I always felt as if I should like to punch that boy's head, and then
directly after I used to feel as if I shouldn't care to touch him,
because he looked so dirty and ragged.
It was not dirty dirt, if you know what I mean by that, but dirt that he
gathered up in his work--bits of hay and straw, and dust off a shed
floor; mud over his boots and on his toes, for you could see that the
big boots he wore seemed to be like a kind of coarse rough shell with a
great open mouth in front, and his toes used to seem as if they lived in
there as hermit-crabs do in whelk shells. They used to play about in
there and waggle this side and that side when he was standing still
looking at you; and I used to think that some day they would come a
little way out and wait for prey like the different molluscs I had read
about in my books.
But you should have seen his hands! I've seen them so coated with dirt
that it hung on them in knobs, and at such times he used to hold them up
to me with the thumbs and fingers spread out wide, and then down he
would go again and continue his work, which, when he was in this state,
would be pulling up the weeds from among the onions in the long beds.
I didn't want him to do it, but he used to see me at the window looking
out; and I being one lonely boy in the big pond of life, and he being
another lonely boy in the same big pond, and both floating about like
bits of stick, he seemed as if he wanted to gravitate towards me as bits
of stick do to each other, and in his uncouth way he would do all sorts
of things to attract my attention.
Sometimes it seemed as if it was to frighten me, at others to show how
clever he was; but of course I know now that it was all out of the
superabundant energy he had in him, and the natural longing of a boy for
a companion.
I'll just tell you what he'd do. After showing me his muddy fingers,
and crawling along and digging them as hard as he could into the soil to
tear out the weeds, all at once he would kick his heels up in the air
like a donkey. Then he would go on weeding again, look to see if I was
watching him, and leave his basket and run down between two onion beds
on all-fours like a dog, run back, and go on with his work.
Every now and then he would pull up a young onion with the weeds and
pick it out, give it a rub on his sleeve, put one end in his mouth, and
eat it gradually, taking it in as I've seen a cow with a long strand of
rye or grass.
Another time he would fall to punching the ground with his doubled fist,
make a basin-like depression, put his head in, support himself by
setting his hands on each side of the depression, and then, as easily as
could be, throw up his heels and stand upon his head.
It seemed to be no trouble to him to keep his balance, and when up like
that he would twist his legs about, open them wide, put them forwards
and backwards, and end by insulting me with his feet, so it seemed to
me, for he would spar at me with them and make believe to hit out.
All at once he would see one of the labourers in the distance, and then
down he would go and continue his weeding.
Perhaps, when no one was looking, he would start up, look round, go down
again on all-fours, and canter up to a pear-tree, raise himself up, and
begin scratching the bark like one of the cats sharpening its claws; or
perhaps trot to an apple-tree, climb up with wonderful activity, creep
out along a horizontal branch, and pretend to fall, but save himself by
catching with and hanging by one hand.
That done he would make a snatch with his other hand, swing about for a
few moments, and then up would go his legs to be crossed over the
branch, when he would swing to and fro head downwards, making derisive
gestures at me with his hands.
So it was that I used to hate that boy, and think he was little better
than a monkey; but somehow I felt envious of him too when the sun
shone--I didn't so much mind when it was wet--for he seemed so free and
independent, and he was so active and clever, while whenever I tried to
stand on my head on the carpet I always tipped right over and hurt my
back.
That was a wonderful place, that garden, and I used to gaze over the
high wall with its bristle of young shoots of plum-trees growing over
the coping, and see the chaffinches building in the spring-time among
the green leaves and milky-white blossoms of the pear-trees; or,
perhaps, it would be in a handy fork of an apple-tree, with the crimson
and pink blossoms all around.
Those trees were planted in straight rows, so that, look which way I
would, I could see straight down an avenue; and under them there were
rows of gooseberry trees or red currants that the men used to cut so
closely in the winter that they seemed to be complete skeletons.
