Sycamore Hill

by Francine Rivers

  “I spent most of my life living in that broken-down shack they call a schoolhouse,” Ellen Greer said as she sat in a window chair and tucked a knitted afghan around her thin legs. “Oh, that’s better,” she sighed. “I just can’t walk on these sticks anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” I started to say and then stopped as I noted the expression of disdain in Ellen Greer’s eyes. “I didn’t know you were a teacher.”

  “How were you expected to know?” Ellen asserted. “Emily forgot to mention it. She never was one of my brighter pupils. She would have forgotten her head every morning if the good Lord hadn’t sewed it on.”

  I suppressed a laugh with effort.

  “Sit down, girl.” Ellen Greer thrust her cane at a chair across the room. “Drag the thing over here so I can have a better look at you.”

  “It seems to me you looked your fill, Miss Greer.” I smiled.

  “Don’t provoke me,” she snapped, her mouth drawing into a tighter pucker, while her eyes sparkled with laughter. “And you have my permission to call me Ellen, since we are fellow teachers.”

  “Ellen then. And please call me Abigail instead of girl,” I commented, liking the old lady in spite of her abrupt manner.

  “Abby does you better,” she decided, and I was reminded of Jordan Bennett. “I’ll call you that, as it pleases me. It’s a right of age.”

  I looked around the room, admiring the crocheted bedspread and the lacy doilies on the small bookshelf that boasted Dickens, Shakespeare, Longfellow, and Dumas.

  “My niece allows me to live here on sufferance,” Ellen explained without self-pity or bitterness. “She’s a nice enough girl, but she would prefer having the extra ten dollars a month this room would bring. And I can’t blame her. She’s got four hungry, growing children to feed and clothe, and her worthless husband up and died on her ten years ago. Some stomach disorder or another. He wasn’t much when he was alive, but at least Amelia didn’t have to work at cooking and cleaning for seven boarders.”

  I thought of the four quiet Bartlett girls: Becky with her lisp, Kathy and Lottie with their bright smiles and inane chatter and Martha, the hardest worker but possessor of the least intelligence.

  “How old are you, Abby?” Ellen repeated her first question to me. I did not hesitate this time.

  “Twenty-four.” My birthday had come soon after I arrived in town.

  “You don’t look it. But give it time, and you will,” she muttered. “Even good children have a way of wearing body and soul down. I bear my wrinkles like battle medals.”

  “Don’t sound so encouraging,” I said wryly.

  “You may as well know what you’re in for, girl. And I don’t for the life of me know what’s wrong with you that you haven’t got a man of your own. It’s not the usual thing to have a schoolteacher with your looks. Usually they’re old battle-axes like me. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

  “Ask James Olmstead. I’m sure he could supply you with several answers to that question,” I answered abysmally.

  Ellen chuckled. “The children used to call him Tattle-Tom, because he always liked to see and tell the worst about everyone.”

  “Apparently, age hasn’t improved him,” I mumbled and then flushed bright red with embarrassment at my wayward tongue. He has been... kind.” I tried to amend the damage.

  “Oh, hogwash and folderol!” Ellen ejaculated in disgust. “James Olmstead isn’t what I would call kind. Emily perhaps ... when she can get away with it. But James? Ha!” She leaned forward from her chair, jabbing her finger toward me. “Now, let’s get one thing agreed between us. We’ll be honest with each other. I can’t abide any more amenities. And being retired now, I don’t have to!”

  I laughed again.

  “Besides,” Ellen said more levelly, settling back in her chair and readjusting the afghan, “I’ve a feeling we’re birds of a feather. You’re going to need to talk to someone if you intend keeping your wits about you. I had family I could go to when things worried me down. But you have no one, if my gossiping sources are correct.” She raised thin gray brows questioningly.

  “Your sources are correct,” I answered with a faint smile, wondering to whom she had been talking to learn that tidbit of information. “My parents died when I was five, and I was reared by guardians.”

  “And what happened to them?” she asked, not the least bit hesitant about learning someone else’s business.

