When Grandmamma Was New Part 5

I had taken her to bed with me that night for the first time in many weeks. Mary 'Liza was amused, in an amiable way, when she saw the bundle done up in red flannel--Musidora's rheumatism was _awful!_--that I hugged up to me.

"I never let Dorinda sleep with me," she observed. "I am afraid of hurting her. But I suppose you can't hurt Musidora. Why don't you give her to one of the colored children? She is really a sight."

"n.o.body asked you to look at her!" retorted I, crossly, putting my hand over the unfeatured face. "Mam' Chloe says, 'Handsome is as handsome does.' Anyhow, my doll-baby doesn't say mean things to folks."

The little bout raised the tear-level nearer to the escape-pipe. It was easy to cry when Mary 'Liza's breathing a.s.sured me that she was asleep.

It also confirmed my resolution to have the poor, deformed dear dead and buried without useless delay.

I cannot decide what moved me to bear her off secretly to the seldom-used staircase in the north wing to prepare her for her last long sleep. I escaped thither the next morning, as soon as lessons were over, and seated myself half-way up the steep staircase. It was scarred in many places by fire and smoke. No amount of scrubbing could quite efface the traces of the catastrophe. I looked at them for a long time before beginning my sad task, and did not shrink from the sight. My state of mind was distinctly morbid. Children were not reckoned to have nerves at that date, and little notice was taken of their silent moods. That I should voluntarily seek a solitary quarter of the house, which was shunned by others, never entered my mother's or my nurse's mind.

I had abundance of time in which to be as miserable as I thought I ought to be, and diligently nursed such sickly, sentimental fancies as ought to be foreign to a healthy young mind, while I divested maimed and sightless Musidora of her flannel m.u.f.flings and dressed her in a clean night-gown. Without saying what I meant to do with it I had begged a square of white cambric from Mam' Chloe, and set about notching it with a pair of blunt scissors. Mariposa had described a winding-sheet minutely to me, and I meant that my dead doll-baby should be decently laid out. The notching took a tedious time, and the bows of the blunt scissors left purple furrows upon thumb and fingers. Uncle Ike had given me an empty raisin box. I lined it with Musidora's own mattress and quilt, spread the "pinked" cambric on them, laid the remains (no figurative phrase in this connection) upon this bed, folding the one arm left to the unfortunate across her breast, and wrapped the edges of the winding-sheet over her face. With difficulty I coaxed the points of four projecting nails left in the lid into corresponding holes in the box, and having no hammer, sat down upon the top to make them fast, bouncing up and down a few times to make a good job of it.

I sat still awhile after closing the casket, and rehea.r.s.ed mentally the order of the obsequies. I had, thus far, made no arrangements for them beyond instructing the colored children to meet me in the Old Orchard under the big sweeting when the sun reached the "noonmark" my father had, to please me, cut in the fence by the playhouse door. They would be there in force and on time. I would get myself and burden out of the end door of the north wing and steal around the yard fence to the back of the garden without being seen. I knew how Mary 'Liza would smile and hitch up her straight, clean nose at the box and its contents, and I had a boding fear lest grown people might disapprove of and forbid the funeral.

Upon that my heart was fully set. The grief of losing the ceremony would be harder to endure than the delicious mournfulness with which I had systematically imbued my soul. I chose four boys of uniform size for pall-bearers; Barratier was to have a spade ready and to dig the grave, and when it was filled in we would sing a hymn. Mourning garments were the knotty point. I, as Musidora's mother, could not appear at her funeral in the crimson circa.s.sian frock I wore at present. That would upset everything.

A happy thought struck me. I recollected to have seen in the lumber-room, hanging upon some pegs high upon the wall, a row of old bonnets, and a black one among them. Other black things could be had for the hunting. I was a fanciful child, too used to conjuring up weird situations and make-believe happenings to be easily scared by what other children might dread. Nor was I then, or ever, a physical coward. As soon as the idea of visiting that upper room came to me I acted upon it.

Tripping up the narrow stairs, I pushed hard against the door. It stuck in the frame, and I was fearing it might be locked when it gave way suddenly and I almost fell into the chamber. It was a dreary place, although the spring suns.h.i.+ne poured broadly from wall to wall. The charred brands of the fire that had wrought such woe were cold in the corners of the hearth, having toppled, head-foremost and backward, over the andirons after burning through in the middle. The old blankets and comfortables were huddled upon the mattress and trailed upon the floor, as my mother had left them in s.n.a.t.c.hing one to throw about Lucy. A ball with which Alexander the Great had played was in a corner. But for the dead fire and the living suns.h.i.+ne and the stillness that met me on the threshold like a draught of icy air, we might have left the place not three minutes ago.

