Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0127/01273.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 14KB | 226 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01273}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Chapter 7}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{time
miracle
now
tower
couldn't
even
away
little
wanted
began}
$Date{1889}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1889

Chapter 7

Merlin's Tower

     Inasmuch as I was now the second personage in the Kingdom, as far as
political power and authority were concerned, much was made of me.  My
raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold, and by consequence was
very showy, also uncomfortable.  But habit would soon reconcile me to my
clothes; I was aware of that.  I was given the choicest suite of apartments
in the castle, after the king's.  They were aglow with loud-colored silken
hangings, but the stone floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet,
and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of one breed.  As for
conveniences, properly speaking, there weren't any.  I mean little
conveniences; it is the little conveniences that make the real comfort of
life.  The big oaken chairs, graced with rude carvings, were well enough, but
that was the stopping place.  There was no soap, no matches, no looking glass
- except a metal one, about as powerful as a pail of water.  And not a chromo.
I had been used to chromos for years, and I saw now that without my
suspecting it a passion for art had got worked into the fabric of my being,
and was become a part of me.  It made me homesick to look around over this
proud and gaudy but heartless barrenness and remember that in our house in
East Hartford, all unpretending as it was, you couldn't go into a room but
you would find an insurance chromo, or at least a three-color
God-Bless-Our-Home over the door; and in the parlor we had nine.  But here,
even in my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature of a
picture except a thing the size of a bed quilt, which was either woven or
knitted (it had darned places in it), and nothing in it was the right color
or the right shape; and as for proportions, even Raphael himself couldn't
have botched them more formidably, after all his practice on those nightmares
they call his "celebrated Hampton Court cartoons."  Raphael was a bird.  We
had several of his chromos; one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," where
he puts in a miracle of his own - puts three men into a canoe which wouldn't
have held a dog without upsetting.  I always admired to study R.'s art, it
was so fresh and unconventional.

     There wasn't even a bell or a speaking tube in the castle.  I had a
great many servants, and those that were on duty lolled in the anteroom; and
when I wanted one of them I had to go and call for him.  There was no gas,
there were no candles; a bronze dish half full of boardinghouse butter with a
blazing rag floating in it was the thing that produced what was regarded as
light.  A lot of these hung along the walls and modified the dark, just toned
it down enough to make it dismal.  If you went out at night, your servants
carried torches.  There were no books, pens, paper, or ink, and no glass in
the openings they believed to be windows.  It is a little thing - glass is -
until it is absent, then it becomes a big thing.  But perhaps the worst of
all was, that there wasn't any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco.  I saw that I
was just another Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no
society but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life
bearable I must do as he did - invent, contrive, create, reorganize things;
set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy.  Well, that was in my line.

     One thing troubled me along at first - the immense interest which people
took in me.  Apparently the whole nation wanted a look at me.  It soon
transpired that the eclipse had scared the British world almost to death:
that while it lasted the whole country, from one end to the other, was in a
pitiable state of panic, and the churches, hermitages, and monkeries
overflowed with praying and weeping poor creatures who thought the end of the
world was come.  Then had followed the news that the producer of this awful
event was a stranger, a mighty magician at Arthur's court; that he could have
blown out the sun like a candle, and was just going to do it when his mercy
was purchased, and he then dissolved his enchantments, and was now recognized
and honored as the man who had by his unaided might saved the globe from
destruction and its peoples from extinction.  Now if you consider that
everybody believed that, and not only believed it but never even dreamed of
doubting it, you will easily understand that there was not a person in all
Britain that would not have walked fifty miles to get a sight of me.  Of
course I was all the talk - all other subjects were dropped; even the king
became suddenly a person of minor interest and notoriety.  Within twenty-four
hours the delegations began to arrive, and from that time onward for a
fortnight they kept coming.  The village was crowded, and all the
countryside.  I had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to these
reverent and awestricken multitudes.  It came to be a great burden, as to
time and trouble, but of course it was at the same time compensatingly
agreeable to be so celebrated and such a center of homage.  It turned Brer
Merlin green with envy and spite, which was a great satisfaction to me.  But
there was one thing I couldn't understand; nobody had asked for an autograph.
I spoke to Clarence about it.  By George, I had to explain to him what it
was.  Then he said nobody in the country could read or write but a few dozen
priests.  Land! think of that.

     There was another thing that troubled me a little.  Those multitudes
presently began to agitate for another miracle.  That was natural.  To be
able to carry back to their far homes the boast that they had seen the man
who could command the sun, riding in the heavens, and be obeyed, would make
them great in the eyes of their neighbors, and envied by them all; but to be
able to also say they had seen him work a miracle themselves - why, people
would come a distance to see them.  The pressure got to be pretty strong.
There was going to be an eclipse of the moon, and I knew the date and hour,
but it was too far away.  Two years.  I would have given a good deal for
license to hurry it up and use it now when there was a big market for it.  It
seemed a great pity to have it wasted so, and come lagging along at a time
when a body wouldn't have any use for it as like as not.  If it had been
booked for only a month away, I could have sold it short; but as matters
stood, I couldn't seem to cipher out any way to make it do me any good, so I
gave up trying.  Next, Clarence found that old Merlin was making himself busy
on the sly among those people.  He was spreading a report that I was a
humbug, and that the reason I didn't accommodate the people with a miracle was
because I couldn't.  I saw that I must do something.  I presently thought out
a plan.

