Sold Down the River.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
WhenRoxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her. He was ruined past hope, now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and he would be an outcast and friendless. That was reason enough for a mother to love a child; so she loved him, and told him so. It made him wince, secretly—for she was a “nigger.” That he was one himself was far from reconciling him to that despised race.
Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded uncomfortably, but as well as he could. And she tried to comfort him, but that was not possible. These intimacies quickly became horrible to him, and within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to tell her so, and require that they be discontinued or very considerably modified. But he was afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull, now, for she had begun to think. She was trying to invent a saving plan. Finally she started up, and said she had found a way out. Tom was almost suffocated by the joy of this sudden good news. Roxana said:
“Here is de plan, en she’ll win, sure. I’s a nigger, en nobody ain’t gwyne to doubt it dat hears me talk. I’s wuth six hund’d dollahs. Take en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers.”
Tom was dazed. He was not sure he had heard aright. He was dumb for a moment; then he said:
“Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?”
“Ain’t you my chile? En does you knowanything dat a mother won’t do for her chile? Day ain’t nothin’ a white mother won’t do for her chile. Who made ’em so? De Lord done it. En who made de niggers? De Lord made ’em. In de inside, mothers is all de same. De good Lord he made ’em so. I’s gwyne to be sole into slavery, en in a year you’s gwyne to buy yo’ ole mammy free ag’in. I’ll show you how. Dat’s de plan.”
Tom’s hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them. He said—
“It’s lovely of you, mammy—it’s just—”
“Say it ag’in! En keep on sayin’it!It’s all de pay a body kin want in dis worl’, en it’s mo’ den enough. Laws bless you, honey, when I’s slavin’ aroun’, en dey ’buses me, if I knows you’s a-sayin’ dat, ’way off yonder somers, it’ll heal up all de sore places, en I kin stan’ ’em.”
“Idosay it again, mammy, and I’ll keep on saying it, too. But how am I going to sell you? You’re free, you know.”
“Much diff’rence dat make! White folks ain’t partic’lar. De law kin sell me now if dey tell me to leave de State in six monthsen I don’t go. You draw up a paper—bill o’ sale—en put it ’way off yonder, down in de middle o’ Kaintuck somers, en sign some names to it, en say you’ll sell me cheap ’ca’se you’s hard up; you’ll find you ain’t gwyne to have no trouble. You take me up de country a piece, en sell me on a farm; dem people ain’t gwyne to ask no questions if I’s a bargain.”
Tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an Arkansas cotton-planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars. He did not want to commit this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved him the necessity of going up country to hunt up a purchaser, with the added risk of having to answer a lot of questions, whereas this planter was so pleased with Roxy that he asked next to none at all. Besides, the planter insisted that Roxy wouldn’t know where she was, at first, and that by the time she found out she would already have become contented. And Tom argued with himself that it was an immense advantage for Roxy to have a master who was so pleased withher, as this planter manifestly was. In almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point of even half believing he was doing Roxy a splendid surreptitious service in selling her “down the river.” And then he kept diligently saying to himself all the time: “It’s for only a year. In a year I buy her free again; she’ll keep that in mind, and it’ll reconcile her.” Yes; the little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out right and pleasant in the end, any way. By agreement, the conversation in Roxy’s presence was all about the man’s “upcountry” farm, and how pleasant a place it was, and how happy the slaves were there; so poor Roxy was entirely deceived; and easily, for she was not dreaming that her own son could be guilty of treason to a mother who, in voluntarily going into slavery—slavery of any kind, mild or severe, or of any duration, brief or long—was making a sacrifice for him compared with which death would have been a poor and commonplace one. She lavished tears and loving caresses upon him privately, and then went away withher owner—went away broken-hearted, and yet proud of what she was doing, and glad it was in her power to do it.
Tom squared his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very letter of his reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again. He had three hundred dollars left. According to his mother’s plan, he was to put that safely away, and add her half of his pension to it monthly. In one year this fund would buy her free again.
For a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the villainy which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his rag of a conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was presently able to sleep like any other miscreant.
The boat bore Roxy away from St. Louis at four in the afternoon, and she stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle-box and watched Tom through a blur of tears until he melted into the throng of people and disappeared; then she looked no more, butsat there on a coil of cable crying till far into the night. When she went to her foul steerage-bunk at last, between the clashing engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for the morning, and, waiting, grieve.
It had been imagined that she “would not know,” and would think she was traveling up stream. She! Why, she had been steamboating for years. At dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on the cable-coil again. She passed many a snag whose “break” could have told her a thing to break her heart, for it showed a current moving in the same direction that the boat was going; but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she did not notice. But at last the roar of a bigger and nearer break than usual brought her out of her torpor, and she looked up, and her practised eye fell upon that telltale rush of water. For one moment her petrified gaze fixed itself there. Then her head dropped upon her breast, and she said—
“Oh, de good Lord God have mercy on po’ sinful me—I’s sole down de river!”
The Judge Utters Dire Prophecy.
Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that you didn’t see him do it.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
July 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
Thesummer weeks dragged by, and then the political campaign opened—opened in pretty warm fashion, and waxed hotter and hotter daily. The twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart, for their self-love was engaged. Their popularity, so general at first, had suffered afterward; mainly because they had beentoopopular, and so a natural reaction had followed. Besides, it had been diligently whispered around that itwas curious—indeed,verycurious—that that wonderful knife of theirs did not turn up—ifit was so valuable, orifit had ever existed. And with the whisperings went chucklings and nudgings and winks, and such things have an effect. The twins considered that success in the election would reinstate them, and that defeat would work them irreparable damage. Therefore they worked hard, but not harder than Judge Driscoll and Tom worked against them in the closing days of the canvas. Tom’s conduct had remained so letter-perfect during two whole months, now, that his uncle not only trusted him with money with which to persuade voters, but trusted him to go and get it himself out of the safe in the private sitting-room.
The closing speech of the campaign was made by Judge Driscoll, and he made it against both of the foreigners. It was disastrously effective. He poured out rivers of ridicule upon them, and forced the big mass-meeting to laugh and applaud. He scoffed at them as adventurers, mountebanks, side-show riff-raff, dime museum freaks; he assailedtheir showy titles with measureless derision; he said they were back-alley barbers disguised as nobilities, peanut peddlers masquerading as gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their brother monkey. At last he stopped and stood still. He waited until the place had become absolutely silent and expectant, then he delivered his deadliest shot; delivered it with ice-cold seriousness and deliberation, with a significant emphasis upon the closing words: he said that he believed that the reward offered for the lost knife was humbug and buncombe, and that its owner would know where to find it whenever he should have occasionto assassinate somebody.
Then he stepped from the stand, leaving a startled and impressive hush behind him instead of the customary explosion of cheers and party cries.
The strange remark flew far and wide over the town and made an extraordinary sensation. Everybody was asking, “What could he mean by that?” And everybody went on asking that question, but in vain; for the Judge only said he knew what he was talkingabout, and stopped there; Tom said he hadn’t any idea what his uncle meant, and Wilson, whenever he was asked what he thought it meant, parried the question by asking the questioner whathethought it meant.
Wilson was elected, the twins were defeated—crushed, in fact, and left forlorn and substantially friendless. Tom went back to St. Louis happy.
Dawson’s Landing had a week of repose, now, and it needed it. But it was in an expectant state, for the air was full of rumors of a new duel. Judge Driscoll’s election labors had prostrated him, but it was said that as soon as he was well enough to entertain a challenge he would get one from Count Luigi.
The brothers withdrew entirely from society, and nursed their humiliation in privacy. They avoided the people, and went out for exercise only late at night, when the streets were deserted.
Roxana Commands.
Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
Thanksgiving Day. Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks, now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
TheFriday after the election was a rainy one in St. Louis. It rained all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its best to wash that soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding. Toward midnight Tom Driscoll arrived at his lodgings from the theatre in the heavy downpour, and closed his umbrella and let himself in; but when he would have shut the door, he found that there was another person entering—doubtless another lodger; this person closed the doorand tramped up-stairs behind Tom. Tom found his door in the dark, and entered it and turned up the gas. When he faced about, lightly whistling, he saw the back of a man. The man was closing and locking his door for him. His whistle faded out and he felt uneasy. The man turned around, a wreck of shabby old clothes, sodden with rain and all a-drip, and showed a black face under an old slouch hat. Tom was frightened. He tried to order the man out, but the words refused to come, and the other man got the start. He said, in a low voice—
“Keep still—I’s yo’ mother!”
Tom sunk in a heap on a chair, and gasped out—
“It was mean of me, and base—I know it; but I meant it for the best, I did indeed—I can swear it.”
Roxana stood awhile looking mutely down on him while he writhed in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime; then she seated herself and took off her hat, and her unkept massesof long brown hair tumbled down about her shoulders.
“It ain’t no fault o’ yo’n dat dat ain’t gray,” she said sadly, noticing the hair.
“I know it, I know it! I’m a scoundrel. But I swear I meant it for the best. It was a mistake, of course, but I thought it was for the best, I truly did.”
Roxana began to cry softly, and presently words began to find their way out between her sobs. They were uttered lamentingly, rather than angrily—
“Sell a pusson down de river—down the river!—for de bes’! I wouldn’t treat a dog so! I is all broke down en wore out, now, en so I reckon it ain’t in me to storm aroun’ no mo’, like I used to when I ’uz trompled on en ’bused. I don’t know—but maybe it’s so. Leastways, I’s suffered so much dat mournin’ seem to come mo’ handy to me now den stormin’.”
These words should have touched Tom Driscoll, but if they did, that effect was obliterated by a stronger one—one which removed the heavy weight of fear which lay upon him,and gave his crushed spirit a most grateful rebound, and filled all his small soul with a deep sense of relief. But he kept prudently still, and ventured no comment. There was a voiceless interval of some duration, now, in which no sounds were heard but the beating of the rain upon the panes, the sighing and complaining of the winds, and now and then a muffled sob from Roxana. The sobs became more and more infrequent, and at last ceased. Then the refugee began to talk again:
“Shet down dat light a little. More. More yit. A pusson dat is hunted don’t like de light. Dah—dat’ll do. I kin see whah you is, en dat’s enough. I’s gwine to tell you de tale, en cut it jes as short as I kin, en den I’ll tell you what you’s got to do. Dat man dat bought me ain’t a bad man; he’s good enough, as planters goes; en if he could ’a’ had his way I’d ’a’ be’n a house servant in his fambly en be’n comfortable: but his wife she was a Yank, en not right down good lookin’, en she riz up agin me straight off; so den dey sent me out to de quarter’mongst de common fiel’ han’s. Dat woman warn’t satisfied even wid dat, but she worked up de overseer ag’in’ me, she ’uz dat jealous en hateful; so de overseer he had me out befo’ day in de mawnin’s en worked me de whole long day as long as dey ’uz any light to see by; en many’s de lashin’s I got ’ca’se I couldn’t come up to de work o’ de stronges’. Dat overseer wuz a Yank, too, outen New Englan’, en anybody down South kin tell you what dat mean.Deyknows how to work a nigger to death, endeyknows how to whale ’em, too—whale ’em till dey backs is welted like a washboard. ’Long at fust my marster say de good word for me to de overseer, but dat ’uz bad for me; for de mistis she fine it out, en arter dat I jist ketched it at every turn—dey warn’t no mercy for me no mo’.”
Tom’s heart was fired—with furyagainstthe planter’s wife; and he said to himself, “But for that meddlesome fool, everything would have gone all right.” He added a deep and bitter curse against her.
The expression of this sentiment was fiercely written in his face, and stood thus revealed toRoxana by a white glare of lightning which turned the somber dusk of the room into dazzling day at that moment. She was pleased—pleased and grateful; for did not that expression show that her child was capable of grieving for his mother’s wrongs and of feeling resentment toward her persecutors?—a thing which she had been doubting. But her flash of happiness was only a flash, and went out again and left her spirit dark; for she said to herself, “He sole me down de river—he can’t feel for a body long: dis’ll pass en go.” Then she took up her tale again.
“’Bout ten days ago I ’uz sayin’ to myself dat I couldn’t las’ many mo’ weeks I ’uz so wore out wid de awful work en de lashin’s, en so downhearted en misable. En I didn’t care no mo’, nuther—life warn’t wuth noth’n’ to me, if I got to go on like dat. Well, when a body is in a frame o’ mine like dat, what do a body care what a body do? Dey was a little sickly nigger wench ’bout ten year ole dat ’uz good to me, en hadn’t no mammy, po’ thing, en I loved her en she loved me; en she come out whah I ’uz workin ’en she hada roasted tater, en tried to slip it to me,—robbin’ herself, you see, ’ca’se she knowed de overseer didn’t gimme enough to eat,—en he ketched her at it, en give her a lick acrost de back wid his stick, which ’uz as thick as a broom-handle, en she drop’ screamin’ on de groun’, en squirmin’ en wallerin’ aroun’ in de dust like a spider dat’s got crippled. I couldn’t stan’ it. All de hell-fire dat ’uz ever in my heart flame’ up, en I snatch de stick outen his han’ en laid him flat. He laid dah moanin’ en cussin’, en all out of his head, you know, en de niggers ’uz plumb sk’yred to death. Dey gathered roun’ him to he’p him, en I jumped on his hoss en took out for de river as tight as I could go. I knowed what dey would do wid me. Soon as he got well he would start in en work me to death if marster let him; en if dey didn’t do dat, they’d sell me furder down de river, en dat’s de same thing. So I ’lowed to drown myself en git out o’ my troubles. It ’uz gitt’n’ towards dark. I ’uz at de river in two minutes. Den I see a canoe, en I says dey ain’t no use to drown myself tell I got to; so I ties de hoss in deedge o’ de timber en shove out down de river, keepin’ in under de shelter o’ de bluff bank en prayin’ for de dark to shet down quick. I had a pow’ful good start, ’ca’se de big house ’uz three mile back f’om de river en on’y de work-mules to ride dah on, en on’y niggers to ride ’em, endeywarn’t gwine to hurry—dey’d gimme all de chance dey could. Befo’ a body could go to de house en back it would be long pas’ dark, en dey couldn’t track de hoss en fine out which way I went tell mawnin’, en de niggers would tell ’em all de lies dey could ’bout it.
