CHAPTER XII--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.