"You don"t know what a voracious creature is?"
"No, sir."
And then came the writing exercise, when each grimy fist gripped a pen, and each red tongue rolled around a mouth in the vain effort to guide the pen. _Cramp, cramp; scratch, scratch; sputter!_ What a task it was!
The December afternoon sun struck in at the windows, and fell across the heads of the busy scholars, and as he looked, Dr. Thatcher was a boy again, and Rose and her companions were the "big girls" of the school.
He was looking at Stella, the prettiest girl in the district, the sunlight on her hair, a dream of nameless pa.s.sion in her eyes.
The little room grew wide as romance, and across the aisle seemed over vast s.p.a.ces. Girlish eyes met his like torches in the night. The dusty air, the shuffle of feet, the murmuring of lips only added to the mysterious power of the scene.
There they sat, these girls, just as in the far-off days, trying to study, and succeeding in dreaming of love songs, and vague, sweet embraces on moonlight nights, beneath limitless star-shot skies, with sound of bells in their ears, and the unspeakable glory of youth and pure pa.s.sion in their souls.
The Doctor sighed. He was hardly forty yet, but he was old in the history of disillusion and in contempt of human nature. His deep-set eyes glowed with an inward fire of remembrance.
"O pathetic little band of men and women," thought he, "my heart thrills and aches for you."
He was brought back to the present with a start by the voice of the teacher.
"Rose, you may recite now."
The girl he had been admiring came forward. As she did so he perceived her to be not more than sixteen, but she still had in her eyes the look of a dreaming woman.
"Rose Dutcher is our best scholar," smiled the teacher proudly as Rose took her seat. She looked away out of the window abstractedly as the teacher opened the huge geography and pa.s.sed it to the Doctor.
"Ask her anything you like from the first fifty-six pages." The Doctor smiled and shook his head.
"Bound the Sea of Okhotsk," commanded the teacher.
Thatcher leaned forward eagerly--her voice would tell the story!
Without looking around, with her hands in her lap, an absent look in her eyes, the girl began in a husky contralto voice: "Bounded on the north--" and went through the whole rigmarole in the same way, careless, but certain.
"What rivers would you cross in going from Moscow to Paris?"
Again the voice began and flowed on in the same measured indifferent way till the end was reached.
"Good heavens!" thought the Doctor, "they still teach that useless stuff. But how well she does it!"
After some words of praise, which the girl hardly seemed to listen to, she took her seat again.
Rose, on her part, saw another man of grace and power. She saw every detail of his dress. His dark, sensitive face, and splendid slope of his shoulders, the exquisite neatness and grace of his collar and tie and coat. But in his eyes was something that moved her, drew her. She felt something subtile there, refinement and sorrow, and emotions she could only dimly feel.
She could not keep her eyes from studying his face. She compared him with "William De Lisle," not deliberately, always unconsciously. He had nothing of the bold beauty of her ideal. This man was a scholar, and he was come out of the world beyond the Big Ridge, and besides, there was mystery and allurement in his face.
The teacher called as if commanding a regiment of cavalry. "Books.
_Ready!_" There was a riotous clatter, which ended as quickly as it begun.
_Kling!_ They all rose. _Kling!_ and the boys moved out with clumping of heavy boots and burst into the open air with wild whoopings. The girls gathered into little knots and talked, glancing furtively at the stranger. Some of them wondered if he were the County Superintendent of Schools.
Rose sat in her seat, with her chin on her clasped hands. It was a sign of her complex organization, that the effect of a new experience was rooted deep, and changes took place noiselessly, far below the surface.
"Rose, come here a moment," called the teacher, "bring your history."
"Don"t keep her from her playmates," Thatcher remonstrated.
"O she"d rather recite any time than play with the others."
Rose stood near, a lovely figure of wistful hesitation. She had been curiously unembarra.s.sed before, now she feared to do that which was so easy and so proper. At last she saw her opportunity as the teacher turned away to ring the bell.
She touched Thatcher on the arm. "Do you live in Madison, sir?"
"Yes. I am a doctor there."
She looked embarra.s.sed now and twisted her fingers.
"Is it so very hard to get into the university?"
"No. It is very easy--it would be for you," he said with a touch of unconscious gallantry of which he was ashamed the next moment, for the girl was looking away again. "Do you want to go to the university?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"Why?"
"O, because--I want to know all I can."
"Why? What do you want to do?"
"You won"t tell on me, will you?" She blushed red as a carnation now.
Strange mixture of child and woman, thought Thatcher.
"Why, certainly not."
They stood over by the blackboard; the other girls were pointing and snickering, but she did not mind them.
"I guess I won"t tell," she stammered; "you"d laugh at me like everybody else--I know you would."
He caught her arm and turned her face toward his; her eyes were full of tears.
"Tell me. I"ll help you."
His eyes glowed with a kindly smile, and she warmed under it.
"I want to write--stories--and books," she half whispered guiltily. The secret was out and she wanted to run away. The Doctor"s crucial time had come. If he laughed!--but he did not laugh. He looked thoughtful, almost sad.
"You are starting on a long, long road, Rose," he said at last. "Where it will lead to I cannot tell--n.o.body can. What put that into your head?"
Rose handed him a newspaper clipping containing a brief account of "how a Wisconsin poetess achieved fame and fortune."