Those Extraordinary Twins

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Those Extraordinary Twins


The new lodger, rather shoutingly dressed but looking superbly handsome,
stepped with courtly carnage into the trim little breakfast-room and put
out all his cordial arms at once, like one of those pocket-knives with a
multiplicity of blades, and shook hands with the whole family
simultaneously. He was so easy and pleasant and hearty that all
embarrassment presently thawed away and disappeared, and a cheery feeling
of friendliness and comradeship took its place. He--or preferably they
--were asked to occupy the seat of honor at the foot of the table. They
consented with thanks, and carved the beefsteak with one set of their
hands while they distributed it at the same time with the other set.

"Will you have coffee, gentlemen, or tea?"

"Coffee for Luigi, if you please, madam, tea for me."

"Cream and sugar?"

"For me, yes, madam; Luigi takes his coffee, black. Our natures differ a
good deal from each other, and our tastes also."

The first time the negro girl Nancy appeared in the door and saw the two
heads turned in opposite directions and both talking at once, then saw
the commingling arms feed potatoes into one mouth and coffee into the
other at the same time, she had to pause and pull herself out of a
faintness that came over her; but after that she held her grip and was
able to wait on the table with fair courage.

Conversation fell naturally into the customary grooves. It was a little
jerky, at first, because none of the family could get smoothly through a
sentence without a wabble in it here and a break there, caused by some
new surprise in the way of attitude or gesture on the part of the twins.
The weather suffered the most. The weather was all finished up and
disposed of, as a subject, before the simple Missourians had gotten
sufficiently wonted to the spectacle of one body feeding two heads to
feel composed and reconciled in the presence of so bizarre a miracle.
And even after everybody's mind became tranquilized there was still one
slight distraction left: the hand that picked up a biscuit carried it to
the wrong head, as often as any other way, and the wrong mouth devoured
it. This was a puzzling thing, and marred the talk a little. It
bothered the widow to such a degree that she presently dropped out of the
conversation without knowing it, and fell to watching and guessing and
talking to herself:

"Now that hand is going to take that coffee to no, it's gone to the other
mouth; I can't understand it; and how, here is the dark-complected hand
with a potato in its fork, I'll see what goes with it--there, the
light-complected head's got it, as sure as I live!"

Finally Rowena said:

"Ma, what is the matter with you? Are you dreaming about something?"

The old lady came to herself and blushed; then she explained with the
first random thing that came into her mind: "I saw Mr. Angelo take up Mr.
Luigi's coffee, and I thought maybe he--sha'n't I give you a cup, Mr.
Angelo?"

"Oh no, madam, I am very much obliged, but I never drink coffee, much as
I would like to. You did see me take up Luigi's cup, it is true, but if
you noticed, I didn't carry it to my mouth, but to his."

"Y-es, I thought you did: Did you mean to?"

"How?"

The widow was a little embarrassed again. She said:

"I don't know but what I'm foolish, and you mustn't mind; but you see,
he got the coffee I was expecting to see you drink, and you got a potato
that I thought he was going to get. So I thought it might be a mistake
all around, and everybody getting what wasn't intended for him."

Both twins laughed and Luigi said:

"Dear madam, there wasn't any mistake. We are always helping each other
that way. It is a great economy for us both; it saves time and labor.
We have a system of signs which nobody can notice or understand but
ourselves. If I am using both my hands and want some coffee, I make the
sign and Angelo furnishes it to me; and you saw that when he needed a
potato I delivered it."

"How convenient!"

"Yes, and often of the extremest value. Take the Mississippi boats, for
instance. They are always overcrowded. There is table-room for only
half of the passengers, therefore they have to set a second table for the
second half. The stewards rush both parties, they give them no time to
eat a satisfying meal, both divisions leave the table hungry. It isn't
so with us. Angelo books himself for the one table, I book myself for
the other. Neither of us eats anything at the other's table, but just
simply works--works. Thus, you see there are four hands to feed Angelo,
and the same four to feed me. Each of us eats two meals."

The old lady was dazed with admiration, and kept saying, "It is perfectly
wonderful, perfectly wonderful" and the boy Joe licked his chops
enviously, but said nothing--at least aloud.

