Turner was occupied with his javelin-shaped fork, and did not seem to hear it.
Mr. Bunce suspected artifice in this, and watched the rector’s meek face for a sign of secret confusion. After a moment he said, with his full, pompous voice at its loudest and most artificial pitch:—
“Ah, Mr. Turner, this is a sad occasion!”
The rector glanced up with some surprise, for he had not expected this overture, and answered “Yes, truly it is; extremely sad.”
“Yet it is consoling to feel that even so sad an occasion can be converted into a means of grace, a season of spiritual solace as it were.”
Mr. Turner only nodded assent to this; he felt that the whole company around the table, hired people and all, were eagerly watching him and the burly, bold-faced preacher opposite, as if they were about to engage in gladiatorial combat.
But Mr. Bunce would not permit the challenge to be declined. He stroked his ochre-hued chin whisker, looked complacently around the board, and asked:
“I s’pose you’ve brought your white and black riggins’ along, eh? Or don’t you wear ’em except in Church?”
There was a pained look in Mr. Turner’s face; he made a little gesture toward the folding doors leading to the parlor, beyond which lay the dead, and murmured:
“It will be better, will it not, to speak of these matters together, after dinner?”
Again the Rev. Stephen glanced around the table, looking especially toward Miss Sabrina for approval, and remarked loftily:
“There is no need of concealment here, sir. It is all in the family here. We all know that the Mother in Israel who has departed was formerly of your communion, and if she wanted to have you here, sir, at her funeral, why well and good. But the rest of this sorrowin’ family, sir, this stricken household, air Baptists—”
“I declare! there’s the Burrells drivin’ into the yard, a’ready!” said Alvira, rising from her chair abruptly. “If you’re threw we better hustle these things aout, naow; you women won’t more’n have time to dress ’fore they’ll all be here.”
The interruption seemed a welcome one to everybody, for there was a general movement on both sides of Mr. Bunce, which he, with his sentence unfinished, was constrained to join.
The third stranger, a small, elderly man with a mobile countenance and rusty black clothes, drew himself up, put on a modifiedly doleful expression, and, speaking for the first time, assumed control of everything:
“Naow, Milton, you ’n’ Leander git the table aout, ’n’ bring in all the extry chairs, ’n’ set ’em ’raound in rows. Squeeze ’em pooty well together in back, but the front ones kind o’ spread aout. You, Miss Sabriny, ’n’ the lady”—indicating Isabel with his thumb—“ ’n’ Annie’d better go upstairs ’n’ git yer bonnets on, ’n’ things, ’n’ go ’n’ set in the room at the head o’ the stairs. You men, tew, git your gloves on, ’n’ naow be sure ’n’ have your hankch’fs in some pocket where you can git at ’em with your gloves on—‘n’ have your hats in your hands, ‘n’ then go ’n’ set with the ladies. Miss Sabriny, you’ll come daown arm-in-arm with yer brother, when I call, ’n’ then Albert ’n’ his wife, ’n’ John with Annie, ’n’ Seth with—pshaw, there’s odd numbers. Well, Seth can come alone. And dew keep step comin’ daown stairs!”
“ ’N’ naow, gents,” turning to the Rev. Mr. Turner, “your gaown’s in the fust room to the right on the landin’, and if you”—addressing Mr. Bunce—“will go up with him, and arrange ’baout the services, so’s to come daown together—it’ll look pootier than to straggle in by yourselves—‘n’ you, Milton, ain’t you got somethin’ besides overalls to put on?”
Thus the autocrat cleared the living room. Then, going around through the front hall, he entered the parlor to receive, with solemn dignity and a fine eye to their relative social merit, the first comers.
These were almost exclusively women, dressed in Sunday garb. As each buggy or democrat wagon drove up inside the gate, and discharged its burden, the men would lead the horses further on, to be hitched under or near the shed, and then saunter around to the kitchen side of the house, where cider was on tap, and other men were standing in the sunshine, chewing tobacco and conversing in low tones, while the women from each conveyance went straight to the front door, and got seats in the parlor as close to the coffin as possible. The separation of the sexes could hardly have been more rigorous in a synagogue. There were, indeed two or three meek, well-brushed men among the women, sitting, uncomfortable but resigned, in the geranium-scented gloom of the curtained parlor, but, as the more virile brethren outside would have said, they were men who didn’t count.
The task of the undertaker was neither light nor altogether smooth. There were some dozen chairs reserved, nearest the pall, for the mourners, the clergymen and the mixed quartette expected from Thessaly. Every woman on entering made for these chairs, and the more unimportant and “low-down” she was in the rural scale of social values, the more confidently she essayed to get one of them. With all of these more or less argument was necessary—conducted in a buzzing whisper from which some squeak or guttural exclamation would now and again emerge. With some, the undertaker was compelled to be quite peremptory; while one woman—Susan Jane Squires, a slatternly, weak-eyed creature who presumed upon her position as sister-in-law of Milton, the hired man—had actually to be pushed away by sheer force.
Then there was the further labor of inducing all these disappointed ones to take the seats furthest back, so that late comers might not have to push by and over them, but efforts in this direction were only fitful at the best, and soon were practically abandoned.
“Fust come, fust sarved!” said old Mrs. Wimple. “I’m jes ez good ez them that’ll come bimeby, ’n’ ef I don’ mind their climbin’ over me, you needn’t!” and against this the undertaker could urge nothing satisfactory.
In the intervals of that functionary’s activity, conversation was quite general, carried on in whispers which, in the aggregate, sounded like the rustle of a smart breeze through the dry leaves of a beach tree. Many women were there who had never been in the house before—could indeed, have had no other chance of getting in. These had some fleeting interest in the funeral appointments, and the expense incident thereto, but their chief concern was the furnishing of the house. They furtively scraped the carpet with their feet to test its quality, they felt of the furniture to see if it had been re-varnished, they estimated the value of the curtains, speculated on the cost of the melodeon and its age, wondered when the ceiling had last been whitewashed. Some, who knew the family better, discussed the lamentable decline of the Fairchilds in substance and standing within their recollection, and exchanged hints about the endemic mortgage stretching its sinister hand even to the very chairs they were sitting on. Others, still more intimate, rehearsed the details of the last and fatal illness, commented on the character of individuals in the family, and guessed how long old Lemuel would last, now that Cicely was gone.
In the centre of these circling waves of gossip lay the embodiment of the eternal silence. Listening, one might fain envy such an end to that living death of mental starvation which was the lot of all there, and which forced them, out of their womanhood, to chatter in the presence of death.
The singers came. They were from the village, belonging to the Congregational church there, and it was understood that they came out of liking for John Fairchild. None of the gathering knew them personally, but
