The Buckley Lady

By Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

The author of this book had a very strict upbringing by orthodox Congregationalists; the effects of this are revealed in some of her novels many of which are ghost stories or have echoes of spiritualism and the supernatural. As this story begins little Persis Buckley is startled by the arrival of strangers asking to see her father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547055013

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Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

The Buckley Lady

EAN 8596547055013

DigiCat, 2022

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Table of Contents

Cover

Titlepage

Text

The dark slate stones that now slant to their falls in the old burying-ground, or are fallen already, then stood straight. The old inscriptions, now blurred over by moss and lichen, or worn back into the face of the stone by the wash of the heavy coast rains, were then quite plain. The winged cherubim and death-heads — the terrible religious symbols of the Old Testament, made realistic by New England minds under stress of grief — were quite fresh from the artist's hands.

The funeral urns and weeping-willows, a very art of sorrow in themselves, with their every curve the droop of a mourner's head, and all their flowing lines of tears, were still distinct. Indeed, the man who had graven many of them was still alive, and not yet past his gloomy toil. He lived in his little house not far beyond the burying-ground, and his name was Ichabod Buckley. He had a wife Sarah, a son Ichabod, and three daughters, Submit, Rebecca, and Persis. When Persis was twelve years old a great change and a romance came into her life. She was the youngest of the family; her brother was ten years older than she; her sisters were older still. She had always been to a certain extent petted and favored from her babyhood; however, until she was twelve, she had not been exempt from her own little duties and privations. She had gathered drift-wood on the shore, her delicate little figure buffeted and shaken by rough winds. She had dug quahaugs, wading out in the black mud, with her petticoats kilted high over her slender childish legs. She had spun her daily stint, and knitted faithfully harsh blue yarn socks for her father and brother. In the early autumn, when she was twelve years old, all that was changed.

One morning in September it was hot inland, but cool on the point of land reaching out into the sea where the Buckley house stood. The son, Ichabod, had gone to sea in a whaling-vessel; the father was at home, working in the little slanting shed behind the house. One could hear the grating slide of his chisel down the boughs of a weeping-willow on a new gravestone. A very old woman of the village had died that week.

At the left of the house there was a bright unexpected glint from a great brass kettle which the eastern sun struck. Ichabod Buckley's wife had her dye-kettle out there on forked sticks over a fire. She was dyeing some cloth an indigo-blue, and her two elder daughters were helping her. The two daughters Submit and Rebecca looked like their mother. The three, from their figures, seemed about of an age — all tall and meagre and long-limbed, moving in their scanty petticoats around the kettle with a certain dry pliability, like three tall brown weeds on the windy marsh.

Persis came up from the shore at the front of the house with her arms full of drift-wood. She was just crossing the front yard when she heard a sound that startled her, and she stood still and listened, inclining her head towards the woods on the right. In the midst of these woods was the cleared space of the graveyard; the rough path to the main road ran past it.

Seldom any but horseback riders came that way; but now Persis was sure that she heard the rumble of carriage-wheels, as well as the tramp of horses' feet. She turned excitedly to run to her mother and sisters; but all at once the splendid coach