the seasons, according to the literary and artistic view of things, have been rather out of joint this year. the autumn was not a time of mellow fruitfulness at all, because all the green things upon this earth had exhausted themselves in the long hot summer, and had no more spirit left to be fruitful with. then january in england had been of the usual warm mugginess and mist which poets say are characteristic of autumn, but which in reality characterize winter. indeed, i doubt if winter was ever a time of hard frosts and sparkling snow, which is the artistic ideal, and i am disposed to believe that that version of it was really brought from germany by the prince consort, and popularized by charles dickens. then after the mists came the mellow fruitfulness, for i myself saw strawberries in flower on february 2, and on february 9 helen came in saying she had found a{248} real strawberry. that was strange enough, though perhaps the finding of an unreal strawberry would have been stranger still, so i said, ‘where?’ and she said, ‘on the strawberry beds, silly.’
therefore i started up, leaving a most important and epoch-making sentence unfinished (and i have never been able to remember what the end of it was going to be), because i wanted to see the strawberry, and write to the field about it. so she said, ‘are you going out already?’ and i said, ‘yes, just to see the strawberry, and write to the field, saying i have.’
then she pointed to half-way down her person (since we are so abstemious of words that indicate the anatomy below the throat), and said:
‘would x rays help?’
being extremely clever that morning, of course i understood, and reviled her for eating an unnatural phenomenon. it was criminal; she might as well have found the sea-serpent or the north pole, and eaten it. but as usual she was artful, and led the conversation away to daffodils, which were behaving in a manner nearly equal to that of the strawberry-plant. one, indeed,{249} was in bud (a thing incredible, but true), and i supposed she had eaten that, too. that led us back to the strawberry again, which she was not even sorry about, for she said it was far more interesting to be able to write to the field to say she had eaten a strawberry on february 9 than that i should be able to say i had seen it. so i very kindly gave her my pen, and said:
‘write quickly.’
she said:
‘oh, but i am only a woman; i can’t. they wouldn’t put it in.’
‘i wish you hadn’t put the strawberry in,’ said i.
‘i think i shall wish that, too, before long,’ said she.
i only mention this in order to show the utter unreasonableness of my wife. if i want to write to the field, and say there was a strawberry in my garden on february 9, she will allow me to say that though i did not see it, she ate it. (she certainly would not have eaten it if i had seen it.) but she will not write to say she ate it, like a true woman. she says it does not matter, but added with a{250} changed voice that she was afraid it might. it did, for the fruitfulness of the season was not so mellow as might have been wished.
yes, once again spring has begun to stir in the fiery heart of the world; once again the breath of life blows the embers that seemed all winter to be but grey and lifeless cinders, and from the centre the glow spreads, till that grey surface of ash is alive with flame again. and as the flames shoot upwards they are like rockets, rising from over the whole face of the world. at present they are but going upwards, those slender lines of flame, which are the sap that is rising through branch and leafless stem until it reaches the very ends of the twigs. then these rockets will burst in stars of leaf and opening flower, till the vast illumination is again complete. but in the warm soft february morning, though i feel and know that this is so, i cannot help my thoughts going back to the other side of things. what of the illumination of last year? it is quenched dead, and even while the world is getting ready for the next one there still lie broadcast the ashes and fallen{251} sticks of the last rocket-shower. however many more gladden the world, even though to all infinity life was incessantly and beautifully renewed, yet i cannot forgive the perishing of a single flower. i know well that the material is indestructible, that of life and the death of it is born fresh life, so that we are quite right to say that life cannot be destroyed. but what of the individual rose, what of that one purple star of clematis that twinkled on the end of the stem i hold in my hand? though it may be transformed, and will be transformed, into a myriad other things, so that by its death it is transfused into a hundred other flowers, and courses through the veins of life for ever, yet it, that individual object, will be seen no more. its individuality is completely lost; it figures in new forms, not its own.
