Page 21 of The Rake's Daughter
“Oh,” Leo said, shocked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“No, because I haven’t told a soul. And if it gets out now, I’ll know who to blame.”
“I would never—”
“No, but you see, if they don’t know, they can’t hurt you.”
Leo frowned, turning it over in his mind.
Randall added, “Some of the fellows here look for vulnerability in others.” Seeing that Leo didn’t understand the word, he added, “Ways they can hurt or upset people. Like saying mean things about your mother. Or picking on someone because they’re small or look funny or stutter or wet the bed or different in any way. They don’t actually care what it is—they do it because they can.”
Leo nodded. He knew he wasn’t the only one who was bullied and picked on.
Randall continued, “So I pretend that nothing matters, that life is just a lark, and nobody bothers me—well, the masters do, but that’s their job, I suppose. You, on the other hand, walk around with an expression on your face that might as well be a sign that readsKick Me. And so they do, and you obligingly fight back, and so a boring day of dreary lessons is enlivened with a fight.”
Leo could see his point, but still... “But I miss my mama, and I hate it when they say bad things about her.”
“I know. I miss my mother, too. But do you think itwould make your mother happy to know that you’re getting into fights every day, because of her?”
“No,” Leo said in a small voice.
“And do you want those clods to keep winning?”
“No, but they’re bigger than me.”
“So be smarter.”
“How?”
“Stop dancing to their tune.”
“Dancing? But I’m not dan—”
“I mean reacting every time they taunt or tease you or say mean things about your mother. They only do it because they get a reaction.”
“But—”
“Look, it’s your choice. Keep fighting—I don’t care—or learn to shrug it off. I play the clown, but you don’t have to do it my way. Be a tortoise, develop a shell. You don’t see a tortoise losing its temper, do you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen a tortoise.”
Randall laughed. “Well, think about it anyway. Now hush, I need to get this Latin translation finished or I’ll never get out of here.”
Leo returned to his own exercise, but his mind was full of the ideas planted there by the older boy. The idea that you could think andchoosehow to be, instead of simply reacting. It was as if he’d been struggling grimly down a long, dark, hopeless tunnel, and suddenly there was a chink of light, showing a different path. It made all the difference in the world.
He’d watched Race Randall after that and learned that sometimes a sharp, funny comment could change the way people reacted, and that sometimes it was possible to defuse a situation without having to back down—because he refused to back down and be called a coward. Either way, it was a choice he could make.
Leo could never be the kind of witty, entertaining, popular boy that Randall was—he was too naturally serious forthat—but he learned to deal with hurtful or upsetting comments designed to provoke, and to choose when to fight and when not to. And Randall had shown him another way of winning, to turn the tables on his tormenters by not reacting and appearing not to care.
After that, Leo started to make friends, and having friends, he found, made all the difference in the world at school. And despite the years between them, Race Randall remained a friend.
And years later they were still friends.
They returned to the club, bathed, changed and met again in the club dining room for dinner. After a hearty dinner of roast beef—Leo had missed good English food—a waiter brought them a very fine port, and they settled down in front of a cozy fire.
“Now, Leo,” Race said, swirling his port and inhaling the aroma, “what—or should I say who—has got you all hot and bothered. A woman, is it?”
“No, not in the way you’re thinking,” he said, though that was a lie. “And there are two of them.” He briefly explained the situation to his friend—the mistaken title in the will, the unwanted guardianship, and the problem of Studley’s by-blow.
