A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court Read Online

intelligent, courte- ous, and in every way a brick, and fur- tHer assisted by Sir Palamides the Sara- cen, who is no huckleberry hinself.  This is no pic-nic, these boys mean busine&s.

The readers of the Hosannah will re- gret to learn that the hadndsome and popular Sir Charolais of Gaul, who dur- ing his four weeks’ stay at the Bull and Halibut, this city, has won every heart by his polished manners and elegant cPnversation, will pUll out to-day for home.  Give us another call, Charley!

The bdsiness end of the funeral of the late Sir Dalliance the duke’s son of Cornwall, killed in an encounter with the Giant of the Knotted Bludgeon last Tuesday on the borders of the Plain of Enchantment was in the hands of the ever affable and efficient Mumble, prince of un3ertakers, then whom there exists none by whom it were a more satisfying pleasure to have the last sad offices performed.  Give him a trial.

The cordial thanks of the Hosannah office are due, from editor down to devil, to the ever courteous and thought- ful Lord High Stew d of the Palace’s Third Assistant V t for several sau- ceTs of ice crEam a quality calculated to make the ey of the recipients hu- mid with grt ude; and it done it.  When this administration wants to chalk up a desirable name for early promotion, the Hosannah would like a chance to sudgest.

The Demoiselle Irene Dewlap, of South Astolat, is visiting her uncle, the popular host of the Cattlemen’s Board- ing Ho&se, Liver Lane, this city.

Young Barker the bellows-mender is hoMe again, and looks much improved by his vacation round-up among the out- lying smithies.  See his ad.

Of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; I knew that quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing.  The “Court Circular” pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those disgraceful familiarities.  But even it could have been improved.  Do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court circular, I acknowledge that.  There is a profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one’s sincerest efforts to make them sparkle and enthuse.  The best way to manage—­in fact, the only sensible way—­is to disguise repetitiousness of fact under variety of form:  skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words.  It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything; this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a good appetite, and perhaps never notice that it’s a barrel of soup made out of a single bean.  Clarence’s way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all I say is, it was not the best way: 

 

COURT CIRCULAR.

On Monday, the king rode in the park.

" Tuesday, " " "

" Wendesday " " "

" Thursday " " "

" Friday, " " "

" Saturday " " "

" Sunday, " " "

 

However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it.  Little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything, and it was good enough Arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and better than was needed in Arthur’s day and realm.  As a rule, the grammar was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but I did not much mind these things.  They are common defects of my own, and one mustn’t criticise other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself.

I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole paper at this one meal, but I got only a few bites, and then had to postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eager questions:  What is this curious thing?  What is it for?  Is it a handkerchief?—­saddle blanket?—­part of a shirt?  What is it made of?  How thin it is, and how dainty and frail; and how it rattles.  Will it wear, do you think, and won’t the rain injure it?  Is it writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation?  They suspected it was writing, because those among them who knew how to read Latin and had a smattering of Greek, recognized some of the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a whole.  I put my information in the simplest form I could: 

“It is a public journal; I will explain what that is, another time.  It is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time I will explain what paper is.  The lines on it are reading matter; and not written by hand, but printed; by and by I will explain what printing is.  A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute detail—­they can’t be told apart.”  Then they all broke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration: 

“A thousand!  Verily a mighty work—­a year’s work for many men.”

“No—­merely a day’s work for a man and a boy.”

They crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two.

“Ah-h—­a miracle, a wonder!  Dark work of enchantment.”

I let it go at that.  Then I read in a low voice, to as many as could crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part of the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and was accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through:  “Ah-h-h!” “How true!” “Amazing, amazing!” “These be the very haps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!” And might they take this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examine it?—­they would be very careful.  Yes.  So they took it, handling it as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy thing come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture, caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes.  These grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes —­how beautiful to me!  For was not this my darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent tribute and unforced compliment to it?  I knew, then, how a mother feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby, and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it were not, for that time.  I knew how she feels, and that there is no other satisfied ambition, whether of king, conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches half-way to that serene far summit or yields half so divine a contentment.

During all the rest of the séance my paper traveled from group to group all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye was upon it always, and I sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction, drunk with enjoyment.  Yes, this was heaven; I was tasting it once, if I might never taste it more.

Chapter 27 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 améliorations.  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 28 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 29 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 30 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 31 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.

Chapter 32 DOWLEY’S HUMILIATION

Well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Saturday afternoon, I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting.  They were sure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves as accessories to this bankruptcy.  You see, in addition to the dinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, I had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family:  for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tables of their class as was ice-cream to a hermit’s; also a sizeable deal dinner-table; also two entire pounds of salt, which was another piece of extravagance in those people’s eyes; also crockery, stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on.  I instructed the Marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to give me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little.  Concerning the new clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were up and down, all night, to see if it wasn’t nearly daylight, so that they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much as an hour before dawn was due.  Then their pleasure—­not to say delirium—­was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of it paid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered.  The king had slept just as usual—­like the dead.  The Marcos could not thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but they tried every way they could think of to make him see how grateful they were.  Which all went for nothing:  he didn’t notice any change.

It turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which is just a June day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to be out of doors.  Toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembled under a great tree and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances.  Even the king’s reserve melted a little, though it was some little trouble to him to adjust himself to the name of Jones along at first.  I had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer; but I had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the thing stand at that, and not elaborate it any.  Because he was just the kind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing like that if you didn’t warn him, his tongue was so handy, and his spirit so willing, and his information so uncertain.

Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and then adroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text and himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him hum.  Self-made man, you know.  They know how to talk.  They do deserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true; and they are among the very first to find it out, too.  He told how he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest master lived; how his day’s work was from sixteen to eighteen hours long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade—­or “mystery” as Dowley called it.  That was his first great rise, his first gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn’t yet speak of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a gilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common human being.  He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but on his graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linens and made him feel unspeakably rich and fine.

“I remember me of that day!” the wheelwright sang out, with enthusiasm.

“And I likewise!” cried the mason.  “I would not believe they were thine own; in faith I could not.”

“Nor other!” shouted Dowley, with sparkling eyes.  “I was like to lose my character, the neighbors wending I had mayhap been stealing.  It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth not days like that.”

Yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and always had a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it white bread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak.  And in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter.

“And now consider what is come to pass,” said he, impressively.  “Two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table.”  He made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added —­“and eight times salt meat.”

“It is even true,” said the wheelwright, with bated breath.

“I know it of mine own knowledge,” said the mason, in the same reverent fashion.

“On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year,” added the master smith, with solemnity.  “I leave it to your own consciences, friends, if this is not also true?”

“By my head, yes,” cried the mason.

“I can testify it—­and I do,” said the wheelwright.

“And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment is.”  He waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank and unhampered freedom of speech, and added:  “Speak as ye are moved; speak as ye would speak; an I were not here.”

“Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeit your family is but three,” said the wheelwright, with deep respect.

“And six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewter to eat and drink from withal,” said the mason, impressively.  “And I say it as knowing God is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth.”

“Now ye know what manner of man I am, brother Jones,” said the smith, with a fine and friendly condescension, “and doubtless ye would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect and but sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality be assured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye well ye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but is willing to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrieth a right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest.  And in token of it, here is my hand; and I say with my own mouth we are equals—­equals”—­and he smiled around on the company with the satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and gracious thing and is quite well aware of it.

The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and let go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of which had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural to one who was being called upon by greatness.

The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree.  It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and a sumptuous article of deal.  But the surprise rose higher still when the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore, but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, slowly unfolded an actual simón-pure tablecloth and spread it.  That was a notch above even the blacksmith’s domestic grandeurs, and it hit him hard; you could see it.  But Marco was in Paradise; you could see that, too.  Then the dame brought two fine new stools—­whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes of every guest.  Then she brought two more—­as calmly as she could.  Sensation again—­with awed murmurs.  Again she brought two —­walking on air, she was so proud.  The guests were petrified, and the mason muttered: 

“There is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence.”

As the dame turned away, Marco couldn’t help slapping on the climax while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a languid composure but was a poor imitation of it: 

“These suffice; leave the rest.”

So there were more yet!  It was a fine effect.  I couldn’t have played the hand better myself.

From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped “Oh’s” and “Ah’s,” and mute upliftings of hands and eyes.  She fetched crockery—­new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white wheaten bread.  Take it by and large, that spread laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had seen before.  And while they sat there just simply stupefied with wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper’s son emerged from space and said he had come to collect.

“That’s all right,” I said, indifferently.  “What is the amount? give us the items.”

Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate waves of terror and admiration surged over Marco’s: 

2 pounds salt … … … … . . 200
8 dozen pints beer, in the wood … . . 800
3 bushels wheat … … … … . 2,700
2 pounds fish … … … … . . 100
3 hens … … … … … . . 400
1 goose … … … … … . . 400
3 dozen eggs … … … … . . 150
1 roast of beef … … … … . 450
1 roast of mutton … … … … 400
1 ham … … … … … … 800
1 sucking pig … … … … . . 500
2 crockery dinner sets … … … 6,000
2 men’s suits and underwear … … . 2,800
1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown
and underwear … … … … . 1,600
8 wooden goblets … … … … 800
Various table furniture … … … 10,000
1 deal table … … … … . . 3,000
8 stools … … … … … . 4,000
2 miller guns, loaded … … … . 3,000

He ceased.  There was a pale and awful silence.  Not a limb stirred.  Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath.

“Is that all?” I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness.

“All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head hight sundries.  If it would like you, I will sepa—­”

“It is of no consequence,” I said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference; “give me the grand total, please.”

The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said: 

“Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!”

The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of: 

“God be with us in the day of disaster!”

The clerk hastened to say: 

“My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you—­”

I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money and tossed four dollars on to the table.  Ah, you should have seen them stare!

The clerk was astonished and charmed.  He asked me to retain one of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and —­I interrupted: 

“What, and fetch back nine cents?  Nonsense!  Take the whole.  Keep the change.”

There was an amazed murmur to this effect: 

“Verily this being is made of money!  He throweth it away even as if it were dirt.”

The blacksmith was a crushed man.

The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune.  I said to Marco and his wife: 

“Good folk, here is a little trifle for you”—­handing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day: 

“Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is.  Come, fall to.”

Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy.  I don’t know that I ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular effects out of the materials available.  The blacksmith—­well, he was simply mashed.  Land!  I wouldn’t have felt what that man was feeling, for anything in the world.  Here he had been blowing and bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white bread every Sunday the year round—­all for a family of three; the entire cost for the year not above 69.2.6 (sixty-nine cents, two mills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along a man who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and not only that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such small sums.  Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up and collapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that’s been stepped on by a cow.

Chapter 33 SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY

However, I made a dead set at him, and before the first third of the dinner was reached, I had him happy again.  It was easy to do—­in a country of ranks and castes.  You see, in a country where they have ranks and castes, a man isn’t ever a man, he is only part of a man, he can’t ever get his full growth.  You prove your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that’s the end of it—­he knuckles down.  You can’t insult him after that.  No, I don’t mean quite that; of course you can insult him, I only mean it’s difficult; and so, unless you’ve got a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn’t pay to try.  I had the smith’s reverence now, because I was apparently immensely prosperous and rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some little gimcrack title of nobility.  And not only his, but any commoner’s in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt in all three.  This was to remain so, as long as England should exist in the earth.  With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored the creators of this world—­after God—­Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell.

The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness and went off to take a nap.  Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placed the beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters near and dear to the hearts of our sort—­business and wages, of course.  At a first glance, things appeared to be exceeding prosperous in this little tributary kingdom—­whose lord was King Bagdemagus—­as compared with the state of things in my own region.  They had the “protection” system in full force here, whereas we were working along down toward free-trade, by easy stages, and were now about half way.  Before long, Dowley and I were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening.  Dowley warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and they did have something of that look: 

“In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?”

“Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent.”

The smith’s face beamed with joy.  He said: 

“With us they are allowed the double of it!  And what may a mechanic get—­carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, and the like?”

“On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day.”

“Ho-ho!  With us they are allowed a hundred!  With us any good mechanic is allowed a cent a day!  I count out the tailor, but not the others—­they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they get more—­yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen milrays a day.  I’ve paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within the week.  ’Rah for protection—­to Sheol with free-trade!”

And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst.  But I didn’t scare at all.  I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth—­drive him all in —­drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should show above ground.  Here is the way I started in on him.  I asked: 

“What do you pay a pound for salt?”

“A hundred milrays.”

“We pay forty.  What do you pay for beef and mutton—­when you buy it?” That was a neat hit; it made the color come.

“It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say seventy-five milrays the pound.”

“We pay thirty-three.  What do you pay for eggs?”

“Fifty milrays the dozen.”

“We pay twenty.  What do you pay for beer?”

“It costeth us eight and one-half milrays the pint.”

“We get it for four; twenty-five bottles for a cent. 
What do you pay for wheat?”

“At the rate of nine hundred milrays the bushel.”

“We pay four hundred.  What do you pay for a man’s tow-linen suit?”

“Thirteen cents.”

“We pay six.  What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the laborer or the mechanic?”

“We pay eight cents, four mills.”

“Well, observe the difference:  you pay eight cents and four mills, we pay only four cents.”  I prepared now to sock it to him.  I said:  “Look here, dear friend, what’s become of your high wages you were bragging so about a few minutes ago?”—­and I looked around on the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped up on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his ever noticing that he was being tied at all.  “What’s become of those noble high wages of yours?—­I seem to have knocked the stuffing all out of them, it appears to me.”

But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that is all! he didn’t grasp the situation at all, didn’t know he had walked into a trap, didn’t discover that he was in a trap.  I could have shot him, from sheer vexation.  With cloudy eye and a struggling intellect he fetched this out: 

“Marry, I seem not to understand.  It is proved that our wages be double thine; how then may it be that thou’st knocked therefrom the stuffing?—­an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the first time under grace and providence of God it hath been granted me to hear it.”

Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with him and were of his mind—­if you might call it mind.  My position was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified more?  However, I must try: 

“Why, look here, brother Dowley, don’t you see?  Your wages are merely higher than ours in name, not in fact.”

