‘Please do!’
‘She next treats conversation. “In conversation, trifling occurrences such as small disappointments, petty annoyances, and other everyday incidents, should never be mentioned to friends. If the mistress be a wife, never let a word in connection with her husband’s failings pass her lips – ”’
‘By Jove, this book has more wisdom to the square inch than any work of man,’ cried Frank, in enthusiasm.
‘I thought that would please you. “Good temper should be cultivated by every mistress, as upon it the welfare of the household may be said to turn.”’
‘Excellent!’
‘“In starting a household, it is always best in the long-run to get the very best articles of their kind.”’
‘That is why I got you, Maude.’
‘Thank you, sir. We have a dissertation then upon dress and fashion, another upon engaging domestics, another about daily duties, another about visiting, another about fresh air and exercise – ’
‘The most essential of any,’ cried Frank, jumping up, and pulling his wife by the arms out of her low wicker-chair. ‘There is just time for nine holes at golf before it is dark, if you wilt come exactly as you are. But listen to this, young lady. If ever again I see you fretting or troubling yourself about your household affairs – ’
‘No, no, Frank, I won’t!’
‘Well, if you do, Mrs. Beeton goes into the kitchen-fire. Now remember?’
‘You are sure you don’t envy Mr. Beeton?’
‘I don’t envy a man upon earth.’
‘Then why should I try to be Mrs. Beeton?’
‘Why indeed?’
‘O Frank, what a load off my mind! Those sixteen hundred pages have just lain upon it for months. Dear old boy! come on!’
And they clattered downstairs for their golf-clubs.
MR. SAMUEL PEPYS
There were few things which Maude liked so much as a long winter evening when Frank and she dined together, and then sat beside the fire and made good cheer. It would be an exaggeration to say that she preferred it to a dance, but next to that supreme joy, and higher even than the theatre in her scale of pleasures, were those serene and intimate evenings when they talked at their will, and were silent at their will, within their home brightened by those little jokes and endearments and allusions which make up that inner domestic masonry which is close-tiled for ever to the outsider. Five or six evenings a week, she with her sewing and Frank with his book, settled down to such enjoyment as men go to the ends of the earth to seek, while it awaits them, if they will but atune their souls to sympathy, beside their own hearthstones. Now and again their sweet calm would be broken by a ring at the bell, when some friend of Frank’s would come round to pay them an evening visit. At the sound Maude would say ‘bother,’ and Frank something shorter and stronger, but, as the intruder appeared, they would both break into, ‘Well, really now it was good of you to drop in upon us in this homely way.’ Without such hypocrisy, the world would be a hard place to live in.
I may have mentioned somewhere that Frank had a catholic taste in literature. Upon a shelf in their bedroom – a relic of his bachelor days – there stood a small line of his intimate books, the books which filled all the chinks of his life when no new books were forthcoming. They were all volumes which he had read in his youth, and many times since, until they had become the very tie-beams of his mind. His tastes were healthy and obvious without being fine. Macaulay’s Essays, Holmes’ Autocrat, Gibbons’ History, Jefferies’ Story of my Heart, Carlyle’s Life, Pepys’ Diary, and Borrow’s Lavengro were among his inner circle of literary friends. The sturdy East Anglian, half prize-fighter, half missionary, was a particular favourite of his, and so was the garrulous Secretary of the Navy. One day it struck him that it would be a pleasant thing to induce his wife to share his enthusiasms, and he suggested that the evenings should be spent in reading selections from these old friends of his. Maude was delighted. If he had proposed to read the rig-vedas in the original Sanskrit, Maude would have listened with a smiling face. It is in such trifles that a woman’s love is more than a man’s.
That night Frank came downstairs with a thick well-thumbed volume in his hand.
‘This is Mr. Pepys,’ said he solemnly.
‘What a funny name!’ cried Maude. ‘It makes me think of indigestion. Why? Oh yes, pepsine, of course.’
