Breaking Away; or, The Fortunes of a Student

by Oliver Optic

I lived with my uncle, Amos Thornton. His residence was a vine-clad cottage, built in the Swiss style, on the border of the lake, the lawn in front of it extending down to the water's edge. My uncle was a strange man. He had erected this cottage ten years before the time at which my story opens, when I was a mere child. He had employed in the beginning, before the house was completed, a man and his wife as gardener and housekeeper, and they had been residents in the cottage ever since.

I said that my uncle was a strange man; and so he was. He hardly ever spoke a word to any one, and never unless it was absolutely necessary to do so. He was not one of the talking kind; and old Jerry, the gardener, and old Betsey, the housekeeper, seemed to have been cast in the same mould. I never heard them talking to each other, and they certainly never spoke to me unless I asked them a question, and then only in the briefest manner.

I never knew what to make of my uncle Amos. He had a little room, which he called his library, in one corner of the house, which could be entered only by passing through his bedroom. In this apartment he spent most of his time, though he went out to walk every day, while I was at school; but, if he saw me coming, he always retreated to the house. He was gloomy and misanthropic; he never went to church himself, though he always compelled me to go, and also to attend the Sunday school. He did not go into society, and had little or nothing to do with, or to say to, the people of Parkville. He never troubled them, and they were content to let him alone.

As may well be supposed, my life at the cottage was not the pleasantest that could be imagined. It was hardly a home, only a stopping-place to me. It was gloom and silence there, and my uncle was the lord of the silent land. Such a life was not to my taste, and I envied the boys and girls of my acquaintance in Parkville, as I saw them talking and laughing with their fathers and mothers, their brothers and sisters, or gathered in the social circle around the winter fire. It seemed to me that their cup of joy was full, while mine was empty. I longed for friends and companions to share with me the cares and the pleasures of life.

Of myself I knew little or nothing. My memory hardly reached farther back than the advent of my uncle at Lake Adieno, and all my early associations were connected with the cottage and its surroundings. I had a glimmering and indistinct idea of something before our coming to Parkville. It seemed to me that I had once known a motherly lady with a sweet and lovely expression on her face; and I had a faint recollection of looking out upon a dreary waste of waters; but I could not fix the idea distinctly in my mind. I supposed that the lady was my mother. I made several vain efforts to induce my uncle to tell me something about her; if he knew anything, he would not tell me.

Old Jerry and his wife evidently had no knowledge whatever in regard to me before my uncle brought me to Parkville. They could not tell me anything, and my uncle would not. Though I was a boy of only fourteen, this concealment of my birth and parentage troubled me. I was told that my father was dead; and this was all the information I could obtain. Where he had lived, when and where he died, I was not permitted to know. If I asked a question, my uncle turned on his heel and left me, with no reply.

The vision of the motherly lady, distant and indistinct as it was, haunted me like a familiar melody. If the person was my mother, why should her very name be kept from me? If she was still living, why could I not go to her? If she was dead, why might I not water the green sod above her grave with my tears, and plant the sweetest flowers by her tombstone? I was dissatisfied with my lot, and I was determined, at no distant day, to wring from my silent uncle the particulars of my early history. I was so eager to get this knowledge that I was almost ready to take him by the throat, if need be, and force out the truth from between his closed lips.

I never had an opportunity to speak with him; but I could make the opportunity. He took no notice of me; he avoided me; he seemed hardly to be conscious of my existence. Yet he was not a hard man, in the common sense of the word. He clothed me as well as the best boys in the Institute. If I wanted anything for the table, old Jerry was ordered to procure it. When I was ten years old a little row-boat was furnished for me; but before I was fourteen I wanted something better, and told my uncle so. He made me no reply; but on my next birthday a splendid sail-boat floated on the lake before the house, which Jerry said had been built for me. I told my silent lord that I was much obliged to him for his very acceptable present, when I happened to catch him on the lawn. He turned on his heel, and fled as though I had stung him with the sting of ingratitude.

If I wanted anything, I had only to mention it; and no one criticised my conduct, whatever I did. I was free to go and come when I pleased; and though in vacation I was absent three days at once in my boat, no one asked me where I had been, or what I had done. Neither my uncle nor his silent satellites ever expressed a fear that I might be drowned in my voyages in night and storm on the lake; and I came to the conclusion that no one would care if I were lost.

I do not know how, under such a home government, I ever became a decent fellow. I do not know why I am not now a pirate, a freebooter, a pickpocket, or a nuisance to myself and the world in some other capacity. I have come to believe since that my inherited good qualities saved me under such an utter neglect of all home influences. It is a marvel to me that I was not ruined before I was twenty-one; and from the deepest depths of my heart I thank God for his mercy in sparing me from the fate which generally and naturally overtakes such a neglected child.