Part II
CHAPTER XIV—“IN A STRANGE LAND”
They buried Noakes on the other side of the kopje behind the house. He had lasted through the winter and early spring, but the season of the rains and heat, when the damp oozed through wooden walls and mud floor, and hung clammily upon sheets and pillows, gave the remnants of his lungs no breathing chance, and Noakes went uncomplainingly to his place.
Joyce laid “the dear lady’s” letter on his breast before nailing down the rough wooden coffin. It seemed as if most of his own heart too were enclosed with the letter, to be put away under the ground for ever and ever. Wilson the farmer, himself, and a Kaffir carried the coffin to the hole that had been dug beneath a blue gum-tree. There Wilson read the burial service of the Church of England.
He was a religious man, when he was not drunk, and set great store by a prayer-book that he had saved from the wreckage of churchgoing times. Over a fat, phlegmatic, brick-red face the sun had spread a glaze, as if to shield the colour from other counteracting climatic influences. His speech was thick and uneducated. At first Joyce had resented his intention as a mockery, and only to avoid unseemly wrangling did he stand there and listen, while the Kaffir squatted by, scratching his limbs in meditative wonder at the incantation. But very soon the solemn beauty of the service appealed to him. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” He stooped and threw some handfuls of the red soil reverently into the grave. It seemed not unfitting that the rude voice should give the broken life this rude burial.
The service over, Wilson signed to the Kaffir to fill in the grave, and flicking the perspiration from his forehead, for the sun beat down fiercely, turned to Joyce.
“Come in now and have a drink.”