Sycamore Hill (10 page)

I stiffened. “I think it’s an improvement over what I found ten
days ago,” I said in a clear, controlled voice. I heard Jordan Bennett enter
the classroom and laugh slightly under his breath. He was really helping
matters, wasn’t he?

“An improvement?” Olmstead ejaculated, aghast.

“I will admit there isn’t a Rembrandt in Sycamore Hill, but they
worked hard and did their best to make this schoolhouse a little more pleasant
than it was,” I told him. I met Olmstead’s cold eyes. “Four days of scrubbing
and scouring cannot remove dirt allowed to accumulate over a year, Mr.
Olmstead. If this schoolhouse was such hallowed ground, why was it allowed to
fall into such sad disrepair?”

“She’s got you there, Jim.” Jordan chuckled. Olmstead’s face
turned an angry red.

“And what about children digging the latrine out back?” he
demanded, ignoring my defenses.

“I had hoped that was one of those heavy chores you referred to
when we talked.”

“Don’t be impertinent, Miss McFarland.”

I sighed. “I did not have time to dig a four-foot hole, so the
choice goes to those children who refuse to listen or who cause mischief in
class.”

“Oh.” Some of the steam seeped out of his arguments but he was
struggling to work up more. He enjoyed asserting his authority.

“Might I ask when you can replace the windows?” I asked, hoping to
change the subject. I resented Jordan Bennett’s presence intensely.

“There’s no hurry to do that,” Olmstead said. “It’s still summer.”
He was glowering again. “It seems to me that you’re putting off onto the
children what you should be doing yourself.”

That hurt, for I had tried very hard to be fair. There were few enough
hours in a day for me to manage the cleaning, lesson plans and paper-correcting
required without being expected to dig latrines and plow play yards.

“It’s a matter of choices, Mr. Olmstead,” I said with conviction,
though inside I was beginning to tremble under the strain of this scene. What
would I do if he dismissed me? Where would I go?

“What choices?” he demanded imperiously. “It seems to me you were
well aware of your duties the night we discussed them. You agreed to carry them
out. You’re being paid to uphold them.”

“I’ve only been in town ten days—”

“And you’re already off to a bad start,” Olmstead interrupted
critically.

“Teaching the children has to come first,” I said in my own
defense, about to reason that my time had not permitted making all the repairs
as yet.

“Well, then teach them, Miss McFarland! Painting walls and digging
holes isn’t in any of the textbooks that I remember!” He glanced around again.
“I’ll get some whitewash so you can cover these... paintings.” With that, he
marched out of the schoolhouse with a look of satisfaction. My shoulders
drooped, and I unconsciously rubbed my bruised thigh.

“You hurt yourself when you fell, didn’t you?” Bennett asked from
close behind me.

“Nothing that won’t mend, Mr. Bennett,” I said harshly, looking
away from him. My mouth was trembling, and I knew there was little color in my
face. Bennett moved closer and put his hands on my shoulders. I jerked away.

“I think you had better leave, Mr. Bennett, before Mr. Olmstead
decides to add other misdemeanors to the list he’s making against me.”

“Such as what, Abby? Indiscreet behavior for being alone with
me... or are you bent on murder?” He released me, and I spun around.

“You think this is all very funny, don’t you?” I flared, blinking
rapidly to stop the tears. “Well, laugh your fill and then leave me alone! I
haven’t got a ranch or a family. If I lose this position....” I stopped. What
did this man care whether I lost my position or not? He had made it very clear
he did not want me in Sycamore Hill. I managed to regain some measure of
control.

“I don’t feel like laughing, Abby,” Bennett said quietly.

“I’ll thank you not to call me that. You have no right!”

Jordan Bennett’s expression hardened. “I’ll call you any damn
thing I please,” he retaliated. “And if you think what you’ve just been through
is anything, you’re sadly mistaken. Things aren’t even warmed up a bit.”

I stared at him questioningly, but he was not going to enlighten
me.

“I’ll say it again. You’ll make a very poor schoolmarm.”

I did not feel like arguing with him anymore, and I gave a slight
shrug of indifference. “Well, we aren’t all born with choices, Mr. Bennett.”

He turned without another word and strode out of the schoolhouse.
I closed my eyes and let out my breath, wondering why I felt like crying.

That night I thought I heard someone moving about in the
schoolroom. When I got up and entered the darkened place to investigate, there
was no one there. My only company were the shadows from the oaks, and the wind
that fluttered through the patchwork curtains.

The Reverend Jonah Hayes had missed his calling, I thought
regretfully as I left the church among the other chastened members of the
congregation. The hellfire-and-damnation sermon was still ringing in my ears. I
heartily wished that Hayes had offered his rather remarkable dramatic talents
to some traveling-show company. The last thing these hard-working people needed
was the harangue they received each Sunday like a dose of castor oil. The
terrifying pictures of what awaited them if they dared “let the devil in” were
enough to keep even the most stout-hearted awake at night. And the weak—woe be
to them— were hell bound.

