The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (desktop ebook reader TXT) 📖

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lad under my protection when a mob of such as thou would have mishandled

him, mayhap killed him; dost imagine I will desert him now to a worser

fate?—for whether thou art his father or no—and sooth to say, I think

it is a lie—a decent swift death were better for such a lad than life in

such brute hands as thine. So go thy ways, and set quick about it, for I

like not much bandying of words, being not over-patient in my nature.”

 

John Canty moved off, muttering threats and curses, and was swallowed

from sight in the crowd. Hendon ascended three flights of stairs to his

room, with his charge, after ordering a meal to be sent thither. It was

a poor apartment, with a shabby bed and some odds and ends of old

furniture in it, and was vaguely lighted by a couple of sickly candles.

The little King dragged himself to the bed and lay down upon it, almost

exhausted with hunger and fatigue. He had been on his feet a good part

of a day and a night (for it was now two or three o’clock in the

morning), and had eaten nothing meantime. He murmured drowsily—

 

“Prithee call me when the table is spread,” and sank into a deep sleep

immediately.

 

A smile twinkled in Hendon’s eye, and he said to himself—

 

“By the mass, the little beggar takes to one’s quarters and usurps one’s

bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned them—with never a

by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort. In his

diseased ravings he called himself the Prince of Wales, and bravely doth

he keep up the character. Poor little friendless rat, doubtless his mind

has been disordered with ill-usage. Well, I will be his friend; I have

saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already I love the bold-tongued little rascal. How soldier-like he faced the smutty rabble and

flung back his high defiance! And what a comely, sweet and gentle face

he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its griefs.

I will teach him; I will cure his malady; yea, I will be his elder

brother, and care for him and watch over him; and whoso would shame him

or do him hurt may order his shroud, for though I be burnt for it he

shall need it!”

 

He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest,

tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls

with his great brown hand. A slight shiver passed over the boy’s form.

Hendon muttered—

 

“See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill

his body with deadly rheums. Now what shall I do? ‘twill wake him to

take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep.”

 

He looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet

and wrapped the lad in it, saying, “I am used to nipping air and scant

apparel, ‘tis little I shall mind the cold!”—then walked up and down the

room, to keep his blood in motion, soliloquising as before.

 

“His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; ‘twill be odd to

have a Prince of Wales still with us, now that he that WAS the prince is

prince no more, but king—for this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy,

and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince and call

itself the king… If my father liveth still, after these seven years

that I have heard nought from home in my foreign dungeon, he will welcome

the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so will my good

elder brother, Arthur; my other brother, Hugh—but I will crack his crown

an HE interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned animal! Yes, thither

will we fare—and straightway, too.”

 

A servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal

table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap

lodgers as these to wait upon themselves. The door slammed after him,

and the noise woke the boy, who sprang to a sitting posture, and shot a

glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he

murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, “Alack, it was but a dream, woe is

me!” Next he noticed Miles Hendon’s doublet—glanced from that to

Hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said,

gently—

 

“Thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me. Take it and put it

on—I shall not need it more.”

 

Then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner and stood there,

waiting. Hendon said in a cheery voice—

 

“We’ll have a right hearty sup and bite, now, for everything is savoury

and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little

man again, never fear!”

 

The boy made no answer, but bent a steady look, that was filled with

grave surprise, and also somewhat touched with impatience, upon the tall

knight of the sword. Hendon was puzzled, and said—

 

“What’s amiss?”

 

“Good sir, I would wash me.”

 

“Oh, is that all? Ask no permission of Miles Hendon for aught thou

cravest. Make thyself perfectly free here, and welcome, with all that

are his belongings.”

 

Still the boy stood, and moved not; more, he tapped the floor once or

twice with his small impatient foot. Hendon was wholly perplexed. Said

he—

 

“Bless us, what is it?”

 

“Prithee pour the water, and make not so many words!”

 

Hendon, suppressing a horse-laugh, and saying to himself, “By all the

saints, but this is admirable!” stepped briskly forward and did the small

insolent’s bidding; then stood by, in a sort of stupefaction, until the

command, “Come—the towel!” woke him sharply up. He took up a towel,

from under the boy’s nose, and handed it to him without comment. He now

proceeded to comfort his own face with a wash, and while he was at it his

adopted child seated himself at the table and prepared to fall to.

