The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

This speech was received with great applause, mixed with cries of —

“That’s the talk!” “He’s a good fellow, anyway, if he is a teetotaler!” “Drink his health!” “Give him a rouser, and no heeltaps!”

Glasses were handed around, and everybody on the platform drank Angelo’s health, while the house bellowed forth in song:

 
For he’s a jolly good fel-low,
For he’s a jolly good fel-low,
For he’s a jolly good fe-el-low, —
Which nobody can deny.
 

Tom Driscoll drank. It was his second glass, for he had drunk Angelo’s the moment that Angelo had set it down. The two drinks made him very merry – almost idiotically so – and he began to take a most lively and prominent part in the proceedings, particularly in the music and cat-calls and side-remarks.

The chairman was still standing at the front, the twins at his side. The extraordinarily close resemblance of the brothers to each other suggested a witticism to Tom Driscoll, and just as the chairman began a speech he skipped forward and said with an air of tipsy confidence to the audience —

“Boys, I move that he keeps still and lets this human philopena snip you out a speech.”

The descriptive aptness of the phrase caught the house, and a mighty burst of laughter followed.

Luigi’s southern blood leaped to the boiling-point in a moment under the sharp humiliation of this insult delivered in the presence of four hundred strangers. It was not in the young man’s nature to let the matter pass, or to delay the squaring of the account. He took a couple of strides and halted behind the unsuspecting joker. Then he drew back and delivered a kick of such titanic vigor that it lifted Tom clear over the footlights and landed him on the heads of the front row of the Sons of Liberty.

Even a sober person does not like to have a human being emptied on him when he is not doing any harm; a person who is not sober cannot endure such an attention at all. The nest of Sons of Liberty that Driscoll landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there was probably not an entirely sober one in the auditorium. Driscoll was promptly and indignantly flung on to the heads of Sons in the next row, and these Sons passed him on toward the rear, and then immediately began to pummel the front-row Sons who had passed him to them. This course was strictly followed by bench after bench as Driscoll traveled in his tumultuous and airy flight toward the door; so he left behind him an ever lengthening wake of raging and plunging and fighting and swearing humanity. Down went group after group of torches, and presently above the deafening clatter of the gavel, roar of angry voices, and crash of succumbing benches, rose the paralyzing cry of “Fire!”

The fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased; for one distinctly defined moment there was a dead hush, a motionless calm, where the tempest had been; then with one impulse the multitude awoke to life and energy again, and went surging and struggling and swaying, this way and that, its outer edges melting away through windows and doors and gradually lessening the pressure and relieving the mass.

The fire-boys were never on hand so suddenly before; for there was no distance to go, this time, their quarters being in the rear end of the market-house. There was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company. Half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies, after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the frontier town of the period. Enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters to man the engine and the ladders. In two minutes they had their red shirts and helmets on – they never stirred officially in unofficial costume – and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row of windows and poured out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were ready for them with a powerful stream of water which washed some of them off the roof and nearly drowned the rest. But water was preferable to fire, and still the stampede from the windows continued, and still the pitiless drenching assailed it until the building was empty; then the fire-boys mounted to the hall and flooded it with water enough to annihilate forty times as much fire as there was there; for a village fire-company does not often get a chance to show off, and so when it does get a chance it makes the most of it. Such citizens of that village as were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did not insure against fire; they insured against the fire-company.

CHAPTER XII.
The Shame of Judge Driscoll

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea! – incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who “didn’t know what fear was,” we ought always to add the flea – and put him at the head of the procession.– Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.

