MRS. BROWN EXPLAINS
There was a funeral in the village on the Wednesday of last week. On the previous Sunday Mother Hubbard had assured me with great solemnity that something of the sort was going to happen, for had not a solitary magpie perched upon our garden wall and waved his handsome tail in full view of the window for at least a minute? What connection there was between his visit and the calamity which it foretold was not clear to me, but it appears that the magpie is a bird of omen, and there is an old rhyme which in these parts is considered oracular:
"One for sorrow,
And two for mirth;
Three for a wedding
And four for a birth."
However that may be, it is a fact that in the late afternoon Dr. Trempest called to inform me that Farmer Brown was dead.
"He has lasted twice as long as anyone could have foreseen," he said. "Poor chap, it's a mercy it's all over."
The whole countryside was inches deep in snow when they buried him in the little God's acre that clings to the side of the hill at the point where the roads diverge. The grave-digger had a hard task, for we had had a fortnight of severe frost; but he bent to his work with the grim persistence of the man who knows that the last enemy is a hard master, and that there must be no tarrying in his service.
All the village turned out to the funeral, and there was a great crowd of invited mourners. It struck me as strange that so many coaches should be provided and that the last sad rites should partake of the nature of a public spectacle, for surely when we have given our loved ones into God's keeping it is most seemly to lay all that is human of them in the lap of earth reverently and with simplicity; but the Yorkshire folk make it an occasion of display, fearing, perhaps, to dishonour their dead, and dreading even more the criticism and displeasure of their neighbours.
When the grave had been filled in and the upturned earth was covered with the evergreens and wreaths which loving hands had brought and left there, I went and stood beside the grave and thought of Farmer Brown's parting words. I suppose it is heretical to pray for the dead, but I did it.
Yesterday I went to see Mrs. Brown, taking the photographs and a framed enlargement with me. It was a hard tramp, and my arms ached before the journey's end was reached, but I am wonderfully "fit" just now, and I thoroughly enjoyed the walk. Well—perhaps I must modify that. There was always present with me the anticipation of a depressing scene, and that marred the enjoyment somewhat, though it could not destroy it.
Yet to feel the sting of a north-easterly wind on one's cheek, and the sensation of crunching snow beneath one's feet, with a bright blue sky overhead and the far-away smell of spring in one's nostrils, was to experience something of the joy of life.