by Max Brand
And then a sudden thought came to him with a blessed relief. After all, he could not do more than die, and death itself would be the open door through which he would escape from this flamboyant mockery, this scorn, this contemptuous world in which all his days were so wretched.
He went straight up to big Jack. “Can you write?” he asked.
“Young feller,” said Jack, bending dark brows, “are you sassin’ me, maybe?”
The room hushed to delicious expectancy.
“If you can write,” said Paul, “why haven’t you put down your name?”
The big fellow grinned. He searched inward for insulting phrases, but all he could find to say was: “Maybe I’m gonna write it and maybe I ain’t. Maybe I ain’t ready to write it. And you . . . what you gonna do about it? Do I get a licking?”
He leered at Paul out of the greatness of his strength. Death, certainly, was coming upon the teacher. So, at least, he felt. Those mighty hands could break him like a reed; those balled fists, like ragged lumps of iron, could smash straight through his body.
And across the mind of Paul came an echo from an old romance that he had read in one of his times of illness. In that book, ringed with enemies, the hero had bidden the most formidable of them all to come from the house with him and settle their differences in solitude.
Now he quoted from it, word for word: “Will you leave the room with me, sir?”
That “sir” might have caused more comment, but the excitement was so tense that it was passed over.
“And why in earth should I leave the room with you?” asked big Jack.
Almost in those words the brute of the novel had spoken, and the hero had answered as Paul answered now: “There are women here. Do you wish them to see blood?”
Big Jack lurched to his feet. He was half of a mind to knock down the little schoolteacher then and there, but Paul already was moving uncertainly toward the door. He found it through a mist, and stepped out into the cold, clear morning.
Jack strode behind him. Like a giant he seemed as he stood with feet braced at the bottom of the steps.
“Now what do you want?” he asked savagely.
“I want you,” said the young teacher, “to go home to your father and tell him that you have refused to do what I asked you to do. Or else go back into the school and begin to work.”
There was a gasp from the massed faces at the door.
The handsome face of Jack grew scarlet with anger. “And if I don’t do either, then what?”
“Then,” said Paul, “I’ll have to try to make you.”
“Well,” snarled Jack, “I ain’t gonna do neither. And you try to make me, kid. I ask you that.”
“Very well,” said Paul. He looked at those balled fists with a sigh. The stronger and harder they were, the better. Death would be utterly painless. “Very well,” said Paul, and, stepping a little closer, he flicked big Jack lightly across the face with his open hand.
The answer was all that Paul could have prayed for. It was totally painless. It seemed that a heavy blow fell on the base of his brain, and he dropped into a thousand leagues of darkness.
When he recovered, the sun was spinning across the face of the sky in vast circles. The schoolhouse fairly dissolved in the speed with which it whirled. The trees nearby blurred together.
“He’s alive!” cried a deep, heavy voice.
“Lift him up and carry him in from this frosty ground,” said the voice of a girl.
Paul closed his eyes again, and the darkness shot over his brain once more in a long, slow wave, beginning at his feet.
He wakened near the heat of the stove. A cold cloth was across his forehead. He raised his hand to a bulging, painful lump on the side of his jaw. That was where the blow had fallen. How strange that it had not broken the bone, snapped his neck, smashed all before it.
He could not see clearly, but, when that same heavy man’s voice spoke again, he recognized the tones of big Jack.
“How’s the back of your head, Paul? Will you feel it there . . . where it whacked the ground?”
Paul obediently fumbled at the spot. It was a little sore, but there seemed nothing wrong.
“It ain’t fractured?” gasped Jack.
“No. I’m all right. I . . .”
“Lie still, will you? Lie still and . . . Nancy, what’d we better do with him? I’ll get my wagon and haul him home.”
Paul sat up.
A silent, pale circle stood about them. On their knees beside him were Nancy and Jack.
“I’m all right,” said Paul.
He climbed to his feet. With his great hands, Jack followed the movement, ready to support him if he should fall again. But he would not fall again. He was stronger at that moment than ever he had been in the world. For he had come through the valley of death, and here was the face of lovely Nancy, pale, but lighted with eyes that were on fire with admiration.
IV
There are various thresholds which we must cross, between that of life and that of death, and when young Paul Torridon had risen to his feet and stood safely on them, although his head still rang and his very soul was bruised by his great fall, yet he knew that he had crossed the greatest threshold of all and found himself.
He could look around upon that room without trembling. He went back to his desk, the huge Jack attending him. There, safely seated, he said in a rather faint voice: “Now we’ll begin again . . . your names, please, on the slates.”
Instantly the vast shoulders of Jack Brett bowed over the slate. He labored, and, having finished, he turned slowly around and stared grimly about the schoolroom. There were a full half of the pupils who still had not entirely understood what change had occurred in the school, but the dreadful glare of Jack quickly convinced them that something had changed. They hastened to snatch at their pencils. There was no sight except that of bowed, earnest workers.
Then a little girl of eight began to cry.
“What’s the matter?” asked the teacher.
“I dunno how to write!” wailed the child. “My mummy never taught me!”
