The Soldier of the Valley Part 9

Books! Books! Eternal, infernal books! The sun was printing over the floor the shadow skeleton of the juniper-tree by the westerly window.

That always told me it was one o'clock. And one o'clock meant books again--three long hours of wrangling with dull wits, of fencing with sharper ones; three long hours of a-b-abs, of two-times-twos and three-times-threes; hours of spelling and of parsing, hours of bounding and describing. With it all, woven through it, now swelling, now dying away, now broken by a shrill cry of pain or anger, was the ceaseless buzzing of the school. There was no rest for the eye, even. The walls were white, their glare was baneful, and through the chalk-dust mist the rustling field of young heads suggested anything but peace and repose to one of my calling. That was the field I worked in.

I had been with Tim. His letter from New York was in my hands, and over and over I had read it, until I knew every twist in the writing. In the reading I had been carried away from myself, and seemed to be beside him in his battle in the world, laying about with him right l.u.s.tily. Then by force of habit I had looked up and had seen the shadow of the juniper-tree. I was back in my prison. And it was books!

[Ill.u.s.tration: I was back in my prison.]

"Brace up there, Daniel Arker, and quit your blubbering!" I cried.

Daniel was a snuffler. Whenever I had a companion in the schoolhouse at the noon recess, it was generally this lad, and when he was there he was nursing a wound and snuffling. If there was any trouble to be got into, if there was a flying ball to come in contact with, ice to break through or a limb to snap, Daniel never failed to be on hand. Then he would burst rudely into my solitude and while I sopped cold water over his injured members, he would blubber. When I turned from him to my own corner by the window, the blubber would die away into a snuffle, and there he would sit, his head buried in his hands, snuffling and snuffling until books.

Now I spoke sharply to the boy. He raised his head and fixed one red eye on me, for the other was hidden by his hand.

"I guesst you was never hit on the eye by a ball, was ye?" he stuttered.

"I guess I have been," was my reply. "I was a good round-town player, and you never saw me crying like that, either."

"I was playin' sock-ball," snuffled the boy, and a solitary tear rolled down his snub nose. He flicked it away with his right hand, and this act disclosed to me a great bluish swelling, from under which a bit of eye was twinkling mournfully at me. The boy was hurt; my heart went out to him, for the memory of my own sock-ball and tickley-bender days came back to me.

"Come, come," I said more kindly, laying a hand on the black head.

"Brace up, Daniel, for I must call the others in, and you don't want them to see you crying. Dare to be like the great Daniel, who wasn't even afraid of the wild beasts."

"But Dan'el in the Lion's Den never played sock-ball," whimpered the boy, covering each eye with a chubby fist as he rubbed away the traces of his tears.

Beware, Daniel Arker! Form not in my mind such a picture as that of the mighty prophet in his robes being "it." Over the mantel in our parlor we have a picture of the lion's den, and it is one of the choicest of our family treasures. Whence it came, we do not know. Even my mother, familiar as she was with the minutest detail of our family history as far back as my grandfather's time, could not tell me that; but we always believed it to be one of the world's great pictures that by some strange chance had come into our possession. How well I remember my keen disappointment on learning that it was not a photograph. It took years to convince Tim of that, and we consoled ourselves that at least it had been drawn by one who was there. Else how could he have done it so accurately? For the likeness of Daniel was splendid. The great prophet of Babylon must have looked just like that. He must have sat on a boulder in the middle of the rocky chamber, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, one hand resting languidly on the head of a mighty lion, a sandalled foot using another h.o.a.ry mane as a footstool. There were lions all around him, and how they loved him! You could see it in their eyes.

Tip Pulsifer once told me that Daniel had them charmed, and that he was looking so intently at the ceiling because he was repeating over and over again the mystic words--probably Dutch--that his grandfather had taught him. One slip--and I should see the fiery flash return to the eyes of the beasts! One slip--and they would be upon him! To Tip I replied that this was preposterous, as Babylon lived before there was any Dutch, and there being no Dutch, how could there be effective charms? Daniel was saved by a miracle. But Tip is slow-witted. Charms were originally called miracles, he said. The miracle was the father of the charm.

Folks would say there were no charms to-day, yet they would believe in charms that were worked a few thousand years ago, only they called them miracles. It was useless to argue with a thick fellow like Tip. I had always preferred to think of Daniel stilling the wild beasts by the grandeur of his soul, and the suggestion that I drag him from his throne, king of men and king of beasts, and picture him playing sock-ball, doing a double shuffle with his sandalled feet, tossing his long robe wildly about, now leaping, now dodging, to avoid the flying sphere--it was too much. It angered me.

"You should be ashamed of yourself, Daniel Arker!" I cried. "The idea of a boy that comes of good church folks like yours talking that way about one of the prophets! I'll dally with you no more. The boys shall see you as you are. It's books!"

