The Father of His Son

by Inez Haynes Irwin

Illustration: “YOU'VE COME TO SEE ME ABOUT PAT, HAVEN'T YOU? I'M GLAD OF THAT.”

 

The Father of His Son

By INEZ HAYNES GILLMORE

Illustrated by Wallace Morgan

The little school-teacher had a sense of humor so keen that when William Fayne made an important announcement in regard to Pat O'Quinn's father, she was able to see the matter from his point of view. She realized that his unfeigned joy in the tidings he bore was only the exudation of a boy's instinctive delight in a row, not a malicious pleasure in her coming downfall. That announcement was the following, delivered in a breathless voice, the words, because of his haste, slightly run together:

“Say, teacher, Pat O'Quinn's father's comin' up to school this mornin' with Pat. He's dead mad with you. He says he's going to break your slats.”

The little school-teacher stared blankly for a second down into William's irradiated face, and William stared with guileless glee back into hers. But it was evident that under her absorption, she was thinking hard.

“All right, William,” she said, after a long pause, “you may clean all the front blackboards and water the plants.”

William set to work on the boards with a zest that threatened to dislocate all the bones in his body, and soon covered everything in sight with a fine white chalk-dust. The teacher, with less ado, went about the work of arranging her desk and getting out the materials for the day's lessons. It was perceptible, however, that her mind was not on what she was doing.

It was the first year of her teaching, and her lines had fallen in difficult places: in a congested Boston school. The district was a poor one, the population largely Irish Catholic. The other teachers in the building were old. Most of them had been teaching for periods running from twenty-five to thirty-five years. They had become the machines that such a routine, and years of it, is bound to make of the most ambitious mentalities. They had little sympathy for her youth, and even less with the new ideas of teaching and discipline that she was gradually introducing into her work. She had not had much trouble with the children themselves, with the exception of Pat O'Quinn, but he had become a veritable thorn in her flesh. He was idle, disorderly, insolent, and maliciously so, it seemed to her. She had tried all the tricks and devices of her slender experience to bring him into line with the rest of her well-disciplined little class, but as yet she had not succeeded. In fact, she had very definitely failed. Pat's surly insubordination had culminated yesterday, when he had refused to obey her, and she had sent him home with the admonition not to return until his mother came with him.

Pat's father was one of the local heroes. He had been a good average working-man until the unlucky day dawned when in a bar-room scrap he had had the felicity to knock John L. Sullivan down. From that time onward he lived in the fame of his great blow. He gave up his work and lived a furtive saloon existence, sinking gradually into deeper and deeper strata of idleness, unnoticed except when a sudden visit to town of the famous pugilist revived memories of his great moment and brought him into prominence again. He was, it happened, and rather unaccountably, a favorite with the famous man. During the pugilist's brief stay he lived a splendid life, moving grandly from saloon to saloon, in one day's-long protracted spree.

The little teacher thought all this over, and it is not surprising that her face sobered. For a moment she wondered if she had better ask the advice of some of the older teachers in regard to the matter. But her pride came to her rescue, urging her to meet the difficulty unaided. Finally her sense of humor got the upper hand, and she smiled.

Simultaneously, a line of dimples, that lived a subsidiary existence about her mouth, flashed into prominence. She went to the closet-door and looked at herself in the mirror hanging there. She was a little round person, curly and dimply, with a dewy mouth, and soft brown eyes that seemed to grow vivid when she laughed. She had no features to speak of, but to make up, her complexion was fresh, and her expression changeable. She was glad, as she surveyed herself in the scrap of looking-glass, that she did not happen to be wearing her regular school uniform, that she had dressed thus early for the tea she expected to attend late that afternoon. Her brow lightened as she turned away, the little figure was so dainty in the soft pearly-gray gown with the globe of fluffy white chiffon at its neck.

