The Portable Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  “Well,” she says, “I’ll run down to breakfast now, and then I’ll start straight for Mr. Lothrop’s.”

  “ ’Deed, that ain’t the ticket, Miss Mary Jane,” I says, “by no manner of means; go before breakfast.”

  “Why?”

  “What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?”

  “Well, I never thought—and come to think, I don’t know. What was it?”

  “Why, it’s because you ain’t one of these leather-face people. I don’t want no better book that what your face is. A body can set down and read it off like coarse print. Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles, when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never—”

  “There, there, don’t! Yes, I’ll go before breakfast—I’ll be glad to. And leave my sisters with them?”

  “Yes—never mind about them. They’ve got to stand it yet a while. They might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don’t want you to see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town—if a neighbor was to ask how is your uncles this morning, your face would tell something. No, you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I’ll fix it with all of them. I’ll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say you’ve went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you’ll be back to-night or early in the morning.”

  “Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won’t have my love given to them.”

  “Well, then, it sha’n’t be.” It was well enough to tell her so—no harm in it. It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it’s the little things that smoothes people’s roads the most, down here below; it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn’t cost nothing. 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 wish I knowed, but I don’t. I had it, because I stole it from them: and I stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but I’m afraid it ain’t there no more. I’m awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I’m just as sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could; I did, honest. I come nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I come to, and run—and it warn’t a good place.”

  “Oh, stop blaming yourself—it’s too bad to do it, and I won’t allow it—you couldn’t help it; it wasn’t your fault. Where did you hide it?”

  I didn’t want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and I couldn’t seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So for a minute I didn’t say nothing—then I says:

  “I’d ruther not tell you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don’t mind letting me off; but I’ll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop’s, if you want to. Do you reckon that’ll do?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  So I wrote: “I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was crying there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane.”

  It made my eyes water a little, to remember her crying there all by herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and give it to her, I see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says:

  “Good-bye—I’m going to do everything just as you’ve told me; and if I don’t ever see you again, I sha’n’t ever forget you, and I’ll think of you a many and a many a time, and I’ll pray for you, too!”—and she was gone.

  Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same—she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion—there warn’t no back-down to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain’t no flattery. And when it comes to beauty—and goodness too—she lays over them all. I hain’t ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door; no, I hain’t ever seen her since, but I reckon I’ve thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever I’d a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn’t a done it or bust.

  Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see her go. When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says:

  “What’s the name of them people over on t’other side of the river that you, all goes to see sometimes?”

  They says:

  “There’s several; but it’s the Proctors, mainly.”

  “That’s the name,” I says; “I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she told me to tell you she’s gone over there in a dreadful hurry—one of them’s sick.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know; leastways I kinder forget; but I think it’s—”

  “Sakes alive, I hope it ain’t Hanner?”

  “I’m sorry to say it,” I says, “but Hanner’s the very one.”

  “My goodness—and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?”

  “It ain’t no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane said, and they don’t think she’ll last many hours.”

  “Only think of that, now! What’s the matter with her!”

  I couldn’t think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:

  “Mumps.”

  “Mumps your granny! They don’t set up with people that’s got the mumps.”

  “They don’t, don’t they? You better bet they do with these mumps. These mumps is different. It’s a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said.”

  “How’s it a new kind?”

  “Because it’s mixed up with other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and yaller janders, and brain fever, and I don’t know what all.”

  “My land! And they call it the mumps?”

  “That’s what Miss Mary Jane said.”

  “Well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for?”

  “Why, because it is the mumps. That’s what it starts with.”

  “Well, ther’ ain’t no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, ‘Why, he stumped his toe.’ Would ther’ be any sense in that? No. And ther’ ain’t no sense in this, nuther. Is it ketching?”

  “Is it ketching? Why, how you talk. Is a harrow catching?—in the dark? If you don’t hitch onto one tooth, you’re bound to on another, ain’t you? And you can’t get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say—and it ain’t no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good.”

  “Well, it’s awful, I think,” says the hare-lip. “I’ll go to Uncle Harvey and—”

  “Oh, yes,” I says, “I would. Of course I would. I wouldn’t lose no time.”

  “Well, why wouldn’t you?”

  “Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Hain’t your uncles obleeged to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you reckon they’d be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves? You know they’ll wait for you. So fur, so good. Your uncle Harvey’s a preacher, ain’t he? Very well, then; is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a ship clerk?—so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now you know he ain’t. What will he do, then? Why, he’ll say, ‘It’s a great pity, but my church matters had got to get along the best way they can; for my niece has been e
xposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it’s my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she’s got it.’ But never mind, if you think it’s best to tell your uncle Harvey—”

  “Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane’s got it or not? Why, you talk like a muggins.”

  “Well, anyway, maybe you better tell some of the neighbors.”

  “Listen at that, now. You do beat all, for natural stupidness. Can’t you see that they’d go and tell? Ther’ ain’t no way but just to not tell anybody at all.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right—yes, I judge you are right.”

  “But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she’s gone out a while, anyway, so he wont be uneasy about her?”

  “Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says, “Tell them to give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I’ve run over the river to see Mr.—Mr.—what is the name of that rich family our uncle Peter used to think so much of?—I mean the one that—”

  “Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain’t it?”

