The Silver Maple Part 3

Big Malcolm took the primer, adjusted his spectacles, and moved the little book up and down before the candle to get the proper focus.

"Ralph Everett Stanwell," he read slowly. "What kind o' a name would that be, whatever!" he cried, with a twinkle in his eye.

"It's got a fearsome kind of a sough to it," said Callum apprehensively.

"It will be an English name!" cried Scotty fiercely, "an' Peter Lauchie would be saying it is jist no name at all!"

The young men burst into laughter, which served only to increase their nephew's wrath. He sprang out upon the floor, his black eyes blazing, and stamped his small foot.

"I'll not be English!" he shouted. "It's jist them louts from the Tenth is English! An' I'll be Hielan'. An' it's not my name!"

"Eh, eh, mannie!" cried his grandmother gently. She laid her hand on the boy's arm and drew him toward her. "That will be no way for a big boy that will be going to school to behave," she whispered. The child turned to her and saw to his amazement that her eyes were full of tears. His st.u.r.dy little figure stiffened suddenly, and he made a desperate effort for self-control.

"But it would be a great lie, Granny!" he faltered appealingly.

"Hoots, never you mind!" cried his grandfather, with strange leniency; and even in the midst of his pa.s.sion Scotty dimly wondered that he did not receive a summary chastis.e.m.e.nt for his fit of temper. There was a strange, sad look in the man's eyes that alarmed the child more than anger would have done.

"Granny will be telling you all about it," he said, rising. "Come, lads, it will be getting late."

The three young men followed their father out to the stable.

Ordinarily they attended to the evening duties there themselves, but to-night Big Malcolm wished to leave the boy alone with his grandmother, realising that the situation needed a woman's delicate handling.

This new proceeding filled Scotty with an added alarm. He clambered up on his grandmother's knee as soon as they were alone and demanded an explanation; surely that English name wasn't his. He whispered the momentous question, for though Old Farquhar was snoring loudly in his corner, Bruce was there, wide awake and looking up inquiringly, as though he could understand.

And so, with her arms about him, Granny told him for the first time the story of his birth. How Granny had had only one little girl, older than Callum, eh, and such a sweet la.s.sie she was; how just when they had landed in Canada she had married a young Englishman who had come over with them on the great ship; how they had left them in Toronto when they came north to the forests of Oro; how their baby had come, the most beautiful baby, Granny's little girl wrote, and how she had written also that they, too, were coming north to live near the old folks when,--Granny's voice faltered,--when the fever came, and both Granny's beautiful little girl and her Englishman died, and Grandaddy and Callum had journeyed miles through the bush to bring Granny her baby, and how Kirsty John's mother had carried him all the way, and how he was all Granny had left of her bright la.s.s!

At the sound of grief in his grandmother's voice, the child put up his hand to stroke her face, and found it wet with tears. Instantly he forgot his own trouble in sympathy for hers, and clasping his hands about her neck he soothed her in the best way he knew. He scarcely understood her grief; was Granny crying because he was only an Englishman after all? For to him, bereavement and death were but names, and in the midst of abounding love he had never realised the lack of parents.

He had often heard of them before, of his beautiful mother, whose eyes were so dark and whose hair was so curly like his own; and how his father had been such a fine, big, young man, and a gentleman too, though Scotty had often vaguely wondered just what that meant. But that his parents had left him an inheritance of a name and lineage other than MacDonald he had never dreamed. And now there was no denying the humiliating truth; his father had been an Englishman, he himself was English, and that disgraceful name, at which Peter Lauchie had sneered, was his very own. Henceforth he must be an outcast among the MacDonalds, and be cla.s.sed with the English crew that lived over on the Tenth, and whom, everyone knew, the MacDonalds despised. Yes, and he belonged to the same cla.s.s as that stuck-up Captain Herbert, who lived in that grand house on the north sh.o.r.e of Lake Oro, and whom his grandfather hated!

