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

‘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 AEtatis 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 suede 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.