Home from the Hill by William Humphrey Read Free Book Online Page B

and bring out a coarse remark. But from the start, with Theron Hunnicutt there, such things were seldom said. It was not merely that we sensed the Captain would not like it, or more obscurely, that Mrs. Hannah would not have. It was also because the boy himself made us feel ashamed to do it, and this he did not so much by making us feel that he was too good, as that we ourselves were. Shyly, delicately—since praise to the face is open disgrace—he let us know what we had meant in his life, and it came out bit by bit that we, a more mortal lot than whom you would have to go far to find, had all figured to him as a kind of assembly of lesser gods surrounding that god of a father of his. He told us stories about ourselves, stories in which we were heroes, most often things we ourselves had long ago forgotten and never had seen much heroic in; but listening to him tell it over, with his dark, humorless, intense young face, you got the feeling that you had looked pretty good on that occasion, and that it was something memorable. It was a little like reading about yourself in a book, an old book, in old-fashioned and formal language full of words that amused and yet pleased and at the same time embarrassed you a little just because they both amused and pleased, words like courageous, valiant , even fortitude , even steadfast , words he got from his reading in Scott, Marryat, Cooper, and Southern historians of The Lost Cause. When he told you of a time when you had been more courageous, more loyal, more valiant than you knew perfectly well you ever had been, it shamed you into resolving to live up to his notion of you in future. In that boy’s stories you always came off well somehow, bigger than lifesize, even when it was a story on you; if you were a fool, you were an epic fool. He made you feel you had taken it too much for granted, being a member of this fine body of men like yourself. You did not want to say or do anything that would hurt his regard for you or the fresh regard he had given you for yourself.
    You could not help liking him—even if he was conceited. And he was conceited. He was not brash or smart-alecky, not show-off. He did not have to impress his self-assurance on others to know he had it. He just took things for granted, as he took for granted right away that his rightful place was among the hunting men. He felt he still had to prove that right, but to prove it only to them. Of other men, and of all boys his own age, he was unconscious. He was not disdainful of boys his age—just unconscious of them. And he did behave very grown-up. At twelve he had all the certainty of a crown prince as to precisely what his role in life was to be, and he judged from the example of his father, down to the smallest detail, exactly how he would fill it. It gave him a kind of miniature pomposity, but you could not help liking him. For one thing there was that earnestness of his. Even for a boy, he took things seriously. Because of his strong sense of the high expectations held of him, he had a time forgiving himself for any mistake he made. And though not so hard on others as on himself, he made high demands on others too. What made this appealing, as well as just a little touching, was that so far as he could see as yet, nobody fell short of his high demands. Narrow and intolerant, as boys will be, he could feel pity, but he could not separate it from contempt. He could not feel very much pity for someone and go on thinking of him as a friend. Oh, he was conceited, but not so conceited that he could pardon in others what he could not pardon in himself.
    And he was humorless. He could be sold the most useless things told the most outlandish lies; then, too trusting to believe it or too proud to admit it, had to be told he’d been had. He was subjected to all the old as well as hundreds of spur-of-the-moment pranks, sent after a pint of pigeon’s milk, a left-handed monkey wrench, etc.—that sly