“By God!” Gordon said passionately, “I don’t know but I’m not glad Clare’s gone—Simmons has got our house, I’m not driving stage ... Clare would have sorrowed herself out of living. Life’s no jig tune.”
The doctor left. Gordon continued to sit on the porch; at intervals he mechanically rolled and lit cigarettes, which glowed for a moment and went out, unsmoked. The feeling of depression that had cloaked him during the few days past changed imperceptibly to one of callous indifference toward existence in general. The seeds of revolt, of instability, which Clare and a measure of worldly position, of pressure, had held in abeyance, germinated in his disorganized mind, his bitter sense of injustice and injury. He hardened, grew defiant ... the strain of lawlessness brought so many years before from warring Scotch highlands rose bright and troublesome in him.
XVIII
Clare’s body was brought back to Greenstream on the following day. His sister and her numerous brood descended solicitously upon Gordon later; neighbors, kindly and officious, arrived ... Clare was laid out. There were sibilant, whispered conversations about a mislaid petticoat with a mechlin hem; drawers were searched and the missing garment triumphantly unearthed; silk mitts were discussed, discarded; the white shoes—real buck and a topnotch article—forced on. At last Clare was exhibited in the room that had been hers. There was no place in the Makimmon dwelling for general assemblage but the kitchen, and it had been pointed out by certain delicate souls that the body and the preparations for the funeral repast would accord but doubtfully. Besides, the kitchen was too hot.
Clare’s peaked, blue-white countenance was withdrawn and strange above a familiar, harsh black silk dress; her hands, folded upon her flat breast, lay in a doubled attitude dreadfully impossible to life. A thin locket of gold hung on a chain about her still throat. The odor of June roses that filled the corners, a subdued, red riot of the summer, the sun without, was overpowering.
As the hour appointed for the funeral approached a gratifying number of people assembled: the women clustered about the porch, hovered about the door which opened upon the remains; while the men gathered in a group above the stream, lingered by the fence. A row of dusty, hooded vehicles, rough-coated, intelligent horses, were hitched above.
The minister took his station by a table on which a glass of water had been placed upon a vivid red cover: he portentously cleared his throat. “The Lord giveth,” he began.... It was noon, pellucidly clear, still, hot; the foliage on the mountainsides was like solid walls of greenery rising to a canopy, a veil, of azure. Partridges whistled clear and flutelike from a nearby cover; the stream flashed in the sun, mirroring on its unwrinkled surface the stiff, somber figures gathered for the funeral.
The droning voice of the preacher drew out interminably through the sultry, golden hour. Women sniffed sharply, dabbled with toil-hardened hands at their eyes; the men, standing in the grass, shuffled their feet uneasily. “Let us pray,” the speaker dropped upon his knees, and his voice rose, grew more insistent, shrill with a touch of hysteria. From the back of the house a hen clucked in an excited, aggravated manner.