The Prince and The Pauper, Part 8. - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
The dreaded Sir Hugh wheeled his horse about, and as he spurred away, the
living wall divided silently to let him pass, and as silently closed
together again. And so remained; nobody went so far as to venture a
remark in favour of the prisoner, or in compliment to him; but no matter
--the absence of abuse was a sufficient homage in itself. A late comer
who was not posted as to the present circumstances, and who delivered a
sneer at the 'impostor,' and was in the act of following it with a dead
cat, was promptly knocked down and kicked out, without any words, and
then the deep quiet resumed sway once more.
Chapter XXIX. To London.
When Hendon's term of service in the stocks was finished, he was released
and ordered to quit the region and come back no more. His sword was
restored to him, and also his mule and his donkey. He mounted and rode
off, followed by the King, the crowd opening with quiet respectfulness to
let them pass, and then dispersing when they were gone.
Hendon was soon absorbed in thought. There were questions of high import
to be answered. What should he do? Whither should he go? Powerful help
must be found somewhere, or he must relinquish his inheritance and remain
under the imputation of being an impostor besides. Where could he hope
to find this powerful help? Where, indeed! It was a knotty question.
By-and-by a thought occurred to him which pointed to a possibility--the
slenderest of slender possibilities, certainly, but still worth
considering, for lack of any other that promised anything at all. He
remembered what old Andrews had said about the young King's goodness and
his generous championship of the wronged and unfortunate. Why not go and
try to get speech of him and beg for justice? Ah, yes, but could so
fantastic a pauper get admission to the august presence of a monarch?
Never mind--let that matter take care of itself; it was a bridge that
would not need to be crossed till he should come to it. He was an old
campaigner, and used to inventing shifts and expedients: no doubt he
would be able to find a way. Yes, he would strike for the capital.
Maybe his father's old friend Sir Humphrey Marlow would help him--'good
old Sir Humphrey, Head Lieutenant of the late King's kitchen, or stables,
or something'--Miles could not remember just what or which. Now that he
had something to turn his energies to, a distinctly defined object to
accomplish, the fog of humiliation and depression which had settled down
upon his spirits lifted and blew away, and he raised his head and looked
about him. He was surprised to see how far he had come; the village was
away behind him. The King was jogging along in his wake, with his head
bowed; for he, too, was deep in plans and thinkings. A sorrowful
misgiving clouded Hendon's new-born cheerfulness: would the boy be
willing to go again to a city where, during all his brief life, he had
never known anything but ill-usage and pinching want? But the question
must be asked; it could not be avoided; so Hendon reined up, and called
out--
"I had forgotten to inquire whither we are bound. Thy commands, my
liege!"
"To London!"
Hendon moved on again, mightily contented with the answer--but astounded
at it too.
The whole journey was made without an adventure of importance. But it
ended with one. About ten o'clock on the night of the 19th of February
they stepped upon London Bridge, in the midst of a writhing, struggling
jam of howling and hurrahing people, whose beer-jolly faces stood out
strongly in the glare from manifold torches--and at that instant the
decaying head of some former duke or other grandee tumbled down between
them, striking Hendon on the elbow and then bounding off among the
hurrying confusion of feet. So evanescent and unstable are men's works in
this world!--the late good King is but three weeks dead and three days in
his grave, and already the adornments which he took such pains to select
from prominent people for his noble bridge are falling. A citizen
stumbled over that head, and drove his own head into the back of somebody
in front of him, who turned and knocked down the first person that came
handy, and was promptly laid out himself by that person's friend. It was
the right ripe time for a free fight, for the festivities of the morrow
--Coronation Day--were already beginning; everybody was full of strong
drink and patriotism; within five minutes the free fight was occupying a
good deal of ground; within ten or twelve it covered an acre of so, and
was become a riot. By this time Hendon and the King were hopelessly
separated from each other and lost in the rush and turmoil of the roaring
masses of humanity. And so we leave them.
