A moment later, before Clara Citron could make any scandalized protest, he bent forward, pounced forward, in a quick, cunning way, as you would on an animal you wished to catch, and brought his hand down heavily on the cushions of the opposite seat. A cloud of dust rose up and choked our companion. When she had done spluttering, she asked him angrily why on earth he did it. He didn’t answer. He only sat and stared, with dazed eyes, at the seat where she sat. Once he moaned and shivered. He was not looking at Clara Citron. He was looking past her, through her. He was like an imbecile. But what could one expect of a man who had drunk whisky as if it had been water for a week, and had wound up with funeral port from the grocer’s?
The service was a trial to everyone but Clara Citron. She reveled in the crowd. I was never in such a rage in my life. Every slatternly woman was pointing and whispering. Orion’s face was clammy and yellow, like the clay into which they lowered Mrs. Grigg. I watched them drop earth onto her coffin; watched them put away for ever that leer of hers, those old coquetries.
When everything was over we went quickly across the sodden, exquisitely green turf to the gravel. The crowd seemed to melt away; softly, with a gentle rustle, like the gurgling May rain. We were almost alone.
A warm, wet day in spring is perfect. The rain came finer and thicker every moment. It made a mysterious veil of gauze which dropped over the graveyard.
Halfway down the path Orion clutched my arm. It was the despairing mad clutch of a doomed man. He clutched my arm and looked hurriedly behind him.
We had reached the coach. The undertaker’s men climbed to their box with an air of business. Some sat on the roof of the hearse, their legs dangling jovially.
“We shall get back faster than we came,” Clara Citron said, getting in and looking round, half in disappointment, because there was no longer such a crowd. “I’m dying for a cup of tea.”
Orion leaped in and rattled to the door. I was beginning to be really anxious about him. We started off at a brisk trot, but the iron gates of the cemetery were hardly out of sight before he stumbled up with a fearful cry. The cemetery, I say, was hardly out of sight; we might still have seen the grave which held Mrs. Grigg and the mystery of her death. He gave that cry and put out his trembling hands to the door.
He saw what we could not see. He saw the door of the coach open easily, and saw the fourth mourner come in. She brushed by him silently—the one in red—to the vacant seat.
“I can’t stay. I tell you I won’t stay,” he shrieked, and the sharp rattle of wheels and hoofs dulled the agony in his voice. “Don’t you see her on the seat?”—he was speaking to Clara Citron. “She has hardly left you room to sit. Those confounded crinolines take up so much room.”