Carnival Part 64

Chapter x.x.xII: _Pageantry of Death_

Mr. Raeburn determined that, if there had sometimes been a flaw in his behavior towards his wife when alive, there should be no doubt about his treatment of her in death. Her funeral should be famous for its bra.s.s-adorned oaken coffin, splendidly new in the gigantic hea.r.s.e. There should be long-tailed sable horses with nodding plumes, and a line of mourning coaches. Mutes should be everywhere and as many relatives as could be routed out within the time. Black silks and satins, jet and c.r.a.pe and somber stuffs should oppress the air, and Death with darkling wings should overshadow Islington. Many mourners were gathered together whose personalities had never played any part in Jenny's life; but others arrived who had in the past helped her development.

Mrs. Purkiss came, escorted by Claude Purkiss representing with pale face and yellow silky mustache the smugness of himself and Percy the missionary. Claude's majority would occur in May, when he would be admitted to a partnership in the business. Already a bravery of gold paint, symbolizing his gilt-edged existence, was at work adding "And Son" to "William Purkiss." Uncle James Threadgale made the journey from Galton, bringing with him Mrs. Threadgale the second--a cheerful country body who pressed an invitation upon Jenny and May to visit them. Uncle James did not seem to have altered much, and brought up with him a roll of fine black cloth for Jenny, but was so much upset on realizing he had omitted May from his thoughtfulness that immediately upon his arrival he slipped out to buy a similar roll for her. The two lodgers were present as a mark of respect to the dead woman who had been so admirable a landlady; and both of them, with kindly tact, announced they were going away for a few days. Alfie, of course, was there with his fiancee, whom Jenny somewhat grudgingly admitted to be very smart. Edie came with the children and her husband. His arrival caused a slight unpleasantness, because Alfie said he would rather not go at all to the funeral than ride with Edie and Bert. But in the end a compromise was effected by which he and his Amy occupied a coach alone. After these mourners came a cortege of friends and cousins, all conspicuously black, all intent to pay their homage of gloom.

Jenny, when she had made herself ready, sat on the end of the bed and laughed.

"I can't help it, May. I know it's wicked of me. But I can't keep from laughing, I can't really."

"Well, don't let any of them downstairs hear you," begged May, "because _they_ wouldn't understand."

"It doesn't mean I'm not sorry about mother because I laugh. And I believe she'd be the first to understand. Oh, May, what a tale she'd have made of it, if she'd only been alive to see her own funeral. She'd have kept anyone in fits of laughter for a week."

Even during the slow progress of the pomp, Jenny, in the first coach with her father and May, was continually on the verge of laughter because, just as by a great effort she had managed to bring her emotions under control, Aunt Mabel had tripped over her skirt and dived head foremost into the carriage that was to hold Claude, Uncle James and his wife, and herself. Moreover, to make matters worse, her father's black kid gloves kept splitting in different places until, by the time the cemetery was reached, his hands merely looked as if they were plentifully patched with court-plaster. It was blue and white April weather, fit for cowslips and young lambs, when the somber people darkened the vivid, wet gra.s.s round the grave. During the solemnity and mournfulness of the burial service Jenny stood very rigid and pale, more conscious of the wind sighing through the yew trees than of finality and irremediable death. She was neither irritated nor moved by the sniffling of those around her. The fluttering of the priest's surplice and the tear-dabbled handkerchiefs occupied her attention less than the figure of a widow looking with sorrowful admiration at a tombstone two hundred yards away. She did not advance with the rest to stare uselessly down on the lowered coffin. The last words had been said: the ceremony was done.

In the sudden silver wash of an April shower they all hurried to the shelter of the mourning coaches. Jenny looked back once, and under the arc of a rainbow saw men with gleaming spades: then she, too, lost in the dust and hangings of the heavy equipage, was jogged slowly back to Islington.

Funerals, like weddings, are commonly employed by families to weld broken links in the chain of a.s.sociation with comparisons of progress and the condolences or congratulations of a decade's chance and change.

