I crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I tiptoed
along, and got down-stairs all right. There warn’t a sound anywheres. I
peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that
was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was
open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a
candle in both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open;
but I see there warn’t nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so
I shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn’t
there. Just then I heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind
me. I run in the parlor and took a swift look around, and the only
place I see to hide the bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved
along about a foot, showing the dead man’s face down in there, with a
wet cloth over it, and his shroud on. I tucked the money-bag in under
the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me
creep, they was so cold, and then I run back across the room and in
behind the door.
The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, very soft,
and kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and
I see she begun to cry, though I couldn’t hear her, and her back was
to me. I slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I’d make
sure them watchers hadn’t seen me; so I looked through the crack, and
everything was all right. They hadn’t stirred.
I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing
playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much
resk about it. Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right;
because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write
back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that
ain’t the thing that’s going to happen; the thing that’s going to
happen is, the money’ll be found when they come to screw on the lid.
Then the king ’ll get it again, and it ’ll be a long day before he
gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him. Of course I
_wanted_ to slide down and get it out of there, but I dasn’t try it.
Every minute it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them
watchers would begin to stir, and I might get catched—catched with
six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn’t hired me to take
care of. I don’t wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I
says to myself.
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 passageways, and done
it 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 ever 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 powwow 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, s’pose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?—now how do
_I_ know whether to write to Mary Jane or not? S’pose 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 everybody up,
and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his
congregation 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 heart
ache 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 noon-time, 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
a-near 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 awhile and see my chance; then I says:
“Well, I see the niggers go in there several times.”
Both of them gave 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 tiptoed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they’d shoved in
there to do up your majesty’s room, or something, s’posing 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 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 theater, 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’ ’em 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_ awhile, 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.