There was a good district school in the village, and Jerome, before
his father's disappearance, had attended it all the year round; now
he went only in winter. Jerome rose at four o'clock in the dark
winter mornings, and went to bed at ten, getting six hours' sleep. It
was fortunate that he was a hardy boy, with a wirily pliant frame,
adapting itself, with no lesions, to extremes of temperature and
toil, even to extremes of mental states. In spite of all his
hardships, in spite of scanty food, Jerome thrived; he grew; he began
to fill out better his father's clothes, to which he had succeeded.
The first time Jerome wore his poor father's best coat to school--Ann
had set in the buttons so it folded about him in ludicrous fashion,
bringing the sleeves forward and his arms apparently into the middle
of his chest--one of the big boys and two big girls at his side
laughed at him, the boy with open jeers, the girls with covert
giggles behind their hands. They were standing in front of the
school-house at the top of the long hill when Jerome was ascending it
with Elmira. It was late and cold, and only these three scholars were
outside. The girls, who were pretty and coquettish, had detained this
great boy, who was a man grown.
Jerome went up the long hill under this fire of covert ridicule.
Elmira, behind him, began to cry, holding up one little shawled arm
like a wing before her face. Jerome never lowered his proud head; his
unwinking black eyes stared straight ahead at the three; his face was
deadly white; his hands twitched at his sides.
The great boy was 'Lisha Robinson; the girls were the pretty twin
daughters of a farmer living three miles away, who had just brought
them to school on his ox-sled. Their two sweet, rosy faces, full of
pitiless childish merriment for him, and half-unconscious maiden
wiles towards the young man at their side, towards whom they leaned
involuntarily as they tittered, aroused Jerome to a worse frenzy than
'Lisha's face with its coarse leer.
All three started back a little as he drew near; there was something
in his unwinking eyes which was intimidating. However, 'Lisha had his
courage to manifest before these girls. "Say, Jerome," he
shouted--"say, Jerome, got any room to spare in that coat? 'cause
Abigail Mack is freezin'."
"Go 'long, 'Lisha," cried Abigail, sputtering with giggles, and
giving the young man a caressing push with her elbow.
'Lisha, thus encouraged, essayed further wit. "Say, Jerome, s'pose
you can fill out that coat of yours any quicker if I give ye half my
dinner? Here's a half a pie I can spare. Reckon you don't have much
to eat down to your house, 'cept chicken-fodder, and that ain't very
fat'nin'."
Jerome came up. All at once through the glow of his black eyes
flashed that spiritual lightning, evident when purpose is changed to
action. The girls screamed and fled. 'Lisha swung about in a panic,
but Jerome launched himself upon his averted shoulder. The girls,
glancing back with terrified eyes from the school-house door, seemed
to see the boy lift the grown man from the ground, and the two whirl
a second in the air before they crashed down, and so declared
afterwards. Jerome clung to his opponent like a wild-cat, a small but
terrific body all made up of nerves and muscles and electric fire. He
wound his arms with a violent jerk as of steel around 'Lisha's neck;
he bunted him with a head like a cannon-ball; he twisted little wiry
legs under the hollows of 'Lisha's knees. The two came down together
with a great thud. The teacher and the scholars came rushing to the
door. Elmira wailed and sobbed in the background. The slight boy was
holding great 'Lisha on the ground with a strength that seemed
uncanny.
'Lisha's nose was bleeding; he breathed hard; his eyes, upturned to
Jerome, had a ghastly roll. "Let me--up, will ye?" he choked,
faintly.
"Will you ever say anything like that again?"
"Let me up, will ye?" 'Lisha gave a convulsive gasp that was almost
a sob.
"Jerome!" called the teacher. She was a young woman from another
village, mildly and assentingly good, virtue having, like the moon,
only its simply illuminated side turned towards her vision. Weakly
blue-eyed and spectacled, hooked up primly in chaste drab woollen and
capped with white muslin, though scarcely thirty, she stood among her
flock and eyed the fierce combatants with an utter lack of command of
the situation. She was a country minister's daughter, and had never
taught until her father's death. This was her first school, and to
its turbulent elements she brought only the precisely limited lore of
a young woman's seminary of that day, and the experiences of early
piety.
Looking at the struggling boys, she thought vaguely of that hymn of
Isaac Watts's which treats of barking and biting dogs and the
desirability of amity and concord between children, as if it could in
some way be applied to heal the breach. She called again fruitlessly
in her thin treble, which had been raised in public only in
neighborhood prayer-meetings: "Jerome! Jerome Edwards!"
"Will you say it again?" demanded Jerome of his prostrate adversary,
with a sharp prod of a knee.
After a moment of astonished staring there was a burst of mirth among
the pupils, especially the older boys. 'Lisha was not a special
favorite among them--he was too good-looking, had too much money to
spend, and was too much favored by the girls. In spite of the
teacher's half-pleading commands, they made a rush and formed a ring
around the fighters.
"Go it, J'rome!" they shouted. "Give it to him! You're a fighter, you
be. Look at J'rome Edwards lickin' a feller twice his size. Hi! Go
it, J'rome!"
"Boys!" called the teacher. "Boys!"
Some of the smaller girls began to cry and clung to her skirts; the
elder girls watched with dilated eyes, or laughed with rustic
hardihood for such sights. Elmira still waited on the outskirts.
Jerome paid no attention to the teacher or the shouting boys. "Will
you say it again?" he kept demanding of 'Lisha, until finally he got
a sulky response.
"No, I won't. Now lemme up, will ye?"
"Say you're sorry."
"I'm sorry. Lemme up!"
Jerome, without appearing to move, collected himself for a spring.
Suddenly he was off 'Lisha and far to one side, with one complete
bound of his whole body, like a cat.
'Lisha got up stiffly, muttering under his breath, and went round to
the well to wash off the blood. He did not attempt to renew the
combat, as the other boys had hoped he might. He preferred to undergo
the ignominy of being worsted in fight by a little boy rather than
take the risk of being pounced upon again with such preternatural
fury. When he entered school, having washed his face, he was quite
pale, and walked with shaking knees. Rather physical than moral
courage had 'Lisha Robinson, and it was his moral courage, after all,
which had been tested, as it is in all such unequal combats.
As for Jerome, he had to stand in the middle of the floor, a
spectacle unto the school, folded in his father's coat, which had,
alas! two buttons torn off, and a three-cornered rag hanging from one
tail, which fluttered comically in the draught from the door; but
nobody dared laugh. There was infinite respect, if not approbation,
for Jerome in the school that day. Some of the big boys scowled, and
one girl said out loud, "It's a shame!" when the teacher ordered him
to stand in the floor. Had he rebelled, the teacher would have had no
support, but Jerome took his place in the spot indicated, with a
grave and scornful patience. The greatness of his triumph made him
magnanimous. It was clearly evident to his mind that 'Lisha Robinson
and not he should stand in the floor, and that he gained a glory of
martyrdom in addition to the other.
Jerome had never felt so proud in his life as when he stood there, in
his father's old coat, having established his right to wear it
without remark by beating the biggest boy in school. He stood erect,
equally poised on his two feet, looking straight ahead with a grave,
unsmiling air. He looked especially at no one, except once at his
sister Elmira. She had just raised her head from the curve of her
arm, in which she had been weeping, and her tear-stained eyes met her
brother's. He looked steadily at her, frowning significantly. Elmira
knew what it meant. She began to study her geography, and did not cry
again.
At recess the teacher went up to Jerome, and spoke to him almost
timidly. "I am very sorry about this, Jerome," she said. "I am sorry
you fought, and sorry I had to punish you in this way."
Jerome looked at her. "She's a good deal like mother," he thought.
"You had to punish somebody," said he, "an'--_I'd_ licked _him_."
The teacher started; this reasoning confused her a little, the more
so that she had an uneasy conviction that she had punished the lesser
offender. She looked at the proud little figure in the torn coat, and
her mild heart went out to him. She glanced round; there were not
many scholars in the room. Elmira sat in her place, busy with her
slate; a few of the older ones were in a knot near the window at the
back of the room. The teacher slipped her hand into her pocket and
drew out a lemon-drop, which she thrust softly into Jerome's hand.
"Here," said she.
Jerome, who treated usually a giver like a thief, took the
lemon-drop, thanked her, and stood sucking it the rest of the recess.
It was his first gallantry towards womankind.
This teacher remained in the school only a half-term. Some said that
she left because she was not strong enough to teach such a large
school. Some said because she had not enough government. This had
always been considered a man's school during the winter months, but a
departure had been made in this case because the female teacher was
needy and a minister's daughter.
The place was filled by a man who never tempered injustice with
lemon-drops, and ruled generally with fair and equal measure. He was
better for the school, and Jerome liked him; but he felt sad, though
he kept it to himself, when the woman teacher went away. She gave him
for a parting gift a little volume, a treasure of her own childhood,
purporting to be the true tale of an ungodly youth who robbed an
orchard on the Sabbath day, thereby combining two deadly sins, and
was drowned in crossing a brook on his way home. The weight of his
bag of stolen fruit prevented him from rising, but he would not let
go, and thereby added to his other crimes that of greediness. There
was a frontispiece representing this froward hero, in a tall hat and
little frilled trousers, with a bag the size of a slack balloon
dragging on the ground behind him, proceeding towards the neighbor's
apple-tree, which bore fruit as large as the thief's head upon its
unbending boughs.
"There's a pretty picture in it," the teacher said, when she
presented the book; she had kept Jerome after school for that
purpose. "I used to like to look at it when I was a little girl."
Then she added that she had crossed out the inscription, "Martha
Maria Whittaker, from her father, Rev. Enos Whittaker," on the
fly-leaf, and written underneath, "Jerome Edwards, from his teacher,
Martha Maria Whittaker," and displayed her little delicate scratch.
Then the teacher had hesitated a little, and colored faintly, and
looked at the boy. He seemed to this woman--meekly resigned to
old-age and maidenhood at thirty--a mere child, and like the son
which another woman might have had, but the missing of whom was a
shame to her to contemplate. Then she had said good-bye to him, and
bade him be always a good boy, and had leaned over and kissed him. It
was the kiss of a mother spiritualized by the innocent mystery and
imagination of virginity.
Jerome kept the little book always, and he never forgot the kiss nor
the teacher, who returned to her native village and taught the school
there during the summer months, and starved on the proceeds during
the winter, until she died, some ten years later, being of a delicate
habit, and finding no place of comfort in the world.
Jerome walked ten miles and back to her funeral one freezing day.