“Well, de dark come, en I went on a-spinnin’ down de river. I paddled mo’n two hours, den I warn’t worried no mo’, so I quit paddlin, en floated down de current, considerin’ what I ’uz gwine to do if I didn’t have to drown myself. I made up some plans, en floated along, turnin’ ’em over in my mine. Well, when it ’uz a little pas’ midnight, as I reckoned, en I had come fifteen or twenty mile, I see de lights o’ a steamboat layin’ at de bank, whah dey warn’t no town en no woodyard, en putty soon I ketched de shapeo’ de chimbly-tops ag’in’ de stars, endengood gracious me, I ’most jumped out o’ my skin for joy! It ’uz deGran’ Mogul—I ’uz chambermaid on her for eight seasons in de Cincinnati en Orleans trade. I slid ’long pas’—don’t see nobody stirrin’ nowhah—hear ’em a-hammerin’ away in de engine-room, den I knowed what de matter was—some o’ de machinery’s broke. I got asho’ below de boat and turn’ de canoe loose, den I goes ’long up, en dey ’uz jes one plank out, en I step’ ’board de boat. It ’uz pow’ful hot, deckhan’s en roustabouts ’uz sprawled aroun’ asleep on de fo’cas’l’, de second mate, Jim Bangs, he sot dah on de bitts wid his head down, asleep—’ca’se dat’s de way de second mate stan’ de cap’n’s watch!—en de ole watchman, Billy Hatch, he ’uz a-noddin’ on de companionway;—en I knowed ’em all; ’en, lan’, but dey did look good! I says to myself, I wished old marster’d come alongnowen try to take me—bless yo’ heart, I’s ’mong frien’s, I is. So I tromped right along ’mongst ’em, en went up on de b’iler deck en ’way back aft to de ladies’ cabin guard, en sot down dah in desame cheer dat I’d sot in ’mos’ a hund’d million times, I reckon; en it ’uz jist home ag’in, I tell you!
“In ’bout an hour I heard de ready-bell jingle, en den de racket begin. Putty soon I hear de gong strike. ‘Set her back on de outside,’ I says to myself—‘I reckon I knows dat music!’ I hear de gong ag’in. ‘Come ahead on de inside,’ I says. Gong ag’in. ‘Stop de outside.’ Gong ag’in. ‘Come ahead on de outside—now we’s pinted for Sent Louis, en I’s outer de woods en ain’t got to drown myself at all.’ I knowed deMogul’uz in de Sent Louis trade now, you see. It ’uz jes fair daylight when we passed our plantation, en I seed a gang o’ niggers en white folks huntin’ up en down de sho’, en troublin’ deyselves a good deal ’bout me; but I warn’t troublin’ myself none ’bout dem.
“’Bout dat time Sally Jackson, dat used to be my second chambermaid en ’uz head chambermaid now, she come out on de guard, en ’uz pow’ful glad to see me, en so ’uz all de officers; en I tole ’em I’d got kidnapped en sole down de river, en dey made me uptwenty dollahs en give it to me, en Sally she rigged me out wid good clo’es, en when I got here I went straight to whah you used to wuz, en den I come to dis house, en dey say you’s away but ’spected back every day; so I didn’t dast to go down de river to Dawson’s, ’ca’se I might miss you.
“Well, las’ Monday I ’uz pass’n’ by one o’ dem places in Fourth street whah deh sticks up runaway-nigger bills, en he’ps to ketch ’em, en I seed my marster! I ’mos’ flopped down on de groun’, I felt so gone. He had his back to me, en ’uz talkin’ to de man en givin’ him some bills—nigger-bills, I reckon, en I’se de nigger. He’s offerin’ a reward—dat’s it. Ain’t I right, don’t you reckon?”
Tom had been gradually sinking into a state of ghastly terror, and he said to himself, now: “I’m lost, no matter what turn things take! This man has said to me that he thinks there was something suspicious about that sale. He said he had a letter from a passenger on theGrand Mogulsaying that Roxy came here on that boat and that everybody on board knew all about the case; sohe says that her coming here instead of flying to a free State looks bad for me, and that if I don’t find her for him, and that pretty soon, he will make trouble for me. I never believed that story; I couldn’t believe she would be so dead to all motherly instincts as to come here, knowing the risk she would run of getting me into irremediable trouble. And after all, here she is! And I stupidly swore I would help him find her, thinking it was a perfectly safe thing to promise. If I venture to deliver her up, she—she—but how can I help myself? I’ve got to do that or pay the money, and where’s the money to come from? I—I—well, I should think that if he would swear to treat her kindly hereafter—and she says, herself, that he is a good man—and if he would swear to never allow her to be overworked, or ill fed, or—”
A flash of lightning exposed Tom’s pallid face, drawn and rigid with these worrying thoughts. Roxana spoke up sharply now, and there was apprehension in her voice—
“Turn up dat light! I want to see yo’ face better. Dah now—lemme look at you.Chambers, you’s as white as yo’ shirt! Has you see dat man? Has he be’n to see you?”
“Ye-s.”
“When?”
“Monday noon.”
“Monday noon! Was he on my track?”
“He—well, he thought he was. That is, he hoped he was. This is the bill you saw.” He took it out of his pocket.
“Read it to me!”
She was panting with excitement, and there was a dusky glow in her eyes that Tom could not translate with certainty, but there seemed to be something threatening about it. The handbill had the usual rude woodcut of a turbaned negro woman running, with the customary bundle on a stick over her shoulder, and the heading in bold type, “$100Reward.” Tom read the bill aloud—at least the part that described Roxana and named the master and his St. Louis address and the address of the Fourth-street agency; but he left out the item that applicants for the reward might also apply to Mr. Thomas Driscoll.
