“It is ready, señorita.”
“While he’s in it you can fix up some food for both of us. I’m just starved.”
Off she went and Grace showed me through to the bathroom. It’s bigger than some houses I seen, with shiny marble everywhere and a bath you could of floated a steamboat in. It never took long to fill because there’s gold faucets shaped like fishes that puked all the hot water you need direct from a boiler someplace else in the hotel, Grace says, so you don’t have to haul buckets of it upstairs or nothing. She was real proud of that bathroom.
“Get in,” she says, “and if you don’t get rid of every speck of dirt I’ll make you do it again.”
“I’ll do it proper, Grace,” says I, and she left.
I clumb out of my duds, gone kind of stiffish with sweat and dried mud now I come to pay them mind, and dumped them in a heap on the floor. Then I lowered myself gradual into all that steaming water. Apart from when we crossed rivers and such it’s the first bath I took since 1848 back when I lived with the Widow Douglas. Hot water ain’t all that familiar to me, but it’s friendly stuff once you get down into it, and real relaxsome after awhile. There’s perfume in it too, which is a first-time experience for yours truly, and a hunk of soap that’s shaped like a turtle. That turtle seen every part of me close up, but never got offended by none of it, and when I’m finished in comes Consuela and picks up my clothes on the end of a broomstick and walks out again, giggling all the while. I was too mortified at the way she strolled in to tell her to let them be, and now I’m in confusement with regard to the matter of duds. Then in comes Grace with an armload of clothes and puts them on a chair.
“These should fit you,” she says. “They belong to Consuela’s little brother. He’s the bellboy here. Huckleberry, you’re trying my patience something sore.”
“What’d I do, Grace?”
“It’s what you haven’t done. Look at your face! And your hair! You’re supposed to wash above the neckline too. Squint your eyes and get under that water this instant.”
I had to do it or she would of poked me under with her little umbrella, and when I come up for air she watched over me to make sure I give my headstraw a good sudsing with the turtle, then I ducked under again and when I come up she poured a pitcher of cold water over my head, punishment I reckon. Then she left so’s I can get dried and dressed.
The clothes fitted fair and I come out feeling kind of awkward and shy. Grace was sat at a little table piled up with food, and she points to another chair on account of her mouth being full. I sat and et and in between mouthfuls she told me how she left the Naismith train at Sacramento after Mr. Shaughnessy asked her to marry him, seeing as Mrs. Shaughnessy died in the desert. Grace warn’t partial to him but says she’ll do it if he gets her a ring, which he done, and she went straight back to the store and got the money back on it, just enough for a steamer ticket downriver to San Francisco. When she got here she warn’t inclined to wash no dishes or nothing and got work with a bunch of dancing girls, even if she can’t dance, and while she’s there she met a man that come backstage with a bunch of flowers and a diamond ring, and pretty soon after that she changed her name and started work in what she calls legitimate theater, which means they don’t allow no bastards to work there I guess. The Eagle Theater where she does the show is owned by the man with the flowers and diamond ring, who’s called Miles, and Finn the Red Handed is the successfullest show they ever put on there.
“I earn a thousand dollars a week and I’m happy as can be,” she says. “Now tell me what happened to you.”
I never let on about Pap and Morg; it’s too secret to tell no one except Jim, but I laid on all the rest thick as I can. It took awhile and she listened real close, and when I finished she says:
“Oh, Huckleberry, what an adventure! It puts Auberon’s silly story to shame. All he ever had was newspaper clippings to inspire him, If you told him the truth I’m sure he’d rewrite the whole play.”
“You told me yourself it ain’t possible, not while I’m a wanted man. I don’t want to meet him anyway, not someone that reckons I’m a cold-blooded murderer and Jim’s a fool. He’d likely turn me in soon as he knowed who I am.”
“Well, suit yourself,” she says, “but it could give you undying fame, and Auberon would pay you for the story.”
“I’d prefer to get forgot.”
“You won’t be unless you escape from Chauncey Barrett, and you can’t do that without money, and you’ve got none.”
“It’s a problem, but I reckon me and Jim’ll find a way out.”
“You’re so impractical sometimes you make me want to scream. Did you wash your face?”
“All over, Grace.”
“Well, it’s still dirty,” she says, leaning over the table. “Why, Huckleberry Finn, you’ve grown whiskers! I never noticed them under all that dirt. We’ll have to get you shaved.”
It’s true what she says. When we was mining I rubbed my chin one day and felt little tickling hairs there, and on my lip too, but I figured it’s just as well to let it grow and make me look older, not like Huck Finn no more. But Grace says it looks just awful, what folks call catkin fluff, and she orders me into the bathroom again and sits me in a chair and whips up a bowl of suds in a jiffy, then gets a razor off a shelf and comes at me.
“Grace, I ain’t too sure about this.…”
“Don’t be such a silly. I’ve shaved men before. Just you sit there and don’t move.”
I never argued, not while she’s got a razor in her fist, and she painted my face with suds and scraped away.
“Don’t be so stiff,” she says. “I’m not pulling a tooth.”
It never took long. She holds up a mirror and says:
“There, now you’re the smoothest thing outside of glass.”
“Aawww, Grace … you’ve gone and took years off me. Now I look like Huck Finn again. Dang it, I never should of let you.”
“You’re just the most exasperating person I ever met. I give you a bath and a shave and food and new clothes and what kind of gratitude do I get? None at all.”
“Thank you for all of it, Grace. I appreciate what you done.”
A clock in the other room bonged midnight and she says:
“You’ll have to go soon. He’ll be back anytime now.”
“Who will?”
“My gentleman friend Miles that owns the theater, puddin’ head.”
“I figured this place was yours.”
“It is, and his too.”
“You mean he lives here?”
“Of course he does. Where would you expect, out in the hall? We’ve got a bed with a canopy over the top like European royalty sleep in. Do you want to see it? It’s the biggest bed in the world.”
“No thank you, Grace. I best be getting on back.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Oh, a place that ain’t nothing like this.”
“This is only a hotel. Miles is building a big mansion for me on top of a hill, but it won’t be finished for awhile yet. It’s going to have fifty rooms and acres of garden and a fountain with statues out front.”
“That sounds fine, Grace. I reckon you’ll be happy there.”
I got up and she followed me through to the other room, but before I can open the door to the hall she grabs me by the arm.
“Huckleberry, you’ll come back and see me, won’t you?”
“You can’t need no more company, Grace, not with the kind of life you got now.”
“But I want to see you again. I can talk to you. You understand me.… Pretty please, Huckleberry?”
For all that she acts like she’s growed up and dignificated I can see there’s a whole lot of little girl left inside of Grace still. She’s got her face all screwed up with worry that I ain’t going to come back, and I seen something for the first time since she let me in the stage door. She ain’t happy, not one little bit. Now I come to look at her close there’s shadows under her eyes and her m
outh is kind of pinched and quivery. She’s still the prettiest girl I ever seen, but it’s like I can see behind her face, and that ain’t pretty at all, just miserable and jumbled and sad. She says:
“If you like I’ll talk to Miles and he’ll give you and Jim work so you can save money to get away.”
“I ain’t asking for no favors from a body I ain’t even met.”
“He’ll do it for me, not you. He gives me whatever I want, truly. If I ask him he’ll fix you both up so you don’t have any more worries.… Please say you’ll come back.”
“Well, all right, but not here.”
“At the theater? Come by the stage door after the last show and I’ll have Rosemary let you in. You won’t let me down, will you?”
“I reckon not.”
“Wait.… I’ve got something for you,” she says, and rushed away and come back with a purse and pulled out a handful of money.
“Here, take this and get Jim some clothes too,” she says, shoving it in my pockets.
“I can’t take no money off you, Grace.…”
“Don’t you dare be late tomorrow,” she says, and opened the door and shoved me out in the hall and slammed it shut again. I stood there trying to figure if maybe I should slide the money back under the door, then I recollected how raggedy Jim is nowadays and made up my mind. It’s a rich man’s money anyhow, and most likely plenty more where it come from, so it don’t make a grain of sense to feel guiltiness about it. There’s folks in the hall that’s giving me strange looks just stood there figuring things, so I went downstairs and out in the street and headed for the crate Jim and me calls home.
33
A Narrow Escape—Chance Meeting—The Seamy Side—Night Work—Partners in Crime
Next day Jim got new clothes and went in one of them Chinaman bath houses and come out a new man. He even got his hair barbered and his beard shaved. I hardly reckernized him he’s so dandified, but he ain’t finished yet. He says we both got to get new hats to kind of round things off, so we went in a hatshop where there’s all kinds of head warmers. When it come our turn to get served the storeman acted kind of snotty when he sees Jim’s a nigger, but he smiled when I let him see the color of our cash. He wanted to serve me first on account of I’m white, but I made him fetch Jim’s hat before me. Jim put it on and strutted a little in front of the mirror and says he’ll take it, then the storeman wants to know what hat I want.
“There one in the window,” says I.
“There are several dozen styles on display,” he says, real snippy. “If you would care to step outside perhaps you could point it out.”
“I surely will,” says I, and went out on the sidewalk. He poked his head in the window from inside and took the one I want off a little stand, and about then I got a kind of tingly feeling down my back and turned around. Right across the street is Bulldog Barrett, and he’s looking straight at me! I never stopped to give it no consideration, just run like a rabbit off down the street, switching and dodging through the crowds fast as I can without running into no one that’ll grab me and want to know where the fire is. I figured I had a lead on Bulldog seeing as he’s got to get across a muddy street before he can follow on, but when I give a fast look over my shoulder I seen he’s smarter than I counted on and never bothered with crossing, just run along keeping track of me from the other side. Then the street got crowded with wagons and he can’t do that no more, so now he’s crossing over, splashing through the mud and ducking under teams and not stopping for nothing. His legs is longer than mine so I got to lose him quick or get catched. I seen an alleyway and pounded along it through the trash and mud and turned left into another big street and hared along it then down another alley into another street that ain’t so crowded. Behind me I can hear the bulldog crash through a pile of garbage and cuss something awful. He’s real close now and I got to find a place to hide or get chased all around town. If he gets tired he’s only got to holler “Stop thief!” and I’ll get collared by someone that’s law-abiding, which there’s got to be a couple of in San Francisco.
Then I seen a fancy coach by the sidewalk just a little way down the street with the driver fitting nosebags on the team, so I run to it and hauled open the door fast but quiet so the driver don’t turn around, and clumb in and closed it soft behind me and squatted on the floor in the dark, seeing as the window blinds is drawed. I put a hand over my mouth to make myself quit panting and waited, then heard running footsteps that slowed down gradual and come to a stop right by the coach. Then the bulldog’s voice asks the driver if he seen a boy run by, but the driver says he never and Bulldog run on, so it looks like I’m safe.
Ain’t it peculiar how when things is happening real fast you can see a thing and at the same time not see it? Now that I can rest easy it come to me all of a sudden that the little picture I seen on the coach door when I opened it is mighty familiar, two crossed swords and a bull’s head with long horns. Of all the coaches I could of come across I went and jumped in Don Esteban Hernando Rodrigo and All the Rest’s! It’s enough to make you wonder if maybe guardian angels watches over us after all. Don Esteban must of took his time about going back south after his trip to the diggings, or maybe he just likes it here in Frisco. But it’s strange that the driver never sounded like a Spaniard. Then I hear the bulldog’s voice again.
“I’ve asked up and down the street but no one saw him,” he says.
“Well, neither did I,” says the driver, and he ain’t no Spaniard, definite.