The head of Paul Torridon was quite clear now. “Then I’ll teach you,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.” He began to make a tour of the room and studied the sprawling and labored writings until he came to the slate of Nancy. There he paused a moment.
“I think you had better be a teacher, too,” said Torridon.
She looked quickly up to him, surprised, and then she flushed a little with pleasure. “I will, if I can,” she said.
He moved on and came to Jack Brett.
A certain rigidity about the back of the giant took his attention. The neck was as rigid as a pillar of red-hot steel. The head was poised to withstand shocks. And when he looked over the shoulder of the big fellow he saw upon the slate—a meaningless scrawl.
He looked down into the eyes of Jack. They stared straight ahead. One who is about to enter the fire without protest would look forward in that manner.
Torridon picked up that slate and carried it to his desk, where he turned about and faced the class. Dreadful misery was in the face of big Jack now, and, by the peculiar prescience of the sensitive soul, Paul understood what his late enemy expected—that the shapeless scratchings on his slate would be exposed to all eyes.
Torridon laid the slate upon his desk, face down.
“Jack Brett!” he said.
Jack Brett rose slowly to his feet. One hand was gripped into a fist, not to strike, but to endure.
“There’s a lot of the wood in the shed that needs splitting. You’d better go and do that today.”
Vast silence seized upon the schoolroom. They waited as for a thunderbolt to strike. Then a faint sigh of amazement came from those who watched, for Jack Brett, his fine face crimson to the throat, turned and stalked from the room.
Still they waited, until from the rear of the school they heard the loud, crisp ring of an axe as it was driven home into hard wood. At that sound every eye in the
schoolroom became empty, blank with submission, like the eye of a penned calf. Torridon knew that the great battle was fought and won.
All morning he worked. By noon he understood rather clearly what each one in the room knew, and it was pathetically little. There was hardly a girl there who could not sew, spin, manage a creamery, cook. There was not a boy who could not bring one of the massive, soft-iron rifles to his shoulder and shoot a squirrel out of a treetop. But about books they knew little or nothing. Only Nancy knew.
To read, to write, to spell, to do arithmetic. Those were the tasks for which he must prepare them, and he went about it methodically, patiently, hopefully. Nancy helped at once. She took the little girls about her and started their small hands to work on the copies that she furnished them.
Noon came. Lunch was eaten. Then for a half hour the place echoed with shouts as the children played. And afterward, the long afternoon went by almost to dusk. For John Brett had set down the hours that the school should endure.
Many a weary, suffering face had Torridon to look at before the school was dismissed. He went to the door and thanked Nancy. If she would ask her father if he would permit her to help in the mornings, then in the afternoon he would teach her what he could.
“And how old are you, Nancy?”
“I’m fourteen.”
He watched her go off after the others. He could tell her from the rest as long as she was in sight. Her clothes were as rough as those of the others, but she wore them differently. And her step was different. She was a harmony of pleasant music to Torridon.
Then the great shadow of Jack Brett stood before him.
“Well?” said Jack.
Torridon smiled frankly at him, although it was a twisted smile, for one side of his face was very swollen and sore.
“I thought it would be better if you stayed after school and worked with me,” he said simply.
They sat by the stove. So long as the day lasted, Jack Brett worked. It seemed impossible that he should cramp down his big fingers enough to hold the pencil. He leaned his head low and grimly set his teeth. Gross were his untrained muscles, but in his mind there was the same steady patience that had made him, at twenty, the finest shot in all that close-shooting clan.
Afterward, they locked the door of the school. Dusk was falling. The blueness stood close at hand, with the frosty trees only dimly etched. The freezing ground crackled under their feet. For a moment they looked around at this.
Then: “Well, good night, Paul.”
“Good night, Jack.”
They separated and went home, but something more than words had passed between them. The thin legs of Torridon bore him up lightly all the way to the house and he found himself singing, although with a faint voice.
He soaked his swollen face with a cold compress, but it seemed as swollen as ever when he went in to supper and sat down at the great table. Curious glances fell on him. Little Ned, opposite him, stared frankly, as though at a stranger never before seen, and suddenly the great voice of John Brett boomed: “Paul!”
He started to his feet. In that house everyone rose when addressed by the master.
“Yes, sir,” said Paul.
“What’s happened to your face, eh?”
He had half expected that question. He had turned the answer in his mind half a dozen times. It was the expectation of that answer that had made Jack Brett so pale and grave when he said good bye that evening, for, when the wrath of terrible John Brett descended upon the boy, it would be a thing to remember, to tell of in the clan for three generations.
He said slowly: “I had a fall today.”
All heads lifted. All heads turned toward him. There was a peculiar wonder in every eye.
“You had a fall?” echoed John Brett in a voice of thunder. “Where?”
“On the ground,” said Torridon.
“Come here to me.”
He went obediently, fear cold and heavy in his heart.
“You fell on the ground, did you?”
“Yes.”
“What made you fall?”
Torridon was silent.
The voice of John Brett rose to a terrible thunder that shook the room. “What made you fall?”
