Mitch Miller Part 25

"Don't you boys think I'm lecturin' you for huntin' for treasure, or that I want either of you to grow up and be as poor as I am. I don't. I want you to have sense and provide for yourselves; Lincoln did that; he really had plenty after he got fairly started. But on the other hand, gold as gold I hate, and I see it getting power in this country. Why, it has it now. Look at Lincoln's face, what do you think he'd think of what's happened since the war--the robbery, ruin and conquest of the South, the money grabbing and privilege grabbing at the North, the money deals in New York, the money scandals everywhere--the treasure-hunting everywhere--and not a big man left in the country; none of the old, fine characters left who built their lives on foundations of wisdom and service and makin' the country better--none of these left to come forward and take the country out of the hands of these vultures, wolves, hyenas. And what are we going to have? Is money goin' to be the master in this country, or is man goin' to be? I hate it--I hate it as Lincoln hated it when he asked whether the dollar or the man should be put first. And I hate it because it is brainless, spiritless. It cares for nothing but itself. It is a snake that swallows and sleeps and wakes to eat again. It is a despot; it is without love, genius, morality. It is against people, against G.o.d, against the country. It is as wicked as Nero, as gluttonous as a cormorant; and it makes cowards, slaves, lick-spittles of some of the best of men. In this country, intended to be of free men, where men could grow and come to the best that is in them, already we find these laws and principles mocked--by what? By gold, by riches; and we find talented men and good men compelled to step aside for rich men; and rich men held higher than good and useful lawyers, preachers or anything else. Well, there's Lincoln: and if never again in the history of this country a rail-splitter, a boy who worked up from nothing with his hands and his mind, comes to rulers.h.i.+p, still there's Lincoln, on whom no rich man could frown; and no big-bellied capitalist could patronize or ignore or make step aside. Why, it's great--it makes me happy, it gives me hope. And I can see for ages and ages the face of Lincoln on books, on coins, on monuments; until some day his face will be the symbol of the United States of America, when the United States of America has rotted into the manure piles of history with Tyre and Babylon, as it will if it doesn't turn back and be what Lincoln was: a man who worked and thought, and whose idea was to have a free field, just laws, and a democracy where to make a man and not make a dollar is the first consideration."

And then Mr. Miller said: "Yes, this is a great monument and Lincoln was a great man. You see when all the sap-heads and poets down in New England and all over was hollerin' for n.i.g.g.e.r equality and to give the n.i.g.g.e.r a vote and to marry him, and give him the same right as anybody, Lincoln just kept cool; and he didn't even emanc.i.p.ate the n.i.g.g.e.r until he had to in order to win the war. It was to win the war, understand. He wasn't swept off his feet by anybody, orators or poets or yawpers--n.o.body. But you'll see when you grow up what the difference is between not havin' the n.i.g.g.e.r for a slave and allowin' him to vote and marry you; and you'll see that what Lincoln said when he went over the country debatin' with Douglas, speakin' at Havana, and right here in Springfield and at Petersburg, too, he said to the last and acted on to the last. It was after the war and after Lincoln was dead that these here snifflers and scalawags got into power and pushed it over until they gave the n.i.g.g.e.r the vote and all that. And if this country goes to pieces because the good breeds have been killed off and die off, and the country is run by the riff-raff, then Lincoln, say five hundred years from now, will stand greater than he is to-day, unless the world can then see that the n.i.g.g.e.r should have been kept a slave, so as to let the wise and the intelligent have time to think better and work better for the good of the country. For, boys, you can put it down that a country ain't good that is run on the principle of countin' noses, and lettin' everybody have a say just because he walks on two legs and can talk instead of barkin' or waggin' his tail." And so Mr. Miller went on.

Then Mr. Miller said d.a.m.n, or that something could be "d.a.m.ned." And Mitch says, "Pa, did you know you swore?" And Mr. Miller says: "I shouldn't have, and don't you follow my example. But sometimes I get so mad about the country."

So we had seen the monument and walked away; and when we got a long way from it, we turned around and looked at it for the last.

