At school the children made so much of him and of Joe, and delivered such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were not long in becoming insufferably "stuck-up." They began to tell their adventures to hungry listeners--but they only began; it was not a thing likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish material. And finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached.
Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now. Glory was sufficient. He would live for glory. Now that he was distinguished, maybe she would be wanting to "make up." Well, let her--she should see that he could be as indifferent as some other people. Presently she arrived. Tom pretended not to see her. He moved away and joined a group of boys and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she was tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes, pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye in his direction at such times, too. It gratified all the vicious vanity that was in him; and so, instead of winning him, it only "set him up"
the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that he knew she was about. Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and wistfully toward Tom. Then she observed that now Tom was talking more particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else. She felt a sharp pang and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. She tried to go away, but her feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. She said to a girl almost at Tom"s elbow--with sham vivacity:
"Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn"t you come to Sunday-school?"
"I did come--didn"t you see me?"
"Why, no! Did you? Where did you sit?"
"I was in Miss Peters" cla.s.s, where I always go. I saw _you_."
"Did you? Why, it"s funny I didn"t see you. I wanted to tell you about the picnic."
"Oh, that"s jolly. Who"s going to give it?"
"My ma"s going to let me have one."
"Oh, goody; I hope she"ll let _me_ come."
"Well, she will. The picnic"s for me. She"ll let anybody come that I want, and I want you."
"That"s ever so nice. When is it going to be?"
"By and by. Maybe about vacation."
"Oh, won"t it be fun! You going to have all the girls and boys?"
"Yes, every one that"s friends to me--or wants to be"; and she glanced ever so furtively at Tom, but he talked right along to Amy Lawrence about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the great sycamore tree "all to flinders" while he was "standing within three feet of it."
"Oh, may I come?" said Grace Miller.
"Yes."
"And me?" said Sally Rogers.
"Yes."
"And me, too?" said Susy Harper. "And Joe?"
"Yes."
And so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged for invitations but Tom and Amy. Then Tom turned coolly away, still talking, and took Amy with him. Becky"s lips trembled and the tears came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and had what her s.e.x call "a good cry." Then she sat moody, with wounded pride, till the bell rang. She roused up, now, with a vindictive cast in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what _she"d_ do.
At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind the schoolhouse looking at a picture-book with Alfred Temple--and so absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book, that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides.
Jealousy ran red-hot through Tom"s veins. He began to hate himself for throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation. He called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. He wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked, for her heart was singing, but Tom"s tongue had lost its function. He did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he could only stammer an awkward a.s.sent, which was as often misplaced as otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and again, to sear his eyeb.a.l.l.s with the hateful spectacle there. He could not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the living. But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered.
Amy"s happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had to attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. But in vain--the girl chirped on. Tom thought, "Oh, hang her, ain"t I ever going to get rid of her?" At last he must be attending to those things--and she said artlessly that she would be "around" when school let out. And he hastened away, hating her for it.
"Any other boy!" Tom thought, grating his teeth. "Any boy in the whole town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is aristocracy! Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw this town, mister, and I"ll lick you again! You just wait till I catch you out! I"ll just take and--"
And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy--pummelling the air, and kicking and gouging. "Oh, you do, do you? You holler "nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you!" And so the imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction.
Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of Amy"s grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the other distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but as the minutes dragged along and no Tom came to suffer, her triumph began to cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absentmindedness followed, and then melancholy; two or three times she p.r.i.c.ked up her ear at a footstep, but it was a false hope; no Tom came. At last she grew entirely miserable and wished she hadn"t carried it so far. When poor Alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, kept exclaiming: "Oh, here"s a jolly one! look at this!" she lost patience at last, and said, "Oh, don"t bother me! I don"t care for them!" and burst into tears, and got up and walked away.
Alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she said:
"Go away and leave me alone, can"t you! I hate you!"
So the boy halted, wondering what he could have done--for she had said she would look at pictures all through the nooning--and she walked on, crying. Then Alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. He was humiliated and angry. He easily guessed his way to the truth--the girl had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon Tom Sawyer.
He was far from hating Tom the less when this thought occurred to him.
He wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much risk to himself. Tom"s spelling-book fell under his eye. Here was his opportunity. He gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and poured ink upon the page.
Becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act, and moved on, without discovering herself. She started homeward, now, intending to find Tom and tell him; Tom would be thankful and their troubles would be healed. Before she was half way home, however, she had changed her mind. The thought of Tom"s treatment of her when she was talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with shame.
She resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged spelling-book"s account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain.
CHAPTER XIX
TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an unpromising market:
"Tom, I"ve a notion to skin you alive!"
"Auntie, what have I done?"
"Well, you"ve done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an old softy, expecting I"m going to make her believe all that rubbage about that dream, when lo and behold you she"d found out from Joe that you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom, I don"t know what is to become of a boy that will act like that. It makes me feel so bad to think you could let me go to Sereny Harper and make such a fool of myself and never say a word."
This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness of the morning had seemed to Tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. It merely looked mean and shabby now. He hung his head and could not think of anything to say for a moment. Then he said:
"Auntie, I wish I hadn"t done it--but I didn"t think."
"Oh, child, you never think. You never think of anything but your own selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from Jackson"s Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn"t ever think to pity us and save us from sorrow."
"Auntie, I know now it was mean, but I didn"t mean to be mean. I didn"t, honest. And besides, I didn"t come over here to laugh at you that night."
"What did you come for, then?"
"It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn"t got drownded."
"Tom, Tom, I would be the thankfullest soul in this world if I could believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never did--and I know it, Tom."
"Indeed and "deed I did, auntie--I wish I may never stir if I didn"t."
"Oh, Tom, don"t lie--don"t do it. It only makes things a hundred times worse."
"It ain"t a lie, auntie; it"s the truth. I wanted to keep you from grieving--that was all that made me come."