Indeed, if he had not been a sturdy child he might have succumbed to his mother’s determination that he should linger close to death’s door. When he grew out of babyhood she dosed him for constipation. This was a bugbear of the Reverend John’s, and she was convinced that Hector had inherited it. Her husband took a large dose of castor oil every Saturday in order that his brain might be at its keenest on Sunday. But it was clear to her that such weekly dosing was not enough for a child, and Hector was plagued with syrups, pellets, suppositories and nastiness of every kind all the week through, and because his young bowels were never permitted to have a mind of their own, they behaved whimsically and he often had pains. Nor was constipation all. His mother believed that whenever a child had a white ring around its mouth, it was suffering from worms. Hector, whose inside was continually being churned with cathartics, very often had this symptom, and the worm powder was poured from its pink tissue wrapper upon his tongue, followed by a gobbet of jam which only made the dose more gritty and nauseous.

Because Hector was a growing boy, he was encouraged and indeed compelled by his mother to stuff himself, and though constipated and supposedly wormy he grew into a hearty lump of a lad, with thick, curly black hair, long eyelashes, solemn grey eyes and ruddy cheeks. When he was disturbed a dark flush crept over his face. It was this high colour, as much as anything, which made other boys dislike him. The children of Canada are not, in general, ruddy; hot summers, bitter winters and the heat of winter houses all combine to make them pale, though it is a healthy pallor. Church mothers agreed that “that young one of Reverend Mackilwraith’s looked as if he was going to have apoplexy any time”, and their sons resented and bullied Hector as something different from themselves.

He bore this bullying with stoicism. He felt that he was picked on because he was better than the others. There was no snobbery in this thought; it was the way of the world that a minister’s son should be better than other boys. He was even good-natured about it. But once he lost his temper.

He was being baited by a rat-faced boy, a Baptist—Hector knew the religious denomination of every child in the school, as a matter of course—who had brought a gang of his companions along to see the fun.

“Say fork,” said the Baptist, menacingly.

“Why?” asked Hector, backing against the wall of the school.

“Because I’ll soak yuh if yuh don’t,” said the tormentor, squinting and twisting his face menacingly. “G’wan, say fork.”

“Oh all right; fork,” said Hector.

“Got a hole in yer pants as big as New York,” screamed the Baptist. His admirers roared with laughter, but there was no mirth in it; under the microscope the meanness in the soul of a little boy cannot be distinguished from that in the heart of an adult fascist jailer.

“Now: say spoon.”

“Spoon.”

“Yah! Suck yer mother’s teat all afternoon!”

This Hector could not bear. Not for himself, but for his mother, he was suddenly possessed by anger. That this rat-face should speak of her so! He had but the dimmest notions about sex, and his mind shrank from the smutty, ignorant talk of the schoolyard, but he knew that his mother had been spoken of in a way which he could not tolerate, and live. His face turned its darkest red, and he went for Rat-face with both fists flying.

“Fight! Fight!” The schoolyard cry went up and in a few seconds there was a crowd around the two boys.

Rat-face fancied himself as a fighter. He was the sort of boy who moves from group to group in a playground, dancing and striking the air, and asking in a menacing voice if anybody wants a fight. Such boys rarely find anyone who dares to take the challenge. Hector knew nothing of fighting, but he was a heavy, powerful boy and he was angry as Highlanders are angry, with blood hissing in his head, and throbbing behind his eyes. Rat-face attempted to dance and feint, but Hector rushed in upon him, caring nothing for his blows, and hammered him until the astonished Rat-face gave up any pretence of fighting and tried to run away. But Hector seized him and swung him around with his back to the wall of the school. And there he punched and pummelled him until Rat-face, who was a puny child, fell down in a faint.

Then the cry went up! Hector Mackilwraith had killed Rat-face! Hector Mackilwraith was a brutal bully who had defied the conventions of dodging and feinting and pawing the air so dear to little boys, and had unfairly hit his opponent as hard as he could! Nobody dared to touch him, but they all screamed abuse. Shortly a teacher arrived, who shrieked when she saw blood running from Rat-face’s nose and mouth, and sent a boy to fetch the principal. The principal came on the run, and Hector was sent to his office to wait, while Rat-face was restored to such limited consciousness as his heredity and his fate permitted him to enjoy.

The principal was a just and mild man, who did not want to beat Hector if he could find a way out of it; Hector had never sinned before, and it was plain that there had been some unusual reason for his fury. But when he asked Hector to explain why he had beaten Rat-face into insensibility the boy would give no answer. How could he repeat, to an adult, those shameful words about his mother? How could an adult understand them? The disgrace, the filthiness of what Rat-face had said was linked with dark mysteries of which Hector had little knowledge, but an infinity of disgusted, fascinated surmise. It was clear that adults did not want children to know of these mysteries, for they never mentioned them. How, then, could Hector mention the unmentionable to the principal? How could he ever mention it to anyone who would understand? He knew that there was no way out of his predicament, and he stubbornly held his tongue.

The principal had no alternative but to beat him. Rat-face’s parents would expect it, and if he could not suggest to them that there had been fault on both sides they might complain to the school trustees. As beatings go, it was a mild affair. The principal got out the special strap authorized by the provincial Department of Education for the purpose, and gave Hector four strokes on each hand. But both the principal and Hector knew what was happening; a reputation was falling to ruin; Hector Mackilwraith, a preacher’s son, was Getting The Strap, and the shadow of corporal punishment had fallen across a pulpit. In such a community as that, the preachers formed a Sanhedrin, and as they were severe towards others, they were harshly judged when disgrace touched them.

It was thus that Hector, as a boy of eleven, brought his family into disgrace which lasted for perhaps a fortnight. It was agreed in the village that it had always been plain that the boy would break out, some day; it was agreed that his parents had done a poor job of bringing-up, and that if there had been more beating at home this public disgrace might have been avoided; it was agreed that preachers’ young ones were always the worst. And then a dark suspicion arose that somebody’s hired girl was carrying on with a married man who worked in the woodyard, and Hector’s fall from virtue was forgotten. But he did not forget it. His mother had wept over him, loving him the more in his disgrace; and he, knowing that it was because of her that he had fought, and knowing the utter impossibility of ever explaining to her why he had fought, loved her and grieved with an intensity which unobservant people would have supposed to be beyond his years.

Nobody at that school ever provoked him to fight again, and Rat-face became his toady and trumpeter. Thus Hector learned about one kind of love, and a valuable lesson about the way of the world, into the bargain.