by Mark Twain
When I got down stairs in the morning, the parlor was shut up, and the watchers was gone. There warn’t nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn’t tell.
Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come, with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. I see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but I dasn’t go to look in under it, with folks around.
Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man’s face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There warn’t no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor, and blowing noses—because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church.
When the place was packed full, the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passage-ways, and done it all with nods, and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there warn’t no more smile to him than there is to a ham.
They had borrowed a melodeum—a sick one; and when everything was ready, a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body every heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up, right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait—you couldn’t hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody didn’t seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, “Don’t you worry—just depend on me.” Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people’s heads. So he glided along, and the pow-wow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then, in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker’s back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided, and glided, around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, over the people’s heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “He had a rat!” Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don’t cost nothing, and it’s just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There warn’t no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was.
Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screw-driver. I was in a sweat then, and watched him pretty keen. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along, as soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didn’t know whether the money was in there, or not. So, says I, spose somebody had hogged that bag on the sly?—now how do I know whether to write to Mary Jane or not? ’Spose she dug him up and didn’t find nothing—what would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and jailed; I’d better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the thing’s awful mixed, now; trying to better it, I’ve worsened it a hundred times, and I wish to goodness I’d just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business!
They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces again—I couldn’t help it, and I couldn’t rest easy. But nothing come of it; the faces didn’t tell me nothing.
The king he visited around, in the evening, and sweetened every body up, and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his congregration over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away, and leave for home. He was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn’t be done. And he said of course him and William would take the girls home with them; and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed, and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls; too—tickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. Them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heartache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but I didn’t see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune.
Well, blamed if the king didn’t bill the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight off—sale two days after the funeral; but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to.
So the next day after the funeral, along about noontime, the girls’ joy got the first jolt; a couple of nigger traders come along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they hadn’t ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. I can’t ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other’s necks and crying; and I reckon I couldn’t a stood it all but would a had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn’t knowed the sale warn’t no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two.
The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out flat-footed and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. It injured the frauds some; but the old fool he bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you the duke was powerful uneasy.
Next day was auction day. About broad-day in the morning, the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look that there was trouble. The king says:
“Was you in my room night before last?”
“No, your majesty”—which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang warn’t around.
“Was you in there yisterday er last night?”
“No, your majesty.”
“Honor bright, now—no lies.”
“Honor bright, your majesty, I’m telling you the truth. I hain’t been anear your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it to you.”
The duke says:
“Have you seen anybody else go in there?”
“No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe.”
“Stop and think.”
I studied a while, and see my chance, then I says:
“Well, I see the niggers go in there several times.”
Both of them give a little jump; and looked like they hadn’t ever expected it, and then like they had. Then the duke says:
“What, all of them?”
“No—leastways not all at once. That is, I don’t think I ever see them all come out at once but just one time.”
; “Hello—when was that?”
“It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It warn’t early, because I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I see them.”
“Well, go on, go on—what did they do? How’d they act?”
“They didn’t do nothing. And they didn’t act anyway, much, as fur as I see. They tip-toed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they’d shoved in there to do up your majesty’s room, or something, sposing you was up; and found you warn’t up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn’t already waked you up.”
“Great guns, this is a go!” says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and tolerable silly. They stood there a thinking and scratching their heads, a minute, and then the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says:
“It does beat all, how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to be sorry they was going out of this region! and I believed they was sorry. And so did you, and so did everybody. Don’t ever tell me any more that a nigger ain’t got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played that thing, it would fool anybody. In my opinion there’s a fortune in ’em. If I had capital and a theatre, I wouldn’t want a better lay out than that—and here we’ve gone and sold ’em for a song. Yes, and ain’t privileged to sing the song, yet. Say, where is that song?—that draft.”
“In the bank for to be collected. Where would it be?”
“Well, that’s all right then, thank goodness.”
Says I, kind of timid-like:
“Is something gone wrong?”
The king whirls on me and rips out:
“None o’ your business! You keep your head shet, and mind y’r own affairs—if you got any. Long as you’re in this town, don’t you forgit that, you hear?” Then he says to the duke, “We got to jest swaller it, and say noth’n: mum’s the word for us.”
As they was starting down the ladder, the duke he chuckles again, and says:
“Quick sales and small profits! It’s a good business—yes.”
The king snarls around on him and says,
“I was trying to do for the best, in sellin’ ’m out so quick. If the profits has turned out to be none, lackin’ considable, and none to carry, is it my fault any more’n it’s yourn?”
“Well, they’d be in this house yet, and we wouldn’t if I could a got my advice listened to.”
