de ole mammy. I'uz jes as shore--"
"Cut it short, I tell you, and get along! What do you want?"
This was a bitter disappointment. Roxy had for so many days nourished
and fondled and petted her notion that Tom would be glad to see his old
nurse, and would make her proud and happy to the marrow with a cordial
word or two, that it took two rebuffs to convince her that he was not
funning, and that her beautiful dream was a fond and foolish variety, a
shabby and pitiful mistake. She was hurt to the heart, and so ashamed
that for a moment she did not quite know what to do or how to act. Then
her breast began to heave, the tears came, and in her forlornness she was
moved to try that other dream of hers--an appeal to her boy's charity;
and so, upon the impulse, and without reflection, she offered her
supplication:
"Oh, Marse Tom, de po' ole mammy is in sich hard luck dese days; en she's
kinder crippled in de arms and can't work, en if you could gimme a
dollah--on'y jes one little dol--"
Tom was on his feet so suddenly that the supplicant was startled into a
jump herself.
"A dollar!--give you a dollar! I've a notion to strangle you! Is _that_
your errand here? Clear out! And be quick about it!"
Roxy backed slowly toward the door. When she was halfway she stopped,
and said mournfully:
"Marse Tom, I nussed you when you was a little baby, en I raised you all
by myself tell you was 'most a young man; en now you is young en rich, en
I is po' en gitt'n ole, en I come heah b'leavin' dat you would he'p de
ole mammy 'long down de little road dat's lef' 'twix' her en de grave,
en--"
Tom relished this tune less than any that he preceded it, for it began to
wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he interrupted and said with
decision, though without asperity, that he was not in a situation to help
her, and wasn't going to do it.
"Ain't you ever gwine to he'p me, Marse Tom?"
"No! Now go away and don't bother me any more."
Roxy's head was down, in an attitude of humility. But now the fires of
her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely. She
raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at the same time her
great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and masterful attitude, with
all the majesty and grace of her vanished youth in it. She raised her
finger and punctuated with it.
"You has said de word. You has had yo' chance, en you has trompled it
under yo' foot. When you git another one, you'll git down on yo' knees
en _beg_ for it!"
A cold chill went to Tom's heart, he didn't know why; for he did not
reflect that such words, from such an incongruous source, and so solemnly
delivered, could not easily fail of that effect. However, he did the
natural thing: he replied with bluster and mockery.
"_You'll_ give me a chance--_you_! Perhaps I'd better get down on my
knees now! But in case I don't--just for argument's sake--what's going
to happen, pray?"
"Dis is what is gwine to happen, I's gwine as straight to yo' uncle as I
kin walk, en tell him every las' thing I knows 'bout you."
Tom's cheek blenched, and she saw it. Disturbing thoughts began to chase
each other through his head. "How can she know? And yet she must have
found out--she looks it. I've had the will back only three months, and
am already deep in debt again, and moving heaven and earth to save myself
from exposure and destruction, with a reasonably fair show of getting the
thing covered up if I'm let alone, and now this fiend has gone and found
me out somehow or other. I wonder how much she knows? Oh, oh, oh, it's
enough to break a body's heart! But I've got to humor her--there's no
other way."
Then he worked up a rather sickly sample of a gay laugh and a hollow
chipperness of manner, and said:
"Well, well, Roxy dear, old friends like you and me mustn't quarrel.
Here's your dollar--now tell me what you know."
He held out the wildcat bill; she stood as she was, and made no movement.
It was her turn to scorn persuasive foolery now, and she did not waste
it. She said, with a grim implacability in voice and manner which made
Tom almost realize that even a former slave can remember for ten minutes
insults and injuries returned for compliments and flatteries received,
and can also enjoy taking revenge for them when the opportunity offers:
"What does I know? I'll tell you what I knows, I knows enough to bu'st
dat will to flinders--en more, mind you, _more!_"
Tom was aghast.
"More?" he said, "What do you call more? Where's there any room for
more?"
Roxy laughed a mocking laugh, and said scoffingly, with a toss of her
head, and her hands on her hips:
"Yes!--oh, I reckon! _co'se_ you'd like to know--wid yo' po' little ole
rag dollah. What you reckon I's gwine to tell _you_ for?--you ain't got
no money. I's gwine to tell yo' uncle--en I'll do it dis minute,
too--he'll gimme FIVE dollahs for de news, en mighty glad, too."
She swung herself around disdainfully, and started away. Tom was in a
panic. He seized her skirts, and implored her to wait. She turned and
said, loftily:
"Look-a-heah, what 'uz it I tole you?"
"You--you--I don't remember anything. What was it you told me?"
"I tole you dat de next time I give you a chance you'd git down on yo'
knees en beg for it."
Tom was stupefied for a moment. He was panting with excitement. Then he
said:
"Oh, Roxy, you wouldn't require your young master to do such a horrible
thing. You can't mean it."
"I'll let you know mighty quick whether I means it or not! You call me
names, en as good as spit on me when I comes here, po' en ornery en
'umble, to praise you for bein' growed up so fine and handsome, en tell
you how I used to nuss you en tend you en watch you when you 'uz sick en
hadn't no mother but me in de whole worl', en beg you to give de po' ole
nigger a dollah for to get her som'n' to eat, en you call me
names--_names_, dad blame you! Yassir, I gives you jes one chance mo',
and dat's _now_, en it las' on'y half a second--you hear?"
Tom slumped to his knees and began to beg, saying:
"You see I'm begging, and it's honest begging, too! Now tell me, Roxy,
tell me."
The heir of two centuries of unatoned insult and outrage looked down on
him and seemed to drink in deep draughts of satisfaction. Then she said:
"Fine nice young white gen'l'man kneelin' down to a nigger wench! I's
wanted to see dat jes once befo' I's called. Now, Gabr'el, blow de hawn,
I's ready . . . Git up!"
Tom did it. He said, humbly:
"Now, Roxy, don't punish me any more. I deserved what I've got, but be
good and let me off with that. Don't go to uncle. Tell me--I'll give
you the five dollars."
"Yes, I bet you will; en you won't stop dah, nuther. But I ain't gwine
to tell you heah--"
"Good gracious, no!"
"Is you 'feared o' de ha'nted house?"
"N-no."
"Well, den, you come to de ha'nted house 'bout ten or 'leven tonight, en
climb up de ladder, 'ca'se de sta'rsteps is broke down, en you'll find
me. I's a-roostin' in de ha'nted house 'ca'se I can't 'ford to roos'
nowher's else." She started toward the door, but stopped and said,
"Gimme de dollah bill!" He gave it to her. She examined it and said,
"H'm--like enough de bank's bu'sted." She started again, but halted
again. "Has you got any whisky?"
"Yes, a little."
"Fetch it!"
He ran to his room overhead and brought down a bottle which was
two-thirds full. She tilted it up and took a drink. Her eyes sparkled
with satisfaction, and she tucked the bottle under her shawl, saying,
"It's prime. I'll take it along."
Tom humbly held the door for her, and she marched out as grim and erect
as a grenadier.
CHAPTER 9
Tom Practices Sycophancy
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a
man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained
that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands,
and rested his elbows on his knees. He rocked himself back and forth and
moaned.
"I've knelt to a nigger wench!" he muttered. "I thought I had struck the
deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to
this. . . . Well, there is one consolation, such as it is--I've struck
bottom this time; there's nothing lower."
But that was a hasty conclusion.
At ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak,
and wretched. Roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms,
waiting, for she had heard him.
This was a two-story log house which had acquired the reputation a few
years ago of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness.
Nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most
people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime. As it had no
competition, it was called _the_ haunted house. It was getting crazy and
ruinous now, from long neglect. It stood three hundred yards beyond
Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, with nothing between but vacancy. It was the
last house in the town at that end.
Tom followed Roxy into the room. She had a pile of clean straw in the
corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the
wall, there was a tin lantern freckling the floor with little spots of
light, and there were various soap and candle boxes scattered about,
which served for chairs. The two sat down. Roxy said:
"Now den, I'll tell you straight off, en I'll begin to k'leck de money
later on; I ain't in no hurry. What does you reckon I's gwine to tell
you?"
"Well, you--you--oh, Roxy, don't make it too hard for me! Come right out
and tell me you've found out somehow what a shape I'm in on account of
dissipation and foolishness."
"Disposition en foolishness! NO sir, dat ain't it. Dat jist ain't
nothin' at all, 'longside o' what _I_ knows."
Tom stared at her, and said:
"Why, Roxy, what do you mean?"
She rose, and gloomed above him like a Fate.
"I means dis--en it's de Lord's truth. You ain't no more kin to ole
Marse Driscoll den I is! _dat's_ what I means!" and her eyes flamed
with triumph.
"What?"
"Yassir, en _dat_ ain't all! You's a _nigger!_--_bawn_ a nigger and a
_slave!_--en you's a nigger en a slave dis minute; en if I opens my mouf
ole Marse Driscoll'll sell you down de river befo' you is two days older
den what you is now!"
"It's a thundering lie, you miserable old blatherskite!"
"It ain't no lie, nuther. It's just de truth, en nothin' _but_ de truth,
so he'p me. Yassir--you's my _son_--"
"You devil!"
"En dat po' boy dat you's be'n a-kickin' en a-cuffin' today is Percy
Driscoll's son en yo' _marster_--"
"You beast!"
"En _his_ name is Tom Driscoll, en _yo's_ name's Valet de Chambers, en
you ain't GOT no fambly name, beca'se niggers don't _have_ em!"
Tom sprang up and seized a billet of wood and raised it, but his mother
only laughed at him, and said:
"Set down, you pup! Does you think you kin skyer me? It ain't in you,
nor de likes of you. I reckon you'd shoot me in de back, maybe, if you
got a chance, for dat's jist yo' style--_I_ knows you, throo en
throo--but I don't mind gitt'n killed, beca'se all dis is down in writin'
and it's in safe hands, too, en de man dat's got it knows whah to look
for de right man when I gits killed. Oh, bless yo' soul, if you puts yo'
mother up for as big a fool as _you_ is, you's pow'ful mistaken, I kin
tell you! Now den, you set still en behave yo'self; en don't you git up
ag'in till I tell you!"
Tom fretted and chafed awhile in a whirlwind of disorganizing sensations
and emotions, and finally said, with something like settled conviction:
"The whole thing is moonshine; now then, go ahead and do your worst; I'm
done with you."
Roxy made no answer. She took the lantern and started for the door. Tom
was in a cold panic in a moment.
"Come back, come back!" he wailed. "I didn't mean it, Roxy; I take it
all back, and I'll never say it again! Please come back, Roxy!"
The woman stood a moment, then she said gravely:
"Dat's one thing you's got to stop, Valet de Chambers. You can't call me
_Roxy_, same as if you was my equal. Chillen don't speak to dey mammies
like dat. You'll call me ma or mammy, dat's what you'll call
me--leastways when de ain't nobody aroun'. _Say_ it!"
It cost Tom a struggle, but he got it out.
"Dat's all right, don't you ever forgit it ag'in, if you knows what's
good for you. Now den, you had said you wouldn't ever call it lies en
moonshine ag'in. I'll tell you dis, for a warnin': if you ever does say
it ag'in, it's de LAS' time you'll ever say it to me; I'll tramp as
straight to de judge as I kin walk, en tell him who you is, en _prove_
it. Does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"
"Oh," groaned Tom, "I more than believe it; I _know_ it."
Roxy knew her conquest was complete. She could have proved nothing to
anybody, and her threat of writings was a lie; but she knew the person
she was dealing with, and had made both statements without any doubt as
to the effect they would produce.
She went and sat down on her candle box, and the pride and pomp of her
victorious attitude made it a throne. She said:
"Now den, Chambers, we's gwine to talk business, en dey ain't gwine to be
no mo' foolishness. In de fust place, you gits fifty dollahs a month;
you's gwine to han' over half of it to yo' ma. Plank it out!"
But Tom had only six dollars in the world. He gave her that, and
promised to start fair on next month's pension.
"Chambers, how much is you in debt?"
Tom shuddered, and said:
"Nearly three hundred dollars."
"How is you gwine to pay it?"
Tom groaned out: "Oh, I don't know; don't ask me such awful questions."
But she stuck to her point until she wearied a confession out of him: he
had been prowling about in disguise, stealing small valuables from
private houses; in fact, he made a good deal of a raid on his fellow
villagers a fortnight before, when he was supposed to be in St. Louis;
but he doubted if he had sent away enough stuff to realize the required
amount, and was afraid to make a further venture in the present excited
state of the town. His mother approved of his conduct, and offered to
help, but this frightened him. He tremblingly ventured to say that if
she would retire from the town he should feel better and safer, and could
hold his head higher--and was going on to make an argument, but she
interrupted and surprised him pleasantly by saying she was ready; it
didn't make any difference to her where she stayed, so that she got her
share of the pension regularly. She said she would not go far, and would
call at the haunted house once a month for her money. Then she said:
"I don't hate you so much now, but I've hated you a many a year--and
anybody would. Didn't I change you off, en give you a good fambly en a
good name, en made you a white gen'l'man en rich, wid store clothes
on--en what did I git for it? You despised me all de time, en was al'ays
sayin' mean hard things to me befo' folks, en wouldn't ever let me forgit
I's a nigger--en--en--"
She fell to sobbing, and broke down. Tom said: "But you know I didn't
know you were my mother; and besides--"
"Well, nemmine 'bout dat, now; let it go. I's gwine to fo'git it." Then
she added fiercely, "En don't ever make me remember it ag'in, or you'll
be sorry, _I_ tell you."
When they were parting, Tom said, in the most persuasive way he could
command:
"Ma, would you mind telling me who was my father?"
He had supposed he was asking an embarrassing question. He was mistaken.
Roxy drew herself up with a proud toss of her head, and said:
"Does I mine tellin' you? No, dat I don't! You ain't got no 'casion to
be shame' o' yo' father, _I_ kin tell you. He wuz de highest quality in
dis whole town--ole Virginny stock. Fust famblies, he wuz. Jes as good
stock as de Driscolls en de Howards, de bes' day dey ever seed." She put
on a little prouder air, if possible, and added impressively: "Does you
'member Cunnel Cecil Burleigh Essex, dat died de same year yo' young
Marse Tom Driscoll's pappy died, en all de Masons en Odd Fellers en
Churches turned out en give him de bigges' funeral dis town ever seed?
Dat's de man."
Under the inspiration of her soaring complacency the departed graces of
her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to itself a
dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her surroundings
had been a little more in keeping with it.
"Dey ain't another nigger in dis town dat's as highbawn as you is. Now
den, go 'long! En jes you hold yo' head up as high as you want to--you
has de right, en dat I kin swah."
CHAPTER 10
The Nymph Revealed
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Every now and then, after Tom went to bed, he had sudden wakings out of
his sleep, and his first thought was, "Oh, joy, it was all a dream!"
Then he laid himself heavily down again, with a groan and the muttered
words, "A nigger! I am a nigger! Oh, I wish I was dead!"
He woke at dawn with one more repetition of this horror, and then he
resolved to meddle no more with that treacherous sleep. He began to
think. Sufficiently bitter thinkings they were. They wandered along
something after this fashion:
"Why were niggers _and_ whites made? What crime did the uncreated first
nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for him? And why is
this awful difference made between white and black? . . . How hard the
nigger's fate seems, this morning!--yet until last night such a thought
never entered my head."
He sighed and groaned an hour or more away. Then "Chambers" came humbly
in to say that breakfast was nearly ready. "Tom" blushed scarlet to see
this aristocratic white youth cringe to him, a nigger, and call him
"Young Marster." He said roughly:
"Get out of my sight!" and when the youth was gone, he muttered, "He has
done me no harm, poor wretch, but he is an eyesore to me now, for he is
Driscoll, the young gentleman, and I am a--oh, I wish I was dead!"
A gigantic eruption, like that of Krakatoa a few years ago, with the
accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of volcanic dust,
changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond recognition,
bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where
deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before.
The tremendous catastrophe which had befallen Tom had changed his moral
landscape in much the same way. Some of his low places he found lifted to
ideals, some of his ideas had sunk to the valleys, and lay there with the
sackcloth and ashes of pumice stone and sulphur on their ruined heads.
For days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking, thinking
--trying to get his bearings. It was new work. If he met a friend, he
found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished
--his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a
shake. It was the "nigger" in him asserting its humility, and he blushed
and was abashed. And the "nigger" in him was surprised when the white
friend put out his hand for a shake with him. He found the "nigger" in
him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to a white rowdy and
loafer. When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his
secret worship, invited him in, the "nigger" in him made an embarrassed
excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on
equal terms. The "nigger" in him went shrinking and skulking here and
there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe detection in
all faces, tones, and gestures. So strange and uncharacteristic was
Tom's conduct that people noticed it, and turned to look after him when
he passed on; and when he glanced back--as he could not help doing, in
spite of his best resistance--and caught that puzzled expression in a
person's face, it gave him a sick feeling, and he took himself out of
view as quickly as he could. He presently came to have a hunted sense
and a hunted look, and then he fled away to the hilltops and the
solitudes. He said to himself that the curse of Ham was upon him.
He dreaded his meals; the "nigger" in him was ashamed to sit at the white
folk's table, and feared discovery all the time; and once when Judge
Driscoll said, "What's the matter with you? You look as meek as a
nigger," he felt as secret murderers are said to feel when the accuser
says, "Thou art the man!" Tom said he was not well, and left the table.
His ostensible "aunt's" solicitudes and endearments were become a terror
to him, and he avoided them.
And all the time, hatred of his ostensible "uncle" was steadily growing
in his heart; for he said to himself, "He is white; and I am his chattel,
his property, his goods, and he can sell me, just as he could his dog."
For as much as a week after this, Tom imagined that his character had
undergone a pretty radical change. But that was because he did not know
himself.
In several ways his opinions were totally changed, and would never go
back to what they were before, but the main structure of his character
was not changed, and could not be changed. One or two very important
features of it were altered, and in time effects would result from this,
if opportunity offered--effects of a quite serious nature, too. Under the
influence of a great mental and moral upheaval, his character and his
habits had taken on the appearance of complete change, but after a while
with the subsidence of the storm, both began to settle toward their
former places. He dropped gradually back into his old frivolous and
easygoing ways and conditions of feeling and manner of speech, and no
familiar of his could have detected anything in him that differentiated
him from the weak and careless Tom of other days.
The theft raid which he had made upon the village turned out better than
he had ventured to hope. It produced the sum necessary to pay his gaming
debts, and saved him from exposure to his uncle and another smashing of
the will. He and his mother learned to like each other fairly well. She
couldn't love him, as yet, because there "warn't nothing _to_ him," as
she expressed it, but her nature needed something or somebody to rule
over, and he was better than nothing. Her strong character and
aggressive and commanding ways compelled Tom's admiration in spite of the
fact that he got more illustrations of them than he needed for his
comfort. However, as a rule her conversation was made up of racy tales
about the privacies of the chief families of the town (for she went
harvesting among their kitchens every time she came to the village), and
Tom enjoyed this. It was just in his line. She always collected her
half of his pension punctually, and he was always at the haunted house to
have a chat with her on these occasions. Every now and then, she paid
him a visit there on between-days also.
Occasions he would run up to St. Louis for a few weeks, and at last
temptation caught him again. He won a lot of money, but lost it, and
with it a deal more besides, which he promised to raise as soon as
possible.
For this purpose he projected a new raid on his town. He never meddled
with any other town, for he was afraid to venture into houses whose ins
and outs he did not know and the habits of whose households he was not
acquainted with. He arrived at the haunted house in disguise on the
Wednesday before the advent of the twins--after writing his Aunt Pratt
that he would not arrive until two days after--and laying in hiding there
with his mother until toward daylight Friday morning, when he went to his
uncle's house and entered by the back way with his own key, and slipped
up to his room where he could have the use of the mirror and toilet
articles. He had a suit of girl's clothes with him in a bundle as a
disguise for his raid, and was wearing a suit of his mother's clothing,
with black gloves and veil. By dawn he was tricked out for his raid, but
he caught a glimpse of Pudd'nhead Wilson through the window over the way,
and knew that Pudd'nhead had caught a glimpse of him. So he entertained
Wilson with some airs and graces and attitudes for a while, then stepped
out of sight and resumed the other disguise, and by and by went down and
out the back way and started downtown to reconnoiter the scene of his
intended labors.
But he was ill at ease. He had changed back to Roxy's dress, with the
stoop of age added to the disguise, so that Wilson would not bother
himself about a humble old women leaving a neighbor's house by the back
way in the early morning, in case he was still spying. But supposing
Wilson had seen him leave, and had thought it suspicious, and had also
followed him? The thought made Tom cold. He gave up the raid for the
day, and hurried back to the haunted house by the obscurest route he
knew. His mother was gone; but she came back, by and by, with the news of
the grand reception at Patsy Cooper's, and soon persuaded him that the
opportunity was like a special Providence, it was so inviting and
perfect. So he went raiding, after all, and made a nice success of it
while everybody was gone to Patsy Cooper's. Success gave him nerve and
even actual intrepidity; insomuch, indeed, that after he had conveyed his
harvest to his mother in a back alley, he went to the reception himself,
and added several of the valuables of that house to his takings.
After this long digression we have now arrived once more at the point
where Pudd'nhead Wilson, while waiting for the arrival of the twins on
that same Friday evening, sat puzzling over the strange apparition of
that morning--a girl in young Tom Driscoll's bedroom; fretting, and
guessing, and puzzling over it, and wondering who the shameless creature
might be.
CHAPTER 11
Pudd'nhead's Thrilling Discovery
There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three
form a rising scale of compliment: 1--to tell him you have read one of
his books; 2--to tell him you have read all of his books; 3--to ask him
to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you
to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you
clear into his heart.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
The twins arrived presently, and talk began. It flowed along chattily
and sociably, and under its influence the new friendship gathered ease
and strength. Wilson got out his Calendar, by request, and read a
passage or two from it, which the twins praised quite cordially. This
pleased the author so much that he complied gladly when they asked him to
lend them a batch of the work to read at home. In the course of their
wide travels, they had found out that there are three sure ways of
pleasing an author; they were now working the best of the three.
There was an interruption now. Young Driscoll appeared, and joined the
party. He pretended to be seeing the distinguished strangers for the
first time when they rose to shake hands; but this was only a blind, as
he had already had a glimpse of them, at the reception, while robbing the
house. The twins made mental note that he was smooth-faced and rather
handsome, and smooth and undulatory in his movements--graceful, in fact.
Angelo thought he had a good eye; Luigi thought there was something
veiled and sly about it. Angelo thought he had a pleasant free-and-easy
way of talking; Luigi thought it was more so than was agreeable. Angelo
thought he was a sufficiently nice young man; Luigi reserved his
decision. Tom's first contribution to the conversation was a question
which he had put to Wilson a hundred times before. It was always cheerily
and good-natured put, and always inflicted a little pang, for it touched
a secret sore; but this time the pang was sharp, since strangers were
present.
