by Mark Twain
‘No! Now go away and don’t bother me any more.’
Roxy’s head was down, in an attitude of humility. But now the fires of her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely. She raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at the same time her great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and masterful attitude, with all the majesty and grace of her vanished youth in it. She raised her finger and punctuated with it.
‘You has said de word. You has had yo’ chance, en you has trompled it under yo’ foot. When you git another one, you’ll git down on yo’ knees en beg for it!’
A cold chill went to Tom’s heart, he didn’t know why; for he did not reflect that such words, from such an incongruous source, and so solemnly delivered, could not easily fail of that effect. However, he did the natural thing: he replied with bluster and mockery:
‘You’ll give me a chance—you! Perhaps I’d better get down on my knees now! But in case I don’t—just for argument’s sake—what’s going to happen, pray?’
‘Dis is what is gwine to happen. I’s gwine as straight to yo’ uncle as I kin walk, en tell him every las’ thing I knows ’bout you.’
Tom’s cheek blenched, and she saw it. Disturbing thoughts began to chase each other through his head. ‘How can she know? And yet she must have found out—she looks it. I’ve had the will back only three months, and am already deep in debt again, and moving heaven and earth to save myself from exposure and destruction, with a reasonably fair show of getting the thing covered up if I’m let alone, and now this fiend has gone and found me out somehow or other. I wonder how much she knows? Oh, oh, oh, it’s enough to break a body’s heart! But I’ve got to humour her—there’s no other way.’
Then he worked up a rather sickly sample of a gay laugh and a hollow chipperness of manner, and said:
‘Well, well, Roxy dear, old friends like you and me mustn’t quarrel. Here’s your dollar—now tell me what you know.’
He held out the wild-cat bill; she stood as she was, and made no movement. It was her turn to scorn persuasive foolery now, and she did not waste it. She said, with a grim implacability in voice and manner which made Tom almost realise that even a former slave can remember for ten minutes insults and injuries returned for compliments and flatteries received, and can also enjoy taking revenge for them when the opportunity offers.
‘What does I know? I’ll tell you what I knows. I knows enough to bu’st dat will to flinders—en more, mind you, more!’
Tom was aghast.
‘More?’ he said. ‘What do you call more? Where’s there any room for more?’
Roxy laughed a mocking laugh, and said scoffingly, with a toss of her head, and her hands on her hips:
‘Yes!—oh, I reckon! Co’se you’d like to know—wid yo’ po’ little ole rag dollah. What you reckon I‘se gwine to tell you for?—you ain’t got no money. I’se gwine to tell yo’ uncle—en I’ll do it dis minute, too—he’ll gimme five dollahs for de news, en mighty glad, too.’
She swung herself around disdainfully, and started away.
Tom was in a panic. He seized her skirts, and implored her to wait. She turned and said, loftily:
‘Look-a-heah, what ’uz it I tole you?’
‘You—you—I don’t remember anything. What was it you told me?’
‘I tole you dat de next time I give you a chance you’d git down on yo’ knees en beg for it.’
Tom was stupefied for a moment. He was panting with excitement. Then he said:
‘Oh, Roxy, you wouldn’t require your young master to do such a horrible thing. You can’t mean it.’
‘I’ll let you know mighty quick whether I means it or not! You call me names, en as good as spit on me when I comes here, po’ en ornery en ’umble, to praise you for bein’ growed up so fine en handsome, en tell you how I used to nuss you en tend you en watch you when you ‘uz sick en hadn’t no mother but me in de whole worl’, en beg you to give de po’ ole nigger a dollah for to git her sum‘n’ to eat, en you call me names—names, dad blame you! Yassir, I gives you jes one chance mo’, and dat’s now, en it las’ on‘y a half second—you hear?’
Tom slumped to his knees and began to beg, saying:
‘You see I’m begging, and it’s honest begging, too! Now tell me, Roxy, tell me.’
