Cornwall (England : County) -- Fiction; Short stories
"We walked a few paces together as far as the green knoll that
I have described as overhanging Eucalyptus, and there I halted to
wait for the funeral, while Captain Bill went on to the Necropolis
to make sure that the grave was ready and all arrangements complete.
The procession was not due to start for another quarter of an hour,
so I found a comfortable boulder and sat down to smoke a pipe.
Right under me stretched the deserted main street, and in the
hush of the morning--it was just the middle of the Indian summer,
and the air all sunny and soft--I could hear the billiard balls
click-click-clicking as usual, and the players' voices breaking in at
intervals, and the banjoes tinkling away down the street from saloon
to saloon. These and the distant chatter of the river were all the
sounds; and the river's chatter seemed hardly so persistent and
monotonous as the voices of the saloons and the unceasing question--"
'Was it weary there
In the wilderness?
Was it weary-y-y, 'way down in Goshen?'
"Suddenly, far down the street, there was a stir, and from the door
of No. 67 half a dozen men came staggering out into the sunshine
under a black coffin, which they carried shoulder high; and behind
came two figures only--those of Miss Montmorency and the architect--
arm in arm. The bearers wheeled round, got into step after one or
two attempts, and the procession advanced.
"And I observed, as it advanced, that a hush came slowly with it,
closing on the click of the balls and the strumming of the banjoes,
as from saloon after saloon the players stepped out and fell in at
the tail of the procession. Gradually these noises were penned into
the three or four saloons immediately beneath me; and then these,
too, were silenced, and the mourners began to climb the hill.
"I did not attend the funeral after all. I rose and stood hat in
hand as it climbed past--the coffin, the one woman, and the many men.
It was grotesque enough. Flo had on the same outrageous costume she
had worn at our first meeting; but a look at the black drapery of the
coffin sanctified _that_. One mourner, in pure absence of mind, had
brought along his billiard-cue as a walking-stick; and every now and
then would step out of the ranks and distribute whacks among the five
or six dogs that frisked alongside the procession. But I read on
every face the consciousness that Eucalyptus was doing its duty.
"So they climbed past and up to the Necropolis, and filed in between
its two pillars. I could see among the pines a group or two
standing, with bent heads, and Captain Bill towering beside the
grave; at times I heard his voice lifted, but could not catch the
words. Down in the town for a while all was silent as death.
Then in a saloon below some boy--left behind, no doubt, to look after
the house--took up a banjo and began to pick out slowly and with one
finger the tune of ''Way down upon the Suwanee River,' and as it went
I fitted the words to it:"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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