‘We shall take a dose of him every night after dinner to complete the resemblance. But seriously, dear, I think that now that we have taken up a course of reading, we should try to approach it in a grave spirit, and endeavour to realise – Oh, I say, don’t!’
‘I am so sorry, dear! I do hope I didn’t hurt, you!’
‘You did – considerably.’
‘It all came from my having the needle in my hand at the time – and you looked so solemn – and – well, I couldn’t help it.’
‘Little wretch – !’
‘No, dear; Jemima may come in any moment with the coffee. Now, do sit down and read about Mr. Pepys to me. And first of all, would you mind explaining all about the gentleman, from the beginning, and taking nothing for granted, just as if I had never heard of him before.’
‘I don’t believe – ’
‘Never mind, sir! Be a good boy and do exactly what you are told. Now begin!’
‘Well, Maude, Mr. Pepys was born – ’
‘What was his first name?’
‘Samuel.’
‘Oh dear, I’m sure I should not have liked him.’
‘Well, it’s too late to change that. He was born – I could see by looking, but it really doesn’t matter, does it? He was born somewhere in sixteen hundred and something or other, and I forget what his father was.’
‘I must try to remember what you tell me.’
‘Well, it all amounts to this, that he got on very well in the world, that he became at last a high official of the navy in the time of Charles the Second, and that he died in fairly good circumstances, and left his library, which was a fine one, to one of the universities, I can’t remember which.’
‘There is an accuracy about your information, Frank – ’
‘I know, dear, but it really does not matter. All this has nothing to do with the main question.’
‘Go on, then!’
‘Well, this library was left as a kind of dust-catcher, as such libraries are, until one day, more than a hundred years after the old boy’s death, some enterprising person seems to have examined his books, and he found a number of volumes of writing which were all in cipher, so that no one could make head or tail of them.’
‘Dear me, how very interesting!’
‘Yes, it naturally excited curiosity. Why should a man write volumes of cipher? Imagine the labour of it! So some one set to work to solve the cipher. This was about the year 1820. After three years they succeeded.’
‘How in the world did they do it?’
‘Well, they say that human ingenuity never yet invented a cipher which human ingenuity could not also solve. Anyhow, they did succeed. And when they had done so, and copied it all out clean, they found they had got hold of such a book as was never heard of before in the whole history of literature.’
Maude laid her sewing on her lap, and looked across with her lips parted and her eyebrows raised.
‘They found that it was an inner Diary of the life of this man, with all his impressions, and all his doings, and all his thoughts – not his ought-to-be thoughts, but his real, real thoughts, just as he thought then at the back of his soul. You see this man, and you know him very much better than his own wife knew him. It is not only that he tells of his daily doings, and gives us such an intimate picture of life in those days, as could by no other means have been conveyed, but it is as a piece of psychology that the thing is so valuable. Remember the dignity of the man, a high government official, an orator, a writer, a patron of learning, and here you have the other side, the little thoughts, the mean ideas which may lurk under a bewigged head, and behind a solemn countenance. Not that he is worse than any of us. Not a bit. But he is frank. And that is why the book is really a consoling one, for every sinner who reads it can say to himself, “Well, if this man who did so well, and was so esteemed, felt like this, it is no very great wonder that I do.”’
Maude looked at the fat brown book with curiosity. ‘Is it really all there?’ she asked.
‘No, dear, it will never all be published. A good deal of it is, I believe, quite impossible. And when he came to the impossible places, he doubled and trebled his cipher, so as to make sure that it should never be made out. But all that is usually published is here.’ Frank turned over the leaves, which were marked here and there with pencilings.
‘Why are you smiling, Frank?’
‘Only at his way of referring to his wife.’
‘Oh, he was married?’
‘Yes, to a very charming girl. She must have been a sweet creature. He married her at fifteen on account of her beauty. He had a keen eye for beauty had old Pepys.’
‘Were they happy?’
‘Oh yes, fairly so. She was only twenty-nine when she died!’
‘Poor girl!’
