Queed Part 30

"I think," said Sharlee, "the funeral will be Monday afternoon.... You will go, won't you?"

Queed turned upon her a clouded brow. The thought of taking personal part in such mummery as a funeral--"barbaric rites," he called them in the forthcoming Work--was entirely distasteful to him. "No," he said, hastily. "No, I could hardly do that--"

"Fifi--would like it. It is the last time you will have to do anything for her."

"Like it? It is hardly as if she would know--!"

"Mightn't you show your regard for a friend just the same, even if your friend was never to know about it?... Besides--I think of these things another way, and so did Fifi."

He peered down at her over the banisters, oddly disquieted. The flaring gas lamp beat mercilessly upon her face, and it occurred to him that she looked tired around her eyes.

"I think Fifi will know ... and be glad," said Sharlee. "She liked and admired you. Only day before yesterday she spoke of you. Now she ... has gone, and this is the one way left for any of us to show that we are sorry."

Long afterwards, Queed thought that if Charles Weyland's lashes had not glittered with sudden tears at that moment he would have refused her.

But her lashes did so glitter, and he capitulated at once; and turning instantly went heavy-hearted up the stairs.

XV

_In a Country Churchyard, and afterwards; of Friends: how they take your Time while they live, and then die, upsetting your Evening's Work; and what Buck Klinker saw in the Scriptorium at 2 a.m._

Queed was caught, like many another rationalist before him, by the stirring beauty of the burial service of the English church.

Fifi's funeral was in the country, at a little church set down in a beautiful grove which reminds all visitors of the saying about G.o.d's first temples. Near here Mrs. Paynter was born and spent her girlhood; here Fifi, before her last illness, had come every Sabbath morning to the Sunday-school; here lay the little strip of G.o.d's acre that the now childless widow called her own. You come by the new electric line, one of those high-speed suburban roads which, all over the country, are doing so much to persuade city people back to the land. The cars are steam-road size. Two of them had been provided for the mourners, and there was no room to spare; for the Paynter family connection was large, and it seemed that little Fifi had many friends.

From Stop 11, where the little station is, your course is by the woodland path; past the little springhouse, over the tiny rustic bridge, and so on up the shady slope to the cl.u.s.ter of ancient pines. In the grove stood carriages; buggy horses reined to the tall trees; even that abomination around a church, the motor of the vandals. In the walk through the woods, Queed found himself side by side with a fat, scarlet-faced man, who wore a vest with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and immediately began talking to him like a lifelong friend. He was a motorman on the suburban line, it seemed, and had known Fifi very well.

"No, sir, I wouldn't believe it when my wife seen it in the paper and called it out to me, an' I says there's some mistake, you can be sure, and she says no, here it is in the paper, you can read it for y'self.

But I wouldn't believe it till I went by the house on the way to my run, and there was the c.r.a.pe on the door. An' I tell you, suh, I couldn't a felt worse if 'twas one o' my own kids. Why, it seems like only the other morning she skipped onto my car, laughin' and sayin', 'How are you to-day, Mr. Barnes?' Why she and me been buddies for nigh three years, and she took my 9.30 north car every Sunday morning, rain or shine, just as reg'lar, and was the only one I ever let stand out on _my_ platform, bein' strictly agin all rules, and my old partner Hornheim was fired for allowin' it, it ain't six months since. But what could I do when she asked me, _please, Mr. Barnes_, with that sweet face o' hers, and her rememberin' me every Christmas that came along just like I was her Pa...."

The motorman talked too much, but he proved useful in finding seats up near the front, where, being fat, he took up considerably more than his share of room.

Unless Tim had taken him to the Cathedral once, twenty years ago, it was the first time that Queed had ever been inside a church. He had read Renan at fourteen, finally discarding all religious beliefs in the same year. Approximately Spencer's First Cause satisfied his reason, though he meant to b.u.t.tress Spencer's contention in its weakest place and carry it deeper than Spencer did. But in fact, the exact limits he should a.s.sign to religious beliefs as an evolutionary function were still indeterminate in his system. He, like all cosmic philosophers, found this the most baffling and elusive of all his problems. Meantime, here in this little country church, he was to witness the supreme rite of the supreme religious belief. There was some compensation for his enforced attendance in that thought. He looked about him with genuine and candid interest. The hush, the dim light, the rows upon rows of sober-faced people, seemed to him properly impressive. He was struck by the wealth of flowers ma.s.sed all over the chancel, and wondered if that was its regular state. The pulpit and the lectern; the altar, which he easily identified; the stained-gla.s.s windows with their obviously symbolic pictures; the bronze pipes of the little organ; the unvested choir, whose function he vaguely made out--over all these his intelligent eye swept, curiously; and lastly it went out of the open window and lost itself in the quiet sunny woods outside.

Strange and full of wonder. This incredible instinct for adoration--this invincible insistence in believing, in defiance of all reason, that man was not born to die as the flesh dies. What, after all, was the full significance of this unique phenomenon?

_I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live...._

A loud resonant voice suddenly cut the hush with these words and immediately they were all standing. Queed was among the first to rise; the movement was like a reflex action. For there was something in the thrilling timbre of that voice that seemed to pull him to his feet regardless of his will; something, in fact, that impelled him to crane his neck around and peer down the dim aisle to discover immediately who was the author of it.

His eye fell on a young man advancing, clad in white robes the like of which he had never seen, and wearing the look of the morning upon his face. In his hands he bore an open book, but he did not glance at it.

His head was thrown back; his eyes seemed fastened on something outside and beyond the church; and he rolled out the victorious words as though he would stake all that he held dearest in this world that their prophecy was true.

_Whom I shall see for myself, and_ MINE _eyes shall behold, and not another...._

But behind the young man rolled a little stand on wheels, on which lay a long box banked in flowers; and though the little Doctor had never been at a funeral before, and never in the presence of death, he knew that here must lie the mortal remains of his little friend, Fifi. From this point onward Queed's interest in the service became, so to say, less purely scientific.

There was some antiphonal reciting, and then a long selection which the young man in robes read with the same voice of solemn triumph. It is doubtful if anybody in the church followed him with the fascinated attention of the young evolutionist. Soon the organ rumbled, and the little choir, standing, broke into song.

For all the Saints who from their labors rest....

Saints! Well, well, was it imaginable that they thought of Fifi that way _already_? Why, it was only three weeks ago that he had sent her the roses and she....

A black-gloved hand, holding an open book, descended out of the dim s.p.a.ce behind him. It came to him, as by an inspiration, that the book was being offered for his use in some mysterious connection. He grasped it gingerly, and his friend the motorman, jabbing at the text with a scarlet hand, whispered raucously: "'S what they're singin'." But the singers had traveled far before the young man was able to find and follow them.

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, Steals on the ear the distant triumph song, And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.

The girls in the choir sang on, untroubled by a doubt:--

But lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day; The saints triumphant rise in bright array; The King of glory pa.s.ses on His way.

They marched outside following the flower-banked casket into the little cemetery, and Queed stood with bared head like the others, watching the committal of dust unto dust. In the forefront of the mournful gathering, nearest the grave's edge, there stood three women heavily swathed in black. Through all the rite now, suppressed sobbing ran like a motif.

Soon fell upon all ears the saddest of all sounds, the pitiless thud of the first earth upon the stiff lid. On the other side of the irregular circle, Queed saw the coa.r.s.e red motorman; tears were rolling down his fat cheeks; but never noticing them he was singing loudly, far off the key, from the book the black-gloved hand had given Queed. The hymn they were singing now also spoke surely and naturally of the saints. The same proud note, the young man observed, ran through the service from beginning to end. Hymn and prayer and reading all confidently a.s.sumed that Fifi was dead only to this mortal eye, but in another world, open to all those gathered about the grave for their seeking, she lived in some marvelously changed form--her body being made _like unto his own glorious body_....

In the homeward-bound car, Queed fully recaptured his poise, and redirected his thoughts into rational channels.

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul had not a rational leg to stand on. The anima, or spirit, being merely the product of certain elements combined in life, was wiped out when those elements dissolved their union in death. It was the flame of a candle blown out. Yet with what unbelievable persistence this doctrine had survived through history. Science had annihilated it again and again, but these people resolutely stopped their ears to science. They could not answer science with argument, so they had answered her with the axe and the stake; and they were still capable of doing that whenever they thought it desirable. Strange spectacle! What was the "conflict between Religion and Science" but man's desperate struggle against his own reason?

Benjamin Kidd had that right at any rate.

Yet did these people really believe their doctrine of the saved body and the saved soul? They said they did, but did they? If they believed it surely, as they believed that this night would be followed by a new day, if they believed it pa.s.sionately as they believed that money is the great earthly good, then certainly the biggest of their worldly affairs would be less than a grain of sand by the sea against the everlasting glories that awaited them. Yet ... look at them all about him in the car, these people who told themselves that they had started Fifi on the way to be a saint, in which state they expected to remeet her. Did they so regard their worldly affairs? By to-morrow they would be at each other's throats, squabbling, cheating, slandering, lying, fighting desperately to gain some ephemeral advantage--all under the eye of the magnificent guerdon they pretended to believe in and knew they were jeopardizing by such acts. No, it was pure self-hypnosis. Weak man demanded offsets for his earthly woes, and he had concocted them in a world of his own imagining. That was the history of man's religions; the concoction of other-worldly offsets for worldly woes. In their heart of hearts, all knew that they were concoctions, and the haruspices laughed when they met each other.

Supper was early at Mrs. Paynter's, as though to atone for the tardiness of yesterday. The boarders dispatched it not without recurring cheerfulness, broken now and again by fits of decorous silence. You could see that by to-morrow, or it might be next day, the house would be back in its normal swing again.

