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

strange she acted,”

he muttered. “I think she knew me—and I think she did NOT know me.

These opinions do conflict, I perceive it plainly; I cannot reconcile

them, neither can I, by argument, dismiss either of the two, or even

persuade one to outweigh the other. The matter standeth simply thus:

she MUST have known my face, my figure, my voice, for how could it be

otherwise? Yet she SAID she knew me not, and that is proof perfect, for

she cannot lie. But stop—I think I begin to see. Peradventure he hath

influenced her, commanded her, compelled her to lie. That is the

solution. The riddle is unriddled. She seemed dead with fear—yes, she

was under his compulsion. I will seek her; I will find her; now that he

is away, she will speak her true mind. She will remember the old times

when we were little playfellows together, and this will soften her heart,

and she will no more betray me, but will confess me. There is no

treacherous blood in her—no, she was always honest and true. She has

loved me, in those old days—this is my security; for whom one has loved,

one cannot betray.”

 

He stepped eagerly toward the door; at that moment it opened, and the

Lady Edith entered. She was very pale, but she walked with a firm step,

and her carriage was full of grace and gentle dignity. Her face was as

sad as before.

 

Miles sprang forward, with a happy confidence, to meet her, but she

checked him with a hardly perceptible gesture, and he stopped where he

was. She seated herself, and asked him to do likewise. Thus simply did

she take the sense of old comradeship out of him, and transform him into

a stranger and a guest. The surprise of it, the bewildering

unexpectedness of it, made him begin to question, for a moment, if he WAS

the person he was pretending to be, after all. The Lady Edith said—

 

“Sir, I have come to warn you. The mad cannot be persuaded out of their

delusions, perchance; but doubtless they may be persuaded to avoid

perils. I think this dream of yours hath the seeming of honest truth to

you, and therefore is not criminal—but do not tarry here with it; for

here it is dangerous.” She looked steadily into Miles’s face a moment,

then added, impressively, “It is the more dangerous for that you ARE much

like what our lost lad must have grown to be if he had lived.”

 

“Heavens, madam, but I AM he!”

 

“I truly think you think it, sir. I question not your honesty in that; I

but warn you, that is all. My husband is master in this region; his

power hath hardly any limit; the people prosper or starve, as he wills.

If you resembled not the man whom you profess to be, my husband might bid

you pleasure yourself with your dream in peace; but trust me, I know him

well; I know what he will do; he will say to all that you are but a mad

impostor, and straightway all will echo him.” She bent upon Miles that

same steady look once more, and added: “If you WERE Miles Hendon, and he

knew it and all the region knew it—consider what I am saying, weigh it

well—you would stand in the same peril, your punishment would be no less

sure; he would deny you and denounce you, and none would be bold enough

to give you countenance.”

 

“Most truly I believe it,” said Miles, bitterly. “The power that can

command one life-long friend to betray and disown another, and be obeyed,

may well look to be obeyed in quarters where bread and life are on the

stake and no cobweb ties of loyalty and honour are concerned.”

 

A faint tinge appeared for a moment in the lady’s cheek, and she dropped

her eyes to the floor; but her voice betrayed no emotion when she

proceeded—

 

“I have warned you—I must still warn you—to go hence. This man will

destroy you, else. He is a tyrant who knows no pity. I, who am his

fettered slave, know this. Poor Miles, and Arthur, and my dear guardian,

Sir Richard, are free of him, and at rest: better that you were with

them than that you bide here in the clutches of this miscreant. Your

pretensions are a menace to his title and possessions; you have assaulted

him in his own house: you are ruined if you stay. Go—do not hesitate.

If you lack money, take this purse, I beg of you, and bribe the servants

to let you pass. Oh, be warned, poor soul, and escape while you may.”

 

Miles declined the purse with a gesture, and rose up and stood before

her.

 

“Grant me one thing,” he said. “Let your eyes rest upon mine, so that I

may see if they be steady. There—now answer me. Am I Miles Hendon?”

 

“No. I know you not.”

 

“Swear it!”

 

The answer was low, but distinct—

 

“I swear.”

 

“Oh, this passes belief!”

 

“Fly! Why will you waste the precious time? Fly, and save yourself.”

 

At that moment the officers burst into the room, and a violent struggle

began; but Hendon was soon overpowered and dragged away. The King was

taken also, and both were bound and led to prison.

 

Chapter XXVII. In prison.

 

The cells were all crowded; so the two friends were chained in a large

room where persons charged with trifling offences were commonly kept.

They had company, for there were some twenty manacled and fettered

prisoners here, of both sexes and of varying ages,—an obscene and noisy

gang. The King chafed bitterly over the stupendous indignity thus put

upon his royalty, but Hendon was moody and taciturn. He was pretty

thoroughly bewildered; he had come home, a jubilant prodigal, expecting

to find everybody wild with joy over his return; and instead had got the

cold shoulder and a jail. The promise and the fulfilment differed so

widely that the effect was stunning; he could not decide whether it was

most tragic or most grotesque. He felt much as a man might who had

danced blithely out to enjoy a rainbow, and got struck by lightning.

