By and by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and
started for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls’ room the door was
open, and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was
open and she’d been packing things in it—getting ready to go to
England. But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and
had her face in her hands, crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of
course anybody would. I went in there and says:
“Miss Mary Jane, you can’t a-bear to see people in trouble, and _I_
can’t—most always. Tell me about it.”
So she done it. And it was the niggers—I just expected it. She said
the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she
didn’t know _how_ she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the
mother and the children warn’t ever going to see each other no
more—and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands,
and says:
“Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain’t _ever_ going to see each other
any more!”
“But they _will_—and inside of two weeks—and I _know_ it!” says I.
Laws, it was out before I could think! And before I could budge she
throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it _again_, say it
_again_, say it _again!_
I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close
place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very
impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and
eased-up, like a person that’s had a tooth pulled out. So I went to
studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells
the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many
resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain;
but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest
if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly _safer_
than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time
or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing
like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m a-going to chance it;
I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most _like_
setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where
you’ll go to. Then I says:
“Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where
you could go and stay three or four days?”
“Yes; Mr. Lothrop’s. Why?”
“Never mind why yet. If I’ll tell you how I know the niggers will see
each other again—inside of two weeks—here in this house—and _prove_
how I know it—will you go to Mr. Lothrop’s and stay four days?”
“Four days!” she says; “I’ll stay a year!”
“All right,” I says, “I don’t want nothing more out of _you_ than just
your word—I druther have it than another man’s kiss-the-Bible.” She
smiled and reddened up very sweet, and I says, “If you don’t mind it,
I’ll shut the door—and bolt it.”
Then I come back and set down again, and says:
“Don’t you holler. Just set still and take it like a man. I got to
tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it’s a
bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain’t no help for
it. These uncles of yourn ain’t no uncles at all; they’re a couple of
frauds—regular dead-beats. There, now we’re over the worst of it, you
can stand the rest middling easy.”
It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal
water now, so I went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher
all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first
struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to
where she flung herself onto the king’s breast at the front door and
he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times—and then up she jumps, with
her face afire like sunset, and says:
“The brute! Come, don’t waste a minute—not a _second_—we’ll have
them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!”
Says I:
“Cert’nly. But do you mean _before_ you go to Mr. Lothrop’s, or—”
“Oh,” she says, “what am I _thinking_ about!” she says, and set right
down again. “Don’t mind what I said—please don’t—you _won’t_, now,
_will_ you?” Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that
I said I would die first. “I never thought, I was so stirred up,” she
says; “now go on, and I won’t do so any more. You tell me what to do,
and whatever you say I’ll do it.”
“Well,” I says, “it’s a rough gang, them two frauds, and I’m fixed so
I got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not—I
druther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town
would get me out of their claws, and _I_’d be all right; but there’d be
another person that you don’t know about who’d be in big trouble.
Well, we got to save _him_, hain’t we? Of course. Well, then, we won’t
blow on them.”
Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could
get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then
leave. But I didn’t want to run the raft in the daytime without
anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so I didn’t want the plan
to begin working till pretty late to-night. I says:
“Miss Mary Jane, I’ll tell you what we’ll do, and you won’t have to
stay at Mr. Lothrop’s so long, nuther. How fur is it?”
“A little short of four miles—right out in the country, back here.”
“Well, that ’ll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till
nine or half past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home
again—tell them you’ve thought of something. If you get here before
eleven put a candle in this window, and if I don’t turn up wait _till_
eleven, and _then_ if I don’t turn up it means I’m gone, and out of
the way, and safe. Then you come out and spread the news around, and
get these beats jailed.”
“Good,” she says, “I’ll do it.”
“And if it just happens so that I don’t get away, but get took up
along with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing
beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can.”
“Stand by you! indeed I will. They sha’n’t touch a hair of your head!”
she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she
said it, too.
“If I get away I sha’n’t be here,” I says, “to prove these
rapscallions ain’t your uncles, and I couldn’t do it if I _was_ here.