"Yes," continued Luigi, "our construction may have its disadvantages--in
fact, has but it also has its compensations of one sort and another. Take
travel, for instance. Travel is enormously expensive, in all countries;
we have been obliged to do a vast deal of it--come, Angelo, don't put any
more sugar in your tea, I'm just over one indigestion and don't want
another right away--been obliged to do a deal of it, as I was saying.
Well, we always travel as one person, since we occupy but one seat; so we
save half the fare."

"How romantic!" interjected Rowena, with effusion.

"Yes, my dear young lady, and how practical too, and economical. In
Europe, beds in the hotels are not charged with the board, but
separately--another saving, for we stood to our rights and paid for the
one bed only. The landlords often insisted that as both of us occupied
the bed we ought--"

"No, they didn't," said Angelo. "They did it only twice, and in both
cases it was a double bed--a rare thing in Europe--and the double bed
gave them some excuse. Be fair to the landlords; twice doesn't
constitute 'often.'"

"Well, that depends--that depends. I knew a man who fell down a well
twice. He said he didn't mind the first time, but he thought the second
time was once too often. Have I misused that word, Mrs. Cooper?"

"To tell the truth, I was afraid you had, but it seems to look, now, like
you hadn't." She stopped, and was evidently struggling with the
difficult problem a moment, then she added in the tone of one who is
convinced without being converted, "It seems so, but I can't somehow tell
why."

Rowena thought Luigi's retort was wonderfully quick and bright, and she
remarked to herself with satisfaction that there wasn't any young native
of Dawson's Landing that could have risen to the occasion like that.
Luigi detected the applause in her face, and expressed his pleasure and
his thanks with his eyes; and so eloquently withal, that the girl was
proud and pleased, and hung out the delicate sign of it on her cheeks.
Luigi went on, with animation:

"Both of us get a bath for one ticket, theater seat for one ticket,
pew-rent is on the same basis, but at peep-shows we pay double."

"We have much to' be thankful for," said Angelo, impressively, with a
reverent light in his eye and a reminiscent tone in his voice, "we have
been greatly blessed. As a rule, what one of us has lacked, the other,
by the bounty of Providence, has been able to supply. My brother is
hardy, I am not; he is very masculine, assertive, aggressive; I am much
less so. I am subject to illness, he is never ill. I cannot abide
medicines, and cannot take them, but he has no prejudice against them,
and--"

"Why, goodness gracious," interrupted the widow, "when you are sick, does
he take the medicine for you?"

"Always, madam."

"Why, I never heard such a thing in my life! I think it's beautiful of
you."

"Oh, madam, it's nothing, don't mention it, it's really nothing at all."

"But I say it's beautiful, and I stick to it!" cried the widow, with a
speaking moisture in her eye.

"A well brother to take the medicine for his poor sick brother--I wish I
had such a son," and she glanced reproachfully at her boys. "I declare
I'll never rest till I've shook you by the hand," and she scrambled out
of her chair in a fever of generous enthusiasm, and made for the twins,
blind with her tears, and began to shake. The boy Joe corrected her:
"You're shaking the wrong one, ma."

This flurried her, but she made a swift change and went on shaking.

"Got the wrong one again, ma," said the boy.

"Oh, shut up, can't you!" said the widow, embarrassed and irritated.
"Give me all your hands, I want to shake them all; for I know you are
both just as good as you can be."

It was a victorious thought, a master-stroke of diplomacy, though that
never occurred to her and she cared nothing for diplomacy. She shook the
four hands in turn cordially, and went back to her place in a state of
high and fine exultation that made her look young and handsome.

"Indeed I owe everything to Luigi," said Angelo, affectionately.
"But for him I could not have survived our boyhood days, when we were
friendless and poor--ah, so poor! We lived from hand to mouth-lived on
the coarse fare of unwilling charity, and for weeks and weeks together
not a morsel of food passed my lips, for its character revolted me and I
could not eat it. But for Luigi I should have died. He ate for us
both."

"How noble!" sighed Rowena.

"Do you hear that?" said the widow, severely, to her boys. "Let it be an
example to you--I mean you, Joe."

Joe gave his head a barely perceptible disparaging toss and said: "Et for
both. It ain't anything I'd 'a' done it."

"Hush, if you haven't got any better manners than that. You don't see
the point at all. It wasn't good food."

"I don't care--it was food, and I'd 'a' et it if it was rotten."

"Shame! Such language! Can't you understand? They were starving
--actually starving--and he ate for both, and--"

"Shucks! you gimme a chance and I'll--"

"There, now--close your head! and don't you open it again till you're
asked."

