For haste, for unadulterated despatch, commend me to the county burying.
The body politic is busy and has no time to waste on an inert human
body. It does its duty to its own interest and to the pauper dead when
the body is dropped with all celerity into the ground. The county is
philosophical: it says, "Poor devil, the world was unkind to him: he 'll
be glad to get out of it: we 'll be doing him a favour to put him at the
earliest moment out of sight and sound and feeling of the things that
wounded him. Then, too, the quicker the cheaper, and that will make it
easier on the taxpayers." This latter is so comforting! So the order is
written, the funeral is rushed through, and the county goes home to its
dinner, feeling well satisfied with itself,--so potent are the
consolations of philosophy at so many hundreds per year.
To this general order poor Margaret's funeral proved no exception. The
morning after her decease she was shrouded and laid in her cheap pine
coffin to await those last services which, in a provincial town, are the
meed of saint and sinner alike. The room in which she lay was very
clean,--unnaturally so,--from the attention of Miss Prime. Clean muslin
curtains had been put up at the windows, and the one cracked mirror
which the house possessed had been covered with white cloth. The
lace-like carpet had been taken off the floor, and the boards had been
scrubbed white. The little stove in the corner, now cold, was no longer
red with rust. In a tumbler on a little table at Margaret's head stood
the only floral offering that gave a touch of tenderness to the grim
scene,--a bunch of home-grown scarlet and white geraniums. Some woman
had robbed her wintered room of this bit of brightness for the memory of
the dead. The perfume of the flowers mingled heavily with the faint
odour which pervades the chamber of death,--an odour that is like the
reminiscence of sorrow.
Like a spirit of order, with solemn face and quiet tread, Miss Hester
moved about the room, placing one thing here, another there, but ever
doing or changing something, all with maidenly neatness. What a
childish fancy this is of humanity's, tiptoeing and whispering in the
presence of death, as if one by an incautious word or a hasty step might
wake the sleeper from such deep repose!
The service had been set for two o'clock in the afternoon. One or two
women had already come in to "sit," but by half-past one the general
congregation began to arrive and to take their places. They were mostly
women. The hour of the day was partially responsible for this; but then
men do not go to funerals anyway, if they can help it. They do not
revel, like their sisters, in the exquisite pleasure of sorrow. Most of
the women had known pain and loss themselves, and came with ready
sympathy, willing, nay, anxious to be moved to tears. Some of them came
dragging by one hand children, dressed stiffly, uncomfortably, and
ludicrously,--a medley of soiled ribbons, big collars, wide bows, and
very short knickerbockers. The youngsters were mostly curious and
ill-mannered, and ever and anon one had to be slapped by its mother into
snivelling decorum. Mrs. Davis came in with one of her own children and
leading the dead woman's boy by the hand. At this a buzz of whispered
conversation began.
"Pore little dear," said one, as she settled the bow more securely
under her own boy's sailor collar,--"pore little dear, he 's all alone
in the world."
"I never did see in all my life sich a young child look so sad," said
another.
"H'm!" put in a third; "in this world pore motherless childern has
plenty o' reason to look sad, I tell you."
She brushed the tears off the cheek of her little son whom she had
slapped a moment before. She was tender now.
One woman bent down and whispered into her child's ear as she pointed
with one cotton-gloved finger, "See, Johnny, see little Freddie, there;
he 'ain't got no mother no more. Pore little Freddie! ain't you sorry
fur him?" The child nodded, and gazed with open-eyed wonder at "little
Freddie" as if he were of a new species.
The curtains, stirred by the blast through the loose windows, flapped
dismally, and the people drew their wraps about them, for the fireless
room was cold. Steadily, insistently, the hive-like drone of
conversation murmured on.
"I wonder who 's a-goin' to preach the funeral," asked one.
"Oh, Mr. Simpson, of the Methodist Church, of course: she used to go to
that church years ago, you know, before she backslid."
"That 's jest what I 've allus said about people that falls from grace.
You know the last state o' that man is worse than the first."
"Ah, that 's true enough."
"It 's a-puttin' yore hand to the ploughshare an' then turnin' back."
