XVII.
Meantime Reuben grew into a knowledge of all the town mischief, and into the practice of such as came within the scope of his years. The proposed introduction of the young stranger from abroad to the advantages of the parsonage home did not weigh upon his thought greatly. The prospect of such a change did not soften him, whatever might come of the event. In his private talk with Esther, he had said, "I hope that French girl'll be a clever un; if she a'n't, I'll"——and he doubled up a little fist, and shook it, so that Esther laughed outright.
Not that the boy had any cruelty in him, but he was just now learning from his older companions of the village, who were more steeped in iniquity, that defiant manner by which the Devil in all of us makes his first pose preparatory to the onslaught that is to come.
"Nay, Ruby, boy," said Esther, when she had recovered from her laughter, "you wouldn't hurt the little un, would ye? Don't ye want a little playfellow, Ruby?"
"I don't play with girls, I don't," said Reuben. "But, I say, Esther, what'll papa do, if she dances?"
"What makes the boy think she'll dance?" said Esther.
"Because the Geography says the French people dance; and Phil Elderkin showed me a picture with girls dancing under a tree, and, says he, 'That 's the sort that's comin' to y'r house.'"
"Well, I don't know," said Esther, "but I guess your Aunt Eliza 'd cure the dancin'."
"She wouldn't cure me, if I wanted to," said Reuben, who thought it needful to speak in terms of bravado about the spinster, with whom he kept up a series of skirmishing fights from week to week. The truth is, the keen eye of the good lady ferreted out a great many of his pet plans of mischief, and nipped them before they had time to ripen. Over and over, too, she warned him against the evil associates whom he would find about the village tavern, where he strayed from time to time to be witness to some dog-fight, or to receive a commendatory glance of recognition from one Nat Boody, the tavern-keeper's son, who had run away two years before and made a voyage down the river in a sloop laden with apples and onions to "York." He was a head taller than Reuben, and the latter admired him intensely: we never cease admiring those "a head taller" than ourselves. Reuben absolutely pined in longing wonderment at the way in which Nat Boody could crack a coach-whip, and with a couple of hickory sticks could "call the roll" upon a pine table equal to a drum-major. Wonderful were the stories this boy could tell, to special cronies, of his adventures in the city: they beat the Geography "all hollow." Such an air, too, as this Boody had, leaning against the pump-handle by his father's door, and making cuts at an imaginary span of horses!—such a pair of twilled trousers, cut like a man's!—such a jacket, with lapels to the pockets, which he said "the sailors wore on the sloops, and called 'em monkey-jackets"!—such a way as he had of putting a quid in his mouth! for Nat Boody chewed. It is not strange that Reuben, feeling a little of ugly constraint under the keen eye of the spinster Eliza, should admire greatly the free-and-easy manner of the tavern-boy, who had such familiarity with the world and such large range of action. The most of us never get over a wonderment at the composure and complacency which spring from a wide knowledge of the world; and the man who can crack his whip well, though only at an imaginary pair of horses, is sure to have a throng of admirers.
By this politic lad, Nat Boody, the innocent Reuben was decoyed into many a little bargain which told more for the shrewdness of the tavern than for that of the parsonage. Thus, he bartered one day a new pocket-knife, the gift of his Aunt Mabel of Greenwich Street, for a knit Scotch cap, half-worn, which the tavern traveller assured him could not be matched for any money. And the parson's boy, going back with this trophy on his head, looking very consciously at those who give an admiring stare, is pounced upon at the very door-step by the indefatigable spinster.
"What now, Reuben? Where in the world did you get that cap?"
"Bought it,"—in a grand way.
"But it's worn," says the aunt. "Ouf! whose was it?"
"Bought it of Nat Boody," says Reuben; "and he says there isn't another can be had."
"Bah!" says the spinster, making a dash at the cap, which she seizes, and, straightway rushing in-doors, souses in a kettle of boiling water.
After which comes off a new skirmish, followed by the partial defeat of Reuben, who receives such a combing down (with sundry killed and wounded) as he remembers for a month thereafter.