Jenny could not bear to see these relations cawing like rooks in a domestic parliament. She felt their presence outraged the humor of the dead woman and pictured to herself how, if her father had died, her mother would have sent them all flapping away. She did not want to hear her mother extolled by unappreciative people. She loathed the sight of her sleek cousin Claude, of Alfie glowering at Edie, of her future sister-in-law picking pieces of white cotton off her skirt, of Edie brushing currants from the side of Norman's mouth. Finally, when she was compelled to listen to her father's statement of his susceptibility to the knocks of a feather on receiving the news of his wife's death, she could bear it no longer, but went upstairs to her bedroom, whither Aunt Mabel presently followed in search.

"Ah, Jenny, this is a sad set out and no mistake," Mrs. Purkiss began.

Jenny did not deign to pay any attention, but looked coldly out of the window.

"You must feel quite lost without her," continued the aunt, "though to be sure you didn't trouble her much with your company this last year.

Poor Florrie, she used to fret about it a lot. And your father wasn't much use--such an undependable sort of a man as he is. Let's all hope, now he's got two motherless girls to look after, he'll be a bit more strict."

"I wish you wouldn't keep on at me, Auntie," Jenny protested, "because I shall be most shocking rude to you in a minute, which I shouldn't like to be at such a time."

"Tut--tut, I wish you could control that temper of yours; but there, I make allowances for I know you must be feeling it all very much, especially as you must blame yourself a bit."

Jenny turned sharply round and faced her aunt.

"What for?" she demanded.

"Why, for everything. Nothing'll ever convince me it wasn't worry drove your poor mother into the grave. Your Uncle William said the same when he heard of it. He was _very_ disappointed to think he couldn't come to the funeral; but, as he said, 'what with, Easter almost on us and one thing and another, I really haven't got the time.'"

Mrs. Purkiss had seated herself in the arm-chair and was creaking away in comfortable loquacity.

"I think it's nothing more than wicked to talk like that," Jenny declared indignantly. "And, besides, it's silly, because the doctor said it was an abscess, nothing else."

"Ah, well, doctors know best, I daresay; but we all have a right to our opinions."

"And you think my leaving home for a year killed my mother?"

"I don't go so far as that. What I said was you were a worry to her. You were a worry when you were born, for I was there. You were a worry when you would go on the stage against whatever I said. You were a worry when you dyed your hair and when you kept such disgraceful late hours and when you went gallivanting about with that young fellow. However, I don't want to be the one to rub in uncomfortable facts at such a time.

What I came up to ask was if you wouldn't like to come and stay with us for a little while, you and May. You'll have to get an extra servant to look after the lodgers if your father intends keeping things on as they were, and you'll be more at home with us."

Mrs. Purkiss spoke in accents almost ghoulish, with a premonitory relish of macabre conversations.

"Stay with you?" repeated Jenny. "Stay with _you_? What, and hear nothing but what I ought to have done? No, thanks; May and I'll stay on here."

"You wouldn't disturb your Uncle William," Mrs. Purkiss continued placidly, "if that's what you're thinking of. You'd be gone to the theater when he reads his paper of an evening."

"If I went to stay anywhere," said Jenny emphatically, "I should go and stay with Uncle James at Galton. But I'm not, so please don't keep on, because I don't want to talk to _any_body."

Mrs. Purkiss sighed compa.s.sionately and vowed she would forgive her nieces under the circ.u.mstances, would even spend the evening in an attempt to console the sad household of Hagworth Street.

"But I want to be alone, and so does May."

"Well, I always used to say you was funny girls, and this proves my words true. Anyone would think you'd be glad to talk about your poor mother to her only sister. But, no, girls nowadays seem to have no civilized feelings. Slap-dashing around. In and out. Nothing but amuse themselves, the uncultivated things, all the time. No wonder the papers carry on about it. But I'm not going to stay where I'm not wanted and don't need any innuendives to go."

Here Mrs. Purkiss rose from the chair and, having in a majestic sweep of watered silk attained the door, paused to deliver one severe speculation.

"If you treated your poor mother as you behave to your aunt, I'm not surprised she got ill. If my Percy or my Claude behaved like you--well, there, but they don't, thank goodness."

Jenny listened quite unmoved to the swishing descent of her aunt. She was merely glad to think her rudeness had been effectual in driving her away, and followed her downstairs very soon in order to guarantee her departure.

