Old Mrs. Butterfield had had her third stroke of paralysis, and died
of a Sunday night. She was all alone in her little cottage on the river
bank, with no neighbor nearer than Croft's, and nobody there but a blind
man and a small boy. Everybody had told her it was foolish to live alone
in a house on the river road, and everybody was pleased in a discreet
and chastened fashion of course, that it had turned out exactly as they
had predicted.
Aunt Mehitable Tarbox was walking up to Milliken's Mills, with her
little black reticule hanging over her arm, and noticing that there
was no smoke coming out of the chimney, and that the hens were gathered
about the kitchen door clamoring for their breakfast, she thought it
best to stop and knock. No response followed the repeated blows from
her hard knuckles. She then tapped smartly on Mrs. Butterfield's bedroom
window with her thimble finger. This proving of no avail, she was
obliged to pry open the kitchen shutter, split open a mosquito netting
with her shears, and crawl into the house over the sink. This was a
considerable feat for a somewhat rheumatic elderly lady, but this one
never grudged trouble when she wanted to find out anything.
When she discovered that her premonitions were correct, and that
old Mrs. Butterfield was indeed dead, her grief at losing a pleasant
acquaintance was largely mitigated by her sense of importance at being
first on the spot, and chosen by Providence to take command of the
situation. There were no relations in the village; there was no woman
neighbor within a mile: it was therefore her obvious Christian duty not
only to take charge of the remains, but to conduct such a funeral as the
remains would have wished for herself.
The fortunate Vice-President suddenly called upon by destiny to guide
the ship of state, the general who sees a possible Victoria Cross in
a hazardous engagement, can have a faint conception of aunt Hitty's
feeling on this momentous occasion. Funerals were the very breath of her
life. There was no ceremony, either of public or private import, that,
to her mind, approached a funeral in real satisfying interest. Yet,
with distinct talent in this direction, she had always been “cabined,
cribbed, confined” within hopeless limitations. She had assisted in a
secondary capacity at funerals in the families of other people, but she
would have reveled in personally conducted ones. The members of her own
family stubbornly refused to die, however, even the distant connections
living on and on to a ridiculous old age; and if they ever did die, by
reason of a falling roof, shipwreck, or conflagration, they generally
died in Texas or Iowa, or some remote State where aunt Hitty could not
follow the hearse in the first carriage. This blighted ambition was a
heart sorrow of so deep and sacred a character that she did not even
confess it to “Si,” as her appendage of a husband was called.
Now at last her chance for planning a funeral had come. Mrs. Butterfield
had no kith or kin save her niece, Lyddy Ann, who lived in Andover,
or Lawrence, or Haverhill Massachusetts,--aunt Hitty couldn't remember
which, and hoped nobody else could. The niece would be sent for when
they found out where she lived; meanwhile the funeral could not be put
off.
She glanced round the house preparatory to locking it up and starting
to notify Anthony Croft. She would just run over and talk to him about
ordering the coffin; then she could attend to all other necessary
preliminaries herself. The remains had been well-to-do, and there was no
occasion for sordid economy, so aunt Hitty determined in her own mind to
have the latest fashion in everything, including a silver coffin plate.
The Butterfield coffin plates were a thing to be proud of. They had
been sacredly preserved for years and years, and the entire
collection--numbering nineteen in all had been framed, and adorned the
walls of the deceased lady's best room. They were not of solid silver,
it is true, but even so it was a matter of distinction to have belonged
to a family that could afford to have nineteen coffin plates of any
sort.
