The house had been "genteel." When trade was prospering in the East End,
and the ship-fitter or block-maker thought it no shame to live in the
parish where his workshop lay, such a master had lived here. Now, it was
a tall, solid, well-bricked, ugly house, grimy and paintless in the
joinery, cracked and patched in the windows: where the front door stood
open all day long; and the womankind sat on the steps, talking of
sickness and deaths and the cost of things; and treacherous holes lurked
in the carpet of road-soil on the stairs and in the passage. For when
eight families live in a house, nobody buys a door-mat, and the street
was one of those streets that are always muddy. It smelt, too, of many
things, none of them pleasant (one was fried fish); but for all that it
was not a slum.
Three flights up, a gaunt woman with bare forearms stayed on her way to
listen at a door which, opening, let out a warm, fetid waft from a close
sick-room. A bent and tottering old woman stood on the threshold,
holding the door behind her.
"An' is 'e no better now, Mrs. Curtis?" the gaunt woman asked, with a
nod at the opening.
The old woman shook her head, and pulled the door closer. Her jaw
waggled loosely in her withered chaps: "Nor won't be; till 'e's gone."
Then after a certain pause, "'E's goin'," she said.
"Don't doctor give no 'ope?"
"Lor' bless ye, I don't want to ast no doctors," Mrs. Curtis replied,
with something not unlike a chuckle. "I've seed too many on 'em. The
boy's a-goin', fast; I can see that. An' then"--she gave the handle
another tug, and whispered--"he's been called." She nodded amain. "Three
seprit knocks at the bed-head las' night; an' I know what _that_ means!"
The gaunt woman raised her brows, and nodded. "Ah, well," she said, "we
all on us comes to it some day, sooner or later. An' it's often a 'appy
release."
The two looked into space beyond each other, the elder with a nod and a
croak. Presently the other pursued, "'E's been a very good son, ain't
'e?"
"Ay, ay, well enough son to me," responded the old woman, a little
peevishly; "an' I'll 'ave 'im put away decent, though there's on'y the
Union for me after. I can do that, thank Gawd!" she added, meditatively,
as chin on fist she stared into the thickening dark over the stairs.
"When I lost my pore 'usband," said the gaunt woman, with a certain
brightening, "I give 'im a 'ansome funeral. 'E was a Oddfeller, an' I
got twelve pound. I 'ad a oak caufin an' a open 'earse. There was a
kerridge for the fam'ly an' one for 'is mates--two 'orses each, an'
feathers, an' mutes; an' it went the furthest way round to the cimitry.
'Wotever 'appens, Mrs. Manders,' says the undertaker, 'you'll feel as
you're treated 'im proper; nobody can't reproach you over that.' An'
they couldn't. 'E was a good 'usband to me, an' I buried 'im
respectable."
The gaunt woman exulted. The old, old story of Manders's funeral fell
upon the other one's ears with a freshened interest, and she mumbled her
gums ruminantly. "Bob'll 'ave a 'ansome buryin', too," she said. "I can
make it up, with the insurance money, an' this, an' that. On'y I dunno
about mutes. It's a expense."
In the East End, when a woman has not enough money to buy a thing much
desired, she does not say so in plain words; she says the thing is an
"expense," or a "great expense." It means the same thing, but it sounds
better. Mrs. Curtis had reckoned her resources, and found that mutes
would be an "expense." At a cheap funeral mutes cost half-a-sovereign
and their liquor. Mrs. Manders said as much.
"Yus, yus, 'arf-a-sovereign," the old woman assented. Within, the sick
man feebly beat the floor with a stick. "I'm a-comin'," she cried
shrilly; "yus, 'arf-a-sovereign, but it's a lot, an' I don't see 'ow I'm
to do it--not at present." She reached for the door-handle again, but
stopped and added, by after-thought, "Unless I don't 'ave no plooms."
"It 'ud be a pity not to 'ave plooms. I 'ad--"
There were footsteps on the stairs: then a stumble and a testy word.
Mrs. Curtis peered over into the gathering dark. "Is it the doctor,
sir?" she asked. It was the doctor's assistant; and Mrs. Manders tramped
up to the next landing as the door of the sick-room took him in.
For five minutes the stairs were darker than ever. Then the assistant, a
very young man, came out again, followed by the old woman with a candle.
Mrs. Manders listened in the upper dark. "He's sinking fast," said the
assistant. "He _must_ have a stimulant. Dr. Mansell ordered port wine.
Where is it?" Mrs. Curtis mumbled dolorously. "I tell you he _must_
have it," he averred with unprofessional emphasis (his qualification
was only a month old). "The man can't take solid food, and his strength
must be kept up somehow. Another day may make all the difference. Is it
because you can't afford it?" "It's a expense--sich a expense, doctor,"
the old woman pleaded. "An' wot with 'arf-pints o' milk an'--" She grew
inarticulate, and mumbled dismally.
"But he must have it, Mrs. Curtis, if it's your last shilling: it's the
only way. If you mean you absolutely haven't the money--" And he paused
a little awkwardly. He was not a wealthy young man--wealthy young men do
not devil for East End doctors--but he was conscious of a certain haul
of sixpences at nap the night before; and, being inexperienced, he did
not foresee the career of persecution whereon he was entering at his own
expense and of his own motion. He produced five shillings: "If you
absolutely haven't the money, why--take this and get a bottle--good: not
at a public-house. But mind, _at once_. He should have had it before."
It would have interested him, as a matter of coincidence, to know that
his principal had been guilty of the selfsame indiscretion--even the
amount was identical--on that landing the day before. But, as Mrs.
Curtis said nothing of this, he floundered down the stair and out into
the wetter mud, pondering whether or not the beloved son of a
Congregational minister might take full credit for a deed of charity on
the proceeds of sixpenny nap. But Mrs. Curtis puffed her wrinkles, and
shook her head sagaciously as she carried in her candle. From the room
came a clink as of money falling into a teapot. And Mrs. Manders went
about her business.
The door was shut, and the stair a pit of blackness. Twice a lodger
passed down, and up and down, and still it did not open. Men and women
walked on the lower flights, and out at the door, and in again. From the
street a shout or a snatch of laughter floated up the pit. On the
pavement footsteps rang crisper and fewer, and from the bottom passage
there were sounds of stagger and sprawl. A demented old clock buzzed
divers hours at random, and was rebuked every twenty minutes by the
regular tread of a policeman on his beat. Finally, somebody shut the
street-door with a great bang, and the street was muffled. A key turned
inside the door on the landing, but that was all. A feeble light shone
for hours along the crack below, and then went out. The crazy old clock
went buzzing on, but nothing left that room all night. Nothing that
opened the door....
When next the key turned, it was to Mrs. Manders's knock, in the full
morning; and soon the two women came out on the landing together, Mrs.
Curtis with a shapeless clump of bonnet. "Ah, 'e's a lovely corpse,"
said Mrs. Manders. "Like wax. So was my 'usband."
"I must be stirrin'," croaked the old woman, "an' go about the insurance
an' the measurin' an' that. There's lots to do."
"Ah, there is. 'Oo are you goin' to 'ave,--Wilkins? I 'ad Wilkins.
Better than Kedge, _I_ think: Kedge's mutes dresses rusty, an' their
trousis is frayed. If you was thinkin' of 'avin' mutes--"
"Yus, yus,"--with a palsied nodding,--"I'm a-goin' to 'ave mutes: I can
do it respectable, thank Gawd!"
"And the plooms?"
"Ay, yus, and the plooms too. They ain't sich a great expense, after
all."