[Angelo goes on and tells how his parents the Count and Countess had
to fly from Florence for political reasons, and died poor in Berlin
bereft of their great property by confiscation; and how he and Luigi
had to travel with a freak-show during two years and suffer
semi-starvation.]

"That hateful black-bread; but I seldom ate anything during that time;
that was poor Luigi's affair--"

"I'll never Mister him again!" cried the widow, with strong emotion,
"he's Luigi to me, from this out!"

"Thank you a thousand times, madam, a thousand times! though in truth I
don't deserve it."

"Ah, Luigi is always the fortunate one when honors are showering," said
Angelo, plaintively; "now what have I done, Mrs. Cooper, that you leave
me out? Come, you must strain a point in my favor."

"Call you Angelo? Why, certainly I will; what are you thinking of! In
the case of twins, why--"

"But, ma, you're breaking up the story--do let him go on."

"You keep still, Rowena Cooper, and he can go on all the better, I
reckon. One interruption don't hurt, it's two that makes the trouble."

"But you've added one, now, and that is three."

"Rowena! I will not allow you to talk back at me when you have got
nothing rational to say."




CHAPTER III

ANGELO IS BLUE

[After breakfast the whole village crowded in, and there was a grand
reception in honor of the twins; and at the close of it the gifted
"freak" captured everybody's admiration by sitting down at the piano and
knocking out a classic four-handed piece in great style. Then the judge
took it--or them--driving in his buggy and showed off his village.]

All along the streets the people crowded the windows and stared at the
amazing twins. Troops of small boys flocked after the buggy, excited and
yelling. At first the dogs showed no interest. They thought they merely
saw three men in a buggy--a matter of no consequence; but when they found
out the facts of the case, they altered their opinion pretty radically,
and joined the boys, expressing their minds as they came. Other dogs got
interested; indeed, all the dogs. It was a spirited sight to see them
come leaping fences, tearing around corners, swarming out of every
bystreet and alley. The noise they made was something beyond belief
--or praise. They did not seem to be moved by malice but only by
prejudice, the common human prejudice against lack of conformity. If the
twins turned their heads, they broke and fled in every direction, but
stopped at a safe distance and faced about; and then formed and came on
again as soon as the strangers showed them their back. Negroes and
farmers' wives took to the woods when the buggy came upon them suddenly,
and altogether the drive was pleasant and animated, and a refreshment all
around.

[It was a long and lively drive. Angelo was a Methodist, Luigi was
a Free-thinker. The judge was very proud of his Freethinkers'
Society, which was flourishing along in a most prosperous way and
already had two members--himself and the obscure and neglected
Pudd'nhead Wilson. It was to meet that evening, and he invited
Luigi to join; a thing which Luigi was glad to do, partly because it
would please himself, and partly because it would gravel Angelo.]

They had now arrived at the widow's gate, and the excursion was ended.
The twins politely expressed their obligations for the pleasant outing
which had been afforded them; to which the judge bowed his thanks,
and then said he would now go and arrange for the Free-thinkers' meeting,
and would call for Count Luigi in the evening.

"For you also, dear sir," he added hastily, turning to Angelo and bowing.
"In addressing myself particularly to your brother, I was not meaning to
leave you out. It was an unintentional rudeness, I assure you, and due
wholly to accident--accident and preoccupation. I beg you to forgive
me."

His quick eye had seen the sensitive blood mount into Angelo's face,
betraying the wound that had been inflicted. The sting of the slight had
gone deep, but the apology was so prompt, and so evidently sincere, that
the hurt was almost immediately healed, and a forgiving smile testified
to the kindly judge that all was well again.

Concealed behind Angelo's modest and unassuming exterior, and unsuspected
by any but his intimates, was a lofty pride, a pride of almost abnormal
proportions, indeed, and this rendered him ever the prey of slights; and
although they were almost always imaginary ones, they hurt none the less
on that account. By ill fortune judge Driscoll had happened to touch his
sorest point, i.e., his conviction that his brother's presence was
welcomer everywhere than his own; that he was often invited, out of mere
courtesy, where only his brother was wanted, and that in a majority of
cases he would not be included in an invitation if he could be left out
without offense. A sensitive nature like this is necessarily subject to
moods; moods which traverse the whole gamut of feeling; moods which know
all the climes of emotion, from the sunny heights of joy to the black
abysses of despair. At times, in his seasons of deepest depressions,
Angelo almost wished that he and his brother might become segregated from
each other and be separate individuals, like other men. But of course as
soon as his mind cleared and these diseased imaginings passed away, he
shuddered at the repulsive thought, and earnestly prayed that it might
visit him no more. To be separate, and as other men are! How awkward it
would seem; how unendurable. What would he do with his hands, his arms?
How would his legs feel? How odd, and strange, and grotesque every
action, attitude, movement, gesture would be. To sleep by himself, eat
by himself, walk by himself--how lonely, how unspeakably lonely! No, no,
any fate but that. In every way and from every point, the idea was
revolting.

