University of Virginia Library

35. CHAPTER XXXV.
THE GRAVEYARD MAKES STRANGE MEETINGS.

THE day appointed for the funeral of Granny
Frank's remains came on. The dinner-bell at
Mr. Worner's had rung some time ago; and there
had been flying for some hours, at half-way up the flagstaff
near the church, the white cross on the red ground,
which is the signal for divine service; in this case, (half-hoisted,)
of a funeral. The flagstaff stands at a good two
or three minutes' walk from the church door, upon the
highest point of the cliff that overhangs the water, at the
height of a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet, from
which the signal gleams out far and wide,—down harbor,
up harbor, over to Indian Point. The rounded back of
this cliff, landward, is like the round back of a breaker
fixed forever; and, at a musket-shot behind it, is another,
whose upright front we see, stayed, in like manner, ere it
broke. Between the two, half-way from each, passes the
road,—as Israel's road through the Red Sea is sometimes
painted,—between two mighty waves.

The flag went down, the funeral procession came along
down the short hill beyond the church, with eight men
bearers, and the children from the schools; the rest being
mostly women. It passed, like a long sigh, into the church
door as the priest met it there, and disappeared.

At the same time, another scene was going on at the
side, unnoticed, very likely, except to those who had a
part in it.

The little road from Marchants' Cove comes steeply
up into the main, just opposite the church-tower; and up
this road Mr. Debree was coming from Mr. Dennis
O'Rourke's house, which lies at its foot. He stopped at
midway, seeing the funeral, and, having saluted it respectfully,
stood still until it should have passed into the
church.

Mrs. Barrè and little Mary were coming from the
other quarter, (Frank's Cove,) hand in hand. They
came to the point of meeting of the two roads, opposite
the church-porch, just as the corpse went in, but did not
join the company; and when the space was empty on
which the mourners stood but now, still were the mother
and the child on the same spot.

To little Mary the solemn tramp of children, and of
elders, and the black pall, typifying the night which had
closed a long day, shut out all other objects; and she held,
with both her hands, the one her mother gave her, and
looked in silence on the silent show.

When it was all gone by, the sadness had passed with
it, and she came back to present life. The point at which
she entered it again was here.

“How cold your hand is, dear mamma! Are you
going to die?”

Her mother's hand must have been icy cold, for it was
one of those moments, with her, when the blood is all
wanted between the heart and brain. The Priest, whom
she had sought and found, and by whom she had been
cast off and put aside, who had met her little daughter in
the path, and to whose hand she had sent the letter, was

standing but a hundred feet from her, on his way towards
the spot where she had set herself. There is a point,—
one chance in million millions,—where the wide wandering
comet may meet a world and whelm it; (God will
see to that;) but here was a point at which she met this
Romish priest again. Drawing her child up against her
knees, she turned, and in the middle of the way, stood, in
gentle, sorrowing, noble womanhood, in front of Mr. Debree,
as he came up.

With her pale face, the dark hair coming smoothly
down, and her full eye lighted with a soft brightness—her
paleness, too, set off by her close black bonnet—she looked
very handsome—ay, and more—as she stood there, drawing
her child up against her knees; and this was one of
the great times in life. It matters not for the surroundings;
it may be Marathon to Miltiades, or Thermopylæ
to Leonidas, or Basil to John Huss, or Worms to Luther,
or a blind alley to the drunkard's daughter, or the plain,
square-cornered city street for the deserted maiden, or as
it was here.

The Priest came up, as pale as melting snow, straight
up the hill, and, as if there were no other being in the
world, or rather, as if he knew exactly who were there,
he never looked at Mrs. Barrè or the child, but as he
passed into the main road, bowed his face, all agonized,
and said, as he had said in Mad Cove, “I cannot! I cannot!”

She did not wait there, but raising up her eyes in
mute appeal to God, as if she had done her duty, and
needed help and comfort, for her work had made her
weary, she turned away, and, with a very hurrying step,
went, as the funeral had gone, into the church.

Having risen from her private prayer, she had state

down, and was composing herself to take a part in the
most solemn service that was going forward. She rose—
for they were singing—the children there all sing—“As
soon as thou scatterest them they are even as a sleep and
fade away, suddenly—.” It was very sweet and sad
music, and Mrs. Barrè had fresh memories of losses; but
suddenly, at that very word, to many a person's astonishment
in the church—for even at the burial-service many
a one had seen her come and saw her now—she looked at
either side of her; then all along the rows of children in
the foremost seats, and then, laying down her Book, went
softly and hurriedly out again, as she had come in.

This way and that way, on the outside, she gazed; but
there was no sight of little Mary, of whom, as the reader
has already fancied, she was in search.

