Chapter XVIII: Dotty’s Funeral

“Alone and cold, with no one to care for me,” was Uncle Zach’s constant lament, as he sat shivering by Dotty’s coffin during the days which preceded her funeral.

Craig and Alice were both with him and this was some comfort, while the flowers sent in great profusion made him feel, he said, as if he was somebody, and he wished Dotty knew. Greatly to Fanny’s surprise and delight her mother came in the morning train, and the honor of having her there with Craig and Alice partly compensated Mr. Taylor for his loss. It was the first time Helen had been in Ridgefield since she left it twenty-four years ago, and naturally her presence aroused much interest and curiosity in those who remembered her. When she heard of Mrs. Taylor’s death a sudden impulse seized her to go to the funeral. Almost anything was better than staying at home alone as she was doing. If Roy built that cottage she must of course go there some time, and she might as well make this her opportunity. So she went and in her crape, still worn for Judge Prescott, she looked grand and handsome and dignified, and cried a little over Dotty and more over Uncle Zach in his wheel chair. He persisted in calling her Miss Hilton and talking to her of Mark, until Alice suggested to him that it might be better to give her her real name and to say nothing of Mark, as it could only bring up unpleasant memories.

“Jess so,—jess so. Yes, marm. You are right, and it shows how I am missin’ Dotty to tell me what is what,” Uncle Zach replied.

After that he laid great stress on Miss Prescott when he spoke to her, as she was brushing his hair and arranging his necktie for the funeral. She had asked to do this for him and as he felt her fingers on his forehead and about his neck, he burst out suddenly, “It brings it all back, when you was a young gal makin’ the house so bright. You ain’t a widder, nor Miss Prescott to me, and I won’t call you so.”

“Call me Helen, please. I feel more like her here than I have in years,” she replied.

She was very kind to him and arranged that he should go to the grave in the carriage with Roy and Fanny and herself. “The very best and easiest there is in town,” she said to the undertaker.

“But, but,” Uncle Zach interposed, “I could no more git into a kerridge than I could fly. I must be wheeled. Dot won’t mind. She knows how stiff I am.”

It was in vain that they urged upon him that he could be lifted into a carriage. He insisted that he couldn’t.

“If I go at all, it must be in my chair, with Sam to push me,” he said, and that settled it, and his chair was wheeled into its place in the long procession which followed Dotty to the grave.

It took some time to get all the carriages into line and ready, and while they were waiting a stranger came rapidly across the street and joined the crowd in front of the Prospect House. He was dusty and travel stained and no one recognized him but Roy and Fanny, who, with Helen, were in the carriage next to Uncle Zach’s chair.

“Oh, Roy,—there’s Tom!” Fanny cried, as he passed them without looking up, so intent was he upon the forlorn old man sitting alone with his attendant behind him.

“If you please, this is my place,” he said in a low tone to Sam, waving him aside so peremptorily that Sam had nothing to do but submit, which he did willingly, wondering who the stranger was and why he was so anxious for a job he did not fancy.

Uncle Zach was rather hard of hearing, and in the confusion of starting did not hear Sam’s instructions, “Go easy over the stones; he’s awful lame.”

Tom nodded that he understood, and the funeral cortege started.

“Careful, now, Sam. There’s a rut full of stones!” Uncle Zach said once, surprised at the deftness and ease with which the supposed Sam avoided the stones, almost lifting the chair over the worst of them, and showing a thoughtfulness he had never shown before. “It’s because it’s Dotty’s funeral, he’s so keerful,” Uncle Zach thought, resolving to give him something extra when he paid him his next month’s wages. “Get me as close to the grave as you can. I want to see her up to the last minute,” he said, when they were in the cemetery.

Without a word Jeff wheeled the chair as near the grave as possible, every one making way for him and all wondering who he could be, except Roy and Fanny. Once during the committal he looked at them and in response to their greeting touched his hand to his uncovered head with a motion so natural that Alice, who was watching him, started with a conviction that she had seen him before, and when the next moment their eyes met and he smiled upon her she was sure that it was the boy Jeff. She could not speak to him then and when the ceremony was over and the people began to disperse there was a new diversion in the scene in the shape of a huge dog who came bounding over the grass and leaping upon Jeff nearly knocked him down. It was Nero escaped from the freight house at the station where his master had left him for a time in charge of a boy. Jeff’s longing to see Ridgefield had grown in intensity until at last without any warning of his coming, he started east with his dog and travelled night and day until Ridgefield was reached. Hearing in the car of the funeral and fearing Nero might be in the way he had him shut up and went rapidly up the street he remembered so well to the Prospect House, reaching it in time to take Sam’s place and wheel Uncle Zacheus to the cemetery. After many fruitless efforts to escape by the door Nero squeezed through a half open window and following his master’s trail came upon him in the graveyard and in his joy at finding him caused a lurch to the chair which elicited a groan from Uncle Zach.

“Oh, Sam, are you in a hole, or what? You’ve nearly broke my back,” he said; “and whose great dog is that cantering ’round as if he was goin’ to jump on me. Go ’way, doggie, doggie; go ’way. Shoo! Shoo! Take him off!” he continued, as Nero showed signs of making his acquaintance, or at least finding out what manner of being it was wrapped in a shawl and looking so small and helpless.