Judge Driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o’clock on Friday night, and he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the morning with his friend Pembroke Howard. These two had been boys together in Virginia when that State still ranked as the chief and most imposing member of the Union, and they still coupled the proud and affectionate adjective “old” with her name when they spoke of her. In Missouri a recognized superiority attached to any person who hailed from Old Virginia; and this superiority was exalted to supremacy when a person of such nativity could also prove descent from the First Families of that great commonwealth. The Howards and Driscolls were of this aristocracy. In their eyes it was a nobility. It had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly defined and as strict as any that could be found among the printed statutes of the land. The F. F. V. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in life was to watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched. He must keep his honor spotless. Those laws were his chart; his course was marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as half a point of the compass it meant shipwreck to his honor; that is to say, degradation from his rank as a gentleman. These laws required certain things of him which his religion might forbid: then his religion must yield – the laws could not be relaxed to accommodate religions or anything else. Honor stood first; and the laws defined what it was and wherein it differed in certain details from honor as defined by church creeds and by the social laws and customs of some of the minor divisions of the globe that had got crowded out when the sacred boundaries of Virginia were staked out.

If Judge Driscoll was the recognized first citizen of Dawson’s Landing, Pembroke Howard was easily its recognized second citizen. He was called “the great lawyer” – an earned title. He and Driscoll were of the same age – a year or two past sixty.

Although Driscoll was a free-thinker and Howard a strong and determined Presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment in consequence. They were men whose opinions were their own property and not subject to revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their friends.

The day’s fishing finished, they came floating down stream in their skiff, talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met a skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said:

“I reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a kicking last night, Judge?”

“Did what?”

“Gave him a kicking.”

The old Judge’s lips paled, and his eyes began to flame. He choked with anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to say —

“Well – well – go on! give me the details!”

The man did it. At the finish the Judge was silent a minute, turning over in his mind the shameful picture of Tom’s flight over the footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud – “H’m – I don’t understand it. I was asleep at home. He didn’t wake me. Thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, I reckon.” His face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said with a cheery complacency, “I like that – it’s the true old blood – hey, Pembroke?”

Howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly. Then the news-bringer spoke again —

“But Tom beat the twin on the trial.”

The Judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said —

“The trial? What trial?”

“Why, Tom had him up before Judge Robinson for assault and battery.”

The old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received a death-stroke. Howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon, and took him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat. He sprinkled water in his face, and said to the startled visitor —

“Go, now – don’t let him come to and find you here. You see what an effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been more considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as that.”

“I’m right down sorry I did it now, Mr. Howard, and I wouldn’t have done it if I had thought: but it ain’t slander; it’s perfectly true, just as I told him.”

He rowed away. Presently the old Judge came out of his faint and looked up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over him.

“Say it ain’t true, Pembroke; tell me it ain’t true!” he said in a weak voice.

There was nothing weak in the deep organ-tones that responded —

“You know it’s a lie as well as I do, old friend. He is of the best blood of the Old Dominion.”

“God bless you for saying it!” said the old gentleman, fervently. “Ah, Pembroke, it was such a blow!”

Howard stayed by his friend, and saw him home, and entered the house with him. It was dark, and past supper-time, but the Judge was not thinking of supper; he was eager to hear the slander refuted from headquarters, and as eager to have Howard hear it, too. Tom was sent for, and he came immediately. He was bruised and lame, and was not a happy-looking object. His uncle made him sit down, and said —

“We have been hearing about your adventure, Tom, with a handsome lie added to it for embellishment. Now pulverize that lie to dust! What measures have you taken? How does the thing stand?”

Tom answered guilelessly: “It don’t stand at all; it’s all over. I had him up in court and beat him. Pudd’nhead Wilson defended him – first case he ever had, and lost it. The judge fined the miserable hound five dollars for the assault.”

Howard and the Judge sprang to their feet with the opening sentence – why, neither knew; then they stood gazing vacantly at each other. Howard stood a moment, then sat mournfully down without saying anything. The Judge’s wrath began to kindle, and he burst out —

“You cur! You scum! You vermin! Do you mean to tell me that blood of my race has suffered a blow and crawled to a court of law about it? Answer me!”

Tom’s head drooped, and he answered with an eloquent silence. His uncle stared at him with a mixed expression of amazement and shame and incredulity that was sorrowful to see. At last he said —

“Which of the twins was it?”

“Count Luigi.”

“You have challenged him?”

“N – no,” hesitated Tom, turning pale.

“You will challenge him to-night. Howard will carry it.”

