Thus we lived—humble folk if you please—far from the world of wealth or of fashion.

This happiness was too great to last. We were to be stricken down, yet not unto death.

The troubles began with the death of my father.

One morning, when he ought to have been at his desk, my old friend Ramage came to see me.

'Master Will,' he said, the tears running down his cheeks, 'Master Will—'tis now too late. You will never be reconciled now.'

'What has happened?' I asked. But his troubled face told me.

'My master fell down in a fit last night, coming home from the Company's feast. They carried him home and put him to bed. But in the night he died.'

In such a case as mine one always hopes vaguely for reconciliation, so long as there is life: without taking any steps, one thinks that a reconciliation will come of its own accord. I now believe that if I had gone to my father and put the case plainly: my manifest vocation: my incapacity for business; if I had asked his permission to continue in the musical profession: if I had, further, humbled myself so far as to admit that I deserved at his hands nothing less than to be cut off without a shilling: he might have given way. It is a terrible thing to know that your father has died with bitterness in his heart against his only son. Or, I might have sent Alice, with the child. Surely the sight of that sweet girl, the sight of the helpless child, would have moved him. I reproached myself, in a word, when it was too late.

'Sir,' said the clerk, 'I do not believe that Mr. Matthew, or his father, will send you word of this event, or of the funeral.'

'They do not know where I live.'

'Excuse me, Sir, Mr. Matthew knows where you live and everything that you have done since you left your home. Believe me, Mr. Will, you have no greater enemy than your cousin. He has constantly inflamed your father's mind against you. It was he who told my master that you were playing for sailors at a common tavern with a red blind and a sanded floor. He told him that you were playing in the orchestra at the Dog and Duck for all the 'prentices and the demireps of town: he told him that you had married—a——'

'Stop, Ramage, lest I do my cousin a mischief. How do you know all this?'

'I listen,' he replied. 'From my desk, I can hear plainly what is said in the counting-house. I listen. I can do no good. But sometimes it is well to know what goes on.'

'It may be useful—but to listen—well—Ramage, is there more to tell?'

'This. They do not intend to invite you to the funeral. Mr. Matthew will assume the place of the heir, and his father will be chief mourner.'

'Oh! Do you tell me, old friend, when it is to take place, and I will be there.'

So he promised, though it was worth his situation if he were found out to have held any intercourse with me. In the end it proved useful to have a friend in the enemy's camp. At the time, I laughed at danger. What had I to fear from Matthew's enmity?

The manner of my father's death is common among Merchants of the City of London. Their very success makes them liable to it: the City customs favour feasting and the drinking of wine: the richer sort ride in a coach when they should be walking for health: it is seldom, indeed, that one may meet a citizen of Quality walking in the fields of which there are so many and of such a wholesome air round London, whether we go East to the fields of Mile End and Bow: or North where, not to speak of Moorfields, there are the fields this side of Islington: or on the West where are the fields of Westminster and Chelsea: or South where the whole country is a verdant meadow with orchards. I say that among the crowds who flock out on a summer evening to take the air (and other refreshments) in these fields, one may look in vain for the substantial merchant. He takes the air lolling in his coach: he feasts every day, drinking quantities of rich and strong wine such as Port or Lisbon: he stays too much indoors: the counting-house is too often but a step from the parlour.

The consequence is natural: at thirty-five the successful merchant begins to swell and to expand: his figure becomes arched or rounded: perhaps his nose grows red: at forty-five his circumference is great: his neck is swollen; his cheek is red: perhaps his nose has become what is called a Bottle. Soon after fifty, he is seized with an apoplexy. It is whispered on Change that such an one fell down stepping out of his Company's Hall, after a Feast, into the road: that he never recovered consciousness: and that he is dead. The age of fifty, I take it, is the grand Climacteric of the London Merchant.

On the day of the funeral, then, I presented myself, with Alice, properly habited, to take my place as chief Mourner. The house, within, was all hung with black cloth. The hall and the stairs were thus covered: it was evening at eight o'clock: candles placed in sconces feebly lit up the place: at the door and on the stairs stood the undertaker's men, mutes, bearing black staves with black plumes: within, the undertaker himself was busy serving out black cloaks, tying the weepers on the hats, distributing the gloves and the rosemary, and getting ready the torches.