Then Mr. Miller said he was glad he was out of the church, that he had tried to do certain things, but they wouldn't let him, and kept him in a groove. And now he was going to sell atlases and geographies, and be a free man, and maybe write a book. And he said: "The idea seems to be that goodness, spirituality, is church. It isn't, and it never was; it wasn't when the Savior came; He found goodness and spirituality in a lot of things, in a free life, in the freedom of out-doors, and not in the synagogues. Now, boys, believe in the Bible, in the Savior--I mean that; but don't let that belief make you into a members.h.i.+p with those who live for denial, for observation of injunctions, for abstinence from life, more or less, for solemnity, for religion as business, and business as religion, and religion for business. This is not goodness--not spirituality. Lincoln was good and spiritual--he believed in the mind and he used it. Wisdom, beauty, play, adventure, friends.h.i.+p, love, fights for the right, and for your rights, travel, everything, anything that keeps the mind going; and kindness, generosity, hospitality, laughter, trips down the Mississippi, making cities beautiful and clean, having fun,--all these things are spirituality and goodness. They are religion--they are the religion of the Savior. They will make America; and they ought to be Americanism."

So Mr. Miller went on. I can't remember half he said, but it was plain he was worked up. Losin' his church or somethin' had set his thoughts free; and everything considered, I think he wanted to give us some ideas about things. And so after lookin' at Linkern's home, a frame house, not very big, not fine, but a good house; and lookin' at the furniture and things he had, we took the train back to Petersburg.

CHAPTER XXVIII

I could see plainer and plainer that I was losin' Mitch. There was somethin' about having this business together of huntin' for treasure that kept us chums; and now that was over and if we didn't get something else, where would we end up? Mitch said that the trip to Springfield had cured him of being mad at his pa for takin' us to Hannibal to see Tom Sawyer the butcher. And he said: "Suppose you was at Old Salem fis.h.i.+n'

and you had a can of worms for bait, or thought you had, and you was really out of worms. Which would be better, to set there and think you had bait and go on believin' that until you began to catch fish and needed lots of bait and found you hadn't none, or to find out you hadn't none all of a sudden and then go get some in time for the fis.h.i.+n' that got good? And so, wasn't it better to find out that Tom Sawyer didn't live and find it out suddenly than to go along being fooled until something serious happened, and be a fool to the end, and maybe lose some good chance?" What I wanted to tell Mitch was that our case was real, that we had found treasure and would get it on Christmas; but I had promised my pa I wouldn't tell, and I didn't. I only said to Mitch: "We're just as sure to get treasure as the sun s.h.i.+nes." And Mitch said: "Maybe, but not real treasure, not money, not jewels, or things like that."

As I said, I was surely losin' Mitch, for he was goin' considerable now with Charley King and George Heigold. I don't know what he found with them to like; only they were older and as it turned out, he did things with them that he and I never did. I tried my best to hold on to him, but couldn't. Sometimes I'd think I wasn't losin' him, that it was just fancy. Just the same things wasn't the same. The Miller family wasn't the same; there wasn't as much fun up there; and now Mr. Miller was away a good deal selling atlases; and sometimes when I was there of evenings Mrs. Miller would be sittin' alone, no one reading to her, and the girls kind of walkin' the rooms, and Mitch a good deal away of evenings, not home like he always was before.

You see I had a pony all the time; but pa loaned him here and there, and sometimes took him out to pasture across the river to a farmer's and that's how it was I didn't ride him sometimes out to the farm. But now he was in the barn, and as I didn't have Mitch, I rode about the country by myself. And once went out to the farm for a few hours, comin' back to town in a gallop all the way, to see how quick I could make it.

