They set out, a funeral procession of three, which at other times would have drawn many curious glances; the priest leading the horse and William and the Englishwoman walking side by side at the rear of the cart. The cemetery lay outside the village, a half-mile or so from their starting-point, and they passed wayfarers enough on the road, of whom some bared their heads and crossed themselves, and others were too busy with their own sorrows to give even a thought to the dead. The gate of the graveyard was narrow and it was with difficulty that the cart was manoeuvred between its posts. At an ordinary funeral the hearse would have remained in the road; but this was no ordinary funeral nor ordinary day, and it was as well not to tempt the footsore fugitive by the sight of a vehicle unguarded. Accordingly, the cart was manoeuvred through the gate before the priest, William and the Englishwoman lifted out the body of Griselda and carried it to the grave in the corner. The bent-backed old labourer was sitting beside it on the mound that would shortly fill it; he rose when he saw them, leaning on his spade and bared his grey hairs to the dead.
The grave was shallow—but, shallow as it was, the body, being coffinless, was lowered with difficulty and the Englishwoman led William a little way aside that he might not watch while the priest and the peasant performed the last service Griselda would require of man; he understood what she meant and stood with his back to the group round the grave, staring at a granite tombstone bedizened with massive bead wreaths. When she touched him on the shoulder, as sign that he might turn, the priest was crossing himself at his prayers and the old man standing by the heap of new turned earth. He went to the edge of the grave, looked down at the crumpled sheet and then stupidly round at his neighbour. He said nothing, but she thought he was expecting something; so, as the priest still prayed with closed eyes in silence, she struggled with the racial shyness where things of the spirit are concerned and, swallowing her tears, spoke the funeral words for Griselda.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live …”
“Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord … they rest from their labours.”
“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live … He cometh up and is cut down …”
“Lord have mercy upon us!”
It was all she could remember; and when William had whispered Amen they left the old peasant to his work.
XIII
At the gate of the cemetery they parted from the priest, who had charged himself with the immediate return of the haycart which he had borrowed from a neighbouring farm; he shook hands with them, nodded kindly to the Englishwoman’s thanks, climbed into the cart and drove off along the dusty road. They saw him no more and often wondered what became of him when the wave of Teutonic invasion swept over his parish and himself. Their own way lay in the opposite direction—first back to the village inn, where the Englishwoman picked up her bag and a package of provisions for the journey, and then on to the station to await the arrival of the train. William followed her incuriously, without question or comment; and when she broke silence to explain what they were doing he assented, speaking with an effort and hardly knowing to what he assented.
The train to Paris had been announced by the station authorities for an early hour in the morning, but morning dragged on and became afternoon before it put in an appearance. They waited through long and shadeless hours—till two o’clock and after—at the most insignificant of railway stations with a crowd of would-be passengers; a crowd that swelled as the hours crawled on until it flowed from the platform far along the line, and it seemed doubtful if any train, however capacious, could absorb its swarming multitude. It sat in families about the platform and camped and shifted as an untidy fringe to the track; it was querulous, weeping, apathetic—it was also, in patches, malodorous. At midday it picknicked, squalidly enough, out of bottles and bulging handkerchiefs, finding momentary distraction in the process; for the rest it had nothing to do but exchange its miseries, stare at the curve which the train must round, listen uneasily to the echo of artillery and assail the stationmaster with complaining queries whenever he dared to show his face. For the most part that hapless and harried official—whose subordinates had been reft from him by mobilization and who was only too conscious that his timetable was a snare and a mockery—lay low in his miniature office; whence he peered out now and again to make anxious estimate of the numbers that blackened and overflowed his platform. As time went on and the throng grew denser, he gave up his attempts to reconcile the extent of the crowd with the cubic capacity of a highly problematical train, and retiring to his sanctum, in despair and for good, locked the door on intrusion and complaint.
Whenever—as happened not once, but often—an engine was sighted rounding the curve to the northward, there was instant bustle and expectation on the part of the waiting multitude. Makeshift luggage was collected and clutched at, mothers screamed to their straying young families and herded them together in anxious preparation for the formidable struggle ahead; but not once but often the alarm was a false one, the preparations in vain, as the train sped by without halt. The first to run past was a Red Cross train with bandaged men showing at the windows; as it slid between the platforms the crowd buzzed its disappointment and then—with the exception
