Old Jack had always been old Jack since at fourteen young Jack had come
'prentice in the same engine-turner's shop. Young Jack was a married man
himself now, at another shop; and old Jack was near fifty, and had set
himself toward thrift. All along Whitechapel Road, Mile End Road, and
Bow Road he considered the shops and houses from the tram-roof, madly
estimating rents and values. Near Bow Road end he and his wife alighted,
and went inspecting Twenty-seven Mulberry Street once more. Old Jack
remarked that the scraper was of a different shape from that he had
carried in his mind since their last examination; and he mentioned it to
Mrs. Randall, who considered the scraper of fact rather better than the
scraper of memory. They walked to and fro several times, judging the
door and three windows from each side of the street, and in the end they
knocked, with a purpose of reporting the completed purchase. But the
tenant's wife, peeping from behind a blind, and seeing only the people
who had already come spying about the house some two or three times,
retired to the back and went on with her weekly washing.
They waited a little, repeated the knock, and then went away. The whole
day was "off," and a stroll in the Tower Hamlets Cemetery was decided
on. Victoria Park was as near, but was not in the direction of home.
Moreover, there was less interest for Mrs. Randall in Victoria Park,
because there were no funerals. In the cemetery, Mrs. Randall solaced
herself and old Jack with the more sentimental among the inscriptions.
In the poor part, whose miscellaneous graves are marked by mounds alone,
they stopped to look at a very cheap funeral.
"Lor', Jack," Mrs. Randall said under her breath with a nudge, "wot a
common caufin! Why, the body's very nigh a-droppin' through the
bottom!" The thin under-board had, in fact, a bulge. "Pore chap! ain't
it shockin'!"
The ignominy of a funeral with no feathers was a thing accepted of
course, but the horror of a cheap coffin they had never realized till
now. They turned away. In the main path they met the turgid funeral of a
Bow Road bookmaker. After the dozen mourning coaches there were cars and
pony traps, and behind these came a fag-end of carts and donkey-barrows.
Ahead of all was the glazed hearse, with attendants in weepers, and by
it, full of the pride of artistry, walked the undertaker himself.
"Now that," said old Jack, "is somethin' like a caufin." (It was heavy
and polished and beset with bright fittings.) "Ah," sighed his missis,
"ain't it lovely!"
The hearse drew up at the chapel door, where the undertaker turned to
the right-about and placidly surveyed the movements of his forces. Mrs.
Randall murmured again: "Lovely--lovely!" and kept her eyes on the
coffin. Then she edged gently up to the undertaker, and whispered, "What
would that kind o' caufin be called, mister?"
The undertaker looked at her from the sides of his eyes, and answered
briskly, "Two-inch polished oak solid extry brass fittin's." Mrs.
Randall returned to old Jack's side and repeated the words. "That must
cost a lot," she said. "What a thing, though, to be certain you won't be
buried in a trumpery box like that other! Ah, it's well to be rich."
Old Jack gazed on the coffin, and thought. Surely a landlord, if
anybody, was entitled to indulge in an expensive coffin? All day he had
nursed a fancy that some small indulgence, something a little heavier
than usual in the matter of expense, would be proper to celebrate the
occasion. But he reflected that his savings were gone and his pockets no
fuller than had always been their Wednesday wont: though, of course, in
that matter the future would be different. The bearers carried the
coffin into the chapel, and Mrs. Randall turned away among the graves.
Old Jack put his hands in his pockets, and, looking at the ground, said:
"That was a nobby caufin, mother, wasn't it?" Whereunto Mrs. Randall
murmured: "Lovely--lovely!" yet again.
Old Jack walked a little further, and asked, "Two-inch polished oak, 'e
said, didn't 'e?"
"Solid, an' extry brass fittin's; beautiful!"
"I'll remember it. That's what you shall 'ave if it 'appens you go fust.
There!" And old Jack sat on the guard-chain of a flowery grave with the
air of one giving a handsome order.
"Me? Git out! Look at the expense."
"Matter o' circumstances. Look at Jenkins's Gardens. Jenkins was a
bench-'and at the Limited; got 'is 'ouses one under another through
building s'ieties. That there caufin 'ud be none too dear for _'im_.
We're beginnin'; an' I promise you that same, if you'd like it."
"Like it!" the missis ejaculated. "Course I should. Wouldn't you?"
"Wy, yus. Any one 'ud prefer somethin' a bit nobby; an' thick."
And the missis reciprocated old Jack's promise, in case he died first:
if a two-inch polished oak solid could be got for everything she had to
offer. And, tea-time approaching, they made well pleased for home.