The heir of two centuries of unatoned insult and outrage looked down on him and seemed to drink in deep draughts of satisfaction. Then she said:
‘Fine nice young white gen’l’man kneelin’ down to a nigger-wench! I’se wanted to see dat jes once befo’ I‘se called. Now, Gabr’el, blow de hawn, I‘se ready ... Git up!’
Tom did it. He said, humbly:
‘Now, Roxy, don’t punish me any more. I deserved what I’ve got, but be good and let me off with that. Don’t go to uncle. Tell me—I’ll give you the five dollars.’
‘Yes, I bet you will; en you won’t stop dah, nuther. But I ain’t gwine to tell you heah—’
‘Good gracious, no!’
‘Is you ’feared o’ de ha‘nted house?’
‘N—no.’
‘Well, den, you come to de ha’nted house ‘bout ten or ’leven to-night, en climb up de ladder, ‘ca’se de sta‘r-steps is broke down, en you’ll fine me. I’se a-roostin’ in de ha‘nted house ’cas‘e I can’t ’ford to roos’ nowher’s else.’ She started toward the door, but stopped and said, ‘Gimme de dollah bill!’ He gave it to her. She examined it and said, ‘H‘m—like enough de bank’s bu’sted.’ She started again, but halted again. ‘Has you got any whisky?’
‘Yes, a little.’
‘Fetch it!’
He ran to his room overhead and brought down a bottle which was two-thirds full. She tilted it up and took a drink. Her eyes sparkled with satisfaction, and she tucked the bottle under her shawl, saying, ‘It’s prime. I’ll take it along.’
Tom humbly held the door for her, and she marched out as grim and erect as a grenadier.
CHAPTER 9
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands, and rested his elbows on his knees. He rocked himself back and forth and moaned.
‘I’ve knelt to a nigger-wench!’ he muttered. ‘I thought I had struck the deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to this.... Well, there is one consolation, such as it is—I’ve struck bottom this time; there’s nothing lower.’
But that was a hasty conclusion.
At ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak, and wretched. Roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms, waiting, for she had heard him.
This was a two-storey log house which had acquired the reputation a few years before of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness. Nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime. As it had no competition, it was called the haunted house. It was getting crazy and ruinous, now, from long neglect. It stood three hundred yards beyond Pudd’nhead Wilson’s house, with nothing between but vacancy. It was the last house in the town at that end.
Tom followed Roxy into the room. She had a pile of clean straw in the corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the wall, there was a tin lantern freckling the floor with little spots of light, and there were various soap- and candle-boxes scattered about, which served for chairs. The two sat down. Roxy said:
‘Now den, I’ll tell you straight off, en I’ll begin to k’leck de money later on; I ain’t in no hurry. What does you reckon I‘se gwine to tell you?’
‘Well, you—you—oh, Roxy, don’t make it too hard for me!
Come right out and tell me you’ve found out somehow what a scrape I’m in on account of dissipation and foolishness.’
‘Disposition en foolishness! No, sir, dat ain’t it. Dat jist ain’t nothin’ at all, ’longside o’ what I knows.’
Tom stared at her, and said:
‘Why, Roxy, what do you mean?’
She rose, and gloomed above him like a Fate.
‘I means dis—en its de Lord’s truth. You ain’t no more kin to ole Marse Driscoll den I is!—dat’s what I means!’ and her eyes flamed with triumph.
‘What?’
‘Yassir, en dat ain’t all! You’s a nigger!—bawn a nigger en a slave!—en you’s a nigger en a slave dis minute; en if I opens my mouf ole Marse Driscoll’ll sell you down de river befo’ you is two days older den what you is now.’
‘It’s a thundering lie, you miserable old blatherskite!’
‘It ain’t no lie, nuther. It’s jes de truth, en nothin’ but de truth, so he’p me. Yassir—you’s my son—’
‘You devil!’
‘En dat po’ boy dat you’s be’n a-kickin’ en a’cuffing to-day is Percy Driscoll’s son en yo’ marster—’
‘You beast!’
‘En his name’s Tom Driscoll, en yo’ name’s Valet de Chambers, en you ain’t got no fambly name, beca’se niggers don’t have ‘em!’
