or maybe Wednesday. You understan’?”
Tom answered sullenly: “Yes.”
“En when you gits de new bill o’ sale dat sells me to my own self,
take en send it in de mail to Mr. Pudd’nhead Wilson,
en write on de back dat he’s to keep it tell I come. You understan’?”
“Yes.”
“Dat’s all den. Take yo’ umbreller, en put on yo’ hat.”
“Why?”
“Beca’se you’s gwine to see me home to de wharf. You see dis knife?
I’s toted it aroun’ sence de day I seed dat man en bought dese clo’es en it.
If he ketch me, I’s gwine to kill myself wid it. Now start along,
en go sof’, en lead de way; en if you gives a sign in dis house,
or if anybody comes up to you in de street, I’s gwine to jam it
right into you. Chambers, does you b’lieve me when I says dat?”
“It’s no use to bother me with that question. I know your word’s good.”
“Yes, it’s diff’rent from yo’n! Shet de light out en move along–
here’s de key.”
They were not followed. Tom trembled every time a late
straggler brushed by them on the street, and half expected to
feel the cold steel in his back. Roxy was right at his heels and
always in reach. After tramping a mile they reached a wide
vacancy on the deserted wharves, and in this dark and rainy
desert they parted.
As Tom trudged home his mind was full of dreary thoughts and
wild plans; but at last he said to himself, wearily:
“There is but the one way out. I must follow her plan.
But with a variation–I will not ask for the money and ruin myself;
I will ROB the old skinflint.”
CHAPTER 19
The Prophesy Realized
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a
good example.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is
difference of opinion that makes horse races.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Dawson’s Landing was comfortably finishing its season of
dull repose and waiting patiently for the duel.
Count Luigi was waiting, too; but not patiently, rumor said.
Sunday came, and Luigi insisted on having his challenge conveyed.
Wilson carried it. Judge Driscoll declined to fight with an assassin–
“that is,” he added significantly, “in the field of honor.”
Elsewhere, of course, he would be ready. Wilson tried to
convince him that if he had been present himself when Angelo told
him about the homicide committed by Luigi, he would not have
considered the act discreditable to Luigi; but the obstinate old
man was not to be moved.
Wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure
of his mission. Luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be
that the old gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his
trifling nephew’s evidence in inferences to be of more value than Wilson’s.
But Wilson laughed, and said:
“That is quite simple; that is easily explicable.
I am not his doll–his baby–his infatuation: his nature is.
The judge and his late wife never had any children.
The judge and his wife were past middle age when this treasure
fell into their lap. One must make allowances for a parental instinct
that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years.
It is famished, it is crazed wit hunger by that time, and will be
entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied,
it can’t tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is
measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long,
but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them,
and remains so, through thick and thin. Tom is this old man’s angel;
he is infatuated with him. Tom can persuade him into things which
other people can’t–not all things; I don’t mean that,
but a good many–particularly one class of things: the things that
create or abolish personal partialities or prejudices in the old
man’s mind. The old man liked both of you. Tom conceived a
hatred for you. That was enough; it turned the old man around at once.
The oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground