Jupiter Lights. Woolson Constance Fenimore
Christmas Day, Eve was out with little Jack and Dilsey. Dilsey was a negro woman of sixty, small and thin, with a wise, experienced face; she increased her dignity as much as she could by a high stiff white turban, but the rest of her attire was poor and old, though she was not bare-legged like Powlyne; she wore stockings and shoes. Little Jack’s wagon was a rude cart with solid wooden wheels; but the hoops of its hood had been twined with holly by the negroes, so that the child’s face was enshrined in a bower of green.
“We will go to the sea,” said Eve. “Unless it is too far for you and the wagon?”
“No, ’m; push ’em easy ’nuff.”
The narrow road, passing between unbroken thickets of glittering evergreen bushes, breast-high, went straight towards the east, like an unroofed tunnel; in twenty minutes it brought them to the shore. The beach, broad, firm, and silver white, stretched towards the north and the south, dotted here and there with drift-wood; a breeze from the water touched their cheeks coolly; the ocean was calm, little foam-crested wavelets coming gurgling up to curl over and flatten themselves out on the wet sand. “Do you see it, Jack?” said Eve, kneeling down by the wagon. “It’s the sea, the great big sea.”
But Jack preferred to blow his whistle, and that done, he proceeded to examine it carefully, putting his little fat forefinger into all the holes. Eve sat down on the sand beside him; if he scorned the sea, for the moment she did too.
“I’s des sauntered ober, Dilsey; dey ’ain’t no hurry ‘bout comin’ back,” said a voice. “En I ’low’d miss might be tired, so I fotched a cheer.” It was old Temp’rance, the cook.
“Did you bring that chair all the way for me?” asked Eve, surprised.
“Yass, ’m. It’s sut’ny pleasant here; it sut’ny is.”
“I am much obliged; but I shall be going back soon.”
The two old women looked at each other. “Dat dere ole wrack down der beach is moughty cu’us – ef yer like ter walk dat way en see ’em?” suggested Dilsey, after a pause.
“Too far,” said Eve.
Both of the old women declared that it was very near. The wind freshened; Eve, who had little Jack in her arms, feared lest he might take cold, thinly clad as he was – far too thinly for her Northern ideas – with only one fold of linen and his little white frock over his breast. She drew the skirt of her dress over his bare knees. Then after a while she rose and put him in his wagon. “We will go back,” she said.
Again the two old women looked at each other. But they were afraid of the Northern lady; the munificent presents which she had given them that morning did not bring them any nearer to her. Old Temp’rance, therefore, shouldered her chair again, Dilsey turned the wagon, and they entered the bush-bordered tunnel on their way home, walking as slowly as they could. In only one place was there an opening through the serried green; here a track turned off to the right. When Eve had passed its entrance the first time, there was nothing to be seen but another perspective of white sand and glittering foliage; but on their return her eyes, happening to glance that way, perceived a group of figures at the end. “Who are those people? – what are they doing?” she said, pausing.
“Oh, nutt’n,” answered Temp’rance. “Des loungjun roun’.”
As Eve still stood looking, Uncle Abram emerged from the bushes. “Shall I kyar your palasol fer yer, miss?” he asked, officiously. “‘Pears like yer mus’ be tired; been so fur.”
Eve now comprehended that the three were trying to keep something from her. “What has happened?” she said. “Tell me immediately.”
“Dey’ ain’ nutt’n happen,” answered Uncle Abram, desperately; “dey’s too brash, dem two! Miss S’breeny she ’low’d dat yer moutn’t like ter see her go a moanin’, miss; en so she tole us not ter let yer come dishyer way ef we could he’p it. But dem two – dey’s boun’ ter do some fool ting. It’s a cohesion of malice ’mong women – ’tis dat!”
“Does that road lead to the cemetery, too?” said Eve. “I went by another way. Take baby home, Dilsey” – she stooped and kissed him; “I will join Miss Abercrombie.” She walked rapidly down the side track; the three blacks stood watching her, old Temp’rance with the chair poised on her turban.
The little burying-ground was surrounded by an old brick wall; its high gate-posts were square, each surmounted by a clumsy funeral urn. The rusty iron gate was open, and a procession was passing in. First came Miss Sabrina in her bonnet, an ancient structure of large size, trimmed with a black ribbon; the gentle lady, when out-of-doors, was generally seen in what she called her “flat;” the presence of the bonnet, therefore, marked a solemn occasion. She likewise wore a long scarf, which was pinned, with two pins, low down on her sloping shoulders, its broché ends falling over her gown in front; her hands were encased in black kid gloves much too large for her, the kid wrists open and flapping. Behind her came Powlyne, Pomp, and Plato, carrying wreaths of holly. Eve drew near noiselessly, and paused outside. Miss Sabrina first knelt down, bowing her head upon her hands for a moment; then, rising, she took the wreaths one by one, and arranged them upon the graves, the three blacks following her. When she had taken the last, she signed to them to withdraw; they went out quietly, each turning at the gate to make a reverential bow, partly to her, partly to the circle of the dead. Eve now entered the enclosure, and Miss Sabrina saw her.
“Oh, my dear! I didn’t intend that you should come,” she said, distressed.
“And why not? I have been here before; and my brother is here.”
“Yes; but to-day – to-day is different.”
Eve looked at the graves; she perceived that three of them were decked with small Confederate flags.
“Our dear cousins,” said Miss Sabrina; “they died for their country, and on Memorial Day, Christmas Day, and Easter I like to pay them such small honor as I can. I am in the habit of singing a hymn before I go; don’t stay, my dear, if it jars upon you.”
“It doesn’t,” said Eve. She had seated herself on the grass beside her brother’s grave, with her arm laid over it.
Miss Sabrina turned her back and put on her glasses. Then, resuming her original position, she took a small prayer-book from her pocket, opened it, and, after an apologetic cough, began:
“Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
Thy better portion trace.”
Eve, sitting there, looked at her. Miss Sabrina was tall and slender; she had once been pretty, but now her cheeks were wan, her eyes faded, her soft brown hair was very thin. She had but a thread of a voice.
“There is everlasting peace,
Rest, enduring rest, in heaven,”
she sang in her faint, sweet tones; and when she came to the words, “There will sorrows ever cease,” she raised her poor dim eyes towards the sky with such a beautiful expression of hope in them that the younger woman began to realize that there might be acute griefs even when people were so mild and acquiescent, so dimly hued and submissive, as was this meek Southern gentlewoman.
The hymn finished, Miss Sabrina put her prayer-book in her pocket, and came forward. “My mother,” she said, touching one of the tombs. “My grandfather and grandmother. My brother Marmaduke, Cicely’s father. Cicely’s mother; she was a Northerner, and we have sometimes thought Cicely rather Northern.”
“Oh, no!”
“Well, her grandmother was from Guadeloupe. So perhaps that balances it.”
The older tombs were built of brick, each one covered with a heavy marble slab, upon which were inscribed, in stately old-fashioned language, and with old-fashioned arrangement of lines and capitals, the names, the virtues, and the talents of the one who lay beneath. The later graves were simple grassy mounds.
“My brother Augustus; my great-uncle William Drayton; my aunt Pamela,” Miss Sabrina continued,