University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW.

The virtue of the world is not mainly in its
leaders. In the midst of the multitude which
follows there is often something better than in the
one that goes before. Old generals wanted to
take Toulon, but one of their young colonels
showed them how. The junior counsel has been
known not unfrequently to make a better argument
than his senior fellow, — if, indeed, he did
not make both their arguments. Good ministers
will tell you they have parishioners who beat
them in the practice of the virtues. A great
establishment, got up on commercial principles,
like the Apollinean Institute, might yet be well
carried on, if it happened to get good teachers.
And when Master Langdon came to see its management,
he recognized that there must be fidelity
and intelligence somewhere among the instructors.
It was only necessary to look for a moment
at the fair, open forehead, the still, tranquil eye of
gentle, habitual authority, the sweet gravity that
lay upon the lips, to hear the clear answers to the
pupils' questions, to notice how every request had

the force without the form of a command, and
the young man could not doubt that the good
genius of the school stood before him in the person
of Helen Darley.

It was the old story. A poor country-clergyman
dies, and leaves a widow and a daughter.
In Old England the daughter would have eaten
the bitter bread of a governess in some rich family.
In New England she must keep a school.
So, rising from one sphere to another, she at
length finds herself the prima donna in the department
of instruction in Mr. Silas Peckham's
educational establishment.

What a miserable thing it is to be poor!
She was dependent, frail, sensitive, conscientious.
She was in the power of a hard, grasping,
thin-blooded, tough-fibred, trading educator,
who neither knew nor cared for a tender woman's
sensibilities, but who paid her and meant to have
his money's worth out of her brains, and as much
more than his money's worth as he could get.
She was consequently, in plain English, overworked,
and an overworked woman is always a
sad sight, — sadder a great deal than an overworked
man, because she is so much more fertile
in capacities of suffering than a man. She has
so many varieties of headache, — sometimes as
if Jael were driving the nail that killed Sisera
into her temples, — sometimes letting her work
with half her brain while the other half throbs as
if it would go to pieces, — sometimes tightening

round the brows as if her cap-band were a ring
of iron, — and then her neuralgias, and her backaches,
and her fits of depression, in which she
thinks she is nothing and less than nothing, and
those paroxysms which men speak slightingly of
as hysterical, — convulsions, that is all, only not
commonly fatal ones, — so many trials which
belong to her fine and mobile structure, — that
she is always entitled to pity, when she is placed
in conditions which develop her nervous tendencies.

The poor young lady's work had, of course,
been doubled since the departure of Master Langdon's
predecessor. Nobody knows what the weariness
of instruction is, as soon as the teacher's
faculties begin to be overtasked, but those who
have tried it. The relays of fresh pupils, each
new set with its exhausting powers in full action,
coming one after another, take out all the
reserved forces and faculties of resistance from
the subject of their draining process.

The day's work was over, and it was late in
the evening, when she sat down, tired and faint,
with a great bundle of girls' themes or compositions
to read over before she could rest her
weary head on the pillow of her narrow trundle-bed,
and forget for a while the treadmill stair of
labor she was daily climbing.

How she dreaded this most forlorn of all a
teacher's tasks! She was conscientious in her
duties, and would insist on reading every sentence,

