by Mark Twain
I reckon a body that goes and blurts out the truth when he is in a tight space is taking considerable risks, though I ain’t had much experience, so I can’t say for certain. But I think – here’s a case where the truth is all around better and safer than a lie. I never seen nothing like it. Well, says I to myself at last, I’m a-goin’ to chance it. I’m going to tell the whole truth this time, thought it does seem most like setting down on a powder keg and torching it just to see where you’ll wind up.
“Miss Mary Jane, is there some place out of town where you could go and stay for a few days?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Mr. Lorthrop’s, I suppose. Why?”
“Never mind just yet. If I tell you how I know the folks that was sold will all see each other inside of two or three weeks – and in this house – and prove it to you – will you go there and stay for a few days?”
“A few days!” she says. “I’ll stay a year!”
“All right,” I says, “I’ll just take your word for it – and I’d druther have that than another man’s kiss-the-Bible.”
She smiled and reddened up, very sweet, and I says:
“If you don’t mind, let’s talk with a closed door. I’ll be more at ease.”
After she does this, I says:
“Don’t holler when you hear all this. Just take it as best you can. I got to tell the truth, and you got to take it. It’s going to be hard to face, but there ain’t no help for it. These uncles of your’n ain’t no uncles at all. They’re a couple of frauds – regular deadbeats.”
That jolted her up like anything, but I went right along and told her every blame thing, from when we first struck that young fool going up to the riverboat, to where we came into town and her and her sisters flew themselves into their arms. Well, she jumps up, her face red as a sunset, and she says:
“Those brutes! Doctor Robinson was right all along! I was such a fool! Come, let’s not waste a second – we’ll have them tarred and feathered and flung in the river!”
I had to remind her of the promise she had just made to me, and by and by she settles back down.
“It’s a rough gang, these two frauds, and I’m fixed that I’ll have to travel with them a while farther, whether I want to or not; and if you was to blow on them this town would get them out of their craws, but there is another person you don’t know about who’d be in big trouble. I got to do what I can to save him, too, don’t I?”
She shook her head and agreed with me.
“And if it happens so I don’t get away, but git took up along with them, you must up and tell the whole town I told you about this aforehand, and stand by me all you can.”
“Stand by you! Indeed I shall!” she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too.
“If I manage to get away, I sha’n’t be here to prove these rapscallions ain’t your uncles, and I couldn’t do it even if I was. But I’ll tell you how to get proof. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. There…” I wrote: Brickville. Three-night play. Cameleopard. “Put it away and don’t lose it. When the people want to find out a thing or two about these two, let them send up the river to Brickville and say you’ve got the two men who put on an interesting play in their town a little bit ago. If you need witnesses – why, you’ll have every man in the town before you can hardly blink, Miss Mary; and they’ll come with their own tar and feathers, and a lot more.”
I judged I had got everything fixed about right now. I says:
“Just let the auction go along, and don’t worry. Nobody won’t have to pay for what they bought till a day or so after the auction on account of the short notice, and they ain’t getting out of this till they get that money – and they ain’t going to get that money. It will be like that too with your owned folks – it warn’t no real sale, cause those two didn’t own ‘em to sell ‘em, so they’ll be back before long. They’ll be in the worst kind of fix, Miss Mary.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ll just run down to breakfast and start straight for Mr. Lothrop’s.”
“That ain’t the ticket, Miss Mary Jane – go before breakfast.”
“Why?”
“Why did you reckon I wanted you to go at all, Miss Mary?”
“Well, come to think of it, I don’t know. What is it?”
“Why, it’s because you ain’t one of them leather-face people. I don’t want no better book than what your face is. A body could sit down and read it and know all there was to know. Do you reckon you could go and face your uncles when they come to breakfast and kiss you good-morning, and never –“
“There, there, don’t! I’ll go before breakfast – I’ll be glad to.”
“Good. I’ll give Miss Susan and Miss Joanna your love, and tell them you’ll most likely be back in a day or so.” Then I says: “There’s one more thing – that bag of money.”
“Well, they’ve got that, and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it.”
“No; you’re out, there. They hain’t got it.”
“Why, who’s got it?”
I didn’t want to set her to thinking about her troubles again, and I couldn’t seem to put my mouth to tell her that it was in the coffin with her Zum paw, but there warn’t a sweet way to put it.
“I tucked it in the coffin. I put it in there after they drained off all the ice and led your poor paw back in. I figured no one would think to look for it there. It’ll be safe in there till this whole mess is over.”
I seen the water come to her eyes and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says:
“Goodbye. I’m going to do everything as you’ve told me. I sha’n’t every forget you, and I’ll pray for you, too. Remember to say goodbye to my sisters!” and then she was out the door and gone.
You can say what you want to, but in my opinion that girl had more sand in her than any girl I’ve ever seen. It sounds like flattery, but it ain’t. She was plumb full of sand. And goodness, when it comes to beauty, she lays over them all. I ain’t ever seen her since then, but I’ve thought about her a million times, and of her saying she’d pray for me, and if I thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, I would ‘a’ done that too.
