"What are little boys made of, made of?
What are little boys made of?"
_Nursery Rhyme_.
When the school was opened, Jem and I were sent there at once. Everybody
said it was "time we were sent somewhere," and that "we were getting too
wild for home."
I got so tired of hearing this at last, that one day I was goaded to
reply that "home was getting too tame for me." And Jem, who always
backed me up, said, "And me too." For which piece of swagger we
forfeited our suppers; but when we went to bed we found pieces of cake
under our pillows, for my mother could not bear us to be short of food,
however badly we behaved.
I do not know whether the trousers had anything to do with it, but about
the time that Jem and I were put into trousers we lived in a chronic
state of behaving badly. What makes me feel particularly ashamed in
thinking of it is, that I know it was not that we came under the
pressure of any overwhelming temptations to misbehave and yielded
through weakness, but that, according to an expressive nursery formula,
we were "seeing how naughty we could be." I think we were genuinely
anxious to see this undesirable climax; in some measure as a matter of
experiment, to which all boys are prone, and in which dangerous
experiments, and experiments likely to be followed by explosion, are
naturally preferred. Partly, too, from an irresistible impulse to "raise
a row," and take one's luck of the results. This craving to disturb the
calm current of events, and the good conduct and composure of one's
neighbours as a matter of diversion, must be incomprehensible by
phlegmatic people, who never feel it, whilst some Irishmen, I fancy,
never quite conquer it, perhaps because they never quite cease to be
boys. In any degree I do not for an instant excuse it, and in excess it
must be simply intolerable by better-regulated minds.
But really, boys who are pickles should be put into jars with sound
stoppers, like other pickles, and I wonder that mothers and cooks do not
get pots like those that held the forty thieves, and do it.
I fancy it was because we happened to be in this rough, defiant,
mischievous mood, just about the time that Mrs. Wood opened her school,
that we did not particularly like our school-mistress. If I had been
fifteen years older, I should soon have got beyond the first impression
created by her severe dress, close widow's cap and straight grey hair,
and have discovered that the outline of her face was absolutely
beautiful, and I might possibly have detected, what most people failed
to detect, that an odd unpleasing effect, caused by the contrast between
her general style, and an occasional lightness and rapidity and grace of
movement in her slender figure, came from the fact that she was much
younger than she looked and affected to be. The impression I did receive
of her appearance I communicated to my mother in far from respectful
pantomime.
"Well, love, and what do you think of Mrs. Wood?" said she.
"I think," chanted I, in that high brassy pitch of voice which Jem and I
had adopted for this bravado period of our existence--"I think she's
like our old white hen that turned up its eyes and died of the pip.
Lack-a-daisy-dee! Lack-a-daisy-dee!"
And I twisted my body about, and strolled up and down the room with a
supposed travesty of Mrs. Wood's movements.
"So she is," said faithful Jem. "Lack-a-daisy-dee! Lack-a-daisy-dee!"
and he wriggled about after me, and knocked over the Berlin
wool-basket.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" said our poor mother.
Jem righted the basket, and I took a run and a flying leap over it, and
having cleared it successfully, took another, and yet another, each one
soothing my feelings to the extent by which it shocked my mother's. At
the third bound, Jem, not to be behindhand, uttered a piercing yell from
behind the sofa.
"Good gracious, what's the matter?" cried my mother.
"It's the war-whoop of the Objibeway Indians," I promptly explained, and
having emitted another, to which I flattered myself Jem's had been as
nothing for hideousness, we departed in file to raise a row in the
kitchen.
Summer passed into autumn. Jem and I really liked going to school, but
it was against our principles at that time to allow that we liked
anything that we ought to like.
Some sincere but mistaken efforts to improve our principles were made, I
remember, by a middle-aged single lady, who had known my mother in her
girlhood, and who was visiting her at this unlucky stage of our career.
Having failed to cope with us directly, she adopted the plan of talking
improvingly to our mother and at us, and very severe some of her
remarks were, and I don't believe that Mother liked them any better
than we did.
The severest she ever made were I think heightened in their severity by
the idea that we were paying unusual attention, as we sat on the floor a
little behind her one day. We were paying a great deal of attention, but
it was not so much to Miss Martin as to a stock of wood-lice which I had
collected, and which I was arranging on the carpet that Jem might see
how they roll themselves into smooth tight balls when you tease them.
