London's Heart: A NovelFarjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
General
London's Heart: A Novel
Farjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
London (England) -- Fiction
As they had nearly twenty miles to go, the coach was at the door early
in the morning. All the neighbours round about came into the street to
gaze at it and the mourners. They stood and talked in whispers. Their
sympathy was chiefly reserved for Lily and the coffin. "Hush-sh-sh!
There's the coffin. Hush-sh-sh!" as if their very whispers might
disturb the dead. Then, when Lily came out, the women shook their
heads, and said, "Poor dear! Poor dear! How pale she is! Ah, she
didn't look like that the other night at the White Rose." Presently
they expressed surprise because the children were going, but said, a
moment afterwards, "Ah, well, it will be a nice ride for them."
Gribble junior's father, master of the chandler-shop, and foe to
co-operation, having been assured by his son that his late lodger was
not to be buried by co-operation, also patronised the starting of the
funeral with his presence. He had a corrugated face, not unlike the
outside of an old walnut-shell, and it would have been difficult to
have persuaded him that there was hope of salvation for the deceased
if the coffin had been a co-operative production.
The party being large a one, a coach of an extra size had been
provided. Gribble junior rode outside the coach, with the driver; the
others, each mother with her child on her lap, and the coffin, were
inside. He liked his position on the box, and thoroughly enjoyed the
ceremony. As he sat there, he looked round with a sad gentle smile
upon his neighbours. The day was fine, and the coach moved slowly
through the narrow streets, as was befitting and proper. Common as the
sight is, everybody turns his head or pauses for a moment to look at a
coach with a coffin in it. Women come to the windows and gaze at it
with a kind of quiet fascination; dirty children suspend their games
and stand in admiration at the corners of the streets; idle
shopkeepers come to their doors in their aprons; and mothers bring
their babies to see the coach go by--truly suggestive of the cradle
and the grave. Gribble junior relished this attention on the part of
the public. He took it in some measure as a tribute to himself, and
even derived satisfaction from the thought that many of the persons
who stopped and gazed must believe him to be a near relative of the
deceased. He was as little of a hypocrite as it is in the nature of
human beings to be, but he deemed it necessary to his position to
assume a mournful demeanour; and he did so accordingly, and sighed
occasionally. When the coach got away from the narrow streets, it
moved faster. Gribble junior had brought a Cambridge blue-silk
umbrella with him, which, however, he did not open on the journey. He
and his wife and Mrs. Podmore enjoyed the ride amazingly. To escape
for a few hours from the narrow labyrinths of Soho was good; to get
into a little open country where grass and flowers were growing and
blooming was better; and to see bright colour come to the children's
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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