The Life & Times of Mark Twain - 4 Biographical Works in One Edition. Марк Твен

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ asleep when I finally ventured home. I was very heavyhearted, and full of a sense of disgrace. Pinned to my pillow I found a slip of paper which bore a line that did not lighten my heart, but only made my face burn. It was written in a laboriously disguised hand, and these were its mocking terms:

      “You probably couldn’t have played bear, but you played bare very well — oh, very very well!”

      We think boys are rude, unsensitive animals, but it is not so in all cases. Each boy has one or two sensitive spots, and if you can find out where they are located you have only to touch them and you can scorch him as with fire. I suffered miserably over that episode. I expected that the facts would be all over the village in the morning, but it was not so. The secret remained confined to the two girls and Sandy and me. That was some appeasement of my pain, but it was far from sufficient — the main trouble remained: I was under four mocking eyes, and it might as well have been a thousand, for I suspected all girls’ eyes of being the ones I so dreaded. During several weeks I could not look any young lady in the face; I dropped my eyes in confusion when any one of them smiled upon me and gave me greeting; and I said to myself, “That is one of them,” and got quickly away. Of course I was meeting the right girls everywhere, but if they ever let slip any betraying sign I was not bright enough to catch it. When I left Hannibal four years later, the secret was still a secret; I had never guessed those girls out, and was no longer expecting to do it. Nor wanting to, either.

      One of the dearest and prettiest girls in the village at the time of my mishap was one whom I will call Mary Wilson, because that was not her name. She was twenty years old; she was dainty and sweet, peach-bloomy and exquisite, gracious and lovely in character, and I stood in awe of her, for she seemed to me to be made out of angel-clay and rightfully unapproachable by an unholy ordinary kind of a boy like me. I probably never suspected her. But —

      The scene changes. To Calcutta — forty-seven years later. It was in 1896. I arrived there on my lecturing trip. As I entered the hotel a divine vision passed out of it, clothed in the glory of the Indian sunshine — the Mary Wilson of my long-vanished boyhood! It was a startling thing. Before I could recover from the bewildering shock and speak to her she was gone. I thought maybe I had seen an apparition, but it was not so, she was flesh. She was the granddaughter of the other Mary, the original Mary. That Mary, now a widow, was upstairs, and presently sent for me. She was old and gray-haired, but she looked young and was very handsome. We sat down and talked. We steeped our thirsty souls in the reviving wine of the past, the beautiful past, the dear and lamented past; we uttered the names that had been silent upon our lips for fifty years, and it was as if they were made of music; with reverent hands we unburied our dead, the mates of our youth, and caressed them with our speech; we searched the dusty chambers of our memories and dragged forth incident after incident, episode after episode, folly after folly, and laughed such good laughs over them, with the tears running down; and finally Mary said suddenly, and without any leading up —

      “Tell me! What is the special peculiarity of smoked herrings?”

      It seemed a strange question at such a hallowed time as this. And so inconsequential, too. I was a little shocked. And yet I was aware of a stir of some kind away back in the deeps of my memory somewhere. It set me to musing — thinking — searching. Smoked herrings. Smoked herrings. The peculiarity of smo…. I glanced up. Her face was grave, but there was a dim and shadowy twinkle in her eye which — All of a sudden I knew! and far away down in the hoary past I heard a remembered voice murmur, “Dey eats ‘em guts and all!”

      “At — last! I’ve found one of you, anyway! Who was the other girl?”

      But she drew the line there. She wouldn’t tell me.

      IV.

      … But it was on a bench in Washington Square that I saw the most of Louis Stevenson. It was an outing that lasted an hour or more, and was very pleasant and sociable. I had come with him from his house, where I had been paying my respects to his family. His business in the Square was to absorb the sunshine. He was most scantily furnished with flesh, his clothes seemed to fall into hollows as if there might be nothing inside but the frame for a sculptor’s statue. His long face and lank hair and dark complexion and musing and melancholy expression seemed to fit these details justly and harmoniously, and the altogether of it seemed especially planned to gather the rays of your observation and focalize them upon Stevenson’s special distinction and commanding feature, his splendid eyes. They burned with a smouldering rich fire under the penthouse of his brows, and they made him beautiful.

      I said I thought he was right about the others, but mistaken as to Bret Harte; in substance I said that Harte was good company and a thin but pleasant talker; that he was always bright, but never brilliant; that in this matter he must not be classed with Thomas Bailey Aldrich, nor must any other man, ancient or modern; that Aldrich was always witty, always brilliant, if there was anybody present capable of striking his flint at the right angle; that Aldrich was as sure and prompt and unfailing as the red-hot iron on the blacksmith’s anvil — you had only to hit it competently to make it deliver an explosion of sparks. I added —

      “Aldrich has never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has equalled him, certainly none has surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed these children of his fancy. Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn’t help it, he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking, you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around in him; when he speaks the diamonds flash. Yes, he was always brilliant, he will always be brilliant; he will be brilliant in hell — you will see.”

      Stevenson, smiling a chuckly smile, “I hope not.”

      “Well, you will, and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look like a transfigured Adonis backed against a pink sunset.”

      There on that bench we struck out a new phrase — one or the other of us, I don’t remember which — ”submerged renown.” Variations were discussed: “submerged fame,” “submerged reputation,” and so on, and a choice was made; “submerged renown” was elected, I believe. This important matter rose out of an incident which had been happening to Stevenson in Albany. While in a book-shop or bookstall there he had noticed a long rank of small books, cheaply but neatly gotten up, and bearing such titles as “Davis’s Selected Speeches,” “Davis’s Selected Poetry,” Davis’s this and Davis’s that and Davis’s the other thing; compilations, every one of them, each with a brief, compact, intelligent and useful introductory chapter by this same Davis, whose first name I have forgotten. Stevenson had begun the matter with this question:

      “Can you name the American author whose fame and acceptance stretch widest in the States?”

      I thought I could, but it did not seem to me that it would be modest to speak out, in the circumstances. So I diffidently said nothing. Stevenson noticed, and said —

      “Save your delicacy for another time — you are not the one. For a shilling you can’t name the American author of widest note and popularity in the States. But I can.”

      Then he went on and told about that Albany incident. He had inquired of the shopman —

      “Who is this Davis?”

      The answer was —

      “An author whose books have to have freight-trains to carry them, not baskets. Apparently you have not heard of him?”

      Stevenson said no, this was the first time. The man said —

      “Nobody СКАЧАТЬ