Upstairs, the room in which my father's body lay had been prepared for the ceremony. All the furniture—bed, chairs, everything—had been taken out: there was nothing at all in the room but the coffin on trestles: the wainscotted walls had been hung with black velvet, which looked indeed funereal as it absorbed the light of fifty or sixty wax tapers and reflected none. The tapers stood in silver sconces on the walls: they showed up the coffin, the lid of which, not yet screwed down, was laid so as to expose the white face of the deceased, grave, set, serious and full of dignity. I remembered how it looked, fiery and passionate, when my father drove me from his presence. The candles also lit up the faces of the mourners: in the midst of so much blackness their faces were white and deathlike. On the breast of the dead man lay branches of rosemary: on the lid of the coffin were branches of rosemary, of which every person present carried a sprig. On the lid of the coffin was also a large and capacious silver cup with two handles.

Only one thing relieved the blackness of the walls. It was a hatchment with the family shield. Everyone would believe, so splendid is this coat of arms, that our family must rank among the noblest in the land. But the time has passed when the City Fathers were closely connected by blood with the gentry and the aristocracy of the country: of our family one could only point to the shield: where we came from, I know not: nor how we obtained so fine a shield: nor to what station of life my ancestors originally belonged. Family pride, however, is a harmless superstition: not one of us, I am sure, would surrender that coat of arms, or acknowledge that we were anything but a very ancient and honourable House.

When I entered the house, accompanied by Alice, I found the hall and the steps, and even the street itself, which is but narrow, crowded with the humbler class of mourners. There was a whisper of surprise, and more than one honest hand furtively grasped mine. Well: there would be few such hands to welcome Matthew.

I did not need to be told where the coffin lay. I led my wife up the stairs and so into my father's room, which was the best bedroom, on the first floor. I found the various members of the family already assembled, my Uncle Paul as I expected, with Matthew, usurping my place at the head of the coffin. My cousins, of whom there were five-and-twenty at least, including my Uncle Paul's wife and two daughters, showed signs of profound astonishment at the sight of the banished son. The Alderman, for his part, held up his hands in amazement, and looked up to Heaven as if to protest against this assertion of filial rights. The girls, who were as amiable as their brother Matthew, stared with more rudeness than one would expect even from a Wappineer, at Alice. They knew not, perhaps, that I had taken a wife: to a natural curiosity on such a subject they affected a contempt which they took no pains to disguise.

There was a man standing behind my cousin whom I knew not: nor did I understand by what right he stood among us at all: a tall thin figure somewhat bowed with years: a lean and wrinkled face: his appearance filled me with distrust at the outset—let no one deny that first thoughts are best thoughts. He stooped and whispered something to my cousin—whose face seemed to show trouble of some kind, but not grief. Matthew started, and looked at me with astonishment.

I stepped forward, drawing Alice with me. 'Uncle Paul,' I said, 'I take my place as my father's chief mourner.'

My cousin glared at me, as if threatening to dispute the point, but he gave way and retired to my left hand. Thus, Alice beside me, my Uncle Paul at my right, and Matthew at my left, I waited the arrival of the funeral guests.

Meantime, the ladies moaned and wailed. Outside, the women-servants on the stairs lifted up their lamentation. The crying of the women at a funeral hath in it little reality of grief: yet it penetrates to the soul of those who hear it. As each new guest arrived, the wail was raised anew: the louder in proportion to the rank of the arrival, in so much that when the Lord Mayor himself walked up the stairs the lament became a shriek.

The undertaker whispered in my ear that all were present.

I looked about me. 'Twas not in human nature to avoid a sense of honour and glory in looking upon so honourable a company. They proclaimed by their presence the respect with which they regarded my father. Here, beside our cousins, were the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, the Sheriffs, the Town Clerk, the Recorder, the Common Sergeant, the Remembrancer, the Dean of St. Paul's, the Master and Wardens of his Company and many of the greatest merchants on Change. They were there to do honour to my father's memory, and I was there to receive them, as my father's son, despite the respect in which I had failed.

It was not a time, however, for regrets.