The king sassed back, as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around and lit into me again. He give me down the banks for not coming and telling him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that way—said any fool would a knowed something was up. And then waltzed in and cussed himself a while; and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he’d be blamed if he’d ever do it again. So they went off a jawing; and I felt dreadful glad I’d worked it all off onto the niggers and yet hadn’t done the niggers no harm by it.
CHAPTER XXVIII
By and-by it was getting-up time; so I come down the ladder and started for down stairs, but as I come to the girls’ room, the door was open, and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she’d been packing things in it—getting ready to go to England. But she had stopped now, with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. I went in there, and says:
“Miss Mary Jane, you can’t abear to see people in trouble, and I can’t—most always. Tell me about it.”
So she done it. And it was the niggers—I just expected it. She said the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn’t know how she was every going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn’t ever going to see each other no more—and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says
“Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain’t ever going to see each other any more!”
“But they will—and inside of two weeks—and I know it!” says I.
Laws it was out before I could think!—and before I could budge, she throws her arms around my neck, and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again!
I see I had spoke too sudden, and said too much, and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited, and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that’s had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place, is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better, and actuly safer, than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m agoing to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to. Then I says:
“Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways, where you could go and stay three or four days?”
“Yes—Mr. Lothrop’s. Why?”
“Never mind why, yet. If I’ll tell you how I know the niggers will see each other again—inside of two weeks—here in this house—and prove how I know it—will you go to Mr. Lothrop’s and stay four days?”
“Four days!” she says; “I’ll stay a year!”
“All right,” I says, “I don’t want nothing more out of you than just your word—I druther have it than another man’s kiss-the-Bible.” She smiled, and reddened up very sweet, and I says, “If you don’t mind it, I’ll shut the door—and bolt it.”
Then I come back and set down again, and says:
“Don’t you holler. Just set still, and take it like a man. I got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it’s a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain’t no help for it. These uncles of yourn ain’t no uncles at all—they’re a couples of frauds—regular dead-beats. There, now we’re over the worst of it—you can stand the rest middling easy.”
It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal water now, so I went right along, her eyes a blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself onto the king’s breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times—and then up she jumps, with her face afire like sunset, and says:
“The brute! Come—don’t waste a minute—not a second—we’ll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!”
Says I:
“Cert’nly. But do you mean, before you go to Mr. Lothrop’s, or—”
“Oh,” she says, “What am I thinking about!” she says, and set right down again. “Don’t mind what I said—please don’t—you won’t, now, will you?” Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die first. “I never thought, I was so stirred up,” she says; “now go on, and I won’t do so any more. You tell me what to do, and whatever you say, I’ll do it.”
“Well,” I says, “it’s a rough gang, them two frauds, and I’m fixed so I got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not—I druther not tell you why—and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and I’d be all right, but there’d be another person that you don’t know about who’d be in big trouble. Well, we got to save him, hain’t we? Of course. Well, then, we won’t blow on them.”
Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. But I didn’t want to run the raft in daytime, without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so I didn’t want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night. I says:
“Miss Mary Jan
e, I’ll tell you what we’ll do—and you won’t have to stay at Mr. Lothrop’s so long, nuther. How fur is it?”
“A little short of four miles—right out in the country, back here.”
“Well, that’ll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half-past, to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again—tell them you’ve thought of something. If you get here before eleven, put a candle in this window, and if I don’t turn up, wait till eleven, and then if I don’t turn up it means I’m gone, and out of the way, and safe. Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed.”
“Good,” she says, “I’ll do it.”
“And if it just happens so that I don’t get away, but get took up along with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can.”
“Stand by you, indeed I will. They sha’n’t touch a hair of your head!” she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too.
“If I get away, I sha’n’t be here,” I says, “to prove these rapscallions ain’t your uncles, and I couldn’t do it if I was here. I could swear they was beats and bummers, that’s all; though that’s worth something. Well, there’s others can do that better than what I can—and they’re people that ain’t going to be doubted as quick as I’d be. I’ll tell you how to find them. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. There—‘Royal Nonesuch, Bricksville.’ Put it away, and don’t lose it. When the court wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to Bricksville and say they’ve got the men that played the Royal Nonesuch, and ask for some witnesses—why, you’ll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary. And they’ll come a-biling, too.”
I judged we had got everything fixed about right, now. So I says:
“Just let the auction go right along, and don’t worry. Nobody don’t have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction, on accounts of the short notice, and they ain’t going out of this till they get that money—and the way we’ve fixed it the sale ain’t going to count, and they ain’t going to get no money. It’s just like the way it was with the niggers—it warn’t no sale, and the niggers will be back before long. Why, they can’t collect the money for the niggers, yet—they’re in the worst kind of fix, Miss Mary.”