The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

CHAPTER 3

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 odour 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 grey head for safety. She had thought that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered to see 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 around 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 splendour 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 flavour 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 hailstorm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties and rally 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 wended towards 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 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 little 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 sending towards the house. Tom came up to the fence, and leaned on it, grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet a while longer. She halted a moment on the steps, and then moved towards 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 towards the pansy; finally his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped away with his treasure, and disappeared around 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 went 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 well-nigh 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’re 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:

‘Umph! Well, you didn’t get a lick amiss, I reckon. You’d been into some other owdacious 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 poor hands still for ever, 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 away 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 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 maidservant’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 whizz 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 ‘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 4

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 honourable 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 colour, 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 labour and difficulty, and plastered his hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and his own filled his life with bitterness.) Then Mary got out a suit of his clothing that had been used only on Sundays during two years – they were simply called his ‘other clothes’ – and so by that we know the size of his wardrobe. The girl ‘put him to rights’ after he had dressed himself; she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his vast shirt-collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off, and crowned him with his speckled straw hat. He now looked exceedingly improved and uncomfortable; and he was fully as uncomfortable as he looked; for there was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. He hoped that Mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted; she coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought them out. He lost his temper, and said he was always being made to do everything he didn’t want to do. But Mary said persuasively:

‘Please, Tom – that’s a good boy.’

So he got into his shoes, snarling. Mary was soon ready, and the three children set out for Sunday school, a place that Tom hated with his whole heart; but Sid and Mary were fond of it.

Sabbath school hours were from nine to half-past ten; and then church service. Two of the children always remained for the sermon voluntarily; and the other always remained, too – for stronger reasons. The church’s high-backed uncushioned pews would seat about three hundred persons; the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort of pine-board tree-box on top of it for a steeple. At the door Tom dropped back a step and accosted a Sunday-dressed comrade:

‘Say, Bill, got a yaller ticket?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’ll you take for her?’

‘What’ll you give?’

‘Piece of lickrish and a fish-hook.’

‘Less see ’em.’

Tom exhibited. They were satisfactory, and the property changed hands. Then Tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and some small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. He waylaid other boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colours ten or fifteen minutes longer. He entered the church, now, with a swarm of clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started a quarrel with the first boy that came handy. The teacher, a grave, elderly man, interfered; then turned his back a moment, and Tom pulled a boy’s hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, presently, in order to hear him say ‘Ouch!’ and got a new reprimand from his teacher. Tom’s whole class were of a pattern – restless, noisy, and troublesome. When they came to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses perfectly, but had to be prompted all along. However, they worried through, and each got his reward in small blue tickets, each with a passage of scripture on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of the recitation. Ten blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be exchanged for it; ten red tickets equalled a yellow one; for ten yellow tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound Bible (worth forty cents in those easy times) to the pupil. How many of my readers would have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even for a Doré Bible? And yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this way; it was the patient work of two years: and a boy of German parentage had won four or five. He once recited three thousand verses without stopping; but the strain upon his mental faculties was too great, and he was little better than an idiot from that day forth – a grievous misfortune for the school, for on great occasions before company, the superintendent (as Tom expressed it) had always made this boy come out and ‘spread himself.’ Only the older pupils managed to keep their tickets and stick to their tedious work long enough to get a Bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy circumstance; the successful pupil was so great and conspicuous for that day that on the spot every scholar’s breast was fired with a fresh ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks. It is possible that Tom’s mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes, but unquestionably his entire being had for many a day longed for the glory and the éclat that came with it.