Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I crept to their doors and listened; they were snoring. So I tiptoed along, and got downstairs all right. There wasn’t a sound anywhere. I peeped through a crack of the dining room door, and saw the men who were watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was lying, and there was a candle in both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but I saw there was 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 ran into the parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place I saw 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 were crossed, which made me creep, they were so cold, and then I ran back across the room and in behind the door.

The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, very softly, and knelt down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and I saw she had 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 would make sure those 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 rather blue, on account of the thing playing out that way after I had taken so much trouble and run so much risk about it. I said to myself, if it could stay where it is, all right; because when we get a hundred or two hundred miles down the river I could write back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that isn’t what’s going to happen; what’s going to happen is, the money will be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king will get it again, and it will be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to swipe it from him. Of course I wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but I didn’t dare try it. Every minute it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of those watchers would begin to stir, and I might get caught—caught with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody had hired me to take care of. I don’t wish to be mixed up in any such business as that, I said to myself.

When I got downstairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the watchers were gone. There was 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.

Toward the middle of the day the undertaker came 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 until the hall and the parlor and the dining room were full. I saw the coffin lid was the way it was before, but I didn’t dare look in under it, with folks around.

Then the people began to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for half an hour the people filed around slowly, 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 was no other sound but the scraping of feet on the floor and the blowing of noses—because people always blow them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church.

When the place was packed full the undertaker slid around in his black gloves with his soft, soothing ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all shipshape 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 did it with nods and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, most gliding, stealthiest man I ever saw; and there was no more smile to him than there is to a ham.

They had borrowed a melodeon—a sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman sat down and worked it, and it was pretty screechy and colicky, and everybody joined in and sang, and Peter was the only one who had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slowly and solemnly, and began to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar that anyone ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along; the parson had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait—you couldn’t hear yourself think. It was downright awkward, and nobody seemed to know what to do. But pretty soon they saw 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 began to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people’s heads. So he glided along, with the uproar and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappeared down into the cellar. Then in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson began his solemn talk where he had left off. In a minute or two here came 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 toward the preacher, over the people’s heads, and said, in a kind of 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 doesn’t cost anything, and it’s just the little things that make a man looked up to and liked. There was no more popular man in town than that undertaker.

Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but awfully long and tiresome; and then the king shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbish, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker began to sneak up on the coffin with his screwdriver. I was in a sweat then, and watched him pretty keenly. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as softly 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 I said to myself, suppose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?—now how do I know whether to write to Mary Jane or not? Suppose she dug him up and didn’t find anything, what would she think of me? Blame it, I said, I might get hunted up and jailed; I had better lie low and keep dark, and not write at all; the thing’s awfully mixed up now; trying to better it, I’ve worsened it a hundred times, and I wish to goodness I had just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business!

They buried him, and we came back home, and I went to watching faces again—I couldn’t help it, and I couldn’t rest easy. But nothing came of it; the faces didn’t tell me anything.

The king visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, and made himself ever so friendly; and he gave 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 William and he would take the girls home with them; and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed and among their own relations; and it pleased the girls, too—tickled them so that they completely forgot they had ever had a trouble in the world—and they told him to sell out as quickly as he wanted to; they would be ready. Those poor things were so glad and happy that it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but I didn’t see any safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune.

Well, I’ll be blamed if the king didn’t advertise the house and the enslaved people and all the property for auction straight off—the sale two days after the funeral; but anybody could buy privately beforehand if they wanted to.

So the next day after the funeral, about noontime, the girls’ joy got its first jolt. A couple of slave traders came along, and the king sold them the enslaved people cheaply, for three-day drafts, as they called them, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their mother down the river to Orleans. I thought those poor girls and those enslaved people would break their hearts with grief; they cried with their arms around each other, and took on so that it nearly made me sick to see it. The girls said they had never dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. I can never get it out of my memory, the sight of those poor miserable girls and the enslaved people hanging around each other’s necks and crying; and I reckon I couldn’t have stood it all, but would have had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn’t known the sale was no good and the enslaved people would be back home in a week or two.

The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many came out flat-footed and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. It injured the frauds somewhat; but the old fool bulled right along, in spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you the duke was powerfully uneasy.

The next day was auction day. In the morning, about broad daylight, the king and the duke came up to the garret and woke me up, and I saw by their looks that there was trouble. The king said:

“Were you in my room night before last?”

“No, Your Majesty”—which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang was around.

“Were you in there yesterday or last night?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“Honor bright, now—no lies.”

“Honor bright, Your Majesty, I’m telling you the truth. I haven’t been near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it to you.”

The duke said:

“Have you seen anybody else go in there?”

“No, Your Grace, not as I remember, I believe.”

“Stop and think.”

I studied awhile and saw my chance; then I said:

“Well, I saw the enslaved people go in there several times.”

Both of them gave a little jump, and looked as if they had never expected it, and then as if they had. Then the duke said:

“What, all of them?”

“No—at least, not all at once—that is, I don’t think I ever saw 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 overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I saw them.”

“Well, go on, go on! What did they do? How’d they act?”

“They didn’t do anything. And they didn’t act in any special way, as far as I saw. They tiptoed away; so I could easily see that they had shoved in there to do up Your Majesty’s room, or something, supposing you were up; and found you weren’t up, and so they were hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn’t already woken you up.”

“Great guns, this is a go!” said the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and tolerably silly. They stood there thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke burst into a kind of little raspy chuckle, and said:

“It does beat all how neatly the enslaved people played their hand. They pretended to be sorry they were going out of this region! And I believed they were sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don’t ever tell me any more that an enslaved person doesn’t have any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played that thing it would fool anybody. In my opinion, there’s a fortune in them. If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn’t want a better layout than that—and here we’ve gone and sold them for a song. Yes, and we aren’t privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where is that song—that draft?”

“In the bank, to be collected. Where would it be?”

“Well, that’s all right then, thank goodness.”

I said, kind of timidly:

“Has something gone wrong?”

The king whirled on me and ripped out:

“None of your business! You keep your head shut, and mind your own affairs—if you have any. As long as you’re in this town, don’t you forget that—you hear?” Then he said to the duke, “We have to just swallow it and say nothing: mum’s the word for us.”

As they were starting down the ladder the duke chuckled again, and said:

“Quick sales and small profits! It’s a good business—yes.”

The king snarled around on him and said:

“I was trying to do the best thing in selling them out so quickly. If the profits have turned out to be none, lacking considerably, and none to carry, is it my fault any more than it’s yours?”

“Well, they’d be in this house yet and we wouldn’t if I could have gotten 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 gave me down the banks for not coming and telling him I saw the enslaved people come out of his room acting that way—said any fool would have known something was up. And then he waltzed in and cussed himself awhile, and said it all came of his not lying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he would be blamed if he would ever do it again. So they went off jawing; and I felt dreadfully glad I had worked it all off onto the enslaved people, and yet hadn’t done the enslaved people any harm by it.