She had stopped talking suddenly, wondering if her affection for the little Penmark girl had somehow been determined by her reaction so many years ago to her grandmother’s skating print, for Mrs. Breedlove denied the existence of the meaningless thought; everything said, she maintained, no matter how casually, was related, was tied together, was part of a logical and quite comprehensible pattern if others could find the clues or glimpse the design. She came to the conclusion that her admiration of the colored print was the genesis of her admiration for the child. There was no doubt about it!… None at all!… Then she remembered that her brother Emory, with whom she lived, loved the little girl quite as much as she did. Now, Emory’s affection was certainly not the associative end result of an old lithograph, for he was nine years younger than herself, and there was no reason whatever to assume that he’d even seen the old skating print. In fact, her grandmother had died, and her effects had been scattered, two years before Emory was born.… So it was very doubtful that— In other words, there was no reason to suppose— She waited, wondering if her system of associative wisdom were as effective as she had believed, her brows puckered in perturbation.
She had said these things, and had thought these thoughts the morning before, while returning leisurely with Mrs. Penmark and her daughter from the closing exercises of the Fern School. There had been the customary recitations with the customary lapses of memory and the usual flow of tears; the fumbling application of parental handkerchiefs; the traditional caresses and words of comfort. Miss Burgess Fern (the middle one) had made her expected speech on honor and the need for fair play; there was the harp solo by Miss Fern herself, who had once studied in Rome.
When these preliminaries were done with and the chorus of children had sung the school song, the prizes for the different excellencies displayed were awarded. At the very end, the most important prize of all, in the minds of the pupils, was given: the gold medal awarded annually to the child who showed the greatest improvement in penmanship during the school year. (“The hallmark of the lady or gentleman is the quality of his penmanship,” Miss Octavia Fern so often said. “The clarity, elegance, and refinement of one’s penmanship establishes the true character and background of the individual when all other tests are inconclusive.”)
Rhoda had wanted the penmanship medal from the first, and from the first she had thought she would win it. She had practiced faithfully, the tip of her tongue protruding between her teeth, the pen clutched in her determined hand; but as it happened, the beautiful medal had gone not to herself but to a thin, timid little boy named Claude Daigle, who was in her class and who was her age.
When the exercises were over, and the pupils and their parents were strolling under the live oaks of the Fern lawn, Miss Claudia came up, rested her hand on Rhoda’s shoulder, and said, “You mustn’t feel badly about not winning the medal, although I know how important these things are at your age. It was a very close race this year.” Then, turning to Mrs. Breedlove, she added, “Rhoda worked so hard; she labored so diligently to improve her penmanship. We all knew how badly she wanted the medal, and I, for one, was sure she’d win it. But our judges, who are entirely impartial, who don’t even know the identity of the children whose work they inspect, decided that the little Daigle boy, while not writing the clear neat hand that Rhoda used, did show the greatest improvement for the term, and improvement is what the medal is given for, after all.”
Remembering these things of the day before, knowing how disappointed the child was, the reason for her quietness now, Christine said gaily, “You must have a perfectly wonderful day! When you’re as old as I am, and perhaps have a little girl of your own who goes on school picnics, you can look back on today and remember it with pleasure.”
Rhoda sipped her orange juice, turning her mother’s words over in her mind; then, with no emotion in her voice, as though repeating a thing which did not really concern her, she said, “I don’t see why Claude Daigle got the medal. It was mine. Everybody knew it was mine.”
Christine touched the child’s cheek with her finger. “These things happen to us all the time,” she said; “and when they do, we simply accept them. If I were you, I’d forget the whole thing.” She drew the child’s head toward her, and Rhoda submitted to the caress with that tolerant but withdrawn patience of the pet that can never be quite domesticated; then, smoothing down her bangs, she impatiently pulled away from her mother. But feeling, perhaps, that she had been inconsiderate or unwise, she smiled her quick, placating smile, her pink, pointed tongue darting toward her glass.
Christine laughed softly and said, “I know you don’t like to have people paw at you. I’m sorry.”
