THE FUNERAL.
That night the weather changed, and grew cloudy and cold. Saturday
morning broke drizzly and dismal. A north-east wind tore off the
tops of the drearily tossing billows. All was gray--enduring,
hopeless gray. Along the coast the waves kept roaring on the sands,
persistent and fateful; the Scaurnose was one mass of foaming white;
and in the caves still haunted by the tide, the bellowing was like
that of thunder.
Through the drizzle-shot wind and the fog blown in shreds from the
sea, a large number of the most respectable of the male population
of the burgh, clothed in Sunday gloom deepened by the crape on
their hats, made their way to Miss Horn’s, for, despite her rough
manners, she was held in high repute. It was only such as had reason
to dread the secret communication between closet and house-top that
feared her tongue; if she spoke loud, she never spoke false, or
backbit in the dark. What chiefly conduced however to the respect
in which she was held, was that she was one of their own people,
her father having died minister of the parish some twenty years
before.
Comparatively little was known of her deceased cousin, who had been
much of an invalid, and had mostly kept to the house, but all had
understood that Miss Horn was greatly attached to her; and it was
for the sake of the living mainly that the dead was thus honoured.
As the prayer drew to a close, the sounds of trampling and scuffling
feet bore witness that Watty Witherspail and his assistants were
carrying the coffin down the stair. Soon the company rose to follow
it, and trooping out, arranged themselves behind the hearse, which,
horrid with nodding plumes and gold and black panelling, drew away
from the door to make room for them.
Just as they were about to move off, to the amazement of the company
and the few onlookers who, notwithstanding the weather, stood
around to represent the commonalty, Miss Horn herself, solitary,
in a long black cloak and somewhat awful bonnet, issued, and made
her way through the mourners until she stood immediately behind
the hearse, by the side of Mr Cairns, the parish minister. The next
moment, Watty Witherspail, who had his station at the further side
of the hearse, arriving somehow at a knowledge of the apparition,
came round by the horses’ heads, and with a look of positive alarm
at the glaring infringement of time-honoured customs, addressed
her in half whispered tones expostulatory:
“Ye’ll never be thinkin’ o’ gauin’ yersel’, mem!” he said.
“What for no, Watty, I wad like to ken,” growled Miss Horn from
the vaulted depths of her bonnet.
“The like was never hard tell o’!” returned Watty, with the dismay
of an orthodox undertaker, righteously jealous of all innovation.
“It’ll _be_ to tell o’ hencefurth,” rejoined Miss Horn, who in her
risen anger spoke aloud, caring nothing who heard her. “Daur _ye_
preshume, Watty Witherspail,” she went on, “for no rizzon but that
I gae you the job, an’ unnertook to pay ye for ’t--an’ that far
abune its market value,--daur ye preshume, I say, to dictate to
_me_ what I’m to du an’ what I’m no to du anent the maitter in han’?
Think ye I hae been a mither to the puir yoong thing for sae mony
a year to lat her gang awa’ her lane at the last wi’ the likes o’
_you_ for company!”
“Hoot, mem! there’s the minister at yer elbuck.”
“I tell ye, ye’re but a wheen rouch men-fowk! There’s no a wuman
amon’ ye to haud things dacent, ’cep I gang mysel’. I’m no beggin’
the minister’s pardon aither. _I’ll gang._ I _maun_ see my puir Grizel
till her last bed.”
“I dread it may be too much for your feelings, Miss Horn,” said
the minister, who being an ambitious young man of lowly origin, and
very shy of the ridiculous, did not in the least wish her company.
“Feelin’s!” exclaimed Miss Horn, in a tone of indignant repudiation;
“I’m gauin’ to du what’s richt. I s’ _gang_, and gien ye dinna like
my company, Mr Cairns, ye can gang hame, an’ I s’ gang withoot ye.
Gien she sud happen to be luikin doon, she sanna see me wantin’
at the last o’ her. But I s’ mak’ no wark aboot it. I s’ no putt
mysel’ ower forret.”
And ere the minister could utter another syllable, she had left
her place to go to the rear. The same instant the procession began
to move, corpse-marshalled, towards the grave; and stepping aside,
she stood erect, sternly eyeing the irregular ranks of two and
three and four as they passed her, intending to bring up the rear
alone. But already there was one in that solitary position: with
bowed head, Alexander Graham walked last and single. The moment he
caught sight of Miss Horn, he perceived her design, and, lifting
his hat, offered his arm. She took it almost eagerly, and together
they followed in silence, through the gusty wind and monotonous
drizzle.
The school-house was close to the churchyard. An instant hush fell upon
the scholars when the hearse darkened the windows, lasting while the
horrible thing slowly turned to enter the iron gates,-- a deep hush,
as if a wave of the eternal silence which rounds all our noises had
broken across its barriers. The mad laird, who had been present all the
morning, trembled from head to foot; yet rose and went to the door with
a look of strange, subdued eagerness. When Miss Horn and Mr Graham had
passed into the churchyard, he followed.
