A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
but not perfect. The shoulders have known no ignobler burden
than iron mail, and they will not stoop.”
“Give me, then, the bag. I will learn the spirit that goeth
with burdens that have not honor. It is the spirit that stoopeth
the shoulders, I ween, and not the weight; for armor is heavy,
yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it....
Nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections. I will have the thing.
Strap it upon my back.”
He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little
like a king as any man I had ever seen. But it was an obstinate
pair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick of
stooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness. The drill went on,
I prompting and correcting:
“Now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless
creditors; you are out of work--which is horse-shoeing, let us
say--and can get none; and your wife is sick, your children are
crying because they are hungry--”
And so on, and so on. I drilled him as representing in turn all
sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations and
misfortunes. But lord, it was only just words, words--they meant
nothing in the world to him, I might just as well have whistled.
Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have
suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to
describe. There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and
complacently about “the working classes,” and satisfy themselves
that a day's hard intellectual work is very much harder than
a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much
bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they
know all about the one, but haven't tried the other. But I know
all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn't money
enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days,
but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as
near nothing as you can cipher it down--and I will be satisfied, too.
Intellectual “work” is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation,
and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect,
engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate,
legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven
when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow
in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the
ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him--why,
certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord,
it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly
unfair--but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher
the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall
be his pay in cash, also. And it's also the very law of those
transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SMALLPOX HUT
When we arrived at that hut at mid-afternoon, we saw no signs
of life about it. The field near by had been denuded of its crop
some time before, and had a skinned look, so exhaustively had
it been harvested and gleaned. Fences, sheds, everything had a
ruined look, and were eloquent of poverty. No animal was around
anywhere, no living thing in sight. The stillness was awful, it
was like the stillness of death. The cabin was a one-story one,
whose thatch was black with age, and ragged from lack of repair.
The door stood a trifle ajar. We approached it stealthily--on tiptoe
and at half-breath--for that is the way one's feeling makes him do,
at such a time. The king knocked. We waited. No answer. Knocked
again. No answer. I pushed the door softly open and looked in.
I made out some dim forms, and a woman started up from the ground
and stared at me, as one does who is wakened from sleep. Presently
she found her voice:
“Have mercy!” she pleaded. “All is taken, nothing is left.”
“I have not come to take anything, poor woman.”
“You are not a priest?”
“No.”
“Nor come not from the lord of the manor?”
“No, I am a stranger.”
“Oh, then, for the fear of God, who visits with misery and death
such as be harmless, tarry not here, but fly! This place is under
his curse--and his Church's.”
“Let me come in and help you--you are sick and in trouble.”
I was better used to the dim light now. I could see her hollow
eyes fixed upon me. I could see how emaciated she was.
“I tell you the place is under the Church's ban. Save yourself
--and go, before some straggler see thee here, and report it.”
“Give yourself no trouble about me; I don't care anything for the
Church's curse. Let me help you.”
“Now all good spirits--if there be any such--bless thee for that
word. Would God I had a sup of water!--but hold, hold, forget
I said it, and fly; for there is that here that even he that
feareth not the Church must fear: this disease whereof we die.
Leave us, thou brave, good stranger, and take with thee such
whole and sincere blessing as them that be accursed can give.”
But before this I had picked up a wooden bowl and was rushing
past the king on my way to the brook. It was ten yards away.
When I got back and entered, the king was within, and was opening
the shutter that closed the window-hole, to let in air and light.
The place was full of a foul stench. I put the bowl to the woman's
lips, and as she gripped it with her eager talons the shutter came
open and a strong light flooded her face. Smallpox!
I sprang to the king, and said in his ear:
“Out of the door on the instant, sire! the woman is dying of that
disease that wasted the skirts of Camelot two years ago.”
He did not budge.
“Of a truth I shall remain--and likewise help.”
I whispered again:
“King, it must not be. You must go.”
“Ye mean well, and ye speak not unwisely. But it were shame that
a king should know fear, and shame that belted knight should
withhold his hand where be such as need succor. Peace, I will
not go. It is you who must go. The Church's ban is not upon me,
but it forbiddeth you to be here, and she will deal with you with
a heavy hand an word come to her of your trespass.”