"Well, how does the law come on? Had a case yet?"
Wilson bit his lip, but answered, "No--not yet," with as much
indifference as he could assume. Judge Driscoll had generously left the
law feature out of Wilson's biography which he had furnished to the
twins. Young Tom laughed pleasantly, and said:
"Wilson's a lawyer, gentlemen, but he doesn't practice now."
The sarcasm bit, but Wilson kept himself under control, and said without
passion:
"I don't practice, it is true. It is true that I have never had a case,
and have had to earn a poor living for twenty years as an expert
accountant in a town where I can't get a hold of a set of books to
untangle as often as I should like. But it is also true that I did
myself well for the practice of the law. By the time I was your age,
Tom, I had chosen a profession, and was soon competent to enter upon it."
Tom winced. "I never got a chance to try my hand at it, and I may never
get a chance; and yet if I ever do get it, I shall be found ready, for I
have kept up my law studies all these years."
"That's it; that's good grit! I like to see it. I've a notion to throw
all my business your way. My business and your law practice ought to
make a pretty gay team, Dave," and the young fellow laughed again.
"If you will throw--" Wilson had thought of the girl in Tom's bedroom,
and was going to say, "If you will throw the surreptitious and
disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to something,"
but thought better of it and said,
"However, this matter doesn't fit well in a general conversation."
"All right, we'll change the subject; I guess you were about to give me
another dig, anyway, so I'm willing to change. How's the Awful Mystery
flourishing these days? Wilson's got a scheme for driving plain window
glass panes out of the market by decorating it with greasy finger marks,
and getting rich by selling it at famine prices to the crowned heads over
in Europe to outfit their palaces with. Fetch it out, Dave."
Wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said:
"I get the subject to pass the fingers of his right hand through his hair,
so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on them, and then press
the balls of them on the glass. A fine and delicate print of the lines
in the skin results, and is permanent, if it doesn't come in contact with
something able to rub it off. You begin, Tom."
"Why, I think you took my finger marks once or twice before."
"Yes, but you were a little boy the last time, only about twelve years
old."
"That's so. Of course, I've changed entirely since then, and variety is
what the crowned heads want, I guess."
He passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and pressed them
one at a time on the glass. Angelo made a print of his fingers on
another glass, and Luigi followed with a third. Wilson marked the
glasses with names and dates, and put them away. Tom gave one of his
little laughs, and said:
"I thought I wouldn't say anything, but if variety is what you are after,
you have wasted a piece of glass. The hand print of one twin is the same
as the hand print of the fellow twin."
"Well, it's done now, and I like to have them both, anyway," said Wilson,
returned to his place.
"But look here, Dave," said Tom, "you used to tell people's fortunes, too,
when you took their finger marks. Dave's just an all-round genius--a
genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great scientist running to seed
here in this village, a prophet with the kind of honor that prophets
generally get at home--for here they don't give shucks for his
scientifics, and they call his skull a notion factory--hey, Dave, ain't
it so? But never mind, he'll make his mark someday--finger mark, you
know, he-he! But really, you want to let him take a shy at your palms
once; it's worth twice the price of admission or your money's returned at
the door. Why, he'll read your wrinkles as easy as a book, and not only
tell you fifty or sixty things that's going to happen to you, but fifty
or sixty thousand that ain't. Come, Dave, show the gentlemen what an
inspired jack-at-all-science we've got in this town, and don't know it."
Wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff, and the
twins suffered with him and for him. They rightly judged, now, that the
best way to relieve him would be to take the thing in earnest and
treat it with respect, ignoring Tom's rather overdone raillery; so Luigi
said:
"We have seen something of palmistry in our wanderings, and know very
well what astonishing things it can do. If it isn't a science, and one
of the greatest of them too, I don't know what its other name ought to
be. In the Orient--"
Tom looked surprised and incredulous. He said:
"That juggling a science? But really, you ain't serious, are you?"
"Yes, entirely so. Four years ago we had our hands read out to us as if
our plans had been covered with print."
"Well, do you mean to say there was actually anything in it?" asked Tom,
his incredulity beginning to weaken a little.
"There was this much in it," said Angelo: "what was told us of our
characters was minutely exact--we could have not have bettered it
ourselves. Next, two or three memorable things that have happened to us
were laid bare--things which no one present but ourselves could have
known about."
"Why, it's rank sorcery!" exclaimed Tom, who was now becoming very much
interested. "And how did they make out with what was going to happen to
you in the future?"
"On the whole, quite fairly," said Luigi. "Two or three of the most
striking things foretold have happened since; much the most striking one
of all happened within that same year. Some of the minor prophesies have
come true; some of the minor and some of the major ones have not been
fulfilled yet, and of course may never be: still, I should be more
surprised if they failed to arrive than if they didn't."
Tom was entirely sobered, and profoundly impressed. He said,
apologetically:
"Dave, I wasn't meaning to belittle that science; I was only chaffing
--chattering, I reckon I'd better say. I wish you would look at their
palms. Come, won't you?"
"Why certainly, if you want me to; but you know I've had no chance to
become an expert, and don't claim to be one. When a past event is
somewhat prominently recorded in the palm, I can generally detect that,
but minor ones often escape me--not always, of course, but often--but I
haven't much confidence in myself when it comes to reading the future. I
am talking as if palmistry was a daily study with me, but that is not so.
I haven't examined half a dozen hands in the last half dozen years; you
see, the people got to joking about it, and I stopped to let the talk die
down. I'll tell you what we'll do, Count Luigi: I'll make a try at your
past, and if I have any success there--no, on the whole, I'll let the
future alone; that's really the affair of an expert."
He took Luigi's hand. Tom said:
"Wait--don't look yet, Dave! Count Luigi, here's paper and pencil. Set
down that thing that you said was the most striking one that was foretold
to you, and happened less than a year afterward, and give it to me so I
can see if Dave finds it in your hand."
Luigi wrote a line privately, and folded up the piece of paper, and
handed it to Tom, saying:
"I'll tell you when to look at it, if he finds it."
Wilson began to study Luigi's palm, tracing life lines, heart lines, head
lines, and so on, and noting carefully their relations with the cobweb of
finer and more delicate marks and lines that enmeshed them on all sides;
he felt of the fleshy cushion at the base of the thumb and noted its
shape; he felt of the fleshy side of the hand between the wrist and the
base of the little finger and noted its shape also; he painstakingly
examined the fingers, observing their form, proportions, and natural
manner of disposing themselves when in repose. All this process was
watched by the three spectators with absorbing interest, their heads bent
together over Luigi's palm, and nobody disturbing the stillness with a
word. Wilson now entered upon a close survey of the palm again, and his
revelations began.
He mapped out Luigi's character and disposition, his tastes, aversions,
proclivities, ambitions, and eccentricities in a way which sometimes made
Luigi wince and the others laugh, but both twins declared that the chart
was artistically drawn and was correct.
Next, Wilson took up Luigi's history. He proceeded cautiously and with
hesitation now, moving his finger slowly along the great lines of the
palm, and now and then halting it at a "star" or some such landmark, and
examining that neighborhood minutely. He proclaimed one or two past
events, Luigi confirmed his correctness, and the search went on.
Presently Wilson glanced up suddenly with a surprised expression.
"Here is a record of an incident which you would perhaps not wish me
to--"
"Bring it out," said Luigi, good-naturedly. "I promise you sha'n't
embarrass me."
But Wilson still hesitated, and did not seem quite to know what to do.
Then he said:
"I think it is too delicate a matter to--to--I believe I would rather
write it or whisper it to you, and let you decide for yourself whether
you want it talked out or not."
"That will answer," said Luigi. "Write it."
Wilson wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to Luigi, who
read it to himself and said to Tom:
"Unfold your slip and read it, Mr. Driscoll."
Tom said:
"'IT WAS PROPHESIED THAT I WOULD KILL A MAN. IT CAME TRUE BEFORE THE
YEAR WAS OUT.'"
Tom added, "Great Scott!"
Luigi handed Wilson's paper to Tom, and said:
"Now read this one."
Tom read:
"'YOU HAVE KILLED SOMEONE, BUT WHETHER MAN, WOMAN, OR CHILD, I DO NOT
MAKE OUT.'"
"Caesar's ghost!" commented Tom, with astonishment. "It beats anything
that was ever heard of! Why, a man's own hand is his deadliest enemy!
Just think of that--a man's own hand keeps a record of the deepest and
fatalest secrets of his life, and is treacherously ready to expose
himself to any black-magic stranger that comes along. But what do you
let a person look at your hand for, with that awful thing printed on it?"
"Oh," said Luigi, reposefully, "I don't mind it. I killed the man for
good reasons, and I don't regret it."
"What were the reasons?"
"Well, he needed killing."
"I'll tell you why he did it, since he won't say himself," said Angelo,
warmly. "He did it to save my life, that's what he did it for. So it was
a noble act, and not a thing to be hid in the dark."
"So it was, so it was," said Wilson. "To do such a thing to save a
brother's life is a great and fine action."
"Now come," said Luigi, "it is very pleasant to hear you say these
things, but for unselfishness, or heroism, or magnanimity, the
circumstances won't stand scrutiny. You overlook one detail; suppose I
hadn't saved Angelo's life, what would have become of mine? If I had let
the man kill him, wouldn't he have killed me, too? I saved my own life,
you see."
"Yes, that is your way of talking," said Angelo, "but I know you--I
don't believe you thought of yourself at all. I keep that weapon yet
that Luigi killed the man with, and I'll show it to you sometime. That
incident makes it interesting, and it had a history before it came into
Luigi's hands which adds to its interest. It was given to Luigi by a
great Indian prince, the Gaikowar of Baroda, and it had been in his
family two or three centuries. It killed a good many disagreeable people
who troubled the hearthstone at one time or another. It isn't much too
look at, except it isn't shaped like other knives, or dirks, or whatever
it may be called--here, I'll draw it for you." He took a sheet of paper
and made a rapid sketch. "There it is--a broad and murderous blade, with
edges like a razor for sharpness. The devices engraved on it are the
ciphers or names of its long line of possessors--I had Luigi's name added
in Roman letters myself with our coat of arms, as you see. You notice
what a curious handle the thing has. It is solid ivory, polished like a
mirror, and is four or five inches long--round, and as thick as a large
man's wrist, with the end squared off flat, for your thumb to rest on;
for you grasp it, with your thumb resting on the blunt end--so--and lift
it along and strike downward. The Gaikowar showed us how the thing was
done when he gave it to Luigi, and before that night was ended, Luigi had
used the knife, and the Gaikowar was a man short by reason of it. The
sheath is magnificently ornamented with gems of great value. You will
find a sheath more worth looking at than the knife itself, of course."
Tom said to himself:
"It's lucky I came here. I would have sold that knife for a song; I
supposed the jewels were glass."
"But go on; don't stop," said Wilson. "Our curiosity is up now, to hear
about the homicide. Tell us about that."
"Well, briefly, the knife was to blame for that, all around. A native
servant slipped into our room in the palace in the night, to kill us and
steal the knife on account of the fortune encrusted on its sheath,
without a doubt. Luigi had it under his pillow; we were in bed together.
There was a dim night-light burning. I was asleep, but Luigi was awake,
and he thought he detected a vague form nearing the bed. He slipped the
knife out of the sheath and was ready and unembarrassed by hampering
bedclothes, for the weather was hot and we hadn't any. Suddenly that
native rose at the bedside, and bent over me with his right hand lifted
and a dirk in it aimed at my throat; but Luigi grabbed his wrist, pulled
him downward, and drove his own knife into the man's neck. That is the
whole story."
