Friday was rather an eventful day at the school. The boys had heard of the meeting and expected serious developments. Mrs. Ben Steven called in the morning. She was a tall heavily-framed woman, short-tempered, and astonishingly voluble in her wrath. She had selected Richard Haddon as the vandal who had despoiled her cabbage-patch, and was seeking a just revenge. Already she had called upon Mrs. Haddon and delivered a long, loud, and fierce public lecture to the startled little widow on the moral responsibilities of parents, and the need they have of faithfully and regularly thrashing their sons as a duty they owe to their neighbors. Now it was her intention to incite Joel Ham to administer an adequate caning to the boy, or to do herself the bare justice of soundly spanking the culprit. She bounced into the school, angry, bare-armed, and eager for the fray, and all the children sat up and wondered.
“I’ve come about that boy Haddon,” said Mrs. Steven.
Joel Ham blinked his pale lashes and regarded her thoughtfully, in peaceful and good-humoured contrast with her own haste and heat.
“Have you, indeed, ma’am?” he said softly.
“Have I, indeed! “cried the woman, bridling again at a hint of sarcasm; “can’t you see I have?”
“Madam, you are very obvious.”
“Am I, then! Well, look here, you; you’ve got to cane the hide off that boy.”
“You surprise me, Mrs. Steven. For what?”
“For breakin’ into my garden an’ robbin’ me. Nice way you’re teachin’ these boys, ain’t you? Makin’ thieves an’ stealers of ’em. Now, tell me, do you mean to thrash him?”
Joel considered the matter calmly, pinching his under lip and blinking at Mrs. Ben in a pensive, studious way.
“No, ma’am, I do not.”
“For why?” cried the woman.
“I am not the public hangman, Mrs. Steven.”
Mrs. Steven could not see the relevance of the excuse, and her anger rose again.
“Then, sir, I’ll thrash him myself, now an’ here.”
The master sighed heavily and clambered on to his high stool, took his black bottle from his desk, and deliberately refreshed himself, oblivious apparently to the lady’s threat and forgetting her presence.
“Do you hear me, Joel Ham?” Mrs. Ben Steven beat heavily on the desk with the palm of her large hand. “I’ll whack him myself.”
“Certainly, ma’am, certainly—if you can catch him.”
Dick accepted this as a kindly hint and dived under a couple of desks as Mrs. Steven rushed his place. The chase was obviously useless from the first; the woman had not a possible chance of catching Dick amongst the forms, but she tried while her breath lasted, rushing in and out amongst the classes, knocking a child over here and there, boxing the ears of others when they got in her way, and creating confusion and unbounded delight everywhere. The children were overjoyed, but Gable was much concerned for Dick, and stood up in his place ejaculating “Crickey!’in a loud voice and following the hunt with frightened eyes.
Meanwhile Joel Ham, B.A., sat at his desk, contemplating the roof with profound interest, and taking a casual mechanical pull at his bottle. Joel was in a peculiar position: he was selected by the people of Waddy and paid by them, and had to defer to their wishes to some extent; and, besides, Mrs. Ben Steven was a large, powerful, indignant woman, and he a small, slim man.
Mrs. Steven stood in front of the classes until she had recovered sufficient breath to start a fierce tirade; then, one hand on her hip and the other out-thrown, she thundered abuse at Richard Haddon and all his belongings. The master bore this for two or three minutes; then he slid from his stool, seized his longest cane, and thrashing the desk—his usual demand for order—he faced Mrs. Ben and, pointing to the door, cried:
“Out!”
The woman backed away a step and regarded him with some amazement. He was not a bit like the everyday Joel Ham, but quite imperious and fierce.
“Out!” he said, and the long cane whistled threateningly around and over her.
She backed away a few steps more; Joel followed her up, cutting all around her with the lightning play of an expert swordsman, just missing by the fraction of an inch, and showing a face that quite subdued the virago. Mrs. Steven backed to the door.
“Out!” thundered Ham, and she fled, banging the door between her and the dangerous cane.
“Oh crickey!” cried Gable in a high squeak that set the whole school laughing boisterously.
Mrs. Ben Steven reappeared at one of the windows, and threatened terrible things for Ham when her Ben returned; but Joel was consoling himself with his bottle again and was not in the least disturbed, and a minute later the school was plunged in a studious silence.
Peterson and Cann called late in the afternoon, as representatives of the School Committee.
“We’ve come fer your permission to ask some questions of the boy Haddon, Mr. Ham, sir,” said Peterson.
Joel received a great show of respect from most of the men of Waddy in consideration of his position and scholarship.
Dick was called out and faced the men, firm-lipped and with unconquerable resolution in the set of his face and the gleam of his eye.
“’Bout this job o’ goat-stealin’?” said Cann, with a grave judicial air.
