A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Page 24

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE PILGRIMS

  When I did get to bed at last I was unspeakably tired; the stretchingout, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious,how delicious! but that was as far as I could get--sleep was out ofthe question for the present. The ripping and tearing and squealingof the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemoniumcome again, and kept me broad awake. Being awake, my thoughtswere busy, of course; and mainly they busied themselves with Sandy'scurious delusion. Here she was, as sane a person as the kingdomcould produce; and yet, from my point of view she was acting likea crazy woman. My land, the power of training! of influence!of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything. I hadto put myself in Sandy's place to realize that she was not alunatic. Yes, and put her in mine, to demonstrate how easy it isto seem a lunatic to a person who has not been taught as you havebeen taught. If I had told Sandy I had seen a wagon, uninfluencedby enchantment, spin along fifty miles an hour; had seen a man,unequipped with magic powers, get into a basket and soar out ofsight among the clouds; and had listened, without any necromancer'shelp, to the conversation of a person who was several hundred milesaway, Sandy would not merely have supposed me to be crazy, shewould have thought she knew it. Everybody around her believed inenchantments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle couldbe turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs, would have beenthe same as my doubting among Connecticut people the actualityof the telephone and its wonders,--and in both cases would beabsolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. Yes, Sandywas sane; that must be admitted. If I also would be sane--to Sandy--I must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculouslocomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. Also, I believedthat the world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to supportit, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water thatoccupied all space above; but as I was the only person in the kingdomafflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, I recognizedthat it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too,if I did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybodyas a madman.

  The next morning Sandy assembled the swine in the dining-room andgave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally andmanifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives ofher island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let itsoutward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may.I could have eaten with the hogs if I had had birth approaching mylofty official rank; but I hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidableslight and made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast atthe second table. The family were not at home. I said:

  "How many are in the family, Sandy, and where do they keep themselves?"

  "Family?"

  "Yes."

  "Which family, good my lord?"

  "Why, this family; your own family."

  "Sooth to say, I understand you not. I have no family."

  "No family? Why, Sandy, isn't this your home?"

  "Now how indeed might that be? I have no home."

  "Well, then, whose house is this?"

  "Ah, wit you well I would tell you an I knew myself."

  "Come--you don't even know these people? Then who invited us here?"

  "None invited us. We but came; that is all."

  "Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. Theeffrontery of it is beyond admiration. We blandly march intoa man's house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobilitythe sun has yet discovered in the earth, and then it turns outthat we don't even know the man's name. How did you ever ventureto take this extravagant liberty? I supposed, of course, it wasyour home. What will the man say?"

  "What will he say? Forsooth what can he say but give thanks?"

  "Thanks for what?"

  Her face was filled with a puzzled surprise:

  "Verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words.Do ye dream that one of his estate is like to have the honor twicein his life to entertain company such as we have brought to gracehis house withal?"

  "Well, no--when you come to that. No, it's an even bet that thisis the first time he has had a treat like this."

  "Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speechand due humility; he were a dog, else, and the heir and ancestorof dogs."

  To my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. It might become more so.It might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. So I said:

  "The day is wasting, Sandy. It is time to get the nobility togetherand be moving."

  "Wherefore, fair sir and Boss?"

  "We want to take them to their home, don't we?"

  "La, but list to him! They be of all the regions of the earth!Each must hie to her own home; wend you we might do all thesejourneys in one so brief life as He hath appointed that createdlife, and thereto death likewise with help of Adam, who by sindone through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought uponand bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, thatserpent hight Satan, aforetime consecrated and set apart unto thatevil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heartthrough fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erstso white and pure whenso it hove with the shining multitudesits brethren-born in glade and shade of that fair heaven whereinall such as native be to that rich estate and--"

  "Great Scott!"

  "My lord?"

  "Well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. Don'tyou see, we could distribute these people around the earth in lesstime than it is going to take you to explain that we can't. Wemustn't talk now, we must act. You want to be careful; you mustn'tlet your mill get the start of you that way, at a time like this.To business now--and sharp's the word. Who is to take thearistocracy home?"

  "Even their friends. These will come for them from the far partsof the earth."

  This was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpectedness; and therelief of it was like pardon to a prisoner. She would remain todeliver the goods, of course.

