Chapter 4

They had followed the guide into another small chapel, which bore the name of Henry VII. upon the door. Surely they were great builders and great designers in those days! Had stone been as pliable as wax it could not have been twisted and curved into more exquisite spirals and curls, so light, so delicate, so beautiful, twining and turning along the walls, and drooping from the ceiling. Never did the hand of man construct anything more elaborately ornate, nor the brain of man think out a design more absolutely harmonious and lovely. In the centre, with all the pomp of mediæval heraldry, starred and spangled with the Tudor badges, the two bronze figures of Henry and his wife lay side by side upon their tomb. The guide read out the quaint directions in the king’s will, by which they were to be buried ‘with some respect to their Royal dignity, but avoiding damnable pomp and outrageous superfluities!’ There was, as Frank remarked, a fine touch of the hot Tudor blood in the adjectives. One could guess where Henry the Eighth got his masterful temper. Yet it was an ascetic and priest-like face which looked upwards from the tomb.

They passed the rifled tombs of Cromwell, Blake, and Ireton—the despicable revenge of the men who did not dare to face them in the field,—and they marked the grave of James the First, who erected no monument to himself, and so justified in death the reputation for philosophy which he had aimed at in his life. Then they inspected the great tomb of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, as surprising and as magnificent as his history, cast a glance at the covering of plucky little George the Second, the last English king to lead his own army into battle, and so onwards to see the corner of the Innocents, where rest the slender bones of the poor children murdered in the Tower.

But now the guide had collected his little flock around him again, with the air of one who has something which is not to be missed. ‘You will stand upon the step to see the profile,’ said he, as he indicated a female figure upon a tomb. ‘It is the great Queen Elizabeth.’

It was a profile and a face worth seeing—the face of a queen who was worthy of her Shakespeares upon the land and her Drakes upon the sea. Had the Spanish king seen her, he would have understood that she was not safe to attack—this grim old lady with the eagle nose and the iron lips. You could understand her grip upon her cash-box, you could explain her harshness to her lovers, you could realise the confidence of her people, you could read it all in that wonderful face.

‘She’s splendid,’ said Frank.

‘She’s terrible,’ said Maude.

‘Did I understand you to say, sir,’ asked the American, ‘that it was this lady who beheaded the other lady, Queen of Scotland, whom we saw ’way back in the other compartment?’

‘Yes, sir, she did.’

‘Well, I guess if there was any beheading to be done, this was the lady to see that it was put through with promptness and despatch. Not a married lady, I gather?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And a fortunate thing for somebody. That woman’s husband would have a mean time of it, sir, in my opinion.’

‘Hush, poppa,’ said the two daughters, and the procession moved on. They were entering the inner chapel of all, the oldest and the holiest, in which, amid the ancient Plantagenet kings, there lies that one old Saxon monarch, confessor and saint, the holy Edward, round whose honoured body the whole of this great shrine has gradually risen. A singular erection once covered with mosaic work, but now bare and gaunt, stood in the centre.

‘The body of Edward the Confessor is in a case up at the top,’ said the guide. ‘This hollow place below was filled with precious relics, and the pilgrims used to kneel in these niches, which are just large enough to hold a man upon his knees. The mosaic work has been picked out by the pilgrims.’

‘What is the date of the shrine?’ asked Frank.

‘About 1250, sir. The early kings were all buried as near to it as they could get, for it was their belief in those days that the devil might carry off the body, and so the nearer they got to the shrine the safer they felt. Henry the Fifth, who won the battle of Agincourt, is there. Those are the actual helmet, shield, and saddle which he used in the battle upon the crossbeam yonder. That king with the grave face and the beard is Edward the Third, the father of the Black Prince. The Black Prince never lived to ascend the throne, but he was the father of the unfortunate Richard the Second, who lies here—this clean-shaven king with the sharp features. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you will turn this way, I will show you one of the most remarkable objects in the Abbey.’

The object in question proved to be nothing more singular than a square block of stone placed under an old chair. And yet as the guide continued to speak, they felt that he had justified his words.

‘This is the sacred stone of Scone upon which the kings of Scotland have been crowned from time immemorial. When Edward the First overran Scotland 600 years ago, he had it brought here, and since then every monarch of England has also sat upon it when crowned.’

