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"Upon my word, I don't know," I answered. I passed a wretched day. Ashamed to face Mrs. Peedles or even the slavey, I kept to my room, with the door locked. At dusk, feeling a little better or, rather, less bad, I stole out and indulged in a simple meal, consisting of tea without sugar and a kippered herring, at a neighbouring coffee-house.
I saw it was a collection of old plays in manuscript-prompt copies, scored, cut and interlined. The top one I noticed was "The Bloodspot: Or the Maiden, the Miser and the Murderer;" the second, "The Female Highwayman." "Everybody's forgotten 'em," explained Mrs. Peedles, "but there's some good stuff in all of them." "But what am I to do with them?" I enquired.
The Signora through her tears smiled at him, but with a sigh shook her head. Mrs. Peedles, clad, so far as the dim November light enabled me to judge, in the costume of Queen Elizabeth nothing regal; the sort of thing one might assume to have been Her Majesty's second best, say third best, frock explained that weddings always reminded her how fleeting a thing was love.
But the woman that is good for yerself is better for ye than a better woman who's the best for somebody else. Ye understand?" I said I did. At eight o'clock precisely Mrs. Peedles arrived as Flora MacDonald, in green velvet jacket and twelve to fifteen inches of plaid stocking. As a topic fitting the occasion we discussed the absent Mr. Peedles and the subject of deserted wives in general.
Peedles, drawing her chair closer to the Signora, assumed a confidential attitude. "If they want to go, let 'em go, I always say," she whispered loudly into the Signora's ear. "Ten to one they'll find they've only jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire. One can always comfort oneself with that." There seemed to be confusion in the mind of Mrs. Peedles.
At the top of the kitchen stairs Miss Sellars paused and called down shrilly to Mrs. Peedles, who in course of time appeared, panting. "Oh, me and Mr. Kelver are going out for a short walk, Mrs. Peedles. I shan't want any supper. Good night." "Oh, good night, my dear," replied Mrs. Peedles. "Hope you'll enjoy yourselves. Is Mr. Kelver there?"
"Just whatever you like, my dear," explained Mrs. Peedles. "It's quite safe. They're all of 'em dead, the authors of 'em. I've picked 'em out most carefully. You just take a scene from one and a scene from the other. With judgment and your talent you'll make a dozen good plays out of that little lot when your time comes." "But they wouldn't be my plays, Mrs. Peedles," I suggested.
Peedles observing that under such circumstances it only remained for her to withdraw everything she had said; to which Miss Sellars replied graciously that she had always known Mrs. Peedles to be a good sort at the bottom. Nevertheless, gaiety was gone from among us, and for this, in some way I could not understand, I appeared to be responsible. Jarman was distinctly sulky.
A bottle of whiskey fell into my hands that Christmas time, a present from a commercial traveller in the way of business. Not liking whiskey myself, it was no sacrifice for me to reserve it for the occasional comfort of Mrs. Peedles, when, breathless, with her hands to her side, she would sink upon the chair nearest to my door. Her poor, washed-out face would lighten at the suggestion.
As Mrs. Peedles explained, and as one could well credit, it had been an awkward position for all present. Nobody had quite known whether to feel glad or sorry with the exception of the chief mourner, upon whose personal undertaking that the company might regard the ceremony as merely postponed, festivities came to an end. Our prop and stay from a convivial point of view was Jarman.
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