Miss Spence gasped. So did the pupils.
The whole room filled with a swelling conglomerate “O-O-O-O-H!”
As for Penrod himself, the walls reeled with the shock. He sat with his
mouth open, a mere lump of stupefaction. For the appalling words that
he had hurled at the teacher were as inexplicable to him as to any other
who heard them.
Nothing is more treacherous than the human mind; nothing else so loves
to play the Iscariot. Even when patiently bullied into a semblance of
order and training, it may prove but a base and shifty servant. And
Penrod's mind was not his servant; it was a master, with the April
wind's whims; and it had just played him a diabolical trick. The very
jolt with which he came back to the schoolroom in the midst of his
fancied flight jarred his day-dream utterly out of him; and he sat,
open-mouthed in horror at what he had said.
The unanimous gasp of awe was protracted. Miss Spence, however, finally
recovered her breath, and, returning deliberately to the platform, faced
the school. “And then for a little while,” as pathetic stories sometimes
recount, “everything was very still.” It was so still, in fact, that
Penrod's newborn notoriety could almost be heard growing. This grisly
silence was at last broken by the teacher.
“Penrod Schofield, stand up!”
The miserable child obeyed.
“What did you mean by speaking to me in that way?”
He hung his head, raked the floor with the side of his shoe, swayed,
swallowed, looked suddenly at his hands with the air of never having
seen them before, then clasped them behind him. The school shivered in
ecstatic horror, every fascinated eye upon him; yet there was not a
soul in the room but was profoundly grateful to him for the
sensation--including the offended teacher herself. Unhappily, all this
gratitude was unconscious and altogether different from the kind which,
results in testimonials and loving-cups. On the contrary!
“Penrod Schofield!”
He gulped.
“Answer me at once! Why did you speak to me like that?”
“I was----” He choked, unable to continue.
“Speak out!”
“I was just--thinking,” he managed to stammer.
“That will not do,” she returned sharply. “I wish to know immediately
why you spoke as you did.”
The stricken Penrod answered helplessly:
“Because I was just thinking.”
Upon the very rack he could have offered no ampler truthful explanation.
It was all he knew about it.
“Thinking what?”
“Just thinking.”
Miss Spence's expression gave evidence that her power of self-restraint
was undergoing a remarkable test. However, after taking counsel with
herself, she commanded:
“Come here!”
He shuffled forward, and she placed a chair upon the platform near her
own.
“Sit there!”
Then (but not at all as if nothing had happened), she continued the
lesson in arithmetic. Spiritually the children may have learned a lesson
in very small fractions indeed as they gazed at the fragment of
sin before them on the stool of penitence. They all stared at him
attentively with hard and passionately interested eyes, in which there
was never one trace of pity. It cannot be said with precision that he
writhed; his movement was more a slow, continuous squirm, effected with
a ghastly assumption of languid indifference; while his gaze, in the
effort to escape the marble-hearted glare of his schoolmates, affixed
itself with apparent permanence to the waistcoat button of James Russell
Lowell just above the “U” in “Russell.”
Classes came and classes went, grilling him with eyes. Newcomers
received the story of the crime in darkling whispers; and the outcast
sat and sat and sat, and squirmed and squirmed and squirmed. (He did one
or two things with his spine which a professional contortionist would
have observed with real interest.) And all this while of freezing
suspense was but the criminal's detention awaiting trial. A known
punishment may be anticipated with some measure of equanimity; at least,
the prisoner may prepare himself to undergo it; but the unknown looms
more monstrous for every attempt to guess it. Penrod's crime was unique;
there were no rules to aid him in estimating the vengeance to fall upon
him for it. What seemed most probable was that he would be expelled from
the schools in the presence of his family, the mayor, and council, and
afterward whipped by his father upon the State House steps, with the
entire city as audience by invitation of the authorities.
Noon came. The rows of children filed out, every head turning for a last
unpleasingly speculative look at the outlaw. Then Miss Spence closed the
door into the cloakroom and that into the big hall, and came and sat at
her desk, near Penrod. The tramping of feet outside, the shrill calls
and shouting and the changing voices of the older boys ceased to be
heard--and there was silence. Penrod, still affecting to be occupied
with Lowell, was conscious that Miss Spence looked at him intently.
“Penrod,” she said gravely, “what excuse have you to offer before I
report your case to the principal?”
The word “principal” struck him to the vitals. Grand Inquisitor, Grand
Khan, Sultan, Emperor, Tsar, Caesar Augustus--these are comparable. He
stopped squirming instantly, and sat rigid.
“I want an answer. Why did you shout those words at me?”
“Well,” he murmured, “I was just--thinking.”
“Thinking what?” she asked sharply.
“I don't know.”
“That won't do!”
He took his left ankle in his right hand and regarded it helplessly.
“That won't do, Penrod Schofield,” she repeated severely. “If that is
all the excuse you have to offer I shall report your case this instant!”
And she rose with fatal intent.
But Penrod was one of those whom the precipice inspires. “Well, I HAVE
got an excuse.”
“Well”--she paused impatiently--“what is it?”
He had not an idea, but he felt one coming, and replied automatically,
in a plaintive tone:
“I guess anybody that had been through what I had to go through, last
night, would think they had an excuse.”
Miss Spence resumed her seat, though with the air of being ready to leap
from it instantly.
“What has last night to do with your insolence to me this morning?”
“Well, I guess you'd see,” he returned, emphasizing the plaintive note,
“if you knew what I know.”
“Now, Penrod,” she said, in a kinder voice, “I have a high regard for
your mother and father, and it would hurt me to distress them, but you
must either tell me what was the matter with you or I'll have to take
you to Mrs. Houston.”
