'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.