Mark Twain - The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (Illustrated)

“—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.”

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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 Angelo’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 Angelo 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.