Elia Wilkinson Peattie

“ To Carin, used to luxury and beauty and her parent’s unceasing care, it was an adventure in independence; to Azalea, accustomed to changes, to people of many sorts, to both rough and smooth living, it was one more chapter in a book destined to be filled with curious incidents. To Keefe—but let him speak for himself.
“This place,” he said, “looks to me singularly like Paradise. My own particular habitation is as damp and cold as the Mammoth Cave. My bed is done up in oilskins, and my easel is under the bed. Every stick of wood I have is drenched, and the field mice have got at my food.” ”

“ You see, there are men and women up there on Dundee mountain who don’t even know their letters, and teaching the children will be like carrying civilization to them,” said Carin earnestly, meaning very much more than she said but trusting her sympathetic friends to understand.
“It’s the very kind of work that I want to do above everything else,” declared Azalea with an earnestness no less than that of her friend. “Oh, Annie Laurie, if we go, do come with us! You’d make the best teacher of us all. You’re so firm, and you always think out beforehand what you’re going to do.” ”

“ They were very happy together, with a freedom from care that does not often come in this rather grim world. Only in the eyes of Mary Cecily Rowantree there remained that strange look of longing, of forever searching for something which she could not find. Keefe O’Connor caught it, and sympathized. Azalea saw it, and because she too had a hurt—as orphans must needs have—she too understood. Those who have a sorrow belong to a great brotherhood and know each other by secret signs. ”

“ Carin had been prepared for gratitude from the pupils; it had never occurred to her that they would come to school in a warring attitude. Moreover, for the first time she realized what a young girl Azalea still was. As her Zalie stood there on the platform, her hair rumpled by the wind, her face flushed with perplexity, her frock coming just below her shoe tops, she looked very tender and youthful indeed. But she had what Sam Disbrow would have called “the fighting stuff” in her.
“This school is for learning,” she said, “and learning has nothing to do with friend or foe. It is for all alike. ”

“ It was as if she had come into p. 133the house of her own mind; as if she had opened up the weed-choked door and crossed the threshold, discovering within fair rooms undreamed of; as if she had put the shutters back from long-closed windows and let the light stream in.
By four o’clock the rain seemed to have beaten itself out, and the wind died, too.
“Study is over!” cried Azalea at length. “Come, Paralee, get your things. Such a day! I tell you, anyone who can study as you do will make a success. Isn’t it so, Carin?”
Carin got up from her letter writing. ”

“ Annie Laurie drew a deep breath.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” sighed Carin sympathetically. “Isn’t it queer, when you come to think of it, that work had to be brought into the world? Why weren’t we made like the birds, so that we could hop around awhile, and sing awhile, and go to sleep under a nice dry leaf?”
p. 15“Well, life isn’t that way,” said Annie Laurie in the solemn tones the Paces sometimes used. “We have to work for what we get, and I’m glad we do. Life is more interesting just the way it is.” ”

“ She heard Azalea’s voice going on and on, kindly, gently, insistently; heard Paralee’s gruff answers; but the rain and the wind drowned the words. It was only when Azalea called to her that she learned of the nature of the conversation. Paralee was standing with half dried garments before the fire. She had eaten her little repast, and with her one poor hand was brushing back the hair that straggled about her face.
“Paralee,” said Azalea, “wants to be a teacher, Carin. She has to make her own living, and that is the way she means to do it.” ”

“ I was told about that by poor old Betty Bowen that time Sisson kidnapped me.”
“Oh, don’t talk about that, Azalea,” cried her friend, throwing her arms about her and kissing her on the cheek with a sort of desperate tenderness. “I can’t bear it. Oh, those nights that we didn’t know where you were!”
“I only speak of it,” said Azalea, holding her friend close to her, “because that explains why I want to make every place cheerful. I can’t stand gloom and chill and hunger—can’t stand them for myself or anyone else. And then—don’t laugh at me, Carin, please—there’s another reason. ”

“ The girls felt that if she had a happy time she wouldn’t, in the midst of it, be able to forget sorrow; and that if she were very sorrowful, she would still manage to hold on to joy. Carin said afterward that her face made her think of Ellen Terry’s. Azalea had not, of course, seen this great actress, but she, too, thought somehow of acting. As soon as Mrs. Rowantree began to talk, Azalea felt as if she were in a story book or on the stage. ”

