Chapter 3 (Tom Sawyer (Full Cast))

01Chapter 3.

02Tom as a General, Triumph and Reward, Dismal Felicity, Commission and Omission.

03Tom 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.

04The 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.

05Her spectacles were propped up on her grey head for safety.

06She had thought that, of course, Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at seeing him place himself in her power again in this intrepid way.

07He said, Mayn't I go and play now, Aunt?

08What?

09Already?

10How much have you done?

11It's all done, Aunt.

12Tom, don't lie to me.

13I can't bear it.

14I ain't, Aunt.

15It is all done.

16Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence.

17She went out to sea for herself, and she wouldn't have been content to find twenty per cent of Tom's statement true.

18When 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.

19She said, Well, I never.

20There's no getting round it.

21You can work when you're a mind to, Tom.

22And then she diluted the compliment, by adding, But it's powerful seldom you're a mind to, I'm bound to say.

23Well, go long and play.

24But mind you get back some time in a week, or I'll tan you.

25She 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.

26And while she closed with a happy scriptural flourish, he hooked a doughnut.

27Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway that led to the back rooms on the second floor.

28Clods were handy, and the air was full of them in a twinkling.

29They raged around Sid like a hailstorm, and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect, and Tom was over the fence and gone.

30There was a gate, but as a general thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it.

31His soul was at peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his black thread and getting him into trouble.

32Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by the back of his aunt's cow-stable.

33He presently got safely beyond the reach of capture and punishment, and hastened toward the public square of the village, where two military companies of boys had met for conflict, according to previous appointment.

34Tom was general of one of these armies, Joe Harper, a bosom friend, general of the other.

35These two great commanders did not condescend to fight in person, that being better suited to the still smaller fry, but sat together on an eminence, and conducted the field's operations by orders delivered through aides-de-camp.

36Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and hard-fought battle.

37Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the necessary battle appointed.

38After which the armies fell into line and marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

39As 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.

40The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot.

41A certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart, and left not even a memory of herself behind.

42He had thought he loved her to distraction.

43He had regarded his passion as adoration, and, behold, it was only a pure little evanescent partiality.

44He had been months winning her.

45She had confessed hardly a week ago.

46He had been the happiest and the proudest boy in the world only seven short days.

47And here, in an instant of time, she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is done.

48He worshipped this new angel with a furtive eye till he saw that she had discovered him.

49Then 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.

50He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some 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 wending her way toward the house.

51Tom came up to the fence and leaned on it, grieving and hoping she would tarry yet a while longer.

52She halted a moment on the steps and then moved toward the door.

53Tom 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.

54The 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.

55Presently he picked up a straw and began to balance it on his nose, with his head tilted far back.

56As he moved from side to side in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy.

57Finally his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped away with the treasure, and disappeared round the corner.

58But 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 hypocritical anyway.

59He returned now and hung about the fence till nightfall, showing off as before.

60But 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 intentions.

61Finally he strode home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions.

62All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered.

63What had got into the child?

64He took a good scolding about clodding Sid, and did not seem to mind it in the least.

65He tried to steal sugar under his aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles wrapped for it.

66He said, "'And you don't whack Sid when he takes it.' "'Well, Sid, don't torment a body the way you do.

67You'd be always into that sugar if I weren'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.

68But Sid's fingers slipped, and the bowl dropped and broke.

69Tom was in ecstasies, in such ecstasies that he even controlled his tongue and was silent.

70He 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 had done 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.

71He 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.

72He said to himself, "'Now it's coming.' And the next instant he was sprawling on the floor.

73The potent palm was uplifted to strike again, when Tom cried out, "'Hold on now, what are you melting me for?

74Sid broke it.' Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity.

75But when she got her tongue again, she only said, "'Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon.

76You been into some other audacious mischief when I weren'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.

77So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.

78Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes.

79He knew that in her heart his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the consciousness of it.

80He would hang out no signals, he would take notice of none.

81He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him now and then through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it.

82He pictured himself lying sick unto death, and his aunt bending over him, beseeching one little forgiving word.

83But he would turn his face to the wall and die with that word unsaid.

84Ah, how would she feel then?

85And he pictured himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet and his sore heart at rest.

86How 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.

87But he would lie there cold and white and make no sign, a poor little sufferer whose griefs were at an end.

88He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos of these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to choke.

89And his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he winked, and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose.

90And 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.

91It was too sacred for such contact.

92And 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 one door, as she brought song and sunshine in at the other.

93He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit.

94A 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.

95Then he thought of his flower.

96He got it out, rampled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal felicity.

97He wondered if she would pity him if she knew.

98Would she cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms around his neck and comfort him?

99Or would she turn coldly away, like all the hollow world?

100This 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 very lights, till he wore it threadbare.

101At last he rose up sighing, and departed in the darkness.

102About half-past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street to where the adored unknown lived.

103He paused a moment.

104No sound fell upon his listening ear.

105A candle was casting a dull glow upon the curtain of a second-story window.

106Was the sacred presence there?

107He climbed the fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till he stood under that window.

108He looked up at it long, and with emotion.

109Then he laid down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon his back, with his hands clasped upon his breast, and holding his poor wilted flower.

110And 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.

111And thus she would see him when she looked out upon the glad morning.

112And, oh, would she drop one little 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?

113The window went up.

114A maidservant's discordant voice profaned the holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains.

115The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort.

116There was a whiz as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse.

117A sound as of shivering glass followed, and a small vague form went over the fence, and shot away in the gloom.

118Not 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 any references to allusions, he thought better of it, and held his peace, for there was danger in Tom's eye.

119Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made mental note of the omission.

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