Читать книгу The Yoke of Life - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 4

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SCHOOL

It was two and a half years later.

Through the enormous drifts of the frozen slough two horses were plunging, a sorrel and a bay, drawing a cutter which pitched and rolled in the snow like a boat in a sea. An ineffectual morning sun glared down on the waste created by the night's blizzard. The landscape—the drifts, the bare trees, and even the sky—looked ice-cold, windswept, and hostile. The absolute quiet of the atmosphere and the indifference of the sun intensified that impression, just as the song of a bird on a battle-field emphasizes its horrors.

In the cutter sat a bearded old man who, in picking his road, exerted himself as much as did the horses in travelling it. He wore an old fur coat, fur cap, and huge gauntlets of fur. His lower body was rolled up in a goat-skin robe.

As he neared the east-west grade, which the wind had swept bare of snow, he caught sight of two boys walking and sometimes running along to the west. Between them there was now a considerable difference in height.

The man in the cutter sang out, "Hoih-o! Len, wait!"

A few minutes later, having swung up on the grade, he stopped and admitted the boys under his robe. Neither Len nor Charlie wore mitts; both were clad in "mackinaw" coats and, under them, in blue-denim overalls. Grey cotton caps were insufficient to protect their scalps against the piercing cold. Down the cheeks of the smaller boy tears were running, congealing on the way.

Len, in taking his seat beside Mr. Crawford, nodded shyly. Charlie gave no sign of recognition. Mr. Crawford, in clicking his tongue, reached with one hand under the robe and drew up a round-bellied hot-water bottle of crockery which he handed to the smaller boy.

"Put that between your knees," he said. "Hold your hands against it." Then he threw the robe over the child's head and shoulders, burying him out of sight.

The horses shot along; a warm stable awaited them at the end of their journey. At the next crossing of trails they waited for a little girl of possibly twelve who, clad in a thin gingham dress, but wrapped in a multitude of shawls and scarves which left only a narrow strip of eyes exposed, struggled valiantly through snow knee-deep and unbroken.

"Come on, Helen," Mr. Crawford called; and, bending forward, made sign for her to climb up on the seat behind his back.

Thus they went for another mile and came to a trail which debouched from the south. There, in the corner, almost hidden by the bush, lay a homestead consisting of three small log buildings.

The cutter stopped for a moment; and a line of five scholars filed from a path through the brush which grew almost level with the grade. The first to come was a boy, six feet tall and perhaps sixteen years old; the next, a girl, thin and slender, nearest to the boy in age; behind her, two more boys and another girl, all diminishing in size like the pipes of an organ.

Somehow the smaller ones piled into the sleigh, two crouching down in front, stepping on the teacher's toes; one crawling in with Charlie under the robe. The oldest two stood with one foot on the runner, with the other on the draw-bar, hands on the dash-board.

Slowly the vehicle got under way again, first through the dense bush, smoothly enough; but where the grade swung up and drifts were flung across it, snow was thrown aloft by the horses' feet, now in the form of dust, now of slabs, according as the wind had piled it. Thus the last mile was covered; and the school appeared south of the road.

This was a pleasant building put up by the provincial government, highly up-to-date, with all its windows on one, the eastern side, and a fresh-air intake projecting from its wall like a blunt nose. At the north end an entrance hall jutted out, housing a cloak-room; and the whole was painted in a pleasing colour-scheme of cream and brown. It had only one drawback: it was built for looks, to enhance the prestige of some official in the capital; for, though wood was piled into the jacketed furnace as if it did not cost any labour to cut it, water would freeze on its floor at mid-day.

A moment after the school had appeared, the view opened, to the north, on a farm yard of a somewhat unusual kind in the pioneer bush. It was dominated by a two-story frame house painted pink. A large, frame-built barn stood straight behind it, unpainted, it is true, but so solidly put together that its very outside promised warmth and comfort behind its walls. Beyond the barn, a forty-acre field was cleared.

