He had taken off my
hands the disagreeable task of seeing the undertakers and making
arrangements for the saying of Masses, etc., arrangements which would
be intensely disagreeable to me to make so. I had plenty of time to
think out the details of my burning; and I grew happy in the thought
that I had escaped from the disgrace of Christian burial--a disgrace
which was never, until the last two days, wholly realised by me, but
which was nevertheless always suspected. No doubt it was the dread of
Kiltoon that had inspired that thought of death from which in late
years I had never seemed able to escape. I am of the romantic
temperament, and it would be a pity to forgo the burning I had
imagined. I delighted in the vision that had come upon me of the
felling of the larch trees on the hillside and the building of the
pyre about the old castle. It would reach much higher; I imagined it
at least fifty feet high. I saw it flaming in imagination, and when
half of it was burnt, the mourners would have to take to the boats, so
intense would be the heat. What a splendid spectacle! Never did any
man imagine a more splendid funeral! It would be a pity if the law
obliged me to forgo it. But there was no use hoping that the law would
not; there was a law against the burning of human remains, and I might
have to fall back on the Public Crematorium: it only remained for me
to decide what I would wish to be done with the ashes.
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