But at last she talked so that we could not help attending. I dared not
say anything to her, but her own tactics were available. I put the
wood-lice back in my pocket, and stretching my arms yawningly above my
head, I said to Jem, "How dull it is! I wish I were a bandit."
Jem generally outdid me if possible, from sheer willingness and loyalty
of spirit.
"_I_ should like to be a burglar," said he.
And then we both left the room very quietly and politely. But when we
got outside I said, "I hate that woman."
"So do I," said Jem; "she regularly hectors over mother--I hate her
worst for that."
"So do I. Jem, doesn't she take pills?"
"I don't know--why?"
"I believe she does; I'm certain I saw a box on her dressing-table.
Jem, run like a good chap and see, and if there is one, empty out the
pills and bring me the pill-box."
Jem obeyed, and I sat down on the stairs and began to get the wood-lice
out again. There were twelve nice little black balls in my hand when Jem
came back with the pill-box.
"Hooray!" I cried; "but knock out all the powder, it might smother them.
Now, give it to me."
Jem danced with delight when I put the wood-lice in and put on the lid.
"I hope she'll shake the box before she opens it," I said, as we
replaced it on the dressing-table.
"I hope she will, or they won't be tight. Oh, Jack! Jack! _How many do
you suppose she takes at a time?_"
We never knew, and what is more, we never knew what became of the
wood-lice, for, for some reason, she kept our counsel as well as her own
about the pill-box.
One thing that helped to reconcile us to spending a good share of our
summer days in Walnut-tree Academy was that the school-mistress made us
very comfortable. Boys at our age are not very sensitive about matters
of taste and colour and so forth, but even we discovered that Mrs. Wood
had that knack of adapting rooms to their inhabitants, and making them
pleasant to the eye, which seems to be a trick at the end of some
people's fingers, and quite unlearnable by others. When she had made the
old miser's rooms to her mind, we might have understood, if we had
speculated about it, how it was that she had not profited by my mother's
sound advice to send all his "rubbishy odds and ends" (the irregularity
and ricketiness and dustiness of which made my mother shudder) to be
"sold at the nearest auction-rooms, and buy some good solid furniture of
the cabinet-maker who furnished for everybody in the neighbourhood,
which would be the cheapest in the long-run, besides making the rooms
look like other people's at last." That she evaded similar
recommendations of paperhangers and upholsterers, and of wall-papers and
carpets, and curtains with patterns that would "stand," and wear best,
and show dirt least, was a trifle in the eyes of all good housekeepers,
when our farming-man's daughter brought the amazing news with her to
Sunday tea, that "the missus" had had in old Sally, and had torn the
paper off the parlour, and had made Sally "lime-wash the walls, for all
the world as if it was a cellar." Moreover, she had "gone over" the
lower part herself, and was now painting on the top of that. There was
nothing for it, after this news, but to sigh and conclude that there
was something about the old place which made everybody a little queer
who came to live in it.
But when Jem and I saw the parlour (which was now the school-room), we
decided that it "looked very nice," and was "uncommonly comfortable."
The change was certainly amazing, and made the funeral day seem longer
ago than it really was. The walls were not literally lime-washed; but
(which is the same thing, except for a little glue!) they were
distempered, a soft pale pea-green. About a yard deep above the wainscot
this was covered with a dark sombre green tint, and along the upper edge
of this, as a border all round the room, the school-mistress had painted
a trailing wreath of white periwinkle. The border was painted with the
same materials as the walls, and with very rapid touches. The white
flowers were skilfully relieved by the dark ground, and the varied tints
of the leaves, from the deep evergreen of the old ones to the pale
yellow of the young shoots, had demanded no new colours, and were
wonderfully life-like and pretty. There was another border, right round
the top of the room; but that was painted on paper and fastened on. It
was a Bible text--"Keep Innocency, and take heed to the thing that is
right, for that shall bring a man Peace at the last." And Mrs. Wood had
done the text also.