it is quite certain also that the same things happen to our bodies. the grass grows thick on the graves of those we have loved, and the roots of the roses penetrate deep. i saw once on the crumbling, sea-devoured east coast of england the thing itself under my very eyes, which made it real to me in a way that nothing{252} had ever done before. for a churchyard stood there on the very edge of the sandy cliff, and one night, with noise of huge murmurous thunder, an acre of it slid down into the sea. next morning i visited the place, and there, sticking out of the cliff, were the bones of the dead that had been buried there. a ruin of roses that had sprawled and trumpeted over the churchyard gate, which had been plucked in half by the fall, lay on the ground, and i wondered how the trees had not slipped with the rest of the landslide, until i saw. their roots had lain just where the fracture of the earth occurred, and in the exposed face of the new cliff i saw their anchorage. one was wrapped round a thigh-bone, another had made a network among ribs ... it was all horrible and revolting. and that has happened to the million dead who have lived and loved, whose limbs have been swift to move, who have drawn rapturous, long breaths of this keen sea-scented air, whose eyes have been bright and mouths eager when they met, lover and beloved. this is all—this ruin of red roses on the grass.
there is nothing in the world more certain{253} than this, and one may as well face it. helen will die, and i shall die, and one of us will die first. and the other will sometimes see a grave with the grass green over it, and roses triumphant thereon. for we have settled most things at one time or another, she and i, and the manner of our funerals and what happens after has passed under discussion. we have decided definitely against cremation, because it seems such a waste of tissue, and we are both of us going to be properly buried, the one close to the other so that the same rose may bloom from us both. but she will have roses and strawberries on her grave, so that the sunday-school children may pluck and eat them, while i, on the other hand, am going to be a spring-man, and have daffodils, for i feel no leaning, as i have said, towards sunday-schools. here lies the difficulty: she wants a rich clayey soil for her roses and strawberries, and my daffodils will demand not clay but sand. also she is going to plant purple clematis by my head, and clematis likes sand too. we have not yet perfectly decided where we are going to die, but it seems probable that the survivor will stay in the same place as{254} the survived. but i want purple clematis, since it was when i saw that that i knew somebody whom i had thought to be a friend was false. indeed, i have done all i could to forgive, but i think a clematis that feeds on me may make it surer.
our funerals will shock the neighbourhood, i am afraid. i am going to have the a flat fugue and prelude blared on the organ (it is time somebody began to learn to play) at that distressing moment when my coffin is wheeled out of the church, simply to show that i have enjoyed myself enormously. great heaven! i should as soon think of having a dead march of whatever kind played over me as i should let them play the works of mr. mendelssohn. i shall have had (whatever happens) an immensely good time. it seems to me much fitter to return thanks for that than to remind people that my poor body is dead, which they knew already, or why did they come to my funeral service? as for requiems, i will have none of them. whatever happens, i, my body at least, cannot possibly lie quiet in my grave. the dear flowers planted there will see to that.{255}
oh, my god, my god, what unanswerable riddles you set us! even this body, and what happens to it, is so occupying a subject. i don’t really care what happens to mine: it may be set up in an anatomical museum if it will teach anybody anything; but helen’s.... somehow, when i come out of the valley of the shadow, something of that must wait for her; or, if she has gone through that passage first, i shall not know myself unless at the end of it, when the darkness lifts a little, i shall see grey eyes looking at the procession of those passing over, and meeting mine, and saying somehow, ‘i am here.’ she must be there (is it not so?) waiting on the eternal shore for me.
there she must be. i can’t help what i believe; that is the one thing in oneself which one can never change. and dick will be there, and margery ... what a splendid day!
then the one horrible certainty descended on me again. in so few years we shall all—our bodies, i mean, the appearance by which we recognize each other—not be our bodies at all, but part of the fibre of other living things{256} which are having their day, even as we have had ours. it is so now with dick and margery, so how shall i know them? are they to be just voices in the air, presences that are felt? is that all? shall i never see again that quiver on margery’s mouth, which means that a smile is ready to break from it? i don’t want incorporeal presences. i want dick and his crooked nose, and margery’s smile....
