Left alone in the cottage, now so quiet and so peaceful, Beaumaroy mused a while as he smoked his pipe. Then he turned to his labors—his final night of work in the Tower. There was much to do, very much to do; he achieved his task towards morning. When day dawned, there was nothing but water in the water-butt, and in the Tower no furnishings were visible save three chairs—a high carved one by the fireplace, and two much smaller on the little platform under the window. The faded old red carpet on the floor was the only attempt at decoration. And in still one thing more the Tower was different from what it had been, Beaumaroy contented himself with pasting brown paper over the pane on which Mike had operated. He did not replace the matchboarding over the window, but stowed it away in the coal-shed. The place was horribly in need of sunshine and fresh air—and the old gentleman was no longer alive to fear the draught!
When the undertaker came up to the cottage that afternoon, he glanced from the parlor, through the open door, into the Tower.
“Driving past on business, sir,” he remarked to Beaumaroy, “I’ve often wondered what the old gentleman did with that there Tower. But it looks as if he didn’t make no use of it.”
“We sometimes stored things in it,” said Beaumaroy. “But, as you see, there’s nothing much there now.”
But then the undertaker, worthy man, could not see through the carpet, or through the lid of Captain Duggle’s grave. That was full—fuller than it had been at any period of its history. In it lay the wealth, the scepter, and the trappings of dead Majesty. For wherein did Mr. Saffron’s dead Majesty differ from the dead Majesty of other Kings?
CHAPTER XVII. — THE CHIEF MOURNERS
The attendance was small at Mr. Saffron’s funeral. Besides meek and depressed Mrs. Wiles, and Beaumaroy himself, Doctor Mary found herself, rather to her surprise, in company with old Mr. Naylor. On comparing notes she discovered that, like herself, he had come on Beaumaroy’s urgent invitation and, moreover, that he was engaged also to come on afterwards to Tower Cottage, where Beaumaroy was to entertain the chief mourners at a mid-day repast. “Glad enough to show my respect to a neighbor,” said old Naylor. “And I always liked the old man’s looks. But really I don’t see why I should go to lunch. However, Beaumaroy—”
Mary did not see why he should go to lunch—nor, for that matter, why she should either, but curiosity about the chief mourners made her glad that she was going. The chief mourners did not look, at first sight, attractive. Mr. Radbolt was a short plump man, with a weaselly face and cunning eyes; his wife’s eyes, of a greeny color, stared stolidly out from her broad red face; she was taller than her mate, and her figure contrived to be at once stout and angular. All through the service, Beaumaroy’s gaze was set on the pair as they sat or stood in front of him, wandering from the one to the other in an apparently fascinated study.