He managed to check his tears by the time the boys returned, but during prayers he crouched miserably in a dark corner behind Hamish, a victim of despair. He derived very little comfort from the fact that Grandaddy was reading, "And thou shalt be called by a new name"; it seemed only an advertis.e.m.e.nt of his disgrace. He wondered drearily who else was so unfortunate as to be presented with one, and if it would be an English name. And afterwards, when they had gone up to the loft to bed, he crept in behind Hamish, and cried himself to sleep because of that, which, in after years, he always remembered with pride.

III

WINNING HIS SPURS

The Saxon force, the Celtic fire, These are thy manhood's heritage!

--C. G. D. ROBERTS.

Old Ian McAllister, schoolmaster of Section Number Nine, Oro, was calling his flock into the educational fold. It was no clarion ring that summoned the youths from the forest, for the times were early and a settlement might be proud to possess a school, without going to the extremity of such foolishness as a bell, and Number Nine was not extravagant. But the schoolmaster's ingenuity had improvised a very good subst.i.tute. He stood in the doorway, hammering upon the doorpost with a long, flexible ruler, and making a peremptory clatter that echoed far away into the arches of the forest and hastened the steps of any tardy youths approaching from its depths. Good cause they had to be expeditious, too, for well they knew, did they linger, the master would be apt to resume the bastinado upon their belated persons when they did arrive. This original method had other advantages, from the schoolmaster's point of view, for, as his pupils crowded past him through the narrow doorway, he had many a fine opportunity to transfer occasional whacks to the heads of such boys, and girls, too, as he felt would need the admonition before the day was over, and who could not manage to dodge him. So those approaching the school, even before they came within sight of the place, could reckon exactly the state of the master's temper, and the number of victims sacrificed thereto, by the intermittent sounds of the summoning stick. Indeed, Number Nine possessed an almost superhuman knowledge of their master's mental workings. When he was fiercest then they were most hopeful; for they knew that, like other active volcanoes, having once indulged in a terrible eruption he was not likely to break forth again for some time.

He was quite dependable, for his conduct followed certain fixed rules.

First came about a fortnight of stern discipline and faithful and terrifying attention to duty. During this period a subdued and busy hum pervaded Number Nine and much knowledge was gained. For Ian McAllister was a man of no mean parts, and, as the trustees of the section were wont to boast, there was not such another man in the county of Simcoe for "bringing the scholars on--when he was at it."

But the trouble was he could never stay "at it" very long. A much more joyous, though less profitable, season followed, during which the schoolmaster's energies were taken up in a bitter and losing fight with an appet.i.te for strong drink. Poor McAllister had been intended for a fine, scholarly, upright character, and he struggled desperately to maintain his integrity. But about once in two months he yielded to temptation. During these "spells," as Number Nine called his lapses from duty, he still taught, but in a perfunctory manner, being p.r.o.ne to play practical jokes upon his pupils, which, of course, they returned with interest. When he finally succ.u.mbed in sleep, with his feet on the desk and his red spotted handkerchief over his face, Number Nine took to the bush and proceeded to enjoy life. That they did not altogether give themselves over to unbounded riot was due to the fact that the master's awakening might occur at any moment. And well they knew he was apt to come out of his lethargy with awful suddenness, with a conscience lashing him for his weakness and with a stern determination to work out tremendous reparation for the lost hours.

But Number Nine suffered little from this changeable conduct. They had studied their master so faithfully that they could generally calculate what would be the state of his temper at a given time, and guided themselves accordingly. Indeed, Roarin' Sandy's Archie, a giant MacDonald who had attended every winter since the schoolhouse was built, could tell almost to a day when the master was likely to relax, and he acted as a sort of barometer to the whole school.

But to-day McAllister showed no signs of relaxation as they dodged past him and scrambled into their places. The room was soon filled, for the winter term had commenced and all the big boys and girls of the section were in attendance. The schoolroom was small, with rough log walls and a raftered ceiling. Down the middle ran a row of long forms for the younger children, and along the sides were ranged a few well carved desks, at which the elder pupils sat when they wrote in their copy-books. At the end nearest the door stood a huge rusty stove, always red-hot in winter, and near it were a big wooden water-pail and tin dipper. At the other end of the room stood the master's desk, a long-legged rickety structure, with a stool to match, from which lofty throne the ruler of Number Nine could command a view of his realm and spy out its most remote region of insubordination. Behind him was the blackboard, a piece of sheep-skin used as an eraser, and an ancient and tattered map of Europe.