Well, Mary Jane lit out of the house the back way, and no one seen her go. When I seen her sisters, a bit later, I says:
“What’s the name of them people on t’other side of the river you go to see sometimes?”
They says:
“There’s several, but it’s the Proctors, mainly.”
“That’s it,” I says. “Well, Miss Mary Jane she told me she’s gone over there in a dreadful hurry – one of them’s sick.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know; leastways, I kinder forget.”
“Sakes alive, it ain’t Hannah?”
“That’s it,” says I. “The very one. Hannah.”
“My goodness! Is she took bad?”
“Miss Mary Jane said they set with her all night, and she’d doing poorly. She mightn’t last.”
“Think of that! She was so well only last week! What’s the matter with her?”
I couldn’t think of anything reasonable, right off that ways, so I says:
“Mumps.”
“Mumps? Ain’t nobody dies of the mumps.”
“Well, they do with these mumps. These mumps is different. It’s a whole new kind, Miss Mary Jane said. Just like they’s new kinds of Zum walking around, they’s new kinds of mumps. It’s mixed up with a bunch of other things.”
“What other things?”
“Well, measles, whooping cough, consumption, yaller janders, brain fever, and I don’t know what all. They don’t want any of these people to die, because they’re not sure what’ll happen to ‘em if they do. It cain’t be good, though. Just think of it!”
“My lord! And they call it the mumps?”
“That’s what Miss Mary Jane said.”
“Well, what in thunder do they call it mumps for?”
“Why, that’s how
it starts. First mumps, then everything else.”
“I reckon we should tell Uncle Harvey she’s gone out awhile, so he won’t be uneasy about her.”
“Yes, Miss Mary Jane said she wanted you to do that. She said no one should worry, and that she’ll be back in the morning anyway. Or around there.”
Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn’t worry about their sister, and the king and the duke would rather Mary Jane be tending to sick people somewheres else than anywhere where Doctor Robinson might turn up. I judged I had done it pretty neat. Tom Sawyer himself couldn’t’a done it better. Of course, he would a throwed a lot more style into it, but I can’t do that very handy, not being brung up to it.
Well, they started the auction in the public square and it strung along and strung along, and the old man was on hand, there along side the auctioneer, chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke was keeping himself low and in the back, as there was no getting around that something mighty peculiar was wrong with him, now that he had a jack o’lantern pumpkin smile on all the time.
In the middle of all this, whilst they was busy selling and moving money around, a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping and yelling and laughing, and carrying on; and one old boy sings out:
“Here they are, folks! Not to be outdone, one more set of heirs for poor old Peter Wilks – you pays your money and you takes your chance!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I Go Out into the Storm
They was fetching a nice-looking pair of gentlemen along, an older man short and portly, and a much younger one with his right arm in a sling. And oh laws, how the people yelled and laughed, and horsed it up. But I didn’t see no joke in it, and I judge the king and duke didn’t see one neither. I figured they would turn pale and light out when they knew what was up, but they didn’t. The king never let on he suspicioned what was up; he just gazed down on them new-comers like it gave him the stomach-ache to think there could be such frauds and rascals in this world. Oh, he done it admirably. The duke, with his mad smile, just looked amused by the whole thing, but didn’t open his mouth or say a word, though I knew he were able now. Lots of town people gathered around the king, to let him know they was all on his side. The old man that had just come looked puzzled to death. Pretty soon, he opened his mouth, and I could see straight off he pronounced like an Englishman. He turned to the crowd, and says:
“This is a complete surprise to me, I can tell you – one I wasn’t looking for. To be candid and frank, I ain’t well fixed up to meet it and answer it. I am Peter Wilks brother, and this young man is William, his brother, too. William don’t hear nor speak – and he broke his arm two nights ago in a mishap, and so can’t make signs to amount to much. We are who we say we are, though; and in a day or two, when we receive our baggage, I think we can prove it to your satisfaction. Up until then, I’ll say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait.”
So then they start off and the king laughs, and bluthers out:
“Broke his arm – very likely, ain’t it? Very convenient, too, for a fraud that’s got to make signs, and ain’t yet learned how! Lost their baggage! That’s mighty good – and ingenious – under the circumstances.”
So he laughed again, and so did a lot of the others, except maybe a half a dozen. One of those who didn’t laugh was that Doc Robinson; another was a sharp-looking gentleman who had just come off the steamboat and was talking to the doctor in a low voice, glancing at the king now and then and nodding his head. Another was a big rough husky that come along and listened to the whole commotion, and when the king was done, the husky up and says:
“Say, looky here, if you are Harvey Wilks, when’d you come to this town?”
“The day just before the funeral, friend,” says the king.
“How’d you get to come here?”
“I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati.”
“Well then, how is it I saw up at the point, that morning, in a canoe?”
