The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete
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.
CHAPTER IV
The sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful
village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family
worship: it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid
courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of
originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter of
the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.
Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to “get
his verses.” Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all his
energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the
Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter.
At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of his lesson,
but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human
thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. Mary took
his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through the
fog:
“Blessed are the—a—a—”
“Poor”—
“Yes—poor; blessed are the poor—a—a—”
“In spirit—”
“In spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for they—they—”
“_Theirs_—”
“For _theirs_. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they—they—”
“Sh—”
“For they—a—”
“S, H, A—”
“For they S, H—Oh, I don’t know what it is!”
“_Shall_!”
“Oh, _shall_! for they shall—for they shall—a—a—shall
mourn—a—a—blessed are they that shall—they that—a—they that
shall mourn, for they shall—a—shall _what_? Why don’t you tell me,
Mary?—what do you want to be so mean for?”
“Oh, Tom, you poor thick-headed thing, I’m not teasing you. I wouldn’t
do that. You must go and learn it again. Don’t you be discouraged, Tom,
you’ll manage it—and if you do, I’ll give you something ever so nice.
There, now, that’s a good boy.”
“All right! What is it, Mary, tell me what it is.”
“Never you mind, Tom. You know if I say it’s nice, it is nice.”
“You bet you that’s so, Mary. All right, I’ll tackle it again.”
And he did “tackle it again”—and under the double pressure of curiosity
and prospective gain he did it with such spirit that he accomplished a
shining success. Mary gave him a brand-new “Barlow” knife worth twelve
and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system
shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would not cut anything,
but it was a “sure-enough” Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur
in that—though where the Western boys ever got the idea that such a
weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury is an imposing
mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. Tom contrived to scarify the
cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin on the bureau, when he was
called off to dress for Sunday-school.
Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went
outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he
dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves;
poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the kitchen
and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the door. But
Mary removed the towel and said:
“Now ain’t you ashamed, Tom. You mustn’t be so bad. Water won’t hurt
you.”
Tom was a trifle disconcerted. The basin was refilled, and this time he
stood over it a little while, gathering resolution; took in a big breath
and began. When he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes shut
and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony of
suds and water was dripping from his face. But when he emerged from
the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped
short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask; below and beyond this line
there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in
front and backward around his neck. Mary took him in hand, and when she
was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of
color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls
wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [He privately
smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his
hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and his