The Loom of Destiny/The Essentials of Aristocracy
THE ESSENTIALS OF
ARISTOCRACY
But agine they weeps art agine they syes
As it b'aint our bloomin' fault;
An' they syes to us as they 'ands us out:
"Now earn your bloody salt!"
THE ESSENTIALS OF ARISTOCRACY
HE knew they were to be enemies. Just why he could never have said, but he felt it in his bones when their eyes first met. Each of the two boys seemed to recognise the silent and mysterious challenge of combative childhood.
The new boy's face was shiny from soap and hot water, and under his arm he carried his new slate and a crisp yellow-covered First Book. The doctor had told his Aunt Martha that the children ought to be kept out of the way for the next few weeks. His Aunt Martha had cruelly suggested school for him.
It was with a sinking heart that he felt himself led relentlessly up the urchin-lined walk of the new Ward school.
"Hello, kid, whatcher name?" asked a lean-legged boy with a cigarette stub in his mouth.
Johnnie Armstrong, please," replied the new boy, almost tearfully.
But that one pair of challenging eyes—they followed him right up the walk and into the schoolhouse. There were scores of other audacious enemies who gazed critically at the patches on his knees and the hole in the toe of his boot, but in all that army of foes he knew to the marrow in his childish bones that this one particular boy was to be his one particular enemy.
Through all the long, stifling, terrible first hour of school life he furtively watched the figure of his fated opponent.
During recess the new boy hung about the hallway, homesick and miserable. He wondered what his Aunt Martha and the baby were doing. He knew what his mother was doing—she was in bed all the time, of course, and coughing away just the same as if he were there.
At the end of recess, when the bell rang, and the screaming, surging crowd of children made the usual mad rush for their rooms, the new boy and the enemy came face to face in the hall. The new boy was bunted vigorously against the wall as his rival went past. The new boy expected it. A scream of delight broke from the groups of hurrying boys and girls as they crowded past, or stopped a moment to watch him get up and brush the dust from his carefully patched clothes.
For one weak moment, at noon, the new boy was tempted to slip out by the girl's door, and so escape. That would mean putting off the fight for a day at least.
One of the girls, as she hurried out, saw he was a new boy and made a face at him. The malevolence of that grimace turned him precipitately back. With quaking knees, and a pitiful mockery of a whistle, he walked out of the boys' door. The fight had to be that day!
It was all as he expected. He, of course, was waiting for him. With a choking sickliness at his throat he made steadily for the gate. Before he was half way there a jagged piece of cinder struck him on the cheek with a stinging pain. He put up his hand and felt his face. It was bleeding. A surge of something like drunkenness swept through his frame. He did n't mind the bleeding. Now he did n't care. He was glad it really was bleeding. That meant that they had to fight it out then and there. He did n't mind fighting, nor did he mind getting whipped. But he felt that he would rather be pounded to pieces than endure any longer this uncertainty of position. One or the other must be boss, and boss for all time.
It hardly seemed his own hand that clutched wildly for a fragment of brick on the ground and flung it with all his force at the other boy. It went wide, for it was thrown in blind passion.
But it brought the enemy, bristling and aggressive, toward him.
"Did youse t'row that at me, kid?" demanded the boy who had thrown the coal cinder. He could not have been a year older than the other.
"'Course I did!" said the new boy, almost crying, but not daring to show it. His voice sounded strange to him. He was a coward to the backbone; and no one knew that better than he himself. But his face was bleeding, and he did n't care now! And he was afraid the boys would find out that he really was a coward.
They fought. A dozen small boys saw the well-known preliminaries, and ran joyfully toward the two, screaming as they came, "A fight! a fight!" A man in an express waggon pulled up to look down on the struggle, and two or three girls watched open-mouthed from the sidewalk.
When the teacher came out of the school gate, five minutes later, she saw a group of small boys scurry suspiciously away. One boy limped—for kicking had been allowed—and the other left little drops of blood here and there on the sidewalk as he ran. It had not been to a finish, but the skinny, narrow-chested new boy had surprised them all. As for the new boy himself, he was supremely thankful that he was even alive.
His misery came back to him with a deadening rush when he remembered that he must show himself at home. He crawled, snail-like, in at the back door and listened. The doctor was there, and he was glad of it. He was also glad when his Aunt Martha told him that he must not go in and see his mother. He could hear her coughing feebly, and the baby crying for something to eat. As his aunt went into his mother's room with a hot-water bottle, she called back for him to take some fried potatoes and hash off the stove and eat his dinner. He did as he was told, and hurried away before his aunt came out again. His face was still blood-stained and scratched.
