Oh, I told em the full circumstances. I told em I just had to keep my promise. Im afraid not to keep it. Ive lived my own life in my own way and I guess Ive got a lot of things to answer for. I aint worryin about that now. But you dont dare to break a promise thats made to the dyin. They come back and hant you. Ive always heard that and I know its true.
One after another I told those preachers just exactly how it was, but still they all said no. Every one of em said his board of deacons or elders or trustees, or something like that, wouldnt stand for openin up their church for Viola. I always thought a preacher could run his church to suit himself, but from what Ive heard to-day I know now he takes his orders from somebody else. So finally, when I was about to give up, I thought about you and I come here as straight as I could walk.
But, maam, he said, Im not a regular church member myself. I reckin I oughter be, but I aint. And I still fail to understand why you should think I could serve you, though I dont mind tellin you Id be mighty glad to ef I could.
Ill tell you why. I never spoke to you but once before in my life, but I made up my mind then what kind of a man you was. Maybe you dont remember it, Judge, but two years ago this comin December that there Law and Order League fixed up to run me out of this town. They didnt succeed, but they did have me indicted by the Grand Jury, and I come up before you and pleaded guilty they had the evidence on me all right. You fined me, you fined me the limit, and I guess if I hadnt a had the money to pay the fine Id a gone to jail. But the main point with me was that you treated me like a lady.
I know what I am good and well, but I dont like to have somebody always throwin it up to me. Ive got feelins the same as anybody else has. You made that little deputy sheriff quit shovin me round and you called me Mizzis Cramp to my face, right out in court. Ive been Old Mallie Cramp to everybody in this town so long Id mighty near forgot I ever had a handle on my name, until you reminded me of it. You was polite to me and decent to me, and you acted like you was sorry to see a white woman fetched up in court, even if you didnt say it right out. I aint forgot that. I aint ever goin to forget it. And awhile ago, when I was all beat out and discouraged, I said to myself that if there was one man left in this town who could maybe help me to keep my promise to that dead girl, Judge William Pitman Priest was the man. Thats why Im here.
Im sorry, maam, sorry fur you and sorry fur that dead child, said Judge Priest slowly. I wish I could help you. I wish I knew how to advise you. But I reckin those gentlemen were right in whut they said to you to-day. I reckin probably their elders would object to them openin up their churches, under the circumstances. And Im mightily afraid I aint got any influence I could bring to bear in any quarter. Did you go to Father Minor? Hes a good friend of mine; we was soldiers together in the war him and me. Mebbe
I thought of him, said the woman hopelessly; but you see, Judge, Viola didnt belong to his church. She was raised a Protestant, she told me so. I guess he couldnt do nothin. in.
Ah-hah, I see, said the judge, and in his perplexity he bent his head and rubbed his broad expanse of pink bald brow fretfully, as though to stimulate thought within by friction without. His left hand fell into the litter of documents upon his desk. Absently his fingers shuffled them back and forth under his eyes. He straightened himself alertly.
Was it stated was it specified that a preacher must hold the funeral service over that dead girl? he inquired.
The woman caught eagerly at the inflection that had come into his voice.
No, sir, she answered; all she said was that it must be in a church and with some flowers and some music. But I never heard of anybody preachin a regular sermon without it was a regular preacher. Did you ever, Judge? Doubt and renewed disappointment battered at her just-born hopes.
I reckin mebbe there have been extraordinary occasions where an amateur stepped in and done the best he could, said the judge. Mebbe some folks here on earth couldnt excuse sech presumption as that, but I reckin theyd understand how it was up yonder.
He stood up, facing her, and spoke as one making a solemn promise:
Maam, you neednt worry yourself any longer. You kin go on back to your home. That dead child is goin to have whut she asked for. I give you my word on it.
She strove to put a question, but he kept on: I aint prepared to give you the full details yit. You see I dont know myself jest exactly whut theyll be. But inside of an hour from now Ill be seein Jansen and hell notify you in regards to the hour and the place and the rest of it. Kin you rest satisfied with that?
She nodded, trying to utter words and not succeeding. Emotion shook her gross shape until the big gold bands on her arms jangled together.
So, ef youll kindly excuse me, Ive got quite a number of things to do betwixt now and suppertime. I kind of figger Im goin to be right busy.
He stepped to the threshold and called out down the hallway, which by now was a long, dim tunnel of thickening shadows.