“ We’ll teach school as we never did before. There’s only three weeks more ahead of us and we mustn’t waste a minute.”
“My goodness,” yawned Carin, prettily, “you sound like a call to arms. All right, comrade, I’m with you. Shall we wear our pink ginghams?”
“What does it matter what we wear?” demanded Azalea sternly. “We’re here to teach school. Nobody cares how we look.”
At that Carin sat up in bed bristling with protest.
“What’s come over you, Zalie?” she demanded. “Of course the children care how we look. Looking as well as we can is part of our work. You know you’ve often said so yourself. ”

“ People who get on in the world all know how to read and write.”
“Sam Simms can’t read nor write none,” said Bud, “and he’s got six mules and ten head of cattle and his own house and fields.”
Azalea flushed a little. It came back to her memory that it was a part of the delight of mountain people to catch each other tripping. They liked a tussle of wits; it was an intellectual game with them.
“Oh, well,” she said, “there’s more than one way of getting on, of course. But Mr. Simms must have been a smart man to get all those things without having reading and writing to help him. ”

“ But after a while they grew interested in the flowering mountain side and the little cabins tucked away on the shelves of the mountains. Azalea even caught a glimpse of the McBirney cabin lying so confidently on its high ledge—the cabin through whose hospitable door she had entered to find the only home she knew. ”

“ So it came to pass that Azalea, sitting on the doorstep one morning after her early breakfast, saw three heads appearing above the slope.
“Carin,” she called. “They’ve come!”
“Who? The gypsies?”
“No. The pupils. Oh, where is the key to the schoolhouse? Oh, Aunt Zillah, do I look in the least like a teacher? Come, Carin, we must go meet them.” ”

“ As they walked away Miss Zillah and her girls could hear their soft singsong voices in kindly unison.
“They’re right sweet folks,” Miss Zillah declared, sighing unaccountably. “At first they did seem queer to me, but now I’ve grown to be as fond of them as if they were old neighbors. They’re a good example of a happy married pair, too. I don’t know as I ever heard them really disagree about a thing; and though those medicine bottles must be a terrible trial to Mr. McEvoy, he never says a word about them, except, of course, to tease Mis’ Cassie a little now and then.” ”

“ This time, Aunt Zillah and Carin rode together, and Azalea’s pony tried in vain to keep pace with Keefe’s raw-boned horse. Keefe had much to say of the day.
“I was very happy the little time I stayed there at Rowantree Hall,” he said. “I understood their ways—understood the things they do and the things they don’t do—and what’s more I perfectly understand why they don’t do them. Rowantree himself amuses me, yet I’m fond of him. Mrs. Rowantree—well, she’s a little miracle.”
“Oh, she is,” cried Azalea. “How she works—and doesn’t mind. What ducks the children are! ”

“ Mr. Thompson was leaving matters for the present in Miss Zillah’s hands. Keefe and the girls were silent with pity. Never had they imagined anything so hopeless as the look on the faces of that man and woman.
“You’ll think of a dozen reasons why you can’t do this or that,” went on Miss Zillah, “but I feel that every one of them can be overcome.”
Paralee had drawn nearer to her mother, and her dark eyes shone like points of fire there in the gloom of the cabin.
“Say yes, ma,” she whispered. “Say yes! We’ll all die here like snakes in our holes, if you don’t.”
Mrs. Panther turned on her. ”

“ One day Azalea caught a glimpse of a face at the window, and after school Dibblee Sikes told her that it was Skully Simms.
“He’s jest pestered to know what we-all are doing,” he said. “But he’s skeered of Bud.”
“I might ride down and see him,” said Azalea. “Perhaps I could coax him to come.”
“Then if he got in bad with Bud and there was blood-shedding,” said Dibblee wisely, “you’d be taking blame to yourself. It might break up the school, ma’am. That would do harm to the whole lot of us. Folks around here don’t believe in stirring up the Coulters and Simms.” ”

“ Azalea p. 165said she believed that it was the only mountain she ever had seen which she did not care for. The road was so bad that it was impossible for a wagon to pass over it; and even the horses had trouble making their way. Only Paralee, grown up in that tangle, knew how to thread it with ease. It was one of the few things which she did know well, and as she went on, showing no sign of weariness, her awkwardness and shyness began to drop from her. She was on her own ground—the ground where she and her people had fought their lonely fight for life ”

“ She was not a married woman. Her name was Harriet Foster, and the name tells what she was like, simple and straightforward and practical. She had lost all of her family and was tired of living alone. She had been looking for some time for a child to help fill her life, and when she saw me, she seemed satisfied. I was satisfied, too, and not at all afraid of her even at first.”
“Won’t you rest awhile now, Keefe?” broke in Azalea, trying desperately to do her duty. Keefe looked at the parted lips and shining eyes which betrayed her breathless inquisitiveness, and shook his head. ”

