When the Earl had finished with the calf skull, Barquentine bent over the coffin and peered at the effect. He was, on the whole, satisfied. The calf’s head was rather too big, but it was adequate. The late evening light lit it admirably and the grain of the bone was particularly effective.
The Earl was standing silently a little in front of the crowd, and Barquentine, digging his crutch into the earth, hopped around it until he was facing the men who had carried the coffin. One glint of his cold eyes brought them to the graveside.
‘Nail the lid on,’ he shouted, and hopped around his crutch again on his withered leg, the ferrule of his support swivelling in the soft ground and raising the mud in gurgling wedges as it twisted.
Fuchsia, standing at her mother’s mountainous side, loathed him with her whole body. She was beginning to hate everything that was old. What was that word which Steerpike kept denouncing whenever he met her? He was always saying it was dreadful – ‘Authority’; that was it. She looked away from the one-legged man and her eyes moved absently along the line of gaping faces. They were staring at the coffin-men who were nailing down the planks. Everyone seemed horrible to Fuchsia. Her mother was gazing over the heads of the crowd with her characteristic sightlessness. Upon her father’s face a smile was beginning to appear, as though it were something inevitable, uncontrollable – something Fuchsia had never seen before on his face. She covered her eyes with her hands for a moment and felt a surge of unreality rising in her, perhaps the whole thing was a dream, perhaps everyone was really kind and beautiful, and she had seen them only through the black net of a dream she was suffering. She lowered her hands and found herself gazing into Steerpike’s eyes. He was on the other side of the grave and his arms were folded. As he stared at her, with his head a little on one side, like a bird’s, he raised his eyebrows to her, quizzically, his mouth twisted up on one side. Fuchsia involuntarily made a little gesture with her hand, a motion of recognition, of friendliness, but there was about the gesture something so subtle, so tender, as to be indescribable. For herself, she did not know that her hand had moved – she only knew that the figure across the grave was young.
He was strange and unappealing, with his high shoulders and his large swollen forehead; but he was slender, and young. Oh, that was what it was! He did not belong to the old, heavy, intolerant world of Barquentine: he belonged to the lightness of life. There was nothing about him that drew her, nothing she loved except his youth and his bravery. He had saved Nannie Slagg from the fire. He had saved Dr Prune from the fire – and oh! he had saved her, too. Where was his swordstick? What had he done with it? He was so silly about it, carrying it with him wherever he went.
The earth was being shovelled into the grave for the ramshackle coffin had been lowered. When the cavity was filled, Barquentine inspected the rectangular patch of disturbed earth. The shovelling had been messy work, the mud clinging to the spades, and Barquentine had shouted at the grave-hands irritably. Now, he scraped some of the unevenly distributed earth into the shallower patches with his foot, balancing at an angle upon his crutch. The mourners were dispersing, and Fuchsia, shambling away from her parents, found herself to the extreme right of the crowd as it moved towards the castle.
‘May I walk with you?’ said Steerpike, sidling up.
‘Yes,’ said Fuchsia. ‘Oh, yes; why shouldn’t you?’ She had never wanted him before, and was surprised at her own words.
Steerpike shot a glance at her as he pulled out his small pipe. When he had lit it, he said:
‘Not much in my line, Lady Fuchsia.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Earth to earth; ashes to ashes, and all that sort of excitement.’
‘Not much in anyone’s line, I shouldn’t think,’ she replied. ‘I don’t like the idea of dying.’
‘Not when one’s young, anyway,’ said the youth. ‘It’s all right for our friend rattle-ribs: not much life left inside him, anyway.’
‘I like you being disrespectful, sometimes,’ said Fuchsia in a rush. ‘Why must one try and be respectful to old people when they aren’t considerate?’
‘It’s their idea,’ said Steerpike. ‘They like to keep this reverence business going. Without it where’d they be? Sunk. Forgotten. Over the side: for they’ve nothing except their age, and they’re jealous of our youth.’
‘Is that what it is?’ said Fuchsia, her eyes widening. ‘Is it because they are jealous? Do you really think it’s that?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Steerpike. ‘They want to imprison us and make us fit into their schemes, and taunt us, and make us work for them. All the old are like that.’
‘Mrs Slagg isn’t like that,’ said Fuchsia.
‘She is the exception,’ said Steerpike, coughing in a strange way with his hand over his mouth. ‘She is the exception that proves the rule.’
