Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood by George MacDonald (read aloud books TXT) 📕

of the water, and sped, like Achilles of the swift foot, for the boat. I jumped in and seized the oars, intending to row across, and get the big boy to throw the clothes of the party into the boat. But I had never handled an oar in my life, and in the middle passage-how it happened I cannot tell-I found myself floundering in the water.

Now, although you might expect that the water being dammed back just here, it would be shallow below the dam, it was just the opposite. Had the bottom been hard, it would have been shallow; but as the bottom was soft and muddy, the rush of the water over the dam in the winter-floods had here made a great hollow. There was besides another weir a very little way below which again dammed the water back; so that the depth was greater here than in almost any other part within the ken of the village boys. Indeed there were horrors afloat concerning its depth. I was but a poor swimmer, for swimming is a natural gift, and is not equally distributed to all. I might have done better, however, but for those stories of the awful gulf beneath me. I was struggling and floundering, half-blind, and quite deaf, with a sense of the water constantly getting up and stopping me, whatever I wanted to do, when I felt myself laid hold of by the leg, dragged under water, and a moment after landed safe on the bank. Almost the same moment I heard a plunge, and getting up, staggering and bewildered, saw, as through the haze of a dream, a boy swimming after the boat, which had gone down with the slow current. I saw him overtake it, scramble into it in midstream, and handle the oars as to the manner born. When he had brought it back to the spot where I stood, I knew that Peter Mason was my deliverer. Quite recovered by this time from my slight attack of drowning, I got again into the boat, and leaving the oars to Peter, was rowed across and landed. There was no further difficulty. The man, alarmed, I suppose, at the danger I had run, recalled his dog; we bundled in the clothes; Peter rowed them across; Rory, the big boy, took the water after the boat, and I plunged in again above the dam. For the whole of that summer and part of the following winter, Peter was my hero, to the forgetting even of my friend Turkey. I took every opportunity of joining him in his games, partly from gratitude, partly from admiration, but more than either from the simple human attraction of the boy. It was some time before he led me into any real mischief, but it came at last.


CHAPTER XVI

I Go Down Hill


It came in the following winter.

My father had now begun to teach me as well as Tom, but I confess I did not then value the privilege. I had got much too fond of the society of Peter Mason, and all the time I could command I spent with him. Always full of questionable frolic, the spirit of mischief gathered in him as the dark nights drew on. The sun, and the wind, and the green fields, and the flowing waters of summer kept him within bounds; but when the ice and the snow came, when the sky was grey with one cloud, when the wind was full of needle-points of frost and the ground was hard as a stone, when the evenings were dark, and the sun at noon shone low down and far away in the south, then the demon of mischief awoke in the bosom of Peter Mason, and, this winter, I am ashamed to say, drew me also into the net.

Nothing very bad was the result before the incident I am about to relate. There must have been, however, a gradual declension towards it, although the pain which followed upon this has almost obliterated the recollection of preceding follies. Nobody does anything bad all at once. Wickedness needs an apprenticeship as well as more difficult trades.

It was in January, not long after the shortest day, the sun setting about half-past three o'clock. At three school was over, and just as we were coming out, Peter whispered to me, with one of his merriest twinkles in his eyes:

"Come across after dark, Ranald, and we'll have some fun."

I promised, and we arranged when and where to meet. It was Friday, and I had no Latin to prepare for Saturday, therefore my father did not want me. I remember feeling very jolly as I went home to dinner, and made the sun set ten times at least, by running up and down the earthen wall which parted the fields from the road; for as often as I ran up I saw him again over the shoulder of the hill, behind which he was going down. When I had had my dinner, I was so impatient to join Peter Mason that I could not rest, and from very idleness began to tease wee Davie. A great deal of that nasty teasing, so common among boys, comes of idleness. Poor Davie began to cry at last, and I, getting more and more wicked, went on teasing him, until at length he burst into a howl of wrath and misery, whereupon the Kelpie, who had some tenderness for him, burst into the room, and boxed my ears soundly. I was in a fury of rage and revenge, and had I been near anything I could have caught up, something serious would have been the result. In spite of my resistance, she pushed me out of the room and locked the door. I would have complained to my father, but I was perfectly aware that, although she had no right to strike me, I had deserved chastisement for my behaviour to my brother. I was still boiling with anger when I set off for the village to join Mason. I mention all this to show that I was in a bad state of mind, and thus prepared for the wickedness which followed. I repeat, a boy never disgraces himself all at once. He does not tumble from the top to the bottom of the cellar stair. He goes down the steps himself till he comes to the broken one, and then he goes to the bottom with a rush. It will also serve to show that the enmity between Mrs. Mitchell and me had in nowise abated, and that however excusable she might be in the case just mentioned, she remained an evil element in the household.

