POMPE FUNEBRE.
In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble.
When I first saw the sexton he was standing motionless behind a stone.Presently he moved on again, pausing at times, and turning right andleft with that nervous, jerky motion that always chills me.
His path lay across the blighted moss and withered leaves scatteredin moist layers along the bank of the little brown stream, and I,wondering what his errand might be, followed, passing silently over therotting forest mould. Once or twice he heard me, for I saw him stopshort, a blot of black and orange in the sombre woods; but he alwaysstarted on again, hurrying at times as though the dead might growimpatient.
For the sexton that I followed through the November forest was oneof those small creatures that God has sent to bury little things thatdie alone in the world. Undertaker, sexton, mute, and gravedigger inone, this thing, robed in black and orange, buries all things that dieunheeded by the world. And so they call it--this little beetle in blackand orange--the "sexton."
How he hurried! I looked up into the gray sky where ashen branches,interlaced, swayed in unfelt winds, and I heard the dry leaves rattlein the tree tops, and the thud of acorns on the mould. A sombre birdpeered at me from a heap of brush, then ran pattering over the leaves.
The sexton had reached a bit of broken ground, and was scuffling oversticks and gulleys toward a brown tuft of withered grass above. I darednot help him; besides, I could not bring myself to touch him, he was sohorribly absorbed in his errand.
I halted for a moment. The eagerness of this live creature to find hisdead and handle it; the odour of death and decay in this little forestworld, where I had waited for spring when Lys moved among the floweringgorse, singing like a throstle in the wind--all this troubled me, andI lagged behind.
The sexton scrambled over the dead grass, raising his seared eyes atevery wave of wind. The wind brought sadness with it, the scent oflifeless trees, the vague rustle of gorse buds, yellow and dry as paperflowers.
Along the stream, rotting water plants, scorched and frost-blighted,lay massed above the mud. I saw their pallid stems swaying like wormsin the listless current.
The sexton had reached a mouldering stump, and now he seemed undecided.I sat down on a fallen tree, moist and bleached, that crumbled undermy touch, leaving a stale odour in the air. Overhead a crow roseheavily and flapped out into the moorland; the wind rattled the starkblackthorns; a single drop of rain touched my cheek. I looked into thestream for some sign of life; there was nothing, except a shapelesscreature that might have been a blindworm, lying belly upward on themud bottom. I touched it with a stick. It was stiff and dead.
The wind among the sham paperlike gorse buds filled the woods with asilken rustle. I put out my hand and touched a yellow blossom; it feltlike an immortelle on a funeral pillow.
The sexton had moved on again; something, perhaps a musty spider's web,had stuck to one leg, and he dragged it as he laboured on through thewood. Some little field mouse torn by weasel or kestrel, some crushedmole, some tiny dead pile of fur or feather, lay not far off, strickenby God or man or brother creature. And the sexton knew it--how, Godknows! But he knew it, and hurried on to his tryst with the dead.
His path now lay along the edge of a tidal inlet from the Groix River.I looked down at the gray water through the leafless branches, and Isaw a small snake, head raised, swim from a submerged clot of weedsinto the shadow of a rock. There was a curlew, too, somewhere in theblack swamp, whose dreary, persistent call cursed the silence.
I wondered when the sexton would fly; for he could fly if he chose; itis only when the dead are near, very near, that he creeps. The soiledmess of cobweb still stuck to him, and his progress was impeded byit. Once I saw a small brown and white spider, striped like a zebra,running swiftly in his tracks, but the sexton turned and raised histwo clubbed forelegs in a horrid imploring attitude that still hadsomething of menace under it. The spider backed away and sidled undera stone.
When anything that is dying--sick and close to death--falls upon theface of the earth, something moves in the blue above, floating likea moat; then another, then others. These specks that grow out of thefathomless azure vault are jewelled flies. They come to wait for Death.
The sexton also arranges rendezvous with Death, but never waits; Deathmust arrive the first.
When the heavy clover is ablaze with painted wings, when bees hum andblunder among the white-thorn, or pass by like swift singing bullets,the sexton snaps open his black and orange wings and hums across theclover with the bees. Death in a scented garden, the tokens of theplague on a fair young breast, the gray flag of fear in the face ofone who reels into the arms of Destruction, the sexton scrambling inthe lap of spring, folding his sleek wings, unfolding them to ape thebuzz of bees, passing over sweet clover tops to the putrid flesh thatsummons him--these things must be and will be to the end.
The sexton was running now--running fast, trailing the cobweb overtwigs and mud. The edge of the wood was near, for I could see thewinter wheat, like green scenery in a theatre, stretching for milesacross the cliffs, crude as painted grass. And as I crept throughthe brittle forest fringe, I saw a figure lying face downward in thewheat--a girl's slender form, limp, motionless.
The sexton darted under her breast.
Then I threw myself down beside her, crying, "Lys! Lys!" And as Icried, the icy rain burst out across the moors, and the trees dashedtheir stark limbs together till the whole spectral forest tossed anddanced, and the wind roared among the cliffs.
And through the Dance of Death Lys trembled in my arms, and sobbed andclung to me, murmuring that the Purple Emperor was dead; but the windtore the words from her white lips, and flung them out across the sea,where the winter lightning lashed the stark heights of Groix.
Then the fear of death was stilled in my soul, and I raised her fromthe ground, holding her close.
And I saw the sexton, just beyond us, hurry across the ground and seekshelter under a little dead skylark, stiff-winged, muddy, lying alonein the rain.
* * * * *
In the storm, above us, a bird hovered singing through the rain. Itpassed us twice, still singing, and as it passed again we saw theshadow it cast upon the world was whiter than snow.
THE MESSENGER.
Little gray messenger, Robed like painted Death, Your robe is dust. Whom do you seek Among lilies and closed buds At dusk?
Among lilies and closed buds At dusk, Whom do you seek, Little gray messenger, Robed in the awful panoply Of painted Death?
R. W. C.