Chapter XXX. Tom's progress.
Whilst the true King wandered about the land poorly clad, poorly fed,
cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and
murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all
impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed quite a different
experience.
When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side
for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more every day:
in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and
delightfulness. He lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died;
his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident
bearing. He worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit.
He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his presence when
he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with them,
with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances. It no
longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at
parting.
He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed
with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It came to be a proud
pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of
officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he
doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. He
liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the
distant voices responding, "Way for the King!"
He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and seeming
to be something more than the Lord Protector's mouthpiece. He liked to
receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen to the
affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who called
him brother. O happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!
He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more: he found his four
hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. The
adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears. He
remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all
that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws: yet upon
occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and
give him a look that would make him tremble. Once, when his royal
'sister,' the grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with him
against the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would
otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that their
august late father's prisons had sometimes contained as high as sixty
thousand convicts at one time, and that during his admirable reign he had
delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers over to death by the
executioner, {9} the boy was filled with generous indignation, and
commanded her to go to her closet, and beseech God to take away the stone
that was in her breast, and give her a human heart.
Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince
who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to avenge
him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate? Yes; his first royal
days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts about
the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return, and happy
restoration to his native rights and splendours. But as time wore on,
and the prince did not come, Tom's mind became more and more occupied
with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the
vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he
did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome spectre,
for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed.
Tom's poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his mind.
At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but
later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and
betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty
place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums,
made him shudder. At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost
wholly. And he was content, even glad: for, whenever their mournful and
accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more
despicable than the worms that crawl.
At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to sleep in
his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded
by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for tomorrow was the day appointed
for his solemn crowning as King of England. At that same hour, Edward,
the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with travel,
and clothed in rags and shreds--his share of the results of the riot--was
wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest
certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of Westminster
Abbey, busy as ants: they were making the last preparation for the royal
coronation.
Chapter XXXI. The Recognition procession.
When Tom Canty awoke the next morning, the air was heavy with a
thunderous murmur: all the distances were charged with it. It was music
to him; for it meant that the English world was out in its strength to
give loyal welcome to the great day.
Presently Tom found himself once more the chief figure in a wonderful
floating pageant on the Thames; for by ancient custom the 'recognition
procession' through London must start from the Tower, and he was bound
thither.
When he arrived there, the sides of the venerable fortress seemed
suddenly rent in a thousand places, and from every rent leaped a red
tongue of flame and a white gush of smoke; a deafening explosion
followed, which drowned the shoutings of the multitude, and made the
ground tremble; the flame-jets, the smoke, and the explosions, were
repeated over and over again with marvellous celerity, so that in a few
moments the old Tower disappeared in the vast fog of its own smoke, all
but the very top of the tall pile called the White Tower; this, with its
banners, stood out above the dense bank of vapour as a mountain-peak
projects above a cloud-rack.
Tom Canty, splendidly arrayed, mounted a prancing war-steed, whose rich
trappings almost reached to the ground; his 'uncle,' the Lord Protector
Somerset, similarly mounted, took place in his rear; the King's Guard
formed in single ranks on either side, clad in burnished armour; after
the Protector followed a seemingly interminable procession of resplendent
nobles attended by their vassals; after these came the lord mayor and the
aldermanic body, in crimson velvet robes, and with their gold chains
across their breasts; and after these the officers and members of all the
guilds of London, in rich raiment, and bearing the showy banners of the
several corporations. Also in the procession, as a special guard of
honour through the city, was the Ancient and Honourable Artillery
Company--an organisation already three hundred years old at that time,
and the only military body in England possessing the privilege (which it
still possesses in our day) of holding itself independent of the commands
of Parliament. It was a brilliant spectacle, and was hailed with
acclamations all along the line, as it took its stately way through the
packed multitudes of citizens. The chronicler says, 'The King, as he
entered the city, was received by the people with prayers, welcomings,
cries, and tender words, and all signs which argue an earnest love of
subjects toward their sovereign; and the King, by holding up his glad
countenance to such as stood afar off, and most tender language to those
that stood nigh his Grace, showed himself no less thankful to receive the
people's goodwill than they to offer it. To all that wished him well, he
gave thanks. To such as bade "God save his Grace," he said in return,
"God save you all!" and added that "he thanked them with all his heart."
