 | Dukesborough tales |  |
THE EARLY MAJORITY OF MR. THOMAS
WATTS.
“O 'tis a parlous boy.”
Richard III.
LITTLE TOM WATTS, as he used to be called before the unexpected
developments which I propose briefly to narrate, was the
second in a family of eight children, his sister Susan being the eldest.
His parents dwelt in a small house situate on the edge of Dukesborough.
Mr. Simon Watts, though of extremely limited means, had
some ambition. He held the office of constable in that militia district,
and in seasons favorable to law business, made about fifty dollars a
year. The outside world seemed to think it was a pity that the head
of a family so large and continually increasing should so persistently
prefer mere fame to the competency which would have followed upon
his staying at home and working his little field of very good ground.
But he used to contend that a man could not be expected to live
always, and therefore he ought to try to live in such a way as to leave
to his family, if nothing else, a name that they wouldn't be ashamed
ever to hear mentioned after he was gone.
Yet Mr. Watts was not a cheerful man. Proud as he might justly
feel in his official position, it went hard with him to be compelled to live
in a way more and more pinched as his family continued to multiply
with astonishing rapidity. His spirits, naturally saturnine, grew worse
and worse with every fresh arrival in the person of a baby, until the
eighth. Being yet a young man, comparatively speaking, and being
used to make calculations, the figures seemed too large as he looked
to the future. I would not go so far as to say that this prospect
doctor could not manage, and then Mr. Watts gave up his office and
everything else that he had in this world.
But Mrs. Watts, his widow, had as good a resolution as any other
woman in her circumstances ever had. She had no notion of giving
up in that way. She gave up her husband, it is true; but that could
not be helped: and without making much ado about even that, she
kept going at all sorts of work, and somehow she got along at least as
well after as before the death of Mr. Simon.
A person not well acquainted with the brood of little Wattses often
found difficulty in discriminating among them. I used to observe
them with considerable interest as I went into Dukesborough occasionally
with one, or the other, or both of my parents. They all had
white hair, and red chubby faces. It was long a matter of doubt what
was their sex. Such was the rapidity of their succession, and so
graduated the declivity from Susan downwards, that the mother used
to cut all their garments after a fashion that was very general, in order
that they might descend during the process of decay to as many of
them as possible. Now, although I saw them right often, I had
believed for several months, for instance, that little Jack was a girl,
from a yellow frock that had belonged to his sister Mary Jane, but which
little Jack wore until his legs became subjected to such exposure that
it had to descend to Polly Ann, his next younger sister. Then I
made a similar mistake about Polly Ann; who, during this time, had
worn little Jack's breeches, out of which he had gone into Mary Jane's
frock; and I thought on my soul that Polly Ann was a boy.
In regard to little Tommy, not only I, but the whole public had
been in a state of uncertainty in this behalf for a great length of time.
Having no older brother, and Susan's outgrown dresses being alone
available, his male wardrobe was inevitably only half as extensive
and various as by good rights, generally speaking, it ought to
have been. Therefore little Tommy had to make his appearance
alternately in frock and breeches, according to the varying conditions
of these garments, for a period that annoyed him the more the longer
it extended, and finally began to disgust. Tom eagerly wished that
he could outgrow Susan, and thus get into breeches out and out. But
Susan, in this respect, as indeed in almost all others, kept her distance
in the lead.
There was a difference, easily noticeable, in Tom's deportment in
melancholy, at least fretful. Curiosity, perhaps, or some other motive
equally powerful, might, and indeed sometimes did, lead him outside of
the gate; but never to linger there for any great length of time. If
he had to go upon an errand during that season (a necessity which
that resolute woman, his mother, enforced without the slightest hesitation),
he went and returned with speed. Yet, before starting out on
such occasions, he was wont to be careful to give his hair such a turn
that his manly head might refute the lie which Susan's frock had told.