 

But gradually his confused and tormenting thoughts settled down into some

sort of order, and then his mind centred itself upon Edith. He turned

her conduct over, and examined it in all lights, but he could not make

anything satisfactory out of it. Did she know him—or didn’t she know

him? It was a perplexing puzzle, and occupied him a long time; but he

ended, finally, with the conviction that she did know him, and had

repudiated him for interested reasons. He wanted to load her name with

curses now; but this name had so long been sacred to him that he found he

could not bring his tongue to profane it.

 

Wrapped in prison blankets of a soiled and tattered condition, Hendon and

the King passed a troubled night. For a bribe the jailer had furnished

liquor to some of the prisoners; singing of ribald songs, fighting,

shouting, and carousing was the natural consequence. At last, a while

after midnight, a man attacked a woman and nearly killed her by beating

her over the head with his manacles before the jailer could come to the

rescue. The jailer restored peace by giving the man a sound clubbing

about the head and shoulders—then the carousing ceased; and after that,

all had an opportunity to sleep who did not mind the annoyance of the

moanings and groanings of the two wounded people.

 

During the ensuing week, the days and nights were of a monotonous

sameness as to events; men whose faces Hendon remembered more or less

distinctly, came, by day, to gaze at the ‘impostor’ and repudiate and

insult him; and by night the carousing and brawling went on with

symmetrical regularity. However, there was a change of incident at last.

The jailer brought in an old man, and said to him—

 

“The villain is in this room—cast thy old eyes about and see if thou

canst say which is he.”

 

Hendon glanced up, and experienced a pleasant sensation for the first

time since he had been in the jail. He said to himself, “This is Blake

Andrews, a servant all his life in my father’s family—a good honest

soul, with a right heart in his breast. That is, formerly. But none are

true now; all are liars. This man will know me—and will deny me, too,

like the rest.”

 

The old man gazed around the room, glanced at each face in turn, and

finally said—

 

“I see none here but paltry knaves, scum o’ the streets. Which is he?”

 

The jailer laughed.

 

“Here,” he said; “scan this big animal, and grant me an opinion.”

 

The old man approached, and looked Hendon over, long and earnestly, then

shook his head and said—

 

“Marry, THIS is no Hendon—nor ever was!”

 

“Right! Thy old eyes are sound yet. An’ I were Sir Hugh, I would take

the shabby carle and—”

 

The jailer finished by lifting himself a-tip-toe with an imaginary

halter, at the same time making a gurgling noise in his throat suggestive

of suffocation. The old man said, vindictively—

 

“Let him bless God an’ he fare no worse. An’ I had the handling o’ the

villain he should roast, or I am no true man!”

 

The jailer laughed a pleasant hyena laugh, and said—

 

“Give him a piece of thy mind, old man—they all do it. Thou’lt find it

good diversion.”

 

Then he sauntered toward his ante-room and disappeared. The old man

dropped upon his knees and whispered—

 

“God be thanked, thou’rt come again, my master! I believed thou wert

dead these seven years, and lo, here thou art alive! I knew thee the

moment I saw thee; and main hard work it was to keep a stony countenance

and seem to see none here but tuppenny knaves and rubbish o’ the streets.

I am old and poor, Sir Miles; but say the word and I will go forth and

proclaim the truth though I be strangled for it.”

 

“No,” said Hendon; “thou shalt not. It would ruin thee, and yet help but

little in my cause. But I thank thee, for thou hast given me back

somewhat of my lost faith in my kind.”

 

The old servant became very valuable to Hendon and the King; for he

dropped in several times a day to ‘abuse’ the former, and always smuggled

in a few delicacies to help out the prison bill of fare; he also

furnished the current news. Hendon reserved the dainties for the King;

without them his Majesty might not have survived, for he was not able to

eat the coarse and wretched food provided by the jailer. Andrews was

obliged to confine himself to brief visits, in order to avoid suspicion;

but he managed to impart a fair degree of information each time—

information delivered in a low voice, for Hendon’s benefit, and

interlarded with insulting epithets delivered in a louder voice for the

benefit of other hearers.

 

So, little by little, the story of the family came out. Arthur had been

dead six years. This loss, with the absence of news from Hendon,

impaired the father’s health; he believed he was going to die, and he

wished to see Hugh and Edith settled in life before he passed away; but

Edith begged hard for delay, hoping for Miles’s return; then the letter

came which brought the news of Miles’s death; the shock prostrated Sir

Richard; he believed his end was very near, and he and Hugh insisted upon

the marriage;