I learned, subsequently, that my mother had been sadly prostrated by the terrible threefold disaster, and had never had the nerve to re-visit the place where it began. None of the servants would have gone near it of their own free will. A queer, unfamiliar tremor I did not recognize as superst.i.tious dread contracted my heart, and arrested me just within the doorway. The box, from which we had eaten our dinner, was in the middle of the floor, the three crickets pushed a little way back from it, and half-way between the fireplace and a window in the gable was the rocking-chair my mother had occupied while she held Lucy on her lap.

Faded calico covered the seat, a valance of the same hung about the legs; two of the upright spindles were missing from the back. I took in every feature of the haunted room before I rushed over to the wall where the bonnets hung, climbed upon a chair, grabbed the black bonnet, and espying a black silk ap.r.o.n dependent from another peg, jerked it down, and ran off shakily, with my booty. The queer trembling had got into my legs, and as I went downstairs I steadied myself against the wall, avoiding, as I had not thought of doing as I went up, the scorched streaks on the walls and the stains on the steps. Even after I stood in the safe shelter of the garden fence, my heart beat so loudly that I put the raisin box down upon the gra.s.s, and pulled myself together.

The suns.h.i.+ne was genial to my chilled frame; through the palings I could see double rows of hyacinths, tulips, and b.u.t.ter-and-eggs, edging the walks, and bushes of lilacs and s...o...b..a.l.l.s almost in bloom, just as they had looked before I went up to the lumber-room. The serene naturalness of it all restored my wits to me; I unrolled the ap.r.o.n which I had wrapped about the bonnet, and reawakened, as from a nightmare, to the business of the hour.

When I presented myself to the group awaiting me under the big sweeting, a low, but fervent, groan of admiration broke forth as from one breast.

The bonnet covered my head generously, jutting six inches beyond my nose. The crepe curtain at the back descended to my shoulder-blades and flapped at the sides like the wings of a dejected crow. I had made a mourning-cloak of the ap.r.o.n by tying it, hind part before, about my neck, whence it drooped to my heels. Mariposa said--respectful of the genius manifest in my caparison--that I looked "mos' ezzac'ly like a real, sure-'nough widder." The boys were impressed into gravity becoming the occasion, and obeyed, with never a snicker or a grimace, my instructions as to the conduct of the ceremony.

I walked directly behind the coffin; Mariposa, with the baby on her left hip, marched next, arm-in-arm with another girl, who carried her baby--a very young one--over her shoulder, its head wobbling helplessly as she walked. The rest came after us, two-and-two, through the Old Orchard, out through the draw-bars at the lower end, and into the graveyard beyond.

It was a retired, and not an unlovely spot. A brick wall, splashed with ochre and gray lichens, enclosed six generations of dead Burwells and their next of kin. A locked gate kept out trespa.s.sers. Long streamers of brier and wild berry bushes, purple and ashy with the mantling sap drawn upward by the March suns.h.i.+ne, were matted over the older graves; a spreading "honey-shuck" tree arose near the middle of the badly kept square, and smaller trees flourished here and there. An apple tree, flushed with blossoms, leaned over the wall above the place selected for Musidora's grave.

Barratier struck his perpendicular spade into the black soil in a truly workmanlike manner, utilizing the foundation of the wall as one side of the oblong pit. The coffin was lowered into place by means of tow-strings, provided by thoughtful Mariposa. There was no reason, save her punctilio of "doin' things jes' like folks," why Barratier, or I, for that matter, should not have stooped and laid the casket in the eighteen-inch-deep hole with our bare hands. But lowered it was in funereal style, and covered with apple blossoms, before the bearers returned the black earth to the excavation and mounded it into proper shape. I stood at the head of the grave, my handkerchief at my eyes, trying with all my might to feel sorry enough to cry. The excitement of the conventional ceremonies, and the complacent consciousness of being the princ.i.p.al actor in it, and doing the thing creditably, drew the sting out of what would have been real grief had the flutter of my spirits allowed me to think. I believe that, if maturer mourners would be as frank as I, we should find that my experience was not singular, nor my reluctant composure unnatural.

