There Was a Time

  CHAPTER 5

  Miss Ballister was not without some knowledge of children, whom she hated. She had had to develop this knowledge in self-defense. So she pushed a book full of pictures before him, and opened it. Then she rapped on his head with her pencil, to the delighted giggles of the others, and said: “Look at that, and amuse yourself for a little while.”

  There is the Enemy, thought the children, not in actual words, but only with their instincts. He is the Outlaw. He is the Alien, formed of other flesh and filled with other spirit, whom we hate bottomlessly.

  The profound and primordial tide flowed back and forth between Frank Clair and the children, the tide of recognition and denial, of understanding and hatred. It flowed all the morning, while Miss Ballister complained, reprimanded, questioned, and assigned. A boy or girl stood up to drone from a book; a late fly buzzed dizzily at the windowpane. The smell of chalk and slate pencil became acrid in a gathering dimness before the coming rain, and the air progressively chilly. Frank stared at his book, his cold fingers numbly turning pages. He saw strange scenes: storks nesting on roofs, a child in the arms of an ice goddess who fled through snow and storm, a child in a magic boat of gold with red silken sails, a girl with scarlet shoes racing through a dark forest, a beautiful lady asleep for one hundred years on a blue satin couch, a slattern on a hearth, among ashes, and a pumpkin coach beside her drawn by little white mice. He saw, in short, his first book of fairy tales, and immediately he was one with the creatures in the colorful pictures. He sat in a trance, dreaming, leagues deep in formless meditation, so that his own identity was lost, and he was not cold or terror-stricken or alone.

  Miss Ballister was pleased at his stillness. At least, she thought, he is not incorrigible, as I had feared. I shall be able to control him. But what a stupid, stupid, empty face! No expression at all. He might be asleep with his eyes open. She was surprised when she saw the pages turned, softly, slowly, by a little bluish finger.

  The children did not forget little Frank, though he had now forgotten them. He was completely unaware of their presence, and this, too, their instincts resented, almost more intensely than their knowledge of him. Sometimes he would lift his heavy blue eyes and stare at them, but it was as if they did not exist. Their warm and savage young hearts rebelled at this dismissal of them into nothingness, into insignificance. Had he, but for an instant, smiled at one or two of them, shyly, hopefully, had he really seen them, he might have made a friend.

  At noon, the children smelled tea. A little maidservant entered the other room with a loud tramping of boots, carrying a tray on which were steaming hot water and tea, a slop-bowl, a cannister of hard biscuits encrusted with slate-like sugar or seeds, a plate of thin bread and butter, a jar of jam, and, for Miss Ballister, a small saucer of sliced cold beef. The children greeted her entrance with joy, put aside their slates, slammed shut their books.

  Miss Ballister assembled them with some order, and marshalled them into their places at the tea table. Happily noisy and released, they frolicked, pushed each other, grinned, chatted. Miss Ballister sat down, smiling thinly, her avid eyes on the beef. It was then that she became aware that Frank was not among the children.

  Angrily, she glanced back into the other room. There sat Frank, his head bent over his book, the faint glimmering light from the windows hovering over his bright hair. He sat like a young neophyte poring over mystic parchments, transfixed with holy awe. Even Miss Ballister became aware of some deep quality of stillness about him, some absorption that had drawn him away into a region of eternal dreams. The stillness of him seeped through the deserted room, so that it was like a well of motionless water, gray and soundless. He did not seem to breathe.

  In spite of herself, Miss Ballister shivered, and thought vaguely of her shawl. Then a hot little spark of hatred and impatience glowed in her. The lad was impossible. Some impulse made her rise swiftly from her chair, rush to the boy, and seize him by a flaccid arm. She shook him with quite unusual violence. “You little ninny, what is wrong with you?” she exclaimed. “Come at once and have your tea!”