‘The present Queen?’ asked some one.

‘Yes, she also. The legend was that it was the stone upon which Jacob rested his head when he dreamed, but the geologists have proved that it is red sandstone of Scotland.’

‘Then I understand, sir, that this other throne is the Scottish throne,’ said the American gentleman.

‘No, sir, the Scottish throne and the English throne are the same throne. But at the time of William and Mary it was necessary to crown her as well as him, and so a second throne was needed. But that of course was modern.’

‘Only a couple of hundred years ago. I wonder they let it in. But I guess they might have taken better care of it. Some one has carved his name upon it.’

‘A Westminster boy bet his schoolfellows that he would sleep among the tombs, and to prove that he had done it, he carved his name upon the throne.’

‘You don’t say!’ cried the American. ‘Well, I guess that boy ended pretty high up.’

‘As high as the gallows, perhaps,’ said Frank, and every one tittered, but the guide hurried on with a grave face, for the dignity of the Abbey was in his keeping.

‘This tomb is that of Queen Eleanor,’ said he.

Frank twitched Maude by the sleeve. ‘Eleanor of Charing Cross,’ said he. ‘See how one little bit of knowledge links on with another.’

‘And here is the tomb of her husband, Edward the First. It was he who brought the stone from Scone. At the time of his death the conquest of Scotland was nearly done, and he gave orders that his burial should be merely temporary until Scotland was thoroughly subdued. He is still, as you perceive, in his temporary tomb.’

The big Scotchman laughed loudly and derisively. All the others looked sadly at him with the pitying gaze which the English use towards the more excitable races when their emotion gets the better of them. A stream from a garden hose could not have damped him more.

‘They opened the grave last century,’ said the guide. ‘Inside was an inscription, which said, “Here lies the hammer of the Scots.” He was a fine man, six feet two inches from crown to sole.’

They wandered out of the old shrine where the great Plantagenet kings lie like a bodyguard round the Saxon saint. Abbots lay on one side of them as they passed, and dead crusaders with their legs crossed, upon the other. And then, in an instant, they were back in comparatively modern times again.

‘This is the tomb of Wolfe, who died upon the Heights of Abraham,’ said the guide. ‘It was due to him and to his soldiers that all America belongs to the English-speaking races. There is a picture of his Highlanders going up to the battle along the winding path which leads from Wolfe’s Cove. He died in the moment of victory.’

It was bewildering, the way in which they skipped from age to age. The history of England appeared to be not merely continuous, but simultaneous, as they turned in an instant from the Georgian to the Elizabethan, the one monument as well preserved as the other. They passed the stately de Vere, his armour all laid out in fragments upon a marble slab, as a proof that he died at peace with all men; and they saw the terrible statue of the onslaught of Death, which, viewed in the moonlight, made a midnight robber drop his booty and fly panic-stricken out of the Abbey. So awful and yet so fascinating is it, that the shuffling feet of the party of sightseers had passed out of hearing before Maude and Frank could force themselves away from it.

In the base of the statue is an iron door, which has been thrown open, and the sculptor’s art has succeeded wonderfully in convincing you that it has been thrown open violently. The two leaves of it seem still to quiver with the shock, and one could imagine that one heard the harsh clang of the metal. Out of the black opening had sprung a dreadful thing, something muffled in a winding-sheet, one bony hand clutching the edge of the pedestal, the other upraised to hurl a dart at the woman above him. She, a young bride of twenty-seven, has fallen fainting, while her husband, with horror in his face, is springing forward, his hand outstretched, to get between his wife and her loathsome assailant.

‘I shall dream of this,’ said Maude. She had turned pale, as many a woman has before this monument.

‘It is awful!’ Frank walked backwards, unable to take his eyes from it. ‘What pluck that sculptor had! It is an effect which must be either ludicrous or great, and he has made it great.’

‘Roubillac is his name,’ said Maude, reading it from the pedestal.

‘A Frenchman, or a man of French descent. Isn’t that characteristic! In the whole great Abbey the one monument which has impressed us with its genius and imagination is by a foreigner. We haven’t got it in us. We are too much afraid of letting ourselves go and of giving ourselves away. We are heavy-handed and heavy-minded.’

