The Steadfast Heart/Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ideas flit into and out of the normal young mind like bees buzzing about a hive; each may contribute its trifle of honey, though it is highly probable a notable percentage are drones. In any event the coming of a single idea is no hive-bursting occasion. The arrival of an idea in Angus Burke’s mind was comparable to a freshet in a mountain brook. While the flood continues the brook has neither time nor inclination for anything else. The freshet becomes an obsession with the brook. So Angus Burke’s first adventure in thought possessed him utterly as the spring flood possesses the banks between which it rushes…. To stand up for himself!…
On the morning which followed Angus crossed the street to the post office for Dave Wilkins, It was but a step and he crossed hastily, timorously. Midway he caught sight of young Malcolm Crane and Lydia Canfield emerging from the door with letters in their hand—Lydia’s a letter from a distant father from whom she heard on rare occasions, but whom she had not seen since babyhood—a shadow of a father becoming material to her only as inked words upon paper…. Angus halted, hesitated, turned, but the sight and thought of Lydia stiffened him to resolution while her words repeated themselves in his ear. “Stand up for yourself!… Why don’t you stand up for yourself?” So Angus persisted on his way doggedly.
Young Crane’s mischief-seeking eyes were quick to see him, quick to light with the hunting gleam of boyhood. He cast sidewise a calculating glance at Lydia, and for safety’s sake edged a few steps away. Then, jeeringly, tauntingly, he shouted, “Murderer!… Jailbird!…”
Angus walked steadily ahead. One might have reasoned that he did not hear. His cheeks were a trifle pale, but there was about his mouth an expression which in maturity might become fine determination. Close to young Crane he stopped, eyes bright, face almost animated by the working of the great idea within, and he spoke—not loudly, not excitedly with trembling voice, but rather doggedly, phlegmatically; he spoke as one who has taken a task in hand which he does not understand save in the aspect that it must be done.
“I got to stand up for myself,” he said. “You can’t call me that name…. Don’t pick on me, I got to stand up for myself.”
Crane either failed to estimate Angus truly, or depended upon outside interference in his behalf, for he grimaced horribly and laughed provocatively. “Who’s afraid of you?” he said, using the ancient formula of boyhood. “I guess I can call you whatever I want to, you bet. I can call it to you now, and what’ll you do about it?… Murderer! Ya-aa-aa!”
Angus acted deliberately, with no glint of passion in his eyes. He stepped one pace nearer his tormentor and slapped his cheek with a sharp, clean, disconcerting snap. “I got to stand up for myself,” he said in monotonous repetition.
Crane emitted a bellow of rage and struck wildly at Angus…. The fight was on, without the usual formality of a chip on the shoulder which is a part of the international law of Rainbow’s boydom. Pride compelled Crane; resolution, firmly fixed, made it impossible for Angus to retreat; indeed the idea of retreat did not come to him. He was standing up for himself in the primitive way in which alone he could vision standing up for himself. One swift glance he cast at Lydia Canfield, and she bobbed her head excitedly and threw a little smile to him.
It was nothing but a boys’ fight, a battle of ten-year-olds, of wild blows which found no mark, or which at worst could but blacken eye or blood the nose. Of such a fight the one notable thing to be observed is if courage shows its face or cowardice is forced to confession—yet it was a battle important in the career of one of the combatants as Marengo was important in the history of Bonaparte, for it marked in letters of red the turning point in Angus Burke’s life, his moment of emergence from the torpor which had lain like a frog concealing the Angus Burke who should have been.
Angus fought as he had challenged, phlegmatically, determinedly, one might almost say stolidly as a man goes about the uncongenial task of shingling a roof—and he won. Young Crane, presently, the worse by bruises and an eye which would have its story to tell, was crying the tears of the defeated.
A hand rested upon Angus Burke’s shoulder, and Alvin Trueman, who had emerged from the post office in time to be a spectator of the complete episode, turned the boy about firmly. “That’s enough,” said Trueman kindly. “Now shake hands and be friends.”
Angus stood without movement, uncertain, unequipped to meet this demand. Deep within him he felt dimly that it was not for him to take the initiative. Young Crane glared through his tears, muttered sullenly under his breath, and pushed his ashamed way through the little knot of spectators who had gathered from nowhere to watch the scrimmage. Angus stood uncertain; then, when Trueman’s hand dropped from his shoulder, he turned away from it all as from a bit of work completed, and started on his way to the post office. Lydia Canfield’s voice stopped him, an excited, musical chirrup. “You did stand up for yourself,” she said, and seemed to take a special pride in the thing as of her own doing. “If you hadn’t been in jail, and if it wasn’t for other things that, like anybody knows, make you kind of low down and beneath anybody’s notice and so you’re not fit to play with, why, I guess maybe I’d like you.” With which pronouncement, she skipped off light-heartedly, womanlike unaware or careless of the trouble she had caused.