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PART 6: CHAPTER XXVII THE YANKEE AND THE KING TRAVEL INCOGNITO
About bedtime I took the king to my private quarters to cut his hair and help him get
the hang of the lowly raiment he was to wear.
The high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead but hanging to the
shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas the lowest ranks of commoners were
banged fore and aft both; the slaves were
bangless, and allowed their hair free growth.
So I inverted a bowl over his head and cut away all the locks that hung below it.
I also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were only about a half-inch
long; and tried to do it inartistically, and succeeded.
It was a villainous disfigurement.
When he got his lubberly sandals on, and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth,
which hung straight from his neck to his ankle-bones, he was no longer the comeliest
man in his kingdom, but one of the
unhandsomest and most commonplace and unattractive.
We were dressed and barbered alike, and could pass for small farmers, or farm
bailiffs, or shepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, if we chose, our
costume being in effect universal among the
poor, because of its strength and cheapness.
I don't mean that it was really cheap to a very poor person, but I do mean that it was
the cheapest material there was for male attire--manufactured material, you
understand.
We slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broad sun-up had made eight or ten miles,
and were in the midst of a sparsely settled country.
I had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden with provisions--provisions for the king to
taper down on, till he could take to the coarse fare of the country without damage.
I found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside, and then gave him a morsel or
two to stay his stomach with. Then I said I would find some water for
him, and strolled away.
Part of my project was to get out of sight and sit down and rest a little myself.
It had always been my custom to stand when in his presence; even at the council board,
except upon those rare occasions when the sitting was a very long one, extending over
hours; then I had a trifling little
backless thing which was like a reversed culvert and was as comfortable as the
toothache. I didn't want to break him in suddenly, but
do it by degrees.
We should have to sit together now when in company, or people would notice; but it
would not be good politics for me to be playing equality with him when there was no
necessity for it.
I found the water some three hundred yards away, and had been resting about twenty
minutes, when I heard voices.
That is all right, I thought--peasants going to work; nobody else likely to be
stirring this early.
But the next moment these comers jingled into sight around a turn of the road--
smartly clad people of quality, with luggage-mules and servants in their train!
I was off like a shot, through the bushes, by the shortest cut.
For a while it did seem that these people would pass the king before I could get to
him; but desperation gives you wings, you know, and I canted my body forward,
inflated my breast, and held my breath and flew.
I arrived. And in plenty good enough time, too.
"Pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony--jump!
Jump to your feet--some quality are coming!"
"Is that a marvel?
Let them come." "But my liege!
You must not be seen sitting. Rise!--and stand in humble posture while
they pass.
You are a peasant, you know."
"True--I had forgot it, so lost was I in planning of a huge war with Gaul"--he was
up by this time, but a farm could have got up quicker, if there was any kind of a boom
in real estate--"and right-so a thought
came randoming overthwart this majestic dream the which--"
"A humbler attitude, my lord the king--and quick!
Duck your head!
--more!--still more!--droop it!" He did his honest best, but lord, it was no
great things. He looked as humble as the leaning tower at
Pisa.
It is the most you could say of it.
Indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that it raised wondering scowls all
along the line, and a gorgeous flunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but I
jumped in time and was under it when it
fell; and under cover of the volley of coarse laughter which followed, I spoke up
sharply and warned the king to take no notice.
He mastered himself for the moment, but it was a sore tax; he wanted to eat up the
procession. I said:
"It would end our adventures at the very start; and we, being without weapons, could
do nothing with that armed gang.
If we are going to succeed in our emprise, we must not only look the peasant but act
the peasant." "It is wisdom; none can gainsay it.
Let us go on, Sir Boss.
I will take note and learn, and do the best I may."
He kept his word. He did the best he could, but I've seen
better.
If you have ever seen an active, heedless, enterprising child going diligently out of
one mischief and into another all day long, and an anxious mother at its heels all the
while, and just saving it by a hair from
drowning itself or breaking its neck with each new experiment, you've seen the king
and me.
If I could have foreseen what the thing was going to be like, I should have said, No,
if anybody wants to make his living exhibiting a king as a peasant, let him
take the layout; I can do better with a menagerie, and last longer.
And yet, during the first three days I never allowed him to enter a hut or other
dwelling.
If he could pass muster anywhere during his early novitiate it would be in small inns
and on the road; so to these places we confined ourselves.
Yes, he certainly did the best he could, but what of that?
He didn't improve a bit that I could see.
He was always frightening me, always breaking out with fresh astonishers, in new
and unexpected places.
Toward evening on the second day, what does he do but blandly fetch out a dirk from
inside his robe! "Great guns, my liege, where did you get
that?"
"From a smuggler at the inn, yester eve." "What in the world possessed you to buy
it?"
"We have escaped divers dangers by wit--thy wit--but I have bethought me that it were
but prudence if I bore a weapon, too. Thine might fail thee in some pinch."
"But people of our condition are not allowed to carry arms.
What would a lord say--yes, or any other person of whatever condition --if he caught
an upstart peasant with a dagger on his person?"
It was a lucky thing for us that nobody came along just then.
I persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy as persuading a child to
give up some bright fresh new way of killing itself.
We walked along, silent and thinking.
Finally the king said: "When ye know that I meditate a thing
inconvenient, or that hath a peril in it, why do you not warn me to cease from that
project?"
It was a startling question, and a puzzler. I didn't quite know how to take hold of it,
or what to say, and so, of course, I ended by saying the natural thing:
"But, sire, how can I know what your thoughts are?"
The king stopped dead in his tracks, and stared at me.
"I believed thou wert greater than Merlin; and truly in magic thou art.
But prophecy is greater than magic. Merlin is a prophet."
I saw I had made a blunder.
I must get back my lost ground. After a deep reflection and careful
planning, I said: "Sire, I have been misunderstood.
I will explain.
There are two kinds of prophecy. One is the gift to foretell things that are
but a little way off, the other is the gift to foretell things that are whole ages and
centuries away.
Which is the mightier gift, do you think?" "Oh, the last, most surely!"
"True. Does Merlin possess it?"
"Partly, yes.
He foretold mysteries about my birth and future kingship that were twenty years
away." "Has he ever gone beyond that?"
"He would not claim more, I think."
"It is probably his limit. All prophets have their limit.
The limit of some of the great prophets has been a hundred years."
