PROFESSOR JOVANNY’S FUNERAL
(Edward Iraneus Stephenson: The Manhattan.)
Unaffected was the regret in Yellow Bear City, Storey County, Nevada, when, upon a certain January evening in the year 187—, the news spread that Professor Jovanny was dead. Professor Jovanny had been a long time (as time runs in communities like Yellow Bear City) piano-player in ordinary to the “Cosmopolitan Hotel and Dancing Pavilion—Ladies Free.” Yellow Bear was yet something uncultivated. It was true that its small population found advantage in pursuing the study of geology, after the methods advocated by Mr. Squeers, and that tons of gold-hiding quartz were daily crushed through their energies; but, in spite of a weekly newspaper, thirteen saloons (where discussion upon our national policy not unfrequently led to—lead), an unfinished Methodist mission chapel and six dance-houses (including the Cosmopolitan), the advances of art and sentiment within Yellow Bear’s straggling limits had been coy. The dint of pity was quite a different matter. It was genuinely felt now. All was excitement at “Cosmopolitan End,” where a notice, nailed above the bar of the popular resort, apprised patrons, first, of the sad event, and, second, of the omission of the usual evening dance, which Professor Jovanny’s untimely taking-off rendered impracticable. The street-corner next the Cosmopolitan, just around which stood the house of mourning, was the rallying-spot for groups of sympathizing Yellow Bear citizens. “Poor old One-Two-Three!”—“Handlin’ a golden harp, mebbe, by this, think?” and many other more potent and entirely unquotable remarks and testimonials to the virtuoso’s virtues were plentiful and loud. The old and cracked piano itself, at the upper end of the long dance-room, was already draped with sundry torn strips of bombazine and white cambric. A yellow and scarcely relevant engraving of Abraham Lincoln, which the Yellow Bear flies seemed to have visited with cruel pertinacity, had been propped upright upon its cover. Its legend, “We Mourn our Loss,” struck the barkeeper as an appropriate and delicate expression of personal grief, under the circumstances. San Monito street was unanimous in confessing that Yellow Bear could well have spared a better man; thereby signifying a man who could drink deep, swing a pick long and shoot informally—in none of which accomplishments the dead musician had been versed. The editor of the Weekly Intelligencer was, during the last moments of the waning twilight, correcting in proof an obituary headed in his heaviest-faced capitals, “Muses in the Mud. Death of our Talented Fellow-Citizen, Professor Jovanny.” In short, as Rioba Jack expressed it to the crowd of choice spirits hanging about the Cosmopolitan bar, Professor Jovanny’s decease was “a suc—cess.”
And as to this dead Nevada Orpheus who lay white and rigid around the corner, and whose name, when pronounced nearer to the Atlantic, must have been Giovanni something, or something Giovanni, what was now to him the petty bustle of Yellow Bear City—or what the scarcely more important bustle that the whole round earth makes as it spins. Six months back the “Professor” had landed in this rude mining-town of the Sierras. Gaunt, middle-aged, travel-stained and timid was this waif and stray of art, blown by some ironical wind hither. Under one arm was a music portfolio; hanging to the other, a daughter. Nevertheless, Professor Jovanny made his advent in a smiling hour for his fortunes. Between Dennison, proprietor of the Cosmopolitan, and the newcomer an out-of-hand bargain was struck in very Western English and very badly mangled Italian ditto that was satisfactory to both parties. Professor Jovanny abode in Yellow Bear and won reputation. Whether he had ever tried his hand at other music than the festive waltz, jig and walk-around is open to doubt. But certain it was that he played everything of that stamp with such irresistible vigor and spirit that the Cosmopolitan outrivaled all its compeers apace, and the mirth and fun of its nightly revels (termed upon Sundays, out of deference to religious scruples, “grand sacred concerts”) waxed nightly more fast and furious. As for the daughter, one single relic of her father’s early refinement asserted itself on her behalf, namely, that not one of the Yellow Bear species-male could truly say that he knew her. Rioba Jack, Dennison of the Cosmopolitan, “Mister” (whose sobriquet was the derisive contraction of one lone visiting card unfortunately discovered among the effects of Mr. James Thornborough Harrington, formerly of the State of Maine), nor any of their fraternity, had been able to get the advantage of this mortifying dilemma. The girl was hardly ever seen upon the street, so jealous was her father’s watchfulness. In time Rioba Jack and the rest of them came to respect this position. That is, they ceased to combat it actively. “After all,” remarked some one, during a discussion of the topic, “it ain’t a bad idea to have one real woman in this here town.” There happened to be a considerable female contingent already in Yellow Bear society, so the remark last quoted evinced a good deal of nice discrimination on the speaker’s part.
It was not until evening that, with the session of the wonted parliament around the Cosmopolitan bar, the proposition to inter Professor Jovanny with civic honors took shape. The full quorum was present in that hospitable retreat. Distilled liquors flowed, albeit no dance was forthcoming. Rioba Jack rose to address the company. “It appears to me,” said that gentleman, covering both his awkwardness as orator and his mouth with a tumbler, when desirable—“it appears to me that we had ought—that in view of his position in Yellow Bear—that we had ought to give Professor Jovanny his funeral.” “My sentiments,” interrupted an approving voice, promptly. Rioba Jack continued: “He hain’t left nothin’ worth chattering about, except the gal, and all gals ain’t cash. Jovanny was a artist way above tide-level—there ain’t no mistake about that. Talk about your celluloid-clawyers! Talk about your Dumb Toms! Talk of your—of your scales,” the Rioba concluded hastily, suddenly realizing that he was drifting among breakers in any rash employment of technical terms, “unless a man had heerd Jovanny rattlin’ ‘Where was Moses,’ in this here hotel, he hadn’t never heerd no genuine tunin’ up at all. I say, we had ought to give Jovanny a big time.”
The chorus of approval came fortissimo.
“I move that Rioba Jack be app’inted a committee of one to wait on deceased and ask his gal if the notion jumps with her feelin’s, like as it were.” This suggestion from a distant quarter, however mixed, was to the point. It was carried. Every man present felt equal to himself undertaking this preliminary; but this was no time for permitting personal interests to dam the current of popular feeling. Rioba Jack strode from the barroom. Applause and suggestion swelled behind his back. “Make it a square out-and-out show.” “Borry the Methodist’s gospel stamp.” “Pay an entrance fee for the benefit of the gal.” “Embalm the corpse!” and the like, were distinguishable among these. High over all the tumult broke the stentorian voice of Dennison of the Cosmopolitan, commanding order and enforcing the same by the handle of his knife applied vigorously to a tumbler. Finally some settled plan of action crystalized. A “square funeral” Professor Jovanny should have. His body should “lay in state” for the whole of the ensuing day—on the piano in the adjoining dance-room—that piano which had so often been shaken to its center beneath the defunct’s nimble fingers. “Mister’s” proposal of an admission fee—for gentlemen only—was accepted. The entire male population of Yellow Bear City was to be duly invited to appear and “view the remains” for the modest sum of one dollar, during any hour of the morrow’s daylight most suited to individual convenience. A brass band had not yet been organised in Yellow Bear, or it would unquestionably have been provided. A free bar was—of course. At nightfall Professor Jovanny should be buried with all the mortuary pomp practicable.
Rioba Jack was greeted eagerly upon his return. “It’s all right,” responded that worthy, composedly resuming his seat. “Go ahead, all hands! I didn’t see the gal, but Big Jinny and Pearl Kate are settin’ round with her, and they give her the message. Jinny says its all right. We can go ahead.”
The Rioba was fully posted on the progress of affairs during his absence. The idea of Professor Jovanny’s “laying in state” upon the old piano alone drew forth his contempt in round terms; which, although they betrayed surprising acquaintance with scriptural phraseology, were by no means pious. “D—— any such half-way style as that,” he ended, explosively; “What I say is, buy the old tune-box from Dennison and bury Jovanny in it!” The uproar that greeted this novel proposal, like Prospero’s tale, might have cured deafness. Naturally, each person present promptly claimed to have thought of it himself—and rejected it unuttered. Dennison announced his entire willingness to dispose of the widowed instrument at a reasonable figure. There was a unanimous rush into the long dance-room adjoining. Away flew the emblems of grief dangling about the object of special inspection. Its cover was laid off, bodily, in a twinkling. Its length, its depth, its available breadth and strength of bottom were excitedly ascertained. It was bought within ten minutes by a lavish collection, Dennison mentioning a price that certainly showed him to be an astute man in recognizing a commercial opportunity. Thereupon did the whole roomful resolve itself into a committee on destruction. Alas! what soft-hearted story-teller can dwell upon the unholy hammering and cleaving, the ruthless hacking and smashing which ended in making visible for weeks thereafter in the back yard of the Cosmopolitan a hideous wreck of tangled steel wire, white and black keys and splinters of sounding-board—in a word, the entrails of the murdered piano?
