Читать книгу Dream Life: A Fable of the Seasons - Donald Grant Mitchell - Страница 15

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It is a proud thing to go out from under the realm of a schoolmistress, and to be enrolled in a company of boys, who are under the guidance of a master. It is one of the earliest steps of worldly pride, which has before it a long and tedious ladder of ascent. Even the advice of the old mistress, and the ninepenny book that she thrusts into your hand as a parting gift, pass for nothing; and her kiss of adieu, if she tenders it in the sight of your fellows, will call up an angry rush of blood to the cheek, that for long years shall drown all sense of its kindness.

You have looked admiringly many a day upon the tall fellows who play at the door of Dr. Bidlow's school; you have looked with reverence—second only to that felt for the old village church—upon its dark-looking, heavy brick walls. It seemed to be redolent of learning; and stopping at times to gaze upon the gallipots and broken retorts at the second-story window, you have pondered in your boyish way upon the inscrutable wonders of Science, and the ineffable dignity of Dr. Bidlow's brick school!

Dr. Bidlow seems to you to belong to a race of giants; and yet he is a spare, thin man, with a hooked nose, a large, flat, gold watch-key, a crack in his voice, a wig, and very dirty wristbands. Still you stand in awe at the mere sight of him—an awe that is very much encouraged by a report made to you by a small boy, that "Old Bid" keeps a large ebony ruler in his desk. You are amazed at the small boy's audacity; it astonishes you that any one who had ever smelt the strong fumes of sulphur and ether in the Doctor's room, and had seen him turn red vinegar blue, (as they say he does,) should call him "Old Bid!"

You however come very little under his control; you enter upon the proud life, in the small boy's department, under the dominion of the English master. He is a different personage from Dr. Bidlow: he is a dapper little man, who twinkles his eye in a peculiar fashion, and who has a way of marching about the schoolroom with his hands crossed behind him, giving a playful flirt to his coat-tails. He wears a pen tucked behind his ear; his hair is carefully set up at the sides and upon the top, to conceal (as you think later in life) his diminutive height; and he steps very springily around behind the benches, glancing now and then at the books—cautioning one scholar about his dog's-ears, and startling another from a doze by a very loud and odious snap of his forefinger upon the boy's head.

At other times he sticks a hand in the armlet of his waistcoat; he brandishes in the other a thickish bit of smooth cherry-wood, sometimes dressing his hair withal; and again giving his head a slight scratch behind the ear, while he takes occasion at the same time for an oblique glance at a fat boy in the corner, who is reaching down from his seat after a little paper pellet that has just been discharged at him from some unknown quarter. The master steals very cautiously and quickly to the rear of the stooping boy, dreadfully exposed by his unfortunate position, and inflicts a stinging blow. A weak-eyed little scholar on the next bench ventures a modest titter, at which the assistant makes a significant motion with his ruler—on the seat, as it were, of an imaginary pair of pantaloons—which renders the weak-eyed boy on a sudden very insensible to the recent joke.

You meantime profess to be very much engrossed with your grammar—turned upside-down; you think it must have hurt, and are only sorry that it did not happen to a tall, dark-faced boy, who cheated you in a swop of jackknives. You innocently think that he must be a very bad boy, and fancy—aided by a suggestion of the old nurse at home on the same point—that he will one day come to the gallows.

There is a platform on one side of the schoolroom, where the teacher sits at a little red table; and they have a tradition among the boys, that a pin properly bent was one day put into the chair of the English master, and that he did not wear his hand in the armlet of his waistcoat for two whole days thereafter. Yet his air of dignity seems proper enough in a man of such erudition, and such grasp of imagination, as he must possess. For he can quote poetry—some of the big scholars have heard him do it; he can parse the whole of "Paradise Lost," and he can cipher in Long Division, and the Rule of Three, as if it was all Simple Addition; and then, such a hand as he writes, and such a superb capital B! It is hard to understand how he does it.

Sometimes lifting the lid of your desk, where you pretend to be very busy with your papers, you steal the reading of some brief passage of "Lazy Lawrence," or of the "Hungarian Brothers," and muse about it for hours afterward to the great detriment of your ciphering; or, deeply lost in the story of the "Scottish Chiefs," you fall to comparing such villains as Menteith with the stout boys who tease you; and you only wish they could come within reach of the fierce Kirkpatrick's claymore.

But you are frighted out of this stolen reading by a circumstance that stirs your young blood very strangely. The master is looking very sourly on a certain morning, and has caught sight of the little weak-eyed boy over beyond you, reading "Roderick Random." He sends out for a long birch rod, and having trimmed off the leaves carefully—with a glance or two in your direction—he marches up behind the bench of the poor culprit—who turns deathly pale—grapples him by the collar, drags him out over the desks, his limbs dangling in a shocking way against the sharp angles, and having him fairly in the middle of the room, clinches his rod with a new, and, as it seems to you, a very sportive grip.

You shudder fearfully.

"Please don't whip me," says the boy, whimpering.

"Aha!" says the smirking pedagogue, bringing down the stick with a quick, sharp cut—"you don't like it, eh?"

The poor fellow screams, and struggles to escape; but the blows come faster and thicker. The blood tingles in your finger-ends with indignation.

"Please don't strike me again," says the boy, sobbing, and taking breath, as he writhes about the legs of the master; "I won't read another time."

"Ah, you won't, sir—won't you? I don't mean you shall, sir;" and the blows fall thick and fast, until the poor fellow crawls back, utterly crestfallen and heartsick, to sob over his books.

You grow into a sudden boldness; you wish you were only large enough to beat the master; you know such treatment would make you miserable; you shudder at the thought of it; you do not believe he would dare; you know the other boy has got no father. This seems to throw a new light upon the matter, but it only intensifies your indignation. You are sure that no father would suffer it; or, if you thought so, it would sadly weaken your love for him. You pray Heaven, that it may never be brought to such proof.

----Let a boy once distrust the love or the tenderness of his parents, and the last resort of his yearning affections—so far as the world goes—is utterly gone. He is in the sure road to a bitter fate. His heart will take on a hard, iron covering, that will flash out plenty of fire in his after contact with the world, but it will never—never melt!

There are some tall trees, that overshadow an angle of the schoolhouse; and the larger scholars play some very surprising gymnastic tricks upon their lower limbs: one boy, for instance, will hang for an incredible length of time by his feet with his head down; and when you tell Charlie of it at night, with such additions as your boyish imagination can contrive, the old nurse is shocked, and states very gravely that it is dangerous, and that the blood all runs to the head, and sometimes bursts out of the eyes and mouth. You look at that particular boy with astonishment afterward, and expect to see him some day burst into bleeding from the nose and ears, and flood the schoolroom benches.

In time however you get to performing some modest experiments yourself upon the very lowest limbs, taking care to avoid the observation of the larger boys, who else might laugh at you; you especially avoid the notice of one stout fellow in pea-green breeches, who is a sort of "bully" among the small boys, and who delights in kicking your marbles about very accidentally. He has a fashion too of twisting his handkerchief into what he calls a "snapper," with a knot at the end, and cracking at you with it, very much to the irritation of your spirits and of your legs.

Sometimes, when he has brought you to an angry burst of tears, he will very graciously force upon you the handkerchief, and insist upon your cracking him in return; which, as you know nothing about his effective method of making the knot bite, is a very harmless proposal on his part.

But you have still stronger reason to remember that boy. There are trees, as I said, near the school; and you get the reputation, after a time, of a good climber. One day you are well in the tops of the trees, and being dared by the boys below, you venture higher—higher than any boy has ever gone before. You feel very proudly, but just then catch sight of the sneering face of your old enemy of the snapper; and he dares you to go upon a limb that he points out.

The rest say—for you hear them plainly—"It won't bear him." And Frank, a great friend of yours, shouts loudly to you not to try.

"Pho," says your tormentor—"the little coward!"

If you could whip him, you would go down the tree, and do it willingly; as it is, you cannot let him triumph; so you advance cautiously out upon the limb; it bends and sways fearfully with your weight; presently it cracks; you try to return, but it is too late; you feel yourself going; your mind flashes home—over your life, your hope, your fate—like lightning; then comes a sense of dizziness, a succession of quick blows, and a dull, heavy crash!

You are conscious of nothing again, until you find yourself in the great hall of the school, covered with blood, the old Doctor standing over you with a phial, and Frank kneeling by you, and holding your shattered arm, which has been broken by the fall.

After this come those long, weary days of confinement, when you lie still through all the hours of noon, looking out upon the cheerful sunshine only through the windows of your little room. Yet it seems a grand thing to have the whole household attendant upon you. The doors are opened and shut softly, and they all step noiselessly about your chamber; and when you groan with pain, you are sure of meeting sad, sympathizing looks. Your mother will step gently to your side and lay her cool, white hand upon your forehead; and little Nelly will gaze at you from the foot of your bed with a sad earnestness, and with tears of pity in her soft hazel eyes. And afterward, as your pain passes away, she will bring you her prettiest books, and fresh flowers, and whatever she knows you will love.

But it is dreadful when you wake at night from your feverish slumber, and see nothing but the spectral shadows that the sick-lamp upon the hearth throws aslant the walls; and hear nothing but the heavy breathing of the old nurse in the easy-chair, and the ticking of the clock upon the mantel! Then silence and the night crowd upon your soul drearily. But your thought is active. It shapes at your bedside the loved figure of your mother, or it calls up the whole company of Dr. Bidlow's boys and weeks of study or of play group like magic on your quickened vision; then a twinge of pain will call again the dreariness, and your head tosses upon the pillow, and your eye searches the gloom vainly for pleasant faces; and your fears brood on that drearier, coming night of Death—far longer, and far more cheerless than this.

But even here the memory of some little prayer you have been taught, which promises a Morning after the Night, comes to your throbbing brain; and its murmur on your fevered lips, as you breathe it, soothes like a caress of angels, and woos you to smiles and sleep.

As the days pass, you grow stronger; and Frank comes in to tell you of the school, and that your old tormentor has been expelled; and you grow into a strong friendship with Frank, and you think of yourselves as a new Damon and Pythias, and that you will some day live together in a fine house, with plenty of horses, and plenty of chestnut-trees. Alas, the boy counts little on those later and bitter fates of life, which sever his early friendships like wisps of straw!

At other times, with your eye upon the sleek, trim figure of the Doctor, and upon his huge bunch of watch-seals, you think you will some day be a Doctor; and that with a wife and children, and a respectable gig, and gold watch, with seals to match, you would needs be a very happy fellow.