Although the house of worship which boasted as its ornament the Reverend
Gideon Darden was not so large and handsome as Bruton church, nor could
rival the painted glories of Poplar Spring, it was yet a building good
enough,--of brick, with a fair white spire and a decorous mantle of ivy.
The churchyard, too, was pleasant, though somewhat crowded with the dead.
There were oaks for shade, and wild roses for fragrance, and the grass
between the long gravestones, prone upon mortal dust, grew very thick and
green. Outside the gates,--a gift from the first master of Fair
View,--between the churchyard and the dusty highroad ran a long strip of
trampled turf, shaded by locust-trees and by one gigantic gum that became
in the autumn a pillar of fire.
Haward, arriving somewhat after time, found drawn up upon this piece of
sward a coach, two berlins, a calash, and three chaises, while tied to
hitching-posts, trees, and the fence were a number of saddle-horses. In
the shade of the gum-tree sprawled half a dozen negro servants, but on the
box of the coach, from which the restless horses had been taken, there yet
sat the coachman, a mulatto of powerful build and a sullen countenance.
The vehicle stood in the blazing sunshine, and it was both cooler and
merrier beneath the tree,--a fact apparent enough to the coachman, but
the knowledge of which, seeing that he was chained to the box, did him
small good. Haward glanced at the figure indifferently; but Juba,
following his master upon Whitefoot Kate, grinned from ear to ear.
"Larnin' not to run away, Sam? Road's clear: why don' you carry off de
coach?"
Haward dismounted, and leaving Juba first to fasten the horses, and then
join his fellows beneath the gum-tree, walked into the churchyard. The
congregation had assembled, and besides himself there were none without
the church save the negroes and the dead. The service had commenced.
Through the open door came to him Darden's voice: "Dearly beloved
brethren"-Haward waited, leaning against a tomb deep graven with a coat of arms and
much stately Latin, until the singing clave the air, when he entered the
building, and passed down the aisle to his own pew, the chiefest in the
place. He was aware of the flutter and whisper on either hand,--perhaps he
did not find it unpleasing. Diogenes may have carried his lantern not
merely to find a man, but to show one as well, and a philosopher in a pale
gray riding dress, cut after the latest mode, with silver lace and a fall
of Mechlin, may be trusted to know the value as well as the vanity of
sublunary things.