Scotty was already in his place; he had hurried to his seat as soon as he arrived for fear someone might ask him his name, and in dread lest he might be claimed by those English boys from the Tenth, whom his soul loathed.

He had started to school at a time when the several nationalities that were being welded together to make the Canadian race were by no means one, and he had inherited all the prejudices of his own people. Number Nine was a school eminently calculated to keep alive all the small race animosities that characterised the times; for English, Irish and Scotch, both Highland and Lowland, had settled in small communities with the schoolhouse as a central point.

The building was situated in a hollow made by a bend in the Oro River; to the north among the green hills surrounding Lake Oro, was the Oa, a district named after a part of Islay, and there dwelt the Highlanders; all MacDonalds, all related, all tenaciously clannish, and all such famous warriors that they had earned the name throughout the whole County of Simcoe of the "Fighting MacDonalds," a name which their progeny who attended Number Nine School strove valiantly to perpetuate.

From the low-lying lands at the south, a region called the Flats, which sloped gently southward until it sank beneath the blue waters of Lake Simcoe, came the Irish contingent, always merry, always quarrelling, and always headed by young Pat Murphy and Nancy Caldwell, who were the chief warriors of the section.

And over on the western plains that stretched away from the banks of the Oro, on a concession locally styled "the Tenth," lived a cla.s.s of pupils whose chief representative had been overheard by a Highland enemy to say, as he named the forest trees along his path to school, "That there's a _hoak_, an' that there's a _hash_, an' that there's a _helm_." Though the youth bore the highly respectable and historic name of Tommy Tucker, he was forever after branded as "Hoak" Tucker, and his two innocent brothers were dubbed, respectively, "Helm" and "Hash."

One more nationality was represented in Number Nine, those who approached the school-house with the rising sun behind them. They were Scotch to a man; what was more, they proclaimed the fact upon the fence-tops and made themselves obnoxious to even the MacDonalds, for after all they were only Lowlanders, and how could the Celt be expected to treat them as equals?

When this heterogeneous a.s.sembly had all pa.s.sed under the rod and seated themselves, the master tramped up to his desk and a solemn hush fell over the room. This was remarkable, for unless McAllister was in an unusually bad humour Number Nine buzzed like a saw-mill. But this morning the silence was intense and ominous, and for a very good reason. For only the evening before Number Nine had for once miscalculated their ruler's condition, and a flagrant act of disobedience had been perpetrated. McAllister had commanded that all fighting cease, and in the face of his interdict the MacDonalds and the Murphys, according to the established custom of the country, had manfully striven to exterminate each other. For between the Oa and the Flats there was an undying feud; partly hereditary, and partly owing to the fact that Pat Murphy considered it an impertinence on the part of anyone to come from the north when he chose to approach from the opposite direction.

During school-hours a truce was preserved, all factions being united against a common foe; but as soon as school was dismissed the lines of demarcation became too obvious to be overlooked. The outlandish Gaelic the MacDonalds spoke when among their brethren, their irritating way of gathering clan-like for the journey home, always aroused resentment in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the a.s.sembling Murphys. So, five o'clock fights had long ago become one of the inst.i.tutions of the school, and in the winter when the big boys were present the encounters were frequent and sanguinary.

The schoolmaster objected to all strife in which he had no part, and since the opening of the winter term he had set his face like adamant against this international warfare. But his opposition served only to increase the ardour of the combatants. In vain he scolded and thrashed. In vain he imprisoned the Scots until the Hibernians had had a reasonable time to make an honourable retreat. The liberated party only waited behind stumps and fallen logs, with the faithfulness of a lover to his tryst.

So at last McAllister arose in his might and announced that the next time such an affair occurred he would thrash the leaders of each party within an inch of their lives. On such occasions the schoolmaster was not to be trifled with, and for a few days even the Murphys were cowed.

But as time pa.s.sed there grew up between the belligerents a tacit understanding that just as soon as the master entered upon a less rigid frame of mind they would settle the fast acc.u.mulating scores.

