JOB GOES TO A FUNERAL.
"Do you know what a first-rate substitute for roast oysters these
are?" asked Alan, twirling the great metal spider with purplish
back and spiral wire legs that hung from the gas fixture.
"No, nor you either, Alan," said Jessie. "They do, now honestly.
If you heat them up real hot, they smell just like roast oysters.
I knew a family once, that always kept one on hand, and when
provisions ran low, they'd set it to frying, and all sit round and
smell of it. It was 'most as good as eating them," persisted the
boy soberly.
"Alan Hapgood," said his sister, "if you tell any more such
taradiddles, I'll send you home."
"But what if I don't choose to go?" returned Alan. "Mrs. Adams
asked me here to spend the afternoon, and you wouldn't any of you
have known what was going on, if it hadn't been for me."
"You shall stay and tell all the stories you like, Alan," said
Polly, coming to his defence as usual. "And if Molly doesn't like
it, she shall go home, her own self."
"Come, Alan," urged Florence; "tell us another story, a real long
one, to help pass the time."
"Hm! Let's see," mused Alan. "I don't know as I know any. I'll
tell you, I read one a while ago that I liked pretty well, and if
I get hard up, I can put in some of that. How'll that do?"
"Beautifully," said Polly, with enthusiasm. "You do tell such
splendid stories, Alan."
The group in Mrs. Adams's parlor had gathered there for a strange
purpose, that day. An old negro, well-known throughout the town,
had died, two days before, and Alan had discovered, only that
noon, that the man was to be buried with military honors. The line
of march to the cemetery lay past the Adams house, so Mrs. Adams
had asked them all to come there, to watch the solemn pageant. It
was a cold, gray April day, threatening rain at any moment. As the
girls and Alan reached the gate, they had paused, for a minute, to
watch the fast-gathering crowd as it hurried away up the street to
the old brown house, just visible in the distance, whose end,
jutting out on the street, was surrounded with the members of the
company, who had assembled to pay the last honors to their
sleeping comrade. Under the dull, leaden sky, and in the shade of
the arching elms, the old house and the road and the gray-coated
men looked to the children as if the heavy shadow which rested
over the silent room within had extended over them all, and was
enveloping them in its sombre gloom. Though only a moment before,
they had been laughing and talking in mere curious interest, they
grew suddenly quiet, as they realized that the swift, mysterious
summons had come to old Pete, whom they had known so well.
"And they say," said Alan, as Polly joined them at the gate, and
they lingered there, "that Pete's little dog won't leave the room
one minute, but just lies there and watches him. They tried to get
him away, for the funeral, but he snarled at them so they had to
let him be."
Katharine's face softened.
"That's a friend worth having," said she thoughtfully. "Some
people say 'only a dog,' but if he is faithful to his master, even
after death has come, what more can he do?"
"Oh, dear me; there's Job!" exclaimed Polly suddenly, as the old
creature stalked into sight. "How did he get out?"
"I wonder if we could get him in," said Alan.
"It's no use; he'd only kick you," returned Polly. "We may as well
come into the house, and let him alone; then perhaps he'll go in.
He's awfully obstinate, you know."
"I think I've noticed something of the kind," said Jessie, as they
ran up the steps, and left Job to the quiet workings of his
conscience.
By the time they were gathered in the parlor windows, their
momentary quiet was over, and they were talking as gaily as ever
while they gazed up the street, watching for the first signs of
the procession. But the funeral services were long, and the girls'
patience was rapidly becoming exhausted when Florence had
suggested Alan's telling them a story, to while away the time of
waiting. The girls arranged themselves before the two long front
windows, to look and listen at the same time, Katharine, Florence,
and Jean at one, Molly and Jessie at the other, with Alan and
Polly on the floor at their feet, and the lad began his tale.
"Once upon a time, about sixty-seven years and nine months ago,
there was a young man in England that was rich and handsome and
brave and good, and his name was--Oh, give us a name for him,
Poll."
