“I am a committed Emancipationist, Goody Guester. I will not join in a conspiracy to deprive any Black child of his or her intellectual heritage.”
Old Peg didn’t know what in the world an intellectual heritage was, but she knew that Miss Larner was in too much sympathy. If she kept up this way, she’d be like to ruin everything. “You got to hear me out, Miss Larner. They’ll just get another teacher, and I’ll be worse off, and so will Arthur Stuart. No, I just ask that you give him an hour in the evening, a few days a week. I’ll make him study somewhat in the daytime, to learn proper what you teach him quick. He’s a bright boy, you’ll see that. He already knows his letters—he can A it and Z it better than my Horace. That’s my husband, Horace Guester. So I’m not asking more than a few hours a week, if you can spare it. That’s why we worked up this springhouse, so you could do it and none the wiser.”
Miss Larner arose from where she sat on the edge of her bed, and walked to the window. “This is not what I ever imagined—to teach a child in secret, as if I were committing a crime.”
“In some folks’ eyes, Miss Larner—”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that.”
“Don’t you Quakers have silent meetings? All I ask is a kind of quiet meeting, don’t you know—”
“I am not a Quaker, Goody Guester. I am merely a human being who refuses to deny the humanity of others, unless their own acts prove them unworthy of that noble kinship.”
“Then you’ll teach him?”
“After hours, yes. Here in my home, which you and your husband so kindly provided, yes. But in secret? Never! I shall proclaim to all in this place that I am teaching Arthur Stuart, and not just a few nights a week, but daily. I am free to tutor such pupils as I desire—my contract is quite specific on that point—and as long as I do not violate the contract, they must endure me for at least a year. Will that do?”
Old Peg looked at the woman in pure admiration. “I’ll be jiggered,” she said, “you’re mean as a cat with a burr in its behind.”
“I regret that I’ve never seen a cat in such an unfortunate situation, Goody Guester, so that I cannot estimate the accuracy of your simile.”
Old Peg couldn’t make no sense of the words Miss Larner said, but she caught something like a twinkle in the lady’s eye, so it was all right.
“When should I send Arthur to you?” she asked.
“As I said when I first opened the door, I’ll need a week to prepare. When school opens for the White children, it opens for Arthur Stuart as well. There remains only the question of payment.”
Old Peg was taken aback for a moment. She’d come here prepared to offer money, but after the way Miss Larner talked, she thought there’d be no cost after all. Still, teaching was Miss Larner’s livelihood, so it was only fair. “We thought to offer you a dollar a month, that being most convenient for us, Miss Larner, but if you need more—”
“Oh, not cash, Goody Guester. I merely thought to ask if you might indulge me by allowing me to hold a weekly reading of poetry in your roadhouse on Sunday evenings, inviting all in Hatrack River who aspire to improve their acquaintance with the best literature in the English language.”
“I don’t know as how there’s all that many who hanker after poetry, Miss Larner, but you’re welcome to have a go of it.”
“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the number of people who wish to be thought educated, Goody Guester. We shall have difficulty finding seats for all the ladies of Hatrack River who compel their husbands to bring them to hear the immortal words of Pope and Dryden, Donne and Milton, Shakespeare and Gray and—oh, I shall be daring—Wordsworth and Coleridge, and perhaps even an American poet, a wandering spinner of strange tales named Blake.”
“You don’t mean old Taleswapper, do you?”
“I believe that is his most common sobriquet.”
“You’ve got some of his poems wrote drown?”
“Written? Hardly necessary, for that dear friend of mine. I have committed many of his verses to memory.”
“Well, don’t that old boy get around. Philadelphia, no less.”
“He has brightened many a parlor in that city, Goody Guester. Shall we hold our first soiree this Sunday?”
“What’s a swore raid?”
“Soiree. An evening gathering, perhaps with ginger punch—”
“Oh, you don’t have to teach me nothing about hospitality, Miss Larner. And if that’s the price for Arthur Stuart’s education, Miss Larner, I’m sore afraid I’m cheating you, because it seems to me you’re doing us the favor both ways.”