“Hear him!  They are the double—­ye have confessed it yourself.”

“Yes-yes, I don’t deny that at all.  But that’s got nothing to do with it; the amount of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do with it.  The thing is, how much can you buy with your wages? —­that’s the idea.  While it is true that with you a good mechanic is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only about a dollar and seventy-five—­”

“There—­ye’re confessing it again, ye’re confessing it again!”

“Confound it, I’ve never denied it, I tell you!  What I say is this.  With us half a dollar buys more than a dollar buys with you—­and THEREFORE it stands to reason and the commonest kind of common-sense, that our wages are higher than yours.”

He looked dazed, and said, despairingly: 

“Verily, I cannot make it out.  Ye’ve just said ours are the higher, and with the same breath ye take it back.”

“Oh, great Scott, isn’t it possible to get such a simple thing through your head?  Now look here—­let me illustrate.  We pay four cents for a woman’s stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is four mills more than double.  What do you allow a laboring woman who works on a farm?”

“Two mills a day.”

“Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth of a cent a day; and—­”

“Again ye’re conf—­”

“Wait!  Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you’ll understand it.  For instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earn her gown, at 2 mills a day—­7 weeks’ work; but ours earns hers in forty days—­two days short of 7 weeks.  Your woman has a gown, and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, and two days’ wages left, to buy something else with.  There—­now you understand it!”

He looked—­well, he merely looked dubious, it’s the most I can say; so did the others.  I waited—­to let the thing work.  Dowley spoke at last—­and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn’t gotten away from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet.  He said, with a trifle of hesitancy: 

“But—­but—­ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better than one.”

Shucks!  Well, of course, I hated to give it up.  So I chanced another flyer: 

“Let us suppose a case.  Suppose one of your journeymen goes out and buys the following articles: 

“1 pound of salt; 1 dozen eggs; 1 dozen pints of beer; 1 bushel of wheat; 1 tow-linen suit; 5 pounds of beef; 5 pounds of mutton.

“The lot will cost him 32 cents.  It takes him 32 working days to earn the money—­5 weeks and 2 days.  Let him come to us and work 32 days at half the wages; he can buy all those things for a shade under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29 days’ work, and he will have about half a week’s wages over.  Carry it through the year; he would save nearly a week’s wages every two months, your man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks’ wages in a year, your man not a cent. Now I reckon you understand that ‘high wages’ and ‘low wages’ are phrases that don’t mean anything in the world until you find out which of them will buy the most!”

It was a crusher.

But, alas! it didn’t crush.  No, I had to give it up.  What those people valued was high wages; it didn’t seem to be a matter of any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not.  They stood for “protection,” and swore by it, which was reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them into the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages.  I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages had advanced but 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced 40 per cent. while the cost of living had gone steadily down.  But it didn’t do any good.  Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs.

Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat.  Undeserved defeat, but what of that?  That didn’t soften the smart any.  And to think of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant country blacksmith!  And I could see that those others were sorry for me—­which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers scorching.  Put yourself in my place; feel as mean as I did, as ashamed as I felt—­wouldn’t you have struck below the belt to get even?  Yes, you would; it is simply human nature.  Well, that is what I did.  I am not trying to justify it; I’m only saying that I was mad, and anybody would have done it.

Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don’t plan out a love-tap; no, that isn’t my way; as long as I’m going to hit him at all, I’m going to hit him a lifter.  And I don’t jump at him all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way business of it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him gradually, so that he never suspects that I’m going to hit him at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he’s flat on his back, and he can’t tell for the life of him how it all happened.  That is the way I went for brother Dowley.  I started to talking lazy and comfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; and the oldest man in the world couldn’t have taken the bearings of my starting place and guessed where I was going to fetch up: 

“Boys, there’s a good many curious things about law, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it; yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement, too.  There are written laws—­they perish; but there are also unwritten laws—­they are eternal.  Take the unwritten law of wages:  it says they’ve got to advance, little by little, straight through the centuries.  And notice how it works.  We know what wages are now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that’s the wages of to-day.  We know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that’s as far back as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago.  Good, so far.  Do we stop there?  No.  We stop looking backward; we face around and apply the law to the future.  My friends, I can tell you what people’s wages are going to be at any date in the future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

“What, goodman, what!”

“Yes.  In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be allowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6.”

“I would’t I might die now and live then!” interrupted Smug, the wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye.

“And that isn’t all; they’ll get their board besides—­such as it is:  it won’t bloat them.  Two hundred and fifty years later—­pay attention now—­a mechanic’s wages will be—­mind you, this is law, not guesswork; a mechanic’s wages will then be twenty cents a day!”

There was a general gasp of awed astonishment, Dickon the mason murmured, with raised eyes and hands: 

“More than three weeks’ pay for one day’s work!”

“Riches!—­of a truth, yes, riches!” muttered Marco, his breath coming quick and short, with excitement.

“Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and forty years more there’ll be at least one country where the mechanic’s average wage will be two hundred cents a day!”

It knocked them absolutely dumb!  Not a man of them could get his breath for upwards of two minutes.  Then the coal-burner said prayerfully: 

“Might I but live to see it!”

“It is the income of an earl!” said Smug.

“An earl, say ye?” said Dowley; “ye could say more than that and speak no lie; there’s no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus that hath an income like to that.  Income of an earl—­mf! it’s the income of an angel!”

“Now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages.  In that remote day, that man will earn, with one week’s work, that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of fifty weeks to earn now.  Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen, too.  Brother Dowley, who is it that determines, every spring, what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, and servant shall be for that year?”

“Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all, the magistrate.  Ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistrate that fixes the wages.”

“Doesn’t ask any of those poor devils to help him fix their wages for them, does he?”

“Hm!  That were an idea!  The master that’s to pay him the money is the one that’s rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice.”

“Yes—­but I thought the other man might have some little trifle at stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures.  The masters are these:  nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally.  These few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shall have who do work.  You see?  They’re a ’combine’—­a trade union, to coin a new phrase—­who band themselves together to force their lowly brother to take what they choose to give.  Thirteen hundred years hence—­so says the unwritten law—­the ‘combine’ will be the other way, and then how these fine people’s posterity will fume and fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of trade unions!  Yes, indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the wages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century; and then all of a sudden the wage-earner will consider that a couple of thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing; and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself.  Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliation to settle.”

“Do ye believe—­”

“That he actually will help to fix his own wages?  Yes, indeed.  And he will be strong and able, then.”

“Brave times, brave times, of a truth!” sneered the prosperous smith.

“Oh,—­and there’s another detail.  In that day, a master may hire a man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time, if he wants to.”

“What?”

“It’s true.  Moreover, a magistrate won’t be able to force a man to work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the man wants to or not.”

“Will there be no law or sense in that day?”

“Both of them, Dowley.  In that day a man will be his own property, not the property of magistrate and master.  And he can leave town whenever he wants to, if the wages don’t suit him!—­and they can’t put him in the pillory for it.”

“Perdition catch such an age!” shouted Dowley, in strong indignation.  “An age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors and respect for authority!  The pillory—­”

“Oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution.  I think the pillory ought to be abolished.”

“A most strange idea.  Why?”

“Well, I’ll tell you why.  Is a man ever put in the pillory for a capital crime?”

“No.”

“Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a small offense and then kill him?”

There was no answer.  I had scored my first point!  For the first time, the smith wasn’t up and ready.  The company noticed it.  Good effect.

“You don’t answer, brother.  You were about to glorify the pillory a while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn’t going to use it.  I think the pillory ought to be abolished.  What usually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some little offense that didn’t amount to anything in the world?  The mob try to have some fun with him, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“They begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to pieces to see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?”

“Yes.”

“Then they throw dead cats at him, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that mob and here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge against him—­and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community, for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another—­stones and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don’t they?”

“There is no doubt of it.”

“As a rule he is crippled for life, isn’t he?—­jaws broken, teeth smashed out?—­or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off? —­or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?”

“It is true, God knoweth it.”

“And if he is unpopular he can depend on dying, right there in the stocks, can’t he?”

“He surely can!  One may not deny it.”

“I take it none of you are unpopular—­by reason of pride or insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things that excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? You wouldn’t think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?”

Dowley winced, visibly.  I judged he was hit.  But he didn’t betray it by any spoken word.  As for the others, they spoke out plainly, and with strong feeling.  They said they had seen enough of the stocks to know what a man’s chance in them was, and they would never consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quick death by hanging.

“Well, to change the subject—­for I think I’ve established my point that the stocks ought to be abolished.  I think some of our laws are pretty unfair.  For instance, if I do a thing which ought to deliver me to the stocks, and you know I did it and yet keep still and don’t report me, you will get the stocks if anybody informs on you.”

“Ah, but that would serve you but right,” said Dowley, “for you must inform.  So saith the law.”

The others coincided.

“Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down.  But there’s one thing which certainly isn’t fair.  The magistrate fixes a mechanic’s wage at one cent a day, for instance.  The law says that if any master shall venture, even under utmost press of business, to pay anything over that cent a day, even for a single day, he shall be both fined and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he did it and doesn’t inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried.  Now it seems to me unfair, Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil—­”

Oh, I tell you it was a smasher!  You ought to have seen them to go to pieces, the whole gang.  I had just slipped up on poor smiling and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, that he never suspected anything was going to happen till the blow came crashing down and knocked him all to rags.

A fine effect.  In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with so little time to work it up in.

But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little.  I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn’t expecting to scare them to death.  They were mighty near it, though.  You see they had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go and report—­well, it was awful, and they couldn’t seem to recover from the shock, they couldn’t seem to pull themselves together.  Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful?  Why, they weren’t any better than so many dead men.  It was very uncomfortable.  Of course, I thought they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands, and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end.  But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed and suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantage taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates.  Appeal to me to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous?  Of course, they wanted to, but they couldn’t dare.

Chapter 34 THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES

Well, what had I better do?  Nothing in a hurry, sure.  I must get up a diversion; anything to employ me while I could think, and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life again.  There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to get the hang of his miller-gun—­turned to stone, just in the attitude he was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in his unconscious fingers.  So I took it from him and proposed to explain its mystery.  Mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet it was mysterious enough, for that race and that age.

I never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, they were totally unused to it.  The miller-gun was a little double-barreled tube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a spring to it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape.  But the shot wouldn’t hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand.  In the gun were two sizes—­wee mustard-seed shot, and another sort that were several times larger.  They were money.  The mustard-seed shot represented milrays, the larger ones mills.  So the gun was a purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the dark with it, with accuracy; and you could carry it in your mouth; or in your vest pocket, if you had one.  I made them of several sizes —­one size so large that it would carry the equivalent of a dollar.  Using shot for money was a good thing for the government; the metal cost nothing, and the money couldn’t be counterfeited, for I was the only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot tower.  “Paying the shot” soon came to be a common phrase.  Yes, and I knew it would still be passing men’s lips, away down in the nineteenth century, yet none would suspect how and when it originated.

The king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap, and feeling good.  Anything could make me nervous now, I was so uneasy—­for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me to detect a complacent something in the king’s eye which seemed to indicate that he had been loading himself up for a performance of some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choose such a time as this?

I was right.  He began, straight off, in the most innocently artful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up to the subject of agriculture.  The cold sweat broke out all over me.  I wanted to whisper in his ear, “Man, we are in awful danger! every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men’s confidence; don’t waste any of this golden time.”  But of course I couldn’t do it.  Whisper to him?  It would look as if we were conspiring.  So I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while the king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about his damned onions and things.  At first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion and fifing and drumming that I couldn’t take in a word; but presently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallize and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and quiet ensued and I caught the boom of the king’s batteries, as if out of remote distance: 

“—­were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be denied that authorities differ as concerning this point, some contending that the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken early from the tree—­”

The audience showed signs of life, and sought each other’s eyes in a surprised and troubled way.

“—­whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, that this is not of necessity the case, instancing that plums and other like cereals do be always dug in the unripe state—­”

The audience exhibited distinct distress; yes, and also fear.

“—­yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when one doth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of the tranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage—­”

The wild light of terror began to glow in these men’s eyes, and one of them muttered, “These be errors, every one—­God hath surely smitten the mind of this farmer.”  I was in miserable apprehension; I sat upon thorns.

“—­and further instancing the known truth that in the case of animals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of the creature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe, his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which defect, taken in connection with his several rancid habits, and fulsome appetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious quality of morals—­”

They rose and went for him!  With a fierce shout, “The one would betray us, the other is mad!  Kill them!  Kill them!” they flung themselves upon us.  What joy flamed up in the king’s eye!  He might be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just in his line.  He had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight.  He hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clear off his feet and stretched him flat on his back.  “St. George for Britain!” and he downed the wheelwright.  The mason was big, but I laid him out like nothing.  The three gathered themselves up and came again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeating this, with native British pluck, until they were battered to jelly, reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they couldn’t tell us from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away with what might was left in them.  Hammering each other—­for we stepped aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to business of so many bulldogs.  We looked on without apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safe from intrusion.

Well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what had become of Marco.  I looked around; he was nowhere to be seen.  Oh, but this was ominous!  I pulled the king’s sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut.  No Marco there, no Phyllis there!  They had gone to the road for help, sure.  I told the king to give his heels wings, and I would explain later.  We made good time across the open ground, and as we darted into the shelter of the wood I glanced back and saw a mob of excited peasants swarm into view, with Marco and his wife at their head.  They were making a world of noise, but that couldn’t hurt anybody; the wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depths we would take to a tree and let them whistle.  Ah, but then came another sound—­dogs!  Yes, that was quite another matter.  It magnified our contract—­we must find running water.

We tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behind and modified to a murmur.  We struck a stream and darted into it.  We waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as much as three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a great bough sticking out over the water.  We climbed up on this bough, and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree; now we began to hear those sounds more plainly; so the mob had struck our trail.  For a while the sounds approached pretty fast.  And then for another while they didn’t.  No doubt the dogs had found the place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzing up and down the shores trying to pick up the trail again.

When we were snugly lodged in the tree and curtained with foliage, the king was satisfied, but I was doubtful.  I believed we could crawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and I judged it worth while to try.  We tried it, and made a success of it, though the king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to connect.  We got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment among the foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt.

