Title:  The Stillwater Tragedy

Author:  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Release Date:  April, 2004 [EBook #5435] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 18, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of the project gutenberg EBOOK, the Stillwater tragedy ***

This eBook was created by Charles Aldarondo (pg@aldarondo.net).

The Stillwater Tragedy

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I

It is close upon daybreak.  The great wall of pines and hemlocks that keep off the west wind from Stillwater stretches black and indeterminate against the sky.  At intervals a dull, metallic sound, like the guttural twang of a violin string, rises form the frog-invested swamp skirting the highway.  Suddenly the birds stir in their nests over there in the woodland, and break into that wild jargoning chorus with which they herald the advent of a new day.  In the apple-orchards and among the plum-trees of the few gardens in Stillwater, the wrens and the robins and the blue-jays catch up the crystal crescendo, and what a melodious racket they make of it with their fifes and flutes and flageolets!

The village lies in a trance like death.  Possibly not a soul hears this music, unless it is the watchers at the bedside of Mr. Leonard Tappleton, the richest man in town, who has lain dying these three days, and cannot last until sunrise.  Or perhaps some mother, drowsily hushing her wakeful baby, pauses a moment and listens vacantly to the birds singing.  But who else?

The hubbub suddenly ceases,—­ceases as suddenly as it began,—­and all is still again in the woodland.  But it is not so dark as before.  A faint glow of white light is discernible behind the ragged line of the tree-tops.  The deluge of the darkness is receding from the face of the earth, as the mighty waters receded of old.

The roofs and tall factory chimneys of Stillwater are slowly taking shape in the gloom.  Is that a cemetery coming into view yonder, with its ghostly architecture of obelisks and broken columns and huddled head-stones?  No, that is only Slocum’s Marble Yard, with the finished and unfinished work heaped up like snowdrifts,—­a cemetery in embryo.  Here and there in an outlying farm a lantern glimmers in the barn-yard:  the cattle are having their fodder betimes.  Scarlet-capped chanticleer gets himself on the nearest rail-fence and lifts up his rancorous voice like some irate old cardinal launching the curse of Rome.  Something crawls swiftly along the gray of the serpentine turnpike,—­a cart, with the driver lashing a jaded horse.  A quick wind goes shivering by, and is lost in the forest.