A WALLENCAMP FUNERAL.
Mr. 'Lihu Dole—Harvey's father—lay dying, and all the Wallencampers were assembled in and about the house.
It was night, and one was going out from among them to launch his lonely bark on a deeper, more mysterious ocean than that whose moan came up to them from behind the cedars. There was awe on their faces, and a touch of terror, too, but above all there was a strange, childlike wonder.
They had seen death before. It might come to them at any time, they knew. Its spirit sounded in the dirges of the waves along the shore, yet, none the less, for time or fate, or moan of solemn wave, grew this exceeding mystery.
Was it like a cold black flood, to die at night, and no stars shining—a cold flood creeping more and more above the heart? Oh, the wonder on those poor faces, if there might be, indeed, some fairer harbor lights beyond death's tide, and gentler music lulling the dread surge, so that the voyager, with untold joy at last, felt the worn boat-keel loosen on the strand and drift off from this shore!
Emily and Aunt Cinthia were alone in the room with the dying man. They were his sisters. His wife had been dead for years.
In the adjoining room sat a group of females, a single candle burning dimly on a table in their midst. Grandma Bartlett was there, and Grandma Keeler, and Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow.
Occasionally, a whisper from one of these three pierced the gloom, a whisper appropriately sepulchral in tone, but more penetrating than any voice of buoyant life and hope.
I sat in the door with Madeline, Rebecca on the step below, very still and thoughtful.
The men and the young people, for the most part, were waiting about outside.
I caught the low murmur of a discussion between Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot, who were sitting on the fence, and knew by the attitude of the listeners gathered around them, that the subject was one of no ordinary interest. I could not help wondering what those two argued concerning death and the immortality of the soul.
The tick! tick! tick! of the clock sounded with persistent distinctness in the room where the women sat, and Grandma Bartlett sighed, and then came the awful whisper:—
"Ah, death's vary sahd—vary sahd."
Grandma Bartlett, superannuated as she was, was the most trite of the Wallencampers.
Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow accepted the lifeless phrase with something almost like a smile of disdain in her magnificent eyes.
"Oh, it's like everything else," she whispered. "It's a mixter! It's a mixter!"
Once the door of the little bedroom opened softly, and Emily appeared on the scene.
"He's got most to the end of his rope," she said, dryly, in answer to the inquiring faces lifted to her own. There was an unnatural brightness in Emily's tearless eyes, and her tone was as sprightly as ever.
"He don't see nothin', and he don't feel nothin', and he don't hear nothin'," she continued; "and it's sech poor work a breathin', he's most give that up, too. It might stop any minute and he not know it. Cinthy's cryin'; I don't see nothin' to cry about. It'll storm before to-morrow, likely—it's dark enough, Lord knows—and them east winds always hurt him so. 'I don't know whether he's worse off, or better off, Cinthy,' says I, 'or whether he's off entirety. But I don't believe a righteous God'll make poor 'Lihu suffer any worse than he has in the last ten weeks.' But it's strange, all the time I was a' sittin' there by him, when he was worst, it kept comin' up before me, jest as he was when he was a little boy. I hadn't thought on him so for years, but it seemed jest as though 'twas back in New Hampshire, where we was born, a' playin' around the old mill again. Him and me was the youngest, we was always together, and I couldn't 'a' called him up so before me, to save me; but there he was, as plain as life, with his little blue checked apron on, a skippin' along towards me over the logs, and his eyes a dancin', and the wind a blowin' his hair out; and all the while I couldn't help a knowin' that 'Lihu was a man grown, a dyin' there before me on the bed.
"'Seems as though a man that's been a wearin' out as long as he has had ought to die easier, Cinthy,' says I. 'It's pretty hard to have forty years' consumption, and then go off with a fever,' 'We can't question the Lord's doin's,' says Cinthy. But for all that, she wouldn't stay in the room to see him. He couldn't ketch his breath and he was as crazy as a loon. Lord, how he worried! All day, yesterday, he was a loadin' ship down to the shore. It would a' made your bones ache to hear him workin' so; and all night long he was a loadin', and a loadin.' Thinks I, won't there never be no end to this, for I felt hard, and him a loadin' and a loadin' all through them long hours, jest as faithful as life, with his eyes like blood, and the sweat a rollin' off'n him. He couldn't stand that forever. This mornin' the pain sorter left him, but there was that one idee on his mind. The ship was all loaded, and he'd got to wait for high tide to git it off, and he wanted to go to sleep, but he couldn't, because he'd got to watch the tide.
