CHAPTER XXXI
MARCO

WE strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion
now, and talked. We must dispose of about
the amount of time it ought to take to go to the little
hamlet of Abblasoure and put justice on the track of
those murderers and get back home again. And mean-
time I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled
yet, never lost its novelty for me since I had been in
Arthur's kingdom: the behavior -- born of nice and
exact subdivisions of caste -- of chance passers-by
toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who
trudged along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat
washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply
reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the
small farmer and the free mechanic he was cordial and
gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a counte-
nance respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the
air -- he couldn't even see him. Well, there are times
when one would like to hang the whole human race
and finish the farce.

Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of
half-naked boys and girls came tearing out of the
woods, scared and shrieking. The eldest among them
were not more than twelve or fourteen years old.
They implored help, but they were so beside them-
selves that we couldn't make out what the matter was.
However, we plunged into the wood, they skurrying in
the lead, and the trouble was quickly revealed: they
had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, and he was
kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to
death. We rescued him, and fetched him around. It
was some more human nature; the admiring little folk
imitating their elders; they were playing mob, and
had achieved a success which promised to be a good
deal more serious than they had bargained for.

It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to
put in the time very well. I made various acquaintance-
ships, and in my quality of stranger was able to ask as
many questions as I wanted to. A thing which natur-
ally interested me, as a statesman, was the matter of
wages. I picked up what I could under that head
during the afternoon. A man who hasn't had much
experience, and doesn't think, is apt to measure a
nation's prosperity or lack of prosperity by the mere
size of the prevailing wages; if the wages be high, the
nation is prosperous; if low, it isn't. Which is an
error. It isn't what sum you get, it's how much you
can buy with it, that's the important thing; and it's
that that tells whether your wages are high in fact or
only high in name. I could remember how it was in
the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth cen-
tury. In the North a carpenter got three dollars a
day, gold valuation; in the South he got fifty -- pay-
able in Confederate shinplasters worth a dollar a
bushel. In the North a suit of overalls cost three
dollars -- a day's wages; in the South it cost seventy-
five -- which was two days' wages. Other things were
in proportion. Consequently, wages were twice as
high in the North as they were in the South, because
the one wage had that much more purchasing power
than the other had.

Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet
and a thing that gratified me a good deal was to find
our new coins in circulation -- lots of milrays, lots of
mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels, and some
silver; all this among the artisans and commonalty
generally; yes, and even some gold -- but that was at
the bank, that is to say, the goldsmith's. I dropped
in there while Marco, the son of Marco, was haggling
with a shopkeeper over a quarter of a pound of salt,
and asked for change for a twenty-dollar gold piece.
They furnished it -- that is, after they had chewed the
piece, and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it,
and asked me where I got it, and who I was, and
where I was from, and where I was going to, and
when I expected to get there, and perhaps a couple of
hundred more questions; and when they got aground,
I went right on and furnished them a lot of informa-
tion voluntarily; told them I owned a dog, and his
name was Watch, and my first wife was a Free Will
Baptist, and her grandfather was a Prohibitionist, and
I used to know a man who had two thumbs on each
hand and a wart on the inside of his upper lip, and
died in the hope of a glorious resurrection, and so on,
and so on, and so on, till even that hungry village
questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade
put out; but he had to respect a man of my financial
strength, and so he didn't give me any lip, but I
noticed he took it out of his underlings, which was a
perfectly natural thing to do. Yes, they changed my
twenty, but I judged it strained the bank a little, which
was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as
walking into a paltry village store in the nineteenth
century and requiring the boss of it to change a two
thousand-dollar bill for you all of a sudden. He could
do it, maybe; but at the same time he would wonder
how a small farmer happened to be carrying so much
money around in his pocket; which was probably this
goldsmith's thought, too; for he followed me to
the door and stood there gazing after me with reverent
admiration.

Our new money was not only handsomely circulating,
but its language was already glibly in use; that is to
say, people had dropped the names of the former
moneys, and spoke of things as being worth so many
dollars or cents or mills or milrays now. It was very
gratifying. We were progressing, that was sure.

I got to know several master mechanics, but about
the most interesting fellow among them was the black-
smith, Dowley. He was a live man and a brisk talker,
and had two journeymen and three apprentices, and was
doing a raging business. In fact, he was getting rich,
hand over fist, and was vastly respected. Marco was
very proud of having such a man for a friend. He
had taken me there ostensibly to let me see the big
establishment which bought so much of his charcoal,
but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar
terms he was on with this great man. Dowley and I
fraternized at once; I had had just such picked men,
splendid fellows, under me in the Colt Arms Factory.
I was bound to see more of him, so I invited him to
come out to Marco's Sunday, and dine with us.
Marco was appalled, and held his breath; and when
the grandee accepted, he was so grateful that he almost
forgot to be astonished at the condescension.

Marco's joy was exuberant -- but only for a mo-
ment; then he grew thoughtful, then sad; and when
he heard me tell Dowley I should have Dickon, the
boss mason, and Smug, the boss wheelwright, out
there, too, the coal-dust on his face turned to chalk,
and he lost his grip. But I knew what was the matter
with him; it was the expense. He saw ruin before
him; he judged that his financial days were numbered.
However, on our way to invite the others, I said:

"You must allow me to have these friends come;
and you must also allow me to pay the costs."

His face cleared, and he said with spirit:

"But not all of it, not all of it. Ye cannot well
bear a burden like to this alone."

