Part 27 (1/2)

The day after Mr. 'Lihu's death, I looked down from my desk in school to see the infant Sophronia weeping bitterly.

”What is the matter, Sophronia?” I said.

”Carietta's been to see the cops twice,” she sobbed; ”and I ain't been any.”

I only gathered from this that Carietta was somehow implicated as being the cause of the infant Sophronia's sufferings.

”Now,” said I gravely; ”tell me what you mean?”

”She means the cops!” cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, ”'Lihu's cops. 'Phrony means the----”

”That will do,” I said. ”I understand you perfectly. I understand you only too well. This is about as bad,” I reflected; ”as anything in my experience.”

After admonis.h.i.+ng my pupils with that sincere emotion to which the occasion had given rise, that they should speak always respectfully of their elders, but especially in the most tender and solemn tones of the dead; after pointing out to them the perniciousness of a low and vulgar curiosity, and expatiating on the vastness and superiority of the spiritual life, compared with the earthly and carnal, I paused, only to give, further on, a fuller ill.u.s.tration to my words, and said:--

”Now, Sophronia, you have an immortal soul?”

There was evidence of some faint hankering in Sophronia's face as she mentally ran over the list of her possessions.

”No'm,” said she; ”I hain't--but I've got a cornycopia!”

I think it was then and there that my hopes for the elevation of juvenile Wallencamp received their deathblow, and my labors, which had before been cheered by a dream of partially satisfying success, at least, took on an utterly goal-less and prosaical form.

These children, I was forced to admit, regarded the day of Mr. 'Lihu's funeral as a holiday of rare and special interest, mysteriously bestowed by Heaven.

Aunt Rhoda had previously informed me that it was expected I would have no school that afternoon.

The West Wallen minister officiated on the occasion with an aspect neither more nor less funereal than he had worn at Lovell's wedding. He spoke in such a labored, trumpet-like tone of voice that the Wallencampers seemed, at first, inspired with a lively hope, expecting momentarily that his breath would give out, but in this they were doomed to ever-increasing disappointment.

At length, Captain Sartell drew a bucketful of fresh water from the well, and pa.s.sed it around the room, winking expansively at each individual in turn, by way of silent encouragement and support.

Grandma Bartlett, observing the generally tearless aspect of the community, conscientiously attempted to weep, but being entirely out of tears, at her time of life, she only succeeded in s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her face up into what, in earlier years, might have appeared as a lachrymose expression, but now took the shape of a fixed and ogreish grin.

The infant Sophronia was seated on a bench of an exceedingly temporary nature, between Grandma Keeler and Aunt Lobelia, both persons of weight, and it so chanced, or, rather, it followed as a matter of course, an equal pressure being applied to both sides, that the board sustaining the three, broke directly under that diminutive victim of fate, awaking her thereby from feverish slumber; and whether the infant Sophronia had an immortal soul or not, no one there present could doubt that she possessed an uncommon pair of lungs.

The little room where we sat was hot and overcrowded, and the thought was running in my mind continually. ”Poor, restless Wallencampers! and how happy Mr. 'Lihu is not to have any connection with his funeral.”

When the procession was about to start for the burying-ground, the request was made to me that I would blow the horn, even as the bell is usually tolled on such occasions, for it would seem inappropriate for one of the Wallencampers to do so, they all having been related to the deceased.

At such a time, I could not refuse, though the emotions with which I crossed over to the school-house to perform this grim duty, were of a nature best known to, and appreciated by, myself. My terror of the Wallencamp horn had waxed daily. I believed that there was nothing in the whole world of inanimate things on which I would not sooner have attempted to sound a funeral dirge. Though capable of some variety of expression, it had never yet been seduced into emitting any sound in the least indicative of the designs struggling in the mind of the blower. The human was paralyzed before it--a mere machine to blow into it and let come what would. And, now, for the first time in my experience, it took on a jubilant strain. I blew slowly; I blew solemnly. Still, it sounded like nothing else than a glad, exultant rallying-call.

I paused, horrified. From the rear of the moving procession, Aunt Patty, with a yell and a frantic gesture of the hands, entreated me to ”keep a blowin'!”

And, as I stood thus on the steps of the deserted school-house and blew, only to hear the wild lamentations of my soul translated into strains of fiendish mirth through the medium of the horn, the Turkey Mogul, arrived on his second visit of examination to the Wallencamp school, seemed to be descending before my eyes, in a vortex of the giddy atmosphere. In fact, he was alighting from his buggy, and a grim, though rea.s.suring smile sat on his features.

”I see! I see!” he nodded his head. ”You've given them a good start,” he added, succinctly, indicating the direction of the Wallencampers; ”humph!

yes! they are always up to something!”