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Mark
Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Chapter 35
A PITIFUL INCIDENT
IT'S a world of surprises. The king brooded; this was natural. What
would he brood about, should you say? Why, about the prodigious nature
of his fall, of course -- from the loftiest place in the world to
the lowest; from the most illustrious station in the world to the
obscurest; from the grandest vocation among men to the basest. No,
I take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to start with,
was not this, but the price he had fetched! He couldn't seem to get
over that seven dollars. Well, it stunned me so, when I first found
it out, that I couldn't believe it; it didn't seem natural. But as
soon as my mental sight cleared and I got a right focus on it, I saw
I was mistaken; it was natural. For this reason: a king is a mere
artificiality, and so a king's feelings, like the impulses of an automatic
doll, are mere artificialities; but as a man, he is a reality, and
his feelings, as a man, are real, not phantoms. It shames the average
man to be valued below his own estimate of his worth, and the king
certainly wasn't anything more than an average man, if he was up that
high.
Confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anything
like a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, sure
-- a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldest conceit;
I wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground for me to argue
on. In fact, I had to simply shirk argument and do the diplomatic
instead. I had to throw conscience aside, and brazenly concede that
he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars; whereas I was quite
well aware that in all the ages, the world had never seen a king that
was worth half the money, and during the next thirteen centuries wouldn't
see one that was worth the fourth of it. Yes, he tired me. If he began
to talk about the crops; or about the recent weather; or about the
condition of politics; or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology
-- no matter what -- I sighed, for I knew what was coming; he was
going to get out of it a palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar
sale. Wherever we halted where there was a crowd, he would give me
a look which said plainly: "if that thing could be tried over
again now, with this kind of folk, you would see a different result."
Well, when he was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go
for seven dollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worrying
I wished he had fetched a hundred. The thing never got a chance to
die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchasers looked
us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on the king
was something like this:
"Here's a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirty-dollar
style. Pity but style was marketable."
At last this sort of remark produced an evil result. Our owner was
a practical person and he perceived that this defect must be mended
if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king. So he went to work to
take the style out of his sacred majesty. I could have given the man
some valuable advice, but I didn't; you mustn't volunteer advice to
a slave-driver unless you want to damage the cause you are arguing
for. I had found it a sufficiently difficult job to reduce the king's
style to a peasant's style, even when he was a willing and anxious
pupil; now then, to undertake to reduce the king's style to a slave's
style -- and by force -- go to! it was a stately contract. Never mind
the details -- it will save me trouble to let you imagine them. I
will only remark that at the end of a week there was plenty of evidence
that lash and club and fist had done their work well; the king's body
was a sight to see -- and to weep over; but his spirit? -- why, it
wasn't even phased. Even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able
to see that there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a
man till he dies; whose bones you can break, but whose manhood you
can't. This man found that from his first effort down to his latest,
he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but the king was ready
to plunge for him, and did it. So he gave up at last, and left the
king in possession of his style unimpaired. The fact is, the king
was a good deal more than a king, he was a man; and when a man is
a man, you can't knock it out of him.
We had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth,
and suffering. And what Englishman was the most interested in the
slavery question by that time? His grace the king! Yes; from being
the most indifferent, he was become the most interested. He was become
the bitterest hater of the institution I had ever heard talk. And
so I ventured to ask once more a question which I had asked years
before and had gotten such a sharp answer that I had not thought it
prudent to meddle in the matter further. Would he abolish slavery?
His answer was as sharp as before, but it was music this time; I
shouldn't ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanity was not
good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crash-word almost
in the middle instead of at the end, where, of course, it ought to
have been.
I was ready and willing to get free now; I hadn't wanted to get
free any sooner. No, I cannot quite say that. I had wanted to, but
I had not been willing to take desperate chances, and had always dissuaded
the king from them. But now -- ah, it was a new atmosphere! Liberty
would be worth any cost that might be put upon it now. I set about
a plan, and was straightway charmed with it. It would require time,
yes, and patience, too, a great deal of both. One could invent quicker
ways, and fully as sure ones; but none that would be as picturesque
as this; none that could be made so dramatic. And so I was not going
to give this one up. It might delay us months, but no matter, I would
carry it out or break something.
Now and then we had an adventure. One night we were overtaken by
a snow-storm while still a mile from the village we were making for.
Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving snow was
so thick. You couldn't see a thing, and we were soon lost. The slave-driver
lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin before him, but his lashings
only made matters worse, for they drove us further from the road and
from likelihood of succor. So we had to stop at last and slump down
in the snow where we were.
The storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased. By this
time two of our feebler men and three of our women were dead, and
others past moving and threatened with death. Our master was nearly
beside himself. He stirred up the living, and made us stand, jump,
slap ourselves, to restore our circulation, and he helped as well
as he could with his whip.
Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman
came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flung herself into
our midst and begged for protection. A mob of people came tearing
after her, some with torches, and they said she was a witch who had
caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her
arts by help of a devil in the form of a black cat. This poor woman
had been stoned until she hardly looked human, she was so battered
and bloody. The mob wanted to burn her.
Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closed around
this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. He said, burn
her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. Imagine that! They were
willing. They fastened her to a post; they brought wood and piled
it about her; they applied the torch while she shrieked and pleaded
and strained her two young daughters to her breast; and our brute,
with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the
stake and warmed us into life and commercial value by the same fire
which took away the innocent life of that poor harmless mother. That
was the sort of master we had. I took his number. That snow-storm
cost him nine of his flock; and he was more brutal to us than ever,
after that, for many days together, he was so enraged over his loss.
We had adventures all along. One day we ran into a procession. And
such a procession! All the riffraff of the kingdom seemed to be comprehended
in it; and all drunk at that. In the van was a cart with a coffin
in it, and on the coffin sat a comely young girl of about eighteen
suckling a baby, which she squeezed to her breast in a passion of
love every little while, and every little while wiped from its face
the tears which her eyes rained down upon it; and always the foolish
little thing smiled up at her, happy and content, kneading her breast
with its dimpled fat hand, which she patted and fondled right over
her breaking heart.
Men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or after the
cart, hooting, shouting profane and ribald remarks, singing snatches
of foul song, skipping, dancing -- a very holiday of hellions, a sickening
sight. We had struck a suburb of London, outside the walls, and this
was a sample of one sort of London society. Our master secured a good
place for us near the gallows. A priest was in attendance, and he
helped the girl climb up, and said comforting words to her, and made
the under-sheriff provide a stool for her. Then he stood there by
her on the gallows, and for a moment looked down upon the mass of
upturned faces at his feet, then out over the solid pavement of heads
that stretched away on every side occupying the vacancies far and
near, and then began to tell the story of the case. And there was
pity in his voice -- how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant
and savage land! I remember every detail of what he said, except the
words he said it in; and so I change it into my own words:
"Law is intended to mete out justice. Sometimes it fails. This
cannot be helped. We can only grieve, and be resigned, and pray for
the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and that
his fellows may be few. A law sends this poor young thing to death
-- and it is right. But another law had placed her where she must
commit her crime or starve with her child -- and before God that law
is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death!
"A little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen
years, was as happy a wife and mother as any in England; and her lips
were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and innocent
hearts. Her young husband was as happy as she; for he was doing his
whole duty, he worked early and late at his handicraft, his bread
was honest bread well and fairly earned, he was prospering, he was
furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family, he was adding his
mite to the wealth of the nation. By consent of a treacherous law,
instant destruction fell upon this holy home and swept it away! That
young husband was waylaid and impressed, and sent to sea. The wife
knew nothing of it. She sought him everywhere, she moved the hardest
hearts with the supplications of her tears, the broken eloquence of
her despair. Weeks dragged by, she watching, waiting, hoping, her
mind going slowly to wreck under the burden of her misery. Little
by little all her small possessions went for food. When she could
no longer pay her rent, they turned her out of doors. She begged,
while she had strength; when she was starving at last, and her milk
failing, she stole a piece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth
part of a cent, thinking to sell it and save her child. But she was
seen by the owner of the cloth. She was put in jail and brought to
trial. The man testified to the facts. A plea was made for her, and
her sorrowful story was told in her behalf. She spoke, too, by permission,
and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mind was so disordered
of late by trouble that when she was overborne with hunger all acts,
criminal or other, swam meaningless through her brain and she knew
nothing rightly, except that she was so hungry! For a moment all were
touched, and there was disposition to deal mercifully with her, seeing
that she was so young and friendless, and her case so piteous, and
the law that robbed her of her support to blame as being the first
and only cause of her transgression; but the prosecuting officer replied
that whereas these things were all true, and most pitiful as well,
still there was much small theft in these days, and mistimed mercy
here would be a danger to property -- oh, my God, is there no property
in ruined homes, and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that British
law holds precious! -- and so he must require sentence.
"When the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolen
linen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his face as gray as ashes;
and when the awful words came, he cried out, 'Oh, poor child, poor
child, I did not know it was death!' and fell as a tree falls. When
they lifted him up his reason was gone; before the sun was set, he
had taken his own life. A kindly man; a man whose heart was right,
at bottom; add his murder to this that is to be now done here; and
charge them both where they belong -- to the rulers and the bitter
laws of Britain. The time is come, my child; let me pray over thee
-- not for thee, dear abused poor heart and innocent, but for them
that be guilty of thy ruin and death, who need it more."
After his prayer they put the noose around the young girl's neck,
and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, because
she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it, and snatching
it to her face and her breast, and drenching it with tears, and half
moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the baby crowing, and laughing,
and kicking its feet with delight over what it took for romp and play.
Even the hangman couldn't stand it, but turned away. When all was
ready the priest gently pulled and tugged and forced the child out
of the mother's arms, and stepped quickly out of her reach; but she
clasped her hands, and made a wild spring toward him, with a shriek;
but the rope -- and the under-sheriff -- held her short. Then she
went on her knees and stretched out her hands and cried:
"One more kiss -- oh, my God, one more, one more, -- it is
the dying that begs it!"
She got it; she almost smothered the little thing. And when they
got it away again, she cried out:
"Oh, my child, my darling, it will die! It has no home, it
has no father, no friend, no mother -- "
"It has them all!" said that good priest. "All these
will I be to it till I die."
You should have seen her face then! Gratitude? Lord, what do you
want with words to express that? Words are only painted fire; a look
is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the
treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.
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