The Complete Novels of Mark Twain and the Complete Biography of Mark Twain (115 page)

The old man, still pacing back and forth, ceased to speak aloud, and began to mutter.  The King seized this opportunity to state his case; and he did it with an eloquence inspired by uneasiness and apprehension.  But the hermit went on muttering, and gave no heed.  And still muttering, he approached the King and said impressively—

"'Sh!  I will tell you a secret!"  He bent down to impart it, but checked himself, and assumed a listening attitude.  After a moment or two he went on tiptoe to the window-opening, put his head out, and peered around in the gloaming, then came tiptoeing back again, put his face close down to the King's, and whispered—

"I am an archangel!"

The King started violently, and said to himself, "Would God I were with the outlaws again; for lo, now am I the prisoner of a madman!"  His apprehensions were heightened, and they showed plainly in his face.  In a low excited voice the hermit continued—

"I see you feel my atmosphere!  There's awe in your face!  None may be in this atmosphere and not be thus affected; for it is the very atmosphere of heaven.  I go thither and return, in the twinkling of an eye.  I was made an archangel on this very spot, it is five years ago, by angels sent from heaven to confer that awful dignity.  Their presence filled this place with an intolerable brightness.  And they knelt to me, King! yes, they knelt to me! for I was greater than they.  I have walked in the courts of heaven, and held speech with the patriarchs.  Touch my hand—be not afraid—touch it.  There—now thou hast touched a hand which has been clasped by Abraham and Isaac and Jacob!  For I have walked in the golden courts; I have seen the Deity face to face!"  He paused, to give this speech effect; then his face suddenly changed, and he started to his feet again saying, with angry energy, "Yes, I am an archangel; A MERE ARCHANGEL!—I that might have been pope!  It is verily true.  I was told it from heaven in a dream, twenty years ago; ah, yes, I was to be pope!—and I SHOULD have been pope, for Heaven had said it—but the King dissolved my religious house, and I, poor obscure unfriended monk, was cast homeless upon the world, robbed of my mighty destiny!" Here he began to mumble again, and beat his forehead in futile rage, with his fist; now and then articulating a venomous curse, and now and then a pathetic "Wherefore I am nought but an archangel—I that should have been pope!"

So he went on, for an hour, whilst the poor little King sat and suffered. Then all at once the old man's frenzy departed, and he became all gentleness.  His voice softened, he came down out of his clouds, and fell to prattling along so simply and so humanly, that he soon won the King's heart completely.  The old devotee moved the boy nearer to the fire and made him comfortable; doctored his small bruises and abrasions with a deft and tender hand; and then set about preparing and cooking a supper—chatting pleasantly all the time, and occasionally stroking the lad's cheek or patting his head, in such a gently caressing way that in a little while all the fear and repulsion inspired by the archangel were changed to reverence and affection for the man.

This happy state of things continued while the two ate the supper; then, after a prayer before the shrine, the hermit put the boy to bed, in a small adjoining room, tucking him in as snugly and lovingly as a mother might; and so, with a parting caress, left him and sat down by the fire, and began to poke the brands about in an absent and aimless way. Presently he paused; then tapped his forehead several times with his fingers, as if trying to recall some thought which had escaped from his mind.  Apparently he was unsuccessful.  Now he started quickly up, and entered his guest's room, and said—

"Thou art King?"

"Yes," was the response, drowsily uttered.

"What King?"

"Of England."

"Of England?  Then Henry is gone!"

"Alack, it is so.  I am his son."

A black frown settled down upon the hermit's face, and he clenched his bony hands with a vindictive energy.  He stood a few moments, breathing fast and swallowing repeatedly, then said in a husky voice—

"Dost know it was he that turned us out into the world houseless and homeless?"

There was no response.  The old man bent down and scanned the boy's reposeful face and listened to his placid breathing.  "He sleeps—sleeps soundly;" and the frown vanished away and gave place to an expression of evil satisfaction.  A smile flitted across the dreaming boy's features. The hermit muttered, "So—his heart is happy;" and he turned away.  He went stealthily about the place, seeking here and there for something; now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around and casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always mumbling to himself.  At last he found what he seemed to want—a rusty old butcher knife and a whetstone.  Then he crept to his place by the fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone, still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating.  The winds sighed around the lonely place, the mysterious voices of the night floated by out of the distances.  The shining eyes of venturesome mice and rats peered out at the old man from cracks and coverts, but he went on with his work, rapt, absorbed, and noted none of these things.

At long intervals he drew his thumb along the edge of his knife, and nodded his head with satisfaction.  "It grows sharper," he said; "yes, it grows sharper."

He took no note of the flight of time, but worked tranquilly on, entertaining himself with his thoughts, which broke out occasionally in articulate speech—

"His father wrought us evil, he destroyed us—and is gone down into the eternal fires!  Yes, down into the eternal fires!  He escaped us—but it was God's will, yes it was God's will, we must not repine.  But he hath not escaped the fires!  No, he hath not escaped the fires, the consuming, unpitying, remorseless fires—and THEY are everlasting!"

And so he wrought, and still wrought—mumbling, chuckling a low rasping chuckle at times—and at times breaking again into words—

"It was his father that did it all.  I am but an archangel; but for him I should be pope!"

The King stirred.  The hermit sprang noiselessly to the bedside, and went down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife uplifted.  The boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more.

The hermit watched and listened, for a time, keeping his position and scarcely breathing; then he slowly lowered his arms, and presently crept away, saying,—

"It is long past midnight; it is not best that he should cry out, lest by accident someone be passing."

