“WEASER TAN.”

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue XV, 7 October 1899, Page 633

“WEASER TAN.”

By

MARGARET JOHANN.

The teacher stood by the blackboard reviewing with Ralph Burrows a problem in algebra. Most of her pupils were from the lower walks of life, rude in dress and manner, and

backward in intelligence. The school-

room was a relic of an ancient educational with broken, begrimed walls, curtainless windows and backless, splinter-fringed benches, whose present incumbents could, upon the clumsy “forms” before them, carve their initials side by side with those of their fathers’, or imprison flies in dungeons gouged out by the jack-knives of their grandfathers.

This pupil in algebra was the sole representative there of the township aristocracy. The teacher was very proud of him. He had already passed the entrance examination for the

high-school in a distant city. He showed what she could do when she had material to work with, she thought, and she was fond of showing him off when the trustees made their

prescribed “two visits a year.” The boy had an earnest though > merry face, and he bore with good-humour-ed indifference the distinction of be-

ing the best-dressed and most scholarly pupil there. It was a raw January day. The wind made the old school-house quake, but for pity of the children; it piled protecting ridges of snow about the casements. For the comfort of the smaller children benches were drawn close to the stove; but at the forms the older ones wrung their hands to dispel the numbness of their fingers, and sat upon their feet to keep them warm. A little girl with stringy, yellow curls, a lace-bordered apron, torn and dingy, and a soiled ribbon around her neck, tugged at the teacher’s gown. “Tin me and Weaser Tan do home?” “Weaser Tan” (Louisa Rutan) by her side, hung her head bashfully and pulled her mouth awry with her fingers. There was no attempt at finery in Weaser’s Tan's costume. She was an ugly child, with part of her unkempt hair gathered into a short, tapering braid and tied with a bit of thread, and the rest of it hanging in strings about her eyes' and ears. The teacher hesitated. b‘Me and Weaser Tan’ will freeze on’ the way, Miss L ” said Ralph, good-naturedly, turning from his problem, “they have nearly as far to go as I have.” Mass L stepped' anxiously to the window and surveyed the road. “If ‘Me and Weaser Tan’ will wait, till school’s out I’ll take them home on my sled,” continued Ralph. The teacher looked relieved. “If you’ll do that, Ralph, ” she said, “you may go right away; for the storm’s getting worse every minute.” i The boy was delighted to get out, of school so early, “Proof that a good action is never thrown away,” he said, with roguish familiarity. Then he slammed his books into place, put on his warm overcoat and tied a bright home-knit searf around his neck, and the little girls pinned on their threadbare shawls. They went out into the storm together, and he Seated them a-tandem upon his sled. “ Put on your Weaser Tan,” he said, for the child’s hands holding to the sides of the sled were chapped and red. “She ain’t got none,” said Grace, pulling at the wrists of her own and giggling self-consciously. “Put these on, then,” said he, throwing his own into her lap. She drew them on shamefacedly. The little girls lived in adjoining cabins; and when he left them in front of their door he said: “You may keep the mittens, Weaser Tan; mother’ll knit me another pair. They’re not so gay as Grace’s, but they’re warm.” Ralph Burrows, home on a college vacation, came out of the woods behind the Rutan cabin with his gun upon his shoulder. His dog had run on ahead and Ralph came upon him eagerly lapping water from a trough in front of the house. Grace and Weaser Tan were there, the latter with her hand upon the handle of the pump, from whose nozzle a stream of fresh water was falling gently, for the animal’s' enjoyment. “Don knows where the best water in the neighbourhood is to be found,” said Ralph, throwing a bunch of game upon the grass and pumping a dipperful of water ’ for ’ himself as

the girl stepped bashfully aside. The dog, a magnificent English setter, went to her and laid his tawny head against her. She spoke gently to him, foudliug his silky ears. “He seems to be an acquaintance of yours,” said Ralph, by way of being sociable. “Sh’d think he ought to be,” giggled Grace. “She’s always saving bones and things for him.” “That’s very kind, I’m sure,” said the young fellow, turning toward the game which Grace was inspecting. “That blue-jay was an accident —I didn’t mean to shoot him.” “You might give me his wings for my hat,” said Grace, saucily. “His wings? with pleasure,” and, taking out his knife, he cut them off. “One for Grace and one for—-‘Wea-ser Tan,’” he said, giving one to each, and laughing at the recollection of the old childish name. He went whistling out out of the gate ; and Grace, with each hand grasping a picket of the rickety fence, watched him out of hearing. She drew a long breath as she turned away : “Gracious, ain’t he handsome !” she said, “ and Wease, you like him awful good.” For answer Wease splashed her well with water. Then Grace went crying into the house, and Wease, in the covert of the high pump, softly stroked the jay’s wing and watched the giver out of sight. “ Room in our town for another physician,” wrote distant relatives, and there Ralph Burrows went fresh from an extended course of study and travel abroad. He opened his office in the heart of the town ; his home was with his relatives on hills that overlooked it. Business came to him laggingly, but love came on smooth, swift wings. Marguerite, heir of beauty, wealth and goodness, sat on the veranda, fieldglass in hand. A dozen times a day she focused it, upon Ralph’s office in the town below. A few moments since she saw’him lock his door and set out upon the. homeward road. Now he was hidden from view, but she knew just what landmark He had reached (she had timed him so often). To speed, the minutes she took tjp a magazine arid scanned an article that essayed to settle for all times and total! people the question : “Is life worth' living ?”. When he came, she met him at the foot of the terraces, and with his arin around her he led her back to the veranda.

