This challenge brought forth renewed taunts from the others. The larger boy puffed out his checks. "Well, I ain"t afraid," he explained, sullenly. He had made a mistake in diplomacy, and now his small enemies were tumbling his prestige all about his ears. They crowed like roosters and bleated like lambs, and made many other noises which were supposed to bury him in ridicule and dishonor.
"Well, I ain"t afraid," he continued to explain through the din.
Jimmie, the hero of the mob, was pitiless. "You ain"t afraid, hey?" he sneered. "If you ain"t afraid, go do it, then."
"Well, I would if I wanted to," the other retorted. His eyes wore an expression of profound misery, but he preserved steadily other portions of a pot-valiant air. He suddenly faced one of his persecutors. "If you"re so smart, why don"t you go do it?" This persecutor sank promptly through the group to the rear. The incident gave the badgered one a breathing-spell, and for a moment even turned the derision in another direction. He took advantage of his interval.
"I"ll do it if anybody else will," he announced, swaggering to and fro.
Candidates for the adventure did not come forward. To defend themselves from this counter-charge, the other boys again set up their crowing and bleating. For a while they would hear nothing from him.
Each time he opened his lips their chorus of noises made oratory impossible. But at last he was able to repeat that he would volunteer to dare as much in the affair as any other boy.
"Well, you go first," they shouted.
But Jimmie intervened to once more lead the populace against the large boy. "You"re mighty brave, ain"t you?" he said to him. "You dared me to do it, and I did--didn"t I? Now who"s afraid?" The others cheered this view loudly, and they instantly resumed the baiting of the large boy.
He shamefacedly scratched his left shin with his right foot. "Well, I ain"t afraid." He cast an eye at the monster. "Well, I ain"t afraid."
With a glare of hatred at his squalling tormentors, he finally announced a grim intention. "Well, I"ll do it, then, since you"re so fresh. Now!"
The mob subsided as with a formidable countenance he turned towards the impa.s.sive figure on the box. The advance was also a regular progression from high daring to craven hesitation. At last, when some yards from the monster, the lad came to a full halt, as if he had encountered a stone wall. The observant little boys in the distance promptly hooted. Stung again by these cries, the lad sneaked two yards forward. He was crouched like a young cat ready for a backward spring.
The crowd at the rear, beginning to respect this display, uttered some encouraging cries. Suddenly the lad gathered himself together, made a white and desperate rush forward, touched the monster"s shoulder with a far-outstretched finger, and sped away, while his laughter rang out wild, shrill, and exultant.
The crowd of boys reverenced him at once, and began to throng into his camp, and look at him, and be his admirers. Jimmie was discomfited for a moment, but he and the larger boy, without agreement or word of any kind, seemed to recognize a truce, and they swiftly combined and began to parade before the others.
"Why, it"s just as easy as nothing," puffed the larger boy. "Ain"t it, Jim?"
"Course," blew Jimmie. "Why, it"s as e-e-easy."
They were people of another cla.s.s. If they had been decorated for courage on twelve battle-fields, they could not have made the other boys more ashamed of the situation.
Meanwhile they condescended to explain the emotions of the excursion, expressing unqualified contempt for any one who could hang back. "Why, it ain"t nothin". He won"t do nothin" to you," they told the others, in tones of exasperation.
One of the very smallest boys in the party showed signs of a wistful desire to distinguish himself, and they turned their attention to him, pushing at his shoulders while he swung away from them, and hesitated dreamily. He was eventually induced to make furtive expedition, but it was only for a few yards. Then he paused, motionless, gazing with open mouth. The vociferous entreaties of Jimmie and the large boy had no power over him.
Mrs. Hannigan had come out on her back porch with a pail of water.
From this coign she had a view of the secluded portion of the Trescott grounds that was behind the stable. She perceived the group of boys, and the monster on the box. She shaded her eyes with her hand to benefit her vision. She screeched then as if she was being murdered.
"Eddie! Eddie! You come home this minute!"
Her son querulously demanded, "Aw, what for?"
"You come home this minute. Do you hear?"
The other boys seemed to think this visitation upon one of their number required them to preserve for a time the hang-dog air of a collection of culprits, and they remained in guilty silence until the little Hannigan, wrathfully protesting, was pushed through the door of his home. Mrs. Hannigan cast a piercing glance over the group, stared with a bitter face at the Trescott house, as if this new and handsome edifice was insulting her, and then followed her son.