This was of course natural; to have felt otherwise would have been
unnatural. He had known no life but a combined one; he had been familiar
with it from his birth; he was not able to conceive of any other as being
agreeable, or even bearable. To him, in the privacy of his secret
thoughts, all other men were monsters, deformities: and during
three-fourths of his life their aspect had filled him with what promised
to be an unconquerable aversion. But at eighteen his eye began to take
note of female beauty; and little by little, undefined longings grew up
in his heart, under whose softening influences the old stubborn aversion
gradually diminished, and finally disappeared. Men were still
monstrosities to him, still deformities, and in his sober moments he had
no desire to be like them, but their strange and unsocial and uncanny
construction was no longer offensive to him.

This had been a hard day for him, physically and mentally. He had been
called in the morning before he had quite slept off the effects of the
liquor which Luigi had drunk; and so, for the first half-hour had had the
seedy feeling, and languor, the brooding depression, the cobwebby mouth
and druggy taste that come of dissipation and are so ill a preparation
for bodily or intellectual activities; the long violent strain of the
reception had followed; and this had been followed, in turn, by the
dreary sight-seeing, the judge's wearying explanations and laudations of
the sights, and the stupefying clamor of the dogs. As a congruous
conclusion, a fitting end, his feelings had been hurt, a slight had been
put upon him. He would have been glad to forego dinner and betake
himself to rest and sleep, but he held his peace and said no word, for he
knew his brother, Luigi, was fresh, unweary, full of life, spirit,
energy; he would have scoffed at the idea of wasting valuable time on a
bed or a sofa, and would have refused permission.




CHAPTER IV

SUPERNATURAL CHRONOMETRY

Rowena was dining out, Joe and Harry were belated at play, there
were but three chairs and four persons that noon at the home
dinner-table--the twins, the widow, and her chum, Aunt Betsy Hale. The
widow soon perceived that Angelo's spirits were as low as Luigi's were
high, and also that he had a jaded look. Her motherly solicitude was
aroused, and she tried to get him interested in the talk and win him
to a happier frame of mind, but the cloud of sadness remained on his
countenance. Luigi lent his help, too. He used a form and a phrase which
he was always accustomed to employ in these circumstances. He gave his
brother an affectionate slap on the shoulder and said, encouragingly:

"Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!"

But this did no good. It never did. If anything, it made the matter
worse, as a rule, because it irritated Angelo. This made it a favorite
with Luigi. By and by the widow said:

"Angelo, you are tired, you've overdone yourself; you go right to bed
after dinner, and get a good nap and a rest, then you'll be all right."

"Indeed, I would give anything if I could do that, madam."

"And what's to hender, I'd like to know? Land, the room's yours to do
what you please with! The idea that you can't do what you like with your
own!"

"But, you see, there's one prime essential--an essential of the very
first importance--which isn't my own."

"What is that?"

"My body."

The old ladies looked puzzled, and Aunt Betsy Hale said:

"Why bless your heart, how is that?"

"It's my brother's."

"Your brother's! I don't quite understand. I supposed it belonged to
both of you."

"So it does. But not to both at the same time."

"That is mighty curious; I don't see how it can be. I shouldn't think it
could be managed that way."

"Oh, it's a good enough arrangement, and goes very well; in fact, it
wouldn't do to have it otherwise. I find that the teetotalers and the
anti-teetotalers hire the use of the same hall for their meetings. Both
parties don't use it at the same time, do they?"

"You bet they don't!" said both old ladies in a breath.

"And, moreover," said Aunt Betsy, "the Freethinkers and the Baptist Bible
class use the same room over the Market house, but you can take my word
for it they don't mush up together and use it at the same time.'

