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‘I won’t!’
‘You shall – he’s on my side of the line.’
‘Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?’
‘I don’t care whose tick he is – he’s on my side of the line, and you shan’t touch him.’
‘Well, I’ll just bet I will, though. He’s my tick, and I’ll do what I blame please with him, or die!’
A tremendous whack came down on Tom’s shoulders, and its duplicate on Joe’s; and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. The boys had been too absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school a while before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over them. He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he contributed his bit of variety to it. When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and whispered in her ear:
‘Put on your bonnet and let on you’re going home; and when you get to the corner, give the rest of ’em the slip, and turn down through the lane and come back. I’ll go the other way, and come it over ’em the same way.’
So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising house. When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking. Tom was swimming in bliss. He said:
‘Do you love rats?’
‘No, I hate them!’
‘Well, I do too – live ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing around your head with a string.’
‘No, I don’t care for rats much, anyway. What I like is chewing gum!’
‘Oh, I should say so! I wish I had some now!’
‘Do you? I’ve got some. I’ll let you chew it awhile, but you must give it back to me.’
That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs against the bench in excess of contentment.
‘Was you ever at a circus?’ said Tom.
‘Yes, and my pa’s going to take me again some time, if I’m good.’
‘I been to the circus three or four times – lots of times. Church ain’t shucks to a circus. There’s things going on at a circus all the time. I’m going to be a clown in a circus when I grow up.’
‘Oh, are you! That will be nice. They’re so lovely all spotted up.’
‘Yes, that’s so. And they get slathers of money – most a dollar a day, Ben Rogers says. Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Why, engaged to be married.’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to?’
‘I reckon so. I don’t know. What is it like?’
‘Like? Why, it ain’t like anything. You only just tell a boy you won’t ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss, and that’s all. Anybody can do it.’
‘Kiss ? What do you kiss for ?’
‘Why that, you know, is to – well, they always do that.’
‘Everybody?’
‘Why, yes, everybody that’s in love with each other. Do you remember what I wrote on the slate?’
‘Ye-yes.’
‘What was it?’
‘I shan’t tell you.’
‘Shall I tell you?’
‘Ye-yes – but some other time.’
‘No, now.’
‘No, not now – to-morrow.’
‘Oh, no, now, please, Becky. I’ll whisper it, I’ll whisper it ever so easy.’
Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm about her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth close to her ear. And then he added:
‘Now you whisper it to me – just the same.’
She resisted for a while, and then said:
‘You turn your face away, so you can’t see, and then I will. But you mustn’t ever tell anybody – will you, Tom? Now you won’t – will you?’
‘No, indeed indeed I won’t. Now Becky.’
He turned his face away. She bent timidly around till her breath stirred his curls, and whispered, ‘I – love – you!’
Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches, with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her little white apron to her face. Tom clasped her about her neck and pleaded.
‘Now Becky, it’s all over – all over but the kiss. Don’t you be afraid of that – it ain’t anything at all. Please, Becky.’
And he tugged at the apron and the hands.
By and by she gave up and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and said:
‘Now it’s all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain’t ever to love anybody but me, and you ain’t ever to marry anybody but me, never and for ever. Will you?’
‘No, I’ll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I’ll never marry anybody but you, and you ain’t to ever marry anybody but me, either.’
‘Certainly. Of course. That’s part of it. And always, coming to school, or when we’re going home, you’re to walk with me, when there ain’t anybody looking – and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because that’s the way you do when you’re engaged.’
‘It’s so nice. I never heard of it before.’
‘Oh it’s ever so jolly! Why me and Amy Lawrence—’
The big eyes told Tom his blunder, and he stopped, confused.
‘Oh, Tom! Then I ain’t the first you’ve ever been engaged to!’
The child began to cry. Tom said:
‘Oh, don’t cry, Becky. I don’t care for her any more.’
‘Yes, you do, Tom – you know you do.’
Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. Tom tried again, with soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was up, and he strode away and went outside. He stood about, restless and uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door every now and then, hoping she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began to feel badly, and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle with him to make new advances now, but he nerved himself to it and entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing with her face to the wall. Tom’s heart smote him. he went to her and stood a moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said, hesitatingly:
‘Becky, I – I don’t care for anybody but you.’
No reply – but sobs.
‘Becky?’ pleadingly.
‘Becky, won’t you say something?’
More sobs.
Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:
‘Please, Becky, won’t you take it?’
She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:
‘Tom! Come back, Tom!’
She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid herself, and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she had to hide her grief and still her broken heart, and take up the cross of a long dreary aching afternoon, with none among the strangers about her to exchange sorrows with.
CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_182514c8-cddf-50a3-bfc2-65d22832c624)
Tom dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed a small ‘branch’ two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. The boy’s soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released. It must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream for ever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers of the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. If he only had a clean Sunday school record he could be willing to go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl. What had he done? Nothing. He had meant the best in the world and been treated like a dog – like a very dog. She would be sorry some day – maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die temporarily!
But the elastic heart of youth cannot be kept compressed into one constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away – ever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas – and never came back any more! How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes, and spotted tights, were an offence when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague, august realm of the romantic. No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious. No, better still, he would join the Indians and hunt buffaloes, and go on the war-path in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday school, some drowsy summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eye-balls of all his companions with unappeasable envy. But no, there was something grander even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it! Now his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendour. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go ploughing the dancing seas, in his long low, black racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore! And, at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk into church, all brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull and cross-bones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings: ‘It’s Tom Sawyer, the Pirate! the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main!
Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources together. He went to a rotten log near at hand, and began to dig under one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck Wood that sounded hollow. He put his hand there, and uttered this incantation impressively:
‘What hasn’t come here, come! What’s here, stay here!’
Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom’s astonishment was boundless. He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:
‘Well, that beats anything!’
Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The truth was, that a superstition of his had failed here, which he and all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated. But now this thing had actually and unquestionably failed. Tom’s whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding, but never of its failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterwards. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he would satisfy himself on that point, so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and called:
‘Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!
‘Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!’
The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a second, and then darted under again in a fright.
‘He dasn’t tell! So it was a witch that done it. I just knowed it.’
He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up, discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his treasure-house, and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his pocket, and tossed it in the same way, saying:
‘Brother, go find your brother!’
He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must have fallen short or gone too far, so he tried twice more. The last repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each other.
Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log, disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword, and a tin trumpet, and in a moment had seized these things, and bounded away, barelegged, with fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way and that. He said cautiously – to an imaginary company:
‘Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow.’
Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom. Tom called:
‘Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?’
‘Guy of Guisborne wants no man’s pass! Who art thou that – that—’
‘Dares to hold such language,’ said Tom, prompting, for they talked ‘by the book,’ from memory.
‘Who art thou that dares to hold such language?’
‘I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcass soon shall know.’
‘Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!’
They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground, struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful combat, ‘two up and two down.’ Presently Tom said:
‘Now if you’ve got the hang, go it lively!’
So they ‘went it lively,’ panting and perspiring with the work. By and by Tom shouted:
‘Fall! fall! Why don’t you fall?’
‘I shan’t! Why don’t you fall yourself? You’re getting the worst of it.’
‘Why, that ain’t anything. I can’t fall. That ain’t the way it is in the book. The book says, “Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor Guy of Guisborne!” You’re to turn around and let me hit you in the back.’
There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the whack, and fell.
