The Ways of the Changelings.
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they
escaped teething.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.
There is this trouble about special providences--namely, there is so
often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In
the case of the children, the bears and the prophet, the bears got more
real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they
got the children.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.
This history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change which
Roxana has consummated, and call the real heir "Chambers" and the
usurping little slave "Thomas à Becket"--shortening this latter name to
"Tom," for daily use, as the people about him did.
"Tom" was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. He
would cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper
without notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall,
then climax the thing with "holding his breath"--that frightful
specialty of the teething nursling, in the throes of which the creature
exhausts its lungs, then is convulsed with noiseless squirmings and
twistings and kickings in the effort to get its breath, while the lips
turn blue and the mouth stands wide and rigid, offering for inspection
one wee tooth set in the lower rim of a hoop of red gums; and when the
appalling stillness has endured until one is sure the lost breath will
never return, a nurse comes flying, and dashes water in the child's
face, and--presto! the lungs fill, and instantly discharge a shriek, or
a yell, or a howl which bursts the listening ear and surprises the owner
of it into saying words which would not go well with a halo if he had
one. The baby Tom would claw anybody who came within reach of his nails,
and pound anybody he could reach with his rattle. He would scream for
water until he got it, and then throw cup and all on the floor and
scream for more. He was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever
troublesome and exasperating they might be; he was allowed to eat
anything he wanted, particularly things that would give him the
stomach-ache.
When he got to be old enough to begin to toddle about and say broken
words and get an idea of what his hands were for, he was a more
consummate pest than ever. Roxy got no rest while he was awake. He would
call for anything and everything he saw, simply saying "Awnt it!" (want
it), which was a command. When it was brought, he said in a frenzy, and
motioning it away with his hands, "Don't awnt it! don't awnt it!" and
the moment it was gone he set up frantic yells of "Awnt it! awnt it!
awnt it!" and Roxy had to give wings to her heels to get that thing back
to him again before he could get time to carry out his intention of
going into convulsions about it.
What he preferred above all other things was the tongs. This was because
his "father" had forbidden him to have them lest he break windows and
furniture with them. The moment Roxy's back was turned he would toddle
to the presence of the tongs and say "Like it!" and cock his eye to one
side to see if Roxy was observing; then, "Awnt it!" and cock his eye
again; then, "Hab it!" with another furtive glance; and finally, "Take
it!"--and the prize was his. The next moment the heavy implement was
raised aloft; the next, there was a crash and a squall, and the cat was
off on three legs to meet an engagement; Roxy would arrive just as the
lamp or a window went to irremediable smash.
Tom got all the petting, Chambers got none. Tom got all the delicacies,
Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. In consequence
Tom was a sickly child and Chambers wasn't. Tom was "fractious," as Roxy
called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek and docile.
With all her splendid common sense and practical every-day ability, Roxy
was a doting fool of a mother. She was this toward her child--and she
was also more than this: by the fiction created by herself, he was
become her master; the necessity of recognizing this relation outwardly
and of perfecting herself in the forms required to express the
recognition, had moved her to such diligence and faithfulness in
practicing these forms that this exercise soon concreted itself into
habit; it became automatic and unconscious; then a natural result
followed: deceptions intended solely for others gradually grew
practically into self-deceptions as well; the mock reverence became real
reverence, the mock obsequiousness real obsequiousness, the mock homage
real homage; the little counterfeit rift of separation between
imitation-slave and imitation-master widened and widened, and became an
abyss, and a very real one--and on one side of it stood Roxy, the dupe
of her own deceptions, and on the other stood her child, no longer a
usurper to her, but her accepted and recognized master. He was her
darling, her master, and her deity all in one, and in her worship of him
she forgot who she was and what he had been.
In babyhood Tom cuffed and banged and scratched Chambers unrebuked, and
Chambers early learned that between meekly bearing it and resenting it,
the advantage all lay with the former policy. The few times that his
persecutions had moved him beyond control and made him fight back had
cost him very dear at headquarters; not at the hands of Roxy, for if she
ever went beyond scolding him sharply for "forgitt'n' who his young
marster was," she at least never extended her punishment beyond a box on
the ear. No, Percy Driscoll was the person. He told Chambers that under
no provocation whatever was he privileged to lift his hand against his
little master. Chambers overstepped the line three times, and got three
such convincing canings from the man who was his father and didn't know
it, that he took Tom's cruelties in all humility after that, and made no
more experiments.