"These are few, I ween."
"There have been two still greater ones, whose limit was four hundred and six
hundred years, and one whose limit compassed even seven hundred and twenty."
"Gramercy, it is marvelous!"
"But what are these in comparison with me? They are nothing."
"What? Canst thou truly look beyond even so vast a
stretch of time as--"
"Seven hundred years? My liege, as clear as the vision of an
eagle does my prophetic eye penetrate and lay bare the future of this world for
nearly thirteen centuries and a half!"
My land, you should have seen the king's eyes spread slowly open, and lift the
earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch!
That settled Brer Merlin.
One never had any occasion to prove his facts, with these people; all he had to do
was to state them. It never occurred to anybody to doubt the
statement.
"Now, then," I continued, "I could work both kinds of prophecy --the long and the
short--if I chose to take the trouble to keep in practice; but I seldom exercise any
but the long kind, because the other is beneath my dignity.
It is properer to Merlin's sort --stump- tail prophets, as we call them in the
profession.
Of course, I whet up now and then and flirt out a minor prophecy, but not often--hardly
ever, in fact.
You will remember that there was great talk, when you reached the Valley of
Holiness, about my having prophesied your coming and the very hour of your arrival,
two or three days beforehand."
"Indeed, yes, I mind it now."
"Well, I could have done it as much as forty times easier, and piled on a thousand
times more detail into the bargain, if it had been five hundred years away instead of
two or three days."
"How amazing that it should be so!" "Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell
a thing that is five hundred years away easier than he can a thing that's only five
hundred seconds off."
"And yet in reason it should clearly be the other way; it should be five hundred times
as easy to foretell the last as the first, for, indeed, it is so close by that one
uninspired might almost see it.
In truth, the law of prophecy doth contradict the likelihoods, most strangely
making the difficult easy, and the easy difficult."
It was a wise head.
A peasant's cap was no safe disguise for it; you could know it for a king's under a
diving-bell, if you could hear it work its intellect.
I had a new trade now, and plenty of business in it.
The king was as hungry to find out everything that was going to happen during
the next thirteen centuries as if he were expecting to live in them.
From that time out, I prophesied myself bald-headed trying to supply the demand.
I have done some indiscreet things in my day, but this thing of playing myself for a
prophet was the worst.
Still, it had its ameliorations. A prophet doesn't have to have any brains.
They are good to have, of course, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but they are
no use in professional work.
It is the restfulest vocation there is.
When the spirit of prophecy comes upon you, you merely cake your intellect and lay it
off in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave it alone; it will work
itself: the result is prophecy.
Every day a knight-errant or so came along, and the sight of them fired the king's
martial spirit every time.
He would have forgotten himself, sure, and said something to them in a style a
suspicious shade or so above his ostensible degree, and so I always got him well out of
the road in time.
Then he would stand and look with all his eyes; and a proud light would flash from
them, and his nostrils would inflate like a war-horse's, and I knew he was longing for
a brush with them.
But about noon of the third day I had stopped in the road to take a precaution
which had been suggested by the whip-stroke that had fallen to my share two days
before; a precaution which I had afterward
decided to leave untaken, I was so loath to institute it; but now I had just had a
fresh reminder: while striding heedlessly along, with jaw spread and intellect at
rest, for I was prophesying, I stubbed my toe and fell sprawling.
I was so pale I couldn't think for a moment; then I got softly and carefully up
and unstrapped my knapsack.
I had that dynamite bomb in it, done up in wool in a box.
It was a good thing to have along; the time would come when I could do a valuable
miracle with it, maybe, but it was a nervous thing to have about me, and I
didn't like to ask the king to carry it.
Yet I must either throw it away or think up some safe way to get along with its
society.
I got it out and slipped it into my scrip, and just then here came a couple of
knights.
The king stood, stately as a statue, gazing toward them--had forgotten himself again,
of course--and before I could get a word of warning out, it was time for him to skip,
and well that he did it, too.
He supposed they would turn aside. Turn aside to avoid trampling peasant dirt
under foot?
When had he ever turned aside himself--or ever had the chance to do it, if a peasant
saw him or any other noble knight in time to judiciously save him the trouble?
The knights paid no attention to the king at all; it was his place to look out
himself, and if he hadn't skipped he would have been placidly ridden down, and laughed
at besides.
The king was in a flaming fury, and launched out his challenge and epithets
with a most royal vigor. The knights were some little distance by
now.
They halted, greatly surprised, and turned in their saddles and looked back, as if
wondering if it might be worth while to bother with such *** as we.
Then they wheeled and started for us.
Not a moment must be lost. I started for them.
I passed them at a rattling gait, and as I went by I flung out a hair-lifting soul-
scorching thirteen-jointed insult which made the king's effort poor and cheap by
comparison.
I got it out of the nineteenth century where they know how.
They had such headway that they were nearly to the king before they could check up;
then, frantic with rage, they stood up their horses on their hind hoofs and
whirled them around, and the next moment here they came, breast to breast.
I was seventy yards off, then, and scrambling up a great bowlder at the
roadside.
When they were within thirty yards of me they let their long lances droop to a
level, depressed their mailed heads, and so, with their horse-hair plumes streaming
straight out behind, most gallant to see, this lightning express came tearing for me!
When they were within fifteen yards, I sent that bomb with a sure aim, and it struck
the ground just under the horses' noses.
Yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty to see.
It resembled a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi; and during the next fifteen
minutes we stood under a steady drizzle of microscopic fragments of knights and
hardware and horse-flesh.
I say we, for the king joined the audience, of course, as soon as he had got his breath
again.
There was a hole there which would afford steady work for all the people in that
region for some years to come --in trying to explain it, I mean; as for filling it
up, that service would be comparatively
prompt, and would fall to the lot of a select few--peasants of that seignory; and
they wouldn't get anything for it, either. But I explained it to the king myself.
I said it was done with a dynamite bomb.
This information did him no damage, because it left him as intelligent as he was
before. However, it was a noble miracle, in his
eyes, and was another settler for Merlin.
I thought it well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sort that
it couldn't be done except when the atmospheric conditions were just right.
Otherwise he would be encoring it every time we had a good subject, and that would
be inconvenient, because I hadn't any more bombs along.