"I wonder what the preacher 'll have to say fur her. It 's a mighty hard
case to preach about."
"I 'm wonderin' too what he 'll say, an' where he 'll preach her."
"Well, it 's hard to tell. You know the Methodists believe that there 's
'salvation to be found between the stirrup an' the ground.'"
"It 's a mighty comfortin' doctern, too."
"An' then they do say that she left some dyin' testimony; though I
'ain't never heerd tell the straight of it."
"He can't preach her into heaven, o' course, after her life. Leastways
it don't hardly seem like it would be right an' proper."
"Well, I don't think he kin preach her into hell, neither. After a
woman has gone through all that pore Margar't has, it seems to me that
the Lord ought to give her some consideration, even if men don't."
"I do declare, Seely Matthews, with yore free thinkin' an' free
speakin', you 're put' nigh a infidel."
"No, I ain't no infidel, neither, but I ain't one o' them that sings,
'When all thy mercies, O my God,' and thinks o' the Lord as if He was a
great big cruel man."
"Well, I don't neither; but--"
"'Sh! 'sh!"
The woman's declaration of principle was cut short by the entrance of
the minister, the Rev. Mr. Simpson. He was a tall, gaunt man, in a coat
of rusty black. His hair, of an indeterminate colour, was slightly mixed
with grey. A pair of bright grey eyes looked out from underneath bushy
eyebrows. His lips were close set. His bony hands were large and
ungainly. The Rev. Mr. Simpson had been a carpenter before he was
"called." He went immediately to the stand where lay the Bible and
hymn-book. He was followed by a man who had entered with him,--a man
with soft eyes and a kindly face. He was as tall as the pastor, and
slender, but without the other's gauntness. He was evidently a church
official of some standing.
With strange inappropriateness, the preacher selected and gave out the
hymn:
Sister, thou wast mild and lovely,
Gentle as the summer's breeze.
With some misgivings, it was carried through in the wavering treble of
the women and the straggling bass of the few men: then the kindly-faced
man, whom the preacher addressed as "Brother Hodges," knelt and offered
prayer. The supplication was very tender and childlike. Even by the
light of faith he did not seek to penetrate the veil of divine
intention, nor did he throw his javelin of prayer straight against the
Deity's armour of eternal reserve. He left all to God, as a child lays
its burden at its father's feet, and many eyes were moist as the people
rose from their knees.
The sermon was a noisy and rather inconsequential effort. The preacher
had little to say, but he roared that little out in a harsh, unmusical
voice accompanied by much slapping of his hands and pounding of the
table. Towards the end he lowered his voice and began to play upon the
feelings of his willing hearers, and when he had won his meed of sobs
and tears, when he had sufficiently probed old wounds and made them
bleed afresh, when he had conjured up dead sorrows from the grave, when
he had obscured the sun of heavenly hope with the vapours of earthly
grief, he sat down, satisfied.
The people went forward, some curiously, some with sympathy, to look
their last on the miserable dead. Mrs. Davis led the weeping child
forward and held him up for a last gaze on his mother's face. The poor
geraniums were wiped and laid by the dead hands, and then the undertaker
glided in like a stealthy, black-garmented ghost. He screwed the
pine-top down, and the coffin was borne out to the hearse. He clucked to
his horses, and, with Brother Hodges and the preacher in front, and Mrs.
Davis, Miss Prime, and the motherless boy behind, the little funeral
train moved down the street towards the graveyard, a common but pathetic
spectacle.
Mrs. Warren had remained behind to attend to the house. She watched the
short procession out of sight. "I guess Margar't did n't have no linen
worth havin'," she said to herself, "but I 'll jest look." And look she
did, but without success. In disappointment and disgust she went out and
took the streamer of dusty black and dingy white crape from the door
where it had fluttered, and, bringing it in, laid it on the empty
trestles, that the undertaker might find it when he came for them. She
took the cloth off the mirror, and then, with one searching look around
to see that she had missed nothing worth taking, she went out, closing
and locking the door behind her.
"I guess I 'm as much entitled to anything Mag had as any one else,"
said Mrs. Warren.