I stopped him, and said:

"Now let's understand each other on the spot, old
friend. I am only a farm bailiff, it is true; but I am
not poor, nevertheless. I have been very fortunate
this year -- you would be astonished to know how I
have thriven. I tell you the honest truth when I say
I could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like
this and never care THAT for the expense!" and I
snapped my fingers. I could see myself rise a foot at
a time in Marco's estimation, and when I fetched out
those last words I was become a very tower for style
and altitude. "So you see, you must let me have my
way. You can't contribute a cent to this orgy, that's SETTLED."

"It's grand and good of you --"

"No, it isn't. You've opened your house to Jones
and me in the most generous way; Jones was remark-
ing upon it to-day, just before you came back from
the village; for although he wouldn't be likely to say
such a thing to you -- because Jones isn't a talker, and
is diffident in society -- he has a good heart and a
grateful, and knows how to appreciate it when he is
well treated; yes, you and your wife have been very
hospitable toward us --"

"Ah, brother, 'tis nothing -- SUCH hospitality!"

"But it IS something; the best a man has, freely
given, is always something, and is as good as a prince
can do, and ranks right along beside it -- for even a
prince can but do his best. And so we'll shop around
and get up this layout now, and don't you worry about
the expense. I'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever
was born. Why, do you know, sometimes in a single
week I spend -- but never mind about that -- you'd
never believe it anyway."

And so we went gadding along, dropping in here
and there, pricing things, and gossiping with the shop-
keepers about the riot, and now and then running
across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of
shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families
whose homes had been taken from them and their
parents butchered or hanged. The raiment of Marco
and his wife was of coarse tow-linen and linsey-woolsey
respectively, and resembled township maps, it being
made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been
added, township by township, in the course of five or
six years, until hardly a hand's-breadth of the original
garments was surviving and present. Now I wanted
to fit these people out with new suits, on account of
that swell company, and I didn't know just how to get
at it -- with delicacy, until at last it struck me that as I
had already been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude
for the king, it would be just the thing to back it up
with evidence of a substantial sort; so I said:

"And Marco, there's another thing which you must
permit -- out of kindness for Jones -- because you
wouldn't want to offend him. He was very anxious
to testify his appreciation in some way, but he is so
diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he
begged me to buy some little things and give them to
you and Dame Phyllis and let him pay for them with-
out your ever knowing they came from him -- you
know how a delicate person feels about that sort of
thing -- and so I said I would, and we would keep
mum. Well, his idea was, a new outfit of clothes for
you both --"

"Oh, it is wastefulness! It may not be, brother, it
may not be. Consider the vastness of the sum --"

"Hang the vastness of the sum! Try to keep quiet
for a moment, and see how it would seem; a body
can't get in a word edgeways, you talk so much. You
ought to cure that, Marco; it isn't good form, you
know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it.
Yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff
-- and don't forget to remember to not let on to Jones
that you know he had anything to do with it. You
can't think how curiously sensitive and proud he is.
He's a farmer -- pretty fairly well-to-do farmer -- an
I'm his bailiff; BUT -- the imagination of that man!
Why, sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to
blowing off, you'd think he was one of the swells of
the earth; and you might listen to him a hundred
years and never take him for a farmer -- especially if
he talked agriculture. He THINKS he's a Sheol of a
farmer; thinks he's old Grayback from Wayback; but
between you and me privately he don't know as much
about farming as he does about running a kingdom --
still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop your
underjaw and listen, the same as if you had never
heard such incredible wisdom in all your life before,
and were afraid you might die before you got enough
of it. That will please Jones."

It tickled Marco to the marrow to hear about such
an odd character; but it also prepared him for acci-
dents; and in my experience when you travel with a
king who is letting on to be something else and can't
remember it more than about half the time, you can't
take too many precautions.

This was the best store we had come across yet; it
had everything in it, in small quantities, from anvils
and drygoods all the way down to fish and pinchbeck
jewelry. I concluded I would bunch my whole invoice
right here, and not go pricing around any more. So
I got rid of Marco, by sending him off to invite the
mason and the wheelwright, which left the field free to
me. For I never care to do a thing in a quiet way;
it's got to be theatrical or I don't take any interest in
it. I showed up money enough, in a careless way, to
corral the shopkeeper's respect, and then I wrote down
a list of the things I wanted, and handed it to him to
see if he could read it. He could, and was proud to
show that he could. He said he had been educated by
a priest, and could both read and write. He ran it
through, and remarked with satisfaction that it was a
pretty heavy bill. Well, and so it was, for a little
concern like that. I was not only providing a swell
dinner, but some odds and ends of extras. I ordered
that the things be carted out and delivered at the
dwelling of Marco, the son of Marco, by Saturday
evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time Sunday.
He said I could depend upon his promptness and exacti-
tude, it was the rule of the house. He also observed
that he would throw in a couple of miller-guns for the
Marcos gratis -- that everybody was using them now.
He had a mighty opinion of that clever device. I said:

"And please fill them up to the middle mark, too;
and add that to the bill."

He would, with pleasure. He filled them, and I
took them with me. I couldn't venture to tell him
that the miller-gun was a little invention of my own,
and that I had officially ordered that every shopkeeper
in the kingdom keep them on hand and sell them at
government price -- which was the merest trifle, and
the shopkeeper got that, not the government. We
furnished them for nothing.

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.

****

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