>
PART 6: CHAPTER XXVIII DRILLING THE KING
On the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, and we had been tramping
an hour in the chill dawn, I came to a resolution: the king must be drilled;
things could not go on so, he must be taken
in hand and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or we couldn't
ever venture to enter a dwelling; the very cats would know this masquerader for a
humbug and no peasant.
So I called a halt and said:
"Sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, there is no discrepancy;
but as between your clothes and your bearing, you are all wrong, there is a most
noticeable discrepancy.
Your soldierly stride, your lordly port-- these will not do.
You stand too straight, your looks are too high, too confident.
The cares of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin, they
do not depress the high level of the eye- glance, they do not put doubt and fear in
the heart and hang out the signs of them in slouching body and unsure step.
It is the sordid cares of the lowly born that do these things.
You must learn the trick; you must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery,
oppression, insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sap the
manliness out of a man and make him a loyal
and proper and approved subject and a satisfaction to his masters, or the very
infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go to pieces at the
first hut we stop at.
Pray try to walk like this." The king took careful note, and then tried
an imitation. "Pretty fair--pretty fair.
Chin a little lower, please--there, very good.
Eyes too high; pray don't look at the horizon, look at the ground, ten steps in
front of you.
Ah--that is better, that is very good. Wait, please; you betray too much vigor,
too much decision; you want more of a shamble.
Look at me, please--this is what I mean....
Now you are getting it; that is the idea-- at least, it sort of approaches it....
Yes, that is pretty fair. But!
There is a great big something wanting, I don't quite know what it is.
Please walk thirty yards, so that I can get a perspective on the thing....
Now, then--your head's right, speed's right, shoulders right, eyes right, chin
right, gait, carriage, general style right- -everything's right!
And yet the fact remains, the aggregate's wrong.
The account don't balance. Do it again, please....
Now I think I begin to see what it is.
Yes, I've struck it. You see, the genuine spiritlessness is
wanting; that's what's the trouble.
It's all amateur--mechanical details all right, almost to a hair; everything about
the delusion perfect, except that it don't delude."
"What, then, must one do, to prevail?"
"Let me think... I can't seem to quite get at it.
In fact, there isn't anything that can right the matter but practice.
This is a good place for it: roots and stony ground to break up your stately gait,
a region not liable to interruption, only one field and one hut in sight, and they so
far away that nobody could see us from there.
It will be well to move a little off the road and put in the whole day drilling you,
sire."
After the drill had gone on a little while, I said:
"Now, sire, imagine that we are at the door of the hut yonder, and the family are
before us.
Proceed, please--accost the head of the house."
The king unconsciously straightened up like a monument, and said, with frozen
austerity:
"Varlet, bring a seat; and serve to me what cheer ye have."
"Ah, your grace, that is not well done." "In what lacketh it?"
"These people do not call each other varlets."
"Nay, is that true?" "Yes; only those above them call them so."
"Then must I try again.
I will call him villein." "No-no; for he may be a freeman."
"Ah--so. Then peradventure I should call him
goodman."
"That would answer, your grace, but it would be still better if you said friend,
or brother." "Brother!--to dirt like that?"
"Ah, but we are pretending to be dirt like that, too."
"It is even true. I will say it.
Brother, bring a seat, and thereto what cheer ye have, withal.
Now 'tis right." "Not quite, not wholly right.
You have asked for one, not us --for one, not both; food for one, a seat for one."
The king looked puzzled--he wasn't a very heavy weight, intellectually.
His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a
time, not the whole idea at once. "Would you have a seat also--and sit?"
"If I did not sit, the man would perceive that we were only pretending to be equals--
and playing the deception pretty poorly, too."
"It is well and truly said!
How wonderful is truth, come it in whatsoever unexpected form it may!
Yes, he must bring out seats and food for both, and in serving us present not ewer
and napkin with more show of respect to the one than to the other."
"And there is even yet a detail that needs correcting.
He must bring nothing outside; we will go in--in among the dirt, and possibly other
repulsive things,--and take the food with the household, and after the fashion of the
house, and all on equal terms, except the
man be of the serf class; and finally, there will be no ewer and no napkin,
whether he be serf or free. Please walk again, my liege.
There--it is better--it is the best yet; but not perfect.
The shoulders have known no ignobler burden than iron mail, and they will not stoop."
"Give me, then, the bag.
I will learn the spirit that goeth with burdens that have not honor.
It is the spirit that stoopeth the shoulders, I ween, and not the weight; for
armor is heavy, yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it....
Nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections.
I will have the thing. Strap it upon my back."
He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little like a king as any man
I had ever seen.
But it was an obstinate pair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick of
stooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness.
The drill went on, I prompting and correcting:
"Now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless creditors; you are
out of work--which is horse-shoeing, let us say--and can get none; and your wife is
sick, your children are crying because they are hungry--"
And so on, and so on.
I drilled him as representing in turn all sorts of people out of luck and suffering
dire privations and misfortunes.
But lord, it was only just words, words-- they meant nothing in the world to him, I
might just as well have whistled.
Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own
person the thing which the words try to describe.
There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about "the
working classes," and satisfy themselves that a day's hard intellectual work is very
much harder than a day's hard manual toil,
and is righteously entitled to much bigger pay.
Why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but
haven't tried the other.
But I know all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn't money enough in
the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days, but I will do the hardest kind
of intellectual work for just as near
nothing as you can cipher it down--and I will be satisfied, too.
Intellectual "work" is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own
highest reward.
The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter,
lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in
heaven when he is at work; and as for the
musician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra
with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him--why, certainly, he
is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same.
The law of work does seem utterly unfair-- but there it is, and nothing can change it:
the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay
in cash, also.
And it's also the very law of those transparent swindles, transmissible
nobility and kingship.
>
PART 6: CHAPTER XXIX THE SMALLPOX HUT
When we arrived at that hut at mid- afternoon, we saw no signs of life about
it.
The field near by had been denuded of its crop some time before, and had a skinned
look, so exhaustively had it been harvested and gleaned.
Fences, sheds, everything had a ruined look, and were eloquent of poverty.
No animal was around anywhere, no living thing in sight.
The stillness was awful, it was like the stillness of death.
The cabin was a one-story one, whose thatch was black with age, and ragged from lack of
repair.
The door stood a trifle ajar. We approached it stealthily--on tiptoe and
at half-breath--for that is the way one's feeling makes him do, at such a time.
The king knocked.
We waited. No answer.