There was wavering in the party. An inroad by one mother always caused them to carefully sweep the horizon to see if there were more coming.
"This is my yard," said Jimmie, proudly. "We don"t have to go home."
The monster on the box had turned its black crepe countenance towards the sky, and was waving its arms in time to a religious chant. "Look at him now," cried a little boy. They turned, and were transfixed by the solemnity and mystery of the indefinable gestures. The wail of the melody was mournful and slow. They drew back. It seemed to spellbind them with the power of a funeral. They were so absorbed that they did not hear the doctor"s buggy drive up to the stable. Trescott got out, tied his horse, and approached the group. Jimmie saw him first, and at his look of dismay the others wheeled.
"What"s all this, Jimmie?" asked Trescott, in surprise.
The lad advanced to the front of his companions, halted, and said nothing. Trescott"s face gloomed slightly as he scanned the scene.
"What were you doing, Jimmie?"
"We was playin"," answered Jimmie, huskily.
"Playing at what?"
"Just playin"."
Trescott looked gravely at the other boys, and asked them to please go home. They proceeded to the street much in the manner of frustrated and revealed a.s.sa.s.sins. The crime of trespa.s.s on another boy"s place was still a crime when they had only accepted the other boy"s cordial invitation, and they were used to being sent out of all manner of gardens upon the sudden appearance of a father or a mother. Jimmie had wretchedly watched the departure of his companions. It involved the loss of his position as a lad who controlled the privileges of his father"s grounds, but then he knew that in the beginning he had no right to ask so many boys to be his guests.
Once on the sidewalk, however, they speedily forgot their shame as trespa.s.sers, and the large boy launched forth in a description of his success in the late trial of courage. As they went rapidly up the street, the little boy who had made the furtive expedition cried out confidently from the rear, "Yes, and I went almost up to him, didn"t I, Willie?"
The large boy crushed him in a few words. "Huh!" he scoffed. "You only went a little way. I went clear up to him."
The pace of the other boys was so manly that the tiny thing had to trot, and he remained at the rear, getting entangled in their legs in his attempts to reach the front rank and become of some importance, dodging this way and that way, and always piping out his little claim to glory.
XXI
"By-the-way, Grace," said Trescott, looking into the dining-room from his office door, "I wish you would send Jimmie to me before school-time."
When Jimmie came, he advanced so quietly that Trescott did not at first note him. "Oh," he said, wheeling from a cabinet, "here you are, young man."
"Yes, sir."
Trescott dropped into his chair and tapped the desk with a thoughtful finger. "Jimmie, what were you doing in the back garden yesterday--you and the other boys--to Henry?"
"We weren"t doing anything, pa."
Trescott looked sternly into the raised eyes of his son. "Are you sure you were not annoying him in any way? Now what were you doing, exactly?"
"Why, we--why, we--now--Willie Dalzel said I da.s.sent go right up to him, and I did; and then he did; and then--the other boys were "fraid; and then--you comed."
Trescott groaned deeply. His countenance was so clouded in sorrow that the lad, bewildered by the mystery of it, burst suddenly forth in dismal lamentations. "There, there. Don"t cry, Jim," said Trescott, going round the desk. "Only--" He sat in a great leather reading-chair, and took the boy on his knee. "Only I want to explain to you--"
After Jimmie had gone to school, and as Trescott was about to start on his round of morning calls, a message arrived from Doctor Moser. It set forth that the latter"s sister was dying in the old homestead, twenty miles away up the valley, and asked Trescott to care for his patients for the day at least. There was also in the envelope a little history of each case and of what had already been done. Trescott replied to the messenger that he would gladly a.s.sent to the arrangement.
He noted that the first name on Moser"s list was Winter, but this did not seem to strike him as an important fact. When its turn came, he rang the Winter bell. "Good-morning, Mrs. Winter," he said, cheerfully, as the door was opened. "Doctor Moser has been obliged to leave town to-day, and he has asked me to come in his stead. How is the little girl this morning?"
Mrs. Winter had regarded him in stony surprise. At last she said: "Come in! I"ll see my husband." She bolted into the house. Trescott entered the hall, and turned to the left into the sitting-room.
Presently Winter shuffled through the door. His eyes flashed towards Trescott. He did not betray any desire to advance far into the room.
"What do you want?" he said.
"What do I want? What do I want?" repeated Trescott, lifting his head suddenly. He had heard an utterly new challenge in the night of the jungle.
"Yes, that"s what I want to know," snapped Winter. "What do you want?"