_Sable_:--"Ha, you! A little more upon the dismal (_forming their
countenances_); this fellow has a good mortal look, place him near
the corpse; that wainscoat face must be o' top of the stairs; that
fellow's almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some
strange misery) at the end of the hall. So--but I'll fix you all
myself. Let's have no laughing now on any provocation."--_The
Funeral_, STEELE.
At one time I really hoped to make the acquaintance of the old miser of
Walnut-tree Farm. It was when we saved the life of his cat.
He was very fond of that cat, I think, and it was, to say the least of
it, as eccentric-looking as its master. One eye was yellow and the other
was blue, which gave it a strange, uncanny expression, and its
rust-coloured fur was not common either as to tint or markings.
How dear old Jem did belabour the boy we found torturing it! He was much
older and bigger than we were, but we were two to one, which we reckoned
fair enough, considering his size, and that the cat had to be saved
somehow. The poor thing's forepaws were so much hurt that it could not
walk, so we carried it to the farm, and I stood on the shallow
doorsteps, and under the dial, on which was written--
"Tempora mutantur!"--
and the old miser came out, and we told him about the cat, and he took
it and said we were good boys, and I hoped he would have asked us to go
in, but he did not, though we lingered a little; he only put his hand
into his pocket, and very slowly brought out sixpence.
"No, thank you," said I, rather indignantly. "We don't want anything for
saving the poor cat."
"I am very fond of it," he said apologetically, and putting the sixpence
carefully back; but I believe he alluded to the cat.
I felt more and more strongly that he ought to invite us into the
parlour--if there was a parlour--and I took advantage of a backward
movement on his part to move one shallow step nearer, and said, in an
easy conversational tone, "Your cat has very curious eyes."
He came out again, and his own eyes glared in the evening light as he
touched me with one of his fingers in a way that made me shiver, and
said, "If I had been an old woman, and that cat had lived with me in the
days when this house was built, I should have been hanged, or burned as
a witch. Twelve men would have done it--twelve reasonable and
respectable men!" He paused, looking over my head at the sky, and then
added, "But in all good conscience--mind, in all good conscience!"
And after another pause he touched me again (this time my teeth
chattered), and whispered loudly in my ear, "Never serve on a jury."
After which he banged the door in our faces, and Jem caught hold of my
jacket and cried, "Oh! he's quite mad, he'll murder us!" and we took
each other by the hand and ran home as fast as our feet would carry us.
We never saw the old miser again, for he died some months afterwards,
and, strange to relate, Jem and I were invited to the funeral.
It was a funeral not to be forgotten. The old man had left the money for
it, and a memorandum, with the minutest directions, in the hands of his
lawyer. If he had wished to be more popular after his death than he had
been in his lifetime, he could not have hit upon any better plan to
conciliate in a lump the approbation of his neighbours than that of
providing for what undertakers call "a first-class funeral." The good
custom of honouring the departed, and committing their bodies to the
earth with care and respect, was carried, in our old-fashioned
neighbourhood, to a point at which what began in reverence ended in
what was barely decent, and what was meant to be most melancholy became
absolutely comical. But a sense of the congruous and the incongruous was
not cultivated amongst us, whereas solid value (in size, quantity and
expense) was perhaps over-estimated. So our furniture, our festivities,
and our funerals bore witness.
No one had ever seen the old miser's furniture, and he gave no
festivities; but he made up for it in his funeral.
Children, like other uneducated classes, enjoy domestic details, and
going over the ins and outs of other people's affairs behind their
backs; especially when the interest is heightened by a touch of gloom,
or perfected by the addition of some personal importance in the matter.
Jem and I were always fond of funerals, but this funeral, and the fuss
that it made in the parish, we were never likely to forget.
Even our own household was so demoralized by the grim gossip of the
occasion that Jem and I were accused of being unable to amuse ourselves,
and of listening to our elders. It was perhaps fortunate for us that a
favourite puppy died the day before the funeral, and gave us the
opportunity of burying him.
"As if our whole vocation
Were endless imitation----"
Jem and I had already laid our gardens waste, and built a rude wall of
broken bricks round them to make a churchyard; and I can clearly
remember that we had so far profited by what we had overheard among our
elders, that I had caught up some phrases which I was rather proud of
displaying, and that I quite overawed Jem by the air with which I spoke
of "the melancholy occasion"--the "wishes of deceased"--and the
"feelings of survivors" when we buried the puppy.