One by one the funereal visitors went their ways. One by one they faded into the sapphire dusk of April. Some went in sable parties like dilatory homing cattle, browsing as they went on anecdotes of the dead.

On the tail of the last exit, their father, somewhat anxiously, as if afraid of filial criticism, went also. He sat for a long time, as he told them afterwards, without drinking anything, the while he stared at his silk hat enmeshed in c.r.a.pe, and when he did drink he called for stout.

The two girls stayed alone in the parlor with little heart to light the gas, with little desire to talk over the mournful buzz which had filled the house all day. The lodgers being gone, no responsibility of general illumination rested with Jenny or May. Soon, however, they moved in accord to the kitchen, where on each side of the glowing fire they listened to the singing of a kettle and the tick of the American clock.

An insistent loneliness penetrated their souls. In that hour of sorrow and twilight, they drew nearer to one another than ever before. Outside a cat was wailing, and far down the road a dog, true to superst.i.tion, howled at intervals. The kitchen was intolerably changed by Mrs.

Raeburn's absence. Jenny suddenly realized how lonely May must have been during those weeks of illness and suspense. She herself had had the distractions of the theater, but May must have moped away each heavy moment.

"I wonder where Ruby is now?" said Jenny suddenly.

"Fancy! I wonder."

They sighed. The old house in Hagworth Street seemed, with the death of its laughing mistress, to have lost its history, to have become merely one of a dreary row.

"Oh, May, look," said Jenny. "There's her ap.r.o.n never even gone to the wash."

After that the sisters wept quietly; while Venus dogged the young moon down into the green West, and darkness shrouded the gray Islington street.

Chapter x.x.xIII: _Loose Ends_

For all that Jenny was so contemptuous of her aunt's opinion at the time of its expression, when she came to weigh its truth she found it somewhat disturbing. Was an abscess, indeed, the sole cause of her mother's madness and death? And could Aunt Mabel have any justification for so cruelly hinting at a less obvious cause? Jenny herself possessed a disconcerting clarity of intuition which she inherited from her mother, who might have divined the progress of the Danby incident and brooded over it too profoundly in the absence of her daughter. Indeed, she might have been actually goaded into sheer madness by a terrible consciousness of that rainy St. Valentine's night; for it was strange that her sanity should fly forever on the very next morning. It was horrid to think that all night long her mother, kept awake by pain, might have been conscious of her actions. Yet the doctor had so confidently blamed the abscess for everything. Moreover, in the asylum her mother had seemed just as much distressed by the thought of May's back as anything else. Sensitiveness to her mother's feelings had led Jenny into wrecking her own happiness with Maurice, and even Fortune could scarcely be so fierce as to drive her mother mad on account of the pitiful corollary to that ruined love. Yet it might be so, and if it were, what remorse would burden her mind everlastingly. And now it was too late for explanations. Jenny, having felt all through her mother's life an inability to confide in her completely, now when she was dead developed an intense desire to pour out her soul, to acquaint her with every detail of experience and even to ascertain if her own pa.s.sionate adventures had been foreshadowed in her mother's life.

Meanwhile, with all these potential horrors of culpable actions, there was the practical side of the future to consider. In a week the lodgers would return, and a servant must be found at once to help May. She herself would do as much as possible, but most of her energy was sapped by the theater. She wished her father had the smallest conception of management. The death of his wife, however, seemed to have destroyed what small equipment of resolution he possessed, and the "Masonic Arms"

received him more openly, more frequently than ever.

Jenny debated the notion of leaving the Orient and applying all her mind to keeping house; but it was too late for her temperament to inure itself to domesticity without the spur of something sharper than mere pecuniary advantage. Perhaps it would be better to give up the house in Hagworth Street and take a smaller one, where, on the joint earnings of herself and her father, he and the two sisters could live in tolerable comfort. Perhaps she might even accept the risk of setting up house with May alone. But thirty shillings a week was not a large sum for two girls, one of whom must be well dressed and able to hold her own in company where dress counted for a good deal. The more she thought of it, the more impossible did it seem to give up the theater. Those few days of absence proved how intimately her existence was wrapped up in the certainty of an evening's employment. As the time had drawn on for going down to the Orient, she had become very restless in the quiet of home.