Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
“Have you seen anybody else go in there?”
“No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe.”
“Stop and think.”
I studied awhile and see my chance; then I says:
“Well, I see the niggers go in there several times.”
Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn’t ever
expected it, and then like they _had_. Then the duke says:
“What, _all_ of them?”
“No—leastways, not all at once—that is, I don’t think I ever see them
all come _out_ at once but just one time.”
“Hello! When was that?”
“It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It warn’t early,
because I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I see
them.”
“Well, go on, _go_ on! What did they do? How’d they act?”
“They didn’t do nothing. And they didn’t act anyway much, as fur as I
see. They tiptoed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they’d shoved in
there to do up your majesty’s room, or something, s’posing you was up;
and found you _warn’t_ up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the
way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn’t already waked you
up.”
“Great guns, _this_ is a go!” says the king; and both of them looked
pretty sick and tolerable silly. They stood there a-thinking and
scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a
little raspy chuckle, and says:
“It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on
to be _sorry_ they was going out of this region! And I believed they
_was_ sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don’t ever tell _me_
any more that a nigger ain’t got any histrionic talent. Why, the way
they played that thing it would fool _anybody_. In my opinion, there’s
a fortune in ’em. If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn’t want a
better lay-out than that—and here we’ve gone and sold ’em for a song.
Yes, and ain’t privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where _is_ that
song—that draft?”
“In the bank for to be collected. Where _would_ it be?”
“Well, _that’s_ all right then, thank goodness.”
Says I, kind of timid-like:
“Is something gone wrong?”
The king whirls on me and rips out:
“None o’ your business! You keep your head shet, and mind y’r own
affairs—if you got any. Long as you’re in this town don’t you forgit
_that_—you hear?” Then he says to the duke, “We got to jest swaller it
and say noth’n’: mum’s the word for _us_.”
As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and
says:
“Quick sales _and_ small profits! It’s a good business—yes.”
v
The king snarls around on him and says:
“I was trying to do for the best in sellin’ ’em out so quick. If the
profits has turned out to be none, lackin’ considable, and none to
carry, is it my fault any more’n it’s yourn?”
“Well, _they’d_ be in this house yet and we _wouldn’t_ if I could a got
my advice listened to.”
The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped
around and lit into _me_ again. He give me down the banks for not
coming and _telling_ him I see the niggers come out of his room acting
that way—said any fool would a _knowed_ something was up. And then
waltzed in and cussed _himself_ awhile, and said it all come of him not
laying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he’d be
blamed if he’d ever do it again. So they went off a-jawing; and I felt
dreadful glad I’d worked it all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn’t
done the niggers no harm by it.
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, 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:
“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 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 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.”
“’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