"'Oh, if I could only rest, now,' he kep' a savin', weak and slow. 'If I could only go to sleep now;' and so he moaned and moaned.
"So I got close to his ear and I says, 'You go to sleep, now, 'Lihu, and I'll watch,' I says; 'I'll wake you up when it's high tide,' I says; but he only shook his head. So then, I says, 'Aint there none o' the folks you can trust to watch?' And he shook his head, and so he moaned and moaned.
"By and by, all of a sudden, 'Lihu looked up at me different, with his eyes wide open, so that for a minute, I was most fool enough to think 'Lihu was gittin' well, and he smiled as though he wanted to say something. So I leant over. 'I—know—somebody,' he says, as slow as that, for he was all worn out. 'Who then, 'Lihu?' says I. 'Jesus,' says he, with that queer, smilin' look, as though it was the naturalest thing on earth. 'He'll—wake—me—up—when—', and he couldn't wait no longer, his head fell over as heavy as a log, and that's the way he's been ever since, sleepin' like death.
"Wall, Cinthy thinks somebody'd ought to come in and make a prayer. 'He wasn't a perfessor,' says she. 'Lord knows, if he had a been,' says I, 'there'd be more need on't!' 'Anyway,' says I, 'he can't hear nothin', it won't do him no harm.' So I thought I'd come out and see. It'll make Cinthy feel easier."
There was a whispered consultation among the women, but Emily came over to where I sat.
"Come, teacher," said she. "Your voice ain't as raspin' as some, and you've got a knack o' stringin' words together, that sound likely, and don't hit nobody—you come in."
"Hush!" I cried, grasping the woman's hand, thinking only, then, that it would seem like sacrilege for any one to speak aloud in the room where one was waiting for Christ to wake him. I had forgotten at that moment that I was out of the habit of praying, even for myself. Emily's tale had moved me so, it seemed only its sweet and fitting consummation, and nothing incredible to my mind then, that Christ should come down out of the starless sky to touch that heavy sleeper's brow.
It was finally decided that there should be a quiet little prayer-meeting in the room where the women sat, in behalf of Mr. 'Lihu's soul; but before all the preliminary steps had been taken, and the men and youth noiselessly ingathered, Mr. 'Lihu's breathing had ceased, without a parting pang or gasp, and the tide was at its full.
Harvey had been standing with a group near the door. Once at some irrelevancy in the proceedings, while the women were organizing the prayer-meeting, I heard his irrepressible little giggle creeping in; but when the words so mysteriously uttered were passed out to him—"Lihu's gone!"—the poor boy, realizing only at that instant their terrible meaning, that his father had indeed gone, gone away from him forever, ran forward a pace or two, and then fell, with his face to the ground.
So he lay, shaking and sobbing helplessly.
Grandma Bartlett, standing in the door, studied him for some moments with her fossilized eyes:—
"Fatherless and motherless, now," said she. "Poor creetur, humph! Vary sahd."
Then she blinked, and, simultaneously, the subject seemed to have slipped from her mind, and she to have become vaguely contemplative concerning worlds and ages remote.
The boy was still lying prone on the ground, when I left the place of mourning with Grandma and Madeline. I spoke to him, and shrank instinctively from his face as he turned it towards me. It was swollen and disfigured with weeping. He had bruised it, too, in falling. He rose, trembling, and walked with me. For my own part, the emotional had given place to feelings of a more sustained and ordinary nature.
I strove to impress upon Harvey's mind the beautiful and poetic manner in which his father had been released from his sufferings.
I reminded him of the shortness of life, "even from your point of view, Harvey;" and the necessity there was always, for not allowing ourselves to be overcome by our griefs or passions, or diverted from the supreme satisfaction of performing our appointed tasks, etc.
And Harvey listened patiently throughout, and said "good night," with a brave attempt at a smile, and a sob still choking in his throat.
