汤姆历险记chapter3 打仗恋爱忙得汤姆不亦乐乎

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
   
      
        Chapter 3
      
      
        
            
      
   
    TOM 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. The balmy summer air, the restful quiet, the odor 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. Her spectacles were
    propped up on her gray head for safety. She 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. He said: "Mayn't I go and play now, aunt?"

    "What, a'ready? How much have you done?"

    "It's all done, aunt."

    "Tom, don't lie to me -- I can't bear it."

    "I ain't, aunt; it is all done."

    Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see for herself; and
    she would have been content to find twenty per cent. of Tom's statement true. When 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.
    She said:

    "Well, I never! There's no getting round it, you can work when you're a mind to,
    Tom." And then she diluted the compliment by adding, "But it's powerful seldom
    you're a mind to, I'm bound to say. Well, go 'long and play; but mind you get back some
    time in a week, or I'll tan you."

    She was so overcome by the splendor 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 flavor a treat took to itself when it came without sin
    through virtuous effort. And while she closed with a happy Scriptural flourish, he
    "hooked" a doughnut.

    Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway that led to the
    back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and the air was full of them in a
    twinkling. They raged around Sid like a hail-storm; 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. There was a gate, but as a general thing he
    was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at peace, now that he had settled
    with Sid for calling attention to his black thread and getting him into trouble.

    Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by the back of his
    aunt's cow-stable. He 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. Tom was General of one of
    these armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These 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 operations by orders delivered
    through aides-de-camp. Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and hard-fought
    battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, the terms of the next
    disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the necessary battle appointed; after which the
    armies fell into line and marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

    As 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. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing
    a shot. A certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a memory of
    herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction; he had regarded his passion as
    adoration; and behold it was only a poor little evanescent partiality. He had been months
    winning her; she had confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the
    proudest boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time she had
    gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is done.

    He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had discovered him;
    then 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. He 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. Tom came up to the fence and leaned on it, grieving, and
    hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer. She halted a moment on the steps and then moved
    toward the door. Tom 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.

    The 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. Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to
    balance it on his nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side,
    in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally his bare foot rested
    upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped away with the treasure and
    disappeared round the corner. But 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 hypercritical, anyway.

    He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, "showing off," as
    before; but 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
    attentions. Finally he strode home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions.

    All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered "what had got
    into the child." He took a good scolding about clodding Sid, and did not seem to mind
    it in the least. He tried to steal sugar under his aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles
    rapped for it. He said:

    "Aunt, you don't whack Sid when he takes it."

    "Well, Sid don't torment a body the way you do. You'd be always into that sugar if
    I warn'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 wellnigh unbearable. But Sid's fingers
    slipped and the bowl dropped and broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he
    even controlled his tongue and was silent. He 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 did 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." He 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. He said to himself, "Now it's coming!" And the next instant he was
    sprawling on the floor! The potent palm was uplifted to strike again when Tom cried out:

    "Hold on, now, what 'er you belting me for? -- Sid broke it!"

    Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But when she got her
    tongue again, she only said:

    "Umf! Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some other
    audacious mischief when I wasn'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. So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a
    troubled heart. Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart his
    aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the consciousness of it. He
    would hang out no signals, he would take notice of none. He knew that a yearning glance
    fell upon him, now and then, through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He
    pictured himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching one little
    forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and die with that word unsaid. Ah,
    how would she feel then? And he pictured himself brought home from the river, dead, with
    his curls all wet, and his sore heart at rest. How 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!
    But he would lie there cold and white and make no sign -- a poor little sufferer, whose
    griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos of these dreams,
    that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to choke; and his eyes swam in a blur of
    water, which overflowed when he winked, and ran down and trickled from the end of his
    nose. And 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; it was too sacred for
    such contact; and 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 at one door as she brought song and sunshine in at the other.

    He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought desolate places that
    were in harmony with his spirit. A 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. Then he thought of his flower. He got it out,
    rumpled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal felicity. He wondered if she
    would pity him if she knew? Would she cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms
    around his neck and comfort him? Or would she turn coldly away like all the hollow world? This 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 varied lights, till he wore it threadbare. At last he rose up sighing and
    departed in the darkness.

    About half-past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street to where the
    Adored Unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell upon his listening ear; a candle
    was casting a dull glow upon the curtain of a second-story window. Was the sacred presence
    there? He climbed the fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till he stood
    under that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion; then he laid him down on the
    ground under it, disposing himself upon his back, with his hands clasped upon his breast
    and holding his poor wilted flower. And 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. And thus she would
    see him when she looked out upon the glad morning, and 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?

    The window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the holy calm, and a
    deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains!

    The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort. There was a whiz as of a missile
    in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound as of shivering glass followed,
    and a small, vague form went over the fence and shot away in the gloom.

    Not 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.

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