“I warn’t nowhere at a point that morning.”
“That’s a lie.”
Several of them jumped on him when he said that and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher to boot.
“Preacher be hanged, he’s a liar. I seen him up at the point. I live there, don’t I? Well, I was there, and I seen him there. He came in a canoe – and with a young boy!”
The doctor up and says:
“Would you know the boy again if you was to see him?”
“I reckon I would; and I reckon that’s him yonder, standing right there!”
And he points to me. The crowd starts a-murmuring. The doctor says:
“Neighbors, if these two ain’t frauds, I am an idiot and that’s all there is to say. I think it’s our duty to see they don’t get away from here till we’re well into this thing. Come along then, all of you. We’ll take these two to the tavern and affront them with the other two, and I reckon we’ll find out something soon enough.”
So we all started out. It was about sundown. The doctor he took me along by the hand, and was pretty kind enough, but he never let go of my hand, not for a second. We all got a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and fetched the new couple down from their room. First the doctor says:
“If these two ain’t frauds, they won’t object to producing that bag of gold and letting the rest of us keep it for them till they prove they’re all right – ain’t that so?”
Everybody thought that was a good idea; but the king only looked sorrowful and says:
“Gentlemen, I wish the money was here, but alas! It ain’t.”
“Where is it then?” says the doctor, who I could tell was losing his courtesy little by little.
“Well, my niece gave it to me that first day, and I hid it in the mattress o’ my bed, not wishing to bank it for the few days we’d be here, and the servants stole it right out from under me, and when I sold ‘em I hadn’t missed the money yet, so they clean got away with it. My servant will tell you all about it, gentlemen! Adolphus!”
So everyone swirls around and one man in the crowd asks me if I seen the servants steal the gold. I said no, I didn’t see it, but I did see them sneak out of the room and hustling away, and I reckoned they waked up my master and were trying to get away before he made trouble for them.” Then the doctor turns on me and says:
“Are you English, too?”
I says: “Yazzure!” and him and some others laughed, which cut the tension, but they didn’t buy it one little bit.
They made the king tell his yarn again, and they made the old gentleman tell his, and anyone but a bunch of chuckle-heads would see one was telling the truth and one was spinning lies. And by and by they had me talk. I begun to tell about England and the Queen and how they sweep the city for Zums, and how the king comes to Sheffield when they sweep London, and goes back to London when they sweep Sheffield, and how we lived there, and all about the English Wilkses, and so on; but I didn’t get fur before the doctor begun to laugh, and finally he says:
“Set down, my boy. I wouldn’t strain myself if I was you. I reckon you ain’t used to lying. It don’t seem to come first-nature to you, as some in this room. What you want is practice; you do it pretty awkward.”
Then they shoot another bunch of questions, first to the brothers, then to the king and the duke, but nothing is getting proved. The king was too slick and the brothers too open, and the king was picking up a lot of cues whenever the old gentleman spoke. It looked like they could go on like they were till sun-up. Then all of a sudden, the new gentleman’s face all lights up, and he breaks in and says:
“I’ve thought of something! Is there anyone here who helped lay out my brother for burying?”
A few of the men nod their head and say yes, but leave out the whole story of him breaking out of his coffin and winding up next to a cook stove trying to get the chill off, that being a different story for a
nother kind of time.
“Perhaps these men can tell me what was tattooed on his left shoulder?”
Says I to myself, now that old fraud’ll throw up the sponge – there ain’t no more use. Well, did he? A body can’t hardly believe it, but he didn’t. I reckon he thought he’d keep the thing up till he tired all them people out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. Anyway, he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says:
“Hah! It’s a very tough question, ain’t it? Yes sir, I kin tell you what’s tattooed on his shoulder. It’s jest a small, thin, blue arrow – that’s what it is. He had it put on just before he left England. What it meant – that’s another thing, and I ain’t sure. But it was a small, blue arrow.”
The new gentleman, he smiles too and asks the men who got his brother ready for the coffin if they saw any such mark. Both of them spoke up and said:
“We didn’t see any such mark.”
“Good!” says the old gentleman. “Now, what you did see was his initials – P, and a B for his middle name, and a W; so P – B - W. He wanted to make sure people knew who he was in case he ever turned Zum in some place where no one knew him by sight. Why he didn’t just have his whole name put on, I don’t know. I think a thing like that might’ve caught on. But there you have it!”
Both men spoke up again, and says:
“We didn’t see this mark either.”
Well, everyone was in a frenzy now, and some begin to think that both groups are imposters, and maybe every last one of them should be ridden out of town on a rail. But the doctor comes up with another grand idea and says:
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Here me just a word – if you please! There’s a way out of his yet – let’s just go dig up the corpse and look.”
That did it.
“Hooray!” they all shouted amid a general clamor, and the doctor and the lawyer sung out:
“Hold on, hold on! Collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch them along. We’ll get to the bottom of this!”
