The scene presented at the Abbey struck her as magnificent.  She had never seen so many private carriages assembled together, and she would not have guessed that the whole county of Hampshire contained so many policemen.  There were soldiers also—­members of some volunteer or yeomanry corps of which the deceased was honorary colonel.  Their brilliant uniforms shone out dazzlingly on a background of black dresses and coats.

Naturally there was not space in the church for all this vast concourse.  The nobility, gentry, and other ticket-holders were admitted first, and then there came an unmannerly rush which the constables checked with difficulty.  Mavis and Dale were just inside the door; and Mr. Silcox close by, whispering, and pointing out several lords and ladies near the chancel steps.  The service was long but very beautiful, with giant candles burning by the draped bier, organ music that seemed to swell and rumble in the pit of one’s stomach, and light voices of singing boys that made one vibrate as if one had been turned into glass—­all stirring one to a quite meaningless regret, not for the man who lay deaf and dumb and blind beneath the velvet pall, but because of vague thoughts about children who die young and have wings to hover over those they loved down here below.  And, oh, the increasing heat of the church, the oppressive crush, the heavy odors of flowers and crape and perspiration!  When at last one emerged, and the open air touched one’s forehead, it was like coming out of an oven into a cold bath.

Then the remains were consigned to the family vault in the small graveyard behind the church—­the crowd filling every vista, the bells tolling, and the soldiers discharging a cannon and making one jump at each regularly timed discharge.  Mavis, turning her eyes in all directions, looked at everything with intense interest—­at the gentlefolk, now inextricably mixed up with the tenantry and the mob; at her husband, standing so black and solemn, with a face that might have belonged to a marble statue; at the puff of smoke that crept upward when the gun went bang, at the sunlight on the church tower, at the birds flying so high and so joyous above its battlements.  And all at once she saw Aunt Petherick—­the blackest mourner there, with crape veils trailing to the ground, a red face down which the tears streamed in rivers; sobbing so that the sobs sounded like the most violent hiccoughs; really almost as much noise as the soldiers’ gun.

Will had seen her too.  Mavis noticed his stony glance at Auntie, when the crowd began to move again.

While he was slowly making his way toward the stables, she got hold of Mrs. Petherick and had a little chat with her.  Auntie had now entirely recovered from her recent hysterical storm; the redness of her face was passing off, and its expression was one of anxiety, rather than of grief.

“My dear girl,” she said, “I don’t yet know what this will mean to me.  You know, he promised the house for my life—­but he wouldn’t give me a lease.  I’ve nothing to show—­not so much as a letter.  I may be turned out neck and crop.”