The Prince and the Pauper
me--performs high service; but it is little--it is nothing--oh, less
than nothing!--when ’tis weighed against the act of him who saves his
prince from _shame_!”
Hendon made no outcry under the scourge, but bore the heavy blows with
soldierly fortitude. This, together with his redeeming the boy by
taking his stripes for him, compelled the respect of even that forlorn
and degraded mob that was gathered there; and its gibes and hootings
died away, and no sound remained but the sound of the falling blows.
The stillness that pervaded the place, when Hendon found himself once
more in the stocks, was in strong contrast with the insulting clamour
which had prevailed there so little a while before. The King came
softly to Hendon’s side, and whispered in his ear--
“Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher
than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility
to men.” He picked up the scourge from the ground, touched Hendon’s
bleeding shoulders lightly with it, and whispered, “Edward of England
dubs thee Earl!”
Hendon was touched. The water welled to his eyes, yet at the same time
the grisly humour of the situation and circumstances so undermined his
gravity that it was all he could do to keep some sign of his inward
mirth from showing outside. To be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory,
from the common stocks to the Alpine altitude and splendour of
an Earldom, seemed to him the last possibility in the line of the
grotesque. He said to himself, “Now am I finely tinselled, indeed!
The spectre-knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows is become a
spectre-earl--a dizzy flight for a callow wing! An’ this go on, I
shall presently be hung like a very maypole with fantastic gauds and
make-believe honours. But I shall value them, all valueless as
they are, for the love that doth bestow them. Better these poor mock
dignities of mine, that come unasked, from a clean hand and a right
spirit, than real ones bought by servility from grudging and interested
power.”
The dreaded Sir Hugh wheeled his horse about, and as he spurred away,
the living wall divided silently to let him pass, and as silently closed
together again. And so remained; nobody went so far as to venture
a remark in favour of the prisoner, or in compliment to him; but no
matter--the absence of abuse was a sufficient homage in itself. A
late comer who was not posted as to the present circumstances, and who
delivered a sneer at the ‘impostor,’ and was in the act of following it
with a dead cat, was promptly knocked down and kicked out, without any
words, and then the deep quiet resumed sway once more.
CHAPTER XXIX. To London.
When Hendon’s term of service in the stocks was finished, he was
released and ordered to quit the region and come back no more. His sword
was restored to him, and also his mule and his donkey. He mounted
and rode off, followed by the King, the crowd opening with quiet
respectfulness to let them pass, and then dispersing when they were
gone.
Hendon was soon absorbed in thought. There were questions of high
import to be answered. What should he do? Whither should he go?
Powerful help must be found somewhere, or he must relinquish his
inheritance and remain under the imputation of being an impostor
besides. Where could he hope to find this powerful help? Where,
indeed! It was a knotty question. By-and-by a thought occurred to him
which pointed to a possibility--the slenderest of slender possibilities,
certainly, but still worth considering, for lack of any other that
promised anything at all. He remembered what old Andrews had said about
the young King’s goodness and his generous championship of the wronged
and unfortunate. Why not go and try to get speech of him and beg for
justice? Ah, yes, but could so fantastic a pauper get admission to the
august presence of a monarch? Never mind--let that matter take care of
itself; it was a bridge that would not need to be crossed till he should
come to it. He was an old campaigner, and used to inventing shifts and
expedients: no doubt he would be able to find a way. Yes, he would
strike for the capital. Maybe his father’s old friend Sir Humphrey
Marlow would help him--‘good old Sir Humphrey, Head Lieutenant of the
late King’s kitchen, or stables, or something’--Miles could not remember
just what or which. Now that he had something to turn his energies to,
a distinctly defined object to accomplish, the fog of humiliation and
depression which had settled down upon his spirits lifted and blew away,
and he raised his head and looked about him. He was surprised to see
how far he had come; the village was away behind him. The King was
jogging along in his wake, with his head bowed; for he, too, was deep
in plans and thinkings. A sorrowful misgiving clouded Hendon’s new-born
cheerfulness: would the boy be willing to go again to a city where,
during all his brief life, he had never known anything but ill-usage and
pinching want? But the question must be asked; it could not be avoided;
so Hendon reined up, and called out--
“I had forgotten to inquire whither we are bound. Thy commands, my
liege!”
“To London!”
Hendon moved on again, mightily contented with the answer--but astounded
at it too.
The whole journey was made without an adventure of importance. But it
ended with one. About ten o’clock on the night of the 19th of February
they stepped upon London Bridge, in the midst of a writhing, struggling
jam of howling and hurrahing people, whose beer-jolly faces stood out
strongly in the glare from manifold torches--and at that instant the
decaying head of some former duke or other grandee tumbled down between
them, striking Hendon on the elbow and then bounding off among the
hurrying confusion of feet. So evanescent and unstable are men’s works
in this world!--the late good King is but three weeks dead and three
days in his grave, and already the adornments which he took such pains
to select from prominent people for his noble bridge are falling. A
citizen stumbled over that head, and drove his own head into the back of
somebody in front of him, who turned and knocked down the first person
that came handy, and was promptly laid out himself by that person’s
friend. It was the right ripe time for a free fight, for the
festivities of the morrow--Coronation Day--were already beginning;
everybody was full of strong drink and patriotism; within five minutes
the free fight was occupying a good deal of ground; within ten or twelve
it covered an acre of so, and was become a riot. By this time Hendon
and the King were hopelessly separated from each other and lost in the
rush and turmoil of the roaring masses of humanity. And so we leave
them.
CHAPTER XXX. Tom’s progress.
Whilst the true King wandered about the land poorly clad, poorly
fed, cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves
and murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by
all impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed quite a different
experience.
When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side
for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more every
day: in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and
delightfulness. He lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died;
his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident
bearing. He worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit.
He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his presence
when he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with
them, with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances.
It no longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand
at parting.
He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed
with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It came to be a
proud pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession
of officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he
doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. He
liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the
distant voices responding, “Way for the King!”
He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and
seeming to be something more than the Lord Protector’s mouthpiece. He
liked to receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen
to the affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who
called him brother. O happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!
He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more: he found his four
hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. The
adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears. He
remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all
that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws: yet
upon occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a
duke, and give him a look that would make him tremble. Once, when his
royal ‘sister,’ the grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with
him against the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who
would otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that
their august late father’s prisons had sometimes contained as high as
sixty thousand convicts at one time, and that during his admirable reign
he had delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers over to death
by the executioner, {9} the boy was filled with generous indignation,
and commanded her to go to her closet, and beseech God to take away the
stone that was in her breast, and give her a human heart.
Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince
who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to
avenge him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate? Yes; his first
royal days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts
about the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return, and
happy restoration to his native rights and splendours. But as time
wore on, and the prince did not come, Tom’s mind became more and more
occupied with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and
little the vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and
finally, when he did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an
unwelcome spectre, for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed.
Tom’s poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his mind.
At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but
later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and
betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty
place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums,
made him shudder. At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost
wholly. And he was content, even glad: for, whenever their mournful
and accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more
despicable than the worms that crawl.
At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to sleep in
his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded
by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for tomorrow was the day appointed
for his solemn crowning as King of England. At that same hour, Edward,
the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with
travel, and clothed in rags and shreds--his share of the results of the
riot--was wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep
interest certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of
Westminster Abbey, busy as ants: they were making the last preparation
for the royal coronation.
CHAPTER XXXI. The Recognition procession.