King Arthur Collection (232 page)

The king had hardly missed us when we got back at nightfall.  He had early dropped again into his dream of a grand invasion of Gaul with the whole strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoon had slipped away without his ever coming to himself again.

CHAPTER XXXII. DOWLEY'S HUMILIATION
 

Well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Saturday afternoon, I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting.  They were sure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves as accessories to this bankruptcy.  You see, in addition to the dinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, I had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family: for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tables of their class as was ice-cream to a hermit's; also a sizeable deal dinner-table; also two entire pounds of salt, which was another piece of extravagance in those people's eyes; also crockery, stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on.  I instructed the Marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to give me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little.  Concerning the new clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were up and down, all night, to see if it wasn't nearly daylight, so that they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much as an hour before dawn was due.  Then their pleasure—not to say delirium—was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of it paid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered. The king had slept just as usual—like the dead.  The Marcos could not thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but they tried every way they could think of to make him see how grateful they were.  Which all went for nothing:  he didn't notice any change.

It turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which is just a June day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to be out of doors.  Toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembled under a great tree and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances. Even the king's reserve melted a little, though it was some little trouble to him to adjust himself to the name of Jones along at first.  I had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer; but I had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the thing stand at that, and not elaborate it any.  Because he was just the kind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing like that if you didn't warn him, his tongue was so handy, and his spirit so willing, and his information so uncertain.

Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and then adroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text and himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him hum.  Self-made man, you know.  They know how to talk.  They do deserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true; and they are among the very first to find it out, too.  He told how he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest master lived; how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hours long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade—or "mystery" as Dowley called it.  That was his first great rise, his first gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn't yet speak of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a gilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common human being.  He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but on his graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linens and made him feel unspeakably rich and fine.

"I remember me of that day!" the wheelwright sang out, with enthusiasm.

"And I likewise!" cried the mason.  "I would not believe they were thine own; in faith I could not."

"Nor other!" shouted Dowley, with sparkling eyes.  "I was like to lose my character, the neighbors wending I had mayhap been stealing.  It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth not days like that."

Yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and always had a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it white bread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak. And in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter.

"And now consider what is come to pass," said he, impressively. "Two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table." He made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added—"and eight times salt meat."

"It is even true," said the wheelwright, with bated breath.

"I know it of mine own knowledge," said the mason, in the same reverent fashion.

"On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year," added the master smith, with solemnity.  "I leave it to your own consciences, friends, if this is not also true?"

"By my head, yes," cried the mason.

"I can testify it—and I do," said the wheelwright.

"And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment is."  He waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank and unhampered freedom of speech, and added:  "Speak as ye are moved; speak as ye would speak; an I were not here."

"Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeit your family is but three," said the wheelwright, with deep respect.

"And six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewter to eat and drink from withal," said the mason, impressively.  "And I say it as knowing God is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth."

"Now ye know what manner of man I am, brother Jones," said the smith, with a fine and friendly condescension, "and doubtless ye would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect and but sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality be assured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye well ye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but is willing to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrieth a right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest. And in token of it, here is my hand; and I say with my own mouth we are equals—equals"—and he smiled around on the company with the satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and gracious thing and is quite well aware of it.

The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and let go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of which had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural to one who was being called upon by greatness.

The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and a sumptuous article of deal.  But the surprise rose higher still when the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore, but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it. That was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs, and it hit him hard; you could see it.  But Marco was in Paradise; you could see that, too.  Then the dame brought two fine new stools—whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes of every guest.  Then she brought two more—as calmly as she could. Sensation again—with awed murmurs.  Again she brought two—walking on air, she was so proud.  The guests were petrified, and the mason muttered:

"There is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence."

As the dame turned away, Marco couldn't help slapping on the climax while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a languid composure but was a poor imitation of it:

"These suffice; leave the rest."

So there were more yet!  It was a fine effect.  I couldn't have played the hand better myself.

From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped "Oh's" and "Ah's," and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. She fetched crockery—new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white wheaten bread.  Take it by and large, that spread laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had seen before.  And while they sat there just simply stupefied with wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had come to collect.

"That's all right," I said, indifferently.  "What is the amount? give us the items."

Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate waves of terror and admiration surged over Marco's:

He ceased.  There was a pale and awful silence.  Not a limb stirred. Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath.

"Is that all?" I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness.

"All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head hight sundries.  If it would like you, I will sepa—"

"It is of no consequence," I said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference; "give me the grand total, please."

