Eugene Pickering | Page 6

a sign of knowing me. So at last I introduced myself. Then he
jumped up and grasped my hands, and stared and blushed and laughed,
and began a dozen random questions, ending with a demand as to how
in the world I had known him.
"Why, you are not changed so utterly," I said; "and after all, it's but
fifteen years since you used to do my Latin exercises for me."
"Not changed, eh?" he answered, still smiling, and yet speaking with a
sort of ingenuous dismay.
Then I remembered that poor Pickering had been, in those Latin days, a

victim of juvenile irony. He used to bring a bottle of medicine to school
and take a dose in a glass of water before lunch; and every day at two
o'clock, half an hour before the rest of us were liberated, an old nurse
with bushy eyebrows came and fetched him away in a carriage. His
extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his bottle of medicine, which
suggested a vague analogy with the sleeping-potion in the tragedy,
caused him to be called Juliet. Certainly Romeo's sweetheart hardly
suffered more; she was not, at least, a standing joke in Verona.
Remembering these things, I hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped
he was still the same good fellow who used to do my Latin for me. "We
were capital friends, you know," I went on, "then and afterwards."
"Yes, we were very good friends," he said, "and that makes it the
stranger I shouldn't have known you. For you know, as a boy, I never
had many friends, nor as a man either. You see," he added, passing his
hand over his eyes, "I am rather dazed, rather bewildered at finding
myself for the first time--alone." And he jerked back his shoulders
nervously, and threw up his head, as if to settle himself in an unwonted
position. I wondered whether the old nurse with the bushy eyebrows
had remained attached to his person up to a recent period, and
discovered presently that, virtually at least, she had. We had the whole
summer day before us, and we sat down on the grass together and
overhauled our old memories. It was as if we had stumbled upon an
ancient cupboard in some dusky corner, and rummaged out a heap of
childish playthings--tin soldiers and torn story-books, jack-knives and
Chinese puzzles. This is what we remembered between us.
He had made but a short stay at school--not because he was tormented,
for he thought it so fine to be at school at all that he held his tongue at
home about the sufferings incurred through the medicine- bottle, but
because his father thought he was learning bad manners. This he
imparted to me in confidence at the time, and I remember how it
increased my oppressive awe of Mr. Pickering, who had appeared to
me in glimpses as a sort of high priest of the proprieties. Mr. Pickering
was a widower--a fact which seemed to produce in him a sort of
preternatural concentration of parental dignity. He was a majestic man,
with a hooked nose, a keen dark eye, very large whiskers, and notions
of his own as to how a boy--or his boy, at any rate--should be brought
up. First and foremost, he was to be a "gentleman"; which seemed to

mean, chiefly, that he was always to wear a muffler and gloves, and be
sent to bed, after a supper of bread and milk, at eight o'clock.
School-life, on experiment, seemed hostile to these observances, and
Eugene was taken home again, to be moulded into urbanity beneath the
parental eye. A tutor was provided for him, and a single select
companion was prescribed. The choice, mysteriously, fell on me, born
as I was under quite another star; my parents were appealed to, and I
was allowed for a few months to have my lessons with Eugene. The
tutor, I think, must have been rather a snob, for Eugene was treated like
a prince, while I got all the questions and the raps with the ruler. And
yet I remember never being jealous of my happier comrade, and
striking up, for the time, one of those friendships of childhood. He had
a watch and a pony and a great store of picture-books, but my envy of
these luxuries was tempered by a vague compassion which left me free
to be generous. I could go out to play alone, I could button my jacket
myself, and sit up till I was sleepy. Poor Pickering could never take a
step without asking leave, or spend half an hour in the garden without a
formal report of it when he came in. My parents, who had no desire to
see me inoculated with importunate virtues, sent