A Book o' Nine Tales Part 33

_She._ But--

_He._ No, no more nonsense; I am in dead earnest now. You know I couldn't live without you, or I shouldn't have followed you to Cuba.

_She._ And Annie Cleaves?

_He._ Oh, if you had a letter from her yesterday, you must know she's engaged to Bob Wainwright. Is it yes?

_She._ (_rising._) It would be a pity that you should have come so far for nothing.

[_As he rises also he manages to catch her hand, which he clasps joyously before the pair go forward to meet the new-comers._]

_He._ I hope you had a pleasant ride, Mr. Peltonville? I like Marianao so well that I have concluded to remain a while.

Tale the Ninth.

DELIA GRIMWET.

DELIA GRIMWET.

To an ordinary observer, nothing could be more commonplace than Kempton, a decrepit little apology for a village, lying on the coast of Maine.

Properly speaking, however, no sea-port can be utterly commonplace, with its suggestion of the mystery of the sea, the ships, the sailors who have been to far lands, the glimpses of unwritten tragedies on every hand. But among sea-side villages Kempton was surely dull enough, and dry enough, and lifeless enough,--as if the sea-winds had sucked its vitality, leaving it empty and pallid and juiceless, like the c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls which bleached upon its sandy beaches.

Yet Kempton had one peculiarity which marked it as singular among all New England towns. It had a woman to dig its graves.

Its one church stood stark and doleful upon the hill at whose foot lay the rotting wharves; and back from the church stretched the church-yard in which the Kempton dead took their long repose, scarcely more monotonous than their colorless lives. The s.e.xton, digging their last resting-places in the ochery loam, might look far off toward the sea where they had wrested from the grudging waters a scanty subsistence; and the dead wives, if so be that their ears were yet sentient, might lie at night and hear below the beat of the waves which afar had rolled over the unmarked graves of their sailor husbands.

To and fro among the gra.s.s-grown mounds the s.e.xton went daily, quite unmindful of being the unique feature of Kempton by belonging to the weaker s.e.x. With masculine stride and coa.r.s.e hands, her unkempt locks blown by the salt winds, the woman went her way and did her work with a steadfastness and a vigor which might have put to shame many a man idling about the boats under the hill. She was not an old woman,--not even middle-aged, except with the premature age of toil and sorrow; but the weather-beaten face, the stooping shoulders, and the faded hair made her seem old. To look at her, it was difficult to realize what her youth could have been like, or to call up any image of sweet or gracious maidenhood in which she could have shared.

It was a gray November day. The white-caps made doubly black the dark waves of the bay, and the bitter wind blew freshly through the withered gra.s.s and stubble, chasing the faded leaves over Kempton Hill until they rushed about the old meeting-house like a flight of terrified witches. A stranger was driving slowly up the road from the next town in an open carriage, and as he came to the top of the hill he drew rein before the church and looked about him.

His gaze was not that of one who beheld the scene for the first time.

He gazed down at the irregular houses under the hill, cuddled like frightened and weak-kneed sheep. He looked over the bay to the lighthouse, looming ghastly and white against the dark sea and sky. His glance took in all the details of the picture, cold and joyless, devoid alike of warmth and color. He shivered and sighed, his brows drooping more heavily yet over his dark piercing eyes, and then turned his gaze to objects nearer at hand.

Close by was the stark church, with weather-beaten steeple, wherein half a dozen generations of Kempton women,--the men, for the most part, being at sea,--had worshipped the power of the storm, praying more for the escape from evil of the absent than for good to themselves. Beyond the church appeared the first headstones of the graveyard, the ground sloping away so rapidly that little more than the first row of slate slabs was visible from the street. With another shiver Mr. Farnsworth (for by that name the gentleman played his part upon this world's stage) got down from his carriage, fastened his horse, and walked toward the stones, whose rudely chiselled cherubs leered at him through their tawny rust of moss with a diabolic and sinister mirthfulness.

As Mr. Farnsworth opened the sagging and unpainted gate of the enclosure, he became aware that the place was not empty. The head and shoulders of a human being were visible half-way down the hill, now and then obscured by the dull-reddish heap of earth thrown up from a partially dug grave.

The visitor made his way down the irregular path, so steep as to be almost like a rude flight of stairs, and as he neared the worker, he suddenly perceived, with something of a shock, that the grave-digger was a woman. She worked as if familiar with her task, a man's battered hat pushed back from her forehead, over which her faded hair straggled in confusion, and across which certain grimy streaks bore witness that she had not escaped the primal curse, but labored in the sweat of her brow.

