Their decorous carousal was at its height, and the ladies, one and
all, had sought their respective rooms to recuperate their wearied
energies by a loll, if not a siesta, that they might be in trim for
the evening's enjoyment (Christmas lasted a whole week at Ridgeley)
when four strapping field hands, barefooted, that their tramp might
not break the epicurean slumbers, brought down from the desolate
upper chamber a rough pine coffin, manufactured and screwed tight by
the plantation carpenter, and after halting a minute in the back
porch to pull on their boots, took their way across the lawn and
fields to the servants' burial-place. This was in a pine grove, two
furlongs or more from the garden fence, forming the lower enclosure
of the mansion grounds. The intervening dell was knee-deep in
drifted snow, the hillside bare in spots, and ridged high in others,
where the wind-currents had swirled from base to summit. The passage
was a toilsome one, and the stalwart bearers halted several times to
shift their light burden before they laid it down upon the mound of
mixed snow and red clay at the mouth of the grave. Half-a-dozen
others were waiting there to assist in the interment, and at the
head of the pit stood a white-headed negro, shaking with palsy and
cold--the colored chaplain of the region, who, more out of custom
and superstition than a sense of religious responsibility--least of
all motives, through respect for the dead--had braved the inclement
weather to say a prayer over the wanderer's last home.
The storm had abated at noon, and the snow no longer fell, but there
had been no sunshine through all the gloomy day, and the clouds were
now mustering thickly again to battle, while the rising gale in the
pine-tops was hoarse and wrathful. Far as the eye could reach were
untrodden fields of snow; gently-rolling hills, studded with shrubs
and tinged in patches by russet bristles of broom-straw; the river
swollen into blackness between the white banks, and the dark horizon
of forest seeming to uphold the gray firmament. To the right of the
spectator, who stood on the eminence occupied by the cemetery, lay
Ridgeley, with its environing outhouses, crowning the most ambitious
height of the chain, the smoke from its chimneys and those of the
village of cabins beating laboriously upward, to be borne down at
last by the lowering mass of chilled vapor.
The coffin was deposited in its place with scant show of reverence,
and without removing their hats, the bystanders leaned on their
spades, and looked to the preacher for the ceremony that was to
authorize them to hurry through with their distasteful task. That
the gloom of the hour and scene, and the utter forlornness of all
the accompaniments of what was meant for Christian burial, had
stamped themselves upon the mind and heart of the unlettered slave,
was evident from the brief sentences he quavered out--joining his
withered hands and raising his bleared eyes toward the threatening
heavens: "Lord! what is man, that thou art mindful of him! For that which
befalleth man befalleth beasts--even one thing befalleth them. All
go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of
the beast that goeth downward to the earth? Man cometh in with
vanity and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with
darkness. The dead know not anything, for the memory of them is
forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now
perished, neither have they a portion for ever in anything that is
done under the sun.