In the early autumn John Brett summoned the boy one evening and told him to bring in all the books that he had read.
They made several loads. He heaped them on the table. Books were an accident in the Brett household, but there was an arithmetic, and an algebra of vast antiquity, a good old-fashioned grammar, a history of the ancient world, a thick tome from which the cover was entirely missing and the title page gone as well. This, together with a Bible and a PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, constituted the backbone of the reading of young Paul. The rest consisted of a miscellaneous assortment, from almanacs to novels. Not one of those books had been bought intentionally by the Bretts, but all had been taken in gathering in the effects of a bankrupt neighbor who could pay his debts in no way except through his goods. They had lain in an attic unnoticed for years, while the rats ate through many of them. There Paul Torridon had found them, and through the long months and months of his illnesses, he had worked over them with the patience of despair. Even the problems in the arithmetic and the algebra were a delight, and when the last of them was solved he had fallen into a profound gloom.
Now he stood by the table and saw John Brett, with thick and unaccustomed fingers, turning the frail leaves of the books. Delicately and carefully he handled them, as though in fear lest they rend like spider’s silk under his touch.
He remarked finally: “There’s thirty-five books here.”
“Yes,” said Paul.
“You’ve read them all?”
“Yes. Several times over.”
The big man lifted his brows. He rested his chin on the hard palm of his hand and stared.
“Several times? You mean that?”
“This one a great many times,” said the boy, and touched the ponderous ancient history.
“How come that?”
“After pneumonia, you remember it was weeks and weeks before I could leave my bed, and I had only this book in the room.”
“And you read that?”
“Four times through, carefully.”
“Didn’t you get tired of it?”
“No, because I never was able to remember everything in it.”
“Why didn’t you send for some of the other books?”
“I did ask for them. Nobody wanted to go.”
The glance of Brett sharpened again. Then he looked suddenly aside. That small remark evidently had meant something to him. He sent the boy off to bed, but a week later, when the first frost began, he conversed with Paul again.
“You’re fifteen, Paul?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve been here eight years?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you willin’ to work?”
“I’m willing to do what I can.”
“Education is pretty good,” observed John Brett. “I’m gonna make a school, with you for the teacher, and every man and boy up to twenty in the whole tribe is gonna come and study under you, and all the girls up to fifteen. Can you teach ’em?”
Paul Torridon was aghast, but he dared not refuse.
He lay awake that night, staring at the darkness. He tried to think of himself imposing tasks upon Charlie Brett, for instance. The thought was unthinkable.
However, the plan went forward. Whatever John Brett determined upon, he put through with suddenness and with effect. The three clans of the Bretts lived at equal distances from one another. They were like the three points of a triangle. Almost in the center was a crossroads. There John Brett called a meeting of the heads of the families, and there he struck his heel into the ground and declared that the schoolhouse must be posted.
The others agreed. They dared not dispute with him, any more than soldiers would have dared to dispute with a general. They lived in a sea of dangers, and they knew the value of the leadership of this rough, rude man. The schoolhouse was built in two weeks. A stove was installed in the center of it. Paul Torridon was told to meet his first class.
Pale from a sleepless night, he walked out over the frosty, white road, stumbling in the ruts uncertainly. The boots that the Brett shoemaker turned out were only roughly shaped to the foot. And these which Torridon wore were cast-offs of Charlie Brett. His feet slipped about in them awkwardly. And three shanks as large as his could have fitted into the tops. His coat, too, was a discard. Much scrubbing with soap had faded and worn the tough homespun but had not dimmed the splendor of the grease spots with which it was checkered. It was rubbed through at either elbow, and was so big that he wrapped it around him and pinned one edge of it above his right hip. His hat was a battered, green-faded thing that lay without shape on his head, the brim falling down over his eyes.
There was so little strength in Torridon that he was wearied without being warmed by the walk. Neither can the weak enjoy the beauty of a winter scene, and he looked about him in despair at the naked trees, their limbs outlined with broken pipings of white frost. He saw no living thing except, on a bare bough, a row of little birds, with their feathers all ruffed out and their heads drawn in until they seemed little, round, headless balls.
He yearned with all his heart to be back in the kitchen at the house of John Brett, or even amid the sour smells of the creamery. Everything that was familiar was cheering to him. Everything that was strange was a load upon his mind.
When he came in sight of the schoolhouse, he halted. His legs were powerless to carry him forward. It was not until the chill thrust through his very vitals that he spurred forward and with slow steps approached the door.
He opened it with a desperate thrust of his hand and stepped quickly inside. His greeting was the tumbling of a bucket of water that had been propped above the door by a practical jester. He was drenched to the skin and stood shivering in a wild outburst of laughter.
In that roar of mirth were the voices of twenty-year-old youths, brutalized by heavy labor and exposure all the days of their lives. There was the shouting of girls almost as brown and strong as their brothers, and the shrill piping of children.
In the midst of that dreadful mockery, Paul Torridon shuddered and turned blue with the cold of the water. He went to the stove, wrung the water from his coat, and then spread his hands close to the heated iron.
He looked around him, his head jerking with nervousness. Seventeen grinning faces looked back at him, expectant, scornful, contemptuous. Only one looked neither at him nor at her companions, but down at her folded hands. That was Nancy Brett.
III
He could not make himself warm. He could only thaw the outer layers of the cold, as it were. Then he went to his desk. It was raised on a little platform at the end of the room. It consisted of a table with two drawers on either side. A subdued murmuring was sweeping from one side of the room to the other; the grinning faces watched him, brightly, as mischievous dogs watch a cat they are about to pounce on. Nancy Brett had raised her head and watched him, also, but gravely, with a veil over her eyes, so to speak.
He was more conscious of her quiet scorn than of all the unmasked grins of the rest.
“We’d better start,” said Paul hoarsely, “with writing down our names. You all have slates and slate pencils. Please write down your names.”
He sat down and waited. There was only one who stirred to obey, and that was Nancy Brett.
For five minutes he waited. Then he rose from his chair. His face was icy cold, and he knew that it must be deadly white. Directly opposite his desk was big Jack Brett, a burly six-footer, twenty years old, dark as an Indian, and as savage. He sat with arms folded, waiting, sneering.