CHAPTER XV.PREPARING FOR THE FUNERAL.
Early the next morning, Mrs. Judson went out from the basement of her house, almost for the first time in her life, and in company with Jane Kelly passed into the street. None of the servants were up, and the lady had put on awalking-dress, so plain and dark, that no one would have been likely to notice her had many persons been abroad. Through that side-gate in the garden-wall, Jane conducted her charge, and they passed together down that same gloomy path into a little stone building near the water.
“Don’t be afraid; it’s nothing when you get used to it,” she said, patronizingly. “I remember almost fainting the first time I came here, but now I don’t even think of it.”
All this show of courage did not prevent Mrs. Judson from turning cold as marble when that door was thrown open, and she found herself close by a coarse pine coffin, from which Jane was composedly removing the lid.
The lady cast one glance at the dead-whiteness of the face revealed to her, and retreated into the open air, pale, almost, as the corpse she had left.
Jane followed her, swinging the key on her finger.
“Is it her, lady?” she asked, in a whisper.
“Yes.”
“Well, what am I to do?”
“Can it be quietly removed? Is that permitted?”
“Yes; money can do anything. Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it; for if any one knows how, it’s the person before you.”
Mrs. Judson stood in the garden a while irresolute, then she turned toward the woman and said, almost helplessly, notwithstanding her great pride,—
“You know best how to manage it. I will tell you what I want, then try and carry out my wishes.”
“Of course, I mean to do that—only tell me what they are.”
“She must be buried from my house.”
“Well, that can be done.”
“But she must be brought there unseen, if possible.”
“Nothing easier. You want everything of the best, no doubt?”
“Yes.”
“Well, have your crape handy; I’ll take care of the rest. When all is ready, I’ll call up. Say nothing about it till then, please; just leave the servants to me. Say as little as you can, and don’t let them know anything till I come, which will be about dark.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Judson, forgetting her pride in a strong sense of relief. “I shall depend on you.”
“Dear me, how a little trouble takes the starch out of a woman like that! Last night she wanted to sweep by me like a peacock; now, now it’s all whiteness and swan’s down; never mind, I rather like her, any way.” Saying this, Jane locked the side-gate and walked leisurely back to the hospital.
A little after dusk that evening Jane Kelly called decorously, and inquired for Mrs. Judson of a supercilious footman, who would have questioned her right to see that lady, but for the timely interposition of the girl, Ellen. As it was, Ellen admitted her at once to Mrs. Judson’s bedroom, where she remained a full hour. When she came down-stairs, Ellen, was ready to intercept her, and they went together into the servants’ parlor, where Jane dropped at once into a most confidential conversation.
“You see, Ellen, it was about that very young lady that I came. A friend of mine lives at the boarding-school where Mrs. Judson put her before she went to the springs.”
“The boarding-school! dear me, was that so? Why, not a servant in the house knew a word about it; then it was not a detective she called in?”
“Not a bit of it; that was the madam’s real-estate agent.”
“You don’t say so! But why was it kept close where the young lady went to school?”
“Close! why it wasn’t kept close at all. Of course, she could not come home when the house was as good as closed.”
“That’s true; but where is she now?”
“Ellen, I am going to tell you something mournful. It was that I came to tell Mrs. Judson last night, but you must not let the other servants know. Miss Louisa is dead.”
“Dead! and you talked as if you had never seen her, last night. Dear me, dead!”
“Yes, sudden—cholera—taken down and died before help could come. The poor lady up-stairs is dreadfully cut up.”
“Dear me, how dreadful!”
“But above all things, don’t hint to the servants that she died of cholera; the funeral will have to be from the house, you know, and the neighbors might get frightened.”
“Oh! I wouldn’t for the world,” protested Ellen,—“not for the world.”
“Now, not a word of this to any one in the house,” Jane went on impressively, “your lady would not like to have the boarding-school spoken of.”
“But what school was it?”
“Oh, Catholic; those Catholics keep their scholars so close; besides, this idea of cholera might hurt the school. Least said, soonest mended. I don’t suppose they let the scholars know what she died of.”
“I am glad she died in the true faith, any way,” said Ellen, just then remembering that she was a Catholic herself, and making a quick motion of the cross. “You and I don’t want to bring trouble on a Catholic school.”
“But you will mention to no human soul that she was sent to a Catholic school; her brother is a little that way, I am told, and as for the cholera, not a word.”
“Not a word.”
“Or my friend would get into trouble. She trusted me just as you have. Wasn’t it strange that both of you should begin talking about the very same thing, just by accident? But I never mentioned your name to the lady up-stairs, only to say how long I had known you, and what splendid places you had always been in. She thinks my other friend told me all I know.”
“That was very good of you.”
“Oh, I’m to be trusted. Indeed I wouldn’t mention the word hospital before her for the world; I really believe it would make her faint.”
“I’m sure it would,” said Ellen.
“Now I must be going. But about that place, Ellen; stand by me and I’ll stand by you.”
There was a dash of patronage about all this, which impressed Ellen considerably. She went to the basement-door with Jane, as a mark of particular respect, and put a finger to her lip, nodding emphatically in answer to a like signal from the nurse, as she passed into the street.