Outside of the house the two boys were together all through their
boyhood. Chambers was strong beyond his years, and a good fighter;
strong because he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the house, and
a good fighter because Tom furnished him plenty of practice--on white
boys whom he hated and was afraid of. Chambers was his constant
body-guard, to and from school; he was present on the playground at
recess to protect his charge. He fought himself into such a formidable
reputation, by and by, that Tom could have changed clothes with him, and
"ridden in peace," like Sir Kay in Launcelot's armor.
He was good at games of skill, too. Tom staked him with marbles to play
"keeps" with, and then took all the winnings away from him. In the
winter season Chambers was on hand, in Tom's worn-out clothes, with
"holy" red mittens, and "holy" shoes, and pants "holy" at the knees and
seat, to drag a sled up the hill for Tom, warmly clad, to ride down on;
but he never got a ride himself. He built snow men and snow
fortifications under Tom's directions. He was Tom's patient target when
Tom wanted to do some snowballing, but the target couldn't fire back.
Chambers carried Tom's skates to the river and strapped them on him,
then trotted around after him on the ice, so as to be on hand when
wanted; but he wasn't ever asked to try the skates himself.
In summer the pet pastime of the boys of Dawson's Landing was to steal
apples, peaches, and melons from the farmers' fruit-wagons,--mainly on
account of the risk they ran of getting their heads laid open with the
butt of the farmer's whip. Tom was a distinguished adept at these
thefts--by proxy. Chambers did his stealing, and got the peach-stones,
apple-cores, and melon-rinds for his share.
Tom always made Chambers go in swimming with him, and stay by him as a
protection. When Tom had had enough, he would slip out and tie knots in
Chambers's shirt, dip the knots in the water and make them hard to undo,
then dress himself and sit by and laugh while the naked shiverer tugged
at the stubborn knots with his teeth.
Tom did his humble comrade these various ill turns partly out of native
viciousness, and partly because he hated him for his superiorities of
physique and pluck, and for his manifold cleverness. Tom couldn't dive,
for it gave him splitting headaches. Chambers could dive without
inconvenience, and was fond of doing it. He excited so much admiration,
one day, among a crowd of white boys, by throwing back somersaults from
the stern of a canoe, that it wearied Tom's spirit, and at last he
shoved the canoe underneath Chambers while he was in the air--so he came
down on his head in the canoe-bottom; and while he lay unconscious,
several of Tom's ancient adversaries saw that their long-desired
opportunity was come, and they gave the false heir such a drubbing that
with Chambers's best help he was hardly able to drag himself home
afterward.
When the boys were fifteen and upward, Tom was "showing off" in the
river one day, when he was taken with a cramp, and shouted for help. It
was a common trick with the boys--particularly if a stranger was
present--to pretend a cramp and howl for help; then when the stranger
came tearing hand over hand to the rescue, the howler would go on
struggling and howling till he was close at hand, then replace the howl
with a sarcastic smile and swim blandly away, while the town boys
assailed the dupe with a volley of jeers and laughter. Tom had never
tried this joke as yet, but was supposed to be trying it now, so the
boys held warily back; but Chambers believed his master was in earnest,
therefore he swam out, and arrived in time, unfortunately, and saved his
life.
This was the last feather. Tom had managed to endure everything else,
but to have to remain publicly and permanently under such an obligation
as this to a nigger, and to this nigger of all niggers--this was too
much. He heaped insults upon Chambers for "pretending" to think he was
in earnest in calling for help, and said that anybody but a block-headed
nigger would have known he was funning and left him alone.
Tom's enemies were in strong force here, so they came out with their
opinions quite freely. They laughed at him, and called him coward, liar,
sneak, and other sorts of pet names, and told him they meant to call
Chambers by a new name after this, and make it common in the town--"Tom
Driscoll's niggerpappy,"--to signify that he had had a second birth into
this life, and that Chambers was the author of his new being. Tom grew
frantic under these taunts, and shouted--
"Knock their heads off, Chambers! knock their heads off! What do you
stand there with your hands in your pockets for?"