“It was mine,” said Rhoda stubbornly. “The medal was mine.” Her round, light-brown eyes were stretched and unyielding. “It was mine,” she said. “The medal was mine.”
Christine sighed and went into the living-room; and kneeling on the window seat, she hooked back the heavy, old-fashioned shutters, allowing the soft morning sunlight to flood the room. It was almost seven o’clock, and the street was rapidly waking up. Old Mr. Middleton came onto his front porch, yawned, scratched his stomach, and, stooping cautiously, picked up the morning paper; the cooks for the Truby and the Kunkel families, approaching from opposite directions, nodded, raised their hands in greeting, and disappeared, almost at the same instant, around the corners of their respective houses; a half-grown girl, with legs as shapeless and almost as thin as the lines in a child’s drawing of a girl, pulled her scarf more tightly about her head and ran for her bus with a clumsy, loping motion, her ankles turning inward a little like the ankles of an inexperienced skater.…
Mrs. Penmark, seeing these familiar things, turned back to her living-room and began to straighten it up. When her husband’s work had brought them to this particular town, they had looked forward to a house of their own, having spent their entire married life in apartments; but not having at once found what they wanted, they had taken another apartment after all, deciding vaguely to build later on.
The apartment house itself consisted of three floors of ponderous Victorian elegance. It was of red brick, and its turrets, oriel windows, spires, and ornamental spouts balanced and matched one another in a sort of impressive architectural madness. It was set on a little natural hillock, well back from the street, and it was banked with shrubs and flanked by a well-tended lawn. When the house was planned, the lot at the back had been bought as a playground for the children who might some day live in the apartment itself, and it had been turned into a sort of private park enclosed by a high brick wall. It was the playground rather than the big, inefficient apartment which had attracted the Penmarks to the place.
The bell rang at that moment, and Christine went to answer it. It was Mrs. Monica Breedlove from the floor above, and she called out gaily, “I wanted to make sure that you hadn’t overslept on such an important morning. I thought my brother Emory was coming along, too, but he’s still fast asleep. No power in the world can get him up before eight o’clock, but he did open his eyes long enough to tell me that his car is parked in front of the building, and to suggest we use it this morning. So I’m going to drive you and Rhoda to the Fern School, if you haven’t any objections. Anyway, it’ll save you the trouble of getting your car out of the garage.” Then, turning to the child, and tossing her head a little, she added, “I have two gifts for you, my darling. The first is from Emory. It’s a pair of dark glasses with rhinestone decorations, and he says tell you that it’s intended to keep the sun out of those pretty brown eyes.”
The child moved quickly toward Mrs. Breedlove, with the expression on her face which Christine had come to think of as “Rhoda’s acquisitive look.” She stood obediently while Mrs. Breedlove adjusted the glasses, then turning, she examined herself in the mirror. Monica stood back, clasped her hands together, and cried out in an enraptured voice, “Now, who is this glamorous Hollywood actress? Can it really be little Rhoda Penmark who lives with her delightful par
ents on the first floor of my apartment house? Is it possible that this lovely, sophisticated creature is the little Rhoda Penmark that everybody loves and admires so greatly?”
She paused for effect, and then, continuing in a lower key, she went on. “And now for the second prize, which is from me.” She took from her purse a gold heart with a finely wrought chain attached to it. She explained that the locket had been given her when she, too, was eight; and it had waited all these years in her jewelry case just for this occasion. The locket had been a birthday present originally, and in one side of the heart there was set a garnet, which was her birthstone, since she’d been born in January. At the first opportunity, she meant to take the locket to the jeweler and have the garnet taken out and a turquoise, which was Rhoda’s own birthstone, put in instead. She planned, too, to have the locket cleaned and the little chain fixed; the clasp didn’t seem to be as firm as it should be, which was hardly surprising when you considered that she, Mrs. Breedlove, had had the locket for more than fifty years.
“Can I have both stones?” asked Rhoda. “Can I have the little garnet, too?”
Christine smiled, shook her head disapprovingly, and said, “Rhoda! Rhoda! How can you say such a thing?”