"Very well," said Angelo, "you understand it now. And it stands to
reason that the arrangement couldn't be improved. I'll prove it to you.
If our legs tried to obey two wills, how could we ever get anywhere?
I would start one way, Luigi would start another, at the same moment
--the result would be a standstill, wouldn't it?"

"As sure as you are born! Now ain't that wonderful! A body would never
have thought of it."

"We should always be arguing and fussing and disputing over the merest
trifles. We should lose worlds of time, for we couldn't go down-stairs
or up, couldn't go to bed, couldn't rise, couldn't wash, couldn't dress,
couldn't stand up, couldn't sit down, couldn't even cross our legs,
without calling a meeting first and explaining the case and passing
resolutions, and getting consent. It wouldn't ever do--now would it?"

"Do? Why, it would wear a person out in a week! Did you ever hear
anything like it, Patsy Cooper?"

"Oh, you'll find there's more than one thing about them that ain't
commonplace," said the widow, with the complacent air of a person with a
property right in a novelty that is under admiring scrutiny.

"Well, now, how ever do you manage it? I don't mind saying I'm suffering
to know."

"He who made us," said Angelo reverently, "and with us this difficulty,
also provided a way out of it. By a mysterious law of our being, each of
us has utter and indisputable command of our body a week at a time, turn
and turn about."

"Well, I never! Now ain't that beautiful!"

"Yes, it is beautiful and infinitely wise and just. The week ends every
Saturday at midnight to the minute, to the second, to the last shade of
a fraction of a second, infallibly, unerringly, and in that instant the
one brother's power over the body vanishes and the other brother takes
possession, asleep or awake."

"How marvelous are His ways, and past finding out!"

Luigi said: "So exactly to the instant does the change come, that during
our stay in many of the great cities of the world, the public clocks were
regulated by it; and as hundreds of thousands of private clocks and
watches were set and corrected in accordance with the public clocks, we
really furnished the standard time for the entire city."

"Don't tell me that He don't do miracles any more! Blowing down the
walls of Jericho with rams' horns wa'n't as difficult, in my opinion."

"And that is not all," said Angelo. "A thing that is even more
marvelous, perhaps, is the fact that the change takes note of longitude
and fits itself to the meridian we are on. Luigi is in command this
week. Now, if on Saturday night at a moment before midnight we could fly
in an instant to a point fifteen degrees west of here, he would hold
possession of the power another hour, for the change observes local time
and no other."

Betsy Hale was deeply impressed, and said with solemnity:

"Patsy Cooper, for detail it lays over the Passage of the Red Sea."

"Now, I shouldn't go as far as that," said Aunt Patsy, "but if you've a
mind to say Sodom and Gomorrah, I am with you, Betsy Hale."

"I am agreeable, then, though I do think I was right, and I believe
Parson Maltby would say the same. Well, now, there's another thing.
Suppose one of you wants to borrow the legs a minute from the one that's
got them, could he let him?"

"Yes, but we hardly ever do that. There were disagreeable results,
several times, and so we very seldom ask or grant the privilege,
nowadays, and we never even think of such a thing unless the case is
extremely urgent. Besides, a week's possession at a time seems so little
that we can't bear to spare a minute of it. People who have the use of
their legs all the time never think of what a blessing it is, of course.
It never occurs to them; it's just their natural ordinary condition,
and so it does not excite them at all. But when I wake up, on Sunday
morning, and it's my week and I feel the power all through me, oh, such a
wave of exultation and thanksgiving goes surging over me, and I want to
shout 'I can walk! I can walk!' Madam, do you ever, at your uprising,
want to shout 'I can walk! I can walk!'?"

"No, you poor unfortunate cretur', but I'll never get out of my bed again
without doing it! Laws, to think I've had this unspeakable blessing all
my long life and never had the grace to thank the good Lord that gave it
to me!"

Tears stood in the eyes of both the old ladies and the widow said,
softly:

"Betsy Hale, we have learned something, you and me."

The conversation now drifted wide, but by and by floated back once more
to that admired detail, the rigid and beautiful impartiality with which
the possession of power had been distributed, between the twins. Aunt
Betsy saw in it a far finer justice than human law exhibits in related
cases. She said:

"In my opinion it ain't right no, and never has been right, the way a
twin born a quarter of a minute sooner than the other one gets all the
land and grandeurs and nobilities in the old countries and his brother
has to go bare and be a nobody. Which of you was born first?"