. In any case, he had been bent on
having a handsome funeral, and on having persons »bid« to it who would rather
have stayed at home. He had even desired that female relatives should follow him
to the grave, and poor sister Martha had taken a difficult journey for this
purpose from the Chalky Flats. She and Jane would have been altogether cheered
(in a tearful manner) by this sign that a brother who disliked seeing them while
he was living had been prospectively fond of their presence when he should have
become a testator, if the sign had not been made equivocal by being extended to
Mrs. Vincy, whose expense in handsome crape seemed to imply the most
presumptuous hopes, aggravated by a bloom of complexion which told pretty
plainly that she was not a blood-relation, but of that generally objectionable
class called wife's kin.
    We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood
of desire; and poor old Featherstone, who laughed much at the way in which
others cajoled themselves, did not escape the fellowship of illusion. In writing
the programme for his burial he certainly did not make clear to himself that his
pleasure in the little drama of which it formed a part was confined to
anticipation. In chuckling over the vexations he could inflict by the rigid
clutch of his dead hand, he inevitably mingled his consciousness with that livid
stagnant presence, and so far as he was preoccupied with a future life, it was
with one of gratification inside his coffin. Thus old Featherstone was
imaginative, after his fashion.
    However, the three mourning-coaches were filled according to the written
orders of the deceased. There were pall-bearers on horse-back, with the richest
scarves and hatbands, and even the under-bearers had trappings of woe which were
of a good well-priced quality. The black procession, when dismounted, looked the
larger for the smallness of the churchyard; the heavy human faces and the black
draperies shivering in the wind seemed to tell of a world strangely incongruous
with the lightly-dropping blossoms and the gleams of sunshine on the daisies.
The clergyman who met the procession was Mr. Cadwallader - also according to the
request of Peter Featherstone, prompted as usual by peculiar reasons. Having a
contempt for curates, whom he always called understrappers, he was resolved to
be buried by a beneficed clergyman. Mr. Casaubon was out of the question, not
merely because he declined duty of this sort, but because Featherstone had an
especial dislike to him as the rector of his own parish, who had a