He glided about his hovel, gathering a rag here, a thong there, and another one yonder; then he returned, and by careful and gentle handling he managed to tie the King's ankles together without waking him.  Next he essayed to tie the wrists; he made several attempts to cross them, but the boy always drew one hand or the other away, just as the cord was ready to be applied; but at last, when the archangel was almost ready to despair, the boy crossed his hands himself, and the next moment they were bound. Now a bandage was passed under the sleeper's chin and brought up over his head and tied fast—and so softly, so gradually, and so deftly were the knots drawn together and compacted, that the boy slept peacefully through it all without stirring.

The old man glided away, stooping, stealthy, cat-like, and brought the low bench.  He seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there, heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay bound and helpless in his web.

After a long while, the old man, who was still gazing,—yet not seeing, his mind having settled into a dreamy abstraction,—observed, on a sudden, that the boy's eyes were open! wide open and staring!—staring up in frozen horror at the knife.  The smile of a gratified devil crept over the old man's face, and he said, without changing his attitude or his occupation—

"Son of Henry the Eighth, hast thou prayed?"

The boy struggled helplessly in his bonds, and at the same time forced a smothered sound through his closed jaws, which the hermit chose to interpret as an affirmative answer to his question.

"Then pray again.  Pray the prayer for the dying!"

A shudder shook the boy's frame, and his face blenched.  Then he struggled again to free himself—turning and twisting himself this way and that; tugging frantically, fiercely, desperately—but uselessly—to burst his fetters; and all the while the old ogre smiled down upon him, and nodded his head, and placidly whetted his knife; mumbling, from time to time, "The moments are precious, they are few and precious—pray the prayer for the dying!"

The boy uttered a despairing groan, and ceased from his struggles, panting.  The tears came, then, and trickled, one after the other, down his face; but this piteous sight wrought no softening effect upon the savage old man.

The dawn was coming now; the hermit observed it, and spoke up sharply, with a touch of nervous apprehension in his voice—

"I may not indulge this ecstasy longer!  The night is already gone.  It seems but a moment—only a moment; would it had endured a year!  Seed of the Church's spoiler, close thy perishing eyes, an' thou fearest to look upon—"

The rest was lost in inarticulate mutterings.  The old man sank upon his knees, his knife in his hand, and bent himself over the moaning boy.

Hark!  There was a sound of voices near the cabin—the knife dropped from the hermit's hand; he cast a sheepskin over the boy and started up, trembling.  The sounds increased, and presently the voices became rough and angry; then came blows, and cries for help; then a clatter of swift footsteps, retreating.  Immediately came a succession of thundering knocks upon the cabin door, followed by—

"Hullo-o-o!  Open!  And despatch, in the name of all the devils!"

Oh, this was the blessedest sound that had ever made music in the King's ears; for it was Miles Hendon's voice!

The hermit, grinding his teeth in impotent rage, moved swiftly out of the bedchamber, closing the door behind him; and straightway the King heard a talk, to this effect, proceeding from the 'chapel':—

"Homage and greeting, reverend sir!  Where is the boy—MY boy?"

"What boy, friend?"

"What boy!  Lie me no lies, sir priest, play me no deceptions!—I am not in the humour for it.  Near to this place I caught the scoundrels who I judged did steal him from me, and I made them confess; they said he was at large again, and they had tracked him to your door.  They showed me his very footprints.  Now palter no more; for look you, holy sir, an' thou produce him not—Where is the boy?"

"O good sir, peradventure you mean the ragged regal vagrant that tarried here the night.  If such as you take an interest in such as he, know, then, that I have sent him of an errand.  He will be back anon."

"How soon?  How soon?  Come, waste not the time—cannot I overtake him? How soon will he be back?"

"Thou need'st not stir; he will return quickly."

"So be it, then.  I will try to wait.  But stop!—YOU sent him of an errand?—you!  Verily this is a lie—he would not go.  He would pull thy old beard, an' thou didst offer him such an insolence. Thou hast lied, friend; thou hast surely lied!  He would not go for thee, nor for any man."

"For any MAN—no; haply not.  But I am not a man."

"WHAT!  Now o' God's name what art thou, then?"

"It is a secret—mark thou reveal it not.  I am an archangel!"

There was a tremendous ejaculation from Miles Hendon—not altogether unprofane—followed by—

"This doth well and truly account for his complaisance!  Right well I knew he would budge nor hand nor foot in the menial service of any mortal; but, lord, even a king must obey when an archangel gives the word o' command!  Let me—'sh!  What noise was that?"

All this while the little King had been yonder, alternately quaking with terror and trembling with hope; and all the while, too, he had thrown all the strength he could into his anguished moanings, constantly expecting them to reach Hendon's ear, but always realising, with bitterness, that they failed, or at least made no impression.  So this last remark of his servant came as comes a reviving breath from fresh fields to the dying; and he exerted himself once more, and with all his energy, just as the hermit was saying—

"Noise?  I heard only the wind."

"Mayhap it was.  Yes, doubtless that was it.  I have been hearing it faintly all the—there it is again!  It is not the wind!  What an odd sound!  Come, we will hunt it out!"

Now the King's joy was nearly insupportable.  His tired lungs did their utmost—and hopefully, too—but the sealed jaws and the muffling sheepskin sadly crippled the effort.  Then the poor fellow's heart sank, to hear the hermit say—

"Ah, it came from without—I think from the copse yonder.  Come, I will lead the way."

The King heard the two pass out, talking; heard their footsteps die quickly away—then he was alone with a boding, brooding, awful silence.