“Gimme de bill!”
Tom had folded it and was putting it in his pocket. He felt a chilly streak creeping down his back, but said as carelessly as he could—
“The bill? Why, it isn’t any use to you, you can’t read it. What do you want with it?”
“Gimme de bill!” Tom gave it to her, but with a reluctance which he could not entirely disguise. “Did you read itallto me?”
“Certainly I did.”
“Hole up yo’ han’ en swah to it.”
Tom did it. Roxana put the bill carefully away in her pocket, with her eyes fixed upon Tom’s face all the while; then she said—
“Yo’s lyin’!”
“What would I want to lie about it for?”
“I don’t know—but you is. Dat’s my opinion, anyways. But nemmine ’bout dat. When I seed dat man I ’uz dat sk’yerd dat I could sca’cely wobble home. Den I give a nigger man a dollar for dese clo’es, en I ain’t be’n in a house sence, night ner day, till now. I blacked my face en laid hid in de cellar of aole house dat’s burnt down, daytimes, en robbed de sugar hogsheads en grain sacks on de wharf, nights, to git somethin’ to eat, en never dast to try to buy noth’n’, en I’s ’mos’ starved. En I never dast to come near dis place till dis rainy night, when dey ain’t no people roun’ sca’cely. But to-night I be’n a-stannin’ in de dark alley ever sence night come, waitin’ for you to go by. En here I is.”
She fell to thinking. Presently she said—
“You seed dat man at noon, las’ Monday?”
“Yes.”
“I seed him de middle o’ dat arternoon. He hunted you up, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Did he give you de bill dat time?”
“No, he hadn’t got it printed yet.”
Roxana darted a suspicious glance at him.
“Did you he’p him fix up de bill?”
Tom cursed himself for making that stupid blunder, and tried to rectify it by saying he remembered, now, that itwasat noon Monday that the man gave him the bill. Roxana said—
“You’s lyin’ ag’in, sho.” Then she straightened up and raised her finger:
“Now den! I’s gwine to ask you a question, en I wants to know how you’s gwine to git aroun’ it. You knowed he ’uz arter me; en if you run off, ’stid o’ stayin’ here to he’p him, he’d know dey ’uz somethin’ wrong ’bout dis business, en den he would inquire ’bout you, en dat would take him to yo’ uncle, en yo’ uncle would read de bill en see dat you be’n sellin’ a free nigger down de river, en you knowhim, I reckon! He’d t’ar up de will en kick you outen de house. Now, den, you answer me dis question: hain’t you tole dat man dat I would be sho’ to come here, en den you would fix it so he could set a trap en ketch me?”
Tom recognized that neither lies nor arguments could help him any longer—he was in a vise, with the screw turned on, and out of it there was no budging. His face began to take on an ugly look, and presently he said, with a snarl—
“Well, what could I do? You see, yourself,that I was in his grip and couldn’t get out.”
Roxy scorched him with a scornful gaze awhile, then she said—
“What could you do? You could be Judas to yo’ own mother to save yo’ wuthless hide! Would anybody b’lieve it? No—a dog couldn’t! You is de low-downest orneriest hound dat was ever pup’d into dis worl’—en I’s ’sponsible for it!”—and she spat on him.
He made no effort to resent this. Roxy reflected a moment, then she said—
“Now I’ll tell you what you’s gwine to do. You’s gwine to give dat man de money dat you’s got laid up, en make him wait till you kin go to de Judge en git de res’ en buy me free agin.”
“Thunder! what are you thinking of? Go and ask him for three hundred dollars and odd? What would I tell him I want with it, pray?”
Roxy’s answer was delivered in a serene and level voice—
“You’ll tell him you’s sole me to pay yo’gamblin’ debts en dat you lied to me en was a villain, en dat I ’quires you to git dat money en buy me back ag’in.”
“Why, you’ve gone stark mad! He would tear the will to shreds in a minute—don’t you know that?”
“Yes, I does.”
“Then you don’t believe I’m idiot enough to go to him, do you?”
“I don’t b’lieve nothin’ ’bout it—Iknowsyou’s a-goin’. I knows it ’ca’se you knows dat if you don’t raise dat money I’ll go to him myself, en den he’ll sellyoudown de river, en you kin see how you like it!”
Tom rose, trembling and excited, and there was an evil light in his eye. He strode to the door and said he must get out of this suffocating place for a moment and clear his brain in the fresh air so that he could determine what to do. The door wouldn’t open. Roxy smiled grimly, and said—
“I’s got de key, honey—set down. You needn’t cle’r up yo’ brain none to fine out what you gwine to do—Iknows what you’s gwine to do.” Tom sat down and began to pass hishands through his hair with a helpless and desperate air. Roxy said, “Is dat man in dis house?”
Tom glanced up with a surprised expression, and asked—
“What gave you such an idea?”