When I reached the village, I found very few people about. The night was very cold, for there was a black frost. There had been a thaw the day before which had carried away the most of the snow, but in the corners lay remnants of dirty heaps which had been swept up there. I was waiting near one of these, which happened to be at the spot where Peter had arranged to meet me, when from a little shop near a girl came out and walked quickly down the street. I yielded to the temptation arising in a mind which had grown a darkness with slimy things crawling in it. I kicked a hole in the frozen crust of the heap, scraped out a handful of dirty snow, kneaded it into a snowball, and sent it after the girl. It struck her on the back of the head. She gave a cry and ran away, with her hand to her forehead. Brute that I was, I actually laughed. I think I must have been nearer the devil then than I have been since. At least I hope so. For you see it was not with me as with worse-trained boys. I knew quite well that I was doing wrong, and refused to think about it. I felt bad inside. Peter might have done the same thing without being half as wicked as I was. He did not feel the wickedness of that kind of thing as I did. He would have laughed over it merrily. But the vile dregs of my wrath with the Kelpie were fermenting in my bosom, and the horrid pleasure I found in annoying an innocent girl because the wicked Kelpie had made me angry, could never have been expressed in a merry laugh like Mason's. The fact is, I was more displeased with myself than with anybody else, though I did not allow it, and would not take the trouble to repent and do the right thing. If I had even said to wee Davie that I was sorry, I do not think I should have done the other wicked things that followed; for this was not all by any means. In a little while Peter joined me. He laughed, of course, when I told him how the girl had run like a frighted hare, but that was poor fun in his eyes.

"Look here, Ranald," he said, holding out something like a piece of wood.

"What is it, Peter?" I asked.

"It's the stalk of a cabbage," he answered. "I've scooped out the inside and filled it with tow. We'll set fire to one end, and blow the smoke through the keyhole."

"Whose keyhole, Peter?"

"An old witch's that I know of. She'll be in such a rage! It'll be fun to hear her cursing and swearing. We'd serve the same to every house in the row, but that would be more than we could get off with. Come along. Here's a rope to tie her door with first."

I followed him, not without inward misgivings, which I kept down as well as I could. I argued with myself, " I am not doing it; I am only going with Peter: what business is that of anybody's so long as I don't touch the thing myself?" Only a few minutes more, and I was helping Peter to tie the rope to the latch-handle of a poor little cottage, saying now to myself, "This doesn't matter. This won't do her any harm. This isn't smoke. And after all, smoke won't hurt the nasty old thing. It'll only make her angry. It may do her cough good: I dare say she's got a cough." I knew all I was saying was false, and yet I acted on it. Was not that as wicked as wickedness could be? One moment more, and Peter was blowing through the hollow cabbage stalk in at the keyhole with all his might. Catching a breath of the stifling smoke himself, however, he began to cough violently, and passed the wicked instrument to me. I put my mouth to it, and blew with all my might. I believe now that there was some far more objectionable stuff mingled with the tow. In a few moments we heard the old woman begin to cough. Peter, who was peeping in at the window, whispered-

"She's rising. Now we'll catch it, Ranald!"

Coughing as she came, I heard her with shuffling steps approach the door, thinking to open it for air. When she failed in opening it, and found besides where the smoke was coming from, she broke into a torrent of fierce and vengeful reproaches, mingled with epithets by no means flattering. She did not curse and swear as Peter had led me to expect, although her language was certainly far enough from refined; but therein I, being, in a great measure, the guilty cause, was more to blame than she. I laughed because I would not be unworthy of my companion, who was genuinely amused; but I was, in reality, shocked at