  The child’s head lolled on his shoulder. Then she felt his trembling, his startled return to reality. He looked up at her, and a glaring light flashed over his eyes. He allowed her to drag him into the other room. The children were again delighted and eager. Miss Ballister set him with a smarting thump on a chair, and stared at him balefully as she poured a cup of tea for him and clattered three biscuits into his saucer. She buttered a slice of bread for him, covered it with a thin skin of jam. Her mouth was tightly closed against any display of temper and disgust, and something nameless which she had never felt before. He watched all her movements, as if hypnotized. Then he sat and looked at his plate.

  “Eat!” said Miss Ballister furiously, while the children watched, full of glee.

  Obediently, for he had found that obedience brought him inattention, he put a biscuit into his mouth. He carried the teacup to his lips with both his cold little hands. The warmth penetrated into his flesh, and it was comforting. He even looked up.

  The children, disappointed that they had been deprived of scenes and screamings, were talking and laughing with one another merrily, clattering their spoons in their cups, teasing one another with friendly malice, passing the plates, gossiping and disagreeing. One of the children was the son of Reddish’s richest shopkeeper, and he was treated with respect and servility, and his slightest word greeted with quick nods though he was a fat young bully and a fool. Eddie Durham came next in respect. He was the only one who knew Frank, and he kept whispering viciously to his neighbors, who answered with malevolent giggles and stares at the silent little boy. The children were still too young to have acquired that hypocritical veneer of civilization which pretends to accept even the stranger. Savage, cruel, uninhibited and naturally bestial, they were themselves—truly human and as yet uncorrupted by courtesy and tolerance.

  Frank sipped his tea. But now a mortal despondency had him, a sickness of heart which he was too young to understand. He had these periods quite often, though he had no words for them and became only more silent. He looked up, and met the row of grinning faces, saw the sly noddings of heads, heard the spiteful whispers.

  Children had never impinged on his consciousness before, not even the Worden children, who endured him with healthy indifference because they were so busy and poverty and hunger were so exigent. But now he saw the children objectively, and knew that they had thrust him outside the pale, that he would never be one of them.

  He was seized with an immense loneliness and isolation, a horrible and indescribable grief. His human flesh cried out for a human touch, a human hand, a human word of affection and closeness. All his heart, all his being, craved a glance of brotherhood and friendliness, a confiding laugh, a gesture of acceptance. His loneliness became a huge and crushing thing, an illness of the spirit, a desperate and bottomless hunger.

  Stare, stare, thought Miss Ballister, disgusted. Has he never seen children before? He looks like an imbecile. Perhaps he is an imbecile. Well, four shillings extra a week is four shillings extra a week, and beggars cannot be choosers, unfortunately.

  “Drink your tea, Francis,” she said crossly. She snapped open the watch that was pinned on her shirtwaist. “We have exactly five minutes left.”

  But Frank could not drink his tea. His hands were reaching toward each and every one across from him, hands extended as if for alms. But the children, with the cruelty and the viciousness and malice of their childhood, looked at those hands and remained gloatingly silent.

  Then Frank knew that he was finally, irrevocably, rejected, and that it would always be so, unless he disguised himself behind another face that was not his, unless he learned an alien and hateful language, unless he became what they desired all others to be. The asking hands withdrew. He sat in cloudy silence, not in rebellion, but in resignation, not in anger, but in perplexed sorrow.

  The children went back to their schoolroom, and Frank
followed, stumbling awkwardly over his feet. He pulled himself silently up on his chair. The book lay before him, but now it had lost its enchantment. All his flesh was wounded, aching, bleeding, his sickness a knot in his vitals. He sat in his chair, bowed, his head on his chest, his eyes closed.

  He’s really asleep, thought Miss Ballister, relieved. I do hope he will sleep until school is over.

  But Frank was not asleep. He sat, completely inert, as the noisy lessons went on. He was too young to think in images or words, but his emotions were immense. They were storms and lightnings and seas and wearinesses and despairs. All sound retreated from him, and he was alone as he had always been alone and as he always would be alone.

  The hours crept by. It was two, three, four o’clock. The children, having completely forgotten Frank, prepared to go home. But Francis had promised to come early for his son. Tomorrow, one of the older children, or perhaps Dr. Durham, who sometimes called for Eddie, would accompany him home until he knew the way.

