Some stray word must have reached the contralto, for she colored and pretended to study the music before her intently, and, later, when “Pleyel’s Hymn” was being sung, she played so nervously that there was an utter collapse in the sharps and flats of the third line, which nearly threw the singers out.
The undertaker now stalked in, and stood on tiptoe to see if the back room was also filled. He had been out with the men at the kitchen door, fixing crape on the arms of six of the best dressed and most respectable looking farmers in an almost jocular mood, and drilling them affably in their duties; drinking cider, exchanging gossip with one or two acquaintances, and conducting himself generally like an ordinary mortal. He had now resumed his dictatorship.
Most of the men had followed him around to the front of the house, and clustered now in the hall, or in a group about the outer door, holding their hats on a level with their shoulders.
A rustle on the stairs told that the mourners were descending. Then came the strains of the melodeon, and the singing, very low, solemn and sweet.
A little pause, and the full voice of the Baptist preacher was heard in prayer—then in some eulogistic remarks. What he said was largely nonsense, from any point of view, but the voice was that of the born exhorter, deep, clear-toned, melodious; there seemed to be a stop in it, as in an organ, which at pathetic parts gave forth a tremulous, weeping sound, and when this came not a dry eye could be found. He was over-fond of using this effect, as are most men possessing the trick, but no one noticed it, not even Isabel, who from sitting sternly intolerant of the whispering women around her, and indignant at Mr. Bunce for his dinner performance, found herself sobbing with all the rest when the tremulo stop was touched.
There was more singing, this time fine, simple old “St. Denis” and then the bearers were summoned in.
The men asked one another in murmurs outside if the Episcopal clargyman was to take no part in the services. Within, Mrs. Wimple went straighter to the point. She plucked him by the sleeve of his robe and leaning over with some difficulty, for she was a corpulent body, whispered to the hearing of a score of her neighbours:
“What air you here fer, mister, if you ain’t goin’ to say nor dew nothin’?”
“I officiate at the grave,” he had said, and then regretted all the remainder of the day having answered her at all.
On the return of the procession from the little knoll where the slate and marble tomb-stones of long dead Fairchilds bent over the new brown mound, Annie and Seth walked together. There was silence between them for a time, which he broke suddenly.
“It’s all very hard, Annie, for you know how much mother and I loved each other. But, truly, the hardest thing of all is to think of staying here among these narrow dolts. While she was here I could stand it. But I can’t any more.”
Annie said nothing. She felt his arm trembling against hers, and his voice was strained and excited. What could she say?
“They’re not like me,” he went on; “I have nothing in common with them. I hate the sight of the whole of them. I never realised till to-day how big a gulf there was between them and me. Didn’t you see it—what a mean, narrow-contracted lot they all were?”
“Who do you mean, Seth?”
“Why all of them. The Burrells, the Wimples, old Elhanan Pratt, old Lyman Tenney, that fellow Bunce—the whole lot of them. And the women too! Did you watch them—or, what’s worse, did you hear them? I wonder you can bear them yourself, Annie, any more than I can.”
“Sometimes it is hard, Seth, I admit; when I first came back to grandma from school it was awfully hard. But then I’ve got to live here, and reconcile myself to what the place offers—and, after all, Seth, they are well-meaning people, and some of them are smart, too, in their way.”
“Oh, well-meaning—in their way—yes! But I haven’t got to live here, Annie, and I haven’t got to reconcile myself, and I won’t That’s the long and short of it. I can make my living elsewhere—perhaps more than my living—and be among people who don’t make me angry every time I set eyes on them. And I can find friends, too, who feel as I do, and look at things as I do, instead of these country louts who only know abominable stories, and these foolish girls—who—who—”
“Nobody can blame you to-day, Seth, for feeling blue and sore, but you ought not to talk so, even now. They’re not all like what you say. Reuben Tracy, now, he’s been a good friend and a useful friend to you.”
“Yes, Rube’s a grand, good fellow, of course. I know all that. But then just take his case. He’s a poor schoolmaster now, just as he was five years ago, and will be twenty years from now. What kind of a life is that for a man?”
“And maybe the girls are—foolish, as you started to say, but—”
“Now, Annie, don’t think I m’eant anything by that, please! I know you’re the dearest girl and the best friend in the world. Truly, now, you won’t think I meant anything, will you?”
“No, Seth, I won’t” said Annie softly. It was her arm that trembled now.
CHAPTER VI.—IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY.
MISS Sabrina sat by her accustomed window an hour after the return from the grave, waiting for Albert. The mourning dress, borrowed for the occasion from a neighbor, was cut in so modern a fashion, contrasted with the venerable maiden’s habitual garments, that it gave her spare figure almost a fantastic air. The bonnet, with its yard of dense, coarse ribbed crape, lay on the table at her elbow, beside her spectacles and the unnoticed Bible. Miss Sabrina was ostensibly looking out of the window, but she really saw nothing. She was thinking very steadily about the coming interview with her nephew, and what she would say to him, and wondering, desponding, hoping about his answers.
The door opened, and Albert entered. “You wanted to see me, Aunt, so Annie said,” he remarked! gravely, in a subdued tone.
She motioned him to a chair and answered, in a solemn voice curiously like his own: “Yes, there’s some things I want to say to you, all by yourself.”
They sat for some moments in silence, the lawyer watching his aunt with amiable forbearance, as if conscious that his time was being wasted, and she, poor woman, groping in a novel mental fog for some suitable phrases with which to present her views. Under Albert’s calm, uninspiring gaze those views seemed to lose form, and diminish in intelligence as much as in distinctness. It had all been so clear to her mind—and now she suddenly found it fading off into a misty jumble of speculations, mere castles in the air. She had expected to present an unanswerable case lucidly and forcibly to her lawyer nephew; instead, it seemed increasingly probable that he would scout the thing as ridiculous—and, what was worse, be justified in so doing. So it was that she finally made her beginning doubtingly, almost dolefully:
“Of course I dunno haow you feel abaout it, Albert, but I can’t help thinking something ought to be settled abaout th’ farm, while yer here.”
“Settled? How settled?’’ asked Albert. There was a dry, dispassionate fibre in his voice which further chilled her enthusiasm.