‘She was happy in her life – though he did blacken her eye once.’
‘Not really?’
‘Yes, he did. And kicked the housemaid.’
‘Oh, the brute!’
‘But on the whole he was a good husband. He had a few very good points about him.’
‘But how does he allude to his wife?’
‘He has a trick of saying, “my wife, poor wretch!”’
‘Impertinent! Frank, you said to-night that other men think what this odious Mr. Pepys says. Yes, you did! Don’t deny it! Does that mean that you always think of me as “poor wretch”?’
‘We have come along a little since then. But how these passages take you back to the homely life of those days!’
‘Do read some.’
‘Well, listen to this, “And then to bed without prayers, to-morrow being washing-day.” Fancy such a detail coming down to us through two centuries.’
‘Why no prayers?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose they had to get up early on washing-days, and so they wanted to go to sleep soon.’
‘I’m afraid, dear, you do the same without as good an excuse. Read another!’
‘He goes to dine with some one – his uncle, I think. He says, “An excellent dinner, but the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome.”’
‘How beautiful! Mrs. Hunt Mortimer’s sole last week was palpable plaice. Mr. Pepys is right. It was not handsome.’
‘Here’s another grand entry: “Talked with my wife of the poorness and meanness of all that the people about us do, compared with what we do.” I dare say he was right, for they did things very well. When he dined out, he says that his host gave him “the meanest dinner of beef, shoulder and umbles of venison, and a few pigeons, and all in the meanest manner that ever I did see, to the basest degree.”
‘What are umbles, dear?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Well, whatever they are, it sounds to me a very good dinner. People must have lived very well in those days.’
‘They habitually over-ate and over-drank themselves. But Pepys gives us the menu of one of his own entertainments. I’ve marked it somewhere. Yes, here it is. “Fricassee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a most rare pie!), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all things mighty noble and to my great content.”’
‘Good gracious! I told you that I associated him with indigestion.’
‘He did them pretty well that time.’
‘Who cooked all this?’
‘The wife helped in those days.’
‘No wonder she died at twenty-nine. Poor dear! What a splendid kitchen-range they must have had! I never understood before why they had such enormous grates in the old days. Naturally, if you have six pigeons, and a lamprey, and a lobster, and a side of lamb, and a leg of mutton, and all these other things cooking at the same time, you would need a huge fire.’
‘The wonderful thing about Pepys,’ said Frank, looking thoughtfully over the pages, ‘is that he is capable of noting down the mean little impulses of human nature, which most men would be so ashamed of, that they would hasten to put them out of their mind. His occasional shabbiness in money matters, his jealousies, his envies, all his petty faults, which are despicable on account of their pettiness. Fancy any man writing this. He is describing how he visited a friend and was reading a book from his library. “A very good book,” says he, “especially one letter of advice to a courtier, most true and good, which made me once resolve to tear out the two leaves that it was writ in, but I forbore it.” Imagine recording such a vile thought.’
‘But what you have never explained to me yet, dear, or if you did, I didn’t understand – you don’t mind my being a little stupid, do you? – is, what object Mr. Pepys had in putting down all this in such a form that no one could read it.’
‘Well, you must bear in mind, dear, that he could read it himself. Besides he was a fellow with a singularly methodical side to his mind. He was, for example, continually adding up how much money he had, or cataloguing and indexing his library, and so on. He liked to have everything shipshape. And so with his life, it pleased him to have an exact record which he could turn to. And yet, after all, I don’t know that that is a sufficient explanation.’
‘No, indeed, it is not. My experience of man – ’
‘Your experience, indeed!’
‘Yes, sir, my experience of men – how rude you are, Frank! – tells me that they have funny little tricks and vanities which take the queerest shapes.’
‘Indeed! Have I any?’
‘You – you are compounded of them. Not vanity – no, I don’t mean that. But pride – you are as proud as Lucifer, and much too proud to show it. That is the most subtle form of pride. Oh yes, I know perfectly well what I mean. But in this man’s case, it took the form of wishing to make a sensation after his death. He could not publish such a thing when he lived, could he?’
