Chapter Chapter 3 · CHAPTER III. Tom as a General—Triumph and Reward—Dismal

. CHAPTER III. Tom as a General—Triumph and Reward—Dismal

Tom presented himself before Aunt Polly, who was sitting by an

open window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bedroom,

breakfast-room, dining-room, and library, combined. The balmy summer

air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing

murmur of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her

knitting—for she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her

lap. Her spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. She had

thought that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at

seeing him place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. He

said: “Mayn’t I go and play now, aunt?”

“What, a’ready? How much have you done?”

“It’s all done, aunt.”

“Tom, don’t lie to me—I can’t bear it.”

“I ain’t, aunt; it _is_ all done.”

Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see for

herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent. of

Tom’s statement true. When she found the entire fence white-washed, and

not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even a

streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable. She

said:

“Well, I never! There’s no getting round it, you can work when you’re a

mind to, Tom.” And then she diluted the compliment by adding, “But it’s

powerful seldom you’re a mind to, I’m bound to say. Well, go ’long and

play; but mind you get back some time in a week, or I’ll tan you.”

She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took

him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him,

along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat

took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort.

And while she closed with a happy Scriptural flourish, he “hooked” a

doughnut.

Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway

that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and

the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a

hail-storm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties

and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect,

and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general

thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at

peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his

black thread and getting him into trouble.

Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by the

back of his aunt’s cow-stable. He presently got safely beyond the reach

of capture and punishment, and hastened toward the public square of the

village, where two “military” companies of boys had met for conflict,

according to previous appointment. Tom was General of one of these

armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These two

great commanders did not condescend to fight in person—that being better

suited to the still smaller fry—but sat together on an eminence

and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through

aides-de-camp. Tom’s army won a great victory, after a long and

hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged,

the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the

necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and

marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new

girl in the garden—a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow

hair plaited into two long-tails, white summer frock and embroidered

pantalettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A

certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a

memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction;

he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor

little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her; she had

confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest

boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time

she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is

done.

He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had

discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and

began to “show off” in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win

her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some time;

but by-and-by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous gymnastic

performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl was wending

her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and leaned on it,

grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer. She halted a

moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom heaved a great

sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face lit up,

right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment before she

disappeared.

The boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and

then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as

if he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction.

Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his

nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side,

in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally his

bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped

away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But only for a

minute—only while he could button the flower inside his jacket, next

his heart—or next his stomach, possibly, for he was not much posted in

anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway.

He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, “showing

off,” as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though Tom

comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some

window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. Finally he strode

home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions.

All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered “what

had got into the child.” He took a good scolding about clodding Sid, and

did not seem to mind it in the least. He tried to steal sugar under his

aunt’s very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. He said:

“Aunt, you don’t whack Sid when he takes it.”

“Well, Sid don’t torment a body the way you do. You’d be always into

that sugar if I warn’t watching you.”

Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his immunity,

reached for the sugar-bowl—a sort of glorying over Tom which was

wellnigh unbearable. But Sid’s fingers slipped and the bowl dropped and

broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even controlled

his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would not speak a

word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she

asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be

nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model “catch it.” He was

so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold himself when the old

lady came back and stood above the wreck discharging lightnings of wrath

from over her spectacles. He said to himself, “Now it’s coming!” And the

next instant he was sprawling on the floor! The potent palm was uplifted

to strike again when Tom cried out:

“Hold on, now, what ’er you belting _me_ for?—Sid broke it!”

Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But when

she got her tongue again, she only said:

“Umf! Well, you didn’t get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some

other audacious mischief when I wasn’t around, like enough.”

Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something

kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a

confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that.

So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.

Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart

his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the

consciousness of it. He would hang out no signals, he would take notice

of none. He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then,

through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He pictured

himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching

one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and

die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? And he pictured

himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and

his sore heart at rest. How she would throw herself upon him, and how

her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray God to give her back

her boy and she would never, never abuse him any more! But he would

lie there cold and white and make no sign—a poor little sufferer, whose

griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos of

these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to choke;

and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he winked,

and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. And such a luxury to

him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear to have any

worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too

sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin Mary danced

in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an age-long visit

of one week to the country, he got up and moved in clouds and darkness

out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in at the other.

He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate

places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the river

invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and contemplated

the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, that he could

only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without undergoing the

uncomfortable routine devised by nature. Then he thought of his flower.

He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal

felicity. He wondered if she would pity him if she knew? Would she

cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms around his neck and

comfort him? Or would she turn coldly away like all the hollow world?

This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable suffering that he

worked it over and over again in his mind and set it up in new and

varied lights, till he wore it threadbare. At last he rose up sighing

and departed in the darkness.

About half-past nine or ten o’clock he came along the deserted street to

where the Adored Unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell upon

his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the curtain

of a second-story window. Was the sacred presence there? He climbed the

fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till he stood under

that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion; then he laid him

down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon his back, with his

hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor wilted flower.

And thus he would die—out in the cold world, with no shelter over his

homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the death-damps from his brow,

no loving face to bend pityingly over him when the great agony came. And

thus _she_ would see him when she looked out upon the glad morning, and

oh! would she drop one little tear upon his poor, lifeless form, would

she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted,

so untimely cut down?

The window went up, a maid-servant’s discordant voice profaned the holy

calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr’s remains!

The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort. There was a whiz

as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound

as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the

fence and shot away in the gloom.

Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his

drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, Sid woke up; but if he

had any dim idea of making any “references to allusions,” he thought

better of it and held his peace, for there was danger in Tom’s eye.

Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made mental

note of the omission.