"Your intentions are all right--they always are--you want to do honour to the remains, and surely nobody can find any fault with that, for he was your kin; but you are going the wrong way about it, and you will see it yourself if you stop and think.You can't file around a basket of ashes trying to look sorry for it and make a sight that is really solemn, because the solemner it is, the more it isn't--anybody can see that.It would be so with one basket; it would be three times so with three.
Well, it stands to reason that if it wouldn't be solemn with one mourner, it wouldn't be with a procession--and there would be five thousand people here.I don't know but it would be pretty near ridiculous; I think it would.No, Mulberry, they can't lie in state--it would be a mistake.
Give that up and think of something else."So he gave it up; and not reluctantly, when he had thought it over and realized how right her instinct was.He concluded to merely sit up with the remains just himself and Hawkins.Even this seemed a doubtful attention, to his wife, but she offered no objection, for it was plain that he had a quite honest and simple-hearted desire to do the friendly and honourable thing by these forlorn poor relics which could command no hospitality in this far off land of strangers but his.He draped the flag about the baskets, put some crape on the door-knob, and said with satisfaction:
"There--he is as comfortable, now, as we can make him in the circumstances.Except--yes, we must strain a point there--one must do as one would wish to be done by--he must have it.""Have what, dear?"
"Hatchment."
The wife felt that the house-front was standing about all it could well stand, in that way; the prospect of another stunning decoration of that nature distressed her, and she wished the thing had not occurred to him..
She said, hesitatingly:
"But I thought such an honour as that wasn't allowed to any but very very near relations, who--""Right, you are quite right, my lady, perfectly right; but there aren't any nearer relatives than relatives by usurpation.We cannot avoid it;we are slaves of aristocratic custom and must submit."The hatchments were unnecessarily generous, each being as large as a blanket, and they were unnecessarily volcanic, too, as to variety and violence of color, but they pleased the earl's barbaric eye, and they satisfied his taste for symmetry and completeness, too, for they left no waste room to speak of on the house-front.
Lady Rossmore and her daughter assisted at the sitting-up till near midnight, and helped the gentlemen to consider what ought to be done next with the remains.Rossmore thought they ought to be sent home with a committee and resolutions,--at once.But the wife was doubtful.She said:
"Would you send all of the baskets?"
"Oh, yes, all."
"All at once?"
"To his father? Oh, no--by no means.Think of the shock.No--one at a time; break it to him by degrees.""Would that have that effect, father?"
"Yes, my daughter.Remember, you are young and elastic, but he is old.
To send him the whole at once might well be more than he could bear.