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The Story of Wild Will Enderby

Chapter VIII. Mistaken Identity

page 228

Chapter VIII. Mistaken Identity.

"Well, Mr. Pratt, you have behaved like a trump all through, I must say."

"Like a trump? Hang it, no! That's a bad phrase. A knave is a trump, and a winning trump, much too often, by Jove! Say rather, like a Roman citizen."

"Thank you gents. Reckon you mean well. But I'm an American citizen, I am, and I don't want no higher name than that. Don't believe they ain't got any better men than Mr. George Washington down to Rome."

The interlocutors were—first, Philip Grey; second, the Medico; and third, the Senior Partner.

"Say, Doc.," continued the latter, "ain't it a powerful circumstance that I should be sitting here, sociably colliding with a man that tried his darndest to get me wiped out? How on earth came you to take that poor dead chap for my mate? Don't wonder at some of the galoots, but you're so chock full of science, Doc.?"

"Bother science! It's a lesson I shall not easily forget. But such mistakes are not at all uncommon. I remember a case, where a man claimed the body of a page 229drowned woman as that of his wife, with whom he had lived twelve years. It seemed that she had left the house in a fit of anger about something. The fellow was in a tempest of grief, and the funeral procession was about to start for the churchyard, when his wife walked in alive and well, and turned the mourners out of doors. What do you think of that?"

The Senior Partner replenished his plug and said—"Well, Sir, that reminds me of a curious event that happened to Jim Burke, down to Missouri. Lazy Jim, he was called. He was so all-fired lazy that when he yawned he had to get his wife to shut his mouth for him. The scientific gents gave it as their opinion that he had sprouted too fast when a lad, and never rightly got over it. The only thing he was ever known to be spry about was liquoring up. He was considerable on the liquor, he was; and he'd go loafing around the bars all day on the chance of a cock-tail, or a gin-sling, or a mint-julep, or any other sort of wet drink. He did not mind a cent what, so long as it was wet. But he couldn't abide anything dry, not even a dry eye. Used to say it made him feel thirsty. He swallowed so much old rye that any ordinary man would feel half drunk if he came anywhere nigh hand; and when he fell in the creek one time, the horses that drank the water got the staggers, and one virtuous old lady was overcome by swallowing tea made from it. Anyhow, she gave it out that it happened that way, and her teapot had a high old smell of whiskey, that's a fact.

"Jim's wife was a decent soul; rather good looking too, and as lively as a three-year-old. How she ever came to let such a goney freeze on to her is more than page 230I know. Gals do make a queer fix of it sometimes. And the fun of it seems to be, that the worse they are treated the more loving they get. That was so with Jim's wife. She worked for him and tried to fix him up decent, and keep his head up. But it warn't no use. The darned critter got lower and lower, till, 'as drunk as Jim Burke,' and 'as lazy as Jim Burke,' got to be a kind of proverbs.

"She gave out at last. Human nature—even she-human nature—couldn't stand it for ever. So one time when Jim had been on the bust for a whole week, the boys got him asleep and shaved his head, and stained him from head to foot a most beautiful mulatto colour. Then they shook him into his clothes again, and laid him aside to dry.

"When he fetched around, he warn't more than half-sobered, and the first thing he did, he went up to the barkeeper and asked for more liquor. Barkeeper said they didn't serve coloured gentlemen at that shop. Jim fired up as much as such a lazy critter could fire, and swore he was as good a white man as any in the crowd. Well, the boys laughed right out at that, and told him he'd better look in the glass. 'Jest what I want,' says he, 'Gi' me glass old rye!' But they meant a looking-glass; and as it was too much like work for him to go to one, they brought one to him and showed him his mahogany visage and bald-footed head.

"You bet he squirmed like a speared eel when he saw that. It seemed to sober him all at once. 'Thunder!' says he, 'who's that?'

"You oughter know that best yerself, stranger,' says page 231the boys. 'What name did your boss conceit you were capable of carrying safely.'

"'Why don' you know me?' cried the poor wretch. 'I'm Jim Burke; old Jim Burke, of Indianny!'138

"'That won't do,' says the boys, 'you can't put that off on our folk. Why, Jim Burke, the drunken old cuss, went dead and buried more'n a week agone; and what's more, his old woman's goin' to hitch up again in a few days, with Dick Stanley. No, Sirree! none of yer darned low nigger tricks here, if you please, if you ain't pertickler in want of a bran new suit of tar and feathers.'

"Jim shot out of the saloon at a mighty tall pace for him. He almost ran—very near, not quite though. The first man he met that he knew, he called to him. 'Say! who'm I?'

"'How on airth du I know?' says the other. 'Think I keep a register of runaway niggers?'

