But the cock crew.
The roof jarred.
‘How is Mrs. Merrymusk?’
‘Well.’
‘And the children?’
‘Well. All well.’
The last two words he shouted forth in a kind of wild ecstasy of triumph
over ill. It was too much. His head fell back. A white napkin seemed
dropped upon his face. Merrymusk was dead.
An awful fear seized me.
But the cock crew.
The cock shook his plumage as if each feather were a banner. The cock
hung from the shanty roof as erewhile the trophied flags from the dome
of St. Paul’s. The cock terrified me with exceeding wonder.
I drew nigh the bedsides of the woman and children. They marked my look
of strange affright; they knew what had happened.
‘My good man is just dead,’ breathed the woman lowly. ‘Tell me true?’
‘Dead,’ said I.
The cock crew.
She fell back, without a sigh, and through long-loving sympathy was
dead.
The cock crew.
The cock shook sparkles from his golden plumage. The cock seemed in a
rapture of benevolent delight. Leaping from the hoop, he strode up
majestically to the pile of old clothes, where the wood-sawyer lay, and
planted himself, like an armorial supporter, at his side. Then raised
one long, musical, triumphant, and final sort of crow, with throat
heaved far back, as if he meant the blast to waft the wood-sawyer’s soul
sheer up to the seventh heaven. Then he strode, king-like, to the
woman’s bed. Another upturned and exultant crow, mated to the former.
The pallor of the children was changed to radiance. Their faces shone
celestially through grime and dirt. They seemed children of emperors and
kings, disguised. The cock sprang upon their bed, shook himself, and
crowed, and crowed again, and still and still again. He seemed bent upon
crowing the souls of the children out of their wasted bodies. He seemed
bent upon rejoining instanter this whole family in the upper air. The
children seemed to second his endeavours. Far, deep, intense longings
for release transfigured them into spirits before my eyes. I saw angels
where they lay.
They were dead.
The cock shook his plumage over them. The cock crew. It was now like a
Bravo! like a Hurrah! like a Three-times-three! hip! hip! He strode out
of the shanty. I followed. He flew upon the apex of the dwelling, spread
wide his wings, sounded one supernatural note, and dropped at my feet.
The cock was dead.
If now you visit that hilly region, you will see, nigh the railroad
track, just beneath October Mountain, on the other side of the
swamp--there you will see a gravestone, not with skull and cross-bones,
but with a lusty cock in act of crowing, chiselled on it, with the words
beneath:--
‘O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?’
The wood-sawyer and his family, with the Signor Beneventano, lie in that
spot; and I buried them, and planted the stone, which was a stone made
to order; and never since then have I felt the doleful dumps, but under
all circumstances crow late and early with a continual crow.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!--oo!--oo!--oo!--oo!
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