The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

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When Mr. Bernard showed himself at meeting, on the first Sunday after
his arrival, it may be supposed that a good many eyes were turned upon
the young schoolmaster. There was something heroic in his coming forward
so readily to take a place which called for a strong hand, and a prompt,
steady will to guide it. In fact, his position was that of a military
chieftain on the eve of a battle. Everybody knew everything in Pigwacket
Centre; and it was an understood thing that the young rebels meant to
put down the new master, if they could. It was natural that the two
prettiest girls in the village, called in the local dialect, as nearly
as our limited alphabet will represent it, Alminy Cutterr, and Arvilly
Braowne, should feel and express an interest in the good-looking
stranger, and that, when their flattering comments were repeated in the
hearing of their indigenous admirers, among whom were some of the older
"boys" of the school, it should not add to the amiable dispositions of
the turbulent youth.

Monday came, and the new schoolmaster was in his chair at the upper end
of the schoolhouse, on the raised platform. The rustics looked at his
handsome face, thoughtful, peaceful, pleasant, cheerful, but sharply cut
round the lips and proudly lighted about the eyes. The ringleader of the
mischief-makers, the young butcher who has before figured in this
narrative, looked at him stealthily, whenever he got a chance to study
him unobserved; for the truth was, he felt uncomfortable, whenever he
found the large, dark eyes fixed on his own little, sharp, deep-set,
gray ones. But he found means to study him pretty well,--first his face,
then his neck and shoulders, the set of his arms, the narrowing at the
loins, the make of his legs, and the way he moved. In short, he examined
him as he would have examined a steer, to see what he could do and how
he would cut up. If he could only have gone to him and felt of his
muscles, he would have been entirely satisfied. He was not a very wise
youth, but he did know well enough, that, though big arms and legs are
very good things, there is something besides size that goes to make a
man; and he had heard stories of a fighting-man, called "The Spider,"
from his attenuated proportions, who was yet a terrible hitter in the
ring, and had whipped many a big-limbed fellow in and out of the roped
arena.

Nothing could be smoother than the way in which everything went on for
the first day or two. The new master was so kind and courteous, he
seemed to take everything in such a natural, easy way, that there was no
chance to pick a quarrel with him. He in the mean time thought it best
to watch the boys and young men for a day or two with as little show of
authority as possible. It was easy enough to see that he would have
occasion for it before long.

The schoolhouse was a grim, old, red, one-story building, perched on a
bare rock at the top of a hill,--partly because this was a conspicuous
site for the temple of learning, and partly because land is cheap where
there is no chance even for rye or buckwheat, and the very sheep find
nothing to nibble. About the little porch were carved initials and
dates, at various heights, from the stature of nine to that of eighteen.
Inside were old unpainted desks,--unpainted, but browned with the umber
of human contact,--and hacked by innumerable jackknives. It was long
since the walls had been whitewashed, as might be conjectured by the
various traces left upon them, wherever idle hands or sleepy heads could
reach them. A curious appearance was noticeable on various higher parts
of the wall, namely, a wart-like eruption, as one would be tempted to
call it, being in reality a crop of the soft missiles before mentioned,
which, adhering in considerable numbers, and hardening after the usual
fashion of _papier mache_, formed at last permanent ornaments of the
edifice.

The young master's quick eye soon noticed that a particular part of the
wall was most favored with these ornamental appendages. Their position
pointed sufficiently clearly to the part of the room they came from. In
fact, there was a nest of young mutineers just there, which must be
broken up by a _coup d'etat_. This was easily effected by redistributing
the seats and arranging the scholars according to classes, so that a
mischievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious imponderable, should
find himself between two non-conductors, in the shape of small boys of
studious habits. It was managed quietly enough, in such a plausible sort
of way that its motive was not thought of. But its effects were soon
felt; and then began a system of correspondence by signs, and the
throwing of little scrawls done up in pellets, and announced by
preliminary _a'h'ms!_ to call the attention of the distant youth
addressed. Some of these were incendiary documents, devoting the
schoolmaster to the lower divinities, as "a ---- stuck-up dandy," as "a
---- purse-proud aristocrat," as "a ---- sight too big for his, etc.,"
and holding him up in a variety of equally forcible phrases to the
indignation of the youthful community of School District No. 1,
Pigwacket Centre.

