Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0147/01474.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 8KB | 153 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01474}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Pudd'nhead Wilson
Chapter XVI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
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$Subject{de
en
ain't
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roxy
tom
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$Date{1905}
$Log{}
Title:       Pudd'nhead Wilson
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1905

Chapter XVI

     If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not
     bite you.  This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

                    - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.

     We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits
     of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster.
     It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for
     studying the oyster.

                    - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar.

     When Roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that
her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her.  He was
ruined past hope, now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and he
would be an outcast and friendless.  That was reason enough for a mother to
love a child; so she loved him, and told him so.  It made him wince, secretly
- for she was a "nigger." That he was one himself was far from reconciling
him to that despised race.

     Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded
uncomfortably, but as well as he could.  And she tried to comfort him, but
that was not possible.  These intimacies quickly became horrible to him, and
within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to tell her so, and
require that they be discontinued or very considerably modified.  But he was
afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull, now, for she had begun to
think.  She was trying to invent a saving plan.  Finally she started up, and
said she had found a way out.  Tom was almost suffocated by the joy of this
sudden good news.  Roxana said:

     "Here is de plan, en she'll win, sure.  I's a nigger, en nobody ain't
gwyne to doubt it dat hears me talk.  I's wuth six hund'd dollahs.  Take en
sell me, en pay off dese gamblers."

     Tom was dazed.  He was not sure he had heard aright.  He was dumb for
a moment; then he said:

     "Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?"

     "Ain't you my chile?  En does you know anything dat a mother won't do
for her chile?  Dey ain't nothin' a white mother won't do for her chile.  Who
made 'em so?  De Lord done it.  En who made de niggers?  De Lord made 'em.
In de inside, mothers is all de same.  De good Lord he made 'em so.  I's
gwyne to be sole into slavery, en in a year you's gwyne to buy yo' ole mammy
free ag'in.  I'll show you how.  Dat's de plan."

     Tom's hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them.  He said:

     "It's lovely of you, mammy - it's just - "

     "Say it ag'in!  En keep on sayin' it!  It's all de pay a body kin want
in dis worl', en it's mo' den enough.  Laws bless you, honey, when I's
slavin' aroun,' en dey 'buses me, if I knows you's a-sayin' dat, 'way off
yonder somers, it'll heal up all de sore places, en I kin stan' 'em."

     "I do say it again, mammy, and I'll keep on saying it, too.  But how am
I going to sell you?  You're free, you know."

     "Much diff'rence dat make!  White folks ain't partic'lar.  De law kin
sell me now if dey tell me to leave de State in six months en I don't go.
You draw up a paper - bill o' sale - en put it 'way off yonder, down in de
middle 'o Kaintuck somers, en sign some names to it, en say you'll sell me
cheap 'ca'se you's hard up; you'll find you ain't gwyne to have no trouble.
You take me up de country a piece, en sell me on a farm; dem people ain't
gwyne to ask no questions if I's a bargain."

     Tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an Arkansas cotton
planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars.  He did not want to commit
this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved him the
necessity of going up country to hunt up a purchaser, with the added risk of
having to answer a lot of questions, whereas this planter was so pleased with
Roxy that he asked next to none at all.  Besides, the planter insisted that
Roxy wouldn't know where she was, at first, and that by the time she found
out she would already have become contented.

     So Tom argued with himself that it was an immense advantage for Roxy to
have a master who was as pleased with her, as this planter manifestly was.
In almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point of even
half believing he was doing Roxy a splendid surreptitious service in selling
her "down the river." And then he kept diligently saying to himself all the
time: "It's for only a year.  In a year I buy her free again; she'll keep
that in mind, and it'll reconcile her." Yes; the little deception could do
no harm, and everything would come out right and pleasant in the end, anyway.
By agreement, the conversation in Roxy's presence was all about the man's
"up-country" farm, and how pleasant a place it was, and how happy the slaves
were there; so poor Roxy was entirely deceived; and easily, for she was not
dreaming that her own son could be guilty of treason to a mother who, in
voluntarily going into slavery - slavery of any kind, mild or severe, or of
any duration, brief or long - was making a sacrifice for him compared with
which death would have been a poor and commonplace one.  She lavished tears
and loving caresses upon him privately, and then went away with her owner -
 went away broken-hearted, and yet proud of what she was doing, and glad that
it was in her power to do it.

     Tom squared his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very letter of his
reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again.  He had three hundred
dollars left.  According to his mother's plan, he was to put that safely
away, and add her half of his pension to it monthly.  In one year this fund
would buy her free again.

     For a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the villainy
which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his rag of a
conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was
presently able to sleep like any other miscreant.

     The boat bore Roxy away from St. Louis at four in the afternoon, and she
stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle-box and watched Tom through a blur
of tears until he melted into the throng of people and disappeared; then she
looked no more, but sat there on a coil of cable crying till far into the
night.  When she went to her foul steerage-bunk at last, between the clashing
engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for the morning, and, waiting,
grieve.

     It had been imagined that she "would not know," and would think she was
traveling up stream.  She!  Why, she had been steamboating for years.  At
dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on the cable-coil again.
She passed many a snag whose "break" could have told her a thing to break her
heart, for it showed a current moving in the same direction that the boat was
going; but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she did not notice.  But at last
the roar of a bigger and nearer break than usual brought her out of her
torpor, and she looked up, and her practiced eye fell upon that tell-tale
rush of water.  For one moment her petrified gaze fixed itself there.  Then
her head dropped upon her breast, and she said:

     "Oh, de good Lord God have mercy on po' sinful me - I's sole down de
river!"