Then he dropped down and moved along the wall back to his place. You could see that the people were glad to hear it, because they all wanted to know what had been going on. 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 weren’t no more liked man in town than what that funeral man was.
Well, the preaching was very good, but poison long; and then the king he pushed in and got off some of his same old foolishness, and at last the job was through, and the funeral man started to come up on the box with his screw-driver. I was worried then, and watched him pretty closely. But he never made any trouble at all; just moved the cover along as smooth as pig fat, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didn’t know if the money was in there or not. So, says I, what if someone has robbed that bag secretly? -- now how do I know if I should write to Mary Jane or not? What if she was to dig him up and not find nothing, what would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and put in prison; I’d better keep quiet, and not write at all; the thing’s awful mixed up now; trying to better it, I’ve made it worse a hundred times, and I wish to God I’d just let it alone.
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 was sweet to everyone; and he give out that his church over in England would be worried about him, so he must hurry and sell up 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 him and William would take the girls home with them; and that made everybody happy, because then the girls would be well fixed and with their relatives; and the girls were happy too -- they were so enthusiastic about it that it was like they never had a trouble in the world. They told him to sell out as fast as he wanted, they would be ready. Them poor things was that glad it made my heart hurt to see them getting tricked and lied to so, but I didn’t see no safe way to cut in and change the song.
Well, blamed if the king didn’t advertise the house and the slaves and all the furniture to be sold two days after the funeral; and anyone could buy before that if they wanted to.
So the next day after the funeral, along about noon, the girls’ happiness got the first big kick. Two slave buyers come along, and the king sold them the slaves cheap 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 slaves leaving would break their hearts; they cried around each other, and took on so it almost made me 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 stop remembering them poor sad girls and slaves hanging around each other’s necks and crying; and I think I couldn’t a taken it all, but would a had to break out and tell on our gang if I hadn’t knowed the sale weren’t true and the slaves would be back home in a week or two.
The thing made a lot of talk in town, too, and a good many come out straight and said it was wrong to separate the mother and the children that way. It hurt those two phonies some; but the old man he pushed right along, against all the duke could say or do, and I tell you the duke was feeling pretty guilty.
Next day was sale day. When the sun was well and truly up the king and the duke come up in the top of the house to wake me, and I seen by their look that there was trouble.
The king says: “Was you in my room night before last?”
“No, sir, your lord” -- which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang was around.
“Was you in there yesterday or last night?”
“No, your lord.”
“Tell the truth, now -- no lies.”
“Before God, my lord, I’m telling the truth. I ain’t been near your room since Miss Mary Jane showed it to you.”
The duke says: “Have you seen anyone else go in there?” “No, my Lord, not as I remember, I believe.”
“Stop and think.”
I studied it for a while and seen my opening; then I says:
“Well, I seen the slaves go in there a few times.”
Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn’t ever thought of it, and then like they had.
Then the duke says: “What, all of them?”
“No -- at least, not all at once -- that is, I don’t think I ever seen 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 wasn’t early, because I was late getting up. I was just starting down the ladder, and I seen 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 far as I seen. They walked on their toes going away; so I seen, easy enough, that they’d gone in there to do up your lord’s room, thinking you was up; and found you weren’t, and so they was hoping to not get in trouble for waking you up.”
“Great guns, this is a go!” says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and more than a little foolish. They stood there a-thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he broke into a kind of a little scratchy laugh, and says:
“It does surprise me how well the slaves played their hand. They let on to be sorry they was going away from here! And I believed they was sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don’t ever tell me any more that a black man ain’t got any acting ability. Why, the way they played that thing it would a tricked anybody. As I see it, there’s a lot of money in ‘em. If I had the money and a theatre, I wouldn’t want a better team than that -- and here we’ve gone and sold ‘em for a song. Yes, and for now, we can’t even sing the song yet. Say, where IS that song -- that cheque the buyer paid with?”