By ten o’clock the work was fairly done. The crowd had departed, and only Dennison, Rioba Jack and “Mister” now remained in the long dance-room. Dennison was smoking, as he leaned against one end of his late piece of property. “Mister,” with bared arms, diligently rubbed oil over sundry scratches upon its case. Rioba Jack was strengthening with hammer and nails some weak spot beneath. The flaring light from a couple of oil lamps on the side of the wall brought out strong shadows on the three dark, heavily-mustached faces. Neither of the trio broke the silence for a few moments. Presently the Rioba emerged from his close quarters and began hammering at the end opposite to Dennison. He looked up. “What’s goin’ to become of the gal?” he queried, abruptly; “Yellow Bear ain’t no place for a decent one like her, ’specially if she’s left alone in it.”
“Oh, I’ve fixed that,” replied Dennison, leisurely, “Mother Sal’s a-goin’ to take keer of her till she can do for herself.”
The Rioba dropped his lathe-nail and stopped his pounding. “Mother Sal,” he repeated—“Mother Sal around on San Monito street?”
“Yes! who else?”
Rioba Jack quietly turned and slipped on his coat.
“Dennison,” he said, with an unwonted accent of expostulation lurking in his voice, “don’t do this thing. Keep your hand out of deviltry for once—leastways such deviltry as this. I don’t know Jovanny’s gal. I hain’t hardly ever seen her. ’Taint for myself I’m askin’ it—but just you let her alone. Won’t you?”
Dennison had removed his pipe from his mouth for good now. He stood staring angrily at the Rioba, whose clear, dark eyes under their bushy brows were fixed with unwonted brilliancy upon his own. The proprietor of the Cosmopolitan burst into a rude laugh. “What’s the matter with the man?” he ejaculated. Then returning the Rioba’s steadfast gaze with an equally pertinacious and meaning one, he answered with much deliberateness, “Look-a-here, Rioba, I suppose I can take a hint if I must—especially when it’s rammed down into my skull as this one appears to be. You and me has got along without trouble for ever since we come to Yellow Bear. I should be sorry, very sorry, to be obleeged to have any unpleasantness between us now. I always feel bound to have unpleasantness with any man, partner or stranger, who interferes with my own partic’ler concerns. Do you take?”
The Rioba made no direct reply. He stood with his eyes bent upon the floor abstractedly. Nevertheless he “took.” “Good-night, Dennison—good-night, ‘Mister,’” he suddenly said, and turning abruptly upon his heel he quitted the Cosmopolitan without another syllable.
The gray Nevada dawn was beginning to filter between the sharp Sierra peaks. Yellow Bear looked like a sketch in India-ink on gray paper. Around the corner of the Cosmopolitan came a little procession not irreverently conveying upon a shutter something over which a sheet had been loosely spread. The air was raw and cold. “Careful—that’s it—steady now,” cautioned Dennison in a low voice as they mounted the Cosmopolitan doorstep. “Mister,” Rioba Jack, Big Jinny, and Pearl Kate set down their burden at the upper end of the dance-room. “Come gals, fly round,” exhorted Dennison, “there’s all the bar to be set up across there—them windows has got to be darkened up—there ain’t no time to waste. ‘Mister’ and me’ll tend to our share of the performance.” “I say, Jinny,” questioned the Rioba sotto voce to that Paphian nymph a moment later, when Dennison and “Mister” were engaged at a distance, “you left her asleep, eh?” (There had, by the way, been no allusion from either party concerned as to the embryo “unpleasantness” of the preceding night—again to “Mister’s” secret regret). “Sound, Jack—just like she was dead drunk,” responded Big Jinny, cheerfully, pounding away with her hammer at the window-sash. Her interrogator frowned. The answer somehow gritted against his dormant sense of the fitting. Big Jinny drove another tack and began to whistle.