— there was no saying where she might
find faults of grammar or bad spelling. There
might have been twenty or thirty of these themes
in the bundle before her. Of course she knew
pretty well the leading sentiments they could contain:
that beauty was subject to the accidents
of time; that wealth was inconstant, and existence
uncertain; that virtue was its own reward;
that youth exhaled, like the dewdrop from the
flower, ere the sun had reached its meridian; that
life was o'ershadowed with trials; that the lessons
of virtue instilled by our beloved teachers were to
be our guides through all our future career. The
imagery employed consisted principally of roses,
lilies, birds, clouds, and brooks, with the celebrated
comparison of wayward genius to a meteor.
Who does not know the small, slanted,
Italian hand of these girls'-compositions, — their
stringing together of the good old traditional
copy-book phrases, their occasional gushes of
sentiment, their profound estimates of the world,
sounding to the old folks that read them as
the experience of a bantam-pullet's last-hatched
young one with the chips of its shell on its head
would sound to a Mother Cary's chicken, who
knew the great ocean with all its typhoons and
tornadoes? Yet every now and then one is liable
to be surprised with strange clairvoyant flashes,
that can hardly be explained, except by the mysterious
inspiration which every now and then
seizes a young girl and exalts her intelligence,
just as hysteria in other instances exalts the sensibility,
— a little something of that which made
Joan of Arc, and the Burney girl who prophesied
“Evelina,” and the Davidson sisters. In the
midst of these commonplace exercises which Miss
Darley read over so carefully were two or three
that had something of individual flavor about
them, and here and there there was an image
or an epithet which showed the footprint of a
passionate nature, as a fallen scarlet feather
marks the path the wild flamingo has trodden.

The young lady teacher read them with a certain
indifference of manner, as one reads proofs,
— noting defects of detail, but not commonly
arrested by the matters treated of. Even Miss
Charlotte Ann Wood's poem, beginning

did not excite her. She marked the inevitable
false rhyme of Cockney and Yankee beginners,
morn and dawn, and tossed the verses on the pile
of papers she had finished. She was looking over
some of the last of them in a rather listless way,
— for the poor thing was getting sleepy in spite of
herself, — when she came to one which seemed
to rouse her attention, and lifted her drooping
lids. She looked at it a moment before she
would touch it. Then she took hold of it by
one corner and slid it off from the rest. One
would have said she was afraid of it, or had some
undefined antipathy which made it hateful to her.
Such odd fancies are common enough in young
persons in her nervous state. Many of these
young people will jump up twenty times a day
and run to dabble the tips of their fingers in
water, after touching the most inoffensive objects.

This composition was written in a singular,
sharp-pointed, long, slender hand, on a kind
of wavy, ribbed paper. There was something
strangely suggestive about the look of it, — but
exactly of what, Miss Darley either could not or
did not try to think. The subject of the paper
was The Mountain, — the composition being a
sort of descriptive rhapsody. It showed a startling
familiarity with some of the savage scenery
of the region. One would have said that the
writer must have threaded its wildest solitudes
by the light of the moon and stars as well as by
day. As the teacher read on, her color changed,
and a kind of tremulous agitation came over her.
There were hints in this strange paper she did not
know what to make of. There was something in
its descriptions and imagery that recalled, — Miss
Darley could not say what, — but it made her
frightfully nervous. Still she could not help
reading, till she came to one passage which so
agitated her, that the tired and overwearied girl's
self-control left her entirely. She sobbed once or
twice, then laughed convulsively, and flung herself
on the bed, where she worked out a set hysteric
spasm as she best might, without anybody
to rub her hands and see that she did not hurt

herself. By-and-by she got quiet, rose and went
to her book-case, took down a volume of Coleridge,
and read a short time, and so to bed, to
sleep and wake from time to time with a sudden
start out of uneasy dreams.

Perhaps it is of no great consequence what it
was in the composition which set her off into
this nervous paroxysm. She was in such a
state that almost any slight agitation would
have brought on the attack, and it was the accident
of her transient excitability, very probably,
which made a trifling cause the seeming occasion
of so much disturbance. The theme was
signed, in the same peculiar, sharp, slender hand,
E. Venner, and was, of course, written by that
wild-looking girl who had excited the master's
curiosity and prompted his question, as before
mentioned.

The next morning the lady-teacher looked pale
and wearied, naturally enough, but she was in her
place at the usual hour, and Master Langdon
in his own. The girls had not yet entered the
school-room.

“You have been ill, I am afraid,” said Mr.
Bernard.

“I was not well yesterday,” she answered. “I
had a worry and a kind of fright. It is so dreadful
to have the charge of all these young souls
and bodies! Every young girl ought to walk,
locked close, arm in arm, between two guardian
angels. Sometimes I faint almost with

the thought of all that I ought to do, and of my
own weakness and wants. — Tell me, are there
not natures born so out of parallel with the lines
of natural law that nothing short of a miracle can
bring them right?”

Mr. Bernard had speculated somewhat, as all
thoughtful persons of his profession are forced
to do, on the innate organic tendencies with
which individuals, families, and races are born.
He replied, therefore, with a smile, as one to
whom the question suggested a very familiar
class of facts.

“Why, of course. Each of us is only the footing-up
of a double column of figures that goes
back to the first pair. Every unit tells, — and
some of them are plus, and some minus. If the
columns don't add up right, it is commonly because
we can't make out all the figures. I don't
mean to say that something may not be added
by Nature to make up for losses and keep the
race to its average, but we are mainly nothing
but the answer to a long sum in addition and
subtraction. No doubt there are people born
with impulses at every possible angle to the
parallels of Nature, as you call them. If they
happen to cut these at right angles, of course
they are beyond the reach of common influences.
Slight obliquities are what we have most
to do with in education. Penitentiaries and in-sane
asylums take care of most of the right-angle
cases. — I am afraid I have put it too much like

a professor, and I am only a student, you know.
Pray, what set you to asking me this? Any
strange cases among the scholars?”

The meek teacher's blue eyes met the luminous
glance that came with the question. She,
too, was of gentle blood, — not meaning by that
that she was of any noted lineage, but that she
came of a cultivated stock, never rich, but long
trained to intellectual callings. A thousand decencies,
amenities, reticences, graces, which no
one thinks of until he misses them, are the traditional
right of those who spring from such
families. And when two persons of this exceptional
breeding meet in the midst of the common
multitude, they seek each other's company
at once by the natural law of elective affinity.
It is wonderful how men and women know their
peers. If two stranger queens, sole survivors of
two shipwrecked vessels, were cast, half-naked,
on a rock together, each would at once address
the other as “Our Royal Sister.”

Helen Darley looked into the dark eyes of
Bernard Langdon glittering with the light which
flashed from them with his question. Not as
those foolish, innocent country-girls of the small
village did she look into them, to be fascinated
and bewildered, but to sound them with a calm,
steadfast purpose. “A gentleman,” she said to
herself, as she read his expression and his features
with a woman's rapid, but exhausting
glance. “A lady,” he said to himself, as he

met her questioning look, — so brief, so quiet,
yet so assured, as of one whom necessity had
taught to read faces quickly without offence, as
children read the faces of parents, as wives read
the faces of hard-souled husbands. All this was
but a few seconds' work, and yet the main point
was settled. If there had been any vulgar curiosity
or coarseness of any kind lurking in his expression,
she would have detected it. If she had
not lifted her eyes to his face so softly and kept
them there so calmly and withdrawn them so
quietly, he would not have said to himself,
“She is a lady,” for that word meant a good
deal to the descendant of the courtly Wentworths
and the scholarly Langdons.

“There are strange people everywhere, Mr.
Langdon,” she said, “and I don't think our
school-room is an exception. I am glad you
believe in the force of transmitted tendencies.
It would break my heart, if I did not think that
there are faults beyond the reach of everything
but God's special grace. I should die, if I
thought that my negligence or incapacity was
alone responsible for the errors and sins of those
I have charge of. Yet there are mysteries I do
not know how to account for.” She looked all
round the school-room, and then said, in a whisper,
“Mr. Langdon, we had a girl that stole, in
the school, not long ago. Worse than that, we
had a girl who tried to set us on fire. Children
of good people, both of them. And we have a
girl now that frightens me so” —