‘Rather not.’
‘Well, then, he had to do it after his death. He had to write it in cipher, or else some one would have found him out during his lifetime. But, very likely, he left a key to the cipher, so that every one might read it when he was gone, but the key and his directions were in some way lost.’
‘Well, it is very probable.’
The fire had died down, so Maude shipped off her chair, and sat on the black fur rug, with her back against Frank’s knees. ‘Now, dear, read away!’ said she.
But the lamp shone down upon her dainty head, and it gleamed upon her white neck, and upon the fluffy, capricious, untidy, adorable, little curlets, which broke out along the edges of the gathered strands of her chestnut hair. And so, after the fashion of men, his thoughts flew away from Mr. Pepys and the seventeenth century, and all that is lofty and instructive, and could fix upon nothing except those dear little wandering tendrils, and the white column on which they twined. Alas, that so small a thing can bring the human mind from its empyrean flights! Alas, that vague emotions can drag down the sovereign intellect! Alas, that even for an hour, a man should prefer the material to the spiritual!
But the man who doesn’t misses a good deal.
A VISIT TO MR. SAMUEL PEPYS
There are several unjustifiable extravagances which every normal man commits. There are also several unjustifiable economies. Among others, there is that absurd eagerness to save the striking of a second match, which occasions so many burned fingers, and such picturesque language. And again, there is the desire to compress a telegraphic message into the minimum sixpennyworth, and so send an ambiguous and cryptic sentence, when sevenpence would have made it as clear as light. We all tend to be stylists in our telegrams.
A week after the conversation about Mr. Pepys, when some progress had been made with the reading of the Diary, Maude received the following wire from Frank —
‘Mrs. Crosse. Woking. – Pepys buttered toast suède gloves four Monument wait late.’
As a sixpennyworth it was a success, but as a message it seemed to leave something to be desired. Maude puzzled over it, and tried every possible combination of the words. The nearest approach to sense was when it was divided in this way – Pepys – buttered toast – suède gloves – four – Monument, wait late.
She wrote it out in this form, and took it section by section. ‘Pepys,’ that was unintelligible. ‘Buttered toast,’ no sense in that. ‘Suède gloves,’ yes, she had told Frank that when she came to town, she would buy some suède gloves at a certain shop in the City, where she could get for three and threepence a pair which would cost her three and ninepence in Woking. Maude was so conscientiously economical, that she was always prepared to spend two shillings in railway fares to reach a spot where a sixpence was to be saved, and to lavish her nerve and energy freely in the venture. Here, then, in the suède gloves, was a central point of light. And then her heart bounded with joy, as she realised that the last part could only mean that she was to meet Frank at the Monument at four, and that she was to wait for him if he were late.
So, now, returning to the opening of the message, with the light which shone from the ending, she realised that buttered toast might refer to a queer little City hostel, remarkable for that luxury, where Frank had already taken her twice to tea. And so leaving Mr. Pepys to explain himself later, Maude gave hurried orders to Jemima and the cook, and dashed upstairs to put on her new fawn-coloured walking-dress – a garment which filled her with an extraordinary mixture of delight and remorse, for it was very smart, cost seven guineas, and had not yet been paid for.
The rendezvous was evidently a sudden thought upon the part of Frank, for he had left very little time for her to reach the trysting-place. However, she was fortunate in catching a train to Waterloo, and another thence to the City, and so reached the Monument at five minutes to four. The hour was just striking when Frank, with his well-brushed top-hat and immaculate business frock-coat, came rushing from the direction of King William Street. Maude held out her hand and he shook it, and then they both laughed at the formality.
‘I am so glad you were able to come, dearest. How you do brighten up the old City!’
‘Do I? I felt quite lonely until you came. Nothing but droves of men – and all staring.’
‘It’s your dress.’