then, on this warm february morning i must suppose that i went down into hell. dead leaves and flowers, it was certain, were transformed into fresh living forms, the bones, too, and flesh of dead animals, and of men and women, passed again into the great machine of life, and were served up in new transformations, so that of the individual body nothing at all was left. that is bad enough; i shall never see margery and dick again as i used to see them. helen will pass, too, into other forms ... that is bad enough. but this is infinitely worse. what of the individual soul, the spirit that we love? will that, too, as analogy grimly insists, be put back again into the principle of eternal life from which it came, so that its identity, too,{257} is lost, and lives but only as the autumn leaves of last year live in the verdure of the next spring? with everything else that happens; the bodies of those we love even, a cruel thing surely, but certainly true, are used up again to make fresh forms of life. why should we suppose that god makes any exception in dealing with the souls of men, the individuals? every other form of life he uses and re-uses ... the world is but a lump of modelling clay, with which he beguiles the leisure of eternity, making now one shape, then crushing it all up and making another.
so this is all that the promise of eternal life amounts to, that we shall pass back into the crucible, and issue forth again as bits of somebody else! it seems to me a very mean affair; frankly, it seems a swindle. it is a poor trick to make us puny little creatures love one another, and try to be kind, and console ourselves for the evil days and the sorrows of the world with thoughts of the everlasting day that shall dawn for us all, if that everlasting day is nothing more than the day that is here already; if the souls whom we have believed{258} are at rest in some ineffable peace and content, or, on the other hand, through further suffering are getting nearer, ever nearer, to the perfection and flower of their being, have already passed into other forms of life, so that dante and beatrice are themselves no longer (as we should call ‘themselves’), but have been infinitely divided into soldiers, sailors, tinkers, and tailors. in that sense they may be said to be alive still, but it is a very paltry sense. they (what we mistakenly call ‘they’) are as dead as if they had never been.
it is all very well to say that dante is immortal by reason of his deathless verse; that is all very well for us, but how is it for that fiery soul which is split up into a thousand other bodies? when he thought to open his eyes on the mystical rose as the dark waves of death slowly drew back from his emancipated spirit, it was all a dismal mistake. no beatrice awaited him; she, too, is split into a million other forms of life. they were absorbed back into the central fire, and a spark of dante’s soul went into this man, and another into that, so that in this sense there is eternal life for him.{259} but in no other; the dante which we mean was formed out of other lives, and into other lives he went. the man is there no more, and there is no beatrice. there will be nothing of us either, unless you mean that at some future time i am alive because part of me has become perhaps a murderer, and another part a politician, and another a housemaid, for all i know.
the february sun was warm; you might almost call it hot. a little wind pregnant with spring moved through the bushes; the snowdrops, those pale heralds of the triumphant march of the new year, were thick in the grass where we had planted them, helen and i, last autumn, so that they should give us the earliest news of the returning tide of life. and to me this morning they brought but bitter news, for they spoke not of the returning of life, but of the thousand deaths which made them alive. they pointed not forwards towards the glory of the many-coloured summer, but back to the innumerable decay of the autumn. and the quiet garden which i loved, the tiled mossy roof which i had called home, became the place of death, even as last autumn death had called to{260} me from it, and had been seen by legs, and had made the dog howl. was it this that was hinted at by those dim forebodings which for months had never been absent from me? was the fear that crouched in the shadow ready to spring taking form now? it seemed to me that the logic which had turned the world to hell was irrefutable; i expected some shattering stroke that should blot out sunshine and sensation from me for ever, proving that i and my logic were right. i had guessed the horrid secret of the world; i was like a spy found with the plans of the enemy’s fortress on me, and must die, lest i should communicate them. i said that to myself; i said ‘enemy’s fortress,’ meaning the world where i had loved and been loved. ‘enemy,’ mark you; i knew what i meant. the world was the enemy’s fortress.
