Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

By and by it was getting-up time. So I came down the ladder and started downstairs; but as I came to the girls’ room the door was open, and I saw Mary Jane sitting by her old hair trunk, which was open, and she had been packing things in it—getting ready to go to England. But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. I felt awfully bad to see it; of course anybody would. I went in there and said:

“Miss Mary Jane, you can’t bear to see people in trouble, and I can’t—almost always. Tell me about it.”

So she did. And it was the enslaved people—I just expected it. She said the beautiful trip to England was almost spoiled for her; she didn’t know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children weren’t ever going to see each other anymore—and then she burst out, more bitterly than ever, and flung up her hands, and said:

“Oh, dear, dear, to think they aren’t ever going to see each other anymore!”

“But they will—and within two weeks—and I know it!” I said.

Goodness, it was out before I could think! And before I could budge she threw her arms around my neck and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again!

I saw I had spoken too suddenly and said too much, and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she sat there, very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person who has had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I said to myself, I reckon a person who ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking a good many risks, though I haven’t had any experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blessed if it doesn’t look to me like the truth is better and actually safer than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over sometime or other, it’s so kind of strange and irregular. I never saw anything like it. Well, I said to myself at last, I’m going to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like sitting down on a keg of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to. Then I said:

“Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little way where you could go and stay three or four days?”

“Yes; Mr. Lothrop’s. Why?”

“Never mind why yet. If I tell you how I know the enslaved people will see each other again within two weeks—here in this house—and prove how I know it—will you go to Mr. Lothrop’s and stay four days?”

“Four days!” she said; “I’ll stay a year!”

“All right,” I said, “I don’t want anything more out of you than just your word—I’d rather have it than another man’s kiss-the-Bible.” She smiled and reddened up very sweetly, and I said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll shut the door—and bolt it.”

Then I came back and sat down again, and said:

“Don’t you holler. Just sit still and take it like a man. I have to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it’s a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there is no help for it. These uncles of yours aren’t uncles at all; they’re a couple of frauds—regular deadbeats. There, now we’re over the worst of it, you can stand the rest pretty easily.”

It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal water now, so I went right along, her eyes blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself onto the king’s breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times—and then up she jumped, with her face afire like sunset, and said:

“The brute! Come, don’t waste a minute—not a second—we’ll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!”

I said:

“Certainly. But do you mean before you go to Mr. Lothrop’s, or—”

“Oh,” she said, “what am I thinking about!” she said, and sat right down again. “Don’t mind what I said—please don’t—you won’t, now, will you?” She laid her silky hand on mine in such a way that I said I would die first. “I never thought, I was so stirred up,” she said; “now go on, and I won’t do so anymore. You tell me what to do, and whatever you say I’ll do it.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s a rough gang, those two frauds, and I’m fixed so that I have to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not—I would rather not tell you why; and if you were to blow on them, this town would get me out of their claws, and I’d be all right; but there’d be another person that you don’t know about who’d be in big trouble. Well, we have to save him, don’t we? Of course. Well, then, we won’t blow on them.”

Saying those words put a good idea in my head. I saw how maybe I could get Jim and me rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. But I didn’t want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so I didn’t want the plan to begin working until pretty late tonight. I said:

“Miss Mary Jane, I’ll tell you what we’ll do, and you won’t have to stay at Mr. Lothrop’s so long, either. How far is it?”

“A little short of four miles—right out in the country, back here.”

“Well, that’ll do. Now you go along out there, and lie low until nine or half past tonight, and then get them to fetch you home again—tell them you’ve thought of something. If you get here before eleven, put a candle in this window, and if I don’t turn up, wait until eleven, and then if I don’t turn up it means I’m gone, and out of the way, and safe. Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed.”

“Good,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

“And if it just happens so that I don’t get away, but get taken up along with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can.”

“Stand by you! Indeed I will. They shall not touch a hair of your head!” she said, and I saw her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too.

