‘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
Ætatis 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.’