Chanticleer Part 10

"She should look so now if ever, Tiffany," said old Sylvester, "for she is just about to be married to your cousin Elbridge."

"Now you don't mean that?" said Mr. Tiffany, touching the tawny tufts tenderly with his perfumed pocket-handkerchief, "Oh, woman! woman! what is your name?" He hesitated for a reply.

"Perfidy?" suggested Mr. Oliver Peabody.

"Yes, that's it. Have I lived to look on this," Mr. Tiffany continued; "to have my young hopes blighted, the rose of my existence cropped, and all that. Is it for this," addressing Miriam directly: he had been talking before to the air: "Is it for this I went blackberrying with you in my tender infancy! Is it for this that in the heyday of youth I walked with you to the school-house down the road! Was it for this that in the prime of manhood I breathed soft music in your ear at the witching time of night!"

As he arrived at this last question, Mopsey, in her new gown of gorgeous pattern, and, having laid aside her customary broad-bordered cap, with a high crowned turban of red, and yellow cotton handkerchief on her head, appeared at the parlor door. Mr. Tiffany paused: he saw the Moorish princess before him; rallying, however, he was proceeding to describe himself as a friendly troubadour, whose affection had been responded to, when the Captain placing his mouth to his ear, as in confidence, uttered in a portentous whisper, "THE VAT!"

Mr. Tiffany immediately lost all joint and strength, subsided into a chair at a distance, and from that moment looked upon the scene like one in a trance.

"After all," said Mr. Oliver, glancing at him, "I don't see just now that, in any point of view, this young gentleman _is_ destined to carry the principles of free government--anywhere."

The family being now all gathered, Mr. Barbary proceeded, employing a simple and impressive form in use in that family from its earliest history:

"You, the Bridegroom and the Bride, who now present yourselves candidates of the covenant of G.o.d and of your marriage before him, in token of your consenting affections and united hearts, please to give your hands to one another.

"Mr. Bridegroom, the person whom you now take by the hand, you receive to be your married wife: you promise to love her, to honor her, to support her, and in all things to treat her as you are now, or shall hereafter be convinced is by the laws of Christ made your duty,--a tender husband, with unspotted fidelity till death shall separate you.

"Mrs. Bride, the person whom you now hold by the hand you accept to be your married husband; you promise to love him, to honor him, to submit to him, and in all things to treat him as you are now or shall hereafter be convinced, is by the laws of Christ made your duty,--an affectionate wife, with inviolable loyalty till death shall separate you.

"This solemn covenant you make, and in this sacred oath bind your souls in the presence of the Great G.o.d, and before these witnesses.

"I then declare you to be husband and wife regularly married according to the laws of G.o.d and the Commonwealth: therefore what G.o.d hath thus joined together let no man put asunder."

When these words had been solemnly spoken the widow Margaret struck her ancient harpsichord in an old familiar tune of plaintive tenderness, and the young bridegroom holding Miriam's hand in an affectionate clasp, answered the music with a little hymn or carol, often used before among the Peabodys on a like occasion:

Entreat me not--I ne'er will leave thee, Ne'er loose this hand in bower or hall; This heart, this heart shall ne'er deceive thee, This voice shall answer ever to thy call.

To which Miriam, after a brief pause of hesitation, in that tone of chanting lament familiar to her, answered--

Thy G.o.d is mine, where'er thou rovest, Where'er thou dwellest there too will I dwell; In the same grave shall she thou lovest Lie down with him she loves so well.

Like a cheerful voice answering to these, and wis.h.i.+ng, out of the mysterious darkness of night, all happiness and prosperity to the young couple, the silver call of Chanticleer arose without, renewed and renewed again, as if he could never tire of announcing the happy union to all the country round.

And now enjoyment was at its height among the Peabodys, helped by Plenty, who, with Mopsey for chief a.s.sistant, hurried in, with plates of s.h.i.+ning pippins, baskets of nuts, brown jugs of new cider of home-made vintage; Mrs. Carrack, who had selected the simplest garment in her wardrobe, moving about in aid of black Mopsey, tendering refreshment to her old father first, and Mrs. Jane Peabody insisting on being allowed to distribute the walnuts with her own hand.

The children, never at rest for a moment, frisked to and fro, like so many merry dolphins, disporting in the unaccustomed candle-light, to which they were commonly strangers. They were listened to in all their childish prattle kindly, by every one, indulged in all their little foolish ways, as if the grown-up Peabodys for this night at least, believed that they were indeed little citizens of the kingdom of heaven, straying about this wicked world on parole. Uncle Oliver, once, spreading his great Declaration-of-Independence pocket-handkerchief on his knees, attempted to put them to the question as to their learning.

They all recognised Dr. Franklin, with his spectacles thrown up on his brow, among the signers, but denying all knowledge of anything more, ran away to the Captain, who was busy building, a dozen at a time, paper packet s.h.i.+ps, and launching them upon the table for a sea.

In the very midst of the mirthful hubbub old Sylvester called Robert and William to his side, and was heard to whisper, "Bring 'em in." William and Robert were gone a moment and returned, bearing under heavy head-way, tumbling and pitching on one side constantly, two ancient spinning wheels, Mopsey following with snowy flocks of wool and spinning sticks. Old Sylvester arose, and delivering a stick and flock to Mrs.

