 | CHAPTER IX.
THE DOING. Antony Brade |  |
9. CHAPTER IX.
THE DOING.
Whoever has lifted the curtains of boys' alcoves,
soon after their inmates have gone to bed, and has
looked lovingly in, has seen a pretty sight. Generally,
the faces are lying most restfully, with hand under
cheek, and in many cases look strangely younger than
when awake, and often very infantile, as if some trick
of older expression, which they had been taught to
wear by day, had been dropped the moment the young
ambitious will had lost control. The lids lie shut over
bright, busy eyes; the air is gently and evenly fanned
by coming and going breaths; there is a little crooked
mound in the bed; along the bed's foot, or on a chair
beside it, are the day-clothes, sometimes neatly folded,
sometimes huddled off, in a hurry; bulging with balls,
or, in the lesser fellows, marbles; stained with the earth
of many fields where woodchucks have been trapped,
or perhaps torn with the roughnesses of trees on which
squirrels' holes have been sought; perhaps wet and
mired with the smooth black or gray mud from
marshes or the oozy banks of streams, where muskrats
have been tracked. Under the bed's foot, after a
hard share in all the play and toil of the day, lie the
shoes, — one on its side, — with the gray and white
socks, now creased and soiled, thrown across them; a
and there, in their little cells, squared in the great mass
of night, heedless how the earth whirls away with
them or how the world goes, who is thinking of them
or what is doing at home, the busiest people in the
world are resting for the morrow.
All was still, that night, after the Tutor's going.
Then, as the great constellations, made up of tremendous
worlds, and the huge separate glowing stars, were
all going through their vast turning in the boundless
emptiness of space, so the lesser plan of Towne began
its working in the Lower Dormitory at St. Bart's.
Scarcely had all grown still, when two sounds, by no
means noisy, from the throat of the leader, announced
to the associates in enterprise and peril that the work
was to begin. A flash of light might have been seen in
the dormitory, and possibly something like a chuckle from
some young voice was followed by another chuckle from
another young voice. As the light lasted, many curtains
were shaken, and many faces appeared looking
out from them as suddenly as flashes of northern lights
show themselves all over the side of the sky. All in
the same moment came a cry of alarm from the upper
end of the dormitory, something like, “Get out, you!”
and in that part might be seen, by a dim light prevailing
there, a female figure in black dress and hat, retreating
precipitately from a counterpart female figure in ghastly
white dress and hat, precisely like, in shape and making,
to the other, though on a somewhat larger scale.
In another moment the black female had scrambled
away from before the white, and disappeared behind
the curtain of an alcove, from which came forth
repeated cries of, “Keep it off! keep it off!”
All this could not be gone through with without
excitement, as indeed what street is there, in what
town, where a scene like this could be enacted, with
faces on all sides looking out upon it from windows,
without a good deal of excitement? Curtains were
suddenly drawn aside, and now a gathering of young
figures in long white dresses began to take place in the
middle of the room, the white counterpart of the
woman in black having disappeared as effectually as
the black figure. There was still a faint light at the
upper end where the two apparitions had been.
The elder boys were asking and answering questions,
with here and there a little fellow standing near; but,
of the small boys, most stood in the doorways of their
alcoves, holding the curtains aside and looking forth
with curiosity or apprehension.
Even the younger boys at school learn a good deal
of self-control; and therefore none of these committed
himself, hastily, by words. Two or three seemed to
understand the whole thing, and were laughing heartily,
and trying to keep down the sound.
One voice was heard, but half-restrained, exclaiming,
“What a fool that fellow is, to be frightened! He
thought it was a ghost, most likely; and ghosts have
been dead these thousand years, — there ain't any now!”
And so, venting his indignation, the owner of this
voice was walking up towards the light which still
burned at the upper end, when all at once there was a
general flutter and dispersion of the small boys; the
light went out, a tone of authority was heard, close by
the side of this malcontent, saying, “Towne, go to Mr.
Cornell's door, and wait there!” and a whining sort of
appeal from a third voice, “Mr. Bruce, sir! please, sir,
many-throated laugh of derision from curtained alcoves
at the untimeliness of this request. Towne, also,
laughed a short laugh, as he walked. Moreover, while
these things were going on, all at once the larger boys
in the middle of the floor at the same moment were
saying, “We didn't have any thing to do with it, sir; we
only came out to see what was going on,” and were
told mildly to go to their alcoves, and thereupon dispersed.
Mr. Bruce had lighted a candle which he carried, and
went straight to the alcove in which the black figure
had disappeared, and from which the cries of terror
had come, but which was now as silent as all the
others.
