As they lifted the casket, Paine
began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's "Impromptu," which was
Jean's favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then
he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my
request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo
and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in
their last hours in this life.
From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road
and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently
disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any
more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies
together--he and her beloved old Katy--were conducting her to her distant
childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more, in the
company of Susy and Langdon.
DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning.
He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters
hereafter.
The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives
across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and Jean not here
to see.
2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four
hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The
scene is the library in the Langdon homestead.
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