Читать книгу The Stone Field - Martha Ostenso - Страница 16

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Jo sat between her father and mother in the cramped pew and listened to the drone of the preacher’s voice as he spoke words of consolation and high hope, and of the life everlasting that awaited all beyond the grave.... “In my Father’s house are many mansions....” The little spray of hepatica blossoms which she had gathered along the wood road only an hour ago was wilting already, the delicate, pale purple heads drooping over her fingers. She had brought them as a shy tribute to the man whose still form lay now in the broad space before the altar, but her first sight of the huge gray casket banked about with rich flowers had appalled her. She had kept her offering clutched tightly in her hand and had slipped into the pew ahead of her father.

This was the church that old Ashbrooke Hilyard had caused to be built nearly twenty years ago after he had begun to settle his land about Fallen Star Lake with families from other parts of the state, from Wisconsin and Iowa and Nebraska. And these were the people who had known him in those years, men and women from Carthia, dressed in somber black for the most part and crowded into the narrow pine pews on either side of the aisle; men and women from the farms about the lake, looking stiff and uncomfortable in their best clothes, many of them standing about the walls and filling the open space at the back beside the door.

When they stood to sing it was like the sudden rush of wind among the pines, Jo thought.

When I can read my title clear

To mansions in the skies,

I’ll bid farewell to every fear

And wipe my weeping eyes.

She wondered if these people knew of the mansions as she did, mansions white and tall, with four great pillars in front and a brass horseshoe on the door with an H—that might be for Heaven, now—curiously wrought to fill the inner circle of the shoe. Did they think of a mansion as having a great tower with windows that looked out upon a blue lake where there was sunrise and sunset and a glittering noon between? And did they know that mansions had great, sweeping stairways, soft-carpeted, that fell away to a shining pool below?

The singing ceased, and the prayer, and now the congregation was leaving the pews and marching solemnly down to gaze for the last time upon the face of the man they had known for so many years. Jo stole apart from her father and mother and pushed her way up the aisle until she reached the door. Why should she look again upon a face that was more clearly limned in her memory than her own father’s? For such is the deft power of pain.

When they had left the church at last and were gathered about the heap of moist clay in the yard, Jo heard the preacher’s voice again in dreary monotone and crept forward unobserved to a place well within the crowded circle. “I am the resurrection and the life and whosoever believeth in me shall not perish but have everlasting ...”

Jo looked up and saw Mr. Leonard Hilyard, pale, taut, a shadow of defeat in his eyes, as if something that had once been born within him had never come quite to fullness and was dead now and in the grave with his father. Beside him Alda Hilyard stood, her stout figure carefully garbed, her outer calm hiding whatever feelings she may have known. Dorothy was weeping softly as she clung to her mother’s arm, her eyes strangely deep and dark in her frightened face. Young Ashbrooke’s gaze shifted, impatient of pause, restless before the display of emotion about him, loath to dwell upon the dull spectacle of an old man being laid to rest. Royce had remained a little apart from the others, his eyes fixed hard upon the ground, his lips tight-locked and his jaws set against the upward rush of feeling which threatened every moment to break control. Jo, watching him intently, wished the preacher would soon come to the end of his talking. If he didn’t do so soon something was going to happen to Royce. What was the need of so much talk anyhow—and reading from the little black book—and endless praying? It would have been enough to—

Suddenly old Ashbrooke’s own words came to her—“Life and courage went hand in hand ...” She repeated the words to herself—and just then the preacher’s voice ceased.

The abrupt silence was almost unbearable. Royce stepped suddenly forward, lifted a moist clod of earth and dropped it into the open pit, then turned away. Jo watched the others gazing at him with something like awe in their eyes before they began shuffling slowly toward the churchyard gate. She waited for a moment, glancing about her until she was sure that no one was looking, then tossed the crushed spray of hepaticas into the grave.

“Come along, Jobina!” her mother ordered in a brusque undertone.