Elsie Venner

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. >> Elsie Venner


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 managed 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 jack-knives. 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 shoulder 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 that which he commonly wore,
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 Cutter," 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 haalth?" 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 sign-board. 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 caar!"

"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 these 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 haaf eat up Eben Squires's little Jo, a year come
nex' Faast day."

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 "haaf 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. Ahniny 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 picket 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 under stand 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 school master, 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 school-house, 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 singlestick, 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
jack-knife.

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

"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 an 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 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 two summits 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 which 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 easemates 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, hibernated, and in due time
died in peace. Many a foray had the towns-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 barefooted 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 Damon, yet he did come
with Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant,--etc.