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"Now that you know the place, what do you want more?" asked the gravedigger. Samuel did not answer. He fell on his knees, and piously kissed the little mound. Then rising, with his cheeks bathed in tears, he approached the gravedigger, and spoke to him for some moments in a whisper though they were alone, and in the centre of that deserted place.
It is some sport of the gods, I suppose, a superhuman jest, perhaps the touch of farce that makes tragedy more vivid, since even that colossal Shakespeare of yours thought fit to lighten Hamlet by introducing a comic gravedigger. Be that as it may, Joan, you are Alec's Queen, and, as he cannot come for you it follows that you must go to him. Shall I tell you why? You are necessary to him.
There were no flowers planted around the tomb by those who revered his genius; only one wreath, withered and dead, lay among the grass, as if left long ago by some solitary pilgrim, and a few wild buttercups hung with their bright blossoms over the slab. It might have been wrong, but I could not resist the temptation to steal one or two while the old gravedigger was busy preparing a new tenement.
You would have about as much quicksilver in your stomach, as I have in my purse, and all my silver has been quick, ever since I remember, like the jests of the gravedigger in Hamlett but, as you say, where the devil is the end of this yarn?"
There was never perhaps a more extraordinary syllogism since the argal of Shakespeare's gravedigger. I quote from memory, and may slightly misrepresent the actual statement of the influential "educationalist," but the spirit of his words, as indeed of his practice, is surely as I give it.
Then began between those two men a mysterious dialogue, which the night enveloped in shade and silence. The gravedigger, alarmed at what Samuel asked him, at first refused his request. But the Jew, employing persuasions, entreaties, tears, and at last the seduction of the jingling gold, succeeded in conquering the scruples of the gravedigger.
See that buryin' ground over there?" inquired the driver, pointing as he spoke to a quaint little cemetery by the roadside. "Yes," replied Mott. "Probably most of the people died of longevity." "It don't tell on th' gravestones. Jest got a new gravedigger." "How's that?" "Third we've had inside o' a year. Had one fur nigh onto forty year, but he up an' died." "Longevity?" gravely inquired Mott.
The entertainment is followed by a counter-invitation; and the gravedigger is forced to pay a return visit. He is taken to Heaven, where, among other things, he sees at intervals three leaves fall slowly one after another from off a large tree in the garden. The tree is the Tree of Life, from which a leaf falls at the end of every century.
Half buried there in the pit, all the time handing those desolate trays, poor Israel seemed some gravedigger, or churchyard man, tucking away dead little innocents in their coffins on one side, and cunningly disinterring them again to resurrectionists stationed on the other. Twenty of these melancholy old mills were in operation.
Indeed, I think I shall go out to work. 'You will do no such thing, replied his wife. 'Just keep quite quiet, for before the sun rises you will be a dead man. The man was very frightened at her words, and lay absolutely still while the undertaker came and measured him for his coffin; and his wife gave orders to the gravedigger about his grave.
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