"And so with every soul he spoke to. At last he brought up at his own caboose, and in he goes, and calls to his wife—'Maria! Say! Look here! Ain't I yer huz?'

"But she yelled right out at him to 'Git out!' and quit the house; and she called him 'a impident dirty black beast.'

"Says she—'You wouldn't dar to insult me, only you know I'm a poor lone woman, since my poor Jim went to glory, and left me alone in the world, with four precious lambs to feed, and nobody to look to for a cent.' With much more of the same sort, keeping it up like a high-pressure steam engine, so that Jim page 232couldn't wire in edgeways. By-and-by she exhausted the boiler, and had to pull up for fresh supplies.

"Then Jim struck in. 'See here!' he said. 'Air I Jim Burke, or air I not? What say?

"'You Jim Burke?' says the ma'am. 'You? How dar you ax me such a question? Oh, Jim! Jim! my poor dear Jim!' she cried. 'If you were only here, and not lying out there in the cold ground, wouldn't you cowhide this old black villain, that wants to make me believe he's yer own darlin' self? Oh! you vagabond,' says she; ' Git out of this, or I'll break every bone in yer ugly carcass, I will.'

"And she fairly drove him out of the house with a broomstick.

"As he went forth into the street, he ran kerwallop, right slap into the arms of Deacon Goodenough; who had often laid it down to him that his goings on would lead him to perdition, clear and straight. The Deacon didn't know him in the least. So says he—

"'My dark friend, what air you a-doin' of in the habitation of the widow and the fatherless?"

"'Doin'?' says Jim. 'Why, ain't she my wife? Don't you know me? I'm Jim Burke!'

"'Alas! no,' snuffled the Deacon. 'Lie not, my sable friend—lie not! Jim Burke departed from us last week; and I'm afeared he's gone where there ain't no water, and there ain't no wine.'

"'I'm darned if I am!' cried Jim. "See here, old hoss;—jest come over to the grocery and try. I ain't got nary red myself; but they'll let you plaster it up, Deacon, I guess.'

"'Depart from me, man of sin!' said the Deacon. page 233'Depart from me, for I know thee not. Be warned by the end of Jim Burke, and drink not at groceries, neither at saloons, lest a worse thing happeneth unto thee.'

"Well, Jim went for one after another, and they all answered him in pretty much the same style; for, you see, the report had been put around that he was dead and buried. At last one of the boys who was in the secret took him up to the graveyard, and showed him a headboard, crowded with no end of willow bushes, and churches, and seatless babes, and such-like foolishness all wafered on to it; and an epitaph which made out that it had been put up in memory of James Burke, who 'died of mixed liquors at the early age of 47.'

"When he spelled that out, he felt pretty considerable strange, you bet. 'Darn'd queer thing,' says he, 'that a man don't know who he his. I don't mind passing in my checks one bit. Wonder how I got so as to be transmogrified into a bald-face old darkey, who ain't got no friends. Seems like as if I war kinder reading my own tombstone. Can't cipher this here 'rithmetic up no-how. See here, boys! 'sposing I ain't myself, who on airth can I be?"

"Well, they kept that game running for the matter of a week or more maybe. And Jim got so dreadful mixed, that if anybody inquired for his name, he'd say he hadn't got none,—came kerslap into the world promiscuous-like, and couldn't find out rightly who he was. But after a spell Ma'am Burke, she softened to him, else she got tired of playing widow anymore; for when he was very badly gone in liquor one day, she toted him home, and had him scraped and cleaned, page 234and when he come to, she persuaded him that he'd been down in a fever through the drink, and had had his head shaved to cool him. But the story went around, and if ever he showed his nose inside a whiskey-mill after that, the boys sand-papered him to that degree that he was glad to keep clear of them and the liquor too.139

"And I tell you what, gents," said the Senior Partner, in conclusion, "he got so as to be a new edition of a human, and went in for work, and joined the Order of the Children of Jonadab, and he lost the name of Lazy Jim from that out."140

"That reminds me," said Philip, "of a trick that was played upon old Markham Jackson, when he was electioneering up-country in Victoria. He used to ride a white pony, and one night while Markham was explaining his political views, some of the 'free and independent' painted the pony sky-blue, so that the old boy was unable to identify his property when they brought the animal round in the morning."

"And that reminds me," cried Miss Mabel, there and then opening the door, "that we have to start early in the morning, and it is quite time for all good people to be in bed."

138 Indianny - Possibly referring to Indiana, the state in America.

139 Whiskey-mill - Pub, drinking house.

140 The Order of the Children of Jonadab - Jonadab was a figure in the Old Testament of the Bible who commanded his descendents not to drink wine. Jeremiah 35:6.