“You’re most kind, Goody Guester. But I must ask you one question.”
“Ask away. Can’t promise I’m too good at answers.”
“Goody Guester,” said Miss Larner. “Are you aware of the Fugitive Slave Treaty?”
Fear and anger stabbed right through Old Peg’s heart, even to hear it mentioned. “A devilish piece of work!”
“Slavery is a devilish work indeed, but the treaty was signed to bring Appalachee into the Compact, and to keep our fragile nation from war with the Crown Colonies. Peace is hardly to be labeled devilish.”
“It is when it’s a peace that says they can send their damned finders into the free states and bring back captive Black people to be slaves!”
“Perhaps you’re right, Goody Guester. Indeed, one could say that the Fugitive Slave Treaty is not so much a treaty of peace as it is an article of surrender. Nevertheless, it is the law of the land.”
Only now did Old Peg realize what this teacher just done. What could it mean, her bringing up the Fugitive Slave Treaty, excepting to make sure Old Peg knew that Arthur Stuart wasn’t safe here, that finders could still come from the Crown Colonies and claim him as the property of some family of White so-called Christians? And that also meant that Miss Larner didn’t believe a speck of her story about where Arthur Stuart come from. And if she saw through the lie so easy-like, why was Old Peg fool enough to think everybody else believed it? Why, as far as Old Peg knew, the whole town of Hatrack River had long since guessed that Arthur Stuart was a slave boy what somehow run off and got hisself a White mama.
And if everybody knew, what was to stop somebody from giving report on Arthur Stuart, sending word to the Crown Colonies about a runaway slavechild living in a certain roadhouse near the Hatrack River? The Fugitive Slave Treaty made her adoption of Arthur Stuart plain illegal. They could take the boy right out of her arms and she’d never have the right to see him again. In fact, if she ever went south they could arrest her and hang her under the slave-poaching laws of King Arthur. And thinking of that monstrous King in his lair in Camelot made her remember the unkindest thing of all—that if they ever took Arthur Stuart south, they’d change his name. Why, it’d be high treason in the Crown Colonies, having a slavechild named with the same name as the King. So all of a sudden poor Arthur would find hisself with some other name he never heard of afore. She couldn’t help thinking of the boy all confused, somebody calling him and calling him, and whipping him for not coming, but how could he know to come, since nobody called him by his right name?
Her face must’ve painted a plain picture of all the thoughts going through her head, because Miss Larner walked behind her and put her hands on Old Peg’s shoulders.
“You’ve nought to fear from me, Goody Guester. I come from Philadelphia, where people speak openly of defying that treaty. A young New Englander named Thoreau has made quite a nuisance of himself, preaching that a bad law must be defied, that good citizens must be prepared to go to jail themselves rather than submit to it. It would do your heart good to hear him speak.”
Old Peg doubted that. It only froze her to the heart to think of the treaty at all. Go to jail? What good would that do, if Arthur was being whipped south in chains? No matter what, it was none of Miss Larner’s business. “I don’t know why you’re saying all this, Miss Larner. Arthur Stuart is the freeborn son of a free Black woman, even if she got him on the wrong si
de of the sheets. The Fugitive Slave Treaty means nothing to me.”
“Then I shall think no more of it, Goody Guester. And now, if you’ll forgive me, I’m somewhat weary from traveling, and I had hoped to retire early. though it’s still light outside.”
Old Peg sprang to her feet, mighty relieved at not talking anymore about Arthur and the Treaty. “Why, of course. But you ain’t hopping into bed without taking a bath, are you? Nothing like a bath for a traveler.”
“I quite agree, Goody Guester. However, I fear my luggage was not copious enough for me to bring my tub along.”
“I’ll send Horace over with my spare tub the second I get back, and if you don’t mind hotting up your stove there, we can get water from Gertie’s well yonder and set it to steaming in no time.”
