Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Well, what of the alas?

  You shall hear.

  CHAPTER II

  FOR the first two weeks I had it all my own way in No. 2, and fancied that I was getting to be quite a virtuous hero. Jimmy looked up to me, and I explained his lessons to him, and gave him all sorts of wise counsel, and I looked up to Lucy, and Lucy was gracious to me.

  I had taken my stand as one of the best scholars in school, and the master gave me approving glances. The minister cast benignant eyes on me, when I stood lounging at his front gate under the sugar maples, of an evening, and talked over it to Lucy. Sometimes he would look out of his study window and say, “Come in, my son,” and then I came and sat on the front steps. It was so pleasant to hear Lucy call me Mr. Somers, and ask my opinion about the last poem of the day, and to hold grave discussions with her on all sorts of subjects.

  Punctually on Wednesday evening I called to walk with her to the weekly evening lecture, sat by her side, and sung out of the same hymn-book. I regarded myself as far along in my pilgrimage of virtue, established in a sort of Palace Beautiful, and Lucy figured in my eyes as the fair damsel named Discretion, who kept the door. I did not know how near to the Palace Beautiful of boys often lies the Valley of Humiliation, but into this valley it was my fortune to make a pretty rapid descent.

  There were rumors that two more boys were expected in No. 2; and one night, when I sauntered in from my evening stroll, I found Tom Danforth in possession.

  “Why, isn’t El Vinton here?” he said. “I expected to find him.”

  I hadn’t even heard of El Vinton, and said so.

  “Not heard of him! Why, he’s one of your Beacon Street mags,” said Tom. “His father lives in a palace right opposite the Frog Pond, there on Beacon Street. El’s jolly; he’s up to everything that’s going. We were in the Latin School together. I came here to chum with him.”

  “Why doesn’t he stay in the Latin School, then?” said I, not well pleased with the idea of this Boston mag, as Tom called him.

  “Well, El’s up to too many tricks, you see. The fact is, he’s been blowing a little too strong, and his governor is going to rusticate him. Sent him here because it is such a sweet little innocent place. El says he don’t care a dam; he can have jolly times anywhere.”

  And sure enough, that evening El came down in state and style on the top of the stage, and took possession in our quiet chamber with an abundance of racket.

  “Hello, fellows! Who’s here?” he said, when he broke into the apartment. “You — what’s your name?”

  “Somers is my name,” I said, endeavoring to maintain that mild dignity of demeanor which I had read about in story-books.

  “My dear fellow, don’t attempt that style,” he said, as he seated himself on the table among my Latin books, and swung his feet in a free-and-easy manner. “Cultivate simplicity, my son, and tell your grandfather your name, like a good boy.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. Tom and Jimmy laughed, too, and I felt rather uncomfortable as I said, “Well, my name is William.”

  “Well, then, here we all are, — Tom, Bill, Jim, and your humble servant, El Vinton,” he said; “just a jolly room full. Now hand out the toothbrush mugs, or whatever drinking weapons you’ve got, and let’s drink to better acquaintance. Tom, haul that hamper this way. Let’s make friends with these natives. I’m abominably thirsty.” In a moment a bottle of claret was produced from a well-stuffed hamper, the top dexterously knocked off with a skillful blow by El Vinton, and we were discussing crackers, and cheese, and claret with our new friend.

  Now, in my native village of Blueberry, I had signed a temperance pledge, and at first I had some faint scruples, and said that I never took wine, but the new ruler of the apartment put me down with, —

  “Ah, now, my boy, don’t come the moral dodge, — nothing but weak red ink, you know! I knew the grub here’d be abominable, and so I came stocked, — and share all round’s my motto, — nothing that can intoxicate, of course,” he added, with a wink at Tom Danforth.

  Tom laughed, and seemed to think this was a capital joke.

  Altogether we two innocent country boys seemed to be taken possession of by the new occupants of the room. Boys have the phrase “Coming it over one,” and, like most phrases coined out of life, it expresses a real fact. Elliot Vinton “came it over” us both the very first evening, and settled himself as lord paramount in our apartment We certainly passed a very merry evening, and Elliot made himself most entertaining, recounting scenes and exploits of wild school-boy life in Boston, and Tom chorused the laugh always.