Wilson and Tom drew deep breaths, and after some general chat about the
tragedy, Pudd'nhead said, taking Tom's hand:
"Now, Tom, I've never had a look at your palms, as it happens; perhaps
you've got some little questionable privacies that need--hel-lo!"
Tom had snatched away his hand, and was looking a good deal confused.
"Why, he's blushing!" said Luigi.
Tom darted an ugly look at him, and said sharply:
"Well, if I am, it ain't because I'm a murderer!" Luigi's dark face
flushed, but before he could speak or move, Tom added with anxious haste:
"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons. I didn't mean that; it was out before I
thought, and I'm very, very sorry--you must forgive me!"
Wilson came to the rescue, and smoothed things down as well as he could;
and in fact was entirely successful as far as the twins were concerned,
for they felt sorrier for the affront put upon him by his guest's
outburst of ill manners than for the insult offered to Luigi. But the
success was not so pronounced with the offender. Tom tried to seem at
his ease, and he went through the motions fairly well, but at bottom he
felt resentful toward all the three witnesses of his exhibition; in fact,
he felt so annoyed at them for having witnessed it and noticed it that he
almost forgot to feel annoyed at himself for placing it before them.
However, something presently happened which made him almost comfortable,
and brought him nearly back to a state of charity and friendliness. This
was a little spat between the twins; not much of a spat, but still a
spat; and before they got far with it, they were in a decided condition
of irritation while pretending to be actuated by more respectable
motives. By his help the fire got warmed up to the blazing point, and he
might have had the happiness of seeing the flames show up in another
moment, but for the interruption of a knock on the door--an interruption
which fretted him as much as it gratified Wilson. Wilson opened the
door.
The visitor was a good-natured, ignorant, energetic middle-aged Irishman
named John Buckstone, who was a great politician in a small way, and
always took a large share in public matters of every sort. One of the
town's chief excitements, just now, was over the matter of rum. There
was a strong rum party and a strong anti-rum party. Buckstone was
training with the rum party, and he had been sent to hunt up the twins
and invite them to attend a mass meeting of that faction. He delivered
his errand, and said the clans were already gathering in the big hall
over the market house. Luigi accepted the invitation cordially. Angelo
less cordially, since he disliked crowds, and did not drink the powerful
intoxicants of America. In fact, he was even a teetotaler sometimes
--when it was judicious to be one.
The twins left with Buckstone, and Tom Driscoll joined the company with
them uninvited.
In the distance, one could see a long wavering line of torches drifting
down the main street, and could hear the throbbing of the bass drum, the
clash of cymbals, the squeaking of a fife or two, and the faint roar of
remote hurrahs. The tail end of this procession was climbing the market
house stairs when the twins arrived in its neighborhood; when they
reached the hall, it was full of people, torches, smoke, noise, and
enthusiasm. They were conducted to the platform by Buckstone--Tom
Driscoll still following--and were delivered to the chairman in the midst
of a prodigious explosion of welcome. When the noise had moderated a
little, the chair proposed that "our illustrious guests be at once
elected, by complimentary acclamation, to membership in our ever-glorious
organization, the paradise of the free and the perdition of the slave."
This eloquent discharge opened the floodgates of enthusiasm again, and
the election was carried with thundering unanimity. Then arose a storm
of cries:
"Wet them down! Wet them down! Give them a drink!"
Glasses of whisky were handed to the twins. Luigi waves his aloft, then
brought it to his lips; but Angelo set his down. There was another storm
of cries.
"What's the matter with the other one?" "What is the blond one going
back on us for?" "Explain! Explain!"
The chairman inquired, and then reported:
"We have made an unfortunate mistake, gentlemen. I find that the Count
Angelo Capello is opposed to our creed--is a teetotaler, in fact, and was
not intending to apply for membership with us. He desires that we
reconsider the vote by which he was elected. What is the pleasure of the
house?"
There was a general burst of laughter, plentifully accented with
whistlings and catcalls, but the energetic use of the gavel presently
restored something like order. Then a man spoke from the crowd, and said
that while he was very sorry that the mistake had been made, it would not
be possible to rectify it at the present meeting. According to the
bylaws, it must go over to the next regular meeting for action. He would
not offer a motion, as none was required. He desired to apologize to the
gentlemen in the name of the house, and begged to assure him that as far
as it might lie in the power of the Sons of Liberty, his temporary
membership in the order would be made pleasant to him.
This speech was received with great applause, mixed with cries of:
"That's the talk!" "He's a good fellow, anyway, if he _is_ a teetotaler!"
"Drink his health!" "Give him a rouser, and no heeltaps!"
Glasses were handed around, and everybody on the platform drank Angelo's
health, while the house bellowed forth in song:
For he's a jolly good fel-low,
For he's a jolly good fel-low,
For he's a jolly good fe-el-low,
Which nobody can deny.
Tom Driscoll drank. It was his second glass, for he had drunk Angelo's
the moment that Angelo had set it down. The two drinks made him very
merry--almost idiotically so, and he began to take a most lively and
prominent part in the proceedings, particularly in the music and catcalls
and side remarks.
The chairman was still standing at the front, the twins at his side. The
extraordinarily close resemblance of the brothers to each other suggested
a witticism to Tom Driscoll, and just as the chairman began a speech he
skipped forward and said, with an air of tipsy confidence, to the
audience:
"Boys, I move that he keeps still and lets this human philopena snip you
out a speech."
The descriptive aptness of the phrase caught the house, and a mighty
burst of laughter followed.
Luigi's southern blood leaped to the boiling point in a moment under the
sharp humiliation of this insult delivered in the presence of four
hundred strangers. It was not in the young man's nature to let the
matter pass, or to delay the squaring of the account. He took a couple of
strides and halted behind the unsuspecting joker. Then he drew back and
delivered a kick of such titanic vigor that it lifted Tom clear over the
footlights and landed him on the heads of the front row of the Sons of
Liberty.
Even a sober person does not like to have a human being emptied on him
when he is not going any harm; a person who is not sober cannot endure
such an attention at all. The nest of Sons of Liberty that Driscoll
landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there was probably not an
entirely sober one in the auditorium. Driscoll was promptly and
indignantly flung on the heads of Sons in the next row, and these Sons
passed him on toward the rear, and then immediately began to pummel the
front row Sons who had passed him to them. This course was strictly
followed by bench after bench as Driscoll traveled in his tumultuous and
airy flight toward the door; so he left behind him an ever-lengthening
wake of raging and plunging and fighting and swearing humanity. Down went
group after group of torches, and presently above the deafening clatter
of the gavel, roar of angry voices, and crash of succumbing benches, rose
the paralyzing cry of "_fire!_"
The fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased; for one distinctly
defined moment, there was a dead hush, a motionless calm, where the
tempest had been; then with one impulse the multitude awoke to life and
energy again, and went surging and struggling and swaying, this way and
that, its outer edges melting away through windows and doors and
gradually lessening the pressure and relieving the mass.
The fireboys were never on hand so suddenly before; for there was no
distance to go this time, their quarters being in the rear end of the
market house, There was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company.
Half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies,
after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the
frontier town of the period. Enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters
to man the engine and the ladders. In two minutes they had their red
shirts and helmets on--they never stirred officially in unofficial
costume--and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row of
windows and poured out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were
ready for them with a powerful stream of water, which washed some of them
off the roof and nearly drowned the rest. But water was preferable to
fire, and still the stampede from the windows continued, and still the
pitiless drenching assailed it until the building was empty; then the
fireboys mounted to the hall and flooded it with water enough to
annihilate forty times as much fire as there was there; for a village
fire company does not often get a chance to show off, and so when it does
get a chance, it makes the most of it. Such citizens of that village as
were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did not insure against
fire; they insured against the fire company.
CHAPTER 12
The Shame of Judge Driscoll
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear.
Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is
brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the
flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance
of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack
you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him
as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both
day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the
immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man
who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten
centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who
"didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and put him
at the head of the procession.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Judge Driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on Friday night, and
he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the morning with his
friend Pembroke Howard. These two had been boys together in Virginia
when that state still ranked as the chief and most imposing member of the
Union, and they still coupled the proud and affectionate adjective "old"
with her name when they spoke of her. In Missouri a recognized
superiority attached to any person who hailed from Old Virginia; and this
superiority was exalted to supremacy when a person of such nativity could
also prove descent from the First Families of that great commonwealth.
The Howards and Driscolls were of this aristocracy. In their eyes, it
was a nobility. It had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly
defined and as strict as any that could be found among the printed
statues of the land. The F.F.V. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in
life was to watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched. He
must keep his honor spotless. Those laws were his chart; his course was
marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as half a point of the
compass, it meant shipwreck to his honor; that is to say, degradation
from his rank as a gentleman. These laws required certain things of him
which his religion might forbid: then his religion must yield--the laws
could not be relaxed to accommodate religions or anything else. Honor
stood first; and the laws defined what it was and wherein it differed in
certain details from honor as defined by church creeds and by the social
laws and customs of some of the minor divisions of the globe that had got
crowded out when the sacred boundaries of Virginia were staked out.
If Judge Driscoll was the recognized first citizen of Dawson's Landing,
Pembroke Howard was easily its recognized second citizen. He was called
"the great lawyer"--an earned title. He and Driscoll were of the same
age--a year or two past sixty.
Although Driscoll was a freethinker and Howard a strong and determined
Presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment in consequence.
They were men whose opinions were their own property and not subject to
revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their
friends.
The day's fishing finished, they came floating downstream in their skiff,
talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met a
skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said:
"I reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a kicking last
night, Judge?"
"Did WHAT?"
"Gave him a kicking."
The old judge's lips paled, and his eyes began to flame. He choked with
anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to say:
"Well--well--go on! Give me the details!"
The man did it. At the finish the judge was silent a minute, turning
over in his mind the shameful picture of Tom's flight over the
footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud,
"H'm--I don't understand it. I was asleep at home. He didn't wake me.
Thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, I reckon."
His face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said with
a cheery complacency, "I like that--it's the true old blood--hey,
Pembroke?"
Howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly. Then the
news-bringer spoke again.
"But Tom beat the twin on the trial."
The judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said:
"The trial? What trial?"
"Why, Tom had him up before Judge Robinson for assault and battery."
The old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received a death
stroke. Howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon, and took
him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat. He sprinkled
water in his face, and said to the startled visitor:
"Go, now--don't let him come to and find you here. You see what an
effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been more
considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as that."
"I'm right down sorry I did it now, Mr. Howard, and I wouldn't have done
it if I had thought; but it ain't slander; it's perfectly true, just as I
told him."
He rowed away. Presently the old judge came out of his faint and looked
up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over him.
"Say it ain't true, Pembroke; tell me it ain't true!" he said in a weak
voice.
There was nothing weak in the deep organ tones that responded:
"You know it's a lie as well as I do, old friend. He is of the best
blood of the Old Dominion."
"God bless you for saying it!" said the old gentleman, fervently. "Ah,
Pembroke, it was such a blow!"
Howard stayed by his friend, and saw him home, and entered the house with
him. It was dark, and past supper-time, but the judge was not thinking
of supper; he was eager to hear the slander refuted from headquarters,
and as eager to have Howard hear it, too. Tom was sent for, and he came
immediately. He was bruised and lame, and was not a happy-looking
object. His uncle made him sit down, and said:
"We have been hearing about your adventure, Tom, with a handsome lie
added for embellishment. Now pulverize that lie to dust! What measures
have you taken? How does the thing stand?"