“If I get away, I won’t be here,” I said, “to prove these rapscallions aren’t your uncles, and I couldn’t do it if I were here. I could swear they were beats and bummers, that’s all, though that’s worth something. Well, there are others who can do that better than I can, and they’re people who aren’t going to be doubted as quickly as I would be. I’ll tell you how to find them. Give me a pencil and a piece of paper. There—‘Royal Nonesuch, Bricksville.’ Put it away, and don’t lose it. When the court wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to Bricksville and say they’ve got the men who played the Royal Nonesuch, and ask for some witnesses—why, you’ll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary. And they’ll come boiling, too.”

I judged we had gotten everything fixed about right now. So I said:

“Just let the auction go right along, and don’t worry. People don’t have to pay for the things they buy until a whole day after the auction on account of the short notice, and they aren’t going out of this until they get that money; and the way we’ve fixed it the sale isn’t going to count, and they aren’t going to get any money. It’s just like the way it was with the enslaved people—it wasn’t a sale, and the enslaved people will be back before long. Why, they can’t collect the money for the enslaved people yet—they’re in the worst kind of fix, Miss Mary.”

“Well,” she said, “I’ll run down to breakfast now, and then I’ll start straight for Mr. Lothrop’s.”

“Indeed, that isn’t the ticket, Miss Mary Jane,” I said, “by no manner of means; go before breakfast.”

“Why?”

“What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?”

“Well, I never thought—and come to think of it, I don’t know. What was it?”

“Why, it’s because you aren’t one of these leather-faced people. I don’t want any better book than your face is. A person can sit down and read it off like coarse print. Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles when they come to kiss you good morning, and never—”

“There, there, don’t! Yes, I’ll go before breakfast—I’ll be glad to. And leave my sisters with them?”

“Yes; never mind about them. They have to stand it yet a while. They might suspect something if all of you were to go. I don’t want you to see them, or your sisters, or anybody in this town; if a neighbor were to ask how your uncles are this morning, your face would tell something. No, you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I’ll fix it with all of them. I’ll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say you’ve gone away for a few hours to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you’ll be back tonight or early in the morning.”

“Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won’t have my love given to them.”

“Well, then, it won’t be.” It was well enough to tell her so—no harm in it. It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it’s the little things that smooth people’s roads the most, down here below; it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn’t cost anything. Then I said: “There’s one more thing—that bag of money.”

“Well, they have that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it.”

“No, you’re wrong there. They don’t have it.”

“Why, who has it?”

“I wish I knew, but I don’t. I had it, because I stole it from them; and I stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but I’m afraid it isn’t there anymore. I’m awfully sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I’m just as sorry as I can be; but I did the best I could; I did, honestly. I came close to getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I came to, and run—and it wasn’t a good place.”

“Oh, stop blaming yourself—it’s too bad to do it, and I won’t allow it—you couldn’t help it; it wasn’t your fault. Where did you hide it?”

I didn’t want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and I couldn’t seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse lying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So for a minute I didn’t say anything; then I said:

“I’d rather not tell you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don’t mind letting me off; but I’ll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop’s, if you want to. Do you reckon that’ll do?”

“Oh, yes.”

So I wrote: “I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you were crying there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane.”

It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by herself in the night, and those devils lying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and gave it to her I saw the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the hand, hard, and said:

“Good-bye. I’m going to do everything just as you’ve told me; and if I don’t ever see you again, I shall never forget you and I’ll think of you many and many a time, and I’ll pray for you, too!”—and she was gone.

Pray for me! I reckoned if she knew me she’d take a job that was nearer her size. But I bet she did it, just the same—she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judas if she took the notion—there was no back-down in her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever saw; in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it isn’t flattery. And when it comes to beauty—and goodness, too—she beats them all. I haven’t ever seen her since that time that I saw her go out of that door; no, I haven’t ever seen her since, but I reckon I’ve thought of her many and many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if I had ever thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn’t have done it or bust.

Well, Mary Jane lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody saw her go. When I ran across Susan and Joanna, I said:

“What’s the name of those people over on the other side of the river that all of you go to see sometimes?”

They said:

“There are several; but it’s the Proctors, mainly.”

“That’s the name,” I said; “I almost forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane told me to tell you she’s gone over there in a dreadful hurry—one of them is sick.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know; at least, I kind of forget; but I think it’s—”

“Goodness gracious, I hope it isn’t Hannah?”