  “They were killed in a carriage accident about six months ago.”

  “Did bill collectors get the lot?”

  I laughed slightly at the old woman’s brash nosiness. “A nephew inherited,” I answered, without adding the other details of the Haversalls’ deception. But it all came back in a second.

  “I suspect there’s more to that story than you’re telling,” Ellen said acutely, watching my face. “All right, I won’t ask,” she relented with a wave of her gnarled hand. “Not today, anyway,” she corrected and flashed a smile. “What do you think of Sycamore Hill?”

  “It’s a nice Western community.”

  Ellen sniffed. “A very nice, safe answer. Forget the buildings, and let’s get down to the people.”

  “You hardly give a person a chance to breathe, do you?” I commented.

  “I learned that during my schoolteaching days. It helped me keep one step ahead of those wild little Indians. If you take my advice, you’ll do the same thing. Keep them so busy their little heads spin. Then they won’t have time to make your life a misery. And believe me, they can do it! Children have cunning, devious little minds.” She waved her hand again, cutting off my comment. “And don’t try to tell me they’re little angels, all sweetness and light. They’d be abnormal if they were! Even the quiet, dumb ones have some mischief on their minds. As long as they’re alive and kicking, that’s the way they should be.”

  “Well, so far they’re behaving remarkably well,” I insisted, wanting very much to laugh again.

  “Give them time,” Ellen Greer prophesied. “Right now they’re on their Sunday-best behavior. Monday will arrive anytime, and then we’ll see what stuff you’re made of.”

  “I do believe you’re trying to frighten me off,” I replied.

  “You’ll do just fine. You look soft, but I think there’s a determined streak in you.” She nodded. “Yes, Abby, my dear, you’ll do just fine. Now, who have you met or who do you want to know about?”

  I considered a moment before I spoke. “I haven’t really met very many people as yet. The Olmsteads, of course.”

  “Of course,” Ellen muttered. “And Bertie Poole, from what I hear.”

  “Yes.”

  “She didn’t like her boys digging a latrine or plowing the play yard,” the old woman chuckled. “When I heard about that, I knew we were going to get on together. The last teacher was in over her head.”

  “The last teacher? I thought—”

  “That I was? No, my dear. I retired five years ago. I worked until I was seventy-five and then couldn’t handle it anymore.”

  “Then who?...”

  “A weak little drudge named Prudence Townsend.”

  “That’s not very kind,” I admonished.

  “No, I don’t suppose it is. But she was pathetic as a teacher. She had no business even trying it in the first place. But I don’t suppose there was anything she could do. She wasn’t the least bit pretty like you, which was at least one point in her favor.”

  “What an awful thing to say,” I emitted, shocked.

  “Maybe so,” Ellen relented only momentarily, for she went on bluntly again. “She was nice, and that was her problem. The children ran all over her. She wanted to do well, but couldn’t keep the horde of barbarians under control. They didn’t learn much from her, which was a shame, because the girl had some brains and a lot more education than I did. But it takes more than formal knowledge to make a schoolteacher. A strong hand can be more beneficial than ten textbooks.”

  “I don’t think I could use
corporal punishment,” I admitted. “You won’t have to as long as you have latrines to dig and play yards to plow,” Ellen Greer chortled gleefully. “I would have loved to have seen the Poole boys at that. Your looks are going to come in handy where they’re concerned. From what I’ve heard, both boys have perched you high on a pedestal and labeled you their first love.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as that,” I disagreed, while remembering the calf-eyed look Sherman had cast me recently.

  “Don’t be modest! And besides, they show surprising taste, I’d say. I’d little hope of those two ever showing the least bit of intelligence, though I know they do have it hidden away somewhere upstairs beneath all that curly hair.”

  “They are bright,” I agreed.

  “They didn’t get it from Bertie or Branford. They must be throwbacks to some other relative long forgotten.”

  I laughed.

  “I had both in my class—the parents first, then the two boys; so I’m not talking through my hat,” Ellen told me defensively.