The truth is, that it was not altogether from admiration of the accomplished Nat Boody that Reuben was prone to linger about the tavern neighborhood. The spinster had so strongly and constantly impressed it upon him that it was a low and vulgar and wicked place, that the boy, growing vastly inquisitive in these years, was curious to find out what shape the wickedness took; and as he walked by, sometimes at dusk, when thoroughly infused with the last teachings of Miss Eliza, it seemed to him that he might possibly catch a glimpse of the hoofs of some devil (as he had seen devils pictured in an illustrated Milton) capering about the doorway,—and if he had seen them, truth compels us to say that he would have felt a strong inclination to follow them up, at a safe distance, in order to see what kind of creatures might be wearing them. But he was far more apt to see the lounging figure of the shoemaker from down the street, or of Mr. Postmaster Troop, coming thither to have an evening's chat about Vice-President Calhoun, or William Wirt and the Anti-Masons. Or possibly, it might be, he would see the light heels of Suke Boody, the pretty daughter of the tavern-keeper, who had been pronounced by Phil Elderkin, who knew, (being a year his senior,) the handsomest girl in the town. This might well be; for Suke was just turned of fifteen, with pink arms and pink cheeks and blue eyes and a great flock of brown hair: not very startling in her beauty on ordinary days, when she appeared in a pinned-up quilted petticoat, and her curls in papers, sweeping the tavern-steps; but of a Saturday afternoon, in red and white calico, with the curls all streaming,—no wonder Phil Elderkin, who was tall of his age, thought her handsome. So it happened that the inquisitive Reuben, not finding any cloven feet in his furtive observations, but encountering always either the rosy Suke, or "Scamp," (which was Nat's pet fighting-dog,) or the shoemaker, or the round-faced Mr. Boody himself, could justify and explain his aunt's charge of the tavern wickedness only by distributing it over them all. And when, one Sunday, Miss Suke appeared at meeting (where she rarely went) in hat all aflame with ribbons, Reuben, sorely puzzled at the sight, says to his Aunt Eliza,—
"Why didn't the sexton put her out?"
"Put her out!" says the spinster, horrified,—"what do you mean, Reuben?"
"Isn't she wicked?" says he; "she came from the tavern, and she lives at the tavern."
"But don't you know that preaching is for the wicked, and that the good had much better stay away than the bad?"
"Had they?" said Reuben, thoughtfully, pondering if there did not lie somewhere in this averment the basis for some new moral adjustment of his own conduct.
There are a vast many prim preachers, both male and female, in all times, who imagine that certain styles of wickedness or vulgarity are to be approached with propriety only across a church;—as if better preaching did not lie, nine times out of ten, in the touch of a hand or a whisper in the ear!
Pondering, as Reuben did, upon the repeated warnings of the spinster against any familiarity with the tavern or tavern people, he came in time to reckon the old creaking sign-board of Mr. Boody, and the pump in the inn-yard, as the pivotal points of all the town wickedness, just as the meeting-house was the centre of all the town goodness; and since the great world was very wicked, as he knew from overmuch iteration at home, and since communication with that wicked world was kept up mostly by the stage-coach that stopped every noon at the tavern-door, it seemed to him that relays of wickedness must flow into the tavern and town daily upon that old swaying stage-coach, just as relays of goodness might come to the meeting-house on some old lumbering chaise of a neighboring parson, who once a month, perhaps, would "exchange" with the Doctor. And it confirmed in Reuben's mind a good deal that was taught him about natural depravity, when he found himself looking out with very much more eagerness for the rumbling coach, that kept up a daily wicked activity about the tavern, than he did for Parson Hobson, who snuffled in his reading, and who drove an old, thin-tailed sorrel mare, with lopped ears and lank jaws, that made passes at himself and Phil, if they teased her, as they always did.
So, too, he came to regard, in virtue of misplaced home instruction, the monkey-jacket of Nat Boody, and his fighting-dog "Scamp," and the pink arms and pink cheeks and brown ringlets of Suke Boody, as so many types of human wickedness; and, by parity of reasoning, he came to look upon the two flat curls on either temple of his Aunt Eliza, and her pragmatic way, and upon the yellow ribbons within the scoop-hat of Almira Tourtelot, who sang treble and never went to the tavern, as the types of goodness. What wonder, if he swayed more and more toward the broad and easy path that lay around the tavern-pump, ("Scamp" lying there biting at the flies,) and toward the barroom, with its flaming pictures of some past menagerie-show, and big tumblers with lemons atop, rather than to the strait and narrow path in which his Aunt Eliza and Miss Almira would guide him with sharp voices, thin faces, and decoy of dyspeptic doughnuts?
Phil and he sauntering by one day, Phil says,—
"Darst you go in, Reub?"
Phil was under no law of prohibition. And Reuben, glancing around the Common, says,—
"Yes, I'll go."
"Then," says Phil, "we'll call for a glass of lemonade. Fellows 'most always order somethin', when they go in."
So Phil, swelling with his ten years, and tall of his age, walks to the bar and calls for two tumblers of lemonade, which Old Boody stirs with an appetizing rattle of the toddy-stick,—dropping, meantime, a query or two about the Squire, and a look askance at the parson's boy, who is trying very hard to wear an air as if he, too, were ten, and knew the ropes.
"It's good, a'n't it?" says Phil, putting down his money, of which he always had a good stock.
"Prime!" says Reuben, with a smack of the lips.
And then Suke comes in, hunting over the room for last week's "Courant"; and the boys, with furtive glances at those pink cheeks and brown ringlets, go down, the steps.
"A'n't she handsome?" says Phil.
Reuben is on the growth. And when he eats dinner that day, with the grave Doctor carving the rib-roast and the prim aunt ladling out the sauces, he is elated with the vague, but not unpleasant consciousness, that he is beginning to be familiar with the world.