Tom began to turn sick, and to show it. He turned his hat round and round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and said piteously —

“Oh, please don’t ask me to do it, uncle! He is a murderous devil – I never could – I – I’m afraid of him!”

Old Driscoll’s mouth opened and closed three times before he could get it to perform its office; then he stormed out —

“A coward in my family! A Driscoll a coward! Oh, what have I done to deserve this infamy!” He tottered to his secretary in the corner repeating that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones, and got out of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits scattering the bits absently in his track as he walked up and down the room, still grieving and lamenting. At last he said —

“There it is, shreds and fragments once more – my will. Once more you have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most noble father! Leave my sight! Go – before I spit on you!”

The young man did not tarry. Then the Judge turned to Howard:

“You will be my second, old friend?”

“Of course.”

“There is pen and paper. Draft the cartel, and lose no time.”

“The Count shall have it in his hands in fifteen minutes,” said Howard.

Tom was very heavy-hearted. His appetite was gone with his property and his self-respect. He went out the back way and wandered down the obscure lane grieving, and wondering if any course of future conduct, however discreet and carefully perfected and watched over, could win back his uncle’s favor and persuade him to reconstruct once more that generous will which had just gone to ruin before his eyes. He finally concluded that it could. He said to himself that he had accomplished this sort of triumph once already, and that what had been done once could be done again. He would set about it. He would bend every energy to the task, and he would score that triumph once more, cost what it might to his convenience, limit as it might his frivolous and liberty-loving life.

“To begin,” he said to himself, “I’ll square up with the proceeds of my raid, and then gambling has got to be stopped – and stopped short off. It’s the worst vice I’ve got – from my standpoint, anyway, because it’s the one he can most easily find out, through the impatience of my creditors. He thought it expensive to have to pay two hundred dollars to them for me once. Expensive —that! Why, it cost me the whole of his fortune – but of course he never thought of that; some people can’t think of any but their own side of a case. If he had known how deep I am in, now, the will would have gone to pot without waiting for a duel to help. Three hundred dollars! It’s a pile! But he’ll never hear of it, I’m thankful to say. The minute I’ve cleared it off, I’m safe; and I’ll never touch a card again. Anyway, I won’t while he lives, I make oath to that. I’m entering on my last reform – I know it – yes, and I’ll win; but after that, if I ever slip again I’m gone.”

CHAPTER XIII.
Tom Stares at Ruin

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.– Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.– Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.

Thus mournfully communing with himself Tom moped along the lane past Pudd’nhead Wilson’s house, and still on and on between fences inclosing vacant country on each hand till he neared the haunted house, then he came moping back again, with many sighs and heavy with trouble. He sorely wanted cheerful company. Rowena! His heart gave a bound at the thought, but the next thought quieted it – the detested twins would be there.

He was on the inhabited side of Wilson’s house, and now as he approached it he noticed that the sitting-room was lighted. This would do; others made him feel unwelcome sometimes, but Wilson never failed in courtesy toward him, and a kindly courtesy does at least save one’s feelings, even if it is not professing to stand for a welcome. Wilson heard footsteps at his threshold, then the clearing of a throat.

“It’s that fickle-tempered, dissipated young goose – poor devil, he find friends pretty scarce to-day, likely, after the disgrace of carrying a personal-assault case into a law-court.”

A dejected knock. “Come in!”

Tom entered, and drooped into a chair, without saying anything. Wilson said kindly —

“Why, my boy, you look desolate. Don’t take it so hard. Try and forget you have been kicked.”

“Oh, dear,” said Tom, wretchedly, “it’s not that, Pudd’nhead – it’s not that. It’s a thousand times worse than that – oh, yes, a million times worse.”

“Why, Tom, what do you mean? Has Rowena – ”

“Flung me? No, but the old man has.”

Wilson said to himself, “Aha!” and thought of the mysterious girl in the bedroom. “The Driscolls have been making discoveries!” Then he said aloud, gravely:

“Tom, there are some kinds of dissipation which – ”

“Oh, shucks, this hasn’t got anything to do with dissipation. He wanted me to challenge that derned Italian savage, and I wouldn’t do it.”