I could swear they was beats and bummers, that’s all, though that’s
worth something. Well, there’s others can do that better than what I
can, and they’re people that ain’t going to be doubted as quick as I’d
be. I’ll tell you how to find them. Gimme a pencil and a piece of
paper. There—’_Royal Nonesuch, Bricksville._’ Put it away, and don’t
lose it. When the court wants to find out something about these two,
let them send up to Bricksville and say they’ve got the men that
played the ’Royal Nonesuch,’ and ask for some witnesses—why, you’ll
have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary.
And they’ll come a-biling, too.”
I judged we had got everything fixed about right now. So I says:
“Just let the auction go right along, and don’t worry. Nobody don’t
have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction
on accounts of the short notice, and they ain’t going out of this till
they get that money; and the way we’ve fixed it the sale ain’t going
to count, and they ain’t going to _get_ no money. It’s just like the way
it was with the niggers—it warn’t no sale, and the niggers will be
back before long. Why, they can’t collect the money for the _niggers_
yet—they’re in the worst kind of a fix, Miss Mary.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ll run down to breakfast now, and then I’ll start
straight for Mr. Lothrop’s.”
“’Deed, _that_ ain’t the ticket, Miss Mary Jane,” I says, “by no
manner of means; go _before_ breakfast.”
“Why?”
“What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?”
“Well, I never thought—and come to think, I don’t know. What was it?”
“Why, it’s because you ain’t one of these leather-face people. I don’t
want no better book than what your face is. A body can set down and
read it off like coarse print. Do you reckon you can go and face your
uncles when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never—”
“There, there, don’t! Yes, I’ll go before breakfast—I’ll be glad to.
And leave my sisters with them?”
“Yes; never mind about them. They’ve got to stand it yet awhile. They
might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don’t want you to
see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town; if a neighbor was
to ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something.
No, you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I’ll fix it with all of
them. I’ll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say
you’ve went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change,
or to see a friend, and you’ll be back to-night or early in the
morning.”
“Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won’t have my love given to
them.”
“Well, then, it sha’n’t be.” It was well enough to tell _her_ so—no
harm in it. It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it’s
the little things that smooths people’s roads the most, down here
below; it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn’t cost
nothing. Then I says: “There’s one more thing—that bag of money.”
“Well, they’ve got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think
_how_ they got it.”
“No, you’re out, there. They hain’t got it.”
“Why, who’s got it?”
“I wish I knowed, but I don’t. I _had_ it, because I stole it from
them; and I stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but
I’m afraid it ain’t there no more. I’m awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane,
I’m just as sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could; I did
honest. I come nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the
first place I come to, and run—and it warn’t a good place.”
“Oh, stop blaming yourself—it’s too bad to do it, and I won’t allow
it—you couldn’t help it; it wasn’t your fault. Where did you hide
it?”
I didn’t want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and I
couldn’t seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that
corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So
for a minute I didn’t say nothing; then I says:
“I’d ruther not _tell_ you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you
don’t mind letting me off; but I’ll write it for you on a piece of
paper, and you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop’s, if you
want to. Do you reckon that ’ll do?”
“Oh, yes.”
So I wrote: “I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was
crying there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was
mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane.”
It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by
herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own
roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and give it
to her I see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by
the hand, hard, and says:
“_Good_-by. I’m going to do everything just as you’ve told me; and if
I don’t ever see you again, I sha’n’t ever forget you, and I’ll think
of you a many and a many a time, and I’ll _pray_ for you, too!”—and
she was gone.
Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was
more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same—she was
just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the
notion—there warn’t no back-down to her, I judge. You may say what
you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl
I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like
flattery, but it ain’t no flattery. And when it comes to beauty—and
goodness, too—she lays over them all. I hain’t ever seen her since
that time that I see her go out of that door; no, I hain’t ever seen
her since, but I reckon I’ve thought of her a many and a many a
million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever
I’d ’a’ thought it would do any good for me to pray for _her_, blamed
if I wouldn’t ’a’ done it or bust.
Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see
her go. When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says:
“What’s the name of them people over on t’other side of the river that
you all goes to see sometimes?”
They says:
“There’s several; but it’s the Proctors, mainly.”
“That’s the name,” I says; “I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she
told me to tell you she’s gone over there in a dreadful hurry—one of
them’s sick.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it’s—”
“Sakes alive, I hope it ain’t _Hanner_?”