Tom answered guilelessly: "It don't stand at all; it's all over. I had
him up in court and beat him. Pudd'nhead Wilson defended him--first
case he ever had, and lost it. The judge fined the miserable hound five
dollars for the assault."
Howard and the judge sprang to their feet with the opening sentence
--why, neither knew; then they stood gazing vacantly at each other.
Howard stood a moment, then sat mournfully down without saying anything.
The judge's wrath began to kindle, and he burst out:
"You cur! You scum! You vermin! Do you mean to tell me that blood of
my race has suffered a blow and crawled to a court of law about it?
Answer me!"
Tom's head drooped, and he answered with an eloquent silence. His uncle
stared at him with a mixed expression of amazement and shame and
incredulity that was sorrowful to see. At last he said:
"Which of the twins was it?"
"Count Luigi."
"You have challenged him?"
"N--no," hesitated Tom, turning pale.
"You will challenge him tonight. Howard will carry it."
Tom began to turn sick, and to show it. He turned his hat round and
round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as
the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and said
piteously:
"Oh, please, don't ask me to do it, uncle! He is a murderous devil--I
never could--I--I'm afraid of him!"
Old Driscoll's mouth opened and closed three times before he could get it
to perform its office; then he stormed out:
"A coward in my family! A Driscoll a coward! Oh, what have I done to
deserve this infamy!" He tottered to his secretary in the corner,
repeated that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones, and got out
of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits, scattering the bits
absently in his track as he walked up and down the room, still grieving
and lamenting. At last he said:
"There it is, shreds and fragments once more--my will. Once more you
have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most noble father!
Leave my sight! Go--before I spit on you!"
The young man did not tarry. Then the judge turned to Howard:
"You will be my second, old friend?"
"Of course."
"There is pen and paper. Draft the cartel, and lose no time."
"The Count shall have it in his hands in fifteen minutes," said Howard.
Tom was very heavyhearted. His appetite was gone with his property and
his self-respect. He went out the back way and wandered down the obscure
lane grieving, and wondering if any course of future conduct, however
discreet and carefully perfected and watched over, could win back his
uncle's favor and persuade him to reconstruct once more that generous
will which had just gone to ruin before his eyes. He finally concluded
that it could. He said to himself that he had accomplished this sort of
triumph once already, and that what had been done once could be done
again. He would set about it. He would bend every energy to the task,
and he would score that triumph once more, cost what it might to his
convenience, limit as it might his frivolous and liberty-loving life.
"To begin," he says to himself, "I'll square up with the proceeds of my
raid, and then gambling has got to be stopped--and stopped short off.
It's the worst vice I've got--from my standpoint, anyway, because it's
the one he can most easily find out, through the impatience of my
creditors. He thought it expensive to have to pay two hundred dollars to
them for me once. Expensive--_that!_ Why, it cost me the whole of his
fortune--but, of course, he never thought of that; some people can't
think of any but their own side of a case. If he had known how deep I am
in now, the will would have gone to pot without waiting for a duel to
help. Three hundred dollars! It's a pile! But he'll never hear of it,
I'm thankful to say. The minute I've cleared it off, I'm safe; and I'll
never touch a card again. Anyway, I won't while he lives, I make oath to
that. I'm entering on my last reform--I know it--yes, and I'll win; but
after that, if I ever slip again I'm gone."
CHAPTER 13
Tom Stares at Ruin
When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have
gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in
stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November,
May, March, June, December, August, and February.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Thus mournfully communing with himself, Tom moped along the lane past
Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, and still on and on between fences enclosing
vacant country on each hand till he neared the haunted house, then he
came moping back again, with many sighs and heavy with trouble. He sorely
wanted cheerful company. Rowena! His heart gave a bound at the thought,
but the next thought quieted it--the detested twins would be there.
He was on the inhabited side of Wilson's house, and now as he approached
it, he noticed that the sitting room was lighted. This would do; others
made him feel unwelcome sometimes, but Wilson never failed in courtesy
toward him, and a kindly courtesy does at least save one's feelings, even
if it is not professing to stand for a welcome. Wilson heard footsteps at
his threshold, then the clearing of a throat.
"It's that fickle-tempered, dissipated young goose--poor devil, he find
friends pretty scarce today, likely, after the disgrace of carrying a
personal assault case into a law-court."
A dejected knock. "Come in!"
Tom entered, and dropped into a chair, without saying anything. Wilson
said kindly:
"Why, my boy, you look desolate. Don't take it so hard. Try and forget
you have been kicked."
"Oh, dear," said Tom, wretchedly, "it's not that, Pudd'nhead--it's not
that. It's a thousand times worse than that--oh, yes, a million times
worse."
"Why, Tom, what do you mean? Has Rowena--"
"Flung me? _No_, but the old man has."
Wilson said to himself, "Aha!" and thought of the mysterious girl in the
bedroom. "The Driscolls have been making discoveries!" Then he said
aloud, gravely:
"Tom, there are some kinds of dissipation which--"
"Oh, shucks, this hasn't got anything to do with dissipation. He wanted
me to challenge that derned Italian savage, and I wouldn't do it."
"Yes, of course he would do that," said Wilson in a meditative
matter-of-course way, "but the thing that puzzled me was, why he didn't
look to that last night, for one thing, and why he let you carry such a
matter into a court of law at all, either before the duel or after it.
It's no place for it. It was not like him. I couldn't understand it.
How did it happen?"
"It happened because he didn't know anything about it. He was asleep
when I got home last night."
"And you didn't wake him? Tom, is that possible?"
Tom was not getting much comfort here. He fidgeted a moment, then said:
"I didn't choose to tell him--that's all. He was going a-fishing before
dawn, with Pembroke Howard, and if I got the twins into the common
calaboose--and I thought sure I could--I never dreamed of their slipping
out on a paltry fine for such an outrageous offense--well, once in the
calaboose they would be disgraced, and uncle wouldn't want any duels with
that sort of characters, and wouldn't allow any.
"Tom, I am ashamed of you! I don't see how you could treat your good old
uncle so. I am a better friend of his than you are; for if I had known
the circumstances I would have kept that case out of court until I got
word to him and let him have the gentleman's chance."
"You would?" exclaimed Tom, with lively surprise. "And it your first
case! And you know perfectly well there never would have _been_ any case
if he had got that chance, don't you? And you'd have finished your days
a pauper nobody, instead of being an actually launched and recognized
lawyer today. And you would really have done that, would you?"
"Certainly."
Tom looked at him a moment or two, then shook his head sorrowfully and
said:
"I believe you--upon my word I do. I don't know why I do, but I do.
Pudd'nhead Wilson, I think you're the biggest fool I ever saw."
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
"Well, he has been requiring you to fight the Italian, and you have
refused. You degenerate remnant of an honorable line! I'm thoroughly
ashamed of you, Tom!"
"Oh, that's nothing! I don't care for anything, now that the will's torn
up again."
"Tom, tell me squarely--didn't he find any fault with you for anything
but those two things--carrying the case into court and refusing to
fight?"
He watched the young fellow's face narrowly, but it was entirely
reposeful, and so also was the voice that answered:
"No, he didn't find any other fault with me. If he had had any to find,
he would have begun yesterday, for he was just in the humor for it. He
drove that jack-pair around town and showed them the sights, and when he
came home he couldn't find his father's old silver watch that don't keep
time and he thinks so much of, and couldn't remember what he did with it
three or four days ago when he saw it last, and when I suggested that it
probably wasn't lost but stolen, it put him in a regular passion, and he
said I was a fool--which convinced me, without any trouble, that that
was just what he was afraid _had_ happened, himself, but did not want to
believe it, because lost things stand a better chance of being found
again than stolen ones."
"Whe-ew!" whistled Wilson. "Score another one the list."
"Another what?"
"Another theft!"
"Theft?"
"Yes, theft. That watch isn't lost, it's stolen. There's been another
raid on the town--and just the same old mysterious sort of thing that has
happened once before, as you remember."
"You don't mean it!"
"It's as sure as you are born! Have you missed anything yourself?"
"No. That is, I did miss a silver pencil case that Aunt Mary Pratt gave
me last birthday--"
"You'll find it stolen--that's what you'll find."
"No, I sha'n't; for when I suggested theft about the watch and got such a
rap, I went and examined my room, and the pencil case was missing, but it
was only mislaid, and I found it again."
"You are sure you missed nothing else?"
"Well, nothing of consequence. I missed a small plain gold ring worth
two or three dollars, but that will turn up. I'll look again."
"In my opinion you'll not find it. There's been a raid, I tell you. Come
_in!_"
Mr. Justice Robinson entered, followed by Buckstone and the town
constable, Jim Blake. They sat down, and after some wandering and
aimless weather-conversation Wilson said:
"By the way, We've just added another to the list of thefts, maybe two.
Judge Driscoll's old silver watch is gone, and Tom here has missed a gold
ring."
"Well, it is a bad business," said the justice, "and gets worse the
further it goes. The Hankses, the Dobsons, the Pilligrews, the Ortons,
the Grangers, the Hales, the Fullers, the Holcombs, in fact everybody
that lives around about Patsy Cooper's had been robbed of little things
like trinkets and teaspoons and suchlike small valuables that are easily
carried off. It's perfectly plain that the thief took advantage of the
reception at Patsy Cooper's when all the neighbors were in her house and
all their niggers hanging around her fence for a look at the show, to
raid the vacant houses undisturbed. Patsy is miserable about it;
miserable on account of the neighbors, and particularly miserable on
account of her foreigners, of course; so miserable on their account that
she hasn't any room to worry about her own little losses."
"It's the same old raider," said Wilson. "I suppose there isn't any
doubt about that."
"Constable Blake doesn't think so."
"No, you're wrong there," said Blake. "The other times it was a man;
there was plenty of signs of that, as we know, in the profession, thought
we never got hands on him; but this time it's a woman."
Wilson thought of the mysterious girl straight off. She was always in
his mind now. But she failed him again. Blake continued:
"She's a stoop-shouldered old woman with a covered basket on her arm, in
a black veil, dressed in mourning. I saw her going aboard the ferryboat
yesterday. Lives in Illinois, I reckon; but I don't care where she
lives, I'm going to get her--she can make herself sure of that."
"What makes you think she's the thief?"
"Well, there ain't any other, for one thing; and for another, some nigger
draymen that happened to be driving along saw her coming out of or going
into houses, and told me so--and it just happens that they was _robbed_,
every time."
It was granted that this was plenty good enough circumstantial evidence.
A pensive silence followed, which lasted some moments, then Wilson said:
"There's one good thing, anyway. She can't either pawn or sell Count
Luigi's costly Indian dagger."
"My!" said Tom. "Is _that_ gone?"
"Yes."
"Well, that was a haul! But why can't she pawn it or sell it?"
"Because when the twins went home from the Sons of Liberty meeting last
night, news of the raid was sifting in from everywhere, and Aunt Patsy
was in distress to know if they had lost anything. They found that the
dagger was gone, and they notified the police and pawnbrokers everywhere.
It was a great haul, yes, but the old woman won't get anything out of it,
because she'll get caught."
"Did they offer a reward?" asked Buckstone.
"Yes, five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred more for the
thief."
"What a leather-headed idea!" exclaimed the constable. "The thief das'n't
go near them, nor send anybody. Whoever goes is going to get himself
nabbed, for their ain't any pawnbroker that's going to lose the chance
to--"
If anybody had noticed Tom's face at that time, the gray-green color of
it might have provoked curiosity; but nobody did. He said to himself:
"I'm gone! I never can square up; the rest of the plunder won't pawn or
sell for half of the bill. Oh, I know it--I'm gone, I'm gone--and this
time it's for good. Oh, this is awful--I don't know what to do, nor
which way to turn!"