There were no curtains to the broad, mullioned window, which was kept
wide open at every lattice; and one long shoot of ivy that had pushed in
farther than the rest had been seized, and pinned to the wall inside,
where its growth was a subject of study and calculation, during the many
moments when we were "trying to see" how little we could learn of our
lessons. The black-board stood on a polished easel; but the low seats
and desks were of plain pine like the floor, and they were scrupulously
scrubbed. The cool tint of the walls was somewhat cheered by coloured
maps and prints, and the school-mistress's chair (an old carved oak one
that had been much revived by bees-wax and turpentine since the miser's
days) stood on the left-hand side of the window--under "Keep Innocency,"
and looking towards "Peace at the last." I know, for when we were all
writing or something of that sort, so that she could sit still, she used
to sit with her hands folded and look up at it, which was what made Jem
and me think of the old white hen that turned up its eyes; and made
Horace Simpson say that he believed she had done one of the letters
wrong, and could not help looking at it to see if it showed. And by the
school-mistress's chair was the lame boy's sofa. It was the very old
sofa covered with newspapers on which I had read about the murder, when
the lawyer was reading the will. But she had taken off the paper, and
covered it with turkey red, and red cushions, and a quilt of brown
holland and red bordering, to hide his crumpled legs, so that he looked
quite comfortable.
I remember so well the first day that he came. His father was a parson
on the moors, and this boy had always wanted to go to school in spite of
his infirmity, and at last his father brought him in a light cart down
from the moors, to look at it; and when he got him out of the cart, he
carried him in. He was a big man, I remember, with grey hair and bent
shoulders, and a very old coat, for it split a little at one of the
seams as he was carrying him in, and we laughed.
When they got into the room, he put the boy down, keeping his arm round
him, and wiped his face and said--"How deliciously cool!"--and the boy
stared all round with his great eyes, and then he lifted them to his
father's face and said--"I'll come here. I do like it. But not to-day,
my back is so bad."
And what makes me know that Horace was wrong, and that Mrs. Wood had
made no mistake about the letters of the text, is that "Cripple
Charlie"--as we called him--could see it so well with lying down. And he
told me one day that when his back was very bad, and he got the fidgets
and could not keep still, he used to fix his eyes on "Peace," which had
gold round the letters, and shone, and that if he could keep steadily to
it, for a good bit, he always fell asleep at the last. But he was very
fanciful, poor chap!
I do not think it was because Jem and I had any real wish to become
burglars that we made a raid on the walnuts that autumn. I do not even
think that we cared very much about the walnuts themselves.
But when it is understood that the raid was to be a raid by night, or
rather in those very early hours of the morning which real burglars are
said almost to prefer; that it was necessary to provide ourselves with
thick sticks; that we should have to force the hedge and climb the
trees; that the said trees grew directly under the owner's bedroom
window, which made the chances of detection hazardously great; and that
walnut juice (as I have mentioned before) is of a peculiarly
unaccommodating nature, since it will neither disguise you at the time
nor wash off afterwards--it will be obvious that the dangers and
delights of the adventure were sufficient to blunt, for the moment, our
sense of the fact that we were deliberately going a-thieving.
"Shall we wear black masks?" said Jem.
On the whole I said "No," for I did not know where we should get them,
nor, if we did, how we should keep them on.
"If she has a blunderbuss, and fires," said I, "you must duck your
head, remember; but if she springs the rattle we must cut and run."
"Will her blunderbuss be loaded, do you think?" asked Jem. "Mother says
the one in _their_ room isn't; she told me so on Saturday. But she says
we're never to touch it, all the same, for you never can be sure about
things of that sort going off. Do you think Mrs. Wood's will be loaded?"
"It may be," said I, "and of course she might load it if she thought she
heard robbers."
"I heard father say that if you shoot a burglar outside it's murder,"
said Jem, who seemed rather troubled by the thought of the blunderbuss;
"but if you shoot him inside it's self-defence."
"Well, you may spring a rattle outside, anyway," said I; "and if hers
makes as much noise as ours, it'll be heard all the way here. So mind,
if she begins, you must jump down and cut home like mad."
Armed with these instructions and our thick sticks, Jem and I crept out
of the house before the sun was up or a bird awake. The air seemed cold
after our warm beds, and the dew was so drenching in the hedge bottoms,
and on the wayside weeds of our favourite lane, that we were soaked to
the knees before we began to force the hedge. I did not think that grass
and wild-flowers could have held so much wet. By the time that we had
crossed the orchard, and I was preparing to grip the grandly scored
trunk of the nearest walnut-tree with my chilly legs, the heavy peeling,
the hard cracking, and the tedious picking of a green walnut was as
little pleasurable a notion as I had in my brain.
All the same, I said (as firmly as my chattering teeth would allow) that
I was very glad we had come when we did, for that there certainly were
fewer walnuts on the tree than there had been the day before.
"She's been at them," said I, almost indignantly.
"Pickling," responded Jem with gloomy conciseness; and spurred by this
discovery to fresh enthusiasm for our exploit, we promptly planned
operations.
"I'll go up the tree," said I, "and beat, and you can pick them as they
fall."
Jem was, I fear, only too well accustomed to my arrogating the first
place in our joint undertakings, and after giving me "a leg up" to an
available bit of foothold, and handing up my stick, he waited patiently
below to gather what I beat down.
The walnuts were few and far between, to say nothing of leaves between,
which in walnut-trees are large. The morning twilight was dim, my hands
were cold and feebler than my resolution. I had battered down a lot of
leaves and twigs, and two or three walnuts; the sun had got up at last,
but rather slowly, as if he found the morning chillier than he expected,
and a few rays were darting here and there across the lane, when Jem
gave a warning "Hush!" and I left off rustling in time to hear Mrs.
Wood's bedroom lattice opened, and to catch sight of something pushed
out into the morning mists.
"Who's there?" said the school-mistress.
Neither Jem nor I took upon us to inform her, and we were both seized
with anxiety to know what was at the window. He was too low down and I
too much buried in foliage to see clearly. Was it the rattle? I took a
hasty step downwards at the thought. Or was it the blunderbuss? In my
sudden move I slipped on the dew-damped branch, and cracked a rotten one
with my elbow, which made an appalling crash in the early stillness, and
sent a walnut--pop! on to Jem's hat, who had already ducked to avoid the
fire of the blunderbuss, and now fell on his face under the fullest
conviction that he had been shot.
"Who's there?" said the school-mistress, and (my tumble having brought
me into a more exposed position) she added, "Is that you, Jack and Jem?"
"It's me," said I, ungrammatically but stoutly, hoping that Jem at any
rate would slip off.
But he had recovered himself and his loyalty, and unhesitatingly
announced, "No, it's me," and was picking the bits of grass off his
cheeks and knees when I got down beside him.
"I'm sorry you came to take my walnuts like this," said the voice from
above. She had a particularly clear one, and we could hear it quite
well. "I got a basketful on purpose for you yesterday afternoon. If I
let it down by a string, do you think you can take it?"
Happily she did not wait for a reply, as we could not have got a word
out between us; but by and by the basketful of walnuts was pushed
through the lattice and began to descend. It came slowly and unsteadily,
and we had abundant leisure to watch it, and also, as we looked up, to
discover what it was that had so puzzled me in Mrs. Wood's
appearance--that when I first discovered that it was a head and not a
blunderbuss at the window I had not recognized it for hers.
She was without her widow's cap, which revealed the fact that her hair,
though the two narrow, smooth bands of it which appeared every day
beyond her cap were unmistakably grey, was different in some essential
respects from (say) Mrs. Jones's, our grey-haired washer-woman. The more
you saw of Mrs. Jones's head, the less hair you perceived her to have,
and the whiter that little appeared. Indeed, the knob into which it was
twisted at the back was much of the colour as well as of the size of a
tangled reel of dirty white cotton. But Mrs. Wood's hair was far more
abundant than our mother's, and it was darker underneath than on the
top--a fact which was more obvious when the knot into which it was
gathered in her neck was no longer hidden. Deep brown streaks were
mingled with the grey in the twists of this, and I could see them quite
well, for the outline of her head was dark against the white-washed
mullion of the window, and framed by ivy-leaves. As she leaned out to
lower the basket we could see her better and better, and, as it touched
the ground, the jerk pulled her forward, and the knot of her hair
uncoiled and rolled heavily over the window-sill.
By this time the rays of the sun were level with the windows, and shone
full upon Mrs. Wood's face. I was very much absorbed in looking at her,
but I could not forget our peculiar position, and I had an important
question to put, which I did without more ado.
"Please, madam, shall you tell Father?"
"We only want to know," added Jem.
She hesitated a minute, and then smiled. "No; I don't think you'll do it
again;" after which she disappeared.
