The American Claimant, Mark Twain [great novels to read txt] 📗

with them in the hour of his defection and retreat. Every word spoken by this stranger seemed to leave a blister on Tracy’s conscience, and by the time the speech was finished he felt that he was all conscience and one blister. This man’s deep compassion for the enslaved and oppressed millions in Europe who had to bear with the contempt of that small class above them, throned upon shining heights whose paths were shut against them, was the very thing he had often uttered himself. The pity in this man’s voice and words was the very twin of the pity that used to reside in his own heart and come from his own lips when he thought of these oppressed peoples.

The homeward tramp was accomplished in brooding silence. It was a silence most grateful to Tracy’s feelings. He wouldn’t have broken it for anything; for he was ashamed of himself all the way through to his spine. He kept saying to himself:

“How unanswerable it all is—how absolutely unanswerable! It is basely, degradingly selfish to keep those unearned honors, and—and—oh, hang it, nobody but a cur—”

“What an idiotic damned speech that Tompkins made!”

This outburst was from Barrow. It flooded Tracy’s demoralized soul with waters of refreshment. These were the darlingest words the poor vacillating young apostate had ever heard—for they whitewashed his shame for him, and that is a good service to have when you can’t get the best of all verdicts, self-acquittal.

“Come up to my room and smoke a pipe, Tracy.”

Tracy had been expecting this invitation, and had had his declination all ready: but he was glad enough to accept, now. Was it possible that a reasonable argument could be made against that man’s desolating speech? He was burning to hear Barrow try it. He knew how to start him, and keep him going: it was to seem to combat his positions—a process effective with most people.

“What is it you object to in Tompkins’s speech, Barrow?”

“Oh, the leaving out of the factor of human nature; requiring another man to do what you wouldn’t do yourself.”

“Do you mean—”

“Why here’s what I mean; it’s very simple. Tompkins is a blacksmith; has a family; works for wages; and hard, too—fooling around won’t furnish the bread. Suppose it should turn out that by the death of somebody in England he is suddenly an earl—income, half a million dollars a year. What would he do?”

“Well, I—I suppose he would have to decline to—”

“Man, he would grab it in a second!”

“Do you really think he would?”

“Think?—I don’t think anything about it, I know it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not a fool.”

“So you think that if he were a fool, he—”

“No, I don’t. Fool or no fool, he would grab it. Anybody would. Anybody that’s alive. And I’ve seen dead people that would get up and go for it. I would myself.”

“This was balm, this was healing, this was rest and peace and comfort.”

“But I thought you were opposed to nobilities.”

“Transmissible ones, yes. But that’s nothing. I’m opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.”

“You’d take it?”

“I would leave the funeral of my dearest enemy to go and assume its burdens and responsibilities.”

Tracy thought a while, then said:

“I don’t know that I quite get the bearings of your position. You say you are opposed to hereditary nobilities, and yet if you had the chance you would—”

“Take one? In a minute I would. And there isn’t a mechanic in that entire club that wouldn’t. There isn’t a lawyer, doctor, editor, author, tinker, loafer, railroad president, saint-land, there isn’t a human being in the United States that wouldn’t jump at the chance!”

“Except me,” said Tracy softly.

“Except you!” Barrow could hardly get the words out, his scorn so choked him. And he couldn’t get any further than that form of words; it seemed to dam his flow, utterly. He got up and came and glared upon Tracy in a kind of outraged and unappeasable way, and said again, “Except you!” He walked around him—inspecting him from one point of view and then another, and relieving his soul now and then by exploding that formula at him; “Except you!” Finally he slumped down into his chair with the air of one who gives it up, and said:

“He’s straining his viscera and he’s breaking his heart trying to get some low-down job that a good dog wouldn’t have, and yet wants to let on that if he had a chance to scoop an earldom he wouldn’t do it. Tracy, don’t put this kind of a strain on me. Lately I’m not as strong as I was.”

“Well, I wasn’t meaning to put—a strain on you, Barrow, I was only meaning to intimate that if an earldom ever does fall in my way—”

“There—I wouldn’t give myself any worry about that, if I was you. And besides, I can settle what you would do. Are you any different from me?”

“Well—no.”

“Are you any better than me?”

“O,—er—why, certainly not.”

“Are you as good? Come!”

“Indeed, I—the fact is you take me so suddenly—”

“Suddenly? What is there sudden about it? It isn’t a difficult question is it? Or doubtful? Just measure us on the only fair lines—the lines of merit—and of course you’ll admit that a journeyman chairmaker that earns his twenty dollars a week, and has had the good and genuine culture of contact with men, and care, and hardship, and failure, and success, and downs and ups and ups and downs, is just a trifle the superior of a young fellow like you, who doesn’t know how to do anything that’s valuable, can’t earn his living in any secure and steady way, hasn’t had any experience of life and its seriousness, hasn’t any culture but the artificial culture of books, which adorns but doesn’t really educate-come! if I wouldn’t scorn an earldom, what the devil right have you to do it!”

