His lips seemed to move as if in some request.
"'The peace of God, which passeth all understanding,'" began mother, in a broken voice.
There was a long silence in the room, and then a sound: it was a sob from our mother's heavy heart.
His voice was still forever.
CHAPTER XL.
On the day of father's funeral the sun shone and all the summer had come back. Against a pale, fair sky, dashed with softest clouds, golden boughs of elms made delicate metallic traceries, and crimson creepers shot like flames across the gray walls of sober cottages. Even passing birds had not all deserted us, and swallows swept again around the ancient ivied aisles of the old cathedral, under whose shadows we laid him away in the earth.
We put him under the yew-trees beside our little brother John, with his face towards the sun's setting behind the pine-trees; every one said it was a beautiful place for him to rest in; and Joyce wept her simple, silent tears over the hopeful words spoken by the Rev. Cyril Morland, whom mother had chosen to read the service. But as for me, my heart was too hot and rebellious to shed any tears or to see any hope or comfort; I hated the sun for shining so brightly, the world for being so fair, and folk for thinking it natural enough that an old man should come to an end of his life.
Yes, they spoke of it sadly, compassionately—all those many folk who followed him to the grave; folk to whom he had told his thoughts, whom he had helped and taught, and with whom he had sympathized in his life; folk who would not have been what they were without him—whose friend he had been, who would never find such another to lead them! But for all their honest tears, they spoke of it as a worthy life brought worthily to an end—they could think of his grave as beautiful, whereas to me God was cruel to have taken him, and no place in the world could be anything but cold earth that hid him from my sight.
Towards mother and Joyce my heart was soft because of the promise I had given him with his darkening eyes looking into mine, but even towards Joyce I was sore when I saw her bend her head towards Mr. Hoad as he held open the gate of the graveyard for her; and it was with a grim feeling of satisfaction, and no sense at all of the unfitness of the occasion, that I turned aside from his out-stretched hand, and said, in a loud voice, that every by-stander could hear: "No, Mr. Hoad, I don't think I shall ever care to shake hands with you again. You don't fight fair. It is through you my father lies there, and I'll never forgive you."