Often, at night, Guy Doak slid quietly out through the window on to the side porch, and escaped down the road under the concealing roar of the trees. He would return from town within two hours, crawling in exultantly with a bag full of hot frankfurter sandwiches coated thickly with mustard, chopped onion, and a hot Mexican sauce. With a crafty grin he unfoiled two five-cent cigars, which they smoked magnificently, with a sharp tang of daring, blowing the smoke up the chimney in order to thwart a possible irruption by the master. And Guy brought back, from the wind and the night, the good salt breath of gossip in street and store, news of the town, and the brave swagger of the drugstore gallants.
As they smoked and stuffed fat palatable bites of sandwich into their mouths, they would regard each other with pleased sniggers, carrying on thus an insane symphony of laughter:
“Chuckle, chuckle! — laugh of gloatation.”
“Tee-hee, tee-hee, tee-hee! . . laugh of titterosity.”
“Snuh-huh, snuh-huh, snuh-huh! . . laugh of gluttonotiousness.”
The vigorous warmth of burning wood filled their room pleasantly: over their sheltered heads the dark gigantic wind howled through the earth. O sheltered love, nooked warmly in against this winter night. O warm fair women, whether within a forest hut, or by the town ledged high above the moaning seas, shot upon the wind, I come.
Guy Doak toyed gently at his belly with his right hand, and stroked his round chin slowly with his left.
“Now let me see,” he whined, “what he gives on this.”
Their laughter rang around the walls. Too late, they heard the aroused stealthy foot-falls of the master, creaking down the hall. Later — silence, the dark, the wind.
Miss Amy closed her small beautifully kept grade book, thrust her great arms upward, and yawned. Eugene looked hopefully at her and out along the playing court, reddened by the late sun. He was wild, uncontrollable, erratic. His mad tongue leaped out in class. He could never keep peace a full day. He amazed them. They loved him, and they punished him piously, affectionately. He was never released at the dismissal hour. He was always “kept in.”
John Dorsey noted each whisper of disorder, or each failure in preparation, by careful markings in a book. Each afternoon he read the names of delinquents, amid a low mutter of sullen protest, and stated their penalties. Once Eugene got through an entire day without a mark. He stood triumphantly before Leonard while the master searched the record.
John Dorsey began to laugh foolishly; he gripped his hand affectionately around the boy’s arm.
“Well, sir!” he said. “There must be a mistake. I’m going to keep you in on general principles.”
He bent to a long dribbling suction of laughter. Eugene’s wild eyes were shot with tears of anger and surprise. He never forgot.
Miss Amy yawned, and smiled on him with slow powerful affectionate contempt.
“Go on!” she said, in her broad, lazy accent. “I don’t want to fool with you any more. You’re not worth powder enough to blow you up.”
Margaret came in, her face furrowed deeply between smoke-dark eyes, full of tender sternness and hidden laughter.
“What’s wrong with the rascal?” she asked. “Can’t he learn algebra?”
“He can learn!” drawled Miss Amy. “He can learn anything. He’s lazy — that’s what it is. Just plain lazy.”
She smacked his buttock smartly with a ruler.
“I’d like to warm you a bit with this,” she laughed, slowly and richly. “You’d learn then.”
“Here!” said Margaret, shaking her head in protest. “You leave that boy alone. Don’t look behind the faun’s ears. Never mind about algebra, here. That’s for poor folks. There’s no need for algebra where two and two make five.”
Miss Amy turned her handsome gypsy eyes on Eugene.
“Go on. I’ve seen enough of you.” She made a strong weary gesture of dismissal.
Hatless, with a mad whoop, he plunged through the door and leaped the porch rail.
“Here, boy!” Margaret called. “Where’s your hat?”
Grinning, he galloped back, picked up a limp rag of dirty green felt, and pulled it over his chaotic hair. Curly tufts stuck through the gaping crease-holes.
“Come here!” said Margaret gravely. Her nervous fingers pulled his frayed necktie around to the front, tugged down his vest, and buttoned his coat over tightly, while he peered at her with his strange devil’s grin. Suddenly she trembled with laughter.
“Good heavens, Amy,” she said. “Look at that hat.”
Miss Amy smiled at him with indifferent sleepy cat-warmth.
“You want to fix yourself up, ‘Gene,” she said, “so the girls will begin to notice you.”
He heard the strange song of Margaret’s laughter.
“Can you see him out courting?” she said. “The poor girl would think she had a demon lover, sure.”
“As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover.”
His eyes burned on her face, flowing with dark secret beauty.
“Get along, you scamp!” she ordered.
He turned, and, crying fiercely in his throat, tore down the road with bounding strides.
All the dusk blurred in her eyes.
“Leave him alone!” she whispered to no one. “Leave him alone!”
A light wind of April fanned over the hill. There was a smell of burning leaves and rubble around the school. In the field on the hill flank behind the house a plowman drove his big horse with loose clanking traces around a lessening square of dry fallow earth. Gee, woa. His strong feet followed after. The big share bit cleanly down, cleaving a deep spermy furrow of moist young earth along its track.
John Dorsey Leonard stared fascinated out the window at the annual rejuvenation of the earth. Before his eyes the emergent nymph was scaling her hard cracked hag’s pelt. The golden age returned.
Down the road a straggling queue of boys were all gone into the world of light. Wet with honest sweat, the plowman paused at the turn, and wiped the blue shirting of his forearm across his beaded forehead. Meanwhile, his intelligent animal, taking advantage of the interval, lifted with slow majesty a proud flowing tail, and added his mite to the fertility of the soil with three moist oaty droppings. Watching, John Dorsey grunted approvingly. They also serve who only stand and wait.
“Please, Mr. Leonard,” said Eugene, carefully choosing his moment, “can I go?”
John Dorsey Leonard stroked his chin absently, and stared sightlessly at his book. Others abide our question, thou art free.
“Huh?” he purred vaguely. Then, with a high vacant snigger he turned suddenly, and said:
“You rascal, you! See if Mrs. Leonard wants you.” He fastened his brutal grip with keen hunger into the boy’s thin arm. April is the cruellest of months. Eugene winced, moved away, and then stood quietly, checked by memory of the old revolt from awe.
He found Margaret in the library reading to the children from The Water Babies.
“Mr. Leonard says to ask you if I can go?” he said.
And