We were but little the wiser as to this something, when Hi had come to a halt before us, and was pouring out a volley of explanations, accompanied by earnest grimaces1 and strenuous2 gestures. Even Marcellus could make next to nothing of what he was trying to convey; but Aunt Em, strangely enough, seemed to understand him. Still slightly trembling, and with a little occasional catch in her breath, she bent3 an intent scrutiny4 upon Hi, and nodded comprehendingly from time to time, with encouraging exclamations5, “He did, eh!”
“Is that so?” and “I expected as much.” Listening and watching, I formed the uncharitable conviction that she did not really understand Hi at all, but was only pretending to do so in order further to harrow Serena’s feelings.
Doubtless I was wrong, for presently she turned, with an effort, to her sister-in-law, and remarked, “P’rhaps you don’t quite follow what he’s say-in’?”
“Not a word!” said Serena, eagerly. “Tell me, please, Emmeline!”
Aunt Em seemed to hesitate. “He was shot through the mouth at Gaines’s Mills, you know—that’s right near Cold Harbor and—the Wilderness6,” she said, obviously making talk.
“That isn’t what he’s saying,” broke in Serena. “What is it, Emmeline?”
“Well,” rejoined the other, after an instant’s pause, “if you want to know—he says that it ain’t Alvy at all that they’ve got there in the barn.”
Serena turned swiftly, so that we could not see her face.
“He says it’s some strange man,” continued Em, “a yaller-headed man, all packed an’ stuffed with charcoal7, so’t his own mother wouldn’t know him. Who it is nobody knows, but it ain’t Alvy.”
“They’re a pack of robbers ’n’ swindlers!” cried old Arphaxed, shaking his long gray beard with wrath8.
He had come up without our noticing his approach, so rapt had been our absorption in the strange discovery reported by Hi Tuckerman. Behind him straggled the boys and the hired men, whom Si Hummaston had scurried9 across from the house to join. No one said anything now, but tacitly deferred10 to the old man’s principal right to speak. It was a relief to hear that terrible silence of his broken at all.
“They ought to all be hung!” he cried, in a voice to which the excess of passion over physical strength gave a melancholy11 quaver. “I paid ’em what they asked—they took a hundred dollars o’ my money—an’ they ain’t sent me him at all! There I went, at my age, all through the Wilderness, almost clear to Cold Harbor, an’ that, too, gittin’ up from a sick bed in Washington, and then huntin’ for the box at New York an’ Albany, an’ all the way back, an’ holdin’ a funeral over it only this very day—an’ here it ain’t him at all! I’ll have the law on ‘em though, if it costs the last cent I’ve got in the world!”
Poor old man! These weeks of crushing grief and strain had fairly broken him down. We listened to his fierce outpourings with sympathetic silence, almost thankful that he had left strength and vitality12 enough still to get angry and shout. He had been always a hard and gusty13 man; we felt by instinct, I suppose, that his best chance of weathering this terrible month of calamity14 was to batter15 his way furiously through it, in a rage with everything and everybody.
“If there’s any justice in the land,” put in Si Hummaston, “you’d ought to get your hundred dollars back. I shouldn’t wonder if you could, too, if you sued ’em afore a Jestice that was a friend of yours.”
“Why, the man’s a fool!” burst forth16 Arphaxed, turning toward him with a snort. “I don’t want the hundred dollars—I wouldn’t’a’ begrudged17 a thousand—if only they’d dealt honestly by me. I paid ’em their own figure, without beatin’ ’em down a penny. If it’d be’n double, I’d ’a’ paid it. What I wanted was my boy! It ain’t so much their cheatin’ me I mind, either, if it ’d be’n about anything else. But to think of Alvy—my boy—after all the trouble I took, an’ the journey, an’ my sickness there among strangers—to think that after it all he’s buried down there, no one knows where, p’raps in some trench18 with private soldiers, shovelled19 in anyhow—oh-h! they ought to be hung!”
The two women had stood motionless, with their gaze on the grass; Aunt Em lifted her head at this.
“If a place is good enough for private soldiers to be buried in,” she said, vehemently20, “it’s good enough for the best man in the army. On Resurrection Day, do you think them with shoulder-straps ’ll be called fust an’ given all the front places? I reckon the men that carried a musket21 are every whit22 as good, there in the trench, as them that wore swords. They gave their lives as much as the others did, an’ the best man that ever stepped couldn’t do no more.”
Old Arphaxed bent upon her a long look, which had in it much surprise and some elements of menace. Reflection seemed, however, to make him think better of an attack on Aunt Em. He went on, instead, with rambling23 exclamations to his auditors24 at large.
