A Duet (with an occasional chorus) by Arthur Conan Doyle (best classic books to read .txt) 📕

‘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.

CHAPTER XIII—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 suede 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— suede 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. ‘Suede gloves,’ yes, she had told Frank that when she came to town, she would buy some suede 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 suede 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