Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0131/01311.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 4KB | 71 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01311}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Final P.S. By M.T.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{sandy
dreams
thought

}
$Date{1889}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1889

Final P.S. By M.T.

     The dawn was come when I laid the manuscript aside.  The rain had almost
ceased, the world was gray and sad, the exhausted storm was sighing and
sobbing itself to rest.  I went to the stranger's room, and listened at his
door, which was slightly ajar.  I could hear his voice, and so I knocked.
There was no answer, but I still heard the voice.  I peeped in.  The man lay
on his back, in bed, talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with
his arms, which he thrashed about, restlessly, as sick people do in delirium.
I slipped in softly and bent over him.  His mutterings and ejaculations went
on.  I spoke - merely a word, to call his attention.  His glassy eyes and his
ashy face were alight in an instant with pleasure, gratitude, gladness,
welcome:

     "O, Sandy, you are come at last - how I have longed for you!  Sit by me -
do not leave me - never leave me again, Sandy, never again.  Where is your
hand - give it me, dear, let me hold it - there - now all is well, all is
peace, and I am happy again - we are happy again, isn't it so, Sandy?  You are
so dim, so vague, you are but a mist, a cloud, but you are here, and that is
blessedness sufficient; and I have your hand; don't take it away - it is for
only a little while, I shall not require it long....  Was that the child?...
Hello-Central!...  She doesn't answer.  Asleep, perhaps?  Bring her when she
wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair, and tell her
goodbye....  Sandy!...  Yes, you are there.  I lost myself a moment, and I
thought you were gone....  Have I been sick long?  It must be so; it seems
months to me.  And such dreams!  Such strange and awful dreams, Sandy! Dreams
that were as real as reality - delirium, of course, but so real!  Why, I
thought the king was dead, I thought you were in Gaul and couldn't get home, I
thought there was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzy of these dreams, I
thought that Clarence and I and a handful of my cadets fought and exterminated
the whole chivalry of England!  But even that was not the strangest.  I seemed
to be a creature out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even that
was as real as the rest!  Yes, I seemed to have flown back out of that age
into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set down, a stranger
and forlorn in that strange England, with an abyss of thirteen centuries
yawning between me and you! between me and my home and my friends! between me
and all that is dear to me, all that could make life worth the living!  It was
awful - awfuler than you can ever imagine, Sandy. Ah, watch by me, Sandy -
stay by me every moment - don't let me go out of my mind again; death is
nothing, let it come, but not with those dreams, not with the torture of those
hideous dreams - I cannot endure that again.... Sandy?..."

     He lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time he lay
silent, and apparently sinking away toward death.  Presently his fingers began
to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign I knew that his end was at
hand.  With the first suggestion of the death rattle in his throat he started
up slightly, and seemed to listen; then he said:

     "A bugle?...  It is the king!  The drawbridge, there!  Man the
battlements - turn out the -"

     He was getting up his last "effect"; but he never finished it.