For it is probable that there have been few, if indeed any boys who
were more unwilling either to be, or to be considered of the opposite
sex than that same Tom Watts. I do not remember ever to have seen
a boy whose hair had so high and peculiar a roach as his exhibited,
especially when he wore his sister Susan's frocks. Instead of being
parted in the middle, it was divided into three parts. It was combed
perfectly straight down on the sides of his head, and perfectly straight
up from the top. An immense distance was thus established between
the extremities of any two hairs which receded contiguously to each
other on the border lines.
All this was an artful attempt to divert public attention from the
frock which intimated the female, to the head which asserted and
which was supposed to establish the male. He once said to Susan:
“When they sees your old frock, they makes out like that they
'spicions me a gal; but when they looks at my har all roached up,
then they knows who I air.”
“Yes, indeed,” answered Susan, “and a sight you air. Goodness
knows, I'd rather be a girl, and rather look like one if I weren't, than
to look like you do in that fix.”
But it was during the other season, that which he called his breeches
week, that Tommy Watts was most himself. In this period he was
cheerful, bold, and notorious. He was as often upon the street as he
could find opportunities to steal away from home; and while there, he
was as evidently a boy as was to be found in Dukesborough or any
other place of its size. In this happy season he seemed to be disposed
to make up as far as possible for the confinements and the gloominesses
of the other. So much so, indeed, that he had to be whipped
time and time again for his unlicensed wanderings, and for many other
pranks which are indeed peculiar to persons of his age and sex, but
which he seemed to have the greater temptation to do, and which he
half their time in which to do them. Tom Watts maintained that if a
boy was a boy, then he ought to be a boy; and as for himself, if he
had to be a girl a part of the time, he meant to double on them for
the balance. By them he meant his Mammy, as he was wont to call
his surviving parent. But she understood the method of doubling as
well as he; for while she whipped him with that amount of good-will
which in her judgment was proper, she not unfrequently cut short his
gay career by reducing him to Susan's frock, or (if it was not ready
for the occasion) to his own single shirt. On such occasions he would
relapse at once into the old melancholy ways. If Thomas Watts had
been familiar with classical history, I have not a doubt that, in these
periods of his humiliation, he would have compared his case with that
of the great Achilles whose mother had him kept in inglorious seclusion
amid the daughters of Lycomedes. Yet, like that hero further in
being extremely imprudent, no sooner would he recover his male attire
than he would seem to think that no laws had ever been made for
him, and would rush headlong into difficulties and meet their consequences.
Tom, as his mother used to say, was a boy of a “tremenjuous
sperrit.” But it had come from her, and enough had been left
in her for all domestic purposes. In every hand-to-hand engagement
between the two, Thomas was forced to yield and make terms; but he
resolved over and over, and communicated that resolution to many
persons, that if he ever did obtain his liberty, the world should hear
from him. His late father having been to a degree connected, as we
remember, with the legal profession, Tom had learned one item (and
that was probably the only one that he did learn sufficiently well to
remember) of the law: that was, that young men of fourteen who had
lost their fathers might go into court and choose their own guardians,
and do other things besides. How he did long for that fourteenth
birthday! The more he longed for it the longer it seemed in coming.
He had gotten to believe that if it ever should come, he would have
lived long enough and had experience enough for all, even the most
difficult and responsible purposes of human life.
But events that must come will come, if we will only wait for them.
In process of time, which to the hasty nature of Tom seemed unreasonably
and cruelly long in passing, he seemed to emerge from
the frock for good and all. The latest inducement to a preparation
for this liberty was a promise that it should come the sooner provided
for he had been a sad fellow in that item of personal economy. When
this inducement was placed before him, he entered upon a new career.
He abjured wrestlings with other boys, and all other sports and
exercises, however manly, which involved either the tearing of his
attire or contact with the ground. He even began to be spruce and
dandyish, and the public was astonished to find that in the matter of
personal neatness Tom Watts was likely to become a pattern to all
the youth of Dukesborough and its environs. His roach grew both
in height and in sleekness; and when his hat was off his head, Tom
Watts was the tallest-looking boy of his inches that I ever saw.
