Those Extraordinary Twins

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


"--while he survives," muttered Luigi--

"--and see that the room is kept wholesomely hot, and the doors and
windows closed tight. Keep Count Angelo nicely covered up with six or
seven blankets, and when he is thirsty--which will be frequently--moisten
a 'rag in the vapor of the tea kettle and let his brother suck it. When
he is hungry--which will also be frequently he must not be humored
oftener than every seven or eight hours; then toast part of a cracker
until it begins to brown, and give it to his brother."

"That is all very well, as far as Angelo is concerned," said Luigi, "but
what am I to eat?"

"I do not see that there is anything the matter with you," the doctor
answered, "you may, of course, eat what you please."

"And also drink what I please, I suppose?"

"Oh, certainly--at present. When the violent and continuous perspiring
has reduced your strength, I shall have to reduce your diet, of course,
and also bleed you, but there is no occasion for that yet awhile." He
turned to Aunt Patsy and said: "He must be put to bed, and sat up with,
and tended with the greatest care, and not allowed to stir for several
days and nights."

"For one, I'm sacredly thankful for that," said Luigi, "it postpones the
funeral--I'm not to be drowned to-day, anyhow."

Angelo said quietly to the doctor:

"I will cheerfully submit to all your requirements, sir, up to two
o'clock this afternoon, and will resume them after three, but cannot be
confined to the house during that intermediate hour."

"Why, may I ask?"

"Because I have entered the Baptist communion, and by appointment am to
be baptised in the river at that hour."

"Oh, insanity!--it cannot be allowed!"

Angelo answered with placid firmness:

"Nothing shall prevent it, if I am alive."

"Why, consider, my dear sir, in your condition it might prove fatal."

A tender and ecstatic smile beamed from Angelo's eyes, and he broke forth
in a tone of joyous fervency:

"Ah, how blessed it would be to die for such a cause--it would be
martyrdom!"

"But your brother--consider your brother; you would be risking his life,
too."

"He risked mine an hour ago," responded Angelo, gloomily; "did he
consider me?" A thought swept through his mind that made him shudder.
"If I had not run, I might have been killed in a duel on the Sabbath day,
and my soul would have been lost--lost."

"Oh, don't fret, it wasn't in any danger," said Luigi, irritably; "they
wouldn't waste it for a little thing like that; there's a glass case all
ready for it in the heavenly museum, and a pin to stick it up with."

Aunt Patsy was shocked, and said:

"Looy, Looy!--don't talk so, dear!"

Rowena's soft heart was pierced by Luigi's unfeeling words, and she
murmured to herself, "Oh, if I but had the dear privilege of protecting
and defending him with my weak voice!--but alas! this sweet boon is
denied me by the cruel conventions of social intercourse."

"Get their bed ready," said Aunt Patsy to Nancy, "and shut up the windows
and doors, and light their candles, and see that you drive all the
mosquitoes out of their bar, and make up a good fire in their stove, and
carry up some bags of hot ashes to lay to his feet--"

"--and a shovel of fire for his head, and a mustard plaster for his neck,
and some gum shoes for his ears," Luigi interrupted, with temper; and
added, to himself, "Damnation, I'm going to be roasted alive, I just know
it!"

"Why, Looy! Do be quiet; I never saw such a fractious thing. A body
would think you didn't care for your brother."

"I don't--to that extent, Aunt Patsy. I was glad the drowning was
postponed a minute ago, but I'm not now. No, that is all gone by; I want
to be drowned."

"You'll bring a judgment on yourself just as sure as you live, if you go
on like that. Why, I never heard the beat of it. Now, there--there!
you've said enough. Not another word out of you--I won't have it!"

"But, Aunt Patsy--"

"Luigi! Didn't you hear what I told you?"

"But, Aunt Patsy, I--why, I'm not going to set my heart and lungs afloat
in that pail of sewage which this criminal here has been prescri--"

"Yes, you are, too. You are going to be good, and do everything I tell
you, like a dear," and she tapped his cheek affectionately with her
finger. "Rowena, take the prescription and go in the kitchen and hunt up
the things and lay them out for me. I'll sit up with my patient the rest
of the night, doctor; I can't trust Nancy, she couldn't make Luigi take
the medicine. Of course, you'll drop in again during the day. Have you
got any more directions?"