“Makin’ me the butt25 of the whole county!” he cried. “There was that funeral to-day—with a parade an’ a choir26 of music an’ so on: an’ now it’ll come out in the papers that it wasn’t Alvy at all I brought back with me, but only some perfect stranger—by what you can make out from his clothes, not even an officer at all. I tell you the war’s a jedgment on this country for its wickedness, for its cheatin’ an’ robbin’ of honest men! They wa’n’t no sense in that battle at Cold Harbor anyway—everybody admits that! It was murder an’ massacre27 in cold blood—fifty thousand men mowed28 down, an’ nothin’ gained by it! An’ then not even to git my boy’s dead body back! I say hangin’s too good for ’em!”
“Yes, father,” said Myron, soothingly29; “but do you stick to what you said about the—the box? Wouldn’t it look better—”
“No!” shouted Arphaxed, with emphasis. “Let Dana do what I told him—take it down this very night to the poor-master, an’ let him bury it where he likes. It’s no affair of mine. I wash my hands of it. There won’t be no funeral held here!”
It was then that Serena spoke30. Strangely enough, old Arphaxed had not seemed to notice her presence in our group, and his jaw31 visibly dropped as he beheld32 her now standing33 before him. He made a gesture signifying his disturbance34 at finding her among his hearers, and would have spoken, but she held up her hand.
“Yes, I heard it all,” she said, in answer to his deprecatory movement. “I am glad I did. It has given me time to get over the shock of learning—our mistake—and it gives me the chance now to say something which I—I feel keenly. The poor man you have brought home was, you say, a private soldier. Well, isn’t this a good time to remember that there was a private soldier who went out from this farm—belonging right to this family—and who, as a private, laid down his life as nobly as General Sedgwick or General Wadsworth, or even our dear Alva, or any one else? I never met Emmeline’s husband, but Alva liked him, and spoke to me often of him. Men who fall in the ranks don’t get identified, or brought home, but they deserve funerals as much as the others—just as much. Now, this is my idea: let us feel that the mistake which has brought this poor stranger to us is God’s way of giving us a chance to remember and do honor to Abel Jones. Let him be buried in the family lot up yonder, where we had thought to lay Alva, and let us do it reverently35, in the name of Emmeline’s husband, and of all others who have fought and died for our country, and with sympathy in our hearts for the women who, somewhere in the North, are mourning, just as we mourn here, for the stranger there in the red barn.”
Arphaxed had watched her intently. He nodded now, and blinked at the moisture gathering36 in his old eyes. “I could e’en a’most ’a’ thought it was Alvy talkin’,” was what he said. Then he turned abruptly37, but we all knew, without further words, that what Serena had suggested was to be done.
The men-folk, wondering doubtless much among themselves, moved slowly off toward the house or the cow-barns, leaving the two women alone. A minute of silence passed before we saw Serena creep gently up to Aunt Em’s side, and lay the thin white hand again upon her shoulder. This time it was not shaken off, but stretched itself forward, little by little, until its palm rested against Aunt Em’s further cheek. We heard the tin-pail fall resonantly38 against the stones under the rail-fence, and there was a confused movement as if the two women were somehow melting into one.
“Come on, Sid!” said Marcellus Jones to me; “let’s start them cows along. If there’s anything I hate to see it’s women cryin’ on each other’s necks.”
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1
grimaces
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| n.（表蔑视、厌恶等）面部扭曲，鬼脸( grimace的名词复数 )v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的第三人称单数 ) | |
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2
strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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3
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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5
exclamations
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| n.呼喊( exclamation的名词复数 )；感叹；感叹语；感叹词 | |
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6
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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7
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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8
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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9
scurried
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| v.急匆匆地走( scurry的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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10
deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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11
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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12
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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13
gusty
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| adj.起大风的 | |
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14
calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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15
batter
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| v.接连重击；磨损；n.牛奶面糊；击球员 | |
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16
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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17
begrudged
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| 嫉妒( begrudge的过去式和过去分词 )； 勉强做； 不乐意地付出； 吝惜 | |
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18
trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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19
shovelled
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| v.铲子( shovel的过去式和过去分词 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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20
vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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21
musket
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| n.滑膛枪 | |
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22
whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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23
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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24
auditors
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| n.审计员，稽核员( auditor的名词复数 )；（大学课程的）旁听生 | |
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25
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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26
choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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27
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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28
mowed
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| v.刈，割( mow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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soothingly
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| adv.抚慰地，安慰地；镇痛地 | |
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30
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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31
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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32
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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33
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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34
disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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35
reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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36
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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37
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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38
resonantly
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| adv.共鸣地，反响地 | |
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