It was understood that I could not attend the puppy's funeral in my
proper person, because I wished to be the undertaker; but the happy
thought struck me of putting my wheelbarrow alongside of the brick wall
with a note inside it to the effect that I had "sent my carriage as a
mark of respect."
In one point we could not emulate the real funeral: that was carried out
"regardless of expense." The old miser had left a long list of the names
of the people who were to be invited to it and to its attendant feast,
in which was not only my father's name, but Jem's and mine. Three yards
was the correct length of the black silk scarves which it was the custom
in the neighbourhood to send to dead people's friends; but the old
miser's funeral-scarves were a whole yard longer, and of such stiffly
ribbed silk that Mr. Soot, the mourning draper, assured my mother that
"it would stand of itself." The black gloves cost six shillings a pair,
and the sponge-cakes, which used to be sent with the gloves and scarves,
were on this occasion ornamented with weeping willows in white sugar.
Jem and I enjoyed the cake, but the pride we felt in our scarves and
gloves was simply boundless. What pleased us particularly was that our
funeral finery was not enclosed with my father's. Mr. Soot's man
delivered three separate envelopes at the door, and they looked like
letters from some bereaved giant. The envelopes were twenty inches by
fourteen, and made of cartridge-paper; the black border was two inches
deep, and the black seals must have consumed a stick of sealing-wax
among them. They contained the gloves and the scarves, which were
lightly gathered together in the middle with knots of black gauze
ribbon.
How exquisitely absurd Jem and I must have looked with four yards of
stiff black silk attached to our little hats I can imagine, if I cannot
clearly remember. My dear mother dressed us and saw us off (for, with
some curious relic of pre-civilized notions, women were not allowed to
appear at funerals), and I do not think she perceived anything odd in
our appearance. She was very gentle, and approved of everything that was
considered right by the people she was used to, and she had only two
anxieties about our scarves: first, that they should show the full four
yards of respect to the memory of the deceased; and secondly, that we
should keep them out of the dust, so that they might "come in useful
afterwards."
She fretted a little because she had not thought of changing our gloves for
smaller sizes (they were eight and a quarter); but my father "pish"ed and
"pshaw"ed, and said it was better than if they had been too small, and that
we should be sure to be late if my mother went on fidgeting. So we pulled
them on--with ease--and picked up the tails of our hatbands--with
difficulty--and followed my father, our hearts beating with pride, and my
mother and the maids watching us from the door. We arrived quite
half-an-hour earlier than we need have done, but the lane was already
crowded with complimentary carriages, and curious bystanders, before whom
we held our heads and hatbands up; and the scent of the wild roses was lost
for that day in an all-pervading atmosphere of black dye. We were very
tired, I remember, by the time that our turn came to be put into a carriage
by Mr. Soot, who murmured--"Pocket-handkerchiefs, gentlemen"--and,
following the example of a very pale-faced stranger who was with us, we
drew out the clean handkerchiefs with which our mother had supplied us, and
covered our faces with them.
At least Jem says he shut _his_ eyes tight, and kept his face covered
the whole way, but he always _was_ so conscientious! I held my
handkerchief as well as I could with my gloves; but I contrived to peep
from behind it, and to see the crowd that lined the road to watch us as
we wound slowly on.
If these outsiders, who only saw the procession and the funeral, were
moved almost to enthusiasm by the miser's post-mortem liberality, it may
be believed that the guests who were bidden to the feast did not fail to
obey the ancient precept, and speak well of the dead. The tables (they
were rickety) literally groaned under the weight of eatables and
drinkables, and the dinner was so prolonged that Jem and I got terribly
tired, in spite of the fun of watching the faces of the men we did not
know, to see which got the reddest.
My father wanted us to go home before the reading of the will, which
took place in the front parlour; but the lawyer said, "I think the young
gentlemen should remain," for which we were very much obliged to him;
though the pale-faced man said quite crossly--"Is there any special
reason for crowding the room with children, who are not even relatives
of the deceased?" which made us feel so much ashamed that I think we
should have slipped out by ourselves; but the lawyer, who made no
answer, pushed us gently before him to the top of the room, which was
soon far too full to get out of by the door.
