‘Ye may as well spet upon his grave, for all the good we shall do en by what we lift up, now he’s got so far,’ said Notton, the clarionet man and professed sceptic of the choir. ‘But I’m agreed if the rest be.’
They thereupon placed themselves in a semicircle by the newly stirred earth, and roused the dull air with the well-known Number Sixteen of their collection, which Lot gave out as being the one he thought best suited to the occasion and the mood
He comes’ the pri’-soners to’ re-lease’,
In Sa’-tan’s bon’-dage held’.
‘Jown it—we’ve never played to a dead man afore,’ said Ezra Cattstock, when, having concluded the last verse, they stood reflecting for a breath or two. ‘But it do seem more merciful than to go away and leave en, as they t’other fellers have done.’
‘Now backalong to Newton, and by the time we get overright the pa’son’s ’twill be half after twelve,’ said the leader.
They had not, however, done more than gather up their instruments when the wind brought to their notice the noise of a vehicle rapidly driven up the same lane from Sidlinch which the gravediggers had lately retraced. To avoid being run over when moving on, they waited till the benighted traveller, whoever he might be, should pass them where they stood in the wider area of the Cross.
In half a minute the light of the lanterns fell upon a hired fly, drawn by a steaming and jaded horse. It reached the hand-post, when a voice from the inside cried, ‘Stop here!’ The driver pulled rein. The carriage door was opened from within, and there leapt out a private soldier in the uniform of some line regiment. He looked around, and was apparently surprised to see the musicians standing there.
‘Have you buried a man here?’ he asked.
‘No. We bain’t Sidlinch folk, thank God; we be Newton choir. Though a man is just buried here, that’s true; and we’ve raised a carrel over the poor mortal’s natomy. What—do my eyes see before me young Luke Holway, that went wi’ his regiment to the East Indies, or do I see his spirit straight from the battlefield? Be you the son that wrote the letter—’
‘Don’t—don’t ask me. The funeral is over, then?’