"No, I believe not, Aunt Patsy. If I don't get in earlier, I'll be along
by early candle-light, anyway. Meantime, don't allow him to get out of
his bed."

Angelo said, with calm determination:

"I shall be baptized at two o'clock. Nothing but death shall prevent
me."

The doctor said nothing aloud, but to himself he said:

"Why, this chap's got a manly side, after all! Physically he's a coward,
but morally he's a lion. I'll go and tell the others about this; it will
raise him a good deal in their estimation--and the public will follow
their lead, of course."

Privately, Aunt Patsy applauded too, and was proud of Angelo's courage in
the moral field as she was of Luigi's in the field of honor.

The boy Henry was troubled, but the boy Joe said, inaudibly, and
gratefully, "We're all honky, after all; and no postponement on account
of the weather."




CHAPTER VIII

BAPTISM OF THE BETTER HALF

By nine o'clock the town was humming with the news of the midnight duel,
and there were but two opinions about it: one, that Luigi's pluck in the
field was most praiseworthy and Angela's flight most scandalous; the
other, that Angelo's courage in flying the field for conscience' sake was
as fine and creditable as was Luigi's in holding the field in the face of
the bullets. The one opinion was held by half of the town, the other one
was maintained by the other half. The division was clean and exact, and
it made two parties, an Angela party and a Luigi party. The twins had
suddenly become popular idols along with Pudd'nhead Wilson, and haloed
with a glory as intense as his. The children talked the duel all the way
to Sunday-school, their elders talked it all the way to church, the choir
discussed it behind their red curtain, it usurped the place of pious
thought in the "nigger gallery."

By noon the doctor had added the news, and spread it, that Count Angelo,
in spite of his wound and all warnings and supplications, was resolute in
his determination to be baptized at the hour appointed. This swept the
town like wildfire, and mightily reinforced the enthusiasm of the Angelo
faction, who said, "If any doubted that it was moral courage that took
him from the field, what have they to say now!"

Still the excitement grew. All the morning it was traveling countryward,
toward all points of the compass; so, whereas before only the farmers and
their wives were intending to come and witness the remarkable baptism,
a general holiday was now proclaimed and the children and negroes
admitted to the privileges of the occasion. All the farms for ten miles
around were vacated, all the converging roads emptied long processions of
wagons, horses, and yeomanry into the town. The pack and cram of people
vastly exceeded any that had ever been seen in that sleepy region before.
The only thing that had ever even approached it, was the time long gone
by, but never forgotten, nor even referred to without wonder and pride,
when two circuses and a Fourth of July fell together. But the glory of
that occasion was extinguished now for good. It was but a freshet to
this deluge.

The great invasion massed itself on the river-bank and waited hungrily
for the immense event. Waited, and wondered if it would really happen,
or if the twin who was not a "professor" would stand out and prevent it.

But they were not to be disappointed. Angela was as good as his word.
He came attended by an escort of honor composed of several hundred of the
best citizens, all of the Angelo party; and when the immersion was
finished they escorted him back home and would even have carried him on
their shoulders, but that people might think they were carrying Luigi.

Far into the night the citizens continued to discuss and wonder over the
strangely mated pair of incidents that had distinguished and exalted the
past twenty-four hours above any other twenty-four in the history of
their town for picturesqueness and splendid interest; and long before the
lights were out and burghers asleep it had been decided on all hands that
in capturing these twins Dawson's Landing had drawn a prize in the great
lottery of municipal fortune.

At midnight Angelo was sleeping peacefully. His immersion had not harmed
him, it had merely made him wholesomely drowsy, and he had been dead
asleep many hours now. It had made Luigi drowsy, too, but he had got
only brief naps, on account of his having to take the medicine every
three-quarters of an hour-and Aunt Betsy Hale was there to see that he
did it. When he complained and resisted, she was quietly firm with him,
and said in a low voice:

"No-no, that won't do; you mustn't talk, and you mustn't retch and gag
that way, either--you'll wake up your poor brother."

