“Well,” Robert said gently, “I was thinking I wished you were dead, Miss Gildea. I was thinking I wished I could kill you.”

  Her first reaction was simply blank incomprehension. She had been standing not ten feet away when that car had skidded up on the sidewalk and crushed her mother’s life from her, and Miss Gildea had neither screamed nor fainted. She had stood there dumbly, because of the very unreality of the thing. Just the way she stood in court where they explained that the man got a year in jail, but didn’t have a dime to pay for the tragedy he had brought about. And now the orderly ranks of desks before her, the expanse of blackboard around her, and Robert’s face in the midst of it all were no more real. She found herself rising from her chair, walking toward Robert, who shrank back, his eyes wide and panicky, his elbow half lifted, as if to ward off a blow.

  ‘‘Do you understand what you’ve just said?” Miss Gildea demanded hoarsely.

  “No, Miss Gildea! Honest, I didn’t mean anything.”

  She shook her head unbelievingly. “Whatever made you say it? Whatever in the world could make a boy say a thing like that, such a wicked, terrible thing!”

  “You wanted to know! You kept asking me!”

  The sight of that protective elbow raised against her cut as deep as the incredible words had.

  “Put that arm down!” Miss Gildea said shrilly, and then struggled to get her voice under control. “In all my years I’ve never struck a child, and I don’t intend to start now!”

  Robert dropped his arm and clasped his bands together on his desk, and Miss Gildea, looking at the pinched white knuckles, realized with surprise that her own hands were shaking uncontrollably. ‘‘But if you think this little matter ends here, young-feller-me-lad,” she said, “you’ve got another thought coming. You get your things together, and we’re marching right up to Mr. Harkness. He’ll be very much interested in all this.”

  Mr. Harkness was the Principal. He had arrived only the term before, and but for his taste in eyeglasses (the large, black-rimmed kind which, Miss Gildea privately thought, looked actorish) and his predilection for the phrase “modern pedagogical methods” was, in her opinion, a rather engaging young man.

  He looked at Robert’s frightened face and then at Miss Gildea’s pursed lips. “Well,” he said pleasantly, “what seems to be the trouble here?”

  “That,” said Miss Gildea, “is something I think Robert should tell you about.”

  She placed a hand on Robert’s shoulder, but he pulled away and backed slowly toward Mr. Harkness, his breath coming in loud, shuddering sobs, his eyes riveted on Miss Gildea as if she were the only thing in the room beside himself. Mr. Harkness put an arm around Robert and frowned at Miss Gildea.

  “Now, what’s behind all this, Miss Gildea? The boy seems frightened to death.”

  Miss Gildea found herself sick of it all, anxious to get out of the room, away from Robert. “That’s enough, Robert,” she commanded. “Just tell Mr. Harkness exactly what happened.”

  “I said the boy was frightened to death, Miss Gildea,” Mr. Harkness said brusquely. “We’ll talk about it as soon as he understands we’re his friends. Won’t we, Robert?”

  Robert shook his head vehemently. “I didn’t do anything bad! Miss Gildea said I didn’t do anything bad!”

  “Well, then!” said Mr. Harkness triumphantly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?”

  Robert shook his head again. “She said I had to stay in after school.”

  Mr. Harkness glanced sharply at Miss Gildea. “I suppose he missed the morning bus, is that it? And after I said in a directive that the staff was to make allowances—”

  “Robert doesn’t use a bus,” Miss Gildea protested. “Perhaps I’d better explain all this, Mr. Harkness. You see—”

  “I think Robert’s doing very well,” Mr. Harkness said, and tightened his arm around Robert, who nodded shakily.

  “She kept me in,” he said, “and then when we were alone, she came up close to me and she said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you’d like to see me dead! You’re thinking you’d like to kill me, aren’t you?’”

  Robert’s voice had dropped to an eerie whisper that bound Miss Gildea like a spell. It was broken only when she saw the expression on Mr. Harkness’ face.

  “Why, that’s a lie!” she cried. “That’s the most dreadful lie I ever heard any boy dare—”

  Mr. Harkness cut in abruptly. “Miss Gildea! I insist you let the boy finish what he has to say.”