Where there were no gooseberries or currants, the rows of rhubarb plants
used to send up their red stems and great green leaves; and in other
places there would be great patches of wallflowers, from which wafts of
delicious scent would come in at the open window. In the spring there
would be great rows of red and yellow tulips, and later on sweet-william
and rockets, and purple and yellow pansies in great beds.
I used to wonder that such a boy was allowed to go loose in such a
garden as that, among those flowers and strawberry beds, and, above all,
apples, and pears, and plums, for in the autumn time the trees trained
up against the high red-brick wall were covered with purple and yellow
plums, and the rosy apples peeped from among the green leaves, and the
pears would hang down till it seemed as if the branches must break.
But that boy went about just as he liked, and it often seemed very hard
that such a shaggy-looking wild fellow in rags should have the run of
such a beautiful garden, while I had none.
There was a little single opera-glass on the chimney-piece which I used
to take down and focus, so that I could see the fruit that was ripe, and
the fruit that was green, and the beauty of the flowers. I used to
watch the birds building through that glass, and could almost see the
eggs in one little mossy cup of a chaffinch's nest; but I could not
quite. I did see the tips of the young birds' beaks, though, when they
were hatched and the old ones came to feed them.
It was by means of that glass that I could see how the boy fastened up
his trousers with one strap and a piece of string, for he had no braces,
and there were no brace buttons. Those corduroy trousers had been made
for somebody else, I should say for a man, and pieces of the legs had
been cut off, and the upper part came well over his back and chest. He
had no waistcoat, but he wore a jacket that must have belonged to a man.
It was a jacket that was fustian behind, and had fustian sleeves, but
the front was of purple plush with red and yellow flowers, softened down
with dirt; and the sleeves of this jacket were tucked up very high,
while the bottom came down to his knees.
He did not wear a hat, but the crown of an old straw bonnet, the top of
which had come unsewed, and rose and fell like the lid of a round box
with one hinge, and when the lid blew open you could see his shaggy
hair, which seemed as if it had never been brushed since it first came
up out of his skin.
The opera-glass was very useful to me, especially as the boy fascinated
me so, for I used to watch him with it till I knew that he had two brass
shank-buttons and three four-holes of bone on his jacket, that there
were no buttons at all on his shirt, and that he had blue eyes, a
snub-nose, and had lost one of his top front teeth.
I must have been quite as great an attraction to him as he was to me,
but he showed it in a very different way. There would be threatening
movements made with his fists. After an hour's hard work at weeding,
without paying the slightest heed to my presence, he would suddenly jump
up as if resenting my watching, catch up the basket, and make believe to
hurl it at me. Perhaps he would pick up a great clod and pretend to
throw that, but let it fall beside him; while one day, when I went to
the window and looked out, I found him with a good-sized switch which
had been the young shoot of a pear tree, and a lump of something of a
yellowish brown tucked in the fork of a tree close by where he worked.
He had a basket by his side and was busily engaged as usual weeding, for
there was a great battle for ever going on in that garden, where the
weeds were always trying to master the flowers and vegetables, and that
boy's duty seemed to be to tear up weeds by the roots, and nothing else.
But there by his side stuck in the ground was the switch, and as soon as
he saw me at the window he gave a look round to see if he was watched,
and then picked up the stick.
"I wonder what he is going to do!" I thought, as I twisted the glass a
little and had a good look.
He was so near that the glass was not necessary, but I saw through it
that he pinched off a bit of the yellowish-brown stuff, which was
evidently clay, and, after rolling it between his hands, he stuck what
seemed to be a bit as big as a large taw marble on the end of the
switch, gave it a flourish, and the bit of clay flew off.
I could not see where it went, but I saw him watching it, as he quickly
took another piece, kneaded it, and with another flourish away that
flew.
That bit evidently went over our house; and the next time he
tried--_flap_! the piece struck the wall somewhere under the window.
Five times more did he throw, the clay flying swiftly, till all at once
_thud_! came a pellet and stuck on the window pane just above my head.
I looked up at the flattened clay, which was sticking fast, and then at
that boy, who was down on his knees again weeding away as hard as he
could weed, but taking no more notice of me, and I saw the reason: his
master was coming down the garden.