"She's certainly no sneak," said I, with an effort to be magnanimous,
for I would much rather she had sprung the rattle or fired the
blunderbuss.
"And I say," said Jem, "isn't she pretty without her cap?"
We looked ruefully at the walnuts. We had lost all appetite for them,
and they seemed disgustingly damp, with their green coats reeking with
black bruises. But we could not have left the basket behind, so we put
our sticks through the handles, and carried it like the Sunday picture
of the spies carrying the grapes of Eshcol.
And Jem and I have often since agreed that we never in all our lives
felt so mean as on that occasion, and we sincerely hope that we never
may.
Indeed, it is only in some books and some sermons that people are
divided into "the wicked" and "the good," and that "the wicked" have no
consciences at all. Jem and I had wilfully gone thieving, but we were
far from being utterly hardened, and the school-mistress's generosity
weighed heavily upon ours. Repentance and the desire to make atonement
seem to go pretty naturally together, and in my case they led to the
following dialogue with Jem, on the subject of two exquisite little
bantam hens and a cock, which were our joint property, and which were
known in the farmyard as "the Major and his wives."
These titles (which vexed my dear mother from the first) had suggested
themselves to us on this wise. There was a certain little gentleman who
came to our church, a brewer by profession, and a major in the militia
by choice, who was so small and strutted so much that to the insolent
observation of boyhood he was "exactly like" our new bantam cock. Young
people are very apt to overhear what is not intended for their
knowledge, and somehow or other we learned that he was "courting" (as
his third wife) a lady of our parish. His former wives are buried in our
churchyard. Over the first he had raised an obelisk of marble, so costly
and affectionate that it had won the hearts of his neighbours in
general, and of his second wife in particular. When she died the gossips
wondered whether the Major would add her name to that of her
predecessor, or "go to the expense" of a new monument. He erected a
second obelisk, and it was taller than the first (height had a curious
fascination for him), and the inscription was more touching than the
other. This time the material was Aberdeen granite, and as that is most
difficult to cut, hard to polish, and heavy to transport, the expense
was enormous. These two monstrosities of mortuary pomp were the pride of
the parish, and they were familiarly known to us children (and to many
other people) as "the Major's wives."
When we called the cock "the Major," we naturally called the hens "the
Major's wives."
"My dears, I don't like that name at all," said my mother. "I never like
jokes about people who are dead. And for that matter, it really sounds
as if they were both alive, which is worse."
It was during our naughty period, and I strutted on my heels till I must
have looked very like the little brewer himself, and said, "And why
shouldn't they both be alive? Fancy the Major with two wives, one on
each arm, and both as tall as the monuments! What fun!"
As I said the words "one on each arm," I put up first one and then the
other of my own, and having got a satisfactory impetus during the rest
of my sentence, I crossed the parlour as a catherine-wheel under my
mother's nose. It was a new accomplishment, of which I was very proud,
and poor Jem somewhat envious. He was clumsy and could not manage it.
"Oh!" ejaculated my mother, "Jack, I must speak to your father about
those dangerous tricks of yours. And it quite shocks me to hear you talk
in that light way about wicked things."
Jem was to my rescue in a moment, driving his hands into the pockets of
his blouse, and turning them up to see how soon he might hope that his
fingers would burst through the lining.
"Jacob had two wives," he said; and he chanted on, quoting imperfectly
from Dr. Watts's _Scripture Catechism_, "And Jacob was a good man,
therefore his brother hated him."
"No, no, Jem," said I, "that was Abel. Jacob was Isaac's younger son,
and----"
"Hush! Hush! Hush!" said my mother. "You're not to do Sunday lessons on
week-days. What terrible boys you are!" And, avoiding to fight about
Jacob's wives with Jem, who was pertinacious and said very odd things,
my mother did what women often do and are often wise in doing--she laid
down her weapons and began to beseech.
"My darlings, call your nice little hens some other names. Poor old
mother doesn't like those."
I was melted in an instant, and began to cast about in my head for new
titles. But Jem was softly obstinate, and he had inherited some of my
mother's wheedling ways. He took his hands from his pockets, flung his
arms recklessly round her clean collar, and began stroking (or
_pooring_, as we called it) her head with his grubby paws. And as he
_poored_ he coaxed--"Dear nice old mammy! It's only us. What can it
matter? Do let us call our bantams what we like."
