When the angel child returned with her parents to New York, the fond
heart of Jimmie Trescott felt its bruise greatly. For two days he
simply moped, becoming a stranger to all former joys. When his old
comrades yelled invitation, as they swept off on some interesting
quest, he replied with mournful gestures of disillusion.
He thought often of writing to her, but of course the shame of it made
him pause. Write a letter to a girl? The mere enormity of the idea
caused him shudders. Persons of his quality never wrote letters to
girls. Such was the occupation of mollycoddles and snivellers. He knew
that if his acquaintances and friends found in him evidences of such
weakness and general milkiness, they would fling themselves upon him
like so many wolves, and bait him beyond the borders of sanity.
However, one day at school, in that time of the morning session when
children of his age were allowed fifteen minutes of play in the
school-grounds, he did not as usual rush forth ferociously to his
games. Commonly he was of the worst hoodlums, preying upon his weaker
brethren with all the cruel disregard of a grown man. On this
particular morning he stayed in the school-room, and with his tongue
stuck from the corner of his mouth, and his head twisting in a painful
way, he wrote to little Cora, pouring out to her all the poetry of his
hungry soul, as follows: "My dear Cora I love thee with all my hart oh
come bac again, bac, bac gain for I love thee best of all oh come bac
again When the spring come again we'l fly and we'l fly like a brid."
As for the last word, he knew under normal circumstances perfectly
well how to spell "bird," but in this case he had transposed two of
the letters through excitement, supreme agitation.
Nor had this letter been composed without fear and furtive glancing.
There was always a number of children who, for the time, cared more
for the quiet of the school-room than for the tempest of the
play-ground, and there was always that dismal company who were being
forcibly deprived of their recess--who were being "kept in." More than
one curious eye was turned upon the desperate and lawless Jimmie
Trescott suddenly taken to ways of peace, and as he felt these eyes he
flushed guiltily, with felonious glances from side to side.
It happened that a certain vigilant little girl had a seat directly
across the aisle from Jimmie's seat, and she had remained in the room
during the intermission, because of her interest in some absurd
domestic details concerning her desk. Parenthetically it might be
stated that she was in the habit of imagining this desk to be a house,
and at this time, with an important little frown, indicative of a
proper matron, she was engaged in dramatizing her ideas of a
household.
But this small Rose Goldege happened to be of a family which numbered
few males. It was, in fact, one of those curious middle-class families
that hold much of their ground, retain most of their position, after
all their visible means of support have been dropped in the grave. It
contained now only a collection of women who existed submissively,
defiantly, securely, mysteriously, in a pretentious and often
exasperating virtue. It was often too triumphantly clear that they
were free of bad habits. However, bad habits is a term here used in a
commoner meaning, because it is certainly true that the principal and
indeed solitary joy which entered their lonely lives was the joy of
talking wickedly and busily about their neighbors. It was all done
without dream of its being of the vulgarity of the alleys. Indeed it
was simply a constitutional but not incredible chastity and honesty
expressing itself in its ordinary superior way of the whirling circles
of life, and the vehemence of the criticism was not lessened by a
further infusion of an acid of worldly defeat, worldly suffering, and
worldly hopelessness.
Out of this family circle had sprung the typical little girl who
discovered Jimmie Trescott agonizingly writing a letter to his
sweetheart. Of course all the children were the most abandoned
gossips, but she was peculiarly adapted to the purpose of making
Jimmie miserable over this particular point. It was her life to sit of
evenings about the stove and hearken to her mother and a lot of
spinsters talk of many things. During these evenings she was never
licensed to utter an opinion either one way or the other way. She was
then simply a very little girl sitting open-eyed in the gloom, and
listening to many things which she often interpreted wrongly. They on
their part kept up a kind of a smug-faced pretence of concealing from
her information in detail of the widespread crime, which pretence may
have been more elaborately dangerous than no pretence at all. Thus all
her home-teaching fitted her to recognize at once in Jimmie Trescott's
manner that he was concealing something that would properly interest
the world. She set up a scream. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Jimmie Trescott's writing
to his girl! Oh! Oh!"
Jimmie cast a miserable glance upon her--a glance in which hatred
mingled with despair. Through the open window he could hear the
boisterous cries of his friends--his hoodlum friends--who would no
more understand the utter poetry of his position than they would
understand an ancient tribal sign-language. His face was set in a
truer expression of horror than any of the romances describe upon the
features of a man flung into a moat, a man shot in the breast with an
arrow, a man cleft in the neck with a battle-axe. He was suppedaneous
of the fullest power of childish pain. His one course was to rush upon
her and attempt, by an impossible means of strangulation, to keep her
important news from the public.
The teacher, a thoughtful young woman at her desk upon the platform,
saw a little scuffle which informed her that two of her scholars were
larking. She called out sharply. The command penetrated to the middle
of an early world struggle. In Jimmie's age there was no particular
scruple in the minds of the male sex against laying warrior hands upon
their weaker sisters. But, of course, this voice from the throne
hindered Jimmie in what might have been a berserk attack.
Even the little girl was retarded by the voice, but, without being
unlawful, she managed soon to shy through the door and out upon the
play-ground, yelling, "Oh, Jimmie Trescott's been writing to his
girl!"
The unhappy Jimmie was following as closely as he was allowed by his
knowledge of the decencies to be preserved under the eye of the
teacher.
Jimmie himself was mainly responsible for the scene which ensued on
the play-ground. It is possible that the little girl might have run,
shrieking his infamy, without exciting more than a general but
unmilitant interest. These barbarians were excited only by the actual
appearance of human woe; in that event they cheered and danced. Jimmie
made the strategic mistake of pursuing little Rose, and thus exposed
his thin skin to the whole school. He had in his cowering mind a
vision of a hundred children turning from their play under the
maple-trees and speeding towards him over the gravel with sudden wild
taunts. Upon him drove a yelping demoniac mob, to which his words were
futile. He saw in this mob boys that he dimly knew, and his deadly
enemies, and his retainers, and his most intimate friends. The
virulence of his deadly enemy was no greater than the virulence of his
intimate friend. From the outskirts the little informer could be heard
still screaming the news, like a toy parrot with clock-work inside of
it. It broke up all sorts of games, not so much because of the mere
fact of the letter-writing, as because the children knew that some
sufferer was at the last point, and, like little blood-fanged wolves,
they thronged to the scene of his destruction. They galloped about him
shrilly chanting insults. He turned from one to another, only to meet
with howls. He was baited.
Then, in one instant, he changed all this with a blow. Bang! The most
pitiless of the boys near him received a punch, fairly and skilfully,
which made him bellow out like a walrus, and then Jimmie laid
desperately into the whole world, striking out frenziedly in all
directions. Boys who could handily whip him, and knew it, backed away
from this onslaught. Here was intention--serious intention. They
themselves were not in frenzy, and their cooler judgment respected
Jimmie's efforts when he ran amuck. They saw that it really was none
of their affair. In the mean time the wretched little girl who had
caused the bloody riot was away, by the fence, weeping because boys
were fighting.
[Illustration: "THEY GALLOPED ABOUT HIM, SHRILLY CHANTING INSULTS."]
Jimmie several times hit the wrong boy--that is to say, he several
times hit a wrong boy hard enough to arouse also in him a spirit of
strife. Jimmie wore a little shirt-waist. It was passing now rapidly
into oblivion. He was sobbing, and there was one blood stain upon his
cheek. The school-ground sounded like a pinetree when a hundred crows
roost in it at night.
Then upon the situation there pealed a brazen bell. It was a bell that
these children obeyed, even as older nations obey the formal law which
is printed in calf-skin. It smote them into some sort of inaction;
even Jimmie was influenced by its potency, although, as a finale, he
kicked out lustily into the legs of an intimate friend who had been
one of the foremost in the torture.
When they came to form into line for the march into the school-room it
was curious that Jimmie had many admirers. It was not his prowess; it
was the soul he had infused into his gymnastics; and he, still
panting, looked about him with a stern and challenging glare.
And yet when the long tramping line had entered the school-room his
status had again changed. The other children then began to regard him
as a boy in disrepair, and boys in disrepair were always accosted
ominously from the throne. Jimmie's march towards his seat was a feat.
It was composed partly of a most slinking attempt to dodge the
perception of the teacher and partly of pure braggadocio erected for
the benefit of his observant fellow-men.
The teacher looked carefully down at him. "Jimmie Trescott," she said.
"Yes'm," he answered, with businesslike briskness, which really
spelled out falsity in all its letters.
"Come up to the desk."
He rose amid the awe of the entire school-room. When he arrived she
said,
"Jimmie, you've been fighting."
"Yes'm," he answered. This was not so much an admission of the fact as
it was a concessional answer to anything she might say.
"Who have you been fighting?" she asked.
"I dunno', 'm."
Whereupon the empress blazed out in wrath. "You don't know who you've
been fighting?"