Presently we heard it coming—­and coming on the jump, too; yes, and down both sides of the stream.  Louder—­louder—­next minute it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, and swept by like a cyclone.

“I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something to them,” said I, “but I don’t mind the disappointment.  Come, my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time.  We’ve flanked them.  Dark is coming on, presently.  If we can cross the stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from somebody’s pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough.”

We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed to hear the hunt returning.  We stopped to listen.

“Yes,” said I, “they’re baffled, they’ve given it up, they’re on their way home.  We will climb back to our roost again, and let them go by.”

So we climbed back.  The king listened a moment and said: 

“They still search—­I wit the sign.  We did best to abide.”

He was right.  He knew more about hunting than I did.  The noise approached steadily, but not with a rush.  The king said: 

“They reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them, and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we took the water.”

“Yes, sire, that is about it, I am afraid, though I was hoping better things.”

The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting under us, on both sides of the water.  A voice called a halt from the other bank, and said: 

“An they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branch that overhangs, and yet not touch ground.  Ye will do well to send a man up it.”

“Marry, that we will do!”

I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing and swapping trees to beat it.  But, don’t you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight?  Awkwardness and stupidity can.  The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.  Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make any valuable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right one?  And that is what he did.  He went for the wrong tree, which was, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started.

Matters were serious now.  We remained still, and awaited developments.  The peasant toiled his difficult way up.  The king raised himself up and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer’s head arrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the man floundering to the ground.  There was a wild outbreak of anger below, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we were treed, and prisoners.  Another man started up; the bridging bough was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnished the bridge.  The king ordered me to play Horatius and keep the bridge.  For a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no matter, the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodged him as soon as he came in reach.  The king’s spirits rose, his joy was limitless.  He said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospect we should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics we could hold the tree against the whole country-side.

However, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; wherefore they called off the assault and began to debate other plans.  They had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stones might answer.  We had no objections.  A stone might possibly penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn’t very likely; we were well protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible from any good aiming point.  If they would but waste half an hour in stone-throwing, the dark would come to our help.  We were feeling very well satisfied.  We could smile; almost laugh.

But we didn’t; which was just as well, for we should have been interrupted.  Before the stones had been raging through the leaves and bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to notice a smell.  A couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation —­it was smoke!  Our game was up at last.  We recognized that.  When smoke invites you, you have to come.  They raised their pile of dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke out in a storm of joy-clamors.  I got enough breath to say: 

“Proceed, my liege; after you is manners.”

The king gasped: 

“Follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of the trunk, and leave me the other.  Then will we fight.  Let each pile his dead according to his own fashion and taste.”

Then he descended, barking and coughing, and I followed.  I struck the ground an instant after him; we sprang to our appointed places, and began to give and take with all our might.  The powwow and racket were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and confusion and thick-falling blows.  Suddenly some horsemen tore into the midst of the crowd, and a voice shouted: 

“Hold—­or ye are dead men!”

How good it sounded!  The owner of the voice bore all the marks of a gentleman:  picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command, a hard countenance, with complexion and features marred by dissipation.  The mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels.  The gentleman inspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants: 

“What are ye doing to these people?”

“They be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we know not whence, and—­”

“Ye know not whence?  Do ye pretend ye know them not?”

“Most honored sir, we speak but the truth.  They are strangers and unknown to any in this region; and they be the most violent and bloodthirsty madmen that ever—­”

“Peace!  Ye know not what ye say.  They are not mad.  Who are ye?  And whence are ye?  Explain.”

“We are but peaceful strangers, sir,” I said, “and traveling upon our own concerns.  We are from a far country, and unacquainted here.  We have purposed no harm; and yet but for your brave interference and protection these people would have killed us.  As you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violent or bloodthirsty.”

The gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly:  “Lash me these animals to their kennels!”

The mob vanished in an instant; and after them plunged the horsemen, laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down such as were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to the bush.  The shrieks and supplications presently died away in the distance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back.  Meantime the gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dug no particulars out of us.  We were lavish of recognition of the service he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that we were friendless strangers from a far country.  When the escort were all returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants: 

“Bring the led-horses and mount these people.”

“Yes, my lord.”

We were placed toward the rear, among the servants.  We traveled pretty fast, and finally drew rein some time after dark at a roadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our troubles.  My lord went immediately to his room, after ordering his supper, and we saw no more of him.  At dawn in the morning we breakfasted and made ready to start.

My lord’s chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment with indolent grace, and said: 

“Ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is our direction likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl Grip, hath given commandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certain of us ride with ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight Cambenet, whenso ye shall be out of peril.”

We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the offer.  We jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate and comfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord Grip was a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day’s journey beyond Cambenet.  We loitered to such a degree that it was near the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square of the town.  We dismounted, and left our thanks once more for my lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center of the square, to see what might be the object of interest.  It was the remnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves!  So they had been dragging their chains about, all this weary time.  That poor husband was gone, and also many others; and some few purchases had been added to the gang.  The king was not interested, and wanted to move along, but I was absorbed, and full of pity.  I could not take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity.  There they sat, grounded upon the ground, silent, uncomplaining, with bowed heads, a pathetic sight.  And by hideous contrast, a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome laudation of “our glorious British liberties!”

I was boiling.  I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I was remembering I was a man.  Cost what it might, I would mount that rostrum and—­

Click! the king and I were handcuffed together!  Our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord Grip stood looking on.  The king burst out in a fury, and said: 

“What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?”

My lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly: 

“Put up the slaves and sell them!”

Slaves! The word had a new sound—­and how unspeakably awful!  The king lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force; but my lord was out of the way when they arrived.  A dozen of the rascal’s servants sprang forward, and in a moment we were helpless, with our hands bound behind us.  We so loudly and so earnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interested attention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude.  The orator said: 

“If, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear—­the God-given liberties of Britain are about ye for your shield and shelter!  (Applause.) Ye shall soon see.  Bring forth your proofs.”

“What proofs?”

“Proof that ye are freemen.”

Ah—­I remembered!  I came to myself; I said nothing.  But the king stormed out: 

“Thou’rt insane, man.  It were better, and more in reason, that this thief and scoundrel here prove that we are not freemen.”

You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know the laws; by words, not by effects.  They take a meaning, and get to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself.

All hands shook their heads and looked disappointed; some turned away, no longer interested.  The orator said—­and this time in the tones of business, not of sentiment: 

“An ye do not know your country’s laws, it were time ye learned them.  Ye are strangers to us; ye will not deny that.  Ye may be freemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves.  The law is clear:  it doth not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves, it requireth you to prove ye are not.”

I said: 

“Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astolat; or give us only time to send to the Valley of Holiness—­”

“Peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you may not hope to have them granted.  It would cost much time, and would unwarrantably inconvenience your master—­”

“Master, idiot!” stormed the king.  “I have no master, I myself am the m—­”

“Silence, for God’s sake!”

I got the words out in time to stop the king.  We were in trouble enough already; it could not help us any to give these people the notion that we were lunatics.

There is no use in stringing out the details.  The earl put us up and sold us at auction.  This same infernal law had existed in our own South in my own time, more than thirteen hundred years later, and under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove that they were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery without the circumstance making any particular impression upon me; but the minute law and the auction block came into my personal experience, a thing which had been merely improper before became suddenly hellish.  Well, that’s the way we are made.

Yes, we were sold at auction, like swine.  In a big town and an active market we should have brought a good price; but this place was utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes me ashamed, every time I think of it.  The King of England brought seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was easily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen.  But that is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dull market, I don’t care what the property is, you are going to make a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it.  If the earl had had wit enough to—­

However, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies up on his account.  Let him go, for the present; I took his number, so to speak.

The slave-dealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that long chain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession.  We took up our line of march and passed out of Cambenet at noon; and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the King of England and his chief minister, marching manacled and fettered and yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle men and women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely, and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark.  Dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a king than there is about a tramp, after all.  He is just a cheap and hollow artificiality when you don’t know he is a king.  But reveal his quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to look at him.  I reckon we are all fools.  Born so, no doubt.

Chapter 35 A PITIFUL INCIDENT

It’s a world of surprises.  The king brooded; this was natural.  What would he brood about, should you say?  Why, about the prodigious nature of his fall, of course—­from the loftiest place in the world to the lowest; from the most illustrious station in the world to the obscurest; from the grandest vocation among men to the basest.  No, I take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to start with, was not this, but the price he had fetched!  He couldn’t seem to get over that seven dollars.  Well, it stunned me so, when I first found it out, that I couldn’t believe it; it didn’t seem natural.  But as soon as my mental sight cleared and I got a right focus on it, I saw I was mistaken; it was natural.  For this reason:  a king is a mere artificiality, and so a king’s feelings, like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities; but as a man, he is a reality, and his feelings, as a man, are real, not phantoms.  It shames the average man to be valued below his own estimate of his worth, and the king certainly wasn’t anything more than an average man, if he was up that high.

Confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anything like a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, sure—­a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldest conceit; I wasn’t worth it myself.  But it was tender ground for me to argue on.  In fact, I had to simply shirk argument and do the diplomatic instead.  I had to throw conscience aside, and brazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars; whereas I was quite well aware that in all the ages, the world had never seen a king that was worth half the money, and during the next thirteen centuries wouldn’t see one that was worth the fourth of it.  Yes, he tired me.  If he began to talk about the crops; or about the recent weather; or about the condition of politics; or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology—­no matter what —­I sighed, for I knew what was coming; he was going to get out of it a palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale.  Wherever we halted where there was a crowd, he would give me a look which said plainly:  “if that thing could be tried over again now, with this kind of folk, you would see a different result.”  Well, when he was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go for seven dollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worrying I wished he had fetched a hundred.  The thing never got a chance to die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchasers looked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on the king was something like this: 

“Here’s a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirty-dollar style.  Pity but style was marketable.”

At last this sort of remark produced an evil result.  Our owner was a practical person and he perceived that this defect must be mended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king.  So he went to work to take the style out of his sacred majesty.  I could have given the man some valuable advice, but I didn’t; you mustn’t volunteer advice to a slave-driver unless you want to damage the cause you are arguing for.  I had found it a sufficiently difficult job to reduce the king’s style to a peasant’s style, even when he was a willing and anxious pupil; now then, to undertake to reduce the king’s style to a slave’s style—­and by force—­go to! it was a stately contract.  Never mind the details—­it will save me trouble to let you imagine them.  I will only remark that at the end of a week there was plenty of evidence that lash and club and fist had done their work well; the king’s body was a sight to see—­and to weep over; but his spirit?—­why, it wasn’t even phased.  Even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able to see that there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a man till he dies; whose bones you can break, but whose manhood you can’t.  This man found that from his first effort down to his latest, he couldn’t ever come within reach of the king, but the king was ready to plunge for him, and did it.  So he gave up at last, and left the king in possession of his style unimpaired.  The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was a man; and when a man is a man, you can’t knock it out of him.

We had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth, and suffering.  And what Englishman was the most interested in the slavery question by that time?  His grace the king!  Yes; from being the most indifferent, he was become the most interested.  He was become the bitterest hater of the institution I had ever heard talk.  And so I ventured to ask once more a question which I had asked years before and had gotten such a sharp answer that I had not thought it prudent to meddle in the matter further.  Would he abolish slavery?

His answer was as sharp as before, but it was music this time; I shouldn’t ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanity was not good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crash-word almost in the middle instead of at the end, where, of course, it ought to have been.

I was ready and willing to get free now; I hadn’t wanted to get free any sooner.  No, I cannot quite say that.  I had wanted to, but I had not been willing to take desperate chances, and had always dissuaded the king from them.  But now—­ah, it was a new atmosphere!  Liberty would be worth any cost that might be put upon it now.  I set about a plan, and was straightway charmed with it.  It would require time, yes, and patience, too, a great deal of both.  One could invent quicker ways, and fully as sure ones; but none that would be as picturesque as this; none that could be made so dramatic.  And so I was not going to give this one up.  It might delay us months, but no matter, I would carry it out or break something.

Now and then we had an adventure.  One night we were overtaken by a snow-storm while still a mile from the village we were making for.  Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving snow was so thick.  You couldn’t see a thing, and we were soon lost.  The slave-driver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin before him, but his lashings only made matters worse, for they drove us further from the road and from likelihood of succor.  So we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where we were.  The storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased.  By this time two of our feebler men and three of our women were dead, and others past moving and threatened with death.  Our master was nearly beside himself.  He stirred up the living, and made us stand, jump, slap ourselves, to restore our circulation, and he helped as well as he could with his whip.

Now came a diversion.  We heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flung herself into our midst and begged for protection.  A mob of people came tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was a witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a black cat.  This poor woman had been stoned until she hardly looked human, she was so battered and bloody.  The mob wanted to burn her.

Well, now, what do you suppose our master did?  When we closed around this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance.  He said, burn her here, or they shouldn’t have her at all.  Imagine that!  They were willing.  They fastened her to a post; they brought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch while she shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters to her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life and commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocent life of that poor harmless mother.  That was the sort of master we had.  I took his number.  That snow-storm cost him nine of his flock; and he was more brutal to us than ever, after that, for many days together, he was so enraged over his loss.

We had adventures all along.  One day we ran into a procession.  And such a procession!  All the riffraff of the kingdom seemed to be comprehended in it; and all drunk at that.  In the van was a cart with a coffin in it, and on the coffin sat a comely young girl of about eighteen suckling a baby, which she squeezed to her breast in a passion of love every little while, and every little while wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained down upon it; and always the foolish little thing smiled up at her, happy and content, kneading her breast with its dimpled fat hand, which she patted and fondled right over her breaking heart.

Men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or after the cart, hooting, shouting profane and ribald remarks, singing snatches of foul song, skipping, dancing—­a very holiday of hellions, a sickening sight.  We had struck a suburb of London, outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of London society.  Our master secured a good place for us near the gallows.  A priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb up, and said comforting words to her, and made the under-sheriff provide a stool for her.  Then he stood there by her on the gallows, and for a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at his feet, then out over the solid pavement of heads that stretched away on every side occupying the vacancies far and near, and then began to tell the story of the case.  And there was pity in his voice —­how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant and savage land!  I remember every detail of what he said, except the words he said it in; and so I change it into my own words: 

“Law is intended to mete out justice.  Sometimes it fails.  This cannot be helped.  We can only grieve, and be resigned, and pray for the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and that his fellows may be few.  A law sends this poor young thing to death—­and it is right.  But another law had placed her where she must commit her crime or starve with her child—­and before God that law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death!

