Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?
It is because we are not the person involved.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands, and rested his elbows on his knees. He rocked himself back and forth and moaned.
"I've knelt to a nigger wench!" he muttered. "I thought I had struck the deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to this. . . . Well, there is one consolation, such as it is--I've struck bottom this time; there's nothing lower."
But that was a hasty conclusion.
At ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak, and wretched. Roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms, waiting, for she had heard him.
This was a two-story log house which had acquired the reputation a few years ago of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness.
Nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime.
As it had no competition, it was called _the_ haunted house.
It was getting crazy and ruinous now, from long neglect.
It stood three hundred yards beyond Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, with nothing between but vacancy. It was the last house in the town at that end.
Tom followed Roxy into the room. She had a pile of clean straw in the corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the wall, there was a tin lantern freckling the floor with little spots of light, and there were various soap and candle boxes scattered about, which served for chairs. The two sat down. Roxy said:
"Now den, I'll tell you straight off, en I'll begin to k'leck de money later on; I ain't in no hurry. What does you reckon I's gwine to tell you?"
"Well, you--you--oh, Roxy, don't make it too hard for me!
Come right out and tell me you've found out somehow what a shape I'm in on account of dissipation and foolishness."
"Disposition en foolishness! NO sir, dat ain't it. Dat jist ain't nothin' at all, 'longside o' what _I_ knows."
Tom stared at her, and said:
"Why, Roxy, what do you mean?"
She rose, and gloomed above him like a Fate.
"I means dis--en it's de Lord's truth. You ain't no more kin to ole Marse Driscoll den I is! _dat's_ what I means!" and her eyes flamed with triumph.
"What?"
"Yassir, en _dat_ ain't all! You's a _nigger!_--_bawn_ a nigger and a _slave!_--en you's a nigger en a slave dis minute; en if I opens my mouf ole Marse Driscoll'll sell you down de river befo' you is two days older den what you is now!"
"It's a thundering lie, you miserable old blatherskite!"
"It ain't no lie, nuther. It's just de truth, en nothin' _but_ de truth, so he'p me. Yassir--you's my _son_--"
"You devil!"
"En dat po' boy dat you's be'n a-kickin' en a-cuffin' today is Percy Driscoll's son en yo' _marster_--"
"You beast!"
"En _his_ name is Tom Driscoll, en _yo's_ name's Valet de Chambers, en you ain't GOT no fambly name, beca'se niggers don't _have_ em!"
Tom sprang up and seized a billet of wood and raised it, but his mother only laughed at him, and said:
"Set down, you pup! Does you think you kin skyer me? It ain't in you, nor de likes of you. I reckon you'd shoot me in de back, maybe, if you got a chance, for dat's jist yo' style--_I_ knows you, throo en throo--but I don't mind gitt'n killed, beca'se all dis is down in writin' and it's in safe hands, too, en de man dat's got it knows whah to look for de right man when I gits killed.
Oh, bless yo' soul, if you puts yo' mother up for as big a fool as _you_ is, you's pow'ful mistaken, I kin tell you!
Now den, you set still en behave yo'self; en don't you git up ag'in till I tell you!"
Tom fretted and chafed awhile in a whirlwind of disorganizing sensations and emotions, and finally said, with something like settled conviction:
"The whole thing is moonshine; now then, go ahead and do your worst; I'm done with you."
Roxy made no answer. She took the lantern and started for the door.
Tom was in a cold panic in a moment.
"Come back, come back!" he wailed. "I didn't mean it, Roxy;I take it all back, and I'll never say it again! Please come back, Roxy!"
The woman stood a moment, then she said gravely: