by Mark Twain
As to the clothes, Katrina kept her word. She sat up late, that very first night, and made him a coarse and cheap, but neat and serviceable doublet and hose with her own old hands; and she properly shod him, too. And she had her reward, for he was a graceful and beautiful creature, with the most wonderful eyes, and these facts all showed up, now, and filled her with pride. Daily he grew in her favor. Her old hungry heart was fed, she was a mother at last, with a child to love,—a child who returned her love in full measure, and to whom she was the salt of the earth.
As the days went along, everybody talked about 44, everybody observed him, everybody puzzled over him and his ways; but it was not discoverable that he ever concerned himself in the least degree about this or was in any way interested in what people thought of him or said about him. This indifference irritated the herd, but the boy did not seem aware of it.
The most ingenious and promising attempts to ruffle his temper and break up his calm went for nothing. Things flung at him struck him on the head or the back, and fell at his feet unnoticed; now and then a leg was shoved out and he tripped over it and went heavily down amid delighted laughter, but he picked himself up and went on without remark; often when he had brought a couple of twenty-pound cans of water up two long flights of stairs from the well in the court, they were seized and their winter-cold contents poured over him, but he went back unmurmuring for more; more than once, when the master was not present, Frau Stein made him share the dog’s dinner in the corner, but he was content and offered no protest. The most of these persecutions were devised by Moses and Katzenyammer, but as a rule were carried out by that shabby poor coward, Ernest.
You see, now, how I was situated. I should have been despised if I had befriended him; and I should have been treated as he was, too. It is not everybody that can be as brave as Katrina was. More than once she caught Moses devising those tricks and Ernest carrying them out, and gave both of them an awful hiding; and once when Hans Katzenyammer interfered she beat that big ruffian till he went on his knees and begged.
What a devil to work the boy was! The earliest person up found him at it by lantern-light, the latest person up found him still at it long past midnight. It was the heaviest manual labor, but if he was ever tired it was not perceptible. He always moved with energy, and seemed to find a high joy in putting forth his strange and enduring strength.
He made reputation for the magician right along; no matter what unusual thing he did, the magician got the credit of it; at first the magician was cautious, when accused, and contented himself with silences which rather confessed than denied the soft impeachment, but he soon felt safe to throw that policy aside and frankly take the credit, and he did it. One day 44 unchained the dog and said “Now behave yourself, Felix, and don’t hurt any one,” and turned him loose, to the consternation of the herd, but the magician sweetly smiled and said,
“Do not fear. It is a little caprice of mine. My spirit is upon him, he cannot hurt you.”
They were filled with adoring wonder and admiration, those people. They kissed the hem of the magician’s robe, and beamed unutterable things upon him. Then the boy said to the dog,
“Go and thank your master for this great favor which he has granted you.”
Well, it was an astonishing thing that happened, then. That ignorant and malignant vast animal, which had never been taught language or manners or religion or any other valuable thing, and could not be expected to understand a dandy speech like that, went and stood straight up on its hind feet before the magician, with its nose on a level with his face, and curved its paws and ducked its head piously, and said
“Yap-yap!—yap-yap!—yap-yap!” most reverently, and just as a Christian might at prayers.
Then it got down on all fours, and the boy said,
“Salute the master, and retire as from the presence of royalty.”
The dog bowed very solemnly, then backed away stern-first to his corner—not with grace it is true, but well enough for a dog that hadn’t had any practice of that kind and had never heard of royalty before nor its customs and etiquettes.
Did that episode take those people’s breath away? You will not doubt it. They actually went on their knees to the magician, Frau Stein leading, the rest following. I know, for I was there and saw it. I was amazed at such degraded idolatry and hypocrisy—at least servility—but I knelt, too, to avert remark.
Life was become very interesting. Every few days there was a fresh novelty, some strange new thing done by the boy, something to wonder at; and so the magician’s reputation was augmenting all the time. To be envied is the secret longing of pretty much all human beings—let us say all; to be envied makes them happy. The magician was happy, for never was a man so envied; he lived in the clouds.
I passionately longed to know 44, now. The truth is, he was being envied himself! Spite of all his shames and insults and persecutions. For, there is no denying it, it was an enviable conspicuousness and glory to be the instrument of such a dreaded and extraordinary magician as that and have people staring at you and holding their breath with awe while you did the miracles he devised. It is not for me to deny that I was one of 44’s enviers. If I hadn’t been, I should have been no natural boy. But I was a natural boy, and I longed to be conspicuous, and wondered at and talked about. Of course the case was the same with Ernest and Barty, though they did as I did—concealed it. I was always throwing myself in the magician’s way whenever I could, in the hope that he would do miracles through me, too, but I could not get his attention. He never seemed to see me when he was preparing a prodigy.
At last I thought of a plan that I hoped might work. I would seek 44 privately and tell him how I was feeling and see if he would help me attain my desire. So I hunted up his room, and slipped up there clandestinely one night after the herd were in bed, and waited. After midnight an hour or two he came, and when the light of his lantern fell upon me he set it quickly down, and took me by both of my hands and beamed his gladness from his eyes, and there was no need to say a word.