I threw the window open and shouted, "Books!" I pounded on the ledge with my ruler and shouted, "Books!"

For a minute the boys feigned not to see me, and played the harder, trying to drown my cries in their yells to the runners on the bases. But the girls took up my call and came trooping schoolward. The little boys began to break away, and soon the school resounded with the shuffle of feet, the clatter of empty dinner pails, and the banging of desk tops.

"It's books, William; hurry," I cried to the last laggard.

I knew this boy well. He was the biggest in the school, and to hold his position among his fellows he had to defy me. As long as I watched him, he must lag. The louder I called, the deafer he must seem to be. His post was hemmed around by tradition. It was his by divine right, and it involved on its holder duties sometimes onerous, often dangerous; but for him to abate one iota of his privileges would be a reflection on his predecessors, an injustice to his heirs. It would mean scholastic revolution. He knew that I must yell at him. My position also was hemmed about by tradition. To appear not to fear the biggest boy was one of the chief duties of a successful pedagogue. We understood each other.

So I yelled once more and closed the window. The moment my back was turned he ran for the door.

"It is," Daniel Arker was shouting.

"It ain't," Samuel Carter retorted, sticking out his tongue.

"Boys, be quiet!" I commanded.

"He said his eye was swole worse 'an mine oncet," cried Daniel.

His good eye was blazing, his shoulders were squared back, and his fists were clenched. There was no sign of a snuffle about him now. Heaven, but he looked fine! All this time I had wronged Daniel. I had only known him as he crawled to me broken and bruised after the conflict. I had never known the odds he had encountered, for when I questioned him he just snuffled. Now I saw him before the battle, ready to defend his honor against a lad of more than his years and size, and the wickedest fighter in the school. I believed that had I let him loose there he would have whipped. But one in my position is hemmed in by tradition, so in my private capacity I was patting the boy's head with the same motion that I used in my public capacity to push him into his seat, while with a crutch I made a feint at Samuel that sent him scurrying to his place.

The biggest boy in the school sauntered in. He carefully upset three dinner pails from the shelves in the rear as he hung up his hat. I reprimanded him most severely, but I finished my lecture before he had replaced the cans. Then he shuffled to his place and got out a book as a sign that school might begin.

Now, I always liked that biggest boy. He knew his position so well. He knew just how far it was proper for him to go, and never once did he overstep those bounds. He held the respect and fear of his juniors without making any open breach with the teacher. But in one way William Bellus had been peculiarly favored. His predecessors had to deal with Perry Thomas, and in spite of his gentle ways and intellectual cast, Perry is active and wiry. He is a blacksmith by trade, and is the leading tenor in the Methodist choir. This makes a combination that for staying powers has few equals. My biggest boy's predecessor had been utterly broken. Even the girls jeered at him until he quit school entirely. But William had another problem. It was the disappointment of his life that Perry Thomas retired just as he came into power. He had declared at a ma.s.s-meeting behind the woodshed that it was a gross injustice on the part of the directors to put a crippled teacher in charge of the school. Where now was glory to be gained? They would have a school-ma'am next, like they done up to Popolomus, and none but little boys, and girls not yet out of plaits, would be so servile as to suffer such domination. Mark Hope, the soldier, he honored! Mark Hope, the veteran, he revered! Mark Hope, the teacher, he despised; for his crutches made him a safe barricade against which no Biggest Boy with a spark of honor would dare to hurl himself. There might be in the school boys base enough to charge that he lacked spirit in his att.i.tude of armed neutrality. Let those traducers step forward, whether they be two or a dozen. What would follow, the Biggest Boy did not say; but he had pulled off his coat, and there was none to dispute him. His position was established. Thereafter he a.s.sumed toward me a calm indifference. He was never openly offensive. He always kept within certain carefully laid bounds of supercilious politeness. At first he was exasperating, and I longed to have him forget himself and overstep those bounds, that I might make up for his disappointment in being cheated out of Perry Thomas. But he never did.

To-day William Bellus really opened the school, for not till he had buried his face in his book did the general buzz begin.