Resolute as was the Widow Watts, she had respect for her word, and
was not deficient in love for her offspring. Besides, it was getting to
be high time for Tom to go to school, if he ever was to go. Now, in
a school, I maintain, if nowhere else, it is undeniably to be desired
that everybody's sex should be put beyond doubt. Even a real girl in
a school of boys, or a real boy in a school of girls, it is probable
would both feel and impart considerable embarrassment. This would
doubtless be much increased in case where such a matter was in doubt.
There is no telling what a difference an uncertainty in this behalf
would make, not only in the hours of study, but even to a perhaps
greater extent in those of play. I have lived in the world long enough
to feel justified in saying that suspicions and doubts are more efficacious
than facts in producing embarrassments and alienations. Oh!
it is no use to say anything more upon the subject. Mrs. Watts had
sense enough to have respect for public sentiment; and when Tom
was ready for school, Susan's frock had to be laid aside. However,
Mary Jane, who was a fast grower, went into it, with the taking of only
a little tuck, and nothing was wasted.
Tom Watts, therefore, avowedly and notoriously, for good and for
all and forever, became a boy. When he stepped out of Susan's
frock for the last time, and stepped into a new pair of trowsers which
had been made for the purpose of honoring the occasion, he felt himself
to be older by many years; and if not as sleek, was at least as proud
as any snake when, with the incoming Spring, he has left his old skin
behind him and glided into the sunlight with a new one.
The neat habits which he had adopted from policy, he continued to
practise, to his mother's great delight. It was really a fine thing to
observe the care he took with his clothes; and the manly gait he assumed
having been confounded so long with the other sex had begotten a
repugnance for the latter which might never be removed. Such was
the rapidity of his strides towards manhood, that some females of his
acquaintance not unfrequently spoke of him as Mr. Thomas Watts;
while others went further, left off the Thomas altogether and called
him Mr. Watts.
But time, which is ever making revelations that surprise mankind,
was not slow to reveal that Mr. Watts had not yet been fully understood.
He had been going to school to Mr. Cordy for several weeks
in the winter, and was believed to be making reasonable progress. He
had now passed his thirteenth year, and had gone some distance upon
his fourteenth. He had long looked to that day as the commencement
of his majority. A guardian (or as he was wont to say, a
gardzeen) was an incumbrance which he had long determined to dispense
with. This was not so much, however, because there would be
not a thing for such an official to manage except the person of Mr.
Thomas himself, as that he had no doubt, not a shadow of a doubt in
fact, that such management would be more agreeable, more safe, and
in every way better in his own hands than in those of any other person
of his acquaintance.
Mr. Cordy's school was in a grove of hickory and oak at the end of
the village opposite to the one at which Mrs. Watts's cabin stood. At
the hither end of this grove was another small school of girls, kept by
Miss Julia Louisa Wilkins. She was from Vermont, and was a young
lady of about twenty-eight years, very fair, somewhat tall, and upon
the whole a rather good, certainly a cheerful-looking face. For I
should remark that Dukesborough, which ever held Augusta in view,
had in the pride of its ambition abolished the system of mixed schools,
and though the number of children was rather limited to allow of
great division, still Dukesborough would have, and did have, two
institutions of learning. Miss Wilkins had under her charge about
fifteen girls, ranging from eight years old to fourteen. Prominent
among them were Miss Adeline Jones, Miss Emily Sharp, Miss
Lorinda Holland, Miss Jane Hutchins, and Mr. Watts's elder sister,
Susan.
