Chapter 25
The faces looked very hard and unmoved that surrounded Dempster's grave, while old Mr. Crewe read the burial-service in his low, broken voice. The pall-bearers were such men as Mr. Pittman, Mr. Lowme, and Mr. Budd—men whom Dempster had called his friends while he was in life; and worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.
The one face that had sorrow in it was covered by a thick crape-veil, and
the sorrow was suppressed and silent. No one knew how deep it was; for
the thought in most of her neighbours' minds was, that Mrs. Dempster
could hardly have had better fortune than to lose a bad husband who had
left her the compensation of a good income. They found it difficult to
conceive that her husband's death could be felt by her otherwise than as
a deliverance. The person who was most thoroughly convinced that Janet's
grief was deep and real, was Mr. Pilgrim, who in general was not at all
weakly given to a belief in disinterested feeling.
'That woman has a tender heart,' he was frequently heard to observe in
his morning rounds about this time. 'I used to think there was a great
deal of palaver in her, but you may depend upon it there's no pretence
about her. If he'd been the kindest husband in the world she couldn't
have felt more. There's a great deal of good in Mrs. Dempster—a great
deal of good.'
'I always said so,' was Mrs. Lowme's reply, when he made the
observation to her; 'she was always so very full of pretty attentions to
me when I was ill. But they tell me now she's turned Tryanite; if that's
it we shan't agree again. It's very inconsistent in her, I think, turning
round in that way, after being the foremost to laugh at the Tryanite
cant, and especially in a woman of her habits; she should cure herself of
them before she pretends to be over-religious.'
'Well, I think she means to cure herself, do you know,' said Mr. Pilgrim, whose goodwill towards Janet was just now quite above that temperate point at which he could indulge his feminine patients with a little judicious detraction. 'I feel sure she has not taken any stimulants all through her husband's illness; and she has been constantly in the way of them. I can see she sometimes suffers a good deal of depression for want of them—it shows all the more resolution in her. Those cures are rare: but I've known them happen sometimes with people of strong will.'
Mrs. Lowme took an opportunity of retailing Mr. Pilgrim's conversation to
Mrs. Phipps, who, as a victim of Pratt and plethora, could rarely enjoy
that pleasure at first-hand. Mrs. Phipps was a woman of decided opinions, though of wheezy utterance.
'For my part,' she remarked, 'I'm glad to hear there's any likelihood of
improvement in Mrs. Dempster, but I think the way things have turned out
seems to show that she was more to blame than people thought she was; else, why should she feel so much about her husband? And Dempster, I understand, has left his wife pretty nearly all his property to do as she likes with; that isn't behaving like such a very bad husband. I don't believe Mrs. Dempster can have had so much provocation as they pretended. I've known husbands who've laid plans for tormenting their wives when they're underground—tying up their money and hindering them from marrying again. Not that I should ever wish to marry again; I think one husband in one's life is enough in all conscience';—here she threw a fierce glance at the amiable Mr. Phipps, who was innocently delighting himself with the facetiae in the 'Rotherby Guardian,' and thinking the editor must be a droll fellow—'but it's aggravating to be tied up in that way. Why, they say Mrs. Dempster will have as good as six hundred a-year at least. A fine thing for her, that was a poor girl without a farthing to her fortune. It's well if she doesn't make ducks and drakes of it somehow.'