Part 8

“But I won’t.”

“Yes, but if you should?”

“Why then you would pull me out.”

“But if I wouldn’t pull you out?”

“But I know you would; wouldn’t you, Paul?”

“What makes you think so, Bella?”

“Because you love Bella.”

“How do you know I love Bella?”

“Because once you told me so; and because you pick flowers for me that I can not reach; and because you let me take your rod, when you have a fish upon it.”

“But that’s no reason, Bella.”

“Then what is, Paul?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Bella.”

A little fish has been nibbling for a long time at the bait; the cork has been bobbing up and down—and now he is fairly hooked, and pulls away toward the bank, and you can not see the cork.

—“Here, Bella, quick!”—and she springs eagerly to clasp her little hands around the rod. But the fish has dragged it away on the other side of me; and as she reaches farther, and farther, she slips, cries—“Oh, Paul!” and falls into the water.

The stream they told us, when we came, was over a man’s head—it is surely over little Isabel’s. I fling down the rod, and thrusting one hand into the roots that support the overhanging bank, I grasp at her hat, as she comes up; but the ribbons give way, and I see the terribly earnest look upon her face as she goes down again. Oh, my mother—thought I—if you were only here!

But she rises again; this time I thrust my hand into her dress, and struggling hard, keep her at the top until I can place my foot down upon a projecting root; and, so bracing myself, I drag her to the bank, and having climbed up, take hold of her belt firmly with both hands, and drag her out; and poor Isabel, choked, chilled, and wet, is lying upon the grass.

I commence crying aloud. The workmen in the fields hear me, and come down. One takes Isabel in his arms, and I follow on foot to our uncle’s home upon the hill.

—“Oh, my dear children!” says my mother; and she takes Isabel in her arms; and presently, with dry clothes and blazing wood fire, little Bella smiles again. I am at my mother’s knee.

“I told you so, Paul,” says Isabel—“aunty, doesn’t Paul love me?”

“I hope so, Bella,” said my mother.

“I know so,” said I; and kissed her cheek.

And how did I know it? The boy does not ask; the man does. Oh, the freshness, the honesty, the vigor of a boy’s heart! how the memory of it refreshes like the first gush of spring, or the break of an April shower!

But boyhood has its PRIDE as well as its LOVES.

My uncle is a tall, hard-faced man; I fear him when he calls me—“child;” I love him when he calls me—“Paul.” He is almost always busy with his books; and when I steal into the library door, as I sometimes do, with a string of fish, or a heaping basket of nuts to show him—he looks for a moment curiously at them, sometimes takes them in his fingers—gives them back to me, and turns over the leaves of his book. You are afraid to ask him if you have not worked bravely; yet you want to do so.

You sidle out softly, and go to your mother; she scarce looks at your little stores; but she draws you to her with her arm, and prints a kiss upon your forehead. Now your tongue is unloosened; that kiss and that action have done it; you will tell what capital luck you have had; and you hold up your tempting trophies; “are they not great, mother?” But she is looking in your face, and not at your prize.

“Take them, mother,” and you lay the basket upon her lap.

“Thank you Paul, I do not wish them: but you must give some to Bella.”

And away you go to find laughing, playful, cousin Isabel. And we sit down together on the grass, and I pour out my stores between us. “You shall take, Bella, what you wish in your apron, and then when study hours are over, we will have such a time down by the big rock in the meadow!”

“But I do not know if papa will let me,” says Isabel.

“Bella,” I say, “do you love your papa?”

“Yes,” says Bella, “why not?”

“Because he is so cold; he does not kiss you, Bella, so often as my mother does; and, besides, when he forbids your going away, he does not say, as mother does—my little girl will be tired, she had better not go—but he says only—Isabel must not go. I wonder what makes him talk so?”

“Why, Paul, he is a man, and doesn’t—at any rate, I love him, Paul. Besides, my mother is sick, you know.”

“But Isabel, my mother will be your mother, too. Come, Bella, we will go ask her if we may go.”