“You done it. Gwine out to cle’r yo’ brain! In de fust place you ain’t got none to cle’r, en in de second place yo’ ornery eye tole on you. You’s de low-downest hound dat ever—but I done tole you dat befo’. Now den, dis is Friday. You kin fix it up wid dat man, en tell him you’s gwine away to git de res’ o’ de money, en dat you’ll be back wid it nex’ Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday. You understan’?”
Tom answered sullenly—
“Yes.”
“En when you gits de new bill o’ sale dat sells me to my own self, take en send it in de mail to Mr. Pudd’nhead Wilson, en write on de back dat he’s to keep it tell I come. You understan’?”
“Yes.”
“Dat’s all den. Take yo’ umbreller, en put on yo’ hat.”
“Why?”
“Beca’se you’s gwine to see me home to de wharf. You see dis knife? I’s toted it aroun’ sence de day I seed dat man en bought dese clo’es en it. If he ketch me, I’s gwine to kill myself wid it. Now start along, en go sof’, en lead de way; en if you gives a sign in dis house, or if anybody comes up to you in de street, I’s gwine to jam it right into you. Chambers, does you b’lieve me when I says dat?”
“It’s no use to bother me with that question. I know your word’s good.”
“Yes, it’s diff’rent from yo’n! Shet de light out en move along—here’s de key.”
They were not followed. Tom trembled every time a late straggler brushed by them on the street, and half expected to feel the cold steel in his back. Roxy was right at his heels and always in reach. After tramping a mile they reached a wide vacancy on the deserted wharves, and in this dark and rainy desert they parted.
As Tom trudged home his mind was full of dreary thoughts and wild plans; but at last he said to himself, wearily—
“There is but the one way out. I must follow her plan. But with a variation—I will not ask for the money and ruin myself; I willrobthe old skinflint.”
The Prophecy Realized.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
Dawson’s Landingwas comfortably finishing its season of dull repose and waiting patiently for the duel. Count Luigi was waiting, too; but not patiently, rumor said. Sunday came, and Luigi insisted on having his challenge conveyed. Wilson carried it. Judge Driscoll declined to fight with an assassin—“that is,” he added significantly, “in the field of honor.”
Elsewhere, of course, he would be ready. Wilson tried to convince him that if he had been present himself when Angelo told about the homicide committed by Luigi, he would not have considered the act discreditable toLuigi; but the obstinate old man was not to be moved.
Wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure of his mission. Luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be that the old gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his trifling nephew’s evidence and inferences to be of more value than Wilson’s. But Wilson laughed, and said—
“That is quite simple; that is easily explicable. I am not his doll—his baby—his infatuation: his nephew is. The Judge and his late wife never had any children. The Judge and his wife were past middle age when this treasure fell into their lap. One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can’t tell mud-cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thickand thin. Tom is this old man’s angel; he is infatuated with him. Tom can persuade him into things which other people can’t—not all things; I don’t mean that, but a good many—particularly one class of things: the things that create or abolish personal partialities or prejudices in the old man’s mind. The old man liked both of you. Tom conceived a hatred for you. That was enough; it turned the old man around at once. The oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground when one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it.”
“It’s a curious philosophy,” said Luigi.
“It ain’t a philosophy at all—it’s a fact. And there is something pathetic and beautiful about it, too. I think there is nothing more pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless couples taking a menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their hearts; and then adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a jackass-voiced macaw; and next a couple of hundred screeching song-birds, and presently some fetid guinea-pigs and rabbits, and a howling colony of cats. Itis all a groping and ignorant effort to construct out of base metal and brass filings, so to speak, something to take the place of that golden treasure denied them by Nature, a child. But this is a digression. The unwritten law of this region requires you to kill Judge Driscoll on sight, and he and the community will expect that attention at your hands—though of course your own death by his bullet will answer every purpose. Look out for him! Are you heeled—that is, fixed?”
“Yes, he shall have his opportunity. If he attacks me I will respond.”
As Wilson was leaving, he said—
“The Judge is still a little used up by his campaign work, and will not get out for a day or so; but when he does get out, you want to be on the alert.”
About eleven at night the twins went out for exercise, and started on a long stroll in the veiled moonlight.
Tom Driscoll had landed at Hackett’s Store, two miles below Dawson’s, just about half an hour earlier, the only passenger for that lonely spot, and had walked up the shoreroad and entered Judge Driscoll’s house without having encountered any one either on the road or under the roof.