"Mortimer Vincent Augustin Thome," responded Polly promptly. "I
think that's a lovely name."
"Too long," objected Alan. "Something shorter, not but one."
"Malcolm, then; will that suit?" asked Florence, from the other
side of the room.
"Yes, that's good. Well, his name was Malcolm, and he fell in love
with a girl named--"
"Gertrude," suggested Jean, without waiting to be asked.
"No, Margaret," said Polly. "That's ever so much better."
"All right, call her Margaret," said Alan; "but if you girls don't
keep still, I never can tell you any story. Malcolm loved Margaret
and wanted her to be his bride, but she was kept a captive in a
tower, by a wicked uncle who had gone on a crusade to the Holy
Land."
"But they didn't go on crusades sixty-seven years ago," said Jean,
whose strong point was history.
"Will you keep still, Jean?" said Polly. "This isn't a true story,
and he has as good a right to poetical license as you had in the
play."
"The Holy Land," resumed Alan, not noticing the interruption; "and
he had taken the keys to the tower in his pocket, so Malcolm
didn't really know just what to do. At last, after he had tried
all sorts of things, he took his banjo and went under the tower
window and sang a little song that Margaret had made up, when they
were children together." Here Alan paused to smile meaningly at
Polly, before he went on. "It was a very sweet song, and his voice
was loud enough so Margaret heard him and opened a window to peek
out. She knew him as soon as she saw him, and she wrote a letter
and tied it to a string and let it down to him. He read it and
wrote an answer, and was just getting ready to send it up, the
same way, when a great, fierce ruffian with a bloodhound pounced
on him, and threw him into the very darkest dungeon in the cellar
of the tower. He was pretty much scared, for he was all in the
dark, and he was without any food or anything to drink, and he
only had his banjo to comfort him. But he was so glad it wasn't
Margaret that was there, that he didn't much mind anything else.
But that wasn't the worst of it. His prison walls kept growing
smaller and smaller, till by and by it began to get so tight that
it hurt him. It didn't stop, even then, but it grew so small that
his bones began to break, till finally he found that he only had
one whole one left. That stirred him up, and he said to himself,
'If I don't find a way out, I shall be a dead man!' So he pounded
on the walls, to see what they were made of, and found they were
iron; but he knew the floor was earth, so he began to dig as fast
as he could, and he used his banjo for a scoop, to carry off the
earth in."
"Where'd he carry it to?" inquired Jessie. "I thought he didn't
have any room to move round."
"He didn't, very much," said Alan; "but he made the most of every
little corner, and before long he had dug down far enough to come
to just the jolliest little secret passage you ever saw. He
slipped down into it, and followed it along and along ever so far,
till at last he came up to the light again, outside the walls of
the tower. He swung his hat in the air and shouted, 'Three cheers
for Queen Victoria!' and then he ran round under Margaret's window
and took his banjo and sang the song once more, to let her know he
was alive. Then, without wasting any more time, he ran off through
the forest. But when he came to the top of the very first hill, he
looked back and saw Margaret leaning out of the window, waving a
pale blue flag with the word courage on it, in gilt letters."
"Where did she get such a thing?" asked Jean.
"Oh, she'd been making it, while he was in the dungeon," answered
Alan. "So he went away to the Holy Land, to look for the wicked
uncle. He walked every step of the way, and swam rivers and
climbed up mountains and slid down on avalanches on the other
side, and at last he came to Jerusalem. He found the uncle just
leading four regiments against the city gates, mounted on a
splendid white horse. And he looked down and smiled scornfully and
said, 'What ho, Malcolm! You here?' That made Malcolm very mad, so
he pulled the uncle off his horse and hit him, thump! with his
banjo, and killed him. Then he looked in his pockets and found
ever so much money; but, hard up as he was, for he'd had his
pockets picked on the way, he didn't take the money, for he wanted
something else. It was found at last, a little gold key hung round
his neck on a silver chain; so Malcolm took the key and went home,
riding the uncle's horse, and let out Margaret, and they lived
happy and died happy, and she was heir to all the tower and the
servants. But the first thing she did was to block the walls of
the dungeon, so they couldn't move any more."
