It was a great moment, but something seemed to threaten it. The face of Miss Spence looking up from the crowd grew too vivid--unpleasantly vivid. She was beckoning him and shouting, "Come down, Penrod Schofield!
Penrod Schofield, come down here!"
He could hear her above the band and the singing of the mult.i.tude; she seemed intent on spoiling everything. Marjorie Jones was weeping to show how sorry she was that she had formerly slighted him, and throwing kisses to prove that she loved him; but Miss Spence kept jumping between him and Marjorie, incessantly calling his name.
He grew more and more irritated with her; he was the most important person in the world and was engaged in proving it to Marjorie Jones and the whole city, and yet Miss Spence seemed to feel she still had the right to order him about as she did in the old days when he was an ordinary schoolboy. He was furious; he was sure she wanted him to do something disagreeable. It seemed to him that she had screamed "Penrod Schofield!" thousands of times.
From the beginning of his aerial experiments in his own schoolroom, he had not opened his lips, knowing somehow that one of the requirements for air floating is perfect silence on the part of the floater; but, finally, irritated beyond measure by Miss Spence"s clamorous insistence, he was unable to restrain an indignant rebuke and immediately came to earth with a frightful b.u.mp.
Miss Spence--in the flesh--had directed toward the physical body of the absent Penrod an inquiry as to the fractional consequences of dividing seventeen apples, fairly, among three boys, and she was surprised and displeased to receive no answer although to the best of her knowledge and belief, he was looking fixedly at her. She repeated her question crisply, without visible effect; then summoned him by name with increasing asperity. Twice she called him, while all his fellow pupils turned to stare at the gazing boy. She advanced a step from the platform.
"Penrod Schofield!"
"Oh, my goodness!" he shouted suddenly. "Can"t you keep still a MINUTE?"
CHAPTER X UNCLE JOHN
Miss Spence gasped. So did the pupils.
The whole room filled with a swelling conglomerate "O-O-O-O-H!"
As for Penrod himself, the walls reeled with the shock. He sat with his mouth open, a mere lump of stupefaction. For the appalling words that he had hurled at the teacher were as inexplicable to him as to any other who heard them.
Nothing is more treacherous than the human mind; nothing else so loves to play the Iscariot. Even when patiently bullied into a semblance of order and training, it may prove but a base and shifty servant. And Penrod"s mind was not his servant; it was a master, with the April wind"s whims; and it had just played him a diabolical trick. The very jolt with which he came back to the schoolroom in the midst of his fancied flight jarred his day-dream utterly out of him; and he sat, open-mouthed in horror at what he had said.
The unanimous gasp of awe was protracted. Miss Spence, however, finally recovered her breath, and, returning deliberately to the platform, faced the school. "And then for a little while," as pathetic stories sometimes recount, "everything was very still." It was so still, in fact, that Penrod"s newborn notoriety could almost be heard growing. This grisly silence was at last broken by the teacher.
"Penrod Schofield, stand up!"
The miserable child obeyed.
"What did you mean by speaking to me in that way?"
He hung his head, raked the floor with the side of his shoe, swayed, swallowed, looked suddenly at his hands with the air of never having seen them before, then clasped them behind him. The school shivered in ecstatic horror, every fascinated eye upon him; yet there was not a soul in the room but was profoundly grateful to him for the sensation--including the offended teacher herself. Unhappily, all this grat.i.tude was unconscious and altogether different from the kind which, results in testimonials and loving-cups. On the contrary!
"Penrod Schofield!"
He gulped.
"Answer me at once! Why did you speak to me like that?"
"I was----" He choked, unable to continue.
"Speak out!"
"I was just--thinking," he managed to stammer.
"That will not do," she returned sharply. "I wish to know immediately why you spoke as you did."
The stricken Penrod answered helplessly:
"Because I was just thinking."
Upon the very rack he could have offered no ampler truthful explanation.
It was all he knew about it.
"Thinking what?"
"Just thinking."
Miss Spence"s expression gave evidence that her power of self-restraint was undergoing a remarkable test. However, after taking counsel with herself, she commanded:
"Come here!"
He shuffled forward, and she placed a chair upon the platform near her own.
"Sit there!"
Then (but not at all as if nothing had happened), she continued the lesson in arithmetic. Spiritually the children may have learned a lesson in very small fractions indeed as they gazed at the fragment of sin before them on the stool of penitence. They all stared at him attentively with hard and pa.s.sionately interested eyes, in which there was never one trace of pity. It cannot be said with precision that he writhed; his movement was more a slow, continuous squirm, effected with a ghastly a.s.sumption of languid indifference; while his gaze, in the effort to escape the marble-hearted glare of his schoolmates, affixed itself with apparent permanence to the waistcoat b.u.t.ton of James Russell Lowell just above the "U" in "Russell."
Cla.s.ses came and cla.s.ses went, grilling him with eyes. Newcomers received the story of the crime in darkling whispers; and the outcast sat and sat and sat, and squirmed and squirmed and squirmed. (He did one or two things with his spine which a professional contortionist would have observed with real interest.) And all this while of freezing suspense was but the criminal"s detention awaiting trial. A known punishment may be antic.i.p.ated with some measure of equanimity; at least, the prisoner may prepare himself to undergo it; but the unknown looms more monstrous for every attempt to guess it. Penrod"s crime was unique; there were no rules to aid him in estimating the vengeance to fall upon him for it. What seemed most probable was that he would be expelled from the schools in the presence of his family, the mayor, and council, and afterward whipped by his father upon the State House steps, with the entire city as audience by invitation of the authorities.
Noon came. The rows of children filed out, every head turning for a last unpleasingly speculative look at the outlaw. Then Miss Spence closed the door into the cloakroom and that into the big hall, and came and sat at her desk, near Penrod. The tramping of feet outside, the shrill calls and shouting and the changing voices of the older boys ceased to be heard--and there was silence. Penrod, still affecting to be occupied with Lowell, was conscious that Miss Spence looked at him intently.
"Penrod," she said gravely, "what excuse have you to offer before I report your case to the princ.i.p.al?"
The word "princ.i.p.al" struck him to the vitals. Grand Inquisitor, Grand Khan, Sultan, Emperor, Tsar, Caesar Augustus--these are comparable. He stopped squirming instantly, and sat rigid.
"I want an answer. Why did you shout those words at me?"
"Well," he murmured, "I was just--thinking."
"Thinking what?" she asked sharply.
"I don"t know."
"That won"t do!"
He took his left ankle in his right hand and regarded it helplessly.
"That won"t do, Penrod Schofield," she repeated severely. "If that is all the excuse you have to offer I shall report your case this instant!"
And she rose with fatal intent.
But Penrod was one of those whom the precipice inspires. "Well, I HAVE got an excuse."
"Well"--she paused impatiently--"what is it?"