The Story of a Bad Boy

  Chapter Nineteen--I Become A Blighted Being

  When a young boy gets to be an old boy, when the hair is growingrather thin on the top of the old boy's head, and he has been tamedsufficiently to take a sort of chastened pleasure in allowing the babyto play with his watch-seals--when, I say, an old boy has reached thisstage in the journey of life, he is sometimes apt to indulge in sportiveremarks concerning his first love.

  Now, though I bless my stars that it wasn't in my power to marry MissNelly, I am not going to deny my boyish regard for her nor laugh atit. As long as it lasted it was a very sincere and unselfish love, andrendered me proportionately wretched. I say as long as it lasted, forone's first love doesn't last forever.

  I am ready, however, to laugh at the amusing figure I cut after I hadreally ceased to have any deep feeling in the matter. It was then I tookit into my head to be a Blighted Being. This was about two weeks afterthe spectral appearance of Mr. Waldron.

  For a boy of a naturally vivacious disposition the part of a blightedbeing presented difficulties. I had an excellent appetite, I likedsociety, I liked out-of-door sports, I was fond of handsome clothes. Nowall these things were incompatible with the doleful character I was toassume, and I proceeded to cast them from me. I neglected my hair. Iavoided my playmates. I frowned abstractedly. I didn't eat as much aswas good for me. I took lonely walks. I brooded in solitude. I not onlycommitted to memory the more turgid poems of the late Lord Byron--"Farethee well, and if forever," &c.--but I became a despondent poet on my ownaccount, and composed a string of "Stanzas to One who will understandthem." I think I was a trifle too hopeful on that point; for I cameacross the verses several years afterwards, and was quite unable tounderstand them myself.

  It was a great comfort to be so perfectly miserable and yet not sufferany. I used to look in the glass and gloat over the amount and varietyof mournful expression I could throw into my features. If I caughtmyself smiling at anything, I cut the smile short with a sigh. Theoddest thing about all this is, I never once suspected that I was notunhappy. No one, not even Pepper Whitcomb, was more deceived than I.

  Among the minor pleasures of being blighted were the interest andperplexity I excited in the simple souls that were thrown in dailycontact with me. Pepper especially. I nearly drove him into acorresponding state of mind.

  I had from time to time given Pepper slight but impressive hints of myadmiration for Some One (this was in the early part of Miss Glentworth'svisit); I had also led him to infer that my admiration was notaltogether in vain. He was therefore unable to explain the cause ofmy strange behavior, for I had carefully refrained from mentioning toPepper the fact that Some One had turned out to be Another's.

  I treated Pepper shabbily. I couldn't resist playing on his tendererfeelings. He was a boy bubbling over with sympathy for anyone in anykind of trouble. Our intimacy since Binny Wallace's death had beenuninterrupted; but now I moved in a sphere apart, not to be profaned bythe step of an outsider.

  I no longer joined the boys on the playground at recess. I stayed at mydesk reading some lugubrious volume--usually The Mysteries of Udolpho, bythe amiable Mrs. Radcliffe. A translation of The Sorrows of Werter fellinto my hands at this period, and if I could have committed suicidewithout killing myself, I should certainly have done so.

  On half-holidays, instead of fraternizing with Pepper and the rest ofour clique, I would wander off alone to Grave Point.

  Grave Point--the place where Binny Wallace's body came ashore--was anarrow strip of land running out into the river. A line of Lombardypoplars, stiff and severe, like a row of grenadiers, mounted guard onthe water-side. On the extreme end of the peninsula was an old disusedgraveyard, tenanted principally by the early settlers who had beenscalped by the Indians. In a remote corner of the cemetery, set apartfrom the other mounds, was the grave of a woman who had been hangedin the old colonial times for the murder of her infant. Goodwife PollyHaines had denied the crime to the last, and after her death there hadarisen strong doubts as to her actual guilt. It was a belief currentamong the lads of the town, that if you went to this grave at nightfallon the 10th of November--the anniversary of her execution--and asked, "Forwhat did the magistrates hang you?" a voice would reply, "Nothing."

  Many a Rivermouth boy has tremblingly put this question in the dark,and, sure enough, Polly Haines invariably answered nothing!

  A low red-brick wall, broken down in many places and frosted over withsilvery moss, surrounded this burial-ground of our Pilgrim Fathers andtheir immediate descendants. The latest date on any of the headstoneswas 1780. A crop of very funny epitaphs sprung up here and there amongthe overgrown thistles and burdocks, and almost every tablet had adeath's-head with cross-bones engraved upon it, or else a puffy roundface with a pair of wings stretching out from the ears, like this:

  Cherub Graphic