“What’s in it?” he asked, tossing the magazine aside to make room for them both upon the willow settle. “Oh Ralph,” she cried, archly, “is life worth living ?” He took her face between his hands and looked unutterable love into eyes that paid him back his own : “Is life worth living? And with Marguerite ? A thousand, thousand, times, sweetheart, and forever and ever I” He kissed her rapturously. “ For shame," she whispered, looking rosily foolish and happy, “there’s Louise ; she must have heard and seen the whole performance. And, by the way, Ralph, when you write your mother, thank her again for solving for us the servant problem in so far as a waitress is concerned. This Louise Rutan has been with us two months now, and we find her all we could desire ; only (with a little deprecative shrug) her face is so stolidly sorrowful. I’m so happy myself, Ralph, that, when any one else is sad I feel a sort, of remorse—almost as if I were responsible.” “ Well, poor girl,” he said, “ I’ve known her ever since she was—three feet high, I suppose, and she’s had pretty hard lines. She’ll brighten, never fear, in the atmosphere of this home.” “ Louise,” said Marguerite next day, “ I believe I’ll let you drive me into town ; you’re accustomed to a horse aren’t you ?” “ Not very ; but I’m not afraid,” was the reply, so they went. Marguerite had made her purchases, had achieved a merry consultation with Ralph in front of his office, and they were upon a homeward, uphill road that lay along the bed of a little stream. The queer, reticent girl by her side was a study for Marguerite. Throughout the drive she had tried to make, her talk ; but, baffled, she had by now lapsed, into a silence akin to pique. A new tho”»ht came to her.

“ Louise,” she asked, “ is life worth living ?"• “ For you it must be, Miss Marguerite.” It was a lengthy sentence for the girl to utter, but her eyes looked straight ahead and her hands holdiug the slack reins lay limp in her lap. “ And why not for you, Louise ?” The girl hesitated, and Marguerite, always prone to moralising, improved the opportunity. “My good girl,” she said, “ you wage-earners make a great mistake in thinking that wealth brings happiness. All of us, rich and poor alike, meet with disappointments, and we can either make the best of them and be happy or make the worst of them and be miserable. Now, here are these gloves that I’ve just bought. I couldn’t get the colour I want ; these are fully three shades too dark, but I’m not going to fret about them ; I'm going to be happy in spite of circumstances.”

“ Yes, ma’am,” said the girl apathetically. “ You have health, a home and plenty to eat and to wear, Louise, and I have no more than that.”

“ Yes, ma’am ” —but there was repudiation in the tone. Marguerite recognised it, and went on. a softness stealing over her glad, flowerlike beauty : “Of course, I have Ralph ; but some day, Louise, some honesthearted young fellow will come to you. and will love you as his life, and then, Louise, if your heart responds ” (her voice weighted with the sweet mystery of love dropped into rythmic cadence) “you will be blessed, indeed.” “Yes, ma'am,” said the girl again, but feigned an interest in the landscape and leaned forward to hide her homely face from the gaze of the beautiful and blest. Suddenly the feigned interest became real, for she half rose to her feet, grasping the dashboard. “Whoa!” She threw the reins into Marguerite’s lap; and, springing to the ground, pressed into the thicket of blackberry and catbrier that upon one side bordered the road. Parting the tangle with her bare hands, she took one look through the opening she had made. The next instant she had loosened the • traces and was leading the horse out of the shafts.

“Why, Louise"—began Marguerite; then she got down and went to her with a face full of astonished inquiry. , The girl’s fingers were flying from buckle to buckle along the harness. “Go home as fast as you can go. Miss Marguerite,” she said. Her voice was steady, but her hands shook.

“What do you mean, Louise?” The girl dragged the harness off: “For you,” she said, “life is worth’ living; for me”—she backed the horse to the carriage-side—“death is worth dying.” From a hub she vaulted to the horse’s back.

“Go home!” she shouted fiercely; for by now she had lost control of her voice.

