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Chapter III
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
whitewashed, 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 *** 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 *** 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.