although we had been one man short all day, and there was a plain threat of rain in the hot air, everybody left the hay-field long before sundown. it was too much to ask of human nature to stay off in the remote meadows when such remarkable things were happening down around the house.
marcellus jones and i were in the pasture, watching the dog get the cows together for the homeward march. he did it so well and, withal, so willingly, that there was no call for us to trouble ourselves in keeping up with him. we waited instead at the open bars until the hay-wagon had passed through, rocking so heavily in the ancient pitch-hole, as it did so, that the driver was nearly thrown off his perch on the top of the high load. then we put up the bars, and fell in close behind the haymakers. a rich cloud of dust, far ahead on the road, suggested that the dog was doing his work even too willingly, but for the once we feared no rebuke. almost anything might be condoned that day.
five grown-up men walked abreast down the highway, in the shadow of the towering wagon mow, clad much alike in battered straw hats, gray woollen shirts open at the neck, and rough old trousers bulging over the swollen, creased ankles of thick boots. one had a scythe on his arm; two others bore forks over their shoulders. by request, hi tuckerman allowed me to carry his sickle.
although my present visit to the farm had been of only a few days’ duration—and those days of strenuous activity darkened by a terrible grief—i had come to be very friendly with mr. tuckerman. he took a good deal more notice of me than the others did; and, when chance and leisure afforded, addressed the bulk of his remarks to me. this favoritism, though it fascinated me, was not without its embarrassing side. hi tuckerman had taken part in the battle of gaines’s mill two years before, and had been shot straight through the tongue. one could still see the deep scar on each of his cheeks, a sunken and hairless pit in among his sandy beard. his heroism in the war and his good qualities as a citizen had earned for him the esteem of his neighbors, and they saw to it that he never wanted for work. but their present respect for him stopped short of the pretence that they enjoyed hearing him talk. whenever he attempted conversation, people moved away, or began boisterous dialogues with one another to drown him out. being a sensitive man, he had come to prefer silence to these rebuffs among those he knew. but he still had a try at the occasional polite stranger—and i suppose it was in this capacity that i won his heart. though i never of my own initiative understood a word he said, marcellus sometimes interpreted a sentence or so for me, and i listened to all the rest with a fraudulently wise face. to give only a solitary illustration of the tax thus levied on our friendship, i may mention that when hi tuckerman said “aak!-ah-aak!-uh,” he meant “rappahannock,” and he did this rather better than a good many words.
“rappahannock,” alas! was a word we heard often enough in those days, along with chickahom-iny and rapidan, and that odd chattahoochee, the sound of which raised always in my boyish mind the notion that the geography-makers must have achieved it in their baby-talk period. these strange southern river names and many more were as familiar to the ears of these four other untravelled dearborn county farmers as the noise of their own shallow nedahma rattling over its pebbles in the valley yonder. only when their slow fancy fitted substance to these names they saw in mind’s eye dark, sinister, swampy currents, deep and silent, and discolored with human blood.
two of these men who strode along behind the wagon were young half-uncles of mine, myron and warren turnbull, stout, thick-shouldered, honest fellows not much out of their teens, who worked hard, said little, and were always lumped together in speech, by their family, the hired help, and the neighbors, as “the boys.” they asserted themselves so rarely, and took everything as it came with such docility, that i myself, being in my eleventh year, thought of them as very young indeed. next them walked a man, hired just for the haying, named philleo, and then, scuffling along over the uneven humps and hollows on the outer edge of the road, came si hummaston, with the empty ginger-beer pail knocking against his knees.
as tuckerman’s “hi” stood for hiram, so i assume the other’s “si” meant silas, or possibly cyrus. i dare say no one, not even his mother, had ever called him by his full name. i know that my companion, marcellus jones, who wouldn’t be thirteen until after thanksgiving, habitually addressed him as si, and almost daily i resolved that i would do so myself. he was a man of more than fifty, i should think, tall, lean, and what marcellus called “bible-backed.” he had a short iron-gray beard and long hair. whenever there was any very hard or steady work going, he generally gave out and went to sit in the shade, holding a hand flat over his heart, and shaking his head dolefully. this kept a good many from hiring him, and even in haying time, when everybody on two legs is of some use, i fancy he would often have been left out if it hadn’t been for my grandparents. they respected him on account of his piety and his moral character, and always had him down when extra work began. he was said to be the only hired man in the township who could not be goaded in some way into swearing. he looked at one slowly, with the mild expression of a heifer calf.
we had come to the crown of the hill, and the wagon started down the steeper incline, with a great groaning of the brake. the men, by some tacit understanding, halted and overlooked the scene.
the big old stone farm-house—part of which is said to date almost to the revolutionary times—was just below us, so near, indeed, that marcellus said he had once skipped a scaling-stone from where we stood to its roof. the dense, big-leafed foliage of a sap-bush, sheltered in the basin which dipped from our feet, pretty well hid this roof now from view. farther on, heavy patches of a paler, brighter green marked the orchard, and framed one side of a cluster of barns and stables, at the end of which three or four belated cows were loitering by the trough. it was so still that we could hear the clatter of the stanchions as the rest of the herd sought their places inside the milking-barn.
the men, though, had no eyes for all this, but bent their gaze fixedly on the road, down at the bottom. for a long way this thoroughfare was bordered by a row of tall poplars, which, as we were placed, receded from the vision in so straight a line that they seemed one high, fat tree. beyond these one saw only a line of richer green, where the vine-wrapped rail-fences cleft their way between the ripening fields.