“I believe you are insane,” said Marguerite, half in anger, half in fright. To the quivering girl the suggestion was an inspiration. She waved her hands wildly: “Go!” she shouted, jerking the horse upon his haunches, “start, or I'll ride you down!” Marguerite fled in terror. Once she looked back. No one was in sight, but she heard the horse’s hoofs clattering downward into the town. A catalpa, little and old and scarred and only of late protected from vandalism by a box, stood in front of the doctor’s office. A horse wheeled under it, and Ralph reached the sidewalk as the rider slipped to the ground. “What’s wrong, my girl?” he asked, with forced professional calmness. Her breath came pantingly. “Go home,” she gasped, with tense, white lips, “they want you.” He sprang toward his office, but she clutched his sleeve. She was not fierce now, but her tone was an agony of pleading.

“Oh, go!”—for the first time in her life she looked full into his face—“don’t stop for anything—she’s dying, I tell you—Marguerite—she’s bleeding to death by the roadside —above the dqm.” JShe pressed the bridle into his hand but he tore away into his office. He was out again like a flash, hatless but his emergency kit in hand. He snatched the bridle and the next minute the woody, up-hill road plucked horse and rider out of her sight.

Almost fainting, she held to the tree-box. The street was nearly deserted, but two women, talking earnestly, came round a corner. She clutched the gown of the nearer: “The dam,” she whispered, “there’s a leak ”

Th woman started and gathered her skirt closely about her. “Poor creature!” she said to her companion, “rum is the' curse of this land,” and they turned nervously into the nearest street.

Then Weaser Tan’s strength came again. Two boys tore past her in a wild game of chase. She seized the foremost by his shoulder, his companion grabbed him at the same in-

stant, and both wheeled stumbliugly in front of her.

“Run for the hills!” —she shook the boy as if to awaken him from sleep —“the big dam Is giving way! Don’t stand and stare! Alarm the people!” She flung them from her, and they plunged ahead—one shrieking like a maniac, the other dumb with terror. The girl herself dashed after the two women. Ahead of her and on the opposite side, upon a bank of the ••branch,” was a factory. ’ In its second story young girls were working; she could see them through the open windows.

She was flying up the stairs, when a suspicious foreman stopped her. “Whereaway so fast, young woman?”

“The flood is coming!” “Nonsense!” he smiled pleasantly. “It’s the dam, the great dam above the South Fork! Look out at the branch!” and she tore past him. The girls were already staring wildly into one another’s faces, for a new din, the roar of n raging river, mingled with the whir and clatter of the machinery. “Run for your lives!”

They rushed to the street and fled their various ways. One, half-paral-yzed, clung to Weaser Tan. "The railroad bridge is high and very strong.” From both sides people were crowding upon it. Only a moment—but in it, to that struggling cityful, terror enough to freight eternity—and Louise, her arm around her fainting charge stood upon the bridge. Then the dam surrendered its last defence and pandemonium plunged into the valley.

The work of rescue was going on. The young doctor had not lain down, they said, for two days and two nights. He was everywhere, directing, commanding. executing. Some sixty rods below where the bridge had been was a wooded knoll, for which the branch in its peaceful days had turned tranquilly aside. A mass of drift was piled there now, sand and soil; trees, cattle and the wrecks of homes; stone buttress; brace and girder and stanchion of steel and human flesh and blood—wisps of straw flipped aside by ilie torrent, the discarded playthings of a moment.

Gangs of men were sorting it over. A bit of blue cambric caught Ralph’s eye. He knew it, for his mother had worn it onee.

“Careful there, careful,” he warned, pressing in among the labourers, “take away that piece of roofing. Not your axe, man! For heaven’s sake don't use that! There’s a young girl lying just beneath! Help me lift it, half-a-dozen of you—so—that will do.” He scooped away some debris with his hands and wiped the soil from the dead face. “Thank God, there’s no mutilation. That iron beam there twisted like a thread—it confines the arm. Set your lever just here. Steady—steady; that will do.

“Now some one help me carry her. Not you, Van Courtlandt; some one with an awful sorrow tugging at his heart. You'll do, McCall.

“Gently, my man, tenderly as you’ll lift that little'girl of yours when you find her. Lay her here, McCall. “One moment more, my friend.' Here’s a pillow, soft and white and frilled, a dainty thing—Marguerite sent it. Put it into place while I lift the head. Now the spread—thank you, McCall.”

Weaeer Tan lay in her eoffin; her face as plain in death as in life, but more serene. Ralph atood and looked at her wonderingly and sadly. His old dog came and, whining, laid his muzzle in his hand.

“Yes, Don, you’ve lost a friend. She loved you.” Marguerite came softly In.

“Here’s something else she loved,* she said. “They say she would not sleep without it under her pillow.” He opened the little box she gave him, gazed into it for a moment, touched its contents tenderly, then tucked them under some roses that lay upon her breast.

They were a pair of gray yarn mittens and n blue-jay’s wing.