And my mother gave in before I had time to.
The dialogue I held with Jem about the bantams after the walnut raid was
as follows:
"Jem, you're awfully fond of the 'Major and his wives,' I suppose?"
"Ye-es," said Jem, "_I am_. But I don't mind, Jack, if you want them for
your very own. I'll give up my share,"--and he sighed.
"I never saw such a good chap as you are, Jem. But it's not that. I
thought we might give them to Mrs. Wood. It was so beastly about those
disgusting walnuts."
"I can't touch walnut pickle now," said Jem, feelingly.
"It'd be a very handsome present," said I.
"They took a prize at the Agricultural," said Jem.
"I know she likes eggs. She beats 'em into a froth and feeds Charlie
with 'em," said I.
"I think I could eat walnut pickle again if I knew she had the bantams,"
sighed Jem, who was really devoted to the little cock-major and the
auburn-feathered hens.
"We'll take 'em this afternoon," I said.
We did so--in a basket, Eshcol-grape wise, like the walnuts. When we
told Mother, she made no objection. She would have given her own head
off her shoulders if, by ill-luck, any passer-by had thought of asking
for it. Besides, it solved the difficulty of the objectionable names.
Mrs. Wood was very loth to take our bantams, but of course Jem and I
were not going to recall a gift, so she took them at last, and I think
she was very much pleased with them.
She had got her cap on again, tied under her chin, and nothing to be
seen of her hair but the very grey piece in front. It made her look so
different that I could not keep my eyes off her whilst she was talking,
though I knew quite well how rude it is to stare. And my head got so
full of it that I said at last, in spite of myself, "Please, madam, why
is it that part of your hair is grey and part of it dark?"
Her face got rather red, she did not answer for a minute; and Jem, to my
great relief, changed the subject, by saying, "We were very much obliged
to you for not telling Father about the walnuts."
Mrs. Wood leaned back against the high carving of her old chair and
smiled, and said very slowly, "Would he have been very angry?"
"He'd have flogged us, I expect," said I.
"And I expect," continued Jem, "that he'd have said to us what he said
to Bob Furniss when he took the filberts: 'If you begin by stealing
nuts, you'll end by being transported.' Do you think Jack and I shall
end by being transported?" added Jem, who had a merciless talent for
applying general principles to individual cases.
Mrs. Wood made no reply, neither did she move, but her eyelids fell,
and then her eyes looked far worse than if they had been shut, for there
was a little bit open, with nothing but white to be seen. She was still
rather red, and she did not visibly breathe. I have no idea for how many
seconds I had gazed stupidly at her, when Jem gasped, "Is she dead?"
Then I became terror-struck, and crying, "Let's find Mary Anne!" fled
into the kitchen, closely followed by Jem.
"She's took with them fits occasional," said Mary Anne, and depositing a
dripping tin she ran to the parlour. We followed in time to see her
stooping over the chair and speaking very loudly in the
school-mistress's ear,
"I'll lay ye down, ma'am, shall I?"
But still the widow was silent, on which Mary Anne took her up in her
brawny arms, and laid her on "Cripple Charlie's" sofa, and covered her
with the quilt.
We settled the Major and his wives into their new abode, and then
hurried home to my mother, who put on her bonnet, and took a bottle of
something, and went off to the farm.
She did not come back till tea-time, and then she was full of poor Mrs.
Wood. "Most curious attacks," she explained to my father; "she can
neither move nor speak, and yet she hears everything, though she
doesn't always remember afterwards. She said she thought it was
'trouble,' poor soul!"
"What brought this one on?" said my father.
"I can't make out," said my mother. "I hope you boys did nothing to
frighten her, eh? Are you sure you didn't do one of those dreadful
wheels, Jack?"
This I indignantly denied, and Jem supported me.
My mother's sympathy had been so deeply enlisted, and her report was so
detailed, that Jem and I became bored at last, besides resenting the
notion that we had been to blame. I gave one look into the strawberry
jam pot, and finding it empty, said my grace and added, "Women are a
poor lot, always turning up their eyes and having fits about nothing. I
know one thing, nobody 'll ever catch _me_ being bothered with a wife."
"Nor me neither," said Jem.