Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers Page A

on either side of the mirror. The big four-poster, with its patchwork quilt of faded blues and scarlets and its chintz hangings dimmed by age and laundering, had, against the pale, plastered walls, a dignified air as though of exiled royalty. Harriet, warm and powdered and free at last from the smell of soot, paused with the hair-brush in her hand to wonder what was happening to Peter. She slipped across the chill dark of the dressing-room, opened the farther door, and listened. From somewhere far below came an ominous clank of iron, followed by a loud yelp and a burst of half-suffocated laughter.
      ‘Poor darling!’ said Harriet.…
      She put out the bedroom candles. The sheets, worn thin by age, were of fine linen, and somewhere in the room there was a scent of lavender.... Jordan river.... A branch broke and fell upon the hearth in a shower of sparks, and the tall shadows danced across the ceiling.
      The door-latch clicked, and her husband sidled apologetically through. His air of chastened triumph made her chuckle, though her blood was thumping erratically and something seemed to have happened to her breath. He dropped on his knees beside her.
      ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, his voice shaken between passion and laughter, ‘take your bridegroom. Quite clean and not the least paraffiny, but dreadfully damp and cold. Scrubbed like a puppy under the scullery pump!’
      Dear Peter!’(‘... en Grand Monarque ...’)
      ‘I think,’ he went on, rapidly and almost indistinguishably, ‘I think Bunter was enjoying himself. I have set him to clean the black beetles out of the copper. What does it matter?  What does anything matter? We are here. Laugh, lover, laugh. This is the end of the journey and the beginning of all delight.’
     
    *****
     
      Mr Mervyn Bunter, having chased away the beetles, filled the copper and laid the fire ready for lighting, wrapped himself up in two great-coats and a rug and disposed himself comfortably in a couple of arm-chairs. But he did not sleep at once. Though not precisely anxious, he was filled with a kindly concern. He had (with what exertions!) brought his favourite up to the tape and must leave him now to make the running, but no respect for the proprieties could prevent his sympathetic imagination from following the cherished creature every step of the way. With a slight sigh he drew the candle towards him, took out a fountain-pen and a writing-pad, and began a letter to his mother. The performance of this filial duty might, he thought, serve to calm his mind.
     
      ‘DEAR MOTHER,—I write from an “unknown destination”—’
     
    *****
     
      ‘What was that you called me?’
      ‘Oh, Peter—how absurd! I wasn’t thinking.’
      ‘ What did you call me?’
      ‘My lord!’
      ‘The last two words in the language I ever expected to get a kick out of. One never values a thing till one’s earned it, does one? Listen, heart’s lady—before I’ve done I mean to be king and emperor.’
     
    *****
     
      It is not part of the historian’s duty to indulge in what a critic has called ‘interesting revelations of the marriage-bed’. It is enough that the dutiful Mervyn Bunter at length set aside his writing materials, blew out the candle and composed his limbs to rest; and that, of the sleepers beneath that ancient roof, he that had the hardest and coldest couch enjoyed the quietest slumbers.

Chapter IV. Household Gods
     
      Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house,
      and the bricks are alive to this day to testify it.
      WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: II Henry VI: IV. 2.
     
      Lady Peter Wimsey propped herself cautiously on one elbow and contemplated her sleeping lord. With the mocking eyes hidden and the confident mouth relaxed, his big bony nose and tumbled hair gave him a gawky, fledgling look, like a schoolboy. And the hair itself was almost as light as tow—it was ridiculous that anything male should be as fair as that. No doubt