With the bending of uncovered heads, in a final gaze of leave-taking,
over the coffin at rest in the bottom of the grave, all that belonged
to the ceremony of burial was fulfilled; but the two facts that no one
left the churchyard, although the wind blew and the rain fell, until
the mound of sheltering earth was heaped high over the dead, and that
the hands of many friends assisted with spade and shovel, did much to
compensate for the lack of a service.
As soon as this labour was ended, Mr Graham again offered his arm to
Miss Horn, who had stood in perfect calmness watching the whole with
her eagle’s-eyes. But although she accepted his offer, instead of
moving towards the gate, she kept her position in the attitude of a
hostess who will follow her friends. They were the last to go from the
churchyard. When they reached the school-house she would have had Mr
Graham leave her, but he insisted on seeing her home. Contrary to her
habit she yielded, and they slowly followed the retiring company.
“Safe at last!” half-sighed Miss Horn, as they entered the town--
her sole remark on the way.
Rounding a corner, they came upon Mrs Catanach standing at a
neighbour’s door, gazing out upon nothing, as was her wont at times,
but talking to some one in the house behind her. Miss Horn turned
her head aside as she passed. A look of low, malicious, half-triumphant
cunning lightened across the puffy face of the _howdy_. She cocked
one bushy eyebrow, setting one eye wide open, drew down the other
eyebrow, nearly closing the eye under it, and stood looking after
them until they were out of sight. Then turning her head over her
shoulder, she burst into a laugh, softly husky with the general
flabbiness of her corporeal conditions.
“What ails ye, Mistress Catanach?” cried a voice from within.
“Sic a couple ’s yon twasum wad mak!” she replied, again bursting
into gelatinous laughter.
“Wha, than? I canna lea’ my milk parritch to come an’ luik.”
“Ow! jist Meg Horn, the auld kail-runt, an’ Sanny Graham, the
stickit minister. I wad like weel to be at the beddin’ o’ them.
Eh! the twa heids o’ them upon ae bowster!”
And chuckling a low chuckle, Mrs Catanach moved for her own door.
As soon as the churchyard was clear of the funeral-train, the mad
laird peeped from behind a tall stone, gazed cautiously around him,
and then with slow steps came and stood over the new-made grave,
where the sexton was now laying the turf, “to mak a’ snod (_trim_)
for the Sawbath.”
“Whaur is she gane till?” he murmured to himself.--He could generally
speak better when merely uttering his thoughts without attempt at
communication.--“I dinna ken whaur I cam frae, an’ I dinna ken
whaur she’s gane till; but whan I gang mysel’, maybe I’ll ken baith.
--I dinna ken, I dinna ken, I dinna ken whaur I cam frae.”
Thus muttering, so lost in the thoughts that originated them
that he spoke the words mechanically, he left the churchyard and
returned to the school, where, under the superintendence of Malcolm,
everything had been going on in the usual Saturday fashion--the
work of the day which closed the week’s labours, being to repeat a
certain number of _questions_ of the Shorter Catechism (which term,
alas! included the answers), and next to buttress them with a number
of suffering caryatids, as it were--texts of Scripture, I mean,
first petrified and then dragged into the service. Before Mr
Graham returned, every one had done his part except Sheltie, who,
excellent at asking questions for himself, had a very poor memory
for the answers to those of other people, and was in consequence
often a _keepie-in_. He did not generally heed it much, however, for
the master was not angry with him on such occasions, and they gave
him an opportunity of asking in his turn a multitude of questions
of his own.
When he entered, he found Malcolm reading _The Tempest_ and Sheltie
sitting in the middle of the waste schoolroom, with his elbows on
the desk before him, and his head and the Shorter Catechism between
them; while in the farthest corner sat Mr Stewart, with his eyes
fixed on the ground, murmuring his answerless questions to himself.
“Come up, Sheltie,” said Mr Graham, anxious to let the boy go.
“Which of the questions did you break down in to-day?”
“Please, sir, I cudna rest i’ my grave till the resurrection,”
answered Sheltie, with but a dim sense of the humour involved in
the reply.
“‘What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?’” said
Mr Graham, putting the question with a smile.
“‘The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness,
and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still
united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection,’”
replied Sheltie, now with perfect accuracy; whereupon the master,
fearing the outbreak of a torrent of counter-questions, made haste
to dismiss him.
“That’ll do, Sheltie,” he said. “Run home to your dinner.”
Sheltie shot from the room like a shell from a mortar.
He had barely vanished when Mr Stewart rose and came slowly from
his corner, his legs appearing to tremble under the weight of his
hump, which moved fitfully up and down in his futile attempts to
utter the word _resurrection_. As he advanced, he kept heaving one
shoulder forward, as if he would fain bring his huge burden to
the front, and hold it out in mute appeal to his instructor; but
before reaching him he suddenly stopped, lay down on the floor on
his back, and commenced rolling from side to side, with moans and
complaints. Mr Graham interpreted the action into the question--
How was such a body as his to rest in its grave till the resurrection
--perched thus on its own back in the coffin? All the answer he
could think of was to lay hold of his hand, lift him, and point
upwards. The poor fellow shook his head, glanced over his shoulder
at his hump, and murmured “Heavy, heavy!” seeming to imply that it
would be hard for him to rise and ascend at the last day.
He had doubtless a dim notion that all his trouble had to do with
his hump.