Latest / Adventure Books Collection / 06 - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
Transcript
- Chapter eleven, Conscience Racks tom close upon the hour of noon. The whole village was suddenly electrified with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet undreamed of telegraph, the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to house, with little less than telegraphic speed. Of course, the schoolmaster gave holiday for that afternoon. The town would have thought strangely of him if he had not. A gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been recognized by somebody as belonging to Muff Potter. So the story ran, and it was said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter washing himself in the branch about one or two o'clock in the morning, and that Potter had at once sneaked off suspicious circumstances, especially the washing, which was not a habit with Potter. It was also said that the town had been ransacked for this murderer. The public are not slow in the matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a verdict, but that he could not be found. Horsemen had departed down all the roads in every direction, and the sheriff was confident that he would be captured. Before night. All the town was drifting toward the graveyard. Tom's heartbreak vanished, and he joined the procession, not because he would not a thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful, unaccountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the dreadful place, he wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal spectacle. It seemed to him in age, since he was there before. Somebody pinched his arm. He turned and his eyes met Huckleberry's. Then both looked elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything in their mutual glance. But everybody was talking and intent upon the grisly spectacle before them. Poor fellow, poor young fellow. This ought to be a lesson to grave robbers. Muff potter'll hang for this if they catch him. This was the drift of remark, and the minister said it was a judgment. His hand is here now. Tom shivered from head to heel, for his eye fell upon the stolid face of Injun Joe. At this moment, the crowd began to sway and struggle, and voices shouted, it's him, it's him. He's coming himself. Who who? From twenty voices muff Potter, Hallo, he stopped. Look out, he's turning. Don't let him get away. People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head said he wasn't trying to get away. He only looked doubtful and perplexed. Infernal impudence, said a bystander wanted to come and take a quiet look at his work. I reckon didn't expect any company. The crowd fell apart now, and the sheriff came through a steentpatiously leading Potter by the arm. The poor fellow's face was haggard, and his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face in his hands and burst into tears. I didn't do it for friends, he sobbed, upon my word an honor. I never done it. Who's accused? You? Shouted a voice. This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his face and looked around him, with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw injun Joe and exclaimed, oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never is that your knife? And it was thrust before him by the sheriff. Potter would have fallen if they had caught him and eased him to the ground. Then he said, something's told me if I didn't come back and get He shuddered, and then waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture, and said, tell him, Joe, tell him. It ain't any use any more. Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the stony hearted liar reel off his serene statement. They expecting every moment that the clear sky would deliver God's lightnings upon his head, and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed, And when he had finished and still stood alive in whole, their wavering impulse to break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and vanished away. For plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan, and it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that. Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for? Somebody said, I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it. Potter moaned, I wanted to run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here, and he fell to sobbing again. Injun Joe repeated his statement just as calmly. A few minutes afterwards, on the inquest under oath, and the boys, seeing that the lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that Joe had sold himself to the devil. He was now become to them the most balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could not take their fascinated eyes from his face. They inwardly resolved to watch him nights when opportunity should offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master. Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a wagon for removal, and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd that the wound bled a little. The boys thought that this happy circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction, but they were disappointed. For more than one villager remarked it was within three feet of Muff Potter when it'd done it. Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as much as a week after this, and at breakfast one morning, Sid said, Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me awake half the time. Tom blanched and dropped his eyes. It's a bad sign, said Aunt Polly gravely. What you got on your mind? Tom, Nothing nothing to know of. But the boy's hand shook so that he spilled his coffee. And you do talk such stuff, Sid said. Last night you said it's blood. It's blood, that's what it is. You said that over and over, and you said, don't torment me. So I'll tell, tell what what is it? You'll tell Everything was swimming before Tom. There's no telling what might have happened now. But luckily the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's face, and she came to Tom's relief. Without knowing it. She said, Show it's that dreadful murder. I dream about it most every night myself. Sometimes I dream it's me that done it. Mary said she had been affected much the same way. Sid seemed satisfied. Tom got out of the presents as quick as he plausibly could, and after that he complained of a toothache for a week and tied up his jaws every night. He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching and frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good while at a time, and afterwards slipped the bandage back to its place again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually, and the toothache grew irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to make anything out of Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself. It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his mind. Sid noticed that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries, though it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises. He noticed too, that Tom never acted as a witness, and that was strange, and Sid did not overlook the fact that Tom even showed a marked aversion to these inquests and always avoided them when he could. Sid marveled but said nothing. However, even inquests went out of vogue at last and ceased to torture Tom's conscience. Every day or two during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his opportunity and went to the little grated jail window and smuggled such small comforts through to the murderer as he could get hold of. The jail was a train fafling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge of the village, and no guards were afforded for it. Indeed, it was seldom occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's conscience. The villagers had a strong desire to tar and feather injun Joe and ride him on a rail for body snatching, but so formidable was his character that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead in the matter, so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both of his inquest statements with the fight without confessing the grave robbery that preceded it. Therefore, it was deemed wisest not to try the case in the courts. At present end of chapter eleven, Chapter twelve, The Cat and the Painkiller. One of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret troubles was that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest itself about Becky. Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had struggled with his pride a few days and tried to whistle her down the wind, but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's house nights and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she should die? There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone. There was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away and his bat. There was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to try all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those people who are infatuated with patent medicines and all new fangled methods of producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in these things. When something fresh in this line came out, she was in a fever right away to try it, not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that came handy. She was a subscriber for all the health periodicals and phenomological frauds, and the solemn ignorance they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the rot they contained about ventilation and how to go to bed and how to get up, and what to eat and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing to wear was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her health journals of the current month customarily upset everything they had recommended the month before. She was as simple hearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking with the hell following after. But she never suspected that she was not an angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise to the suffering neighbors. The water treatment was new now, and Tom's low condition was a windfall to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up in the wood shed, and drowned him with a deluge of cold water. Then she scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to Then she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she sweated his soul clean, and the yellow stains of it came through his pores, as Tom said. Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and pale and dejected. She had at hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and plunges, the boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister plasters. She calculated his capacity as she would a JUG's, and filled him up every day with quack curroles. Tom had become indifferent to persecution. By this time. This phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of pain killer for the first time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to painkiller. She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety. For the result, her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again. For the indifference was broken up. The boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest if she had built a fire under him. Tom felt that it was time to wake up. This sort of life might be romantic enough in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit upon that of professing to be fond of pain killer. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight, but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting room floor with it. One day, Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously and begging for a taste. Tom said, don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter, But Peter signified that he did want it, you better make sure, Peter was sure. Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me. But if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self. Peter was agreeable, so Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the painkiller. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower pots, and making general havoc. Next, he rose on his hind feet and pranced around in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again, spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double somersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses. Tom lay on the floor, expiring with laughter, Tom, what on earth ails that cat? I don't know, Aunt gasped the boy. Why I never see anything like it? What did make him act so? Deed? I don't know, Aunt Polly, cats always act so when they're having a good time. They do, do they? There was something in the tone that made Tom apprehensive. Yes'm, that is I believe they do? You do? Yes'm? The old lady was bending down. Tom watching with interest emphasized by anxiety. Too late, he divined her drift. The handle of the tell tale teaspoon was visible under the bed valance. Aunt Polly took it, held it up. Tom winced and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual handle his ear, and cracked his head soundly with her thimble. Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so for? I'd done it out of pity for him, because he hadn't any aunt, hadn't any Aunt, You numskull? What has that got to do with it? Heaps, Because if he'd a had one, she'd a burnt him out herself, she'd a roasted his bowels out of him, thout any more feeling than if he was a human. Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing in a new light. What was cruelty to a cat might be cruelty to a boy too. She began to soften. She felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, and she put her hand on Tom's head and said gently, I was meaning for the best, Tom, and Tom, it did do you good. Tom looked up in her face, with just a perceptible twinkle peeping through his gravity. I know you was meaning for the best, Auntie, and so was I With Peter. It done him good too. I never seen him get around. So since, oh, go along with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again, and you try and see if you can't be a good boy for once, and you needn't take any more medicine. Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange thing had been occurring every day latterly, and now, as usual of late, he hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to be looking everywhere, but whither he really was looking down the road. Presently. Jeff Thatcher how in sight, and Tom's face lighted. He gazed a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom accosted him and led up warily to opportunities for remark about Becky. But the giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last, frocks ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into their dumps. He entered the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock passed in at the gate, and Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next instant he was out and going on like an Indian, yelling and laughing and chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb throwing hand springs, standing on his head, doing all the heroic things he could conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out all the while to see if Becky Thatcher was noticing. But she seemed to be unconscious of it all. She never looked. Could it be possible that she was not aware that he was there? He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity. Came war whooping around, snatched a body's cap, hurled it to the roof of the schoolhouse, broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every direction, and fell, sprawling himself under Becky's nose, almost upsetting her. And she turned with her nose in the air, and he heard her say, humph, some people think they're mighty smart, always showing off. Tom's cheeks burned, he gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed and crestfallen. End of chapter twelve.