Chapter III: A Lesson in History

The square north parlor of the century-old Spellman homestead was furnished with few concessions to modern taste. In summer it was carefully darkened, and during the colder months exhaled that penetrating chill that is still more or less characteristic of the traditional “best room” in rural New England. There was also a mingled odor of sanctity and dried rose-leaves that filled the soul of the young exile with a secret awe. She understood perfectly that children were not expected to enter that room uninvited; even the family reserved it for occasions of ceremony; and it was with a thrill of conscious guilt overborne by an irresistible attraction, that she had stolen in alone on this keen October morning before Miss Sophia was up, and while her sister was capably engaged in preparing breakfast in the large, cheery kitchen.

It was not the ornaments, wonderful as they were, upon the high mantel-piece—the pallid wax flowers under glass, the waving pampas plumes and pink-lined tropic shells dear to romance—no, not even the mysterious closed piano—it was those ghostly crayon portraits in their tarnished gilt frames that drew this little unrelated fragment of humanity with a fascination that she did not in the least understand. She only knew that to gaze upon their white, shrouded faces was to yearn for even the staring, pictured counterparts, even the chill, clustered gravestones of her own vanished forebears. Vanished, indeed, since not even a name or a memory remained to their wistful and solitary descendant!

And these Spellmans and Russells—these revered ancestors of her dear “Mother” Waring as of the thorny and unapproachable Miss Sophia—their by-gone greatness had been so impressed upon her by allusion and suggestion that in the secret world of her imagination it reached heroic proportions. So this child of two races, the one by birth, the other by associations quite as real and vital, well-nigh forgot the shadowy demi-gods of her people while she bowed at the shrine of the commonplace county Judge who was the greatest of all the Russells, and fancied a beauty as of the moon and stars in the conventional portraits of his wife and daughters, with their uncovered necks and pallid, simpering faces.

Only a few stolen moments of gazing, and Stella crossed the dark hall on noiseless feet—for even in the black-leather boxes of civilization she had contrived to keep her native lightness of step—and softly opened the dining-room door.

With its cheerful morning sunshine streaming over the chromoed walls and gayly-carpeted floor, and with the canary singing his prettiest in the south window, above the row of thrifty geraniums and begonias, this room was the strongest possible contrast to the gloomy one she had just left behind. Ah! and that very minute the wonderful bird came out of the clock on the mantel-piece and seven times called “Cuckoo!” while, as if in answer to the call, the door into the kitchen opened, letting in the heartsome odor of frying ham and eggs, and Mother Waring with the smoking coffee-pot.

Stella flew to bring the dish of oatmeal and the hot plates, and then busied herself with the neat tray that was regularly carried up to Miss Sophia’s chamber with her morning coffee and toast. To be sure, the elder sister was only five years older than Lucy, who owned to fifty-two, and who, folks said, had always been “kinder pindlin’,” and in truth was now much worn with hard work and recent grief. But we know that there are always people who contrive to be waited upon, and others to whom it naturally falls to do the waiting.

Housewifely traditions were closely adhered to in Laurel, where but few even of the “first families” kept a maid, and it was now Stella’s duty, together with dishwashing and dusting and such of the lighter household tasks as Lucy would allow her to undertake, to carry up Miss Sophia’s tray. Even that lady had grudgingly conceded that “the child wasn’t as clumsy and heavy-footed as you might expect,” though why you shouldn’t expect anything of the sort it would have taken a better ethnologist than Miss Sophia to explain.

The little ceremony ended, and the hard old eyes met with a low-voiced “Good morning,” and a rather frightened smile, the two ate their own substantial breakfast with a hearty appetite, and directly afterward “flew ’round” to get dishes and other “chores” out of the way before school-time. At a quarter to nine, Stella put on her neat jacket and knitted red tam-o’-shanter, hugged her kind foster-mother, and set out with cheerfulness upon her morning pilgrimage, glancing about shyly at the first corner for a possible glimpse of demure Doris tripping along the sidewalk, or scatter-brained Cynthia flying breathlessly down the hill.

Laurel, like many another village of its ilk, was an odd mixture of modern democratic conditions with the elder social inheritance. In the village school, the children of European peasants, the earlier and quick-witted Irish, the later Poles, with their broad, heavy faces, two or three brilliant, undersized young Jews, and the dark-brown scions of several long-established negro families, sat side by side with the severely self-respecting descendants of the earliest Puritan stock. The six and seven-year-olds knew no difference, and flocked indiscriminately together at recess, but it must be admitted that the caste idea grew with their growth, and that in grammar-school and academy circles the lines were drawn more definitely than in many larger places, to the end of needless resentments and heartaches.

Yellow Star added one more ingredient to the racial melting-pot. But whether because of a certain aboriginal dignity, or the name and protection of a family as much respected as any in Laurel, at any rate nearly everybody found it possible to accept her with excellent grace, and it might have been something personal to herself that bid fair to complete her conquest of the village. Two of the very “nicest” girls in Laurel, Cynthia, whose father was supposed to be the “best fixed” merchant in town, and Doris, the busy Doctor’s only child, were already her devoted friends.

Notwithstanding the fact that she had promptly taken her place among the best scholars in the room, the girl from Dakota had not yet lost her sense of audacity in rising to recite before so imposing a company.

“Why, Stella! you don’t have to dig at your books the way you do; it’s absurd! Look at me; I haven’t opened a single one since Friday afternoon, and _I_ get along,” argued happy-go-lucky Sin.

“But you belong here, and you have been to school always. It is different with me. This is my one chance of really _belonging_.” And, contrary to all advice and precedent, Stella persisted in regarding school as a privilege to be lived up to, and failure in recitation as deep disgrace.

The first thing after recess was American History review.

“How did the early settlers treat the Indians? Mary Maloney,” began Miss Morrison.

“They treated them fine,” declared the auburn-haired Mary, with a sly glance over her shoulder at the unreasonably popular new arrival.

“What did the Indians do? Rosey Bernstein.”

“The cruel and treacherous savages turned upon the defenseless settlers with fire an’ ax,” Rosey glibly recited. “They now began a series of frightful massacres.”

“They stove the babies’ heads in, right in front of their mothers’ faces, and then made the mothers walk hundreds of miles barefoot in the deep snow,” eagerly amended woolly-headed Pete Holley, and all the boys wagged their heads and grinned with satisfaction.

“After they had scalped all the fathers by the light o’ their burnin’ buildings,” finished Rosey complacently.

Several hands went up, but Yellow Star in her excitement quite forgot to wait for the teacher’s permission.

“Who says that the settlers were kind to the Indians?” rang out in challenging tones.

More hands madly clawed the air, and Miss Morrison rather unwillingly nodded to Rosey, who read from her open book:

“‘They treated the Indians for the most part with justice and kindness, notwithstanding which the cruel—’”

“That will do for the present, Rosey,” interrupted her teacher, and was hastily casting about in her own mind for a basis of compromise between warring factions when a certain black-eyed little heroine rose precipitately to her feet, and delivered her soul without fear or favor.

“Was it treating them with justice and kindness to take their lands away from them, and give them only a few beads and knives for thousands of acres? Was it fair to give them whiskey to drink, and knives to kill people with, and then when they were drunk and angry and killed some bad white men, to punish the whole tribe by burning their villages and wives and children?” demanded her people’s advocate.

“Did the ‘cruel, treacherous savages’ take away all the white people’s guns and then shoot them down, women with little babies and boys and girls smaller than us? Did they chase them all over the prairie and kill them while they begged for mercy, and then call it a _battle_? That’s what your soldiers did to us, and _I was in it_! Maybe, if we wrote the history books, there wouldn’t be so much in them about the ‘treacherous Indians!’”

Breathless and darkly flushed, the girl from Dakota sank into her seat, and there was an awful hush.

Cynthia was staring at her friend with open-mouthed admiration, and tender-hearted Doris had her face hidden on her desk, while most of the children, horror-struck, yet thoroughly enjoying the situation, looked hopefully to “Teacher” for summary vengeance on the daring rebel against constituted authority.

That personage, however, gazed straight before her with expressionless face, until the silence had grown positively fearsome in its explosive quality. Then she simply remarked:

“Close your books, children! Our lesson in history is over for to-day.”

“APPLE-TREE HOUSE, MONDAY.

“DEAR MOTHER-OF-MINE, I love Miss Morrison she never said a
word though I was bad to-day and talked right out in school.
The book was wrong and I was right but that didn’t make it
proper for me to talk did it? But Miss Morrison is a Angel and
Doris Brown cried because she was sorry for the poor Indians. I
love her too. How many kind people there are in the world! I am
so happy I almost feel as if I could love Miss Sophia but not
quite. Your Little Girl.”