“Dover!” said he, drawing aside the curtain; and
Dover, in his usual voice, answered. All around was
altogether still.
“What were you making all that noise about?” asked
the Tutor.
“I didn't know I was making a noise,” said Dover.
“I judge it was you by the voice,” Mr. Bruce said,
“calling, `Get out!' or something like it.”
“I was frightened, sir,” answered Dover, treading
along the dizzying brink of discovery, if not with strong
and dauntless stride, yet with unexpectedly firm step,
if one might judge by his voice.
The Tutor bade Dover come to him after breakfast,
and in the mean time to keep his bed and go to sleep;
and then went across the dormitory to the opposite
alcove. Here Remsen was in bed, and, like a sensible
fellow, was not making-believe to be asleep; and near
the curtain, as the candle showed, was standing our
quite as much amused at the recognition.
Mr. Bruce did not smooth the front of authority:
—
“I'm sorry to have to speak to you” (Brade, though
he said nothing and looked down, had certainly not a
very guilty expression). “You know it's a very serious
offence, Brade,” he said, “to be found in another's
alcove.”
Young Brade looked up, ready to speak, but did not
interrupt. The Tutor paused.
“I didn't come to anybody's alcove, sir,” he answered.
“Of course you know what you're saying,” said Mr.
Bruce. “You were in Remsen's alcove a minute ago:
do you mean to say you were brought there?”
The boy stood in his long white night-gown, with
his bare feet on the bare floor, half full of fun, half full of
fear.
“Oh, no, sir, not that,” said Antony. “But I mean
I didn't come up the dormitory to go to anybody's
alcove: I only ran in there to hide away.”
Mr. Bruce's voice changed, decidedly for the softer,
and doubtless his face showed as great a change.
“Come to me immediately after breakfast,” he said,
as he had said to Dover. “Now go to bed instantly,
Brade, and go to sleep as soon as possible.”
Before the words were well spoken, Brade, in his
white night-gown, was scampering down to the other
end, and across the dormitory.
Mr. Bruce looked into each alcove as he went down, and
then up the other side. Towne, meanwhile, danced and
took different attitudes, as if to keep himself warm
and occupied, at his tiresome post. At length the Tutor
this little address: —
“Now, Towne, it's very unpleasant to find you at the
bottom of all the mischief that's going on.”
“I don't see how that is, sir,” said Towne. “You only
found me walking along the dormitory as peaceable as
could be.”
“Where do you belong, sir?” asked the Tutor,
sharply.
“In Brunswick, sir. No, I wasn't thinking, sir: my
alcove's” —
“Twenty lines for impertinence! (Not a word, sir!)
Go straight to your alcove, and don't be found out here
again,” said the Tutor.
“I won't, if I can help it, sir,” answered poor Towne.
“I didn't mean” —
“Not a word, sir!” said Mr. Bruce; and Towne went
away, with an inarticulate murmur, to his place. The
Tutor, having seen all safe, went his way.
When the flap of the spring-door, at the further wash-room,
showed that he was out of hearing, Towne exulted
as loudly as he dared, that, by that cunning trick of
impertinence, he had made Mr. Bruce forget to tell him
to come after breakfast.
Mr. Cornell's door was ajar, as it had been all the
evening, with a light shining through; but no change
had taken place there implying that the occupant had
come in. Mr. Bruce had left every thing, outwardly, as
it ought to be. The dormitory had taken on again the
stillness of night, broken very slightly by what seemed to
be calls from one side to the other at the upper end. The
adventures of the night were not over, however, for that
unrestful place of rest. Towne's alcove and Dover's
the right hand, on that floor. Between those two went
a loud whispering, growing often to a deeper voice.
“I want to go to sleep,” said Dover, at last, a little
more loudly; “and Mr. Bruce told me to. I chucked
'em over on to the ground,” he added peevishly; but
the other's success in pulling the wool over one tutor's
eyes made him anxious for further adventures.
“Good boy!” said Towne, patronizingly. “If you're
afraid, I ain't: so here goes!”
A voice from the opposite side came across the six-foot
alley-way, sounding like Ulterior Blake's: —
“I say, Oppidum, you daresn't go out! Mr. Cornell
'll snap you up. He'll be just coming home, humming
a toone, just now, and he'll snap you up just as a toad
does a fly. I'll bet you two cents you don't dares't to
go out!”
No answer came from Towne, though the speech was
intelligible, if not good English. In the stillness which
followed, a window might have been heard slowly opening.