“In the bank, waiting to be cleared. Where would it be?”
“Well, that’s all right then, thank God.”
Says I, kind of shy-like: “Is something gone wrong?”
The king turns on me and shouts out: “None of your business! You keep your head shut, and look to your own business -- if you got any. Long as you’re in this town don’t you forget that -- you hear?” Then he says to the duke, “We got to just wear it and say nothing: quiet’s the word for us.”
As they was starting down the ladder the duke he laughs again, and says:
“Fast sales and not much to be made by it! It’s a good business -- yes.”
The king turns around angrily on him and says: “I was trying to do what was best in selling ‘em out so fast. If it turns out that we lost on it, am I to be blamed any more than you?”
“Well, they’d be in this house yet and we wouldn’t if I could a got my thinking listened to.”
The king argued back as much as was safe for him, and then changed around and shouted at me again. He give me down the river for not coming and telling him I seen the slaves come out of his room acting that way -- said anyone would a knowed something was up. And then he danced in and argued with himself for a while, and said it all come of him not sleeping in and having a good rest that morning, and he’d be blamed if he’d ever do it again. So they went off a-talking; and I felt very glad I’d worked it all off onto the slaves, and yet hadn’t done them no trouble by it.
Chapter 28
By and by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and started for the steps; but as I come to the girls’ room the door was open, and I seen Mary Jane sitting by her big old chest, which was open and she’d been putting things in it -- getting ready to go to England. But she had stopped now with a folded dress in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. I felt awful bad to see it; anybody would. I went in there and says: “Miss Mary Jane, it hurts you to see people in trouble, and it does me too -- most always. Tell me about it.”
So she
done it. And it was the slaves -- I just knew it. She said the trip to England was about destroyed for her; she didn’t know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children weren’t ever going to see each other no more -- and then she broke out sadder than ever, and threw up her hands, and says:
“Oh, those sweet people, to think they ain’t ever going to see each other any more!”
“But they will -- inside of two weeks -- and I know it!” says I.
Rats! It was out before I could think! And before I could move 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 fast and said too much, and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she sat there, not being at all patient, her being so filled with interest and looking beautiful, and kind of happy and easy, like a person that’s had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I think a body that goes and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is facing a lot of danger, but I ain’t ever done that, so I can’t say for sure; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a place where it looks to me like the truth is better and maybe even safer than a lie. I must think it over for a while, it’s so kind of strange and not right for me. I never seen nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m a-going to do it; I’ll up and tell the truth this one time, even if it does seem most like sitting down on a barrel of gun powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go.
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?”
“Don’t worry about why just yet. If I tell you how I know the servants 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 would take it more than another man’s kiss-the-Bible.” She smiled and turned red very sweetly, and I says, “If you don’t mind it, I’ll shut the door -- and lock it.”
Then I come back and sat down again, and says: “Don’t you shout. Just sit quiet and take it like a man. I got to tell the truth, and you want to be strong, Miss Mary, because it’s a bad kind, and it's going to be hard to take, but there ain’t no help for it. These uncles of yours ain’t no uncles at all; they’re both robbers -- real devils. There, now we’re over the worst of it, you can take the rest pretty easy.”
It surprised her like everything, as I knew it would; but I was over the rough water now, so I went right along and told her every last thing, from where we first met that foolish young man going up to the river boat, clear through to where she threw herself on to the king’s breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times -- and then up she jumps, with her face burning like the sun, and says: “That animal! Come, don’t waste a minute -- not a second -- we’ll have them tarred and feathered, and thrown in the river!”
Says I: “Sure. But do you mean before you go to Mr. Lothrop’s, or -- “
“Oh,” she says, “What am I thinking about!” and sat down again. “Don’t listen to what I said -- please don’t -- you won’t now, will you?” putting her soft hand on mine in that kind of way that I said I would die first.
