He began the service for the dead in a dry nasal voice, remote, monotonous, cold, and passionate.
Then, marshalled by Horse Hines, the pallbearers, young men from the paper and the town, who had known the dead man best, moved slowly out, gripping the coffin-handles with their nicotined fingers. In proper sequence, the mourners followed, lengthening out in closed victorias that exhaled their funeral scent of stale air and old leather.
To Eugene came again the old ghoul fantasy of a corpse and cold pork, the smell of the dead and hamburger steak—the glozed corruption of Christian burial, the obscene pomps, the perfumed carrion. Slightly nauseated, he took his seat with Eliza in the carriage, and tried to think of supper.
The procession moved off briskly to the smooth trotting pull of the velvet rumps. The mourning women peered out of the closed carriages at the gaping town. They wept behind their heavy veils, and looked to see if the town was watching. Behind the world’s great mask of grief, the eyes of the mourners shone through with a terrible and indecent hunger, an unnameable lust.
It was raw October weather—gray and wet. The service had been short, as a precaution against the pestilence which was everywhere. The funeral entered the cemetery. It was a pleasant place, on a hill. There was a good view of the town. As the hearse drove up, two men who had been digging the grave, moved off. The women moaned loudly when they saw the raw open ditch.
Slowly the coffin was lowered onto the bands that crossed the grave.
Again Eugene heard the nasal drone of the Presbyterian minister. The boy’s mind fumbled at little things. Horse Hines bent ceremoniously, with a starched crackle of shirt, to throw his handful of dirt into the grave. “Ashes to ashes—” He reeled and would have fallen in if Gilbert Gant had not held him. He had been drinking. “I am the resurrection and the life—” Helen wept constantly, harshly and bitterly. “He that believeth in me—” The sobs of the women rose to sharp screams as the coffin slid down upon the bands into the earth.
Then the mourners got back into their carriages and were driven briskly away. There was a fast indecent hurry about their escape.