And there I am, the happiest of boys, pleading with the kindest of mothers. And the young heart leans into that mother’s heart—none of the void now that will overtake it like an opening Korah gulf, in the years that are to come. It is joyous, full, and running over!

“You may go,” she says, “if your uncle is willing.”

“But mamma, I am afraid to ask him, I do not believe he loves me.”

“Don’t say so, Paul,” and she draws you to her side, as if she would supply by her own love the lacking love of a universe.

“Go, with your cousin Isabel, and ask him kindly; and if he says no—make no reply.”

And with courage, we go hand in hand, and steal in at the library door. There he sits—I seem to see him now—in the old wainscoted room, covered over with books and pictures; and he wears his heavy-rimmed spectacles, and is poring over some big volume, full of hard words, that are not in any spelling-book. We step up softly; and Isabel lays her little hand upon his arm; and he turns, and says—“Well, my little daughter?”

I ask if we may go down to the big rock in the meadow?

He looks at Isabel, and says he is afraid—“we can not go.”

“But why, uncle? It is only a little way, and we will be very careful.”

“I am afraid, my children; do not say any more: you can have the pony, and Tray, and play at home.”

“But, uncle—”

“You need say no more, my child.”

I pinch the hand of little Isabel, and look in her eye—my own half-filling with tears. I feel that my forehead is flushed, and I hide it behind Bella’s tresses—whispering to her at the same time—“Let us go.”

“What, sir,” says my uncle, mistaking my meaning—“do you persuade her to disobey?”

Now I am angry, and say blindly—“No, sir, I didn’t!” And then my rising pride will not let me say that I wished only Isabel should go out with me.

Bella cries; and I shrink out; and am not easy until I have run to bury my head in my mother’s bosom. Alas! pride can not always find such covert! There will be times when it will harass you strangely; when it will peril friendships—will sever old, standing intimacy; and then—no resource but to feed on its own bitterness. Hateful pride!—to be conquered, as a man would conquer an enemy, or it will make whirlpools in the current of your affections—nay, turn the whole tide of the heart into rough, and unaccustomed channels.

But boyhood has its GRIEF, too, apart from PRIDE.

You love the old dog, Tray; and Bella loves him as well as you. He is a noble old fellow, with shaggy hair, and long ears, and big paws, that he will put up into your hand, if you ask him. And he never gets angry when you play with him, and tumble him over in the long grass, and pull his silken ears. Sometimes, to be sure, he will open his mouth, as if he would bite, but when he gets your hand fairly in his jaws he will scarce leave the print of his teeth upon it. He will swim, too, bravely, and bring ashore all the sticks you throw upon the water; and when you fling a stone to tease him, he swims round and round, and whines, and looks sorry that he can not find it.

He will carry a heaping basket full of nuts, too, in his mouth, and never spill one of them; and when you come out to your uncle’s home in the spring, after staying a whole winter in the town, he knows you—old Tray does! And he leaps upon you, and lays his paws on your shoulder, and licks your face; and is almost as glad to see you as cousin Bella herself. And when you put Bella on his back for a ride, he only pretends to bite her little feet—but he wouldn’t do it for the world. Ay, Tray is a noble old dog!

But one summer, the farmers say that some of their sheep are killed, and that the dogs have worried them; and one of them comes to talk with my uncle about it.

But Tray never worried sheep; you know he never did; and so does nurse; and so does Bella; for in the spring, she had a pet lamb, and Tray never worried little Fidele.

And one or two of the dogs that belong to the neighbors are shot; though nobody knows who shot them; and you have great fears about poor Tray; and try to keep him at home, and fondle him more than ever. But Tray will sometimes wander off; till finally, one afternoon, he comes back whining piteously, and with his shoulder all bloody.

Little Bella cries loud; and you almost cry, as nurse dresses the wound; and poor old Tray whines very sadly. You pat his head, and Bella pats him; and you sit down together by him on the floor of the porch, and bring a rug for him to lie upon; and try and tempt him with a little milk, and Bella brings a piece of cake for him—but he will eat nothing. You sit up till very late, long after Bella has gone to bed, patting his head, and wishing you could do something for poor Tray; but he only licks your hand, and whines more piteously than ever.

