the other that of Percy Driscoll.
On his deathbed Driscoll set Roxy free and delivered his idolized
ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother, the judge,
and his wife. Those childless people were glad to get him.
Childless people are not difficult to please.
Judge Driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month before,
and bought Chambers. He had heard that Tom had been trying to get
his father to sell the boy down the river, and he wanted to prevent
the scandal–for public sentiment did not approve of that way of treating
family servants for light cause or for no cause.
Percy Driscoll had worn himself out in trying to save his great
speculative landed estate, and had died without succeeding.
He was hardly in his grave before the boom collapsed and left his
envied young devil of an heir a pauper. But that was nothing; his uncle
told him he should be his heir and have all his fortune when he died;
so Tom was comforted.
Roxy had no home now; so she resolved to go around and say good-by to
her friends and then clear out and see the world–that is to say,
she would go chambermaiding on a steamboat, the darling ambition of her
race and sex.
Her last call was on the black giant, Jasper. She found him chopping
Pudd’nhead Wilson’s winter provision of wood.
Wilson was chatting with him when Roxy arrived. He asked her how she
could bear to go off chambermaiding and leave her boys; and chaffingly
offered to copy off a series of their fingerprints, reaching up to their
twelfth year, for her to remember them by; but she sobered in a moment,
wondering if he suspected anything; then she said she believed she
didn’t want them. Wilson said to himself, “The drop of black blood in
her is superstitious; she thinks there’s some devilry, some witch business
about my glass mystery somewhere; she used to come here with an old
horseshoe in her hand; it could have been an accident, but I doubt it.”
CHAPTER 5
The Twins Thrill Dawson’s Landing
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond;
cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Remark of Dr. Baldwin’s, concerning upstarts: We don’t care
to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Mrs. York Driscoll enjoyed two years of bliss with that prize,
Tom–bliss that was troubled a little at times, it is true,
but bliss nevertheless; then she died, and her husband and his
childless sister, Mrs. Pratt, continued this bliss-business at the
old stand. Tom was petted and indulged and spoiled to his entire
content–or nearly that. This went on till he was nineteen,
then he was sent to Yale. He went handsomely equipped with “conditions,”
but otherwise he was not an object of distinction there.
He remained at Yale two years, and then threw up the struggle.
He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had lost his
surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and smooth, now;
he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given
to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a good-natured
semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him from getting
into trouble. He was as indolent as ever and showed no very strenuous
desire to hunt up an occupation. People argued from this that he
preferred to be supported by his uncle until his uncle’s shoes should
become vacant. He brought back one or two new habits with him,
one of which he rather openly practiced–tippling–but concealed another,
which was gambling. It would not do to gamble where his uncle could
hear of it; he knew that quite well.
Tom’s Eastern polish was not popular among the young people.
They could have endured it, perhaps, if Tom had stopped there;
but he wore gloves, and that they couldn’t stand, and wouldn’t;
so he was mainly without society. He brought home with him a
suit of clothes of such exquisite style and cut in fashion–
Eastern fashion, city fashion–that it filled everybody with anguish
and was regarded as a peculiarly wanton affront. He enjoyed the