Mr. Queed withdrew to his little chamber. He trod the steps softly for once, and perhaps this was why, as he pa.s.sed Mrs. Paynter's room, his usually engrossed ear caught the sound of weeping, quiet but unrestrained, ceaseless, racking weeping, running on evermore, the weeping of Rachel for her children, who would not be comforted.

The little Doctor shut the door of the Scriptorium and lit the gas. So far, his custom; but here his whim and his wont parted. Instead of seating himself at his table, where the bound _Post_ for January-March, 1902, awaited his exploration, he laid himself down on his tiny bed.

If he were to die to-night, who would weep for him like that?

The thought had come unbidden to his mind and stuck in his metaphysics like a burr. Now he remembered that the question was not entirely a new one. Fifi had once asked him who would be sorry if he died, and had answered herself by saying that she would. However, Fifi was dead, and therefore released from her promise.

Yes, Fifi was dead. He would never help her with her algebra again. The thought filled him with vague, unaccountable regrets. He felt that he would willingly take twenty minutes a night from the wrecked Schedule to have her come back, but unfortunately there was no way of arranging that now. He remembered the night he had sent Fifi out of the dining-room for coughing, and the remembrance made him distinctly uncomfortable. He rather wished that he had told Fifi he was sorry about that, but it was too late now. Still he had told her that he was her friend; he was glad to remember that. But here, from a new point of view, was the trouble about having friends. They took your time while they lived, and then they went off and died and upset your evening's work.

Clearly, Fifi left behind many sorrowful friends, as shown by her remarkable funeral. If he himself were to die, Tim and Murphy Queed would probably feel sorrowful, but they would hardly come to the funeral. For one thing, Tim could not come because of his duties on the force, and Murphy, for all he knew, was undergoing incarceration. About the only person he could think of as a probable attendant at his graveside was William Klinker. Yes, Buck would certainly be there, though it was asking a good deal to expect him to weep. A funeral consisting of only one person would look rather odd to those who were familiar with such crowded churches as that he had seen to-day. People pa.s.sing by would nudge each other and say that the dead must have led an eccentric life, indeed, to be so alone at the end.... Come to think of it, though, there wouldn't be any funeral. He had nothing to do with those most interesting but clearly barbaric rites. Of course his body would be cremated by directions in the will. The operation would be private, attracting no attention from anybody. Buck would make the arrangements. He tried to picture Buck weeping near the incinerator, and failed.

Then there was his father, whom, in twenty-four years' sharing of the world together, he had never met. The man's behavior was odd, to say the least. From the world's point of view he had declined to own his son.

For such an unusual breach of custom, there must be some adequate explanation, and the circ.u.mstances all pointed one way. This was that his mother (whom his boyhood had pictured as a woman of distinction who had eloped with somebody far beneath her) had failed to marry his father. The persistent mystery about his birth had always made him skeptical of Tim's statement that he had been present at the marriage.

But he rarely thought of the matter at all now. The moral responsibility was none of his; and as for a name, Queed was as good as any other. X or Y was a good enough name for a real man, whose life could demonstrate his utter independence of the labels so carefully pasted upon him by environment and circ.u.mstance.

Still, if he were to die, he felt that his father, if yet alive, should come forward and weep for him, even as Mrs. Paynter was weeping for Fifi down in the Second Front. He should stand out like a man and take from Buck's hand the solemn ceremonies of cremation. He tried to picture his father weeping near the incinerator, and failed, partly owing to the mistiness surrounding that gentleman's bodily appearance. He felt that his father was dodging his just responsibilities. For the first time in his life he perceived that, under certain circ.u.mstances, it might be an advantage to have some definite individual to whom you can point and say: "There goes my father."

As it was, it all came down to him and Buck. He and Buck were alone in the world together. He rather clung to the thought of Buck, and instantly caught himself at it. Very well; let him take it that way then. Take Buck as a symbol of the world, of those friendships which played such certain havoc with a man's Schedule. Was he glad that he had Buck or was he not?

The little Doctor lay on his back in the glare thinking things out. The gas in his eyes was an annoyance, but he did not realize it, and so did not get up, as another man would have done, and put it out.

Certainly it was an extraordinary thing that the only critics he had ever had in his life had all three attacked his theory of living at precisely the same point. They had all three urged him to get in touch with his environment. He himself could unanswerably demonstrate that in such degree as he succeeded in isolating himself from his environment--at least until his great work was done--in just that degree would his life be successful. But these three seemed to declare, with the confidence of those who state an axiom, that in just that degree was his life a failure. Of course they could not demonstrate their contention as he could demonstrate his, but the absence of reasoning did not appear to shake their a.s.surance in the smallest. Here then was another apparent conflict of instinct with reason: their instinct with his reason. Perhaps he might have dismissed the whole thing as merely their religion, but that his father, with that mysterious letter of counsel, was among them. He did not picture his father as a religious man. Besides, Fifi, asked point-blank if that was her religion, had denied, a.s.suring him, singularly enough, that it was only common-sense.