Presently the draughtsman of the school set a caricature in circulation,
labelled, to prevent mistakes, with the schoolmaster's name. An immense
bell-crowned hat, and a long, pointed, swallow-tailed coat showed that
the artist had in his mind the conventional dandy, as shown in prints of
thirty or forty years ago, rather than any actual human aspect of the
time. But it was passed round among the boys and made its laugh, helping
of course to undermine the master's authority, as "Punch" or the
"Charivari" takes the dignity out of an obnoxious minister. One morning,
on going to the schoolroom, Master Langdon found an enlarged copy of
this sketch, with its label, pinned on the door. He took it down, smiled
a little, put it into his pocket, and entered the schoolroom. An
insidious silence prevailed, which looked as if some plot were brewing.
The boys were ripe for mischief, but afraid. They had really no fault to
find with the master, except that he was dressed like a gentleman, which
a certain class of fellows always consider a personal insult to
themselves. But the older ones were evidently plotting, and more than
once the warning _a'h'm!_ was heard, and a dirty little scrap of paper
rolled into a wad shot from one seat to another. One of these happened
to strike the stove-funnel, and lodged on the master's desk. He was cool
enough not to seem to notice it. He secured it, however, and found an
opportunity to look at it, without being observed by the boys. It
required no _immediate_ notice.

He who should have enjoyed the privilege of looking upon Mr. Bernard
Langdon the next morning, when his toilet was about half finished, would
have had a very pleasant gratuitous exhibition. First he buckled the
strap of his trousers pretty tightly. Then he took up a pair of heavy
dumb-bells, and swung them for a few minutes; then two great "Indian
clubs," with which he enacted all sorts of impossible-looking feats. His
limbs were not very large, nor his shoulders remarkably broad; but if
you knew as much of the muscles as all persons who look at statues and
pictures with a critical eye ought to have learned,--if you knew the
_trapezius_, lying diamond-shaped over the back and shoulders like a
monk's cowl,--or the _deltoid_, which caps the shoulders like an
epaulette,--or the _triceps_, which furnishes the _calf_ of the upper
arm,--or the hard-knotted _biceps_,--any of the great sculptural
landmarks, in fact,--you would have said there was a pretty show of
them, beneath the white satiny skin of Mr. Bernard Langdon. And if you
had seen him, when he had laid down the Indian clubs, catch hold of a
leather strap that hung from the beam of the old-fashioned ceiling, and
lift and lower himself over and over again by his left hand alone, you
might have thought it a very simple and easy thing to do, until you
tried to do it yourself.--Mr. Bernard looked at himself with the eye of
an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;--"not so much fallen off as I
expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of way, and
delivered two or three blows straight as rulers and swift as winks.
"That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to make a certainty of
his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the drawers in his old
veneered bureau. First he squeezed it with his two hands. Then he placed
it on the floor and lifted, steadily, strongly. The springs creaked and
cracked; the index swept with a great stride far up into the high
figures of the scale; it was a good lift. He was satisfied. He sat down
on the edge of his bed and looked at his cleanly-shaped arms. "If I
strike one of those boobies, I am afraid I shall spoil him," he said.
Yet this young man, when weighed with his class at the college, could
barely turn one hundred and forty-two pounds in the scale,--not a heavy
weight, surely; but some of the middle weights, as the present English
champion, for instance, seem to be of a far finer quality of muscle than
the bulkier fellows.

The master took his breakfast with a good appetite that morning, but was
perhaps rather more quiet than usual. After breakfast he went up-stairs
and put on a light loose frock, instead of his usual dress-coat, which
was a close-fitting and rather stylish one. On his way to school he met
Alminy Cutterr, who happened to be walking in the other direction. "Good
morning, Miss Cutterr," he said; for she and another young lady had been
introduced to him, on a former occasion, in the usual phrase of polite
society in presenting ladies to gentlemen,--"Mr. Langdon, let me make y'
acquainted with Miss Cutterr;--let me make y' acquainted with Miss
Braowne." So he said, "Good morning"; to which she replied, "Good
mornin', Mr. Langdon. Haow's your haaelth?" The answer to this question
ought naturally to have been the end of the talk; but Alminy Cutterr
lingered and looked as if she had something more on her mind.

A young fellow does not require a great experience to read a simple
country-girl's face as if it were a signboard. Alminy was a good soul,
with red cheeks and bright eyes, kind-hearted as she could be, and it
was out of the question for her to hide her thoughts or feelings like a
fine lady. Her bright eyes were moist and her red cheeks paler than
their wont, as she said, with her lips quivering,--"Oh, Mr. Langdon,
them boys'll be the death of ye, if ye don't take caaer!"