The newness of things almost made it appear as if this establishment had been transposed from somewhere else: it had not grown as the result of native conditions: it stood in the untamed wilderness without a background in time.

The horses went on till they reached a culvert bridging the ditch and leading into this yard. There, as they slowed down for the turn, first the big boy, then the girl dropped off their perches; and, as the driver brought the team to a stop, three more of the children emerged from the box of the cutter. These were the pupils from the last homestead: their parents, the Hausmans, were not on speaking terms with Mr. Jackson, owner of the farm beyond the ditch.

A few minutes later, when the sleigh had stopped in front of the barn, Len, Helen, and Charlie also emerged. Helen and Charlie ran into the open door which beckoned with the welcome warmth exhaled by six horses and as many cows. Len bent down and unhooked the traces while Mr. Crawford drew the lines through the bit-rings of the bridles.

That moment, from the background of the roomy stable, the figure of an old, loose-jointed man appeared, handsome in the way of old age, with bushy eyebrows and a snow-white, hanging moustache. He was holding a pitch-fork in one of his hands.

"Well," he said to the teacher, "brought your usual load, eh?"

"Yes. Eight of them, two thirds of the bunch. If I could I'd get the rest of them, too. But I can't go two ways at a time."

"That's so," Mr. Jackson agreed, looking roguishly at the two smaller children in the barn. "Well, I hope these youngsters appreciate what you are doing for them."

"No more than anybody would do."

The horses were ready to be taken in. Mr. Jackson led the way. Len took the halter-shanks and turned into the first stall. Charlie was standing in the drive way and shaking his hands as if he were trying to throw the cold on the floor. His face was recovering its humorous twinkle.

"Well, Charlie," Mr. Jackson said, "have you learnt to count? One, three, eleven, two . . ."

"Nonsense," Charlie said laughing. "You want to fool me."

"I'll be dashed," Mr. Jackson said, half laughing himself. "That's the way they learnt me when I was a youngster. Do you know the best way to take the smart out of your fingers quick?"

"No, I don't."

"Hold them into the hide of a nine-year old mule. Now that's a nine-year old."

"But it ain't a mule!"

"Isn't it?" Mr. Jackson feigned surprised. "Well, now, I may be mistaken. I never had much eddication. I thought it were a mule."

"No, you didn't."

"Well, you know best. Can you read yet, Charlie?"

"A little."

"Well, well! I must get you to come and read to me from them new-fangled books you've got in school. Me and Mary are poor hands at reading. I went to school but one year when I was eleven. I've near forgotten all I ever knew."

"I don't suppose," Mr. Crawford said, joining the group, "you find it much of a loss at that."

"Can't say I do. When I read, I've got to have my finger on the word and to move my lips. Mary says it's a disgrace."

"Well," Mr. Crawford mused, standing on his sound leg and leaning against a stanchion between stalls, "as the world wags, we've got to cram information into the children's heads instead of making men and women out of them."

"You're saying something!" the old man agreed, shaking his head. "Sounds different from what the last teacher said. Slip of a girl with her bit of high-school eddication, coming in here and saying, 'These people are only half civilised!'—Tell you, sir. When a person needs to have his finger on the word and to move his lips when he reads, he ain't so apt to read trash. It takes a mighty good book to stand such reading."

"There is something in that, no doubt."

"I'll tell you, Mr. Crawford, I've looked into that library which the department of eddication sends out and makes us pay for whether we want it or not. It's a disgrace. That's what it is."

"You want to be charitable, Mr. Jackson. Government folk have enough to do holding on to their jobs."

"There's need to be charitable," the old farmer nodded. "Over in Europe they've rushed into war. What the Sam Blazes do they want war for? And here they do the next best thing and give these children a hand-picked library of high-toned books."

Mr. Crawford had drawn his watch and turned to go. "Well, children," he said, reaching for his cane. "We'd better go over to school. You'll give my ponies a bit of hay, Mr. Jackson?"

"I will, sir," the old man replied.

Half an hour later the work in the little school was in full swing. There were only twelve children; but apart from the beginners' class which comprised six scholars, there were as many grades as pupils. Class-teaching was impossible.

