All through the day neighbours came to offer condolences. Then, shrewd-faced, with the marks of child-bearing, hard work and a harsh climate in every line, these respectable wives of lobstermen took their way home in little groups. In the house they had borne themselves somewhat awkwardly, and once outside, their pity for the dead woman appeared tinged with resentment. Little was known about her at the Point.
It was after nightfall when a woman wearing a shawl over her head, knocked timidly at old David's door. A boy of six years clung to her skirts. When she was admitted, she slipped furtively into the room of death, and the boy, with difficulty restraining his tears, waited for her in the kitchen. He was afraid of the fat woman with her face bound round with a handkerchief, who was washing dishes at the sink. She made a great clatter. When she stepped to a cupboard, the candle threw an exaggerated portrait of her on the opposite wall. The ends of the cloth around her face stood up in two points, like horns; from between her flabby cheeks, projected a nose like a beak. A fork in her hand became, to his gaze, the size of a pitchfork. Once, when she passed near him, she held back her skirts, muttering under her breath; and he saw the same aversion in her eyes that he knew to be in his own, save that in her look there was a mingling of scorn and in his, a mingling of fright. It was a strange look to be directed toward a child, but it was one with which the boy was familiar. Presently his mother reappeared and they went out again. She walked very rapidly and now and then she wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron. The boy had to run to keep up with her. When they struck into a rugged path leading to the lighthouse, he paused and looked back.
Under the light of a full moon the Beckett house shone with a quite peculiar radiance. And yes, there it was! as they had said. It stood near the tumble-down cow-shed. The funeral was to take place in a village some miles distant, and an early start in the morning was necessary. The undertaker had gone, but the driver, with the hearse, would remain the night. He was eating his supper now, waited upon by the ugly woman. Meanwhile it stood out in the yard and the moonlight glinted on the four sable urns that decorated its corners, and sparkled on its glass sides and peeped between the black hangings without hindrance. The moon, indeed, to the child's thought, seemed to be as curious as he. Beads of perspiration started to his forehead, and, grasping his mother's skirt, he stumbled on at her side.