“i’d ’a’ took my oath it was them,” said philleo. “i can spot them grays as fur’s i can see ’em. they turned by the school-house there, or i’ll eat it, school-ma’am ’n’ all. and the buggy was fol-lerin’ ’em, too.”
“yes, i thought it was them,” said myron, shading his eyes with his brown hand.
“but they ought to got past the poplars by this time, then,” remarked warren.
“why, they’ll be drivin’ as slow as molasses in january,” put in si hummaston. “when you come to think of it, it is pretty nigh the same as a regular funeral. you mark my words, your father’ll have walked them grays every step of the road. i s’pose he’ll drive himself—he wouldn’t trust bringin’ alvy home to nobody else, would he? i know i wouldn’t, if the lord had given me such a son; but then he didn’t!”
“no, he didn’t!” commented the first speaker, in an unnaturally loud tone of voice, to break in upon the chance that hi tuckerman was going to try to talk. but hi only stretched out his arm, pointing the forefinger toward the poplars.
sure enough, something was in motion down at the base of the shadows on the road. then it crept forward, out in the sunlight, and separated itself into two vehicles. a farm wagon came first, drawn by a team of gray horses. close after it came a buggy, with its black top raised. both advanced so slowly that they seemed scarcely to be moving at all.
“well, i swan!” exclaimed si hummaston, after a minute, “it’s dana pillsbury drivin’ the wagon after all! well—i dunno—yes, i guess that’s prob’bly what i’d ’a’ done too, if i’d b’n your father. yes, it does look more correct, his follerin’ on behind, like that. i s’pose that’s alvy’s widder in the buggy there with him.”
“yes, that’s serena—it looks like her little girl with her,” said myron, gravely.
“i s’pose we might’s well be movin’ along down,” observed his brother, and at that we all started.
we walked more slowly now, matching our gait to the snail-like progress of those coming toward us. as we drew near to the gate, the three hired men instinctively fell behind the brothers, and in that position the group halted on the grass, facing the driveway where it left the main road. not a word was uttered by any one. when at last the wagon came up, myron and warren took off their hats, and the others followed suit, all holding them poised at the level of their shoulders.
dana pillsbury, carrying himself rigidly upright on the box-seat, drove past us with eyes fixed straight ahead, and a face as coldly expressionless as that of a wooden indian. the wagon was covered all over with rubber blankets, so that whatever it bore was hidden. only a few paces behind came the buggy, and my grandfather, old arphaxed turnbull, went by in his turn with the same averted, faraway gaze, and the same resolutely stolid countenance. he held the restive young carriage horse down to a decorous walk, a single firm hand on the tight reins, without so much as looking at it. the strong yellow light of the declining sun poured full upon his long gray beard, his shaven upper lip, his dark-skinned, lean, domineering face—and made me think of some hard and gloomy old prophet seeing a vision, in the back part of the old testament. if that woman beside him, swathed in heavy black raiment, and holding a child up against her arm, was my aunt serena, i should never have guessed it.
we put on our hats again, and walked up the driveway with measured step behind the carriage till it stopped at the side-piazza stoop. the wagon had passed on toward the big new red barn—and crossing its course i saw my aunt em, bareheaded and with her sleeves rolled up, going to the cow-barn with a milking-pail in her hand. she was walking quickly, as if in a great hurry.
“there’s your ma,” i whispered to marcellus, assuming that he would share my surprise at her rushing off like this, instead of waiting to say “how-d’-do” to serena. he only nodded knowingly, and said nothing.
no one else said much of anything. myron and warren shook hands in stiff solemnity with the veiled and craped sister-in-law, when their father had helped her and her daughter from the buggy, and one of them remarked in a constrained way that the hot spell seemed to keep up right along. the newcomers ascended the steps to the open door, and the woman and the child went inside. old arphaxed turned on the threshold, and seemed to behold us for the first time.
“after you’ve put out the horse,” he said, “i want the most of yeh to come up to the new barn. si hummaston and marcellus can do the milkin’.”
“i kind o’ rinched my wrist this forenoon,” put in si, with a note of entreaty in his voice. he wanted sorely to be one of the party at the red barn.
“mebbe milkin’ ’ll be good for it,” said arphaxed, curtly. “you and marcellus do what i say, and keep sidney with you.” with this he, too, went into the house.