Wonderfully transported were the people with the loving answers and
gestures of their King.'
In Fenchurch Street a 'fair child, in costly apparel,' stood on a stage
to welcome his Majesty to the city. The last verse of his greeting was
in these words--
'Welcome, O King! as much as hearts can think; Welcome, again, as much as
tongue can tell,--Welcome to joyous tongues, and hearts that will not
shrink: God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well.'
The people burst forth in a glad shout, repeating with one voice what the
child had said. Tom Canty gazed abroad over the surging sea of eager
faces, and his heart swelled with exultation; and he felt that the one
thing worth living for in this world was to be a king, and a nation's
idol. Presently he caught sight, at a distance, of a couple of his
ragged Offal Court comrades--one of them the lord high admiral in his
late mimic court, the other the first lord of the bedchamber in the same
pretentious fiction; and his pride swelled higher than ever. Oh, if they
could only recognise him now! What unspeakable glory it would be, if
they could recognise him, and realise that the derided mock king of the
slums and back alleys was become a real King, with illustrious dukes and
princes for his humble menials, and the English world at his feet! But
he had to deny himself, and choke down his desire, for such a recognition
might cost more than it would come to: so he turned away his head, and
left the two soiled lads to go on with their shoutings and glad
adulations, unsuspicious of whom it was they were lavishing them upon.
Every now and then rose the cry, "A largess! a largess!" and Tom
responded by scattering a handful of bright new coins abroad for the
multitude to scramble for.
The chronicler says, 'At the upper end of Gracechurch Street, before the
sign of the Eagle, the city had erected a gorgeous arch, beneath which
was a stage, which stretched from one side of the street to the other.
This was an historical pageant, representing the King's immediate
progenitors. There sat Elizabeth of York in the midst of an immense
white rose, whose petals formed elaborate furbelows around her; by her
side was Henry VII., issuing out of a vast red rose, disposed in the same
manner: the hands of the royal pair were locked together, and the
wedding-ring ostentatiously displayed. From the red and white roses
proceeded a stem, which reached up to a second stage, occupied by Henry
VIII., issuing from a red and white rose, with the effigy of the new
King's mother, Jane Seymour, represented by his side. One branch sprang
from this pair, which mounted to a third stage, where sat the effigy of
Edward VI. himself, enthroned in royal majesty; and the whole pageant was
framed with wreaths of roses, red and white.'
This quaint and gaudy spectacle so wrought upon the rejoicing people,
that their acclamations utterly smothered the small voice of the child
whose business it was to explain the thing in eulogistic rhymes. But Tom
Canty was not sorry; for this loyal uproar was sweeter music to him than
any poetry, no matter what its quality might be. Whithersoever Tom
turned his happy young face, the people recognised the exactness of his
effigy's likeness to himself, the flesh and blood counterpart; and new
whirlwinds of applause burst forth.
The great pageant moved on, and still on, under one triumphal arch after
another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical
tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or
merit, of the little King's. 'Throughout the whole of Cheapside, from
every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest
carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streets--specimens of
the great wealth of the stores within; and the splendour of this
thoroughfare was equalled in the other streets, and in some even
surpassed.'
"And all these wonders and these marvels are to welcome me--me!" murmured
Tom Canty.
