I’m tellin’ ye what Eph Landers did

The time that he went and lost his fid.

He was yankin’ boulders a week ago—

Tumble feller to hump and go!

He strung his chain round a rousin’ rock

And found that he’d lost the little block

To catch the link; it’s used instid

Of a hook and link and it’s called a fid.

And the crack-brained critter—what do you think?

Why, he stuck his thumb in the unhooked link!

The school house was more than filled that evening.

People came straggling up across the fields by short cuts, following lanterns that winked between the striding legs of the bearers. The nearer neighbours scuffled slowly along the road, bringing lamps and shielding the blaze with curved palms as they walked. The lanterns were hung on the nails about the cracked walls, part of whose unsightliness the little teacher had covered with the evergreen wreaths that she had plaited. The lamps were placed on the knife-whittled desks.

The grown-ups painfully bent their knees under these narrow confines, some of them acting as though they were astonished that they were so much larger than they were in the old school days. Most of them hadn’t been in the school house since they had gone out with their tattered books in a strap so many years before.

“It makes ye feel nearer the grave, don’t it?” whispered Salome Burpee to her seat mate of the old days, who had by almost unconscious choice sought the well-remembered desk.

The seat mate, a tall, scrawny woman, was obliged to sit sidewise, for she couldn’t get her knees under the desk.

“My, yes!” she replied rather mournfully. “It don’t seem hardly a day ago that I could sit here and swing my feet.”

“That’s my initial,” mumbled Deacon Burgess to Uncle Paul Appleby, fingering a deep nick in the edge of the desk. “They was new then, and I got walloped for cutting it.”

The men had gravitated to one side of the room, the women to the other. All whispered decorously if they had occasion to address one another, for in rural communities the usual gatherings are prayer meetings, and habit is strong.

They discussed the report that the Squire had gone to the teacher’s boarding place with her, and would be present at the meeting that evening, and that he had talked “real saucy” to Mrs. Dunham, and that, too, after she had hired him for her lawyer.

Esther sat grimly at the far side of the room in the girls’ reservation, and Micajah was hunched into a seat on the other side, his eyes staring straight before him. Neither exchanged a word with any other person in the room.

“I heard it hinted,” whispered the scrawny woman, “that Sylvene Willard is going to stick her nose into this thing. She has allus made more or less of ’Lize Haskell, and ’Lize has been one of her ‘Grit and Grace Girls,’ as she calls ’em.” The woman’s tone was scornful. “You can let Sylvene Willard alone to put more tomfool notions into a girl’s head in a minit than practical common-sense will weed out in a year. She’s got them girls meetin’ to her house Saturdays and readin’ a lot of ratted stuff out loud and writin’ papers and foolin’ with a lot of lit’ry sculch. I wouldn’t let my Minnie join in with ’em. I told her that there was too much readin’ and writin’ of tomrot in the world now, and if she wanted to read she could stay to home and read cook-book receets. It may not be quite so new-fangled and fash’nable as it is to read about furrin’ countries”—the woman’s lips curled and her nostrils spread—“but it is a blamed sight more to the point if a woman’s goin’ to amount to anything in this world and has got a husband and fam’ly—as she ought to have.”

“Sylvene Willard better ’a’ taken one of her chances,” agreed Salome Burpee. “She can talk about loyalty to her parent and all sech till the cows come home. But the trouble was she was tormented afraid that the Judge might shine up to Number Two. I tell ye, them Willards is shysters after the dollars!”

“She might have gone furder and fared wuss than o ’a’ married King Bradish,” said the tall woman. “But you’ll find that she has liked to have the two of ’em taggin’ at her gown-tail. You can’t blame ‘Lize Haskell for thinkin’ it’s all right to be flirty.” Salome turned a cautious gaze to the stolid, hard face of Esther. Then she looked across to Micajah.

“My land o’ Goshen,” she murmured, “it don’t seem as though that young gal would need to mess into a fam’ly like that. I’ve thought right along that there ain’t anything to it except that Esther is so set and determined to make it out that way.”

“I tell ye she’s a designin’ little critter,” retorted the tall woman. “And I want to see her boosted out of her job. If Sylvene Willard wants to stick and primp girls up and git ’em to readin’ furrin’ his’try and a lot of sculch, and gittin’ ’em all set up when their father’s nothin’ but a crazy pauper, so that they’re so nippy they have to talk polite lingo all the time, ‘yes, marm, yes, sir, our black cat!’ then I say let her take care of ’em. I want my Minnie to see that airs go before a fall!”

A grating of wheels on the grit outside checked the whispers.

Sylvena Willard came in, her cheeks flushed by her ride through the crisp air. The assembled inquisitors of the Dunham district instinctively knew that she was there as the teacher’s defender, and they surveyed her with disapprobation.