Len who sat by himself was wrestling at almost the same time with the mechanical difficulties of reading and writing and such abstruse subjects as the principles of geometry and advanced arithmetic. While his reasoning powers flew ahead to explore the limits of the human mind in the conceptions of space and time, he was still troubled with the technical stumbling blocks of the mere arts. He was a poor writer and felt ashamed of it; when reading, he was always tempted to grasp at the meaning of a sentence as a whole, instead of spelling it out word for word. Consequently, he was subject to attacks of despondency alternating with spells of exaltation. For the first time since he had gone to school—during the first year five teachers had followed each other; the next year he had stayed at home—he felt that he was getting sympathy and real help. He worshipped Mr. Crawford as a dog worships his master. Charlie excelled him in the elementary things; Charlie was always showing up well. He was receiving good teaching at an age when it was most needed. But, though Mr. Crawford never praised Len in the class and, on trifling occasions, was rather severer with him than with others, Len knew with that certainty which comes only from revelation or intuition that this teacher had consented to take this school for his sake alone. Why that should be, he could not tell; but he knew that it was so. Len was sixteen years old; his stepfather did not need to send him to school any longer; it was Mr. Crawford who had induced him to do so; and Len was grateful. Ever since he had first realised his power to assimilate knowledge, a new ideal had sprung up in him, dimly realised, till at last it had taken shape.

One day he was going to master all human knowledge in all its branches. Whatever any great thinker or poet or scientist had thought and discovered, he was going to make his own. If only Mr. Crawford continued to teach in this little school, he felt sure of his help. He could hardly know as yet how comprehensive his ambition was.

Throughout the first morning period he worked at fever heat, solving problems, first in arithmetic, then in geometry. He sat alone in a seat of the easternmost aisle, next to the windows.

The central aisle was taken up by the three lower grades comprising all but two pupils. The western aisle, like the eastern one, held one child, Lydia Hausman, of nearly Len's age.

As Len squirmed in his seat, drawing one leg up and sitting on it, pulling his hair, grinding his teeth, and shaking his head in his absorption—all which manœuvres seemed to facilitate thinking—he was now and then aware that Lydia who had finished her assignment in formal arithmetic of the fourth grade and was studying her reading lesson looked his way and smiled to herself. He found this attention which she gave him very disturbing and, with his lips moving in unison with his thought, he turned to the window, looking up into the sky and fidgeting because even then he felt her look on the back of his head. Though, in that position, the upper and more mobile strata of his mind continued to grope along the lines and angles of his conceptions, the lower strata remained pervaded with a feeling of discomfort produced by the consciousness that the girl, in her own hidden thoughts, was making fun of his dogged endeavours. At last, frowning with absent anger, he turned and stared at her, trying to purchase peace for his work by sacrificing a minute or so to the open warfare of contemptuous looks. But that made matters worse; for, though she averted her eyes as soon as his met hers squarely, a slow blush spread over her face, from her throat upwards; and in spite of her freckled nose she was pretty, with that slightly unhealthy prettiness which overwork and consequent anæmia often produce in girls of the pioneer districts. For reasons unknown to him, this distracted his mind to such an extent that he fidgeted more than ever and lost the thread of his thought.

Just then Mr. Crawford stopped by the side of a seat in the central aisle and began to speak.

"You don't mean to say that that is the best you can do, Henry? You will write that over again. If you can't finish it to my satisfaction within fifteen minutes, you will lose your recess and stay in."

The boy to whom these words were addressed was Henry Kugler, like most of the children, of Russo-German descent. Next to Len, he was the oldest scholar; unlike Len, he had been going to school for many years, for his father, before taking up his homestead in the bush, had worked in the city. There, in a city school, the boy had been promoted into the fourth grade, chiefly, as Mr. Crawford explained, for reasons of accommodation, whole classes being moved up in order to make room for those that followed. The successive teachers of Macdonald School had not cared to make any change in a grading sanctioned by city authorities. But Mr. Crawford, on taking charge, had put him back into the third grade, saying that he would be promoted as soon as he was able to do the work required of him. From rebellion and ill-will, the boy had ever since done his work, not as well as he could, but as badly as he dared; and at home his parents had upheld him in his insurgency.

