He looked angrily at the stones, and then away, — the little white lambs of marble with crossed forelegs, the doves, the cherubs, the angels, the skulls — all silent, dripping in the fine rain; even the wet spring flowers, the daffodils and tulips, had a mortuary look, seemed somehow morbid. He walked along the grim avenue, taking long steps on the neat gravel, outdistanced the workman with the wheelbarrow, came to the turning and Glen Avenue. Beyond the wooden fence was the railway line, — the hard note of the quotidian and temporary. In this corner of the cemetery, not yet so crowded, the family lots were fewer: the graves humbler; many of them were unmarked save by the little oval metal plaques which gave their numbers. Noting the succession of these he found easily enough the new excavation at the juncture of Glen and Vesper Avenues. Beneath a small tree — a Judas tree? — which was covered with pink blossom, and some distance back from the road, it appeared harmless and natural enough. He walked across the sodden grass, looked into it, observed the carefully sheered sides of wet loam, as glistening as if they had been cut with a knife, and the little pile of soaked earth which had been neatly laid on canvas beside it, and the curious cat’s cradle of broad tape which lay across the aperture in readiness for the coffin. The whole thing was indescribably ugly: it was obscene: the falseness of it was profound. This note as of carefully prepared artifice, of concealment and mitigation—! Christ.
He turned, looked back over his shoulder toward the road, felt curiously ashamed and guilty: he felt sick: it was impossible to avoid the contamination, the sense of complicity and betrayaclass="underline" it was himself who had done this, his own mind had conceived this dishonesty. And it was Jones who had been betrayed. To be standing here — to be seen standing here now—
He must get away quickly, before they came.
He must walk off a little way, perhaps to the tower and back, or to one of the ponds, and then, keeping always within view, return to the scene at the last moment, as if casually. That would be enough — there was no need for more — just to saunter by, have a last look, dismiss with a final gesture the dying world.
He hurried back to the road, and found that it made a loop towards the fence at this point, rejoining Vesper Avenue farther on, — it would be possible, therefore, by walking around this, examining methodically all the inscriptions, the flowers, the trees, to fill in the time and reappear at the right instant. He knocked the bowl of his pipe against the palm of his hand, but decided not to smoke; took the right turning; found that he was staring at the hideous stones and their monotonous inscriptions without seeing them, listening to the passing of a train, beyond the fence, without turning his head. Who departed this life, to the sorrow of his wife and three children … In hopeful rest I here remain … My faith to heaven ensnare … The phrases and sentences were all alike, so many precise wounds of the chisel in Vermont marble or granite; and if the rain had made them more vivid to the eye, they were too familiar to be meaningful to the mind. More actual than the death it symbolized was the cutting in the stone; it was as if only the stones were real, and the incised marks on them, half filled with water, more important than the thing they chronicled. In the gentle and windless drizzle, the scent of the flowers — the lilacs, the narcissus, the daffodils — was oppressive, stifling; it was like the smell of ether; weighed on the consciousness like a cloud; and with his pipe in his hand he was thinking this, and feeling as if he had been half anaesthetized, and walking amid the intermittent patter as if half asleep, when he heard behind him the sound of a car.
It could not have been better managed — he was at a safe distance, just far enough away to be unnoticeable — he stood still and watched the black limousine come slowly along the avenue and stop. There was a moment’s pause, the black door swung open, the hand that had pushed it was visible for a second and then withdrawn, and Jones, stooping, stepped down to the grass-edge. He was wearing the derby hat, turned round toward the car buttoning a soiled raincoat, he appeared to be saying something, his head a little on one side, and as he did so a second figure stooped from the car, holding with gloved hands a small white box. From the other side of the road a workman had mysteriously appeared, as if from nowhere, and the three men began to walk slowly across the grass toward the little grave, their heads just slightly lowered. The man who held the box wore a black frock coat — presumably the undertaker. The box he held was hardly bigger than a shoe box, it was astonishingly small, it made the whole affair seem more than ever ridiculous and meaningless. That it should all have come to this — that all the elaborate structure should amount only to this—! This absurd little ritual in the rain.
He watched them group themselves before the grave, Jones standing a little in the rear, as if in a measure detaching himself from the queer proceedings, and then the undertaker placed the coffin on the cat’s cradle and the workman began to lower it. Jones, with his hat still on, and his hands in his raincoat pockets, suddenly turned away and began to walk quickly toward the car: the undertaker, after a final look into the grave, while the workman drew up the bands, followed him. Apparently, not a word had been said. The whole business had been done in silence. No earth had been flung; only the soft rain fell into the grave.
It was unbelievable. And yet it was what he had expected?…
He found himself standing very tensely, as if he had been about to take a step but had inhibited it — his weight slightly forward; without conscious decision he began to walk toward the little scene, saw the two men get into the limousine, and had just reached the juncture of the two roads when the car passed him, driving slowly. Scarcely a yard away — their two orbits at last almost touching — Jones was sitting upright, his small chin raised as if proudly or challengingly, his blue eyes fixed straight ahead on the road beyond the driver. He was pale, it was obvious that he hadn’t slept, and it was just as obvious that he hardly knew what he was doing or where he was. Possibly he had been drinking. Beyond him, the undertaker was looking out of the window on the far side with an air of professional embarrassment, touching his gloved fingers together. Neither of them was speaking. In another minute, the car took a sharp left turn, and moved off toward the Egyptian gates. He watched it flash slowly in and out among the columns and pyramids and vaults, saw it make a final swing to the right, and then disappear.