And still Torridon, cold and sick, was silent, and kept his eyes desperately fixed upon the eyes of the questioner. So he stood for hours of dread, as it seemed.
“Go back to your place,” said John Brett suddenly.
And Torridon went slowly back and sat down, stunned.
Opposite him he saw the malicious grin of Ned. Sly glances passed between the other boys. But only Aunt Ellen dared to speak, after a while, saying: “Standing up and defyin’ the head of the house . . . that’s what it’s come to, eh? There’s the Torridon in him speakin’.”
“Be quiet!” commanded John Brett.
Aunt Ellen raised her brows. “I was teachin’ him some manners,” she muttered.
The tyrant growled: “I’ll teach the young men of this house their manners. You . . . what’ve you been tryin’ to do with Paul? Dress him up like a scarecrow? Ain’t there enough clothes in this here house to dress him like . . . a man?”
It was a crushing blow for Aunt Ellen. Fiercely she scowled down at her plate, but her lord and master had spoken, and she dared make no reply. As for Torridon, he could not believe that he had heard correctly.
That meal ended. When the others filed out, he waited until the last, half expecting that the harsh voice of John Brett would summon him again, but no summons came. He was allowed to go free.
He went out to the barn. Every evening it was his habit to do that, and to slip into the big stall where Ashur was kept like a young prince. He had a feeling of possession in connection with that colt, for, having given it a name, and through it having come to some note in the house of the Bretts, he retained a sense of kindness toward it. So, in the warm darkness of the barn, he gave the colt a carrot and remained a moment while Ashur sniffed at him and nibbled at his pockets, in hope of something more. Like silk was the muzzle of Ashur, silken was the skin of his neck where the boy stroked it, and by degrees peace came slowly down upon Paul’s soul, so troubled today, and so uplifted from the burden of the fear of man.
V
For several days he waited in expectation of punishment from John Brett, because he had stood before the king of the clan and refused to give an answer to his question, but the blow did not fall. And then, on the third day, Aunt Ellen clothed him in new, stout homespun. John Brett viewed him with evident pleasure.
“Now you look like something,” was all he said.
And the boy went off to his school.
Books had been ordered, books were arriving. Every evening young Torridon struggled eagerly ahead through the texts, making sure that he was perfect in them. For he himself must know before he could teach, and, above all, there was the necessity of keeping well ahead of Nancy. She learned rapidly, smoothly. Her mind was like clear crystal, and imagined all things well. In the mornings she helped him with the little ones. In the afternoon, she was a careful student.
Discipline in that school was perfect. Jack Brett looked after it. There were two other hulking fellows almost as strong as Jack himself. He thrashed them both soundly before the first week was over, and after that the school went easily along. During that first strenuous week, Jack himself remained each evening to work at his writing. He carried home his slate. There he worked again, covertly, seriously, by lantern light, sitting up until the odd hours of the morning. But on the next Monday he could take his place regularly with the rest of the class.
He asked for no special treatment. Like a bulldog he fastened on his work, and gradually he improved. The example of well-disciplined industry that he exhibited worked well with the others. Small and big, they began to bend to their studies, and, before Christmas came, big hands and small were writing and figuring to the great content of Torridon.
This occupation began to have its reaction upon him. He was no longer a w
retched stray, to be scorned by the others. He had become a distinct person, and while no other youth among the clan of Brett would have looked forward to such a task as that of school-mastering, nevertheless Paul Torridon, being unique, was at least respected.
Sometimes he thought that some of their pleasure in his teaching was that they had made a member of another clan, an enemy, their servant, their public servant. But in the meantime, this new-found pride of spirit had even a physical reaction upon him. He grew taller, stronger. His cheeks no longer sank in beneath the cheek bones; there was a trace of hearty color in them. And, at Christmas time, another interest came into his life.
Big Jack, through all the weeks, had been rendering what service he could. Never once had he referred to the first tragic day in the school, nor to the shelter that the schoolmaster had put between him and the wrath of John Brett, but Torridon could feel that the big fellow’s gratitude would never be exhausted.
Several times, at the noon hour and after school, he had offered to teach Torridon how to shoot. But the thin arms and the weak shoulders of Paul could not sway up the massive weight of a rifle and hold it steady. On the last day before Christmas, therefore, Jack had brought to the school a small package, and, when the rest had gone from the school, he unwrapped his parcel and took out an old double-barreled pistol, made light and strong by some good gunsmith. He laid it in the hands of Paul Torridon.
“You can shoot this, Paul,” he said. “Why, even a girl could handle it. It’s like a feather.”
A feather indeed, in his great grasp, but to Paul Torridon it was weight enough. Nevertheless, when he closed his hand upon it, he felt that he had passed through another door and advanced still further into manhood.
There were tears of pleasure in his eyes when he shook hands with Jack. He accepted the small packet of powder and shot. Then Jack gave a little object lesson. He took the big chopping block as a target. Even then, standing not many paces away, he missed it thrice. The fourth bullet lodged in an upper corner, and Jack sighed with relief.