Stephen then asked where Lady Luxellian was to lie.
“Here,” said his father. “We are going to set back this wall and make a recess; and ’tis enough for us to do before the funeral. When my lord’s mother died, she said, ‘John, the place must be enlarged before another can be put in.’ But ’a never expected ’twould be wanted so soon. Better move Lord George first, I suppose, Simeon?”
He pointed with his foot to a heavy coffin, covered with what had originally been red velvet, the colour of which could only just be distinguished now.
“Just as ye think best, Master John,” replied the shrivelled mason. “Ah, poor Lord George!” he continued, looking contemplatively at the huge coffin; “he and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be when one is a lord and t’other only a mortal man. Poor fellow! He’d clap his hand upon my shoulder and cuss me as familial and neighbourly as if he’d been a common chap. Ay, ’a cussed me up hill and ’a cussed me down; and then ’a would rave out again, and the goold clamps of his fine new teeth would glisten in the sun like fetters of brass, while I, being a small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a strappen fine gentleman as he was too! Yes, I rather liked en sometimes. But once now and then, when I looked at his towering height, I’d think in my inside, ‘What a weight you’ll be, my lord, for our arms to lower under the aisle of Endelstow Church some day!’ ”
“And was he?” inquired a young labourer.
“He was. He was five hundredweight if ’a were a pound. What with his lead, and his oak, and his handles, and his one thing and t’other”—here the ancient man slapped his hand upon the cover with a force that caused a rattle among the bones inside—“he half broke my back when I took his feet to lower en down the steps there. ‘Ah,’ saith I to John there—didn’t I, John?—‘that ever one man’s glory should be such a weight upon another man!’ But there, I liked my lord George sometimes.”
“ ’Tis a strange thought,” said another, “that while they be all here under one roof, a snug united family o’ Luxellians, they be really scattered miles away from one another in the form of good sheep and wicked goats, isn’t it?”
“True; ’tis a thought to look at.”
“And that one, if he’s gone upward, don’t know what his wife is doing no more than the man in the moon if she’s gone downward. And that some unfortunate one in the hot place is a-hollering across to a lucky one up in the clouds, and quite forgetting their bodies be boxed close together all the time.”
“Ay, ’tis a thought to look at, too, that I can say ‘Hullo!’ close to fiery Lord George, and ’a can’t hear me.”
“And that I be eating my onion close to dainty Lady Jane’s nose, and she can’t smell me.”
“What do ’em put all their heads one way for?” inquired a young man.
“Because ’tis churchyard law, you simple. The law of the living is, that a man shall be upright and downright, and the law of the dead is, that a man shall be east and west. Every state of society have its laws.”
“We must break the law wi’ a few of the poor souls, however. Come, buckle to,” said the master-mason.
And they set to work anew.
The order of interment could be distinctly traced by observing the appearance of the coffins as they lay piled around. On those which had been standing there but a generation or two the trappings still remained. Those of an earlier period showed bare wood, with a few tattered rags dangling therefrom. Earlier still, the wood lay in fragments on the floor of the niche, and the coffin consisted of naked lead alone; whilst in the case of the very oldest, even the lead was bulging and cracking in pieces, revealing to the curious eye a heap of dust within. The shields upon many were quite loose, and removable by the hand, their lustreless surfaces still indistinctly exhibiting the name and title of the deceased.
Overhead the groins and concavities of the arches curved in all directions, dropping low towards the walls, where the height was no more than sufficient to enable a person to stand upright.
The body of George the fourteenth baron, together with two or three others, all of more recent date than the great bulk of coffins piled there, had, for want of room, been placed at the end of the vault on tressels, and not in niches like the others. These it was necessary to remove, to form behind them the chamber in which they were ultimately to be deposited. Stephen, finding the place and proceedings in keeping with the sombre colours of his mind, waited there still.
“Simeon, I suppose you can mind poor Lady Elfride, and how she ran away with the actor?” said John Smith, after awhile. “I think it fell upon the time my father was sexton here. Let us see—where is she?”
“Here somewhere,” returned Simeon, looking round him.
“Why, I’ve got my arms round the very gentlewoman at this moment.” He lowered the end of the coffin he was holding, wiped his face, and throwing a morsel of rotten wood upon another as an indicator, continued: “That’s her husband there. They was as fair a couple as you should see anywhere round about; and a good-hearted pair likewise. Ay, I can mind it, though I was but a chiel at the time. She fell in love with this young man of hers, and their banns were asked in some church in London; and the old lord her father actually heard ’em asked the three times, and didn’t notice her name, being gabbled on wi’ a host of others. When she had married she told her father, and