Aunt Hitty planned certain dramatic details as she walked town the road
to Croft's. It came to her in a burst of inspiration that she would have
two ministers: one for the long prayer, and one for the short prayer and
the remarks. She hoped that Elder Weeks would be adequate in the latter
direction. She knew she couldn't for the life of her think of anything
interesting about Mrs. Butterfield, save that she possessed nineteen
coffin plates, and brought her hens to Edgewood every summer for their
health; but she had heard Elder Weeks make a moving discourse out of
less than that. To be sure, he needed priming, but she was equal to
that. There was Ivory Brown's funeral: how would that have gone on if it
hadn't been for her? Wasn't the elder ten minutes late, and what would
his remarks have amounted to without her suggestions? You might almost
say she was the author of the discourse, for she gave him all the
appropriate ideas. As she had helped him out of the wagon she had said:
“Are you prepared? I thought not; but there's no time to lose. Remember
there are aged parents; two brothers living, one railroading in Spokane
Falls, the other clerking in Washington, D. C. Don't mention the
Universalists,--there's ben two in the fam'ly; nor insanity,--there 's
ben one o' them. The girl in the corner by the clock is the one that
the remains has been keeping comp'ny with. If you can make some genteel
allusions to her, it'll be much appreciated by his folks.”
As to the long prayer, she knew that the Rev. Mr. Ford could be relied
on to pray until aunt Becky Burnham should twitch him by the coat tails.
She had done it more than once. She had also, on one occasion, got up
and straightened his ministerial neckerchief, which he had gradually
“prayed” around his saintly neck until it was behind the right ear.
These plans proved so fascinating to aunt Hitty that she walked quite
half a mile beyond Croft's, and was obliged to retrace her steps.
She conceived bands of black alpaca for the sleeves and hats of the
pallbearers, and a festoon of the same over the front gate, if there
should be any left over. She planned the singing by the choir. There
had been no real choir-singing at any funeral in Edgewood since the Rev.
Joshua Beckwith had died. She would ask them to open with--
Rebel mourner, cease your weepin'.
You too must die.
This was a favorite funeral hymn. The only difficulty would be in
keeping aunt Becky Burnham from pitching it in a key where nobody but a
soprano skylark, accustomed to warble at a great height, could
possibly sing it. It was generally given at the grave, when Elder Weeks
officiated; but it never satisfied aunt Hitty, because the good elder
always looked so unpicturesque when he threw a red bandanna handkerchief
over his head before beginning the twenty-seven verses. After the long
prayer, she would have Almira Berry give for a solo--
This gro-o-oanin' world 's too dark and
dre-e-ar for the saints' e - ter - nal rest,
This hymn, if it did not wholly reconcile one to death, enabled one to
look upon life with sufficient solemnity. It was a thousand pities, she
thought, that the old hearse was so shabby and rickety, and that Gooly
Eldridge, who drove it, would insist on wearing a faded peach-blow
overcoat. It was exasperating to think of the public spirit at Egypt,
and contrast it with the state of things at Pleasant River. In Egypt
they had sold the old hearse house for a sausage shop, and now they were
having hearse sociables every month to raise money for a new one.
All these details flew through aunt Hitty's mind in fascinating
procession. There shouldn't be “a hitch” anywhere. There had been a
hitch at her last funeral, but she had been only an assistant there.
Matt Henderson had been struck by lightning at the foot of Squire Bean's
old nooning tree, and certain circumstances combined to make the funeral
one of unusual interest, so much so that fat old Mrs. Potter from
Deerwander created a sensation at the cemetery. She was so anxious
to get where she could see everything to the best advantage that she
crowded too near the bier, stepped on the sliding earth, and pitched
into the grave. As she weighed over two hundred pounds, and was in a
position of some disadvantage, it took five men to extricate her from
the dilemma, and the operation made a long and somewhat awkward break in
the religious services. Aunt Hitty always said of this catastrophe,
“If I'd 'a' ben Mis' Potter, I'd 'a' ben so mortified I believe I'd 'a'
said, 'I wa'n't plannin' to be buried, but now I'm in here I declare
I'll stop!'”