  To be sure I could not help feeling, sometimes, that Elliot’s jokes bore rather hard on poor folks. For example, he told, with great gusto, how they served an oyster-man, one night, in Boston. In those days the oystermen used to cry the oysters through the streets of an evening. They commonly had a bag of shell oysters over their shoulder, and a pail full of opened oysters in their hand, so as to serve out either on demand of their customers.

  “This was the way we fixed ‘em,” said Elliot. “Tom and a lot of fellows stood round a corner holding the ends of a stout line, with a strong codfish hook in it. I takes this in my hand and walks up to him just as he comes past the corner.

  “‘Hollo, mister,’ says I, ‘I want some of your oysters there in that air pail.’ I had a little pail in my hand, as if I had come up to buy. At the same time I struck the cod-hook into his bag.

  “Down came his bag on the sidewalk, while he stooped to open his pail. Whisk went the bag up the street.

  “‘Hollo! what’s that?’ says he; and he started off after it. But away went the bag round the comer. The minute his back was turned I caught the pail and was off round another comer. You ought to have seen how funny the old fellow looked. His old coat-tails flapped, and he flew round and round like a cat after her tail. He grabbed right and left — no bag, no pail — one gone round one corner, and one round the other before you could say Jack Robinson. Oh, it was funny!”

  Now, when a set of boys are eating crackers, and drinking claret, and laughing, and the laugh once gets going, it is hard to stop it, and I laughed over the story with the rest, but with a sort of misgiving at my heart.

  I felt as if I ought to say something, and finally I cleared my throat and said, “But after all it wasn’t doing quite the fair thing, was it? Poor old fellow!”

  “Oh, these oystermen get no end of money,” he said, carelessly. “They build houses and own whole blocks. They can afford to give us boys a joke, now and then. Besides, I made it up to him. We bought oysters every night of him for six months.”

  “But that didn’t pay him for those you stole,” I said.

  “Stole! We didn’t steal. We only hooked them, my son,” said Elliot, with a toss of his curls and a patronizing smile. “There’s all the difference in the world between hooking and stealing, my boy. Nobody ever calls such scrapes stealing!”

  Elliot had such a condescending, knowing air of explaining things to us, and then his whiskers were full grown, and he had a decided mustache, and sported a gold watch, with an elegant chain, and altogether seemed so much a man of the world, that there is no wonder we let him lay down the law to us.

  After the claret came a roll of cigars, and he handed one all round.

  “I never smoke,” said I.

  “Time you did, then,” he said, tilting back in his chair and lighting his cigar luxuriously. “Must be a first time for everything, my boy.”

  Jimmy looked up in an undecided way to me, and I played with my cigar carelessly, while Elliot and Tom were soon puffing magnificently.

  “You’ll have to smoke in self-defense, my dear fellow,” said Elliot, laughing. “You may as well have your own smoke as ours.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind a cigar, now and then, just for company,” said I, carelessly lighting mine.

  Jimmy upon this lit his, and the room was soon blue with smoke. Now I had solemnly promised my mother not to smoke, and the thought o
f this promise came rather uneasily into my mind, but I said to myself, “A fellow doesn’t want to be a wet blanket — so just for this once!” Pretty soon Jimmy began to look pale, and after a few uneasy minutes rushed to the chamber-window and began vomiting.

  “Give him a stiffener, Tom,” said Elliot; and Tom drew out of the hamper a flask of brandy, and adroitly mixed a stiffener of brandy and water, which Elliot administered with a paternal air, making Jimmy lie down on the bed.

  “Never mind, my boy, you ‘re green,” he said. “You’ll get used to it after a little. Always make a fellow sick at first. Gracious me, how sick my first cigar made me! I think I was about your age. Here, set the windows open, and give him fresh air; and, Tom, you and I’ll go down and finish in the street.”

  “Oh, you can’t do that,” said I; “it’s contrary to the rules of the academy, and you’d be hauled up at once.”