  During the past hour or so Frank had stirred feebly from his lethargy, but he was still not present among the other children. He watched them, his eyes moving listlessly in their direction when they recited. He watched Miss Ballister as she moved behind the chairs. The vagueness and heaviness were like a mist over his face.

  Now the children, exuberant at release, hung up their pinafores, gathered together their books, giggled and pushed each other cautiously. The girls tied on their hats; the boys pulled caps from their pockets. Frank still sat.

  He suddenly attracted the attention of the sister of the boy whose father was the rich shopkeeper. She was a green-faced little girl with bright orange hair and mean darting eyes. She had taken a vast dislike to Frank. She paused suddenly opposite the table, leaned across it, stuck out her tongue, and made a rude sound. Her saliva splattered him.

  Frank had never known rage before, never so awful and appalling a rage. But all at once his eyes cleared, saw everything brilliantly, saw the hateful child across from him. She was all that was hideous. His gorge rose that she had dared even to be aware of him, and the anger that made all things so clear was a knowledge of all loathesomeness and outrage. She embodied, for him, a repulsive world that insisted on breaking in on his privacy, on invading that in him which was inviolate.

  He had only one desire: to destroy that face, to eliminate it, drive it from his consciousness, force it into nothingness, out of his memory. His hand shot out instinctively, grasped an ink-pot, and hurled it at the child. It struck her forehead with a loud crack. Its contents ran in thin black streams over her face, down her neck, over her crimson wool frock.

  She stood there, stunned. Others, hearing the noise, whirled and stared. When they saw what had happened, their delight was violent. They shouted; they jumped up and down. They clapped their hands in the excess of their excitement. But the brother of the girl rushed upon Frank and knocked him out of his chair, and kicked him. He continued to kick him, and then something voluptuous, murderous, rose in his narrow chest until it seemed unbearable. He writhed; he moaned; he was beside himself. Now, as he felt his foot sinking into the soft thin body of the prostrate child on the floor, thrills of sharp ecstasy shot all through his nerves, quivered over his back in tendrils of delicious fire.

  Miss Ballister, horrified, watched for a moment in complete paralysis. Then she leapt upon the boy, dragged him away, shaking him vigorously, boxing his ears. He turned upon her furiously. He sank his teeth in her hand, grunting loudly.

  She pulled away her hand with a yell, and sent the boy flying with a well-aimed and vigorous blow. She, too, felt delight. She knew children, and hated them. It gave her an enormous pleasure to strike the boy, and she followed him up with a clenched fist.

  He stood at bay, sobered, blubbering. “I’ll tell my father, that I will!” he sobbed, rubbing his eyes. “He’ll take me and Mary away from your rotter of a school! And then, won’t you be sorry!”

  Mary jumped up and down, delirious with excitement, and the other children joined her, caught up in the prevailing intoxication. They chanted with her: “Won’t you be sorry! Won’t you be sorry!”

  Cold sobriety fell upon Miss Ballister. She rubbed her bitten hand. She panted. She was a lonely and deprived spinster; she had nothing but her fees. She would starve. She knew that. Suddenly she was overcome with terror, and her mouth turned dry. What had she lost by defending a miserable little wretch who had deserved his punishment!

  Her heart became a pulse beating feebly and rapidly. Her face grayed with fear, her body lost its rigidity, became old and limp. She took out her handkerchief and wiped the eyes of the shopkeeper’s son. “There, there,” she said. “You were very wicked. Frank Clair is only five years old, Bobbie, and you are nearly twelve. He’s only a baby. Look, you’ve hurt him. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t even cry.”

  This was such an interesting piece of news that Bobbie Tompkins pushed aside her trembling, ministering hand, and craned to see the prostrate Frank. It was true. The little boy lay as he had fallen, lay as he had lain while being kicked, his arms instinctively clasped about his head to protect it. He might have been dead.

  Miss Ballister had an inspiration. She straightened up, fixed all the children with a stern eye.