Immediately a boy came from the opposite alcoves,
and, in a whispered shout, called out: —
“Fellows! fellows! Look out on the roof! Towne's
gone out, in invisible clo'es, to dodge Mr. Cornell!
Won't there be fun!”
“It's dark as Erebus!” said a very assured voice,
louder than the rest, as many windows were hastily
thrown up. “
Οὐδὲν
οὔτ̕
ἀχοῦσαι
οὔτ̕
ἰδεῖν
ἔστι
. Remsen,
how do you expect us to see?”
“Hear that fellow!” said another. “I say, Gaston,
do keep your” —
“Fellows! fellows!” said another voice, which was
certainly our friend Brade's, almost bursting with fun
has gone out there to run before Mr. Cornell in his
gymnasium suit, so that he shouldn't see him;” making
pretty clear, in spite of the confusion of personal pronouns,
that Towne had gone out on the roof to execute
some daring and hazardous feat of activity, with which
Mr. Cornell, the Tutor, was in some way associated.
There was a stir and flurry on all sides. Objections
and hasty discussions took place in several alcoves on
the school-room side, as between boys wanting to go
through and boys not willing to let them.
“Fellows! you'll catch your death o' cold! What's
the use?” said some elder, gravely, probably the deliberate
Blake.
Then a more authoritative voice: —
“Thompson! Mason! Lawrence! don't let those little
fellows out on the roof! Do make 'em go back to bed!”
And, in compliance with this exhortation, Brade, Ransom,
Leavitt, and others, were called by name, as if
already on the roof, and bidden (without apparent
effect) to go to bed.
“We've got blankets round us,” answered several
voices. “Russell better come out himself.”
Meanwhile, from the slight murmur to be heard outside
the windows, and the low cries of “Look out!”
“Isn't it dark?” “Don't walk off!” it might be known
that many boys had got through all difficulties to be
near Towne's feat. Cold had not stopped them; darkness
had not stopped them; and there they were.
“Sh! — sh!” — was cried, to enforce silence; Remsen,
as before, explaining that there was going to be great
fun.
“Have you got it?” whispered a voice, somewhere
in the darkness below the common level.
“Yes!” answered another, somewhere in the same
direction, speaking in his ordinary tone, and therefore
easily recognized as Towne, and going on like a hero,
as he evidently felt himself.
“Now don't I wish Mr. Cornell was about three rods
off! — but it's cold, I tell you!”
The words reminded some of the others that their
clothes were thin, and they began to move; but the
boys' proverb about the nearness of a person talked of
was strikingly illustrated on this occasion, as on so
many others. A good, manly tenor voice, a little way
off, was heard singing “Days of Absence.”
“Mr. Cornell! Mr. Cornell!” was the cry. “Down!”
and some were heard fleeing; and some were heard
going down on the tin roof, with a sudden thud; and
some were heard struggling with laughter.
“Sh! — sh!”— said that fearless and eager lad,
Remsen, again, going about. “Hold on! Towne hasn't
got through yet,” and the audience was still enough to
catch the faintest sound.
Feet without shoe-soles scurried over the ground
below.
“Sh!” said the same eager lad. “Now look out!
sh!”
There was a sort of scramble down there below,
where Towne seemed to be, and then a splash! with a
suppressed shuddering “Oh-h-h!” and Towne had evidently
met with a sudden surprise.
A roar of laughter started from many of the boys on
the roof, suppressed as soon as possible, and as much as
possible, but beginning, as hearty and genuine laughter
will, to spread.
“Get under the cover, Towne! get under the cover!”
so with laughter.
“You better hold your clack, Royalty, or I'll crack
your crown!” retorted the poor fellow, splashing.
“How do you suppose that water got back?” asked
a quavering voice. “'Tain't rained, has it?”
This sounded like Wilkins.
“Wilkins, why didn't you let that water out?” said
Remsen.
Down below, the state of things had changed within
a few seconds essentially. Towne, whose leap to the
back of his great adventure (to use a figure), had been
so vigorous and masterful, now— soused in chilly water
— was not the same boy. His stout and tutor-defying
voice was changed.
“I ain't a-goin' to stay here and freeze! I don't care
if he does catch me!” he muttered. “I'll give it to
somebody for this!” and then a floundering, and the
brattle of the water in the cask, — cold-sounding
enough to make the very listeners shudder, — implied
that the unexpectedly immersed hero was retreating
from his position.
“It is written,” said Gaston's voice, “that the Greek
philosopher lodged in his cask; but, as Towne ain't a
Greek philosopher, I don't see what he wants to take
up his habitation in a hogshead for.”