Mr. Watts's relations to this Institution (for it was thus that the
mistress insisted that her establishment should be styled) seemed to
have been started by accident. One morning, as with lingering but
he spied Miss Wilkins through the window in the act of kindling a
fire. As her face was turned from him he had the opportunity, and he
used it, to observe her motions for several moments. Whether because
the kindling wood was damp, or Miss Wilkins was not expert, I would
not undertake at this late day to say. But the fire would not make a
start; and the lady, apparently bent upon getting warm in some way,
threw down the tongs, gave the logs a kick, and abruptly turned her
back upon the fire-place. Observing Mr. Watts at that instant, and
possibly suspecting that he was a person of an accommodating disposition,
she requested his assistance. He yielded promptly, and it did
Miss Wilkins good to see how quickly the blaze arose and the genial
warmth radiated through the room. The artificial heat at once
subsided, and she smiled and thanked him in a way that could not
soon be forgotten. Then she inquired his name, and was surprised
and gratified to know that so manly a person as he was should be the
brother of one of the best and most biddable girls in her school.
This accident, trifling in appearance, led to consequences. Mr.
Watts had frequent opportunities of rendering this same service, and
others of an equally obliging nature. These gave him access to the
Institution in its hours of ease; and the care that he took of his clothes,
and the general manners that he adopted, were reaching to a height
that approached perfection. If the roach on the summit of his head
was not quite as high as formerly (a depression caused by his having
now a hat to wear), it was not any less decided and defiant.
Yet, he never seemed disposed to abuse his privileges at the Institution
of Miss Wilkins. Although he was there very often, he usually
had little to say to any of the young ladies, and seemed to try to have
the utmost respect for all the mistress's rules and regulations in regard
to the intercourse of her pupils with the opposite sex. It must be
admitted that Mr. Watts had not advanced lately in his studies to the
degree that was promised by his opening career. But Mr. Cordy was
a reasonable man, and, upon principle, was opposed to pushing boys
along too fast. Mrs. Watts, although not a person of education herself,
yet suspected from several circumstances that her son was not well
improving the little time which she could afford to send him to school.
But his deportment was such an example to the younger children that
she had not the heart to complain, except in a very general way.
Of all persons of Mr. Watts's acquaintance, his sister Susan was the
to frown dreadfully upon him, even when he seemed to be at his very
best. Sometimes she even broke into immoderate laughter. While
the former conduct had no influence, the latter used to affect him
deeply. He would grow very angry, and abuse her, and then become
even more manlike. But when Susan would think that he was carrying
matters into extremes, she would check him somewhat in this wise:
“Now lookee here, Tom; if you talk to me that way, I shall tell
Ma what's the matter with you; and if you don't quit being such a
man, and stop some of your foolishness, I'll tell her anyhow.”
Threats of this sort for a time would recall Mr. Watts at least to a
more respectful treatment of his sister. Indeed, he condescended to
beg her not to mention her suspicions, although he assured her that
in these she was wholly mistaken. But Susan did know very well
what he was about, and it is probable that it is high time I should explain
all this uncommon conduct. The truth is, Susan had ascertained
that so far from having the repugnance to ladies that had been feared
at first might grow out of his remembrance of the long confusion of
the public mind touching his own sex, Mr. Thomas Watts had already
conceived a passion that was ardent, and pointed, and ambitious to a
degree which Susan characterised as “perfectly redickerlous.”
But who was the young lady who had thus concentrated upon herself
all the first fresh worship of that young but manly heart? Was it Miss
Jones, or Miss Sharp? Was it Miss Holland, or Miss Hutchins?
Not one of these. Mr. Thomas Watts had with one tremendous
bound leaped clear over the heads of these secondary characters, and
cast himself at the very foot of the throne. To be plain, Mr. Watts
fondly, entirely, madly loved Miss Julia Louisa Wilkins, the mistress
and head of the Dukesborough Female Institution.
Probably, this surprising reach might be attributed to the ambitious
nature of his father, from whom he had inherited this and some other
qualities. Doubtless, however, the recollection of having been kept
long in frocks had engendered a desire to convince the world that
they had sadly mistaken their man. Whatever was the motive power,
such was the fact. Now, notwithstanding this state of his own feelings,
he had never made a declaration in so many words to Miss Wilkins.
But he did not doubt for a moment that she thoroughly understood his
looks, and sighs, and devoted services. For the habit which all of us
have of enveloping beloved objects in our hearts, and making them, so
Watts even to a greater degree perhaps than if he had been older.
