The Cottage in the Woods (22 page)

“I must say you seem to be in adequte good health and spirits to read the rest of
Robinson Crusoe
on your own. I’m afraid I’ve no time for reading. I have a new pupil in the afternoons, and in the evenings I must devote myself to learning Latin. I’m to begin teaching Teddy soon, or suffer Mr. Vaughn’s displeasure.” I made this pronouncement with the satisfied feeling that with these explanations I had barricaded myself quite effectively from any further association with this bear, but this was not to be.

“Learning Latin?” he repeated. “As it happens, I am a great proficient at Latin. Please allow me to offer my services as your tutor. You won’t find a better one in all the county.”

“I could not possibly pay you what your services are worth, Mr. Bentley. Please don’t trouble yourself about it. I’m managing on my own.”

“Miss Brown,” he replied, suddenly serious, “I wouldn’t think of taking tuppence from you. I am so greatly in your debt for your many hours of nursing and attention; surely you couldn’t be so cruel as to deprive me of a way to repay you. What possible reason could you have to spurn my offer?”

Nervously, I cast about for some excuse sufficiently urgent to refuse him. The truth was I did need the help, and had no better reason to turn him down than that his nearness was making my insides flutter. How could I tell him the danger he posed to my peace of mind?

“It’s a very kind offer, Mr. Bentley, but you owe no debt to me. I only did what any decent bear would do.”

“Then you will kindly allow
me
to do what any decent bear
would do, and repay you by sharing my rather remarkable expertise in Latin. Think of Teddy. I will be helping both of you.”

Exasperated, I couldn’t suppress a little laugh at how he had gotten around me. Perhaps I didn’t try hard enough to find more excuses for turning down his offer, but my mind did not seem to be functioning properly. “Indeed, if you are in earnest, Mr. Bentley, I can think of no reason not to accept you. Thank you,” I said, and abruptly fell silent, kicking myself.

“Good, then shall we begin this evening? Perhaps we could make ourselves comfortable in the kitchen, at that small table by the fireplace? There is always someone bustling about in the kitchen. That would be quite proper, would it not?”

“Yes, quite,” I said, and so it was arranged. Every evening after the dinner hour, Mr. Bentley and I met at the table in the kitchen and worked by candlelight, our heads bent together over the books, until the hall clock struck eight. At first I could barely overcome my self-consciousness at his close proximity and attention, but as time went on, his nearness became quite comfortable; more than that—though I could not admit it to myself—I looked forward to it. For days I told myself that my regard for him was simple friendship and respect as a fellow teacher, and indeed, under his guidance, Latin became a living language, and its mysteries of grammar and syntax opened up to me. I began to appreciate it as the mother of many languages, and it became our game to connect common English and French words to their Latin roots. It started when he pointed out that the words
veracity
and
verify
, and the French word
vérité
, come from the Latin word
veritas
, meaning “truth.” He said this looking directly at me, which disconcerted me.

“Oh?” I choked. “Do they?” I stared down at my lap to avoid his gaze. “Are there others?”

“Oh yes. Many others.
Liber
, the Latin for ‘book,’ can be traced to the Italian word for book,
libro
, the Portuguese
livro
, and the French
livre
. We find it in the English word
library
and, interestingly, in the word
liberty
. In Latin the word for ‘book’ is the same as the word for ‘freedom.’ And of course we have the words
amity
and
amorous
, and the French
amour
, all coming from the Latin word
amor
, meaning ‘love.’ ” He said this as casually as he would say any other word, but he looked directly into my eyes, until I felt the heat rising in my face.

I wondered what he meant by staring at me so; or was it only my own excruciating sensitivity warping my perceptions? I had more sense than to believe that he was captivated by my beauty, but I thought his looks seemed to speak of longing, and I had to cover my confusion with a cough.

For the rest of that lesson, I smiled and nodded and managed to be attentive, but my concentration was faulty, and to compensate, I endeavored to study for another hour alone in my room after the tutorial was finished. Even then I found myself distracted and troubled by the memory of his eyes staring into mine. What did it mean? In retrospect I could not say that he had given any indication of a special tenderness for me. Certainly, there had been no declaration, only the light banter that we sometimes exchanged, no more than any two friends might engage in, and yet in my heart of hearts I knew there was something: a quiet thrill, a charged atmosphere between us, like the air before a lightning strike. For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to wonder whether I might be in love, without chastising myself for a fool, but only telling myself to wait and see.

Several weeks went by. Out of doors, Nature ran riot, splashing leaves with extravagant reds, oranges, and yellows, then driving them to the ground with blustering winds and rains in the ancient cycle. Now the naked branches stood exposed and forlorn, awaiting the onslaught of winter, and we in the Cottage drew closer to our fires and counted our blessings.

Up in the east wing, I was seeing good progress with Goldilocks. She no longer hid when I entered her room, but ran instead to the chair where I habitually sat to read to her, and imitated my gesture of patting the place beside her. Her appetite for stories of all kinds seemed endless. Her flashes of temper and of taking fright continued, but I expected very little of her as yet, thinking it important to first establish a bond with her. To aid in this effort, Mrs. Vaughn insisted that I be the one to present to Goldilocks the new toy we had sent for from town, a golden-haired doll, very like the child herself, and dressed in a miniature sailor suit and Lilliputian shoes. I watched Goldilocks’s
face light up as she opened the box, and beheld the little figure within. As a measure of the progress she had made, she looked up at me and signed “please.”