“I’m sorry to say it,” I says, “but Hanner’s the very one.”
“My goodness, and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?”
“It ain’t no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary
Jane said, and they don’t think she’ll last many hours.”
“Only think of that, now! What’s the matter with her?”
I couldn’t think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I
says:
“Mumps.”
“Mumps your granny! They don’t set up with people that’s got the
mumps.”
“They don’t, don’t they? You better bet they do with _these_ mumps.
These mumps is different. It’s a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said.”
“How’s it a new kind?”
“Because it’s mixed up with other things.”
“What other things?”
“Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption,
and yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don’t know what all.”
“My land! And they call it the _mumps_?”
“That’s what Miss Mary Jane said.”
“Well, what in the nation do they call it the _mumps_ for?”
“Why, because it _is_ the mumps. That’s what it starts with.”
“Well, ther’ ain’t no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and
take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his
brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some
numskull up and say, ’Why, he stumped his _toe_.’ Would ther’ be any
sense in that? _No_. And ther’ ain’t no sense in _this_, nuther. Is it
ketching?”
“Is it _ketching?_ Why, how you talk. Is a _harrow_ catching—in the
dark? If you don’t hitch on to one tooth, you’re bound to on another,
ain’t you? And you can’t get away with that tooth without fetching the
whole harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a
harrow, as you may say—and it ain’t no slouch of a harrow, nuther,
you come to get it hitched on good.”
“Well, it’s awful, _I_ think,” says the hare-lip. “I’ll go to Uncle
Harvey and—”
“Oh, yes,” I says, “I _would._ Of _course_ I would. I wouldn’t lose no
time.”
“Well, why wouldn’t you?”
“Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Hain’t your uncles
obleeged to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you
reckon they’d be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that
journey by yourselves? _You_ know they’ll wait for you. So fur, so
good. Your uncle Harvey’s a preacher, ain’t he? Very well, then; is a
_preacher_ going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive
a _ship clerk?_—so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard?
Now _you_ know he ain’t. What _will_ he do, then? Why, he’ll say,
’It’s a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the
best way they can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful
pluribus-unum mumps, and so it’s my bounden duty to set down here and
wait the three months it takes to show on her if she’s got it.’ But
never mind, if you think it’s best to tell your uncle Harvey—”
“Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good
times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane’s
got it or not? Why, you talk like a muggins.”
“Well, anyway, maybe you’d better tell some of the neighbors.”
“Listen at that, now. You do beat all for natural stupidness. Can’t
you _see_ that _they’d_ go and tell? Ther’ ain’t no way but just to
not tell anybody at _all_.”
“Well, maybe you’re right—yes, I judge you _are_ right.”
“But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she’s gone out awhile,
anyway, so he won’t be uneasy about her?”
“Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says, ’Tell them
to give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I’ve run
over the river to see Mr.’—Mr.—what _is_ the name of that rich
family your uncle Peter used to think so much of?—I mean the one
that—”
“Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain’t it?”
“Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can’t ever seem to
remember them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run
over for to ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and
buy this house, because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they
had it than anybody else; and she’s going to stick to them till they
say they’ll come, and then, if she ain’t too tired, she’s coming home;
and if she is, she’ll be home in the morning anyway. She said, don’t
say nothing about the Proctors, but only about the Apthorps—which ’ll
be perfectly true, because she _is_ going there to speak about their
buying the house; I know it, because she told me so herself.”
“All right,” they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and
give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message.
Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn’t say nothing because
they wanted to go to England; and the king and the duke would ruther
Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of
Doctor Robinson. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty
neat—I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn’t ’a’ done it no neater himself. Of
course he would ’a’ throwed more style into it, but I can’t do that
very handy, not being brung up to it.
Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the
end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the
old man he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there
longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and
then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was
around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading
himself generly.
But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was
sold—everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So
they’d got to work _that_ off—I never see such a girafft as the king
was for wanting to swallow _everything_. Well, whilst they was at it a
steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping
and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out:
“_Here’s_ your opposition line! here’s your two sets o’ heirs to old
Peter Wilks—and you pays your money and you takes your choice!”