CHAPTER II

CHAPTER II

SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and
fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if
the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in
every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom
and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond
the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far
enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a
long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and
a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board
fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a
burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost
plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant
whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed
fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at
the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from
the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but
now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at
the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there
waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling,
fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only
a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of
water under an hour--and even then somebody generally had to go after
him. Tom said:

"Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some."

Jim shook his head and said:

"Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis
water an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars
Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend
to my own business--she 'lowed SHE'D 'tend to de whitewashin'."

"Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always
talks. Gimme the bucket--I won't be gone only a a minute. SHE won't
ever know."

"Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n
me. 'Deed she would."

"SHE! She never licks anybody--whacks 'em over the head with her
thimble--and who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but
talk don't hurt--anyways it don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you
a marvel. I'll give you a white alley!"

Jim began to waver.

"White alley, Jim! And it's a bully taw."

"My! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I's powerful
'fraid ole missis--"

"And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe."

Jim was only human--this attraction was too much for him. He put down
his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing
interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was
flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was
whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field
with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.

But Tom's energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had
planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys
would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and
they would make a world of fun of him for having to work--the very
thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and
examined it--bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an
exchange of WORK, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an
hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his
pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark
and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a
great, magnificent inspiration.

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in
sight presently--the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been
dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump--proof enough that his
heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and
giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned
ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As
he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned
far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious
pomp and circumstance--for he was personating the Big Missouri, and
considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and
captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself
standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

"Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out, and he
drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

"Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and
stiffened down his sides.

"Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow!
Chow!" His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles--for it was
representing a forty-foot wheel.

"Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-lingling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!"
The left hand began to describe circles.

"Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead
on the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow!
Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! LIVELY now!
Come--out with your spring-line--what're you about there! Take a turn
round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now--let her
go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! SH'T! S'H'T! SH'T!"
(trying the gauge-cocks).

Tom went on whitewashing--paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben
stared a moment and then said: "Hi-YI! YOU'RE up a stump, ain't you!"

No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then
he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as
before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the
apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

"Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?"

Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

"Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing."

"Say--I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of
course you'd druther WORK--wouldn't you? Course you would!"

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

"What do you call work?"

"Why, ain't THAT work?"

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom
Sawyer."

"Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you LIKE it?"

The brush continued to move.

"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get
a chance to whitewash a fence every day?"

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom
swept his brush daintily back and forth--stepped back to note the
effect--added a touch here and there--criticised the effect again--Ben
watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more
absorbed. Presently he said:

"Say, Tom, let ME whitewash a little."

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

"No--no--I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's
awful particular about this fence--right here on the street, you know
--but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and SHE wouldn't. Yes,
she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very
careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two
thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done."

"No--is that so? Oh come, now--lemme just try. Only just a little--I'd
let YOU, if you was me, Tom."

"Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly--well, Jim wanted to
do it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't
let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this
fence and anything was to happen to it--"

"Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say--I'll give
you the core of my apple."

"Well, here--No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard--"

"I'll give you ALL of it!"

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his
heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in
the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by,
dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more
innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every
little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time
Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for
a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in
for a dead rat and a string to swing it with--and so on, and so on,
hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being
a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling
in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles,
part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a
spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk,
a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six
fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a
dog-collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of
orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while--plenty of company
--and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out
of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He
had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely,
that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only
necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great
and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have
comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do,
and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And
this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers
or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or
climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in
England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles
on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them
considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service,
that would turn it into work and then they would resign.

The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place
in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to
report.

CHAPTER III

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 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.