  “How on earth did you ever last fifty-five years?” I asked, still laughing and thinking her the most outspoken and least tactful person I’d ever met.

  “Following a few basic rules, which I will now kindly pass on to you,” she said seriously. “I kept my thoughts to myself, believe it or not. I obeyed the rules as closely as possible, and when I had to break them, I didn’t apologize or take any guff from the likes of James Olmstead.”

  She tapped her cane on the floor. “And there’s another thing it’ll help you to know. Schoolteachers are hard to come by. It’s a thankless job for the most part. Of course, there are bright spots ahead of you.”

  “For example?” I asked wryly.

  “You may have some gifted student who will make every dumb one worthwhile.”

  “You did?”

  “Indeed, I did. He only went here until he was fourteen. Then his mother took my advice and shipped him off back East to finish his schooling. He’d long since learned everything I could teach him, and he was hungry for more. He went on through Harvard and got his law degree. He was even offered a position in the best firm in Boston.” Ellen’s voice softened, and she looked out the window. “I was real proud of him.” She did not speak for a minute and then looked at me.

  “Of course, he made some stupid mistakes along the way, like marrying himself a brainless, selfish little society girl.” She shook her head in disgust, then waved her hand in her characteristic gesture of dismissal. “Oh, but enough on that. It’s ancient history. Anyway, you’ll have your bright spots. One Jordan Bennett makes all the Berties worth it.”

  “Jordan Bennett?” I choked.

  “You’ve met him, have you?”

  “Yes.” I couldn’t help the way I said it, or the way I looked after I said it.

  Ellen Greer leaned forward, her sharp eyes curious. “Do I take it you don’t like him?”

  “You take it correctly,” I muttered under my breath. “And believe me, the feeling is mutual.”

  The gray eyebrows went up. “How do you know that?”

  “He makes it as plain as day,” I told her.

  “He doesn’t usually show his feelings. You say he doesn’t like you? Does he have some reason to feel that way?” Her gray-blue eyes were studying me again.

  “I don’t think so, but then perhaps he does,” I admitted. “Our first meeting wasn’t very cordial.”

  “Tell me about it,” Ellen ordered, sitting forward and leaning on her cane. She was very curious and not attempting to hide it.

  "I’d rather not. That’s one episode I would prefer to forget.”

  “You just make me all the more interested.”

  “The story would disappoint you, believe me.”

  “Then we’ll shelve Jordan for the moment... along with those guardians of yours,” Ellen Greer decided, but pointed a warning finger at me. “We’ll get around to all of them sooner or later, my dear. Mark my word. I may be eighty, but I’m not ready for the boneyard yet, nor is my brain. When curiosity dies, the rest of you might as well follow right along.”

  “Well, I think you have more than your share of curiosity,” I observed with an amused laugh.

  “If you were really truthful, you’d call me nosy.” Ellen chuckled. “But you’re more polite than honest, it seems. We’ll have to work on overcoming that handicap if you’re planning to make Sycamore Hill your permanent home.”

  “That is going to be up to Mr. Olmstead, I’m afraid,” I told her ruefully.

  “No. That’s going to be up to you. Forget Tattle-Tommy and just do what you think is best for the children. The rest will fall in line. Now, when are you going to come and visit with me again?” she demanded.

  I was pleased she wanted me to come back, and answered, “As soon as I have a spare moment.”

  “Well, I can’t wait that long, Abby,” she muttered impatiently. “I’m an old woman and could die at any moment.”

  “Oh, no! Don’t say such a thing,” I gasped.

  Ellen chuckled again. “I’d better warn you, my dear. I’m not beyond the use of coercion. And I know exactly how to make your conscience smart the most if you stay away too long.”

  “You’re an old harridan,” I told her with humor.

  “And you, young woman, are very astute. Now be off with you!” She dismissed me like some six-year-old child. “My niece will be in here any minute now reminding me it’s time for my afternoon nap.” She shook her head in disgust. “You’d think I would have a little peace at my age, but still I have to follow rules!”

