Go Set a Watchman (To Kill a Mockingbird #2)(67)

It was easy to be absent from a study hall Mr. Tuffett guarded. He took little personal interest in his students, knowing only the more uninhibited by name. Seats were assigned in the library, but if one made clear one’s desire not to attend, the ranks closed; the person on the end of one’s row set the remaining chair in the hall outside and replaced it when the period was over.

Jean Louise paid no attention to her English teacher, and fifty anxious minutes later was stopped by Henry on the way to her civics class.

“Now listen,” he said tersely. “Do exactly as I tell you: you’re gonna tell him. Write—” he handed her a pencil and she opened her notebook.

“Write, ‘Dear Mr. Tuffett. They look like mine.’ Sign your full name. Better copy it over in ink so he’ll believe it. Now just before noon you go and give it to him. Got it?”

She nodded. “Just before noon.”

When she went to civics she knew it was out. Groups of students were clustered in the hall mumbling and laughing. She endured grins and friendly winks with equanimity—they almost made her feel better. It’s grown people who always believe the worst, she thought, confident that her contemporaries believed no more nor less than what Jem and Hank had circulated. But why did they tell it? They’d be kidded forever: they wouldn’t care because they were graduating, but she would have to sit there for three more years. No, Miss Muffett would expel her and Atticus would send her off somewhere. Atticus would hit the ceiling when Miss Muffett told him the gory story. Oh well, it’d get Hank out of a mess. He and Jem were awfully gallant for a while but she was right in the end. It was the only thing to do.

She wrote out her confession in ink, and as noon drew near, her spirits flagged. Normally there was nothing she enjoyed more than a row with Miss Muffett, who was so thick one could say almost anything to him provided one was careful to maintain a grave and sorrowful countenance, but today she had no taste for dialectics. She felt nervous and she despised herself for it.

She was faintly queasy when she walked down the hall to his office. He had called it obscene and depraved in assembly; what would he say to the town? Maycomb thrived on rumors, there would be all kinds of stories getting back to Atticus—

Mr. Tuffett was sitting behind his desk, gazing testily at its top. “What do you want?” he said, without looking up.

“I wanted to give you this, sir,” she said, backing away instinctively.

Mr. Tuffett took her note, wadded it up without reading it, and threw it at the wastepaper basket.

Jean Louise had the sensation of being floored by a feather.

“Ah, Mr. Tuffett,” she said. “I came to tell you like you said. I—I got ’em at Ginsberg’s,” she added gratuitously. “I didn’t mean any—”

Mr. Tuffett looked up, his face reddening with anger. “Don’t you stand there and tell me what you didn’t mean! Never in my experience have I come across—”

Now she was in for it.

But as she listened she received the impression that Mr. Tuffett’s were general remarks directed more to the student body than to her, they were an echo of his early morning feelings. He was concluding with a précis on the unhealthy attitudes engendered by Maycomb County when she interrupted:

“Mr. Tuffett, I just want to say everybody’s not to blame for what I did—you don’t have to take it out on everybody.”

Mr. Tuffett gripped the edge of his desk and said between clenched teeth, “For that bit of impudence you may remain one hour after school, young lady!”

She took a deep breath. “Mr. Tuffett,” she said, “I think there’s been a mistake. I really don’t quite—”

“You don’t, do you? Then I’ll show you!”

Mr. Tuffett snatched up a thick pile of loose-leaf notebook paper and waved it at her.

“You, Miss, are the hundred and fifth!”

Jean Louise examined the sheets of paper. They were all alike. On each was written “Dear Mr. Tuffett. They look like mine,” and signed by every girl in the school from the ninth grade upward.

She stood for a moment in deep thought; unable to think of anything to say to help Mr. Tuffett, she stole quietly out of his office.

“He’s a beaten man,” said Jem, when they were riding home to dinner. Jean Louise sat between her brother and Henry, who had listened soberly to her account of Mr. Tuffett’s state of mind.

“Hank, you are an absolute genius,” she said. “What ever gave you the idea?”