"Oh, Alan, Alan! Where did you get such a story?" said Katharine,
laughing until the tears came.
"Get it? Made it up, of course," returned the boy, with evident
pride in his tale.
"It must be splendid to be able to make up such stories!" sighed
Polly enviously. "I'd give almost anything if I could do it."
"I should hope if you tried, yours would hang together a little
better," said Molly who, in virtue of her relationship, felt
privileged to be as critical as she chose. "It's a mystery to me
how he could move round to dig up the floor when all his bones
were broken, and I never heard that you could use a banjo for a
shovel and then play on it, or hit a man hard enough to kill him,
and not break it.'
"I don't care for all that," said Polly enthusiastically. "Anybody
could tell a story and get rid of those things. What I like is the
things he did, he was so brave and so true, and then his not
touching any of the uncle's money was the best part of it all,
when he needed it so much."
"But he stole the uncle's horse," objected Jean.
"He didn't steal it, he only took it home. And speaking of horses,
I wonder what's become of Job." And Polly leaned forward to peer
out of the window.
"There he is, over in the next lot," said Jessie.
Dr. Adams's house stood far back from the street, and next to it
was a deep, vacant lot at the very rear of which Job was aimlessly
wandering about, pausing now and then to nip at the tender green
blades that were pushing their way up through the brown, dead
turf.
"What ever sent him in there!" said Polly. "I don't see how we can
get him home."
"Let him alone long enough, and he'll come," predicted Molly.
"It's no use to chase him round and round, and if you drive him
out into the street, he'll run away."
"I wish he would," said Polly explosively, "and never come back
again! He's more trouble than he's worth, and he knows more than
all the rest of us put together."
"Give him to Aunt Jane for a wedding present," Alan proposed.
"She'd think 'twas signing her death warrant," answered Polly,
laughing. "You know he did duty at the funeral of Mrs. Baxter the
first."
"Oh dear, it seems as if they never would come!" sighed Jessie
impatiently. "What does keep them so long?"
"Do somebody tell another story," said Florence. "Can't you,
Katharine?"
"I should never dare, after Alan's wonderful success," replied
Katharine lightly, as she took out the daffodil she had been
wearing in her buttonhole and tossed it over to her cousin. Then
she added soberly, "It isn't any story at all, but I believe,
while we wait, I'll tell you about the saddest funeral I ever saw
in my life."
"Go on, Kit; you have the floor," said Alan encouragingly.
"It isn't much to tell, but you've no idea how pitiful it was to
see," the girl went on thoughtfully. "Just a year ago this spring,
papa had to go West on business, and he took me with him. We had
to stay two or three days in a little bit of a town up in the
Rocky Mountains, and while we were there, a young woman died. She
had only been married a month, and had just come out from New
England, to live in the cunning little new house that her husband
had built. It was a winter of very deep snow, even for that
region, and when it melted, it grew soft all the way down through,
before it seemed to go away, any at all. The cemetery was away
from the town, up on the side of the mountain, just the loneliest,
most desolate place you can imagine; and it seemed so sad to take
her away and leave her there all alone. It was a long, long
procession, and papa and I stood at the window to watch it, as it
went through the town, and on out into the open country, where no
road had been broken. Then, for a mile or two, the long black line
crawled along over the snow, while the horses floundered about,
half buried in the drifts, and the hearse tipped this way and
that, as first one wheel would sink down out of sight, and then
another. At last it wound around the foot of the hill, and we
couldn't see it any more; but I kept feeling so sorry for the poor
little wife and for the lonely husband in his new house."
