Now, eastward from the big house lay the village and its churches: thither was tame virtue. But westward lay a broad field stretching off to an orchard, and beyond swelled a gentle hill, mellow in the distance. Still more remotely far, at the hill's rim, was a blur of woods beyond which the sun went down each night. This, in the little boy's mind, was the highway to the glad free Life of Evil. Many days he looked to that western wood when the sky was a gush of colour behind its furred edge, perceiving all manner of allurements to beckon him, hearing them plead, feeling them tug. Daily his spirit quickened within him to their solicitations, leaping out and beyond him in some magic way to bring back veritable meanings and values of the future.
Then a day came when the desire to be off was no longer resistible. There was a month of school yet; an especially bitter thought, for had he not lately been out of school a week with mumps; and during that very week had not the teacher's father died, so that he was cheated out of the resulting three-days' vacation, other children being free while he lay on a bed of pain—if you tasted pickles or any sour thing? Not only was it useless to try to learn to write "a good business hand," like Ralph Overton—he took the phrase to mean one of those pictured hands that were always pointing to things in the newspaper advertisements—but there was the circus and other evil things—and he was getting on in years.
It was a Saturday afternoon. To-morrow would be too late. He knew he would not be allowed to start on the Sabbath, even in a career that was to be all wickedness. In the grape-arbour he massed certain articles necessary for the expedition: a very small strip of carpet on which he meant to sleep; a copy of "Golden Days," with an article giving elaborate instructions for camping in the wilderness. He was compelled to disregard all of them, but there was comfort and sustenance in the article itself. Then there was the gun that came at Christmas. It shot a cork as far as the string would let it go, with a fairly satisfying report (he would have that string off, once he was in the woods!). Also there were three glass alleys, two agate taws and thirty-eight commies. And to hold his outfit there was a rather sizable box which he with his own hands had papered inside and out from a remnant of gorgeously flowered wall-paper.
When all was ready he went in to break the news to Clytie. She, busy with her baking, heard him declare:
"Now—I'm going to leave this place!" with the look of one who will not be coaxed nor in any manner dissuaded. He thought she took it rather coolly, though Allan ran, as promptly as he could have wished, to tell his grandfather.
"I'm going to be a regular mean one—worse'n Budd Jackson!" he continued to Clytie. He was glad to see that this brought her to her senses.
"Will you stay if I give you—an orange?"
"No, sir;—you'll never set eyes on me again!"
"Oh, now!—two oranges?"
"I can't—I got to go!" in a voice tense with effort.
"All right! Then I'll give them to Allan."
She continued to take brown loaves from the oven and to put other loaves in to bake, while he stood awkwardly by, loath to part from her. Allan came back breathless.
"Grandpa says you can go as far as you like and you needn't come back till you get ready!"
He shifted from one foot to the other and absently ate a warm cookie from the jarful at his hand. He thought this seemed not quite the correct attitude to take toward him, yet he did not waver. They would be sorry enough in a few days, when it was too late.
"I guess I better take a few of these along with me," he said, stowing cookies in the pockets of his jacket. He would have liked one of the big preserved peaches all punctuated with cloves, but he saw no way to carry it, and felt really unable to eat it on the spot.
"Well, good-bye!" he called to Clytie, turning back to her from the door.
"Good-bye! Won't you shake hands with me?"
Very solemnly he shook her big, floury hand.
"Now—could I take Penny along?" (Penny was an inconsequential dog that had been given to Clytie by one whom she called Cousin Bill J.)
"Yes, you'll need a dog to keep the animals off. Now be sure you write to us—at least twice a year—don't forget!" And, brutally before his very eyes, she handed the sniffing and virtuous Allan two of the largest, most goldenly beautiful oranges ever beheld by man.
Bitterly the self-exiled turned from this harrowing scene and strode toward his box.
Here ensued a fresh complication. Nancy, who had chosen the good name of Lillian May, wanted to go with him. She, too, it appeared, was fresh from a Sunday-school book—one in which a girl of her own age was so proud of her long raven curls that she was brought to an illness and all her hair came out. There was a distressing picture of this little girl after a just Providence had done its work as a depilatory. And after she recovered from the fever, it seemed, she had cared to do nothing but read the Scriptures to bed-ridden old ladies—even after a good deal of her hair came in again—though it didn't curl this time. The only pleasure she ever experienced thereafter was that, by virtue of her now singularly angelic character, she was enabled to convert an elderly female Papist—an achievement the joys of which were problematic, both to Nancy and the little boy. Certainly, whatever converting a Papist might be, it was nothing comparable to driving a red-and-green-and-gold wagon in which was caged the Scourge of the Jungle.
But Nancy could not go with him. He told her so plainly. It was no place for a girl beyond that hill where they commonly drove caged beasts, and no one ever so much as thought of Coming to the Feet or washing in the blood of the Lamb, or writing a good business hand with the first finger of it pointing out, or anything.
The little girl pleaded, promising to take her new pink silk parasol, her buff buttoned shoes, a Christmas card with real snow on it, shining like diamonds, and Fragile, her best doll. The thing was impossible. Then she wept.
He whistled to Penny, who came barking joyously—a pretender of a dog, if there ever was one—and they moved off. Weeping after them went Nancy—as far as the first fence, between two boards of which she put her head and sobbed with a heavenly bitterness; for to the little boy, pushing sternly on, her tears afforded that certain thrill of gratified brutality under conscious rectitude, the capacity for which is among those matters by which Heaven has set the male of our species apart from the female. The sensation would have been flawless but for Allan's lack of dignity: from the top board of the fence he held aloft in either hand a golden orange, and he chanted in endless inanity:
Chink, Chink Chiraddam!
Don't you wisht you had 'em?
Chink, Chink Chiraddam!
Don't you wisht you had 'em?
Still he was actually and triumphantly off.
And here should be recalled the saying of a certain wise, simple man: "If our failures are made tragic by courage they are not different from successes." For it came about that the subsequent dignity of this revolt was to be wholly in its courage.
The way led over a stretch of grassy prairie to a fence. This surmounted, there came a ploughed field, of considerable extent to one carrying an inconvenient