He pulled down his window-blinds and lighted his candle. He laid off his coat and hat and began his preparations. He unlocked his trunk and got his suit of girl’s clothes out from under the male attire in it, and laid it by. Then he blacked his face with burnt cork and put the cork in his pocket. His plan was, to slip down to his uncle’s private sitting-room below, pass into the bedroom, steal the safe-key from the old gentleman’s clothes, and then go back and rob the safe. He took up his candle to start. His courage and confidence were high, up to this point, but both began to waver a little, now. Suppose he should make a noise, by some accident, and get caught—say, in the act of opening the safe? Perhaps it would be well to go armed. He took the Indian knife from its hiding-place, and felt a pleasant return of his wandering courage. He slipped stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising and his pulses halting at theslightest creak. When he was half-way down, he was disturbed to perceive that the landing below was touched by a faint glow of light. What could that mean? Was his uncle still up? No, that was not likely; he must have left his night-taper there when he went to bed. Tom crept on down, pausing at every step to listen. He found the door standing open, and glanced in. What he saw pleased him beyond measure. His uncle was asleep on the sofa; on a small table at the head of the sofa a lamp was burning low, and by it stood the old man’s small tin cash-box, closed. Near the box was a pile of bank-notes and a piece of paper covered with figures in pencil. The safe-door was not open. Evidently the sleeper had wearied himself with work upon his finances, and was taking a rest.
Tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way toward the pile of notes, stooping low as he went. When he was passing his uncle, the old man stirred in his sleep, and Tom stopped instantly—stopped, and softly drew the knife from its sheath, with his heart thumping, and his eyes fastened uponhis benefactor’s face. After a moment or two he ventured forward again—one step—reached for his prize and seized it, dropping the knife-sheath. Then he felt the old man’s strong grip upon him, and a wild cry of “Help! help!” rang in his ear. Without hesitation he drove the knife home—and was free. Some of the notes escaped from his left hand and fell in the blood on the floor. He dropped the knife and snatched them up and started to fly; transferred them to his left hand, and seized the knife again, in his fright and confusion, but remembered himself and flung it from him, as being a dangerous witness to carry away with him.
He jumped for the stair-foot, and closed the door behind him; and as he snatched his candle and fled upward, the stillness of the night was broken by the sound of urgent footsteps approaching the house. In another moment he was in his room and the twins were standing aghast over the body of the murdered man!
Tom put on his coat, buttoned his hat under it, threw on his suit of girl’s clothes,dropped the veil, blew out his light, locked the room door by which he had just entered, taking the key, passed through his other door into the back hall, locked that door and kept the key, then worked his way along in the dark and descended the back stairs. He was not expecting to meet anybody, for all interest was centered in the other part of the house, now; his calculation proved correct. By the time he was passing through the back-yard, Mrs. Pratt, her servants, and a dozen half-dressed neighbors had joined the twins and the dead, and accessions were still arriving at the front door.
As Tom, quaking as with a palsy, passed out at the gate, three women came flying from the house on the opposite side of the lane. They rushed by him and in at the gate, asking him what the trouble was there, but not waiting for an answer. Tom said to himself, “Those old maids waited to dress—they did the same thing the night Stevens’s house burned down next door.” In a few minutes he was in the haunted house. He lighted a candle and took off his girl-clothes. Therewas blood on him all down his left side, and his right hand was red with the stains of the blood-soaked notes which he had crushed in it; but otherwise he was free from this sort of evidence. He cleansed his hand on the straw, and cleaned most of the smut from his face. Then he burned his male and female attire to ashes, scattered the ashes, and put on a disguise proper for a tramp. He blew out his light, went below, and was soon loafing down the river road with the intent to borrow and use one of Roxy’s devices. He found a canoe and paddled off down-stream, setting the canoe adrift as dawn approached, and making his way by land to the next village, where he kept out of sight till a transient steamer came along, and then took deck passage for St. Louis. He was ill at ease until Dawson’s Landing was behind him; then he said to himself, “All the detectives on earth couldn’t trace me now; there’s not a vestige of a clue left in the world; that homicide will take its place with the permanent mysteries, and people won’t get done trying to guess out the secret of it for fifty years.”
In St. Louis, next morning, he read this brief telegram in the papers—dated at Dawson’s Landing:
Judge Driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated here about midnight by a profligate Italian nobleman or barber on account of a quarrel growing out of the recent election. The assassin will probably be lynched.
Judge Driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated here about midnight by a profligate Italian nobleman or barber on account of a quarrel growing out of the recent election. The assassin will probably be lynched.
“One of the twins!” soliloquized Tom; “how lucky! It is the knife that has done him this grace. We never know when fortune is trying to favor us. I actually cursed Pudd’nhead Wilson in my heart for putting it out of my power to sell that knife. I take it back, now.”
Tom was now rich and independent. He arranged with the planter, and mailed to Wilson the new bill of sale which sold Roxana to herself; then he telegraphed his Aunt Pratt:
Have seen the awful news in the papers and am almost prostrated with grief. Shall start by packet to-day. Try to bear up till I come.
Have seen the awful news in the papers and am almost prostrated with grief. Shall start by packet to-day. Try to bear up till I come.