In the morning you dress early and hurry downstairs; but Tray is not lying on the rug; and you run through the house to find him, and whistle, and call—Tray—Tray! At length you see him lying in his old place, out by the cherry tree, and you run to him; but he does not start; and you lean down to pat him—but he is cold, and the dew is wet upon him—poor Tray is dead!

You take his head upon your knees, and pat again those glossy ears, and cry; but you can not bring him to life. And Bella comes, and cries with you. You can hardly bear to have him put in the ground; but uncle says he must be buried. So one of the workmen digs a grave under the cherry tree, where he died—a deep grave, and they round it over with earth, and smooth the sods upon it—even now I can trace Tray’s grave.

You and Bella together put up a little slab for a tombstone; and she hangs flowers upon it, and ties them there with a bit of ribbon. You can scarce play all that day; and afterward, many weeks later, when you are rambling over the fields, or lingering by the brook, throwing off sticks into the eddies, you think of old Tray’s shaggy coat, and of his big paw, and of his honest eye; and the memory of your boyish grief comes upon you; and you say with tears, “Poor Tray!” And Bella, too, in her sad sweet tones, says—“Poor old Tray—he is dead!”

SCHOOL DAYS

THE morning was cloudy and threatened rain; besides, it was autumn weather, and the winds were getting harsh, and rustling among the tree-tops that shaded the house most dismally. I did not dare to listen. If, indeed, I were to stay by the bright fires of home, and gather the nuts as they fell, and pile up the falling leaves to make great bonfires, with Ben and the rest of the boys, I should have liked to listen, and would have braved the dismal morning with the cheerfullest of them all. For it would have been a capital time to light a fire in the little oven we had built under the wall; it would have been so pleasant to warm our fingers at it, and to roast the great russets on the flat stones that made the top.

But this was not in store for me. I had bid the town boys good-by the day before; my trunk was all packed; I was to go away—to school. The little oven would go to ruin—I knew it would. I was to leave my home. I was to bid my mother good-by, and Lilly, and Isabel, and all the rest; and was to go away from them so far that I should only know what they were all doing—in letters. It _was_ sad. And then to have the clouds come over on that morning, and the winds sigh so dismally; oh, it was too bad, I thought!

It comes back to me as I lie here this bright spring morning as if it were only yesterday. I remember that the pigeons skulked under the eaves of the carriage-house, and did not sit, as they used to do in summer, upon the ridge; and the chickens huddled together about the stable doors, as if they were afraid of the cold autumn. And in the garden the white hollyhocks stood shivering, and bowed to the wind, as if their time had come. The yellow musk-melons showed plain among the frost-bitten vines, and looked cold and uncomfortable.

—Then they were all so kind, indoors! The cook made such nice things for my breakfast, because little master was going; Lilly _would_ give me her seat by the fire, and would put her lump of sugar in my cup; and my mother looked so smiling, and so tenderly, that I thought I loved her more than I ever did before. Little Ben was so gay, too; and wanted me to take his jackknife, if I wished it—though he knew that I had a brand new one in my trunk. The old nurse slipped a little purse into my hand, tied up with a green ribbon—with money in it—and told me not to show it to Ben or Lilly.

And cousin Isabel, who was there on a visit, would come to stand by my chair, when my mother was talking to me; and put her hand in mine, and look up into my face; but she did not say a word. I thought it was very odd; and yet it did not seem odd to me that I could say nothing to her. I dare say we felt alike.

At length Ben came running in, and said the coach had come; and there, sure enough, out of the window, we saw it—a bright yellow coach, with four white horses, and band-boxes all over the top, with a great pile of trunks behind. Ben said it was a grand coach, and that he should like a ride in it; and the old nurse came to the door, and said I should have a capital time; but, somehow, I doubted if the nurse was talking honestly. I believe she gave me an honest kiss though—and such a hug!

