One of my old teachers was in the church; I could have sworn to his
face; he was a precise man; and now I thought he looked rather roughly
at my old shooting jacket. But I let him look, and scowled at him a
little, for I remembered that he had feruled me once. I thought it was
not probable that he would ever do it again.
There was a bustling little lawyer in the village who lived in a large
house, and who was the great man of that town and country—he had scarce
changed at all; and he stepped into the church as briskly and promptly
as he did ten years ago. But what struck me most was the change in a
couple of pretty little white-haired girls that at the time I left were
of that uncertain age when the mother lifts them on a Sunday and pounces
them down one after the other upon the seat of the pew; these were now
grown into blooming young ladies. And they swept by me in the vestibule
of the church, with a flutter of robes and a grace of motion that fairly
made my heart twitter in my bosom. I know nothing that brings home upon
a man so quick the consciousness of increasing years as to find the
little prattling girls, that were almost babies in his boyhood, become
dashing ladies, and to find those whom he used to look on patronizingly
and compassionately, thinking they were little girls, grown to such
maturity that the mere rustle of their silk dresses will give him a
twinge, and their eyes, if he looks at them, make him unaccountably shy.
After service I strolled up by the school buildings; I traced the names
that we had cut upon the fence; but the fence had grown brown with age,
and was nearly rotted away. Upon the beech tree in the hollow behind the
school the carvings were all overgrown. It must have been vacation, if
indeed there was any school at all; for I could see only one old woman
about the premises, and she was hanging out a dishcloth to dry in the
sun. I passed on up the hill, beyond the buildings, where in the
boy-days we built stone forts with bastions and turrets; but the farmers
had put the bastions and turrets into their cobblestone walls. At the
orchard fence I stopped and looked—from force, I believe, of old
habit—to see if any one were watching—and then leaped over, and found my
way to the early-apple tree; but the fruit had gone by. It seemed very
daring in me, even then, to walk so boldly in the forbidden ground.
But the old head-master who forbade it was dead, and Russell and
Burgess, and I know not how many others, who in other times were
culprits with me, were dead, too. When I passed back by the school I
lingered to look up at the windows of that corner room, where I had
slept the sound, healthful sleep of boyhood—and where, too, I had passed
many, many wakeful hours, thinking of the absent Bella, and of my home.
—How small, seemed now, the great griefs of boyhood! Light floating
clouds will obscure the sun that is but half risen; but let him be
up—mid-heaven, and the cloud that then darkens the land must be thick
and heavy indeed.
—The tears started from my eyes—was not such a cloud over me now?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]