He was as little inclined and as little able to doubt Miss Wilkins as to
doubt himself. Facts seemed to bear him out. She had not only
smiled upon him time and time again, and patted him sweetly on the
back of his head, and praised his roach to the very skies; but once,
when he had carried her a great armful of good, fat pine-knots, she
was so overcome as to place her hand under his chin, look him fully
in the face, and declare if he wasn't a man, there wasn't one in this
wide, wide world.
Such was the course of his true love when its smoothness suffered
that interruption which so strangely obtrudes itself among the fondest
affairs of the heart. Miss Susan had threatened so often without fulfilment
to give information to their mother, that he had begun to presume
there was little or no danger from that quarter. Besides, Mr. Watts
had now grown so old and manlike that he was getting to be without
apprehension from any quarter. He reflected that within a few weeks
more he would be fourteen years old, when legal rights would accrue.
Determining not to choose any “gardzeen,” it would follow that he
must become his own. Yet he did not intend to act with unnecessary
notoriety. His plans were, to consummate his union on the very day
he should be fourteen; but to do so clandestinely, and then run away,
not stopping until he should get with his bride plump into Vermont.
For even the bravest find it necessary sometimes to retreat.
Of the practicability of this plan he had no doubt, because he knew
that Miss Wilkins had five hundred dollars in hard cash — a whole
stocking full. This sum seemed to him immensely adequate for their
support in becoming style for an indefinitely long period of time.
As the day of his majority approached, he grew more and more
reserved in his intercourse with his family. This was scarcely to be
avoided now when he was already beginning to consider himself as
not one of them. If his conscience ever upbraided him as he looked
upon his toiling mother and his helpless brothers and sisters, and
knew that he alone was to rise into luxury while they were to be left
in their lowly estate, he reflected that it was a selfish world at best,
and that every man must take care of himself. But one day, after a
season of unusual reserve, and when he had behaved to Miss Susan in
a way which she considered outrageously supercilious, the latter availed
herself of his going into the village, fulfilled her threat, and gave her
mother full information of the state of his feelings.
That resolute woman was in the act of ironing a new homespun
frock she had just made for Susan. She laid down her iron, sat down
in a chair, and looked up at Susan.
“Susan, don't be foolin 'long o' me.”
“Ma, I tell you it's the truth.”
“Susan, do you want me to believe that Tom's a fool? I know'd the
child didn't have no great deal of sense; but I didn't think he was a
clean-gone fool.”
But Susan told many things which established the fact beyond
dispute. In Mr. Thomas's box were found several evidences of guilt.
There was a great red picture of a young woman, on the margin of
which was written the name of Miss Julia Louisa Wilkins. Then
there was wrapped carefully in a rag a small piece of sweet soap, which
was known by Susan to have been once the property of Miss Wilkins.
Then there were sundry scraps of poetry, which were quite variant in
sentiment, and for this and other reasons apparently not fully suited
for the purposes for which they were employed. Mr. Watts's acquaintance
with amatory verses being limited, he had recourse to his mother's
hymn-book. Miss Wilkins was assured how tedious and tasteless
were the hours. Her attention was directed alternately to Greenland's
icy mountains and India's coral strand. She was informed that here he
was raising his Ebenezer, having hitherto thus safely come. But immediately
afterwards his mind seemed to have changed, and he remarked
that his home was over Jordan, and suggested that if she should get there
before he did, she might tell them he was a-coming. Then he urged
Miss Wilkins to turn, sinner, turn, and with great anxiety inquired why
would she die? These might have passed for evidences of a religious
state of mind, but that they were all signed by Miss Wilkins' loving
admirer, Thomas Watts. Indeed, in the blindness of his temerity he
had actually written out his formal proposition to Miss Wilkins, which
he had intended to deliver to her on the very next day. This had
been delayed only because he was not quite satisfied either with the
phraseology or the handwriting. As to the way in which it would be
received, his ardent soul had never entertained a doubt.