I turned an instant, to look at him as he walked away. He wore, generally, a coat of ministerial form and complexion; this, taken in connection with his round, laughing face, his boyish figure, and propensity for playing tricks, had often made me smile, hitherto. But, now, there was something in the attitude of those long, black tails that brought the tears to my eyes.
It occurred to me, indirectly, what Emily had said about my stringing words together, and I marvelled if possibly my exhortation had soared over poor Harvey's head and left his heart aching for an ordinary word of sympathy, or a simple reference to One who as a man of sorrows, was best fitted to understand and console his grief. To any sentiments of the latter nature, Harvey was particularly susceptible.
"Children, all of them!" Thus gently apostrophizing the Wallencampers, I dismissed the cause of my brief mental discomfiture, with a half-pitying smile.
The day after Mr. 'Lihu's death, I looked down from my desk in school to see the infant Sophronia weeping bitterly.
"What is the matter, Sophronia?" I said.
"Carietta's been to see the cops twice," she sobbed; "and I ain't been any."
I only gathered from this that Carietta was somehow implicated as being the cause of the infant Sophronia's sufferings.
"Now," said I gravely; "tell me what you mean?"
"She means the cops!" cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, "'Lihu's cops. 'Phrony means the——"
"That will do," I said. "I understand you perfectly. I understand you only too well. This is about as bad," I reflected; "as anything in my experience."
After admonishing my pupils with that sincere emotion to which the occasion had given rise, that they should speak always respectfully of their elders, but especially in the most tender and solemn tones of the dead; after pointing out to them the perniciousness of a low and vulgar curiosity, and expatiating on the vastness and superiority of the spiritual life, compared with the earthly and carnal, I paused, only to give, further on, a fuller illustration to my words, and said:—
"Now, Sophronia, you have an immortal soul?"
There was evidence of some faint hankering in Sophronia's face as she mentally ran over the list of her possessions.
"No'm," said she; "I hain't—but I've got a cornycopia!"
I think it was then and there that my hopes for the elevation of juvenile Wallencamp received their deathblow, and my labors, which had before been cheered by a dream of partially satisfying success, at least, took on an utterly goal-less and prosaical form.
These children, I was forced to admit, regarded the day of Mr. 'Lihu's funeral as a holiday of rare and special interest, mysteriously bestowed by Heaven.
Aunt Rhoda had previously informed me that it was expected I would have no school that afternoon.
The West Wallen minister officiated on the occasion with an aspect neither more nor less funereal than he had worn at Lovell's wedding. He spoke in such a labored, trumpet-like tone of voice that the Wallencampers seemed, at first, inspired with a lively hope, expecting momentarily that his breath would give out, but in this they were doomed to ever-increasing disappointment.
At length, Captain Sartell drew a bucketful of fresh water from the well, and passed it around the room, winking expansively at each individual in turn, by way of silent encouragement and support.
Grandma Bartlett, observing the generally tearless aspect of the community, conscientiously attempted to weep, but being entirely out of tears, at her time of life, she only succeeded in screwing her face up into what, in earlier years, might have appeared as a lachrymose expression, but now took the shape of a fixed and ogreish grin.
The infant Sophronia was seated on a bench of an exceedingly temporary nature, between Grandma Keeler and Aunt Lobelia, both persons of weight, and it so chanced, or, rather, it followed as a matter of course, an equal pressure being applied to both sides, that the board sustaining the three, broke directly under that diminutive victim of fate, awaking her thereby from feverish slumber; and whether the infant Sophronia had an immortal soul or not, no one there present could doubt that she possessed an uncommon pair of lungs.
The little room where we sat was hot and overcrowded, and the thought was running in my mind continually. "Poor, restless Wallencampers! and how happy Mr. 'Lihu is not to have any connection with his funeral."
When the procession was about to start for the burying-ground, the request was made to me that I would blow the horn, even as the bell is usually tolled on such occasions, for it would seem inappropriate for one of the Wallencampers to do so, they all having been related to the deceased.
At such a time, I could not refuse, though the emotions with which I crossed over to the school-house to perform this grim duty, were of a nature best known to, and appreciated by, myself. My terror of the Wallencamp horn had waxed daily. I believed that there was nothing in the whole world of inanimate things on which I would not sooner have attempted to sound a funeral dirge. Though capable of some variety of expression, it had never yet been seduced into emitting any sound in the least indicative of the designs struggling in the mind of the blower. The human was paralyzed before it—a mere machine to blow into it and let come what would. And, now, for the first time in my experience, it took on a jubilant strain. I blew slowly; I blew solemnly. Still, it sounded like nothing else than a glad, exultant rallying-call.