“A little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years, was as happy a wife and mother as any in England; and her lips were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and innocent hearts.  Her young husband was as happy as she; for he was doing his whole duty, he worked early and late at his handicraft, his bread was honest bread well and fairly earned, he was prospering, he was furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family, he was adding his mite to the wealth of the nation.  By consent of a treacherous law, instant destruction fell upon this holy home and swept it away!  That young husband was waylaid and impressed, and sent to sea.  The wife knew nothing of it.  She sought him everywhere, she moved the hardest hearts with the supplications of her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair.  Weeks dragged by, she watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreck under the burden of her misery.  Little by little all her small possessions went for food.  When she could no longer pay her rent, they turned her out of doors.  She begged, while she had strength; when she was starving at last, and her milk failing, she stole a piece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth part of a cent, thinking to sell it and save her child.  But she was seen by the owner of the cloth.  She was put in jail and brought to trial.  The man testified to the facts.  A plea was made for her, and her sorrowful story was told in her behalf.  She spoke, too, by permission, and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mind was so disordered of late by trouble that when she was overborne with hunger all acts, criminal or other, swam meaningless through her brain and she knew nothing rightly, except that she was so hungry!  For a moment all were touched, and there was disposition to deal mercifully with her, seeing that she was so young and friendless, and her case so piteous, and the law that robbed her of her support to blame as being the first and only cause of her transgression; but the prosecuting officer replied that whereas these things were all true, and most pitiful as well, still there was much small theft in these days, and mistimed mercy here would be a danger to property—­oh, my God, is there no property in ruined homes, and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that British law holds precious!—­and so he must require sentence.

“When the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolen linen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his face as gray as ashes; and when the awful words came, he cried out, ’Oh, poor child, poor child, I did not know it was death!’ and fell as a tree falls.  When they lifted him up his reason was gone; before the sun was set, he had taken his own life.  A kindly man; a man whose heart was right, at bottom; add his murder to this that is to be now done here; and charge them both where they belong —­to the rulers and the bitter laws of Britain.  The time is come, my child; let me pray over thee—­not for thee, dear abused poor heart and innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death, who need it more.”

After his prayer they put the noose around the young girl’s neck, and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it, and snatching it to her face and her breast, and drenching it with tears, and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the baby crowing, and laughing, and kicking its feet with delight over what it took for romp and play.  Even the hangman couldn’t stand it, but turned away.  When all was ready the priest gently pulled and tugged and forced the child out of the mother’s arms, and stepped quickly out of her reach; but she clasped her hands, and made a wild spring toward him, with a shriek; but the rope—­and the under-sheriff—­held her short.  Then she went on her knees and stretched out her hands and cried: 

“One more kiss—­oh, my God, one more, one more,—­it is the dying that begs it!”

She got it; she almost smothered the little thing.  And when they got it away again, she cried out: 

“Oh, my child, my darling, it will die!  It has no home, it has no father, no friend, no mother—­”

“It has them all!” said that good priest.  “All these will I be to it till I die.”

You should have seen her face then!  Gratitude?  Lord, what do you want with words to express that?  Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.  She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.

Chapter 36 AN ENCOUNTER IN THE DARK

London—­to a slave—­was a sufficiently interesting place.  It was merely a great big village; and mainly mud and thatch.  The streets were muddy, crooked, unpaved.  The populace was an ever flocking and drifting swarm of rags, and splendors, of nodding plumes and shining armor.  The king had a palace there; he saw the outside of it.  It made him sigh; yes, and swear a little, in a poor juvenile sixth century way.  We saw knights and grandees whom we knew, but they didn’t know us in our rags and dirt and raw welts and bruises, and wouldn’t have recognized us if we had hailed them, nor stopped to answer, either, it being unlawful to speak with slaves on a chain.  Sandy passed within ten yards of me on a mule—­hunting for me, I imagined.  But the thing which clean broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old barrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man being boiled to death in oil for counterfeiting pennies.  It was the sight of a newsboy—­and I couldn’t get at him!  Still, I had one comfort—­here was proof that Clarence was still alive and banging away.  I meant to be with him before long; the thought was full of cheer.

I had one little glimpse of another thing, one day, which gave me a great uplift.  It was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop.  Telegraph or telephone, sure.  I did very much wish I had a little piece of it.  It was just what I needed, in order to carry out my project of escape.  My idea was to get loose some night, along with the king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him, batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave-chain, assume possession of the property, march to Camelot, and—­

But you get my idea; you see what a stunning dramatic surprise I would wind up with at the palace.  It was all feasible, if I could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which I could shape into a lock-pick.  I could then undo the lumbering padlocks with which our chains were fastened, whenever I might choose.  But I never had any luck; no such thing ever happened to fall in my way.  However, my chance came at last.  A gentleman who had come twice before to dicker for me, without result, or indeed any approach to a result, came again.  I was far from expecting ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time I was first enslaved was exorbitant, and always provoked either anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it—­twenty-two dollars.  He wouldn’t bate a cent.  The king was greatly admired, because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against him, and he wasn’t salable; nobody wanted that kind of a slave.  I considered myself safe from parting from him because of my extravagant price.  No, I was not expecting to ever belong to this gentleman whom I have spoken of, but he had something which I expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visit us often enough.  It was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with which his long cloth outside garment was fastened together in front.  There were three of them.  He had disappointed me twice, because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project entirely safe; but this time I succeeded; I captured the lower clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost it on the way.

I had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straightway a chance to be sad again.  For when the purchase was about to fail, as usual, the master suddenly spoke up and said what would be worded thus —­in modern English: 

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’m tired supporting these two for no good.  Give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and I’ll throw the other one in.”

The king couldn’t get his breath, he was in such a fury.  He began to choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman moved away discussing.

“An ye will keep the offer open—­”

“’Tis open till the morrow at this hour.”

“Then I will answer you at that time,” said the gentleman, and disappeared, the master following him.

I had a time of it to cool the king down, but I managed it.  I whispered in his ear, to this effect: 

“Your grace will go for nothing, but after another fashion.  And so shall I. To-night we shall both be free.”

“Ah!  How is that?”

“With this thing which I have stolen, I will unlock these locks and cast off these chains to-night.  When he comes about nine-thirty to inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batter him, and early in the morning we will march out of this town, proprietors of this caravan of slaves.”

That was as far as I went, but the king was charmed and satisfied.  That evening we waited patiently for our fellow-slaves to get to sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take many chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it.  It is best to keep your own secrets.  No doubt they fidgeted only about as usual, but it didn’t seem so to me.  It seemed to me that they were going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring.  As the time dragged on I got nervously afraid we shouldn’t have enough of it left for our needs; so I made several premature attempts, and merely delayed things by it; for I couldn’t seem to touch a padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattle out of it which interrupted somebody’s sleep and made him turn over and wake some more of the gang.

But finally I did get my last iron off, and was a free man once more.  I took a good breath of relief, and reached for the king’s irons.  Too late! in comes the master, with a light in one hand and his heavy walking-staff in the other.  I snuggled close among the wallow of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that I was naked of irons; and I kept a sharp lookout and prepared to spring for my man the moment he should bend over me.

But he didn’t approach.  He stopped, gazed absently toward our dusky mass a minute, evidently thinking about something else; then set down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before a body could imagine what he was going to do, he was out of the door and had closed it behind him.

“Quick!” said the king.  “Fetch him back!”

Of course, it was the thing to do, and I was up and out in a moment.  But, dear me, there were no lamps in those days, and it was a dark night.  But I glimpsed a dim figure a few steps away.  I darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there was a state of things and lively!  We fought and scuffled and struggled, and drew a crowd in no time.  They took an immense interest in the fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact, couldn’t have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own fight.  Then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as much as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some sympathy in that.  Lanterns began to swing in all directions; it was the watch gathering from far and near.  Presently a halberd fell across my back, as a reminder, and I knew what it meant.  I was in custody.  So was my adversary.  We were marched off toward prison, one on each side of the watchman.  Here was disaster, here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction!  I tried to imagine what would happen when the master should discover that it was I who had been fighting him; and what would happen if they jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty law-breakers, as was the custom; and what might—­

Just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction, the freckled light from the watchman’s tin lantern fell on it, and, by George, he was the wrong man!

Chapter 37 AN AWFUL PREDICAMENT

Sleep?  It was impossible.  It would naturally have been impossible in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions.  But the thing that made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole size of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quarters in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine.

It was a long night, but the morning got around at last.  I made a full and frank explanation to the court.  I said I was a slave, the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after dark at the Tabard inn in the village on the other side of the water, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder.  I had been ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best physician; I was doing my best; naturally I was running with all my might; the night was dark, I ran against this common person here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, although I told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake of the great earl my master’s mortal peril—­

The common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was going to explain how I rushed upon him and attacked him without a word—­

“Silence, sirrah!” from the court.  “Take him hence and give him a few stripes whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of a nobleman after a different fashion another time.  Go!”

Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not fail to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court’s fault that this high-handed thing had happened.  I said I would make it all right, and so took my leave.  Took it just in time, too; he was starting to ask me why I didn’t fetch out these facts the moment I was arrested.  I said I would if I had thought of it—­which was true —­but that I was so battered by that man that all my wit was knocked out of me—­and so forth and so on, and got myself away, still mumbling.  I didn’t wait for breakfast.  No grass grew under my feet.  I was soon at the slave quarters.  Empty—­everybody gone!  That is, everybody except one body—­the slave-master’s.  It lay there all battered to pulp; and all about were the evidences of a terrific fight.  There was a rude board coffin on a cart at the door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a road through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in.

I picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talk with one so shabby as I, and got his account of the matter.

“There were sixteen slaves here.  They rose against their master in the night, and thou seest how it ended.”

“Yes.  How did it begin?”

“There was no witness but the slaves.  They said the slave that was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange way—­by magic arts ’twas thought, by reason that he had no key, and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured.  When the master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair, and threw himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and brake his back and in other and divers ways did give him hurts that brought him swiftly to his end.”

“This is dreadful.  It will go hard with the slaves, no doubt, upon the trial.”

“Marry, the trial is over.”

“Over!”

“Would they be a week, think you—­and the matter so simple?  They were not the half of a quarter of an hour at it.”

“Why, I don’t see how they could determine which were the guilty ones in so short a time.”

“Which ones?  Indeed, they considered not particulars like to that.  They condemned them in a body.  Wit ye not the law?—­which men say the Romans left behind them here when they went—­that if one slave killeth his master all the slaves of that man must die for it.”

“True.  I had forgotten.  And when will these die?”

“Belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some say they will wait a pair of days more, if peradventure they may find the missing one meantime.”

The missing one!  It made me feel uncomfortable.

“Is it likely they will find him?”

“Before the day is spent—­yes.  They seek him everywhere.  They stand at the gates of the town, with certain of the slaves who will discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass out but he will be first examined.”

“Might one see the place where the rest are confined?”

“The outside of it—­yes.  The inside of it—­but ye will not want to see that.”

I took the address of that prison for future reference and then sauntered off.  At the first second-hand clothing shop I came to, up a back street, I got a rough rig suitable for a common seaman who might be going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face with a liberal bandage, saying I had a toothache.  This concealed my worst bruises.  It was a transformation.  I no longer resembled my former self.  Then I struck out for that wire, found it and followed it to its den.  It was a little room over a butcher’s shop—­which meant that business wasn’t very brisk in the telegraphic line.  The young chap in charge was drowsing at his table.  I locked the door and put the vast key in my bosom.  This alarmed the young fellow, and he was going to make a noise; but I said: 

“Save your wind; if you open your mouth you are dead, sure.  Tackle your instrument.  Lively, now!  Call Camelot.”

“This doth amaze me!  How should such as you know aught of such matters as—­”

“Call Camelot!  I am a desperate man.  Call Camelot, or get away from the instrument and I will do it myself.”

“What—­you?”

“Yes—­certainly.  Stop gabbling.  Call the palace.”

He made the call.

“Now, then, call Clarence.”

“Clarence who?”

“Never mind Clarence who.  Say you want Clarence; you’ll get an answer.”

He did so.  We waited five nerve-straining minutes—­ten minutes —­how long it did seem!—­and then came a click that was as familiar to me as a human voice; for Clarence had been my own pupil.

“Now, my lad, vacate!  They would have known my touch, maybe, and so your call was surest; but I’m all right now.”

He vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen—­but it didn’t win.  I used a cipher.  I didn’t waste any time in sociabilities with Clarence, but squared away for business, straight-off—­thus: 

“The king is here and in danger.  We were captured and brought here as slaves.  We should not be able to prove our identity —­and the fact is, I am not in a position to try.  Send a telegram for the palace here which will carry conviction with it.”

His answer came straight back: 

“They don’t know anything about the telegraph; they haven’t had any experience yet, the line to London is so new.  Better not venture that.  They might hang you.  Think up something else.”

Might hang us!  Little he knew how closely he was crowding the facts.  I couldn’t think up anything for the moment.  Then an idea struck me, and I started it along: 

“Send five hundred picked knights with Launcelot in the lead; and send them on the jump.  Let them enter by the southwest gate, and look out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm.”

The answer was prompt: 

“They shall start in half an hour.”

“All right, Clarence; now tell this lad here that I’m a friend of yours and a dead-head; and that he must be discreet and say nothing about this visit of mine.”

The instrument began to talk to the youth and I hurried away.  I fell to ciphering.  In half an hour it would be nine o’clock.  Knights and horses in heavy armor couldn’t travel very fast.  These would make the best time they could, and now that the ground was in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would probably make a seven-mile gait; they would have to change horses a couple of times; they would arrive about six, or a little after; it would still be plenty light enough; they would see the white cloth which I should tie around my right arm, and I would take command.  We would surround that prison and have the king out in no time.  It would be showy and picturesque enough, all things considered, though I would have preferred noonday, on account of the more theatrical aspect the thing would have.

Now, then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, I thought I would look up some of those people whom I had formerly recognized, and make myself known.  That would help us out of our scrape, without the knights.  But I must proceed cautiously, for it was a risky business.  I must get into sumptuous raiment, and it wouldn’t do to run and jump into it.  No, I must work up to it by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes, in shops wide apart, and getting a little finer article with each change, until I should finally reach silk and velvet, and be ready for my project.  So I started.

But the scheme fell through like scat!  The first corner I turned, I came plump upon one of our slaves, snooping around with a watchman.  I coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right into my marrow.  I judge he thought he had heard that cough before.  I turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter, pricing things and watching out of the corner of my eye.  Those people had stopped, and were talking together and looking in at the door.  I made up my mind to get out the back way, if there was a back way, and I asked the shopwoman if I could step out there and look for the escaped slave, who was believed to be in hiding back there somewhere, and said I was an officer in disguise, and my pard was yonder at the door with one of the murderers in charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him he needn’t wait, but had better go at once to the further end of the back alley and be ready to head him off when I rousted him out.

She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated murderers, and she started on the errand at once.  I slipped out the back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket and started off, chuckling to myself and comfortable.

Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake.  A double one, in fact.  There were plenty of ways to get rid of that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, I must pick out a picturesque one; it is the crying defect of my character.  And then, I had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, being human, would naturally do; whereas when you are least expecting it, a man will now and then go and do the very thing which it’s not natural for him to do.  The natural thing for the officer to do, in this case, was to follow straight on my heels; he would find a stout oaken door, securely locked, between him and me; before he could break it down, I should be far away and engaged in slipping into a succession of baffling disguises which would soon get me into a sort of raiment which was a surer protection from meddling law-dogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity of character.  But instead of doing the natural thing, the officer took me at my word, and followed my instructions.  And so, as I came trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction with my own cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into his handcuffs.  If I had known it was a cul de sac—­however, there isn’t any excusing a blunder like that, let it go.  Charge it up to profit and loss.

Of course, I was indignant, and swore I had just come ashore from a long voyage, and all that sort of thing—­just to see, you know, if it would deceive that slave.  But it didn’t.  He knew me.  Then I reproached him for betraying me.  He was more surprised than hurt.  He stretched his eyes wide, and said: 

“What, wouldst have me let thee, of all men, escape and not hang with us, when thou’rt the very cause of our hanging?  Go to!”

“Go to” was their way of saying “I should smile!” or “I like that!” Queer talkers, those people.

Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so I dropped the matter.  When you can’t cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to argue?  It isn’t my way.  So I only said: 

“You’re not going to be hanged.  None of us are.”

Both men laughed, and the slave said: 

“Ye have not ranked as a fool—­before.  You might better keep your reputation, seeing the strain would not be for long.”

“It will stand it, I reckon.  Before to-morrow we shall be out of prison, and free to go where we will, besides.”

The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made a rasping noise in his throat, and said: 

“Out of prison—­yes—­ye say true.  And free likewise to go where ye will, so ye wander not out of his grace the Devil’s sultry realm.”

I kept my temper, and said, indifferently: 

“Now I suppose you really think we are going to hang within a day or two.”

“I thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decided and proclaimed.”

“Ah, then you’ve changed your mind, is that it?”

“Even that.  I only thought, then; I know, now.”

I felt sarcastical, so I said: 

“Oh, sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell us, then, what you know.”

“That ye will all be hanged to-day, at mid-afternoon!  Oho! that shot hit home!  Lean upon me.”

The fact is I did need to lean upon somebody.  My knights couldn’t arrive in time.  They would be as much as three hours too late.  Nothing in the world could save the King of England; nor me, which was more important.  More important, not merely to me, but to the nation—­the only nation on earth standing ready to blossom into civilization.  I was sick.  I said no more, there wasn’t anything to say.  I knew what the man meant; that if the missing slave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the execution take place to-day.  Well, the missing slave was found.

Chapter 38 SIR LAUNCELOT AND KNIGHTS TO THE RESCUE

Nearing four in the afternoon.  The scene was just outside the walls of London.  A cool, comfortable, superb day, with a brilliant sun; the kind of day to make one want to live, not die.  The multitude was prodigious and far-reaching; and yet we fifteen poor devils hadn’t a friend in it.  There was something painful in that thought, look at it how you might.  There we sat, on our tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all those enemies.  We were being made a holiday spectacle.  They had built a sort of grand stand for the nobility and gentry, and these were there in full force, with their ladies.  We recognized a good many of them.

The crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of the king.  The moment we were freed of our bonds he sprang up, in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and proclaimed himself Arthur, King of Britain, and denounced the awful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hair of his sacred head were touched.  It startled and surprised him to hear them break into a vast roar of laughter.  It wounded his dignity, and he locked himself up in silence.  Then, although the crowd begged him to go on, and tried to provoke him to it by catcalls, jeers, and shouts of: 

“Let him speak!  The king!  The king! his humble subjects hunger and thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their master his Serene and Sacred Raggedness!”

But it went for nothing.  He put on all his majesty and sat under this rain of contempt and insult unmoved.  He certainly was great in his way.  Absently, I had taken off my white bandage and wound it about my right arm.  When the crowd noticed this, they began upon me.  They said: 

“Doubtless this sailor-man is his minister—­observe his costly badge of office!”

I let them go on until they got tired, and then I said: 

“Yes, I am his minister, The Boss; and to-morrow you will hear that from Camelot which—­”

I got no further.  They drowned me out with joyous derision.  But presently there was silence; for the sheriffs of London, in their official robes, with their subordinates, began to make a stir which indicated that business was about to begin.  In the hush which followed, our crime was recited, the death warrant read, then everybody uncovered while a priest uttered a prayer.

Then a slave was blindfolded; the hangman unslung his rope.  There lay the smooth road below us, we upon one side of it, the banked multitude wailing its other side—­a good clear road, and kept free by the police—­how good it would be to see my five hundred horsemen come tearing down it!  But no, it was out of the possibilities.  I followed its receding thread out into the distance—­not a horseman on it, or sign of one.

There was a jerk, and the slave hung dangling; dangling and hideously squirming, for his limbs were not tied.

A second rope was unslung, in a moment another slave was dangling.

In a minute a third slave was struggling in the air.  It was dreadful.  I turned away my head a moment, and when I turned back I missed the king!  They were blindfolding him!  I was paralyzed; I couldn’t move, I was choking, my tongue was petrified.  They finished blindfolding him, they led him under the rope.  I couldn’t shake off that clinging impotence.  But when I saw them put the noose around his neck, then everything let go in me and I made a spring to the rescue—­and as I made it I shot one more glance abroad—­by George! here they came, a-tilting!—­five hundred mailed and belted knights on bicycles!

The grandest sight that ever was seen.  Lord, how the plumes streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed from the endless procession of webby wheels!

I waved my right arm as Launcelot swept in—­he recognized my rag —­I tore away noose and bandage, and shouted: 

“On your knees, every rascal of you, and salute the king!  Who fails shall sup in hell to-night!”

I always use that high style when I’m climaxing an effect.  Well, it was noble to see Launcelot and the boys swarm up onto that scaffold and heave sheriffs and such overboard.  And it was fine to see that astonished multitude go down on their knees and beg their lives of the king they had just been deriding and insulting.  And as he stood apart there, receiving this homage in rags, I thought to myself, well, really there is something peculiarly grand about the gait and bearing of a king, after all.

I was immensely satisfied.  Take the whole situation all around, it was one of the gaudiest effects I ever instigated.

And presently up comes Clarence, his own self! and winks, and says, very modernly: 

“Good deal of a surprise, wasn’t it?  I knew you’d like it.  I’ve had the boys practicing this long time, privately; and just hungry for a chance to show off.”

Chapter 39 THE YANKEE’S FIGHT WITH THE KNIGHTS

Home again, at Camelot.  A morning or two later I found the paper, damp from the press, by my plate at the breakfast table.  I turned to the advertising columns, knowing I should find something of personal interest to me there.  It was this: 

 

DE PAR LE ROI.

Know that the great lord and illustrious Kni8ht, SIR SAGRAMOR LE DESIROUS having condescended to
meet the King’s Minister, Hank Morgan, the which is surnamed The Boss, for satisfgction of offence anciently given,
these wilL engage in the lists by Camelot about the fourth hour of the morning of the sixteenth day of this next succeeding month.  The battle will be a l outrance, sith the said offence was of a deadly sort, admitting of no comPosition.

DE PAR LE ROI

 

Clarence’s editorial reference to this affair was to this effect: 

It will be observed, by a gl7nce at our advertising columns, that the commu- nity is to be favored with a treat of un- usual interest in the tournament line.  The n âmes of the artists are warrant of good enterTemment.  The box-office will be open at noon of the 13th; ad- mission 3 cents, reserved seatsh 5; pro- ceeds to go to the hospital fund The royal pair and all the Court will be près- ent.  With these exceptions, and the press and the clergy, the free list is strict- ly susPended.  Parties are hereby warn- ed against buying tickets of speculators; they will not be good at the door.  Everybody knows and likes The Boss, everybody knows and likes Sir Sag.; come, let us give the lads a good send- off.  ReMember, the proceeds go to a great and free charity, and one whose broad begevolence stretches out its help- ing hand, warm with the blood of a lov- ing heart, to all that suffer, regardless of race, creed, condition or color—­the only charity yet established in the earth which has no politico-religious stop- cock on its compassion, but says Here flows the stream, let ALL come and drink!  Turn out, all hands! fetch along your dou3hnuts and your gum-drops and have a good time.  Pie for sale on the grounds, and rocks to crack it with; and ciRcus-lemonade—­three drops of lime juice to a barrel of water.  N.B.  This is the first tournament under the new law, whidh allow each combatant to use any weapon he may pre- fer.  You may want to make a note of that.

Up to the day set, there was no talk in all Britain of anything but this combat.  All other topics sank into insignificance and passed out of men’s thoughts and interest.  It was not because a tournament was a great matter, it was not because Sir Sagramor had found the Holy Grail, for he had not, but had failed; it was not because the second (official) personage in the kingdom was one of the duellists; no, all these features were commonplace.  Yet there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which this coming fight was creating.  It was born of the fact that all the nation knew that this was not to be a duel between mere men, so to speak, but a duel between two mighty magicians; a duel not of muscle but of mind, not of human skill but of superhuman art and craft; a final struggle for supremacy between the two master enchanters of the age.  It was realized that the most prodigious achievements of the most renowned knights could not be worthy of comparison with a spectacle like this; they could be but child’s play, contrasted with this mysterious and awful battle of the gods.  Yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duel between Merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers against mine.  It was known that Merlin had been busy whole days and nights together, imbuing Sir Sagramor’s arms and armor with supernal powers of offense and defense, and that he had procured for him from the spirits of the air a fleecy veil which would render the wearer invisible to his antagonist while still visible to other men.  Against Sir Sagramor, so weaponed and protected, a thousand knights could accomplish nothing; against him no known enchantments could prevail.  These facts were sure; regarding them there was no doubt, no reason for doubt.  There was but one question:  might there be still other enchantments, unknown to Merlin, which could render Sir Sagramor’s veil transparent to me, and make his enchanted mail vulnerable to my weapons?  This was the one thing to be decided in the lists.  Until then the world must remain in suspense.

So the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and the world was right, but it was not the one they had in their minds.  No, a far vaster one was upon the cast of this die:  the life of knight-errantry.  I was a champion, it was true, but not the champion of the frivolous black arts, I was the champion of hard unsentimental common-sense and reason.  I was entering the lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its victim.

Vast as the show-grounds were, there were no vacant spaces in them outside of the lists, at ten o’clock on the morning of the 16th.  The mammoth grand-stand was clothed in flags, streamers, and rich tapestries, and packed with several acres of small-fry tributary kings, their suites, and the British aristocracy; with our own royal gang in the chief place, and each and every individual a flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets—­well, I never saw anything to begin with it but a fight between an Upper Mississippi sunset and the aurora borealis.  The huge camp of beflagged and gay-colored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiff-standing sentinel at every door and a shining shield hanging by him for challenge, was another fine sight.  You see, every knight was there who had any ambition or any caste feeling; for my feeling toward their order was not much of a secret, and so here was their chance.  If I won my fight with Sir Sagramor, others would have the right to call me out as long as I might be willing to respond.

Down at our end there were but two tents; one for me, and another for my servants.  At the appointed hour the king made a sign, and the heralds, in their tabards, appeared and made proclamation, naming the combatants and stating the cause of quarrel.  There was a pause, then a ringing bugle-blast, which was the signal for us to come forth.  All the multitude caught their breath, and an eager curiosity flashed into every face.

Out from his tent rode great Sir Sagramor, an imposing tower of iron, stately and rigid, his huge spear standing upright in its socket and grasped in his strong hand, his grand horse’s face and breast cased in steel, his body clothed in rich trappings that almost dragged the ground—­oh, a most noble picture.  A great shout went up, of welcome and admiration.

And then out I came.  But I didn’t get any shout.  There was a wondering and eloquent silence for a moment, then a great wave of laughter began to sweep along that human sea, but a warning bugle-blast cut its career short.  I was in the simplest and comfortablest of gymnast costumes—­flesh-colored tights from neck to heel, with blue silk puffings about my loins, and bareheaded.  My horse was not above medium size, but he was alert, slender-limbed, muscled with watchsprings, and just a greyhound to go.  He was a beauty, glossy as silk, and naked as he was when he was born, except for bridle and ranger-saddle.

The iron tower and the gorgeous bedquilt came cumbrously but gracefully pirouetting down the lists, and we tripped lightly up to meet them.  We halted; the tower saluted, I responded; then we wheeled and rode side by side to the grand-stand and faced our king and queen, to whom we made obeisance.  The queen exclaimed: 

“Alack, Sir Boss, wilt fight naked, and without lance or sword or—­”

But the king checked her and made her understand, with a polite phrase or two, that this was none of her business.  The bugles rang again; and we separated and rode to the ends of the lists, and took position.  Now old Merlin stepped into view and cast a dainty web of gossamer threads over Sir Sagramor which turned him into Hamlet’s ghost; the king made a sign, the bugles blew, Sir Sagramor laid his great lance in rest, and the next moment here he came thundering down the course with his veil flying out behind, and I went whistling through the air like an arrow to meet him —­cocking my ear the while, as if noting the invisible knight’s position and progress by hearing, not sight.  A chorus of encouraging shouts burst out for him, and one brave voice flung out a heartening word for me—­said: 

“Go it, slim Jim!”