The door opened, and three misses came in to
take their seats: three types, as it happened, of
certain classes, into which it would not have been
difficult to distribute the greater number of the
girls in the school. — Hannah Martin. Fourteen
years and three months old. Short-necked,
thick-waisted, round-cheeked, smooth, vacant forehead,
large, dull eyes. Looks good-natured, with
little other expression. Three buns in her bag,
and a large apple. Has a habit of attacking
her provisions in school-hours. — Rosa Milburn.
Sixteen. Brunette, with a rareripe flush in her
cheeks. Color comes and goes easily. Eyes
wandering, apt to be downcast. Moody at
times. Said to be passionate, if irritated. Finished
in high relief. Carries shoulders well back
and walks well, as if proud of her woman's life,
with a slight rocking movement, being one of the
wide-flanged pattern, but seems restless, — a hard
girl to look after. Has a romance in her pocket,
which she means to read in school-time. — Charlotte
Ann Wood. Fifteen. The poetess before
mentioned. Long, light ringlets, pallid complexion,
blue eyes. Delicate child, half unfolded.
Gentle, but languid and despondent. Does
not go much with the other girls, but reads a
good deal, especially poetry, underscoring favorite
passages. Writes a great many verses, very
fast, not very correctly; full of the usual human
sentiments, expressed in the accustomed phrases.
Undervitalized. Sensibilities not covered with

their normal integuments. A negative condition,
often confounded with genius, and sometimes
running into it. Young people who fall
out of line through weakness of the active faculties
are often confounded with those who step out
of it through strength of the intellectual ones.

The girls kept coming in, one after another, or
in pairs or groups, until the school-room was
nearly full. Then there was a little pause, and a
light step was heard in the passage. The lady-teacher's
eyes turned to the door, and the master's
followed them in the same direction.

A girl of about seventeen entered. She was
tall and slender, but rounded, with a peculiar undulation
of movement, such as one sometimes
sees in perfectly untutored country-girls, whom
Nature, the queen of graces, has taken in hand,
but more commonly in connection with the very
highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained
society. She was a splendid scowling beauty,
black-browed, with a flash of white teeth which
was always like a surprise when her lips parted.
She wore a checkered dress, of a curious pattern,
and a camel's-hair scarf twisted a little fantastically
about her. She went to her seat, which she
had moved a short distance apart from the rest,
and, sitting down, began playing listlessly with
her gold chain, as was a common habit with her,
coiling it and uncoiling it about her slender wrist,
and braiding it in with her long, delicate fingers.
Presently she looked up. Black, piercing eyes, not

large, — a low forehead, as low as that of Clytie
in the Townley bust, — black hair, twisted in
heavy braids, — a face that one could not help
looking at for its beauty, yet that one wanted to
look away from for something in its expression,
and could not for those diamond eyes. They
were fixed on the lady-teacher now. The latter
turned her own away, and let them wander over
the other scholars. But they could not help coming
back again for a single glance at the wild
beauty. The diamond eyes were on her still.
She turned the leaves of several of her books, as
if in search of some passage, and, when she
thought she had waited long enough to be safe,
once more stole a quick look at the dark girl.
The diamond eyes were still upon her. She put
her kerchief to her forehead, which had grown
slightly moist; she sighed once, almost shivered,
for she felt cold; then, following some ill-defined
impulse, which she could not resist, she left her
place and went to the young girl's desk.

“What do you want of me, Elsie Venner?” It
was a strange question to put, for the girl had
not signified that she wished the teacher to come
to her.

“Nothing,” she said. “I thought I could make
you come.” The girl spoke in a low tone, a kind
of half-whisper. She did not lisp, yet her articulation
of one or two consonants was not absolutely
perfect.

“Where did you get that flower, Elsie?” said

Miss Darley. It was a rare alpine flower, which
was found only in one spot among the rocks of
The Mountain.

“Where it grew,” said Elsie Venner. “Take
it.” The teacher could not refuse her. The girl's
finger-tips touched hers as she took it. How cold
they were for a girl of such an organization!

The teacher went back to her seat. She made
an excuse for quitting the school-room soon afterwards.
The first thing she did was to fling the
flower into her fireplace and rake the ashes over
it. The second was to wash the tips of her fingers,
as if she had been another Lady Macbeth.
A poor, overtasked, nervous creature, — we must
not think too much of her fancies.

After school was done, she finished the talk
with the master which had been so suddenly interrupted.
There were things spoken of which
may prove interesting by-and-by, but there are
other matters we must first attend to.