But she nodded cheery little greetings here and there and sat down on one of the front seats with great composure.

“Holds her age tumble well, don’t she?” mumbled Deacon Burgess, surveying the profile above the fluffy collar of her jacket.

But Uncle Paul gazed at her grudgingly. “It ain’t the real Christians that go to Heaven on flow’ry beds of ease,” he grunted. “She’s had a pretty soft time of it all her life now, I tell ye.”

At that moment the hush was broken by one of those solemn explosions that the irreverent call a “vestry cough,” and “Wolf” Doughty, so nicknamed on account of a swelling on his cheek, swung in his seat and suggested:

“I reckon we might as well proceed to elect a moderator to preside this ev’nin’, whilst we are waitin’ for the defendant ’foresaid. Any one that has a mind on the subject will please say something.”

At this hint Deacon Burgess was preparing to nominate Doughty, when there was a bustle in the entry-way and Squire Prin Look came in, blinking the outside gloom from his kindly eyes. The little teacher followed close in the lee of his generous bulk, her eyes downcast. The lawyer had carefully timed his late arrival, both on his own account and for the sake of the schoolma’am.

“We’ll let ’em get settled on the roost,” he had told her, “and their first spell of cawing over and done with.”

He lifted her chair from the platform and placed it so that she did not have to meet their eye-borings. Then he went up and calmly sat down in the visitor’s chair, the only seat on the platform, with an air of proprietorship.

He crossed his knees and swung his dusty foot comfortably, oblivious to the frowns on the faces of Doughty and his adherents. The old dog beside him surveyed the audience with benignly extended jaws and rapped his tail as though it were a chairman’s gavel.

The town of Palermo was accustomed to seeing the Squire at the head of all assemblages. For years he had been the natural selection of the voters at town meetings, after that hot caucus years before when he had defeated Judge Willard, who had been moderator so long that the office had almost become titular with him. It was a bold man who would get up now and suggest that some one else preside. The men stole embarrassed looks at each other, waiting for some one to take the plunge.

“We’re wasting time, fellow-townsmen,” said the Squire briskly.

“We was jest gittin’ ready to choose a moderator when you came in,” growled Doughty.

“Will you kindly make the nomination, Mr. Doughty?” directed the lawyer, keenly eyeing the man.

Doughty, nervous under the general regard that was now fixed on him, gruntingly worked his legs from under a desk and stood up. He could not nominate himself, and he wouldn’t name a Dunham district man, for he was angry at the cowardice of the assemblage that had failed to obey his hint.

“I think it is the general sense of the meetin’,” he mumbled, “that Squire Phineas Look serve as moderator, he knowin’ how—how——”

“I will accept the honour with thanks,” broke in the lawyer, rising. And as he stood there looking into their sullen faces he reflected, “You’re a cheeky old pirate, Phin, but it’s the only way to keep ’em from putting the little one on the rack.”

“Neighbours,” he began, “I’m going to start in by telling you a bit of a story. Once when I was a small boy my father had a flock of turkeys, and the only thing I owned in the Lord’s world then was a little rabbit about half grown. That was the time we lived over on the Ridge road; you remember, some of you older ones, the farm that father took up?” Several nodded. His tone was the social chat of an old friend. The initial stiffness that had oppressed the farmers and their women had begun to wear off.

“Well, s’r, folks, that rabbit was about as cunning a little critter as you ever saw. Gracious, wasn’t I proud of him, though! He used to hop around the yard and nibble clover, and I liked to watch him. You know how a rabbit’s nose will flicker when he eats? Like a lawyer’s tongue in a horse case!” His listeners greeted this thrust at the profession with much hilarity. The Squire beamed an encouraging smile at the little teacher, and then for the first time since their nod of greeting he looked straight and long into the face of Sylvena Willard. Her brown eyes brimmed with appreciation.

“Well, the little rabbit hopped about the yard where the big turkeys brustled and hustled and pecked and scratched. Rabbit was busy getting its living and didn’t mind the turkeys. And the turkeys didn’t pay much attention to the rabbit. But one day something peculiar happened. One of those hen turkeys made what you might call a mispeck at a grasshopper, happened to get hold of that little rabbit’s ear by accident, and that turkey was so surprised that she h’isted it right up and held on.

“Now, it’s the nature of turkeys, when they see another one holding up something that seems like a good, tempting morsel, to close in on the run and get their share. So in they tore. First hen turkey, however run off with the rabbit. She thought it must be good to eat, seeing that all the others were after her hotfoot. When she had run as long as she could, with every once in awhile another turkey getting in a peck at it, she laid it down to take a peck herself, and the others crowded around, shutting their eyes and getting in their work, and before they knew what they were pecking at they had torn that poor little rabbit all to bits.”

The audience blinked up at him, as yet hardly understanding the application of the allegory. He straightened till his head grazed the cracked ceiling.

