“He was a big man, too, sir. He’d ’ave been a fine big man if he’d taken care of himself.”
“Yes,” Margaret answered. “He was a beautiful figure.”
“There’s a lot of poor fellows killed, sir,” said West. “But somehow it don’t come ’ome like this one does. That yellow look, after what he was. And the Spanish lady. She wasn’t his real lady, sir.”
“No. She wasn’t his real lady.”
So they talked as they dug turn and turn about for an hour and a half, when they had to stop digging. They were coming to water. The bottom of the grave was an inch or two deep in water.
“We can go no further,” Margaret said. “Now we’ll get stones.” They lined the bed of the grave with stones, and turned to the house for the body.
The priest and the woman had laid the body out. Margaret ripped down one of the long, jalousied shutters for a bier, while West searched in the patio for rope. An old Spanish tapestry of the death of Absalom served as a pall. They carried Stukeley to the grave, the priest preceding them, intoning the burial service. Then, very reverently, they lowered him. West and Margaret went aside after this and gathered a heap of lilies while the woman and priest prayed together.
“Take her away, father,” Margaret whispered. The priest led the woman to the house. She walked like one stunned. Margaret and West leaned over the grave, to look their last on Stukeley. They could see the water soaking into the linen, and above that the frayed body of Absalom, the handsome youth, caught in the thicket, as he rode. The town was noisy beyond them, two hundred yards away. Singing and shouting came from the Plaza. It seemed to Margaret to be the dirge the man would have chosen, this singing and shouting of men.
“Is that gentleman’s service enough, sir?” West asked.
“Quite enough,” he answered. “You heard him say that Mr. Stukeley had changed his religion?”