“Oh, Goody Guester, I fear you’ll convince me before the evening’s out that I’m in Philadelphia after all, It shall be almost disappointing, for I had steeled myself to endure the rigors of primitive life in the wilderness, and now I find that you are prepared to offer all the convivial blessings of civilization.”
“I’ll take it that what you said mostly means thank you, and so I say you’re welcome, and I’ll be back in no time with Horace and the tub. And don’t you dare fetch your own water, at least not today. You just set there and read or philosophate or whatever an educated person does instead of dozing off.”
With that Old Peg was out of the springhouse. She like to flew along the path to the inn. Why. this teacher lady wasn’t half so bad as she seemed at first. She might talk a language that Old Peg couldn’t hardly understand half the time. but at least she was willing to talk to folks—and she’d teach Arthur at no cost and hold poetry readings in the roadhouse to boot. Best of all, though, best of all she might even be willing to talk to Old Peg sometimes and maybe some of that smartness might rub off on her. Not that smartness was all that much good to a woman like Old Peg, but then, what good was a jewel on a rich lady’s finger, either? And if being around this educated eastern spinster gave Old Peg even a jigger more understanding of the great world outside Hatrack River, it was more than Old Peg had dared to hope for in her life. Like daubing just a spot of color on a drab moth’s wing. It don’t make the moth into a butterfly, but maybe now the moth won’t despair and fly into the fire.
Miss Larner watched Old Peg walk away. Mother, she whispered. No, didn’t even whisper. Didn’t even open her mouth. But her lips pressed together a bit tighter with the M, and her tongue shaped the other sounds inside her mouth.
It hurt her, to deceive. She had promised never to lie, and in a sense she wasn’t lying even now. The name she had taken, Larner, meant nothing more than teacher, and since she was a teacher, it was as truly her name as Father’s name was Guester and Makepeace’s name was Smith. And when people asked her questions, she never lied to them, though she did refuse to answer questions that might tell them more than they ought to know, that might set them wondering.
Still, despite her elaborate avoidance of an open lie, she feared that she merely deceived herself. How could she believe that her presence here, so disguised, was anything but a lie?
And yet surely even that deception was the truth, at its root. She was no longer the same person she had been when she was torch of Hatrack River. She was no longer connected to these people in the former ways. If she claimed to be Little Peggy, that would be a deeper lie than her disguise, for they would suppose that she was the girl they once knew, and treat her accordingly. In that sense, her disguise was a reflection of who she really was, at least here and now—educated, aloof, a deliberate spinster, and sexually unavailable to men.
So her disguise was not a lie, surely it was not; it was merely a way to keep a secret, the secret of who she used to be, but was no longer. Her vow was still unbroken.
Mother was long since out of sight in the woods between the springhouse and the inn, but still Peggy looked after her. And if she wanted, Peggy could have seen her even yet, not with her eyes, but with her torch sight, finding Mother’s heartfire and moving close, looking tight. Mother, don’t you know you have no secrets from your daughter Peggy?
But the fact was that Mother could keep all the secrets she desired. Peggy would not look into her heart. Peggy hadn’t come home to be the torch of Hatrack River again. After all these years of study, in which Peggy had read so many books so rapidly that she feared once that she might run out, that there might not be books enough in America to satisfy her—after all these years, there was only one skill she was certain of. She had finally mastered the ability not to see inside the hearts of other people unless she wanted to. She had finally tamed her torchy sight.
Oh, she still looked inside other people when she needed to, but she rarely did. Even with the school board, when she had to tame them, it took no more than her knowledge of human nature to guess their present thoughts and deal with them. And as for the futures revealed in the heartfire, she no longer noticed them.
I am not responsible for your futures, none of you. Least of all you, Mother. I have meddled enough in your life, in everyone’s lives. If I know all your futures, all you people in Hatrack River, then I have a moral imperative to shape my own actions to help you achieve the happiest possible tomorrow. Yet in so doing, I cease to exist myself. My own future becomes the only one with no hope, and why should that be? By shutting my eyes to what will happen, I become like you, able to live my life according to my guesses at what may happen. I couldn’t guarantee you happiness anyway, and this way at least I also have a chance of it myself.