  Miss Gildea’s voice fluttered. “It seems to me, Mr. Harkness, that he has been allowed to say quite enough already!”

  “Has he?” Mr. Harkness asked.

  “Robert has been inattentive lately, especially so this afternoon. After class I asked him what he had been thinking about, and he dared to say he was thinking how he wished I were dead! How he wanted to kill me!”

  “Robert said that?”

  “In almost those exact words. And I can tell you, Mr. Harkness, that I was shocked, terribly shocked, especially since Robert always seemed like such a nice boy.”

  “His record—?”

  “His record is quite good. It’s just—”

  “And his social conduct?” asked Mr. Harkness in the same level voice.

  “As far as I know, he gets along with the other children well enough.”

  “But for some reason,” persisted Mr. Harkness, “you found him annoying you.”

  Robert raised his voice. “I didn’t! Miss Gildea said I didn’t do anything bad. And I always liked her. I like her better than any teacher!”

  Miss Gildea fumbled blindly in her hair for the silver pencil, and failed to find it. She looked around the floor distractedly.

  “Yes?” said Mr. Harkness.

  “My pencil,” said Miss Gildea on the verge of tears. “It’s gone.”

  “Surely, Miss Gildea,” said Mr. Harkness in a tone of mild exasperation, “this is not quite the moment—”

  “It was very valuable,” Miss Gildea tried to explain hopelessly. “It was my mother’s.”

  In the face of Mr. Harkness’ stony surveillance, she knew she must look a complete mess. Hems crooked, nose red, hair all disheveled. “I’m all upset, Mr. Harkness. It’s been a long term and now all this right at the end of it. I don’t know what to say.”

  Mr. Harkness’ face fell into sympathetic lines.

  “That’s quite all right, Miss Gildea. I know how you feel. Now, if you want to leave, I think Robert and I should have a long, friendly talk.”

  “If you don’t mind—”

  “No, no,” Mr. Harkness said heartily. “As a matter of fact, I think that would be the best thing all around.”

  After he had seen her out, he closed the door abruptly behind her, and Miss Gildea walked heavily up the stairway and down the corridor to the sixth-grade room. The silver pencil was there on the floor at Robert’s desk, and she picked it up and carefully polished it with her handkerchief. Then she sat down at her desk with the handkerchief to her nose and wept soundlessly for ten minutes.

  That night, when the bitter taste of humiliation had grown faint enough to permit it, Miss Gildea reviewed the episode with all the honesty at her command. Honesty with oneself had always been a major point in her credo, had, in fact, been passed on through succeeding classes during the required lesson on The Duties of an American Citizen, when Miss Gildea, to sum up the lesson, would recite: “This above all, To thine ownself be true…” while thumping her fist on her desk as an accompaniment to each syllable.

  Hamlet, of course, was not in the syllabus of the Sixth Grade, whose reactions over the years never deviated from a mixed bewilderment and indifference. But Miss Gildea, after some prodding of the better minds into a discussion of the lines, would rest content with the knowledge that she had sown good seed on what, she prayed, was fertile ground.

  Reviewing the case of Robert now, with her emotions under control, she came to the unhappy conclusion that it was she who had committed the injustice. The child had been ordered to stay after school, something that to him could mean only a punishment. He had been ordered to disclose some shadowy, childlike thoughts that had drifted through his mind hours before, and, unable to do so, either had to make up something out of the whole cloth, or blurt out the immediate thought in his immature mind.

  It was hardly unusual, reflected Miss Gildea sadly, for a child badgered by a teacher to think what Robert had; she could well remember her own feelings toward a certain pompadoured harridan who still haunted her dreams. And the only conclusion to be drawn, unpleasant though it was, was that Robert, and not she, had truly put into practice those beautiful words from Shakespeare.

  It was this, as well as the sight of his pale accusing face before her while she led the class through the morning session next day, which prompted her to put Robert in charge of refilling the water pitcher during recess. The duties of the water pitcher monitor were to leave the playground a little before the rest of the class and clean and refill the pitcher on her desk, but since the task was regarded as an honor by the class, her gesture, Miss Gildea felt with some self-approval, carried exactly the right note of conciliation.