Jeff, oh Jeff, where are you, boy?
Comin, Jedge.
The speaker emerged from the gloom that was only a few shades darker than himself.
Jeff, bade his master, I want you to show this lady the way out its black as pitch in that there hall. And, Jeff, listen here! When youve done that I want you to go and find the sheriff fur me. Ef hes left his office and I spose he has by now you go on out to his house, or wherever he is, and find him and tell him I want to see him here right away.
He swung his ponderous old body about and bowed with a homely courtesy:
And now I bid you good night, maam. At the cross sill of the door she halted: Judge about gettin somebody to carry the coffin in and out did you think about that? She was such a little thing she wont be very heavy but still, at that, I dont know anybody any men that would be willin
Maam, said Judge Priest gravely, ef I was you I wouldnt worry about who the pallbearers will be. I reckin the Lord will provide. Ive took notice that He always does ef youll only meet Him halfway.
For a fact the judge was a busy man during the hour which followed upon all this, the hour between twilight and night. Over the telephone he first called up M. Jansen, our leading undertaker; indeed at that time our only one, excusing the coloured undertaker on Locust Street. He had converse at length with M. Jansen. Then he called up Doctor Lake, a most dependable person in sickness, and when you were in good health too. Then last of all he called up a certain widow who lived in those days, Mrs. Matilda Weeks by name; and this lady was what is commonly called, a character. In her case the title was just and justified. Of character she had more than almost anybody I ever knew.
Mrs. Weeks didnt observe precedents. She made them. She cared so little for following after public opinion that public opinion usually followed alter her when it had recovered from the shock and reorganised itself. There were two sides to her tongue: for some a sharp and acid side, and then again for some a sweet and gentle side and mainly these last were the weak and the erring and the shiftless, those underfoot and trodden down. Moving through this life in a calm, deliberative, determined way, always along paths of her making and her choosing, obeying only the beck of her own mind, doing good where she might, with a perfect disregard for what the truly good might think about it, Mrs. Weeks was daily guilty of acts that scandalised all proper people. But the improper ones worshipped the ground her feet touched as she walked. She was much like that disciple of Joppa named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas, of whom it is written that she was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did. Yes, you might safely call Mrs. Weeks a character.
With her, back and forth across the telephone wire, Judge Priest had extended speech. Then he hung up the receiver and went home alone to a late and badly burnt supper. Aunt Dilsey Turner, the titular goddess of his kitchen, was a queen cook among cooks, but she could keep victuals hot without scorching them for just so long and no longer. She took pains to say as much, standing in the dining-room door with her knuckles on her hips. But the judge didnt pay much attention to Aunt Dilseys vigorous remarks. He had other things on his mind.
Down our way this present generation has seen a good many conspicuous and prominent funerals. Until very recently we rather specialised in funerals. Before moving pictures sprang up so numerously funerals provided decorous and melancholy divertisement for many whose lives, otherwise, were rather aridly devoid of sources of inexpensive excitement. Among us were persons old Mrs. Whitridge was a typical example who hadnt missed a funeral of any consequence for years and years back. Let some one else provide the remains, and they would assemble in such number as to furnish a gathering, satisfying in its size and solemn in its impressiveness. They took the run of funerals as they came. But there were some funerals which, having taken place, stood forth in the public estimation forever after as events to be remembered. They were mortuary milestones on the highway of community life.
For instance, those who were of suitable age to attend it are never going to forget the burial that the town gave lazy, loud-mouthed Lute Montjoy, he being the negro fireman on the ferryboat who jumped into the river that time, aiming to save the small child of a Hungarian immigrant family bound for somewhere up in the Cumberland on the steamer Goldenrod. The baby ran across the boiler deck and went overboard, and the mother screamed, and Lute saw what had happened and he jumped. He was a good swimmer all right, and in half a dozen strokes he reached the strangling mite in the water; but then the current caught him the June rise was on and sucked him downstream into the narrow, swirling place between the steamboats hull and the outside of the upper wharf boat, and he went under and stayed under.
Next morning when the dragnets caught and brought him up, one of his stiffened black arms still encircled the body of the white child, in a grip that could hardly be loosened. White and black, everybody turned out to bury Lute Montjoy. In the services at the church two of the leading clergymen assisted, turn and turn about; and at the graveside Colonel Horatio Farrell, dean of the local bar and the champion orator of seven counties, delivered an hour-long oration, calling Lute by such names as Lute, lying there cased in mahogany with silver trimmings, had never heard applied to him while he lived. Popular subscription provided the fund that paid for the stone to mark his grave and to perpetuate the memory of his deed. You can see the shaft to this day. It rises white and high among the trees in Elm Grove Cemetery, and the word Hero is cut deep in its marble face.