Weakness was defined as sin, and sin, according to the most
assured and inspired Reverend Hayes, was anything and everything enjoyable.
Even private, unconscious thoughts were subject to the monitoring of Reverend
Hayes’s God.

I sighed. Surely if a sincere penitent came forward, God would
forgive a few indiscretions. However, if Hayes were indeed correct in his
interpretation of church doctrine, I could not imagine heaven being populated
by anyone but God himself and a sprinkling of three or four saints. What a
place to spend an eternity.

No, I thought with conviction. Reverend Hayes’s God was not the
same as mine. I preferred the loving, understanding, all-forgiving Father of
mankind to the frightening, jealous, possessive avenger who lurked in Hayes’s
life.

I almost groaned aloud at my own thoughts, for my conception of
God was going to add yet another problem in my life. I was to teach Sunday
school, and it would be impossible for me to present the tyrannical, unfeeling
deity that reigned supreme in Hayes’s world. And the good Reverend Hayes was
another powerful school-board member!

“Miss McFarland.” Emily Olmstead broke into my dreary reverie. “I
would like to introduce you to Miss Ellen Greer,” she said in formal, almost
childish tones of respect. I looked at the small, ancient woman standing next
to Emily, leaning heavily on a cane. One arthritically deformed hand lay over
another, and her feet were planted slightly apart to hold herself as erect as
possible.

Short, frizzled white hair grew over the woman’s small head, the
only relief from its profusion being an ugly little black hat perched at a
precarious angle. Her chin was overlong and pointed with a jutting
stubbornness. Soft but wrinkled skin was drawn into emphatic lines pointing to
a tight-lipped mouth. She had large ears and a long neck adding to the overall
homely picture she made standing there in her somber black dress.

Yet the pair of gray-blue eyes dominated that old, rather awesome
face. They were bright and astute, and they looked at me with unembarrassed
interest. I smiled, feeling a bit intimidated by the old woman’s assessing
gaze. I had noticed her once before in church, and I’d wondered who Miss Ellen
Greer was.

James Olmstead beckoned his wife, and Emily made a quick apology
before darting off to her husband’s side. The old woman gave a faint movement
of her mouth, which could have been either a smile or a grimace of pain.

“How old are you, Miss McFarland?” she asked in a clear, contralto
voice that was very attractive. I thought the question impertinent even for an
old lady, and pretended not to hear it.

Miss Greer gave a low laugh. “Apparently lack of respect for your
elders is yet another fault of yours.”

I stiffened under that assault and barely prevented an angry retort
to the woman’s rudeness.

“Don’t look so testy, my dear,” Ellen Greer chided. “I heartily
approve,” she added conspiratorially. Then she tapped the oak cane. “Come and
walk me home. You and I have many things to talk over.”

What an imperious old lady, I thought with surprise. However,
curiosity made me obey her command. Her pace was slow, and I waited for the old
woman to reveal what “things” she had referred to.

“Curse these old legs of mine,” Ellen Greer muttered angrily.
“They’re just about as useless as the licorice sticks Sherman Poole lives on.”

I laughed and then quickly apologized, about to explain that it
was her statement about Sherman that had amused me so.

“Don’t ever apologize, Miss McFarland,” Ellen Greer told me. “If
you do, that will be the biggest fault on your record.” Before I could comment,
she stopped and thrust her cane at a white picket fence. “Open the gate, Miss
McFarland,” she snapped irritably, and I obeyed. I felt a twinge of resentment
at her tone. She had to be the rudest person I had ever met— with the exception
of Jordan Bennett!

“You live here?” I asked inanely, looking up almost longingly at the
hospitable exterior, for this was the home I had dreamed of as my own on first
entering Sycamore Hill.

“Don’t ask such stupid questions,” Ellen Greer snorted. “Well,
come on, Miss McFarland,” she went on, impatiently pausing several paces inside
the gate. “I haven’t got all day.”

“I have better things to do with my day than spend it with a
discourteous old woman,” I said coldly. Ellen Greer’s eyes sparkled
mischievously, and she laughed delightedly, drawing an astonished look from me.

“I wondered how much you would take from me.”

I stared at her, completely baffled. Was the woman in her dotage?

“You’ve got more spirit than I had at your age, my dear,” Ellen
chortled. “That may be an advantage, but then again, it may not be. But
whatever, I heartily approve of you. Now, please come in and make an old
woman’s afternoon less of a bore.”

Ellen Greer lived in a small room at the back of the
boardinghouse. It was furnished with less than my own quarters, but boasted a
few plaques on the wall. When I started to read them, Ellen Greer dismissed
them.

“Those were in place of a salary increase and a pension,” Ellen
explained with a sniff for their importance. I read them and turned to look
back at her.

“You were the schoolteacher here?” I asked with surprise. No one
had ever said anything about who the previous teacher was. This must be the
teacher who had quit over a year ago.

“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.