•••••••••

The children came into the room when the quarter-of bell rang, in the orderly way in which she had trained them, but there was an air of subdued excitement about them. They glanced eagerly at her where she stood at the hall-door, watching the filing, and their sense of the importance of the things they knew was only rivalled by their recognition of the fact that teacher was wearing some pretty new clothes. They examined her curiously before they exchanged the knowing looks of their secret delight.

The nine o'clock bell rang. The class come to position, each pair of hands folded on the desk, every back as straight as if a ramrod had, without warning, been run into it. The teacher closed the door, walked deliberately to her desk, took from the row of books there her Bible, opened it and sat down. And then suddenly there reverberated through the room the tattoo of a stern and commanding knock. Every child in the class jumped, although each one of them had been secretly anticipating this summons, and their unalloyed joy in the prospective row ran out over every face.

The teacher went to the door and opened it.

Mr. O'Quinn was short and thick-set. He had a burly figure and burly battered-looking features. A nose, several times broken, had destroyed all his pretences to a classic profile; and linen which it is a kindly euphemism to call soiled, a skin that might be charitably described as swarthy if it had not had to accommodate itself to blond coloring, a pervading odor of whiskey and cheap tobacco put him, at once, out of the category of the well-groomed. But to her surprise, the teacher discovered at the back of all this, and in a sense apologizing for it, a pair of blue eyes that looked, if their expression had not been angry, as if they might be bluff and jovial. He was holding Pat by the shoulder, and the little teacher, translating the boy's face by means of the father's, found to her surprise that his eyes might be jolly too if they had not happened, as at the present moment, to be openly impudent in expression. He had red hair and so many freckles that further discovery in regard to his features was virtually a work of excavation. She recognized vaguely, however, that the expression that Pat's mother had once used in her presence was fairly descriptive. She had said that Pat was “the spit of his father.” At the time the teacher had gathered that the similarity was not confined to physique. She had, in consequence, not until yesterday bothered the mother again.

“Oi'd like Miss Perry,” Mr. O'Quinn commanded grandly. His utterance was a little thick, but his manner was that of one descended from kings, as indeed they were, according to Mrs. O'Quinn.

“I am Miss Perry,” that lady announced composedly.

Mr. O'Quinn stared. “Shure, Oi t'ought youse was one of the little gurls in the fuist class,” he muttered. “I t'ought Miss Perry was another wan of thim old maids that's been here since God knows whin.”

“I have only been here a year,” Miss Perry conceded graciously; “you've come to see me about Pat, haven't you? I'm glad of that. Won't you come in and sit down? I shall have to open school first, and give the children something to do. Then I shall have plenty of time to talk with you.”

Mr. O'Quinn's brow had darkened at the suggestion. His lower jaw was protruding in imitation of that of the most correct type of bull-dog. Miss Perry's heart sank. She wondered if the “slats” episode was about to come off.

Illustration: TIPTOED UP TO MR. O'QUINN AND HANDED HIM HER BOOK.

“Shall I send Pat to his seat?” she insinuated gently; “it was good of you to come.” She looked straight into his eyes, dimpling brightly.

Mr. O'Quinn's brow cleared a little. He dropped his hand—it looked like a bunch of sausages, imperfectly separated and a mottled yellow-blue in color—from his son's shoulder. The released Pat, taking this apparently as a command, slouched into the dressing-room and out to his seat, his expression that conventionally assigned to the cock of the walk. He threw himself into his chair and sank down into it, his legs sprawling out in the aisle, his hands in his pockets.

Miss Perry took no notice of this. “Won't you have a seat?” she begged her visitor, prettily.

Mr. O'Quinn assented with a grunt, and she followed in the wake of his lordly stride to the platform. He compressed his bulk into the visitor's chair. From this altitude he surveyed the class haughtily.

Miss Perry took her seat at the desk. She opened the Bible and read in her soft young-girl voice, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Then she said: “Take out your singing books, children. One! Two! Three!”

The fifty-six statues that were her class came to life. The one hundred and twelve hands unfolded. In a flash fifty-six blue-bound books flew into the right-hand corners of the desks, and the one hundred and twelve hands folded themselves again.