Tom sprang up and seized a billet of wood and raised it; but his mother only laughed at him, and said:
‘Set down, you pup! Does you think you kin skyer me? It ain’t in you, nor de likes of you. I reckon you’d shoot me in de back, maybe, if you got a chance, for dat’s jist yo’ style—I knows you, thoo en thoo—but I don’t mind gitt’n’ killed, beca‘se all dis is down in writin’, en it’s in safe hands, too, en de man dat’s got it knows whah to look for de right man when I gits killed. Oh, bless yo’ soul, if you puts yo’ mother up for as big a fool as you is, you’s pow‘ful mistaken, I kin tell you! Now den, you set still en behave yo’self; en don’t you git up ag‘in till I tell you!’
Tom fretted and chafed awhile in a whirlwind of disorganizing sensations and emotions, and finally said, with something like settled conviction:
‘The whole thing is moonshine; now then, go ahead and do your worst; I’m done with you.’
Roxy made no answer. She took the lantern and started toward the door. Tom was in a cold panic in a moment.
‘Come back, come back!’ he wailed. ‘I didn’t mean it, Roxy; I take it all back, and I’ll never say it again! Please come back, Roxy!’
The woman stood a moment, then she said gravely:
‘Dah’s one thing you’s got to stop, Valet de Chambers. You can’t call me Roxy, same as if you was my equal. Chillen don’t speak to dey mammies like dat. You’ll call me ma or mammy, dat’s what you’ll call me—leastways when dey ain’t nobody aroun’. Say it!’
It cost Tom a struggle, but he got it out.
‘Dat’s all right. Don’t you ever forgit it ag’in, if you knows what’s good for you. Now den, you has said you wouldn’t ever call it lies en moonshine ag‘in. I’ll tell you dis, for a warnin’: if you ever does say it ag‘in, it’s de las’ time you’ll ever say it to me; I’ll tramp as straight to de Judge as I kin walk, en tell him who you is, en prove it. Does you b’lieve me when I says dat?’
‘Oh,’ groaned Tom, ‘I more than believe it; I know it.’
Roxy knew her conquest was complete. She could have proved nothing to anybody, and her threat about the writings was a lie; but she knew the person she was dealing with, and had made both statements without any doubt as to the effect they would produce.
She went and sat down on her candle-box, and the pride and pomp of her victorious attitude made it a throne. She said:
‘Now den, Chambers, we’s gwine to talk business, en dey ain’t gwine to be no mo’ foolishness. In de fust place, you gits fifty dollahs a month; you’s gwine to han’ over half of it to yo’ ma. Plank it out!’
But Tom had only six dollars in the world. He gave her that, and promised to start fair on next month’s pension.
‘Chambers, how much is you in debt?’
Tom shuddered, and said:
‘Nearly three hundred dollars.’
‘How is you gwine to pay it?’
Tom groaned out: ‘Oh, I don’t know; don’t ask me such awful questions.’
But she stuck to her point until she wearied a confession out of him: he had been prowling about in disguise, stealing small valuables from private houses; in fact, had made a good deal of a raid on his fellow-villagers a fortnight before, when he was supposed to be in St. Louis; but he doubted if he had sent away enough stuff to realise the required amount, and was afraid to make a further venture in the present excited state of the town. His mother approved of his onduct, and offered to help, but this frightened him. He tremblingly ventured to say that if she would retire from the town he should feel better and safer, and could hold his head higher—and was going on to make an argument, but she interrupted and surprised him pleasantly by saying she was ready; it didn’t make any difference to her where she stayed, so that she got her share of the pension regularly. She said she would not go far, and would call at the haunted house once a month for her money. Then she said:
‘I don’t hate you so much now, but I’ve hated you a many a year—and anybody would. Didn’t I change you off, en give you a good fambly en a good name, en made you a white gen’l’man en rich, wid store clothes on—en what did I git for it? You despised me all de time, en was al’ays sayin’ mean hard things to me befo’ folks, en wouldn’t ever let me forgit I’s a nigger—en—en—’
She fell to sobbing, and broke down. Tom said: ‘But you know I didn’t know you were my mother; and besides—’
‘Well, nemmine ’bout dat, now; let it go. I‘se gwine to fo’git it.’ Then she added fiercely, ‘En don’t you ever make me remember it ag‘in, or you’ll be sorry, I tell you.’