When Wilson reached the house of mourning and had gathered such details as Mrs. Pratt and the rest of the crowd could tell him,he took command as mayor, and gave orders that nothing should be touched, but everything left as it was until Justice Robinson should arrive and take the proper measures as coroner. He cleared everybody out of the room but the twins and himself. The sheriff soon arrived and took the twins away to jail. Wilson told them to keep heart, and promised to do his best in their defense when the case should come to trial. Justice Robinson came presently, and with him Constable Blake. They examined the room thoroughly. They found the knife and the sheath. Wilson noticed that there were finger-prints on the knife-handle. That pleased him, for the twins had required the earliest comers to make a scrutiny of their hands and clothes, and neither these people nor Wilson himself had found any blood-stains upon them. Could there be a possibility that the twins had spoken the truth when they said they found the man dead when they ran into the house in answer to the cry for help? He thought of that mysterious girl at once. But this was not the sort of work for a girl to be engaged in. Nomatter; Tom Driscoll’s room must be examined.
After the coroner’s jury had viewed the body and its surroundings, Wilson suggested a search up-stairs, and he went along. The jury forced an entrance to Tom’s room, but found nothing, of course.
The coroner’s jury found that the homicide was committed by Luigi, and that Angelo was accessory to it.
The town was bitter against the unfortunates, and for the first few days after the murder they were in constant danger of being lynched. The grand jury presently indicted Luigi for murder in the first degree, and Angelo as accessory before the fact. The twins were transferred from the city jail to the county prison to await trial.
Wilson examined the finger-marks on the knife-handle and said to himself, “Neither of the twins made those marks.” Then manifestly there was another person concerned, either in his own interest or as hired assassin.
But who could it be? That, he must try to find out. The safe was not open, thecash-box was closed, and had three thousand dollars in it. Then robbery was not the motive, and revenge was. Where had the murdered man an enemy except Luigi? There was but that one person in the world with a deep grudge against him.
The mysterious girl! The girl was a great trial to Wilson. If the motive had been robbery, the girl might answer; but there wasn’t any girl that would want to take this old man’s life for revenge. He had no quarrels with girls; he was a gentleman.
Wilson had perfect tracings of the finger-marks of the knife-handle; and among his glass-records he had a great array of finger-prints of women and girls, collected during the last fifteen or eighteen years, but he scanned them in vain, they successfully withstood every test; among them were no duplicates of the prints on the knife.
The presence of the knife on the stage of the murder was a worrying circumstance for Wilson. A week previously he had as good as admitted to himself that he believed Luigi had possessed such a knife, and that he stillpossessed it notwithstanding his pretense that it had been stolen. And now here was the knife, and with it the twins. Half the town had said the twins were humbugging when they claimed that they had lost their knife, and now these people were joyful, and said, “I told you so!”
If their finger-prints had been on the handle—but it was useless to bother any further about that; the finger-prints on the handle werenottheirs—that he knew perfectly.
Wilson refused to suspect Tom; for first, Tom couldn’t murder anybody—he hadn’t character enough; secondly, if he could murder a person he wouldn’t select his doting benefactor and nearest relative; thirdly, self-interest was in the way; for while the uncle lived, Tom was sure of a free support and a chance to get the destroyed will revived again, but with the uncle gone, that chance was gone, too. It was true the will had really been revived, as was now discovered, but Tom could not have been aware of it, or he would have spoken of it, in his native talky, unsecretive way. Finally, Tom was in St. Louis whenthe murder was done, and got the news out of the morning journals, as was shown by his telegram to his aunt. These speculations were unemphasized sensations rather than articulated thoughts, for Wilson would have laughed at the idea of seriously connecting Tom with the murder.
Wilson regarded the case of the twins as desperate—in fact, about hopeless. For he argued that if a confederate was not found, an enlightened Missouri jury would hang them, sure; if a confederate was found, that would not improve the matter, but simply furnish one more person for the sheriff to hang. Nothing could save the twins but the discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal account—an undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible. Still, the person who made the finger-prints must be sought. The twins might have no casewithhim, but they certainly would have none without him.
So Wilson mooned around, thinking, thinking, guessing, guessing, day and night, and arriving nowhere. Whenever he ran across a girl or a woman he was not acquainted with,he got her finger-prints, on one pretext or another; and they always cost him a sigh when he got home, for they never tallied with the finger-marks on the knife-handle.
As to the mysterious girl, Tom swore he knew no such girl, and did not remember ever seeing a girl wearing a dress like the one described by Wilson. He admitted that he did not always lock his room, and that sometimes the servants forgot to lock the house doors; still, in his opinion the girl must have made but few visits or she would have been discovered. When Wilson tried to connect her with the stealing-raid, and thought she might have been the old woman’s confederate, if not the very thief herself disguised as an old woman, Tom seemed stuck, and also much interested, and said he would keep a sharp eye out for this person or persons, although he was afraid that she or they would be too smart to venture again into a town where everybody would now be on the watch for a good while to come.
Everybody was pitying Tom, he looked so quiet and sorrowful, and seemed to feel his great loss so deeply. He was playing a part,but it was not all a part. The picture of his alleged uncle, as he had last seen him, was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when he was awake, and called again in his dreams, when he was asleep. He wouldn’t go into the room where the tragedy had happened. This charmed the doting Mrs. Pratt, who realized now, “as she had never done before,” she said, what a sensitive and delicate nature her darling had, and how he adored his poor uncle.