"Go thou, go!" moaned Dorah.
He staggered through the front door. A swift wave of sympathy from the red-eyed crowd in the street surged towards him. A horrible self-consciousness afflicted him and he wilted like a leaf before a flame.
"What a lovely funeral!" he heard somebody mutter....
He heard the clinking of coins in a tin box. He remembered. There was no wedding, no funeral where the shammos was not to be seen, clinking his box for the poor.
But the clinking faded from his ears when he discovered with a swift stare of recognition the tin can at the pavement's edge. "Orummer ingel!" a woman cried, lifting her voice, "Poor lad!" The words grated. He was glad to find himself in the dark shelter of the cab, crushed in among the men.
As the procession moved away, he knew that Dorah stood on the steps of the house, beating her hands together, shouting; that Channah seemed to run after them like a ghost; she tottered, and the capable arms of women had seized her, were bearing her away. The hearse turned the corner of Angel Street. The cabs followed.
Still a passionless stupor held him as they moved along Doomington Road and up Blenheim Road, through Longton, beyond the outskirts of the Jewish quarter, and to Wheatley at last, where the Jewish cemetery straggled over the low slope of a hill and the tombstones bore meekly the inquisitions of the passing trams.
The entrance into the cemetery was a wooden, draughty shed where a few Prayer Books were lying about on the forms. The shed was rapidly filling. In addition to those whom the cabs had brought were a number who had travelled by tram. Soon he found a service beginning and himself mechanically joining in prayers. And shortly after he was moving out into the open with the rest, into the damp air. They were moving along the uphill winding path to the cemetery. The clay underfoot was difficult for treading. The atmosphere was full of the smell of turned earth. After one or two minutes the untidy procession paused and the chazan who was officiating at the funeral continued the wailing chant. Again they moved forward and again they stopped; the chant was resumed, until at last they were among the graves. There were uprooted weeds, removed by the caretaker from privileged graves, lying in dank heaps, tainting the tainted air and tangling the narrow walks among the dead.
This was the place then, this black, deep hole? The rain was drizzling into the grave. If they waited too long, there would be a floor of clayey water. It was a deep hole; who had thought that graves were so deep? It was true that no disturbance from the harsh world above would penetrate so far; but if the grave were a little less deep, there would be communion with the roots of flowers, almost the tiny pattering of birds' feet.
So he mused, hardly conscious of the solemn chanting and the sobbing about his ears, until some one whispered that he must throw a clod of earth into the grave, on to the coffin lid.