and now Bessie Gant’s voice could be heard speaking to them sharply, coldly, peremptorily, as she tried to bring back order and calmness to the distracted scene:
“Now, you get out of here—all of you!… There’s nothing more any of you can do—I’ll take care of all the rest of it!… Get out, now… I can’t have you in the room while there’s work to do…. Helen, go on back to bed and get some sleep…. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“They never told me!… They never told me,” she turned and stared stupidly at Bessie Gant with dull glazed eyes. “Can’t you do something?… Where’s MacGuire? Has anyone called him yet?”
“No,” said the nurse sharply and angrily, “and no one’s going to. You’re not going to get that man out of bed at this hour of the night when there’s nothing to be done…. Get out of here, now, all of you,” she began to push and herd them towards the door. “I can’t be bothered with you…. Go somewhere—anywhere—get drunk—only don’t come back in here.”
The whole house had come to life; in the excitement, shock, and exhaustion of their nerves the dead man still lying there in such a grotesque and twisted position, was forgotten. One of Eliza’s lodgers, a man named Gilmer, who had been in the house for years, was wakened, went out, and got a gallon of corn whisky; everyone drank a great deal, became, in fact, somewhat intoxicated; when the undertakers came to take Gant away, none of the family was present. No one saw it. They were all in the kitchen seated around Eliza’s battered old kitchen table, with the jug of whisky on the table before them. They drank and talked together all night long until dawn came.
XXXIV
The morning of Gant’s funeral the house was filled with people who had known him and the air was heavy with the sweet, cloying fragrance of the funeral flowers: the odours of lilies, roses, and carnations. His coffin was banked with flowers, but in the centre there was a curious and arresting plainness, a simple wreath of laurel leaves. Attached to the wreath was a small card on which these words were written: “Hugh McGuire.”
And people passing by the coffin paused for a moment and stared at the name with a feeling of unspoken wonder in their hearts. Eliza stood looking
