He had not forgiven her four years later when he entered high school
in her company, for somehow Ramsey managed to shovel his way through
examinations and stayed with the class. By this time he had a long
accumulation of reasons for hating her: Dora's persistent and increasing
competency was not short of flamboyant, and teachers naturally got the
habit of flinging their quickest pupil in the face of their slowest and
“dumbest.” Nevertheless, Ramsey was unable to deny that she had become
less awful lookin' than she used to be. At least, he was honest enough
to make a partial retraction when his friend and classmate, Fred
Mitchell, insisted that an amelioration of Dora's appearance could be
actually proven.
“Well, I'll take it back. I don't claim she's every last bit as awful
lookin' as she always has been,” said Ramsey, toward the conclusion of
the argument. “I'll say this for her, she's awful lookin', but she may
not be as awful lookin' as she was. She don't come to school with the
edge of some of her underclo'es showin' below her dress any more, about
every other day, and her eyewinkers have got to stickin' out some, and
she may not be so abbasa_loot_ly skinny, but she'll haf to wait a mighty
long while before _I_ want to look at her without gettin' sick!”
The implication that Miss Yocum cared to have Ramsey look at her, either
with or without gettin' sick, was mere rhetoric, and recognized as such
by the producer of it; she had never given the slightest evidence of
any desire that his gaze be bent upon her. What truth lay underneath his
flourish rested upon the fact that he could not look at her without some
symptoms of the sort he had tersely sketched to his friend; and yet, so
pungent is the fascination of self-inflicted misery, he did look at her,
during periods of study, often for three or four minutes at a stretch.
His expression at such times indeed resembled that of one who has dined
unwisely; but Dora Yocum was always too eagerly busy to notice it. He
was almost never in her eye, but she was continually in his; moreover,
as the banner pupil she was with hourly frequency an exhibit before the
whole class.
Ramsey found her worst of all when her turn came in “Declamation,”
on Friday afternoons. When she ascended the platform, bobbed a little
preliminary bow and began, “Listen, my children, and you shall hear,”
Ramsey included Paul Revere and the Old North Church and the whole
Revolutionary War in his antipathy, since they somehow appeared to
be the property of the Teacher's Pet. For Dora held this post in
“Declamation” as well as in everything else; here, as elsewhere, the
hateful child's prowess surpassed that of all others; and the teacher
always entrusted her with the rendition of the “patriotic selections”:
Dora seemed to take fire herself when she declared:
“The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.”
Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed
next--a ghastly contrast. He gave a “selection from Shakespeare,”
assigned by the teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by
stumbling violently as he ascended the platform, which stimulated a
general giggle already in being at the mere calling of his name. All of
the class were bright with happy anticipation, for the miserable Ramsey
seldom failed their hopes, particularly in “Declamation.” He faced them,
his complexion wan, his expression both baleful and horrified; and he
began in a loud, hurried voice, from which every hint of intelligence
was excluded:
“Most pottent, grave, and rev--”
The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. “You've
forgotten to bow,” she said. “And don't say 'pottent.' The word is
'potent'.”
Ramsey flopped his head at the rear wall of the room, and began again:
“Most pottent potent gray and revenerd signers my very nobe and approve
good masters that I have tan away this sole man's dutter it is mose true
true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending hath this
extent no more rude am I in speech--in speech--rude am I in speech--in
speech--in speech--in speech--”
He had stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some sense
of its applicability to the occasion had interfered with the mechanism
which he had set in operation to get rid of the “recitation” for him.
At all events, the machine had to run off its job all at once, or it
wouldn't run at all. Stopped, it stayed stopped, and backing off granted
no new impetus, though he tried, again and again. “Hath this extent
no more rude am I in speech--” He gulped audibly. “Rude rude rude am
I--rude am I in speech--in speech--in speech. Rude am I in speech--”
“Yes,” the irritated teacher said, as Ramsey's failing voice continued
huskily to insist upon this point. “I think you are!” And her nerves
were a little soothed by the shout of laughter from the school--it was
never difficult for teachers to be witty. “Go sit down, Ramsey, and do
it after school.”
His ears roaring, the unfortunate went to his seat, and, among all
the hilarious faces, one stood out--Dora Yocum's. Her laughter was
precocious; it was that of a confirmed superior, insufferably adult--she
was laughing at him as a grown person laughs at a child. Conspicuously
and unmistakably, there was something indulgent in her amusement. He
choked. Here was a little squirt of a high-school girl who would trot
up to George Washington himself and show off around him, given the
opportunity; and George Washington would probably pat her on the head,
or give her a medal--or something. Well, let him! Ramsey didn't care.
He didn't care for George Washington, or Paul Revere, or Shakespeare, or
any of 'em. They could all go to the dickens with Dora Yocum. They were
all a lot of smarties anyway and he hated the whole stew of 'em!
There was one, however, whom he somehow couldn't manage to hate, even
though this one officially seemed to be as intimately associated with
Dora Yocum and superiority as the others were. Ramsey couldn't hate
Abraham Lincoln, even when Dora was chosen to deliver the “Gettysburg
Address” on the twelfth of February. Vaguely, yet reassuringly, Ramsey
felt that Lincoln had resisted adoption by the intellectuals. Lincoln
had said “Government of the people, by the people, for the people,” and
that didn't mean government by the teacher and the Teacher's Pet
and Paul Revere and Shakespeare and suchlike; it meant government by
everybody, and therefore Ramsey had as much to do with it as anybody
else had. This was friendly; and he believed that if Abraham Lincoln
could have walked into the schoolroom, Lincoln would have been as
friendly with him as with Dora and the teacher herself. Beyond a doubt,
Dora and the teacher _thought_ Lincoln belonged to them and their crowd
of exclusives; they seemed to think they owned the whole United States;
but Ramsey was sure they were mistaken about Abraham Lincoln.
He felt that it was just like this little Yocum snippet to assume such a
thing, and it made him sicker than ever to look at her.
Then, one day, he noticed that her eye-winkers were stickin' out farther
and farther.