At this date the Casterbridge Barracks were cavalry quarters, their
adaptation to artillery having been effected some years later. It had
been owing to the fact that the ---th Dragoons, in which John Clark had
served, happened to be lying there that Selina made his acquaintance. At
the time of his death the barracks were occupied by the Scots Greys, but
when the pathetic circumstances of the sergeant-major's end became known
in the town the officers of the Greys offered the services of their fine
reed and brass band, that he might have a funeral marked by due military
honours. His body was accordingly removed to the barracks, and carried
thence to the churchyard in the Durnover quarter on the following
afternoon, one of the Greys' most ancient and docile chargers being
blacked up to represent Clark's horse on the occasion.
Everybody pitied Selina, whose story was well known. She followed the
corpse as the only mourner, Clark having been without relations in this
part of the country, and a communication with his regiment having brought
none from a distance. She sat in a little shabby brown-black mourning
carriage, squeezing herself up in a corner to be as much as possible out
of sight during the slow and dramatic march through the town to the tune
from Saul. When the interment had taken place, the volleys been fired,
and the return journey begun, it was with something like a shock that she
found the military escort to be moving at a quick march to the lively
strains of 'Off she goes!' as if all care for the sergeant-major was
expected to be ended with the late discharge of the carbines. It was, by
chance, the very tune to which they had been footing when he died, and
unable to bear its notes, she hastily told her driver to drop behind. The
band and military party diminished up the High Street, and Selina turned
over Swan bridge and homeward to Mellstock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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