The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said:

"Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!"

The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of:

"God be with us in the day of disaster!"

The clerk hastened to say:

"My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you—"

I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money and tossed four dollars on to the table.  Ah, you should have seen them stare!

The clerk was astonished and charmed.  He asked me to retain one of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and—I interrupted:

"What, and fetch back nine cents?  Nonsense!  Take the whole. Keep the change."

There was an amazed murmur to this effect:

"Verily this being is
made
of money!  He throweth it away even as if it were dirt."

The blacksmith was a crushed man.

The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune.  I said to Marco and his wife:

"Good folk, here is a little trifle for you"—handing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:

"Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is.  Come, fall to."

Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy.  I don't know that I ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular effects out of the materials available.  The blacksmith—well, he was simply mashed.  Land! I wouldn't have felt what that man was feeling, for anything in the world.  Here he had been blowing and bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white bread every Sunday the year round—all for a family of three; the entire cost for the year not above 69.2.6 (sixty-nine cents, two mills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along a man who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and not only that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such small sums.  Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up and collapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that's been stepped on by a cow.

CHAPTER XXXIII. SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY
 

However, I made a dead set at him, and before the first third of the dinner was reached, I had him happy again.  It was easy to do—in a country of ranks and castes.  You see, in a country where they have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he is only part of a man, he can't ever get his full growth.  You prove your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and that's the end of it—he knuckles down.  You can't insult him after that.  No, I don't mean quite that; of course you
can
insult him, I only mean it's difficult; and so, unless you've got a lot of useless time on your hands it doesn't pay to try.  I had the smith's reverence now, because I was apparently immensely prosperous and rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some little gimcrack title of nobility.  And not only his, but any commoner's in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt in all three. This was to remain so, as long as England should exist in the earth.  With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored the creators of this world—after God—Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell.

The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness and went off to take a nap.  Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placed the beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters near and dear to the hearts of our sort—business and wages, of course.  At a first glance, things appeared to be exceeding prosperous in this little tributary kingdom—whose lord was King Bagdemagus—as compared with the state of things in my own region.  They had the "protection" system in full force here, whereas we were working along down toward free-trade, by easy stages, and were now about half way.  Before long, Dowley and I were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening.  Dowley warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and they did have something of that look:

"In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?"

"Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent."

The smith's face beamed with joy.  He said:

"With us they are allowed the double of it!  And what may a mechanic get—carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, and the like?"

"On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day."

"Ho-ho!  With us they are allowed a hundred!  With us any good mechanic is allowed a cent a day!  I count out the tailor, but not the others—they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they get more—yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen milrays a day.  I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within the week.  'Rah for protection—to Sheol with free-trade!"

And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst.  But I didn't scare at all.  I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth—drive him
all
in—drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should show above ground.  Here is the way I started in on him.  I asked:

"What do you pay a pound for salt?"

"A hundred milrays."

"We pay forty.  What do you pay for beef and mutton—when you buy it?"  That was a neat hit; it made the color come.

"It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say seventy-five milrays the pound."

"
We
pay thirty-three.  What do you pay for eggs?"

"Fifty milrays the dozen."

"We pay twenty.  What do you pay for beer?"

"It costeth us eight and one-half milrays the pint."

"We get it for four; twenty-five bottles for a cent. What do you pay for wheat?"

"At the rate of nine hundred milrays the bushel."

"We pay four hundred.  What do you pay for a man's tow-linen suit?"

"Thirteen cents."

"We pay six.  What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the laborer or the mechanic?"

"We pay eight cents, four mills."

"Well, observe the difference:  you pay eight cents and four mills, we pay only four cents."  I prepared now to sock it to him.  I said: "Look here, dear friend,
what's become of your high wages you were bragging so about a few minutes ago?
"—and I looked around on the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped up on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his ever noticing that he was being tied at all.  "What's become of those noble high wages of yours?—I seem to have knocked the stuffing all out of them, it appears to me."

But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that is all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he had walked into a trap, didn't discover that he was
in
a trap.  I could have shot him, from sheer vexation.  With cloudy eye and a struggling intellect he fetched this out:

"Marry, I seem not to understand.  It is
proved
that our wages be double thine; how then may it be that thou'st knocked therefrom the stuffing?—an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the first time under grace and providence of God it hath been granted me to hear it."

Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with him and were of his mind—if you might call it mind.  My position was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified more?  However, I must try:

"Why, look here, brother Dowley, don't you see?  Your wages are merely higher than ours in
name
, not in
fact
."

"Hear him!  They are the
double
—ye have confessed it yourself."

"Yes-yes, I don't deny that at all.  But that's got nothing to do with it; the
amount
of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do with it.  The thing is, how much can you
buy
with your wages?—that's the idea.  While it is true that with you a good mechanic is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only about a dollar and seventy-five—"

"There—ye're confessing it again, ye're confessing it again!"

"Confound it, I've never denied it, I tell you!  What I say is this.  With us
half
a dollar buys more than a
dollar
buys with you—and
therefore
it stands to reason and the commonest kind of common-sense, that our wages are
higher
than yours."

He looked dazed, and said, despairingly:

"Verily, I cannot make it out.  Ye've just said ours are the higher, and with the same breath ye take it back."

"Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thing through your head?  Now look here—let me illustrate.  We pay four cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is four mills more than
double
.  What do you allow a laboring woman who works on a farm?"

"Two mills a day."

"Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth of a cent a day; and—"

"Again ye're conf—"

"Wait!  Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'll understand it.  For instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earn her gown, at 2 mills a day—7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers in forty days—two days
short
of 7 weeks.  Your woman has a gown, and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, and two days' wages left, to buy something else with.  There—
now
you understand it!"

He looked—well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most I can say; so did the others.  I waited—to let the thing work.  Dowley spoke at last—and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten away from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet.  He said, with a trifle of hesitancy:

"But—but—ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better than one."

Shucks!  Well, of course, I hated to give it up.  So I chanced another flyer:

"Let us suppose a case.  Suppose one of your journeymen goes out and buys the following articles:

  "1 pound of salt;    1 dozen eggs;    1 dozen pints of beer;    1 bushel of wheat;    1 tow-linen suit;    5 pounds of beef;    5 pounds of mutton.

"The lot will cost him 32 cents.  It takes him 32 working days to earn the money—5 weeks and 2 days.  Let him come to us and work 32 days at
half
the wages; he can buy all those things for a shade under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29 days' work, and he will have about half a week's wages over.  Carry it through the year; he would save nearly a week's wages every two months,
your
man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks' wages in a year, your man not a cent.  
Now
I reckon you understand that 'high wages' and 'low wages' are phrases that don't mean anything in the world until you find out which of them will
buy
the most!"

It was a crusher.

But, alas! it didn't crush.  No, I had to give it up.  What those people valued was
high wages
; it didn't seem to be a matter of any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not.  They stood for "protection," and swore by it, which was reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them into the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages.  I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages had advanced but 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone up 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced 40 per cent. while the cost of living had gone steadily down.  But it didn't do any good.  Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs.

Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat.  Undeserved defeat, but what of that?  That didn't soften the smart any.  And to think of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant country blacksmith!  And I could see that those others were sorry for me—which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers scorching.  Put yourself in my place; feel as mean as I did, as ashamed as I felt—wouldn't
you
have struck below the belt to get even?  Yes, you would; it is simply human nature. Well, that is what I did.  I am not trying to justify it; I'm only saying that I was mad, and
anybody
would have done it.

Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don't plan out a love-tap; no, that isn't my way; as long as I'm going to hit him at all, I'm going to hit him a lifter.  And I don't jump at him all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way business of it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him gradually, so that he never suspects that I'm going to hit him at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he's flat on his back, and he can't tell for the life of him how it all happened.  That is the way I went for brother Dowley.  I started to talking lazy and comfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; and the oldest man in the world couldn't have taken the bearings of my starting place and guessed where I was going to fetch up:

"Boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it; yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement, too.  There are written laws—they perish; but there are also unwritten laws—
they
are eternal.  Take the unwritten law of wages: it says they've got to advance, little by little, straight through the centuries.  And notice how it works.  We know what wages are now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that's the wages of to-day.  We know what the wages were a hundred years ago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that's as far back as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, without a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. Good, so far.  Do we stop there?  No.  We stop looking backward; we face around and apply the law to the future.  My friends, I can tell you what people's wages are going to be at any date in the future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years."

"What, goodman, what!"

"Yes.  In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be allowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6."

"I would't I might die now and live then!" interrupted Smug, the wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye.

"And that isn't all; they'll get their board besides—such as it is: it won't bloat them.  Two hundred and fifty years later—pay attention now—a mechanic's wages will be—mind you, this is law, not guesswork; a mechanic's wages will then be
twenty
cents a day!"