Ramsey Milholland Part 2

"The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat."

Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed next--a ghastly contrast. He gave a "selection from Shakespeare,"

a.s.signed by the teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by stumbling violently as he ascended the platform, which stimulated a general giggle already in being at the mere calling of his name. All of the cla.s.s were bright with happy antic.i.p.ation, for the miserable Ramsey seldom failed their hopes, particularly in "Declamation." He faced them, his complexion wan, his expression both baleful and horrified; and he began in a loud, hurried voice, from which every hint of intelligence was excluded:

"Most pottent, grave, and rev--"

The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. "You've forgotten to bow," she said. "And don't say 'pottent.' The word is 'potent'."

Ramsey flopped his head at the rear wall of the room, and began again:

"Most pottent potent gray and revenerd signers my very n.o.be and approve good masters that I have tan away this sole man's dutter it is mose true true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending hath this extent no more rude am I in speech--in speech--rude am I in speech--in speech--in speech--in speech--"

He had stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some sense of its applicability to the occasion had interfered with the mechanism which he had set in operation to get rid of the "recitation" for him.

At all events, the machine had to run off its job all at once, or it wouldn't run at all. Stopped, it stayed stopped, and backing off granted no new impetus, though he tried, again and again. "Hath this extent no more rude am I in speech--" He gulped audibly. "Rude rude rude am I--rude am I in speech--in speech--in speech. Rude am I in speech--"

"Yes," the irritated teacher said, as Ramsey's failing voice continued huskily to insist upon this point. "I think you are!" And her nerves were a little soothed by the shout of laughter from the school--it was never difficult for teachers to be witty. "Go sit down, Ramsey, and do it after school."

His ears roaring, the unfortunate went to his seat, and, among all the hilarious faces, one stood out--Dora Yoc.u.m's. Her laughter was precocious; it was that of a confirmed superior, insufferably adult--she was laughing at him as a grown person laughs at a child. Conspicuously and unmistakably, there was something indulgent in her amus.e.m.e.nt. He choked. Here was a little squirt of a high-school girl who would trot up to George Washington himself and show off around him, given the opportunity; and George Washington would probably pat her on the head, or give her a medal--or something. Well, let him! Ramsey didn't care.

He didn't care for George Washington, or Paul Revere, or Shakespeare, or any of 'em. They could all go to the d.i.c.kens with Dora Yoc.u.m. They were all a lot of smarties anyway and he hated the whole stew of 'em!

There was one, however, whom he somehow couldn't manage to hate, even though this one officially seemed to be as intimately a.s.sociated with Dora Yoc.u.m and superiority as the others were. Ramsey couldn't hate Abraham Lincoln, even when Dora was chosen to deliver the "Gettysburg Address" on the twelfth of February. Vaguely, yet rea.s.suringly, Ramsey felt that Lincoln had resisted adoption by the intellectuals. Lincoln had said "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," and that didn't mean government by the teacher and the Teacher's Pet and Paul Revere and Shakespeare and suchlike; it meant government by everybody, and therefore Ramsey had as much to do with it as anybody else had. This was friendly; and he believed that if Abraham Lincoln could have walked into the schoolroom, Lincoln would have been as friendly with him as with Dora and the teacher herself. Beyond a doubt, Dora and the teacher _thought_ Lincoln belonged to them and their crowd of exclusives; they seemed to think they owned the whole United States; but Ramsey was sure they were mistaken about Abraham Lincoln.

He felt that it was just like this little Yoc.u.m snippet to a.s.sume such a thing, and it made him sicker than ever to look at her.

Then, one day, he noticed that her eye-winkers were stickin' out farther and farther.

Chapter IV

His discovery irritated him the more. Next thing, this ole Teacher's Pet would do she'd get to thinkin' she was pretty! If _that_ happened, well, n.o.body _could_ stand her! The long lashes made her eyes shadowy, and it was a fact that her shoulder blades ceased to insist upon notoriety; you couldn't tell where they were at all, any more. Her back seemed to be just a regular back, not made up of a lot of implements like shoulder blades and things.

A contemptible thing happened. Wesley Bender was well known to be the most untidy boy in the cla.s.s and had never shown any remorse for his reputation or made the slightest effort either to improve or to dispute it. He was content: it failed to lower his standing with his fellows or to impress them unfavourably. In fact, he was treated as one who has attained a slight distinction. At least, he owned one superlative, no matter what its quality, and it lifted him out of the commonplace. It helped him to become better known, and boys liked to be seen with him.

But one day, there was a rearrangement of the seating in the schoolroom: Wesley Bender was given a desk next in front of Dora Yoc.u.m's; and within a week the whole room knew that Wesley had begun voluntarily to wash his neck--the back of it, anyhow.

