was it any wonder that Barbara spoke to him with severity when she found her cherished vision becoming an intangible illusion? Tom would make no career at all at this rate; and to yield to Hiram Mason's wooing would now be to bring to him, not only the drawback of a family of humble breeding and slender education, but the disgrace of a rash, unsteady, and unsuccessful brother, whose adventures with gamblers would seem particularly disreputable to a minister's family. There was no good in thinking about it any more. Her pride could never bear to be "looked down on" by the family of her husband. It would be better to give it up at once--unless--she clung to this possibility--unless Tom should turn out right after all. The necessity for surrendering so much imminent happiness did not surprise her. She had always had to forego, and no prospect of happiness could seem quite possible of realization to an imagination accustomed to contemplate a future of self-denial. None the less, the disappointment was most acute, for she must even give up the school, and try, by spinning yarn, by knitting stockings, and by weaving jeans and linsey, to make up the money taken out of their little fund by Tom's recklessness.

On the next Monday, and the days following, she staid at home without sending any word to the schoolmaster. She held to a lurking hope that Tom's affairs might mend, and she be able, by some good luck, to resume her attendance on the school for a part of the remainder of the quarter.

But when on Wednesday Tom's haggard face appeared at the door, and she read in it that all her schemes for him had miscarried, she knew that she must give up dreaming dreams which seemed too good to be innocent.

There was nothing for her but to give herself to doing what could be done for Tom. It was lucky that the poor fellow did not suspect what it cost her to put a smooth face on his disasters.

IX

BY THE LOOM

On Monday, Mason saw with regret that Barbara was not at school. On Tuesday he felt solicitous, and would have made inquiry if it had not been for an impulse of secretiveness. By Wednesday he began to fear that his words spoken to her at the meadow fence had something to do with her absence. He questioned the past. He could not remember that she had ever repelled his attentions, or that she had seemed displeased when he had spoken his fervent and unpremeditated words. Aware that his bearing toward Barbara had attracted the observation of the school, he did not summon courage to ask about her until Thursday. Then when the voluble Mely McCord came to him before the beginning of the afternoon session, to ask how she should proceed to divide 130 by 9, he inquired if Barbara was ill.

"No, I don't 'low she's sick," responded Mely. "I sh'd 'a' thought she'd tole you, 'f anybody, what't wuz kep' 'er"; and Mely laughed a malicious little snicker, which revealed her belief that the master was in confidential relations with his algebra scholar. "She thinks the worl'n'all of the school an' the master." Mely gasped a little as she ventured this thrust, and quickly added, "An' of algebray--she's _that_ fond of algebray; but I sh'd thought she'd 'a' tole _you_ what kep' 'er, ur'a' sen' choo word. But I 'low it's got sumpin' to do weth the trouble in the family."

Mely made what the old schoolmasters called a "full stop" at this point, as though she considered it certain that Mason would know all about Barbara's affairs.

"Trouble? What trouble?" asked the master.

"W'y, I 'low'd you'd 'a' knowed," said the teasing creature, shaking her rusty ringlets, with a fluttering, half-suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt at the anxiety she had awakened in Mason's mind. "Hain' choo h-yeard about her brother?"

"No; which brother? The one that's in Moscow?"

"W'y, lawsy, don'choo know't she hain't got nary nuther one? The res' 's all dead an' buried long ago. Her brother Tom lost 'is sitooation along of gamblin' an' the like. They say he lost the boots offviz feet an' the coat offviz back." Here Mely had to give vent to her feelings in a hearty giggle; Tom's losses seemed to her a joke of the best, and all the better that the master took it so seriously. "I 'low it's cut Barb'ry up more'n a little. She sot sech store by Tom. An' he _is_ smart, the _smartest_ feller you'd find fer books an' the like. But what's the use a-bein' so smart an' then bein' sech a simple into the bargain? _I_ say."

Mason did not like to ask further questions about Barbara's family affairs. He could hardly bear to hear Mely canva.s.s them in this unsympathetic way. But there was one more inquiry that he made about Tom.

"Does he drink?"

"Mighty leetle. I 'xpect he takes a drop ur two now an' then, jest fer company's sake when he's a-cavortin' 'roun' weth the boys. But I 'low he hain't got no rale hankerin' fer the critter, an' he's that fond of Barb'ry 'n' 'is mother, an' they're so sot on 'im, that he would n'

noways like to git reg'lar drunk like. But he's always a-gittin' into a bad crowd, an' tryin' some deviltry'r nuther; out uv one sc.r.a.pe an' into t'other, kind-uh keerless like; head up an' never ketchin' sight 'v a stump tell he's fell over it, kerthump, head over heels. His uncle's been a-schoolin' 'im, an' lately he's gone 'n' put 'im weth Squire Blackman to learn to be a lawyer; but now he's up 'n' sent him home fer a bad bargain. Ut's no go't the law, an' he won't never stan' a farm, yeh know. Too high-sperrited."

Possessed of a share of Mely McCord's stock of information about Barbara's troubles, Hiram Mason saw that his resolution against calling on his pupil at her own house would have to go the way of most of his other resolutions on this subject. He set himself to find arguments against keeping this one, but he was perfectly aware, all the time, that his going to the Graysons' would not depend on reasons at all. He reflected, however, that Barbara's trouble was a new and unforeseen condition. Besides, his regulative resolutions had been so far strained already that they were not worth the keeping. It is often thus in our dealings with ourselves; we argue from defection to indulgence.