But it was nothing to my mother’s. Tom told me to be a man, and study like a Trojan; but I was not thinking about study then. There was a tall boy in the coach, and I was ashamed to have him see me cry; so I didn’t, at first. But I remember, as I looked back and saw little Isabel run out into the middle of the street to see the coach go off, and the curls floating behind her, as the wind freshened, I felt my heart leaping into my throat, and the water coming into my eyes, and how just then I caught sight of the tall boy glancing at me—and how I tried to turn it off by looking to see if I could button up my greatcoat a great deal lower down than the buttonholes went.

But it was of no use; I put my head out of the coach window, and looked back, as the little figure of Isabel faded, and then the house, and the trees; and the tears did come; and I smuggled my handkerchief outside without turning; so that I could wipe my eyes before the tall boy should see me. They say that these shadows of morning fade, as the sun brightens into noonday; but they are very dark shadows for all that!

Let the father or the mother think long before they send away their boy—before they break the home-ties that make a web of infinite fineness and soft silken meshes around his heart, and toss him aloof into the boy-world, where he must struggle up amid bickerings and quarrels, into his age of youth! There are boys, indeed, with little fineness in the texture of their hearts, and with little delicacy of soul; to whom the school in a distant village is but a vacation from home; and with whom a return revives all those grosser affections which alone existed before; just as there are plants which will bear all exposure without the wilting of a leaf, and will return to the hot-house life as strong and as hopeful as ever. But there are others to whom the severance from the prattle of sisters, the indulgent fondness of a mother, and the unseen influences of the home altar, gives a shock that lasts forever; it is wrenching with cruel hand what will bear but little roughness; and the sobs with which the adieux are said are sobs that may come back in the after years, strong, and steady, and terrible.

God have mercy on the boy who learns to sob early! Condemn it as sentiment, if you will; talk as you will of the fearlessness, and strength of the boy’s heart—yet there belong to many, tenderly strung chords of affection which give forth low and gentle music that consoles and ripens the ear for all the harmonies of life. These chords a little rude and unnatural tension will break, and break forever. Watch your boy then, if so be he will bear the strain; try his nature, if it be rude or delicate; and, if delicate, in God’s name, do not, as you value your peace and his, breed a harsh youth spirit in him that shall take pride in subjugating and forgetting the delicacy and richness of his finer affections!

—I see now, looking into the past, the troops of boys who were scattered in the great play-ground, as the coach drove up at night. The school was in a tall, stately building, with a high cupola on the top, where I thought I would like to go up. The schoolmaster, they told me at home, was kind; he said he hoped I would be a good boy, and patted me on the head; but he did not pat me as my mother used to do. Then there was a woman, whom they called the matron; who had a great many ribbons in her cap, and who shook my hand—but so stiffly that I didn’t dare to look up in her face.

One boy took me down to see the school-room, which was in the basement, and the walls were all moldly, I remember; and when we passed a certain door, he said: there was the dungeon; how I felt! I hated that boy; but I believe he is dead now. Then the matron took me up to my room—a little corner room, with two beds, and two windows, and a red table, and closet; and my chum was about my size, and wore a queer roundabout jacket with big bell buttons; and he called the schoolmaster “Old Crikey”—and kept me awake half the night, telling me how he whipped the scholars, and how they played tricks upon him. I thought my chum was a very uncommon boy.

For a day or two, the lessons were easy, and it was sport to play with so many “fellows.” But soon I began to feel lonely at night after I had gone to bed. I used to wish I could have my mother come and kiss me; after school, too, I wished I could step in and tell Isabel how bravely I had got my lessons. When I told my chum this, he laughed at me, and said that was no place for “homesick, white-livered chaps.” I wondered if my chum had any mother.

We had spending money once a week, with which we used to go down to the village store, and club our funds together, to make great pitchers of lemonade. Some boys would have money besides; though it was against the rules; and one, I recollect, showed us a five-dollar bill in his wallet—and we all thought he must be very rich.