Kempton's peculiarity in the matter of its s.e.xton had not come to the knowledge of the stranger before, although he once had known the village life somewhat intimately. He regarded the woman with a double curiosity,--to see what she was like and to discover whether perchance he had ever known her. He paused as he neared her, resting one nicely gloved hand upon a tilted stone which perpetuated the memory and recorded the virtues of a captain who reposed in some chill cave under the Northern seas. Some slight sound caught the ear of the s.e.xton, who until then had not perceived his approach; she looked up at him stolidly, and as stolidly looked down again, continuing her work without interruption. If there remained any consciousness of the strangeness of her occupation, or if there stirred any womanly shame to be so observed, they were betrayed by no outward sign. She threw up the dull-yellow earth at the feet of the new-comer as unmoved as if she had still only the dwellers in the graves as companions of her labor.

"Don't you find this rather hard work, my good woman?" the gentleman inquired at length, more by way of breaking the silence than from any especial interest.

"Yes," the s.e.xton returned impa.s.sively, "it's hard enough."

"It is rather unusual work for a woman, too," he said.

To this very obvious remark she returned no answer, a stone to which she had come in her digging seeming to absorb all her attention. She unearthed the obstacle with some difficulty, seized it with her rough hands, and threw it up at the feet of the stranger, who watched her with that idle interest which labor begets in the unconcerned observer.

"Do you always do this work?" Farnsworth asked at length.

"Yes," was the laconic return.

"But the old s.e.xton,--Joe Grimwet,--is he gone?"

The woman looked up with some interest at this indication that the other had some previous acquaintance with Kempton and its people. She did not, however, stop her labor, as a man would probably have stopped.

"Yes," she said. "He's buried over yonder,--there beyond the burdocks."

The gentleman changed his position uneasily. Some subtile disquietude had arisen to disturb his serenity. The wind rustled mournfully among the dry leaves, the pebbles rattled against the spade of the grave-digger, increasing the sombreness of a scene which might easily affect one at all susceptible to outward influences. In such an atmosphere a sensitive nature not unfrequently experiences a certain feeling of unreality, as if dealing with scenes and creatures of the imagination rather than with actualities; and Farnsworth, whatever the delicacy of his mental fibre, was conscious of such a sense at this moment. He hastened to speak again, as if the sound of his own voice were needed to a.s.sure him of the genuineness of the place and scene.

"But how long has he been dead?" he asked. "And his daughter; what became of her?"

The grave-digger straightened herself to her full height; brushing back her wind-blown hair with one grimy hand, she raised her face so that her deep-set eyes were fixed upon the questioner's face.

"So you knew Delia Grimwet?" she said. "When was you here before? It'd go hard for you to make her out now, if it's long since."

"Is she here still?" Farnsworth persisted, ignoring her question.

"Yes," the s.e.xton replied, suddenly sinking back into the unfinished grave as a frightened animal might retreat into its den. "Yes; she lives in the old place."

"Alone?"

"Her and the boy."

He recoiled a step, as if the mention of a child startled or repelled him. Yet to a close observer it might have seemed as if he were making an effort to press her with further questions. If so his courage did not prove sufficient, and he watched in silence while the woman before him went steadily on with her arduous work. Presently, however, he advanced again toward the edge of the pit, which was rapidly approaching completion under her familiar labor.

"Should I find her at home at this time?" he inquired. "Or would she be out at work?"

The woman started and crouched, much as if she had received or expected a blow.

"She's out, most likely," she replied in a m.u.f.fled voice. "She'll be home along about sundown."

Farnsworth lingered irresolutely a moment or two, as if there were many things concerning which he could wish to ask; but, as the woman gave him no encouragement, he turned at last and climbed the slippery, ragged path up to the church, untethered his horse, and drove slowly down the hill to the village.

Cap'n Nat Hersey was just coming out of the village store, and to him Farnsworth addressed an inquiry where he might find shelter for himself and horse.

"Well," the cap'n responded, with the deliberation of a man who has very little to say and his whole life to say it in, "well I dunno but ye might get a chance with Widder Bemis, an' I dunno _as_ ye could; but there ain't no harm trying, as I knows of."

Further inquiry regarding the whereabouts of the domicile of the Widow Bemis led to an offer on the part of Cap'n Hersey to act as pilot to that haven. He declined, however, to take a seat in the buggy. The Cap'n had his own opinion of land-vehicles. A man might with perfect a.s.surance trust himself in a boat; but, for his own part, the cap'n had no faith in those dangerous structures which roam about with nothing better than dry land under them. He walked along by the side of the carriage, conversing affably with the stranger under his convoy.