ONE of the reasons why Tom’s mind had drifted away from its secret
troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest
itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had
struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to “whistle her down the
wind,” but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father’s
house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she
should die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an
interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there
was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat;
there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to
try all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those people who
are infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of
producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in
these things. When something fresh in this line came out she was in a
fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing,
but on anybody else that came handy. She was a subscriber for all the
“Health” periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance
they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the “rot” they
contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up,
and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and
what frame of mind to keep one’s self in, and what sort of clothing
to wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her
health-journals of the current month customarily upset everything they
had recommended the month before. She was as simple-hearted and honest
as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered
together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed
with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with
“hell following after.” But she never suspected that she was not an
angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise, to the suffering
neighbors.
The water treatment was new, now, and Tom’s low condition was a windfall
to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up in the
wood-shed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then she scrubbed
him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; then she
rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she
sweated his soul clean and “the yellow stains of it came through his
pores”–as Tom said.
Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and
pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and
plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the
water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plasters. She calculated his
capacity as she would a jug’s, and filled him up every day with quack
cure-alls.
Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase
filled the old lady’s heart with consternation. This indifference must
be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first
time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with
gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water
treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer.
She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the
result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again;
for the “indifference” was broken up. The boy could not have shown a
wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.
Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be
romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have
too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he
thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit upon that of
professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he
became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and
quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings
to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle
clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it
did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in
the sitting-room floor with it.
One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt’s yellow
cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously, and begging
for a taste. Tom said:
“Don’t ask for it unless you want it, Peter.”
But Peter signified that he did want it.
“You better make sure.”
Peter was sure.
“Now you’ve asked for it, and I’ll give it to you, because there ain’t
anything mean about me; but if you find you don’t like it, you mustn’t
blame anybody but your own self.”
Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down
the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then
delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging
against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next
he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment,
with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his
unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again
spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time
to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah,
and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots
with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over
her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter.
“Tom, what on earth ails that cat?”
“I don’t know, aunt,” gasped the boy.
“Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?”
“Deed I don’t know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they’re having a
good time.”
“They do, do they?” There was something in the tone that made Tom
apprehensive.
“Yes’m. That is, I believe they do.”
“You _do_?”
“Yes’m.”
The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized
by anxiety. Too late he divined her “drift.” The handle of the telltale
tea-spoon was visible under the bed-valance. Aunt Polly took it, held it
up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual
handle–his ear–and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.
“Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?”
“I done it out of pity for him–because he hadn’t any aunt.”
“Hadn’t any aunt!–you numskull. What has that got to do with it?”
“Heaps. Because if he’d had one she’d a burnt him out herself! She’d a
roasted his bowels out of him ‘thout any more feeling than if he was a
human!”
Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing in
a new light; what was cruelty to a cat _might_ be cruelty to a boy, too.
She began to soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, and she
put her hand on Tom’s head and said gently:
“I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it _did_ do you good.”
Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping
through his gravity.
“I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. It
done _him_ good, too. I never see him get around so since–”
“Oh, go ‘long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again. And you try
and see if you can’t be a good boy, for once, and you needn’t take any
more medicine.”
Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange thing
had been occurring every day latterly. And now, as usual of late,
he hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his
comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to
be looking everywhere but whither he really was looking–down the road.
Presently Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom’s face lighted; he gazed
a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom
accosted him; and “led up” warily to opportunities for remark about
Becky, but the giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and
watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the
owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last frocks
ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered
the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock passed
in at the gate, and Tom’s heart gave a great bound. The next instant he
was out, and “going on” like an Indian; yelling, laughing, chasing boys,
jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing handsprings,
standing on his head–doing all the heroic things he could conceive of,
and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if Becky Thatcher
was noticing. But she seemed to be unconscious of it all; she never
looked. Could it be possible that she was not aware that he was there?
He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came war-whooping
around, snatched a boy’s cap, hurled it to the roof of the schoolhouse,
broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every direction, and
fell sprawling, himself, under Becky’s nose, almost upsetting her–and
she turned, with her nose in the air, and he heard her say: “Mf! some
people think they’re mighty smart–always showing off!”
Tom’s cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed and
crestfallen.
