"But what?" she said. "O Mercy, Mercy! is it Stephen White you love?" And Lizzy's face, even in that solemn hour, took a look of scorn. "Are you going to marry Stephen White?" she continued.
"Never, Lizzy,--never!" said Mercy, in a tone as concentrated as if a lifetime ended there; and, stooping low, she kissed the rigid hands which lay folded on the heart of the man she ought to have loved, but had not. Then, turning away, she took Lizzy's hands in hers, and kissing, her forehead said earnestly,--
"We will never speak again of this, Lizzy, remember." Lizzy was overawed by her tone, and made no reply.
Parson Dorrance's funeral was a scene which will never be forgotten by those who saw it. It was on one of the fiercest days which the fierce New England March can show. A storm of rain and sleet, with occasional softened intervals of snow, raged all day. The roads were gullies of swift-running water and icy sloughs; the cold was severe; and the cutting wind at times drove the sleet and rain in slanting scourges, before which scarce man or beast could stand. The funeral was held in the village church, which was larger than the college chapel. Long before the hour at which the services were to begin, every pew was filled, and the aisles were crowded with those who could not find seats. From every parish within twenty miles the mourners had come. There was not one there who had not heard words of help or comfort from Parson Dorrance's lips. The students of the college filled the body of the church; the Faculty and distinguished strangers sat in the front pews. The pews under one of the galleries had been reserved for the negroes from "The Cedars." Early in the morning the poor creatures had begun to flock in. Not a seat was empty: old women, women with babies, old men, boys and girls, wet, dripping, ragged, friendless, more than one hundred of them,--there they were. They had walked all that distance in that terrible storm. Each one had brought in his hand a green bough or a bunch of rock-ferns, something of green beauty from the woods their teacher had taught them to love. They sat huddled together, with an expression of piteous grief on every face, which was enough to touch the stoniest heart. Now and then sobs would burst from the women, and some old figure would be seen rocking to and fro in uncontrollable sorrow.
The coffin stood on a table in front of the pulpit. It seemed to be resting on an altar of cedar and ferns. Mercy had brought from her old haunts in the woods masses of the glossy evergreen fern, and interwoven them with the boughs of cedar. At the end of the services, it was announced that all who wished could pass by the coffin and take one last look at their friend.
Slowly and silently the congregation passed up the right aisle, looked on the face, and passed out at the left door. It was a pathetic sight to see the poor, outcast band wait patiently, humbly, till every one else had gone: then, like a flock of stricken sheep, they rushed confusedly towards the pulpit, and gathered round the coffin. Now burst out the grief which had been pent up: with cries and ejaculations, they went tottering and stumbling down the aisles. One old man, with hair as white as snow,--one of the original fugitive slaves who had founded the settlement,--bent over the coffin at its head, and clung with both hands to its edge, swaying back and forth above it, crying aloud, till the sexton was obliged to loosen his grasp and lead him away by force.
The college faculty still sat in the front pews. There were some of their number, younger men, scholars and men of the world, who had not been free from a disposition to make good-natured fun of Parson Dorrance's philanthropies. They shrugged their shoulders sometimes at the mention of his parish at "The Cedars;" they regarded him as old-fashioned and unpractical. They sat conscience-stricken and abashed now; the tears of these bereaved black people smote their philosophy and their worldliness, and showed them how shallow they were. Tears answered to tears, and the college professors and the negro slaves wept together.
"They have nobody left to love them now," exclaimed one of the youngest and hitherto most cynical of Parson Dorrance's colleagues, as he stood watching the grief-stricken creatures.
While the procession formed to bear the body to the grave, the blacks stood in a group on the church-steps, watching it. After the last carriage had fallen into line, they hurried down and followed on in the storm. In vain some kindly persons tried to dissuade them. It was two miles to the cemetery, two miles farther away from their homes; but they repelled all suggestions of the exposure with indignant looks, and pressed on. When the coffin was lowered into the grave, they pushed timidly forward, and began to throw in their green boughs and bunches of ferns. Every one else stepped back respectfully as soon as their intention was discovered, and in a moment they had formed in solid ranks close about the grave, each one casting in his green palm of crown and remembrance,--a body-guard such as no emperor ever had to stand around him in his grave.
On the day after Mercy's arrival in town, Stephen had called to see her. She had sent down to him a note with these words:--