Vanity Fair - Page 510/573

There came a day when the round of decorous pleasures and solemn

gaieties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family indulged was interrupted by

an event which happens in most houses. As you ascend the staircase of

your house from the drawing towards the bedroom floors, you may have

remarked a little arch in the wall right before you, which at once

gives light to the stair which leads from the second story to the third

(where the nursery and servants' chambers commonly are) and serves for

another purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men can give you

a notion. They rest the coffins upon that arch, or pass them through

it so as not to disturb in any unseemly manner the cold tenant

slumbering within the black ark.

That second-floor arch in a London house, looking up and down the well

of the staircase and commanding the main thoroughfare by which the

inhabitants are passing; by which cook lurks down before daylight to

scour her pots and pans in the kitchen; by which young master

stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall, and let himself

in after dawn from a jolly night at the Club; down which miss comes

rustling in fresh ribbons and spreading muslins, brilliant and

beautiful, and prepared for conquest and the ball; or Master Tommy

slides, preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, and

disdaining danger and the stair; down which the mother is fondly

carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as he steps steadily step

by step, and followed by the monthly nurse, on the day when the medical

man has pronounced that the charming patient may go downstairs; up

which John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering tallow candle, and

to gather up before sunrise the boots which are awaiting him in the

passages--that stair, up or down which babies are carried, old people

are helped, guests are marshalled to the ball, the parson walks to the

christening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the undertaker's men to

the upper floor--what a memento of Life, Death, and Vanity it is--that

arch and stair--if you choose to consider it, and sit on the landing,

looking up and down the well! The doctor will come up to us too for

the last time there, my friend in motley. The nurse will look in at

the curtains, and you take no notice--and then she will fling open the

windows for a little and let in the air. Then they will pull down all

the front blinds of the house and live in the back rooms--then they

will send for the lawyer and other men in black, &c. Your comedy and

mine will have been played then, and we shall be removed, oh, how far,

from the trumpets, and the shouting, and the posture-making. If we

are gentlefolks they will put hatchments over our late domicile, with

gilt cherubim, and mottoes stating that there is "Quiet in Heaven."

Your son will new furnish the house, or perhaps let it, and go into a

more modern quarter; your name will be among the "Members Deceased" in

the lists of your clubs next year. However much you may be mourned,

your widow will like to have her weeds neatly made--the cook will send

or come up to ask about dinner--the survivor will soon bear to look at

your picture over the mantelpiece, which will presently be deposed from

the place of honour, to make way for the portrait of the son who reigns.