Katharine paused, but there was no word spoken, so she went on,--
"A month later we spent Sunday there, on our way home. The snow
had all melted and, in the afternoon, I teased papa to walk up to
the cemetery with me. We remembered the name, so we could find the
grave easily enough. It was perfectly bare, without any grass on
it, but at the head was a rough little cross made of two boards
nailed together, with her name painted on it, in black letters
that were a little unsteady, as if somebody's hand shook when he
was making them; and at the foot of the cross lay one tiny bunch
of white immortelles, to show that she wasn't quite forgotten. But
when we turned to look at the view, it didn't seem sad, any more.
The little, low, dingy town lay below us, as if she had risen
above it, and all around us, the great, soft, kind mountains stood
up in the sun to guard her and watch over her, in her sleep. The
shabby cross and the little posy and the magnificent brown
mountains were all so much more kind and loving than our piles of
marble and fussy flowers arranged for show, that when I came down
the hill, I didn't feel sorry for her, any longer."
The hush that followed Katharine's simple story was unbroken for
some moments. Then Polly sprang up excitedly,--
"The drums! Don't you hear them?" And she rushed away to call her
mother.
The procession was moving, at last, and the distant roll of
muffled drums could be plainly heard by the girls, as they pressed
closely to the window. Touched, as they had been, by the account
of that far-away funeral among the mountains, they were in just
the mood to be impressed by the scene which was passing before
them. And, in truth, any one who stood looking on, that day, must
have felt the impressiveness of the long line as it slowly filed
down the broad street under the graceful arches of the tall old
elms, in the cold light of the cloudy afternoon. First came the
drum corps, with wailing fife and muffled drum; next appeared the
gray uniforms of the company who marched two by two, with bowed
heads and reversed arms, to escort the hearse in their midst.
Directly behind the hearse trotted a small, yellow figure, at
sight of whom Alan stealthily drew his hand across his eyes. It
was Pete's faithful friend, the little Scotch terrier, who was
following his master to his last resting-place, with a sturdy
determination not to leave his good old master with whom he had
spent such a happy little life. Then followed the line of
carriages and the straggling groups on foot; but the girls paid
little heed to them, for Polly said, in a sudden whisper,--"Just
look at Job!"
For a long time the old horse had been quietly grazing, without so
much as raising his head to take breath and look about him, so
greedy was he for the first tender grass-blades of the spring.
Suddenly he heard the roll of the drums and threw up his head to
listen, with eager ears and dilating eyes, as if the sound
recalled to him some vague memory of his far-off youth. So proud
and spirited he looked as he stood there, that it was evident
that, in fancy, he was living over his former days, perhaps
listening to the triumphant strains of music which heralded the
close of the rebellion. As the sound came nearer, and yet nearer,
he appeared to be under its spell and slowly moved down towards
the street, arching his glossy neck and stepping high, in perfect
time to the music. Fifty feet from the fence, he stopped and gazed
at the scene before him, still spellbound by the martial sounds
and the memories they called up in his mind, while the group in
the Adams's windows watched him intently, amazed at the life and
fire in the old creature's pose and manner. Still Job stood
watching the soldiers, listening to the band until it had moved
onward, past the spot where he was. Then his eyes fell on the
hearse, and he took one eager step forward. Surely that was a
familiar sight! The carriages came next, and by that time there
was no hesitancy in his mind; for at length he recognized all the
solemn import of the procession. It was a funeral, and in funerals
Job had often borne a conspicuous part. The band was doubtless his
call to duty; and should any one say that he had failed, even in
his old age, to respond to this call? He took another step
forward, paused again, for only one instant; then, just as the
last carriage passed the gate, he swung his aged tail round and
round, in two rapturous, joyful whisks, and with tossing head and
flying mane, he trotted rapidly out into the street, overtook the
procession and, dropping into a decorous walk just as his nose
touched the back of the rear carriage, he marched solemnly off
down the street, with patient resignation and unending sadness
depicted in every line of his old brown body.
Inside the parlor the girls, without a thought of their past
interest in Pete's funeral, turned and gazed at each other in
silence for a moment, then sank to the floor, in uncontrollable,
though noiseless laughter.