I lifted the great cup, I say, and looked around. The wailing ceased. All eyes were turned to me as I drank from the cup—it was hypocras, a drink much loved at City feasts. Then I handed it to Alice, who drank and gave it back to me. Then to my uncle the Alderman, after whom it went round. Down below, in the hall, there was the solemn drinking of wine. We drank thus to the memory of the dead: in old times, I am assured, the mourners drank to the repose of the soul just gone out of the body. For memory or for repose, it is an old custom which one would not willingly neglect.

After the ceremony the ladies began once more their wailing and groaning. They make too much of this custom. It is not in reason that girls like my cousins Amelia and Sophia should be so torn and lacerated by grief as their wails betokened. Indeed, I saw them after the funeral talking and laughing as they went away.

We then descended the stairs and waited below while the men went up to finish their work and to shut out the face of the dead man for ever from the world.

They brought out the coffin. The housekeeper with one last wail of grief—one hopes there was some sincerity in it—locked the door of the death chamber: she locked it noisily, so that all might hear: she turned the handle loudly so that all might be sure that the door was shut: she had before put out the wax candles: out of respect for the late occupant the room would not be opened or used again for years: it would remain as it was with the black velvet hangings and the silver sconces. This is one of the privileges accorded to wealth—an empty honour, but one that is envied by those who cannot afford to spare a room. What can the dead man know or feel or care while the black velvet grows brown and shabby, and the silver sconces become yellow, and the sunbeams through the shutters slowly steal round the room, and except for the dancing of the motes in the sunlight there is no motion or sound or touch of life or light in the solitude and silence of the chamber? It is giving Death to Death—not the Life for which we pray, for which we hope and trust.

The pall was of velvet with a gold fringe and gold embroidery. I knew it for the parish pall bequeathed by some pious person for the use of parishioners. When all was ready the undertaker marshalled the procession. First marched two conductors with staves and plumes: then followed six men in long black coats, two and two; then one bearing the Standard, with black plumes: then, eighteen men in long black cloaks as before, all being servants to the Deceased: then the Minister of the Parish: after him an officer of Arms carrying a knight's sword and target, helm and crest: with him another officer of Arms carrying the shield, both in their tabards or embroidered coats: then the Body, the pall being borne by six Merchants between men carrying the Shields of the City: of the Company: and of Bridewell, Christ's Hospital, St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's, of which the Deceased was a Governor. Then I followed as chief mourner with my wife: after me the Alderman my uncle and his lady. Then came Matthew. With him should have walked one of his sisters: but there stepped out of the crowd a woman in black holding a handkerchief to her face. Who she was I knew not. After them came the rest of the cousins. Then followed the Lord Mayor and the City Fathers; and, lastly, the clerks, porters, stevedores, bargemen, and others in the service of the House. In our hands we carried, as we went, lighted torches: a considerable number of people came out to see the funeral: they lined the street which by the flames of the torches was lit up as if by daylight. The faces at the windows: the crowds in the street: the length of the procession filled my soul with pride, though well I knew that I was but a castaway from the affections of the dead man whom these people honoured.

The procession had not far to go: the parish church, that of St. Michael Paternoster Royal, is but a short distance down the street: it is the church in which Whittington was buried, his tomb and his ashes being destroyed in the Great Fire a hundred years ago. The Church, like the house, was hung with black and lit by wax candles and our torches. The Rector read the service with a solemnity which, I believe, affected all hearts. After the reading of that part which belongs to the Church we carried the body to the churchyard at the back—a very small churchyard: there we lowered the coffin into the grave—I observed that the mould seemed to consist entirely of skulls and bones—and when dust was given to dust and ashes to ashes, we dashed our torches upon the ground and extinguished the flames. Then in darkness we separated and went each his own way. I observed that the lady who walked with Matthew left him when the ceremony was over. The weeping of the women ceased and the whispers of the men: everybody talked aloud and cheerfully. No more mourning for my father: pity and regret were buried in the grave with him: they became the dust and ashes which were strewed upon the coffin. He had gone hence to be no more seen: to be no more wept over. But, as you shall shortly hear, the dead man still retained in his hands the power of doing good or evil.

Matthew spoke to me as we left the Churchyard.

'Cousin,' he said, with more civility than I expected, 'if you can come to the counting-house to-morrow morning you will learn your father's testamentary dispositions. The will is to be opened and read at ten o'clock.'