I paused, horrified. From the rear of the moving procession, Aunt Patty, with a yell and a frantic gesture of the hands, entreated me to "keep a blowin'!"
And, as I stood thus on the steps of the deserted school-house and blew, only to hear the wild lamentations of my soul translated into strains of fiendish mirth through the medium of the horn, the Turkey Mogul, arrived on his second visit of examination to the Wallencamp school, seemed to be descending before my eyes, in a vortex of the giddy atmosphere. In fact, he was alighting from his buggy, and a grim, though reassuring smile sat on his features.
"I see! I see!" he nodded his head. "You've given them a good start," he added, succinctly, indicating the direction of the Wallencampers; "humph! yes! they are always up to something!"
He thrust his hands in his pockets, and, maintaining the same sardonic grin, he, too, stood and watched that receding column.
It was an odd combination of circumstances. I had ceased my mad though involuntary jubilate, on the horn, and was slowly aspiring to that equanimity of mind which the exigencies of the case seemed to require, when the Turkey Mogul turned abruptly, and without speaking a word, handed me a soiled and wrinkled little sheet of paper, the contents of which caused my heart, for an instant, to cease beating, and then set it throbbing with a wild joy and exultation.
It was simply a petition—wrought out of whose brain I know not, but most curiously inscribed in Aunt Patty's own hand, and signed by all the Wallencampers, with "CAPTAIN SARTELL," at the head, and "b. lot" at the foot—to the effect that it was their desire that my labors might be longer continued among them.
Only one, who, having made a play-day of life, turns, at last, to attempt some earnest work, and fails, as he believes, utterly, and then catches a glimpse of unexpected light in the darkness, can understand the impulse given me by that dirty little scroll. It was such happiness as I had never felt before. It made me strangely weak.
"You'll stay," said the Turkey Mogul, at length, "another term, or we'll consider this term extended, if you please."
"I'll stay a few more weeks, anyway," I said, and the Turkey Mogul must have marvelled at the childish faith and joy with which I clung to this new-found rock of my salvation; "but I hadn't thought of it before," I added, a little faintly, thinking of home.
"You're tired!" said the Turkey Mogul, almost sympathetically; "and hungry!" he subjoined, quickly, in a different tone.
I knew by this time that the Turkey Mogul's eyes were dangerously prone to have twinkles in the corners of them, yet I believe I met their derisive questioning with a simple seriousness in my own.
"Well, that's right!" he exclaimed. "Stick to 'em! Stick to 'em! I'll be down to conduct another—humph! another examination in a week or two. Good-bye!" and he gave me his hand, and was off almost before the little line of mourners had disappeared over the crest of the hill. Yet I remember that Grandma Bartlett, who had been deterred by the infirmity of age from joining the procession, and had remained at the window, alone, regaled the Wallencampers, on their return, with a choice fancy, in which the Turkey Mogul and I had stood "talkin' and chatterin' on the school-house steps, for an hour or more." Grandma Bartlett, though not actively disposed to work mischief, nor possessed, indeed, of any animate quality, still cherished a few of the dry formulas of scandal, which she applied to any seemingly favorable combination of circumstances. The Wallencampers, at any time, paid but little attention to her words.
And, at the close of this strange day, I sat alone, in my little room in the Ark, and indited a letter to the following effect:—
"Having received gratifying overtures from the people of my charge, I had decided, for reasons which I could not then explain, to remain at Wallencamp until May, to which time I looked forward with the delightful hope of seeing my dear ones once more.
"Meanwhile, I hoped they would not consider it strange, or ungracious of me to say that I should very much prefer not to have Brother Will, or any one else, come to Wallencamp to look after me, as Brother Will and some others had kindly suggested doing. It would seem to imply that I was not capable of taking care of myself, a mania which I trusted no longer held possession of the family brain. Moreover, Wallencamp, though so charming a place, had but few facilities for the accommodation of guests. I should draw on my salary, now, very shortly, and would then remit the sums I had borrowed in mere temporary embarrassment," etc.