The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
Page 113
Afterwards, he had to go out of the gate and hang about the road, till his eyes got un-red again: not for anything would he have let Mamma or Luce or Bowey know he had had to cry.—And it made him feel hot and prickly all over, when he went indoors, to see that somebody (Mamma most likely) had found the little tumbled polyanthers and picked it up and put it right in the middle of the bunch of violets. That hurt more than anything.
At the last moment, the doctor who was to have attended the funeral telegraphed that he was unavoidably detained. This left an empty place in the single mourning coach; and Tilly, scandalised as she was by the paucity of mourners, straightway fell to work to drape a streamer round Cuffy’s sailor-hat and sew a band on his left sleeve—she had arrived laden with gifts of crêpe and other black stuffs. Open-mouthed, aghast, Cuffy heard his doom. But, though quaking inwardly, he clenched his teeth and said not a word: just stood and let her sew him. Because of Mamma.
It was Mary, suddenly grown aware of his silent agony, who came out of her own grief to say: “No, Tilly, let the child be!. . . .I won’t have him forced. Richard would have been the last to wish it.”
But scarcely had Cuffy breathed again, when he was plunged into a fresh confusion. Men came to shut down the coffin; and then, while Mamma was saying good-bye to Papa, she suddenly burst out crying—oh, simply dreadfully! He felt himself blush over his whole body, to hear her—his Mamma!—going on like this in front of these strange people, so fierce and don’t-carish, and with her face all red and wrinkled up like a baby’s. But she didn’t seem to mind, and didn’t take a bit of notice when he poked her with his elbow and said: “Oh, hush, Mamma! They’ll hear you.” Or of Uncle Jerry either, who put his hand on her shoulder and said: “It’s all for the best, old girl—believe me, it is!” Aunt Tilly blew her nose so loud it hurt your ears, and winked and blinked with her eyes; but what she said was: “Remember, love, you’re not left quite alone; you’ve got your children. They’ll be your comfort. From now on they’ll put aside their naughty ways and be as good as gold—I know they will.” (Huh!)
The hearse stood at the door, its double row of fantastic, feathered plumes, more brown than sable from long usage and the strong sunlight, nodding in the breeze. Brownish, too, were the antique, funereal draperies that hung almost to the ground from the backs of two lean horses. The blinds in the neighbouring houses went down with a rush; and the narrow box, containing all that remained of the medley of hopes and fears, joys and sorrows and untold struggles, that had been Richard Mahony, was shouldered and carried out. The mourners—Jerry, the parson, the Bank manager—took their seats in the carriage, and the little procession got under way.
Rounding the corner and passing in turn the fire-bell, the Rechabites’ Hall and the flour-mill, hearse and coach, resembling two black smudges on empty space, set to crawling up the slope that led out of the township. From the top of this rise the road could be seen for miles, running without curve or turn through the grassy plains. About midway, in a slight dip, was visible the little fenced-in square of the cemetery, its sprinkling of white headstones forming a landmark in the bare, undulating country.
Amid these wavy downs Mahony was laid to rest.—It would have been after his own heart that his last bed was within sound of what he had perhaps loved best on earth—the open sea. A quarter of a mile off, behind a sandy ridge, the surf, driving in from the Bight, breaks and booms eternally on the barren shore. Thence, too, come the fierce winds, which, in stormy weather, hurl themselves over the land, where not a tree, not a bush, nor even a fence stands to break their force. Or to limit the outlook. On all sides the eye can range, unhindered, to where the vast earth meets the infinitely vaster sky. And, under blazing summer suns, or when a full moon floods the night, no shadow falls on the sun-baked or moon-blanched plains, but those cast by the few little stones set up in human remembrance.
All that was mortal of Richard Mahony has long since crumbled to dust. For a time, fond hands tended his grave, on which in due course a small cross rose, bearing his name, and marking the days and years of his earthly pilgrimage. But, those who had known and loved him passing, scattering, forgetting, rude weeds choked the flowers, the cross toppled over, fell to pieces and was removed, the ivy that entwined it uprooted. And, thereafter, his resting-place was indistinguishable from the common ground. The rich and kindly earth of his adopted country absorbed his perishable body, as the country itself had never contrived to make its own, his wayward, vagrant spirit.
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