Part 5 (1/2)

”Go down to the chicken-house, and attend to your work,” his father ordered him. Paul Judson, torn with anger and self-disgust, turned back to the boy. ”I'm going to thrash you every morning for a month. Maybe that will do you some good.”

After a few minutes, gulping down the stinging memories and black bitterness against what he felt was rank injustice, Pelham limped out to his duties. As he watered the hens, and scattered cracked corn before the fuzzy yellow b.a.l.l.s scratching around them, waves of self-pity flooded him. He wept into the chicken-trough and into his handkerchief, until it was a damp salt-smelly wad.

Morning after morning this kept up. Now it was in his own room, his father's, the stable, or by the spring duck-houses; now a slipper, a s.h.i.+ngle, the hated belt, or a freshly cut withe. Once it was the stable broom, which broke over his back at the second stroke,--that morning the whipping ended abruptly. He wept, pleaded, excused himself, begged to have another chance; nothing could shake the stern will of his father, and the merciless schedule of pain.

Mary tried to keep busy at some place where she could not hear his cries. But they pursued her from room to room.

Pelham wore his stockings to school,--they hid the old bruises, and the fresh welts. Night after night he cried himself to sleep. And the mother, stealing in to see the children safely in bed, would feel all the agony seared on her heart, at the sight of the tear-channeled boyish cheeks. She worried and brooded over the favorite son, until bluish depressions pouched beneath her eyes, and a hard look came into them as they followed her husband around his home tasks. He, in turn, became boisterously loud-spoken, and made a vast amount of noise stamping on the halls and porches. It was a gruesome three weeks for all.

At the end of this period, Pelham could stand it no longer. He kissed his mother good night, clinging around her neck and pressing pa.s.sionate kisses upon her lips,--it would be the last time he would ever receive this parting kiss, he told himself. Then he knotted up, in an old sweater, his clean s.h.i.+rts and a change of underclothes, three handkerchiefs, his stamp alb.u.m, and ”Grimm's Fairy Stories,” and hid them under the bed. To-morrow he would leave home forever.

While his mother was seeing to the breakfast table, he slipped into her room, his eyes still red from the morning's session with his father. He unlocked her drawer, and took out of her purse the three one dollar bills he found. On the red book, he knew, he was ent.i.tled to more than eight dollars, but this would do. He slipped in a note he had written the night before, and hid the bulging sweater in a rock beside the front path.

Walking to school with Nell, he pledged her to silence and then told her he was going to run away that afternoon.

”That's wicked, Pell.” Her wide eyes were horror-filled.

”Would you let them whip you every day of your life?” He turned on her fiercely.

”Where are you going?”

”To Jackson, or Columbus, or somewhere,--anything to get away from here.

You'll look after my little chickies, won't you, sister?”

She promised.

The girls were dismissed for lunch at twelve, and as Pelham had only half an hour, their mother usually met them at the big gate, and walked back to the house with them. Nell waited till Sue had run ahead, then betrayed the morning's confidence with maternal conscientiousness.

Mary went at once to her drawer,--she guessed how Pelham had gotten funds. She put on her hat and hurried in to the office, carrying with her the boy's note.

Her lips were set, and her voice difficult to control, when she faced her husband across the bevelled gla.s.s that covered his desk. ”Read this, Paul,” handing him the crumpled message.

It was written painstakingly in the boy's unformed upright script, a youthful imitation of his father's distinctive hand:

”Dearest mother:--

I can not stand any moar whipings. Hollis can have my things wen he growes up. I will come back as soon as father is ded.

Affexionately your son, PELHAM JUDSON.”

Before he had time to comment, the mother spoke. ”You know I advised against this--this brutal, cold-blooded punishment of my son. This is what has come of it.”

”Where is he?----”

She bit her lip to keep from crying. ”He's gone; he may be dead, for all I know. He told Nell he might go to Jackson....”

”I'll go down to the station. He can't leave before the 4:17.”

”Promise me you won't whip the baby any more....” Her voice shook, in spite of herself. ”I'll go with you.”