The Sunday following this meeting of the Soldiers’ Aid Society was a warm and beautiful spring day, which invited to the open air. Public morality in Tuskamuck was narrow in its interpretations, and among other restrictions it imposed was the impropriety of walking on Sunday except by strolling in the village graveyard. The theory, if carefully investigated, would have been found, in all probability, to have its roots in some Puritan notion that youth in its thoughtlessness would be sobered and religiously inclined by the sight of the grassy mounds, the solemnly clumsy mortuary inscriptions, and the general reminders of death. In practice the fact did not entirely justify such a theory, for the graceless young people instinctively sought for amusement rather than for spiritual enlightenment, chatted and laughed as loudly as they dared, examined the epitaphs for those that might by any distortion of their original intent be made ludicrous, and exchanged jokes in most unsabbatical fashion. They even indulged thoughtlessly, in the very midst of these grim reminders of a life wherein is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, in little rustic flirtations, and eagerly picked up morsels of gossip by sharp observation of young couples strolling oblivious of watching eyes among the graves.
To-day the desire to see the newly set stone which had been placed over the empty mound which was to preserve the memory of Archie Lovell attracted an unusually large number of village folk to turn into the graveyard after afternoon service, and an exciting whisper had gone about that the three disconsolate betrothed damsels had all come to church with flowers. The little groups drifted slowly through the weatherbeaten gate behind the church, but the very first of them were deterred by seeing a black-robed figure laying already her bunch of geraniums on the grave. Delia Burrage, who sang in the choir, had, as was afterward told from one end of the town to the other, slipped down the gallery stair without waiting for the benediction, and so had managed to be first in the field.
The gathering groups of villagers had hardly time to note with what tender care the bereft Delia arranged her bunch of scarlet blossoms at the foot of the still snowy marble slab than they were set aquiver with delicious excitement by the sight of a second crape-enshrouded figure that came to the spot, also bearing flowers. Mary Foster carried in her black-gloved hands a cluster of white pyrethrums, a favorite house-plant in Tuskamuck. Miss Foster came up on the side of the mound opposite to the first comer, and humbly laid her offering below the red geraniums; but although she was thus forced to place her flowers farther from the stone than the other, she was evidently determined not to be outdone in devotion. She fell on her knees, and bowed her face in her handkerchief in a grief so dramatic that Miss Burrage was left far behind, and had no resource but to come to her knees in turn, in a weak imitation of her rival.
The spectators were by this time in a sort of twitter of gratified excitement, and exchanged many significant looks and subdued comments. Those boldest pressed nearer to the scene of action, keenly curious to hear if word passed between the bereaved ladies. Excitement rose to its highest when slowly down the long path came Martha Seaton, more voluminously draped in sable weeds than either of the others. She carried a wreath of English ivy, and a sort of admiring shudder ran through the neighbors as they saw that to this funeral wreath Miss Seaton had sacrificed the growth of years of careful window gardening.
“My! She ’s cut her ivy!” one of them gasped.
“Why, so she has! Well, for the land’s sake!” responded another, too much overwhelmed to speak coherently.
“Trust Mattie Seaton for not letting anybody get ahead of her!” a third commented, in accents of admiration.
Human curiosity could not keep aloof at a moment such as this, and as Mattie advanced toward the Lovell lot, the neighbors followed as if irresistibly impelled. They closed in a ring around the spot when she reached it, and they looked and listened with an eagerness so frank as almost to be excusable. They could see that the earlier comers were watching from behind the handkerchiefs pressed to their eyes, and with the approbation which belongs to a successful dramatic performance the audience noted also the entire coolness with which Miss Seaton ignored them until she stood close to the drooping pair. Then she flung back her long veil of crape with a sweeping gesture, and with a regal glance of her gypsyish black eyes looked first at them and then at the flowers.
“Oh, thank you so much for bringing flowers,” she said, in a voice evidently so raised that her words should be distinctly heard by the ring of spectators. “Archie was so fond of them!”