CHAPTER I.

Everybody spoke of it as an "old-field school"; but the only field in sight was one hundred acres in extent and always under cultivation. On the early October morning with which my story begins it was tender green with fall wheat growing fast under the warm Virginia sunshine. A "worm-fence" of rails separated it from the copse of sassafras and chinquapin bushes and scrub-oaks, beyond which was the clearing lying about the school-house door. Many generations of scholars had trampled this area into dust that had not put forth a blade of grass in the month's vacation just ended. But for two tough-lived aspens planted close to the steps of the small building there was not a sign of vegetation nearer to it than the belt of brushwood. The school-house was built of hewn logs, chinked with bits of wood half as long and twice as thick as a shingle. The spaces between these billets were filled in with mortar in which there was much red clay and little lime. Sun, rain, and wind had bleached the mortar to a dirty pink and darkened the logs to grayish-black. Upon two sides of the one-roomed building were windows running horizontally two-thirds of the way across the walls, and but one pane deep. A log had been sawed out, and a single long sash fitted into the space thus left. The sash hung from hinges made fast to the log above it, and when closed was hooked down to hasps set in the lower log. The inner walls and ceiling were plastered with the warmly colored mortar used in filling up the chinks. As far up as a boy could reach by standing upon a bench the mottled surface was covered with pencillings and charcoal scrawls. There was but one movable desk; that stood at the head of the room. It had a hinged cover with a padlock attached to it, and a wooden arm-chair was beside it. The rest of the room was furnished with backless benches of unpainted pine mellow-brown with age, a big stove at the right of the teacher's chair, and a row of tall stools ranged in front of a sloping shelf made fast to the wall behind the desk. Upon these the scholars sat when they had their writing-lessons.

A locust--"a dry-weather fly," the people thereabouts called it--had perched on the sill of the sunniest window, and sang shrilly. But for his chirp the room was very still until two men pushed back the door and strolled up the aisle. Their steps started up queer echoes, like whispers and titters, that chased one another from one corner to another; the locust stopped singing.

"Mrs. Duncombe sent a couple of women over yesterday to sweep and scrub," said the elder of the men. "It all looks fairly decent, I think."

He seated himself upon the teacher's desk, swinging one leg over a corner of it, the other foot upon the floor, and looked around the room, a smile half-humorous, half-pensive showing his white teeth and lighting up his eyes. He had a noble face; his age may have been fifty; his hair was iron-gray. As from the force of early habit he had pulled off his hat at the door, and now held it in his left hand, while with his right he tapped his boot with his riding-whip. This was Major Duncombe, of Greenfield, a fine specimen of the Virginia planter of 1840.

"All the learning I carried with me to college was flogged into me here," he went on, musingly. "Old Byars Lowton reigned supreme from this desk then. I have heard my father say that when Byars applied for the place, Colonel Barton, of Hurley, my nearest neighbor, said to him, 'Young gentleman, you are young and inexperienced. We should like to know something of your proposed principles of government. How do you mean to manage your school?' 'By switch and suasion, sir,' said Byars; '_specially switch_.' The speech got him a berth he held for forty years, and in all that time his hand never lost its cunning"--laughing good-humoredly.

His companion had thrown himself into the wooden arm-chair, and while listening to the Major made good use of his eyes in scrutinizing room and contents. He smiled at the concluding sentence, a smile that curved his mouth upward and drew his brows together, deepening a crease which was always between them. "We shall not disagree there, I reckon," he said. "Martinet practice in the school-room is the wisest in the long-run."

He had a way of jerking out his words that agreed with the impression his face and frown made upon a girl who sat upon the floor in a far corner of the room, with a book upon her knees. She had made a nook for herself by setting one bench upon the top of another, and, herself unseen in the shadow, surveyed the two men through the space left between the benches. She knew one well, and the other was undoubtedly the new teacher who was to take charge of the school the next Monday. Her father had said the day before that he was at Greenfield. He had been in college with young Mr. Duncombe, and the families were old friends.

He was shorter than the Major by half a head, and slight in build. His head was large in proportion to the rest of the body; his forehead broad and thatched with straight straw-colored hair; his eyes were large, and a queer faint blue in color. When he spoke he pursed up his mouth and wagged his head slightly from side to side; in walking he swung his arms and held his head high. Like the instructor of the "switch and suasion" story, he looked very young, not over two-and-twenty.

Unaware of the disapproving gaze of the mouselike eyes, the new-comer resumed, "I was brought up in the old way myself, and see no reason to depart from it."

The Major's eyes ran over the slight figure and twinkled roguishly. "There will be some strapping fellows--pretty hard cases too--in the school, who might not be easy to drive," he said. "They are tolerably good boys in the main, if taken in the right way, with no more spirit than one likes to see in lads of their age. You'll have no trouble with the girls."

"I'm not so sure of that. They need flogging as much as their brothers, sometimes more, and take advantage of the public sentiment that shields them. As it does everywhere."

"I should hope so indeed!" answered the Major, promptly. "I have never laid the weight of a finger upon one of my daughters. My boys"--the twinkle returning to his eyes--"will tell you that I have licked them out of their boots times without number. That is the reason they are so well grown. Their sinews are strengthened and lengthened by exercise. Eh? What is it?"