“Page 86,” Miss Perry commanded.

The fifty-six books and the one hundred and twelve hands formed an instant's combination. There was a rapid flutter of leaves. The little girl in the front seat tiptoed up to Mr. O'Quinn and handed him her book, print painstakingly toward him. Then she tiptoed to an empty seat at the back of the room and took the book from it. She passed Pat on the way and he, with no pretence of concealment, tripped her so adroitly that she fell in a blushing heap against little, correct, pompadoured Michael Vincent. The latter virtuously ignored the incident.

“Take out your book, Pat,” Miss Perry commanded sweetly, ignoring it also.

Pat looked at his father and, extracting encouragement from his haughty mien, drew his book with a jerk from his desk, pulling onto the floor in indiscriminate chaos pencils, pens, and papers. He slammed it onto his desk, and then with an air superbly dégagé he collected the scattered articles and put them back one at a time. After this he leisurely found the page and the position he considered most comfortable. This brought his body across the width of his desk and the upper corner of his book into the neck of the little girl in front of him. She turned and frowned on him. Then indignantly she craned forward out of his reach. Miss Perry waited carefully. Mr. O'Quinn contemplated his son.

The children sang the song through in their earnest, sweet voices, their little faces sobered to suit the occasion. Pat kept up a droning monotone through it all, trailing in the rear of his mates by an exact two beats. Miss Perry said nothing, but she waited ostentatiously at the end of each verse for Pat to finish. Mr. O'Quinn contemplated his son.

The hymn sung, the song-books disappeared again. The little girl who had given Mr. O'Quinn her book, making this time a wide detour that put her out of Pat's reach, tiptoed up to him and whisperingly relieved him of it. Miss Perry took up a volume of poems that lay on her desk.

It was one of her new-fangled notions to read a poem to the children every day, and afterward they talked it over. They had taken Longfellow and Whittier in this way. They were on Lowell, end Miss Perry hoped to complete Bryant and Emerson before the year was out. She liked poetry-work particularly. She was convinced that it was bound to have on the children of poverty an uplifting influence. The children liked it, too. They knew nothing about uplifting influences, but they knew it was “easy,” and that they did not have to take examinations in it.

Miss Perry read the poem on the dandelion, but first she told the children that each one of them must remember and quote from it some line that he liked.

When she began to read, Pat with an elaborate air of unconcern put his head on his desk and appeared to fail into a swift and unnatural torpor. Miss Perry stopped. “Come to position, Pat,” she said tranquilly.

Pat lifted his head. He gave one glance at his father, scowling in lordly possession of the platform. The glance encouraged him. “I don't like poitry,” he announced loudly.

“I think you'll like this,” Miss Perry informed him politely; “come to position.” Pat dragged himself slowly to a spineless reproduction of the attitude of the other children. He dropped his under jaw, half-closed his eyes, and listened to the poem with an excruciating expression of ennui. Mr. O'Quinn contemplated his son.

After she had finished her reading Miss Perry called for questions, for comments, for favorite lines. Inspired, perhaps, by the presence of a stranger, the children responded generally, and with considerable animation. Even Michael Vincent's enigmatic choice, “nor wrinkled the lean brow,” cast no perceptible gloom on the occasion. In return. Miss Perry told the class the lines she liked and why she liked them. She made many references to the bunch of dandelions in the squatty ginger-jar on her desk.

“Now, Pat,” Miss Perry concluded pleasantly, “what did you think of it?”

Pat stole another glance at the lowering visage on the platform. “I think it was r-r-rotten,” he promulgated calmly.

The silence of the instant that followed was death-like, Then Mr. O'Quinn turned to the teacher. “Youse haven't anny such t'ing as a club laying round here loose-like, have youse, miss?” he asked briskly.

There was no thickness in his utterance now. His tones were as clear as a bell.

“I haven't a rattan in the school-room at present,” she explained. “I don't keep one because I have no use for one. I don't believe in corporal punishment.” She paused and her voice sank a little. “I can borrow one though,” she added gently.