A little later a magnificent eastern flare of pink and gold fell through the one window yet undarkened upon the face of Professor Jovanny, peacefully upturned from his last pillow—a roll of his own thumbed dance-music wrapped about with a white bar napkin. A moth-eaten knitted lap-robe was thrown across his feet. Dressed in his one threadbare black suit—a pile of his own music beneath the forlorn gray head—truly here went one to the grave with all that he possessed—except a daughter.
Dennison, the Rioba, “Mister” and the women stood for a moment motionless beside the body—their tasks completed.
“A becomin’ caskit, altogether,” exclaimed the proprietor of the Cosmopolitan, eyeing it critically.
“There’s somethin’ wanting all the same,” quoth “Mister,” after the continued pause had grown oppressive.
“Wantin’,” retorted Dennison; “I’d like to know what it is. Look at them there flags over the windows! Look at that there bar, where all that a man’s got to do is to walk up, after he’s paid his dollar, and help himself or let Pearl and Jinny here help him! Look at this here coffin—solid rosewood, round corners, carved legs and ag-graffe treble,” he went on, with a grin at his own wit. “Come, now, ‘Mister,’ what more could Jovanny or anybody else want?”
But “Mister” was paying no attention to this sally or the mirth it had provoked. “Flowers—flowers and fruit—fruit and flowers,” he was muttering to himself, apparently confounding a conventional Eastern attention from the friends of an afflicted family with the catalogue of some Maine county-fair. “Must come to the same thing—of course,” he exclaimed, conclusively, striding away from the de facto coffin and his companions. He disappeared within the barroom. “I’ve made free with them new stores of yourn, Dennison,” he called out presently, staggering down the room toward the expectant party, weighted with an awkward load—two stems of bananas and four spiky pineapples. “It won’t hurt their sellin’,” he apologized, as with a dexterous balancing and tying he disposed of the two first-named decorations upright, one upon either side of poor Professor Jovanny’s perpendicular feet—vegetable obelisks. A pineapple stood upon each one of the “round corners.” Dennison and the rest were hearty in commendations of their friend’s thoughtfulness and taste. “That just fixes her off too slick!” exclaimed Big Jinny, in high delight.
The sun mounted; the barkeeper appeared in the adjoining room. First stragglers, curious to learn the truth of any rumors concerning the day’s novelties at the Cosmopolitan, strolled across the threshold. Dennison put “Mister” and a table on which was deposited a loaded revolver and an empty biscuit-tin, with a slit in its cover, over against the door; Big Jinny and the Pearl, he posted at the special bar for the day, which he had by no means ungenerously furnished forth; himself, he stationed in an arm-chair, without the dance-room, to advertise the obsequies, urge entrance into the penetralia of the dance-room, as a matter of duty and pleasure, and act as master of ceremonies generally.
It will be remarked that, designedly or accidentally, Rioba Jack was appointed unto no prominent function in these festivities of grief, so he dropped an eagle into “Mister’s” resonant receptacle and walked out of the Cosmopolitan. The street was sparsely peopled at that early hour. He turned the corner of the hotel and halted abruptly to avoid collision with a figure—a girl standing motionless, and leaning against the wall, as if summoning up the courage to advance further. What told the Rioba instantly that it was Professor Jovanny’s daughter, was not difficult to appreciate. The set young face, tear-stained and pallid, but independent of a pair of dark, mournful eyes for its beauty, the slender form not ungracefully draped by the scanty, black-stuff dress; the head bared to the sharp morning wind—it was a vignette of young grief, passive, despairing, solitary, that the Rioba gazed at pityingly.
“Good—good-day,” he said, awkwardly. “You’re—his gal, I take it. Can I—might I help you, Miss?” The last word in respectful salute to the unmarried, weaker sex, had been a stranger to the Rioba’s lips for a dozen years.
“I am going to my father,” the girl replied, in a curiously abstracted fashion of speech; one wherein lay just a shadow of foreign accent. She looked away from the Rioba’s clear gaze, and continued, as if partly speaking to herself, “I wish to see where they have put my father. I must sit by him. He will need me.”
