Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain [156]
I went away stupefied with astonishment, and saying to myself, “How strange it is! We always thought this fellow a fool; yet the moment he comes to a great city, where intelligence and appreciation abound, the talent concealed in this shabby napkin is at once discovered, and promptly welcomed and honored.”
But I came away from the theater that night disappointed and offended; for I had had no glimpse of my hero, and his name was not in the bills. I met him on the street the next morning, and before I could speak, he asked:
“Did you see me?”
“No, you weren’t there.”
He looked surprised and disappointed. He said:
“Yes, I was. Indeed I was. I was a Roman soldier.”
“Which one?”
“Why, didn’t you see them Roman soldiers that stood back there in a rank, and sometimes marched in procession around the stage?”
“Do you mean the Roman army? Those six sandaled roustabouts in nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets, that marched around treading on each other’s heels, in charge of a spiderlegged consumptive dressed like themselves?”
“That’s it! That’s it! I was one of them Roman soldiers. I was the next to the last one. A half a year ago I used to always be the last one; but I’ve been promoted.”
Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman soldier to the last—a matter of thirty-four years. Sometimes they cast him for a “speaking part,” but not an elaborate one. He could be trusted to go and say, “My lord, the carriage waits,” but if they ventured to add a sentence or two to this, his memory felt the strain and he was likely to miss fire. Yet, poor devil, he had been patiently studying the part of Hamlet for more than thirty years, and he lived and died in the belief that some day he would be invited to play it!
And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those young Englishmen to our village such ages and ages ago! What noble horseshoes this man might have made, but for those Englishmen; and what an inadequate Roman soldier he did make!
A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was walking along Fourth Street when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as he passed me, then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a clouding brow, and finally said with deep asperity :
“Look here, have you got that drink yet?”
A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I recognized him. I made an effort to blush that strained every muscle in me, and answered as sweetly and winningly as ever I knew how:
“Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing in on the place where they keep it. Come in and help.”
He softened, and said make it a bottle of champagne and he was agreeable. He said he had seen my name in the papers, and had put all his affairs aside and turned out, resolved to find me or die; and make me answer that question satisfactorily, or kill me; though the most of his late asperity had been rather counterfeit than otherwise.
This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis riots of about thirty years ago. I spent a week there, at that time, in a boardinghouse, and had this young fellow for a neighbor across the hall. We saw some of the fightings and killings; and by and by we went one night to an armory where two hundred young men had met, upon call, to be armed and go forth against the rioters, under command of a military man. We drilled till about ten o’clock at night; then news came that the mob were in great force in the lower end of the town, and were sweeping everything before them. Our column moved at once. It was a very hot night, and my musket was very heavy. We marched and marched; and the nearer we approached the seat of war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I got. I was behind my friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my musket while I dropped out and got a drink.