“I never thought, I was so worked up,” she says; “now go on, and I won’t do so any more. You tell me what to do, and what you say I’ll do it.”
“Well,” I says, “it’s a rough gang, them two snakes, and I’m fixed so I have to travel with them a while longer, if I want to or not -- Don’t ask me to 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 ain’t we? I see you agree. Well, then, we won’t blow on them.”
Saying them words put a plan in my head. I see how maybe I could get me and Jim away from the two of them and get them put in prison. But I didn’t want to run the raft in the light without anyone on it to answer questions but me; so I didn’t want the plan to start working until pretty late that night.
I says: “Miss Mary Jane, I’ll tell you what to do, and you won’t have to stay at Mr. Lothrop’s so long, either. How far is it?”
“A little short of four miles -- right out in the country.”
“Well, that’ll do. Now you go there, and keep low until nine or half-past tonight, and then get them to take 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 until eleven, then it means I’m gone, and out of the way, and safe. Then you come out and pass the news around, and get these men locked up.”
“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 say I told you the whole thing before it happened, and you must stand by me all you can.”
“Stand by you! Oh I will. They shall not touch a hair of your head!” she says, and I seen her nose go wide and her eyes light up when she said it, too.
“If I get away I shall not be here,” I says, “to prove these snakes ain’t your uncles, and I couldn’t do it if I was here. I could say they was counterfeits, that’s all, and that’s worth something. But there’s others can do that better than me, and they’re people that will be trusted more than I’d be. I’ll tell you how to find them. Give me a pencil and a piece of paper. There -- ‘The King’s Foolishness, 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 King’s Foolishness, and ask for some witnesses -- You’ll have that whole town down here before you can even wink, Miss Mary. And they’ll come red-hot, too.”
I judged we had got everything fixed about right now. So I says: “Just let the sale go right along, and don’t worry. Nobody don’t have to pay for the things they buy until a whole day after the sale because it is happening so soon after the funeral, and they ain’t going to leave until 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 slaves -- it weren’t no sale, and your servants will be back before long. Why, they can’t even get the money for the slaves yet -- they’re in the worst kind of a place, Miss Mary.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ll run down to breakfast now, and then I’ll start straight for Mr. Lothrop’s.”
“I’m afraid that ain’t the ticket, Miss Mary Jane,” I says, “not by a long ways; go before breakfast.”
“Why?”
“Why'd you think I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?”
“Well, I never thought -- and come to think, I don’t know. What was it?”
“Why, it’s because you ain’t one of these leather-face people. I don’t want no better book than what your face is. A body can sit down and read it off like big print. Do you think you can go and face your uncles when they come to kiss you good morning, and never -- “
“There, there, don’t! Yes, I’ll go before breakfast -- I’ll be glad to. And leave my sisters with them?”
“Yes; don’t worry about them. They’ve got to put up with it yet a while. They might think something was up if all of you was to go. I don’t want you to see them, or your sisters, or nobody in this town; if a neighbour was to ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell it all. No, you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I’ll fix it with all of them. I’ll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say you’ve went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a friend, and you’ll be back tonight or early in the morning.”
“Gone to see a friend is a
ll right, but I won’t have my love given to them.”
“Well, then, it shall not be.” It was well enough to tell her so -- that wouldn’t hurt no one. It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it’s the little things that smooths people’s roads the most, down here below; it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn’t cost nothing. Then I says: “There’s one more thing -- that bag of money.”
“Well, they’ve got that,” says Mary Jane, “and it makes me feel pretty stupid to think how they got it.”
“No, you’re out, there. They ain’t got it.”
“Why, who’s got it?”
“I wish I knowed, but I don’t. I had it, because I robbed it from them; and I robbed it to give to you; and I know where it’s hiding, but I’m afraid it ain’t there no more. I’m awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I’m just as sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could; I did honest. I come close to getting caught, and I had to put it into the first place I come to, and run -- and it weren’t a good place.”