  “Tom, this gets interesting,” said El. “If there’s any thing that gives a charm to life, it’s a fight with these Dons. I half plagued their lives out in the Latin School.”

  “Well,” said I, “Mr. Exeter is a pretty resolute fellow. It’s a word and a blow with him, and if fellows don’t keep up to the chalk mark, he just sends ’em off.”

  “All the jollier,” said El, “but that sha’n’t hinder my smoke the first evening. I ain’t supposed to know the rules. To-morrow, you know, I shall find ’em out.” And so saying, El and Tom sallied down into the little moonlit street, with their cigars in their mouths, walking grandly up and down with their hands in their pockets, while I sat, crestfallen and self-condemned, in the window, watching them.

  As they came into the broad glare of the full moon, they met Lucy, leading by the hand her younger sister. I remember how pretty she looked, all in white, with her head of golden curls shining like a mist in the mysterious moonshine. I felt myself getting very hot and red, as I sat there in the window-seat, thinking how I had been spending my evening. There was my lesson unlearned, Jimmy groaning in bed with a raging headache, from the brandy and cigar, and I, who had thought myself so manly, and felt so sure of my principles, and had given him so much excellent advice, had gone down before the first touch of temptation!

  The foolish fear of being thought green had upset all my good resolutions, and made me break all my promises. I couldn’t help seeing that the desire to appear manly had led me to do the most sneaking unmanly thing in my life. My example had misled Jimmy, and I had lost his respect. In short, I could not help seeing that that one evening had made El Vinton master in our room. For if a man or boy is going to hold his own against another, he must begin in time. There’s an old proverb, “If you say A, you must say B.” If I had been going to keep my temperance pledge and my promise to my mother about smoking, then and there, on that first evening, was the time to have stood to it. The battle had come on and I had shown the white feather the very first moment.

  The sight of Lucy made me feel all this the more, because in the short time of our acquaintance I had been very confidential, and told her all about my temperance pledge and my promise about tobacco, and she had said how much it increased her respect for me; and Lucy’s respect was worth more to me even than my own. How I did despise myself! How mean and cowardly I seemed to myself!

  El and Tom came back in high spirits.

  “We passed a very nice P. G.,” said EL “I wonder who she is.”

  “Her curls are stunning,” said Tom.

  “That was Miss Lucy Sewell you passed,” said L “She is the minister’s daughter.”

  “She’ll do, Tom,” said El “If I can find a decent team in this place, I’ll trot her out some time this week.” The cup of my misery was full.

  CHAPTER III

  El VINTON proved to be a good scholar. The Boston Latin School generally turned out such, and El stood high, even there.

  In truth, he was one of those bright, quick fellows for whom the ordinary lessons of school are not employment enough — who can keep at the head of their classes with but little outlay of time and thought — and so he soon took a high stand in his classes, with very little study. In fact, he did not scruple, in our room, to assume the airs of a gentleman of elegant leisure. He had a stock of novels, over which he lounged easily, while Jimmy and I were digging at our lessons with care-worn faces — and he contrived to do pretty much what he chose, spite of monitors, rules, and teachers.

  He was a general favorite with the boys, and more so with the girls, who seemed to regard him as a sort of young nobleman in disguise.

  There was, however, one exception. Lucy Sewell had a clear, cool, distant way of looking at him out of her blue eyes, that was quite surprising to him.

  “Hang that girl!” he said, one day, as he stood at his glass; “she don’t seem to appreciate me. Well, I must give her a drive, and have a little private conversation with her.”

  And El posted off to the only livery stable in town to get up what he called a decent turnout. This was two or three days after the evening I have described.

  I can’t tell anybody what a wretched, subjugated, kept-down kind of life I was leading. The fear of El ‘Vinton’s ridicule, and a sort of anxious sense of what he would think of what I said and did, embarrassed me day and night.

  Then I was uncomfortable with Lucy, because I felt as if I had forfeited all pretensions to her respect; and when with her I was constantly wondering what she would think of me, if she knew just how miserably weak I had been.