“Yes, of course he would do that,” said Wilson in a meditative matter-of-course way, “but the thing that puzzled me was, why he didn’t look to that last night, for one thing, and why he let you carry such a matter into a court of law at all, either before the duel or after it. It’s no place for it. It was not like him. I couldn’t understand it. How did it happen?”

“It happened because he didn’t know anything about it. He was asleep when I got home last night.”

“And you didn’t wake him? Tom, is that possible?”

Tom was not getting much comfort here. He fidgeted a moment, then said:

“I didn’t choose to tell him – that’s all. He was going a-fishing before dawn, with Pembroke Howard, and if I got the twins into the common calaboose – and I thought sure I could – I never dreamed of their slipping out on a paltry fine for such an outrageous offense – well, once in the calaboose they would be disgraced, and uncle wouldn’t want any duels with that sort of characters, and wouldn’t allow any.”

“Tom, I am ashamed of you! I don’t see how you could treat your good old uncle so. I am a better friend of his than you are; for if I had known the circumstances I would have kept that case out of court until I got word to him and let him have a gentleman’s chance.”

“You would?” exclaimed Tom, with lively surprise. “And it your first case! And you know perfectly well there never would have been any case if he had got that chance, don’t you? And you’d have finished your days a pauper nobody, instead of being an actually launched and recognized lawyer to-day. And you would really have done that, would you?”

“Certainly.”

Tom looked at him a moment or two, then shook his head sorrowfully and said —

“I believe you – upon my word I do. I don’t know why I do, but I do. Pudd’nhead Wilson, I think you’re the biggest fool I ever saw.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Well, he has been requiring you to fight the Italian and you have refused. You degenerate remnant of an honorable line! I’m thoroughly ashamed of you, Tom!”

“Oh, that’s nothing! I don’t care for anything, now that the will’s torn up again.”

“Tom, tell me squarely – didn’t he find any fault with you for anything but those two things – carrying the case into court and refusing to fight?”

He watched the young fellow’s face narrowly, but it was entirely reposeful, and so also was the voice that answered:

“No, he didn’t find any other fault with me. If he had had any to find, he would have begun yesterday, for he was just in the humor for it. He drove that jack-pair around town and showed them the sights, and when he came home he couldn’t find his father’s old silver watch that don’t keep time and he thinks so much of, and couldn’t remember what he did with it three or four days ago when he saw it last, and so when I arrived he was all in a sweat about it, and when I suggested that it probably wasn’t lost but stolen, it put him in a regular passion and he said I was a fool – which convinced me, without any trouble, that that was just what he was afraid had happened, himself, but did not want to believe it, because lost things stand a better chance of being found again than stolen ones.”

“Whe-ew!” whistled Wilson; “score another on the list.”

“Another what?”

“Another theft!”

“Theft?”

“Yes, theft. That watch isn’t lost, it’s stolen. There’s been another raid on the town – and just the same old mysterious sort of thing that has happened once before, as you remember.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“It’s as sure as you are born! Have you missed anything yourself?”

“No. That is, I did miss a silver pencil-case that Aunt Mary Pratt gave me last birthday – ”

“You’ll find it stolen – that’s what you’ll find.”

“No, I sha’n’t; for when I suggested theft about the watch and got such a rap, I went and examined my room, and the pencil-case was missing, but it was only mislaid, and I found it again.”

“You are sure you missed nothing else?”

“Well, nothing of consequence. I missed a small plain gold ring worth two or three dollars, but that will turn up. I’ll look again.”

“In my opinion you’ll not find it. There’s been a raid, I tell you. Come in!”

Mr. Justice Robinson entered, followed by Buckstone and the town-constable, Jim Blake. They sat down, and after some wandering and aimless weather-conversation Wilson said —

“By the way, we’ve just added another to the list of thefts, maybe two. Judge Driscoll’s old silver watch is gone, and Tom here has missed a gold ring.”