  "Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfullyended, I will go home and report; and if ever another one--"

  "I also am ready; I will go with thee."

  This was recalling the pardon.

  "How? You will go with me? Why should you?"

  "Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That were dishonor.I may not part from thee until in knightly encounter in the fieldsome overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me.I were to blame an I thought that that might ever hap."

  "Elected for the long term," I sighed to myself. "I may as wellmake the best of it." So then I spoke up and said:

  "All right; let us make a start."

  While she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, I gave thatwhole peerage away to the servants. And I asked them to takea duster and dust around a little where the nobilities had mainlylodged and promenaded; but they considered that that would behardly worth while, and would moreover be a rather grave departurefrom custom, and therefore likely to make talk. A departure fromcustom--that settled it; it was a nation capable of committing anycrime but that. The servants said they would follow the fashion,a fashion grown sacred through immemorial observance; they wouldscatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls, and then theevidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible.It was a kind of satire on Nature: it was the scientific method,the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family ina stratified record; and the antiquary could dig through it andtell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the familyhad introduced successively for a hundred years.

  The first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims.It was not going our way, but we joined it, nevertheless; for itwas hourly being borne in upon me now, that if I would governthis country wisely, I must be posted in the details of its life,and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny.

  This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in this: that ithad in it a sample of about
all the upper occupations and professionsthe country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume.There were young men and old men, young women and old women,lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon mules and horses, andthere was not a side-saddle in the party; for this specialty wasto remain unknown in England for nine hundred years yet.

  It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry andfull of unconscious coarsenesses and innocent indecencies. Whatthey regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and causedno more embarrassment than it would have caused in the best Englishsociety twelve centuries later. Practical jokes worthy of theEnglish wits of the first quarter of the far-off nineteenth centurywere sprung here and there and yonder along the line, and compelledthe delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright remark wasmade at one end of the procession and started on its travels towardthe other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparklingspray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along;and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake.

  Sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage, and she postedme. She said:

  "They journey to the Valley of Holiness, for to be blessed of thegodly hermits and drink of the miraculous waters and be cleansedfrom sin."

  "Where is this watering place?"

  "It lieth a two-day journey hence, by the borders of the land thathight the Cuckoo Kingdom."

  "Tell me about it. Is it a celebrated place?"

  "Oh, of a truth, yes. There be none more so. Of old time therelived there an abbot and his monks. Belike were none in the worldmore holy than these; for they gave themselves to study of piousbooks, and spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, andate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard, and prayedmuch, and washed never; also they wore the same garment until itfell from their bodies through age and decay. Right so came theyto be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities,and visited by rich and poor, and reverenced."

  "Proceed."

  "But always there was lack of water there. Whereas, upon a time,the holy abbot prayed, and for answer a great stream of clearwater burst forth by miracle in a desert place. Now were thefickle monks tempted of the Fiend, and they wrought with theirabbot unceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would constructa bath; and when he was become aweary and might not resist more,he said have ye your will, then, and granted that they asked.Now mark thou what 'tis to forsake the ways of purity the whichHe loveth, and wanton with such as be worldly and an offense.These monks did enter into the bath and come thence washed aswhite as snow; and lo, in that moment His sign appeared, inmiraculous rebuke! for His insulted waters ceased to flow, andutterly vanished away."

  "They fared mildly, Sandy, considering how that kind of crimeis regarded in this country."

  "Belike; but it was their first sin; and they had been of perfectlife for long, and differing in naught from the angels. Prayers,tears, torturings of the flesh, all was vain to beguile that waterto flow again. Even processions; even burnt-offerings; even votivecandles to the Virgin, did fail every each of them; and all inthe land did marvel."

  "How odd to find that even this industry has its financial panics,and at times sees its assignats and greenbacks languish to zero,and everything come to a standstill. Go on, Sandy."

  "And so upon a time, after year and day, the good abbot made humblesurrender and destroyed the bath. And behold, His anger was in thatmoment appeased, and the waters gushed richly forth again, and evenunto this day they have not ceased to flow in that generous measure."

  "Then I take it nobody has washed since."

  "He that would essay it could have his halter free; yes, andswiftly would he need it, too."

  "The community has prospered since?"

  "Even from that very day. The fame of the miracle went abroadinto all lands. From every land came monks to join; they cameeven as the fishes come, in shoals; and the monastery added buildingto building, and yet others to these, and so spread wide its armsand took them in. And nuns came, also; and more again, and yetmore; and built over against the monastery on the yon side of thevale, and added building to building, until mighty was that nunnery.And these were friendly unto those, and they joined their lovinglabors together, and together they built a fair great foundlingasylum midway of the valley between."

  "You spoke of some hermits, Sandy."

  "These have gathered there from the ends of the earth. A hermitthriveth best where there be multitudes of pilgrims. Ye shall notfind no hermit of no sort wanting. If any shall mention a hermitof a kind he thinketh new and not to be found but in some farstrange land, let him but scratch among the holes and caves andswamps that line that Valley of Holiness, and whatsoever be hisbreed, it skills not, he shall find a sample of it there."

  I closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat good-humoredface, purposing to make myself agreeable and pick up some furthercrumbs of fact; but I had hardly more than scraped acquaintancewith him when he began eagerly and awkwardly to lead up, in theimmemorial way, to that same old anecdote--the one Sir Dinadantold me, what time I got into trouble with Sir Sagramor and waschallenged of him on account of it. I excused myself and droppedto the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hencefrom this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day ofbroken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and monotonousdefeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how longeternity is, and how many have wended thither who know that anecdote.

  Early in the afternoon we overtook another procession of pilgrims;but in this one was no merriment, no jokes, no laughter, no playfulways, nor any happy giddiness, whether of youth or age. Yet bothwere here, both age and youth; gray old men and women, strong menand women of middle age, young husbands, young wives, little boysand girls, and three babies at the breast. Even the children weresmileless; there was not a face among all these half a hundredpeople but was cast down, and bore that set expression of hopelessnesswhich is bred of long and hard trials and old acquaintance withdespair. They were slaves. Chains led from their fettered feetand their manacled hands to a sole-leather belt about their waists;and all except the children were also linked together in a filesix feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar to collarall down the line. They were on foot, and had tramped threehundred miles in eighteen days, upon the cheapest odds and endsof food, and stingy rations of that. They had slept in thesechains every night, bundled together like swine. They had upontheir bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to beclothed. Their irons had chafed the skin from their ankles andmade sores which were ulcerated and wormy. Their naked feet weretorn, and none walked without a limp. Originally there had been ahundred of these unfortunates, but about half had been sold onthe trip. The trader in charge of them rode a horse and carrieda whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided intoseveral knotted tails at the end. With this whip he cut theshoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain, andstraightened them up. He did not speak; the whip conveyed hisdesire without that. None of these poor creatures looked up aswe rode along by; they showed no consciousness of our presence.And they made no sound but one; that was the dull and awful clankof their chains from end to end of the long file, as forty-threeburdened feet rose and fell in unison. The file moved in a cloudof its own making.

  All these faces were gray with a coating of dust. One has seenthe like of this coating upon furniture in unoccupied houses, andhas written his idle thought in it with his finger. I was remindedof this when I noticed the faces of some of those women, youngmothers carrying babes that were near to death and freedom, howa something in their hearts was written in the dust upon theirfaces, plain to see, and lord, how plain to read! for it was thetrack of tears. One of these young mothers was but a girl, andit hurt me to the heart to read that writing, and reflect that itwas come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast that oughtnot to know trouble yet, but only the gladness of the morning oflife; and no doubt--


  She reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down came the lashand flicked a flake of skin from her naked shoulder. It stung meas if I had been hit instead. The master halted the file andjumped from his horse. He stormed and swore at this girl, andsaid she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as thiswas the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now.She dropped on her knees and put up her hands and began to beg,and cry, and implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gaveno attention. He snatched the child from her, and then made themen-slaves who were chained before and behind her throw her onthe ground and hold her there and expose her body; and then helaid on with his lash like a madman till her back was flayed, sheshrieking and struggling the while piteously. One of the men whowas holding her turned away his face, and for this humanity he wasreviled and flogged.

  All our pilgrims looked on and commented--on the expert way inwhich the whip was handled. They were too much hardened by lifelongeveryday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anythingelse in the exhibition that invited comment. This was what slaverycould do, in the way of ossifying what one may call the superiorlobe of human feeling; for these pilgrims were kind-hearted people,and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that.

