The little crowd on the pavement had swelled. The case and all about it had been manna to hungry July reporters, and all the world knew of Unity and judged her this way and that, according to individual prejudice. But the male part of the crowd uncovered as the coffin and afterward the little group of mourners passed through. John and Miss Lindon and Lady Blount went in the first carriage; Stella, Sir Oliver, and Herold in the second. Sir Oliver, as is the way of Sir Olivers all the world over, spoke of funerals he had attended in years and latitudes both remote. Poor Roddy Greenwood—best fellow that ever lived—it was in Berbice, Demerara—God bless his soul, it was in '68—he had left him at six in the morning after a night's loo—good game loo; no one ever played it these days—and he had followed him to his grave that day before sunset. Then there was Freddy Nicol—they brought it in accidental because he was cleaning his gun—there were the rags and oil and things about him; but it was odd, devilish odd, that it should have happened the day after Kitty Green married that fellow What 's-his-name? Tut! tut! he would remember it in a minute. Now, what the Dickens was the name of the fellow Kitty Green married? But as Kitty Green and her obscure and unremembered spouse were young in the days when Sir Oliver was young, and at the best and happiest were both wrinkled, uninteresting ancients, the baffling question did not stir the pulses of his hearers.
“Anyhow,” said Sir Oliver, summing up, “death is a devilish funny business. I 've seen lots of it.”
“And you who have seen so much of it, dear,” said Stellamaris, very seriously, “what do you think of death?”
“I 've told you, my child; I 've told you. It 's devilish funny—odd—here to-day and gone to-morrow. Devilish funny.”
They arrived at the cemetery. In the bare mortuary chapel Stella knelt and heard for the first time in her life the beautiful words of the service for the burial of the dead. And there in front of her, covered with poor, vain flowers, was the coffin containing the clay of one whom man with his opportunist laws against murder and self-slaughter was powerless to judge. At the appointed time they went out into the summer air and walked in forlorn procession behind the hearse, through the startling city in whose tenements of stone and marble no mortal could dwell; in which there was no fevered strife as in the cities of men; in which all the inhabitants slept far beneath their stately domes or humble monoliths, at peace with mankind, themselves, and God. And green grass grew between the graves, and sweet flowers bloomed and seemed to say, “Why weep, since we are here?” But for the faint grinding of the hearse wheels on the gravelled path and the steps of the followers all was still. Stellamaris clung to Herold's arm.
“I can't believe they are all dead,” she whispered. “The whole place seems alive. I think they are waiting for Unity. They will take her by the hand and make her one of themselves.”
“And bow down before her,” said Herold. “It is only the dead that know the great souls that pass from the earth.”
They reached the graveside. The surpliced chaplain stood a pace or two apart. The dismal men in black deposited the coffin by the yellow, upturned earth. The group of six gathered close together. The July sunshine streamed down, casting a queer projection of shadow from the coffin-end.
“Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”
Stella heard the chaplain's voice as in a dream. The rattle of the earth on the coffin-lid—“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust”—roused her with a shock. Below, deep in the grave, lay Unity—Unity, who had taken a human life, and had taken her own for the sake of those she loved; Unity, who in the approach to her murderous and suicidal end was all but unfathomable to her; Unity, whom she had read and thought enough to know to be condemned by the general judgment of mankind. There, in that oak coffin, lay all that remained of the common little girl, with the lilies she herself had sent on her bosom. The lilies she had seen, pure white, with their pistils of golden hope; the dead white face she had not seen. Yet her lilies were looking into the dead face, and the dead face was near the lilies, down there, underneath the baffling, oaken coffin-lid.... She became aware of words sharp and clear cutting the still air.