“Well, ain't I going to?” he cried, spurred by the dread name. “It's
because I didn't sleep last night.”
“Were you ill?” The question was put with some dryness.
He felt the dryness. “No'm; _I_ wasn't.”
“Then if someone in your family was so ill that even you were kept up
all night, how does it happen they let you come to school this morning?”
“It wasn't illness,” he returned, shaking his head mournfully. “It was
lots worse'n anybody's being sick. It was--it was--well, it was jest
awful.”
“WHAT was?” He remarked with anxiety the incredulity in her tone.
“It was about Aunt Clara,” he said.
“Your Aunt Clara!” she repeated. “Do you mean your mother's sister who
married Mr. Farry of Dayton, Illinois?”
“Yes--Uncle John,” returned Penrod sorrowfully. “The trouble was about
him.”
Miss Spence frowned a frown which he rightly interpreted as one of
continued suspicion. “She and I were in school together,” she said. “I
used to know her very well, and I've always heard her married life was
entirely happy. I don't----”
“Yes, it was,” he interrupted, “until last year when Uncle John took to
running with travelling men----”
“What?”
“Yes'm.” He nodded solemnly. “That was what started it. At first he was
a good, kind husband, but these travelling men would coax him into a
saloon on his way home from work, and they got him to drinking beer and
then ales, wines, liquors, and cigars----”
“Penrod!”
“Ma'am?”
“I'm not inquiring into your Aunt Clara's private affairs; I'm asking
you if you have anything to say which would palliate----”
“That's what I'm tryin' to TELL you about, Miss Spence,” he
pleaded,--“if you'd jest only let me. When Aunt Clara and her little
baby daughter got to our house last night----”
“You say Mrs. Farry is visiting your mother?”
“Yes'm--not just visiting--you see, she HAD to come. Well of course,
little baby Clara, she was so bruised up and mauled, where he'd been
hittin' her with his cane----”
“You mean that your uncle had done such a thing as THAT!” exclaimed Miss
Spence, suddenly disarmed by this scandal.
“Yes'm, and mamma and Margaret had to sit up all night nursin' little
Clara--and AUNT Clara was in such a state SOMEBODY had to keep talkin'
to HER, and there wasn't anybody but me to do it, so I----”
“But where was your father?” she cried.
“Ma'am?”
“Where was your father while----”
“Oh--papa?” Penrod paused, reflected; then brightened. “Why, he was down
at the train, waitin' to see if Uncle John would try to follow 'em and
make 'em come home so's he could persecute 'em some more. I wanted to do
that, but they said if he did come I mightn't be strong enough to
hold him and----” The brave lad paused again, modestly. Miss Spence's
expression was encouraging. Her eyes were wide with astonishment, and
there may have been in them, also, the mingled beginnings of admiration
and self-reproach. Penrod, warming to his work, felt safer every moment.
“And so,” he continued, “I had to sit up with Aunt Clara. She had some
pretty big bruises, too, and I had to----”
“But why didn't they send for a doctor?” However, this question was only
a flicker of dying incredulity.
“Oh, they didn't want any DOCTOR,” exclaimed the inspired realist
promptly. “They don't want anybody to HEAR about it because Uncle John
might reform--and then where'd he be if everybody knew he'd been a
drunkard and whipped his wife and baby daughter?”
“Oh!” said Miss Spence.
“You see, he used to be upright as anybody,” he went on explanatively.
“It all begun----”
“Began, Penrod.”
“Yes'm. It all commenced from the first day he let those travelling men
coax him into the saloon.” Penrod narrated the downfall of his Uncle
John at length. In detail he was nothing short of plethoric; and
incident followed incident, sketched with such vividness, such abundance
of colour, and such verisimilitude to a drunkard's life as a drunkard's
life should be, that had Miss Spence possessed the rather chilling
attributes of William J. Burns himself, the last trace of skepticism
must have vanished from her mind. Besides, there are two things that
will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has
taken to drink. And in every sense it was a moving picture which, with
simple but eloquent words, the virtuous Penrod set before his teacher.
His eloquence increased with what it fed on; and as with the eloquence
so with self-reproach in the gentle bosom of the teacher. She cleared
her throat with difficulty once or twice, during his description of his
ministering night with Aunt Clara. “And I said to her, 'Why, Aunt Clara,
what's the use of takin' on so about it?' And I said, 'Now, Aunt Clara,
all the crying in the world can't make things any better.' And then
she'd just keep catchin' hold of me, and sob and kind of holler, and I'd
say, 'DON'T cry, Aunt Clara--PLEASE don't cry.”'
Then, under the influence of some fragmentary survivals of the
respectable portion of his Sunday adventures, his theme became more
exalted; and, only partially misquoting a phrase from a psalm, he
related how he had made it of comfort to Aunt Clara, and how he had
besought her to seek Higher guidance in her trouble.
The surprising thing about a structure such as Penrod was erecting is
that the taller it becomes the more ornamentation it will stand. Gifted
boys have this faculty of building magnificence upon cobwebs--and Penrod
was gifted. Under the spell of his really great performance, Miss Spence
gazed more and more sweetly upon the prodigy of spiritual beauty and
goodness before her, until at last, when Penrod came to the explanation
of his “just thinking,” she was forced to turn her head away.
“You mean, dear,” she said gently, “that you were all worn out and
hardly knew what you were saying?”
“Yes'm.”
“And you were thinking about all those dreadful things so hard that you
forgot where you were?”
“I was thinking,” he said simply, “how to save Uncle John.”
And the end of it for this mighty boy was that the teacher kissed him!