CHAPTER XXVIII
BY-AND-BY it was getting-up time. So I come down the
ladder and started for down-stairs; but as I come to
the girls' room the door was open, and I see Mary
Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open
and she'd been packing things in it -- getting ready
to go to England. But she had stopped now with a
folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her
hands, crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of course
anybody would. I went in there and says:
"Miss Mary Jane, you can't a-bear to see people in
trouble, and I can't -- most always. Tell me about
it."
So she done it. And it was the niggers -- I just
expected it. She said the beautiful trip to England
was most about spoiled for her; she didn't know how
she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the
mother and the children warn't ever going to see
each other no more -- and then busted out bitterer
than ever, and flung up her hands, and says:
"Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't ever going to
see each other any more!"
"But they will -- and inside of two weeks -- and I
know it!" says I.
Laws, it was out before I could think! And before I
could budge she throws her arms around my neck and
told me to say it again, say it again, say it again!
I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much,
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and was in a close place. I asked her to let me
think a minute; and she set there, very impatient
and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy
and eased-up, like a person that's had a tooth
pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I says to
myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth
when he is in a tight place is taking considerable
many resks, though I ain't had no experience, and
can't say for certain; but it looks so to me,
anyway; and yet here's a case where I'm blest if it
don't look to me like the truth is better and actuly
safer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and
think it over some time or other, it's so kind of
strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it.
Well, I says to myself at last, I'm a-going to
chance it; I'll up and tell the truth this time,
though it does seem most like setting down on a kag
of powder and touching it off just to see where
you'll go to. Then I says:
"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:
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"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 couple 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 on to 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
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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 the 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
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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 a fix, Miss Mary."
"Well," she says, "I'll run down to breakfast now,
and then I'll start straight for Mr. Lothrop's."
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"'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
than 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 smooths people's roads the most, down
here below;
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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."
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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?"
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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
thinks 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."
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"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 on to
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 obleegd 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
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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 has 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 -- "
"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'd 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 won't 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 your uncle Peter used to think so much of? --
I mean the one that -- "
"Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain't it?"
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"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 the 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
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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!"
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