The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0129/01290.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 22KB | 444 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01290}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Chapter 24}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{king
now
doing
tell
right
ye
abbot
magician
valley
place}
$Date{1889}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1889

Chapter 24

A Rival Magician

     My influence in the Valley of Holiness was something prodigious now.  It
seemed worthwhile to try to turn it to some valuable account.  The thought
came to me the next morning and was suggested by my seeing one of my knights
who was in the soap line come riding in.  According to history, the monks of
this place two centuries before, had been worldly minded enough to want to
wash.  It might be that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness still
remaining.  So I sounded a Brother:

     "Wouldn't you like a bath?"

     He shuddered at the thought - the thought of the peril of it to the
well - but he said with feeling -

     "One needs not to ask that of a poor body who was not known that blessed
refreshment sith that he was a boy.  Would God I might wash me!  But it may
not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden."

     And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I was resolved he should
have at least one layer of his real estate removed, if it sized up my whole
influence and bankrupted the pile.  So I went to the abbot and asked for a
permit for this Brother.  He blenched at the idea - I don't mean that you
could see him blench, for of course you couldn't see it without you scraped
him, and I didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but I knew the blench
was there, just the same, and within a book cover's thickness of the surface,
too - blenched, and trembled.  He said:

     "Ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely granted
out of a grateful heart - but this, oh, this!  Would you drive away the
blessed water again?"

     "No, Father, I will not drive it away.  I have mysterious knowledge
which teaches me that there was an error that other time when it was thought
the institution of the bath banished the fountain."  A large interest began
to show up in the old man's face.  "My knowledge informs me that the bath was
innocent of that misfortune, which was caused by quite another sort of sin."

     "These are brave words - but - but right welcome, if they be true."

     "They are true, indeed.  Let me build the bath again, Father.  Let me
build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever."

     "You promise this - you promise it?  Say the word - say you promise it!"

     "I do promise it."

     "Then will I have the first bath myself!  Go - get ye to your work.
Tarry not, tarry not, but go."

     I and my boys were at work, straight off.  The ruins of the old bath
were there yet, in the basement of the monastery, not a stone missing.  They
had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and avoided with a pious fear, as
things accursed.  In two days we had it all done and the water in - a
spacious pool of clear pure water that a body could swim in.  It was running
water, too.  It came in and went out through the ancient pipes.  The old
abbot kept his word and was the first to try it.  He went down black and
shaky, leaving the whole black community above troubled and worried and full
of bodings; but he came back white and joyful, and the game was made!
Another triumph scored.

     It was a good campaign that we made in that Valley of Holiness, and I
was very well satisfied, and ready to move on, now, but I struck a
disappointment.  I caught a heavy cold, and it started up an old lurking
rheumatism of mine.  Of course the rheumatism hunted up my weakest place and
located itself there.  This was the place where the abbot put his arms about
me and mashed me, what time he was moved to testify his gratitude to me with
an embrace.

     When at last I got out, I was a shadow.  But everybody was full of
attentions and kindnesses, and these brought cheer back into my life and were
the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftly up toward health and
strength again: so I gained fast.

     Sandy was worn out with nursing, so I made up my mind to turn out and go
a cruise alone, leaving her at the nunnery to rest up.  My idea was to
disguise myself as a freeman of peasant degree and wander through the country
a week or two on foot.  This would give me a chance to eat and lodge with the
lowliest and poorest class of free citizens of equal terms.  There was no
other way to inform myself perfectly of their everyday life and the operation
of the laws upon it.  If I went among them as a gentleman, there would be
restraints and conventionalities which would shut me out from their private
joys and troubles, and I should get no further than the outside shell.

     One morning I was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip and
had climbed the ridge which bordered the northern extremity of the valley,
when I came upon an artificial opening in the face of a low precipice, and
recognized it by its location as a hermitage which had often been pointed out
to me from a distance, as the den of a hermit of high renown for dirt and
austerity.  I knew he had lately been offered a situation in the Great
Sahara, where lions and sandflies made the hermit life peculiarly attractive
and difficult, and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thought I
would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed with its
reputation.

     My surprise was great: the place was newly swept and scoured.  Then
there was another surprise.  Back in the gloom of the cavern I heard the
clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation:

     "Hello, Central!  Is this you, Camelot? - Behold, thou mayst glad thy
heart an thou hast faith to believe the wonderful when that it cometh in
unexpected guise and maketh itself manifest in impossible places - here
standeth in the flesh his mightiness The Boss, and with thine own ears shall
ye hear him speak!"

     Now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumbling together
of extravagant incongruities; what a fantastic conjunction of opposites and
irreconcilables - the home of the bogus miracle become the home of a real
one, the den of a medieval hermit turned into a telephone office!

     The telephone clerk stepped into the light, and I recognized one of my
young fellows.  I said:

     "How long has this office been established here, Ulfius?"

     "But since midnight, fair Sir Boss, an it please you.  We saw many
lights in the valley, and so judged it well to make a station, for that where
so many lights be needs must they indicate a town of goodly size."

     "Quite right.  It isn't a town in the customary sense, but it's a good
stand, anyway.  Do you know where you are?"

     "Of that I have had no time to make inquiry; for whenas my comradeship
moved hence upon their labors, leaving me in charge, I got me to needed rest,
purposing to inquire when I waked, and report the place's name to Camelot for
record."

     "Well, this is the Valley of Holiness."

     "It didn't take; I mean, he didn't start at the name, as I had supposed
he would.  He merely said -

     "I will so report it."

     "Why, the surrounding regions are filled with the noise of late wonders
that have happened here!  You don't hear of them?"

     "Ah, ye will remember we move by night, and avoid speech with all.  We
learn naught but that we get by the telephone from Camelot."

     "Why they know all about this thing.  Haven't they told you anything
about the great miracle of the restoration of a holy fountain?"

     "Oh, that?  Indeed yes.  But the name of this valley doth woundily
differ from the name of that one; indeed to differ wider were not pos - "

     "What was that name, then?"

     "The Valley of Hellishness."

     "That explains it.  Confound a telephone, anyway.  It is the very demon
for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles of divergenc