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The Choir Invisible, a novel by James Lane Allen |
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Chapter 19 |
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_ CHAPTER XIX THE closing day of school had come; and although he had waited in impatience for the end, it was with a lump in his throat that he sat behind the desk and ruler for the last time and looked out on the gleeful faces of the children. No more toil and trouble between them and him from this time on; a dismissal, and as far as he was concerned the scattering of the huddled lambkins to the wide pastures and long cold mountain sides of the world. He had grown so fond of them and he had grown so used to teach them by talking to them, that his speech overflowed. But it had been his unbroken wont to keep his troubles out of the schoolroom; and although the thought never left him of the other parting to be faced that day, he spoke out bravely and cheerily, with a smile: "This is the last day of school, and you know that to-morrow I am going away and may never come back. Whether I do or not, I shall never teach again, so that I am now saying good-bye to you for life. "What I wish to impress upon you once more is the kind of men and women your fathers and mothers were and the kind of men and women you must become to be worthy of them. I am not speaking so much to those of you whose parents have not been long in Kentucky as to those whose parents were the first to fight for the land until it was safe for others to follow and share it. Let me tell you that nothing like that was ever done before in all this world. And if, as I sit here, I can't help seeing that this one of you has no father and this one no mother and this one neither father nor mother and that almost none of you have both, still I cannot help saying, You ought to be happy children! not that you have lost your parents, but that you have had such parents to lose and to remember! "All of you are still too young to know fully what they have done and how the whole world will some day speak of them. Still, you can understand some things. For nowadays, when you go to your homes at night, you can lie down and sleep without fear or danger. "And in the mornings your fathers go off to the fields to their work, your mothers go off to theirs, you go off to yours, feeling sure that you will all come together at night again. Some of you can remember when this was not so. Your father would put his arms around you in the morning and you would never see him again; your mother kissed you, and waved her hand to you as she went out of the gate; and you never knew what became of her afterwards. "And don't you recollect how you little babes in the wilderness could never go anywhere? If you heard wild turkeys gobbling just inside the forest, or an owl hooting, or a paroquet screaming, or a fawn bleating, you were warned never to go there; it was the trick of the Indians. You could never go near a clump of high weeds, or a patch of cane, or a stump, or a fallen tree. You must not go to the sugar camp, to get a good drink, or to a salt lick for a pinch of salt, or to the field for an ear of corn, or even to the spring for a bucket of water: so that you could have neither bread nor water nor sugar nor salt. Always, always, it was the Indians. If you cried in the night, your mother came over to you and whispered 'Hush! they are coming! They will get you!' And you forgot your pain and clung to her neck and listened. "Now you are let alone, you go farther and farther away from your homes, you can play hide-and-seek in the canebrakes, you can explore the woods, you fish and you hunt, you are free for the land is safe. "And then only think, that by the time you are men and women, Kentucky will no longer be the great wilderness it still is. There will be thousands and thousands of people scattered over it; and the forest will be cut down--can you ever believe that?--cut through and through, leaving some trees here and some trees there. And the cane will be cut down: can you believe that? And instead of buffalo and wild-cats and bears and wolves and panthers there will be flocks of the whitest sheep, with little lambs frisking about on the green spring meadows. And under the big shady trees in the pastures there will be herds of red cattle, so gentle and with backs so soft and broad that you could almost stretch yourselves out and go to sleep on them, and they would never stop chewing their cuds. Only think of the hundreds of orchards with their apple-blossoms and of the big ripe, golden apples on the trees in the fall! It will be one of the quietest, gentlest lands that a people ever owned; and this is the gift of your fathers who fought for it and of your mothers who fought for it also. And you must never forget that you would never have had such fathers, had you not had such mothers to stand by them and to die with them. "This is what I have wished to teach you more than anything in your books--that you may become men and women worthy of them and of what they have left you. But while being the bravest kind of men and women, you should try also to be gentle men and gentle women. You boys must get over your rudeness and your roughness; that is all right in you now but it would be all wrong in you afterwards. And the last and the best thing I have to say to you is be good boys and grow up to be good men! That sounds very plain and common but I can wish you nothing better for there is nothing better. As for my little girls, they are good enough as they are! "I have talked a long time. God bless you everyone. I wish you long and happy lives and I hope we may meet again. And now all of you must come and shake hands with me and tell me good-bye." They started forward and swarmed toward him; only, as the foremost of them rose and hid her from sight, little Jennie, with one mighty act of defiant joy, hurled her arithmetic out of the window; and a chubby-cheeked veteran on the end of the bench produced a big red apple from between his legs and went for it with a smack of gastric rapture that made his toes curl and sent his glance to the rafters. They swarmed on him, and he folded his arms around the little ones and kissed them; the older boys, the warriors, brown and barefoot, stepping sturdily forward one by one, and holding out a strong hand that closed on his and held it, their eyes answering his sometimes with clear calm trust and fondness, sometimes lowered and full of tears; other little hands resting unconsciously on each of his shoulders, waiting for their turns. Then there were softened echoes --gay voices, dying away in one direction and another, and then--himself alone in the room--school-master no longer. He waited till there was silence, sitting in his old erect way behind his desk, the bight smile still on his face though his eyes were wet. Then, with the thought that now he was to take leave of her, he suddenly leaned forward and buried his face on his arms. _ |
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