III
THE graveyard, surrounded by a stone wall, broken down in several places, served as a grazing plot for bullocks, donkeys, and sheep, as well as for the burial place of the dead. A long walk, lined with stunted hazel bushes, ran half-way through the yard, and at the end a low stone vault, hardly higher than a man’s head, stood under the shadow of an overhanging sycamore.
The funeral procession was delayed on the journey, and Father Devaney, round-faced and red-cheeked, stamped up and down while waiting its arrival. He had come all the way from Greenanore and was in a hurry to get back again. The morning was cold and caused him to shiver a little, and when he shivered he clapped his hands vigorously, the palm of one against the back of the other.
His large mansion, complete now and habitable, had not been fully paid for yet, and most of his parishioners were a pound or two in arrears; when this money came to hand matters would be much better. Old Devaney had developed a particularly fine taste in wine and cigars and found these very expensive; and at present he called to mind how James Ryan was two pounds in arrears with the mansion tax. The old priest knew that this money would never come to hand; the widow was ill, no word had been heard of Fergus for years, and Norah Ryan was a light slip of a girl who would probably never earn a penny. Devaney knew all the affairs of his flock, and he stamped up and down the graveyard, a little angry with the dead man who, being so long in coming to his last home, had kept him waiting for thirty minutes.
The funeral came in sight, creeping up over the brow of the hill that rose near at hand, the bearers straining under their burden as they hurried across the uneven ground, with the coffin rising and falling on their shoulders like a bark in a storm at sea. The gate of the graveyard was already open; the procession filed through, Father Devaney stepping out in front, his surplice streaming in the wind. The good man thought of the warm dinner waiting for him at home, and being in a hurry to get done with the burial service he walked so quickly that the bearers could hardly keep up with him. On the floor of the little vault in the centre of the graveyard the coffin was set down and the basket of snuff, pipes, and tobacco was handed round. All the men took pipes, filled them with rank plug and lit them; the older women lit pipes also, and everybody, with the exception of the priest and Norah Ryan, took snuff.
“Hurry up!” said Father Devaney. “Ye can smoke after ye do yer duty. It would be well if ye were puttin’ yer hands in yer pockets now and gettin’ yer offerin’s ready.”
Immediately a stream of silver descended on the coffin. All the mourners paid rapidly, but in turn, and the priest called out their names as they paid. A sum of ten pounds seventeen shillings was collected, and this the priest carefully wrapped up in a woollen muffler and put into his pocket.
“Now hurry up, boys, and get a move on ye; and open the grave!” he shouted, making no effort to hide his impatience now that the money was safely in his keeping. He felt full of the importance of a man who knows that everybody around him trembles under his eyes. Three or four young fellows were digging the grave and joking loudly as they worked; a crowd of men stood round them, puffing white clouds of smoke up into the air. Many of the women were kneeling beside graves that held all that remained of one or another near and dear to them. Norah Ryan stood alone with the priest, her dark shawl drawn over her white forehead, and a few stray tresses, that had fallen over her face, shaking in the breeze.
“It is a black day this for you, Norah, a black day,” said the priest, speaking in Gaelic. Two tears coursed down the girl’s cheeks, and she fixed a pair of sorrowful grey eyes on the man when he spoke.
“Don’t cry, girsha beag (little girl),” said the priest. “It is all for the best, all for the best, because it is the will of God.”