Title: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 6.
Author: Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
Language: English
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          A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT

                             by

                         MARK TWAIN
                     (Samuel L. Clemens)

                           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 scum 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.



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.



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.  She had recognized the death-rattle.



CHAPTER XXX

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 had.  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 murder 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.



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 orgy, 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
--an 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.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 6." ***

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