"Well, what of it, Aunt Betsy, he--"

"'Sh-h! Don't make a noise, dear. You mustn't: forget that your poor
brother is sick and--"

"Sick, is he? Well, I wish I--"

"'Sh-h-h! Will you be quiet, Luigi! Here, now, take the rest of it
--don't keep me holding the dipper all night. I declare if you haven't
left a good fourth of it in the bottom! Come-that's a good--

"Aunt Betsy, don't make me! I feel like I've swallowed a cemetery; I do,
indeed. Do let me rest a little--just a little; I can't take any more of
the devilish stuff now."

"Luigi! Using such language here, and him just baptized! Do you want
the roof to fall on you?"

"I wish to goodness it would!"

"Why, you dreadful thing! I've a good notion to--let that blanket alone;
do you want your brother to catch his death?"

"Aunt Betsy, I've got to have it off, I'm being roasted alive; nobody
could stand it--you couldn't yourself."

"Now, then, you're sneezing again--I just expected it."

"Because I've caught a cold in my head. I always do, when I go in the
water with my clothes on. And it takes me weeks to get over it, too.
I think it was a shame to serve me so."

"Luigi, you are unreasonable; you know very well they couldn't baptize
him dry. I should think you would be willing to undergo a little
inconvenience for your brother's sake."

"Inconvenience! Now how you talk, Aunt Betsy. I came as near as
anything to getting drowned you saw that yourself; and do you call this
inconvenience?--the room shut up as tight as a drum, and so hot the
mosquitoes are trying to get out; and a cold in the head, and dying for
sleep and no chance to get any--on account of this infamous medicine that
that assassin prescri--"

"There, you're sneezing again. I'm going down and mix some more of this
truck for you, dear."




CHAPTER IX

THE DRINKLESS DRUNK

During Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the twins grew steadily worse; but
then the doctor was summoned South to attend his mother's funeral, and
they got well in forty-eight hours. They appeared on the street on
Friday, and were welcomed with enthusiasm by the new-born parties, the
Luigi and Angelo factions. The Luigi faction carried its strength into
the Democratic party, the Angelo faction entered into a combination with
the Whigs. The Democrats nominated Luigi for alderman under the new city
government, and the Whigs put up Angelo against him. The Democrats
nominated Pudd'nhead Wilson for mayor, and he was left alone in this
glory, for the Whigs had no man who was willing to enter the lists
against such a formidable opponent. No politician had scored such a
compliment as this before in the history of the Mississippi Valley.

The political campaign in Dawson's Landing opened in a pretty warm
fashion, and waned hotter every week. Luigi's whole heart was in it,
and even Angelo developed a surprising amount of interest-which was
natural, because he was not merely representing Whigism, a matter of no
consequence to him; but he was representing something immensely finer and
greater--to wit, Reform. In him was centered the hopes of the whole
reform element of the town; he was the chosen and admired champion of
every clique that had a pet reform of any sort or kind at heart. He was
president of the great Teetotalers' Union, its chiefest prophet and
mouthpiece.

But as the canvass went on, troubles began to spring up all around
--troubles for the twins, and through them for all the parties and
segments and factions of parties. Whenever Luigi had possession of the
legs, he carried Angelo to balls, rum shops, Sons of Liberty parades,
horse-races, campaign riots, and everywhere else that could damage him
with his party and the church; and when it was Angelo's week he carried
Luigi diligently to all manner of moral and religious gatherings, doing
his best to regain the ground he had lost before. As a result of these
double performances, there was a storm blowing all the time, an
ever-rising storm, too--a storm of frantic criticism of the twins,
and rage over their extravagant, incomprehensible conduct.

Luigi had the final chance. The legs were his for the closing week of
the canvass. He led his brother a fearful dance.

But he saved his best card for the very eve of the election. There was
to be a grand turnout of the Teetotalers' Union that day, and Angelo was
to march at the head of the procession and deliver a great oration
afterward. Luigi drank a couple of glasses of whisky--which steadied his
nerves and clarified his mind, but made Angelo drunk. Everybody who saw
the march, saw that the Champion of the Teetotalers was half seas over,
and noted also that his brother, who made no hypocritical pretensions to
extra temperance virtues, was dignified and sober. This eloquent fact
could not be unfruitful at the end of a hot political canvass. At the
mass-meeting Angelo tried to make his great temperance oration, but was
so discommoded--by hiccoughs and thickness of tongue that he had to give
it up; then drowsiness overtook him and his head drooped against Luigi's
and he went to sleep. Luigi apologized for him, and was going on to
improve his opportunity with an appeal for a moderation of what he called
"the prevailing teetotal madness," but persons in the audience began to
howl and throw things at him, and then the meeting rose in wrath and
chased him home.