It was a desperate place for him to be in, and might cost him his
life, but it was no use to argue with him. If he considered his
knightly honor at stake here, that was the end of argument; he
would stay, and nothing could prevent it; I was aware of that.
And so I dropped the subject. The woman spoke:
“Fair sir, of your kindness will ye climb the ladder there,
and bring me news of what ye find? Be not afraid to report,
for times can come when even a mother's heart is past breaking
--being already broke.”
“Abide,” said the king, “and give the woman to eat. I will go.”
And he put down the knapsack.
I turned to start, but the king had already started. He halted,
and looked down upon a man who lay in a dim light, and had not
noticed us thus far, or spoken.
“Is it your husband?” the king asked.
“Yes.”
“Is he asleep?”
“God be thanked for that one charity, yes--these three hours.
Where shall I pay to the full, my gratitude! for my heart is
bursting with it for that sleep he sleepeth now.”
I said:
“We will be careful. We will not wake him.”
“Ah, no, that ye will not, for he is dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, what triumph it is to know it! None can harm him, none
insult him more. He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there,
he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find
neither abbot nor yet bishop. We were boy and girl together; we
were man and wife these five and twenty years, and never separated
till this day. Think how long that is to love and suffer together.
This morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we were
boy and girl again and wandering in the happy fields; and so in
that innocent glad converse wandered he far and farther, still
lightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we know
not of, and was shut away from mortal sight. And so there was
no parting, for in his fancy I went with him; he knew not but
I went with him, my hand in his--my young soft hand, not this
withered claw. Ah, yes, to go, and know it not; to separate and
know it not; how could one go peacefuler than that? It was his
reward for a cruel life patiently borne.”
There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where
the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he
was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the
other. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a
slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dying
of smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility,
its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open field
unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set
upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold
to gaze and applaud; and yet the king's bearing was as serenely
brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight
meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. He
was great now; sublimely great. The rude statues of his ancestors
in his palace should have an addition--I would see to that; and it
would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the
rest, it would be a king in commoner's garb bearing death in his
arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child and
be comforted.
He laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearments
and caresses from an overflowing heart, and one could detect a
flickering faint light of response in the child's eyes, but that
was all. The mother hung over her, kissing her, petting her, and
imploring her to speak, but the lips only moved and no sound came.
I snatched my liquor flask from my knapsack, but the woman forbade
me, and said:
“No--she does not suffer; it is better so. It might bring her back
to life. None that be so good and kind as ye are would do her
that cruel hurt. For look you--what is left to live for? Her
brothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, the
Church's curse is upon her, and none may shelter or befriend her
even though she lay perishing in the road. She is desolate. I have
not asked you, good heart, if her sister be still on live, here
overhead; I had no need; ye had gone back, else, and not left
the poor thing forsaken--”
“She lieth at peace,” interrupted the king, in a subdued voice.
“I would not change it. How rich is this day in happiness! Ah,
my Annis, thou shalt join thy sister soon--thou'rt on thy way,
and these be merciful friends that will not hinder.”
And so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, and
softly stroking her face and hair, and kissing her and calling her
by endearing names; but there was scarcely sign of response now
in the glazing eyes. I saw tears well from the king's eyes, and
trickle down his face. The woman noticed them, too, and said:
“Ah, I know that sign: thou'st a wife at home, poor soul, and
you and she have gone hungry to bed, many's the time, that the
little ones might have your crust; you know what poverty is, and
the daily insults of your betters, and the heavy hand of the Church
and the king.”
The king winced under this accidental home-shot, but kept still;
he was learning his part; and he was playing it well, too, for
a pretty dull beginner. I struck up a diversion. I offered the
woman food and liquor, but she refused both. She would allow
nothing to come between her and the release of death. Then I slipped
away and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her.
This broke her down again, and there was another scene that was
full of heartbreak. By and by I made another diversion, and beguiled
her to sketch her story.