“He may have sneaked into your coach. Would you mind if I looked inside?”
“Help yourself. What’s he done, stole something?”
“My pocket watch.”
The dark inside the coach ain’t going to help me none when he opens that door, and I got a dose of the frantics trying to figure a way out. Then I felt a little latch digging in the side of my arm where I’m scrunched on the floor, and what it is give me the answer. It’s the latch to a little door under the seat to a stowaway space for traveling rugs and such, and I opened it and squirmed inside and pulled the door shut. There ain’t hardly room to breathe in there, and no rugs neither, which is a mercy. I hear the coach door get opened, then Bulldog says:
“No, my mistake. Thank you anyway.”
“Maybe he went along the other way,” says the driver.
“That is possible. Good day to you.”
I stayed where I am for fear of getting in more trouble if I leave. The bulldog’ll likely prowl around hereabouts for awhile yet, so I’m safer here, even if I can’t feel my legs no more from being cramped up. To take my mind off it I planned on how I’ll give Esteban a big surprise when he comes back to the coach from wherever he is, but he better come quick or he’ll get surprised by finding me dead of not breathing. I ain’t sure how long it took till he clumb inside, but my face must be blue by now. The coach dipped a little with his weight, then the driver slapped the reins and we was off and lurching through the mud. I figured now’s as good a time as any to do the surprising and opened the little door, but being cooped up in there has gone and cramped my muscles so bad I can’t do no more than that. Then a pistol gets poked in my face and a voice that ain’t Esteban’s says:
“Come out slowly.”
“I ain’t able … I’m stuck.…”
“If you’re not out by the count of five you’ll also be dead, my friend.”
There ain’t nothing like fright to make you do things you figured ain’t possible. I come wriggling out like a snake and rolled around on the floor with the blood coming back in my legs along with pins and needles. The blinds ain’t been opened still and I never seen too much except for the barrel of that pistol held close to my face and a shape behind it with a wide-brimmed hat.
“Pardon me,” says I. “You ain’t Don Esteban after all.…”
“No indeed,” he says, “but you’re surely Huckleberry Finn.”
“No I ain’t. I’m Jack Winterbough.…”
He took the pisto
l away and snapped up the blind so I can see, and it’s Randolph Squires! If you ever lose a friend or kin just go to San Francisco and you’ll find him in around five minutes.
“Well, well,” he says smiling. “So you survived the desert after all.”
“And you, Randolph,” says I, figuring I ain’t about to call him no Mr. Squires. “Ain’t it funny the way we keep bumping into each other.”
“What brings you to hide in my coach?” he wants to know.
“Bulldog Barrett.”
“He’s still after you? I saw a show a few nights back that had you hanged by final curtain.”
“I seen it too and it ain’t nothing but lies. How’d you come to be in Esteban’s coach yourself?”
“The coach is now mine. I won it from the Don in a game of poker. The Spaniard was congenial company, but he knows nothing of cards. He was, however, a fine loser.”
“He ain’t in town no more?”
“He has returned to his hacienda in the south, where his rich daddy will no doubt thrash him for his foolishness. How do you come to know of him?”
I told about the horse race up in Sacramento and whittled down the rest to the part where I got jumped by the bulldog outside the hatshop. He says:
“If you’re buying a new hat I guess you struck it rich up north.”
“We made a strike all right, but it got stole off us soon as we got here. Grace give me the money for new clothes and such.”
“And who might Grace be?”
“She’s the one that acts Becky Thatcher in Finn the Red Handed. Her and me is old friends.”
“Is that so?” he says. “You’re keeping high-class company, Huckleberry. What do you and the nigger plan to do now?”
“Get out of town before the bulldog sees us again, I reckon.”
“And your friend Grace will render assistance?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“She must be a girl of sterling character to risk helping a wanted criminal for friendship’s sake. I’d count it a favor if you introduced me to the young lady.”
“What for?”
The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Page 53