VI: OBSEQUIES
Death came to the old man that night, and so surprised him that he was unable to feel anything. I had been put to sleep in the same room with him and was awakened by his talking. He was delivering himself of what sounded like a lecture, but he broke off in the middle to say:
“This is very astonishing. I am going to die.”
I struck a light, and there he was lying with a smile of incredulity upon his face, and I thought that, if we were sentient beings when we were born, so and not otherwise we would accept the gift of life. So and not otherwise do we greet all manifestations of life which have not become familiar through habit.
I was grateful to the old man for giving me the key to my own frame of mind. I spoke to him, but he was dead.
His loud discourse had roused the mistress of the house who came knocking at the door, saying:
“Baffin, if you don’t behave yourself I shall come and tickle you.”
So astounded and outraged was I at this address that I leapt out of my bed, donned my kilt, and said:
“Come in, woman, and see what you have done. This learned old man, whose mind was one of the glories of the world, has been driven to his death, starved, deprived of the intellectual habits through which a long life had been——”
I got no further, for the woman flung herself upon me and tickled my sides and armpits until I shrieked. Two other women came rushing up and held me on the floor, and then with a feather they tickled my feet until I was nearly mad. I wept and cried for mercy, and at last they desisted and withdrew, leaving me with the corpse, to which they paid not the slightest attention.
The next morning I was told to dig a grave and to prepare the body for burial. There was no more ceremony than in a civilised country is given to the interment of a dog, and in the house I only heard the old man referred to twice. The youngest of the women said, “He was a dear old idiot,” but the mistress of the house shut her mouth like a trap on the words: “One the less.”
But a day or two later I found upon the grave a pretty wreath of wild flowers, and that evening under a hedge I came on a little girl, who was crying softly to herself. I had not seen her before and was puzzled to know where she came from. She said her name was Audrey and she lived at the next farm, where they were very unkind to her, and she used to meet the old man in the fields and he was very nice to her, and when she heard he was dead she wanted to die too. The men on the farm were rough and dirty, and the women were all spiteful and suspicious.
When I asked her if she had put the wreath on my old friend’s grave, she was frightened and made me promise not to tell anyone. Of course I promised, and I took her home. As we parted we engaged to meet again in the wood half-way between our two houses.