Strangely enough there was no interference of the
much-talked of Mr. Cornell.
“Are you visible, Towne?” Brade asked.
“I'll visible you!” said the interrupted adventurer.
“He can't see you in that gray suit,” said Remsen
“Look out, fellows, if you don't want to get spattered,
if he comes up. Mr. Cornell wa'n't there at all,” he
“That was Lawrence: we got him to sing like Mr.
Cornell.”
But now a new element came in.
“Towne!” cried Mr. Bruce's voice, which had been
heard so often that evening, and which now came,
not from the ground, but from one of the dormitory
windows, showing that he had stolen a march upon the
absent inmates. The boys on the roof scuttled or
fluttered, — whichever may be the better expression
for a noisy motion, which partook of those of tortoises
or seals, or the like, at the water's edge, and birds
startled from a brake.
“Come to that storm-house door, and I'll let you in,”
continued Mr. Bruce.
“Whoever put that water,” — said Towne, going
away shivering, “wish I had him — head in it.”
The boys — silently retiring at the presence of the
Tutor — began to giggle, as poor Towne vented his
threats.
Mr. Bruce, having lighted the dormitory lamp, went
down, being doubtless listened to closely as he went,
step by step, and heard to turn the key of the back
door.
“Wait a moment, Towne,” said the Tutor, who
seemed to find it necessary to repress the boy's eagerness
to reach his alcove. “Follow me, if you please;”
and then might be heard, coming along the hall and up
the crooked stairs, two sets of steps, — one brisk and
trig, the other heavy, flat, and wet, even to the ear.
In the “Cross Dormitory” the boys were sitting up
in their beds, as the Tutor, with great gravity, and poor
Towne, looking pretty sulky and savage, went by.
neither admiration nor sympathy was the overpowering
emotion with the witnesses of the adventurous Towne's
present condition. Mr. Bruce stopped, just inside of
the large dormitory and near the lamp; and near him,
of course, stopped Towne. The Tutor did not look
strictly along the alcoves, or he would have seen that
many faces, with very slight effort at concealment, were
peering out at the sides of the curtains.
The victim of misfortune was certainly a most ridiculous
figure; for, whether the hogshead had been nearly
full, or whether he had gone into it “squatting,” he was
soaked and streaming from his neck to his feet.
“Move about, Towne, until I've done with you,” said
the Tutor, “or you'll spoil all the ceiling of the school-room
below. Distribute your streams a little.” And
poor Towne began traversing, like a machine, a large
circle, laying the dust (if there was any) effectually.
“Mayn't I go to bed, sir?” asked Towne, in a voice
intended, perhaps, to be severe and distant, but which
came near setting the whole dormitory off in a fit of
laughter. Tittering and repressed sobs did make themselves
heard. Towne, nevertheless, kept up his best
dignity, and uttered one more sound: —
“I'm” —
“Oh!” said Mr. Bruce, “you've been going through
a preparation for going to bed, have you, sir? Where
have you been since I saw you last? I told you not to
let me see you here again.”
“No more I wouldn't, sir,” said Towne, “if you'd let
me have my way; but you wouldn't.”
Even the gravity of Mr. Bruce gave way a little
before the boy's pitiable figure. “You didn't remember
smiling.
“I'm sure, sir,” said Towne, stopping his round, and
dripping where he was, “this is pretty good keeping
the rules; for if I went `a-bathin' out of doors' it can't
be said but what I had a tootor to see to me.”
This time the furtive laughter may have been with
Towne instead of at him. His pluck appealed to the
boys' sympathy, and possibly conciliated also the kindliness
of the Tutor; for he certainly immediately released
the unsuccessful adventurer from his enforced round.
“Come, Towne! have you got a rough bathing-towel?”
said he; and, having secured one from some
volunteer in an alcove, he took him into a bath-room,
where, after making him strip himself of his slight
clothing, which clung closely to him, and throwing the
soaked garments into the bath-tub, he gave him so
thorough a rubbing-down that poor Towne more than
once cried out, and came out of the operation glowing
all over.
Then Mr. Bruce sent him to bed in a night-gown,
borrowed, like the towel, and bade him “good-night!”
“Isn't that hogshead a good place, Towne?” “Did
the water fit you, Townie?” were questions addressed
to the retiring adventurer, interrupted suddenly by the
arrival of Mr. Cornell in his room.
The dormitory, after this, was still.
| CHAPTER IX.
THE DOING. Antony Brade | |