Sick at heart, he slouched back to school. In the yard one of the boys said: "You licked 'm, Johnnie."
"Naw, he did n't, neither," said another. "Jim had 'im bleedin'."
"Aw gwan! that was n't in the fight! That 'uz when he chucked the cinder at 'im. You had 'im dead skart in the fight, did n't you, Johnnie?"
"'Course I did," said Johnnie Armstrong, stoutly, though he knew he was lying.
"'Course," said another boy. "There's Jim, now, skart to come over!"
Deliciously it dawned on him. It was a revelation to the new boy. Jim was skulking up the side of the school yard, with all the old, insolent air of aggression gone from his limping gait. Then he had licked him after all! The little narrow chest of the new boy swelled with pride.
But this was by no means the end of the battle. From that day the struggle for supremacy merely took on another form. The defeated boy realised that a physical encounter was entirely out of the question. So the warfare for relative rank, since there was no other way to fight it out, became a battle of tongues.
Jimmie Carson told the girls of the school that Johnnie Armstrong wore his Aunt Martha's stockings. Johnnie writhed in spirit, for he knew this was sadly true. But he gave his enemy the lie, and openly declared that Jimmie Carson's father had been put in jail for stealing a horse. This, too, was equally true. But Jimmie retorted by saying he would n't wear patches on his pants. Johnnie once more regained his superiority by pointing out that he did n't have to wear his sister's old shoes.
So day by day the struggle went on. Johnnie Armstrong seemed to be getting the worst of it, until he remembered something that was as a Blücher for his Waterloo.
With a great air he said to his enemy: "The doctor comes to our house every day." The circle of listening urchins heard the remark with a certain awe. With them that meant either a baby or a funeral.
"Oh, that's nothin'," said the enemy. "My ma had three doctors when Tommie swallowed the penny." A chorus of wonder went up from the listening circle.
Johnnie snorted. "H'gh! A penny's nothin'! My mother's got consumption!"
"I don't care if she has. Mine gets chills and fever jus' terrible!"
Johnnie felt that dangerous surge sweep over him.
"Yes, but my mother coughs all day long, and has night sweats, and her medicine costs about—about—well, about three dollars a bottle."
"H'gh! What's that! When my ma gets one of her spells it's just awful. She shakes so hard someone has to hold her in bed!"
Again Johnnie snorted his contempt.
"The doctor told my Aunt Martha my mother was going to cough herself to pieces, and that she might die any single day."
That rather staggered Jimmie Carson. A voice back in the crowd said, "Hurrah for Johnnie!" and the new boy's chest swelled with the old pride.
"And she can't ever get better," went on the exultant Johnnie. "And I'll ride in a cab, see, same as I did at grandpa's funeral!"
The enemy recovered himself. "Oh, ridin' in a cab ain't nothin'. I watched my grandpa die! And Uncle Jake was killed, too. He was a fireman, and they brought him home on a board, after a wall fell right over on top of him, and he was all bleedin' terrible, and smashed up!"
A well-merited cheer from the circle greeted this sally. The school bell rang before Johnnie Armstrong had a chance to meet the crushing charge. The children scampered away and Johnnie's head fell. All afternoon the sense of his defeat hung over him and made him miserable.
Late in the day there came a knock at the door and the teacher was called out.
As the teacher stepped in again Johnnie noticed his Aunt Martha in the hall. She was holding a handkerchief up to her eyes.
The teacher called Johnnie up to her desk. There she started to tell him something, stopped, slipped her arms around him, and burst out crying, to the wonder of the entire, open-eyed school. Johnnie turned crimson with shame. To be seen with a woman petting one was a terrible and awful thing to him. Jimmie Carson giggled audibly.
The teacher wiped away her tears, kissed the child sorrowfully, and falteringly whispered something in his ear.
She expected an outburst, but there was none, not even a sob.
As the child walked down to his desk for his little book and slate, there was a strange, exultant gleam on his face. All the eyes of the school were upon him, but he saw only those of the enemy.
The sense of his defeat still hung over him. As he passed the other boy he looked down at him, as from a height.
"Say, Johnnie, what's wrong?" whispered his foe, curiosity overruling pride.
There was a ring of mingled sorrow and triumph in the voice of Johnnie as he said:
"My mother's dead, see!"
"Gosh!" said Jimmie, overcome. Johnnie knew he had won at last. Every eye in the school-room was on him as he went out.
In the hall his Aunt Martha was waiting to take him home, with her handkerchief still over her eyes.