ieve it, at Ford Lankester's funeral.
I'd gone to Chenies early with young Furnival, who was "doing" the
funeral for his paper, and with Burton, who knew the Lankesters, as
I did, slightly. I'd had a horrible misgiving that I should see
Wrackham there; and there he was, in the intense mourning of that
black cloak and slouch hat he used to wear. The cloak was a fine
thing as far as it went, and with a few more inches he really might
have carried it off; but those few more inches were just what had
been denied him. Still, you couldn't miss him or mistake him. He was
exactly like his portraits in the papers; you know the haggard,
bilious face that would have been handsome if he'd given it a
chance; the dark, straggling, and struggling beard, the tempestuous,
disheveled look he had, and the immortal Attitude. He was standing
in it under a yew tree looking down into Lankester's grave. It was a
small white chamber about two feet square--enough for his ashes. The
earth at the top of it was edged with branches of pine and laurel.

Furnival said afterward you could see what poor Wrackham was
thinking of. _He_ would have pine branches. Pine would be
appropriate for the stormy Child of Nature that he was. And
laurel--there would have to be lots of laurel. He was at the height
of his great vogue, the brief popular fury for him that was absurd
then and seems still more absurd to-day, now that we can measure
him. He takes no room, no room at all, even in the popular
imagination; less room than Lankester's ashes took--or his own, for
that matter.

Yes, I know it's sad in all conscience. But Furnival seemed to think
it funny then, for he called my attention to him. I mustn't miss
him, he said.

Perhaps I might have thought it funny too if it hadn't been for
Antigone. I was not prepared for Antigone. I hadn't realized her.
She was there beside her father, not looking into the grave, but
looking at him as if she knew what he was thinking and found it, as
we find it now, pathetic. But unbearably pathetic.

Somehow there seemed nothing incongruous in _her_ being there. No, I
can't tell you what she was like to look at, except that she was
like a great sacred, sacrificial figure; she might have come there
to pray, or to offer something, or to pour out a libation. She was
tall and grave, and gave the effect of something white and golden.
In her black gown and against the yew trees she literally shone.

It was because of Antigone that