Scowling and muttering to himself, he set to work again, copying out the exercise which he had just finished.

Len, at the master's voice, had turned and was looking at Henry.

Seeing his glance, Mr. Crawford came limping to his side.

"What is it, Len?" he asked sternly.

"I'm all tangled up," Len answered, squirming.

"Let me see your figure. That is right. Have you tried to use your congruencies?"

"Yes, but . . ."

He did not proceed; for with a long, slender finger Mr. Crawford pointed to the sides of two triangles, grouping them into pairs.

"I've got it," Len exclaimed and smiled an embarrassed smile at the man by his side; and at once he bent over his exercise and began to write in his hieroglyphic scrawls.

Mr. Crawford left him and returned to the central aisle.

Fifteen minutes later, the teacher stepped to the front of the class. "Put your books away," he said; and, having waited a moment, ". . . Tention! Turn! Stand!"

The class went through the accustomed movements.

"Turn! March!"

The class was dismissed. As far as the cloak-room they went in good order; but beyond the class-room door the usual pushing and shuffling began as everybody tried to be first to get his wraps.

Then, crowding through the open door, they rushed into the yard which was buried under fresh snow. Led by Ernest Hausman, the smaller children began at once to play a game of hare and hounds, attended with much laughter and shouting. The older ones gathered behind the south end of the building where even in a wind there was shelter.

Henry Kugler, thick-set and burly, swore under his breath.

Willy Hausman, the biggest boy in school, tall, lank, strong, and good-natured by reason of his physical superiority, hearing him, gave him a push and teased, "You were in a hurry all right!"

"That's all he can do," Henry replied contemptuously, throwing his back against the building. "He can't teach me anything! He doesn't know enough himself. So he makes me copy over what I have done. The sneak! He can't say the work is wrong. Whether it's right or not, he can't tell!"

"Don't talk such nonsense!" Len said, blushing.

"Don't tell me what to say, you baby!"

"He knows more than any teacher we've ever had!" Len asserted stoutly, leaning against the corner of the school-house.

"Bosh!" Henry cried. "You should go to school in the city!"

"He's been a high-school teacher all his life!"

"Why does he come to a rotten little place like this, then? If he has, they probably fired him."

"That's a lie!" Len had turned white with anger.

"T. P.! T. P.! T. P.!" Henry mocked.

This appellation, "teacher's pet," introduced into the vocabulary of Macdonald School by the very boy who uttered it, was the worst insult that could be offered to any scholar. It implied that he to whom it was addressed "curried favour" with the teacher or "catered" to him, betraying the interests of his natural allies, his fellow-pupils. It provoked Len's anger, however, not so much on his own account as because it threw an aspersion on the master's impartiality.

Henry, though a year or so younger, was stronger and heavier than Len; yet the latter's fist shot out instantly; and in a moment the two boys were entangled in a coil on the snow, hitting each other, rolling over, kicking. The four or five scholars present formed an excited circle about the combatants. Only Willy Hausman slipped around the corner and ran for the door. He knew from experience that it was best to let the teacher settle such affairs.

But by the time Mr. Crawford came limping along, the fight was decided. Len had been worsted. His nose was dripping blood, and one of his eyes was closing up.

"Well," Mr. Crawford said; and it was strange that he could speak so grimly, "you know the rules. You will hold your hands up. Fighting's the one thing we've got a strap for in this school. Who began it?"

"I did," Len said under the condemnatory silence of the standers-by who deserted his cause as soon as it was apparent that he, like the rest, would have to bow to the law.

"Very well," Mr. Crawford went on. "You will take the double tale. Go and wash the blood off your face before you report. You," turning to Henry, "take your seat meanwhile." And he wheeled about and returned to the school-room, followed by Henry who aped his walk.

