Wandering Heath - Arthur Quiller-Couch

"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:"

'All the world is sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam,
Oh, brudders, how my heart grows weary…'

"The tune ceased. The only sound now came from a robin, hunting about the turf and now and then breaking out into an impatient twitter.