  “Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can’t ever seem to remember them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over for to ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they had it than anybody else; and she’s going to stick to them till they say they’ll come, and then, if she ain’t too tired, she’s coming home; and if she is, she’ll be home in the morning anyway. She said, don’t say nothing about the Proctors, but only about the Apthorps—which’ll be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; I know it, because she told me so, herself.”

  “All right,” they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give them the love and kisses, and tell them the message.

  Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn’t say nothing because they wanted to go to England; and the king and the duke would ruther Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Doctor Robinson. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat—I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn’t a done it no neater himself. Of course he would a throwed more style into it, but I can’t do that very handy, not being brung up to it.

  Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture, now and then, or a little goody-goody saying, of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly.

  But by-and-by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold. Everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So they’d got to work that off—I never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting to swallow everything. Well, whilst they was at it, a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out:

  “Here’s your opposition line! here’s your two sets o’ heirs to old Peter Wilks—and you pays your money and you takes your choice!”

  CHAPTER XXIX

  They was fetching a very nice looking old gentleman along, and a nice looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And my souls, how the people yelled, and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn’t see no joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any. I reckoned they’d turn pale. But no, nary a pale did they turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that’s googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them newcomers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he done it admirable. Lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to let him see they was on his side. That old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he begun to speak, and I see, straight off, he pronounced like an Englishman, not the king’s way, though the king’s was pretty good, for an imitation. I can’t give the old gent’s words, nor I can’t imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and says, about like this:

  “This is a surprise to me which I wasn’t looking for; and I’ll acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain’t very well fixed to meet it and answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes, he’s broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here, last night in the night by a mistake. I am Peter Wilks’s brother Harvey, and this is his brother William, which can’t hear nor speak—and can’t even make signs to amount to much, now’t he’s only got one hand to work them with. We are who we say we are; and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can prove it. But, up till then, I won’t say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait.”

  So him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and blethers out:

  “Broke his arm—very likely ain’t it?—and very convenient, too, for a fraud that’s got to make signs, and hain’t learnt how. Lost their baggage! That’s mighty good!—and mighty ingenious—under the circumstances!”

  So he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor; another one was a sharp looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then and nodding their heads—it was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to Louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king now. And when the king got done, this husky up and says:

  “Say, looky here; if you are Harvey Wilks, when’d you come to this town?”

  “The day before the funeral, friend,” says the king.

  “But what time o’ day?”

  “In the evenin’—’bout an hour er two before sundown.”

  “How’d you come?”

  “I come down on the Susan Powell, from Cincinnati.”

  “Well, then, how’d you come to be up at the Pint in the mornin’—in a canoe?”

  “I warn’t up at the Pint in the mornin’.”

  “It’s a lie.”

  Several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher.

  “Preacher be hanged, he’s a fraud and a liar. He was up at the Pint that mornin’. I live up there, don’t I? Well, I was up there, and he was up there. I see him there. He come in a canoe, along with Tim Collins and a boy.”

  The doctor he up and says:

  “Would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Hines?”

  “I reckon I would, but I don’t know. Why, yonder he is, now. I know him perfectly easy.”

  It was me he pointed at. The doctor says:

  “Neighbors, I don’t know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if these two ain’t frauds, I am an idiot, that’s all. I think it’s our duty to see that they don’t get away from here till we’ve looked into this thing. Come along, Hines; come along, the rest of you. We’ll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with t’other couple, and I reckon we’ll find out something before we get through.”

  It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king’s friends; so we all started. It was about sundown. The doctor he led me along by the hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand.

  We all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and fetched in the new couple. First, the doctor says:

  “I don’t wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they’re frauds, and they may have complices that we don’t know nothing about. If they have, won’t the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilks left? It ain’t unl
ikely. If these men ain’t frauds, they won’t object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they’re all right—ain’t that so?”

  Everybody agreed to that. So I judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place, right at the outstart. But the king he only looked sorrowful, and says:

  “Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, for I ain’t got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation o’ this misable business; but alas, the money ain’t there; you k’n send and see, if you want to.”

  “Where is it, then?”

  “Well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her, I took and hid it inside o’ the straw tick o’ my bed, not wishin’ to bank it for the few days we’d be here, and considerin’ the bed a safe place, we not bein’ used to niggers, and suppos’n’ ’em honest, like servants in England. The niggers stole it the very next mornin’ after I had went down stairs; and when I sold ’em, I hadn’t missed the money yit, so they got clean away with it. My servant here k’n tell you ’bout it gentlemen.”

  The doctor and several said “Shucks!” and I see nobody didn’t altogether believe him. One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it. I said no, but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never thought nothing, only I reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. That was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirls on me and says:

  “Are you English too?”

  I says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, “Stuff!”

  Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about supper, nor ever seemed to think about it—and so they kept it up, and kept it up; and it was the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. They made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his’n; and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth and t’other one lies. And by-and-by they had me up to tell what I knowed. The king he give me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the right side. I begun to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there, and all about the English Wilkses, and so on; but I didn’t get pretty fur till the doctor begun to laugh; and Levi Bell, the lawyer says: