The Complete Novels of Mark Twain and the Complete Biography of Mark Twain (203 page)

"If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to his lord; so let him be.  If others hanged him, belike they had the right—let him hang."

"But—"

"But me no buts, but even leave him as he is.  And for yet another reason.  When the lightning cometh again—there, look abroad."

Two others hanging, within fifty yards of us!

"It is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. They are past thanking you.  Come—it is unprofitable to tarry here."

There was reason in what he said, so we moved on.  Within the next mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion.  That murmur was a murmur no longer, it was a roar; a roar of men's voices.  A man came flying by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him. They disappeared.  Presently another case of the kind occurred, and then another and another.  Then a sudden turn of the road brought us in sight of that fire—it was a large manor-house, and little or nothing was left of it—and everywhere men were flying and other men raging after them in pursuit.

I warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers. We would better get away from the light, until matters should improve.  We stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the wood.  From this hiding-place we saw both men and women hunted by the mob.  The fearful work went on until nearly dawn.  Then, the fire being out and the storm spent, the voices and flying footsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again.

We ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we were worn out and sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place some miles behind us.  Then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoal burner, and got what was to be had.  A woman was up and about, but the man was still asleep, on a straw shake-down, on the clay floor. The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelers and had lost our way and been wandering in the woods all night. She became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the terrible goings-on at the manor-house of Abblasoure.  Yes, we had heard of them, but what we wanted now was rest and sleep.  The king broke in:

"Sell us the house and take yourselves away, for we be perilous company, being late come from people that died of the Spotted Death."

It was good of him, but unnecessary.  One of the commonest decorations of the nation was the waffle-iron face.  I had early noticed that the woman and her husband were both so decorated.  She made us entirely welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was immensely impressed by the king's proposition; for, of course, it was a good deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king's humble appearance who was ready to buy a man's house for the sake of a night's lodging.  It gave her a large respect for us, and she strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make us comfortable.

We slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to make cotter fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularly as it was scant in quantity.  And also in variety; it consisted solely of onions, salt, and the national black bread made out of horse-feed.  The woman told us about the affair of the evening before.  At ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, the manor-house burst into flames.  The country-side swarmed to the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, the master.  He did not appear.  Everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking the burning house seeking that valuable personage.  But after a while he was found—what was left of him—which was his corpse.  It was in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a dozen places.

Who had done this?  Suspicion fell upon a humble family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated with peculiar harshness by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extended itself to their relatives and familiars.  A suspicion was enough; my lord's liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade against these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general. The woman's husband had been active with the mob, and had not returned home until nearly dawn.  He was gone now to find out what the general result had been.  While we were still talking he came back from his quest.  His report was revolting enough.  Eighteen persons hanged or butchered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisoners lost in the fire.

"And how many prisoners were there altogether in the vaults?"

"Thirteen."

"Then every one of them was lost?"

"Yes, all."

"But the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it they could save none of the prisoners?"

The man looked puzzled, and said:

"Would one unlock the vaults at such a time?  Marry, some would have escaped."

"Then you mean that nobody
did
unlock them?"

"None went near them, either to lock or unlock.  It standeth to reason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needful to establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not escape, but be taken. None were taken."

"Natheless, three did escape," said the king, "and ye will do well to publish it and set justice upon their track, for these murthered the baron and fired the house."

I was just expecting he would come out with that.  For a moment the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news and an impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something else betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions. I answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effects produced.  I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these three prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere; that our hosts' continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now only pretended and not real.  The king did not notice the change, and I was glad of that.  I worked the conversation around toward other details of the night's proceedings, and noted that these people were relieved to have it take that direction.

The painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor.  This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter.  This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.

This was depressing—to a man with the dream of a republic in his head.  It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them.  And there was only one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was, that secretly the "poor white" did detest the slave-lord, and did feel his own shame.  That feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out, under favoring circumstances, was something—in fact, it was enough; for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it doesn't show on the outside.

Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of the Southern "poor white" of the far future.  The king presently showed impatience, and said:

"An ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry.  Think ye the criminals will abide in their father's house?  They are fleeing, they are not waiting.  You should look to it that a party of horse be set upon their track."

The woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked flustered and irresolute.  I said:

"Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you, and explain which direction I think they would try to take.  If they were merely resisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity I would try to protect them from capture; but when men murder a person of high degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter."

The last remark was for the king—to quiet him.  On the road the man pulled his resolution together, and began the march with a steady gait, but there was no eagerness in it.  By and by I said:

"What relation were these men to you—cousins?"

He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and stopped, trembling.

"Ah, my God, how know ye that?"

"I didn't know it; it was a chance guess."

"Poor lads, they are lost.  And good lads they were, too."

"Were you actually going yonder to tell on them?"

He didn't quite know how to take that; but he said, hesitatingly:

"Ye-s."

"Then I think you are a damned scoundrel!"

It made him as glad as if I had called him an angel.

"Say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that ye would not betray me an I failed of my duty."

"Duty?  There is no duty in the matter, except the duty to keep still and let those men get away.  They've done a righteous deed."

He looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at the same time.  He looked up and down the road to see that no one was coming, and then said in a cautious voice:

"From what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous words, and seem not to be afraid?"

"They are not perilous words when spoken to one of my own caste, I take it.  You would not tell anybody I said them?"

"I?  I would be drawn asunder by wild horses first."

"Well, then, let me say my say.  I have no fears of your repeating it.  I think devil's work has been done last night upon those innocent poor people.  That old baron got only what he deserved. If I had my way, all his kind should have the same luck."

Fear and depression vanished from the man's manner, and gratefulness and a brave animation took their place:

"Even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing, yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and others like to them, I would go to the gallows happy, as having had one good feast at least in a starved life.  And I will say my say now, and ye may report it if ye be so minded.  I helped to hang my neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of zeal in the master's cause; the others helped for none other reason. All rejoice to-day that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly sorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in that lies safety.  I have said the words, I have said the words! the only ones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient.  Lead on, an ye will, be it even to the scaffold, for I am ready."

There it was, you see.  A man is a man, at bottom.  Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken.  Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed—even the Russians; plenty of manhood in them—even in the Germans—if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it.  We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe.  First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur's days were done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of the nation there to remain.  Yes, there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while.

MARCO

We strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, and talked.  We must dispose of about the amount of time it ought to take to go to the little hamlet of Abblasoure and put justice on the track of those murderers and get back home again.  And meantime I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, never lost its novelty for me since I had been in Arthur's kingdom: the behavior—born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste—of chance passers-by toward each other.  Toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a countenance respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the air—he couldn't even see him.  Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.