The mock King's cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes were
flashing, his senses swam in a delirium of pleasure. At this point, just
as he was raising his hand to fling another rich largess, he caught sight
of a pale, astounded face, which was strained forward out of the second
rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted upon him. A sickening
consternation struck through him; he recognised his mother! and up flew
his hand, palm outward, before his eyes--that old involuntary gesture,
born of a forgotten episode, and perpetuated by habit. In an instant
more she had torn her way out of the press, and past the guards, and was
at his side. She embraced his leg, she covered it with kisses, she
cried, "O my child, my darling!" lifting toward him a face that was
transfigured with joy and love. The same instant an officer of the
King's Guard snatched her away with a curse, and sent her reeling back
whence she came with a vigorous impulse from his strong arm. The words
"I do not know you, woman!" were falling from Tom Canty's lips when this
piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the heart to see her treated
so; and as she turned for a last glimpse of him, whilst the crowd was
swallowing her from his sight, she seemed so wounded, so broken-hearted,
that a shame fell upon him which consumed his pride to ashes, and
withered his stolen royalty. His grandeurs were stricken valueless:
they seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags.
The procession moved on, and still on, through ever augmenting splendours
and ever augmenting tempests of welcome; but to Tom Canty they were as if
they had not been. He neither saw nor heard. Royalty had lost its grace
and sweetness; its pomps were become a reproach. Remorse was eating his
heart out. He said, "Would God I were free of my captivity!"
He had unconsciously dropped back into the phraseology of the first days
of his compulsory greatness.
The shining pageant still went winding like a radiant and interminable
serpent down the crooked lanes of the quaint old city, and through the
huzzaing hosts; but still the King rode with bowed head and vacant eyes,
seeing only his mother's face and that wounded look in it.
"Largess, largess!" The cry fell upon an unheeding ear.
"Long live Edward of England!" It seemed as if the earth shook with the
explosion; but there was no response from the King. He heard it only as
one hears the thunder of the surf when it is blown to the ear out of a
great distance, for it was smothered under another sound which was still
nearer, in his own breast, in his accusing conscience--a voice which kept
repeating those shameful words, "I do not know you, woman!"
The words smote upon the King's soul as the strokes of a funeral bell
smite upon the soul of a surviving friend when they remind him of secret
treacheries suffered at his hands by him that is gone.
New glories were unfolded at every turning; new wonders, new marvels,
sprang into view; the pent clamours of waiting batteries were released;
new raptures poured from the throats of the waiting multitudes: but the
King gave no sign, and the accusing voice that went moaning through his
comfortless breast was all the sound he heard.
By-and-by the gladness in the faces of the populace changed a little, and
became touched with a something like solicitude or anxiety: an abatement
in the volume of the applause was observable too. The Lord Protector was
quick to notice these things: he was as quick to detect the cause. He
spurred to the King's side, bent low in his saddle, uncovered, and said--
"My liege, it is an ill time for dreaming. The people observe thy
downcast head, thy clouded mien, and they take it for an omen. Be
advised: unveil the sun of royalty, and let it shine upon these boding
vapours, and disperse them. Lift up thy face, and smile upon the
people."
So saying, the Duke scattered a handful of coins to right and left, then
retired to his place. The mock King did mechanically as he had been
bidden. His smile had no heart in it, but few eyes were near enough or
sharp enough to detect that. The noddings of his plumed head as he
saluted his subjects were full of grace and graciousness; the largess
which he delivered from his hand was royally liberal: so the people's
anxiety vanished, and the acclamations burst forth again in as mighty a
volume as before.
Still once more, a little before the progress was ended, the Duke was
obliged to ride forward, and make remonstrance. He whispered--
"O dread sovereign! shake off these fatal humours; the eyes of the world
are upon thee." Then he added with sharp annoyance, "Perdition catch
that crazy pauper! 'twas she that hath disturbed your Highness."
The gorgeous figure turned a lustreless eye upon the Duke, and said in a
dead voice--
"She was my mother!"
"My God!" groaned the Protector as he reined his horse backward to his
post, "the omen was pregnant with prophecy. He is gone mad again!"