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"Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and no hearse can be mine: and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!" Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to the surface.
When the procession reached the cemetery, it was too wet to think of leaving the carriages, but Beulah could see the coffin borne from the hearse, and heard the subdued voice of the minister; and when the shrouded form of the only child was lowered into its final resting-place, she groaned, and hid her face in her hands. Should they meet no more? Hitherto Mrs.
Behind the band were two coffins in a hearse, draped in black. Following these walked the condemned men, surrounded by guards with fixed bayonets. The firing party brought up the rear of the procession. They marched slowly around the three sides of the square between the silent ranks, finally reaching the graves and upon the edge of each was set its respective coffin.
Taking the omnibus of the Anglo-Montenegrin Trading Company, rudely dubbed "the Hearse," to Plavnica, the station for Podgorica on the Lake of Scutari, we transferred our luggage to a huge barge, or "londra," and were slowly punted out on to the lake through one of those extraordinary canals which intersect the marshy land at this end of the lake.
Six starved horses, themselves the very emblems of mortality, well cloaked and plumed, lugging along the hearse with its dismal emblazonry, crept in slow state towards the place of interment, preceded by Jamie Duff, an idiot, who, with weepers and cravat made of white paper, attended on every funeral, and followed by six mourning coaches, filled with the company.
As the sad little procession moved along the streets the wayfarers reverently uncovering and soldiers saluting as it passed the dirge-like chant of the Miserere never failed to fill my eyes with unbidden tears of sympathy for the mourners, who, with bowed heads, walked behind the wreath-laden hearse.
All these little maidens, their hands filled with flowers, looked radiant with happiness in the golden light; but suddenly their faces grew grave as they perceived the men placing the coffin on the hearse. "Is she inside that thing?" asked Sophie in a whisper. Her sister Blanche nodded assent. Then, in her turn, she said: "For men it's as big as this!"
At the railway station we were received in a salon where the newspapers, which had announced our arrival for noon, were handed to me. We waited. Crowd; friends. At noon we set out for Pere Lachaise. I followed the hearse bareheaded. Victor was beside me. All our friends followed, the people too. As the procession passed there were cries of: "Hats off!"
He, however, still lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and despising him as she had done, they left him to wake when he should choose. Those men who could sit in their saddles rode escort, the old friends nearest, and four held the heads of the frightened cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They had never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held them.
"But why should I pity my mother? She wished to lie beside her husband. And far be it from me to criticise such a desire!" The coffin was lifted upon the hearse. A gardener of old time came up to ask me if I wished there to be any crying.
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