Finally I thought I'd go out to the farm on my pony and stay for a few days, and go camping with my uncle over to Blue Lake. I was goin' the next day and was out under the oak tree when Mitch came along. He seemed stronger, bigger, more like Charley King and George Heigold; there was somethin' about him kind of hard. He seemed as if he'd fight easier; he was quick to talk back, he seemed to be learnin' about things I didn't know. There was a different look in his eyes. He was changed. That's all I know. Mitch set down in the gra.s.s and began to make traps out of timothy to catch crickets. Somebody had taught him that. His face began to change. He began to look friendlier and like himself again, except he looked older and like he knew more. And then he began to talk:

"Skeet," he says, "I'm not Tom Sawyer, and I never was; never any more than you was Huckleberry Finn. I know who I am now. Do you?"

"No," says I. "Who are you?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Skeet--I'm Hamlet."

"Hamlet--who was he?"

"Well," says Mitch, "he was a prince."

"Well, you ain't," says I.

"No, I ain't. But Hamlet could be just like me and not be the preacher's son; and because he wasn't wouldn't make him different. Yes, sir, I'm Hamlet. I've read the play and thought about it a lot. And I know now who I am. And you, Skeet, are Horatio."

"Who was he?" says I.

"He was Hamlet's friend, just as you are my friend. And as far as that goes, there was never any persons more alike in this world than you and Horatio. You are good and steady, and don't change, and you are a good friend, you have got sense, and you have no troubles of your own, and so you can listen to mine, as Horatio listened to Hamlet's."

"What troubles have you?" says I.

"Lots," says Mitch, "that is general troubles--of course Zueline and this here court worries. I've got to testify again. I'm tangled up just like Hamlet was, and I want to get away like he did, and I can't. And it teaches me that it ain't because I'm a boy that I can't get away, for Hamlet was a man and he couldn't. He was getting old, most thirty, and he couldn't do any more with his life than I can with mine--not as much, maybe."

"And yet you say he was a prince."

"Yes, but what difference did that make? Did you ever see a chip get caught in a little shallow in the river in the reeds; and then see it get out of the shallow by the current changing or somethin', and then see it start down the river all gay and free, and run into some brush floatin', or get thrown against the logs to one side of the dam and held there? Well, Hamlet was a prince, and he was just a chip caught by the dam and couldn't budge and kept tryin' to and couldn't. This is what my pa says the play means; but also I can see it for myself. I keep readin'

it and it gets clearer. And pa says it will never make any difference how old I get, the play will be wonderfuler and wonderfuler, and is to him; and that finally I'll wonder how any man could ever write such a thing."

"But didn't Shakespeare--he wrote it, didn't he?--get it out of some history?"

"Of course," says Mitch, "and didn't Linkern live, and right here in this town, as you might say? But suppose somebody could write up Linkern and use the very things that Linkern did and said, not as we hear 'em around here, wonderful as they are; but write 'em up so that you'd know what Linkern really was and why and all about it. For that matter, take Doc Lyon. We know he was a lunatic, but why, and what for, and just what it means to be a lunatic, I don't know and no one will know until some Shakespeare writes him up. For that matter, some folks think that Hamlet was a lunatic."

"Well, you ain't, Mitch," says I.

"No more than Hamlet was. He just was troubled and his mind kept workin', and that's me. But what would you say if I was the son of Joe Rainey and Mrs. Rainey?"

"How do you mean?" says I.

"Well, suppose I was their son, and suppose I knew that Mrs. Rainey, my mother, wanted Joe Rainey, my father, dead, and put it into Temple Scott's mind to kill my father, Joe Rainey; and then Temple Scott did kill him, and then Mrs. Rainey, my mother, put a pistol down so as to make it seem that my father, Joe Rainey, had carried a pistol. Suppose I was their son and was up in the tree and saw what I saw, what would I do?"

"Then you'd have to testify," said I.

"You don't know what you're sayin', Skeet. You don't see that I love my father, and he's been murdered; and I love my mother, and she has really murdered him. And if I testify against my mother, I get her hanged; and if I don't testify against her, then I wrong my father that I love; my mother goes free, and sometimes I hate her, because she is free, and my father has been robbed of his life, and I do nothing to punish her and Temple Scott for taking his life away. That's the worst of it; or maybe it's just as bad because I'm tangled in law and can't do what I want to do--can't be free to hunt treasure, we'll say, or do what I want to.

