Chapter 5

WINTER SCHOOL-DAYS

Soon beautiful, misty Indian summer had vanished before the stern approach of winter. The chestnut burs had all opened; the wild grapevines, clinging to fence rails along the roadside and twining in drooping profusion over the trees in wood and thicket, had long ago been robbed of their glistening, dark clusters of frost-ripened fruit. The squirrels had laid in their supply of nuts; the birds had given their last Kentucky concert of the season and had departed to fill their winter engagements in the Southland; and the forest trees waved their bare arms and bowed their heads to the wind that wailed a mournful requiem for departed summer.

By this time the wheat had been sown, and the last shock of corn gathered. The school forces were, therefore, augmented by the advent of a dozen or more larger boys and young men, eager to gain all the learning that could be compassed in the months which intervened before early spring plowing and seeding would call them again to the fields.

In the icy gray dawn of these winter days the boy whose week it was to build the schoolhouse fire, would resist the temptation to snug down again in the soft folds of the big feather bed for another trip into delicious dreamland, and would hurry from his warm nest to attend to his morning chores, so that as soon as the early breakfast was over he could hasten through the snow-covered fields to the schoolhouse. There he would pile the fagots high in the big fireplace, eager to have them blazing and crackling before the clap of the master's ferule upon his desk at eight o'clock should summon the school to its daily work.

Cane Ridge school, under the gentle yet energetic sway of Abner Dudley, presented a busy scene. The click of the soapstone pencil upon the frameless slate, the scratch of the quill pen across the bespattered copybook, the shrill tone of the solitary reader as he stood with the rest of the class "toeing the mark" before the master, or the shriller tones of the arithmetic class reciting in concert the multiplication table, kept up a pleasant discord throughout the short day. The rear guard of this army of busy workers, the rows of chubby-faced little boys in short-legged pants and long-sleeved aprons, and of rosy-cheeked little girls in linsey dresses and nankeen pantalets, sat on their slab benches, droning mechanically "a-b, ab; e-b, eb," and looked with wonder at the middle rank of this army, adding up long columns of figures or singing the long list of capitals. Those of the middle rank, in their turn, as they gave place before the master's desk to the three bright pupils of the vanguard, wondered no less to see them performing strange maneuvers called "parsing and conjugating," or battling successfully against Tare and Tret, or that still more insidious foe, Vulgar Fractions. Ahead of this vanguard, on a far-off, dizzy peak of erudition, was Betsy Gilcrest, the courageous color-bearer of the army--actually speaking in an unknown tongue called Latin, and executing surprising feats of legerdemain with that strange trio, x, y and z, who had somehow escaped from their lowly position at the tail end of the alphabet, to play unheard-of antics and to assume characters utterly bewildering.

There was not one of those fifty pupils who did not soon find a warm place in the master's heart; but, though he took care by special kindness to the others to hide his partiality, yet soon pre-eminent in his regard were the four advanced pupils, Henry and Susan Rogers, plodding, thoughtful, thorough; John Calvin Gilcrest, shrewd, retentive, independent; and Betsy Gilcrest, bright, original and ambitious.

Betsy at sixteen was a capable, well-grown girl, such as the freedom and vigor of those pioneer days produced--glowing with health, instinct with life, and of saucy independence to her finger-tips. She possessed a fund of native wit which might, perhaps, often have taken the turn of waywardness, had not her scholarly pride held her girlish love of fun and frolic somewhat in check. Kindly-natured, bright-faced Betsy, champion of the poorest and meanest, helper of the dull and backward, idol of the little children, and object of the shy and silent but sincere adoration of all the big, uncouth boys! She was an exceedingly winsome lassie, with a light, graceful figure, and a richly expressive face framed in by a wealth of clustering dark hair. The sparkling light in the great brown eyes, the saucy curve of the scarlet lips, and the dimple in the rounded cheek betokened a laughter-loving nature; while the proud poise of head, the exquisite turn of sensitive nostrils, and the firm moulding of chin indicated dignity, refinement, and force of character. In her stuff dress of dark red, her braided black silk apron with coquettish little pockets, and her trim morocco shoes, she presented a striking contrast to the linsey-clad, coarsely shod girls on each side of her at the rude writing-desk, or even to her especial chum and chosen friend, Susan Rogers, in homespun gown, cotton neckerchief and gingham apron. It was well for the young schoolmaster that his heart was fortified by its growing love for Abby Patterson, else he could not, perhaps, have withstood the charming personality of Betsy Gilcrest, and a deeper regard than would have been in keeping with their character of master and pupil might have mingled with his interest in this warm-hearted, brilliant girl.

The fashionable people from Lexington who visited at "Oaklands," the home of the Gilcrests, wondered that Major Gilcrest sent his only daughter to this backwoods school, and his wife sometimes urged that Betsy be sent to some finishing-school in Virginia, or at least to the fashionable female seminary at Lexington, or to the lately opened young ladies' college at Bourbonton. Probably, had Betsy seconded the hints of these friends and the rather languid suggestions of her mother, this might have been done; but this independent child of nature loved her home and the humble little schoolhouse by the spring; and her father, whether at the pleading of his daughter, or because of his ingrained dislike of any suggestions from outsiders, continued to send her to the little neighborhood school. In so doing he was building better than he knew; for humble as was the Cane Ridge school, there was in it an atmosphere of happiness and refinement more real than could be found amid the superficial culture, genteel primness and underlying selfishness of most of the fashionable female seminaries of that day. The young Virginian schoolmaster was teaching these boys and girls far better things than could be found in any text-books--independence of thought, reverence for learning, and love of purity and truth; and it was lessons such as these that made these Bourbon County boys and girls reverence their master and love their backwoods school.