This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and Wesley Bender, and the diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding hostilities were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite as mixed-up and off-the-issue as if they had been prepared by professional foreign office men. Ramsey and Fred Mitch.e.l.l and four other boys waylaid young Bender on the street after school, intending jocosities rather than violence, but the victim proved sensitive. "You take your ole hands off o' me!" he said fiercely, as they began to push him about among them.

"Ole dirty Wes!" they hoa.r.s.ely bellowed and squawked, in their changing voices. "Washes his ears!"... "Washes his _neck!_"... "Dora Yoc.u.m told his mama to turn the hose on him!"... "Yay-ho! Ole dirty Wes tryin to be a duke!"

Wesley broke from them and backed away, swinging his strapped books in a dangerous circle. "You keep off!" he warned them. "I got as much right to my pers'nal appearance as anybody!"

This richly fed their humour, and they rioted round him, keeping outside the swinging books at the end of the strap. "Pers'nal appearance!"...

"Who went and bought it for you, Wes?"... "n.o.body bought it for him.

Dora Yoc.u.m took and give him one!"

"You leave ladies' names alone!" cried the chivalrous Wesley. "You ought to know better, on the public street, you--pups!"

Here was a serious affront, at least to Ramsey Milholland's way of thinking; for Ramsey, also, now proved sensitive. He quoted his friends--"Shut up!"--and advanced toward Wesley. "You look here! Who you callin' 'pups'?"

"Everybody!" Wesley hotly returned. "Everybody that hasn't got any more decency than to go around mentioning ladies' names on the public streets. Everybody that goes around mentioning ladies' names on the public streets are pups!"

"They are, are they?" Ramsey as hotly demanded. "Well, you just look here a minute; my own father mentions my mother's name on the public streets whenever he wants to, and you just try callin' my father a pup, and you won't know what happened to you!"

"What'll _you_ do about it?"

"I'll put a new head on you," said Ramsey. "That's what I'll do, because anybody that calls my father or mother a pup--"

"Oh, shut up! I wasn't talking about your ole father and mother. I said everybody that mentioned Dora Yoc.u.m's name on the public streets was a pup, and I mean it! Everybody that mentions Dora Yoc.u.m's name on the pub--"

"Dora Yoc.u.m!" said Ramsey. "I got a perfect right to say it anywhere I want to. Dora Yoc.u.m, Dora Yoc.u.m, Dora Yoc.u.m!--"

"All right, then you're a pup!"

Ramsey charged upon him and received a suffocating blow full in the face, not from Mr. Bender's fist but from the solid bundle of books at the end of the strap. Ramsey saw eight or ten objectives instantly: there were Wesley Benders standing full length in the air on top of other Wesley Benders, and more Wesley Benders zigzagged out sideways from still other Wesley Benders; nevertheless, he found one of these and it proved to be flesh. He engaged it wildly at fisticuffs; pounded it upon the countenance and drove it away. Then he sat down upon the curbstone, and, with his dizzy eyes shut, leaned forward for the better accommodation of his ensanguined nose.

Wesley had retreated to the other side of the street holding a grimy handkerchief to the midmost parts of his pallid face. "There, you ole d.a.m.n pup!" he shouted, in a voice which threatened to sob. "I guess _that'll_ teach you to be careful how you mention Dora Yoc.u.m's name on the public streets!"

At this, Ramsey made a motion as if to rise and pursue, whereupon Wesley fled, wailing back over his shoulder as he ran, "You wait till I ketch you out alone on the public streets and I'll--"

His voice was lost in an outburst of hooting from his former friends, who sympathetically surrounded the wounded Ramsey. But in a measure, at least, the chivalrous fugitive had won his point. He was routed and outdone, yet what survived the day was a rumour, which became a sort of tenuous legend among those interested. There had been a fight over Dora Yoc.u.m, it appeared, and Ramsey Milholland had attempted to maintain something derogatory to the lady, while Wesley defended her as a knightly youth should. The something derogatory was left vague; n.o.body attempted to say just what it was, and the effects of the legend divided the schoolroom strictly according to gender.

The boys, unmindful of proper gallantry, supported Ramsey on account of the way he had persisted in lickin' the stuffin' out of Wesley Bender after receiving that preliminary wallop from Wesley's blackjack bundle of books. The girls petted and championed Wesley; they talked outrageously of his conqueror, fiercely declaring that he ought to be arrested; and for weeks they maintained a new manner toward him. They kept their facial expressions hostile, but perhaps this was more for one another's benefit than for Ramsey's; and several of them went so far out of their way to find even private opportunities for reproving him that an alert observer might have suspected them to have been less indignant than they seemed--but not Ramsey. He thought they all hated him, and said he was glad of it.