“Since then I have always had an eye out to protect the innocent little rabbits from excited turkeys, who most likely might be sorry after they realised what they were pecking at.”

Esther Dunham interrupted him. She half rose from her seat and cried in shrill tones:

“As near as I can ketch what you’re drivin’ at, Squire Look, you’re callin’ me a hen turkey and you’re flingin’ out that the rest of the women in this school deestrick are turkeys, too. I for one don’t consider that is a compliment, and I don’t propose to sit here and listen to any more of that sort of talk.”

He smiled indulgently at her excitement and went on:

“As old Anse Breed, the chicken thief, used to say, ‘It’s a wise fowl that doesn’t step off the roost on to the first warm board that’s stuck up in the night.’

“Now, we’ll just let the story I’ve told stand for what it’s worth. But you mustn’t expect me to argue in defence of such turkeys. And if you ever see an old gobbler named Phineas Look forgetting himself to any such extent you may throw just as many stones at me as you like till I come to my right senses.

“You all know why you’ve met here to-night. All this gossip and guess-so and say-so has been thrashed over at back doors and front doors, upstairs and downstairs. I’ll not soil my tongue by rolling it in my mouth.”

“It’s the bus’ness of this meeting to bring out the evidence,” blurted “Wolf” Doughty.

“Any time I need any assistance, Doughty, in running a meeting over which I am presiding I’ll call you in,” replied the Squire tartly. “Now, what are the facts? Here is a little girl—only a little girl—poor Ben Haskell’s ’Liza, born and brought up in this town. Her mother dead and her father worse than dead. She trying to earn her living honestly, taking care of the children that you’re glad to have out from underfoot, you women. Every day she has been sending them home to you a little better, a little sweeter, a little more honest and self-respecting for having been with her that day—and yet all of you are ready to turn and rend her at the first squawk of——

“Look-a-here, Squire!” Mrs. Dunham was leaning over her desk, her thin hand vibrating at him. “You can go about so fur with me! Do you mean to tell this meetin’ that my husband——”

“Sit down, woman!” the lawyer thundered.

“This ain’t free speech!” clamoured Uncle Appleby. “A moderator ain’t got no license to choke off everybody here.”

With one stride Squire Phin was off the platform. Indignation bristled from his shaggy gray locks and gleamed in his narrowing eyes. As he passed Sylvena Willard she gave him a look that was like a cup of cold water to a man in battle.

He stood among them in the centre aisle.

“Have your moderators to suit yourselves!” he shouted, with a thump of his fist on the desk that made Uncle Paul dodge. “I’m down here now on this floor as a man that won’t see this innocent girl harried nor put out of a place where she is earning her honest living. Who are you, Esther Dunham, to analyse the emotions of the human heart? A self-operating dishwashing machine. What is your old husband that he can understand them, either? A doubled-over grub worm. The two of you hungry for something in your lives, you don’t know what! But you shall not shut your eyes and tear the innocent! Eleven thousand dollars in the banks, eh?” He snarled the words at them. “Rooted by your snouts out of the soil, and you never lifting your eyes to God’s sun and sky and open heart and loving eye and generous impulse. Oh, I know I am harsh and bitter! It is as hard for me to say it as it is for you to hear it. I am bitter toward all of you that live that way, and you in this town have always known my feelings. I dare to tell you the truths about yourselves, and only the sharp-pointed truth will dig into your hides. I dare to say to you, Esther Dunham, that you have maligned a pure and innocent girl who has minded her own business. I dare to tell you that you have trampled upon the torch of love in your own house until you have trod out every spark.

“You wouldn’t let your husband love and do for his own child as he ought. He don’t know what is the matter with him, that’s the trouble. He has been bumping around like an old blind mule. He don’t know his own heart.

“Why, all under God’s heavens he needs is the love of a child—a child, Esther Dunham. He has seen again in this poor girl the image of the one he lost. He has built another altar for his affections, and if it is outside of your own walls, blame yourself, Esther.”

He clapped his finger smartly against his palm.

“Wake up, ‘Caje! Wake up, my man! Can’t you see now what the hankering in your heart meant?”

The old farmer tucked his head between his arms on the desk and wept weakly. His wife sat staring straight before her.

“Poor little girl!” softly said the Squire. He tiptoed back down the aisle and smoothed the little teacher’s curls. “Poor little girl! You have been ground between two hard millstones—and none of you knew, none of you knew.”

He gazed long, silently and rebukingly over the assemblage. The people shifted uneasily, shuttling their eyes from him to the floor.

“Now, who wants to stand forth as persecutor of this abused child?” he demanded, his hand protectingly on her head.

No one stirred or spoke.

In the silence he walked slowly up the aisle and bent down over the wife who stood staring into vacancy.

