he had looked forward to monday and school. after four days in the tollivant household he was eager for relief from it. except for cilly's occasional, and always private, taunts, they were not unkind to him; they only treated him as an outcast whom they had been obliged to succor because no one else would do so. he had the same food and drink as they; his room was good enough; of whatever was material he had no complaint to make. there was only the distrust which rendered his bread bitter and the bed hard to lie upon. they didn't take him in as one of them. they kept him outside, an alien, an intruder.
it was again a new experience in that for the first time in his life he was doing without love. when he was tom coburn he had had plenty of it at the worst of times. the swindon street home was full of it. in the tollivant house it was the only thing weighed and measured and stinted. he couldn't, of course, make this analysis. he only knew that something on which his life depended was not given him.
he hoped to find it in the school. in any case the school would admit him to the larger life. it would bind him to that human family which he had so long craved to enter. in addition to that, it was at school you learned things.
[pg 72]
he was the more eager to learn things for the reason that mrs. tollivant had declared him backward. in the primary school cilly was in the second grade; he must go into the first. he would be with children a year younger than himself. but the humiliation would be an incentive to ambition. he had already decided that only by "knowing things" should he be able to lift himself out of his despised estate.
the school session was all he had hoped for. miss pollard, the teacher, put in touch with his story by mrs. tollivant, kept him near to her, and watched over him. he learned to discriminate between his, has, and had, as matters of orthography, as well as between cat, car, and can. that twice two made four and twice four made eight added much to his understanding of numbers. he sang roving the old homeland, while miss pollard pointed on the map to the places as they were named.
from plymouth town to plymouth town
the pilgrims made their way;
the puritans settled salem,
and boston on the bay.
the air had a rhythm and a lilt which allowed for the inclusion of any reasonable number of redundant syllables.
the dutch lived in new amsterdam,
where the blue waters fork;
the english came and conquered it,
and turned it into new york.
a little history, a little geography, being taught by the simple method of doggerel, much pleasure was
[pg 73]
evoked by the exercise of healthy lungs. listening to her new pupil, miss pollard discovered a sweet treble that had never before been aware of itself, with a linnet's joy in piping. a linnet's joy was his joy throughout the whole morning, with no more than a slight flaw in his ecstasy in the thought of two hours in the tollivant home before he came back for the afternoon.
as cilly called for bertie at the kindergarten, he walked homeward by himself. happy with a happiness never experienced before, he had not noticed that his school-mates hung away from him, tittering as he passed. to well-dressed little boys and girls his worn old cap, his frayed knickerbockers, and above all his cheap gray overcoat with a stringy sheepskin collar, naturally marked him for derision. they would have marked him for derision even had his story not been known to everyone.
he went singing on his way, stepping manfully to the measure.
the dutch lived in new amsterdam,
where the blue waters fork;
the english came and conquered it,
and turned it into new york.
they massed themselves behind him, convulsed by his lack of self-consciousness. the little girls giggled; the boys attempted to make snowballs from snow too powdery to hold together. one lad found a frozen potato which he hurled in such a way as to skim close to the singing figure while just missing it. tom whitelaw, unsuspicious of ill-will, turned round in
[pg 74]
curiosity. he was greeted by a hoot from the crowd, but from whom he couldn't tell.
"who's the boy what his mother was put in jail?"
the hoot became a chorus of jeers. by one after another the insult was taken up.
"who's the boy what his mother was put in jaaa-il?"
as far as he was able to distinguish, the voices of the little girls were the louder. in their merriment they screamed piercingly.
"gutter-snipe! gutter-rat! crook! crook! crook! who's the boy what his mother was put in ja-aa-ail?"
crimson, with clenched fists, with gnashing teeth, with tears of rage in his eyes, he stood his ground while they came on. they swept toward him in a semicircle of which he made the center. very well! so much the better! he could spring on at least one of them, and dash his brains out on the ground. there was no ferocity he would not enjoy putting into execution.
he sprang, but amid the yells of the crowd his prey dodged and escaped him. the semicircle broke. instead of advancing in massed formation, it danced round him now as forty or fifty imps. the imps bewildered him, as banderilleros bewilder a bull in the ring. he didn't know which to attack. when he lunged at one, the charge was diverted by another, so that he struck at the air wildly. shrieks of mockery at these failures maddened him, with the heartbreaking madness of a loving thing goaded out of all semblance to itself. he panted, he groaned, he dashed about foolishly, he stumbled, he fell. when pelted
[pg 75]
with pebbles or scraps of ice, he was hardly aware of the rain upon his head.
but the mob swept on, leaving him behind. at gates and corners the boy baiters disappeared, hungry for their dinners. most of them forgot him as soon as they had turned their backs. it was easy for them to stop for awhile since they could begin again.
he was alone on the gritty, icy slope surrounding the schoolhouse. there was no comfort for him in the world. faintly he remembered as a satisfaction that he hadn't cried, but even this consolation was cold. he wondered if he couldn't kill himself.
he did not kill himself, though he pondered ways and means of doing it. he came to the conclusion that it would be foolish to kill himself before killing some of his tormentors. he prayed about it that night, his first prayer, except for the one taught him on christmas eve by mrs. crewdson.
to the family devotions, for which all were assembled about eight o'clock, before the younger children went to bed, mr. tollivant had begun to add a new petition.
"and, o heavenly father, take pity on the little stranger within our gates, even as we have welcomed him into our home. blot out his past from thy book. give him a new heart. make him truthful and honest especially. help him to be gentle, obedient...."
but savagely the boy intervened on his own behalf. "o heavenly father, don't! don't give me a new heart, or make me gentle and obedient, till i kill some of them fellows that called me a crook, for jesus christ's sake, amen."
