There was to be a procession. All the celebrities were invited, and, as one of them, Old Mole was included. None was omitted. Never a man who had so much as thrust his nose into the limelight was left out.
In the music-halls it was announced on the kinematograph screens that special films would be presented of the funeral of Sir Robert Wherry, and the audiences applauded.
Old Mole was in the forty-fifth carriage, with Sir Henry Butcher and the actress who had created “Lossie,” now an actress-manageress. There were kinematograph operators at every street corner, and Tipton Mudde, the aviator, had received a special dispensation from the Home Secretary allowing him to fly to and fro above the procession and to drop black rosettes into the streets.
It was a wet day.
In the Abbey Old Mole was placed in the north transept, and he sat gazing up into the high, mysterious roof where the music of the great organ rolled and muttered. Chopin’s Dead March was played and Sir Henry Butcher muttered:
“There comes the bloody heart-tear.”
An anthem was sung. Wherry’s (and Gladstone’s) favorite hymn, “O God, our help in ages past.” Apparently there was some delay, for another hymn was sung before the pallbearers and the private mourners came creeping up the nave.
There was silence. The Psalms were sung.
Old Mole heard a reedy, pleasant voice:
“. . . For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal shall put on immortality: then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? . . .”