Mely McCord felt sure of having the master's company after school as far as she had to go on the road leading to the Graysons'. But he went another way to Pearson's, where he was boarding out the proportion due for three pupils. Mrs. Pearson had intermitted the usual diet of corn-dodgers, and had baked a skilletful of hot biscuits, in honor of the master; she was a little piqued that he should absorb them, as he did, in a perfectly heartless way, and she even apologized for them, a.s.serting that they were not so good as usual, in the vain hope that the master would wake up and contradict her. As soon as the early supper was over Hiram left the house, without saying anything of his destination.

He took a "short cut" across a small prairie, then through the woods, and across b.u.t.t's corn-field, until he came out on the road near the place at which he had several times helped Barbara over the fence. By her path through the meadow he reached the house just as the summer twilight was making the vault of the sky seem deeper and mellowing all the tones in the landscape. In that walk Mason's mind had completely changed front. Why should he try to maintain a fast-and-loose relation with Barbara? She was in need of his present sympathy and help. Impulses in his nature, the strength of which he had never suspected, were beating against the feeble barriers he had raised. Of what use was this battle, which might keep him miserable awhile longer, but which could end in but one way? As he walked through the narrow meadow path, in the middle of which the heavy overhanging heads of timothy gra.s.s, now ready for the scythe, touched one another, so that his legs brushed them aside at every step, he cast away the last tatters of his old resolves. The dams were down; the current might flow whither it listed. He would have it out with Barbara this very evening, and end the conflict.

It is by some such only half-rational process that the most important questions of conduct are usually decided--sometimes luckily; in other cases, to the blighting of the whole life. Is it not rather a poor fist of a world after all, this in which we live, where the most critical and irrevocable decisions must be made while the inexperienced youth is tossed with gusts of pa.s.sion and blinded by traditional prejudices or captivated by specious theories? The selection of wives and vocations, the two capital elements in human happiness and success, is generally guided by nothing higher than the caprice of those whose judgments are in the gristle. Often the whole course of life of the strong, clear-seeing man yet to come is changed forever by a boy's whim. The old allegorists painted the young man as playing chess with the devil; but chess is a game of skill. What the young man plays is often a child's game of pitch and toss, cross or pile, heads or tails, for stakes of fearful magnitude. Luckily for Hiram, as you and I know from our present acquaintance with Barbara, nothing more disastrous than disappointment was likely to happen to him from his inability to keep his mortifying resolves. The abandonment of them had simplified his feelings and brought him present relief. When he knocked on the jamb of the open front door of the Grayson farm-house, and was invited to come in by the mother, there was a wholeness in his feelings and purposes to which he had been a stranger for weeks.

"Barb'ry," said Mrs. Grayson as she entered the kitchen, after giving Hiram a chair, "here's the master come to see you. I 'low he thought you mought be sick ur sumpin'."

Barbara sat perched on the loom-bench, with her back to the web she had been weaving. Just now she was peeling, quartering, and coring summer apples to dry for winter stores. She untied her ap.r.o.n and went from the kitchen into the sitting-room, where Mason was looking about, as was his habit, in a quizzical, half-amused way. He had noted the wide stone fire-place, the blackness of whose interior was hidden by the bushy asparagus tops which filled it, and the wooden clock on the unpainted mantel-piece, which had a print of the death-bed of George Washington impaneled in its door. A stairway winding up in one corner gave picturesqueness to the room; diagonally across from this was a high post bed; there were some shuck-bottom chairs, a splint-bottom rocking-chair, and a bureau with a looking-gla.s.s on top. The floor was covered with a new rag-carpet, and the comfortable, home-like sentiment excited in Hiram's mind by the general aspect of the room was enhanced by a hearth cricket, which, in one of the crevices of the uneven flag-stones, was already emitting little vibrant s.n.a.t.c.hes like the black fiddler that he was, tuning up for an evening performance.

The sight of Mason dissipated for the moment the clouds that darkened Barbara's thoughts; she saw blue sky for the first time since Tom's first return. It was a pleased and untroubled face that met his gaze when she extended her hand to him.

"Howdy, Mr. Mason!"

Mason fixed his eyes on her in his odd fashion, half turning his head aside, and regarding her diagonally.

"Well, Barbara, you're the lost sheep," was his greeting. "I was afraid you wouldn't come back to the flock if I didn't come into the wilderness and look you up."

"There's been such a lot of things to do this week," she answered hurriedly, "I didn't know how to get time to go to school."

This was truthful, but it was far from being frank, and it was not on these terms that Mason wished to meet her. His first thought was to put her more at ease.

"Can't we sit out on the porch?" he said; "I'm warm with walking." And he lifted two of the chairs and carried them to the covered porch. There would soon be no light outside but what came from the night sky, and what a dim candle in the sitting-room, when it should be lighted, might manage to spare through the open door. Hiram had a notion that in this obscurity he could coax Barbara out of the diplomatic mood into the plain indicative. But before they had sat down he had changed his plan.

"Hold on," he said, more to himself than to her; and added, "What were you doing when I came?"

"Only peeling some apples to dry."

"Let me help you; we'll have an apple-peeling all to ourselves."

"No," said Barbara, hesitatingly; but Mason went through the sitting-room and, opening the kitchen door, thrust his head through and said: