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.
“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?”
Jimmie looked at her gloomily. “No, ‘m.”
She seemed about to disintegrate to mere flaming fagots of anger. “You don’t know who you’ve been fighting?” she demanded, blazing. “Well, you stay in after school until you find out.”
As he returned to his place all the children knew by his vanquished air that sorrow had fallen upon the house of Trescott. When he took his seat he saw gloating upon him the satanic black eyes of the little Goldege girl.
SHOWIN’ OFF
JIMMIE TRESCOTT’S new velocipede had the largest front wheel of any velocipede in Whilomville. When it first arrived from New York he wished to sacrifice school, food, and sleep to it. Evidently he wished to become a sort of a perpetual velocipede-rider. But the powers of the family laid a number of judicious embargoes upon him, and he was prevented from becoming a fanatic. Of course this caused him to retain a fondness for the three-wheeled thing much longer than if he had been allowed to debauch himself for a span of days. But in the end it was an immaterial machine to him. For long periods he left it idle in the stable.
One day he loitered from school towards home by a very circuitous route. He was accompanied by only one of his retainers. The object of this détour was the wooing of a little girl in a red hood. He had been in love with her for some three weeks. His desk was near her desk in school, but he had never spoken to her. He had been afraid to take such a radical step. It was not customary to speak to girls. Even boys who had school-going sisters seldom addressed them during that
part of a day which was devoted to education.
The reasons for this conduct were very plain. First, the more robust boys considered talking with girls an unmanly occupation; second, the greater part of the boys were afraid; third, they had no idea of what to say, because they esteemed the proper sentences should be supernaturally incisive and eloquent. In consequence, a small contingent of blue-eyed weaklings were the sole intimates of the frail sex, and for it they were boisterously and disdainfully called “girl-boys.”
But this situation did not prevent serious and ardent wooing. For instance, Jimmie and the little girl who wore the red hood must have exchanged glances at least two hundred times in every school-hour, and this exchange of glances accomplished everything. In them the two children renewed their curious inarticulate vows.
Jimmie had developed a devotion to school which was the admiration of his father and mother. In the mornings he was so impatient to have it made known to him that no misfortune had befallen his romance during the night that he was actually detected at times feverishly listening for the “first bell.” Dr. Trescott was exceedingly complacent of the change, and as for Mrs. Trescott, she had ecstatic visions of a white-haired Jimmie leading the nations in knowledge, comprehending all from bugs to comets. It was merely the doing of the little girl in the red hood.
When Jimmie made up his mind to follow his sweetheart home from school, the project seemed such an arbitrary and shameless innovation that he hastily lied to himself about it. No, he was not following Abbie. He was merely making his way homeward through the new and rather longer route of Bryant Street and Oakland Park. It had nothing at all to do with a girl. It was a mere eccentric notion.
“Come on,” said Jimmie, gruffly, to his retainer. “Let’s go home this way.”
“What fer?” demanded the retainer.
“Oh, b’cause.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, it’s more fun — goin’ this way.”
The retainer was bored and loath, but that mattered very little. He did not know how to disobey his chief. Together they followed the trail of red-hooded Abbie and another small girl. These latter at once understood the object of the chase, and looking back giggling, they pretended to quicken their pace. But they were always looking back. Jimmie now began his courtship in earnest. The first thing to do was to prove his strength in battle. This was transacted by means of the retainer. He took that devoted boy and flung him heavily to the ground, meanwhile mouthing a preposterous ferocity.
The retainer accepted this behavior with a sort of bland resignation. After his overthrow he raised himself, coolly brushed some dust and dead leaves from his clothes, and then seemed to forget the incident.
“I can jump farther’n you can,” said Jimmie, in a loud voice.
“I know it,” responded the retainer, simply.
But this would not do. There must be a contest.
“Come on,” shouted Jimmie, imperiously. “Let’s see you jump.”
The retainer selected a footing on the curb, balanced and calculated a moment, and jumped without enthusiasm. Jimmie’s leap of course was longer.
“There!” he cried, blowing out his lips. “I beat you, didn’t I? Easy. I beat you.” He made a great hubbub, as if the affair was unprecedented.
“Yes,” admitted the other, emotionless.
Later, Jimmie forced his retainer to run a race with him, held more jumping matches, flung him twice to earth, and generally behaved as if a retainer was indestructible. If the retainer had been in the plot, it is conceivable that he would have endured this treatment with mere whispered, half-laughing protests. But he was not in the plot at all, and so he became enigmatic. One cannot often sound the profound well in which lie the meanings of boyhood.
Following the two little girls, Jimmie eventually passed into that suburb of Whilomville which is called Oakland Park. At his heels came a badly battered retainer. Oakland Park was a somewhat strange country to the boys. They were dubious of the manners and customs, and of course they would have to meet the local chieftains, who might look askance upon this invasion.
Jimmie’s girl departed into her home with a last backward glance that almost blinded the thrilling boy. On this pretext and that pretext, he kept his retainer in play before the house. He had hopes that she would emerge as soon as she had deposited her school-bag.
A boy came along the walk. Jimmie knew him at school. He was Tommie Semple, one of the weaklings who made friends with the fair sex. “Hello, Tom,” said Jimmie. “You live round here?”
“Yeh,” said Tom, with composed pride. At school he was afraid of Jimmie, but he did not evince any of this fear as he strolled well inside his own frontiers. Jimmie and his retainer had not expected this boy to display the manners of a minor chief, and they contemplated him attentively. There was a silence. Finally Jimmie said:
“I can put you down.” He moved forward briskly. “Can’t I?” he demanded.
The challenged boy backed away. “I know you can,” he declared, frankly and promptly.
The little girl in the red hood had come out with a hoop. She looked at Jimmie with an air of insolent surprise in the fact that he still existed, and began to trundle her hoop off towards some other little girls who were shrilly playing near a nurse-maid and a perambulator.
Jimmie adroitly shifted his position until he too was playing near the perambulator, pretentiously making mince-meat out of his retainer and Tommie Semple.
Of course little Abbie had defined the meaning of Jimmie’s appearance in Oakland Park. Despite this nonchalance and grand air of accident, nothing could have been more plain. Whereupon she of course became insufferably vain in manner, and whenever Jimmie came near her she tossed her head and turned away her face, and daintily swished her skirts as if he were contagion itself. But Jimmie was happy. His soul was satisfied with the mere presence of the beloved object so long as he could feel that she furtively gazed upon him from time to time and noted his extraordinary prowess, which he was proving upon the persons of his retainer and Tommie Semple. And he was making an impression. There could be no doubt of it. He had many times caught her eye fixed admiringly upon him as he mauled the retainer. Indeed, all the little girls gave attention to his deeds, and he was the hero of the hour.
Presently a boy on a velocipede was seen to be tooling down towards them. “Who’s this comin’?” said Jimmie, bluntly, to the Semple boy.
“That’s Horace Glenn,” said Tommie, “an’ he’s got a new velocipede, an’ he can ride it like anything.”
“Can you lick him?” asked Jimmie.
“I don’t — I never fought with ‘im,” answered the other. He bravely tried to appear as a man of respectable achievement, but with Horace coming towards them the risk was too great. However, he added, “Maybe I could.”
The advent of Horace on his new velocipede created a sensation which he haughtily accepted as a familiar thing. Only Jimmie and his retainer remained silent and impassive. Horace eyed the two invaders.
“Hello, Jimmie!”
“Hello, Horace!”
After the typical silence Jimmie said, pompously, “I got a velocipede.”
“Have you?” asked Horace, anxiously. He did not wish anybody in the world but himself to possess a velocipede.
“Yes,” sang Jimmie. “An’ it’s a bigger one than that, too! A good deal bigger! An’ it’s a better one, too!”
“Huh!” retorted Horace, sceptically.
“‘Ain’t I, Clarence? ‘Ain’t I? ‘Ain’t I got one bigger’n that?”
The retainer answered with alacrity:
“Yes, he has! A good deal bigger! An’ it’s a dindy, too!”
This corroboration rather disconcerted Horace, but he continued to scoff at any statement that Jimmie also owned a velocipede. As for the contention that this supposed velocipede could be larger than his own, he simply wouldn’t hear of it.
Jimmie had been a very gallant figure before the coming of Horace, but the new vel
ocipede had relegated him to a squalid secondary position. So he affected to look with contempt upon it. Voluminously he bragged of the velocipede in the stable at home. He painted its virtues and beauty in loud and extravagant words, flaming words. And the retainer stood by, glibly endorsing everything.
The little company heeded him, and he passed on vociferously from extravagance to utter impossibility. Horace was very sick of it. His defence was reduced to a mere mechanical grumbling: “Don’t believe you got one ‘tall. Don’t believe you got one ‘tall.”
Jimmie turned upon him suddenly. “How fast can you go? How fast can you go?” he demanded. “Let’s see. I bet you can’t go fast.”
Horace lifted his spirits and answered with proper defiance. “Can’t I?” he mocked. “Can’t I?”
“No, you can’t,” said Jimmie. “You can’t go fast.”
Horace cried: “Well, you see me now! I’ll show you! I’ll show you if I can’t go fast!” Taking a firm seat on his vermilion machine, he pedalled furiously up the walk, turned, and pedalled back again. “There, now!” he shouted, triumphantly. “Ain’t that fast? There, now!” There was a low murmur of appreciation from the little girls. Jimmie saw with pain that even his divinity was smiling upon his rival. “There! Ain’t that fast? Ain’t that fast?” He strove to pin Jimmie down to an admission. He was exuberant with victory.
Notwithstanding a feeling of discomfiture, Jimmie did not lose a moment of time. “Why,” he yelled, “that ain’t goin’ fast ‘tall! That ain’t goin’ fast ‘tall! Why, I can go almost twice as fast as that! Almost twice as fast! Can’t I, Clarence?”
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 128
