The American farm-house funeral is surely, of all the observances with
which civilized man marks the ending of this earthly pilgrimage, the
most pathetic. The rural life itself is a sad and sterile enough thing,
with its unrelieved physical strain, its enervating and destructive
diet, its mental barrenness, its sternly narrowed groove of toil and
thought and companionship--but death on the farm brings a desolating
gloom, a cruel sense of the hopelessness of existence, which one
realizes nowhere else. The grim, fatalist habit of seizing upon the
grotesque side, which a century of farm life has crystallized into what
the world knows as American humor, is not wanting even in this hour;
and the comforting conviction of immortality, of the shining reward to
follow travail and sorrow, is nowhere more firmly insisted upon than
among our country people. But the bleak environment of the closed
life, the absence of real fellowship among the living, the melancholy
isolation and vanity of it all, oppress the soul here with an
intolerable weight which neither fund of sardonic spirits nor honest
faith can lighten.
Something of this Isabel felt, as the mid-day meal was hurried through,
on Alvira’s sharp intimation that the room couldn’t be cleared any too
soon, for the crowd would begin coming now, right along. There were
three strangers at the table--though they seemed to be scarcely more
strangers than the members of her husband’s family--of whom two were
clergymen.
One of these, who sat next to her, was the Episcopalian minister at
Thessaly, a middle-aged, soft sort of man, with short hair so smooth
and furry that she was conscious of an impulse to stroke it like a
seal-skin, and little side-whiskers which reminded her of a baby brush.
He impressed her as a stupid man, but in that she was mistaken. He was
nervous and ill at ease, first because he could not successfully or
gracefully use the narrow three-tined steel fork with a bone handle
that had been given him, and second, because he did not understand the
presence of the Rev. Stephen Bunce, who sat opposite him, offensively
smacking his lips, and devoting to loud discourse periods which it
seemed might better have been employed in mastication.
If quiet Mr. Turner was ill at ease, the Rev. Stephen was certainly not.
He bestrode the situation like a modern Colossus. The shape of his fork
did not worry him, since he used it only as a humble and lowly adjunct
to his knife. The presence of Mr. Turner too, neither puzzled nor pained
him. In fact, he was rather pleased than otherwise to have him there,
where he could talk to him before sympathetic witnesses, and make
him realise how the man of the people who had a genuine call
towered innately superior to mere beneficed gentility. “Beneficed
gentility”--that was a good phrase, and he made a mental note of it for
future use; then--the temptation was too strong--he bundled it neck and
crop into the florid sentence with which he was addressing Albert--and
looked at the Episcopalian to watch its effect.
Mr. 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 it was said that the contralto--the woman with the bird on her
bonnet, who took her seat at the melodeon--had had trouble with her
husband. A fresh buzz of whispering ran round. 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.