Vincy, whose expense in handsome crape seemed to imply
the most presumptuous hopes, aggravated by a bloom of complexion
which told pretty plainly that she was not a blood-relation,
but of that generally objectionable class called wife's kin.
We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images
are the brood of desire; and poor old Featherstone, who laughed
much at the way in which others cajoled themselves, did not escape
the fellowship of illusion. In writing the programme for his burial
he certainly did not make clear to himself that his pleasure in the
little drama of which it formed a part was confined to anticipation.
In chuckling over the vexations he could inflict by the rigid clutch
of his dead hand, he inevitably mingled his consciousness with that
livid stagnant presence, and so far as he was preoccupied with a
future life, it was with one of gratification inside his coffin.
Thus old Featherstone was imaginative, after his fashion.
However, the three mourning-coaches were filled according to the
written orders of the deceased. There were pall-bearers on horseback,
with the richest scarfs and hatbands, and even the under-bearers
had trappings of woe which were of a good well-priced quality.
The black procession, when dismounted, looked the larger for
the smallness of the churchyard; the heavy human faces and the
black draperies shivering in the wind seemed to tell of a world
strangely incongruous with the lightly dropping blossoms and
the gleams of sunshine on the daisies.
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