Next day, the funeral took place. It happened to be the first Boer funeral that Carol Mayne had ever seen; and he found himself unprepared for it. From early dawn the cape carts and slow waggons kept coming in from all the country-side. He did not at first divine that all these people were come solely to attend the funeral. The Pieters family, to which Tante Wilma belonged, was the leading clan of the district; and before noon at least two hundred were assembled, some of them having come distances of thirty or forty miles for the sake of being present.
When he arrived at Lutwyche's, the ceremony of viewing the corpse was in active process. Just to the left of the stoep, before you entered the sitkamer, was a small room, the function of which seemed indeterminate. Here, in one of the coffins which had for so long borne Millie company in her loft, lay the dead Englishman, his face still uncovered. By his side, as master of the ceremonies, stood the widow's senior male cousin, Cornells Pieters, a typical Boer, with a reputation for beating his wife. His fluent Taal was not very comprehensible to Mayne; but a sick disgust came over him at the way in which he was, as it were, acting showman—stroking back the dead man's hair, pushing or poking his hands or cheeks with great stumpy fingers, and encouraging the never-ending stream of gazers to handle the corpse and finger the linen. A great laugh would go up if some young woman or child made outcry at the unexpected coldness of contact. Mayne's thoughts flew to Millie, and he wondered how she would bear this. But he could not see her anywhere. The widow, surrounded by her children, and evidently deriving moral support from a black-bordered pocket-handkerchief, sat in the sitkamer receiving condolences. But Millie was invisible.
Mayne was on delicate ground here. The dead man had expressly stipulated that he should be laid to rest with the words of his own liturgy, and the services of the English priest; but the Boer Predikant was in evidence, and Carol, who was quick to learn, and was beginning to understand local etiquette, stepped up to him, and asked him to say a prayer, when—the ghoulish corpse-inspection over at last—the coffin was screwed down, borne in, and triumphantly placed upon the family dining-table.
The Predikant, gratified, though hardly placated, took full advantage of his opportunities. He talked to the Almighty about himself, the Pieters family and the Boer nation, for three quarters of an hour; while Tante Wilma's noisy, snuffling sobs filled the place.
After this Mayne stepped forward, and read the first part of the burial service. Then the coffin was raised and borne solemnly out, and down the fields beyond the Kaffir huts, to where a stone wall enclosed the little family burying-ground.
Melicent Lutwyche, standing by the open grave, saw the procession coming, and the sight of Mayne's figure, bareheaded and white-robed, shook her fortitude for the first time. Her eyes began to burn with unshed tears. All these days, all these sleepless nights, her heart had never ceased to repeat: "I am glad! I am glad! He is safe now—free! Out of her clutches for ever!" But now a new and desolating thought supervened—suggested somehow by the liturgy's majestic words—the thought of his immense distance from herself. Heaven had formed no part of her conception of his release from captivity; now the anthem of Resurrection smote her with inarticulate pain. What had she, with a heart full of black hatred, to do with Resurrection? The white flowers in her hands shook; she was shivering from head to foot on the verge of a breakdown.
Then, foremost among the great throng of following people, she saw Amurrica's hatchet profile, and her thoughts, just painfully striving to take wing, sank back to the black, bad earth she knew. Warfare was still her portion. Amurrica and Bert Mestaer should never see her weep. She turned, moved a little, and stood exactly at the grave's head. The light was behind her, and to Bert she seemed like an austere angel, waiting to bestow the dead in some still sanctuary, where vulgar hands and tongues could reach him no longer. As the earth and stones fell pattering on the coffin, her white blooms fluttered down with them. The set intensity of her small white face fairly terrified her new guardian.
The service over, people cheered up, and hurried back to the farm to eat and drink before setting out upon their long return journeys. Mayne made Bert a signal to wait behind.
"Mestaer," he said, "I have to ride to Leitersdorp and get this will proved. I can't get back inside three days. I am setting off at once, and I expect to find a letter from England waiting for me at Mr. Crick's office, so that, when I come back, I shall know better what to do with Millie. Can I trust you while I am gone?"
He looked searchingly at the young man's face.