‘Oh, thank you, sir!’
‘Entirely that pretty brown – ’
‘Brown! Fawn colour.’
‘Well, that’s brown. Anyhow, it looks charming. And so do you – by Jove you do, Maude! Come this way!’
‘Where are we going?’
‘By underground. Here we are. – Two second singles, Mark Lane, please! – No, that’s for the west-end trains. Down here! Next train, the man says.’
They were in the mephitic cellar, with the two long wooden platforms where the subterranean trains land or load their freights. A strangling gas tickled their throats and set them coughing. It was all dank and dark and gloomy. But little youth and love care for that! They were bubbling over with the happiness of this abnormal meeting. Both talked together in their delight, and Maude patted Frank’s sleeve with every remark. They could even illuminate all that was around them, by the beauty and brightness of their own love. It went the length of open praise for their abominable surroundings.
‘Isn’t it grand and solemn?’ said Maude. ‘Look at the black shadows.’
‘When they come to excavate all this some thousands of years hence, they will think it was constructed by a race of giants,’ Frank answered.
‘The modern works for the benefit of the community are really far greater than those which sprang from the caprice of kings. The London and North-Western Railway is an infinitely grander thing than the pyramids. Look at the two headlights in the dark!’
Two sullen crimson discs glowed in the black arch of the tunnel. With a menacing and sinister speed, they grew and grew until roaring they sprang out of the darkness, and the long, dingy train, with a whining of brakes, drew up at the platform.
‘Here’s one nearly empty,’ said Frank, with his hand on the handle.
‘Don’t you think – ’ said Maude.
‘Yes, I do,’ cried Frank.
And they got into one which was quite empty. For the underground railway is blessed as regards privacy above all other lines, and where could a loving couple be more happy, who have been torn apart by cruel fate for seven long hours or so? It was with a groan that Frank remarked that they had reached Mark Lane.
‘Bother!’ said Maude, and wondered if there were any shop near where she could buy hairpins. As every lady knows, or will know, there is a very intimate connection between hairpins and a loving husband.
‘Now, Frank, about your telegram.’
‘All right, dear. Come along where I lead you, and you will understand all about it.’
They passed out of Mark Lane Station and down a steep and narrow street to the right. At the bottom lay an old smoke-stained church with a square tower, and a small open churchyard beside it.
‘That’s the church of Saint Olave,’ said Frank. ‘We are going into it.’
He pushed open a folding oaken door, and they found themselves inside it. Rows of modern seats filled the body of it, but the walls and windows gave an impression of great antiquity. The stained glass – especially that which surmounted the altar – contained those rich satisfying purples and deep deep crimsons which only go with age. It was a bright and yet a mellow light, falling in patches of vivid colour upon the brown woodwork and the grey floors. Here and there upon the walls were marble inscriptions in the Latin tongue, with pompous allegorical figures with trumpets, for our ancestors blew them in stone as well as in epitaphs over their tombs. They loved to die, as they had lived, with dignity and with affectation. White statues glimmered in the shadows of the corners. As Frank and his wife passed down the side-aisle, their steps clanged through the empty and silent church.
‘Here he is!’ said Frank, and faced to the wall.
He was looking up at the modern representation of a gentleman in a full and curly wig. It was a well-rounded and comely face, with shrewd eyes and a sensitive mouth. The face of a man of affairs, and a good fellow, with just that saving touch of sensuality about it which makes an expression human and lovable. Underneath was printed —
SAMUEL PEPYS
Erected by public subscription
1883
‘Oh, isn’t he nice?’ said Maude.
‘He’s not a bad-looking chap, is he?’
‘I don’t believe that man ever could have struck his wife or kicked the maid.’
‘That’s calling him a liar.’
‘Oh dear, I forgot that he said so himself. Then I suppose he must have done it. What a pity it seems.’
‘Cheer up! We must say what the old heathen lady said when they read the gospels to her.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said, “Well, it was a long time ago, and we’ll hope that it wasn’t true!”’
