When a young boy gets to be an old boy, when the hair is growing
rather thin on the top of the old boy's head, and he has been tamed
sufficiently to take a sort of chastened pleasure in allowing the baby
to play with his watch-seals--when, I say, an old boy has reached this
stage in the journey of life, he is sometimes apt to indulge in sportive
remarks concerning his first love.
Now, though I bless my stars that it wasn't in my power to marry Miss
Nelly, I am not going to deny my boyish regard for her nor laugh at
it. As long as it lasted it was a very sincere and unselfish love, and
rendered me proportionately wretched. I say as long as it lasted, for
one's first love doesn't last forever.
I am ready, however, to laugh at the amusing figure I cut after I had
really ceased to have any deep feeling in the matter. It was then I took
it into my head to be a Blighted Being. This was about two weeks after
the spectral appearance of Mr. Waldron.
For a boy of a naturally vivacious disposition the part of a blighted
being presented difficulties. I had an excellent appetite, I liked
society, I liked out-of-door sports, I was fond of handsome clothes. Now
all these things were incompatible with the doleful character I was to
assume, and I proceeded to cast them from me. I neglected my hair. I
avoided my playmates. I frowned abstractedly. I didn't eat as much as
was good for me. I took lonely walks. I brooded in solitude. I not only
committed to memory the more turgid poems of the late Lord Byron--“Fare
thee well, and if forever,” &c.--but I became a despondent poet on my own
account, and composed a string of “Stanzas to One who will understand
them.” I think I was a trifle too hopeful on that point; for I came
across the verses several years afterwards, and was quite unable to
understand them myself.
It was a great comfort to be so perfectly miserable and yet not suffer
any. I used to look in the glass and gloat over the amount and variety
of mournful expression I could throw into my features. If I caught
myself smiling at anything, I cut the smile short with a sigh. The
oddest thing about all this is, I never once suspected that I was not
unhappy. No one, not even Pepper Whitcomb, was more deceived than I.
Among the minor pleasures of being blighted were the interest and
perplexity I excited in the simple souls that were thrown in daily
contact with me. Pepper especially. I nearly drove him into a
corresponding state of mind.
I had from time to time given Pepper slight but impressive hints of my
admiration for Some One (this was in the early part of Miss Glentworth's
visit); I had also led him to infer that my admiration was not
altogether in vain. He was therefore unable to explain the cause of
my strange behavior, for I had carefully refrained from mentioning to
Pepper the fact that Some One had turned out to be Another's.
I treated Pepper shabbily. I couldn't resist playing on his tenderer
feelings. He was a boy bubbling over with sympathy for anyone in any
kind of trouble. Our intimacy since Binny Wallace's death had been
uninterrupted; but now I moved in a sphere apart, not to be profaned by
the step of an outsider.
I no longer joined the boys on the playground at recess. I stayed at my
desk reading some lugubrious volume--usually The Mysteries of Udolpho, by
the amiable Mrs. Radcliffe. A translation of The Sorrows of Werter fell
into my hands at this period, and if I could have committed suicide
without killing myself, I should certainly have done so.
On half-holidays, instead of fraternizing with Pepper and the rest of
our clique, I would wander off alone to Grave Point.
Grave Point--the place where Binny Wallace's body came ashore--was a
narrow strip of land running out into the river. A line of Lombardy
poplars, stiff and severe, like a row of grenadiers, mounted guard on
the water-side. On the extreme end of the peninsula was an old disused
graveyard, tenanted principally by the early settlers who had been
scalped by the Indians. In a remote corner of the cemetery, set apart
from the other mounds, was the grave of a woman who had been hanged
in the old colonial times for the murder of her infant. Goodwife Polly
Haines had denied the crime to the last, and after her death there had
arisen strong doubts as to her actual guilt. It was a belief current
among the lads of the town, that if you went to this grave at nightfall
on the 10th of November--the anniversary of her execution--and asked, “For
what did the magistrates hang you?” a voice would reply, “Nothing.”
Many a Rivermouth boy has tremblingly put this question in the dark,
and, sure enough, Polly Haines invariably answered nothing!
A low red-brick wall, broken down in many places and frosted over with
silvery moss, surrounded this burial-ground of our Pilgrim Fathers and
their immediate descendants. The latest date on any of the headstones
was 1780. A crop of very funny epitaphs sprung up here and there among
the overgrown thistles and burdocks, and almost every tablet had a
death's-head with cross-bones engraved upon it, or else a puffy round
face with a pair of wings stretching out from the ears, like this: