“Sit down!” yelled John Dorsey, hurling him into a desk. Then, his boiling fury unappeased, and baffled by fear of inflicting some crippling punishment on the boy, he added illogically: “Stand up!” and jerked him to his feet again.
“You young upstart!” he panted. “You little two-by-two whippersnapper! We’ll just see, my sonny, if I’m to be dictated to by the like of you.”
“Take your hands off me!” Edward screamed, in an agony of physical loathing. “I’ll tell my father on you, old man Leonard, and he’ll come down here and kick your big fat behind all over the lot. See if he don’t.”
Eugene closed his eyes, unable to witness the snuffing out of a young life. He was cold and sick about his heart. But when he opened his eyes again Edward, flushed and sobbing, was standing where he stood. Nothing had happened.
Eugene waited for God’s visitation upon the unhappy blasphemer. He gathered, from the slightly open paralysis that had frozen John Dorsey’s and Sister Amy’s face, that they were waiting too.
Edward lived. There was nothing beyond this—nothing.
Eugene thought of this young Jew years later with the old piercing shame, with the riving pain by which a man recalls the irrevocable moment of some cowardly or dishonorable act. For not only did he join in the persecution of the boy—he was also glad at heart because of the existence of some one weaker than himself, some one at whom the flood of ridicule might be directed. Years later it came to him that on the narrow shoulders of that Jew lay a burden he might otherwise have borne, that that overladen heart was swollen with a misery that might have been his.
Mr. Leonard’s “men of to-morrow” were doing nicely. The spirit of justice, of physical honor was almost unknown to them, but they were loud in proclaiming the letter. Each of them lived in a fear of discovery; each of them who was able built up his own defenses of swagger, pretense, and loud assertion—the great masculine flower of gentleness, courage, and honor died in a foul tangle. The great clan of go-getter was emergent in young boys—