“I’m sorry to say it,” I said, “but Hannah’s the very one.”

“My goodness, and she so well only last week! Has she been taken ill?”

“There’s no name for it. They sat up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane said, and they don’t think she’ll last many hours.”

“Only think of that, now! What’s the matter with her?”

I couldn’t think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I said:

“Mumps.”

“Mumps your granny! They don’t sit up with people who have the mumps.”

“They don’t, don’t they? You can bet they do with these mumps. These mumps are different. It’s a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said.”

“How’s it a new kind?”

“Because it’s mixed up with other things.”

“What other things?”

“Well, measles, and whooping cough, and erysipelas, and consumption, and yellow jaundice, and brain fever, and I don’t know what else.”

“My land! And they call it the mumps?”

“That’s what Miss Mary Jane said.”

“Well, what in the nation do they call it the mumps for?”

“Why, because it is the mumps. That’s what it starts with.”

“Well, there’s no sense in it. A person might stump his toe, and take poison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody might come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull might up and say, ‘Why, he stumped his toe.’ Would there be any sense in that? No. And there’s no sense in this, either. Is it catching?”

“Is it catching? Why, how you talk. Is a harrow catching—in the dark? If you don’t hitch on to one tooth, you’re bound to on another, aren’t you? And you can’t get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? Well, this kind of mumps is a kind of harrow, as you may say—and it’s no slouch of a harrow, either, once you get it hitched on good.”

“Well, it’s awful, I think,” said Joanna. “I’ll go to Uncle Harvey and—”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “I would. Of course I would. I wouldn’t lose any time.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you?”

“Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Aren’t your uncles obliged to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you reckon they’d be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves? You know they’ll wait for you. So far, so good. Your uncle Harvey’s a preacher, isn’t he? Very well, then; is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk? Is he going to deceive a ship clerk?—so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now you know he isn’t. What will he do, then? Why, he’ll say, ‘It’s a great pity, but my church matters will have to get along the best way they can; for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it’s my bounden duty to sit down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she has it.’ But never mind, if you think it’s best to tell your uncle Harvey—”

“Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in England while we were waiting to find out whether Mary Jane has it or not? Why, you talk like a fool.”

“Well, anyway, maybe you’d better tell some of the neighbors.”

“Listen to that, now. You do beat all for natural stupidity. Can’t you see that they’d go and tell? There’s no way but just not to tell anybody at all.”

“Well, maybe you’re right—yes, I judge you are right.”

“But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she’s gone out a while, anyway, so he won’t be uneasy about her?”

“Yes, Miss Mary Jane wanted you to do that. She said, ‘Tell them to give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I’ve run over the river to see Mr.’—Mr.—what is the name of that rich family your uncle Peter used to think so much of?—I mean the one that—”

“Why, you must mean the Apthorps, isn’t that it?”

“Of course; bother those kinds of names, a person can’t ever seem to remember them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over to ask the Apthorps to be sure to come to the auction and buy this house, because she figured her uncle Peter would rather they had it than anybody else; and she’s going to stick to them until they say they’ll come, and then, if she isn’t too tired, she’s coming home; and if she is, she’ll be home in the morning anyway. She said, don’t say anything about the Proctors, but only about the Apthorps—which will be perfectly true, because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; I know it, because she told me so herself.”

“All right,” they said, and cleared out to lie in wait for their uncles, and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message.

Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn’t say anything because they wanted to go to England; and the king and the duke would rather Mary Jane were off working for the auction than around in reach of Doctor Robinson. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neatly—I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn’t have done it any neater himself. Of course he would have thrown more style into it, but I can’t do that very handily, not being brought up to it.

Well, they held the auction in the public square, along toward the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man was on hand and looking his most poisonous, up there alongside the auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knew how, and just spreading himself generally.

But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold—everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So they had to work that off—I never saw such a giraffe as the king was for wanting to swallow everything. Well, while they were at it a steamboat landed, and in about two minutes up came a crowd whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on, and singing out:

“Here’s your opposition line! Here’s your two sets of heirs to old Peter Wilks—and you pay your money and you take your choice!”