The Young Schoolmistress
The following day Paula had a word with my father regarding the matter.
“Now don’t worry any more about the Breton, Paula,” he answered. “He knows enough to do what’s necessary to gain his living, and if he wants to work faithfully and not spend all his money on drink, he can do that without knowing how to read. However, if it bothers you because he cannot read, why don’t you advise him to go to night school? I can’t imagine what could have happened to him, but he’s changed mightily, and for the better. I only hope the change in him will last!”
The days grew longer, the snow disappeared and the trees and fields began to put on their spring clothes. Week by week the Breton’s home also began to show a marvelous transformation. The pigs who formerly found the garden a sort of happy rooting-ground now found themselves confronted with a neat fence that resisted all their attacks, and the garden itself, with its well-raked beds, showed substantial promise of a harvest of onions, potatoes and cabbage in the near future. Spotless white curtains and shiny panes of window glass began to show in place of the dirty rags and paper which used to stop part of the winter winds from entering, and the rain which formerly kept merry company with the wind in that unhappy dwelling now found itself completely shut out by shingles on the roof and sidewalk; and a certain air of neatness and order so pervaded the whole place that it became the talk of the little town.
“That’s all very well, but it’s not going to last long,” said some.
“Well, we shall soon see,” said others.
The Breton had to stand a good many jests and taunts from his former companions, but he took it all without either complaint or abatement of his courage.
“I don’t blame you one bit,” he said to one of his tormentors, “for I was once exactly the same—only I hope some day you’ll be different, too. In the meantime, comrade, I’ll be praying for you.”
“You must admit I’m a changed man, anyway,” he said one day to a group who made sport of him.
“That’s true, right enough,” said one of them.
“Well, who changed me?”
Various opinions were offered to this question.
“Well, I’ll tell you!” he thundered, and that stentorian voice which always used to dominate every assembly in which he mingled, held them spellbound!
“It was the Lord Jesus Christ. He died for me—yes, and He died for every one of you. He shed His blood on Calvary’s cross to keep every man from hell who surrenders to Him in true repentance. Then He does another thing! His Holy Spirit takes away the bad habits of every man who surrenders to Him. He said once, ‘If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed’ (John 8:36)! Now you look well at me! You know what a terrible temper I had. You’ve tried your best in these past weeks to make me angry but you haven’t succeeded. That’s a miracle in itself. You can say what you like to me now but you won’t make me lose my temper. That’s not to my credit, let me tell you! It’s God Himself who’s done something that I don’t yet clearly understand. The money I earn, I dump it all in the wife’s lap, for I know she can handle it better than I can! Then there’s another thing! When I get up in the morning now, I ask God to help, and He does it. When I go to bed at night, I pray again. Let me tell you, if I should die I’ll go to heaven, and there I’ll meet my dear old mother, for it’s not what I’ve done, it’s what He’s done! It isn’t that I’m any better than any of you. No! There isn’t one of you as bad as I was,” he continued, “but if God was able to change and pardon a beast like me, He can surely do the same with all of you. So what I say is, why don’t you all do just the same as I’ve done? Surrender yourselves into Christ’s hands!”
Little by little, seeing it was useless to try to bring the Breton back into his old ways, his tormentors were silenced at least, and a life of new activities commenced for the former drunkard.
“You certainly appear to be quite happy,” said Paula, as we passed the Breton’s garden one evening where he was whistling merrily at his work.
“I certainly am that,” said he, raising his head. “There’s just one weight on my heart yet, however.”
“And what’s that?” Paula’s voice was sympathetic.
“It’s that I cannot read.”
“But I didn’t think that that fact interested you very much.”
“Yes, I know, Mademoiselle, but I didn’t comprehend what I had lost, but now I’d give my left hand if I could only read.”
“Poor Breton,” I said. It seemed to me we were a bit helpless before such a problem.
“It isn’t that I want to become a fine gentleman, and all that”; and the Breton turned to address me also—“It’s simply that I want to be able to read the Great Book that tells about God and His Son Jesus Christ. Also I would like to help my children that they might have a better chance than hitherto I have given them. But there you are! I’m just a poor ignorant man, and I suppose I always shall be.”
“Well,” said Paula, “why don’t you attend the night school?”
“No, Mademoiselle,” and the Breton shook his head; “that’s all very well for the young fellows who have learned a little something and wish to learn a bit more. But me!—at my age!—and I don’t even know the letter A from B, and I have such a dull head that I would soon tire out the best of teachers.”
“Well, supposing I tried teaching you?” said Paula timidly.
“You, Mademoiselle!” cried the Breton stupefied, “you to try such a thing as to teach me!”
“And why not, if my uncle should let me?”
“Well, Mademoiselle, that would be different. I believe that with you to teach me I might be able to learn,” and the Breton leaned on his spade for a moment.
“You are so good and kind and patient, I would not be afraid of your making fun of my stupid efforts. But there, there’s no use thinking about such a thing, for I’m sure the master would never permit it.”