"Why, what's the matter, my dear?" said Mr. Bernard.--Don't think there
was anything very odd in that "my dear," at the second interview with a
village belle;--some of those woman-tamers call a girl "My dear," after
five minutes' acquaintance, and it sounds all right _as they say it_.
But you had better not try it at a venture.

It sounded all right to Alminy, as Mr. Bernard said it.--"I'll tell ye
what's the mahtterr," she said, in a frightened voice. "Ahbner's go'n'
to car' his dog, 'n' he'll set him on ye 'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive. 'T's
the same cretur that haaef eat up Eben Squires's little Jo, a year
come nex' Faaestday."

Now this last statement was undoubtedly overcolored; as little Jo
Squires was running about the village,--with an ugly scar on his arm, it
is true, where the beast had caught him with his teeth, on the occasion
of the child's taking liberties with him, as he had been accustomed to
do with a good-tempered Newfoundland dog, who seemed to like being
pulled and hauled round by children. After this the creature was
commonly muzzled, and, as he was fed on raw meat chiefly, was always
ready for a fight,--which he was occasionally indulged in, when anything
stout enough to match him could be found in any of the neighboring
villages.

Tiger, or, more briefly, Tige, the property of Abner Briggs, Junior,
belonged to a species not distinctly named in scientific books, but well
known to our country-folks under the name "Yallah dog." They do not use
this expression as they would say _black_ dog or _white_ dog, but with
almost as definite a meaning as when they speak of a terrier or a
spaniel. A "yallah dog" is a large canine brute, of a dingy old-flannel
color, of no particular breed except his own, who hangs round a tavern
or a butcher's shop, or trots alongside of a team, looking as if he were
disgusted with the world, and the world with him. Our inland population,
while they tolerate him, speak of him with contempt. Old ----, of
Meredith Bridge, used to twit the sun for not shining on cloudy days,
swearing, that, if he hung up his "yallah dog," he would make a better
show of daylight. A country fellow, abusing a horse of his neighbor's,
vowed, that, "if he had such a hoss, he'd swap him for a 'yallah
dog,'--and then shoot the dog."

Tige was an ill-conditioned brute by nature, and art had not improved
him by cropping his ears and tail and investing him with a spiked
collar. He bore on his person, also, various not ornamental scars, marks
of old battles; for Tige had fight in him, as was said before, and as
might be guessed by a certain bluntness about the muzzle, with a
projection of the lower jaw, which looked as if there might be a
bull-dog stripe among the numerous bar-sinisters of his lineage.

It was hardly fair, however, to leave Alminy Cutterr waiting while this
piece of natural history was telling.--As she spoke of little Jo, who
had been "haaef eat up" by Tige, she could not contain her sympathies,
and began to cry.

"Why, my dear little soul," said Mr. Bernard, "what are you worried
about? I used to play with a _bear_ when I was a boy; and the bear used
to hug me, and I used to kiss him,----so!"

It was too bad of Mr. Bernard, only the second time he had seen Alminy;
but her kind feelings had touched him, and that seemed the most natural
way of expressing his gratitude. Alminy looked round to see if anybody
was near; she saw nobody, so of course it would do no good to "holler."
She saw nobody; but a stout young fellow, leading a yellow dog, muzzled,
saw _her_ through a crack in a picked fence, not a great way off the
road. Many a year he had been "hangin' 'raoun'" Alminy, and never did he
see any encouraging look, or hear any "Behave, naow!" or "Come, naow,
a'n't ye 'shamed?" or other forbidding phrase of acquiescence, such as
village belles understand as well as ever did the nymph who fled to the
willows in the eclogue we all remember.

No wonder he was furious, when he saw the schoolmaster, who had never
seen the girl until within a week, touching with his lips those rosy
cheeks which he had never dared to approach. But that was all; it was a
sudden impulse; and the master turned away from the young girl,
laughing, and telling her not to fret herself about him,--he would take
care of himself.

So Master Langdon walked on toward his schoolhouse, not displeased,
perhaps, with his little adventure, nor immensely elated by it; for he
was one of the natural class of the sex-subduers, and had had many a
smile without asking, which had been denied to the feeble youth who try
to win favor by pleading their passion in rhyme, and even to the more
formidable approaches of young officers in volunteer companies,
considered by many to be quite irresistible to the fair who have once
beheld them from their windows in the epaulettes and plumes and sashes
of the "Pigwacket Invincibles," or the "Hackmatack Rangers."