But Mrs. Breedlove went into peals of pleased, hysterical laughter. “But of course you may! Why, certainly, my dearest!” She seated herself, and went on. “How wonderful it is to meet such a natural little girl. Why, when I was given that same locket by my uncle Thomas Lightfoot, I just stood tongue-tied in the parlor and twisted my plaid dress, a quivering little mass of anxiety and frustration.”
The child went to her, put her arms around her neck, and kissed her with an intensity that seemed to engage all her consciousness. She laughed softly and rubbed her cheek against the cheek of the entranced woman. “Aunt Monica,” she said in a sweet, shy voice, drawing the name out slowly, as though her mind could not bear to relinquish it. “Oh, Aunt Monica.”
Christine turned and went into the dining-room. She thought, half-amused, half-concerned: What an actress Rhoda is. She knows exactly how to handle people when it’s to her advantage to do so.
When she returned to the living-room, Mrs. Breedlove was inspecting the child’s dress. “You look like you’re going to a fashionable afternoon tea, not to a picnic at the beach,” she said gaily. “I know I’m behind the times, but I thought children wore coveralls and playsuits to picnics. But you, my love, look like a princess in that red-and-white dotted-Swiss dress you’re wearing. Now, tell me, aren’t you afraid you’ll get it dirty? Aren’t you afraid you’ll fall down and scuff those new shoes?”
“She won’t soil the dress, and she won’t scuff the shoes,” said Christine. She waited a moment, as though debating with herself, and then added, “Rhoda never gets anything dirty, although I don’t know how she manages it.” Then, seeing the question in Mrs. Breedlove’s eyes, she said, “I wanted her to dress like the other children, but she felt so strongly about it that—well, if she wanted to wear one of her best dresses, I didn’t see any real objection.”
“I don’t like coveralls,” said Rhoda in an earnest, hesitant voice. “They’re not—” She waited, as though unwilling to finish her sentence, and Mrs. Breedlove laughed with pleasure, and said, “You mean coveralls aren’t quite ladylike, don’t you, my darling?” She embraced the tolerant child once more, and said in a delighted voice, “Oh, my old-fashioned little darling! Oh, my absolutely quaint little darling!”
Presently, when the preparation for departure was completed, Rhoda went to her bedroom to put her locket away for safekeeping, and as she stepped off the rug, her shoes made a sharp, staccato sound on the hardwood floor. “You sound like Mr. Fred Astaire tap-tapping up and down stairs,” said Mrs. Breedlove. “What have you got on your shoes? Is this something entirely new? Is this something I haven’t heard about?”
Rhoda returned, put one hand on Monica’s shoulder for support, and stood obediently while Mrs. Breedlove lifted each of her feet and examined the new shoes. They were heavier than average, designed for the play of childhood, with thick leather heels which had been reinforced with metal cleats in the shape of half-moons. In explanation, Rhoda said, “I run over my heels all the time, so Mother had those iron pieces put on this pair so they’d last longer. Don’t you think it was a good idea?”
“It was Rhoda’s suggestion, not mine,” said Christine. “I can’t take any credit, I’m afraid. You know how vague and impractical I am most of the time. It would never have occurred to me at all. It was Rhoda’s idea entirely.”
“I think they’re nice,” said Rhoda solemnly. “They save money.”
“Oh, my penurious little sweetheart,” said Monica in delight. “Oh, my thrifty little housewife.” She embraced the child exuberantly, and added, “What are we going to do with her, Christine? Tell me, what are we going to do with this remarkable little creature?”
Later, when they came out of the apartment house, they paused on the marble steps that led to the foyer, for Leroy Jessup, the janitor, was hosing down the walk that ran from the house to the street beyond. He worked with that aggrieved persistence, as though calling on heaven to witness the injustice done him, which the sullen everywhere bring to their trivial tasks; and as he worked, his lips moved in unison with his hands to shape his petulant thoughts for his pleasure, for his mind rehearsed eternally the inequities that had been forced upon him—inequities which he must endure in silence, since he was one of the underprivileged ones of the world, the unfortunate son of an unfortunate sharecropper, the pathetic victim of an oppressive system, as everyone who knew anything at all admitted, and had admitted for a long time.