‘O Frank, how can you tell such stories in a church. Do you really suppose that Mr. Pepys is in that wall?’
‘I presume that the monument marks the grave.’
‘There’s a little bit of plaster loose. Do you think I might take it?’
‘It isn’t quite the thing.’
‘But it can’t matter, and it isn’t wrong, and we are quite alone.’ She picked off the little flake of plaster, and her heart sprang into her mouth as she did so, for there came an indignant snort from her very elbow, and there was a queer little smoke-dried, black-dressed person who seemed to have risen, like the Eastern genii or a modern genius, in a single instant. A pair of black list slippers explained the silence of his approach.
‘Put that back, young lady,’ said he severely.
Poor Maude held out her guilty relic on the palm of her hand. ‘I am so sorry,’ said she. ‘I am afraid I cannot put it back.’
‘We’ll ’ave the ’ole church picked to pieces at this rate,’ said the clerk. ‘You shouldn’t ’ave done it, and it was very wrong.’ He snorted and shook his head.
‘It’s of no consequence,’ said Frank. ‘The plaster was hanging, and must have fallen in any case. Don’t make a fuss about a trifle.’
The clerk looked at the young gentleman and saw defiance in one of his eyes and half a crown in the other.
‘Well, well!’ he grumbled. ‘It shows as the young lady takes an interest, and that’s more than most. Why, sir, if you’ll believe me, there’s not one in a hundred that comes to this church that ever ’eard of Pepys. “Pepys!” says they. “’Oo’s Pepys?” “The Diarist,” says I. “Diarist!” says they, “wot’s a Diarist?” I could sit down sometimes an’ cry. But maybe, miss, you thought as you were picking that plaster off ’is grave?’
‘Yes, I thought so.’
The clerk chuckled.
‘Well, it ain’t so. I’ll tell you where ’e really lies, if you’ll promise you won’t pick another chunk off that. Well, then, it’s there – beside the communion. I saw ’im lyin’ there with these very eyes, and ’is wife in the coffin beneath ’im.’
‘You saw him?’
‘Yes, sir, I saw ’im, an’ that’s more than any livin’ man could say, for there were only four of us, and the other three are as dead as Pepys by now.’
‘Oh do tell us about it!’ cried Maude.
‘Well, it was like this, miss. We ’ad to examine to see ’ow much room there was down there, and so we came upon them.’
‘And what did you see?’
‘Well, miss, ’is coffin lay above, and ’is wife’s below, as might be expected, seeing that she died thirty years or so before ’im. The coffins was very much broken, an’ we could see ’im as clear us I can see you. When we first looked in I saw ’im lying quite plain – a short thick figure of a man – with ’is ’ands across ’is chest. And then, just as we looked at ’im, ’e crumbled in, as you might say, across ’is breast bone, an’ just quietly settled down into a ’uddle of dust. It’s a way they ’as when the fresh air strikes ’em. An’ she the same, an’ ‘is dust just fell through the chinks o’ the wood and mixed itself with ’ers.’
‘O Frank!’ Maude’s ready tears sprang to her eyes. She put her hand upon her husband’s and was surprised to find how cold it was. Women never realise that the male sex is the more sensitive. He had not said, ‘O Maude!’ because he could not.
‘They used some powder like pepper for embalmin’ in those days,’ said the clerk. ‘And the vicar – it was in old Bellamy’s time – ’e took a sniff into the grave, an’ ’e sneezed an’ sneezed till we thought we should ’ave to fetch a doctor. ’Ave you seen Mrs. Pepys’ tomb?’
‘No, we have only just come.’
‘That’s it on the left of the common.’
‘With the woman leaning forward?’
‘Yes, sir. That’s Mrs. Pepys herself.’
It was an arch laughing face, the face of a quite young woman; the sculptor had depicted her as leaning forward in an animated and natural attitude. Below was engraved —
Obiit
Xo Novembris
Ætatis 29
Conjugii 15
Anno Domini 1669
‘Poor dear!’ whispered Maude.