and then, thank god—oh! thank god!—before that which was impending happened, i said to myself that i was wrong. i did not at the moment see where i was wrong, but i knew that i must have made some gross and awful mistake. things could not be as i had imagined them. and the moment i said that{261} to myself the darkness lifted a little. it was all dark still, but the quality of the darkness changed. and then, unbidden as a tune that suddenly rings in one’s head, a few words made themselves recollected. and they were, ‘if i go down into hell, thou art there also.’
at that i caught a glimpse again of this dear garden and house, as i had seen and known them. i do not suppose that this blackness and loneliness of spirit which i have tried to indicate could have lasted more than a few minutes, as measured in the world of time, but time has nothing to do with the spirit. in a second, as computed by the unmeaning scale of hours and days, the soul may live a thousand lifetimes or die a thousand deaths. redemption may be wrought there in an infinitesimal fraction of a moment, or in that same fraction a soul may damn itself. for it is not the moment which is anything: it is the instantaneous choice which therein sums up the infinite series of deeds which one has already done, and thoughts which one has harboured. and the message that leaps round the world on electric wires is a sluggard to choice. my{262} choice at this moment was between the truth of what i had been elaborately thinking out and the truth of the words that rang in my head. there was reason on one side; there was just it on the other. and what was ‘it’? just that which, very faintly, but quite audibly, said that i had come near to blasphemy. there are many names for it: we all know its visitation, though it is obscured sometimes because we encourage the devil, who comes to us all in many forms, and can take the most respectable disguises, like those of intellect and mind. but perhaps the simplest name and the truest for it is the grace of god.
then, in the same moment (i am lumbering in words, and trying to express what i know cannot be said), i saw that helen was already half-way across the grass, coming towards me. she held a telegraphic sheet in her hand, and there was in her face a gravity infinitely tender, and quite quiet, and quite normal. i had seen it there once before, when the news came of her father’s death, which was sudden.
‘legs won’t come down this afternoon,’ she said gently. ‘we have got to go up to him.{263}’
and then she showed me the telegram.
it was not many hours before we knew all there was to be known. legs had started to ride down from town, and turning into the king’s road from sloane square his motor bicycle had skidded, and he had fallen under an omnibus. a wheel had passed over him.
he had a letter or two, which identified him, in his pockets, and he had been taken, since it was so near, back to the house in sloane street. when we got there he was still alive.
his room was at the back of the house, and we were allowed to go in at once. he lay there, quite unconscious, and in no pain, for the only thing that could be done for him was to keep him like that. the bedclothes were not allowed to touch him, and a round wooden frame was under them. there was no hope at all.
his bed ran out into the middle of the room, and helen and i sat one on each side of it, while a little distance off was the doctor, who just watched him. sometimes he got up and looked at him, sometimes he softly left the{264} room, returning as quietly. and in those hours of waiting, for a long time i was conscious of nothing except the trivial details of the room itself. i suppose i had been there before—ah! yes, of course, i had, when legs had the influenza in the winter—but it was not familiar. yet it was just like what i should have expected leg’s room to be, and in a moment i found i knew it as well as i knew him. there was a pile of letters on the writing-table, a bag of golf-clubs in the corner, an enormous sponge on the washing-stand, and on the dressing-table a most elaborate shaving apparatus—a metal bowl, a little etna for hot water, a half-dozen razor blades in a neat case, with a sort of mowing-machine handle. he had not packed them, since he was only going to be with us for a couple of days, and he could never have used all those blades once each on that smooth chin....
he had been, as i remembered now, to a fancy-dress ball the night before, and his wardrobe, gaping open, showed the hose and ruffles of the elizabethan period, while hanging up by them was a small pointed beard and a high{265} head-top, with long and rather scanty brown hair. ‘for the point is,’ legs had said rather shrilly, ‘everyone will say, “shakespeare, i presume?” and i shall say, “how dare you! i am hall caine!” and if some people are a little cleverer and say, “‘the bondman,’ i suppose?” i shall say, “you seem to have forgotten william shakespeare.” perhaps you don’t think it funny. but then, you see, you are not going to the ball.’
