Your devoted,
GEORGE.
CHAPTER III
CARRINGTON MEWS,
SHEPHERD MARKET,
24th September.
DEAR Agatha,—I was glad to hear, by the way, that you had been incited to unearth Pepys from a neglected corner of your bookcase. The old chap's vitality is infectious. One can scarcely turn a leaf anywhere but one is interested, amused, or receives the benefit of a shock to one's sense of the proprieties. This morning I opened him haphazard and read, "So over the fields to Southwark. I spent half an hour in St. Mary Overy's Church, where are fine monuments of great antiquity". I took it as a leading, and this afternoon Mrs. Darling and I paid a visit to Southwark Cathedral.
The building lies in a hollow, and as one goes down the steps to the churchyard one leaves behind the rumble of traffic on its way to London Bridge over the cobbles. Inside we found the length of the long narrow nave dim and grey, but in the neighbourhood of the clerestory a golden light diffused itself, falling in patches on the groined roof. At the tomb of John Gower, the poet, who died in 1408, we paused. It occurred to me that it might interest Mrs. D. to hear that it was not till his old age, when his hair was grey, that wearying of his solitary state, John Gower took a wife.
The old lady stared at the stone effigy with the long hair bound by a chaplet of red roses, the short curled beard, the clasped hands, and stiff-buttoned habit falling in straight prim lines to the feet. "They do say," she remarked parenthetically, that "it's a pore 'eart wot never rejoices; but perhaps 'e couldn't get anyone to 'ave 'im."