“ Azalea and Carin opened their eyes upon a rain-smitten landscape, and down the chimney blew a damp wind. It made a failure of breakfast, for the kitchen stove absolutely refused to draw, and it sent the girls out finally in a pelting shower.
“You are foolish to go,” Miss Zillah told them, really quite out of patience with them for the first time. “There will be no pupils at the school to-day. You might much better stay at home and keep dry. I can’t think that your parents would approve of your going out in such a storm.” ”

“ They waste human lives and human happiness. They make enemies out of folks that had ought to be friends, and they leave little children orphans and make our people the laughing stock of the world.
“For my part, I don’t wonder that the world laughs at them. I laugh at them too. They’re so behind the times—they’re so foolish—so like the wild animals out there in the mountain. They don’t seem to realize what it is to be men and to stand up fair and square, taking life and rejoicing, and letting other men take it and rejoice. ”

“ Even in the dusk Miss Zillah’s head could be seen shaking emphatically.
“Well,” she said, “if you’re an old-fashioned man, Mr. Rowantree, I suppose I’m what could be called an old-fashioned woman. But this I will say: I believe in women using their powers, and I think a woman of intelligence and health has the ability to look after her home and do something else besides. Azalea may marry or she may not, but in any event I hope she’ll use her influence and some of her best thought in behalf of these poor people ’round about us. ”

“ It isn’t normal for him to be stupid. He’s up to something, you’ll see.”
But as the “last day,” hot, with gay clouds, came, and the pupils appeared an hour too early, and the Rowantree’s old surrey swung from the thick shade of the old wood road, all indicating that the hour was at hand, Carin began to have her doubts. For once in the history of the world, her parents were going to be stupid and sensible and economical! They were going to act like other people! She was horribly disappointed in them, and kept very busy so as not to be alone with Azalea and let her see how disappointed she was. ”

“ Rowantree went on.
“What’s more, she’s getting something that she’ll not want to keep to herself. That’s the way with folk who learn. They want to pass their knowledge on. She’ll be passing it to her children and they’ll come up in the world. You can’t tell anything about how far they’ll come up. They may get to be the best known and most useful men and women in the state. They say children take from their mother, and your children have a good mother, Mr. McIntosh. She’s a woman with a clear, sensible mind, who wants to lift herself up out of poverty and ignorance. ”

“ Music has laws. They are laws that run through everything that’s good and true—they run through the things you’re studying there in your books and they run through Nature too. They come from God and if we study them right they help us to know that we’re God’s children.
“I’ve had to study it all out for myself, but I know what I know. And the grandest thing I know is that every man has an equal right to his life, to his liberty and to his learning. ”

“ Queerness often means unhappiness, that’s what I’ve discovered. If you girls succeed in doing what you came up to do and help these poor people out of some of their troubles and drawbacks, perhaps they won’t be so queer.”
The evenings at home—they called the cottage “home” now and had named it the “Oriole’s Nest”—were very restful and delightful. If Carin went to bed, she did so on the couch in the sitting room, so that she might be with the others. Sometimes Aunt Zillah sewed—always for Annie Laurie—and sometimes she read aloud. Azalea had some crocheting with which she busied herself. ”

“ No one had anything to eat, for all had counted on reaching their destination by supper time, so that sundown saw a group of hungry people with only Miss Zillah Pace’s generous supply of cookies to comfort them. ”

“ From his tone one would have expected the children to enter accompanied by at least a governess and a nurse, but it was the little proud mother herself who brought in Gerald—“my eldest son, Miss Pace,”—and Moira and Michael—“my darling twins, young ladies,”—and led by the hand that wise young person, Constance, who flew like a bird to Azalea’s arms.
“She’s like myself,” said Mrs. Rowantree, “fierce in her affections.”
Azalea laughed. “Oh, so am I,” she said. “Mr. McBirney, my adopted father, always tells me that. He wants me to be calm, but I can’t stay calm.” ”

“ Carin was wild to join him, but the truth was that those first few days of teaching drained every drop of strength in her, and Azalea and Aunt Zillah hurried her into her bed immediately after supper.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” she complained to Aunt Zillah, half laughing and half in earnest, “if it wasn’t for that dreadful Paralee Panther. She seems like a bad dream; the only trouble is I can’t wake up. I’d like to think I had imagined her. But she is real and needs us more, I suspect, than anybody else in the school.”
“She’s always frowning and watching,” Azalea added. ”