Carrack and Mrs. Jane Peabody, requested them, in a mild voice and as a matter of course already settled, "to begin." A spinning-match!

"Yes, anything you choose to-night, father."

Rolling back their sleeves, adjusting their gowns, the wheels being planted on either side of the fireplace, Mrs. Jane and Mrs. Carrack, stick in hand, seized each on her allotment of wool, and sent the wheels whirling. It was a cheerful sight to see the two matrons closing in upon the wheel, retiring, closing in again--whose wheel is swiftest, whose thread truest? Now Mrs. Jane--now Mrs. Carrack. If either, Mrs. Carrack puts the most heart in her work.

"_Now_ she looks like my Nancy," said old Sylvester in a glow, "as when she used to spin and sing, in the old upper chamber."

Away they go--whose wheel is swiftest, whose thread the truest now?

While swift and free the contest wages, the parlor-door standing open, and beyond that the door of the sitting-room, look down the long perspective! Do you not see in the twilight of the kitchen fire a dark head, lighting up, as in flashes, with a glittering row of teeth, with a violent agitation of the body, with gusty ha-ha's, and fragments of an uproarious chant flying through the door something to this effect--

Oh, de fine ladies, how dey do spin--spin--spin, Like de gals long ago--long ago!

I bet to'der one don't win--win--win, Kase de diamond-flowers on her fingers grow.

Lay down your white gloves, take up de wool, Round about de whirly wheel go; Back'ard and for'ard nimble feet pull, Like de nice gals long--long ago!

Silence follows, in which nothing is observable from that quarter more than a great pair of white eyes rolling about in the partial darkness.

Who was other than pleased that in spite of Mopsey's decision, old Sylvester determined that if either, Mrs. Carrack's work was done a little the soonest, and that her thread was a little the truest?

During the contest the old merchant and his wife had conversed closely, apart; the green shade had lost its terrors, and he could look on it steadily, now; and at the close William Peabody approaching the fireplace, drew from his bosom the old parchment deed, which in his hunger for money had so often disquieted his visits to the homestead, and thrust it into the very heart of the flame, which soon shrivelled it up, and, conveying it out at the chimney, before the night was past spread it in peaceful ashes over the very grounds which it had so long disturbed.

"So much for that!" said the old merchant, as the last flake vanished; "and now, nephew," he addressed himself to Elbridge, "fulfilling an engagement connected with your return, I resign to you all charge of your father's property."

"Did you bring anything with you from the Gold Region?" Mrs. Carrack interposed.

"Not one cent, Aunt," Elbridge answered promptly.

"You may add, William," pursued Mrs. Carrack, "the sums of mine you have in hand."

William Peabody was pausing on this proposition, the sums in question being at that very moment embarked in a most profitable speculation.

Upon the very height of the festivity, when it glowed the brightest and was most musical with mirthful voices, there had come to the cas.e.m.e.nt a moaning sound as if borne upon the wind from a distance, a wailing of anguish, at the same time like and unlike that of human suffering. By slow advances it approached nearer and nearer to the homestead, and whenever it arose it brought the family enjoyment to a momentary pause.

It had drawn so near that it sounded now again, as if in mournful lamentation, at the very door, when Mopsey, her dark face almost white, and her brow wrinkled with anxiety, rushed in. "Grandfather," she said, addressing old Sylvester, "blind Sorrel's dying in the door-yard."

There was not one in all that company whom the announcement did not cause to start; led by old Sylvester, they hastily rose, and conducted by Mopsey, followed to the scene. Blind Sorrel was lying by the moss-grown horse-trough, at the gate.

"I noticed her through the day," said Oliver, "wandering up the lane as if she was seeking the house."

"The death-agony must have been upon her then," said William Peabody, shading his eyes with his hand.

"She remembered, perhaps, her young days," old Sylvester added, "when she used to crop the door-yard gra.s.s."

Mopsey, in her solicitude to have the death-bed of poor blind Sorrel properly attended, had brought with her, in the event of the paling or obscuration of the moon, a dark lantern, which she held tenderly aside as though the poor old creature still possessed her sight; immoveable herself as though she had been a swarthy image in stone, while, on the other side, William Peabody, near her head, stood gazing upon the animal with a fixed intensity, breathing hard and watching her dying struggle with a rigid steadiness of feature almost painful to behold.

"Has carried me to mill many a day," he said; "some pleasantest hours of my life spent upon her back, sauntering along at early day."

"Your mother rode her to meeting," Sylvester addressed his second son, "on your wedding-day, Oliver. Sorrel was of a long-lived race."

"She was the gentlest horse-creature you ever owned, father," added Mrs.

Carrack, turning affectionately toward old Sylvester, "and humored us girls when we rode her as though she had been a blood-relation."

"I'm not so sure of that," Mr. Tiffany Carrack rejoined, "for she has dumped me in a ditch more than once."

"That was your own careless riding, Tiffany," said the Captain, "I don't believe she had the least ill-will towards any living creature, man or beast."

It was observed that whenever William Peabody spoke, blind Sorrel turned her feeble head in that direction, as if she recognised and singled out his voice from all the others.

"She knows your voice, father, even in her darkness," said the Captain, "as the sailor tells his old captain's step on deck at night."