Don't you see what a fix I'm in? Then suppose with findin' out what my mother is, the whole world changes for me--I get suspicious of my girl, and won't marry her and everything goes bad and finally I get killed myself, after killin' Temple Scott who's married my mother, we'll say, and in a way cause my mother to die too."

"Well, of course all this can't be," says I, "for you're not the Raineys' son;--they're both dead anyway; and Temple Scott will probably be hanged, and no one will kill you--you'll grow up and get married--not to Zueline--"

"No," says Mitch, "never to her. For I ain't suspicious of her--I'm just done with her, just like Hamlet was done with Ophelia. I know her as he knew Ophelia, though she's different from Ophelia. She's cold, Skeet, and never understood me. I see that now. If she had, she'd never let her mother keep her away from me. Nothin' can keep a girl away from you that loves you. And I'll tell you something right now. Not long ago, I was walkin' by her house on purpose and she came out goin' somewhere. I tried to talk to her, and tell her that we could meet sometimes, maybe down at Fillmore Springs, or take a little walk at dusk or early evening; and that I wouldn't bother her much, only we'd understand that by and by we'd get married and be together forever, and I'd go away happy if I could have that hope. Well, she kind of turned on me and said 'no,' and hurried on. And, Skeet, when I saw that, when I saw that it was her as well as her ma that wanted me away, and meant to keep away from me--something kind of froze through me--or burned maybe, and then froze--my heart got like a big stone, and I could see it just as if it had been scalt and then turned white and s.h.i.+ny and kind of numb like my foot I cut in two. I began to laugh and since then I have been changed; and I'll never be the same again. My ma said it was foolish, that I was just a little boy and I'd grow up and it would all be forgotten. But I know better--I'm Hamlet--and I don't forget, and I never will. Do you remember one time when you and I was out to your grandpa's farm and Willie Wallace was settin' out trees?"

I said "yes."

"Well," says Mitch, "Willie Wallace that time cut a gash in a tree with the pruner while handlin' it and settin' it out. And he says to us, 'That tree will never get over that. By and by it will be a big scar, growin' big as the tree grows big, and grown over, maybe, but still a scar; or worse, it may stay open more or less and rain and frost will get in, and insects, and after a while it will be a great rotten place, a hole for a snake or a rat, or maybe a bird.' Well, pa says that Linkern lost Anne Rutledge and that he thinks Linkern's beautiful talk and wonderful words came from losin' Anne Rutledge. I don't quite see how--but if it did, then if a bird gets into the hole in the tree, that's a sign that you say somethin' or write somethin' because you've been gashed, just as pa says that Shakespeare wrote his wonderfulest plays and sonnets because he'd lost a woman. And sometimes I think I'm goin' to write something. I keep hearin' music all the time, and I try to write words down, but they don't mean anything; they are silly; so I tear 'em up."

[Ill.u.s.tration: La Belle Dame sans Merci]

So Mitch went on and he worried me. And I says: "Mitch, I'm goin' to say somethin' to you! Do you like me as much as you used to?"

"Every bit," says he. "Why?"

"Because," says I, "you don't always act the same. And besides, you keep goin' with Charley King and George Heigold--and--and--"

"And what?" says Mitch.

"And--I was afraid you liked 'em better'n me."

"Why," says Mitch, "them two boys is just grave diggers compared to you--or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern--while you are Horatio all the time."

He explained to me what he meant by this, which was that in "Hamlet,"

Hamlet talked to grave diggers and to two men named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, without givin' a snap for 'em compared to Horatio.

Then I said, "I'm goin' out to the farm to-morrow. School will begin in about three weeks. I'm goin' out on my pony, and you can ride behind.

And you'd better come. We'll have a lot of fun, and my uncle is goin' to take me campin' to Blue Lake." So Mitch said he'd go; and after a bit he began to repeat something he'd committed to memory. He was settin' in the gra.s.s, lookin' up at me, and his voice was so wonderful and sweet, sayin' these words:

O, what can ail thee, knight at arms, Alone and palely loitering?