Even as she justified herself, she felt the same sour guilt well up inside her. By rejecting her knack, she was sinning against the God that gave it to her. That great magister Erasmus, he had taught as much: Your knack is your destiny. You’ll never know joy except through following the path laid out before you by what is inside you. But Peggy refused to submit to that cruel discipline. Her childhood had already been stolen from her, and to what end? Her mother disliked her, the people of Hatrack River feared her, often hated her, even as they came to her again and again, seeking answers to their selfish, petty questions, blaming her if any seeming ill came into their lives, but never thanking her for saving them from dire events, for they never knew how she had saved them because the evils never happened.
It wasn’t gratitude she wanted. It was freedom. It was a lightening of her burden. She had started bearing it too young, and they had shown her no mercy in their exploitation. Their own fears always outweighed her need for a carefree girlhood. Did any of them understand that? Did any of them know how gratefully she left them all behind?
Now Peggy the torch was back, but they’d never know it. I did not come back for you, people of Hatrack River, nor did I come to serve your children. I came back for one pupil only, the man who stands even now at the forge, his heartfire burning so brightly that I can see it even in my sleep, even in my dreams. I came back having learned all that the world can teach, so I in turn can help that young man achieve a labor that means more than any one of us. That is my destiny, if I have one.
Along the way I’ll do what other good I can—I’ll teach Arthur Stuart, I’ll try to fulfill the dreams his brave young mother died for; I’ll teach all the other children as much as they’re willing to learn, during those certain hours of the day that I’ve contracted for; I’ll bring such poetry and learning into the town of Hatrack River as you’re willing to receive.
Perhaps you don’t desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I daresay poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you. Can I teach you to see in yourselves what Gray saw?
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,
Ha
nds that the rod of empire might have swayed.
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
But she doubted that any of these ordinary souls in Hatrack River were really route, inglorious Miltons. Pauley Wiseman was no secret Caesar. He might wish for it, but he lacked the wit and self-control. Whitley Physicker was no Hippocrates, however much he tried to be a healer and conciliator—his love of luxury undid him, and like many other well-meaning physician he had come to work for what the fee could buy, and not for joy of the work itself.
She picked up the water bucket that stood by the door. Weary as she was, she would not allow herself to seem helpless even for a moment. Father and Mother would come and find Miss Larner had already done for herself all that she could do before the tub arrived.
Ching-ching-ching. Didn’t Alvin rest? Didn’t he know the sun was boiling the western sky, turning it red before sinking out of sight behind the trees? As she walked down the hill toward the smithy, she felt as if she might suddenly begin to run, to fly down the hill to the smithy as she had flown the day that Alvin was born. It was raining that day, and Alvin’s mother was stuck in a wagon in the river. It was Peggy who saw them all, their heartfires off in the blackness of the rain and the flooding river. It was Peggy who gave alarm, and then Peggy who stood watch over the birthing, seeing Alvin’s futures in his heartfire, the brightest heartfire she had ever seen or would ever see in all her life. It was Peggy who saved his life then by peeling the caul away from his face; and, by using bits of that caul. Peggy who had saved his life so many times over the years. She might turn her back on being torch of Hatrack River, but she’d never turn her back on him.
But she stopped herself halfway down the hill. What was she thinking of? She could not go to him, not now, not yet. He had to come to her. Only that way could she become his teacher; only that way was there a chance of becoming anything more than that.
She turned and walked across the face of the hill, slanting down and eastward toward the well. She had watched Alvin dig the well—both wells—and for once she was helpless to help him when the Unmaker came. Alvin’s own anger and destructiveness had called his enemy, and there was nothing Peggy could do with the caul to save him that time. She could only watch as he purged the unmaking that was inside himself, and so defeated, for a time, the Unmaker who stalked him on the outside. Now this well stood as a monument both to Alvin’s power and to his frailty.
Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III Page 23
