CHAPTER XXII

THE MISSION SCHOOL

'Twas some days ere Belle-Ann fitted her mood to her strange environments. The Mission School at Proctor was a beautiful place--a great rambling structure on the apex of a hill overlooking the picturesque Kentucky River. The building was girded with a continuous, s.p.a.cious porch, and hemmed about with flowers, the ident.i.ty of which was unknown to her. The grounds behind were unstinting, and reached half a mile back to the mountain ab.u.t.ting it.

Flanking the building proper, on the verdant esplanade, stood a superb statue of Daniel Boone, embellished with a gurgling fountain which the State had recently reared on this spot where Boone had built his historic fortress.

Belle-Ann was allotted a cozy little room with white enamel furniture, and pretty curtains, and quaint j.a.panese matting, the like of which had never met her admiring eyes.

Withal, Belle-Ann was deeply pleased with her new surroundings--with the other scholars and with the teachers. But so much had been crowded into her young life of late, coupled with the pang of parting from her home, that it was days before her mood aroused itself to the necessity of application.

When she did begin her lessons, it was with an a.s.siduous energy and receptive apt.i.tude that not only attracted the teachers, but the other pupils likewise. From the outset, she developed an inordinate thirst for grammar. Indeed, a great part of the time out of study hours, she carried her grammar about with her, peeping into it anon, spelling, repeating, and pondering over its phrases--never tiring of its dawning mysteries and vast possibilities.

The Mission School, familiarly designated as the Chapel, was not an academic inst.i.tution of cla.s.sics and national renown, but it was of State-wide repute and an oasis of preparatory learning amidst the barren lives of mountain youth, hitherto isolated and deprived of the advantages of his more fortunate Blue-Gra.s.s cousins.

Miss Virginia Worth, in charge of the Chapel, was as agreeably impressed with Belle-Ann as the girl was pleased with the charming teacher. Miss Worth was a woman of thirty-seven, with an abundance of perfectly white hair and the fresh, smooth face of a girl of twenty. Upon this benign, wholesome countenance there dwelt an ever-present sympathy and love for mankind. In her gray eyes was a look of succor that beckoned suffering to her. Oddly enough, a woman of private wealth, she had made the uplift of the mountain folk her life work.

Moreover, Miss Worth was a woman of deep and unerring penetration,--of careful and soothing diplomacy--she had made a life study of the ways of the human heart. With true divinity, she had stepped out into the world, smiling, amidst the trivialities and dissensions, and weaknesses that a.s.sail and tempt and twist and scar the lives of humanity.

In the fountain of her spontaneous Christian soul, she had a lotion for them all. From the first, it was this benevolent woman's smile that drew Belle-Ann to her--a look that reminded the girl keenly of Maw Lutts'

perennial smile, and spread an aftermath that carried her back to days of utter happiness.

Ill things of the soul are oft concealed through the measures of a lifetime. Thus, when its tenancy is predestined,--but when a spirit is unmated to evil, its odious residue gravitates like cork to the surface and speedily floats in the eyes.

From the beginning there was an indefinable underlying something permeating this sweet-faced girl that had come to her from out of the wilderness--a something that sorely puzzled the good Miss Worth. It was like a single elusive carbon spot hidden away in the core of an otherwise perfect diamond--a spot that reflected through the eyes in fleeting transitory glints--a mote-flash that could not be located--baffling discernment only under powerful, expert a.n.a.lysis.

Miss Worth loved the girl. She loved her straightway from the minute that she had held her small, shapely hand, and listened to the timbre of that shy, dulcet voice. She had never seen eyes tinted like these. She marvelled at her curls. Her perfect delicate, Grecian features filled Miss Worth with a lasting wonder.

Through the Reverend Peterson she heard the tragic history of the girl's comely mother, but she could not conceive a heredity sufficiently generous to give the beauty made adorably manifest in this girl of the hills. In every movement her natural artless grace was as a rhythm of poetry.

Miss Worth then recognized an extraordinary character--the fibre of a beautiful, wonderful, lovable womanhood--a girl who could, with the embellishments of education and adornments of fashion, go into the sphere of any secular circle of society in any munic.i.p.ality and create a furore. She was quick to foresee an interesting future for her new protegee, if she could only discover the elusive defect that she could not name, but which was palpably present to her keen senses, versed in thought reading and the pathology of organic character ailments.

Very many times, as the days slipped by, she observed flashes of that sober, mystifying light in Belle-Ann's eyes--a sudden quick, almost vindictive dropping of the sweet lips that showed, otherwise, a dimpled upturn. It followed that Miss Worth devoted extra care to Belle-Ann's tutorage--all the while bent upon deftly angling for that alien, shifting thing that a casual observer would have pa.s.sed unnoticed.

The second Sunday following Belle-Ann's arrival at the school, Miss Worth presented to her an elderly gentleman of distinguished mien and marked personality, and of whom the girl was destined to see much thereafter. This engaging personage was Colonel Amos Tennytown, who resided down Blue-Gra.s.s way, and who visited the school, sometimes during the week, but most generally on a Sunday.

Belle-Ann ever remembered her first meeting with this man, whose deferential manner was rich with little original courtesies which were innate manifestations of gentility that were born with the man. And his voice, in particular, carried a charm that was soothing and totally irresistible.

All this appealed to a certain latent delicacy that wove its hereditary fibre through this untaught mountain girl's being and stirred a response which had hitherto been dormant. She had known true hearts, honest and courageous, but she had never known polished mannerisms in men.