Old Mrs. Butterfield's funeral was not only voted an entire success by
the villagers, but the seal of professional approval was set upon it
by an undertaker from Saco, who declared that Mrs. Tarbox could make
a handsome living in the funeral line anywhere. Providence, who always
assists those who assist themselves, decreed that the niece Lyddy Ann
should not arrive until the aunt was safely buried; so, there being
none to resist her right or grudge her the privilege aunt Hitty, for the
first time in her life, rode in the next buggy to the hearse. Si, in his
best suit, a broad weed and weepers, drove Cyse Higgins's black colt,
and aunt Hitty was dressed in deep mourning, with the Widow Buzzell's
crape veil over her face, and in her hand a palmleaf fan tied with a
black ribbon. Her comment to Si, as she went to her virtuous couch that
night, was: “It was an awful dry funeral, but that was the only flaw in
it. It would 'a' ben perfect if there' ben anybody to shed tears. I
come pretty nigh it myself, though I ain't no relation, when Elder Weeks
said, 'You'll go round the house, my sisters, and Mis' Butterfield won't
be there; you'll go int' the orchard, and Mis' Butterfield won't be
there; you'll go int' the barn and Mis' Butterfield won't be there;
you'll go int' the shed, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go
int' the hencoop, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there!' That would 'a'
drawed tears from a stone most, 'specially sence Mis' Butterfield set
such store by her hens.”
And this is the way that Lyddy Butterfield came into her kingdom, a
little lone brown house on the river's brim. She had seen it only once
before when she had driven out from Portland, years ago, with her aunt.
Mrs. Butterfield lived in Portland, but spent her summers in Edgewood
on account of her chickens. She always explained that the country was
dreadful dull for her, but good for the hens; they always laid so much
better in the winter time.
Lyddy liked the place all the better for its loneliness. She had never
had enough of solitude, and this quiet home, with the song of the
river for company, if one needed more company than chickens and a cat,
satisfied all her desires, particularly as it was accompanied by a snug
little income of two hundred dollars a year, a meagre sum that seemed to
open up mysterious avenues of joy to her starved, impatient heart.
When she was a mere infant, her brother was holding her on his knee
before the great old-fashioned fireplace heaped with burning logs.
A sudden noise startled him, and the crowing, restless baby gave an
unexpected lurch, and slipped, face downward, into the glowing embers.
It was a full minute before the horror-stricken boy could extricate the
little creature from the cruel flame that had already done its fatal
work. The baby escaped with her life, but was disfigured forever. As
she grew older, the gentle hand of time could not entirely efface the
terrible scars. One cheek was wrinkled and crimson, while one eye and
the mouth were drawn down pathetically. The accident might have changed
the disposition of any child, but Lyddy chanced to be a sensitive,
introspective bit of feminine humanity, in whose memory the burning
flame was never quenched. Her mother, partly to conceal her own wounded
vanity, and partly to shield the timid, morbid child, kept her out of
sight as much as possible; so that at sixteen, when she was left an
orphan, she had lived almost entirely in solitude.
She became, in course of time, a kind of general nursery governess in a
large family of motherless children. The father was almost always away
from home; his sister kept the house, and Lyddy stayed in the nursery,
bathing the brood and putting them to bed, dressing them in the morning,
and playing with them in the safe privacy of the back garden or the open
attic. They loved her, disfigured as she was, for the child despises
mere externals, and explores the heart of things to see whether it be
good or evil,--but they could never induce her to see strangers, nor to
join any gathering of people.
The children were grown and married now, and Lyddy was nearly forty when
she came into possession of house and lands and fortune; forty, with
twenty years of unexpended feeling pent within her. Forty, that is
rather old to be interesting, but age is a relative matter. Haven't you
seen girls of four-and-twenty who have nibbled and been nibbled at ever
since they were sixteen, but who have neither caught anything nor been
caught? They are old, if you like, but Lyddy was forty and still young,
with her susceptibilities cherished, not dulled, and with all the
“language of passion fresh and rooted as the lovely leafage about a
spring.”