no; we had not thought it very funny, and legs had been rather ruffled. he told us we had spoiled his pleasure, but if so, it must have very quickly become unspoiled again, for—it was only a week ago that he had conceived that idea—he spent a boisterously hilarious evening afterwards. but, how i wish we had not spoiled his pleasure even for that moment! as if it mattered whether it was funny or not, so long as it amused him. helen had said it was rather a cheap sort of joke.... and just then her eyes, too, saw the fancy dress hanging up in the wardrobe, and the moment afterwards she looked across to me. and then she left the{266} room for a little while. she, too, i am sure, had thought of that.
i had a friend once who was killed in a railway accident. a year afterwards i was staying with his mother, and one evening, when we were alone, she began crying gently. ‘jim took his lunch with him to eat in the train that day,’ she said to me soon, and he had asked me to put him up an orange. but i forgot.’
that is the pathos of little things. yes, you dear soul, weep a little over the forgotten orange, and let helen weep a little because she said leg’s joke was cheap. and then let us think of the bigger things—the love and the loving-kindness that have been ours, that bright, boyish spirit that made mirth in the home. even now let us try to thank god for what has been. you know what legs was to us—a sort of son, a sort of brother.
all that afternoon we sat there, hearing london rumble distantly around us, and little stirrings and creakings came from different parts of the room. now the blind flapped, now a curtain sighed, or, as often happens in spring{267}-time, a board of the flooring gave a little sharp rap, some infinitesimal particle of sap still lingering in it, perhaps, and hearing the heralds of spring blowing their horns outside. only from the bed there came no sound at all: he was still sunk deep in that sleep which the doctor hoped would join and be one with death. if he woke at all, there was a chance that he would suffer blinding, excruciating pain. on the other hand, he might come to himself, just at the last moment of all, when pain would be already passed.
the doctor was saying this in the hushed whisper with which we speak in the chamber of death, though there may be no real reason why we should not speak openly, when i heard a little stir from the bed, and, looking round, i saw that leg’s eyes were open, and that he was moving them this way and that, as if in search of something. helen had seen, too, and next moment she was by him. he recognized her, for there was welcome in his eyes, and then, turning his head a little, he saw me. the doctor meantime had moved to the head of the bed and looked at leg’s face very intently.{268} then he made a little sign to me that i should come up to the bed, and he himself went and stood by the window, looking out.
and i understood.
then legs spoke in his ordinary voice.
‘wasn’t it bad luck?’ he said. my bicycle skidded, and the omnibus——
‘what is happening to me?’ he asked quickly. ‘is it——’
helen laid her hand on his head.
‘yes, my darling,’ she said. ‘but you are not afraid, are you?’
for a moment the pupils of his eyes contracted; then they grew quite normal again.
‘no,’ he said quickly. ‘i’ve had an awfully good time. oh, and it was a great success—shakespeare, you know.’
then a shadow seemed to pass over his face and his eyelids fluttered.
‘now? is it coming now?’ he said.
‘yes, my darling,’ said she again, and kissed him.
legs lay quite still for a moment with closed eyes. then he quickly opened them again, and made as if he would raise his head.{269}
‘buck up, you two, won’t you?’ he said.
from outside there came the dim roar of london, and little noises crept about the room. but from the bed came no sound at all.
two days afterwards we went down home again, arriving in the evening, and the body rested that night in his own room down here, to be taken next day to the churchyard, which the sun blesses more than any other place i have ever seen, and over which the grey norman tower keeps watch. his last charge to us had been to ‘buck up,’ and i do not know how it was, but it seemed to us both as if he was still liking us to ‘buck up.’ so, in so far as we found it possible, we did what legs wished us to do.
but to-night he would have been here, making the third of a merry table, and when the servants had come in for the last time, bringing us coffee, it was not possible not to remember that, and helen rose. and when she spoke, her voice trembled.