In fact, it did take a good deal to persuade my father, but Paula won his permission at last.
The Breton came every Saturday night Teresa complained a bit at first, seeing her kitchen turned into a night school for such a rough ignorant workman, but “for Jesus Christ’s sake,” as Paula said, she had finally become resigned to it.
It was both pathetic and comical to see the efforts which the poor Breton made as he tried to follow with one great finger the letters which his young teacher pointed out to him. He stumbled on, making many mistakes but never discouraged. Sometimes the sweat poured from him when the task appeared too great for him. At such times he would put his head in his hands for a moment, and then with a great sigh he would start again.
At the end of a month he had learned the alphabet and nothing more, and even then he would make mistakes in naming some of the letters.
“Oh, let him go!” said Teresa; “He’s like myself. He’ll never, never learn.”
But Paula’s great eyes opened wide.
“Why! I simply can’t abandon him unless he should give it up himself. Besides, have you forgotten, Teresa, what it cost me to learn to sew? But in the end I did learn; didn’t I?”
So Teresa was silenced. But once the Breton had conquered this first barrier to learning his progress was truly surprising. In the factory his “primer” was always with him. At lunch hours he would either study alone, or he’d persuade a fellow worker more advanced than himself to help him with his lesson. Paula was astonished to see how quickly she could teach him a verse in the New Testament or a Waldensian hymn she had learned in the valley back home.
Nevertheless a week or two later she noticed that he seemed to be a bit distraught, and she feared he was getting weary of his task.
“What’s the matter?” she finally asked him.
“Oh, nothing,” and the Breton grinned rather sheepishly.
“Tell me, Breton, what’s on your mind?”
He guffawed loudly as he replied. “You’d make fun of me sure, if I told you—and with good reason!”
“I never make fun of anybody,” said Paula reproachfully.
“No, Mademoiselle, I ought to know that better than anybody else! Well, perhaps it might be well to tell you. If you must know it, it’s this—there are many, I find, that wish they could be in my place tonight”
“In your place tonight! I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Paula.
“Well, you see, I’ve got four or five of my old comrades who also want to learn to read.”
“What’s that you say?” Teresa said, leaving her knitting to stand in front of the Breton.
“It’s true enough, Mademoiselle Teresa, and when you come to think of it, it’s not a bit strange. Down at the factory they all know how different and how happy I am. And how they did make fun of me when I started to learn to read; just as they jeered at me when Jesus Christ first saved me and I learned to pray. But now some of them, seeing how happy I am, also want to learn to read, and who knows but some day they will want to know how to pray to the Lord Jesus also.”
Paula’s face took on a serious expression—finally, however, she slowly shook her head.
“You know, with all my heart, I’d just love to see it done; but it’s perfectly useless, I suppose, even to think of it,” she said sadly.
“That’s what I thought, too,” said the Breton; “I’m sorry I spoke about it.”
“Well, I don’t know,” continued Paula. “Perhaps if uncle could arrange somehow—I remember when I was quite small, back there before I left the valley, my dear godmother had a night school for laboring men. It was just lovely. They learned to read and to write and to calculate. Then afterwards, each night before they went home they would sing hymns and read the Bible and pray.”
“Yes, that’s all very well,” said Teresa, “but your godmother was a whole lot older than you are.”
Then turning to the Breton she said, “Why don’t you tell your friends to go to the night school in town?”
“Well,” said the Breton, “I know that they learn many things there, but they don’t teach them about God. However, as I said before, I’m sorry I mentioned the thing. Let’s not speak any more about it.”
“Well,” said Paula, “I know what I’m going to do. I’ll speak to the Lord Jesus about it.”
And Paula kept her promise.
One morning, Teresa usually not at all inquisitive, could not seem to keep her eyes off a certain little group who were engaged in moving out of one of the “Red Cottages” across the road. More than once she paused in her work of tidying up the house to peer out of one window or another.
“That’s the very best of all the Red Cottages, and they’re moving out of it,” remarked Teresa finally.
“Of what importance is that?” I said to her rather sharply. I was washing windows, and that task always made me irritable.
“I’ve got a certain idea!” Teresa said.
“Tell me your big idea,” I said.
“No! You go ahead and wash your windows. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
The next day I had forgotten Teresa and her “idea.” As I started for school she called after me, “Tell Mademoiselle Virtud, your teacher, that I want to see her just as soon as possible I have to speak to her about something.”
In a flash I remembered what had happened the day before, and I guessed at once her secret.
“Teresa!” I cried, “I’ve got it now! You want Mademoiselle Virtud to occupy the house across the road. Oh, that’ll be just wonderful!”
Teresa tried to put on her most severe air, but failed completely.
“Well, supposing that’s not so!” she said, as with a grin she pushed me out of the door.
Mademoiselle Virtud came over that very afternoon. I hadn’t been mistaken. She and Teresa went immediately across the road to see the empty house, the owner having left the key with us. At the end of a half-hour they returned.