Tracy dissembled his joy, though he wanted to thank the chairmaker for that last remark. Presently a thought struck him, and he spoke up briskly and said:

“But look here, I really can’t quite get the hang of your notions—your, principles, if they are principles. You are inconsistent. You are opposed to aristocracies, yet you’d take an earldom if you could. Am I to understand that you don’t blame an earl for being and remaining an earl?”

“I certainly don’t.”

“And you wouldn’t blame Tompkins, or yourself, or me, or anybody, for accepting an earldom if it was offered?”

“Indeed I wouldn’t.”

“Well, then, who would you blame?”

“The whole nation—any bulk and mass of population anywhere, in any country, that will put up with the infamy, the outrage, the insult of a hereditary aristocracy which they can’t enter—and on absolutely free and equal terms.”

“Come, aren’t you beclouding yourself with distinctions that are not differences?”

“Indeed I am not. I am entirely clear-headed about this thing. If I could extirpate an aristocratic system by declining its honors, then I should be a rascal to accept them. And if enough of the mass would join me to make the extirpation possible, then I should be a rascal to do otherwise than help in the attempt.”

“I believe I understand—yes, I think I get the idea. You have no blame for the lucky few who naturally decline to vacate the pleasant nest they were born into, you only despise the all-powerful and stupid mass of the nation for allowing the nest to exist.”

“That’s it, that’s it! You can get a simple thing through your head if you work at it long enough.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. And I’ll give you some sound advice: when you go back; if you find your nation up and ready to abolish that hoary affront, lend a hand; but if that isn’t the state of things and you get a chance at an earldom, don’t you be a fool—you take it.”

Tracy responded with earnestness and enthusiasm:

“As I live, I’ll do it!”

Barrow laughed.

“I never saw such a fellow. I begin to think you’ve got a good deal of imagination. With you, the idlest-fancy freezes into a reality at a breath. Why, you looked, then, as if it wouldn’t astonish you if you did tumble into an earldom.”

Tracy blushed. Barrow added: “Earldom! Oh, yes, take it, if it offers; but meantime we’ll go on looking around, in a modest way, and if you get a chance to superintend a sausage-stuffer at six or eight dollars a week, you just trade off the earldom for a last year’s almanac and stick to the sausage-stuffing,”

 

CHAPTER XV.

Tracy went to bed happy once more, at rest in his mind once more. He had started out on a high emprise—that was to his credit, he argued; he had fought the best fight he could, considering the odds against him—that was to his credit; he had been defeated—certainly there was nothing discreditable in that. Being defeated, he had a right to retire with the honors of war and go back without prejudice to the position in the world’s society to which he had been born. Why not? even the rabid republican chairmaker would do that. Yes, his conscience was comfortable once more.

He woke refreshed, happy, and eager for his cablegram. He had been born an aristocrat, he had been a democrat for a time, he was now an aristocrat again. He marveled to find that this final change was not merely intellectual, it had invaded his feeling; and he also marveled to note that this feeling seemed a good deal less artificial than any he had entertained in his system for a long time. He could also have noted, if he had thought of it, that his bearing had stiffened, over night, and that his chin had lifted itself a shade. Arrived in the basement, he was about to enter the breakfast room when he saw old Marsh in the dim light of a corner of the hall, beckoning him with his finger to approach. The blood welled slowly up in Tracy’s cheek, and he said with a grade of injured dignity almost ducal:

“Is that for me?”

“Yes.”

“What is the purpose of it?”

“I want to speak to you—in private.”

“This spot is private enough for me.”

Marsh was surprised; and not particularly pleased. He approached and said:

“Oh, in public, then, if you prefer. Though it hasn’t been my way.”

The boarders gathered to the spot, interested.

“Speak out,” said Tracy. “What is it you want?”

“Well, haven’t you—er—forgot something?”

“I? I’m not aware of it.”

“Oh, you’re not? Now you stop and think, a minute.”

“I refuse to stop and think. It doesn’t interest me. If it interests you, speak out.”

“Well, then,” said Marsh, raising his voice to a slightly angry pitch, “You forgot to pay your board yesterday—if you’re bound to have it public.”

Oh, yes, this heir to an annual million or so had been dreaming and soaring, and had forgotten that pitiful three or four dollars. For penalty he must have it coarsely flung in his face in the presence of these people—people in whose countenances was already beginning to dawn an uncharitable enjoyment of the situation.

“Is that all! Take your money and give your terrors a rest.”

Tracy’s hand went down into his pocket with angry decision. But—it didn’t come out. The color began to ebb out of his face. The countenances about him showed a growing interest; and some of them a heightened satisfaction. There was an uncomfortable pause—then he forced out, with difficulty, the words:

“I’ve—been robbed!”

Old Marsh’s eyes flamed up with Spanish fire, and he exclaimed:

“Robbed, is it? That’s your tune? It’s too old—been played in this house too often; everybody plays it that can’t get