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—