     By my authority as executive I threw Merlin into prison - the same cell
I had occupied myself.  Then I gave public notice by herald and trumpet that
I should be busy with affairs of state for a fortnight, but about the end of
that time I would take a moment's leisure and blow up Merlin's stone tower by
fires from heaven; in the meantime, whoso listened to evil reports about me,
let him beware.  Furthermore, I would perform but this one miracle at this
time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, I would turn the
murmurers into horses, and make them useful.  Quiet ensued.

     I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certain degree, and we went to
work privately.  I told him that this was a sort of miracle that required a
trifle of preparation; and that it would be sudden death to ever talk about
these preparations to anybody.  That made his mouth safe enough.
Clandestinely we made a few bushels of first-rate blasting powder, and I
superintended my armorers while they constructed a lightning rod and some
wires.  This old stone tower was very massive - and rather ruinous, too, for
it was Roman, and four hundred years old.  Yes, and handsome, after a rude
fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to summit, as with a shirt of scale
mail.  It stood on a lonely eminence, in good view from the castle, and about
half a mile away.

     Working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower - dug stones out, on
the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen
feet thick at the base.  We put in a peck at a time, in a dozen places.  We
could have blown up the Tower of London with these charges.  When the
thirteenth night was come we put up our lightning rod, bedded it in one of
the batches of powder, and ran wires from it to the other batches.  Everybody
had shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, but on the morning
of the fourteenth I thought best to warn the people, through the heralds, to
keep clear away - a quarter of a mile away.  Then added, by command, that at
some time during the twenty-four hours I would consummate the miracle, but
would first give a brief notice; by flags on the castle towers, if in the
daytime, by torch baskets in the same places if at night.

     Thundershowers had been tolerably frequent, of late, and I was not much
afraid of a failure; still, I shouldn't have cared for a delay of a day or
two; I should have explained that I was busy with affairs of state, yet, and
the people must wait.

     Of course we had a blazing sunny day - almost the first one without a
cloud for three weeks; things always happen so.  I kept secluded, and watched
the weather.  Clarence dropped in from time to time and said the public
excitement was growing and growing all the time, and the whole country
filling up with human masses as far as one could see from the battlements.
At last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared - in the right quarter, too,
and just at nightfall.  For a little while I watched that distant cloud
spread and blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear.  I ordered
the torch baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me.  A quarter
of an hour later I ascended the parapet and there found the king and the
court assembled and gazing off in the darkness toward Merlin's tower.
Already the darkness was so heavy that one could not see far; these people,
and the old turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow
from the great torch baskets overhead, made a good deal of a picture.

     Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood.  I said:

     "You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done you any harm, and
latterly you have been trying to injure my professional reputation.
Therefore I am going to call down fire and blow up your tower, but it is only
fair to give you a chance; now if you think you can break my enchantments and
ward off the fires, step to the bat, it's your innings."

     "I can, fair sir, and I will.  Doubt it not."

     He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof, and burnt a pinch
of powder in it which sent up a small cloud of aromatic smoke, whereat
everybody fell back, and began to cross themselves and get uncomfortable.
Then he began to mutter and make passes in the air with his hands.  He worked
himself up slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing
around with his arms like the sails of a windmill.  By this time the storm
had about reached us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and making
the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops of rain were falling, the
world abroad was black as pitch, the lightning began to wink fitfully.  Of
course my rod would be loading itself now.  In fact, things were imminent.
So I said:

     "You have had time enough.  I have given you every advantage, and not
interfered.  It is plain your magic is weak.  It is only fair that I begin
now."

     I made about three passes in the air, and then there was an awful crash
and that old tower leaped into the sky in chunks, along with a vast volcanic
fountain of fire that turned night to noonday, and showed a thousand acres of
human beings groveling on the ground in a general collapse of consternation.
Well, it rained mortar and masonry the rest of the week.  This was the
report; but probably the facts would have modified it.

     It was an effective miracle.  The great bothersome temporary population
vanished.  There were a good many thousand tracks in the mud the next
morning, but they were all outward bound.  If I had advertised another
miracle I couldn't have raised an audience with a sheriff.

     Merlin's stock was flat.  The king wanted to stop his wages; he even
wanted to banish him, but I interfered.  I said he would be useful to work
the weather, and attend to small matters like that, and I would give him a
lift now and then when his poor little parlor magic soured on him.  There
wasn't a rag of his tower left, but I had the government rebuild it for him,
and advised him to take boarders; but he was too high-toned for that.  And as
for being grateful, he never even said thank-you.  He was a rather hard lot,
take him how you might; but then you couldn't fairly expect a man to be sweet
that had been set back so.