University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

When Jason saw Sarah's executive ability as the
mistress and manager of her grandfather's establishment,
in doors and out, and comprehended the absolute
position of the Squire, he felt the impotence of his crude
ideas, and his individual isolation. Nothing practical
could be done in the way of equal rights with the
Squire's garden, orchard, woodland, mills, houses, and
ships, presided over and governed by the arbitrary wills
of such a man and such a woman. The prestige of possession
dazzled his view of the tenth point of the law,
and he fell down among the “nine-holes” of the game,
which is an inscrutable one to those who do not hold a
hand in it. He did therefore what most men do, when
suddenly ushered from one sphere to another,—ruled his
actions according to the circumstances he was placed in.
Now and then he made use of the phrases which belonged
to his smouldered theories. When Sarah requested
him to give up his trade, he replied that it was
better to be a carpenter than to live by the extortions
of commerce, or an undue proportion of land; whereat
she laughed so loud he discovered that some of her teeth
were as sharp-pointed as needles, and that they gave her
a tigerish look. His connection simply with the Squire
permitted him to make up his own hand in the game he
thought he despised. Contracts were obtained on the

strength of it which brought him money, and at the end
of three years he was the owner of several stores and
houses, planned by himself, which paid a better rent
than any of the Squire's buildings. In the beginning
of his enterprises he seemed the same to his acquaintances.
They joked with him, and laughed at him; but
the jokes grew few, and the laughs faint. Finally no
one ventured to be familiar with him, except John Davis,
who was now married to Jane Moss.

From the day that Jason entered the family he suffered
from an intangible something in the Squire's bearing
which deprived him of his natural demeanor, and
made him feel, by contrast, unfinished, awkward, incapable.
Whatever the influence was, he succumbed to
it, and its effect lasted long; in fact, the Squire was the
first potter that kneaded Jason's clay.

The fourth year of his marriage came, and the Squire
still lived; he went his daily rounds over his possessions
in his chaise, accompanied by Cuth, smoked, dozed,
played with little Parke, and listened affably to all
Sarah had to say. It was the calmest, most satisfying
period of her life; Jason was no trouble to her, no inconvenience
to the Squire, and not an object of interest
to his boy, beyond the knowledge that he was to be
called “father.”

The thread of the Squire's life, strong as it seemed,
snapped suddenly at last. In the early morning of an
autumn day, Sarah, always up betimes, heard a strange
babbling noise as she passed his door. She opened it,
and went to his bedside, and saw that the “Shadow
feared of man” had come.

“Grandpa,” she whispered, terror-struck.

He knew her, and with one trembling hand,—the
other was paralyzed,—drew her face against his, and
vainly tried to speak. His tongue was paralyzed also;
tears burst from his dim eyes,—the only speech that was
left him,—and they wrung her to the soul. She released
herself and ran to the kitchen—Elsa was not yet down
stairs—then to the barnyard for Cuth.

“My soul,” said Cuth, rising from his milking-pail,
when he saw her flying towards him, “what is it?”

“He is going, Cuth; run for the doctor.”

“Mr. Auster?” stammered Cuth.

“Grandpa,” she shrieked.

“It can't be; I've known him forty year. But I'll
go. What do you think it is?”

“It is death.”

Cuth shook his head, as he started on a swinging trot,
and said to himself, “Numb palsy—I give him up.” He
stopped every person he met, without stopping himself,
to say that the Squire had had a shock, and before Jason
heard of it, it was spread through the town.

When Sarah went back, Elsa was busy making a fire.

“What upon earth ails you, Sarah Auster?” she exclaimed.

Sarah took her by the hand, and led her into the
Squire's bedroom, and Elsa understood all.

“He'll last over to-day,” she said presently; “see how
well he breathes.”

Sarah dropped on the floor beside him, and buried her
face in the bedclothes. He began to babble again. Elsa
slipped out and went up to Jason's room.

“Mr. Auster,” she said, putting her head in at the
door, “the Squire is struck with death.”

“Death,” he muttered, starting from a sound sleep.

“Easy though, almost as easy as your nap. The
neighbors will be flocking in now. Can you dress
Parke? I've got to go right down again, and Sarah
won't think of any thing, except her grandfather.”