  I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but thatwould not do. I must not interfere too much and get myself a namefor riding over the country's laws and the citizen's rightsroughshod. If I lived and prospered I would be the death ofslavery, that I was resolved upon; but I would try to fix it sothat when I became its executioner it should be by command ofthe nation.

  Just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now arrived a landedproprietor who had bought this girl a few miles back, deliverablehere where her irons could be taken off. They were removed; thenthere was a squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as towhich should pay the blacksmith. The moment the girl was deliveredfrom her irons, she flung herself, all tears and frantic sobbings,into the arms of the slave who had turned away his face when shewas whipped. He strained her to his breast, and smothered herface and the child's with kisses, and washed them with the rainof his tears. I suspected. I inquired. Yes, I was right; it washusband and wife. They had to be torn apart by force; the girlhad to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shriekedlike one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; andeven after that, we could still make out the fading plaint of thosereceding shrieks. And the husband and father, with his wife andchild gone, never to be seen by him again in life?--well, the lookof him one might not bear at all, and so I turned away; but I knewI should never get his picture out of my mind again, and thereit is to this day, to wring my heartstrings whenever I think of it.

  We put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and whenI rose next morning and looked abroad, I was ware where a knightcame riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized himfor knight of mine--Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy. He was in thegentlemen's furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty wasplug hats. He was clothed all in steel, in the beautifulest armorof the time--up to where his helmet ought to have been; but hehadn't any helmet, he wore a shiny stove-pipe hat, and was ridiculousa spectacle as one might want to see. It was another of mysurreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making itgrotesque and absurd. Sir Ozana's saddle was hung about withleather hat boxes, and every time he overcame a wandering knighthe swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug and madehim wear it. I dressed and ran down to welcome Sir Ozana andget his news.

  "How is trade?" I asked.

  "Ye will note that I have but these four left; yet were they sixteenwhenas I got me from Camelot."

  "Why, you have certainly done nobly, Sir Ozana. Where have youbeen foraging of late?"

  "I am but now come from the Valley of Holiness, please you sir."

  "I am pointed for that place myself. Is there anything stirringin the monkery, more than common?"

  "By the mass ye may not question it!.... Give him good feed,boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy crown; so get ye lightlyto the stable and do even as I bid.... Sir, it is parlous newsI bring, and--be these pilgrims? Then ye may not do better, goodfolk, than gather and hear the tale I have to tell, sith itconcerneth you, forasmuch as ye go to find that ye will not find,and seek that ye will seek in vain, my life being hostage for myword, and my word and message being these, namely: That a haphas happened whereof the like has not been seen no more but oncethis two hundred years, which was the first and last time thatthat said misfortune strake the holy valley in that form bycommandment of the Most High whereto by reasons just and causesthereunto contributing, wherein the matter--"

  "The miraculous fount hath ceased to flow!" This shout burst fromtwenty pilgrim mouths at once.

  "Ye say well, good people. I was verging to it, even when ye spake."

  "Has somebody been washing again?"

  "Nay, it is suspected, but none believe it. It is thought to besome other sin, but none wit what."

  "How are they feeling about the calamity?"

  "None may describe it in words. The fount is these nine days dry.The prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackclothand ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceasednor night nor day; and so the monks and the nuns and the foundlingsbe all exhausted, and do hang up prayers writ upon parchment,sith that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. And at lastthey sent for thee, Sir Boss, to try magic and enchantment; andif you could not come, then was the messenger to fetch Merlin,and he is there these three days now, and saith he will fetch thatwater though he burst the globe and wreck its kingdoms to accomplishit; and right bravely doth he work his magic and call upon hishellions to hie them hither and help, but not a whiff of moisturehath he started yet, even so much as might qualify as mist upona copper mirror an ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweatethbetwixt sun and sun over the dire labors of his task; and if ye--"

  Breakfast was ready. As soon as it was over I showed to Sir Ozanathese words which I had written on the inside of his hat: "ChemicalDepartment, Laboratory extension, Section G. Pxxp. Send two offirst size, two of No. 3, and six of No. 4, together with the propercomplementary details--and two of my trained assistants." And I said:

  "Now get you to Camelot as fast as you can fly, brave knight, andshow the writing to Clarence, and tell him to have these requiredmatters in the Valley of Holiness with all possible dispatch."

  "I will well, Sir Boss," and he was off.