Master Langdon took his seat and began the exercises of his school. The
smaller boys recited their lessons well enough, but some of the larger
ones were negligent and surly. He noticed one or two of them looking
toward the door, as if expecting somebody or something in that
direction. At half past nine o'clock, Abner Briggs, Junior, who had not
yet shown himself, made his appearance. He was followed by his "yallah
dog," without his muzzle, who squatted down very grimly near the door,
and gave a wolfish look round the room, as if he were considering which
was the plumpest boy to begin with. The young butcher, meanwhile, went
to his seat, looking somewhat flushed, except round the lips, which were
hardly as red as common, and set pretty sharply.

"Put out that dog, Abner Briggs!"--The master spoke as the captain
speaks to the helmsman, when there are rocks foaming at the lips, right
under his lee.

Abner Briggs answered as the helmsman answers, when he knows he has a
mutinous crew round him that mean to run the ship on the reef, and is
one of the mutineers himself. "Put him aout y'rself, 'f ye a'n't afeard
on him!"

The master stepped into the aisle. The great cur showed his teeth,--and
the devilish instincts of his old wolf-ancestry looked out of his eyes,
and flashed from his sharp tusks, and yawned in his wide mouth and deep
red gullet.

The movements of animals are so much quicker than those of human beings
commonly are, that they avoid blows as easily as one of us steps out of
the way of an ox-cart. It must be a very stupid dog that lets himself be
run over by a fast driver in his gig; he can jump out of the wheel's way
after the tire has already touched him. So, while one is lifting a stick
to strike or drawing back his foot to kick, the beast makes his spring,
and the blow or the kick comes too late.

It was not so this time. The master was a fencer, and something of a
boxer; he had played at single-stick, and was used to watching an
adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory
symptoms by which unpractised persons show long beforehand what mischief
they meditate.

"Out with you!" he said, fiercely,--and explained what he meant by a
sudden flash of his foot that clashed the yellow dog's white teeth
together like the springing of a bear-trap. The cur knew he had found
his master at the first word and glance, as low animals on four legs, or
a smaller number, always do; and the blow took him so by surprise, that
it curled him up in an instant, and he went bundling out of the open
schoolhouse-door with a most pitiable yelp, and his stump of a tail shut
down as close as his owner ever shut the short, stubbed blade of his
jacknife.

It was time for the other cur to find who his master was.

"Follow your dog, Abner Briggs!" said Master Langdon.

The stout butcher-youth looked round, but the rebels were all cowed and
sat still.

"I'll go when I'm ready," he said,--"'n' I guess I won't go afore I'm
ready."

"You're ready now," said Master Langdon, turning up his cuffs so that
the little boys noticed the yellow gleam of a pair of gold
sleeve-buttons, once worn by Colonel Percy Wentworth, famous in the Old
French War.

Abner Briggs, Junior, did not apparently think he was ready, at any
rate; for he rose up in his place, and stood with clenched fists,
defiant, as the master strode towards him. The master knew the fellow
was really frightened, for all his looks, and that he must have no time
to rally. So he caught him suddenly by the collar, and, with one great
pull, had him out over his desk and on the open floor. He gave him a
sharp fling backwards and stood looking at him.

The rough-and-tumble fighters all _clinch_, as everybody knows; and
Abner Briggs, Junior, was one of that kind. He remembered how he had
floored Master Weeks, and he had just "spunk" enough left in him to try
to repeat his former successful experiment on the new master. He sprang
at him, open-handed, to clutch him. So the master had to strike,--once,
but very hard, and just in the place to tell. No doubt, the authority
that doth hedge a schoolmaster added to the effect of the blow; but the
blow was itself a neat one, and did not require to be repeated.

"Now go home," said the master, "and don't let me see you or your dog
here again." And he turned his cuffs down again over the gold
sleeve-buttons.

This finished the great Pigwacket Centre School rebellion. What could be
done with a master who was so pleasant as long as the boys behaved
decently, and such a terrible fellow when he got "riled," as they called
it? In a week's time, everything was reduced to order, and the
school-committee were delighted. The master, however, had received a
proposition so much more agreeable and advantageous, that he informed
the committee he should leave at the end of his month, having in his eye
a sensible and energetic young college-graduate who would be willing and
fully competent to take his place.

So, at the expiration of the appointed time, Bernard Langdon, late
master of the School District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, took his
departure from that place for another locality, whither we shall follow
him, carrying with him the regrets of the committee, of most of the
scholars, and of several young ladies; also two locks of hair, sent
unbeknown to payrents, one dark and one warmish auburn, inscribed with
the respective initials of Alminy Cutterr and Arvilly Braowne.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MOTH FLIES INTO THE CANDLE.

