The mother of Johnnie Hedge was a widow, and the chief theory of her
life was that her boy should be in school on the greatest possible
number of days. He himself had no sympathy with this ambition, but she
detected the truth of his diseases with an unerring eye, and he was
required to be really ill before he could win the right to disregard
the first bell, morning and noon. The chicken-pox and the mumps had
given him vacations--vacations of misery, wherein he nearly died
between pain and nursing. But bad colds in the head did nothing for
him, and he was not able to invent a satisfactory hacking cough. His
mother was not consistently a tartar. In most things he swayed her to
his will. He was allowed to have more jam, pickles, and pie than most
boys; she respected his profound loathing of Sunday-school; on summer
evenings he could remain out-of-doors until 8.30; but in this matter
of school she was inexorable. This single point in her character was
of steel.
The Hedges arrived in Whilomville on a Saturday, and on the following
Monday Johnnie wended his way to school with a note to the principal
and his Jersey City school-books. He knew perfectly well that he would
be told to buy new and different books, but in those days mothers
always had an idea that old books would "do," and they invariably sent
boys off to a new school with books which would not meet the selected
and unchangeable views of the new administration. The old books
never would "do." Then the boys brought them home to annoyed mothers
and asked for ninety cents or sixty cents or eighty-five cents or some
number of cents for another outfit. In the garret of every house
holding a large family there was a collection of effete school-books,
with mother rebellious because James could not inherit his books from
Paul, who should properly be Peter's heir, while Peter should be a
beneficiary under Henry's will.
[Illustration: "'THE FIRST TIME I CATCH YOU I'LL LAM THE HEAD OFF'N
YOU'"]
But the matter of the books was not the measure of Johnnie Hedge's
unhappiness. This whole business of changing schools was a complete
torture. Alone he had to go among a new people, a new tribe, and he
apprehended his serious time. There were only two fates for him. One
meant victory. One meant a kind of serfdom in which he would subscribe
to every word of some superior boy and support his every word. It was
not anything like an English system of fagging, because boys
invariably drifted into the figurative service of other boys whom they
devotedly admired, and if they were obliged to subscribe to
everything, it is true that they would have done so freely in any
case. One means to suggest that Johnnie Hedge had to find his place.
Willie Dalzel was a type of the little chieftain, and Willie was a
master, but he was not a bully in a special physical sense. He did not
drag little boys by the ears until they cried, nor make them tearfully
fetch and carry for him. They fetched and carried, but it was because
of their worship of his prowess and genius. And so all through the
strata of boy life were chieftains and subchieftains and assistant
subchieftains. There was no question of little Hedge being towed about
by the nose; it was, as one has said, that he had to find his place in
a new school. And this in itself was a problem which awed his boyish
heart. He was a stranger cast away upon the moon. None knew him,
understood him, felt for him. He would be surrounded for this
initiative time by a horde of jackal creatures who might turn out in
the end to be little boys like himself, but this last point his
philosophy could not understand in its fulness.
He came to a white meeting-house sort of a place, in the squat tower
of which a great bell was clanging impressively. He passed through an
iron gate into a play-ground worn bare as the bed of a mountain brook
by the endless runnings and scufflings of little children. There was
still a half-hour before the final clangor in the squat tower, but the
play-ground held a number of frolicsome imps. A loitering boy espied
Johnnie Hedge, and he howled: "Oh! oh! Here's a new feller! Here's a
new feller!" He advanced upon the strange arrival. "What's your name?"
he demanded, belligerently, like a particularly offensive custom-house
officer.
"Johnnie Hedge," responded the new-comer, shyly.
This name struck the other boy as being very comic. All new names
strike boys as being comic. He laughed noisily.
"Oh, fellers, he says his name is Johnnie Hedge! Haw! haw! haw!"
The new boy felt that his name was the most disgraceful thing which
had ever been attached to a human being.
"Johnnie Hedge! Haw! haw! What room you in?" said the other lad.
"I dun'no'," said Johnnie. In the mean time a small flock of
interested vultures had gathered about him. The main thing was his
absolute strangeness. He even would have welcomed the sight of his
tormentors of Saturday; he had seen them before at least. These
creatures were only so many incomprehensible problems. He diffidently
began to make his way towards the main door of the school, and the
other boys followed him. They demanded information.
"Are you through subtraction yet? We study jogerfre--did you, ever? You
live here now? You goin' to school here now?"
To many questions he made answer as well as the clamor would permit,
and at length he reached the main door and went quaking unto his new
kings. As befitted them, the rabble stopped at the door. A teacher
strolling along a corridor found a small boy holding in his hand a
note. The boy palpably did not know what to do with the note, but the
teacher knew, and took it. Thereafter this little boy was in harness.
A splendid lady in gorgeous robes gave him a seat at a double desk, at
the end of which sat a hoodlum with grimy finger-nails, who eyed the
inauguration with an extreme and personal curiosity. The other desks
were gradually occupied by children, who first were told of the new
boy, and then turned upon him a speculative and somewhat derisive eye.
The school opened; little classes went forward to a position in front
of the teacher's platform and tried to explain that they knew
something. The new boy was not requisitioned a great deal; he was
allowed to lie dormant until he became used to the scenes and until
the teacher found, approximately, his mental position. In the mean
time he suffered a shower of stares and whispers and giggles, as if he
were a man-ape, whereas he was precisely like other children. From
time to time he made funny and pathetic little overtures to other
boys, but these overtures could not yet be received; he was not known;
he was a foreigner. The village school was like a nation. It was
tight. Its amiability or friendship must be won in certain ways.
At recess he hovered in the school-room around the weak lights of
society and around the teacher, in the hope that somebody might be
good to him, but none considered him save as some sort of a specimen.
The teacher of course had a secondary interest in the fact that he was
an additional one to a class of sixty-three.
At twelve o'clock, when the ordered files of boys and girls marched
towards the door, he exhibited--to no eye--the tremblings of a coward
in a charge. He exaggerated the lawlessness of the play-ground and the
street.
But the reality was hard enough. A shout greeted him:
"Oh, here's the new feller! Here's the new feller!"
Small and utterly obscure boys teased him. He had a hard time of it to
get to the gate. There never was any actual hurt, but everything was
competent to smite the lad with shame. It was a curious, groundless
shame, but nevertheless it was shame. He was a new-comer, and he
definitely felt the disgrace of the fact. In the street he was seen
and recognized by some lads who had formed part of the group of
Saturday. They shouted:
"Oh, Jimmie! Jimmie! Here he is! Here's that new feller!"
Jimmie Trescott was going virtuously towards his luncheon when he
heard these cries behind him. He pretended not to hear, and in this
deception he was assisted by the fact that he was engaged at the time
in a furious argument with a friend over the relative merits of two
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" companies. It appeared that one company had only
two bloodhounds, while the other had ten. On the other hand, the first
company had two Topsys and two Uncle Toms, while the second had only
one Topsy and one Uncle Tom.
But the shouting little boys were hard after him. Finally they were
even pulling at his arms.
"Jimmie--"
"What?" he demanded, turning with a snarl. "What d'you want? Leggo my
arm!"
"Here he is! Here's the new feller! Here's the new feller! Now!"
"I don't care if he is," said Jimmie, with grand impatience. He tilted
his chin. "I don't care if he is."
Then they reviled him. "Thought you was goin' to lick him first time
you caught him! Yah! You're a 'fraid-cat!" They began to sing
"'Fraid-cat! 'Fraidcat! 'Fraid-cat!" He expostulated hotly, turning
from one to the other, but they would not listen. In the mean time the
Hedge boy slunk on his way, looking with deep anxiety upon this
attempt to send Jimmie against him. But Jimmie would have none of the
plan.