"Softly, softly," said Wilson to Blake. "I planned their scheme for them
at midnight last night, and it was all finished up shipshape by two this
morning. They'll get their dagger back, and then I'll explain to you how
the thing was done."
There were strong signs of a general curiosity, and Buckstone said:
"Well, you have whetted us up pretty sharp. Wilson, and I'm free to say
that if you don't mind telling us in confidence--"
"Oh, I'd as soon tell as not, Buckstone, but as long as the twins and I
agreed to say nothing about it, we must let it stand so. But you can take
my word for it, you won't be kept waiting three days. Somebody will apply
for that reward pretty promptly, and I'll show you the thief and the
dagger both very soon afterward."
The constable was disappointed, and also perplexed. He said:
"It may all be--yes, and I hope it will, but I'm blamed if I can see my
way through it. It's too many for yours truly."
The subject seemed about talked out. Nobody seemed to have anything
further to offer. After a silence the justice of the peace informed
Wilson that he and Buckstone and the constable had come as a committee,
on the part of the Democratic party, to ask him to run for mayor--for the
little town was about to become a city and the first charter election was
approaching. It was the first attention which Wilson had ever received
at the hands of any party; it was a sufficiently humble one, but it was a
recognition of his debut into the town's life and activities at last; it
was a step upward, and he was deeply gratified. He accepted, and the
committee departed, followed by young Tom.
CHAPTER 14
Roxana Insists Upon Reform
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned
with commoner things. It is chief of this world's luxuries, king by the
grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he
knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve
took: we know it because she repented.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
About the time that Wilson was bowing the committee out, Pembroke Howard
was entering the next house to report. He found the old judge sitting
grim and straight in his chair, waiting.
"Well, Howard--the news?"
"The best in the world."
"Accepts, does he?" and the light of battle gleamed joyously in the
Judge's eye.
"Accepts? Why he jumped at it."
"Did, did he? Now that's fine--that's very fine. I like that. When is
it to be?"
"Now! Straight off! Tonight! An admirable fellow--admirable!"
"Admirable? He's a darling! Why, it's an honor as well as a pleasure to
stand up before such a man. Come--off with you! Go and arrange
everything--and give him my heartiest compliments. A rare fellow, indeed;
an admirable fellow, as you have said!"
"I'll have him in the vacant stretch between Wilson's and the haunted
house within the hour, and I'll bring my own pistols."
Judge Driscoll began to walk the floor in a state of pleased excitement;
but presently he stopped, and began to think--began to think of Tom.
Twice he moved toward the secretary, and twice he turned away again; but
finally he said:
"This may be my last night in the world--I must not take the chance. He
is worthless and unworthy, but it is largely my fault. He was entrusted
to me by my brother on his dying bed, and I have indulged him to his
hurt, instead of training him up severely, and making a man of him, I
have violated my trust, and I must not add the sin of desertion to that.
I have forgiven him once already, and would subject him to a long and
hard trial before forgiving him again, if I could live; but I must not
run that risk. No, I must restore the will. But if I survive the duel, I
will hide it away, and he will not know, and I will not tell him until he
reforms, and I see that his reformation is going to be permanent."
He redrew the will, and his ostensible nephew was heir to a fortune
again. As he was finishing his task, Tom, wearied with another brooding
tramp, entered the house and went tiptoeing past the sitting room door.
He glanced in, and hurried on, for the sight of his uncle was nothing but
terrors for him tonight. But his uncle was writing! That was unusual at
this late hour. What could he be writing? A chill of anxiety settled
down upon Tom's heart. Did that writing concern him? He was afraid so.
He reflected that when ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles,
but in showers. He said he would get a glimpse of that document or know
the reason why. He heard someone coming, and stepped out of sight and
hearing. It was Pembroke Howard. What could be hatching?
Howard said, with great satisfaction:
"Everything's right and ready. He's gone to the battleground with his
second and the surgeon--also with his brother. I've arranged it all with
Wilson--Wilson's his second. We are to have three shots apiece."
"Good! How is the moon?"
"Bright as day, nearly. Perfect, for the distance--fifteen yards. No
wind--not a breath; hot and still."
"All good; all first-rate. Here, Pembroke, read this, and witness it."
Pembroke read and witnessed the will, then gave the old man's hand a
hearty shake and said:
"Now that's right, York--but I knew you would do it. You couldn't leave
that poor chap to fight along without means or profession, with certain
defeat before him, and I knew you wouldn't, for his father's sake if not
for his own."
"For his dead father's sake, I couldn't, I know; for poor Percy--but you
know what Percy was to me. But mind--Tom is not to know of this unless I
fall tonight."
"I understand. I'll keep the secret."
The judge put the will away, and the two started for the battleground. In
another minute the will was in Tom's hands. His misery vanished, his
feelings underwent a tremendous revulsion. He put the will carefully back
in its place, and spread his mouth and swung his hat once, twice, three
times around his head, in imitation of three rousing huzzahs, no sound
issuing from his lips. He fell to communing with himself excitedly and
joyously, but every now and then he let off another volley of dumb
hurrahs.
He said to himself: "I've got the fortune again, but I'll not let on
that I know about it. And this time I'm gong to hang on to it. I take no
more risks. I'll gamble no more, I'll drink no more, because--well,
because I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on,
again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way; I might have thought of
that sooner--well, yes, if I had wanted to. But now--dear me, I've had a
scare this time, and I'll take no more chances. Not a single chance
more. Land! I persuaded myself this evening that I could fetch him
around without any great amount of effort, but I've been getting more and
more heavyhearted and doubtful straight along, ever since. If he tells
me about this thing, all right; but if he doesn't, I sha'n't let on.
I--well, I'd like to tell Pudd'nhead Wilson, but--no, I'll think about
that; perhaps I won't." He whirled off another dead huzzah, and said,
"I'm reformed, and this time I'll stay so, sure!"
He was about to close with a final grand silent demonstration, when he
suddenly recollected that Wilson had put it out of his power to pawn or
sell the Indian knife, and that he was once more in awful peril of
exposure by his creditors for that reason. His joy collapsed utterly, and
he turned away and moped toward the door moaning and lamenting over the
bitterness of his luck. He dragged himself upstairs, and brooded in his
room a long time, disconsolate and forlorn, with Luigi's Indian knife for
a text. At last he sighed and said:
"When I supposed these stones were glass and this ivory bone, the thing
hadn't any interest for me because it hadn't any value, and couldn't help
me out of my trouble. But now--why, now it is full of interest; yes, and
of a sort to break a body's heart. It's a bag of gold that has turned to
dirt and ashes in my hands. It could save me, and save me so easily, and
yet I've got to go to ruin. It's like drowning with a life preserver in
my reach. All the hard luck comes to me, and all the good luck goes to
other people--Pudd'nhead Wilson, for instance; even his career has got a
sort of a little start at last, and what has he done to deserve it, I
should like to know? Yes, he has opened his own road, but he isn't
content with that, but must block mine. It's a sordid, selfish world, and
I wish I was out of it." He allowed the light of the candle to play upon
the jewels of the sheath, but the flashings and sparklings had no charm
for his eye; they were only just so many pangs to his heart. "I must not
say anything to Roxy about this thing," he said. "She is too daring. She
would be for digging these stones out and selling them, and then--why,
she would be arrested and the stones traced, and then--" The thought made
him quake, and he hid the knife away, trembling all over and glancing
furtively about, like a criminal who fancies that the accuser is already
at hand.
Should he try to sleep? Oh, no, sleep was not for him; his trouble was
too haunting, too afflicting for that. He must have somebody to mourn
with. He would carry his despair to Roxy.
He had heard several distant gunshots, but that sort of thing was not
uncommon, and they had made no impression upon him. He went out at the
back door, and turned westward. He passed Wilson's house and proceeded
along the lane, and presently saw several figures approaching Wilson's
place through the vacant lots. These were the duelists returning from the
fight; he thought he recognized them, but as he had no desire for white
people's company, he stooped down behind the fence until they were out of
his way.
Roxy was feeling fine. She said:
"Whah was you, child? Warn't you in it?"
"In what?"
"In de duel."
"Duel? Has there been a duel?"
"Co'se dey has. De ole Jedge has be'n havin' a duel wid one o' dem
twins."
"Great Scott!" Then he added to himself: "That's what made him remake
the will; he thought he might get killed, and it softened him toward me.
And that's what he and Howard were so busy about. . . . Oh dear, if the
twin had only killed him, I should be out of my--"
"What is you mumblin' 'bout, Chambers? Whah was you? Didn't you know dey
was gwine to be a duel?"
"No, I didn't. The old man tried to get me to fight one with Count
Luigi, but he didn't succeed, so I reckon he concluded to patch up the
family honor himself."
He laughed at the idea, and went rambling on with a detailed account of
his talk with the judge, and how shocked and ashamed the judge was to
find that he had a coward in his family. He glanced up at last, and got
a shock himself. Roxana's bosom was heaving with suppressed passion, and
she was glowering down upon him with measureless contempt written in her
face.
"En you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin' at de
chance! En you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell me, dat
fetched sich a po' lowdown ornery rabbit into de worl'! Pah! it make me
sick! It's de nigger in you, dat's what it is. Thirty-one parts o' you
is white, en on'y one part nigger, en dat po' little one part is yo'
_soul_. 'Tain't wuth savin'; 'tain't wuth totin' out on a shovel en
throwin' en de gutter. You has disgraced yo' birth. What would yo' pa
think o' you? It's enough to make him turn in his grave."
The last three sentences stung Tom into a fury, and he said to himself
that if his father were only alive and in reach of assassination his
mother would soon find that he had a very clear notion of the size of his
indebtedness to that man, and was willing to pay it up in full, and would
do it too, even at risk of his life; but he kept this thought to himself;
that was safest in his mother's present state.
"Whatever has come o' yo' Essex blood? Dat's what I can't understan'.
En it ain't on'y jist Essex blood dat's in you, not by a long
sight--'deed it ain't! My great-great-great-gran'father en yo'
great-great-great-great-gran'father was Ole Cap'n John Smith, de highest
blood dat Ole Virginny ever turned out, en _his_ great-great-gran'mother,
or somers along back dah, was Pocahontas de Injun queen, en her husbun'
was a nigger king outen Africa--en yit here you is, a slinkin' outen a
duel en disgracin' our whole line like a ornery lowdown hound! Yes, it's
de nigger in you!"
She sat down on her candle box and fell into a reverie. Tom did not
disturb her; he sometimes lacked prudence, but it was not in
circumstances of this kind, Roxana's storm went gradually down, but it
died hard, and even when it seemed to be quite gone, it would now and
then break out in a distant rumble, so to speak, in the form of muttered
ejaculations. One of these was, "Ain't nigger enough in him to show in
his fingernails, en dat takes mighty little--yit dey's enough to pain
his soul."
Presently she muttered. "Yassir, enough to paint a whole thimbleful of
'em." At last her ramblings ceased altogether, and her countenance began
to clear--a welcome sight to Tom, who had learned her moods, and knew she
was on the threshold of good humor now. He noticed that from time to time
she unconsciously carried her finger to the end of her nose. He looked
closer and said:
"Why, Mammy, the end of your nose is skinned. How did that come?"
