Part 26 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+ning--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.