We marched in procession to the village church on Sundays. There were two long benches in the galleries, reaching down the sides of the meeting-house; and on these we sat. At the first, I was among the smallest boys, and took a place close to the wall, against the pulpit; but afterward, as I grew bigger, I was promoted to the lower end of the first bench. This I never liked, because it was close by one of the ushers, and because it brought me next to some country women, who wore stiff bonnets, and eat fennel, and sung with the choir. But there was a little black-eyed girl, who sat over behind the choir, that I thought handsome; I used to look at her very often; but was careful she should never catch my eye.

There was another down below, in a corner pew, who was pretty; and who wore a hat in the winter trimmed with fur. Half the boys in the school said they would marry her some day or other. One’s name was Jane, and that of the other, Sophia; which we thought pretty names, and cut them on the ice, in skating time. But I didn’t think either of them so pretty as Isabel.

Once a teacher whipped me: I bore it bravely in the school: but afterward, at night, when my chum was asleep, I sobbed bitterly as I thought of Isabel, and Ben, and my mother, and how much they loved me: and laying my face in my hands, I sobbed myself to sleep. In the morning I was calm enough: it was another of the heart-ties broken, though I did not know it then. It lessened the old attachment to home, because that home could neither protect me nor soothe me with its sympathies. Memory, indeed, freshened and grew strong; but strong in bitterness, and in regrets. The boy whose love you can not feed by daily nourishment will find pride, self-indulgence, and an iron purpose coming in to furnish other supply for the soul that is in him. If he can not shoot his branches into the sunshine, he will become acclimated to the shadow, and indifferent to such stray gleams of sunshine as his fortune may vouchsafe.

Hostilities would sometimes threaten between the school and the village boys; but they usually passed off with such loud and harmless explosions as belong to the wars of our small politicians. The village champions were a hatter’s apprentice, and a thickset fellow who worked in a tannery. We prided ourselves especially on one stout boy, who wore a sailor’s monkey jacket. I can not but think how jaunty that stout boy looked in that jacket; and what an Ajax cast there was to his countenance! It certainly did occur to me to compare him with William Wallace (Miss Porter’s William Wallace) and I thought how I would have liked to have seen a tussle between them. Of course, we who were small boys, limited ourselves to indignant remark, and thought “we should like to see them do it;” and prepared clubs from the wood-shed, after a model suggested by a New York boy, who had seen the clubs of the policemen.

There was one scholar, poor Leslie, who had friends in some foreign country, and who occasionally received letters bearing a foreign post-mark: what an extraordinary boy that was—what astonishing letters, what extraordinary parents! I wondered if I should ever receive a letter from “foreign parts?” I wondered if I should ever write one; but this was too much—too absurd! As if I, Paul, wearing a blue jacket with gilt buttons, and number four boots, should ever visit those countries spoken of in the geographies, and by learned travelers! No, no; this was too extravagant; but I knew what I would do, if I lived to come of age; and I vowed that I would—I would go to New York!

Number seven was the hospital, and forbidden ground; we had all of us a sort of horror of number seven. A boy died there once, and oh, how he moaned; and what a time there was when the father came!

A scholar by the name of Tom Belton, who wore linsey gray, made a dam across a little brook by the school, and whittled out a saw-mill that actually sawed; he had genius. I expected to see him before now at the head of American mechanics; but I learn with pain that he is keeping a grocery store.

At the close of all the terms we had exhibitions, to which all the townspeople came, and among them the black-eyed Jane, and the pretty Sophia with fur around her hat. My great triumph was when I had the part of one of Pizarro’s chieftains, the evening before I left the school. How I did look!

I had a mustache put on with burned cork, and whiskers very bushy indeed; and I had the militia coat of an ensign in the town company, with the skirts pinned up, and a short sword very dull, and crooked, which belonged to an old gentleman who was said to have got it from some privateer, who was said to have taken it from some great British admiral in the old wars; and the way I carried that sword upon the platform and the way I jerked it out when it came to my turn to say—“Battle! battle! then death to the armed, and chains for the defenseless!”—was tremendous!

The morning after, in our dramatic hats—black felt, with turkey feathers—we took our place upon the top of the coach to leave the school. The head master, in green spectacles, came out to shake hands with us—a very awful shaking of hands.

Poor gentleman!—he is in his grave now.