“Yes, dear,” I said. “You may have her to keep. She is just for you.” The little girl’s eyes spoke her wonder and gratitude. Her first instinct was to run with it behind her hiding chair, as if fearful that I might change my mind and take it away. There she alternately examined every inch of the doll and its clothing, and hugged it to her chest with both arms, smiling incandescently. How often that happy image comes to me now, in the quiet hours. Would that I could always have kept that shining smile on her innocent face, but I had no such magic.

My work with Teddy continued to be a source of satisfaction and even amusement, his sweet nature and quick perception rewarding my efforts many times over. The difficult task was to avoid laughing at his occasional mischief, for in truth I was delighted to see such evidence of spirit.

But then there was Nurse. For weeks I had seen no sign of her other than her sleeping form when I went into the nursery to wake Teddy. I let myself believe that my problems with her were in the past. It didn’t seem to have penetrated her sensibility, however, that her presence was no longer needed in the schoolroom. By the end of a fortnight, she began wandering into the schooloom at odd times, planting herself immovably on her old chair and watching my every move with an aspect as malignant as the plague.

At first I cordially voiced my objection, reminding Nurse that Mr. Vaughn had decreed that it was not necessary for her to tire herself further by spending time in the schoolroom. When I suggested this, however, the furry face screwed up into an
expression of such tragedy that Teddy immediately ran to her side and smothered her in a small bear hug.

“I ain’t causing no trouble! I never done nothing!” she sobbed, gulping and sniffling to great effect. “I just wanted to be with my little Teddy. An’ all I hear is I ain’t wanted and I must go away, when there ain’t no other place for me, an’ no one else who loves me on this here earth!”

It struck me that, though the performance was clearly manufactured, the old badger might be telling the truth: in all likelihood, her sullen visage was not welcomed anywhere else, and I had no trouble believing that there really
was
no one else to love her but Teddy. Her impact on him was exactly as she had calculated: he looked up at me with tear-filled eyes and said, “Please can’t she stay, Miss Brown?”

“The lessons must not be interrupted,” I insisted, trying to hold my ground.

Teddy immediately agreed, and Nurse sniffled loudly while writhing around uncomfortably in what might have been a nod of assent. In the end, Teddy’s love for the cantankerous old badger was stronger than my polite objections, and so it came about that Nurse was with us again. She typically arrived midmorning, in varying states of sobriety, and was sure to make her presence felt with a loud belch, or a noxious passing of wind, before settling down in her poisonous little corner. There she lurked, exuding malice, making messes with little wads of paper and dead flies. The remarkable exceptions were when I praised Teddy for performing particularly well at his tasks, or when he took some work of his to show to her. Then a transformation took place: her evil old face cracked into a smile, and she’d say, “That’s my duck! What a clever one he is!” and the little bear’s eyes shone.

It seemed that she was now content just to be in the schoolroom with Teddy, where she could sit quietly and kill me with her looks. And yet, for all her hostility, I thought I observed her in unguarded moments to betray a hint of interest in my lessons. On several occasions when I was verbally examining Teddy on some short words, I noticed that she started to call out the answer, then cut herself short, and camouflaged it with an exaggerated sneeze. Could it be that Nurse could not read? Pondering this, I realized that I had never seen books in the nursery. It occurred to me that Nurse was learning to read along with Teddy. This thought gave me pause. I wondered if my teaching her to read could possibly change her behavior toward me: whether opening the world of books to her might actually improve her character, or whether she would just use the ability for composing poison-pen letters and ransom notes.

One day, after the lessons were done, and I was having tea in my room, I received a note from Mr. Vaughn asking whether I might play the accompaniment for the men’s choir that night. If so, I would be escorted by himself, Mr. Bentley, and Fairchild to the church at the appointed hour. My heart skipped a beat upon reading this epistle. I dearly wanted to be of some practical use in the cause for which they were fighting, and I was excited by the spark of danger present.

An hour before sunset, I met the others at the door and we departed silently. Mr. Bentley fell in next to me, and I smiled up at him, hoping he was walking beside me on purpose, but Mr. Vaughn soon consulted him about something, and Mr. Bentley moved to his side to speak with him. I confess, I listened in on their conversation. In truth, I longed to know more of what the men’s choir was trying to do. Though I was full of questions, I
was loath to make a pest of myself, so I thought it better to keep quiet and see what transpired.

When we arrived at the church, the others were waiting for us, having taken their places in the choir loft and passed around the hymnals for good show. I was asked to play the pianoforte while the gentlemen spoke among themselves, so that anyone approaching the church would hear the music. I started with the first hymn in the hymnal, “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” and began to play. Mr. Vaughn called the meeting to order, and gave a quick summary of their recent activities before opening up discussion on conditions in town, and suggestions for their future exploits. A short black bear stood up and reported that many of his longtime human customers, friends and neighbors, were forsaking his grocery store, taking their business to a human greengrocer clear across town. Several raccoons then complained that they had been denied credit at the general store, and that their favorite fresh fish restaurant, where they had been regulars for years, had last night seated them next to the kitchen, and that nobody had waited on them until all the other diners were finished. Finally, an elderly man, introducing himself as Mr. Weatherby, began to talk about the village newspaper, the
Town Crier
, and the way it was twisting and revising the news. I soon deduced that he was the editor of that paper. He objected to Mr. Babcock, the new owner of the paper, and grand high chief of the Anthropological Society, ordering him to run articles that maligned the town’s Enchanted citizens, firing up old resentments, pitting neighbor against neighbor—articles that had little or nothing to do with the truth. Mr. Vaughn then introduced a case in point, the article calling that young bear I had seen in the Post Office a vandal, and praising the boys who beat
him up. He asked me to stop playing briefly and tell the true story, which I managed to do, though I was so nervous to be the center of so much attention that my voice quavered.