  Added to all this, I was wretched to think El Vinton was going to take her to ride. It seemed so manly and grand to have all the money one wanted, and be able to go to livery-stables and order turnouts, and here was I with not a nine-pence for spending-money! I thought I had money enough the two weeks before El came, but now things looked quite changed to my view. A week ago, to escort Lucy to the Wednesday evening lecture seemed to be all I could ask, but now I saw a wider sphere of desire opening before me; and when El Vinton came driving up street that afternoon, bowing, and kissing his hand to the girls as he passed, in his showy buggy, with a fast horse, I felt bitter repinings.

  “Well,” he said, as he came in that evening, “I’ve got a decentish affair, considering the place, and now I shall go and engage my girl for to-morrow.” So, after an elaborate arrangement of necktie, he started over to the minister’s to make his call.

  He was gone about half an hour, and then came back in a very ill humor.

  “What time are you going to-morrow?” said Tom.

  “She won’t go at all,” said El.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, she says her father don’t approve of her riding out with young gentlemen.”

  “What an old tyrant!” said Tom. “I say, El, she might meet you accidentally, and he know nothing about it.”

  “Well, that’s just what I proposed to her,” said El.

  “I wish you could have seen her! Why, the girl actually seemed to take it as an insult! She stood up so straight, that really I thought her feet were going off the carpet, and said she was astonished that I should propose such a thing. She’s a real prig, that girl is; a regular stiff, green-spectacled school-ma’am.”

  “That sounds like sour grapes,” said I, immensely delighted with the result of the transaction, and thinking more of Lucy than ever.

  “Well,” said El, shaking his shoulders, “I’ll go and ask one of those Seymour girls. One of them shook her handkerchief out of the window at me when I drove by this afternoon. The loss will be her own — I’m sure I don’t care. If she don’t want to ride, I don’t know why I should want to take her.”

  It is the way of our selfish sex, I suppose, but it is a fact, nevertheless, that nothing makes a girl’s good opinion more precious in our eyes, than to hear that she has been snubbing some other fellow. That which anybody may have, we set small value on, but the girl who makes distinctions, if she happens to be gracious to us, is forthwith a peg higher in our esteem. I had supposed, of course, that E
l Vinton’s dashing air, and his many advantages of person, wealth, and position, would carry all before them, and I must say I was surprised at his receiving this repulse from Lucy.

  It was Wednesday evening, and I called to ask her to go to the lecture. Yes, she would go — and down she came in the distracting little white bonnet, with the wreath of sweet peas upon it, and we walked off to lecture in the most edifying manner. I expatiated on our new roommate, and tried to draw out Lucy’s opinion of him.

  “To be frank with you, Mr. Somers, I do not like Mr. Vinton,” she said.

  “How charming of her!” was the immediate language of my heart; but I said, “Why, he is just the person I supposed you would be quite carried away with.”

  “Then you know very little of me or my taste,” said Lucy. “I have heard a good deal of this El Vinton, and think it is rather a misfortune that he has been sent to our academy. He is a rich, fast, drinking, smoking boy, just the one to lead young boys astray.”

  “He’s a real jolly fellow,” said I, feeling in honor bound to say something.

  “I dare say he is,” she said, “but I think he is a dangerous companion. Then that little Jimmy Seaforth, in your room! He is a delicate boy, and his mother is constantly anxious about him. She told father all about it. His father died a drunkard, and his mother is very anxious lest he should form any bad habits. So she sent him here because Mr. Exeter is so particular with his boys, to keep dangerous influences out of their way. If it were not that you were in the same room with him I should feel troubled about Jimmy, but you will keep him straight, I know.” This conversation took place as we were walking home from lecture. This commendation from Lucy fell like a pound of lead on my heart. I felt like a miserable, degraded sneak, as I walked by her side in silence. I was appalled, too, by what she told me of Jimmy, for during the fortnight following El Vinton’s arrival Jimmy had seemed quite enkindled with the ambition to learn to smoke, and was in the habit of keeping off the qualmish feelings thus brought on by the aforementioned stiffeners of brandy and water.