“What are the neighbors coming in for?”

“Don't be droll,” she said, closing the door.

Jason dressed, and sat down by Parke's crib. He
softly touched his beautiful hair, and put his finger inside
his little hand, which closed upon it with a clinging
grasp. He counted the network of delicate veins in
his fair temples, and watched the tranquil motion of his
white bosom. Then carefully covering him, he went
down to the kitchen. The outside doors were already
open, and people were lingering about and talking to
each other in subdued voices.

“The doctor has come,” said Elsa, motioning him toward
the bedroom.

“Gilbert,” said Jason, giving his first order, “go up
stairs and watch Parke.”

“Nothing can be done,” he heard the doctor say as
he entered the bedroom. Sarah's eyes were fixed on
the Squire's face, and she made no reply to him.

“Why, Mrs. Auster,” he continued, testily, “would
you never be willing to part with him?”

“Sarah,” said Jason, in a firm voice, that compelled
her attention, “your grandfather is leaving life without
suffering.”

“He is going out like a candle,” added the doctor,
pinching his fingers together as if they were snuffers.

“No link now,” she muttered; “and where is the
other end of the chain, grandpa?”

The doctor rasped his chin, and looked at Jason, who
wore a stolid expression.

“Come, Sarah,” called Elsa, “come to breakfast, do.
There's no use in putting off meals; they will come
round, and they must be eaten. Come, now; the neighbors
are here, longing to do something for you.”

“Come,” said Jason, raising her from her knees.

As she turned he met her eyes; there was a wild look
in them, which stirred his pity. He made a motion as
if to put his arm round her, but she glided by him, and
went over to the table alone. When she returned,
Jason went up stairs to release Gilbert. Parke was
awake, and in high glee.

“Go away, father Jason,” he screamed, “and let me
dress myself.”

“Be good, for grandpa is sick.”

“Then I am sick,” he replied, getting into his crib
again, and shutting his eyes.

“Do you know that there are lots of people down
stairs?”

“No,” Parke answered, hopping out on one foot.
“Tell me about it, and you may dress me. But you
can't wash my face; if lots of people are here, I won't
stop to have my face washed.”

After he was dressed, he insisted on being taken down
stairs on Jason's shoulder, and having his breakfast
handed up to him on his perch, and tried to balance his
plate on Jason's head.

“Where's my mother?” he asked; “there hasn't anybody
kissed me yet.”

“Go to her,” said his father; “she is in the bedroom.”

Sarah heard the patter of his feet, and rose to lead
him to the bed. “Poor grandpa,” she said.

“He isn't poor,” said Parke. “Why don't he get up?”

The chintz bed-curtains, on which was printed a fox-chase,
in red and white, attracted him, as they had done
a hundred times. He put his hand to his mouth, and
tooted in imitation of the huntsmen, and cried “gee-up”
to the galloping horses. The Squire began to babble
at the sound of his voice, which made him turn away
frightened, and beg his mother to let him go.

“Will you kiss grandpa once more?”

“No, not now, but to-morrow.”

She put him down outside the door, and he ran back
to Jason, who amused him all day by whittling boats,
animals, and uncouth toys, with which they played
together.

“Dear me,” said Elsa, who was by no means melancholy,
“how little that child realizes what is going on.”

Jason smiled. “Would you have him howl?”

“Hadn't he ought to have a realizing sense of death?”

“Never, if possible.”

At dusk the doctor pronounced the Squire's life to be
ebbing fast; he would go before morning. Elsa immediately
went all over the house and changed the order
of the furniture. The chairs were placed in rows, and
all small articles were moved into the closets. It was
the third time, she soliloquized, that she had shoved
things about for a funeral since she had been in the
house; the first happened ten years ago, and was that
of Sarah's mother, the wife of Osmond Parke, and if ever
there was a creature ready to go, she was. “I ain't so
mad,” concluded Elsa, “as I was then. It did me good
to hustle the furniture round, and wish it was that villain
Osmond Parke, who was alive somewhere, we

thought; though we hadn't seen him for years.” Having
finished her work, she closed the shutters on the
front of the house, and opened wide all the doors. “If
his old spirit,”—she muttered, meaning the Squire's,—
“wants to take a turn, to see if things are according to
his ideas, he is welcome to do so.” She then retired in
a peaceful frame of mind, after having read some passages
in the Bible, which reminded her of the vanity of
the world, and contained the text, “What profit hath a
man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?”

Cuth remained in the kitchen as a watcher; Jason
took care of Parke, up stairs, and Sarah stayed alone
with the Squire. She was tormented by irrelevant
thoughts, which she constantly checked by a strained
attention to his breath, which grew more and more
difficult.

About four o'clock, he spoke clearly, but hurriedly,
and without a motion, these words:

“It all comes to this, Sarah.”

She bent over him, and he was dead.

For an instant, while she looked upon the calm face,
from which Life had fled, and Death assumed its mask,
she felt as if her soul was poised on the wings of the
spirit going heavenward. It was the first and the last
sublime moment of her life.

Suddenly she recollected that there were no more
Parkes, and she felt a pang because she was a woman,
and had been obliged to change her name.

“It comes to this,” she repeated, “either way.” She
called softly to Cuth, and told him that it was over.

“I know it, marm, I know it,” he answered. “Give
me your hand.” He shook it, patted her shoulder, and

continued: “Go to your bed, marm; I've known him
forty year, and I've a right to get him ready, and stay
by him; and I am a-going to.”

She yielded the wish.

The funeral took place in three days, in the forenoon.
People came from far and near to see the burial of the
last of his name. Cuth took a solemn pleasure in the
occasion; he crammed the horses that brought the funeral
guests with oats, and cursed Gilbert's mischief in
exceeding the order he gave him to mark the carriages
and harness, with their owners' names upon them in
chalk. The spectators of the long funeral procession
had the gratification of knowing that “Capt. Smith,
A 1,” rode in one of the carriages, and “Mr. Brown,
B 2,” in another, and so on through the line. Elsa in a
lustrous black silk and blonde cap poured numberless
cups of tea and coffee that day, and cut many slices of
ham and loaf-cake. It was late in the afternoon before
the house was emptied of visitors, and then a dreadful
blank was felt which neither Jason nor Sarah could endure.
She wrapped Parke in a shawl, and took him
into the garden. Behind it, and beyond the orchard, a
hill rose, whose side towards the town was shaded by a
few tawny crooked cedars, and whose top was covered
by a small grove of oaks and a brushy heap of rocks.
Parke begged to go up there, and she carried him in
her arms.

“Oh, the red water!” he cried, as she placed him on a
rock, “and the red sky, mother. God is burning up, I
am afraid.”

“It is only the sunset, Parke,” and she began to cry
as she had not cried since the Squire died. She was

unmindful of the beautiful bay, whose wide limits could
be seen from the hill-top,—of the splendid western sky,
of the red harvest moon rising in the gray east, of the
swallows circling round the hill, of the faint columns of
smoke ascending from the chimneys of the town,—unmindful
even of Parke, who, regardlesss of her weeping,
slipped down from the rock, and played among the fallen
leaves. A cool wind came moaning round them, and
the sky darkened; he began to count the stars, and
there were not so many of them as there were tears on
his mother's handkerchief. She wiped her eyes, caught
him up, and said they must go back to supper. Elsa
had it ready. Extra lamps were lighted and set on the
table. There should be, she said, no gloomy corners
that night for Sarah's eyes to wander in. She wished,
though, that she had made Mrs. Rogers stay; she might
have occupied that empty chair, and once occupied, its
being set against the wall afterwards would not be
noticed. Jason had not yet come in, but she insisted on
serving tea; he could have his at any hour; he wouldn't
remark whether it was cold or hot. She seemed to be
over and in every dish, with a comfortable bustle which
exhilarated Parke and soothed Sarah.

Jason was plodding the beach which skirted the south
part of the town. As he watched the heaving waters
creeping towards him in the moonlight, a thought of the
Eternity which was eternally creeping towards men
came to him.

“By my soul,” he said, “it is beautiful, though.”

He threw a pebble into the sea.

“As easy as that, a man sinks there. But if there is
light, motion, color as there is here, I shall like Eternity.”