This episode was a crusher for Angelo in another way. It destroyed his
chances with Rowena. Those chances had been growing, right along, for
two months. Rowena had partly confessed that she loved him, but wanted
time to consider. Now the tender dream was ended, and she told him so
the moment he was sober enough to understand. She said she would never
marry a man who drank.

"But I don't drink," he pleaded.

"That is nothing to the point," she said, coldly, "you get drunk, and
that is worse."

[There was a long and sufficiently idiotic discussion here, which ended
as reported in a previous note.]




CHAPTER X

SO THEY HANGED LUIGI

Dawson's Landing had a week of repose, after the election, and it needed
it, for the frantic and variegated nightmare which had tormented it all
through the preceding week had left it limp, haggard, and exhausted at
the end. It got the week of repose because Angelo had the legs, and was
in too subdued a condition to want to go out and mingle with an irritated
community that had come to disgust and detest him because there was such
a lack of harmony between his morals, which were confessedly excellent,
and his methods of illustrating them, which were distinctly damnable.
The new city officers were sworn in on the following Monday--at least all
but Luigi. There was a complication in his case. His election was
conceded, but he could not sit in the board of aldermen without his
brother, and his brother could not sit there because he was not a member.
There seemed to be no way out of the difficulty but to carry the matter
into the courts, so this was resolved upon.

The case was set for the Monday fortnight. In due course the time
arrived. In the mean time the city government had been at a standstill,
because with out Luigi there was a tie in the board of aldermen, whereas
with him the liquor interest--the richest in the political field--would
have one majority. But the court decided that Angelo could not sit in
the board with him, either in public or executive sessions, and at the
same time forbade the board to deny admission to Luigi, a fairly and
legally chosen alderman. The case was carried up and up from court to
court, yet still the same old original decision was confirmed every time.
As a result, the city government not only stood still, with its hands
tied, but everything it was created to protect and care for went a steady
gait toward rack and ruin. There was no way to levy a tax, so the minor
officials had to resign or starve; therefore they resigned. There being
no city money, the enormous legal expenses on both sides had to be
defrayed by private subscription. But at last the people came to their
senses, and said:

"Pudd'nhead was right at the start--we ought to have hired the official
half of that human phillipene to resign; but it's too late now; some of
us haven't got anything left to hire him with."

"Yes, we have," said another citizen, "we've got this"--and he produced a
halter.

Many shouted: "That's the ticket." But others said: "No--Count Angelo is
innocent; we mustn't hang him."

"Who said anything about hanging him? We are only going to hang the
other one."

"Then that is all right--there is no objection to that."

So they hanged Luigi. And so ends the history of "Those Extraordinary
Twins."




FINAL REMARKS

As you see, it was an extravagant sort of a tale, and had no purpose but
to exhibit that monstrous "freak" in all sorts of grotesque lights. But
when Roxy wandered into the tale she had to be furnished with something
to do; so she changed the children in the cradle; this necessitated the
invention of a reason for it; this, in turn, resulted in making the
children prominent personages--nothing could prevent it of course. Their
career began to take a tragic aspect, and some one had to be brought in
to help work the machinery; so Pudd'nhead Wilson was introduced and taken
on trial. By this time the whole show was being run by the new people
and in their interest, and the original show was become side-tracked and
forgotten; the twin-monster, and the heroine, and the lads, and the old
ladies had dwindled to inconsequentialities and were merely in the way.
Their story was one story, the new people's story was another story, and
there was no connection between them, no interdependence, no kinship.
It is not practicable or rational to try to tell two stories at the same
time; so I dug out the farce and left the tragedy.

The reader already knew how the expert works; he knows now how the other
kind do it.

MARK TWAIN.