The stranger had started up and pointed to the distant corner. "Who is that over there? Somebody has been eavesdropping!"

Before the terrified girl could scramble to her feet the two men were looking down at her over the uppermost bench.

"Why! why! why!" uttered the Major. "Flea, is it you? What are you skulking in the corner for like an old hare in a hollow? Don't look so scared, child! We are not hunting you."

She was pulling herself up. She had been sitting with one foot doubled under her, and it had gone to sleep. She dropped a courtesy, first to the Major, then to his companion.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I didn't s'pose anybody would be here. I've often been here before. To read all alone, you know. Mother doesn't mind."

"What book is that?--the Bible?"

"No, sir; Shakespeare."

"So-ho-o!" The Major reached a long arm over the upper bench and brought up a large book that had lost the outer covers, the fly-leaves, and the title-page. "Where did this come from?"

"Father bought it at Mr. Harrison's sale, year before last. One back was off, and he said I might have it."

"And you've read the other back off since? How far have you got in it?"

"I've been through it twice and a half times."

"Twice and a half times, eh?"--with a whistle. "How old are you, may I ask?"

"Twelve and a half, sir."

"You are fond of fractions, it seems. Flea, this is Mr. Tayloe, who is going to teach you something besides Shakespeare next week. You saw Mr. Grigsby this morning, Mr. Tayloe. This young lady who has read Shakespeare twice and a half times and is twelve and a half years old is his daughter."

The girl courtesied again; Mr. Tayloe nodded and pursed up his mouth. The Major resumed his kindly raillery, dipping at random into the dogeared book with the look and touch of one familiar with its contents.

"What have you been reading to-day, my fractional damsel?"

"King Henry Fifth, sir."

"Whose son was he?"

"King Henry Fourth's, sir."

The girl was now quite at home with him and her subject. Her sallow face warmed and dimpled with enjoyment of the mock examination. She stood erect, her arms crossed upon the upper bench, her eyes dancing with amusement.

"Let me see. He was a nice, steady, well-behaved young fellow?"

"Very nice, sir, but he wasn't a bit steady. He was right wild before he got to be King. After that he was _splendid_."

"Humph! Didn't he steal the crown from the old gentleman's head before the breath was out of his body? I don't call that nice behavior."

"Because he thought his father was dead," cried the girl, forgetting jest and herself in defence of her hero. "If he had been dead, the crown would have belonged to his son. When Prince Henry found out that his father was only in a faint and was coming to, don't you remember how he knelt down and begged pardon, and said,

'There is your crown, And He that wears the crown eternally--'

That meant God, you know,

'Long guard it yours?'

It wouldn't be fair to lay _that_ up against him, sir."

The Major laid the book gently upon the bench, sighing as he did it. "You are right, my child," he said, in an altered tone. "An older book than Shakespeare says, 'Remember not the sins of my youth.' We won't be hard upon your dear Prince Hal. Your father tells me he is going to send three of you to school."

"Yes, sir. Bea and Dee and me."

"_What!_" ejaculated Mr. Tayloe, with a short, sharp laugh. He had not spoken during the Shakespearean talk, but fidgeted about the aisle, inspecting the notches and initials cut in the benches, and frowning at the inscriptions upon the walls. "And you called her 'Flea,' didn't you?" he continued. "I never heard anything more ridiculous. Haven't they Christian names?"

"Very Christian, I believe," answered the Major, invincibly good-natured. "At least I can answer for Dee, who was christened 'David.' I was his godfather. And your name, Flea, is--"

"Felicia, sir," said the girl, as he hesitated, "and my sister's is Beatrice."

Mr. Tayloe's laugh was almost a vulgar sniff, and he walked to the door, as if impatient to be gone.

"Well, good-morning to you," said the Major to Flea. "We won't interrupt your reading any longer. Mr. Tayloe is very much gratified to know that he will have such an intelligent and industrious scholar. You will be a comfort and a pride to him."

"Possibly Mr. Tayloe may take a different view of the case," observed that gentleman, as they mounted the horses they had left tied to the aspen-trees. "I am afraid that young person will have to forget a great deal before she can learn anything. She is puffed up with the notion that she is a prodigy. I would wager my head that she suspected we would go to the school-house to-day, and planned to be found there with her Shakespeare. But what could one expect from the child of a father who turns an eleven-year-old girl loose in Shakespeare, and a mother who has her daughters christened Felicia and Beatrice, and nicknames them Flea and Bea?"

"Oh, come, now! you are hard upon my worthy overseer and his wife," rejoined the Major, diverted by the teacher's indignation. "They are excellent folks who mind their own business, attend church regularly, and mean to have their children well educated. Grigsby is a man of remarkable intelligence for his position--a great reader and a clear thinker. As to the nicknames, it is a trick of this region to deck up children in fancy names, and then, as if they were ashamed of the sentimentality, to make the high-sounding titles ridiculous by nicking and contorting them. The more absurd the nickname the tighter it sticks."

Mr. Tayloe made no immediate answer. They had left the copse flanking the school-house play-ground, and were pacing between the banks of a sunken red-clay road, topped by pines, when he broke the silence:

"The old-field school is a horrible leveller of social distinctions. Where else would your children and Mr. Barton's meet, as equals, those of an illiterate overseer? These things must be right in a so-called republic, but I confess they go against the grain with me."

"They dry straight," said the Major, oracularly. "If the planter's children cannot keep abreast, if not ahead, of the overseer's, they must fall behind in the race. In this country every man ought to have a fair chance."

When the sound of hoofs and voices died away upon her ears, Flea Grigsby pushed aside her barricade and came out of her hiding-place. Her fear in building it was that some mischievous boy or passing negro might peep in at the school-house door and disturb her reading and thinking.

Now that she had left her shadowy nook, it could be seen that she was tall for her age, thin, and dark. She had out-grown her frock of mixed blue homespun--"Virginia cloth," as it was called. Children then wore their skirts down to their heels. Flea's had been let down three times, each letting-down registering itself in a band of unfaded stuff, yet the hem left exposed a pair of slim ankles and bare brown feet. She had shoes and stockings at home for Sunday and holiday wear, and her mother had notified her yesterday that she was "getting too old to go to school barefoot." At home she and three younger children ran upon naked soles (except on Sundays) from the 1st of May to the 1st of November, and revelled in their freedom from cramping shoes.

Her cheeks were burning and her heart was thumping with vainglorious delight, such as she had never felt before. Major Duncombe--"the illustrious Major Duncombe," as she called him in her quaint bookish way--had pronounced her "industrious and intelligent." She hoped that he would say it at his own supper-table that evening, and that her dear Miss Em'ly would hear it. She could fancy how Miss Em'ly's eyes would flash and her pretty mouth smile at praises of the scholar who "just adored her."

Long afterward Flea recalled and thought it strange, in view of what happened in later months, that she should have thought so much of Miss Em'ly that October afternoon when she sat dreaming happily upon the log door-step of the school-house, the hundred-acre field of wheat at her right stretching away almost to the river, and before her, beyond the play-ground and belt of brushwood, the dark forest, in the depths of which she felt almost as much at home as in her father's house.

The day was unseasonably warm, and in the sultry stillness the dry-weather flies were fiercely defying the threats of a cloud that was rising from the west to swallow up the sun. The log door-step was quite hot to the girl's bare feet. The leaves of the scrub-oaks were red-brown, and those of the sumac scarlet, although there had been no frost as yet, and the colors dulled as the sunshine left them. The aspen leaves lay back against their stems, exposing their white linings. Every breath of air was hushed, as if the unrolling cloud were a gray blanket and suffocating the earth.

Presently a low growl of thunder seemed, as it passed, to deaden the calm.

"We are going to have a shower," Flea said, aloud, looking up.

She did not budge. She could not get home before the rain, and she was extremely comfortable where she was. Wrapping her bare arms about her knees--another of her "ways"--she hugged herself and her fancies, caring nothing for heat or threatening storm. From babyhood she had created a world of her own, and lived in it at least half of the time. She called this dreaming, for the lack of a better term, "playing ladies." Nobody else knew of the play, much less of the "ladies" in it. She believed that she had invented it, and in it she always took the chief part.

In her present day-dream Major Duncombe was a conspicuous actor, and the school-room was the stage. Under the new teacher prizes would be offered, and she would win them all. She had read of such things, and of examination day. She would coax her mother into giving her a new Swiss muslin frock--not an old one of Bea's. She had never had a really new Sunday frock of her very own. Bea grew as fast as she, and could not be outstripped. The frock would have a full "baby waist," low in the neck, and short-sleeved. There must be a pink ribbon sash with fringed ends. And perhaps her mother might buy for her a pair of India-cotton stockings, and slippers with rosettes upon them. At the imagination she hugged her knees the harder. She did not own a pair of "bought" stockings. Bea had but two pairs, and wore them upon grand occasions.

Thus dressed, she would leave her modest seat in the school-room and walk up the aisle when Major Duncombe, in his finest manner, called up "Miss Felicia Grigsby" to receive, first one, then another of the prizes offered for--say, reading, writing, history--and there ought to be a fourth. Four were none too many. Oh, for Shakespeare, of course! When all had been given, the Major would make a speech.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he would say, in his deep round voice, "as our revered preceptor will bear me witness" (here he would bow to Mr. Tayloe, who would bow and smile), "I told him six months ago that our fair young friend here would prove herself the most intelligent and industrious of his pupils. He is proud of her, ladies and gentlemen, and you and I, and indeed everybody in this county is--(or would 'are' sound better?)--justly proud of our distinguished citizen, Miss Felicia Jean Grigsby."

Then she would courtesy very low and gracefully, and say, in a voice mellow with emotion (another bookish phrase she had picked up), "You do me too much honor, I assure you, sir."

A tremendous roar of thunder awoke her. At the ripping and rending of the laden clouds the rain rushed down in a volume, washing out the view of everything in the landscape except the nearest bushes and the aspen-trees.