Dora was a non-partisan. The little prig was so diligent at her books she gave never the slightest sign of comprehending that there had been a fight about her. Having no real cognizance of Messrs. Bender and Milholland except as impediments to the advance of learning, she did not even look demure.

Chapter V

With Wesley Bender, Ramsey was again upon fair terms before the winter had run its course; the two were neighbours and, moreover, were drawn together by a community of interests which made their reconciliation a necessity. Ramsey played the guitar and Wesley played the mandolin.

All ill feeling between them died with the first duet of spring, yet the twinkling they made had no charm to soothe the savage breast of Ramsey whenever the Teacher's Pet came into his thoughts. He daydreamed a thousand ways of putting her in her place, but was unable to carry out any of them, and had but a cobwebby satisfaction in imagining discomfitures for her which remained imaginary. With a yearning so poignant that it hurt, he yearned and yearned to show her what she really was. "Just once!" he said to Fred Mitch.e.l.l. "That's all I ask, just once. Just gimme one chance to show that girl what she really is.

I guess if I ever get the chance she'll find out what's the matter with her, for _once_ in her life, anyway!" Thus it came to be talked about and understood and expected in Ramsey's circle, all male, that Dora Yoc.u.m's day was coming. The nature of the disaster was left vague, but there was no doubt in the world that retribution merely awaited its ideal opportunity. "You'll see!" said Ramsey. "The time'll come when that ole girl'll wish she'd moved o' this town before she ever got appointed monitor of _our_ cla.s.s! Just you wait!"

They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable indefinitely. Perhaps the great opportunity might have arrived if Ramsey had been able to achieve a startling importance in any of the "various divergent yet parallel lines of school endeavour"--one of the phrases by means of which teachers and princ.i.p.al clogged the minds of their unarmed auditors. But though he was far from being the dumb driven beast of misfortune that he seemed in the schoolroom, and, in fact, lived a double life, exhibiting in his out-of-school hours a remarkable example of "secondary personality"--a creature fearing nothing and capable of laughter; blue-eyed, fairly robust, and anything but dumb--he was nevertheless without endowment or attainment great enough to get him distinction.

He "tried for" the high-school eleven, and "tried for" the nine, but the experts were not long in eliminating him from either of these compet.i.tions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of getting cheered. He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or enough of anything else, to put Dora Yoc.u.m in her place, and so he and the great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of the second year of high school, when the cla.s.s, now the "10 A," reverted to an old fashion and decided to entertain itself with a woodland picnic.

They gathered upon the sandy banks of a creek, in the blue shade of big, patchy-barked sycamores, with a dancing sky on top of everything and gold dust atwinkle over the water. Hither the napkin-covered baskets were brought from the wagons and a.s.sembled in the shade, where they appeared as an attractive little meadow of white napery, and gave both surprise and pleasure to communities of ants and to other original settlers of the neighbourhood.

From this nucleus or headquarters of the picnic, various expeditions set forth up and down the creek and through the woods that bordered it.

Camera work was constant; spring wild flowers were acc.u.mulated by groups of girls who trooped through the woods with eager eyes searching the thickets; two envied boy fishermen established themselves upon a bank up-stream, with hooks and lines thoughtfully brought with them, and poles which they fashioned from young saplings. They took mussels from the shallows, for bait, and having gone to all this trouble, declined to share with friends less energetic and provident the perquisites and pleasures secured to themselves.

Albert Paxton was another person who proved his enterprise. Having visited the spot some days before, he had hired for his exclusive use throughout the duration of the picnic an old rowboat belonging to a shanty squatter; it was the only rowboat within a mile or two and Albert had his own uses for it. Albert was the cla.s.s lover and, after first taking the three chaperon teachers "out for a row," an excursion concluded in about ten minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie Clews stepped into the boat, a pocket camera in one hand, a tennis racket in the other; and the two spent the rest of the day, except for the luncheon interval, solemnly drifting along the banks or grounded on a shoal. Now and then Albert would row a few strokes, and at almost any time when the populated sh.o.r.e glanced toward them, Sadie would be seen photographing Albert, or Albert would be seen photographing Sadie, but the tennis racket remained an enigma. Oarsman and pa.s.senger appeared to have no conversation whatever--not once was either seen or heard to address a remark to the other; and they looked as placid as their own upside-down reflections in one of the still pools they slowly floated over. They were sixteen, and had been "engaged" more than two years.