Money and other stories/Two Fathers

INCE morning the square had been blazing like a burning hot oven under the cloudless sky. White gables with arcades beneath cactus and geranium blooming in the windows; and a reddish coloured little dog scratching himself on the pavement. The frowning façades of well-to-do houses breathed coolness into the glaring day; a comfortable gloom peered from within through the great dark panes of the closed windows. In front of the apothecary's house the St. Bernard dog lay sleeping like a sphinx. It was quiet, always quiet in this square; quiet when it rained, quiet in the midday heat, quiet on Sundays, quiet on week-days. The church, like some huge, sheer ship, rose up in the middle of the square. It was there that the little girl used to walk while she lived.

She died, and never had the little town seen such grief as the grief of her father. For the last few days before she died he never left her bedside only while she slept he would stand at the window and look out on the square. It ​was there that he used to walk with her while she lived, going hand in hand with her and chatting; the apothecary’s St. Bernard always swept the ground with his heavy tail and stood up for her to stroke him. The old apothecary would reach across to a glass jar and give her a handful of grey throat lozenges. The little girl used to spit them out afterwards with disgust, and her poor little fingers would be smeared and sticky for a long time.

He used to walk with her down there and on to the river. She was afraid of some houses and would never say why; she was afraid of people and of mischievous dogs, of wells with buckets, of bridges, beggars, and horses; she was afraid of the river and of engines. At every shudder of fear she squeezed her father’s hand and he responded with a strong, protective clasp: “Don’t be frightened, I’m here.” He would go with her here on woodland walks and roll cones down the slope with affected gaiety; the child never asked questions about anything. Everyone knew them: he the grave father, stout, bent, and so taken up with her; she the badly-dressed six-year-old girl with light hair and a pinched face. The children used to call after her “skinny-ninny;” then he would flush, be pained and go and complain to their parents. That is how their walks used to be.

​The St. Bernard got up and looked round. She was ill for three weeks and then died. A few beggar-women stood in front of the house of mourning; the funeral guests assembled, stood baking for a time in the square, and then went in. The musicians were waiting already, and the choirboys with crosses and lanterns; four workmen from the father’s workshop, in new black suits, brought the bier covered with a long pall, little girls in white came, half-nervous and half-pleased, the choir arrived with music-sheets under their arms, tall, laughing young women with light coloured dresses and bunches of flowers; gradually the leading folk of the town assembled, wearing long black coats and silken skirts, heavy tophats, grave and solemn faces; the whole town came, since the father was a man of means and importance there. At last came the dean with two priests in white canonicals signifying heavenly joys. Upstairs in the large drawing-room lay the little girl, with a wreath on her fair hair and a broken candle in her little waxen hands.

It was quiet in the square and the St. Bernard was lying down with his head raised towards the hushed house. Then through the window came the powerful voice of the priest: “Sit nomen Domini.” The beggar-women fell on their knees. “Laudate pueri Dominum: laudate ​nomen Domini.” The male choir joined in, “Sit nomen Domini benedictum.” The beggar-women in front of the house set up a mumbled confused praying which slowly shaped itself into the words of the Pater noster. “Hic accipiet,” rang the powerful voice of the dean. “Kyrie eleison,” “Christe eleison,” “Kyrie eleison. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.” “Sed libera nos a malo.” The St. Bernard, with drooping tail, slunk home. It was silent in the house, so that even the beggars were quiet. Only the fountain murmured in the centre of the square.

The little girl was dead; she had been a sickly child and not even pretty, she was afraid of the broad square, she was afraid of the big dog and the fountain which for her had no bottom; she went through life hanging on to her father’s hand, lay ill in his arms, and now, praised be the Lord, for she has died in her poor little sixth year to go and be an angel.

Across the sweltering square the black procession made its way: choristers with crosses and lanterns, wailing music, little girls with wreaths of rosemary, each carrying a broken candle on a cushion, priests with lighted candles, and then the little coffin itself, so light amid all that sumptuous display, stiff, broad ribbons, waxen wreaths and bands of ​black crape, the father with bent head and face almost obliterated with grief, the pale, undersized mother under her black veil, and then the people, black and gloomy, with bald heads in the glare of the sun, with white handkerchiefs, a slow-moving, whispering crowd, and in the rear, like a separate and muttering island, the beggars with their never-ending prayer.

Along the parched, hollow path the procession climbed to the Calvary of human sorrows. Behind the bare wall lay the new cemetery, white and dry, the sandy ground of the dead, where nothing grew but white crosses, lilies made of metal and the lean tower of the cemetery chapel. All bare and bleached like bones. A white, dead noon. A white, burning path. The little coffin mounted up and drew after it the mournful procession; a little coffin, a little dead body in its white shroud with the broken candle; there where she used to walk hand in hand with her father—

—Poor fellow, he had loved her so dearly! He had married late and looked forward to the coming of the first child; and then, you know of course, there came the new choir-leader, and the wife lost her head about him. All the town knew about it. That was how this fair-haired girlie came to be born to dark-haired parents; she was exactly like that organist fellow, the ​very image of him. She absolutely pointed to her own real father.