  She was erasing the blackboard at the front of the room near the end of the recess when she heard Robert approaching her desk, but much as she wanted to, she could not summon up courage enough to turn and face him. As if, she thought, he were the teacher, and I were afraid of him. And she could feel her cheeks grow warm at the thought.

  He re-entered the room on the sound of the bell that marked the end of recess, and this time Miss Gildea plopped the eraser firmly into its place beneath the blackboard and turned to look at him. “Thank you very much, Robert,” she said as he set the pitcher down and neatly capped it with her drinking glass.

  “You’re welcome, Miss Gildea,” Robert said politely. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his hands with it, then smiled gently at Miss Gildea. “I bet you think I put poison or something into that water,’’ he said gravely, “but I wouldn’t do anything like that, Miss Gildea. Honest, I wouldn’t.”

  Miss Gildea gasped, then reached out a hand toward Robert’s shoulder. She withdrew it hastily when he shrank away with the familiar panicky look in his eyes.

  “Why did you say that, Robert?” Miss Gildea demanded in a terrible voice. “That was plain impudence, wasn’t it? You thought you were being smart, didn’t you?”

  At that moment the rest of the class surged noisily into the room, but Miss Gildea froze them into silence with a commanding wave of the hand. Out of the corner of her eye she noted the cluster of shocked and righteous faces allied with her in condemnation, and she felt a quick little sense of triumph in her position.

  “I was talking to you, Robert,” she said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Robert took another step backward and almost tumbled over a schoolbag left carelessly in the aisle. He caught himself, then stood there helplessly, his eyes never leaving Miss Gildea’s.

  “Well, Robert?”

  He shook his head wildly. “I didn’t do it!” he cried. “I didn’t put anything in your water, Miss Gildea! I told you I didn’t!”

  Without looking, Miss Gildea knew that the cluster of accusing faces had swung toward her now, felt her triumph tum to a sick bewilderment inside her. It was as if Robert, with his teary eyes and pale, frightened face and too-large ears, had turned into a strange jellylike creature that could not be pinned down and put in its place. As if he were retreating further and further down some dark, twisting path, and leading her on with him. And, she thought desperately, she had to pull herself free before she did something dreadful, something unforgivable.

  She couldn’t take the boy to Mr. Harkness again. Not only did the memory of that scene in his office the day before make her shudder, but a repeated visit would be an admission that after thirty-eight years of teaching she was not up to the mark as a disciplinarian.

  But for her sake, if for nothing else, Robert had to be put in his place. With a gesture, Miss Gildea ordered the rest of the class to their seats and turned to Robert, who remained standing.

  “Robert,” said Miss Gildea, “I want an apology for what has just happened.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Gildea,” Robert said, and it looked as if his eyes would be brimming with tears in another moment.

  Miss Gildea hardened her heart to this. “I apologize, Miss Gildea, and it will not happen again,” she prompted.

  Miraculously, Robert contained his tears. “I apologize, Miss Gildea, and it will not happen again,” he muttered and dropped limply into his seat.

  “Well!” said Miss Gildea, drawing a deep breath as she looked around at the hushed class. “Perhaps that will be a lesson to us all.” The classroom work did not go well after that, but, as Miss Gildea told herself, there were only a few days left to the end of the term, and after that, praise be, there was the garden, the comfortable front porch of the old house to share with neighbors in the summer evenings, and then next term a new set of faces in the classroom, with Robert’s not among them.

  Later, closing the windows of the room after the class had left, Miss Gildea was brought up short by the sight of a large group gathered on the sidewalk near the parked busses. It was Robert, she saw, surrounded by most of the Sixth Grade, and obviously the center of interest. He was nodding emphatically when she put her face to the window, and she drew back quickly at the sight, moved by some queer sense of guilt.

  Only a child, she assured herself, he’s only a child, but that thought did not in any way dissolve the anger against him that stuck like a lump in her throat.