Mariposa had her emotions better in hand. She sobbed volubly, wiping away real tears with the baby's calico slip, and three other girls accomplished commendable snivels. An embarra.s.sing halt brought down my handkerchief and hushed audible mourning. The affair was not over. Every eye was riveted expectantly upon me, and I had forgotten what came next.

Mariposa plucked my cloak and whispered in my ear:--

"Thar oughter be a pra'ar now!"

The propriety of the suggestion was obvious. I had seen pictures of funerals and knew how the officiating clergyman appeared in committing "dust to dust, ashes to ashes." But there was the fear aforementioned of breaking a Commandment by addressing the Almighty in a make-believe service.

"'Tain't a fun'ral 'thout thars a pra'ar!" Mariposa muttered insistently.

Nerved by the exigency, I lifted both hands and eyes toward the sky:--

"World without end, Amen and Amen!"

"A-a-_men_!" groaned my faithful lieutenant. Her emphasis a.s.sured me that the inspiration I had obeyed was a felicitous touch. She pressed still closer to me, mindful of my dignity, and prompted me further, in an artistic mutter, without using her lips.

"The services o' this solemn 'casion will be close' by er hymn."

I uttered it as if she had not given the cue, and "lined out" the hymn I had pitched upon as eminently appropriate for the "solemn 'casion."

"When I can read my t.i.tle clear To mansions in the skies."

Mariposa raised the tune and carried it, the rest of the band screaming in her wake.

"I'll bid farewell to every fear And wipe my weeping eyes,"

I continued in a nasal sing-song.

The chorus was plain sailing before a spanking breeze;

"And wipe my weeping eye-eye-_eyes_!

And wipe my weeping eye-er-_ese_!

I'll bid farewell to every fear And wipe my weeping eyes."

Like the echo of the final screech a fearsome wail arose from within the enclosure,--a long-drawn cry, repeated while we stared into one another's blanched faces, too affrighted for words.

Mariposa was the first to recover the use of her tongue and limbs.

"_Th' ghos' o' the little baby!_" she yelled, and took to her nimble heels at a rate that made it impossible for the fleetest of her fellow fugitives to overtake her.

I was left all alone.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Chapter VI

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Leaning against the outside of the brick wall, too stunned to join in my companions' stampede, I yet did not lose my senses. Neither did I cry out or whimper. Children have gone into convulsions and become idiotic for less cause. I was phenomenally healthy, and, as I have said, no coward. Before the hindmost deserter gained the draw-bars my reason was on the return path. I had the signal advantage above my comrades of not believing in ghosts. My father had a.s.serted to me positively, once and again, that no such things existed, and put himself to much trouble to explain natural phenomena that are often misinterpreted by the ignorant and superst.i.tious into supernatural manifestations. His orders were strict that the servants should never retail ghost stories in our hearing; and he was obeyed by the elder negroes. Mam' Chloe, whatever may have been her reserved rights of private judgment, backed him up dutifully with the epigram:--

"Folks that's gone to the bad place _can't_ get out to come back, an'

them that's in heaven don't _want_ to."

The cry I had heard certainly sounded like the weak wail of Cousin Mary Bray's skinny little baby, but G.o.d and the dear angels would never let the helpless, tiny mite wander back to earth alone. My mother had said to me, last night, that it would never cry any more.

"It was in pain all the while it was here," she reminded me. "It never awoke that it did not begin to cry. Think how sweet it must be for it not to suffer now. I think that G.o.d sent for it to come to heaven because He was so sorry for it."

Strength flowed into my soul with the recollection. My mother never said what was not exactly true. Happy, safe, and saving faith of childhood in a parent's wisdom, a parent's word, a parent's power!

Curious, rather than frightened, I stepped over Musidora's grave, and hurried around to the locked gate. Two unsodded mounds were near the entrance. One was long, and one short. Stretched upon this last was something that moved slightly and cried again, yet more piteously, when I called to it. The sight sent me flying like a flushed partridge through the Old Orchard to the garden fence, over it and up the middle walk of the garden. While yet afar off, I saw my father standing there talking with the gardener. Evidently the scattered horde had not spread an alarm. My father turned at my loud panting, and eyed me with astonishment. Without pausing to consider why he should be amazed, I caught hold of him and shrieked my news:--

"Father! father! it is Alexander the Great come back to look for Lucy!"