‘is it very foolish of me?’ she asked. ‘and do you think legs will mind? but i feel as if{270} i can’t face to-morrow, unless i go and look at the place where we shall put him. it is quite warm outside, jack. oh, let us go out and look at it. it will seem more natural then. i think i shall “buck up” better if i see it first.’
so we went across the garden, and through the place of roses, and through the gate on the far side, and through the field which bounded the churchyard. there was a great yellow moon just risen, and shadows were sharp-cut, so that there was no doubt when we came to the place that had been so newly dug. his uncle, helen’s father, lay there; the two graves were side by side.
so we sat there in silence for some time, very still, for a rat ran on to the mound of earth by the graveside, and sat there, smartening itself up, brushing its face and whiskers with nimble paws. the shadow of the tower swung just clear of the place, and sharp-cut in the light was that oblong hole in the ground. there was nothing as yet to be said, for helen was crying quietly to herself, and i could not stay those loving tears. once she said to me: ‘oh, let us buck up!’ but then she silently wept again.{271}
you see, i know helen. i knew that there was nothing of bitterness in her crying. tears of that sort were not opposed to the bucking up. legs did not mean that he wanted us not to miss his dear companionship. he only wanted us to stand up and be cheery, not be bitter or broken. but since helen felt she could face to-morrow better if she faced the scene of it, why, that was all right; it was bucking up.
then in a few little sentences we talked of the next day. there should be the a flat fugue—no funeral march—and we would have no funeral hymns, but just one psalm, ‘the lord is my shepherd,’ and one hymn after all that had to be done was over; so then we would sing ‘adeste fideles,’ helen thought, for it is always christmas since the first christmas day.
helen just moved as she sat there on the edge of his grave when we had settled this as if to go home again, but——
and then i told her all that i had thought three mornings ago—all the doubts that merged into certainty, all the logical conclusions. whether i then at that moment inclined more to the side of the devil or of{272} god i do not know, but in any case i told her all; and then she put her arms round me.
‘yes, dear,’ she said, ‘but in hell he is there also. and we are all there sometimes, and it is but the lowest step of the beautiful stair to heaven.’
the moon had swung behind the tower, and we sat in the darkness of its shadow.
‘it is all so simple,’ she said. ‘it all depends upon what you believe, not what you think or what you reason about. do you believe that we bury legs to-morrow? do you believe that he is dead, or that he has ceased to be an individual? you may reason about it, and ask me, as you asked yourself, how you will recognize him if his body has become grass and flowers? i am quite content to say that i have no idea. you see, one doesn’t know all god’s plans quite completely, and sometimes we are apt to think that if one doesn’t know plans about a certain thing he hasn’t got one. we put our intelligence above his. that is a mistake.’
and we sat in silence again; then helen spoke asking me an extremely simple question.{273}
‘what does faith mean if you are right about it?’ she said.
‘it means nothing. it is without meaning.’
‘and are you prepared to abide by that?’
again there was silence. she sat a little apart from me, so that her questions came from the darkness; they were put impersonally, so to speak, not by helen, but just by a voice.
‘do you believe that margery and dick are nothing now except grass and flowers, and perhaps a little bit of the lives of other people? do you really believe it? and is legs nothing now?’
it was quite still. we had come to a very sequestered corner of the great house of life to talk about these things. in front was the shadow of the grave, and over it now lay the shadow of the tower. once from the grave’s side a few pebbles detached themselves and fell rattling to the bottom, and i had no answer to this. three days ago i had asked myself the same questions, and what i call my brain answered them; but now it gave no answer. something, i suppose, had made it uncertain.
‘how can the wheel of an omnibus hurt{274} legs?’ she asked. ‘it can do no more than hurt his body.’
then she came closer to me again.
‘and what does love mean?’ she said.
i think legs must have enjoyed his funeral next day, because it was so extremely funny, and i think by this time that you know enough about him and helen and me to allow us all to be amused at it. we had sent a note to our vicar saying that we should like the a flat prelude, and the psalm, and the hymn which i have mentioned. he came in person, not to remonstrate, but to put on to us the correcter attitude. death was a solemn occasion. there was none so solemn, and the hymns ancient and modern provided some very suitable verses to be sung—‘now the labourer’s task is o’er,’ for instance. (legs a labourer, who was the most gorgeous player at life that has ever been seen!) besides, surely a christmas hymn was out of place, when it would be ash wednesday in no time. i said feebly that a christmas hymn was surely always in place; but dear mr. eversley looked pained, and helen at once yielded. she{275} was sure that the ‘labourer’s task’ was most suitable.