“They stole my billy. I went to fetch him back, an’ all the other goats come too,” Dick answered.
“Who helped?”
“Just a dog—a sheep an’ cattle dog.”
“What boys?”
“Dunno!”
The examination might as well have ended there. It is a point of honour amongst all schoolboys never to ‘split’ on mates. The boy who tells is everywhere regarded as a sneak—at Waddy he speedily became a pariah—and Dick was a stickler for points of honour. To be caned was bad, but nothing to the gnawing shame of long weeks following upon a cowardly breach of faith. To all the questions Cann or Peterson could put with the object of eliciting the names of the participators in the big raid, Dick returned only a distressing and wofully stupid “Dunno!”
Peterson scratched his head helplessly, and turned an eye of appeal upon the master.
“Very well,” said Cann, “we’ll just have to guess at the other boys, an’ their fathers’ll be prevailed on to deal with ’em; but this boy what’s been the ring leader ain’t got no father, an’ it don’t seem fair to the others to leave his punishment to a weak woman, does it?”
Peterson’s eye appealed to the master again. “Not fair an’ square to the other boys,” he added philosophically.
Joel Ham shook his head.
“I teach your children,” he said. “I neither hang nor flagellate your criminals.”
“No, no, a-course not,” said Peterson.
“Might you be able to spare us this boy fer the rest o’ the afternoon, in the name o’ the committee?” asked Cann. “We’ll go an’ argue with his mother to leave the lickin’ of him to the committee.”
“As a question o’ public interest,” said Peterson.
The master consented to this, and Dick was led away between the two men. The interview with Mrs. Haddon took place in the widow’s garden. Mrs. Haddon quite understood what it meant when Peterson entered with Dick in custody.
“Good day, Mrs. Haddon,” said the big man gingerly. “O’ course you know all ’bout the trouble o’ those goats.”
“Made by you stupid men, mostly,” said Mrs. Haddon.
Peterson stammered and appealed to Cann—he had not expected argument.
“What we men did, ma’am,” said Cann, “was to protect our property. If the goats hadn’t bin brought here there wouldn’t ’a’ bin any need fer that. Not to mention garden robbin’ before, an’ broken fences an’ such.”
“The School Committee, ma’am,” said Peterson, “has drawed up a list of suspects, an’ the fathers of the boys named will lambaste ’em all thorough. Now it occurred to the committee that your boy, bein’ the worst o’ the pack, an’ havin’ confessed, oughter get a fair share o’ the hammerin’.”
“An’ you’ve come to offer to do it?”
“That’s just it, ma’am, if you’ll be so kind.”
Mrs. Haddon had a proper sense of her public duties, a due appreciation of the extent of Dick’s wickedness, and a full knowledge of her own inefficiency as a scourger. She looked down and debated anxiously with herself, carefully avoiding Dick’s eye, and Dick watched her all the time, but did not speak a word or make a single plea.
“Can’t I beat my own boy?” she asked angrily.
“To be certain sure, ma’am, but you’re a small bit of a woman, an’ it don’t seem altogether square dealin’ fer the others to get a proper hidin’ an’ him not. ’Sides, ’twould satisfy public feelin’ better if one of us was to lam him. Sound, ma’am, but judicious,” said Cairn.
“Au’ ’twould save you further trouble,” added Peterson. “’Twould ease the mind o’ Mrs. Ben Steven.” This latter was a weighty argument. Mrs. Haddon’s terror of the big woman with the terrible tongue was very real.
“Well, well, well,” she said pitifully. “You—you won’t beat him roughly?”
“I’m a father, as you know, ma’am,” said Peterson, “an’ know what’s a fair thing by a boy.”
Cann was unbuckling his belt, and the widow stood trembling, clasping and unclasping her hands. It was a severe ordeal, but public spirit prevailed. Mrs. Haddon turned and fled into the house, and shutting herself in her bedroom buried her head in the pillows and wept.
Ten minutes later she was called out, and Dick was delivered into her hands.
“Better lock him up fer the night,” said Peterson, looking in a puzzled way at Dick.
The boy bad not shed a tear nor uttered a cry. He stood stock still under the flailing, and the heart went out of Peterson. Had Dick fought or struggled, it would have been all right and natural; but this was such a cold-blooded business, and a strange but strongly-felt superiority of spirit in the boy awed and confused the big man, and the beating was but gingerly done after all.
“Come, Dickie, dear,” said Mrs. Haddon, in a penitent tone and with much humility.
She led the boy into his room, and there addressed a diffident and halting speech to him. There were times when Mrs. Haddon had a sense of being younger and weaker than her son, and this was one of them. She felt it her duty to tell Dick of the sinfulness of his conduct, and to try to justify the punishment, but her words fell ineptly from her lips,—she knew them to be vain against the power that held Dick silent and tearless, and yet without a trace of boyish stubbornness. She was not a very wise little woman, or her son’s force of character might have been turned early to good works and profitable courses.