“But,” began the Rioba, in distressed perplexity, as she wrapped her shawl closer about her exposed throat (it was a beautiful throat), and made a motion to pass him, “yer father’s dead, Miss. Poor, old Jovanny’s dead. He’s layin’ in state in his pianny—coffin, I mean—round to the Cosmopolitan here. You wouldn’t like to be a sittin’ alone there all day ’side the coffin, and everybody starin’ at you. ’Twouldn’t do.”
“I want to sit by my father,” the girl answered more decidedly. “Take me to him.”
The Rioba was mute. He saw that his new protégée (for such he instinctively recognized her), was in that state of mind that the eyes of all the universe were as naught to her. Extremity of sorrow had taken hold upon her, and to reason with her would be like reasoning with the clouded mind. He looked again down upon her white, pathetic face. Its innocence awoke a new emotion in the Rioba’s heart.
“Come along,” he ejaculated, not unkindly. He turned and led the way to the Cosmopolitan. His companion followed mutely with bowed head. The gathering crowd in the dance-room stared as the two entered. The girl heeded the whispers not a whit. She uttered a low exclamation and walked quickly across to the “caskit.” “He is here, you see,” she said slowly, half turning to the Rioba with a recognizing smile whose transforming effect upon her wan face, utterly obliterated from his mind any further sense of the awkwardness of his position. Some one pushed a chair forward. She seated herself beside the coffin and fixed her eyes upon the marble face within it—a statue gazing upon a statue. The room was hushed. Suddenly some human vermin, audibly of the feminine gender, laughed from a far corner. The girl raised her head and looked fixedly whence the sound had proceeded. A troubled expression came over her countenance. But at the same moment she caught sight of the Rioba standing not distant, his face flushed with wrath at the insult, his eyes brimming with compassion encountering her own. Some shadowy, tardy sense of her utterly unprotected situation must have tinged that brief look of hers with an unconscious appeal. The effect upon the Rioba was electric. Leisurely drawing his pistol from its belt, the stalwart cavalier of the Sierras, whose education in chivalry had been intuitive, stepped quietly toward the coffin of Professor Jovanny, against the edge of which that loneliest of mourners had rested her forehead. The Rioba laid his hand gently upon her shoulder, and drew himself up. “Friends and feller-citizens,” he said, running his eye comprehensively round the room as he spoke, “this here young woman and this here corpse is under my protection. Look at that there comb in Big Jinny’s head!” Before any one in the room had discovered the gaudy ornament in question it was smashed to atoms by the bullet from the revolver discharged by the Rioba as a period to his sentence. Big Jinny uttered one single staccato screech (to which luxury she was certainly entitled), not much relishing being made a target of; and then became in common with the entire company, significantly silent.
Dennison’s startled face appeared at the door outside; he had listened to speech and shot. The Rioba caught his eye and smiled. It was a smile of wholesale defiance!
The morning wore on—noon came—afternoon. Professor Jovanny’s “laying in state” had been, in the language of “Mister,” “a big go.” Within its allotted limits of time, wellnigh the entire male and female population of Yellow Bear City had one by one entered the door of the Cosmopolitan dance-room, contributed (so far as concerned the male proportion), inspected, imbibed at discretion, departed. The “heft” of “Mister’s” biscuit-tin was something to excite the dormant cupidity of anyone. All day long that ill-sorted pathetic tableau in the center of the place had remained changeless—the voiceless, motionless watcher; the tranquil tenant of that uncouth coffin; the Rioba standing beside both, erect, attentive, grave. The room was scarcely entirely still; even the Rioba had not expected that. There was some shuffling of feet, subdued commenting and query. Big Jinny and the Pearl exchanged pleasantries of a more or less Doric character with passing acquaintances. Glasses clinked and coin jingled. But no word, no ejaculation was let fall that could reflect upon or annoy her who sat in the midst of the staring, sluggishly revolving whirlpool. Big Jinny had stuck sundry disconnected fragments of her unlucky adornment in her ropy locks—a laconic hint. More than once did some acquaintance offer to relieve the Rioba on guard; but that gentleman only smiled and said, in an offhand fashion, “I guess I’ll finish.”