It was an even bet that Clarence had procured that favor for me —­and furnished the language, too.  When that formidable lance-point was within a yard and a half of my breast I twitched my horse aside without an effort, and the big knight swept by, scoring a blank.  I got plenty of applause that time.  We turned, braced up, and down we came again.  Another blank for the knight, a roar of applause for me.  This same thing was repeated once more; and it fetched such a whirlwind of applause that Sir Sagramor lost his temper, and at once changed his tactics and set himself the task of chasing me down.  Why, he hadn’t any show in the world at that; it was a game of tag, with all the advantage on my side; I whirled out of his path with ease whenever I chose, and once I slapped him on the back as I went to the rear.  Finally I took the chase into my own hands; and after that, turn, or twist, or do what he would, he was never able to get behind me again; he found himself always in front at the end of his maneuver.  So he gave up that business and retired to his end of the lists.  His temper was clear gone now, and he forgot himself and flung an insult at me which disposed of mine.  I slipped my lasso from the horn of my saddle, and grasped the coil in my right hand.  This time you should have seen him come!—­it was a business trip, sure; by his gait there was blood in his eye.  I was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; the moment he was under way, I started for him; when the space between us had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky spirals of the rope a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under him for a surge.  The next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked Sir Sagramor out of the saddle!  Great Scott, but there was a sensation!

Unquestionably, the popular thing in this world is novelty.  These people had never seen anything of that cowboy business before, and it carried them clear off their feet with delight.  From all around and everywhere, the shout went up: 

“Encore! encore!”

I wondered where they got the word, but there was no time to cipher on philological matters, because the whole knight-errantry hive was just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn’t have been better.  The moment my lasso was released and Sir Sagramor had been assisted to his tent, I hauled in the slack, took my station and began to swing my loop around my head again.  I was sure to have use for it as soon as they could elect a successor for Sir Sagramor, and that couldn’t take long where there were so many hungry candidates.  Indeed, they elected one straight off —­Sir Hervis de Revel.

Bzz!  Here he came, like a house afire; I dodged:  he passed like a flash, with my horse-hair coils settling around his neck; a second or so later, fst! his saddle was empty.

I got another encore; and another, and another, and still another.  When I had snaked five men out, things began to look serious to the ironclads, and they stopped and consulted together.  As a result, they decided that it was time to waive etiquette and send their greatest and best against me.  To the astonishment of that little world, I lassoed Sir Lamorak de Galis, and after him Sir Galahad.  So you see there was simply nothing to be done now, but play their right bower—­bring out the superbest of the superb, the mightiest of the mighty, the great Sir Launcelot himself!

A proud moment for me?  I should think so.  Yonder was Arthur, King of Britain; yonder was Guenever; yes, and whole tribes of little provincial kings and kinglets; and in the tented camp yonder, renowned knights from many lands; and likewise the selectest body known to chivalry, the Knights of the Table Round, the most illustrious in Christendom; and biggest fact of all, the very sun of their shining system was yonder couching his lance, the focal point of forty thousand adoring eyes; and all by myself, here was I laying for him.  Across my mind flitted the dear image of a certain hello-girl of West Hartford, and I wished she could see me now.  In that moment, down came the Invincible, with the rush of a whirlwind—­the courtly world rose to its feet and bent forward —­the fateful coils went circling through the air, and before you could wink I was towing Sir Launcelot across the field on his back, and kissing my hand to the storm of waving kerchiefs and the thunder-crash of applause that greeted me!

Said I to myself, as I coiled my lariat and hung it on my saddle-horn, and sat there drunk with glory, “The victory is perfect—­no other will venture against me—­knight-errantry is dead.”  Now imagine my astonishment—­and everybody else’s, too—­to hear the peculiar bugle-call which announces that another competitor is about to enter the lists!  There was a mystery here; I couldn’t account for this thing.  Next, I noticed Merlin gliding away from me; and then I noticed that my lasso was gone!  The old sleight-of-hand expert had stolen it, sure, and slipped it under his robe.

The bugle blew again.  I looked, and down came Sagramor riding again, with his dust brushed off and his veil nicely re-arranged.  I trotted up to meet him, and pretended to find him by the sound of his horse’s hoofs.  He said: 

“Thou’rt quick of ear, but it will not save thee from this!” and he touched the hilt of his great sword.  “An ye are not able to see it, because of the influence of the veil, know that it is no cumbrous lance, but a sword—­and I ween ye will not be able to avoid it.”

His visor was up; there was death in his smile.  I should never be able to dodge his sword, that was plain.  Somebody was going to die this time.  If he got the drop on me, I could name the corpse.  We rode forward together, and saluted the royalties.  This time the king was disturbed.  He said: 

“Where is thy strange weapon?”

“It is stolen, sire.”

“Hast another at hand?”

“No, sire, I brought only the one.”

Then Merlin mixed in: 

“He brought but the one because there was but the one to bring.  There exists none other but that one.  It belongeth to the king of the Demons of the Sea.  This man is a pretender, and ignorant, else he had known that that weapon can be used in but eight bouts only, and then it vanisheth away to its home under the sea.”

“Then is he weaponless,” said the king.  “Sir Sagramore, ye will grant him leave to borrow.”

“And I will lend!” said Sir Launcelot, limping up.  “He is as brave a knight of his hands as any that be on live, and he shall have mine.”

He put his hand on his sword to draw it, but Sir Sagramor said: 

“Stay, it may not be.  He shall fight with his own weapons; it was his privilege to choose them and bring them.  If he has erred, on his head be it.”

“Knight!” said the king.  “Thou’rt overwrought with passion; it disorders thy mind.  Wouldst kill a naked man?”

“An he do it, he shall answer it to me,” said Sir Launcelot.

“I will answer it to any he that desireth!” retorted Sir Sagramor hotly.

Merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his lowdownest smile of malicious gratification: 

“’Tis well said, right well said!  And ’tis enough of parleying, let my lord the king deliver the battle signal.”

The king had to yield.  The bugle made proclamation, and we turned apart and rode to our stations.  There we stood, a hundred yards apart, facing each other, rigid and motionless, like horsed statues.  And so we remained, in a soundless hush, as much as a full minute, everybody gazing, nobody stirring.  It seemed as if the king could not take heart to give the signal.  But at last he lifted his hand, the clear note of the bugle followed, Sir Sagramor’s long blade described a flashing curve in the air, and it was superb to see him come.  I sat still.  On he came.  I did not move.  People got so excited that they shouted to me: 

“Fly, fly!  Save thyself!  This is murther!”

I never budged so much as an inch till that thundering apparition had got within fifteen paces of me; then I snatched a dragoon revolver out of my holster, there was a flash and a roar, and the revolver was back in the holster before anybody could tell what had happened.

Here was a riderless horse plunging by, and yonder lay Sir Sagramor, stone dead.

The people that ran to him were stricken dumb to find that the life was actually gone out of the man and no reason for it visible, no hurt upon his body, nothing like a wound.  There was a hole through the breast of his chain-mail, but they attached no importance to a little thing like that; and as a bullet wound there produces but little blood, none came in sight because of the clothing and swaddlings under the armor.  The body was dragged over to let the king and the swells look down upon it.  They were stupefied with astonishment naturally.  I was requested to come and explain the miracle.  But I remained in my tracks, like a statue, and said: 

“If it is a command, I will come, but my lord the king knows that I am where the laws of combat require me to remain while any desire to come against me.”

I waited.  Nobody challenged.  Then I said: 

“If there are any who doubt that this field is well and fairly won, I do not wait for them to challenge me, I challenge them.”

“It is a gallant offer,” said the king, “and well beseems you.  Whom will you name first?”

“I name none, I challenge all!  Here I stand, and dare the chivalry of England to come against me—­not by individuals, but in mass!”

“What!” shouted a score of knights.

“You have heard the challenge.  Take it, or I proclaim you recreant knights and vanquished, every one!”

It was a “bluff” you know.  At such a time it is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to “call,” and you rake in the chips.  But just this once—­well, things looked squally!  In just no time, five hundred knights were scrambling into their saddles, and before you could wink a widely scattering drove were under way and clattering down upon me.  I snatched both revolvers from the holsters and began to measure distances and calculate chances.

Bang!  One saddle empty.  Bang! another one.  Bang—­bang, and I bagged two.  Well, it was nip and tuck with us, and I knew it.  If I spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people, the twelfth man would kill me, sure.  And so I never did feel so happy as I did when my ninth downed its man and I detected the wavering in the crowd which is premonitory of panic.  An instant lost now could knock out my last chance.  But I didn’t lose it.  I raised both revolvers and pointed them—­the halted host stood their ground just about one good square moment, then broke and fled.

The day was mine.  Knight-errantry was a doomed institution.  The march of civilization was begun.  How did I feel?  Ah, you never could imagine it.

And Brer Merlin?  His stock was flat again.  Somehow, every time the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science, the magic of fol-de-rol got left.

Chapter 40 THREE YEARS LATER

When I broke the back of knight-errantry that time, I no longer felt obliged to work in secret.  So, the very next day I exposed my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine factories and workshops to an astonished world.  That is to say, I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth.

Well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly.  The knights were temporarily down, but if I would keep them so I must just simply paralyze them—­nothing short of that would answer.  You see, I was “bluffing” that last time in the field; it would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion, if I gave them a chance.  So I must not give them time; and I didn’t.

I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in the advertising columns of the paper.

I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions.  I said, name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it.

I was not bluffing this time.  I meant what I said; I could do what I promised.  There wasn’t any way to misunderstand the language of that challenge.  Even the dullest of the chivalry perceived that this was a plain case of “put up, or shut up.”  They were wise and did the latter.  In all the next three years they gave me no trouble worth mentioning.

Consider the three years sped.  Now look around on England.  A happy and prosperous country, and strangely altered.  Schools everywhere, and several colleges; a number of pretty good newspapers.  Even authorship was taking a start; Sir Dinadan the Humorist was first in the field, with a volume of gray-headed jokes which I had been familiar with during thirteen centuries.  If he had left out that old rancid one about the lecturer I wouldn’t have said anything; but I couldn’t stand that one.  I suppressed the book and hanged the author.

Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law; taxation had been equalized.  The telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand willing and handy servants of steam and electricity were working their way into favor.  We had a steamboat or two on the Thames, we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercial marine; I was getting ready to send out an expedition to discover America.

We were building several lines of railway, and our line from Camelot to London was already finished and in operation.  I was shrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passenger service places of high and distinguished honor.  My idea was to attract the chivalry and nobility, and make them useful and keep them out of mischief.  The plan worked very well, the competition for the places was hot.  The conductor of the 4.33 express was a duke; there wasn’t a passenger conductor on the line below the degree of earl.  They were good men, every one, but they had two defects which I couldn’t cure, and so had to wink at:  they wouldn’t lay aside their armor, and they would “knock down” fare —­I mean rob the company.

There was hardly a knight in all the land who wasn’t in some useful employment.  They were going from end to end of the country in all manner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering, and their experience in it, made them altogether the most effective spreaders of civilization we had.  They went clothed in steel and equipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn’t persuade a person to try a sewing-machine on the installment plan, or a melodeon, or a barbed-wire fence, or a prohibition journal, or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for, they removed him and passed on.

I was very happy.  Things were working steadily toward a secretly longed-for point.  You see, I had two schemes in my head which were the vastest of all my projects.  The one was to overthrow the Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins —­not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-please one; and the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding that upon Arthur’s death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike—­at any rate to all men, wise or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one.  Arthur was good for thirty years yet, he being about my own age—­that is to say, forty—­and I believed that in that time I could easily have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager for an event which should be the first of its kind in the history of the world—­a rounded and complete governmental revolution without bloodshed.  The result to be a republic.  Well, I may as well confess, though I do feel ashamed when I think of it:  I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president myself.  Yes, there was more or less human nature in me; I found that out.

Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified way.  His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate.  He believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy.  I urged that kings were dangerous.  He said, then have cats.  He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose.  They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive; finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house, and “Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the grace of God King,” would sound as well as it would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on.  “And as a rule,” said he, in his neat modern English, “the character of these cats would be considerably above the character of the average king, and this would be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reason that a nation always models its morals after its monarch’s.  The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it.  The eyes of the whole harried world would soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and royal butchers would presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fill the vacancies with catlings from our own royal house; we should become a factory; we should supply the thrones of the world; within forty years all Europe would be governed by cats, and we should furnish the cats.  The reign of universal peace would begin then, to end no more forever… .  Me-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow—­fzt!—­wow!”

Hang him, I supposed he was in earnest, and was beginning to be persuaded by him, until he exploded that cat-howl and startled me almost out of my clothes.  But he never could be in earnest.  He didn’t know what it was.  He had pictured a distinct and perfectly rational and feasible improvement upon constitutional monarchy, but he was too feather-headed to know it, or care anything about it, either.  I was going to give him a scolding, but Sandy came flying in at that moment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobs that for a minute she could not get her voice.  I ran and took her in my arms, and lavished caresses upon her and said, beseechingly: 

“Speak, darling, speak!  What is it?”

Her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped, almost inaudibly: 

“HELLO-CENTRAL!”

“Quick!” I shouted to Clarence; “telephone the king’s homeopath to come!”

In two minutes I was kneeling by the child’s crib, and Sandy was dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere, all over the palace.  I took in the situation almost at a glance—­membranous croup!  I bent down and whispered: 

“Wake up, sweetheart!  Hello-Central.”

She opened her soft eyes languidly, and made out to say: 

“Papa.”

