She did not stay long, this dear, sweet Anne of mine, but she left a perfume of herself across my room. While she was here, there was an illumination about her. Barely a word did she speak, once she came in, until her going out again, yet my poor old, tired head sings with it.
'Sir,' - that's what she said, when I opened my door to her gentle knocking - 'I've brought another egg, sir. Would you like it?'
Ten words. Well, eleven, if I am allowed to draw out the contraction. And her voice is very beautiful, sweet and low. She called me sir. She made me a delightful little curtsey. I did not let her know that I know her name.
What did they see, that pair of deep, adorable blue eyes? What can their young owner have made of your ancient Pickleherring?
I keep no mirrors by me in this attic. I've allowed myself no looking-glass of any kind since my wife Jane departed this vain world. But of course I can remember what I look like. The memories are not all bad, sir, not all bad.
Pickleherring is of middle stature, with a fair complexion (remarkable I daresay for my extreme age), and of a pleasant countenance, open and cheerful even if somewhat cross-hatched with wrinkles. (Beated and chopt with tann'd antiquity, as Mr Shakespeare said of his own face, and still in his thirties when he said it.) My hair (by reason no barber has come near me for the space of several years) is much overgrown. My habit is plain and without ornament, for the most part - which is to say, when I am not dressed up in any of the ruins of my costumes, but no one ever sees me garbed like that. I favour a sad-coloured cloth, of a texture that will defend me against any machinations of the cold. Since Jane was killed, I say, there has been nothing to be found in my apparel which could be thought to betoken or express the least imagination of pride or of vain-glory.
As she was leaving my chamber, as she stood there in my doorway, I made this darling Anne the gift of one of my precious pickled mulberries.
'This is no common fruit,' I told her. 'It comes from the tree of the greatest poet and the dearest man who ever lived in England. And today is his day, little miss, as much as it is St George's.'
Anne inspected it most respectfully, before wrapping it up in her handkerchief. Then she dropped me another dainty curtsey, and scampered away. Watching her rush down the stairs I remembered her childishness. Perched on my boxes, legs crossed, she had looked something else.
Thus passed the most remarkable St George's Day I have ever known in my life, in which my only feast was on an egg. Blessed be the dear white hands that gave it to me. I ate that egg in Mr Shakespeare's honour. As I say, it is fifty years from the day that the poet died. I will not tell you how he bade farewell to me until it's time for that. Today, fifty years on, let me say only that William Shakespeare's purgatory must be past. His heaven will never end, be sure of it.
Chapter Sixty-One In which Pickleherring speculates concerning the meaning of eggs
Nothing in this box. And this nothing's more than matter to my mood. It fits my spirits, this box that when I tap it with my fingers sounds with hollow poverty and emptiness. I am a poor fellow, sir. I speak with nobody, and I do not answer. I am, again, Cordelia, am I not? 'What can you say?' 'Nothing, my lord.' 'Nothing!' 'Nothing.' And nothing will come of nothing, as Lear replied.
That was one of Mr Shakespeare's favourite words - that terrible NOTHING. He plays on it in every other play. It is no sort of a word for an old man like me.
Well, madam, there you have it, like as not. Pickleherring's down in the dumps this morning, after the high delights of his yesterday. Like a bear with a sore head, madam, O yes, indeed.
I lay awake and thought about those eggs last night. What can it mean - that twice now my bewitching whore-child has brought me an egg?
Reader, forgive me, for then various silly sayings concerning the meaning and significance of eggs came floating into my head where it tossed there, unable to sleep.
Does this Anne mean (thought I) to egg me on? Not likely, I thought. Why should she? How could she? There would be nothing for her in it, and while 'tis pity she's a whore yet a whore is what she is. (That strange image of egg on is a corruption of the Saxon eggia, to incite, according to my dictionary, consulted by candlelight in the dead vast and middle of the night. Madam, I did put my nightcap on.)
So then (thought I, safely back in my cot, and keeping that nightcap tugged down about my ears) does perhaps this dear, sweet little innocent mean to say without having to say it that we are like as two eggs, she and I? Hardly, I thought. We are in fact as different as chalk and cheese. And a broken white stick of dry-as-dust chalk is what I amount to, while a very tasty piece of parmesan looked that Anne, going down those stairs making cheeses with her petticoats.
But what if the cunning little vixen intends to laugh at me? How? Why, by teaching her grandmother to suck eggs? The naughty wicked scamp, if so, thought I, kicking off the bedclothes in my fury. For I should have to show the wench that Pickleherring is no grandmother but the veriest grandfather under his red cotton nightshirt. And to achieve that office would I not need to take Anne across my knee, and have her drawers down, and attend to her posteriors ...
These final images brought me terribly awake, and confronted by my own base desires with regard to the girl. Yet I knew at the same time, even in my excitement, that she did not deserve this, not after her kindnesses to me, which might well have been performed for no motive but that they are the natural expression of a good and simple heart.
I determined then that I would myself have to tread upon eggs in regard to the creature - taking care not to frighten, not to startle, never to hurt her, but to go tenderly and gingerly in all, as if walking over eggs that are so easily broken.
Pickleherring calmed himself down from this unfortunate storm of passion by recalling the well-known anecdote of the silent man and the eggs. (This story, now I come to recite it for you, chimes with some of my procedures in this book - where there is often a delay between event and resolution, for no better reason than that being the way my comedian of a mind has always worked.)
The anecdote concerns as I say a man much given to long silences. One day, when riding over a bridge, this man turned about and asked his servant if he liked eggs, to which the servant briefly answered, 'Yes, sir.' Whereupon not a word more was spoken until a year later, when, riding over the same bridge, the man turned about to his servant once more, and said, 'How?' To which the instant answer came: 'Poached, sir.'
This fine example of intermission of discourse served me last night to take my mind off the matter in hand. I must then have fallen asleep, for the next thing I know I was watching a wonderful silver egg being laid by the joint labour of several serpents in the street below, and then buoyed up into the air above London by their hissing. I stepped out of my window and I caught the egg, and I rode off through the night at full speed astride it. I knew that I had to ride fast away from the serpents, to avoid being stung to death. But I knew also that now I possessed the egg I was sure to prevail in my Life of Mr Shakespeare, and indeed to defeat all my enemies in any contest or combat that might befall me, and to be courted by King Charles and others in power. In my dream I then heard Anne's voice saying (as it seemed close by, and whispering, upon my pillow): 'Pliny says he has seen an egg just like ours, but it was only about the same size as an apple.'
Then I dreamt I wept, and woke. But why I wept, I knew not; yet I know.