He was conscious that the two women and the little girl had stopped on the steps, but he pretended that he did not see them, and he did not lift his hose from the flooded flagstone so that they could pass; instead, he turned toward the street, and with eyes carefully averted, he guided the stream of water so far up the flagstones that the group had to move quickly onto the porch once more. He covered his mouth with one hand to hide his amusement at their consternation.
Mrs. Breedlove said patiently, “Leroy, will you kindly move that hose? We’re going to my brother’s car. We’re late as it is.”
He pretended that he did not hear her; he wanted to prolong the scene to its limit, but Monica, losing patience with him, called out, “Leroy! Have you completely lost your senses this time?”
He stared insolently at her, as though undecided what his next move should be; then, regretfully, he shifted the hose so that the water fell on the lawn. “I got work to do,” he mumbled. “But I guess you don’t know nothing about that, now, do you? I haven’t got no time to go bus-riding and picnicking. I got plenty work to do.”
He stood, hand on hip, thinking how unjustly others used him. He didn’t live in no big apartment house with servants to wait on him hand and foot; and he didn’t have no nice automobile to ride around in; he didn’t have nothing to ride in but an old broke-down wreck that you couldn’t even give to the junk man. He didn’t have no fine clothes to wear, neither; and when he was little, he didn’t go to no private school that cost a pile of money and was always giving picnics and frolics for its worthless pupils. No, sir! He’d walked to school himself! In all sorts of weather, too; and mostly without no shoes on his feet. But at that he was a lot smarter than most of those dumbbells that had all the advantages in the world; he could make monkeys out of them dumbbells any time he wanted to.…
He felt infinitely sorry for himself. No, sir! He didn’t have nothing now, and he didn’t have nothing when he was a boy about Rhoda’s age. The world was in a plot to cheat him out of what was rightfully his, he thought. He watched as the women and the little girl picked their way across the dripping flagstones; but when they had reached the sidewalk, he wheeled abruptly so that the hose lifted, and water splashed over the feet of the people he so deeply despised.
Mrs. Breedlove’s hand, which had been on the door of the car,
dropped with a dramatic suddenness. She closed her eyes, her face and neck turning a deep coral-pink as she counted calmly to ten; then, in her well-bred voice she diagnosed Leroy’s emotional condition in a detailed manner: in the past, she had thought of him as emotionally immature, obsessed, torn by irrational rages and, in a sense, a bit on the constitutional psychopathic side; but now, after the demonstration she’d just witnessed, she wondered if her diagnosis hadn’t been too mild; she thought now that he was definitely a schizophrenic with well-defined paranoid overtones. And another thing: she’d had quite enough of his discourtesy and surliness—a feeling that the other tenants in the building enthusiastically shared. He might not know it, but it was due to her intervention that he now had a job: the other tenants, including her brother Emory, who was hardly a man to take liberties with, had been in favor of demanding his discharge, but she had pleaded for him, not because she condoned his actions, but because she considered him disturbed and hardly responsible for some of his irrational acts.
Christine touched Mrs. Breedlove’s sleeve with a mild, placating gesture. “He didn’t mean to wet us,” she said. “It was an accident. I’m sure it was.”
“He meant it,” said Rhoda. “I know Leroy well.”
Mrs. Breedlove shook her shoulders in indignation. “It was no accident, dear Christine! I assure you, it was no accident.” But already her anger was subsiding, and, extending her hands tolerantly, she added, “It was deliberately done—the spiteful act of a neurotic child.”
“He meant to do it,” said Rhoda. Her voice was cold and thoughtful, and she stared at Leroy with her round, calculating eyes as though she could see into his quivering mind. Then, speaking directly to the man, she added, “You made up your mind to do it when we were standing on the steps. I was looking at you when you made up your mind to wet us.”
The Bad Seed Page 2