Miss Prime’s lips were drawn into a line. She divided that line to say, “I know what the Scriptures say: ’If thy right hand offend thee’—”
“Hester, Hester!” he cried, stretching out his hands to her.
“Good night, Brother Hodges. I must go in.” She turned and left him standing at the gate with a hurt look in his face.
On going into the house, Miss Hester did not immediately ’tend to Fred, as she had promised. Instead, she left him and went into her own room where she remained awhile. When she came out, her lips were no less set, but her eyes were red. It is hardly to be supposed that she had been indulging in that solace of woman’s woes, a good cry.
“Take off yore jacket, Freddie,” she said, calmly, taking down a switch from over the clothespress. “I’m a-goin’ to whip you; but, remember, I ain’t a-punishin’ you because I’m mad. It’s fur the purpose of instruction. It’s fur yore own good.”
Fred received his dressing-down without a whimper. He was too angry to cry. This Miss Prime took as a mark of especial depravity. In fact, the boy had been unable to discover any difference between an instructive and a vindictive whipping. It was perfectly clear in his guardian’s mind, no doubt, but a cherry switch knows no such distinctions.
This incident only prepared Fred Brent for a further infraction of his guardian’s rules the next day. One of Miss Prime’s strictest orders had to do with fighting. Whatever the boys did to Fred, he was never to resent it. He must come to her, he thought, “if I should laugh out while she is whipping me?” And he laughed at the very thought. He was full of pleasure at himself. He had satisfied the impulse within him for once, and it made him happy.
Miss Prime read the ominous note, and looked at her charge thoughtfully. Fred glanced expectantly in the direction of the top of the clothespress. But she only said, “Go out an’ git in yore kindlin’, Freddie; git yore chores done, an’ then come in to supper.” Her voice was menacingly quiet. The boy had learned to read the signs of her face too well to think that he was to get off so easily as this. Evidently, he would “get it” after supper, or Miss Prime had some new, refined mode of punishment in store for him. But what was it? He cudgelled his brain in vain, as he finished his chores, and at table he could hardly eat for wondering. But he might have spared himself his pains, for he learned all too soon.
Immediately after supper he was bidden to put on his cap and come along. Miss Prime took him by the hand. “I’m a-goin’ to take you,” she said, “to beg Willie Tompkins’s pardon fur the way you did him.”
Did the woman know what it meant to the boy? She could not, or her heart would have turned against the cruelty. Fred was aghast. Beg his pardon! A whipping was a thousand times better: indeed, it would be a mercy. He began to protest, but was speedily silenced. The enforced silence, however, did not cool his anger. He had done what other boys did. He had acted in the only way that it seemed a boy could act under the circumstances, and he had expected to be punished as his fellows were; but this—this was awful. He clinched his hands until the nails dug into the palms. His face was as pale as death. He sweated with the consuming fire of impotent rage. He wished that he might run away somewhere where he could hide and tear things and swear. For a moment only he entertained the thought, and then a look into the determined face of the woman at his side drove the thought away. To his childish eyes, distorted by resentment, she was an implacable and relentless monster who would follow him with punishment anywhere he might go.
And now they were at Billy Tompkins’s door. They had passed through, and he found himself saying mechanically the words which Miss Prime put into his mouth, while his tormentor grinned from beside his mother’s chair. Then, after a few words between the women, in which he heard from Mrs. Tompkins the mysterious words, “Oh, I don’t blame you, Miss Hester; I know that blood will tell,” they passed out, and the grinning face of Billy Tompkins was the last thing that Fred saw. It followed him home. The hot tears fell from his eyes, but they did not quench the flames that were consuming him. There is nothing so terrible as the just anger of a child—terrible in its very powerlessness. Polyphemus is a giant, though the mountain hold him down.
Next morning, when Fred went to school, Billy Tompkins with a crowd of boys about was waiting to deride him; but at sight of his face they stopped. He walked straight up to his enemy and began striking him with all his might.
“She made me beg your pardon, did she?” he gasped between the blows; “well, you take that for it, and that.” The boys had fallen back, and Billy was attempting to defend himself.
“Mebbe she’ll make me do it again tonight. If she does, I’ll give you some more o’ this tomorrow, and every time I have to beg your pardon. Do you hear?”
The boys cheered lustily, and Billy Tompkins, completely whipped and ashamed, slunk away.
That night no report of the fight went home. Fred Brent held the master hand.
In life it is sometimes God and sometimes the devil that comes to the aid of oppressed humanity. From the means, it is often hard to tell whose handiwork are the results.
Chapter VII
Cynics and fools laugh at calf-love. Youth, which is wiser,