Knocked again. No answer.
I pushed the door softly open and looked in.
I made out some dim forms, and a woman started up from the ground and stared at
me, as one does who is wakened from sleep.
Presently she found her voice: "Have mercy!" she pleaded.
"All is taken, nothing is left." "I have not come to take anything, poor
woman."
"You are not a priest?" "No."
"Nor come not from the lord of the manor?" "No, I am a stranger."
"Oh, then, for the fear of God, who visits with misery and death such as be harmless,
tarry not here, but fly! This place is under his curse--and his
Church's."
"Let me come in and help you--you are sick and in trouble."
I was better used to the dim light now. I could see her hollow eyes fixed upon me.
I could see how emaciated she was.
"I tell you the place is under the Church's ban.
Save yourself --and go, before some straggler see thee here, and report it."
"Give yourself no trouble about me; I don't care anything for the Church's curse.
Let me help you." "Now all good spirits--if there be any
such--bless thee for that word.
Would God I had a sup of water!--but hold, hold, forget I said it, and fly; for there
is that here that even he that feareth not the Church must fear: this disease whereof
we die.
Leave us, thou brave, good stranger, and take with thee such whole and sincere
blessing as them that be accursed can give."
But before this I had picked up a wooden bowl and was rushing past the king on my
way to the brook. It was ten yards away.
When I got back and entered, the king was within, and was opening the shutter that
closed the window-hole, to let in air and light.
The place was full of a foul stench.
I put the bowl to the woman's lips, and as she gripped it with her eager talons the
shutter came open and a strong light flooded her face.
Smallpox!
I sprang to the king, and said in his ear: "Out of the door on the instant, sire! the
woman is dying of that disease that wasted the skirts of Camelot two years ago."
He did not budge.
"Of a truth I shall remain--and likewise help."
I whispered again: "King, it must not be.
You must go."
"Ye mean well, and ye speak not unwisely. But it were shame that a king should know
fear, and shame that belted knight should withhold his hand where be such as need
succor.
Peace, I will not go. It is you who must go.
The Church's ban is not upon me, but it forbiddeth you to be here, and she will
deal with you with a heavy hand an word come to her of your trespass."
It was a desperate place for him to be in, and might cost him his life, but it was no
use to argue with him.
If he considered his knightly honor at stake here, that was the end of argument;
he would stay, and nothing could prevent it; I was aware of that.
And so I dropped the subject.
The woman spoke: "Fair sir, of your kindness will ye climb
the ladder there, and bring me news of what ye find?
Be not afraid to report, for times can come when even a mother's heart is past breaking
--being already broke." "Abide," said the king, "and give the woman
to eat.
I will go." And he put down the knapsack.
I turned to start, but the king had already started.
He halted, and looked down upon a man who lay in a dim light, and had not noticed us
thus far, or spoken. "Is it your husband?" the king asked.
"Yes."
"Is he asleep?" "God be thanked for that one charity, yes--
these three hours.
Where shall I pay to the full, my gratitude! for my heart is bursting with it
for that sleep he sleepeth now." I said:
"We will be careful.
We will not wake him." "Ah, no, that ye will not, for he is dead."
"Dead?" "Yes, what triumph it is to know it!
None can harm him, none insult him more.
He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there, he bides in hell and is content; for
in that place he will find neither abbot nor yet bishop.
We were boy and girl together; we were man and wife these five and twenty years, and
never separated till this day. Think how long that is to love and suffer
together.
This morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we were boy and girl again and
wandering in the happy fields; and so in that innocent glad converse wandered he far
and farther, still lightly gossiping, and
entered into those other fields we know not of, and was shut away from mortal sight.
And so there was no parting, for in his fancy I went with him; he knew not but I
went with him, my hand in his--my young soft hand, not this withered claw.
Ah, yes, to go, and know it not; to separate and know it not; how could one go
peace--fuller than that? It was his reward for a cruel life
patiently borne."
There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was.
It was the king descending.
I could see that he was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the
other. He came forward into the light; upon his
breast lay a slender girl of fifteen.
She was but half conscious; she was dying of smallpox.
Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit; this was
challenging death in the open field unarmed, with all the odds against the
challenger, no reward set upon the contest,
and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold to gaze and applaud; and yet the
king's bearing was as serenely brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests
where knight meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel.
He was great now; sublimely great.
The rude statues of his ancestors in his palace should have an addition--I would see
to that; and it would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the rest,
it would be a king in commoner's garb
bearing death in his arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child
and be comforted.
He laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearments and caresses from an
overflowing heart, and one could detect a flickering faint light of response in the
child's eyes, but that was all.
The mother hung over her, kissing her, petting her, and imploring her to speak,
but the lips only moved and no sound came.
I snatched my liquor flask from my knapsack, but the woman forbade me, and
said: "No--she does not suffer; it is better so.
It might bring her back to life.
None that be so good and kind as ye are would do her that cruel hurt.
For look you--what is left to live for?
Her brothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, the Church's curse is
upon her, and none may shelter or befriend her even though she lay perishing in the
road.
She is desolate. I have not asked you, good heart, if her
sister be still on live, here overhead; I had no need; ye had gone back, else, and
not left the poor thing forsaken--"
"She lieth at peace," interrupted the king, in a subdued voice.
"I would not change it. How rich is this day in happiness!
Ah, my Annis, thou shalt join thy sister soon--thou'rt on thy way, and these be
merciful friends that will not hinder."
And so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, and softly stroking
her face and hair, and kissing her and calling her by endearing names; but there
was scarcely sign of response now in the glazing eyes.
I saw tears well from the king's eyes, and trickle down his face.
The woman noticed them, too, and said:
"Ah, I know that sign: thou'st a wife at home, poor soul, and you and she have gone
hungry to bed, many's the time, that the little ones might have your crust; you know
what poverty is, and the daily insults of
your betters, and the heavy hand of the Church and the king."
The king winced under this accidental home- shot, but kept still; he was learning his
part; and he was playing it well, too, for a pretty dull beginner.
I struck up a diversion.
I offered the woman food and liquor, but she refused both.
She would allow nothing to come between her and the release of death.
Then I slipped away and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her.
This broke her down again, and there was another scene that was full of heartbreak.
By and by I made another diversion, and beguiled her to sketch her story.
"Ye know it well yourselves, having suffered it--for truly none of our
condition in Britain escape it.