The invitation which Mr. Bernard Langdon had accepted came from the
Board of Trustees of the "Apollinean Female Institute," a school for the
education of young ladies, situated in the flourishing town of Rockland.
This was an establishment on a considerable scale, in which a hundred
scholars or thereabouts were taught the ordinary English branches,
several of the modern languages, something of Latin, if desired, with a
little natural philosophy, metaphysics, and rhetoric, to finish off with
in the last year, and music at any time when they would pay for it. At
the close of their career in the Institute, they were submitted to a
grand public examination, and received diplomas tied in blue ribbons,
which proclaimed them with a great flourish of capitals to be graduates
of the Apollinean Female Institute.

Rockland was a town of no inconsiderable pretensions. It was ennobled by
lying at the foot of a mountain,--called by the working-folks of the
place "_the_ maounting,"--which sufficiently showed that it was the
principal high land of the district in which it was situated. It lay to
the south of this, and basked in the sunshine as Italy stretches herself
before the Alps. To pass from the town of Tamarack on the north of the
mountain to Rockland on the south was like crossing from Coire to
Chiavenna.

There is nothing gives glory and grandeur and romance and mystery to a
place like the impending presence of a high mountain. Our beautiful
Northampton with its fair meadows and noble stream is lovely enough, but
owes its surpassing attraction to those twin summits which brood over
it like living presences, looking down into its streets as if they were
its tutelary divinities, dressing and undressing their green shrines,
robing themselves in jubilant sunshine or in sorrowing clouds, and doing
penance in the snowy shroud of winter, as if they had living hearts
under their rocky ribs and changed their mood like the children of the
soil at their feet, who grow up under their almost parental smiles and
frowns. Happy is the child whose first dreams of heaven are blended with
the evening glories of Mount Holyoke, when the sun is firing its
treetops, and gilding the white walls that mark its one human dwelling!
If the other and the wilder of the twain has a scowl of terror in its
overhanging brows, yet is it a pleasing fear to look upon its savage
solitudes through the barred nursery-windows in the heart of the sweet,
companionable village.--And how the mountains love their children! The
sea is of a facile virtue, and will run to kiss the first comer in any
port he visits; but the chaste mountains sit apart, and show their faces
only in the midst of their own families.

The Mountain that kept watch to the north of Rockland lay waste and
almost inviolate through much of its domain. The catamount still glared
from the branches of its old hemlocks on the lesser beasts that strayed
beneath him. It was not long since a wolf had wandered down, famished in
the winter's dearth, and left a few bones and some tufts of wool of what
had been a lamb in the morning. Nay, there were broad-footed tracks in
the snow only two years previously, which could not be mistaken;--the
black bear alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and little
children must come home early from school and play, for he is an
indiscriminate feeder when he is hungry, and a little child would not
come amiss when other game was wanting.

But these occasional visitors may have been mere wanderers, which,
straying along in the woods by day, and perhaps stalking through the
streets of still villages by night, had worked their way along down from
the ragged mountain-spurs of higher latitudes. The one feature of The
Mountain that shed the brownest horror on its woods was the existence of
the terrible region known as Rattlesnake Ledge, and still tenanted by
those damnable reptiles, which distil a fiercer venom under our cold
northern sky than the cobra himself in the land of tropical spices and
poisons.

From the earliest settlement of the place, this fact had been, next to
the Indians, the reigning nightmare of the inhabitants. It was easy
enough, after a time, to drive away the savages; for "a screeching
Indian Divell," as our fathers called him, could not crawl into the
crack of a rock to escape from his pursuers. But the venomous population
of Rattlesnake Ledge had a Gibraltar for their fortress that might have
defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebastopol. In its deep
embrasures and its impregnable casemates they reared their families,
they met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they
hissed defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hybernated, and in
due time died in peace. Many a foray had the town's-people made, and
many a stuffed skin was shown as a trophy,--nay, there were families
where the children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that
once vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes
one of them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the
hillside into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,--worse than
this, into the long grass, where the bare-footed mowers would soon pass
with their swinging scythes,--more rarely into houses,--and on one
memorable occasion, early in the last century, into the meeting-house,
where he took a position on the pulpit-stairs,--as is narrated in the
"Account of Some Remarkable Providences," etc., where it is suggested
that a strong tendency of the Rev. Didymus Bean, the Minister at that
time, towards the Arminian Heresy may have had something to do with it,
and that the Serpent supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs
was a false show of the Daemon's Contrivance, he having come in to listen
to a Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course,
not being capable of being killed Himself. Others said, however, that,
though there was good Reason to think it was a Daemon, yet he did come
with Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant,--etc.

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