“Well, well!” exclaimed his mother, after getting through with all
this irrefragable evidence. “Well, well. I never should a-blieved it.
But I suppose we live and larn. Stealing out of my hime-book too.
It's enough to make anybody sick at the stomach. I know'd the child
didn't have much sense; but I didn't know he was a clean-gone fool.
Susan, have that frock ironed all right, stiff and starch, by the time I
git back. I shan't be gone long.”
The lady arose, and without putting on her bonnet, walked rapidly
down the street.
“What are you lookin for, Mrs. Watts?” inquired an acquaintance
whom she met on her way.
“I'm a-looking for a person of the name of Mr. Watts,” she answered,
and rushed madly on. The acquaintance hurried home, but
told other acquaintances on the way that the Widow Watts have lost
her mind and gone ravin distracted. Soon afterwards, as Mr. Watts
was slowly returning, his mind full of great thoughts and his head
somewhat bowed, he suddenly became conscious that his hat was
removed and his roach rudely seized. Immediately afterwards he
found himself carried along the street, his head foremost and his legs
and feet performing the smallest possible part in the act of locomotion.
The villagers looked on with wonder. The conclusion was universal.
Yes, the Widow Watts have lost her mind.
When she had reached her cabin with her charge, a space was
cleared in the middle by removing the stools and the children. Then
Mr. Watts was ordered to remove such portions of his attire as might
oppose any hindrance whatever to the application of a leather strap to
those parts of his person which his mother might select.
“Oh, mother, mother!” began Mr. Watts.
“No motherin o' me, Sir. Down with 'em,” and down they came,
and down came the strap rapidly, violently.
“Oh, Mammy, Mammy!”
“Ah, now! that sounds a little like old times; when you used to be
a boy,” she exclaimed in glee as the sounds were repeated amid the
unslackened descent of the strap. Mrs. Watts seemed disposed to
carry on a lively conversation during this flagellation. She joked her
son pleasantly about Miss Wilkins, inquired when it was to be and
who was to be invited? Oh, no! she forgot; it was not to be a big
wedding, but a private one. But how long were they going to be gone
before they would make a visit? But Mr. Watts not only could not
see the joke, but was not able to join in the conversation at all, except
to continue to scream louder and louder, “Oh, Mammy, Mammy!”
Mrs. Watts, finding him not disposed to be talkative, except in mere
ejaculatory remarks, appealed to little Jack, and Mary Jane, and Polly
know that Buddy Tommy were a man grown, and were going to git
married and have a wife, and then go away off yonder to the Vermontes?
Little Jack, and Polly Ann, and baby, and all, evidently did
not precisely understand; for they all cried and laughed tumultuously.
How long this exercise, varied as it was by most animated conversation,
might have continued if the mother had not become exhausted,
there is no calculating. Things were fast approaching that condition
when the son declared that his mother would kill him if she didn't
stop.
“That,” she answered between breaths, “is — what — I — aims —
to do — if — I can't git it — all — all — every — spang — passel — outen
you.”
Tom declared that it was all gone.
“Is you — a man — or — is you — a boy?”
“Boy! boy! Mammy,” cried Tom. “Let me up, Mammy — and —
I'll be a boy — as long — as I live.”
She let him up.
“Susan, whar's that frock? Ah, there it is. Lookee here. Here's
your clo'es, my man. Mary Jane, put away them pantaloonses.”
Tom was making ready to resume the frock. But Susan remonstrated.
It wouldn't look right now, and she would go Tom's security
that he wouldn't be a man any more.
He was cured. From being an ardent lover, he grew to become a
hearty hater of the principal of the Dukesborough Female Institution, the
more implacable upon his hearing that she had laughed immoderately
at his whipping. Before many months she removed from the village,
and when two years afterwards a rumor (whether true or not we never
knew) came that she was dead, Tom was accused of being gratified by
the news. Nor did he deny it.
“Well, fellers,” said he, “I know it weren't right; but I couldn't
keep from being glad ef it had a-kilt me.”
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