Beneath assumption of respectful
silence, it jarred, boomed, took notes, debated, questioned. Beneath
assumption of solemnity, it peeped and stared. Her flayed nerves and
desolated heart plagued her with suspicions of insincerity.
In as far as Colonel Carteret controlled proceedings all had been marked
by reverent simplicity. But where the carcass is, the eagles,
proverbially, gather. And unfeathered fowl, in their own estimation
eminently representative of that regal species, flocked to Deadham church
and to The Hard.
If--to vary our metaphor--some, in the past, inclined to stone the living
prophet, these now outvied one another in their alacrity to bedeck his
tomb. Dr. Cripps, for example, hurried to offer himself as pall-bearer--a
request the more readily disposed of that there was no pall. While
Archdeacon Verity, to cite a second example and from a higher social
level, supported by his elder son Pontifex--domestic chaplain to the
Bishop of Harchester--insisted on sharing with Canon Horniblow the
melancholy honour of reading the burial service.
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