Whether from exhaustion or from the dreamy contemplation of this amazing feat to be performed by us, I fell asleep in his arms, lulled for the first time out of my grief, and did not awake till bright morning. The fog was gone; the birds were singing to us to carry my father to his rest under the blue sky.
By-and-by we set out, Uncle Jenico very grave, in black, with a long weeper round his hat. Mr. Quayle, and one or two more, who had lingered a day behind the Assizes to do honour to the dead, came with us; and others, including the judge, sent flowers. It was a simple, pathetic service, in a green corner of the churchyard. I felt more than understood its beauty, and when once I caught a glimpse of Uncle Jenico busily and stealthily writing something with a pencil on the inside lining of his hat, I accepted the fact naturally as a detail of the ceremony.
But it was on the way home in the carriage that he disillusioned me by removing his hat, and showing me a little drawing of a gravestone he had made therein.
“Just an idea that occurred to me,” he said, “to perpetuate the memory of poor papa. We want to do something better than keep it green, you see. The weather and the lichen pay us all that compliment. So I suggest having the inscription very small, on a stone something the shape of a dining-room clock, and over it a magnifying glass boss, like one of those paperweights, you know, that have a little view at the back. The tooth of Time could never touch that. What do you think now?”
I thought it a very pleasant and kind idea, and told him so, at which he was obviously pleased. But it was never carried out, no more than many another he developed; and in the end—but that was long afterwards—a simple headstone, of my own design, commemorated my beloved father’s virtues.
The few mourners returned with us to the hotel, where, in a private room, we had cake and sherry wine. Afterwards Mr. Quayle, when all but he were gone, asked the favour of a final word with Uncle Jenico.
He appeared to find it a word difficult of utterance, walking up and down, and puffing, and getting a little red in the face, while Uncle Jenico sat beaming in a chair, his legs crossed and finger-tips bridged.
At length Mr. Quayle stopped before him.
“Mr. Paxton,” said he, “when time’s short formalities are best eschewed, eh?”
Uncle Jenico nodded.