Darkness had set in as the funeral procession took order before the Cosmopolitan door. The majority of the sterner sex in Yellow Bear seemed disposed to swell it. “Mister’s” mule-cart preceded, whereon, amputated as to its legs and with its cover nailed fast, was placed the coffin. Dennison and “Mister” drove the hearse slowly. Immediately in its rear walked, bareheaded still, and as walks the somnambulist, Professor Jovanny’s daughter. The instant that the Rioba had said, “You shall go with it,” she had not offered to interfere with the shutting up, at last, from view of her dead father’s body, or the removal of the dismembered piano itself to the cart. The Rioba himself walked a pace to the right, very much with the air of a young man who was dimly aware that he was moving toward an emergency. A miscellaneous crowd lengthened out in the rear. The pitchy flame of the pine-wood torches filled the evening air and played strange tricks with the tree shadows. Professor Jovanny’s funeral cortège began to get straggling and unsteady. In fact the liberty of outside locomotion and potations of strong waters had begun to battle against further decorum. Fragments of ribald songs, unseemly pranks and hilarities broke out behind intermittently. At one stage of the progress a good part of the procession seceded to witness (and assist at) the settlement of a “melancholy dispute for precedence between two of Yellow Bear’s foremost citizens”—as their obituaries in the next Intelligencer recorded. Nevertheless, the cavernous hole dug for the reception of poor Professor Jovanny, or, rather for his bulky sarcophagus, yawned at last down a little declivity under a clump of firs.
“Dig her big enough for a hoss,” had been Dennison’s prudential injunction to the “committee” of grave-diggers. In their zeal they had excavated a pit that was fearful. The crowd gathered about, holding up the torches. Dennison and “Mister” superintended carefully the lowering of the coffin, a feat accomplished not without difficulty. Yellow Bear was, by this time, too weary of affliction, and, it is only veracious to add, too inebriated to think of carrying out any of the quasi religious or municipal ceremonies discussed. The first shovels of clay were discharged into the black depth. Then all at once, with this most merciless of earthly sounds suddenly breaking the stillness, the desolate mourner’s soul awoke from its long lethargy to active grief. The girl uttered an exceedingly bitter cry. “My father!—O God, my father!” came from her white lips again and again, interrupted by a tempest of sobs and tears under which she bowed, crouching down upon the earth in an agony of loss and loneliness. The Rioba stood with his head bent suspiciously near to her side. Dennison stood opposite.
The crowd had dispersed before the work of “filling in” was ended. The girl would not be moved until all was over. Rioba Jack did not shift from his own station. At last, however, the shovels were thrown aside and the few men left, beside the Rioba and Dennison, began relieving each other of the torches, or collecting the tools.
“Come, my gal,” said the Rioba, with unconscious but wondrous tenderness. The sound of his voice seemed to give the kneeling one strength. She nodded her bowed head, checked her sobs piteously and presently rose. Still keeping her wet eyes averted from the flaring lights, she half-turned toward him and—put out her hand.
The Rioba took it as if it had been an angel’s. Suddenly Dennison, who had been the most attentive of spectators, approached. The Rioba looked and discerned at his back, holding a torch, the swart, greasy face of Mother Sal, whom the other man had selected as consignee of the orphan.
“Look-a-here, Rioba,” exclaimed the proprietor of the Cosmopolitan, abruptly, and standing squarely a couple of yards in front of him, “it strikes me as it’s about time now for you and me to turn over Jovanny’s gal here to one of her own sect. She needs a mother’s care now—a mother’s, not a father’s, except her own; nor yit a—a brother’s.”
The Rioba quite understood the situation. He changed his position, looked Dennison squarely in the eye, and with great coolness drew the young girl’s arm through his own—He had settled upon this course of action while walking with the procession. He baulked not. Pointing straight at Mother Sal’s puffy, oily countenance, he ejaculated, “A mother!” with ineffable scorn—and then added concisely: “Dennison, I p’rpose to be responsible henceforth for this here young woman. You are a liar—a thief—and—”
With a face whereon flashed out in a second all his pent-up wrath Dennison brought his pistol from behind his back and fired, but passion made his aim less true than that of the unscathed Rioba; who, entirely on his guard to meet what he had designedly provoked, fired almost simultaneously, and laid Dennison dead at his feet.