It is the old, weary tale. We fought and struggled and succeeded;
meaning by success, that we lived and did not die; more than that is not to be
claimed.
No troubles came that we could not outlive, till this year brought them; then came they
all at once, as one might say, and overwhelmed us.
Years ago the lord of the manor planted certain fruit trees on our farm; in the
best part of it, too--a grievous wrong and shame--"
"But it was his right," interrupted the king.
"None denieth that, indeed; an the law mean anything, what is the lord's is his, and
what is mine is his also.
Our farm was ours by lease, therefore 'twas likewise his, to do with it as he would.
Some little time ago, three of those trees were found hewn down.
Our three grown sons ran frightened to report the crime.
Well, in his lordship's dungeon there they lie, who saith there shall they lie and rot
till they confess.
They have naught to confess, being innocent, wherefore there will they remain
until they die. Ye know that right well, I ween.
Think how this left us; a man, a woman and two children, to gather a crop that was
planted by so much greater force, yes, and protect it night and day from pigeons and
prowling animals that be sacred and must not be hurt by any of our sort.
When my lord's crop was nearly ready for the harvest, so also was ours; when his
bell rang to call us to his fields to harvest his crop for nothing, he would not
allow that I and my two girls should count
for our three captive sons, but for only two of them; so, for the lacking one were
we daily fined.
All this time our own crop was perishing through neglect; and so both the priest and
his lordship fined us because their shares of it were suffering through damage.
In the end the fines ate up our crop--and they took it all; they took it all and made
us harvest it for them, without pay or food, and we starving.
Then the worst came when I, being out of my mind with hunger and loss of my boys, and
grief to see my husband and my little maids in rags and misery and despair, uttered a
deep blasphemy--oh! a thousand of them!
--against the Church and the Church's ways. It was ten days ago.
I had fallen sick with this disease, and it was to the priest I said the words, for he
was come to chide me for lack of due humility under the chastening hand of God.
He carried my trespass to his betters; I was stubborn; wherefore, presently upon my
head and upon all heads that were dear to me, fell the curse of Rome.
"Since that day we are avoided, shunned with horror.
None has come near this hut to know whether we live or not.
The rest of us were taken down.
Then I roused me and got up, as wife and mother will.
It was little they could have eaten in any case; it was less than little they had to
eat.
But there was water, and I gave them that. How they craved it! and how they blessed
it! But the end came yesterday; my strength
broke down.
Yesterday was the last time I ever saw my husband and this youngest child alive.
I have lain here all these hours--these ages, ye may say--listening, listening for
any sound up there that--"
She gave a sharp quick glance at her eldest daughter, then cried out, "Oh, my darling!"
and feebly gathered the stiffening form to her sheltering arms.
>
PART 6: CHAPTER *** THE TRAGEDY OF THE MANOR-HOUSE
At midnight all was over, and we sat in the presence of four corpses.
We covered them with such rags as we could find, and started away, fastening the door
behind us.
Their home must be these people's grave, for they could not have Christian burial,
or be admitted to consecrated ground.
They were as dogs, wild beasts, lepers, and no soul that valued its hope of eternal
life would throw it away by meddling in any sort with these rebuked and smitten
outcasts.
We had not moved four steps when I caught a sound as of footsteps upon gravel.
My heart flew to my throat. We must not be seen coming from that house.
I plucked at the king's robe and we drew back and took shelter behind the corner of
the cabin. "Now we are safe," I said, "but it was a
close call--so to speak.
If the night had been lighter he might have seen us, no doubt, he seemed to be so
near." "Mayhap it is but a beast and not a man at
all."
"True. But man or beast, it will be wise to stay
here a minute and let it get by and out of the way."
"Hark!
It cometh hither." True again.
The step was coming toward us--straight toward the hut.
It must be a beast, then, and we might as well have saved our trepidation.
I was going to step out, but the king laid his hand upon my arm.
There was a moment of silence, then we heard a soft knock on the cabin door.
It made me shiver. Presently the knock was repeated, and then
we heard these words in a guarded voice:
"Mother! Father!
Open--we have got free, and we bring news to pale your cheeks but glad your hearts;
and we may not tarry, but must fly!
And--but they answer not. Mother! father!--"
I drew the king toward the other end of the hut and whispered:
"Come--now we can get to the road."
The king hesitated, was going to demur; but just then we heard the door give way, and
knew that those desolate men were in the presence of their dead.
"Come, my liege! in a moment they will strike a light, and then will follow that
which it would break your heart to hear." He did not hesitate this time.
The moment we were in the road I ran; and after a moment he threw dignity aside and
followed.
I did not want to think of what was happening in the hut--I couldn't bear it; I
wanted to drive it out of my mind; so I struck into the first subject that lay
under that one in my mind:
"I have had the disease those people died of, and so have nothing to fear; but if you
have not had it also--"
He broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and it was his conscience that was
troubling him: "These young men have got free, they say--
but how?
It is not likely that their lord hath set them free."
"Oh, no, I make no doubt they escaped."
"That is my trouble; I have a fear that this is so, and your suspicion doth confirm
it, you having the same fear." "I should not call it by that name though.
I do suspect that they escaped, but if they did, I am not sorry, certainly."
"I am not sorry, I think--but--" "What is it?
What is there for one to be troubled about?"
"If they did escape, then are we bound in duty to lay hands upon them and deliver
them again to their lord; for it is not seemly that one of his quality should
suffer a so insolent and high-handed outrage from persons of their base degree."
There it was again. He could see only one side of it.
He was born so, educated so, his veins were full of ancestral blood that was rotten
with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought down by inheritance from a long
procession of hearts that had each done its share toward poisoning the stream.
To imprison these men without proof, and starve their kindred, was no harm, for they
were merely peasants and subject to the will and pleasure of their lord, no matter
what fearful form it might take; but for
these men to break out of unjust captivity was insult and outrage, and a thing not to
be countenanced by any conscientious person who knew his duty to his sacred caste.
I worked more than half an hour before I got him to change the subject--and even
then an outside matter did it for me.
This was a something which caught our eyes as we struck the summit of a small hill--a
red glow, a good way off. "That's a fire," said I.
Fires interested me considerably, because I was getting a good deal of an insurance
business started, and was also training some horses and building some steam fire-
engines, with an eye to a paid fire department by and by.
The priests opposed both my fire and life insurance, on the ground that it was an
insolent attempt to hinder the decrees of God; and if you pointed out that they did
not hinder the decrees in the least, but
only modified the hard consequences of them if you took out policies and had luck, they
retorted that that was gambling against the decrees of God, and was just as bad.
So they managed to damage those industries more or less, but I got even on my Accident
business.
As a rule, a knight is a lummox, and some times even a labrick, and hence open to
pretty poor arguments when they come glibly from a superstition-monger, but even he
could see the practical side of a thing
once in a while; and so of late you couldn't clean up a tournament and pile the
result without finding one of my accident- tickets in every helmet.
We stood there awhile, in the thick darkness and stillness, looking toward the
red blur in the distance, and trying to make out the meaning of a far-away murmur
that rose and fell fitfully on the night.
Sometimes it swelled up and for a moment seemed less remote; but when we were
hopefully expecting it to betray its cause and nature, it dulled and sank again,
carrying its mystery with it.
We started down the hill in its direction, and the winding road plunged us at once
into almost solid darkness--darkness that was packed and crammed in between two tall
forest walls.
We groped along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and more
distinct all the time.
The coming storm threatening more and more, with now and then a little shiver of wind,
a faint show of lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder.
I was in the lead.
I ran against something--a soft heavy something which gave, slightly, to the
impulse of my weight; at the same moment the lightning glared out, and within a foot
of my face was the writhing face of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree!
That is, it seemed to be writhing, but it was not.
It was a grewsome sight.
Straightway there was an ear-splitting explosion of thunder, and the bottom of
heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge.
No matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the chance that there might be
life in him yet, mustn't we?
The lightning came quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and
midnight.
One moment the man would be hanging before me in an intense light, and the next he was
blotted out again in the darkness. I told the king we must cut him down.
The king at once objected.
"If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to his lord; so let him
be. If others hanged him, belike they had the
right--let him hang."
"But--" "But me no buts, but even leave him as he
is. And for yet another reason.
When the lightning cometh again--there, look abroad."
Two others hanging, within fifty yards of us!
"It is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk.
They are past thanking you. Come--it is unprofitable to tarry here."
There was reason in what he said, so we moved on.
Within the next mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the
lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion.
That murmur was a murmur no longer, it was a roar; a roar of men's voices.
A man came flying by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him.
They disappeared.
Presently another case of the kind occurred, and then another and another.
Then a sudden turn of the road brought us in sight of that fire--it was a large
manor-house, and little or nothing was left of it--and everywhere men were flying and
other men raging after them in pursuit.
I warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers.
We would better get away from the light, until matters should improve.
We stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the wood.
From this hiding-place we saw both men and women hunted by the mob.
The fearful work went on until nearly dawn.
Then, the fire being out and the storm spent, the voices and flying footsteps
presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again.
We ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we were worn out and
sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place some miles behind us.
Then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoal burner, and got what was to be
A woman was up and about, but the man was still asleep, on a straw shake-down, on the
clay floor.
The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelers and had lost our way
and been wandering in the woods all night.
She became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the terrible goings-on at the
manor-house of Abblasoure. Yes, we had heard of them, but what we
wanted now was rest and sleep.
The king broke in: "Sell us the house and take yourselves
away, for we be perilous company, being late come from people that died of the
Spotted Death."
It was good of him, but unnecessary. One of the commonest decorations of the
nation was the waffle-iron face. I had early noticed that the woman and her
husband were both so decorated.
She made us entirely welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was immensely
impressed by the king's proposition; for, of course, it was a good deal of an event
in her life to run across a person of the
king's humble appearance who was ready to buy a man's house for the sake of a night's
lodging.
It gave her a large respect for us, and she strained the lean possibilities of her
hovel to the utmost to make us comfortable.
We slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to make cotter
fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularly as it was scant in quantity.
And also in variety; it consisted solely of onions, salt, and the national black bread
made out of horse-feed. The woman told us about the affair of the
evening before.
At ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, the manor-house burst into
flames.
The country-side swarmed to the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception,
the master. He did not appear.
Everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in
ransacking the burning house seeking that valuable personage.
But after a while he was found--what was left of him--which was his corpse.
It was in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a dozen places.
Who had done this?
Suspicion fell upon a humble family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated
with peculiar harshness by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily
extended itself to their relatives and familiars.
A suspicion was enough; my lord's liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade
against these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general.
The woman's husband had been active with the mob, and had not returned home until
nearly dawn. He was gone now to find out what the
general result had been.
While we were still talking he came back from his quest.
His report was revolting enough.
Eighteen persons hanged or butchered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisoners lost in
the fire. "And how many prisoners were there
altogether in the vaults?"
"Thirteen." "Then every one of them was lost?"
"Yes, all."
"But the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it they could save none of
the prisoners?" The man looked puzzled, and said:
"Would one unlock the vaults at such a time?
Marry, some would have escaped." "Then you mean that nobody did unlock
them?"
"None went near them, either to lock or unlock.
It standeth to reason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needful to
establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not escape, but be taken.
None were taken."
"Natheless, three did escape," said the king, "and ye will do well to publish it
and set justice upon their track, for these murthered the baron and fired the house."
I was just expecting he would come out with that.
For a moment the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news and an
impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something else betrayed itself in
their faces, and they began to ask questions.
I answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effects produced.
I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these three prisoners were had somehow
changed the atmosphere; that our hosts' continued eagerness to go and spread the
news was now only pretended and not real.
The king did not notice the change, and I was glad of that.
I worked the conversation around toward other details of the night's proceedings,
and noted that these people were relieved to have it take that direction.
The painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this
oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the
interest of the common oppressor.
This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class
and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's
whole caste to side with the master and
fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or
wrongs of the matter.
This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal,
and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with
nothing back of it describable as evidence,
still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.
This was depressing--to a man with the dream of a republic in his head.
It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our South
who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them,
and who owed their base condition simply to
the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with
the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery,
and did also finally shoulder their muskets
and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very
institution which degraded them.
And there was only one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of
history; and that was, that secretly the "poor white" did detest the slave-lord, and
did feel his own shame.
That feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was there and
could have been brought out, under favoring circumstances, was something--in fact, it
was enough; for it showed that a man is at
bottom a man, after all, even if it doesn't show on the outside.
Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of the Southern
"poor white" of the far future.
The king presently showed impatience, and said:
"An ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry.
Think ye the criminals will abide in their father's house?
They are fleeing, they are not waiting. You should look to it that a party of horse
be set upon their track."
The woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked flustered
and irresolute. I said:
"Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you, and explain which direction I
think they would try to take.
If they were merely resisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity I would
try to protect them from capture; but when men *** a person of high degree and
likewise burn his house, that is another matter."
The last remark was for the king--to quiet him.
On the road the man pulled his resolution together, and began the march with a steady
gait, but there was no eagerness in it. By and by I said:
"What relation were these men to you-- cousins?"
He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and stopped, trembling.
"Ah, my God, how know ye that?"
"I didn't know it; it was a chance guess." "Poor lads, they are lost.
And good lads they were, too." "Were you actually going yonder to tell on
them?"
He didn't quite know how to take that; but he said, hesitatingly:
"Ye-s." "Then I think you are a damned scoundrel!"
It made him as glad as if I had called him an angel.
"Say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that ye would not betray me
an I failed of my duty."
"Duty? There is no duty in the matter, except the
duty to keep still and let those men get away.
They've done a righteous deed."
He looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at the same time.
He looked up and down the road to see that no one was coming, and then said in a
cautious voice:
"From what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous words, and seem not to
be afraid?" "They are not perilous words when spoken to
one of my own caste, I take it.
You would not tell anybody I said them?" "I?
I would be drawn asunder by wild horses first."
"Well, then, let me say my say.
I have no fears of your repeating it. I think devil's work has been done last
night upon those innocent poor people. That old baron got only what he deserved.
If I had my way, all his kind should have the same luck."
Fear and depression vanished from the man's manner, and gratefulness and a brave
animation took their place:
"Even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing, yet are they such
refreshment that to hear them again and others like to them, I would go to the
gallows happy, as having had one good feast at least in a starved life.
And I will say my say now, and ye may report it if ye be so minded.
I helped to hang my neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of
zeal in the master's cause; the others helped for none other reason.
All rejoice to-day that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly sorrowing, and
shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in that lies safety.
I have said the words, I have said the words! the only ones that have ever tasted
good in my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient.
Lead on, an ye will, be it even to the scaffold, for I am ready."
There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom.
Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him.
Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken.
Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people
that ever existed--even the Russians; plenty of manhood in them--even in the
Germans--if one could but force it out of
its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne
that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it.
We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe.
First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur's days were done, then the destruction of the
throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound out to some useful trade,
universal suffrage instituted, and the
whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of the nation there to
remain. Yes, there was no occasion to give up my
dream yet a while.
>
PART 6: CHAPTER XXXI MARCO
We strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, and talked.
We must dispose of about the amount of time it ought to take to go to the little hamlet
of Abblasoure and put justice on the track of those murderers and get back home again.
And meantime I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, never lost its
novelty for me since I had been in Arthur's kingdom: the behavior--born of nice and
exact subdivisions of caste--of chance passers-by toward each other.
Toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat
washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman he
was abject; with the small farmer and the
free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a
countenance respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the air--he couldn't
even see him.
Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the
farce. Presently we struck an incident.
A small mob of half-naked boys and girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and
shrieking. The eldest among them were not more than
twelve or fourteen years old.
They implored help, but they were so beside themselves that we couldn't make out what
the matter was.
However, we plunged into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was
quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, and he was kicking
and struggling, in the process of choking to death.
We rescued him, and fetched him around.
It was some more human nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elders; they
were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised to be a good deal
more serious than they had bargained for.
It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to put in the time very well.
I made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask as many
questions as I wanted to.
A thing which naturally interested me, as a statesman, was the matter of wages.
I picked up what I could under that head during the afternoon.
A man who hasn't had much experience, and doesn't think, is apt to measure a nation's
prosperity or lack of prosperity by the mere size of the prevailing wages; if the
wages be high, the nation is prosperous; if low, it isn't.
Which is an error.
It isn't what sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it, that's the important
thing; and it's that that tells whether your wages are high in fact or only high in
name.
I could remember how it was in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth
century.
In the North a carpenter got three dollars a day, gold valuation; in the South he got
fifty--payable in Confederate shinplasters worth a dollar a bushel.
In the North a suit of overalls cost three dollars--a day's wages; in the South it
cost seventy-five --which was two days' wages.
Other things were in proportion.
Consequently, wages were twice as high in the North as they were in the South,
because the one wage had that much more purchasing power than the other had.
Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing that gratified me a good
deal was to find our new coins in circulation --lots of milrays, lots of
mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels,
and some silver; all this among the artisans and commonalty generally; yes, and
even some gold--but that was at the bank, that is to say, the goldsmith's.
I dropped in there while Marco, the son of Marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over
a quarter of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty-dollar gold piece.
They furnished it--that is, after they had chewed the piece, and rung it on the
counter, and tried acid on it, and asked me where I got it, and who I was, and where I
was from, and where I was going to, and
when I expected to get there, and perhaps a couple of hundred more questions; and when
they got aground, I went right on and furnished them a lot of information
voluntarily; told them I owned a dog, and
his name was Watch, and my first wife was a Free Will Baptist, and her grandfather was
a Prohibitionist, and I used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and a wart
on the inside of his upper lip, and died in
the hope of a glorious resurrection, and so on, and so on, and so on, till even that
hungry village questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade put out; but he
had to respect a man of my financial
strength, and so he didn't give me any lip, but I noticed he took it out of his
underlings, which was a perfectly natural thing to do.
Yes, they changed my twenty, but I judged it strained the bank a little, which was a
thing to be expected, for it was the same as walking into a paltry village store in
the nineteenth century and requiring the
boss of it to change a two thousand-dollar bill for you all of a sudden.
He could do it, maybe; but at the same time he would wonder how a small farmer happened
to be carrying so much money around in his pocket; which was probably this goldsmith's
thought, too; for he followed me to the
door and stood there gazing after me with reverent admiration.
Our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its language was already
glibly in use; that is to say, people had dropped the names of the former moneys, and
spoke of things as being worth so many dollars or cents or mills or milrays now.
It was very gratifying. We were progressing, that was sure.
I got to know several master mechanics, but about the most interesting fellow among
them was the blacksmith, Dowley.
He was a live man and a brisk talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentices,
and was doing a raging business. In fact, he was getting rich, hand over
fist, and was vastly respected.
Marco was very proud of having such a man for a friend.
He had taken me there ostensibly to let me see the big establishment which bought so
much of his charcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar terms he
was on with this great man.
Dowley and I fraternized at once; I had had just such picked men, splendid fellows,
under me in the Colt Arms Factory.
I was bound to see more of him, so I invited him to come out to Marco's Sunday,
and dine with us.
Marco was appalled, and held his breath; and when the grandee accepted, he was so
grateful that he almost forgot to be astonished at the condescension.
Marco's joy was exuberant--but only for a moment; then he grew thoughtful, then sad;
and when he heard me tell Dowley I should have Dickon, the boss mason, and Smug, the
boss wheelwright, out there, too, the coal-
dust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost his grip.
But I knew what was the matter with him; it was the expense.
He saw ruin before him; he judged that his financial days were numbered.
However, on our way to invite the others, I said:
"You must allow me to have these friends come; and you must also allow me to pay the
costs." His face cleared, and he said with spirit:
"But not all of it, not all of it.
Ye cannot well bear a burden like to this alone."
I stopped him, and said: "Now let's understand each other on the
spot, old friend.
I am only a farm bailiff, it is true; but I am not poor, nevertheless.
I have been very fortunate this year--you would be astonished to know how I have
thriven.
I tell you the honest truth when I say I could squander away as many as a dozen
feasts like this and never care that for the expense!" and I snapped my fingers.
I could see myself rise a foot at a time in Marco's estimation, and when I fetched out
those last words I was become a very tower for style and altitude.
"So you see, you must let me have my way.
You can't contribute a cent to this ***, that's settled."
"It's grand and good of you--" "No, it isn't.
You've opened your house to Jones and me in the most generous way; Jones was remarking
upon it to-day, just before you came back from the village; for although he wouldn't
be likely to say such a thing to you--
because Jones isn't a talker, and is diffident in society--he has a good heart
and a grateful, and knows how to appreciate it when he is well treated; yes, you and
your wife have been very hospitable toward us--"
"Ah, brother, 'tis nothing--such hospitality!"
"But it is something; the best a man has, freely given, is always something, and is
as good as a prince can do, and ranks right along beside it--for even a prince can but
do his best.
And so we'll shop around and get up this layout now, and don't you worry about the
expense. I'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever
was born.
Why, do you know, sometimes in a single week I spend --but never mind about that--
you'd never believe it anyway."
And so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing things, and
gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and now and then running across
pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of
shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes had been taken from
them and their parents butchered or hanged.
The raiment of Marco and his wife was of coarse tow-linen and linsey-woolsey
respectively, and resembled township maps, it being made up pretty exclusively of
patches which had been added, township by
township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a hand's-breadth of the
original garments was surviving and present.
Now I wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of that swell
company, and I didn't know just how to get at it --with delicacy, until at last it
struck me that as I had already been
liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it would be just the thing to
back it up with evidence of a substantial sort; so I said:
"And Marco, there's another thing which you must permit--out of kindness for Jones--
because you wouldn't want to offend him.
He was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but he is so
diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he begged me to buy some little
things and give them to you and Dame
Phyllis and let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came from him--you
know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing --and so I said I would, and
we would keep mum.
Well, his idea was, a new outfit of clothes for you both--"
"Oh, it is wastefulness! It may not be, brother, it may not be.
Consider the vastness of the sum--"
"Hang the vastness of the sum! Try to keep quiet for a moment, and see how
it would seem; a body can't get in a word edgeways, you talk so much.
You ought to cure that, Marco; it isn't good form, you know, and it will grow on
you if you don't check it.
Yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff--and don't forget to remember
to not let on to Jones that you know he had anything to do with it.
You can't think how curiously sensitive and proud he is.
He's a farmer--pretty fairly well-to-do farmer --and I'm his bailiff; but--the
imagination of that man!
Why, sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off, you'd think he was one
of the swells of the earth; and you might listen to him a hundred years and never
take him for a farmer--especially if he talked agriculture.
He thinks he's a Sheol of a farmer; thinks he's old Grayback from Wayback; but between
you and me privately he don't know as much about farming as he does about running a
kingdom--still, whatever he talks about,
you want to drop your underjaw and listen, the same as if you had never heard such
incredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid you might die before you
got enough of it.
That will please Jones."
It tickled Marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character; but it also
prepared him for accidents; and in my experience when you travel with a king who
is letting on to be something else and
can't remember it more than about half the time, you can't take too many precautions.
This was the best store we had come across yet; it had everything in it, in small
quantities, from anvils and drygoods all the way down to fish and pinchbeck jewelry.
I concluded I would bunch my whole invoice right here, and not go pricing around any
more.
So I got rid of Marco, by sending him off to invite the mason and the wheelwright,
which left the field free to me.
For I never care to do a thing in a quiet way; it's got to be theatrical or I don't
take any interest in it.
I showed up money enough, in a careless way, to corral the shopkeeper's respect,
and then I wrote down a list of the things I wanted, and handed it to him to see if he
could read it.
He could, and was proud to show that he could.
He said he had been educated by a priest, and could both read and write.
He ran it through, and remarked with satisfaction that it was a pretty heavy
bill. Well, and so it was, for a little concern
like that.
I was not only providing a swell dinner, but some odds and ends of extras.
I ordered that the things be carted out and delivered at the dwelling of Marco, the son
of Marco, by Saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time Sunday.
He said I could depend upon his promptness and exactitude, it was the rule of the
house.
He also observed that he would throw in a couple of miller-guns for the Marcos
gratis--that everybody was using them now. He had a mighty opinion of that clever
device.
I said: "And please fill them up to the middle
mark, too; and add that to the bill." He would, with pleasure.
He filled them, and I took them with me.
I couldn't venture to tell him that the miller-gun was a little invention of my
own, and that I had officially ordered that every shopkeeper in the kingdom keep them
on hand and sell them at government price--
which was the merest trifle, and the shopkeeper got that, not the government.
We furnished them for nothing. The king had hardly missed us when we got
back at nightfall.
He had early dropped again into his dream of a grand invasion of Gaul with the whole
strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoon had slipped away without his
ever coming to himself again.
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