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

was probably going to order the good judge to be

beheaded on the spot; but he caught a warning sign from Hendon, and

succeeded in closing his mouth again before he lost anything out of it.

Hendon took him by the hand, now, made reverence to the justice, and the

two departed in the wake of the constable toward the jail. The moment

the street was reached, the inflamed monarch halted, snatched away his

hand, and exclaimed—

 

“Idiot, dost imagine I will enter a common jail ALIVE?”

 

Hendon bent down and said, somewhat sharply—

 

“WILL you trust in me? Peace! and forbear to worsen our chances with

dangerous speech. What God wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it,

thou canst not alter it; therefore wait, and be patient—‘twill be time

enow to rail or rejoice when what is to happen has happened.” {1}

 

Chapter XXIV. The escape.

 

The short winter day was nearly ended. The streets were deserted, save

for a few random stragglers, and these hurried straight along, with the

intent look of people who were only anxious to accomplish their errands

as quickly as possible, and then snugly house themselves from the rising

wind and the gathering twilight. They looked neither to the right nor to

the left; they paid no attention to our party, they did not even seem to

see them. Edward the Sixth wondered if the spectacle of a king on his way

to jail had ever encountered such marvellous indifference before. By-and-by the constable arrived at a deserted market-square, and proceeded to

cross it. When he had reached the middle of it, Hendon laid his hand

upon his arm, and said in a low voice—

 

“Bide a moment, good sir, there is none in hearing, and I would say a

word to thee.”

 

“My duty forbids it, sir; prithee hinder me not, the night comes on.”

 

“Stay, nevertheless, for the matter concerns thee nearly. Turn thy back

a moment and seem not to see: LET THIS POOR LAD ESCAPE.”

 

“This to me, sir! I arrest thee in—”

 

“Nay, be not too hasty. See thou be careful and commit no foolish

error”—then he shut his voice down to a whisper, and said in the man’s

ear—“the pig thou hast purchased for eightpence may cost thee thy neck,

man!”

 

The poor constable, taken by surprise, was speechless, at first, then

found his tongue and fell to blustering and threatening; but Hendon was

tranquil, and waited with patience till his breath was spent; then said—

 

“I have a liking to thee, friend, and would not willingly see thee come

to harm. Observe, I heard it all—every word. I will prove it to thee.”

Then he repeated the conversation which the officer and the woman had had

together in the hall, word for word, and ended with—

 

“There—have I set it forth correctly? Should not I be able to set it

forth correctly before the judge, if occasion required?”

 

The man was dumb with fear and distress, for a moment; then he rallied,

and said with forced lightness—

 

“‘Tis making a mighty matter, indeed, out of a jest; I but plagued the

woman for mine amusement.”

 

“Kept you the woman’s pig for amusement?”

 

The man answered sharply—

 

“Nought else, good sir—I tell thee ‘twas but a jest.”

 

“I do begin to believe thee,” said Hendon, with a perplexing mixture of

mockery and half-conviction in his tone; “but tarry thou here a moment

whilst I run and ask his worship—for nathless, he being a man

experienced in law, in jests, in—”

 

He was moving away, still talking; the constable hesitated, fidgeted,

spat out an oath or two, then cried out—

 

“Hold, hold, good sir—prithee wait a little—the judge! Why, man, he

hath no more sympathy with a jest than hath a dead corpse!—come, and we

will speak further. Ods body! I seem to be in evil case—and all for an

innocent and thoughtless pleasantry. I am a man of family; and my wife

and little ones—List to reason, good your worship: what wouldst thou

of me?”

 

“Only that thou be blind and dumb and paralytic whilst one may count a

hundred thousand—counting slowly,” said Hendon, with the expression of a

man who asks but a reasonable favour, and that a very little one.

 

“It is my destruction!” said the constable despairingly. “Ah, be

reasonable, good sir; only look at this matter, on all its sides, and see

how mere a jest it is—how manifestly and how plainly it is so. And even

if one granted it were not a jest, it is a fault so small that e’en the

grimmest penalty it could call forth would be but a rebuke and warning

from the judge’s lips.”

 

Hendon replied with a solemnity which chilled the air about him—

 

“This jest of thine hath a name, in law,—wot you what it is?”

 

“I knew it not! Peradventure I have been unwise. I never dreamed it had

a name—ah, sweet heaven, I thought it was original.”

 

“Yes, it hath a name. In the law this crime is called Non compos mentis

lex talionis sic transit gloria mundi.”

 

“Ah, my God!”

 

“And the penalty is death!”

 

“God be merciful to me a sinner!”

 

“By advantage taken of one in fault, in dire peril, and at thy mercy,

thou hast seized goods worth above thirteenpence ha’penny, paying but a

trifle for the same; and this, in the eye of the law, is constructive

barratry, misprision of treason, malfeasance in office, ad hominem

expurgatis in statu quo—and the penalty is death by the halter, without

ransom, commutation, or benefit of clergy.”