It was very damp and musty. In several places the paper hung in great
strips from the walls, and the oddest part of all was that every article
of furniture in the room, and even the hearthrug, was covered with
sheets of newspaper pinned over to preserve it. I sat in the corner of a
sofa, where I could read the trial of a man who murdered somebody
twenty-five years before, but I never got to the end of it, for it went
on behind a very fat man who sat next to me, and he leaned back all the
time and hid it. Jem sat on a little footstool, and fell asleep with his
head on my knee, and did not wake till I nudged him, when our names were
read out in the will. Even then he only half awoke, and the fat man
drove his elbow into me and hurt me dreadfully for whispering in Jem's
ear that the old miser had left us ten pounds apiece, for having saved
the life of his cat.
I do not think any of the strangers (they were distant connections of
the old man; he had no near relations) had liked our being there; and
the lawyer, who was very kind, had had to tell them several times over
that we really had been invited to the funeral. After our legacies were
known about they were so cross that we managed to scramble through the
window, and wandered round the garden. As we sat under the trees we
could hear high words within, and by and by all the men came out and
talked in angry groups about the will. For when all was said and done,
it appeared that the old miser had not left a penny to any one of the
funeral party but Jem and me, and that he had left Walnut-tree Farm to a
certain Mrs. Wood, of whom nobody knew anything.
"The wording is so peculiar," the fat man said to the pale-faced man and
a third who had come out with them; "'left to her as a sign of sympathy,
if not an act of reparation.' He must have known whether he owed her any
reparation or not, if he were in his senses."
"Exactly. If he were in his senses," said the third man.
"Where's the money?--that's what I say," said the pale-faced man.
"Exactly, sir. That's what _I_ say, too," said the fat man.
"There are only two fields, besides the house," said the third. "He must
have had money, and the lawyer knows of no investments of any kind, he
says."
"Perhaps he has left it to his cat," he added, looking very nastily at
Jem and me.
"It's oddly put, too," murmured the pale-faced relation. "The two
fields, the house and furniture, and everything of every sort therein
contained." And the lawyer coming up at that moment, he went slowly back
into the house, looking about him as he went, as if he had lost
something.
As the lawyer approached, the fat man got very red in the face.
"He was as mad as a hatter, sir," he said, "and we shall dispute the
will."
"I think you will be wrong," said the lawyer, blandly. "He was
eccentric, my dear sir, very eccentric; but eccentricity is not
insanity, and you will find that the will will stand."
Jem and I were sitting on an old garden-seat, but the men had talked
without paying any attention to us. At this moment Jem, who had left me
a minute or two before, came running back and said: "Jack! Do come and
look in at the parlour window. That man with the white face is peeping
everywhere, and under all the newspapers, and he's made himself so
dusty! It's such fun!"
Too happy at the prospect of anything in the shape of fun, I followed
Jem on tiptoe, and when we stood by the open window with our hands over
our mouths to keep us from laughing, the pale-faced man was just
struggling with the inside lids of an old japanned tea-caddy.
He did not see us, he was too busy, and he did not hear us, for he was
talking to himself, and we heard him say, "Everything of every sort
therein contained."
I suppose the lawyer was right, and that the fat man was convinced of
it, for neither he nor any one else disputed the old miser's will. Jem
and I each opened an account in the Savings Bank, and Mrs. Wood came
into possession of the place.
Public opinion went up and down a good deal about the old miser still. When
it leaked out that he had worded the invitation to his funeral to the
effect that, being quite unable to tolerate the follies of his
fellow-creatures, and the antics and absurdities which were necessary to
entertain them, he had much pleasure in welcoming his neighbours to a
feast, at which he could not reasonably be expected to preside--everybody
who heard it agreed that he must have been mad.
But it was a long sentence to remember, and not a very easy one to
understand, and those who saw the plumes and the procession, and those
who had a talk with the undertaker, and those who got a yard more than
usual of such very good black silk, and those who were able to remember
what they had had for dinner, were all charitably inclined to believe
that the old man's heart had not been far from being in the right
place, at whatever angle his head had been set on.
And then by degrees curiosity moved to Mrs. Wood. Who was she? What was
she like? What was she to the miser? Would she live at the farm?
To some of these questions the carrier, who was the first to see her,
replied. She was "a quiet, genteel-looking sort of a grey-haired widow
lady, who looked as if she'd seen a deal of trouble, and was badly off."
The neighbourhood was not unkindly, and many folk were ready to be civil
to the widow if she came to live there.
"But she never will," everybody said. "She must let it. Perhaps the new
doctor might think of it at a low rent, he'd be glad of the field for
his horse. What could she do with an old place like that, and not a
penny to keep it up with?"
What she did do was to have a school there, and that was how Walnut-tree
Farm became Walnut-tree Academy.