Nelly Dean by Alison Case

Author:Alison Case
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008123406
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Well, the young couple made a better showing for the funeral than I expected. The mistress had her little fit of hysterics about the preparation, as I told you before, but at the event itself they were both in mourning clothes, at least, and treating the occasion with the solemnity it required. Hindley’s suit looked worn and a little tight, which puzzled me. I later learned that he had been forwarded funds, via the cousins in York, to buy a full suit of mourning, but had used them instead to buy a wedding suit, and have his old one dyed black. Her dress looked older too, and grey rather than black, though sober enough in style. I thought that perhaps she had bought it second-hand, but she told me, as we walked beside the coffin to the churchyard, that it had been bought at her mother’s death, two years earlier.

‘I was sorry not to be wearing it when we arrived yesterday,’ she confided, ‘but it is my only one, and I was so afraid it would get soiled or torn on the journey, and not be able to be made ready for the funeral today. Hindley says he does not like to see me in mourning, anyway,’ she added. ‘He says he does not see why I should wear black for a man I never met, and whose loss I can scarcely mourn. And I do have a horror of black, as you saw yesterday. But I told him I must wear grey at least, so that I would not be made a byword in the neighbourhood at the start, by not showing proper respect.’

‘That was very right of you,’ I said, as she obviously expected.

At the service itself, Mrs Earnshaw showed so much respect that she even contrived to weep – in sorrow, she said, that she had never had an opportunity to meet such an estimable father. Hindley seemed less than grief-stricken on the occasion, but that was hardly surprising, considering how his father had generally treated him, and I could not hold it against him. I myself wept copiously, to the great annoyance of Joseph, who continued to insist loudly that no grief was needed for a man who had gone to his reward, and was now a saint in Heaven.

Both Dr Kenneths, father and son, were present at the service, Bodkin with his new wife at his side. The elder came up to Hindley afterwards, to offer his condolences, but Hindley himself sought out Bodkin, clapped him on the back, and introduced him to Mrs Earnshaw – grinning broadly the whole time, in defiance of the sadness of the occasion. I was not near enough to hear what was said, but I guessed by their gestures that Bodkin was giving the news of his own marriage, and receiving his friend’s congratulations thereupon, while the two wives made each other’s acquaintance.

Afterwards, as the crowd dispersed, I remained in the churchyard, to look at Mrs Earnshaw’s gravestone, to

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