The Story of a Bad Boy

T >> Thomas Bailey Aldrich >> The Story of a Bad Boy


Everything was changed with us now. There were consultations with
lawyers, and signing of papers, and correspondence; for my father's
affairs had been left in great confusion. And when these were settled,
the evenings were not long enough for us to hear all my mother had to
tell of the scenes she had passed through in the ill-fated city.

Then there were old times to talk over, full of reminiscences of Aunt
Chloe and little Black Sam. Little Black Sam, by the by, had been taken
by his master from my father's service ten months previously, and put on
a sugar-plantation near Baton Rouge. Not relishing the change, Sam had
run away, and by some mysterious agency got into Canada, from which
place he had sent back several indecorous messages to his late owner.
Aunt Chloe was still in New Orleans, employed as nurse in one of the
cholera hospital wards, and the Desmoulins, near neighbors of ours, had
purchased the pretty stone house among the orange-trees.

How all these simple details interested me will be readily understood by
any boy who has been long absent from home.

I was sorry when it became necessary to discuss questions more nearly
affecting myself. I had been removed from school temporarily, but it
was decided, after much consideration, that I should not return, the
decision being left, in a manner, in my own hands.

The Captain wished to carry out his son's intention and send me to
college, for which I was nearly fitted; but our means did not admit of
this. The Captain, too, could ill afford to bear the expense, for his
losses by the failure of the New Orleans business had been heavy. Yet he
insisted on the plan, not seeing clearly what other disposal to make of
me.

In the midst of our discussions a letter came from my Uncle Snow,
a merchant in New York, generously offering me a place in his
counting-house. The case resolved itself into this: If I went to
college, I should have to be dependent on Captain Nutter for several
years, and at the end of the collegiate course would have no settled
profession. If I accepted my uncle's offer, I might hope to work my
way to independence without loss of time. It was hard to give up the
long-cherished dream of being a Harvard boy; but I gave it up.

The decision once made, it was Uncle Snow's wish that I should enter
his counting-house immediately. The cause of my good uncle's haste was
this--he was afraid that I would turn out to be a poet before he could
make a merchant of me. His fears were based upon the fact that I had
published in the Rivermouth Barnacle some verses addressed in a familiar
manner "To the Moon." Now, the idea of a boy, with his living to get,
placing himself in communication with the Moon, struck the mercantile
mind as monstrous. It was not only a bad investment, it was lunacy.

'We adopted Uncle Snow's views so far as to accede to his proposition
forthwith. My mother, I neglected to say, was also to reside in New
York.

I shall not draw a picture of Pepper Whitcomb's disgust when the news
was imparted to him, nor attempt to paint Sailor Ben's distress at the
prospect of losing his little messmate.

In the excitement of preparing for the journey I didn't feel any very
deep regret myself. But when the moment came for leaving, and I saw my
small trunk lashed up behind the carriage, then the pleasantness of the
old life and a vague dread of the new came over me, and a mist filled my
eyes, shutting out the group of schoolfellows, including all the members
of the Centipede Club, who had come down to the house to see me off.

As the carriage swept round the corner, I leaned out of the window to
take a last look at Sailor Ben's cottage, and there was the Admiral's
flag flying at half-mast.

So I left Rivermouth, little dreaming that I was not to see the old
place again for many and many a year.




Chapter Twenty-Two--Exeunt Omnes


With the close of my school-days at Rivermouth this modest chronicle
ends.

The new life upon which I entered, the new friends and foes I
encountered on the road, and what I did and what I did not, are matters
that do not come within the scope of these pages. But before I write
Finis to the record as it stands, before I leave it--feeling as if I
were once more going away from my boyhood--I have a word or two to say
concerning a few of the personages who have figured in the story, if you
will allow me to call Gypsy a personage.

I am sure that the reader who has followed me thus far will be willing
to hear what became of her, and Sailor Ben and Miss Abigail and the
Captain.

First about Gypsy. A month after my departure from Rivermouth the Captain
informed me by letter that he had parted with the little mare, according
to agreement. She had been sold to the ring-master of a travelling
circus (I had stipulated on this disposal of her), and was about to set
out on her travels. She did not disappoint my glowing anticipations, but
became quite a celebrity in her way--by dancing the polka to slow music
on a pine-board ball-room constructed for the purpose.

I chanced once, a long while afterwards, to be in a country town where
her troupe was giving exhibitions; I even read the gaudily illumined
show-bill, setting forth the accomplishments of Zuleika, the famed
Arabian Trick Pony--but I failed to recognize my dear little Mustang
girl behind those high-sounding titles, and so, alas, did not attend the
performance! I hope all the praises she received and all the spangled
trappings she wore did not spoil her; but I am afraid they did, for she
was always over much given to the vanities of this world!

Miss Abigail regulated the domestic destinies of my grandfather's
household until the day of her death, which Dr. Theophilus Tredick
solemnly averred was hastened by the inveterate habit she had contracted
of swallowing unknown quantities of hot-drops whenever she fancied
herself out of sorts. Eighty-seven empty phials were found in a
bonnet-box on a shelf in her bedroom closet.

The old house became very lonely when the family got reduced to Captain
Nutter and Kitty; and when Kitty passed away, my grandfather divided his
time between Rivermouth and New York.

Sailor Ben did not long survive his little Irish lass, as he always
fondly called her. At his demise, which took place about six years
since, he left his property in trust to the managers of a "Home for Aged
Mariners." In his will, which was a very whimsical document--written by
himself, and worded with much shrewdness, too--he warned the Trustees
that when he got "aloft" he intended to keep his "weather eye" on them,
and should send "a speritual shot across their bows" and bring them to,
if they didn't treat the Aged Mariners handsomely.

He also expressed a wish to have his body stitched up in a shotted
hammock and dropped into the harbor; but as he did not strenuously
insist on this, and as it was not in accordance with my grandfather's
preconceived notions of Christian burial, the Admiral was laid to rest
beside Kitty, in the Old South Burying Ground, with an anchor that would
have delighted him neatly carved on his headstone.

I am sorry the fire has gone out in the old ship's stove in that
sky-blue cottage at the head of the wharf; I am sorry they have taken
down the flag-staff and painted over the funny port-holes; for I loved
the old cabin as it was. They might have let it alone!

For several months after leaving Rivermouth I carried on a voluminous
correspondence with Pepper Whitcomb; but it gradually dwindled down to a
single letter a month, and then to none at all. But while he remained
at the Temple Grammar School he kept me advised of the current gossip of
the town and the doings of the Centipedes.

As one by one the boys left the academy--Adams, Harris, Marden, Blake,
and Langdon--to seek their fortunes elsewhere, there was less to interest
me in the old seaport; and when Pepper himself went to Philadelphia to
read law, I had no one to give me an inkling of what was going on.

There wasn't much to go on, to be sure. Great events no longer
considered it worth their while to honor so quiet a place.

One Fourth of July the Temple Grammar School burnt down--set on fire, it
was supposed, by an eccentric squib that was seen to bolt into an upper
window--and Mr. Grimshaw retired from public life, married, "and lived
happily ever after," as the story-books say.

The Widow Conway, I am able to state, did not succeed in enslaving Mr.
Meeks, the apothecary, who united himself clandestinely to one of Miss
Dorothy Gibbs's young ladies, and lost the patronage of Primrose Hall in
consequence.

Young Conway went into the grocery business with his ancient chum,
Rodgers--RODGERS & CONWAY! I read the sign only last summer when I was
down in Rivermouth, and had half a mind to pop into the shop and shake
hands with him, and ask him if he wanted to fight. I contented myself,
however, with flattening my nose against his dingy shop-window, and
beheld Conway, in red whiskers and blue overalls, weighing out sugar for
a customer--giving him short weight, I'll bet anything!

I have reserved my pleasantest word for the last. It is touching the
Captain. The Captain is still hale and rosy, and if he doesn't relate
his exploit in the War of 1812 as spiritedly as he used to, he makes up
by relating it more frequently and telling it differently every time!
He passes his winters in New York and his summers in the Nutter House,
which threatens to prove a hard nut for the destructive gentleman with
the scythe and the hour-glass, for the seaward gable has not yielded a
clapboard to the eastwind these twenty years. The Captain has now become
the Oldest Inhabitant in Rivermouth, and so I don't laugh at the Oldest
Inhabitant any more, but pray in my heart that he may occupy the post of
honor for half a century to come!

So ends the Story of a Bad Boy--but not such a very bad boy, as I told
you to begin with.