Then there was the funeral of old Mr. Simon Leatheritt, mightiest among local financiers. That, indeed, was a funeral to be cherished in the cranial memory casket of any person so favoured by fortune as to have been present; a funeral that was felt to be a credit alike to deceased and to bereaved; a funeral that by its grandeur would surely have impressed the late and, in a manner of speaking, lamented Leatheritt, even though its cost would have panged him; in short, an epoch-making and an era-breeding funeral.
In the course of a long married career this was the widows first opportunity to cut loose and spend money without having to account for it by dollar, by dime and by cent to a higher authority, and she certainly did cut loose, sparing absolutely no pains in the effort to do her recent husband honour. At a cost calculated as running into three figures for that one item alone, she imported the prize male tenor of a St. Louis cathedral choir to enrich the proceedings with his glowing measures. This person, who was a person with eyes too large for a man and a mouth too small, rendered Abide With Me in a fashion so magnificent that the words were entirely indistinguishable and could not be followed on account of the genius fashion of singing them.
By express, floral offerings came from as far away as Cleveland, Ohio, and New Orleans, Louisiana. One creation, sent on from a far distance, which displayed a stuffed white dove hovering, with the aid of wires, in the arc of a green trellis above a bank of white tuberoses, attracted much favourable comment. A subdued murmur of admiration, travelling onward from pew to pew, followed after it as the design was borne up the centre aisle to the chancel rail.
As for broken columns and flower pillows with appropriately regretful remarks let into them in purple immortelle letterings, and gates ajar why, they were evident in a profusion almost past individual recording.
When the officiating minister, reading the burial service, got as far as Dust to dust, Ashby Corwin, who sat at the back of the church, bent over and whispered in the ear of his nearest neighbour: Talk about your ruling passions! If thats not old Uncle Sime all over still grabbing for the dust! As a rule, repetition of this sally about town was greeted with the deep hush of silent reproof. Our dead money-monarchs memory was draped with the sanctity of wealth. Besides, Ash Corwin, as many promptly took pains to point out, was a person of no consequence whatsoever, financial or otherwise. Mrs. Whitridges viewpoint, as voiced by her in the months that followed, was the commoner one. This is Mrs. Whitridge speaking:
Ive been going to funerals steady ever since I was a child, I presume Ive helped comfort more berefts by my presence and seen more dear departeds fittinly laid away than any person in this whole city. But if youre asking me, I must say Mr. Leatheritts was the most fashionable funeral I ever saw, or ever hope to see. Everything that lavishness could do was done there, and all in such lovely taste, too! Why, it had style written all over it, especially the internment.
Oh, weve had funerals and funerals down our way. But the funeral that took place on an October day that I have in mind still will be talked about long after Banker Leatheritt and the estate he reluctantly left behind him are but dim recollections. It came as a surprise to most people, for in the daily papers of that morning no customary black-bordered announcement had appeared. Others had heard of it by word of mouth. In dubious quarters, and in some quarters not quite so dubious, the news had travelled, although details in advance of the event were only to be guessed at. Anyhow, the reading and talking public knew this much: That a girl, calling herself Viola St. Claire and aged nineteen, had died. It was an accepted fact, naturally, that even the likes of her must be laid away after some fashion or other. If she were put under ground by stealth, clandestinely as it were, so much the better for the atmosphere of civic morality. That I am sure would have been disclosed as the opinion of a majority, had there been inquiry among those who were presumed to have and who admitted they had the best interests of the community at heart.
So you see a great many people were entirely unprepared against the coming of the pitiably short procession that at eleven oclock, or thereabout, turned out of the little street running down back of the freight depot into Franklin Street, which was one of our main thoroughfares. First came the hearse, drawn by M. Jansens pair of dappled white horses and driven by M. Jansen himself, he wearing his official high hat and the span having black plumes in their head stalls, thus betokening a burial ceremony of the top cost. Likewise the hearse was M. Jansens best hearse not his third best, nor yet his second best, but the splendid crystal-walled one that he ordered in the Eastern market after the relict of Banker Leatheritt settled the bill.