In truth the thrashing had had an extraordinary effect on Richard Haddon. For a boy to be kicked, or clouted, or tweaked by strange men is the fortune of war—it is a mere everyday incident, the natural and accepted fate of all boys, and is swiftly resented with a jibe or a missile and forgotten on the spot; but to be taken in cold blood by one strange man, not a schoolmaster or in any way privileged, and deliberately and systematically larruped with a belt under the eyes of another, is burning shame. It tortured all Dick’s senses into revolt, and awakened in him a hatred of what he looked upon as the injustice and cowardliness of the outrage that was too deep and too bitter for trivial complaints.
Dick’s temperament was poignantly romantic, and the natural tendency had been fed and nourished by indiscriminate reading. The Waddy Public Library, in point of fact, was largely responsible for many of the minor worries and big troubles Dick had been instrumental in visiting on the township. The ‘lib’ry’ was in the hands of a few men whose literary tastes were decidedly crude, with a strong leaning towards piracy on the high seas, brigandage, buccaneering, and sudden death. Dick read all print that came in his way. Once he started a book he felt in honour bound to finish it, however difficult the task. To set it aside would be a confession of mental weakness. For this reason he had once, during a week of humiliation, fought his way stubbornly through Tupper’s “Proverbial Philosophy.” But it was the rampant fiction that influenced him most directly. He took his romance very seriously; his vivid sympathies were always with the poor persecuted pirate driven to lawless courses by systematic oppression at school, or by a cold proud father’s failure to appreciate the humour of his youthful villainies. The bushranger, too, urged from milder courses of crime by the persecutions of the police, found in Dick a devoted friend. It never occurred to the boy that the excuses given were anything but adequate and satisfactory justification for pillage and arson and homicide.
On leaving Dick’s room, Mrs. Haddon locked the door very carefully and quietly. She suspected that he was planning mischief that would lead to further trouble, and hoped that by next morning he would be in a frame of mind to be won over by a little motherly strategy. But she went about her work with a heavy heart. Later she took the impenitent young “duffer” a tea cunningly designed to appeal to his rebellious heart, and spread it neatly on the big dimity-covered box in his bedroom; but Dick was implacable.
In the evening the widow had a visitor in whom she could confide without reservation. Christina Shine had called about her new dress for the Sunday School anniversary, and the weakest and most indulgent of mothers could not have wished for a more sympathetic confidant than big Miss Chris, who saved all her tears for other people’s troubles.
“You know, dear,” murmured Mrs. Haddon. “I can’t change Dickie’s nature. He’s wild, an’ he thinks he’s all kinds of ridiculous people, an’ they lead him into mischief.”
“Poor Dick! I shouldn’t have let them beat him,” said Chris, flushing with indignation.
“An’ he just as eager for good, you know,” continued the widow, “but then nobody makes any fuss over him when he does something really creditable.”
Chris nodded her head reproachfully. “Even father forgets,” she said.
Miss Chris had enormous faith in her father and a great affection for him, and his want of consideration for the boy who she believed had saved him from much suffering, if not a slow and terrible death, was a trait in his character that gave her a good deal of concern.
“Dickie thinks a lot of you, Christina,” said Mrs. Haddon. “P’r’aps if you went an’ spoke a few words with him he might be persuaded to overlook what’s past.”
“Yes, yes,” said Chris brightly.
“Tell him how much trouble he is givin’ his poor mother, who’d be alone but for him. You might dwell on that, my dear, will you?
“I will, of course; and it’s true, too.”
“It always seems to soften him. If it doesn’t, you can hint I’m not very well to-night.”
Miss Chris, who stood head and shoulders above her friend, laid an affectionate hand upon the plump and rosy widow.
“When he’s unmanageable other ways I take ill for a little while, you know,” said the widow mournfully. “Come in,” she cried in answer to a sharp knock at the door.
The caller was Harry Hardy. He stopped short in confusion on beholding Christina Shine, and Chris blushed warmly in answering his curt “Good evening.”
“I called to see Dick ’bout that tin dish,” he said, beating his leg with his hat in an obvious effort to appear at his ease.
Mrs. Haddon glanced sharply from Harry to Chris and conceived a new interest.
“I will go to Dickie,” said Chris, taking the key from the widow.
Mrs. Haddon explained to Harry when they were alone, and added insinuatingly:
“That’s a dear good girl.”
“Shine’s daughter?” said Harry with emphasis.
“Yes, Shine’s daughter, an’ she’s as good as he pretends to be.”