The light little coffin seemed changed into lead; the bearers halted and placed the bier on the ground. Yes, just as far as here she used to walk with her father; here they used to sit and look down on to the road with the caravans of travelling players, farm waggons, and dog-carts, looking down on the streets and guessing who was going by———

The whole town knew whom the mother was carrying on with, only the husband was blind; he had his child, the light-haired and pale-eyed little girl whom he fussed over while his wife ran round having jealous quarrels with every young woman whom her musician taught to pound on the keys. Finally he had to break with her if he wasn't to lose all his lessons on her account; and then he let anyone who asked for it have her letters to read, and everyone asked.

The music again wailed out a doleful march, and the slow procession wound heavily upwards to the sound of bells. The little lady in the veil, with lips sharply pressed together, stumbled over the hem of her skirt; she was holding herself erect to face all those glances, before she shut herself up at home again, with her endless embroidery, by the window, pale with loneliness and hatred.

​Yes, he had abandoned her after that, and so she stayed there with this child coldly repulsive to her, and her husband who now had no thought but for that impassive little girl who was not his. He was attached to her with the full force of his slow-witted affection; and the little town really did not know whether to laugh at or pity him when he brought her, queerly dressed, pale and wide-eyed, out from the chilly rooms of the house into the square. Then the bells ceased with a short peal.

The little coffin was knocking at the gate of eternity. It was resting on planks over the open grave in the middle of the great, speechless crowd; in the dead silence only the choir rustled music-books and the dean slowly turned over the leaves of a little book bound in black. In the crowd a child burst out crying. The thin shadow of the tower cut across the burning ground belonging to the dead. Just a year ago they had begun to bury here; and perhaps the cemetery was too large, perhaps they would never fill it, perhaps the grass would never grow there, perhaps it must remain for all eternity as empty and bare. The procession breathed heavily in anxiety. What was happening? Why didn’t they begin? The silence drew out painfully, heavily, oppressively—

“Laudate Dominum de coelis, laudate eum in excelsis!” “Laudate eum omnes angeli eius,” ​chanted the choir. “Laudate eum omnes virtutes eius.” The crowd breathed again. “Laudate eum sol et luna; laudate eum stellae et lumen.” “Laudate eum coeli coelorum.” A faint breeze, as though waked by the chorus of male voices, wafted relief to the pale faces; a cloud of incense rose, ribbons and wreaths rustled, and from the grave breathed the chill of clay. The father stared motionless at the coffin, bending over as if he would fall; people stood on tip-toe to see him better; now, now the moment of parting had come.

“Kyrie eleison.” “Christe eleison.” “Kyrie eleison.” The young priest swung the censer, its fine chains rattled softly, the smoke rose and quivered—“Oremus.” The wide, burning sky stretched dully over the white cemetery, for one second of painful eternity there was only the beating of hearts in the tension of a terrible, great and agonizing moment. “Per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.” Drops of holy water were sprinkled on the little coffin; the father fell on his knees sobbing aloud; the coffin slowly descended into the grave and the choir broke sweetly, mournfully and softly into the chorale, “God has called.”

The little lady in the veil listened as if transfixed. She knew only too well that rich, smooth, self-satisfied, self-complacent voice. Once she had heard it under other circum​stances and had melted passionately under its almost material contact. The whole of the little town listened with bowed heads: the choir-leader was singing alone with Marie, the chief of the women singers, the Venus of the place, a tall, handsome girl. Only these two voices were heard out of all the choir. It was said that this Marie was running after him. The two voices blended and mingled lovingly in the broad sunlight; the dean himself listened with closed eyes; the little lady broke into convulsive weeping; the little blue cloud of incense rose to the sky, and softly, very softly the finale floated over the cemetery. The dean awoke as if from a dream and bent down to the earth.

One, two, three; everyone pressed forward to the open grave where the father was kneeling on the piled-up clay and sobbing as though he could never stop. They each threw their three clods into the grave and would have liked to be gone. They only waited until the father should rise so as to press his hand. The priests fidgeted a little, they had still to go to the chapel again; the grave-digger blew his nose noisily and began to shovel the dry and burning clay into the grave. The whole assembly stood in perplexed, helpless silence.

Then the choir broke into a ripple of laughter. ​The choir-leader’s eyes twinkled, glad that his joke had told. Pale Agnes blushed, Matilda bit her handkerchief, and Marie doubled up and exploded soundlessly. The choir-master smoothed his moustache and hair with a satisfied air, bent over to Marie and whispered something to her. Marie giggled and stepped back. The whole company looked round, half-amused and half-indignant.

Suddenly the father rose, trembling, and tried to speak. “To you, you all—who have shown to my beloved little daughter—my only child———” But he could get no further; he sobbed, and without offering his hand to anyone, moved away as if in a dream. There was a general stir. Then as the priests passed into the chapel the assembly broke up and dispersed. Some of them hastily marked the graves of their departed with three crosses, others paused for a time before some monument, and scarcely anyone waited for the end of the ceremony; only the choir-leader with Marie and the choir-girls passed with a loud laugh into the chancel of the cemetery chapel.

A few women in black were praying by the graves, they wiped their eyes and arranged the poor withered flowers.

From the open doors of the chapel floated the voice of the dean: “Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino.”

​“Benedicite angeli Domini Domino," chimed in the choir-leader. “Benedicite coeli Domino.”

The grave-digger, with heaped-up spadefuls, was burying the child of two fathers.