Meanwhile, the Bishop and his vagabond were talking earnestly. The vagabond seemed to belong to the class known as “crackers.” Poverty, sickness, and laziness were written in every flutter of his rags, in every uncouth curve or angle of his long, gaunt figure and sallow face. A mass of unkempt iron-gray hair fell about his sharp features, further hidden by a grizzly beard. His black frock coat had once adorned the distinguished and ample person of a Northern senator; it was wrinkled dismally about Demming’s bones, while its soiled gentility was a queer contrast to his nether garments of ragged butternut, his coarse boots, and an utterly disreputable hat, through a hole of which a tuft of hair had made its way, and waved plume-wise in the wind. Around the hat was wound a strip of rusty crape. The Bishop quickly noticed this woeful addition to the man’s garb. He asked the reason.
“She’s done gone, Bishop,” answered Demming, winking his eyes hard before rubbing them with a grimy knuckle; “th’ ole ’ooman’s done lef’ me ’lone in the worl’. It’s an orful ’fliction!” He made so pitiful a figure, standing there in the sandy road, the wind fluttering his poor token of mourning, that the Bishop’s kind heart was stirred.
“I am truly sorry, Demming,” said he. “Isn’t this very sudden?”
“Laws, yes, Bishop, powerful suddint an’ onprecedented. ’Pears ’s if I couldn’t git myself to b’lieve it, nohow. Yes’day ev’nin’ she wuz chipper’s evah, out pickin’ pine buds; an’ this mahnin’ she woked me up, an’ says she, ‘I reckon you’d better fix the cyoffee yo’self, Demming, I feel so cu’se,’ says she. An’ so I did; an’ when I come to gin it ter her, oh, Lordy, oh, Lordy!—’scuse me, Bishop,—she wuz cole an’ dead! Doctor cyouldn’t do nuthin’, w’en I brung ’im. Rheumatchism o’ th’ heart, he says. It wuz turrible suddint, onyhow. ’Minded me o’ them thar games with the thimble, you know, Bishop,—now ye see it, an’ now ye don’; yes, ’s quick ’s thet!”
The Bishop opened his eyes at the comparison; but Demming had turned away, with a quivering lip, to bury his face in his hands, and the Bishop was reproached for his criticism of the other’s naif phraseology. Now, to be frank, he had approached Demming prepared to show severity, rather than sympathy, because of the cracker’s last flagrant wrong-doing; but his indignation, righteous though it was, took flight before grief. Forgetting judgment in mercy, he proffered all the consolations he could summon, spiritual and material, and ended by asking Demming if he had made any preparations for the funeral.
“Thet thar’s w’at I’m yere for,” replied the man, mournfully. “You know jes’ how I’m fixed. Cyoffins cost a heap; an’ then thar’s the shroud, an’ I ain’t got no reg’lar fun’al cloze, an’ ’pears ’s ef ’t ’ud be a conserlation t’ have a kerridge or two. She wuz a bawn lady, Bishop; we’re kin ter some o’ the real aristookracy o’ Carolina,—we are, fur a fac’; an’ I’d kin’ o’ like ter hev her ride ter her own fun’al, onyhow.”
“Then you will need money?”
“Not frum you, Bishop, not a red cent; but if you uns over thar,” jerking his thumb in the direction of the white pine towers,—“if you all ’d kin’ o’ gin me a small sum, an’ ef you’d jes’ start a paper, as ’twere, an’ al-so ef you yo’self ’ud hev the gre’t kin’ness ter come out an’ conduc’ the fun’al obskesies, it ’ud gratify the corpse powerful. Mistress Demming’ll be entered[A] then like a bawn lady. Yes, sir, thet thar, an’ no mo’, ’s w’at I’m emboldened ter ax frum you.”
The Bishop reflected. “Demming,” said he, gravely, “I will try to help you. You have no objection, I suppose, to our buying the coffin and other things needed. We will pay the bills.”
Demming’s dejected bearing grew a shade more sombre: he waved his hand, a gesture very common with him, and usually denoting affable approval; now it meant gloomy assent. “No objection ’t all, Bishop,” he said. “I knows my weakness, though I don’ feel now as ef I’d evah want ter go on no carousements no mo’. I’m ’bliged ter you uns jes’ the same. An’ you won’t forget ’bout the cloze? I’ve been a right good frien’ to th’ Norf in Aiken, an’ I hope the Norf’ll stan’ by me in the hour o’ trubbel. Now, Bishop, I’ll be gwine ’long. You’ll fin’ me at the cyoffin sto’. Mose Barnwell—he’s a mighty decent cullud man—lives nigh me; he’s gwine fur ter len’ me his cyart ter tek the cyoffin home. Mahnin’, Bishop, an’ min’, I don’ want money outen you. No, sir, I do not!”