Hendon despatched his ablutions with alacrity, then drew back the other

chair and was about to place himself at table, when the boy said,

indignantly—

 

“Forbear! Wouldst sit in the presence of the King?”

 

This blow staggered Hendon to his foundations. He muttered to himself,

“Lo, the poor thing’s madness is up with the time! It hath changed with

the great change that is come to the realm, and now in fancy is he KING!

Good lack, I must humour the conceit, too—there is no other way—faith,

he would order me to the Tower, else!”

 

And pleased with this jest, he removed the chair from the table, took his

stand behind the King, and proceeded to wait upon him in the courtliest

way he was capable of.

 

While the King ate, the rigour of his royal dignity relaxed a little, and

with his growing contentment came a desire to talk. He said—“I think

thou callest thyself Miles Hendon, if I heard thee aright?”

 

“Yes, Sire,” Miles replied; then observed to himself, “If I MUST humour

the poor lad’s madness, I must ‘Sire’ him, I must ‘Majesty’ him, I must

not go by halves, I must stick at nothing that belongeth to the part I

play, else shall I play it ill and work evil to this charitable and

kindly cause.”

 

The King warmed his heart with a second glass of wine, and said—“I would

know thee—tell me thy story. Thou hast a gallant way with thee, and a

noble—art nobly born?”

 

“We are of the tail of the nobility, good your Majesty. My father is a

baronet—one of the smaller lords by knight service {2}—Sir Richard

Hendon of Hendon Hall, by Monk’s Holm in Kent.”

 

“The name has escaped my memory. Go on—tell me thy story.”

 

“‘Tis not much, your Majesty, yet perchance it may beguile a short half-hour for want of a better. My father, Sir Richard, is very rich, and of

a most generous nature. My mother died whilst I was yet a boy. I have

two brothers: Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father’s; and

Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious,

underhanded—a reptile. Such was he from the cradle; such was he ten

years past, when I last saw him—a ripe rascal at nineteen, I being

twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two. There is none other of us but the

Lady Edith, my cousin—she was sixteen then—beautiful, gentle, good, the

daughter of an earl, the last of her race, heiress of a great fortune and

a lapsed title. My father was her guardian. I loved her and she loved

me; but she was betrothed to Arthur from the cradle, and Sir Richard

would not suffer the contract to be broken. Arthur loved another maid,

and bade us be of good cheer and hold fast to the hope that delay and

luck together would some day give success to our several causes. Hugh

loved the Lady Edith’s fortune, though in truth he said it was herself he

loved—but then ‘twas his way, alway, to say the one thing and mean the

other. But he lost his arts upon the girl; he could deceive my father,

but none else. My father loved him best of us all, and trusted and

believed him; for he was the youngest child, and others hated him—these

qualities being in all ages sufficient to win a parent’s dearest love;

and he had a smooth persuasive tongue, with an admirable gift of lying—

and these be qualities which do mightily assist a blind affection to

cozen itself. I was wild—in troth I might go yet farther and say VERY

wild, though ‘twas a wildness of an innocent sort, since it hurt none but

me, brought shame to none, nor loss, nor had in it any taint of crime or

baseness, or what might not beseem mine honourable degree.

 

“Yet did my brother Hugh turn these faults to good account—he seeing

that our brother Arthur’s health was but indifferent, and hoping the

worst might work him profit were I swept out of the path—so—but ‘twere

a long tale, good my liege, and little worth the telling. Briefly, then,

this brother did deftly magnify my faults and make them crimes; ending

his base work with finding a silken ladder in mine apartments—conveyed

thither by his own means—and did convince my father by this, and

suborned evidence of servants and other lying knaves, that I was minded

to carry off my Edith and marry with her in rank defiance of his will.

 

“Three years of banishment from home and England might make a soldier and

a man of me, my father said, and teach me some degree of wisdom. I

fought out my long probation in the continental wars, tasting sumptuously

of hard knocks, privation, and adventure; but in my last battle I was

taken captive, and during the seven years that have waxed and waned since

then, a foreign dungeon hath harboured me. Through wit and courage I won

to the free air at last, and fled hither straight; and am but just

arrived, right poor in purse and raiment, and poorer still in knowledge

of what these dull seven years have wrought at Hendon Hall, its people

and belongings. So please you, sir, my meagre tale is told.”

 

“Thou hast been shamefully abused!” said the little King, with a flashing

eye. “But I will right thee—by the cross will I! The King hath said

it.”

 

Then, fired by the story of Miles’s wrongs, he loosed his tongue