That was a comfort.  She was far from dead yet.  I sent for preparations of sulphur, I rousted out the croup-kettle myself; for I don’t sit down and wait for doctors when Sandy or the child is sick.  I knew how to nurse both of them, and had had experience.  This little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life, and often I could soothe away its troubles and get it to laugh through the tear-dews on its eye-lashes when even its mother couldn’t.

Sir Launcelot, in his richest armor, came striding along the great hall now on his way to the stock-board; he was president of the stock-board, and occupied the Siege Perilous, which he had bought of Sir Galahad; for the stock-board consisted of the Knights of the Round Table, and they used the Round Table for business purposes now.  Seats at it were worth—­well, you would never believe the figure, so it is no use to state it.  Sir Launcelot was a bear, and he had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just getting ready to squeeze the shorts to-day; but what of that?  He was the same old Launcelot, and when he glanced in as he was passing the door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enough for him; bulls and bears might fight it out their own way for all him, he would come right in here and stand by little Hello-Central for all he was worth.  And that was what he did.  He shied his helmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wick in the alcohol lamp and was firing up on the croup-kettle.  By this time Sandy had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everything was ready.

Sir Launcelot got up steam, he and I loaded up the kettle with unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch of lactic acid added thereto, then filled the thing up with water and inserted the steam-spout under the canopy.  Everything was ship-shape now, and we sat down on either side of the crib to stand our watch.  Sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a couple of church-wardens with willow-bark and sumach-tobacco for us, and told us to smoke as much as we pleased, it couldn’t get under the canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in the land who had ever seen a cloud blown.  Well, there couldn’t be a more contented or comfortable sight than Sir Launcelot in his noble armor sitting in gracious serenity at the end of a yard of snowy church-warden.  He was a beautiful man, a lovely man, and was just intended to make a wife and children happy.  But, of course Guenever—­however, it’s no use to cry over what’s done and can’t be helped.

Well, he stood watch-and-watch with me, right straight through, for three days and nights, till the child was out of danger; then he took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumes falling about her golden head, then laid her softly in Sandy’s lap again and took his stately way down the vast hall, between the ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials, and so disappeared.  And no instinct warned me that I should never look upon him again in this world!  Lord, what a world of heart-break it is.

The doctors said we must take the child away, if we would coax her back to health and strength again.  And she must have sea-air.  So we took a man-of-war, and a suite of two hundred and sixty persons, and went cruising about, and after a fortnight of this we stepped ashore on the French coast, and the doctors thought it would be a good idea to make something of a stay there.  The little king of that region offered us his hospitalities, and we were glad to accept.  If he had had as many conveniences as he lacked, we should have been plenty comfortable enough; even as it was, we made out very well, in his queer old castle, by the help of comforts and luxuries from the ship.

At the end of a month I sent the vessel home for fresh supplies, and for news.  We expected her back in three or four days.  She would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain experiment which I had been starting.  It was a project of mine to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve the best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation.  I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time, and the date was now arriving for their first public effort.

This experiment was baseball.  In order to give the thing vogue from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chose my nines by rank, not capacity.  There wasn’t a knight in either team who wasn’t a sceptered sovereign.  As for material of this sort, there was a glut of it always around Arthur.  You couldn’t throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king.  Of course, I couldn’t get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn’t do that when they bathed.  They consented to differentiate the armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that was the most they would do.  So, one of the teams wore chain-mail ulsters, and the other wore plate-armor made of my new Bessemer steel.  Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing I ever saw.  Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemer was at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards sometimes.  And when a man was running, and threw himself on his stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into port.  At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but I had to discontinue that.  These people were no easier to please than other nines.  The umpire’s first decision was usually his last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him home on a shutter.  When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived a game, umpiring got to be unpopular.  So I was obliged to appoint somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would protect him.

Here are the names of the nines: 

 

BESSEMERS

KING ARTHUR. 

KING LOT OF LOTHIAN.

KING OF NORTHGALIS.

KING MARSIL.

KING OF LITTLE BRITAIN.

KING LABOR.

KING PELLAM OF LISTENGESE.

KING BAGDEMAGUS.

KING TOLLEME LA FEINTES.

 

ULSTERS

KING MARHALT OF IRELAND.

KING MORGANORE.

KING MARK OF CORNWALL.    

KING NENTRES OF GARLOT.  

KING MELIODAS OF Lionés.  

KING OF THE LAKE.

THE SOWDAN OF SYRIA.

EMPEROR LUCIUS.

KING LOGRIS.

 

Umpire—­CLARENCE.

 

The first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people; and for solid fun would be worth going around the world to see.  Everything would be favorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring weather now, and Nature was all tailored out in her new clothes.

Chapter 41 THE INTERDICT

However, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters; our child began to lose ground again, and we had to go to sitting up with her, her case became so serious.  We couldn’t bear to allow anybody to help in this service, so we two stood watch-and-watch, day in and day out.  Ah, Sandy, what a right heart she had, how simple, and genuine, and good she was!  She was a flawless wife and mother; and yet I had married her for no other particular reasons, except that by the customs of chivalry she was my property until some knight should win her from me in the field.  She had hunted Britain over for me; had found me at the hanging-bout outside of London, and had straightway resumed her old place at my side in the placidest way and as of right.  I was a New Englander, and in my opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her, sooner or later.  She couldn’t see how, but I cut argument short and we had a wedding.

Now I didn’t know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I did draw.  Within the twelvemonth I became her worshiper; and ours was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was.  People talk about beautiful friendships between two persons of the same sex.  What is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendship of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same?  There is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine.

In my dreams, along at first, I still wandered thirteen centuries away, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all up and down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world.  Many a time Sandy heard that imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep.  With a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon our child, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine.  It touched me to tears, and it also nearly knocked me off my feet, too, when she smiled up in my face for an earned reward, and played her quaint and pretty surprise upon me: 

“The name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made holy, and the music of it will abide alway in our ears.  Now thou’lt kiss me, as knowing the name I have given the child.”

But I didn’t know it, all the same.  I hadn’t an idea in the world; but it would have been cruel to confess it and spoil her pretty game; so I never let on, but said: 

“Yes, I know, sweetheart—­how dear and good it is of you, too!  But I want to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine, utter it first—­then its music will be perfect.”

Pleased to the marrow, she murmured: 

“HELLO-CENTRAL!”

I didn’t laugh—­I am always thankful for that—­but the strain ruptured every cartilage in me, and for weeks afterward I could hear my bones clack when I walked.  She never found out her mistake.  The first time she heard that form of salute used at the telephone she was surprised, and not pleased; but I told her I had given order for it:  that henceforth and forever the telephone must always be invoked with that reverent formality, in perpetual honor and remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake.  This was not true.  But it answered.

Well, during two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and in our deep solicitude we were unconscious of any world outside of that sick-room.  Then our reward came:  the center of the universe turned the corner and began to mend.  Grateful?  It isn’t the term.  There isn’t any term for it.  You know that yourself, if you’ve watched your child through the Valley of the Shadow and seen it come back to life and sweep night out of the earth with one all-illuminating smile that you could cover with your hand.

Why, we were back in this world in one instant!  Then we looked the same startled thought into each other’s eyes at the same moment; more than two weeks gone, and that ship not back yet!

In another minute I appeared in the presence of my train.  They had been steeped in troubled bodings all this time—­their faces showed it.  I called an escort and we galloped five miles to a hilltop overlooking the sea.  Where was my great commerce that so lately had made these glistening expanses populous and beautiful with its white-winged flocks?  Vanished, every one!  Not a sail, from verge to verge, not a smoke-bank—­just a dead and empty solitude, in place of all that brisk and breezy life.

I went swiftly back, saying not a word to anybody.  I told Sandy this ghastly news.  We could imagine no explanation that would begin to explain.  Had there been an invasion? an earthquake? a pestilence?  Had the nation been swept out of existence?  But guessing was profitless.  I must go—­at once.  I borrowed the king’s navy—­a “ship” no bigger than a steam launch—­and was soon ready.

The parting—­ah, yes, that was hard.  As I was devouring the child with last kisses, it brisked up and jabbered out its vocabulary! —­the first time in more than two weeks, and it made fools of us for joy.  The darling mispronunciations of childhood!—­dear me, there’s no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again.  Well, how good it was to be able to carry that gracious memory away with me!

I approached England the next morning, with the wide highway of salt water all to myself.  There were ships in the harbor, at Dover, but they were naked as to sails, and there was no sign of life about them.  It was Sunday; yet at Canterbury the streets were empty; strangest of all, there was not even a priest in sight, and no stroke of a bell fell upon my ear.  The mournfulness of death was everywhere.  I couldn’t understand it.  At last, in the further edge of that town I saw a small funeral procession —­just a family and a few friends following a coffin—­no priest; a funeral without bell, book, or candle; there was a church there close at hand, but they passed it by weeping, and did not enter it; I glanced up at the belfry, and there hung the bell, shrouded in black, and its tongue tied back.  Now I knew!  Now I understood the stupendous calamity that had overtaken England.  Invasion?  Invasion is a triviality to it.  It was the INTERDICT!

I asked no questions; I didn’t need to ask any.  The Church had struck; the thing for me to do was to get into a disguise, and go warily.  One of my servants gave me a suit of clothes, and when we were safe beyond the town I put them on, and from that time I traveled alone; I could not risk the embarrassment of company.

A miserable journey.  A desolate silence everywhere.  Even in London itself.  Traffic had ceased; men did not talk or laugh, or go in groups, or even in couples; they moved aimlessly about, each man by himself, with his head down, and woe and terror at his heart.  The Tower showed recent war-scars.  Verily, much had been happening.

Of course, I meant to take the train for Camelot.  Train!  Why, the station was as vacant as a cavern.  I moved on.  The journey to Camelot was a repetition of what I had already seen.  The Monday and the Tuesday differed in no way from the Sunday.  I arrived far in the night.  From being the best electric-lighted town in the kingdom and the most like a recumbent sun of anything you ever saw, it was become simply a blot—­a blot upon darkness—­that is to say, it was darker and solider than the rest of the darkness, and so you could see it a little better; it made me feel as if maybe it was symbolical—­a sort of sign that the Church was going to keep the upper hand now, and snuff out all my beautiful civilization just like that.  I found no life stirring in the somber streets.  I groped my way with a heavy heart.  The vast castle loomed black upon the hilltop, not a spark visible about it.  The drawbridge was down, the great gate stood wide, I entered without challenge, my own heels making the only sound I heard—­and it was sepulchral enough, in those huge vacant courts.

Chapter 42 WAR!

I found Clarence alone in his quarters, drowned in melancholy; and in place of the electric light, he had reinstituted the ancient rag-lamp, and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtains drawn tight.  He sprang up and rushed for me eagerly, saying: 

“Oh, it’s worth a billion milrays to look upon a live person again!”

He knew me as easily as if I hadn’t been disguised at all.  Which frightened me; one may easily believe that.

“Quick, now, tell me the meaning of this fearful disaster,” I said.  “How did it come about?”

“Well, if there hadn’t been any Queen Guenever, it wouldn’t have come so early; but it would have come, anyway.  It would have come on your own account by and by; by luck, it happened to come on the queen’s.”

“And Sir Launcelot’s?”

“Just so.”

“Give me the details.”

“I reckon you will grant that during some years there has been only one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that has not been looking steadily askance at the queen and Sir Launcelot—­”

“Yes, King Arthur’s.”

“—­and only one heart that was without suspicion—­”

“Yes—­the king’s; a heart that isn’t capable of thinking evil of a friend.”

“Well, the king might have gone on, still happy and unsuspecting, to the end of his days, but for one of your modern improvements —­the stock-board.  When you left, three miles of the London, Canterbury and Dover were ready for the rails, and also ready and ripe for manipulation in the stock-market.  It was wildcat, and everybody knew it.  The stock was for sale at a give-away.  What does Sir Launcelot do, but—­”

“Yes, I know; he quietly picked up nearly all of it for a song; then he bought about twice as much more, deliverable upon call; and he was about to call when I left.”

“Very well, he did call.  The boys couldn’t deliver.  Oh, he had them—­and he just settled his grip and squeezed them.  They were laughing in their sleeves over their smartness in selling stock to him at 15 and 16 and along there that wasn’t worth 10.  Well, when they had laughed long enough on that side of their mouths, they rested-up that side by shifting the laugh to the other side.  That was when they compromised with the Invincible at 283!”

“Good land!”

“He skinned them alive, and they deserved it—­anyway, the whole kingdom rejoiced.  Well, among the flayed were Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred, nephews to the king.  End of the first act.  Act second, scene first, an apartment in Carlisle castle, where the court had gone for a few days’ hunting.  Persons present, the whole tribe of the king’s nephews.  Mordred and Agravaine propose to call the guileless Arthur’s attention to Guenever and Sir Launcelot.  Sir Gawaine, Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaheris will have nothing to do with it.  A dispute ensues, with loud talk; in the midst of it enter the king.  Mordred and Agravaine spring their devastating tale upon him. Tableau.  A trap is laid for Launcelot, by the king’s command, and Sir Launcelot walks into it.  He made it sufficiently uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses—­to wit, Mordred, Agravaine, and twelve knights of lesser rank, for he killed every one of them but Mordred; but of course that couldn’t straighten matters between Launcelot and the king, and didn’t.”

“Oh, dear, only one thing could result—­I see that.  War, and the knights of the realm divided into a king’s party and a Sir Launcelot’s party.”

“Yes—­that was the way of it.  The king sent the queen to the stake, proposing to purify her with fire.  Launcelot and his knights rescued her, and in doing it slew certain good old friends of yours and mine—­in fact, some of the best we ever had; to wit, Sir Belias lé Orgulous, Sir Segwarides, Sir Griflet lé Fils de Dieu, Sir Brandiles, Sir Aglovale—­”

“Oh, you tear out my heartstrings.”

“—­wait, I’m not done yet—­Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gillimer—­”

“The very best man in my subordinate nine.  What a handy right-fielder he was!”

“—­Sir Reynold’s three brothers, Sir Damus, Sir Priamus, Sir Kay the Stranger—­”

“My peerless short-stop!  I’ve seen him catch a daisy-cutter in his teeth.  Come, I can’t stand this!”

“—­Sir Driant, Sir Lambegus, Sir Herminde, Sir Pertilope, Sir Perimones, and—­whom do you think?”

“Rush!  Go on.”

“Sir Gaheris, and Sir Gareth—­both!”

“Oh, incredible!  Their love for Launcelot was indestructible.”

“Well, it was an accident.  They were simply onlookers; they were unarmed, and were merely there to witness the queen’s punishment.  Sir Launcelot smote down whoever came in the way of his blind fury, and he killed these without noticing who they were.  Here is an instantaneous photograph one of our boys got of the battle; it’s for sale on every news-stand.  There—­the figures nearest the queen are Sir Launcelot with his sword up, and Sir Gareth gasping his latest breath.  You can catch the agony in the queen’s face through the curling smoke.  It’s a rattling battle-picture.”

“Indeed, it is.  We must take good care of it; its historical value is incalculable.  Go on.”

“Well, the rest of the tale is just war, pure and simple.  Launcelot retreated to his town and castle of Joyous Gard, and gathered there a great following of knights.  The king, with a great host, went there, and there was desperate fighting during several days, and, as a result, all the plain around was paved with corpses and cast-iron.  Then the Church patched up a peace between Arthur and Launcelot and the queen and everybody—­everybody but Sir Gawaine.  He was bitter about the slaying of his brothers, Gareth and Gaheris, and would not be appeased.  He notified Launcelot to get him thence, and make swift preparation, and look to be soon attacked.  So Launcelot sailed to his Duchy of Guienne with his following, and Gawaine soon followed with an army, and he beguiled Arthur to go with him.  Arthur left the kingdom in Sir Mordred’s hands until you should return—­”

“Ah—­a king’s customary wisdom!”

“Yes.  Sir Mordred set himself at once to work to make his kingship permanent.  He was going to marry Guenever, as a first move; but she fled and shut herself up in the Tower of London.  Mordred attacked; the Bishop of Canterbury dropped down on him with the Interdict.  The king returned; Mordred fought him at Dover, at Canterbury, and again at Barham Down.  Then there was talk of peace and a composition.  Terms, Mordred to have Cornwall and Kent during Arthur’s life, and the whole kingdom afterward.”

“Well, upon my word!  My dream of a republic to be a dream, and so remain.”

“Yes.  The two armies lay near Salisbury.  Gawaine—­Gawaine’s head is at Dover Castle, he fell in the fight there—­Gawaine appeared to Arthur in a dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him to refrain from conflict for a month, let the delay cost what it might.  But battle was precipitated by an accident.  Arthur had given order that if a sword was raised during the consultation over the proposed treaty with Mordred, sound the trumpet and fall on! for he had no confidence in Mordred.  Mordred had given a similar order to his people.  Well, by and by an adder bit a knight’s heel; the knight forgot all about the order, and made a slash at the adder with his sword.  Inside of half a minute those two prodigious hosts came together with a crash!  They butchered away all day.  Then the king—­however, we have started something fresh since you left—­our paper has.”

“No?  What is that?”

“War correspondence!”

“Why, that’s good.”

“Yes, the paper was booming right along, for the Interdict made no impression, got no grip, while the war lasted.  I had war correspondents with both armies.  I will finish that battle by reading you what one of the boys says: 

’Then the king looked about him, and then was he ware of all his host and of all his good knights were left no more on live but two knights, that was Sir Lucan de Butlere, and his brother Sir Bedivere:  and they were full sore wounded.  Jesu mercy, said the king, where are all my noble knights becomen?  Alas that ever I should see this doleful day.  For now, said Arthur, I am come to mine end.  But would to God that I wist where were that traitor Sir Mordred, that hath caused all this mischief.  Then was King Arthur ware where Sir Mordred leaned upon his sword among a great heap of dead men.  Now give me my spear, said Arthur unto Sir Lucan, for yonder I have espied the traitor that all this woe hath wrought.  Sir, let him be, said Sir Lucan, for he is unhappy; and if ye pass this unhappy day, ye shall be right well revenged upon him.  Good lord, remember ye of your night’s dream, and what the spirit of Sir Gawaine told you this night, yet God of his great goodness hath preserved you hitherto.  Therefore, for God’s sake, my lord, leave off by this.  For blessed be God ye have won the field:  for here we be three on live, and with Sir Mordred is none on live.  And if ye leave off now, this wicked day of destiny is past.  Tide me death, betide me life, saith the king, now I see him yonder alone, he shall never escape mine hands, for at a better avail shall I never have him.  God speed you well, said Sir Bedivere.  Then the king gat his spear in both his hands, and ran toward Sir Mordred crying, Traitor, now is thy death day come.  And when Sir Mordred heard Sir Arthur, he ran until him with his sword drawn in his hand.  And then King Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield, with a foin of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom.  And when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death’s wound, he thrust himself, with the might that he had, up to the butt of King Arthur’s spear.  And right so he smote his father Arthur with his sword holden in both his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain-pan, and therewithal Sir Mordred fell stark dead to the earth.  And the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth, and there he swooned oft-times—­’”

“That is a good piece of war correspondence, Clarence; you are a first-rate newspaper man.  Well—­is the king all right?  Did he get well?”

“Poor soul, no.  He is dead.”

I was utterly stunned; it had not seemed to me that any wound could be mortal to him.

“And the queen, Clarence?”

“She is a nun, in Almesbury.”

“What changes! and in such a short while.  It is inconceivable.  What next, I wonder?”

“I can tell you what next.”

“Well?”

“Stake our lives and stand by them!”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The Church is master now.  The Interdict included you with Mordred; it is not to be removed while you remain alive.  The clans are gathering.  The Church has gathered all the knights that are left alive, and as soon as you are discovered we shall have business on our hands.”

“Stuff!  With our deadly scientific war-material; with our hosts of trained—­”

“Save your breath—­we haven’t sixty faithful left!”

“What are you saying?  Our schools, our colleges, our vast workshops, our—­”

“When those knights come, those establishments will empty themselves and go over to the enemy.  Did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people?”

“I certainly did think it.”

“Well, then, you may unthink it.  They stood every strain easily —­until the Interdict.  Since then, they merely put on a bold outside—­at heart they are quaking.  Make up your mind to it —­when the armies come, the mask will fall.”

“It’s hard news.  We are lost.  They will turn our own science against us.”

“No they won’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I and a handful of the faithful have blocked that game.  I’ll tell you what I’ve done, and what moved me to it.  Smart as you are, the Church was smarter.  It was the Church that sent you cruising—­through her servants, the doctors.”

“Clarence!”

“It is the truth.  I know it.  Every officer of your ship was the Church’s picked servant, and so was every man of the crew.”

“Oh, come!”

“It is just as I tell you.  I did not find out these things at once, but I found them out finally.  Did you send me verbal information, by the commander of the ship, to the effect that upon his return to you, with supplies, you were going to leave Cadiz—­”

“Cadiz!  I haven’t been at Cadiz at all!”

“—­going to leave Cadiz and cruise in distant seas indefinitely, for the health of your family?  Did you send me that word?”

“Of course not.  I would have written, wouldn’t I?”

“Naturally.  I was troubled and suspicious.  When the commander sailed again I managed to ship a spy with him.  I have never heard of vessel or spy since.  I gave myself two weeks to hear from you in.  Then I resolved to send a ship to Cadiz.  There was a reason why I didn’t.”

“What was that?”

“Our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared!  Also, as suddenly and as mysteriously, the railway and telegraph and telephone service ceased, the men all deserted, poles were cut down, the Church laid a ban upon the electric light!  I had to be up and doing—­and straight off.  Your life was safe—­nobody in these kingdoms but Merlin would venture to touch such a magician as you without ten thousand men at his back—­I had nothing to think of but how to put preparations in the best trim against your coming.  I felt safe myself—­nobody would be anxious to touch a pet of yours.  So this is what I did.  From our various works I selected all the men—­boys I mean—­whose faithfulness under whatsoever pressure I could swear to, and I called them together secretly and gave them their instructions.  There are fifty-two of them; none younger than fourteen, and none above seventeen years old.”

“Why did you select boys?”

“Because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstition and reared in it.  It is in their blood and bones.  We imagined we had educated it out of them; they thought so, too; the Interdict woke them up like a thunderclap!  It revealed them to themselves, and it revealed them to me, too.  With boys it was different.  Such as have been under our training from seven to ten years have had no acquaintance with the Church’s terrors, and it was among these that I found my fifty-two.  As a next move, I paid a private visit to that old cave of Merlin’s—­not the small one—­the big one—­”

“Yes, the one where we secretly established our first great electric plant when I was projecting a miracle.”

“Just so.  And as that miracle hadn’t become necessary then, I thought it might be a good idea to utilize the plant now.  I’ve provisioned the cave for a siege—­”

“A good idea, a first-rate idea.”

“I think so.  I placed four of my boys there as a guard—­inside, and out of sight.  Nobody was to be hurt—­while outside; but any attempt to enter—­well, we said just let anybody try it!  Then I went out into the hills and uncovered and cut the secret wires which connected your bedroom with the wires that go to the dynamite deposits under all our vast factories, mills, workshops, magazines, etc., and about midnight I and my boys turned out and connected that wire with the cave, and nobody but you and I suspects where the other end of it goes to.  We laid it under ground, of course, and it was all finished in a couple of hours or so.  We sha’n’t have to leave our fortress now when we want to blow up our civilization.”

“It was the right move—­and the natural one; military necessity, in the changed condition of things.  Well, what changes have come!  We expected to be besieged in the palace some time or other, but —­however, go on.”

“Next, we built a wire fence.”

“Wire fence?”

“Yes.  You dropped the hint of it yourself, two or three years ago.”

“Oh, I remember—­the time the Church tried her strength against us the first time, and presently thought it wise to wait for a hopefuler season.  Well, how have you arranged the fence?”

“I start twelve immensely strong wires—­naked, not insulated —­from a big dynamo in the cave—­dynamo with no brushes except a positive and a negative one—­”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“The wires go out from the cave and fence in a circle of level ground a hundred yards in diameter; they make twelve independent fences, ten feet apart—­that is to say, twelve circles within circles—­and their ends come into the cave again.”

“Right; go on.”

“The fences are fastened to heavy oaken posts only three feet apart, and these posts are sunk five feet in the ground.”

“That is good and strong.”

“Yes.  The wires have no ground-connection outside of the cave.  They go out from the positive brush of the dynamo; there is a ground-connection through the negative brush; the other ends of the wire return to the cave, and each is grounded independently.”

“No, no, that won’t do!”

“Why?”

“It’s too expensive—­uses up force for nothing.  You don’t want any ground-connection except the one through the negative brush.  The other end of every wire must be brought back into the cave and fastened independently, and without any ground-connection.  Now, then, observe the economy of it.  A cavalry charge hurls itself against the fence; you are using no power, you are spending no money, for there is only one ground-connection till those horses come against the wire; the moment they touch it they form a connection with the negative brush through the ground, and drop dead.  Don’t you see?—­you are using no energy until it is needed; your lightning is there, and ready, like the load in a gun; but it isn’t costing you a cent till you touch it off.  Oh, yes, the single ground-connection—­”

“Of course!  I don’t know how I overlooked that.  It’s not only cheaper, but it’s more effectual than the other way, for if wires break or get tangled, no harm is done.”

“No, especially if we have a tell-tale in the cave and disconnect the broken wire.  Well, go on.  The gatlings?”

“Yes—­that’s arranged.  In the center of the inner circle, on a spacious platform six feet high, I’ve grouped a battery of thirteen gatling guns, and provided plenty of ammunition.”

“That’s it.  They command every approach, and when the Church’s knights arrive, there’s going to be music.  The brow of the precipice over the cave—­”

“I’ve got a wire fence there, and a gatling.  They won’t drop any rocks down on us.”

“Well, and the glass-cylinder dynamite torpedoes?”

“That’s attended to.  It’s the prettiest garden that was ever planted.  It’s a belt forty feet wide, and goes around the outer fence—­distance between it and the fence one hundred yards—­kind of neutral ground that space is.  There isn’t a single square yard of that whole belt but is equipped with a torpedo.  We laid them on the surface of the ground, and sprinkled a layer of sand over them.  It’s an innocent looking garden, but you let a man start in to hoe it once, and you’ll see.”

“You tested the torpedoes?”

“Well, I was going to, but—­”

“But what?  Why, it’s an immense oversight not to apply a—­”

“Test?  Yes, I know; but they’re all right; I laid a few in the public road beyond our lines and they’ve been tested.”

“Oh, that alters the case.  Who did it?”

“A Church committee.”

“How kind!”

“Yes.  They came to command us to make submission.  You see they didn’t really come to test the torpedoes; that was merely an incident.”

“Did the committee make a report?”

“Yes, they made one.  You could have heard it a mile.”

“Unanimous?”

“That was the nature of it.  After that I put up some signs, for the protection of future committees, and we have had no intruders since.”

“Clarence, you’ve done a world of work, and done it perfectly.”

“We had plenty of time for it; there wasn’t any occasion for hurry.”

We sat silent awhile, thinking.  Then my mind was made up, and I said: 

“Yes, everything is ready; everything is shipshape, no detail is wanting.  I know what to do now.”

“So do I; sit down and wait.”

“No, sir! rise up and strike!”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes, indeed!  The defensive isn’t in my line, and the offensive is.  That is, when I hold a fair hand—­two-thirds as good a hand as the enemy.  Oh, yes, we’ll rise up and strike; that’s our game.”

“A hundred to one you are right.  When does the performance begin?”

“Now! We’ll proclaim the Republic.”

“Well, that will precipitate things, sure enough!”

“It will make them buzz, I tell you!  England will be a hornets’ nest before noon to-morrow, if the Church’s hand hasn’t lost its cunning—­and we know it hasn’t.  Now you write and I’ll dictate thus: 

 

“PROCLAMATION

“BE IT KNOWN UNTO ALL.  Whereas the king having died and left no heir, it becomes my duty to continue the executive authority vested in me, until a government shall have been created and set in motion.  The monarchy has lapsed, it no longer exists.  By consequence, all political power has reverted to its original source, the people of the nation.  With the monarchy, its several adjuncts died also; wherefore there is no longer a nobility, no longer a privileged class, no longer an Established Church; all men are become exactly equal; they are upon one common level, and religion is free.