Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0127/01278.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 10KB | 158 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01278}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Chapter 12}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{time
get
now
how
mind
couldn't
like
wanted
way
enough}
$Date{1889}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1889

Chapter 12

Slow Torture

     Straight off, we were in the country.  It was most lovely and pleasant
in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morning in the first freshness of
autumn.  From hilltops we saw fair green valleys lying spread out below, with
streams winding through them, and island groves of trees here and there, and
huge lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade; and beyond
the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretching away in
billowy perspective to the horizon, with at wide intervals a dim fleck of
white or gray on a wave summit, which we knew as a castle.  We crossed broad
natural lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the cushioned
turf giving out no sound of footfall; we dreamed along through glades in a
mist of green light that got its tint from the sundrenched roof of leaves
overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runlets went frisking
and gossiping over its reefs and making a sort of whispering music
comfortable to hear; and at times we left the world behind and entered into
the solemn great deeps and rich gloom of the forest, where furtive wild
things whisked and scurried by and were gone before you could even get your
eye on the place where the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were
turning out and getting to business with a song here and a quarrel yonder and
a mysterious far-off hammering and drumming for worms on a tree trunk away
somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses of the woods.  And by and by out
we would swing again into the glare.

     About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out into the glare
- it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours or so after sunup - it
wasn't as pleasant as it had been.  It was beginning to get hot.  This was
quite noticeable.  We had a very long pull, after that, without any shade.
Now it is curious how progressively little frets grow and multiply after they
once get a start.  Things which I didn't mind at all, at first, I began to
mind now - and more and more, too, all the time.  The first ten or fifteen
times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to care; I got along, and said
never mind, it isn't any matter, and dropped it out of my mind.  But now it
was different; I wanted it all the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along,
and no rest; I couldn't get it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my
temper and said hang a man that would make a suit of armor without any
pockets in it.  You see I had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some other
things; but it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take off by yourself.
That hadn't occurred to me when I put it there; and in fact I didn't know it.
I supposed it would be particularly convenient there.  And so now, the
thought of its being there, so handy and close by, and yet not get-at-able,
made it all the worse and the harder to bear.  Yes, the thing that you can't
get is the thing that you want, mainly; everyone has noticed that.  Well, it
took my mind off from everything else; took it clear off, and centered it in
my helmet; and mile after mile, there it stayed, imagining the handkerchief,
picturing the handkerchief; and it was bitter and aggravating to have the
salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes, and I couldn't get at it.  It
seems like a little thing, on paper, but it was not a little thing at all; it
was the most real kind of misery.  I would not say it if it was not so.  I
made up my mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let it look
how it might, and people say what they would.  Of course these iron dudes of
the Round Table would think it was scandalous, and maybe raise Sheol about
it, but as for me, give me comfort first, and style afterwards.  So we jogged
along, and now and then we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in
clouds and get into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and of course I said
things I oughtn't to have said, I don't deny that.  I am not better than
others.  We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome Britain, not even
an ogre; and in the mood I was in then, it was well for the ogre; that is, an
ogre with a handkerchief.  Most knights would have thought of nothing but
getting his armor; but so I got his bandanna, he could keep his hardware, for
all me.

     Meantime it was getting hotter and hotter in there.  You see, the sun
was beating down and warming up the iron more and more all the time.  Well,
when you are hot, that way, every little thing irritates you.  When I
trotted, I rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed me; and moreover
I couldn't seem to stand that shield slatting and banging, now about my
breast, now around my back; and if I dropped into a walk my joints creaked
and screeched in that wearisome way that a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn't
create any breeze at that gait, I was like to get fried in that stove; and
besides, the quieter you went the heavier the iron settled down on you and
the more and more tons you seemed to weigh every minute.  And you had to be
always changing hands, and passing your spear over to the other foot, it got
so irksome for one hand to hold it long at a time.

     Well, you know, when you perspire that way, in rivers, there comes a
time when you - when you - well, when you itch.  You are inside, your hands
are outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between.  It is not a light
thing, let it sound as it may.  First it is one place; then another; then
some more; and it goes on spreading and spreading, and at last the territory
is all occupied, and nobody can imagine what you feel like, nor how
unpleasant it is.  And when it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that
I could not stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars and settled on
my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and I couldn't get the
visor up; and I could only shake my head, which was baking hot by this time,
and the fly - well, you know how a fly acts when he has got a certainty - he
only minded the shaking long enough to change from nose to lip, and lip to
ear, and buzz and buzz all around in there, and keep on lighting and biting,
in a way that a person already so distressed as I was, simply could not
stand.  So I gave in, and got Alisande to unship the helmet and relieve me of
it.  Then she emptied the conveniences out of it and fetched it full of
water, and I drank and then stood up and she poured the rest down inside the
armor.  One cannot think how refreshing it was.  She continued to fetch and
pour until I was well soaked and thoroughly comfortable.

     It was good to have a rest - and peace.  But nothing is quite perfect in
this life, at any time.  I had made a pipe a while back, and also some pretty
fair tobacco; not the real thing, but what some of the Indians use; the
inside bark of the willow, dried.  These comforts had been in the helmet, and
now I had them again, but no matches.

     Gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne in upon
my understanding - that we were weather-bound.  An armed novice cannot mount
his horse without help and plenty of it.  Sandy was not enough; not enough
for me, anyway.  We had to wait until somebody should come along.  Waiting,
in silence, would have been agreeable enough, for I was full of matter for
reflection, and wanted to give it a chance to work.  I wanted to try and
think out how it was that rational or even half-rational men could ever have
learned to wear armor, considering its inconveniences; and how they had
managed to keep up such a fashion for generations when it was plain that what
I had suffered today they had had to suffer all the days of their lives.  I
wanted to think that out; and moreover I wanted to think out some way to
reform this evil and persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out;
but thinking was out of the question in the circumstances.  You couldn't
think, where Sandy was.  She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted,
but she had a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your head
sore like the drays and wagons in a city.  If she had had a cork she would
have been a comfort.  But you can't cork that kind; they would die.  Her
clack was going all day, and you would think something would surely happen to
her works, by and by; but no, they never got out of order; and she never had
to slack up for words.  She could grind, and pump, and churn and buzz by the
week, and never stop to oil up or blow out.  And yet the result was just
nothing but wind.  She never had any ideas, any more than a fog has.  She was
a perfect blatherskite; I mean for jaw, jaw, jaw, talk, talk, talk, jabber,
jabber, jabber; but just as good as she could be.  I hadn't minded her mill
that morning, on account of having that hornet's nest of other troubles; but
more than once in the afternoon I had to say -

     "Take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air, the
kingdom will have to go to importing it by tomorrow, and it's a low enough
treasury without that."