“Well, it is a bad business,” said the Justice, “and gets worse the further it goes. The Hankses, the Dobsons, the Pilligrews, the Ortons, the Grangers, the Hales, the Fullers, the Holcombs, in fact everybody that lives around about Patsy Cooper’s has been robbed of little things like trinkets and teaspoons and such-like small valuables that are easily carried off. It’s perfectly plain that the thief took advantage of the reception at Patsy Cooper’s when all the neighbors were in her house and all their niggers hanging around her fence for a look at the show, to raid the vacant houses undisturbed. Patsy is miserable about it; miserable on account of the neighbors, and particularly miserable on account of her foreigners, of course; so miserable on their account that she hasn’t any room to worry about her own little losses.”

“It’s the same old raider,” said Wilson. “I suppose there isn’t any doubt about that.”

“Constable Blake doesn’t think so.”

“No, you’re wrong there,” said Blake; “the other times it was a man; there was plenty of signs of that, as we know, in the profession, though we never got hands on him; but this time it’s a woman.”

Wilson thought of the mysterious girl straight off. She was always in his mind now. But she failed him again. Blake continued:

“She’s a stoop-shouldered old woman with a covered basket on her arm, in a black veil, dressed in mourning. I saw her going aboard the ferry-boat yesterday. Lives in Illinois, I reckon; but I don’t care where she lives, I’m going to get her – she can make herself sure of that.”

“What makes you think she’s the thief?”

“Well, there ain’t any other, for one thing; and for another, some nigger draymen that happened to be driving along saw her coming out of or going into houses, and told me so – and it just happens that they was robbed houses, every time.”

It was granted that this was plenty good enough circumstantial evidence. A pensive silence followed, which lasted some moments, then Wilson said —

“There’s one good thing, anyway. She can’t either pawn or sell Count Luigi’s costly Indian dagger.”

“My!” said Tom, “is that gone?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that was a haul! But why can’t she pawn it or sell it?”

“Because when the twins went home from the Sons of Liberty meeting last night, news of the raid was sifting in from everywhere, and Aunt Patsy was in distress to know if they had lost anything. They found that the dagger was gone, and they notified the police and pawnbrokers everywhere. It was a great haul, yes, but the old woman won’t get anything out of it, because she’ll get caught.”

“Did they offer a reward?” asked Buckstone.

“Yes; five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred more for the thief.”

“What a leather-headed idea!” exclaimed the constable. “The thief da’sn’t go near them, nor send anybody. Whoever goes is going to get himself nabbed, for their ain’t any pawnbroker that’s going to lose the chance to – ”

If anybody had noticed Tom’s face at that time, the gray-green color of it might have provoked curiosity; but nobody did. He said to himself: “I’m gone! I never can square up; the rest of the plunder won’t pawn or sell for half of the bill. Oh, I know it – I’m gone, I’m gone – and this time it’s for good. Oh, this is awful – I don’t know what to do, nor which way to turn!”

“Softly, softly,” said Wilson to Blake. “I planned their scheme for them at midnight last night, and it was all finished up shipshape by two this morning. They’ll get their dagger back, and then I’ll explain to you how the thing was done.”

There were strong signs of a general curiosity, and Buckstone said —

“Well, you have whetted us up pretty sharp, Wilson, and I’m free to say that if you don’t mind telling us in confidence – ”

“Oh, I’d as soon tell as not, Buckstone, but as long as the twins and I agreed to say nothing about it, we must let it stand so. But you can take my word for it you won’t be kept waiting three days. Somebody will apply for that reward pretty promptly, and I’ll show you the thief and the dagger both very soon afterward.”

The constable was disappointed, and also perplexed. He said —

“It may all be – yes, and I hope it will, but I’m blamed if I can see my way through it. It’s too many for yours truly.”

The subject seemed about talked out. Nobody seemed to have anything further to offer. After a silence the justice of the peace informed Wilson that he and Buckstone and the constable had come as a committee, on the part of the Democratic party, to ask him to run for mayor – for the little town was about to become a city and the first charter election was approaching. It was the first attention which Wilson had ever received at the hands of any party; it was a sufficiently humble one, but it was a recognition of his début into the town’s life and activities at last; it was a step upward, and he was deeply gratified. He accepted, and the committee departed, followed by young Tom.