The Complete Works of Mark Twain. Mark Twain
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Washington Hawkins and his fortunes, the stagecoach tore out of Swansea at a fearful gait, with horn tooting gaily and half the town admiring from doors and windows. But it did not tear any more after it got to the outskirts; it dragged along stupidly enough, then — till it came in sight of the next hamlet; and then the bugle tooted gaily again and again the vehicle went tearing by the horses. This sort of conduct marked every entry to a station and every exit from it; and so in those days children grew up with the idea that stagecoaches always tore and always tooted; but they also grew up with the idea that pirates went into action in their Sunday clothes, carrying the black flag in one hand and pistolling people with the other, merely because they were so represented in the pictures — but these illusions vanished when later years brought their disenchanting wisdom. They learned then that the stagecoach is but a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes of the highway; and that the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic “rough,” when he is out of the pictures.
Toward evening, the stagecoach came thundering into Hawkeye with a perfectly triumphant ostentation — which was natural and proper, for Hawkeye a was a pretty large town for interior Missouri. Washington, very stiff and tired and hungry, climbed out, and wondered how he was to proceed now. But his difficulty was quickly solved. Col. Sellers came down the street on a run and arrived panting for breath. He said:
“Lord bless you — I’m glad to see you, Washington — perfectly delighted to see you, my boy! I got your message. Been on the lookout for you. Heard the stage horn, but had a party I couldn’t shake off — man that’s got an enormous thing on hand — wants me to put some capital into it — and I tell you, my boy, I could do worse, I could do a deal worse. No, now, let that luggage alone; I’ll fix that. Here, Jerry, got anything to do? All right-shoulder this plunder and follow me. Come along, Washington. Lord I’m glad to see you! Wife and the children are just perishing to look at you. Bless you, they won’t know you, you’ve grown so. Folks all well, I suppose? That’s good — glad to hear that. We’re always going to run down and see them, but I’m into so many operations, and they’re not things a man feels like trusting to other people, and so somehow we keep putting it off. Fortunes in them! Good gracious, it’s the country to pile up wealth in! Here we are — here’s where the Sellers dynasty hangs out. Hump it on the doorstep, Jerry — the blackest niggro in the State, Washington, but got a good heart — mighty likely boy, is Jerry. And now I suppose you’ve got to have ten cents, Jerry. That’s all right — when a man works for me — when a man — in the other pocket, I reckon — when a man — why, where the mischief as that portmonnaie! — when a — well now that’s odd — Oh, now I remember, must have left it at the bank; and b’George I’ve left my check-book, too — Polly says I ought to have a nurse — well, no matter. Let me have a dime, Washington, if you’ve got — ah, thanks. Now clear out, Jerry, your complexion has brought on the twilight half an hour ahead of time. Pretty fair joke — pretty fair. Here he is, Polly! Washington’s come, children! come now, don’t eat him up — finish him in the house. Welcome, my boy, to a mansion that is proud to shelter the son of the best man that walks on the ground. Si Hawkins has been a good friend to me, and I believe I can say that whenever I’ve had a chance to put him into a good thing I’ve done it, and done it pretty cheerfully, too. I put him into that sugar speculation — what a grand thing that was, if we hadn’t held on too long!”
True enough; but holding on too long had utterly ruined both of them; and the saddest part of it was, that they never had had so much money to lose before, for Sellers’s sale of their mule crop that year in New Orleans had been a great financial success. If he had kept out of sugar and gone back home content to stick to mules it would have been a happy wisdom. As it was, he managed to kill two birds with one stone — that is to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding for high rates till he had to sell at the bottom figure, and that calamity killed the mule that laid the golden egg — which is but a figurative expression and will be so understood. Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the Hawkins property by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins hearts been torn to see Uncle Dan’l and his wife pass from the auction-block into the hands of a negro trader and depart for the remote South to be seen no more by the family. It had seemed like seeing their own flesh and blood sold into banishment.
Washington was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion. It was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about each other’s waists.
The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and the clothing, although neat and clean, showed many evidences of having seen long service. The Colonel’s “stovepipe” hat was napless and shiny with much polishing, but nevertheless it had an almost convincing expression about it of having been just purchased new. The rest of his clothing was napless and shiny, too, but it had the air of being entirely satisfied with itself and blandly sorry for other people’s clothes. It was growing rather dark in the house, and the evening air was chilly, too. Sellers said:
“Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make yourself at home — just consider yourself under your own shingles my boy — I’ll have a fire going, in a jiffy. Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and let’s have things cheerful — just as glad to see you, Washington, as if you’d been lost a century and we’d found you again!”
By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match into a poor little stove. Then he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker against it, for the hinges had retired from business. This door framed a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow. Mrs. Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and took the stove into close companionship.
The children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted him, and were lavishly petted in return. Out from this tugging, laughing, chattering disguise of legs and arms and little faces, the Colonel’s voice worked its way and his tireless tongue ran blithely on without interruption; and the purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at hand and looked happy and proud and grateful; and she listened as one who listens to oracles and, gospels and whose grateful soul is being refreshed with the bread of life. Bye and bye the children quieted down to listen; clustered about their father, and resting their elbows on his legs, they hung upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the spheres.
A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stove — these things constituted the furniture of the room. There was no carpet on the floor; on the wall were occasional square-shaped interruptions of the general tint of the plaster which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the house — but there were none now. There were no mantel ornaments, unless one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled in company the rest of the way home.
“Remarkable clock!” said Sellers, and got up and wound it. “I’ve been offered — well, I wouldn’t expect you to believe what I’ve been offered for that clock. Old Gov. Hager never sees me but he says, ‘Come, now, Colonel, name your price — I must have that clock!’ But my goodness I’d as soon think of selling my wife. As I was saying to — silence in the court, now, she’s begun to strike! You can’t talk against her — you have to just be patient and hold up till she’s said her say. Ah well, as I was saying, when — she’s beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twen — — ah, that’s all. — Yes, as I was saying to old Judge — — go it, old girl, don’t mind me. — Now how is that? — — isn’t that a good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead! Sleep? Why you might as well try to sleep in a thunder-factory. Now just listen at that. She’ll strike a hundred and fifty, now, without stopping, — you’ll see. There ain’t another clock like that in Christendom.”
Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was distracting — though the family, one and all, seemed filled with joy; and the more the clock “buckled down to her work” as