  “You know what the law does when someone is hurt and kicked like that?” she demanded, with new courage and slyness. “They put the kicker in prison. Think, Bobbie. If Frank is very hurt, they will take you away, away from your mama and your papa, and your little sisters. You may never see them again. They might even send your papa to prison, or fine him a lot of money.”

  Bobbie Tompkins had a sudden and horrid vision of his father. He was not Mr. Tom Tompkins’ favorite child, but Mrs. Tompkins had “spoiled” him, a matter which the father had found it hard to forgive. Mr. Tompkins was also a very irascible man, with a bad temper and a very heavy hand. Bobbie saw his father dragged away by the “bobbies.” He heard the wails of his mother. He saw the family funds confiscated, and the whole family sent into exile far from the pleasant suburbs of Sandy Lane, and forced to live on one of those horrible streets in “town.” His father would kill him, as he had often threatened to do. “I tell you, Sally, I’ll kill that boy some day, if I have to hang for it!” he had screamed on occasions of great provocation.

  Bobbie shook so violently that he almost fell. He blubbered louder than ever. He clung to Miss Ballister. “You’ll not tell my dada, please, Miss Ballister?” he pleaded, almost in a shriek. “You’ll not tell my dada?”

  Miss Ballister, who was fervently thanking God for her inspiration, would not immediately relent. She tried to calm the frantic Bobbie. “How can I help it?” she said sternly. “All the other children know. How will you explain Mary’s inky frock and the bruise on her head?”

  In a rage of fear, Bobbie tore himself away from his teacher, and, with clenched fists and bared teeth, swung on his companions. “I’ll murder the first one as speaks!” he shouted, forgetting the elegant language taught him by Miss Ballister. “I’ll smash his bloody head! Just one word, and there’ll be an end to him! Hear?”

  He turned from one to the other, panting, glaring, wild with fright and hate. The children recoiled from that savage eye, from that very real threat. They burst into a chorus of trembling denials. “We won’t tell, Bobbie. You can rely on us, Bobbie. You can trust us, Bobbie!”

  Satisfied, his breath loud and rasping, Bobbie turned on his whimpering sister. “If you say a word to dada, I—I’ll smash every blasted doll you have, and break your nose!” he exclaimed.

  The girl scrubbed her frock with a black handkerchief. “What’ll I say to Ma about this?” she demanded feebly. “She’s got to be told something.”

  Bobbie considered, his fists still clenched. He knew his mother’s adoration of him. His face began to clear. “Tell you wot,” he said thoughtfully. “Ma won’t mind. We were having a jolly time, and I knocked it over your head, accidental. But we’d best get home before dada comes.”
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  The matter was adjusted, decided. He resolutely pulled his cap on his head, caught his sister’s hand. He rushed out of the room with her.

  Miss Ballister, breathing easier, now admonished the other children: “It will be best if nothing is said of this. I am sure you understand that, my dears. Bobbie has a very nasty temper.”

  She dismissed them, and they went out in a silent and subdued file. The danger was over. She was safe. None would dare defy Bobbie Tompkins’ blackmail.

  Then she started, newly terrified. During all this, Frank had not moved. He lay as if dead. And, almost any moment now, Mr. Clair would arrive for his son. She dragged the boy to his feet. He swayed against her, his eyes half shut. But he was conscious. She brushed off his clothing with her hand. She ran for water, and bathed his bruised face. She did all this automatically, rapidly forming a story in her mind. The child was too young for self-control. His father must be told a portion of the truth. She knew her Francis Clair. She knew that he was flattered that his son had been “accepted” by her; she had noticed how he had fawned on her during the negotiations. He could be relied upon not to broadcast the story.

  Now her fear became rage against the suffering child. “You nasty, nasty little thing!” she exclaimed. “Whatever am I to do with you? Oh, if your father had just not brought you here! I don’t know what to do! Here, drink this water. Watch that you don’t choke. There. Oh, dear, why am I tried so? Come with me at once, you naughty lad. You may wait for your papa downstairs, in my sitting room. To hit poor little Mary with an ink-pot! I am sure I don’t know what your father will do to you for this! And how angry he will be to know how you provoked poor Bobbie, who had to defend his little sister!”