Len had already applied snow to his nose and stopped the flow of blood. Then, still excited from the fight, he went to the front and entered the cloak-room where wash-basin and water pitcher stood on a little shelf.

Much to his annoyance, Lydia Hausman entered behind him and stopped by his side, her face pale and her eyes wide. When he straightened, he questioned her with an angry look.

"I didn't think you would fight," she said, her voice apologetic.

Len snorted contemptuously.

"There's still some blood," she said. "Let me wipe it." And she reached for a paper towel, dipped it in water, and wiped his cheek.

This brought her close to Len who was smaller than she. By some revelation he suddenly knew that she was pretty. As, with his eyes half closed, his look rested on her bosom, he saw, with a feeling new in his experience, that the edge of her dress below the throat rose and fell with her breath. She, by some influence born from proximity, became conscious of his look and blushed; and he, stepping back and looking into her face, reddened seeing it. He turned and entered the class-room with that strange feeling which may have stood between Adam and Eve when the serpent had whispered his message. "Eritis sicut Deus scientes bonum et malum."

Len was glad when he had taken his punishment; the momentary sting in his hands filled him with a sort of moral exaltation. Henry received his share with stolid indifference.

The class reassembled; and Mr. Crawford heard the junior grades read.

During these exercises Len followed the lessons; for, though he was fully able to read a book beyond his years and to gather the meaning from the page, he stumbled over syllables and words whenever he was to read aloud and at sight; just as in writing he could put together a really good composition provided the reader was willing to overlook the many mistakes in spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure; yet grammar, a reasoning subject, was one of his strongest points. When his turn came, he was merely asked to read a dozen lines of Evangeline which he had carefully prepared and to retell in a few words the contents of four pages of Tom Brown's School Days which had been assigned for cursory reading. He acquitted himself reasonably well; but Mr. Crawford merely nodded in silence as he stopped.

Dinner recess came.

Having dismissed the class, Mr. Crawford remained in the room till the children had eaten their lunch. He insisted on paper towels being used as table-cloths. Then everybody was turned out; and he himself went across the road to the house where Mary Jackson had prepared his dinner. Mary was a small, nervous old maid with a fine, pinched face and quick movements. She greeted the teacher with a friendly smile.

"Well," she asked, "did everything run smoothly today?"

"Not altogether," Mr. Crawford replied, sitting down at the table. "I had to use the strap."

"Is that so?"

"Thus a man makes rules for the conduct of others and gets entangled himself."

Mary laughed a low, gliding laugh. She did not quite understand; but it was easy to see that she more than admired Mr. Crawford. The shy, flitting glances of her eyes, averted forthwith, betrayed something little short of worship and adoration.

Old Mr. Jackson, her father, stood in the door. He threw up his hands and wagged his head. "I once served on a jury," he said. "When I lived in the city, that was. We had a case. . . . Well, I don't remember the details. Every one of the jurors agreed that he'd have done the same as the prisoner. But we had to find him guilty, and he went to the gallows."

Mr. Crawford nodded. "But it troubled you, didn't it?"

"It did," Mr. Jackson agreed.

"All law is unintelligent. It is no respecter of persons. But the person is after all the only thing that should be respected. When I came to this school last fall, small as it is, it was a perfect hornets' nest of spite and fight. I laid down the rule that whoever was caught fighting should get the strap. I don't believe in the strap."

"You are wrong! You are wrong!" Mr. Jackson wagged.

"Well, we don't see it that way nowadays. I don't say we get better results. On the whole, the growing generation is too soft."

"Go into the towns to see it!"

"Father," Mary said, stopping in her tripping run with a cup in her hand, "you forget that Mr. Crawford knows the town perhaps better than you."

"That is why I left it," Mr. Crawford said with a look at Mary. "When I was a child, in Ontario, we boys had ambition. My own ambition was no less than one day to leave the impress of my mind upon the age."

"Money and amusement," Mr. Jackson crowed. "Those are the only ambitions our youngsters have."

