'If we only had money,' Kate cried, 'to buy a monument to put on her grave,' and she called upon Dick to admire a kneeling angel.
'It's very beautiful,' Dick said, 'I wish we had the money to buy it. Poor little Kate! it's a pity she didn't live; she was very like you, dear.'
He had been offered an engagement for Kate to play the part of the Countess in Olivette, and had accepted it, hoping in the meanwhile to be able to persuade her to take it. It was rather hard to ask her to play the day after the funeral, but there was no help for it. The company would arrive in town to-morrow, and Dick thought it would be a pity to let the chance slip. But her grief was so great that he had not dared to speak to her about it.
'Did you ever see so many graves?' she asked. 'We shall never be able to find her when we come to seek the grave out. An angel—a headstone, at least, would be a help. Oh, Dick, she continued, 'to think they'll put her down into the ground, and that we shall perhaps never even see her grave again. We may be a hundred miles from here tomorrow, or after.'
Dick, who had had credit of the undertaker, looked around uneasily; but seeing that Kate had not been overheard, he said:
'Poor little thing! It's sad to lose her, isn't it? I should have liked to have seen her grow up.'
The coffin was first deposited in the middle of the church, and Dick twisted the brim of his big hat nervously, troubled by the service the parson in a white flowing surplice read from the reading-desk. Kate, on the contrary, appeared much consoled, and prayed silently, and the parson mumbled so many prayers that Dick began to consider the time it would take to learn a part of equal length. And all this while the little brown box remained like a piece of lost luggage, lonely in the greyness of this station-house-looking church; and when the mutes came to claim it Kate again burst into tears. Her tears reminded the parson that he was here to console, and in soft and unctuous words he assured the weeping mother that her child had only been removed to a better and brighter world, and that we must all submit to the will of God. But in the porch his attention was drawn from the weeping mother to the weather. 'A little more of this' he thought, 'and others will be doing for me what I'm now doing for others.'
But there being no help for it, he followed the procession through the tombstones, his white surplice blowing, Dick wondering how the little grave had been found amongst so many, but the sexton knew. The parson sprinkled earth upon the coffin, and the sound of the withdrawn ropes cut the mother's heart even more than the rattle of the earth and stones on the coffin lid. Kate threw some flowers into the grave, and it seemed to Dick certain that if she didn't pull herself together she would not be able to play the Countess in Olivette on the morrow. She was so fearfully haggard and worn that he doubted if any amount of rouge would make her look the part.
He would have done anything in the world for his little girl while she was alive, but now that she was dead—Besides, after all, she was only a baby. For some time past this idea had occurred to him as an excellent argument to convince Kate that there was really no reason why she should not go to rehearsal on the following morning. If he had not yet spoken in this way it was only because he was afraid that she would round on him, and call him a heartless beast, and he would do anything to evade a sulky look; and now, when the funeral was over and they were walking home wet, sorrowful, and tired, it was curious to watch how he gave his arm to Kate, and the timidity with which he introduced the subject. At first he only spoke of himself, and his hopes of being able to obtain a better part and a higher salary in the new drama. But mention to a mummer who is lying on his death-bed that a new piece is going to be produced, and he will not be able to resist asking a question or two about it; and Kate, weary as she was, at once pricked up her ears, and said:
'Oh, they're going to do a new piece! You didn't tell me that before.'