The Portable Mark Twain (51 page)

“Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways, where you could go and stay three or four days?”

“Yes—Mr. Lothrop's. Why?”

“Never mind why, yet. If I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see each other again—inside of two weeks—here in this house—and
prove
how I know it—will you go to Mr. Lothrop's and stay four days?”

“Four days!” she says; “I'll stay a year!”

“All right,” I says, “I don't want nothing more out of
you
than just your word—I druther have it than another man's kiss-the-Bible.” She smiled, and reddened up very sweet, and I says, “If you don't mind it, I'll shut the door—and bolt it.”

Then I come back and set down again, and says:

“Don't you holler. Just set still, and take it like a man. I got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. These uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all—they're a couples of frauds—regular dead-beats. There, now we're over the worst of it—you can stand the rest middling easy.”

It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal water now, so I went right along, her eyes a blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself onto the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times—and then up she jumps, with her face afire like sunset, and says:

“The brute! Come—don't waste a minute—not a
second
—we'll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!”

Says I:

“Cert'nly. But do you mean,
before
you go to Mr. Lothrop's, or—”

“Oh,” she says, “What am I
thinking
about!” she says, and set right down again. “Don't mind what I said—please don't—you
won't,
now,
will
you?” Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die first. “I never thought, I was so stirred up,” she says; “now go on, and I won't do so any more. You tell me what to do, and whatever you say, I'll do it.”

“Well,” I says, “it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so I got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not—I druther not tell you why—and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and
I
'd be all right, but there'd be another person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. Well, we got to save
him,
hain't we? Of course. Well, then, we won't blow on them.”

Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. But I didn't want to run the raft in daytime, without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so I didn't want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night. I says:

“Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do—and you won't have to stay at Mr. Lothrop's so long, nuther. How fur is it?”

“A little short of four miles—right out in the country, back here.”

“Well, that'll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half-past, to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again—tell them you've thought of something. If you get here before eleven, put a candle in this window, and if I don't turn up, wait
till
eleven, and
then
if I don't turn up it means I'm gone, and out of the way, and safe. Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed.”

“Good,” she says, “I'll do it.”

“And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get took up along with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can.”

“Stand by you, indeed I will. They sha'n't touch a hair of your head!” she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too.

“If I get away, I sha'n't be here,” I says, “to prove these rapscallions ain't your uncles, and I couldn't do it if I
was
here. I could swear they was beats and bummers, that's all; though that's worth something. Well, there's others can do that better than what I can—and they're people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be. I'll tell you how to find them. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. There—‘
Royal Nonesuch, Bricksville.
' Put it away, and don't lose it. When the court wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to Bricksville and say they've got the men that played the Royal Nonesuch, and ask for some witnesses—why, you'll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary. And they'll come a-biling, too.”

I judged we had got everything fixed about right, now. So I says:

“Just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. Nobody don't have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction, on accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they get that money—and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count, and they ain't going to
get
no money. It's just like the way it was with the niggers—it warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before long. Why, they can't collect the money for the
niggers,
yet—they're in the worst kind of fix, Miss Mary.”

“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 exposed 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—”