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Book 3One
One winter afternoon, twenty-five years after Lucy Gayheart`s death, the good people of Haverford met at the burying-ground for another funeral. Mr. Gayheart`s body had been sent home from the hospital in Chicago where he had gone for an operation. It was four o`clock in the afternoon, an unusual hour for a funeral, but the hour had been determined by the arrival of the railway train. The coffin was taken from the express car to the Lutheran church in an automobile hearse (these are modern times, 1927), and after a short service it was brought to the graveyard.
Scarcely anyone could remember so large a funeral. Old Mr. Gayheart, as he had been called for years now, had many friends. Since Pauline`s death, five years ago, he had gone on living in his own house, with one of the tailor`s daughters as his housekeeper. He had kept his shop open, and he continued to practise a little on his clarinet, though he complained that his wind was failing him. On Sundays, in summer, he sometimes practised out in the old orchard--which had never been cut down.
He had lived a long and useful life, people were thinking as they walked, or drove slowly in their cars, out to the cemetery. Almost every timepiece in Haverford was indebted to him for some attention. He was slow, to be sure, but to the end he was a good workman. Last night, when they wound their watches, many a one of his old customers paused and wondered; tick, tick, the little thing in his hand was measuring time as smartly as before, and old Mr. Gayheart was out of the measurement altogether.
By four o`clock the graveyard was black with automobiles and people. The cars formed a half-circle at some distance away, and their occupants, except the old and feeble, got out and stood around the open grave. The grey-haired business men had once been "band boys." The young men had taken lessons from Mr. Gayheart even after he stopped leading the town band. His older pupils looked serious and dejected; how many memories of their youth went back to the music-teacher who had lived so long, and lived happily, in spite of misfortunes!
It was sad, too, to see the last member of a family go out; to see a chapter closed, and a once familiar name on the way to be forgotten. There they were, the Gayhearts, in that little square of ground, the new grave standing open. Mr. Gayheart would lie between his long-dead wife and his daughter Lucy; the young people could not remember her at all. Pauline they remembered; she lay on Lucy`s left. There were two little mounds in the lot; sons who died in childhood, it was said. And now the story was finished: no grandchildren, complete oblivion.
While the prayers were being read, someone whispered that it was almost as if Lucy`s grave had been opened; the service brought back vividly that winter day long ago when she had been laid to rest here, so young, so lovely, and, everyone vaguely knew, so unhappy. It was like a bird being shot down when it rises in its morning flight toward the sun. The townspeople remembered that as the saddest funeral that had ever drawn old and young together in this cemetery.
By the time the grave was filled in and the flowers were heaped over it, the sun had set, and a low streak of red fire burned along the edge of the prairie. The crusted snow in the open fields turned rose-colour. The automobiles began slowly to back out, and the people who had come on foot turned their steps homeward. In the company walking toward the town, one man withdrew from the slow-moving crowd. Forsaking the road, he struck off alone across a fenced pasture; a tall man of solid frame, walking deliberately, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, his head erect, his shoulders straight. To a stranger he would have given an impression of loneliness and strength--tried and seasoned strength. He has need of it, for he has much to bear.
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