Harry contrived to look quite vindictive and gave no answer, and a minute later Chris returned. Dick had barred his door on the other side and would give her no reply.
“The window!” cried Mrs. Haddon.
Harry hastened out and around the house. Finding the window of Dick’s room unlatched he threw it up and climbed into the room. The door was barred with a chair; this he removed, and Mrs. Haddon entered with a candle. There was no sign of the boy, but pinned on the wall was a large strip of paper on which was written in bold letters:
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“Good-bye for ever. I’ve run away to be a bushranger.
—DICK HADDON.
P.S.—Pursuit is useless.”
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The widow sank upon the edge of the bed and mopped her tears with a snow-white apron.
“That means that I sha’n’t see him for two days at least,” she said, “unless I’m either taken very ill or attacked by a burglar. Why, why can’t a poor woman be allowed to bring up her own children in her own way?”
Chris was soothing and Harry reassuring.
“He knows how to take care of himself. He’ll be all right,” cried the young man heartily.
“If you could get some o’ the boys to let him know I wasn’t safe from a sundowner, or a drunken drover, or someone, I’d be much obliged,” said Mrs. Haddon.
“Very well,” replied Harry, laughing. “I’ll manage that.”
Mrs. Haddon smiled through her tears, much comforted, and turned her mind to other things. Within the space of about two minutes she had satisfied herself that no woman in all the world would make Harry Hardy a better wife than Christina Shine, and, being convinced, it was manifestly her duty to help the good cause.
“Won’t you stay awhile an’ keep me company, Christina?” she asked. “Harry’ll see you home.”
Miss Chris would stay with pleasure, but she couldn’t think of troubling Mr. Hardy, and she said so with a girl’s shyness. Mr. Hardy stammered a little and tried to say that it would be no trouble at all, but the effort was not a brilliant success considered as a compliment. He longed to stay, and yet hated and feared to stay. This anomalous frame of mind was new; it confused and staggered him. He seemed to be swayed by an external impulse, and resented it with miserable self-deceit. But he stayed.
Harry did not greatly enrich the conversation during the hour spent in Mrs. Haddon’s kitchen, but he found his eyes drawn to the handsome profile of Christina Shine, standing out in its soft fairness against the dark wall like a wonderfully carven cameo. Her hair, turned back in beautifully flowing lines, helped the queenly suggestion. Harry looked resolutely away; then he heard her voice, sweet and low, and recollected that beside himself no man, woman, or child in Waddy was mean enough to cherish a hard thought of Miss Chris. Beside himself? He turned fiercely, as if for refuge, to his dislike for her father. His failure to find the smallest clue to justify his opinion and that of his mother as to the real merits of the crime at the Silver Stream left him more bitter towards the searcher, the one man whose words and actions had convicted Frank. He would not admit his hatred to be unfair or unreasonable, and his moroseness deepened as time showed him how heavily the disgrace and sorrow lay upon his mother, although her words were always cheerful and her faith unconquerable.
The walk home that night was not a pleasant one to Chris. She was piteously anxious to have him think kindly of her, and this made itself felt through Harry’s roughest mood; then he had an absurd impulse to throw out his arms and offer her protection and tenderness. Absurd because, turning towards her, he was compelled to look upwards into her eyes, and the tall, strong figure at his side, walking erect, with firm square shoulders, dwarfed his conceit till he felt himself morally and physically a pigmy.
Their conversation drifted to dangerous ground.
“Have you found nothing to help poor Frank?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said sharply and suspiciously.
“I am sorry. Oh! how I wish I could aid you!”
“There’s one man that might do that, but he won’t.”
“One man? One? You said that strangely. One man? Who would be so brutal?”
His silence stung her. She turned sharply.
“Oh, you don’t mean—surely, surely you don’t mean father?”
Again he did not answer.
“It is not right,” she cried out. “You can have no reason to think that. You say it to hurt me.”
“I didn’t say it.”
“You meant it—you mean it still.”
She quickened her pace and they exchanged no more words until the walk was ended, then she gave him her hand over the gate.
“Good-night,” she said. “You were more generous as a boy, Harry.”
He took her hand. It was ungloved, and felt small and tender in his hard palm. The touch awoke a sudden passion in him. Both of his hands held hers, his head bent over it, and he blurted something in apology. “Don’t mind me! I didn’t mean it! Please, please—” He did not know what he was saying, and the words were too low and confused to reach her ears; but she went up the garden path with an elate bird in her heart singing such a song of gladness that the world was filled with its music, and the girl knew its meaning and yet wondered at it.
Harry stood nervously gripping the pickets of the gate and gazed after her, and continued gazing for many minutes when she had gone. Then he swung off into the bush, walking rapidly, and was glad in a stern rebellious way—glad in spite of his mission, in spite of his brother, in spite of and defiance of every thing.