“I sid 'er up i' the churchyard, ma'am,” said a girl,
who, happily, had not yet passed by, divining the mother's
thoughts and fears; and before the words were fairly
said, the mother was gliding up the steep way to the
place, (properly grave-yard, for it was not about the
church.) A woman—one of those good-natured souls
who can never see trouble without leaving every thing to
help it—had been moved by her distracted looks, and had
followed her distracted steps, but at a slower rate, and
found her seated by the entrance of the yard, looking
steadily and straight before her. The neighbor, (who
was no other than Prudence Barbury,) said, “Shall I go
fetch the little maid, ma'am? I see she, yonder, wi' the
praste, Mr. Debree, they calls un.”

To her astonishment and bewilderment,—connecting
one thing with another,—the neighbor had her offer
kindly declined.

“No, no, thank you; don't call her,” said Mrs. Barrè.

How strange it was, that having missed her and sought
for her, the mother should be satisfied when she had
found her in such hands!

“She's brought him to my little boy's grave,” said Mrs.
Barrè, again.

“Don't 'ee want any thing, ma'am?” inquired the
neighbor next; and this offer was declined with so much
feeling evidently crowding up behind the words, that the
neighbor left wondering, for sympathy.

Thus she sate still; Mary being inside the inclosure
with the priest. How strange it must have been to her
too, that while she herself was so far apart, the child had
secured for herself the companionship of this man!
Truly, how blessed a thing it is that there are these children,
in this evil and formal life, to break through, sometimes,
and snatch with their sure and determined hands,
flowers that for elders only blush and are fragrant within
their safe garden-beds and borders!

Meantime there came up the steep hill the music of the
hymn which here they sing, or used to sing, from the
churchdoor up to the grave.

Up the steep drung with wattled fences on each side,
securing the gardens of different owners, they climb and
sing, pausing after each verse, and thus they reach the
graveyard on the summit of the cliff or rocky hill, which,
beginning nearly opposite the flagstaff cliff, goes down
the harbor, sheltering the church from the north wind as
it goes. The graveyard has but a single outlet, and,
however it happened, so it was, that the funeral had filled
that single passage, and passed, with the minister in his
surplice at the head, into the humble, waste-looking place
of burial, before Mr. Debree had left it. There were a
few trees, here and there, as small as on the uninclosed

land beyond, and behind one of these the Romish priest
had taken stand, and little Mary staid with him.

It is not to be supposed that so strange a visitor should
pass unnoticed, altogether. There were some women in
the company that could not keep their indignation down
at the sight “of the like of him in their churchyard.”
They did not know how the service could go on until he
had been “asked his manin.”

The knowledge, however, that Mrs. Barrè, whose little
daughter was in company with the obnoxious stranger,
had joined the funeral procession, spread itself soon, and
tended to quiet the irritation; the grave voice of Skipper
George,—who, for his nephew's sake, was in the funeral
train,—quelled it.

“N'y, friends,” he said, turning round, in a pause of
the singing, (and all were silent as he spoke,) “'e's a good
gentleman ef 'e be a Roman itself. 'E's been proper
feelun to me, sunce I've ahad my loss; an' 'e never meddled
wi' my religion. It wasn' make believe, I knows
well, by the feel.”

The hymn went on, ending with the Gloria Patri as
they reached the grave.

A good many eyes, during the sublime services at the
open earth, turned toward the stranger very likely; but
whosoever saw him, saw him respectfully standing, uncovered,
like the persons immediately engaged in the
burial.

By the time the office was ended, and the people began
to turn upon their heels and set their caps to go to their
several homes, and while it was asked “Why! didn't 'ee
see un?” it was discovered that Mr. Debree had been
the first to leave the place, and was gone. In that quarter
of the yard where he had been, the mother was seen,

with her recovered child, stooping over a grave smaller
than that just filled, and some of the nearer by-standers
(nearer, perhaps, not quite by accident,) overheard
Mary saying that she “had showed him dear little
brother's place.” The general opinion expressed by one
mouth and assented to by others, was to the effect that
that foreign priest was to the speaker's “seemin,” and to
the general “seemin, a relation, someway—very like a
brother; mubbe the lady was some o' they kind herself,
once;” but then, that “he never took no notice to she,”
was admitted.

The little child was very still, while her mother, having
risen, stood looking on the mound of earth which wore
no greenness yet. She gave her mother time to make to
herself again, out of that clay, a fair boy; and to fondle
him with motherly hands, and deck him with his disused
garments once again; or time to gather at this grave
the memories of other sadnesses. Some of the female
neighbors sought, meanwhile, to solve their question by
asking little Mary, apart, “ef that praste—that strange
gentleman—was her uncle,” in vain; she did not know.
The Minister, looking in that direction, said nothing to
them, and left them to each other; and when all were
gone away, except the eldest son of the last dead, Mrs.
Barrè kissed the green sod, as little Mary also did, and
they two, hand in hand, departed.

“I asked him to go up and see it, mamma,” the child
said, “and so he went, and he was very kind, and he
cried; I saw him cry, only he didn't talk much, and I
think he doesn't know how to lead little children by the
hand, as Mr. Wellon does.”