‘It was hard that she should die just as her husband was becoming famous and successful,’ said Frank. ‘She who had washed his shirts, and made up the coal fires, when they lived in a garret together. What a pity that she could not have a good time!’
‘Ah well, if she loved him, dear, she had a good time in the garret.’
Maude was leaning forward with her face raised to look at the bust of the dead woman, which also leaned forward as if to look down upon her. A pair of marble skulls flanked the lady’s grave. A red glow from the evening sun struck through a side-window and bathed the whole group in its ruddy light. As Frank, standing back in the shadow, ran his eyes from the face of the dead young wife to that of his own sweet, girlish bride, with those sinister skulls between, there came over him like a wave, a realisation of the horror which lies in things, the grim close of the passing pageant, the black gloom, which swallows up the never-ending stream of life. Will the spirit wear better than the body; and if not, what infernal practical joke is this to which we are subjected!
‘It will. It must,’ he said.
‘Why, Frank – Frank dear, what is the matter? You are quite pale.’
‘Come out into the air, Maude. I have had enough of this stuffy old church.’
‘Stuffy!’ said the clerk. ‘Well, we’ve ’ad the Lord Mayor ’ere at least once a year, an’ ’e never found it stuffy. A cleaner, fresher church you won’t find in the city of London. It’s ’ad its day, I’ll allow. There was a time – and I can remember it – when folk used to spend their money where they made it, and the plate would be full of paper and gold, where now we find it ’ard enough to get coppers. That was fifty year ago, when I was a young clerk. You might not think it, but I’ve seen a Lord Mayor, a past Lord Mayor, and a Lord Mayor elect of the city of London, all sitting on one bench in this very church. And you call it stuffy!’
Frank soothed the wounded feelings of the old clerk, and explained that by stuffy he meant interesting. He also shook hands with him in a peculiar way as he held his palm upturned in the small of his back. Then Maude and he retraced their steps up the narrow street which is called Seething Lane.
‘Poor old boy! What was it, then?’ asked Maude, looking up with her sympathetic eyes. It is at such moments that a man realises what the companionship of women means. The clouds melted before the sun.
‘What an ass I was! I began to think of all sorts of horrible things. Never mind, Maude! We are out for a holiday. Hang the future! Let us live in the present.’
‘I always do,’ said Maude, and she spoke for her sex.
‘Well, what now? Buttered toast or suède gloves?’
‘Business first!’ said Maude primly, and so proceeded to save her sixpence on the gloves. As she was tempted, however (‘such a civil obliging shopman, Frank!’), to buy four yards of so-called Astrakhan trimming, a frill of torchon lace, six dear little festooned handkerchiefs, and four pairs of open-work stockings – none of which were contemplated when she entered the shop – her sixpenny saving was not as brilliant a piece of finance as she imagined.
And then they finished their excursion in the dark, wainscotted, low-ceilinged coffee-room of an old-fashioned inn, once the mother of many coaches, and now barren and deserted, but with a strange cunning in the matter of buttered toast which had come down from more prosperous days. It was a new waiter who served them, and he imagined them to be lovers and scented an intrigue; but when they called for a second plate of toast and a jug of boiling water, he recognised the healthy appetite of the married. And then, instead of going home like a good little couple, Maude suddenly got it into her head that it would cheer away the last traces of Frank’s gloom if they went to see ‘Charley’s Aunt’ at the Globe. So they loitered and shopped for a couple of hours, and then squeezed into the back of the pit; and wedged in among honest, hearty folk who were not ashamed to show their emotions, they laughed until they were tired. And so home, as their friend Pepys would have said, after such a day as comes into the memory, shining golden among the drab, when old folk look back, and think of the dear dead past. May you and I, reader, if ever we also come to sit in our final armchairs in the chimney corners, have many such to which our minds may turn, sweet and innocent and fragrant, to cheer us in those darksome hours to come.
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