  I started for the door, but Ellen Greer called my attention back again. “Come for coffee and cake Wednesday at five.”

  “I will if I can,” I promised.

  “I’ll expect you,” Ellen said, a flicker of loneliness appearing before it was squelched. “And, Abby,” she went on more gently, “it’s been a pleasure talking to you. I may decide to live a couple of extra years just to see what happens to you.”

  Chapter Six

  My second week of teaching began well. I kept my Wednesday appointment with Ellen Greer, and on the old woman’s suggestion, decided to teach Bible stories in Sunday School. I would thus avoid a confrontation with the Reverend Jonah Hayes. He could hardly object to verbatim reading from the Bible, and I would have only to pick and choose those stories that best illustrated God’s love and forgiving kindness. I did not want to subject my beliefs to ridicule or debate with the fire-breathing reverend, nor did I want to encourage the children to believe that wrath and vengeance reigned supreme.

  As the weeks progressed, I began to tackle problems other than the physical appearance of the schoolhouse, testing and lessons for the children. When Katrina Lane continued coming to school dressed in expensive frocks, which she was afraid to get dirty, I decided to talk with her mother. I learned from Katrina that her mother worked in the hotel at the end of Main Street, and that she finished working in the bar at nine o’clock each evening. I wrote a note requesting an appointment and sent it home with Katrina. The following morning Katrina returned, saying that her mother had agreed to talk with me. I was invited to the hotel Friday evening after nine, if that was acceptable. I agreed without giving it a second thought.

  The hotel was filled to capacity that evening. The front rails were packed with saddle horses, and several buckboards and carriages were standing at the back. As I came up the street, I could hear the noisy laughter and honky-tonk music. Now and then a man would shout something and more laughter would burst forth.

  Entering the open doorway, I went to the desk to ask where I might find Marba Lane. The short, balding man with wire-rimmed spectacles looked at me curiously, then pointed a finger toward swinging doors that hid the crowd in the bar.

  “In there, ma’am,” he said, pushing his glasses up while he looked at me oddly. “Why don’t you sit down over there.” He indicated a chair shadowed behind a large potted plant. “Miss Lane will be finished in a few minutes. I�
��ll go and tell the boss you’re waiting for her.”

  The clerk reappeared a moment later, casting me a cursory glance. He did not say anything, but I assumed he had notified Marba Lane’s employer that I had arrived. A moment later the swinging doors opened, and the man I had seen accompanying Marba Lane on the first day of school came through. He spotted me in the corner and walked toward me, a charming smile curving his sensuous mouth.

  “Miss McFarland,” he greeted in a deep, husky voice, and I stood. “Marba is going to be detained a little longer than usual, I’m afraid. We were late getting her show started this evening. The crowd is bigger than usual,” he explained. I felt a curious glance sent in my direction by the desk clerk. Then he focused his interest on the register.

  “Why don’t you sit down? Can I get you something to drink?” the proprietor asked, and I was flattered by his solicitude.

  “No, thank you.” I shook my head, feeling rather overwhelmed by the man’s good looks and charm. The brown eyes were warm and moved over my face quickly, lingering just a second longer on my mouth.

  “I should introduce myself,” he laughed apologetically and extended his hand. “I’m Ross Persall. I own this place.” He held my hand firmly and just a little longer than necessary.

  I muttered some amenity. A woman started to sing in the barroom behind the swinging doors. The voice was pleasant and strong, though lacking in formal training. But it was the lyrics that brought a flush of red up under my skin. Ross Persall was watching me closely, and his mouth tilted up at the corner. The song continued, and raucous laughter blended with the singing and ruthlessly pounded piano. I touched my cheek with my fingertips and wondered if I should leave and come back later.

  “Not exactly what you would hear in Boston, is it?” Ross Persall commented not unkindly. I could see no hint of ridicule for my embarrassment in the warm brown eyes, and I smiled.

  “This isn’t exactly Boston, is it?” I gave a faint laugh. “And quite frankly, I prefer Sycamore Hill.”