That buzz was maddening. For three long hours I had to sit there and listen to the children as they droned over and over their lessons. Yet this was my life's work. To my care Six Stars had intrusted her young, and I should be proud of that trust and earnest in its fulfilment. But Tim's letter was in my pocket. It was full of the big things of this life. It told of great struggles for great prizes, and the chalk dust choked me when I thought of him, and then turned to myself as I stood there, trying to demonstrate to half a dozen girls and boys that the total sum of a single column of six figures was twenty-four. Tim had been promoted and was a full-fledged clerk now. There were many steps ahead for him, but he was going to climb them rung by rung; and what joy there is in drawing one's self up by one's own strength! I was at the top of my ladder--at the very pinnacle of learning in Black Log. Even now I was unfolding to the marvelling eyes of the children of the valley the mysteries of that great science, physical geography. I was explaining to them the trend of the Rockies and the Himalayas, and of other mountains I should never see; I was telling them why it snowed, and unfolding the phenomena of the aurora borealis. Alexander with no more worlds to conquer was a sorry spectacle. We pedagogues who have mastered physical geography are Alexanders. But if I was bound to the pinnacle of learning so that I could neither fly nor fall, I could at least watch Tim as he struggled higher and higher. And Mary was watching with me! That was what made my work that day seem doubly irksome and the hours trebly long; for she was waiting to hear from him, and when the sun seemed to rest on the mill gable I should be free to go to her. So the minutes dragged. It made me angry. Ordinarily I speak quietly to the scholars, but now I fairly bellowed at Chester Holmes, who was reading in such a loud tone that he disturbed me and called me to the real business of the moment.

"Don't say Dooglas!" I cried.

"That's the way Teacher Thomas used to say it," retorted Chester, sitting down on the long bench where the Fifth Reader cla.s.s was posted.

"D-o-u-g--dug--Douglas," I snapped.

"'Douglas round him drew his cloak.' Now, Ira Snarkle, you may read five lines, beginning with the second stanza."

Ira was very tall for his sixteen years. His clothes had never caught up to him, for his trousers always failed by two inches to grasp his shoe-tops, and his coat had a terrible struggle to touch the top of his trousers. For the shortness of the sleeves he partly compensated with a pair of bright red worsted wristers. When he bent his elbows the sleeves flew up his arms, and these wristers became the most conspicuous thing in his whole attire.

Ira was holding his book in the correct position now, so I saw a length of bare arms embraced at the wrists by brilliant bands of red.

"'My manors, halls, and bowers shall still be open at my soveryne's will,'" chanted the boy.

He paused, and to ill.u.s.trate the imperious humor of the Scot, he waved his fingers and a red wrister at me. The gesture unnerved him for a moment, and he had to go thumbing over the page to find his place. He caught it again and chanted on--"'At my sover-sover-yne's will. To each one whom he lists, however unmeet to be the owner's peer.'"

Again the boy waved the fingers and the red wrister at me. Again he paused, gathering himself for the climax. That gesture was abominable, but at such a time I dared not interrupt.

"'My castles are my king's alone from turret to foundation stone,'" he cried. The red wrister flashed beneath my eye. Ira had even forgotten his book and let it fall to his side. He took a step forward; paused with one knee bent and the other stiff; extended his right arm and shouted, "'The hand of Dooglas is his own, and never shall in friendly grasp the hand of sech as Marmyyon clasp.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'At my sover-sover-yne's will.'"]

Well done, Ira! The proud Marmion must indeed have trembled until his armor rattled if the Scot bellowed at him in that way and shook a red wrister so violently under his very nose. Excellent, Ira; you put spirit in your reading. One can almost picture you beneath Tantallion's towers, drawing your cloak around you and giving cold respect to the stranger guest. But why say "Dooglas"?

"S-o-u-p spells soup," answered Ira loftily to my question. "Then D-o-u-g must spell doog."

"I tell you it's Douglas. 'The hand of Douglas is his own,'" I cried.

At the mention of the doughty Scot I pounded the floor with my crutch and repeated "Dug--dug--dug."

"But Teacher Thomas allus said Doog," exclaimed Chester Holmes.

"I don't care what Teacher Thomas said," I retorted. "You must say Dug--Dug--Douglas."

"But Teacher Thomas is the best speaker they is," piped in Lulu Ann Nummler from the end of the bench.

"I don't care if Teacher Thomas can recite better than Demosthenes himself," I snapped. "In this school we say Douglas." My crutch emphasized this mandate, but I could not see how it was received, for every scholar's face was hidden from me by a book.

"Now, Abraham, six lines."

Abraham Lincoln Spiker was two years younger than Ira Snarkle, but he seemed much taller and correspondingly thinner. In our valley the boys have a fashion of being born long, and getting shorter and fatter as they grow older. Abraham's mother in making his clothes had provided against the day when he would weigh two hundred pounds, and consequently his garments hung all around him, giving him an exceedingly dispirited look.

His hair relieved this somewhat, for it was white and always stood gaily on end, defying brush and comb. Daniel Arker, a st.u.r.dy black-haired lad, would have done fuller justice to the pa.s.sage that fell to Abraham, for the Spiker boy with his gentle lisp never shone in elocution; but our reading cla.s.s is a lottery, as we go from scholar to scholar down the line. The lot falling to him, Abraham pushed himself up from the bench, grasped his book fiercely with both hands, and fixed his eyes intently on the ceiling.

"Go on," I commanded kindly.