Chapter Nineteen. I Become A Blighted Being

The Story of a Bad Boy

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

When a young boy gets to be an old boy, when the hair is growing
rather thin on the top of the old boy's head, and he has been tamed
sufficiently to take a sort of chastened pleasure in allowing the
baby to play with his watch-seals-when, I say, an old boy has reached
this stage in the journey of life, he is sometimes apt to indulge in
sportive remarks concerning his first love.

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

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

For a boy of a naturally vivacious disposition the part of a
blighted being presented difficulties. I had an excellent appetite, I
liked society, I liked out-of-door sports, I was fond of handsome
clothes. Now all these things were incompatible with the doleful
character I was to assume, and I proceeded to cast them from me. I
neglected my hair. I avoided my playmates. I frowned abstractedly. I
didn't eat as much as was good for me. I took lonely walks. 1 brooded
in solitude. I not only committed to memory the more turgid poems of
the late Lord Byron-"Fare thee well, and if forever," &c.-but I
became a despondent poet on my own account, and composed a string of
"Stanzas to One who will understand them." 1 think I was a trifle too
hopeful on that point; for I came across the verses several years
afterwards, and was quite unable to understand them myself.

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

Among the minor pleasures of being blighted were the interest
and perplexity I excited in the simple souls that were thrown in
daily contact with me. Pepper especially. I nearly drove him into a
corresponding state of mind.

I had from time to time given Pepper slight but impressive hints
of my admiration for Some One (this was in the early part of Miss
Glentworth's visit); I had also led him to infer that my admiration
was not altogether in vain. He was therefore unable to explain the
cause of my strange behavior, for I had carefully refrained from
mentioning to Pepper the fact that Some One had turned out to be
Another's.

I treated Pepper shabbily. I couldn't resist playing on his
tenderer feelings. He was a boy bubbling over with sympathy for
anyone in any kind of trouble. Our intimacy since Binny Wallace's
death had been uninterrupted; but now I moved in a sphere apart, not
to be profaned by the step of an outsider.

I no longer joined the boys on the playground at recess. I
stayed at my desk reading some lugubrious volume-usually The
Mysteries of Udolpho, by the amiable Mrs. Radcliffe. A translation of
The Sorrows of Werter fell into my hands at this period, and if I
could have committed suicide without killing myself, I should
certainly have done so.

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

Grave Point-the place where Binny Wallace's body came ashore-was
a narrow strip of land running out into the river. A line of Lombardy
poplars, stiff and severe, like a row of grenadiers, mounted guard on
the water-side. On the extreme end of the peninsula was an old
disused graveyard, tenanted principally by the early settlers who had
been scalped by the Indians. In a remote corner of the cemetery, set
apart from the other mounds, was the grave of a woman who had been
hanged in the old colonial times for the murder of her infant.
Goodwife Polly Haines had denied the crime to the last, and after her
death there had arisen strong doubts as to her actual guilt. It was a
belief current among the lads of the town, that if you went to this
grave at nightfall on the 10th of November-the anniversary of her
execution-and asked, "For what 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 with silvery moss, surrounded this burial-ground of our Pilgrim
Fathers and their immediate descendants. The latest date on any of
the headstones was 1780. A crop of very funny epitaphs sprung up here
and there among the overgrown thistles and burdocks, and almost every
tablet had a death's-head with cross-bones engraved upon it, or else
a puffy round face with a pair of wings stretching out from the ears,
like this:

Cherub Graphic

These mortuary emblems furnished me with congenial food for
reflection. I used to lie in the long grass, and speculate on the
advantages and disadvantages of being a cherub.

I forget what I thought the advantages were, but I remember
distinctly of getting into an inextricable tangle on two points: How
could a cherub, being all head and wings, manage to sit down when he
was tired? To have to sit down on the back of his head struck me as
an awkward alternative. Again: Where did a cherub carry those
indispensable articles (such as jack-knives, marbles, and pieces of
twine) which boys in an earthly state of existence usually stow away
in their trousers-pockets?

These were knotty questions, and I was never able to dispose of
them satisfactorily.

Meanwhile Pepper Whitcomb would scour the whole town in search
of me. He finally discovered my retreat, and dropped in on me
abruptly one afternoon, while I was deep in the cherub problem.

"Look here, Tom Bailey!" said Pepper, shying a piece of
clam-shell indignantly at the file jacet on a neighboring gravestone.
"You are just going to the dogs! Can't you tell a fellow what in
thunder ails you, instead of prowling round among the tombs like a
jolly old vampire?"

"Pepper," I replied, solemnly, "don't ask me. All is not well
here"-touching my breast mysteriously. If I had touched my head
instead, I should have been nearer the mark.

Pepper stared at me.

"Earthly happiness," I continued, "is a delusion and a snare.
You will never be happy, Pepper, until you are a cherub."

Pepper, by the by, would have made an excellent cherub, he was
so chubby. Having delivered myself of these gloomy remarks, I arose
languidly from the grass and moved away, leaving Pepper staring after
me in mute astonishment. I was Hamlet and Werter and the late Lord
Byron all in one.

You will ask what my purpose was in cultivating this factitious
despondency. None whatever. Blighted beings never have any purpose in
life excepting to be as blighted as possible.

Of course my present line of business could not long escape the
eye of Captain Nutter. I don't know if the Captain suspected my
attachment for Miss Glentworth. He never alluded to it; but he
watched me. Miss Abigail watched me, Kitty Collins watched me, and
Sailor Ben watched me.

"I can't make out his signals," I overheard the Admiral remark
to my grandfather one day. "I hope he ain't got no kind of sickness
aboard."

There was something singularly agreeable in being an object of
so great interest. Sometimes I had all I could do to preserve my
dejected aspect, it was so pleasant to be miserable. I incline to the
opinion that people who are melancholy without any particular reason,
such as poets, artists, and young musicians with long hair, have
rather an enviable time of it. In a quiet way I never enjoyed myself
better in my life than when I was a Blighted Being.