Jeff did not reply till he got the chair away from the grave to a side path where they were comparatively alone.

“Where be you takin’ me? I or’to go back with the procession. Folks’ll think it queer,” Uncle Zach said, as he found himself at some distance from the main road of the cemetery.

Stepping in front of him Jeff took off his hat and said, “Don’t you know me?”

Uncle Zach’s sight was dim and his eyes weak with the tears he had shed, but something in Jeff’s voice and manner seemed natural. He, however, had no suspicion of the truth, and replied, “I or’to know you, of course, but I’m kind of blind, and my spe’tacles is at home. Who be you, and where is Sam?”

“If I were to turn a somerset or two, and stand on my head, do you think you would know me then?” Jeff asked, with his old merry laugh.

The effect was wonderful. Uncle Zach had not risen alone from his chair in months, but he sprang up now and stood firm upon his feet, with his arms outstretched.

“Jeff! Jeff! my boy!” he cried, “It’s you, yourself, come back to me! Thank God!”

He could say no more, and sank back in his chair, shaking like a leaf, while Jeff said to him, “Yes, it’s Jeff, come back, and sorry to find Mrs. Taylor dead, and you so helpless. Shall I take you home?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I’m all of a tremble, and so glad you’ve come, and so would Dotty be, if she knew,” Uncle Zach replied; “and this is your critter?” motioning towards Nero, who, with sundry sharp woofs, was signifying his approval of affairs.

“Yes, this is Nero. He belonged to Mark, and I could not leave him in the mountains alone. He is a friendly, faithful fellow, and will guard you, or your property, with his life,” Jeff said, caressing the dog, in whose eyes there was a human look as if he understood what was being said.

As a rule Mr. Taylor did not care much for dogs. Dotty had disliked them, and would never have one on the premises. They tracked her clean piazza and floor and trampled down her flower beds, she said. But Dotty was gone. Nero had belonged to Mark, and when he put his nose on Zacheus’s knee and looked up in his face, the old man’s heart was won and Nero adopted with Jeff.

“Doggie, doggie, Mark’s doggie, you are welcome,” he said, patting Nero whose bushy tail was in full swing and who, with the sagacity of his race, had seen that Uncle Zach needed care and had constituted himself his body guard.

Meanwhile Craig and Alice, and Helen and Roy and Fanny had been watching the scene at a distance. They were yet to be met and it was hard meeting them all. Jeff had seen Helen at Clark’s when he took Fanny and Roy there after Inez’s funeral. She had been rather reserved towards him then and said very little, but now her manner changed, and she was the first to go forward and meet him as he came near to them. Inez was dead and he could never claim any connection with Fanny. He would stay with Uncle Zach as his proper place, and she was very cordial in her greeting. Alice and Craig came next, the former doing most of the talking and both seeming so pleased to see him that he felt his spirits rising and had not been as happy in years as he was when at last he stood again in the house where he had spent his boyhood.

Roy was cordial, but could not forget Inez’s dying words, which had betrayed so much, and every time he looked at Jeff he recalled the scene of the hold up which he had heard described so vividly that he sometimes felt that he had been an actor in it. Fanny was unfeignedly glad to see Jeff and kept him by her a long time while she questioned him of her father’s sickness and death and burial. Helen, who sat near, made no comments, but she did not lose a word, and occasionally, when Fanny cried the hardest, her bit of linen and lace which passed for a handkerchief, went up to her eyes and came away with several wet spots upon it. With his friends around him, treating him as if he had always been an honest man, Jeff began to feel like one. He was glad Alice did not refer to the pickpocket business, for he could not tell her that he had kept his promise to the letter. He had followed no one on the street, or in a crowd, but he could recall pockets in which his hands had been while the owners were pale as death and almost as still. That was buried in the Yosemite and here in Ridgefield, where every one was pleased to see him, the dreadful past was slipping away from him, and with a rebound his old life was returning. Nero, too, came in for a share of notice and petting. Craig, who was fond of dogs, offered to buy him, but Jeff said, “No, he is the only relative I have left in the world. I have brought him from beyond the Rockies and if Mr. Taylor does not object, I shall keep him.”

“Object to the critter! Of course not. He was Mark’s, and Dotty isn’t here to care about his feet. They are pretty big. _Shoo, shoo_, doggie; not quite so friendly,” Uncle Zach replied, shaking his fingers at the dog, who had taken a great fancy to him and persisted in laying his head in his lap and occasionally putting his paws on the wheel of his chair.

The next day Craig and Alice and Helen went home, but Roy and Fanny staid on to see to the new cottage. The ground for it had been broken a little distance from the old ruin, “but not so far away that ’Tina can’t come across the grass to visit us if she wants to,” Roy said to Fanny, who had no fear of ’Tina so long as Roy was with her. They staid in Ridgefield the rest of the summer with an occasional trip to New York, where Helen kept herself secluded until it was time for the fashionable world to come home and open their doors. Then she gradually made her way again into the society which she enjoyed. Sometime in September Roy and Fanny returned to Boston, leaving the cottage so nearly completed that it would be ready for them in June of the next summer, if they wished to occupy it so early.