“Esther!” he said softly, and when she looked up at him after a time he gazed at her with his eyes softening.

“Poor old mother!” He said it with infinite tenderness. He waited awhile.

“It has been a bitter, cruel lesson that I have read to you,” he went on. “I am a harsh old tyrant when my feelings are stirred. But I would have defended just as stoutly your own little girl if she were here alone and you were sleeping over yonder there on the hill where her mother is.”

He took her unwilling hand, and thereafter the eloquence that trembled on his lips was the soul outpouring of a man who has lived the life of human justice and generosity that he preached—and the woman knew it. With the skill of one who understood what quality of human nature lay under that tough New England exterior, he probed to the depths of her being, pulled away all the husks of selfishness that the years had piled, layer on layer, and reached the mother instinct.

“Esther,” he said at last, “don’t you think you’ll look better with that softness you have now in your eyes when your ’Cilia meets you at the gate of Heaven? Why don’t you practise that look for the rest of your life? But you need something to practise on! There are lots of things that are going to waste up at your house since ’Cilia died. There’s love and tenderness, most of all. There’s the heart of a faithful man who has been yoked with you all these years, dragging at your mutual burdens. He wants a little love, that’s all. He wants that love from you, from no other. The two of you need something to soften your hard natures, something in common. You lost that when your girl died.”

He hastened down the aisle. The little school-ma’am struggled a bit in his grasp, but with Sylvena Willard’s pat on her cheek and comforting word in her ear she went with him.

“Now, Esther, what have you to say to this poor little chicken—this motherless little girl? Look into her eyes! What have you to say?”

The woman seemed to be awakening from some dream. She gazed about over the assemblage. Her eyes returned to the shrinking girl before her.

“It was only the same way that my own father was good to me, Mrs. Dunham,” murmured the schoolma’am, tears streaking her cheeks. “I thought it was you that sent some of the little things, till you—-you——” Sobs checked her.

“Esther!” pleaded the Squire, “it’s awful lonesome up to your house!”

The whole picture of her homeless misery that afternoon blended with the strange new light that had entered her soul. She clutched his arm and pulled him down, whispered a few words into his ear, and then caught the little schoolma’am in an embrace that proved that motherhood was burning in her once again.

The Squire nodded his head and smiled sagely. Sylvena Willard was standing at the foot of the aisle as he passed, mist in her eyes, but a smile of earnest approbation on her lips that made his heart beat fast.

“It is a miracle, Phineas,” she whispered.

“Oh, no; it’s in all of ’em—in all of us, if you only know how to get at it,” he returned softly.

Then he faced the silent people, who were blinking hard their blurry eyes. He ran the brim of his worn hat around and around between his fingers with an air that was almost embarrassment.

“Neighbours!” There was a bit of catch in his throat. “Esther wanted me to tell you that the little school teacher has found a new mother to-night.”

He went out through the entry-way, and the old dog waddled down off the platform and followed at his heels.

“Phineas!” Sylvena Willard caught him on the little platform of the school house. “How are you going to return to the village?”

“I was reckoning to foot it, Eli and I.”

“The boy brought me in our team. Won’t you ride with me? I want to talk it all over with you.”

He was about to accept, when out of the gloom to which their eyes were as yet hardly accustomed came a blur of lighter colour. It was the lining of King Bradish’s Goddard buggy, and Bradish leaned out and spoke to her, “I sent the boy home with your hitch, Sylvie. I’ve been waiting for you.” He climbed out and “cramped” the wheel. “Was your experience meeting worth all the time you put into it?” he inquired with a bit of satire.

“You sent my carriage home?” she demanded indignantly.

“Why, it was the most natural thing in the world to do. There was no need of keeping the boy here when you are going to ride back with me.”

“But I am not going to ride back with you, King,” she said, recovering her composure. “I must withdraw my invitation to you,” she went on, turning to the Squire. “But you can return the compliment by inviting me to share your conveyance—Shanks’s mare, I believe the boys call it.”

“But it is two miles,” remonstrated the Squire.

“Only a pleasant stroll after the stuffiness of the school house. Come!” She seized his arm and brushed past Bradish, for the people were beginning to come out of the school house with their lamps.

He overtook them a few rods down the road.

“Sylvie,” he said, walking his horse close to them, “I don’t propose to discuss this thing in the highway, but you certainly can’t be intending to walk home with this man, under the circumstances.” He dwelt on the last word.

She did not reply, but continued to chat to the Squire, who plodded on, dumb and confounded at the turn affairs had taken.

“And I shall tell your father!” drawled Bradish, venom in his tone.

“Tell him whatever you think will be the best for all concerned,” she replied with fully as much significance.

They heard him lashing his horse cruelly as he turned the corner into the Cove road.

But during the walk to the village his name was not mentioned between them.