Cape Cod Folks Part 26

The strange effect produced upon me by the first of these rhetorical entertainments is still as fresh in my mind as though it had been yesterday, so luminous was the night with stars; so loud and prolonged the preliminary blowing of the horn; so festive the appearance of the school-house, loaded as it was with evergreens; so abnormal the proportions of the stage, which had been extended to comprise nearly two-thirds of the school-room.

It comes to me again, the first shock of surprise at finding all Wallencamp on the stage, Grandpa and I, alone, being left like ostracized owls among the shrubbery of the auditorium. Our sense of isolation was only intensified by hearing the sounds of mirth which proceeded from the other side of the curtain, and seeing a foot or an elbow occasionally thrust out into our own green though silent realm.

Thrice Aunt Rhoda appeared before the curtain to proclaim in pregnant tones, "We are now awaiting for Josiah and Annie."

Josiah, by the way, had married a Wallencamp girl and taken her to West Wallen to live, yet the two were ever faithful attendants at the Wallencamp festivities.

"Declaration" after "declaration" was announced by Aunt Rhoda, and as the declaimers finished their parts, they descended to sit with us, until at last the curtain was drawn aside, revealing Madeline, alone upon the stage, seated at her "music."

She opened the Hymnal, and struck the leading chord, mid straightway, from the Wallencampers, all gathered now below, there arose a burst of melody as it had been one mighty voice.

CHAPTER XI.

A WALLENCAMP FUNERAL.

Mr. 'Lihu Dole--Harvey's father--lay dying, and all the Wallencampers were a.s.sembled 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e!

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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d'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 ap.r.o.n 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 n.o.body--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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.ne 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 pa.s.sions, 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 att.i.tude 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.