A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus Part 24

'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 pa.s.sages 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. "Frica.s.see 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 n.o.ble and to my great content."'

'Good gracious! I told you that I a.s.sociated 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