Scarcely had Jane disappeared, when Ellen ran into the kitchen full of potential excitement, which was sure to throw every servant in the house into a state of wondering inquiry. Of course, she was at once surrounded and eagerly questioned. But no, what she had heard was intrusted to her in strict confidence, nothing on earth would prevail on her to speak. For her part, she had always thought something dreadful would come of that dear young lady being taken off so strangely, without a word to the servants, who had, one and all, been as kind to her as kind could be. Of course, they were all good Catholics, but then, to have religion forced on one was hard. The cholera, of all dreadful diseases, think of it! Well, there was some comfort in knowing the sisters were good nurses. Only she hoped that awful cholera would not spread through the school.
What school? Why, of course, she would not tell for the whole world. Only some one they all knew and loved dearly would be brought home from a Catholic school in her coffin. She, for one, hoped that cholera would neither be left behind or come with her.
Before Ellen had concluded her little harangue, every servant in the house stood listening, open-mouthed and eager as hounds on the scent. Of course, they understood allabout it quite as well as she did, but thirsting for more, asked innumerable questions, to which Ellen shook her head solemnly, and declared that nothing could induce her to give one hint of what had been said in the strictest confidence; it would be awfully mean if she did, and her friend who had lived so close to the New Haven College that she could almost speak Latin, would never forgive her, never!
With an impressive emphasis on the last word, Ellen gave her head a consequential fling, and went up-stairs in answer to Mrs. Judson’s bell, which had rung more than once.
She found Mrs. Judson sitting quietly in her easy-chair, looking pale and harassed, but in both speech and manner self-possessed as usual.
“Ellen,” she said, reaching forth some streamers of black crape and white ribbon, “you will see that these are properly arranged for the door. You will be sorry to hear that there will be a funeral here.”
“Dead! oh, dear! how dreadful!” sobbed Ellen, lifting a corner of her muslin apron half-way to her eyes and dropping it again. “Please, madam, where did she die, and what of!”
Mrs. Judson was not prepared to answer these very natural questions, so she swept them away with a mournful wave of her hand.
Ellen took the crape and busied herself in arranging the ribbon. Mrs. Judson watched her quietly. She was very sad, and the shock of the morning affected her nerves so much that she started when Ellen spoke again.
“Excuse me, ma’am, butischolera catching after the person is dead?”
“The cholera!” faltered the lady. “No, I should think not; but why do you ask?”
Ellen remembered Jane Kelly’s charge of secrecy, and struggled hard to obey it.
“Oh, nothing—I only happened to be thinking that—that,perhaps—dear me! I never thought anything of the kind, only the neighbors, ma’am, might, from its suddenness, think it was something like cholera that took her off. If they do, what shall we servants say?”
“Say that you do not know; that will be right,” answered Mrs. Judson, struck with an idea that there might be safety in this supposition, yet unwilling to suggest a falsehood in words.
“Just as if we didn’t know all about it,” muttered Ellen, as she went down-stairs with the crape streamers in her hand. “Law! she might as well attempt to keep the wind from blowing as the whole neighborhood not finding out. The moment this is seen at the door, won’t we have calls from every basement in the block? Well, I haven’t told a word, anyhow.”
About half-past eleven that evening strange sounds were heard in that stately mansion. The tramp of heavy feet, and the smothered whispers of men carrying some burden up the broad staircase. This lasted a brief time; then the stealthy closing of a door, the rattle of wheels moving slowly down the street, and everything was still again. But all night long the gleam of a funeral light broke faintly through the imperfectly closed blinds of an upper chamber, where Jane Kelly sat, half asleep, watching by a coffin covered with black velvet, on which embossments and handles of silver gave out a faint glow, mournfully in keeping with the stillness and the shadows.
A lady, sitting alone in her chamber, heard these sounds with a shudder of mortal dread, and watched also, in bitter solitude; for sleep that night was impossible to her. The servants, high up under the French roof, whispered very seriously in their separate rooms; wondered, commented, and thought of going away in a body from the house, which might be dangerously infected. Early in the morning this excitement spread from basement to chamber, through the entire block; for long streamers of crape at Mrs. Judson’s door awoke general apprehension, and that day three families leftthe block, driven into the country by fear of the cholera, which had emanated in the mysterious hints of that prudent girl, Ellen.
That afternoon, a hearse with white plumes and a costly coffin, visible through the half-veiled crystal of its windows, drove slowly from the house, followed by a dozen carriages with the curtains down, most of them empty. Even Mrs. Judson’s popularity—joined to the pleasant remembrance of a fair young creature who had for a time been considered the sunlight of her home—could not induce the neighbors to brave their fears of infection in order to pay homage to the dead.
So the funeral cortege moved slowly away toward Greenwood, and the mystery of that young creature’s death was lost in the general apprehension of a disease which, about that time, was a word of terror in the land.
After this, a black-edged letter, written by a hand that shivered as it penned the words which were to give so much sorrow, went from that house to Europe; a few more were carried east and west. Then Mrs. Judson retired to her place in the country for a fortnight, while the gloom was swept away from the house.