Chambers expostulated, and said, "But, Marse Tom, dey's too many of
'em--dey's--"
"Do you hear me?"
"Please, Marse Tom, don't make me! Dey's so many of 'em dat--"
Tom sprang at him and drove his pocket-knife into him two or three times
before the boys could snatch him away and give the wounded lad a chance
to escape. He was considerably hurt, but not seriously. If the blade had
been a little longer his career would have ended there.
Tom had long ago taught Roxy "her place." It had been many a day now
since she had ventured a caress or a fondling epithet in his quarter.
Such things, from a "nigger," were repulsive to him, and she had been
warned to keep her distance and remember who she was. She saw her
darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw that detail perish
utterly; all that was left was master--master, pure and simple, and it
was not a gentle mastership, either. She saw herself sink from the
sublime height of motherhood to the somber depths of unmodified slavery.
The abyss of separation between her and her boy was complete. She was
merely his chattel, now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing and
helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious
temper and vicious nature.
Sometimes she could not go to sleep, even when worn out with fatigue,
because her rage boiled so high over the day's experiences with her boy.
She would mumble and mutter to herself--
"He struck me, en I warn't no way to blame--struck me in de face, right
before folks. En he's al'ays callin' me nigger-wench, en hussy, en all
dem mean names, when I's doin' de very bes' I kin. Oh, Lord, I done so
much for him--I lift' him away up to what he is--en dis is what I git
for it."
Sometimes when some outrage of peculiar offensiveness stung her to the
heart, she would plan schemes of vengeance and revel in the fancied
spectacle of his exposure to the world as an imposter and a slave; but
in the midst of these joys fear would strike her: she had made him too
strong; she could prove nothing, and--heavens, she might get sold down
the river for her pains! So her schemes always went for nothing, and she
laid them aside in impotent rage against the fates, and against herself
for playing the fool on that fatal September day in not providing
herself with a witness for use in the day when such a thing might be
needed for the appeasing of her vengeance-hungry heart.
And yet the moment Tom happened to be good to her, and kind,--and this
occurred every now and then,--all her sore places were healed, and she
was happy; happy and proud, for this was her son, her nigger son,
lording it among the whites and securely avenging their crimes against
her race.
There were two grand funerals in Dawson's Landing that fall--the fall of
1845. One was that of Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, the other that of
Percy Driscoll.
On his death-bed Driscoll set Roxy free and delivered his idolized
ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother, the Judge and
his wife. Those childless people were glad to get him. Childless people
are not difficult to please.
Judge Driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month before, and
bought Chambers. He had heard that Tom had been trying to get his father
to sell the boy down the river, and he wanted to prevent the
scandal--for public sentiment did not approve of that way of treating
family servants for light cause or for no cause.
Percy Driscoll had worn himself out in trying to save his great
speculative landed estate, and had died without succeeding. He was
hardly in his grave before the boom collapsed and left his hitherto
envied young devil of an heir a pauper. But that was nothing; his uncle
told him he should be his heir and have all his fortune when he died; so
Tom was comforted.
Roxy had no home, now; so she resolved to go around and say good-by to
her friends and then clear out and see the world--that is to say, she
would go chambermaiding on a steamboat, the darling ambition of her race
and sex.
Her last call was on the black giant, Jasper. She found him chopping
Pudd'nhead Wilson's winter provision of wood.
Wilson was chatting with him when Roxy arrived. He asked her how she
could bear to go off chambermaiding and leave her boys; and chaffingly
offered to copy off a series of their finger-prints, reaching up to
their twelfth year, for her to remember them by; but she sobered in a
moment, wondering if he suspected anything; then she said she believed
she didn't want them. Wilson said to himself, "The drop of black blood
in her is superstitious; she thinks there's some devilry, some
witch-business about my glass mystery somewhere; she used to come here
with an old horseshoe in her hand; it could have been an accident, but I
doubt it."