then about the psalm. there were two psalms already provided for the burial service, and surely ‘“the lord is my shepherd” struck a different note.’ so said our vicar. that was undeniable. and when should we sing that psalm? then helen was firm, and said that we thought we should go back into church at the end of the service, and—well, just sing it. it was rather good to end with. but mr. eversley looked even more pained than before. he had never heard of such a thing being done. that point was left undecided for the moment, for there was clearly something even more crucial to come.
it came.
ever since the organist had heard of legs’ death he had been most diligent at chopin’s funeral march, of which he had of his own initiative bought a copy in order to be able to perform it. the organist in question, who was also the schoolmaster, had had a sort of distant adoration for legs ever since a year ago he had seen him drive a golf-ball two hundred and sixty{276} measured yards. since then legs had played with him once or twice, giving him enormous odds, and the distant adoration had ripened into a nearer one. ‘he was such a pleasant young gentleman,’ was the upshot of it. and the dear man had bought chopin’s funeral march, since he wanted to play something ‘more uncommon’ than the dead march in ‘saul’!
here helen and i were completely at one. there should be no a flat preludes; it was to be chopin’s funeral march.
there remained the question of the twenty-third psalm. oh yes, it would strike a different note, that was quite true; so there would be no going back into church, but we should have chopin’s funeral march and ‘now the labourer’s task is o’er.’
the vicar did not exactly beam when these things were settled, but he was visibly relieved. he shook hands with us both, and said:
‘terribly sudden, terribly sudden. at two precisely.’
(oh, legs, how you would have enjoyed that! we did, too, for you told us to buck up. and it was so funny, after all we had planned!){277}
the vicar’s call had been made quite early, and it was scarcely twelve when he went away; but to us both it seemed as if legs had been waiting somewhere upstairs till he went in order to laugh over it with us. it was as if he had been waiting on the landing, fresh from his bath, with just a dressing-gown on, so that he could not appear when other people were there, but might come down barefooted when they had gone. he must have been so amused at it. how he would skip into the drawing-room, afraid of prowling housemaids, to find us alone, and say, ‘sorry i haven’t got much on, but i had to come down after my bath.’ yes, after his bath. it was so that it seemed to us. that wholesome spirit had been washed, we thought, by what is called death. it was fresher, more jubilant than ever. and on the vicar’s departure down he came to join us again. i have no other words for it.
there was more to come, for hardly had the vicar gone when it was announced to us that mr. holmes had called, and might he see one of us for a moment only. i felt that legs was{278} cornered now. he would have to stop here, hide behind the piano or something. i hoped he would behave himself, and not make me laugh. so mr. holmes came in.
i never saw anybody so wonderfully attired. he was all in black, including his gloves and his stick, and above his small neat buttoned boots when he sat down i saw a black sock. that may only have been accidental, but no accident would account for the fact that his cuffs had a neat black border about half an inch wide. i wondered if he had blacked himself all over like the enthusiastic impersonator of othello.
he had ventured to intrude on our grief, but only for a moment. here helen dropped her handkerchief, and they both bent down to pick it up and knocked their heads together, and i almost thought i heard a little stifled gasp from behind the piano. but mr. holmes had received no notice of the funeral, which he had understood was to be to-day, and did not know if we wished it to be quite private; if not, he would esteem it a privilege to be allowed to pay his last respects. and here little mr. holmes gave a great gulp, and could not get on.
‘i did like him so much,’ he said, after a moment. ‘two. thank you, i can let myself out!’
and he walked away on tiptoe, as if it was most important not to make a noise.
it was one of those sparkling february days, sunny and windless, and the air was full of the chirruping of birds. there was a moment’s pause at the gate of the churchyard, a moment’s silence. inside the church the organ ceased; then came great simple words:
‘i am the resurrection and the life.’