  That was on Thursday. By Tuesday of the next week, the final week of the term, Miss Gildea was acutely conscious of the oppressive atmosphere lying over the classroom. Ordinarily, the awareness of impending vacation acted on the class like a violent agent dropped into some inert liquid. There would be ferment and seething beneath the surface, manifested by uncontrollable giggling and whispering, and this would grow more and more turbulent until all restraint and discipline was swept away in the general upheaval of excitement and good spirits.

  That, Miss Gildea thought, was the way it always had been. But it was strangely different now. The Sixth Grade, down to the most irrepressible spirits in it, acted as if it had been turned to a set of robots before her startled eyes. Hands tightly clasped on desks, eyes turned toward her with an almost frightening intensity, the class responded to her mildest requests as if they were shouted commands. And when she walked down the aisles between them, one and all seemed to have adopted Robert’s manner of shrinking away fearfully at her approach.

  Miss Gildea did not like to think of what all this might mean, but valiantly forced herself to do so. Can it mean, she asked herself, that all think as Robert does, are choosing this way of showing it? And, if they knew how cruel it was, would they do it?

  Other teachers, Miss Gildea knew, sometimes took problems such as this to the Teacher’s Room, where they could be studied and answered by those who saw them in an objective light. It might be that the curious state of the Sixth Grade was being duplicated in other classes. Perhaps she herself was imagining the whole thing, or, frightening thought, looking back, as people will when they grow old, on the sort of past that never really did exist. Why, in that case—and Miss Gildea had to laugh at herself with a faint merriment—he would just find herself reminiscing about her thirty-eight years of teaching to some bored young woman who didn’t have the fraction of experience she did.

  But underneath the current of these thoughts, Miss Gildea knew there was one honest reason for not going to the Teacher’s Room this last week of the term. She had received no gifts, not one. And the spoils from each grade heaped high in a series of pyramids against the wall, the boxes of fractured cookies, the clumsily wrapped jars of preserves, the scarves, the stockings, the handkerchiefs, infinite, endless boxes of handkerchiefs, all were there to mark the triumph of each teacher. And Miss Gildea, who in all her years at District School Number Three had been blushingly proud of the way her pyramid was highest at the end of each term, had not yet received a single gift from the Sixth Grade class.

  After the class was dismissed that afternoon, however, the spell was broken. Only a few of her pupils still loitered in the hallway near the door, Miss Gildea noted, but Robert remained in his seat. Then, as she gathered together her belongings, Robert approached her with a box outheld in his hand. It was, from its shape, a box of candy. Automatically, she reached a hand out, then stopped herself short. He’ll never make up to me for what he’s done, she told herself furiously; I’ll never let him.

  “Yes, Robert?” she said coolly.

  “It’s a present for you, Miss Gildea,” Robert said, and then as Miss Gildea watched in fascination, he began to strip the wrappings from it. He laid the paper neatly on the desk and lifted the cover of the box to display the chocolates within. “My mother said that’s the biggest box they had,” he said wistfully. “Don’t you even want them, Miss Gildea?”

  Miss Gildea weakened despite herself. “Did you think I would, after what’s happened, Robert?” she asked.

  Robert reflected a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “if you want me to, I’ll eat one right in front of you, Miss Gildea.”

  Miss Gildea recoiled as if at a faraway warning. Don’t let him say any more, something inside her cried; he’ s only playing a trick, another horrible trick, and then she was saying, “Why would I want you to do that, Robert?”

  “So you’ll see they’re not poison or anything, Miss Gildea,” Robert said. “Then you’ll believe it, won’t you, Miss Gildea?”

  She had been prepared. Even before he said the words, she had felt her body drawing itself tighter and tighter against what she knew was coming. But the sound of the words themselves only served to release her like a spring coiled too tightly.

  “You little monster!” sobbed Miss Gildea and struck wildly at the proffered box, which flew almost to the far wall, while chocolates cascaded stickily around the room. “How dare you!” she cried. “How dare you!” and her small bony fists beat at Robert’s cowering shoulders and back as he tried to retreat.

 

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