She recalled the radiant face and the suppressed tremor in Miss Worth's voice when that lady glided into Belle-Ann's room and announced that she wished to introduce her to a gentleman friend. Belle-Ann remembered her poignant embarra.s.sment as she stood before him on the porch, shyly and acutely conscious of her own glaring deficiencies and simple gown, and of her determination at that first instant to excuse herself quickly and slip away--and of the manner in which she was instantly rea.s.sured.

Later, she recalled the keen interest he took in her at this first meeting, and how her case of blues vanished temporarily as she listened to his pleasing voice and was distracted by his courtly, cheery, easy manner. Her shyness forsook her straightway and she experienced a sense of having always known him. He came, ostensibly, to see Miss Worth, they being friends of long standing, and Belle-Ann remembered how he had gallantly bowed to Miss Worth, on leaving that first day, when he laughingly removed the nosegay from his lapel and stuck it into Belle-Ann's curls.

She remembered that she was sorry when he departed, and stood on the porch with Miss Worth's arm around her, and helped her tutoress watch the tall, commanding figure of the Colonel receding down the sinuous path toward the ferry.

Many months had elapsed since that day, and it had come to pa.s.s that now Belle-Ann looked forward to Colonel Tennytown's coming with an eagerness that rendered her almost wistful. This had grown upon her in a subtle way, and in these days he was seemingly a vital connecting link between herself and some indefinable but palpable mystery that hung over her life, veiled by the opaque future.

Tom-John Benson had always, in his rough way, been thoughtful of his only child. Of late years, through necessity, he had been compelled to be away from her, working for a paltry wage. The Kentucky spirit, ever ready to give, is slow to take and, though sorely pressed, stands aloof from charity.

Long since, the good Reverend Peterson of the Diocese of Lexington had volunteered to give Tom-John Benson a free scholarship for his girl--an offer influenced mainly by the Christian spirit of his true missionary heart, and partially because he was sympathetically familiar with the pathos that enveloped the life of Belle-Ann's beautiful mother, who had deserted a luxurious home in Lexington and immured herself in the cloister of the c.u.mberlands, never to emerge. But free scholarship did not appeal to Benson. His pride was less crude than his exterior. He bided his time, and by dint of saving from his meagre wage, paid in full for Belle-Ann's schooling.

The fruits of Belle-Ann's close application to her studies were now made manifest in a way little short of marvelous. It was plain from the outset that she possessed a natural apt.i.tude for the tasks set before her. She developed a love for books that grew into such ceaseless, indefatigable zeal that Miss Worth and Miss Ackerman, her under teacher, were often obliged to remonstrate with her. While the other girls were at tennis or some other diversion after hours, Belle-Ann was poring over her books with as deep absorption as if it were play. Very many times in the night Miss Worth, knowing her propensity for night study, would slip into her room and implore her to retire. She was fast winnowing out her mountain dialect, but there were some words that clung to her tongue tenaciously, despite her efforts to eliminate them.

She was the recipient of a letter each month from her father, always containing a small sum of money, calculated to maintain her simple wardrobe. Then one day she was delighted to receive a postal order for fifty dollars from her father, who stated that the company for whom he worked had given him entire charge of the mill at Catletsburg, and had advanced his pay. He stated, furthermore, that he wished her to buy some nice clothes with the money accompanying the letter.

Miss Worth, having three other schools to supervise in different sections of the county, was unable to spend more than two or three days at a time at Proctor. She being absent now, Miss Ackerman accompanied Belle-Ann across the river to Beattyville, where they purchased two very neat and becoming dresses for Belle-Ann, together with various other needful articles. And now being able to write an intelligent and commendably legible letter, Belle-Ann indited an epistle to her father which abounded with original expressions of love, and wherein she expressed her grat.i.tude to him, describing at length the things she had purchased with the money he had so thoughtfully allowed her.

CHAPTER XXIII

BELLE-ANN VISITS LEXINGTON

One evening after cla.s.s hours, Belle-Ann was in her room engrossed in the pages of her grammar when Miss Worth entered. As the girl leaned over her book, her black curls tumbled about her face, she did not look up until Miss Worth spoke.

"Belle-Ann," said Miss Worth, with a twinkle in her clear eyes. "I see I shall be obliged to lock all your books up in the closet."

"And I shan't complain if you-all allow me to carry the key," returned Belle-Ann.

"But I would guard the key, dear," declared her teacher, pushing the grammar aside and drawing Belle-Ann over to a sofa.

"But I can whittle--Lem taught me to whittle--I can make lots of funny things--and I would make a key with my pencil knife and open the door."

"Then I would take away your wooden key and lock you, together with your books, in the closet."

"Then I would pull the shortest hair from my crown and blow on both ends and make a wish and turn into an elf--no, a gnome,--no, that isn't it either--anyhow, I would turn into something very thin and flat and slide out under the door."

"But you couldn't get your books out, dear--and it would be too lonesome and dark to study in the closet."

"But I would catch some fire-flies out thah and slide back under the door--then I would have a light, and when I study I don't get lonesome."

"Then a sad thing would happen, my dear--I would be compelled to switch you----"

Belle-Ann vented a peal of pent-up glee and pulled the prematurely white head toward her.

"Then I would kiss you thah and thah and thah--I would do what you always tell me--I would give good for evil--and I would not switch you back, and would only squeeze you hard--like this----"

The woman in turn touched the dimpled, mischievous face fondly and kissed the red mouth, so temptingly close to her. Miss Worth the while had held a free hand behind her and in this hand she secreted something.

"I really didn't come in to frolic, Belle-Ann," she said. "I came to tell you something--rather to ask you to do something for us."

"Who's us, Miss Virginia?" quizzed Belle-Ann, her roguish, child-like curiosity superseding her levity.