“Oi'd be that obliged to youse for the lend of wan,” Mr. O'Quinn pronounced inflexibly.

“Dottie,” Miss Perry requested in her most dulcet tones, “go in Miss Hall's room and ask her if she will kindly lend Miss Perry her rattan.” Still tiptoeing, her face very serious, Dottie went.

There was dead silence. The class sat so still that the clock's ticking could be plainly heard. Miss Perry looked politely non-committal. Mr. O'Quinn looked grimly determined. Pat looked puzzled, but gradually and noiselessly he pulled his feet out of the aisle, put them together, and conjured from somewhere a ramrod for his back. Dottie returned apace. She started toward Miss Perry with the rattan, a sinewy-looking wand about a yard in length.

Illustration: IN ONE POWERFUL HAND HE CLUTCHED THE LIMP REMNANT OF PAT.

“Give it to Mr. O'Quinn,” the latter said blandly.

Mr. O'Quinn examined the temper of his blade. It bent sinuously under the urge of his thick fingers.

“It's a young club,” he muttered, “but it'ull do, Oi'm dunkin'. Come on out of there, ye young divule,” he called louder, waving a hand in Pat's direction.

Pat's face had been rapidly losing its look of bravado. He burst suddenly into tears. “I won't do it again, father,” he promised futilely.

“Come on out of this,” Mr. O'Quinn thundered. And Pat came slowly “out.” In fact, he may be said to have crept as he came down the aisle, and he snivelled as he moved.

His father seized him by the shoulder and looked inquiringly about him.

“In the dressing-room,” Miss Perry assisted him. She added a directing motion of her hand.

Mr. O'Quinn dragged his son into the dressing-room and shut the door. An amateur pandemonium ensued. Miss Perry said nothing. The class listened in silence. There was the steady sound of blows: some that whistled through the air and apparently missed Pat's writhing figure, and others that found with neatness and despatch the spot where they would do the most good. These last were in the majority. Howls, screams, and sobs, in Pat's familiar accents, reached them in a continuous stream; but O'Quinn senior was grimly silent.

After a while Miss Perry talked to her awed little flock. She pointed out to them that the way of the transgressor is hard, and that punishment is bound, sooner or later, to come. She called their attention to the fact that Mr. O'Quinn had come to school that morning feeling that Pat's teacher had been unjust to Pat, but he had had only to stay a little while to see what a naughty boy Pat really was, and how wickedly he was wasting all his time in play. And like all good parents, he realized that the best thing for Pat was to be punished, and punished in the presence of those who had seen how naughty he had been.

Once she was interrupted. The master of the school came in, raising inquiring eyebrows in the direction of the howls. Miss Perry explained the situation. He made no comment, but left immediately. The children observed that his shoulders were shaking. A theory gained ground, when they discussed the matter at recess that day, that he was too afraid of Mr. O'Quinn to stay and see him.

That gentleman emerged from the dressing-room after a while, his blue eyes no longer lowering, but jovial in expression. In one powerful hand he clutched the limp remnant of the cocksure Pat, and in the other the collection of splinters that had been the rattan. The former displayed to the class, when at his father's command and dictation he faced it and apologized in much detail for the way he had treated his teacher, a tear-stained and dirt-grimed face. The children listened breathlessly, and the effect of the episode was not destroyed when, with a resumption of his grand manner, Mr. O'Quinn harangued the class in regard to their duties as pupils of Miss Perry, as future voters of Precinct 14, and as embryo aldermen of the city of Boston. Miss Perry was not confused when he alluded to her as “the purtiest young jool of a teacher in the length and breadth of the whole war-r-rd.”

“And as fer whalin',” he concluded, “if there's anny whalin' to be done here sure O'im her man and glad to do it, son or no son.” That last phrase seemed to please him. “Son or no son,” he repeated, glowering fiercely at the class. But he did not glower when he turned to Miss Perry. His blue eyes twinkled, and suddenly one of them screwed up into an elephantine wink.