There was a goodly gathering about the grave, for the funeral had excited the curiosity of the villagers. Mrs. Mince was there in black gloves and black bonnet; also James Marjoy, pulling his ragged mustache; also his wife, eying creation irritably through her brimming glasses. Mrs. Primmer, hard mouthed and self-satisfied, stood beside the gravestone of a girl who had died in child-bed, dabbing her eyes at intervals with a large, white handkerchief. To judge by the dignity of the display, Zeus Gildersedge might have been one of the most respected of patriarchs, a man whose sympathies had fathomed the woes of many a poor fellow’s pocket.
At the end thereof, the crowd dwindled through the lych-gate, under the green chestnut-trees, and by the school-house where the children were at work. Mrs. Primmer, whose tongue had been busy ascribing Zeus Gildersedge’s death to his daughter’s “shocking interference,” accompanied Mrs. Mince up Saltire High Street to the vicarage. Mrs. Primmer carried a little black hand-bag, wherein lay the handkerchief she had used at the funeral, her post-office savings book, and several trinkets she had appropriated from Joan’s bedroom at Burnt House. Mrs. Primmer, in acknowledgment of her many virtues, was to be received once more at the vicarage as cook.
Dr. Marjoy and his wife drove home together, uninspired above their mean level of materialism by the miser’s funeral. The suggestiveness of the scene had been lost upon them—the subtlety of those significant words, “dust to dust.” They discussed the profits of the case over the tea-table, discussed it with that complacency that had accustomed them to existing upon the misfortunes of others.
“I should send in my account at once to the executors,” said the lady, eying the carpet and debating inwardly how much it would cost her to replace it with a new one.
“Mince and Lang are acting in the matter.”
Mrs. Marjoy frowned and fidgeted in her chair.
“How much have you charged?” she asked.
“Thirty pounds or so.”
“Make it fifty, dear; dead men can afford to pay. I am sure you were backward and forward enough.”
“I think it is only fair,” said the doctor, “that one should recuperate one’s self from the wealthy for the amount of time one has to waste gratuitously on the poor. It is an extraordinary thing, but whenever I get a bad diphtheria case it is always in a cottage, and one gets nothing out of it.”