Chapter 6
He closed the door, and we sat down and began to talk, and he said it was good and generous of me to come and see him, and he hoped I would be his friend, for he was lonely and so wanted companionship. His words made me ashamed—so ashamed, and I felt so shabby and mean, that I almost had courage enough to come out and tell him how ignoble my errand was and how selfish. He smiled most kindly and winningly, and put out his hand and patted me on the knee, and said,
“Don’t mind it.”
I did not know what he was referring to, but the remark puzzled me, and so, in order not to let on, I thought I would throw out an observation—anything that came into my head; but nothing came but the weather, so I was dumb. He said,
“Do you care for it?”
“Care for what?”
“The weather.”
I was puzzled again; in fact astonished; and said to myself “This is uncanny; I’m afraid of him.”
He said cheerfully,
“Oh, you needn’t be. Don’t you be uneasy on my account.”
I got up trembling, and said,
“I—I am not feeling well, and if you don’t mind, I think I will excuse myself, and—”
“Oh, don’t,” he said, appealingly, “don’t go. Stay with me a little. Let me do something to relieve you—I shall be so glad.”
“You are so kind, so good,” I said, “and I wish I could stay, but I will come another time. I—well, I—you see, it is cold, and I seem to have caught a little chill, and I think it will soon pass if I go down and cover up warm in bed—”
“Oh, a hot drink is a hundred times better, a hundred times!—that is what you really want. Now isn’t it so?”
“Why yes; but in the circumstances—”
“Name it!” he said, all eager to help me. “Mulled claret, blazing hot—isn’t that it?”
“Yes, indeed; but as we haven’t any way to—”
“Here—take it as hot as y
ou can bear it. You’ll soon be all right.”
He was holding a tumbler to me—fine, heavy cut-glass, and the steam was rising from it. I took it, and dropped into my chair again, for I was faint with fright, and the glass trembled in my hand. I drank. It was delicious; yes, and a surprise to my ignorant palate.
“Drink!” he said. “Go on—drain it. It will set you right, never fear. But this is unsociable; I’ll drink with you.”
A smoking glass was in his hand; I was not quick enough to see where it came from. Before my glass was empty he gave me a full one in its place and said heartily,
“Go right on, it will do you good. You are feeling better already, now aren’t you?”
“Better?” said I to myself; “as to temperature, yes, but I’m scared to rags.”
He laughed a pleasant little laugh and said,
“Oh, I give you my word there’s no occasion for that. You couldn’t be safer in my good old Mother Katrina’s protection. Come, drink another.”
I couldn’t resist; it was nectar. I indulged myself. But I was miserably frightened and uneasy, and I couldn’t stay; I didn’t know what might happen next. So I said I must go. He wanted me to sleep in his bed, and said he didn’t need it, he should be going to work pretty soon; but I shuddered at the idea, and got out of it by saying I should rest better in my own, because I was accustomed to it. So then he stepped outside the door with me, earnestly thanking me over and over again for coming to see him, and generously forbearing to notice how pale I was and how I was quaking; and he made me promise to come again the next night, I saying to myself that I should break that promise if I died for it. Then he said good-bye, with a most cordial shake of the hand, and I stepped feebly into the black gloom—and found myself in my own bed, with my door closed, my candle blinking on the table, and a welcome great fire flaming up the throat of the chimney!
It made me gasp! But no matter, I presently sank deliciously off to sleep, with that noble wine weltering in my head, and my last expiring effort at cerebration hit me with a cold shock:
“Did he overhear that thought when it passed through my mind—when I said I would break that promise if I died for it?”
Chapter 7
To my astonishment I got up thoroughly refreshed when called at sunrise. There was not a suggestion of wine or its effects in my head.
“It was all a dream,” I said, gratefully. “I can get along without the mate to it.”
By and by, on a stairway I met 44 coming up with a great load of wood, and he said, beseechingly,
“You will come again to-night, won’t you?”
“Lord! I thought it was a dream,” I said, startled.
“Oh, no, it was not a dream. I should be sorry, for it was a pleasant night for me, and I was so grateful.”
There was something so pathetic in his way of saying it that a great pity rose up in me and I said impulsively,
“I’ll come if I die for it!”
He looked as pleased as a child, and said,
“It’s the same phrase, but I like it better this time.” Then he said, with delicate consideration for me, “Treat me just as usual when others are around; it would injure you to befriend me in public, and I shall understand and not feel hurt.”
“You are just lovely!” I said, “and I honor you, and would brave them all if I had been born with any spirit—which I wasn’t.”
He opened his big wondering eyes upon me and said,
“Why do you reproach yourself? You did not make yourself; how then are you to blame?”
How perfectly sane and sensible that was—yet I had never thought of it before, nor had ever heard even the wisest of the professionally wise people say it—nor anything half so intelligent and unassailable, for that matter. It seemed an odd thing to get it from a boy, and he a vagabond landstreicher at that. At this juncture a proposition framed itself in my head, but I suppressed it, judging that there could be no impropriety in my acting upon it without permission if I chose. He gave me a bright glance and said,
“Ah, you couldn’t if you tried!”
“Couldn’t what?”
“Tell what happened last night.”
“Couldn’t I?”
“No. Because I don’t wish it. What I don’t wish, doesn’t happen. I’m going to tell you various secrets by and by, one of these days. You’ll keep them.”
“I’m sure I’ll try to.”
“Oh, tell them if you think you can! Mind, I don’t say you shan’t, I only say you can’t.”
“Well, then, I shan’t try.”
Then Ernest came whistling gaily along, and when he saw 44 he cried out,
“Come, hump yourself with that wood, you lazy beggar!”
I opened my mouth to call him the hardest name in my stock, but nothing would come. I said to myself, jokingly, “Maybe it’s because 44 disapproves.”
Forty-Four looked back at me over his shoulder and said,
“Yes, that is it.”
These things were dreadfully uncanny, but interesting. I went musing away, saying to myself, “he must have read my thoughts when I was minded to ask him if I might tell what happened last night.” He called back from far up the stairs,
“I did!”
Breakfast was nearing a finish. The master had been silent all through it. There was something on his mind; all could see it. When he looked like that, it meant that he was putting the sections of an important and perhaps risky resolution together, and bracing up to pull it off and stand by it. Conversation had died out; everybody was curious, everybody was waiting for the outcome.
Forty-Four was putting a log on the fire. The master called him. The general curiosity rose higher still, now. The boy came and stood respectfully before the master, who said,
“Forty-Four, I have noticed—Forty-Four is correct, I believe?—”
The boy inclined his head and added gravely,
“New Series 864,962.”
“We will not go into that,” said the master with delicacy, “that is your affair and I conceive that into it charity forbids us to pry. I have noticed, as I was saying, that you are diligent and willing, and have borne a hard lot these several weeks with exemplary patience. There is much to your credit, nothing to your discredit.”
The boy bent his head respectfully, the master glanced down the table, noted the displeasure along the line, then went on.
“You have earned friends, and it is not your fault that you haven’t them. You haven’t one in the castle, except Katrina. It is not fair. I am going to be your friend myself.”
The boy’s eyes glowed with happiness, Maria and her mother tossed their heads and sniffed, but there was no other applause. The master continued.
“You deserve promotion, and you shall have it. Here and now I raise you to the honorable rank of apprentice to the printer’s art, which is the noblest and the most puissant of all arts, and destined in the ages to come to promote the others and preserve them.”
And he rose and solemnly laid his hand upon the lad’s shoulder like a king delivering the accolade. Every man jumped to his feet excited and affronted, to protest against this outrage, this admission of a pauper and tramp without name or family to the gate leading to the proud privileges and distinctions and immunities of their great order; but the master’s temper was up, and he said he would turn adrift any man that opened his mouth; and he commanded them to sit down, and they obeyed, grumbling, and pretty nearly strangled with wrath. Then the master sat down himself, and began to question the new dignitary.
“This is one of the learned professions. Have you studied the Latin, Forty-Four?”
“No, sir.”
Everybody laughed, but not aloud.
“The Greek?”
“No, sir.”
Another clandestine laugh; and this same attention greeted all the answers, one after the other. But the boy did not blush, nor look confused or embarrassed; on the contrary he looked provokingly contented and happy and innocent. I was
ashamed of him, and felt for him; and that showed me that I was liking him very deeply.
“The Hebrew?”
“No, sir.”
“Any of the sciences?—the mathematics? astrology? astronomy? chemistry? medicine? geography?”
As each in turn was mentioned, the youth shook his untroubled head and answered “No, sir,” and at the end said,
“None of them, sir.”
The amusement of the herd was almost irrepressible by this time; and on his side the master’s annoyance had risen very nearly to the bursting point. He put in a moment or two crowding it down, then asked,
“Have you ever studied anything?”
“No, sir,” replied the boy, as innocently and idiotically as ever.
The master’s project stood defeated all along the line! It was a critical moment. Everybody’s mouth flew open to let go a triumphant shout; but the master, choking with rage, rose to the emergency, and it was his voice that got the innings:
“By the splendor of God I’ll teach you myself!”
It was just grand! But it was a mistake. It was all I could do to keep from raising a hurrah for the generous old chief. But I held in. From the apprentices’ table in the corner I could see every face, and I knew the master had made a mistake. I knew those men. They could stand a good deal, but the master had played the limit, as the saying is, and I knew it. He had struck at their order, the apple of their eye, their pride, the darling of their hearts, their dearest possession, their nobility—as they ranked it and regarded it—and had degraded it. They would not forgive that. They would seek revenge, and find it. This thing that we had witnessed, and which had had the form and aspect of a comedy, was a tragedy. It was a turning point. There would be consequences. In ordinary cases where there was matter for contention and dispute, there had always been chatter and noise and jaw, and a general row; but now the faces were black and ugly, and not a word was said. It was an omen.