She sent out the sort of wholehearted peal of laughter which God had
vouchsafed in its perfection to none but the happy angels in heaven and
the bruised and broken black slave on the earth, and said:
"Dad fetch dat duel, I be'n in it myself."
"Gracious! did a bullet to that?"
"Yassir, you bet it did!"
"Well, I declare! Why, how did that happen?"
"Happened dis-away. I 'uz a-sett'n' here kinder dozin' in de dark, en
_che-bang!_ goes a gun, right out dah. I skips along out towards t'other
end o' de house to see what's gwine on, en stops by de ole winder on de
side towards Pudd'nhead Wilson's house dat ain't got no sash in it--but
dey ain't none of 'em got any sashes, for as dat's concerned--en I stood
dah in de dark en look out, en dar in the moonlight, right down under me
'uz one o' de twins a-cussin'--not much, but jist a-cussin' soft--it 'uz
de brown one dat 'uz cussin,' 'ca'se he 'uz hit in de shoulder. En
Doctor Claypool he 'uz a-workin' at him, en Pudd'nhead Wilson he 'uz
a-he'pin', en ole Jedge Driscoll en Pem Howard 'uz a-standin' out yonder
a little piece waitin' for 'em to get ready agin. En treckly dey squared
off en give de word, en _bang-bang_ went de pistols, en de twin he say,
'Ouch!'--hit him on de han' dis time--en I hear dat same bullet go
_spat!_ ag'in de logs under de winder; en de nex' time dey shoot, de twin
say, 'Ouch!' ag'in, en I done it too, 'ca'se de bullet glance' on his
cheekbone en skip up here en glance' on de side o' de winder en whiz
right acrost my face en tuck de hide off'n my nose--why, if I'd 'a'
be'n jist a inch or a inch en a half furder 't would 'a' tuck de whole
nose en disfiggered me. Here's de bullet; I hunted her up."
"Did you stand there all the time?"
"Dat's a question to ask, ain't it! What else would I do? Does I git a
chance to see a duel every day?"
"Why, you were right in range! Weren't you afraid?"
The woman gave a sniff of scorn.
"'Fraid! De Smith-Pocahontases ain't 'fraid o' nothin', let alone
bullets."
"They've got pluck enough, I suppose; what they lack is judgment. _I_
wouldn't have stood there."
"Nobody's accusin' you!"
"Did anybody else get hurt?"
"Yes, we all got hit 'cep' de blon' twin en de doctor en de seconds. De
Jedge didn't git hurt, but I hear Pudd'nhead say de bullet snip some o'
his ha'r off."
"'George!" said Tom to himself, "to come so near being out of my trouble,
and miss it by an inch. Oh dear, dear, he will live to find me out and
sell me to some nigger trader yet--yes, and he would do it in a minute."
Then he said aloud, in a grave tone:
"Mother, we are in an awful fix."
Roxana caught her breath with a spasm, and said:
"Chile! What you hit a body so sudden for, like dat? What's be'n en gone
en happen'?"
"Well, there's one thing I didn't tell you. When I wouldn't fight, he
tore up the will again, and--"
Roxana's face turned a dead white, and she said:
"Now you's _done!_--done forever! Dat's de end. Bofe un us is gwine to
starve to--"
"Wait and hear me through, can't you! I reckon that when he resolved to
fight, himself, he thought he might get killed and not have a chance to
forgive me any more in this life, so he made the will again, and I've
seen it, and it's all right. But--"
"Oh, thank goodness, den we's safe ag'in!--safe! en so what did you want
to come here en talk sich dreadful--"
"Hold ON, I tell you, and let me finish. The swag I gathered won't half
square me up, and the first thing we know, my creditors--well, you know
what'll happen."
Roxana dropped her chin, and told her son to leave her alone--she must
think this matter out. Presently she said impressively:
"You got to go mighty keerful now, I tell you! En here's what you got to
do. He didn't git killed, en if you gives him de least reason, he'll
bust de will ag'in, en dat's de _las'_ time, now you hear me! So--you's
got to show him what you kin do in de nex' few days. You got to be pison
good, en let him see it; you got to do everything dat'll make him b'lieve
in you, en you got to sweeten aroun' ole Aunt Pratt, too--she's pow'ful
strong with de Jedge, en de bes' frien' you got. Nex', you'll go 'long
away to Sent Louis, en dat'll _keep_ him in yo' favor. Den you go en make
a bargain wid dem people. You tell 'em he ain't gwine to live long--en
dat's de fac', too--en tell 'em you'll pay 'em intrust, en big intrust,
too--ten per--what you call it?"
"Ten percent a month?"
"Dat's it. Den you take and sell yo' truck aroun', a little at a time,
en pay de intrust. How long will it las'?"
"I think there's enough to pay the interest five or six months." "Den
you's all right. If he don't die in six months, dat don't make no
diff'rence--Providence'll provide. You's gwine to be safe--if you
behaves." She bent an austere eye on him and added, "En you IS gwine to
behave--does you know dat?"
He laughed and said he was going to try, anyway. She did not unbend. She
said gravely:
"Tryin' ain't de thing. You's gwine to _do_ it. You ain't gwine to
steal a pin--'ca'se it ain't safe no mo'; en you ain't gwine into no bad
comp'ny--not even once, you understand; en you ain't gwine to drink a
drop--nary a single drop; en you ain't gwine to gamble one single
gamble--not one! Dis ain't what you's gwine to try to do, it's what
you's gwine to DO. En I'll tell you how I knows it. Dis is how. I's
gwine to foller along to Sent Louis my own self; en you's gwine to come
to me every day o' your life, en I'll look you over; en if you fails in
one single one o' dem things--jist _one_--I take my oath I'll come
straight down to dis town en tell de Jedge you's a nigger en a slave--en
_prove_ it!" She paused to let her words sink home. Then she added,
"Chambers, does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"
Tom was sober enough now. There was no levity in his voice when he
answered:
"Yes, Mother, I know, now, that I am reformed--and permanently.
Permanently--and beyond the reach of any human temptation."
"Den g'long home en begin!"
CHAPTER 15
The Robber Robbed
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"
--which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your
attention"; but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket
and--_watch that basket!_"
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
What a time of it Dawson's Landing was having! All its life it had been
asleep, but now it hardly got a chance for a nod, so swiftly did big
events and crashing surprises come along in one another's wake: Friday
morning, first glimpse of Real Nobility, also grand reception at Aunt
Patsy Cooper's, also great robber raid; Friday evening, dramatic kicking
of the heir of the chief citizen in presence of four hundred people;
Saturday morning, emergence as practicing lawyer of the long-submerged
Pudd'nhead Wilson; Saturday night, duel between chief citizen and titled
stranger.
The people took more pride in the duel than in all the other events put
together, perhaps. It was a glory to their town to have such a thing
happen there. In their eyes the principals had reached the summit of
human honor. Everybody paid homage to their names; their praises were in
all mouths. Even the duelists' subordinates came in for a handsome share
of the public approbation: wherefore Pudd'nhead Wilson was suddenly
become a man of consequence. When asked to run for the mayoralty Saturday
night, he was risking defeat, but Sunday morning found him a made man and
his success assured.
The twins were prodigiously great now; the town took them to its bosom
with enthusiasm. Day after day, and night after night, they went dining
and visiting from house to house, making friends, enlarging and
solidifying their popularity, and charming and surprising all with their
musical prodigies, and now and then heightening the effects with samples
of what they could do in other directions, out of their stock of rare and
curious accomplishments. They were so pleased that they gave the
regulation thirty days' notice, the required preparation for citizenship,
and resolved to finish their days in this pleasant place. That was the
climax. The delighted community rose as one man and applauded; and when
the twins were asked to stand for seats in the forthcoming aldermanic
board, and consented, the public contentment was rounded and complete.
Tom Driscoll was not happy over these things; they sunk deep, and hurt
all the way down. He hated the one twin for kicking him, and the other
one for being the kicker's brother.
Now and then the people wondered why nothing was heard of the raider, or
of the stolen knife or the other plunder, but nobody was able to throw
any light on that matter. Nearly a week had drifted by, and still the
thing remained a vexed mystery.
On Sunday Constable Blake and Pudd'nhead Wilson met on the street, and
Tom Driscoll joined them in time to open their conversation for them. He
said to Blake: "You are not looking well, Blake; you seem to be annoyed
about something. Has anything gone wrong in the detective business? I
believe you fairly and justifiably claim to have a pretty good reputation
in that line, isn't it so?"--which made Blake feel good, and look it;
but Tom added, "for a country detective"--which made Blake feel the other
way, and not only look it, but betray it in his voice.
"Yes, sir, I _have_ got a reputation; and it's as good as anybody's in
the profession, too, country or no country."
"Oh, I beg pardon; I didn't mean any offense. What I started out to ask
was only about the old woman that raided the town--the stoop-shouldered
old woman, you know, that you said you were going to catch; and I knew
you would, too, because you have the reputation of never boasting,
and--well, you--you've caught the old woman?"
"Damn the old woman!"
"Why, sho! you don't mean to say you haven't caught her?"
"No, I haven't caught her. If anybody could have caught her, I could;
but nobody couldn't, I don't care who he is."
I am sorry, real sorry--for your sake; because, when it gets around that
a detective has expressed himself confidently, and then--"
"Don't you worry, that's all--don't you worry; and as for the town, the
town needn't worry either. She's my meat--make yourself easy about that.
I'm on her track; I've got clues that--"
"That's good! Now if you could get an old veteran detective down from
St. Louis to help you find out what the clues mean, and where they lead
to, and then--"
"I'm plenty veteran enough myself, and I don't need anybody's help. I'll
have her inside of a we--inside of a month. That I'll swear to!"
Tom said carelessly:
"I suppose that will answer--yes, that will answer. But I reckon she is
pretty old, and old people don't often outlive the cautious pace of the
professional detective when he has got his clues together and is out on
his still-hunt."
Blake's dull face flushed under this gibe, but before he could set his
retort in order Tom had turned to Wilson, and was saying, with placid
indifference of manner and voice:
"Who got the reward, Pudd'nhead?"
Wilson winced slightly, and saw that his own turn was come.
"What reward?"
"Why, the reward for the thief, and the other one for the knife."
Wilson answered--and rather uncomfortably, to judge by his hesitating
fashion of delivering himself:
"Well, the--well, in face, nobody has claimed it yet."
Tom seemed surprised.
"Why, is that so?"
Wilson showed a trifle of irritation when he replied:
"Yes, it's so. And what of it?"
"Oh, nothing. Only I thought you had struck out a new idea, and invented
a scheme that was going to revolutionize the timeworn and ineffectual
methods of the--" He stopped, and turned to Blake, who was happy now
that another had taken his place on the gridiron. "Blake, didn't you
understand him to intimate that it wouldn't be necessary for you to hunt
the old woman down?"
"'B'George, he said he'd have thief and swag both inside of three days
--he did, by hokey! and that's just about a week ago. Why, I said at the
time that no thief and no thief's pal was going to try to pawn or sell a
thing where he knowed the pawnbroker could get both rewards by taking HIM
into camp _with_ the swag. It was the blessedest idea that ever I
struck!"
"You'd change your mind," said Wilson, with irritated bluntness, "if you
knew the entire scheme instead of only part of it."
"Well," said the constable, pensively, "I had the idea that it wouldn't
work, and up to now I'm right anyway."
"Very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further show. It
has worked at least as well as your own methods, you perceive."
The constable hadn't anything handy to hit back with, so he discharged a
discontented sniff, and said nothing.
