Читать книгу Six Common Things - E F Benson - Страница 5

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Two days have passed, and this afternoon they are going to bury the child of whose death I have just told you. Old Ellis came here yesterday, and asked me, ever so timidly, whether I would go with him to the funeral, if it was not too much to ask.

He expected, he said, a sister of his who lived some ten miles away, the aunt of the dead child, but there would be no one else. He scarcely liked to ask me, but I had known his daughter, and she had always been so pleased when I had come to see her. So, if I would do one thing more—it was pitiful to hear him.

I arrived at the cottage about two o’clock. I ordered the carriage to wait, because I thought he might like to go in it to the churchyard. But he would not—he wished to follow her more closely; he would not leave her while she was above ground. It was nearly a mile to the church, and I told the coachman to follow us at some distance; I knew he could not manage to walk both ways, for he was very old.

The blinds were all drawn down, and at the end of the little passage, there stood the coffin, on a dismal-looking truck, round which hovered two men in black. The old man met me at the door, and we went into the room, where his sister was sitting. She was a tall, angular woman, and she was eating seed-cake and drinking sherry with mournful alacrity. She stood up when I entered, and made a stiff courtesy to me.

The old man sat in the window, with his hands crossed on his knees, looking out over the fields with tired, tearless eyes. I talked quietly to him and his sister for a few minutes, until a knock came at the door, and the undertaker looked in.

Ellis got up from his seat.

“It’s time we were off, sir,” he said.

“Ah, poor lamb,” said his sister, opening and shutting her mouth, as if it was worked with a steel snap.

I had brought with me a wreath of hot-house flowers, which I laid on the coffin as it was being wheeled out. Ellis turned round to me, as I placed them there, and he tried to speak, but it was too much for him, when he thought that all that had been dearest to him was leaving the house for ever, and the bitter dryness of his eyes was flooded.

“We will wait a few minutes,” I said. “Come back here in to the room. Ah, my old friend, I wish I could tell you what I feel for you, but you know it, do you not? Yes, yes.”

In a few minutes he was quiet again, and grasped my hand.

“I take it very kind of you, sir,” he said, “to think so much of my poor little lamb; very kind indeed. God bless you for that.”

The coffin was waiting by the little garden gate, and we joined his sister again, who had remained in the passage. As soon as we got outside the house, she drew a large handkerchief, made of some very stiff material from her pocket, and held it in front of her nose and mouth all the way to the churchyard. In the other hand she carried a little glass case of white artificial flowers, bought with money that I am sure she could ill-afford, to place on the grave.

I wonder if there is anyone, of whatever religion or belief, who has heard our English burial service said over one they loved, without feeling strengthened and comforted by its strong security, its patient hope. Poor old Ellis, I know, looked up at the sound of the grave voice, which met us at the gate of the churchyard, and walked more firmly and steadily. In some dim unformulated way he felt that the issues of life and death were in other hands, and in those hands he was content to leave them.

“They are only words,” you say, “what words are of value, when all love has gone?”

So be it; but there are those, perhaps the simplest and best among us, who do value them. Would you take their comfort from them, for they are in sore need.

The service was soon over, and even as we left the grave, a cold drizzle of rain began. The poor people in this village think that it is a good thing if it rains directly after they have buried some one. They say that the sky is weeping for them. That is a beautiful belief, is it not?

The carriage was waiting at the gate into the churchyard, but just as the old man was stepping into it, he looked back again at the little open grave, which the sexton had already begun to fill in.

“I must go back, sir, just for a minute,” he said, and with a curious stumbling run, he made his way over the little mounds, between the white headstones to where he had left his dear child, and by the side of the grave he knelt down, and remained there for a minute or two, with the cold showers beating on to his grey uncovered head. I was suddenly afraid, and went quickly but silently to his side. He saw me, but did not rise from his knees. He was looking earnestly into that horrible cold pit, and his lips moved silently. Then half audibly he whispered:

“Good-bye, dear lamb, dear lamb.”

Then he turned to me.

“I have kept you waiting, sir, I am afraid,” he said. “I just came back to say good-bye to her once more, and to repeat for her the prayer we have always said together of an evening. I will come now.”

His sister was sitting in the carriage, with her handkerchief in the same discreet position, and we drove back together to his house.

This evening he sits there alone. His sister had to go back to her home, for she could not leave the children, and made her departure in an old farm cart, drawn by a shaggy pony, observing the proprieties to the last, and soon afterwards I left him. He wished, I think, to be alone, and get more used to his sorrow.

Ah, what does it all mean? What is the reason of this weary world? Do you know Heine’s “Old play?”

“She was loveable, and he loved her, but he was not loveable and she did not love him.”

The deadly tune of the song of the unwept tear, when one woman alone did not weep, he says is sung in hell. But we are not in hell, we are on this earth, but to-day when I think of the old man sitting alone in his cottage, and another sleeping in God’s acre, once more a deadly tune is sung, which I think, is not less sad than Heine’s.

“She was loveable, and he loved her; he was loveable, and she loved him.”

This song has nothing to do with Heine’s hero, who can still be glad that he is alive. These are not sighs of hopeless passion, they are not young vows breathed to one who will not listen; this is only the sorrow of a very old man, who loved a little daughter, who in turn loved him, and it is all over; he is unhappy, but she has ceased to suffer; at that he is glad; and now he sits alone, and will sit alone till he has ceased to suffer too. Such things are very common.

It is a good thing, is it not, that he is very old; he will have less long to suffer. But it is strange to be glad that Death is probably not far off.

This old man wanted so little, yet he had scarcely enough; only enough for two to live on somewhat sparingly, and very frugally. Now he has enough; there will be no more doctor’s bills; no more nursing expenses. But it was very pitiful to hear him say “Good-bye, dear lamb, dear lamb,” after he had prayed with her for the last time.

This little story, I imagine, will touch very few, fewer, perhaps, than will feel the sadness of the death of this little girl’s dog. So many want a little more subtleness in sorrow than truth can always give them. The sorrow of a dumb thing is more bizarre, more out of the way; the sorrow of an old man is so common, and old men are less attractive than intelligent dogs. Thus many people, I expect, will pass this story over for precisely these reasons, which led me to write it.