 

“Bear me up, bear me up, sweet sir, my legs do fail me! Be thou

merciful—spare me this doom, and I will turn my back and see nought that

shall happen.”

 

“Good! now thou’rt wise and reasonable. And thou’lt restore the pig?”

 

“I will, I will indeed—nor ever touch another, though heaven send it and

an archangel fetch it. Go—I am blind for thy sake—I see nothing. I

will say thou didst break in and wrest the prisoner from my hands by

force. It is but a crazy, ancient door—I will batter it down myself

betwixt midnight and the morning.”

 

“Do it, good soul, no harm will come of it; the judge hath a loving

charity for this poor lad, and will shed no tears and break no jailer’s

bones for his escape.”

 

Chapter XXV. Hendon Hall.

 

As soon as Hendon and the King were out of sight of the constable, his

Majesty was instructed to hurry to a certain place outside the town, and

wait there, whilst Hendon should go to the inn and settle his account.

Half an hour later the two friends were blithely jogging eastward on

Hendon’s sorry steeds. The King was warm and comfortable, now, for he

had cast his rags and clothed himself in the second-hand suit which

Hendon had bought on London Bridge.

 

Hendon wished to guard against over-fatiguing the boy; he judged that

hard journeys, irregular meals, and illiberal measures of sleep would be

bad for his crazed mind; whilst rest, regularity, and moderate exercise

would be pretty sure to hasten its cure; he longed to see the stricken

intellect made well again and its diseased visions driven out of the

tormented little head; therefore he resolved to move by easy stages

toward the home whence he had so long been banished, instead of obeying

the impulse of his impatience and hurrying along night and day.

 

When he and the King had journeyed about ten miles, they reached a

considerable village, and halted there for the night, at a good inn. The

former relations were resumed; Hendon stood behind the King’s chair,

while he dined, and waited upon him; undressed him when he was ready for

bed; then took the floor for his own quarters, and slept athwart the

door, rolled up in a blanket.

 

The next day, and the day after, they jogged lazily along talking over

the adventures they had met since their separation, and mightily enjoying

each other’s narratives. Hendon detailed all his wide wanderings in

search of the King, and described how the archangel had led him a fool’s

journey all over the forest, and taken him back to the hut, finally, when

he found he could not get rid of him. Then—he said—the old man went

into the bedchamber and came staggering back looking broken-hearted, and

saying he had expected to find that the boy had returned and laid down in

there to rest, but it was not so. Hendon had waited at the hut all day;

hope of the King’s return died out, then, and he departed upon the quest

again.

 

“And old Sanctum Sanctorum WAS truly sorry your highness came not back,”

said Hendon; “I saw it in his face.”

 

“Marry I will never doubt THAT!” said the King—and then told his own

story; after which, Hendon was sorry he had not destroyed the archangel.

 

During the last day of the trip, Hendon’s spirits were soaring. His

tongue ran constantly. He talked about his old father, and his brother

Arthur, and told of many things which illustrated their high and generous

characters; he went into loving frenzies over his Edith, and was so glad-hearted that he was even able to say some gentle and brotherly things

about Hugh. He dwelt a deal on the coming meeting at Hendon Hall; what a

surprise it would be to everybody, and what an outburst of thanksgiving

and delight there would be.

 

It was a fair region, dotted with cottages and orchards, and the road led

through broad pasture lands whose receding expanses, marked with gentle

elevations and depressions, suggested the swelling and subsiding

undulations of the sea. In the afternoon the returning prodigal made

constant deflections from his course to see if by ascending some hillock

he might not pierce the distance and catch a glimpse of his home. At

last he was successful, and cried out excitedly—

 

“There is the village, my Prince, and there is the Hall close by! You may

see the towers from here; and that wood there—that is my father’s park.

Ah, NOW thou’lt know what state and grandeur be! A house with seventy

rooms—think of that!—and seven and twenty servants! A brave lodging

for such as we, is it not so? Come, let us speed—my impatience will not

brook further delay.”

 

All possible hurry was made; still, it was after three o’clock before the

village was reached. The travellers scampered through it, Hendon’s

tongue going all the time. “Here is the church—covered with the same

ivy—none gone, none added.” “Yonder is the inn, the old Red Lion,—and

yonder is the market-place.” “Here is the Maypole, and here the pump—

nothing is altered; nothing but the people, at any rate; ten years make a

change in people; some of these I seem to know, but none know me.” So

his chat ran on. The end of the village was soon reached; then the

travellers struck into a crooked, narrow road, walled in with tall

hedges, and hurried briskly along it for half a mile, then passed into a

vast flower garden through an imposing gateway, whose huge stone pillars

bore sculptured armorial devices. A noble mansion was before them.

 

“Welcome to Hendon Hall, my King!” exclaimed Miles. “Ah, ‘tis a great

day! My father and my brother, and the Lady Edith will be so mad with

joy that they will have eyes and tongue for none but me in the first

transports of the meeting, and so thou’lt seem but coldly welcomed—but

mind it not; ‘twill soon seem otherwise; for when I say thou art my ward,

and tell