So the night succeeding Scotty's first day at school they felt the time was ripe. Roarin' Sandy's Archie a.s.sured all that a fight would be perfectly safe. The master's tropical season was already overdue some days, and on the morrow he was sure to be jolly. So the forbidden campaign had opened just a day too soon. It proved to be an Armageddon, too; Lowlander and Highlander, Sa.s.senach and Hibernian, they battered each other right royally, and now here they were ranged before their judge to find to their dismay that he was clear-eyed, clear-headed, and ready to inflict upon the culprits the severest penalties of the law.

The strange, tense atmosphere filled Scotty with vague alarm. He felt that the air was pregnant with disaster. Danny Murphy nudged him when the master closed his eyes for prayer and whispered that "Somebody was goin' to get an awful hidin', likely the MacDonalds." Prayers were extremely lengthy, always a bad sign, and Scotty felt his hair rise as at their close the master banged his desk lid, and glared fiercely about him. Perhaps McAllister was going to thrash him for pretending he was a MacDonald, he reflected fearfully.

The master lost no time in going straight to the point, he knew his period of weakness was coming over him with overwhelming rapidity; one more visit to that which lay in his desk would, he knew, destroy his judgment; and struggling desperately to do what he deemed right, he put his fists firmly upon the desk lid as if to crush down the tempter and proceeded to business.

"So, ye've been fighting again!" he cried, fixing the row of bigger boys with his eye. "Ye uncivilised MacDonald pack, an' ye savage Murphy crew! Tearin' at each other like wolves! Aye! Roarin' an'

rantin' an' ragin' like a pack o' blood-hounds! Ah, ye're nothing but a pack o' savages! Jist uncivilised savages! But Ah'll have no wild beasts in my school. Ah'll teach ye! Ah'll take some o' the fight out o' ye!" He glared meaningly at Peter Lauchie, one of the most bellicose Highlanders, but that young man dodged cleverly behind Pat Murphy's broad shoulders. "Ye'll think Ah'll not find ye out?" the master shouted triumphantly. "But Ah'll soon do that! Aye, it was at the Birch Crick ye were fightin' like a pack o' wild beasts; ye thought ye were far enough away to be safe. But Ah'll find out who started it!" His eye ranged quickly round the room and fell upon Scotty, sitting open-mouthed straight in front of him. McAllister was not above extorting information from the younger pupils, and Scotty went by the Scotch Line and could be made to tell. "You, Ralph Stanwell!" he cried, fixing the boy with an admonitory finger. "Yon's your road.

Now, jist tell me all about this fight!"

Now, Scotty, in his eagerness to get home, had taken the short road across the swamp and knew nothing of the affray. But he scarcely heard the master's question; he had caught only that hateful name, the name that made him an alien from the MacDonalds and cla.s.sed him with that baby, "Hash" Tucker, who was even now weeping behind his slate lest his big brother should be thrashed. Scotty's face flushed crimson, his hands clenched.

"Are ye deef?" roared the master. "Answer me my question, Ralph Stanwell!"

The boy leaped as if he had been struck. "That will not be my name!"

he cried defiantly.

McAllister glared at him with wild bloodshot eyes; under other circ.u.mstances he would have been ashamed of the part he was playing; but now his nerves were raw and his temper was rendered wild by his craving.

"Are ye ashamed o' yer name, ye young English upstart?" he roared.

That opprobrious epithet "English" swept all fear and discretion from Scotty's mind. "I'll not be English!" he shouted back, "I'll be Scotch, an' my name will jist be MacDonald, whatever!"

A low growl of approval came from the region of the MacDonalds at the back of the school, and Peter Lauchie MacDonald, who was Scotty's next of kin, came out from behind Pat Murphy and snorted triumphantly. The master reached out his powerful arm and swept the boy up onto his desk, holding him there in a terrible grip. "Ah'll MacDonald ye!" he shouted, shaking him to and fro. "Another MacDonald to be a wild beast in the school! Ah'll knock the MacDonald out o' ye! Ye young English wasp, ye!"