"Lord, we're all crazy when it comes to things like that," returned
Lee. Before closing the door he flashed his black eyes and white
teeth at Andrew, who felt repelled.
He sat down beside the table and leaned his head upon it. To his
fancy all creation seemed to circle about that one dead man. Mr.
Lloyd had been for years the arbiter of his destiny, almost of his
life. Andrew had regarded him with almost feudal loyalty and
admiration, and lately with bitter revolt and hatred, and now he was
dead. He felt no sorrow, but rather a terrible remorse because he
felt no sorrow. All the bitter thoughts which he had ever had
against Lloyd seemed to marshal themselves before him like an
accusing legion of ghosts. And with it all there was a sense of
desolation, as if some force which had been necessary to his full
living had gone out of creation.
"It's over thirty years since I went to work under him," Andrew
thought, and he gave a dry sob. At that moment a wonderful pity and
sorrow for the dead man seemed to spring up in his soul like a
light. He felt as if he loved him.
Norman Lloyd's funeral was held in the First Baptist Church of Rowe.
It was crowded. Mr. Lloyd had been the most prominent manufacturer
and the wealthiest man in the city. His employes filled up a great
space in the body of the church.
Andrew went with his mother and wife. They arrived quite early. When
Andrew saw the employes of Lloyd's marching in, he drew a great
sigh. He looked at the solemn black thing raised on trestles before
the pulpit with an emotion which he could not himself understand.
"That man 'ain't treated me well enough for me to care anything
about him," he kept urging upon himself. "He never paid any more
attention to me than a gravel-stone under his feet; there ain't any
reason why I should have cared about him, and I don't; it can't be
that I do." Yet arguing with himself in this way, he continued to
eye the casket which held his dead employer with an unyielding
grief.
Mrs. Zelotes sat like a black, draped statue at the head of the pew,
but her eyes behind her black veil were sharply observant. She
missed not one detail. She saw everything; she counted the wreaths
and bouquets on the casket, and stored in her mind, as vividly as
she might have done some old mourning-piece, the picture of the near
relatives advancing up the aisle.
Mrs. Lloyd came leaning on her nephew's arm, and there were Cynthia
Lennox and a distant cousin, an elderly widow who had been summoned
to the house of death.
Ellen sat in the body of the church, with the employes of Lloyd's,
between Abby Atkins and Maria. She glanced up when the little
company of mourners entered, then cast her eyes down again and
compressed her lips. Maria began to weep softly, pressing her
handkerchief to her eyes. Ellen's mother had begged her not to sit
with the employes, but with her and her father and grandmother in
their own pew, but the girl had refused.
"I must sit where I belong," said she.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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