When they were parting, Tom said, in the most persuasive way he could command:
‘Ma, would you mind telling me who was my father?’
He had supposed he was asking an embarrassing question. He was mistaken. Roxy drew herself up with a proud toss of her head, and said:
‘Does I mine tellin’ you? No, dat I don’t! You ain’t got no ‘casion to be shame’ o’ yo’ father, I kin tell you. He wuz de highest quality in dis whole town—ole Virginny stock. Fust famblies, he wuz. Jes as good stock as de Driscolls en de Howards, de bes’ day dey ever seed.’ She put on a little prouder air, if possible, and added impressively: ‘Does you ’member Cunnel Cecil Burleigh Essex, dat died de same year yo’ young Marse Tom Driscoll’s pappy died, en all de Masons en Odd Fellers en Churches turned out en give him de bigges’ funeral dis town ever seed? Dat’s de man.’
Under the inspiration of her soaring complacency the departed graces of her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to itself a dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her surroundings had been a little more in keeping with it.
‘Dey ain’t another nigger in dis town dat’s as high-bawn as you is. Now den, go ’long! En jes you hold yo’ head up as high as you want to—you has de right, en dat I kin swah.’
CHAPTER 10
All say, ‘How hard it is that we have to die’—a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Every now and then, after Tom went to bed, he had sudden wakings out of his sleep, and his first thought was, ‘Oh, joy, it was all a dream!’ Then he laid himself heavily down again, with a groan and the muttered words, ‘A nigger! I am a nigger! Oh, I wish I was dead!’
He woke at dawn with one more repetition of this horror, and then he resolved to meddle no more with that treacherous sleep. He began to think. Sufficiently bitter thinkings they were. They wandered along something after this fashion:
‘Why were niggers and whites made? What crime did the uncreated first nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for him? And why is this awful difference made between white and black? ... How hard the nigger’s fate seems, this morning!—yet until last night such a thought never entered my head.’
He sighed and groaned an hour or more away. Then ‘Chambers’ came humbly in to say that breakfast was nearly ready. ‘Tom’ blushed scarlet to see this aristocratic white youth cringe to him, a nigger, and call him ‘Young Marster’. He said roughly:
‘Get out of my sight!’ and when the youth was gone, he muttered: ‘He has done me no harm, poor wretch, but he is an eyesore to me now, for he is Driscoll the young gentleman, and I am a—oh, I wish I was dead!’
A gigantic irruption, like that of Krakatoa a few years ago, with the accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of volcanic dust, changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond recognition, bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before. The tremendous catastrophe which had befallen Tom had changed his moral landscape in much the same way. Some of his low places he found lifted to ideals, some of his ideals had sunk to the valleys, and lay there with the sackcloth and ashes of pumice-stone and sulphur on their ruined heads.
For days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking, thinking—trying to get his bearings. It was new work. If he met a friend, he found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished—his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a shake. It was the ‘nigger’ in him asserting its humility and he blushed and was abashed. And the ‘nigger’ in him was surprised when the white friend put out his hand for a shake with him. He found the ‘nigger’ in him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to the white rowdy and loafer. When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his secret worship, invited him in, the ‘nigger’ in him made an embarrassed excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on equal terms. The ‘nigger’ in him went shrinking and skulking here and there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe detection in all faces, tones, and gestures. So strange and uncharacteristic was Tom’s conduct that people noticed it, and turned to look after him when he passed on; and when he glanced back—as he could not help doing, in spite of his best resistance—and caught that puzzled expression in a person’s face, it gave him a sick feeling, and he took himself out of view as quickly as he could. He presently came to have a hunted sense and a hunted look, and then he fled away to the hilltops and the solitudes. He said to himself that the curse of Ham was upon him.
