A FATHER INVITES DISASTER
Pauline Gardiner joined us on the day that we, the Second Reader class, moved from the basement to the top story of the old Central Public School.Her mother brought her and, leaving, looked round at us, meeting for an instant each pair of curious eyes with friendly appeal.
We knew well the enchanted house where she lived--stately, retreated far into large grounds in Jefferson Street; a high brick wall all round, and on top of the wall broken glass set in cement.Behind that impassable barrier which so teased our young audacity were flower-beds and "shrub" bushes, whose blossoms were wonderfully sweet if held a while in the closed hand; grape arbors and shade and fruit trees, haunted by bees; winding walks strewn fresh each spring with tan-bark that has such a clean, strong odor, especially just after a rain, and that is at once firm and soft beneath the feet.And in the midst stood the only apricot tree in Saint X.As few of us had tasted apricots, and as those few pronounced them better far than oranges or even bananas, that tree was the climax of tantalization.
The place had belonged to a childless old couple who hated children--or did they bar them out and drive them away because the sight and sound of them quickened the ache of empty old age into a pain too keen to bear? The husband died, the widow went away to her old maid sister at Madison; and the Gardiners, coming from Cincinnati to live in the town where Colonel Gardiner was born and had spent his youth, bought the place.On our way to and from school in the first weeks of that term, pausing as always to gaze in through the iron gates of the drive, we had each day seen Pauline walking alone among the flowers.And she would stop and smile at us; but she was apparently too shy to come to the gates; and we, with the memory of the cross old couple awing us, dared not attempt to make friends with her.
She was eight years old, tall for her age, slender but strong, naturally graceful.Her hazel eyes were always dancing mischievously.She liked boys' games better than girls'.In her second week she induced several of the more daring girls to go with her to the pond below town and there engage in a raft-race with the boys.And when John Dumont, seeing that the girls' raft was about to win, thrust the one he was piloting into it and upset it, she was the only girl who did not scream at the shock of the sudden tumble into the water or rise in tears from the shallow, muddy bottom.
She tried going barefooted; she was always getting bruised or cut in attempts--usually successful-- at boys' recklessness; yet her voice was sweet and her manner toward others, gentle.She hid her face when Miss Stone whipped any one-- more fearful far than the rise and fall of Miss Stone's ferule was the soaring and sinking of her broad, bristling eyebrows.
From the outset John Dumont took especial delight in teasing her--John Dumont, the roughest boy in the school.He was seven years older than she, but was only in the Fourth Reader--a laggard in his studies because his mind was incurious about books and the like, was absorbed in games, in playing soldier and robber, in swimming and sledding, in orchard-looting and fighting.He was impudent and domineering, a bully but not a coward, good-natured when deferred to, the feared leader of a boisterous, imitative clique.Until Pauline came he had rarely noticed a girl--never except to play her some prank more or less cruel.
After the adventure of the raft he watched Pauline afar off, revolving plans for approaching her without impairing his barbaric dignity, for subduing her without subduing himself to her.But he knew only one way of making friends, the only kind of friends he had or could conceive--loyal subjects, ruled through their weaknesses and fears.And as that way was to give the desired addition to his court a sound thrashing, he felt it must be modified somewhat to help him in his present conquest.
He tied her hair to the back of her desk; he snowballed her and his sister Gladys home from school.He raided her playhouse and broke her dishes and--she giving desperate battle--fled with only the parents of her doll family.With Gladys shrieking for their mother, he shook her out of a tree in their yard, and it sprained her ankle so severely that she had to stay away from school for a month.The net result of a year's arduous efforts was that she had singled him out for detestation--this when her conquest of him was complete because she had never told on him, had never in her worst encounters with him shown the white feather.
But he had acted more wisely than he knew, for she had at least singled him out from the crowd of boys.And there was a certain frank good-nature about him, a fearlessness--and she could not help admiring his strength and leadership.Presently she discovered his secret--that his persecutions were not through hatred of her but through anger at her resistance, anger at his own weakness in being fascinated by her.This discovery came while she was shut in the house with her sprained ankle.As she sat at her corner bay-window she saw him hovering in the neighborhood, now in the alley at the side of the house, now hurrying past, whistling loudly as if bent upon some gay and remote errand, now skulking along as if he had stolen something, again seated on the curbstone at the farthest crossing from which he could see her window out of the corner of his eye.She understood--and forthwith forgave the past.She was immensely flattered that this big, audacious creature, so arrogant with the boys, so contemptuous toward the girls, should be her captive.
