Page 382 - of-human-bondage-

They went to the tiny room in which poor Fanny had lived.
Albert Price looked at the pictures and the furniture.
‘I don’t pretend to know much about art,’ he said. ‘I sup-
pose these pictures would fetch something, would they?’
‘Nothing,’ said Philip.
‘The furniture’s not worth ten shillings.’
Albert Price knew no French and Philip had to do every-
thing. It seemed that it was an interminable process to get
the poor body safely hidden away under ground: papers had
to be obtained in one place and signed in another; officials
had to be seen. For three days Philip was occupied from
morning till night. At last he and Albert Price followed the
hearse to the cemetery at Montparnasse.
‘I want to do the thing decent,’ said Albert Price, ‘but
there’s no use wasting money.’
The short ceremony was infinitely dreadful in the cold
gray morning. Half a dozen people who had worked with
Fanny Price at the studio came to the funeral, Mrs. Otter
because she was massiere and thought it her duty, Ruth
Chalice because she had a kind heart, Lawson, Clutton, and
Flanagan. They had all disliked her during her life. Phil-
ip, looking across the cemetery crowded on all sides with
monuments, some poor and simple, others vulgar, preten-
tious, and ugly, shuddered. It was horribly sordid. When
they came out Albert Price asked Philip to lunch with him.
Philip loathed him now and he was tired; he had not been
sleeping well, for he dreamed constantly of Fanny Price in
the torn brown dress, hanging from the nail in the ceiling;
but he could not think of an excuse.

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