After the night that Wilson had partly revealed his scheme at his house,
Tom had tried for several days to guess out the secret of the rest of it,
but had failed. Then it occurred to him to give Roxana's smarter head a
chance at it. He made up a supposititious case, and laid it before
her. She thought it over, and delivered her verdict upon it. Tom said
to himself, "She's hit it, sure!" He thought he would test that verdict
now, and watch Wilson's face; so he said reflectively:
"Wilson, you're not a fool--a fact of recent discovery. Whatever your
scheme was, it had sense in it, Blake's opinion to the contrary
notwithstanding. I don't ask you to reveal it, but I will suppose a
case--a case which you will answer as a starting point for the real thing
I am going to come at, and that's all I want. You offered five hundred
dollars for the knife, and five hundred for the thief. We will suppose,
for argument's sake, that the first reward is _advertised_ and the second
offered by _private letter_ to pawnbrokers and--"
Blake slapped his thigh, and cried out:
"By Jackson, he's got you, Pudd'nhead! Now why couldn't I or _any_ fool
have thought of that?"
Wilson said to himself, "Anybody with a reasonably good head would have
thought of it. I am not surprised that Blake didn't detect it; I am only
surprised that Tom did. There is more to him than I supposed." He said
nothing aloud, and Tom went on:
"Very well. The thief would not suspect that there was a trap, and he
would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a song, or found
it in the road, or something like that, and try to collect the reward,
and be arrested--wouldn't he?"
"Yes," said Wilson.
"I think so," said Tom. "There can't be any doubt of it. Have you ever
seen that knife?"
"No."
"Has any friend of yours?"
"Not that I know of."
"Well, I begin to think I understand why your scheme failed."
"What do you mean, Tom? What are you driving at?" asked Wilson, with a
dawning sense of discomfort.
"Why, that there _isn't_ any such knife."
"Look here, Wilson," said Blake, "Tom Driscoll's right, for a thousand
dollars--if I had it."
Wilson's blood warmed a little, and he wondered if he had been played
upon by those strangers; it certainly had something of that look. But
what could they gain by it? He threw out that suggestion. Tom replied:
"Gain? Oh, nothing that you would value, maybe. But they are strangers
making their way in a new community. Is it nothing to them to appear as
pets of an Oriental prince--at no expense? Is it nothing to them to be
able to dazzle this poor town with thousand-dollar rewards--at no
expense? Wilson, there isn't any such knife, or your scheme would have
fetched it to light. Or if there is any such knife, they've got it yet.
I believe, myself, that they've seen such a knife, for Angelo pictured it
out with his pencil too swiftly and handily for him to have been
inventing it, and of course I can't swear that they've never had it; but
this I'll go bail for--if they had it when they came to this town,
they've got it yet."
Blake said:
"It looks mighty reasonable, the way Tom puts it; it most certainly
does."
Tom responded, turning to leave:
"You find the old woman, Blake, and if she can't furnish the knife, go
and search the twins!"
Tom sauntered away. Wilson felt a good deal depressed. He hardly knew
what to think. He was loath to withdraw his faith from the twins, and
was resolved not to do it on the present indecisive evidence; but--well,
he would think, and then decide how to act.
"Blake, what do you think of this matter?"
"Well, Pudd'nhead, I'm bound to say I put it up the way Tom does. They
hadn't the knife; or if they had it, they've got it yet."
The men parted. Wilson said to himself:
"I believe they had it; if it had been stolen, the scheme would have
restored it, that is certain. And so I believe they've got it."
Tom had no purpose in his mind when he encountered those two men. When he
began his talk he hoped to be able to gall them a little and get a trifle
of malicious entertainment out of it. But when he left, he left in great
spirits, for he perceived that just by pure luck and no troublesome labor
he had accomplished several delightful things: he had touched both men
on a raw spot and seen them squirm; he had modified Wilson's sweetness
for the twins with one small bitter taste that he wouldn't be able to get
out of his mouth right away; and, best of all, he had taken the hated
twins down a peg with the community; for Blake would gossip around
freely, after the manner of detectives, and within a week the town would
be laughing at them in its sleeve for offering a gaudy reward for a
bauble which they either never possessed or hadn't lost. Tom was very
well satisfied with himself.
Tom's behavior at home had been perfect during the entire week. His uncle
and aunt had seen nothing like it before. They could find no fault with
him anywhere.
Saturday evening he said to the Judge:
"I've had something preying on my mind, uncle, and as I am going away,
and might never see you again, I can't bear it any longer. I made you
believe I was afraid to fight that Italian adventurer. I had to get out
of it on some pretext or other, and maybe I chose badly, being taken
unawares, but no honorable person could consent to meet him in the field,
knowing what I knew about him."
"Indeed? What was that?"
"Count Luigi is a confessed assassin."
"Incredible."
"It's perfectly true. Wilson detected it in his hand, by palmistry, and
charged him with it, and cornered him up so close that he had to confess;
but both twins begged us on their knees to keep the secret, and swore
they would lead straight lives here; and it was all so pitiful that we
gave our word of honor never to expose them while they kept the promise.
You would have done it yourself, uncle."
"You are right, my boy; I would. A man's secret is still his own
property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like that.
You did well, and I am proud of you." Then he added mournfully, "But I
wish I could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the
field on honor."
"It couldn't be helped, uncle. If I had known you were going to
challenge him, I should have felt obliged to sacrifice my pledged word in
order to stop it, but Wilson couldn't be expected to do otherwise than
keep silent."
"Oh, no, Wilson did right, and is in no way to blame. Tom, Tom, you have
lifted a heavy load from my heart; I was stung to the very soul when I
seemed to have discovered that I had a coward in my family."
"You may imagine what it cost ME to assume such a part, uncle."
"Oh, I know it, poor boy, I know it. And I can understand how much it
has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time. But it is
all right now, and no harm is done. You have restored my comfort of
mind, and with it your own; and both of us had suffered enough."
The old man sat awhile plunged in thought; then he looked up with a
satisfied light in his eye, and said: "That this assassin should have
put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the field of honor as
if he were a gentleman is a matter which I will presently settle--but not
now. I will not shoot him until after election. I see a way to ruin them
both before; I will attend to that first. Neither of them shall be
elected, that I promise. You are sure that the fact that he is an
assassin has not got abroad?"
"Perfectly certain of it, sir."
"It will be a good card. I will fling a hint at it from the stump on the
polling day. It will sweep the ground from under both of them."
"There's not a doubt of it. It will finish them."
"That and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty. I want you
to come down here by and by and work privately among the rag-tag and
bobtail. You shall spend money among them; I will furnish it."
Another point scored against the detested twins! Really it was a great
day for Tom. He was encouraged to chance a parting shot, now, at the
same target, and did it.
"You know that wonderful Indian knife that the twins have been making
such a to-do about? Well, there's no track or trace of it yet; so the
town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh. Half the people believe
they never had any such knife, the other half believe they had it and
have got it still. I've heard twenty people talking like that today."
Yes, Tom's blemishless week had restored him to the favor of his aunt and
uncle.
His mother was satisfied with him, too. Privately, she believed she was
coming to love him, but she did not say so. She told him to go along to
St. Louis now, and she would get ready and follow. Then she smashed her
whisky bottle and said:
"Dah now! I's a-gwine to make you walk as straight as a string,
Chambers, en so I's bown, you ain't gwine to git no bad example out o'
yo' mammy. I tole you you couldn't go into no bad comp'ny. Well, you's
gwine into my comp'ny, en I's gwine to fill de bill. Now, den, trot
along, trot along!"
Tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with his heavy
satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep of the unjust,
which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the
hanging-eve history of a million rascals. But when he got up in the
morning, luck was against him again: a brother thief had robbed him while
he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing.
CHAPTER 16
Sold Down the River
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of
the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It
seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for
studying the oyster.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
When Roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that
her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her. He was
ruined past hope now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and he
would be an outcast and friendless. That was reason enough for a mother
to love a child; so she loved him, and told him so. It made him wince,
secretly--for she was a "nigger." That he was one himself was far from
reconciling him to that despised race.
Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded
uncomfortably, but as well as he could. And she tried to comfort him, but
that was not possible. These intimacies quickly became horrible to him,
and within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to tell her
so, and require that they be discontinued or very considerably modified.
But he was afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull now, for she had
begun to think. She was trying to invent a saving plan. Finally she
started up, and said she had found a way out. Tom was almost suffocated
by the joy of this sudden good news. Roxana said:
"Here is de plan, en she'll win, sure. I's a nigger, en nobody ain't
gwine to doubt it dat hears me talk. I's wuth six hund'd dollahs. Take
en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers."
Tom was dazed. He was not sure he had heard aright. He was dumb for a
moment; then he said:
"Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?"
"Ain't you my chile? En does you know anything dat a mother won't do for
her chile? Day ain't nothin' a white mother won't do for her chile. Who
made 'em so? De Lord done it. En who made de niggers? De Lord made 'em.
In de inside, mothers is all de same. De good lord he made 'em so. I's
gwine to be sole into slavery, en in a year you's gwine to buy yo' ole
mammy free ag'in. I'll show you how. Dat's de plan."
Tom's hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them. He said:
"It's lovely of you, Mammy--it's just--"
"Say it ag'in! En keep on sayin' it! It's all de pay a body kin want in
dis worl', en it's mo' den enough. Laws bless you, honey, when I's slav'
aroun', en dey 'buses me, if I knows you's a-sayin' dat, 'way off yonder
somers, it'll heal up all de sore places, en I kin stan' 'em."
"I DO say it again, Mammy, and I'll keep on saying it, too. But how am I
going to sell you? You're free, you know."
"Much diff'rence dat make! White folks ain't partic'lar. De law kin sell
me now if dey tell me to leave de state in six months en I don't go. You
draw up a paper--bill o' sale--en put it 'way off yonder, down in de
middle o' Kaintuck somers, en sign some names to it, en say you'll sell
me cheap 'ca'se you's hard up; you'll find you ain't gwine to have no
trouble. You take me up de country a piece, en sell me on a farm; dem
people ain't gwine to ask no questions if I's a bargain."
Tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an Arkansas cotton
planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars. He did not want to commit
this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved him the
necessity of going up-country to hunt up a purchaser, with the added risk
of having to answer a lot of questions, whereas this planter was so
pleased with Roxy that he asked next to none at all. Besides, the
planter insisted that Roxy wouldn't know where she was, at first, and
that by the time she found out she would already have been contented.
So Tom argued with himself that it was an immense advantaged for Roxy to
have a master who was pleased with her, as this planter manifestly was.
In almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point of even
half believing he was doing Roxy a splendid surreptitious service in
selling her "down the river." And then he kept diligently saying to
himself all the time: "It's for only a year. In a year I buy her free
again; she'll keep that in mind, and it'll reconcile her." Yes; the
little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out right
and pleasant in the end, anyway. By agreement, the conversation in
Roxy's presence was all about the man's "up-country" farm, and how
pleasant a place it was, and how happy the slaves were there; so poor
Roxy was entirely deceived; and easily, for she was not dreaming that her
own son could be guilty of treason to a mother who, in voluntarily going
into slavery--slavery of any kind, mild or severe, or of any duration,
brief or long--was making a sacrifice for him compared with which death
would have been a poor and commonplace one. She lavished tears and
loving caresses upon him privately, and then went away with her owner
--went away brokenhearted, and yet proud to do it.
Tom scored his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very letter of his
reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again. He had three
hundred dollars left. According to his mother's plan, he was to put that
safely away, and add her half of his pension to it monthly. In one year
this fund would buy her free again.
For a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the villainy
which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his rag of
conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was
presently able to sleep like any other miscreant.