“It’s all arranged,” and Teresa beamed. “She’s coming to live here right across the road. I’ve thought of the thing for a long time, and now at last the house I wanted is empty. Monsieur Bouché has promised to fix the fence and put a new coat of paint on the house, and with some of our plants placed in the front garden, it will be a fitting place for your dear teacher and her Gabriel to live in.”
“You’ll certainly spoil us!” said Mlle. Virtud. “What a joy it will be to leave that stuffy apartment in town. And Gabriel is so pale and weak! This lovely air of the open country will make a new boy of him!”
It was a wonderful time we had, arranging things before our new neighbors moved in. Teresa bought some neat linen curtains for the windows of the little house. Paula and I gathered quantities of flowers from our garden and placed them over the chimney-piece, and on the bedroom shelves and in the window seats—and how the floors and windows did shine after we had finished polishing them!
When our teacher arrived in a coach with Gabriel packed in among the usual quantity of small household things of all kinds, great was her gratitude and surprise to find, in the transformed house, such signs of our care and affection for her. It was indeed the happiest moving day that could possibly be imagined. There wasn’t a great quantity of furniture, and in an hour or so after our new neighbors’ arrival we had everything installed in its proper place, to say nothing of the bright fire burning in the tiny grate and the kettle singing merrily above it. One would hardly have dreamed that it had been an empty house that very morning. Even Louis who had come home for a weekend holiday had sailed in and worked with us in putting the little cottage in order.
That night the newly-arrived tenants ate with us, after which Louis carried Gabriel piggyback to his new home across the road.
Our teacher’s prophecy regarding Gabriel was a correct one. Day by day he grew stronger. Teresa looked out for him during school hours, and with his bright, happy ways he soon became a great favorite with the neighborhood boys.
“Tell me, Paula,” said my father one evening, “how is the new pupil coming on?”
“Which new pupil?” our cousin said as she came and stood by my father’s chair, where he sat reading his paper.
“The Breton, of course. Surely you haven’t more than one pupil?”
“For the present, no!” she answered, with a queer little smile on her quiet face.
“For the present, no,” repeated my father; “and what may that mean?”
Paula rested her cheek against the top of my father’s head.
“Dearest uncle,” she said, “will you please grant me a great favor?”
“Now, what?” said my father—and the stern, serious face lighted up with a smile.
“You see, the Breton has almost learned to read, and it would be just splendid if some of his old comrades and his two sons could learn too.”
“Oh, Paula, Paula!” said my father—“where is all this going to end?”
But Paula was not easily daunted, especially when the thing asked for was for the benefit of other people.
“Now, why won’t you let me teach them, dear uncle?” She came and knelt at my father’s feet, and took both his hands in hers.
“But you’re only a very young and very little student, Paula. You must be taught yourself before you can teach others.” My father’s voice was very tender, but firm as well, and it didn’t look to me as if Paula would win. She said nothing in reply, but stayed kneeling there at his feet with those great appealing eyes of hers fixed on his face.
“We shall see, we shall see,” said my father gently, “when you’ve finished your own studies. Besides I think you’re reasonable enough to see that such a task along with your studies would be too big a burden for a child like you. I could not let you take this up.”
“I suppose you’re right, dear uncle,” said Paula humbly, as she rose and rested her head against my father’s shoulder, “and yet if you could only know how happy it would make the Breton and his comrades. And besides,” she added, “I had fondly hoped that if I could have taught them, they would learn much about the Lord Jesus and take Him as their Savior, as the Breton has done.”
“You seem to think of nothing but how to serve your ‘Lord Jesus,’ ” and there was a wistful sort of tone in my father’s voice.
“Well, am I not His servant?”
“No!” said my father, “I’d call you a soldier of His, and one that’s always under arms!”
“That’s because I have such a wonderful, such a kind, and such a powerful Captain. I wish everybody might come to know Him! And to know Him is to love Him!”
There followed a moment of silence, so solemn, so sweet, that it seemed as if a Presence had suddenly entered, and I personally felt my soul in that moment suddenly lifted toward God as it had never been before. And as I looked at Paula standing so humbly there her eyes seemed to say: “Oh, my uncle, my cousin, would that you, too, might love Him and receive Him as the Savior of your soul!”
“Listen, Paula,” my father said; “will you leave the Breton and his friends and his sons in my hands for the present?”
Paula looked at him searchingly for a moment, as if trying to find out what was in his mind.
“Of course!” she finally said.
“Well, then, just rest content. I’ll try to see the thing through somehow. If I’m not very much mistaken, these protegés of yours will have very little to complain of.”
“Oh, uncle dear!” shouted Paula, delighted, “what are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know yet exactly, but I’ve thought of something. No! No! Don’t try to thank me for anything, for I don’t know how it will come out. But,” he smiled as he laid his hand on Paula’s head, “you certainly have a method of asking for things that I don’t seem to find any way to refuse you.”