"In city and town," Mr. Crawford agreed. "And, of course, to a certain extent even in the country. But now and then you find even today a boy or a girl who has ideals. Perhaps ideals is not the word. It is something deeper than that. I have a case in point. There is a deep, instinctive urgency in the boy, a striving after the highest to which he can never give scope without an education; but it was there before he had ever looked into a school."

"You are speaking of Len," Mary said with her gliding smile.

"Yes. For a western child he is remarkable. He is a genius in his way. All he needs is an opportunity. He has the fire. It was he who got the strap today."

"Won't hurt him," Mr. Jackson said grimly. "It'll take a little of the froth out'n him."

"I wish I could put a little more of the froth into him rather."

"And Len was fighting?" Mary asked, drawing her hands along her forearms in a nervous motion.

"He and Henry. I don't know what it was about. Len confessed to having begun it."

"I believe," Mary said, standing by the table, "I can explain that. There is only one thing Len would fight about; and that is your good name. The Kuglers have been going about for weeks, talking. Their theory is that you know less than their boy."

"Is that so?" Mr. Crawford smiled up at her, stroking his beard.

"We all know, of course," Mary added quickly, "what a sacrifice you made in coming here. And it's appreciated, Mr. Crawford."

"I don't worry. But don't speak of sacrifice. I consider it a privilege to help a boy like Len; or Charlie, for that matter; though as a scholar he is not what his brother is. As for the money . . . I've lived frugally for forty years. My own boys have enlisted."

"Have you heard from them?"

"They are still in camp."

"They have made the offer. You have reason to be proud."

Mr. Crawford shrugged his shoulders. "There are many sides to that question. In a crisis, it is easy to offer one's life; especially when the chances are that you will not be killed. I fear the excitement of war was a welcome relief from the tedious, hard exactions of peace."

"Well," Mr. Jackson said, "my two good-for-nothing boys enlisted because they had never made so much money with so little work."

"Father!" Mary exclaimed uncomfortably. "You should not say that!"

Mr. Crawford reached for his cane and rose. "The test will come when the war is over. I suppose Len has looked after my ponies?"

The afternoon wore on with its round of grammar, history, geography, and singing; and school was dismissed.

Again eight children piled into Mr. Crawford's cutter; and as he drove along, he dropped them till only Len and Charlie remained.

"Many chores to do in winter?" he asked of the boy by his side.

"No. I have to get wood and water and to milk some cows."

"Time to read at night?"

"Some."

"What are you going to do with yourself later on?"

"I don't know. I shall farm, I suppose."

"Is that what you would like to do?"

"I like the farm. What else could I do?"

"Well," Mr. Crawford proceeded. "I have been wanting to speak to you about this. You said once you would like to teach. If you could attend school for another year, you could pass your Entrance examination. After that, in another two years, you could finish high school. A few months' attendance at Normal would give you a certificate. There are few doctors, lawyers, and ministers in this country who have not been teachers at some time of their lives. You would have leisure to study and a chance to save money to go to college. Teaching may be a stepping-stone towards other things. Not that I think little of the farmer. The farmer who has an education is more nearly a complete man than anyone else. But have you the body, the physical strength?"

Len looked dreamily ahead. "It is hard work."

"What a man does to make a living, matters little. It matters much what his influence is in life. I have that," and Mr. Crawford moved his club-foot. "So I became a teacher and worked up in that line. Not because I wanted to make more money; but because I hungered and thirsted after a higher and truer idea of life. That hunger and thirst itself is happiness, Len. We shall never still it. We shall never find truth. But we must strive after it without standing still. You have the spark. I wish I could fan it into a flame."

Len's eyes gleamed and glittered. All the muscles in his shivering body tightened with the exaltation of his mind. His vision took the shape of a glorious sunrise, the only kind of glory which he knew. He felt as if he were wrapped in solitude; the words of the man by his side were coming from a great distance. Len was in the presence of revelation; and what was revealed to him was the majesty of his self. Thus, Len's teacher asked forgiveness of a boy he had punished.