‘If we can’t produce the monuments, we can produce the men who deserve them,’ said Maude, and Frank wrote the aphorism down upon his shirt-cuff.

‘We are too severe both in sculpture and architecture,’ said he. ‘More fancy and vigour in our sculptors, more use of gold and more ornament in our architects—that is what we want. But I think it is past praying for. It would be better to subdivide the work of the world, according to the capacity of the different nations. Let Italy and France embellish us. We might do something in exchange—organise the French colonies, perhaps, or the Italian exchequer. That is our legitimate work, but we will never do anything at the other.’

The guide had already reached the end of his round, an iron gate corresponding to that by which they had entered, and they found him waiting impatiently and swinging his keys. But Maude’s smile and word of thanks as she passed him brought content into his face once more. A ray of living sunshine is welcome to the man who spends his days among the tombs.

They walked down the North Transept and out through Solomon’s Porch. The rain-cloud had swept over, and the summer sun was shining upon the wet streets, turning them all to gold. This might have been that fabled London of which young Whittington dreamed. In front of them lay the lawns of vivid green, with the sunlit raindrops gleaming upon the grass. The air was full of the chirping of the sparrows. Across their vision, from the end of Whitehall to Victoria Street, the black ribbon of traffic whirled and circled, one of the great driving-belts of the huge city. Over it all, to their right, towered those glorious Houses of Parliament, the very sight of which made Frank repent his bitter words about English architecture. They stood in the old porch gazing at the scene. It was so wonderful to come back at one stride from the great country of the past to the greater country of the present. Here was the very thing which these dead men lived and died to build.

‘It’s not much past three,’ said Frank. ‘What a gloomy place to take you to! Good heavens, we have one day together, and I take you to a cemetery! Shall we go to a matinée to counteract it?’

But Maude laid her hand upon his arm.

‘I don’t think, Frank, that I was ever more impressed, or learned more in so short a time, in my life. It was a grand hour—an hour never to be forgotten. And you must not think that I am ever with you to be amused. I am with you to accompany you in whatever seems to you to be highest and best. Now before we leave the dear old Abbey, promise me that you will always live your own highest and never come down to me.’

‘I can very safely promise that I will never come down to you,’ said Frank. ‘I may climb all my life, and yet there are parts of your soul which will be like snow-peaks in the clouds to me. But you will be now and always my own dear comrade as well as my sweetest wife. And now, Maude, what shall it be, the theatre or the Australians?’

‘Do you wish to go to either very much?’

‘Not unless you do.’

‘Well, then, I feel as if either would be a profanation. Let us walk together down to the Embankment, and sit on one of the benches there, and watch the river flowing in the sunshine, and talk and think of all that we have seen.’

TWO SOLOS AND A DUET

THE night before the wedding, Frank Crosse and his best man, Rupton Hale, dined at the Raleigh Club with Maude’s brother, Jack Selby, who was a young lieutenant in a Hussar regiment. Jack was a horsy, slangy young sportsman who cared nothing about Frank’s worldly prospects, but had given the match his absolute approval from the moment that he realised that his future brother had played for the Surrey Second. ‘What more can you want?’ said he. ‘You won’t exactly be a Mrs. W. G., but you will be on the edge of first-class cricket.’ And Maude, who rejoiced in his approval, without quite understanding the grounds for it, kissed him, and called him the best of brothers.

The marriage was to be at eleven o’clock at St. Monica’s Church, and the Selbys were putting up at the Langham. Frank stayed at the Metropole, and so did Rupton Hale. They were up early, their heads and nerves none the better for Jack Selby’s hospitality of the night before.

Frank could eat no breakfast, and he shunned publicity in his wedding-garments, so they remained in the upstairs sitting-room. He stood by the window, drumming his fingers upon the pane, and looking down into Northumberland Avenue. He had often pictured this day, and associated it with sunshine and flowers and every emblem of joy. But Nature had not risen to the occasion. A thick vapour, half smoke half cloud, drifted along the street, and a thin persistent rain was falling steadily. It pit-patted upon the windows, splashed upon the sills, and gurgled in the water-pipes. Far down beneath him on the drab-coloured slimy road stood the lines of wet cabs, looking like beetles with glistening backs. Round black umbrellas hurried along the shining pavements. A horse had fallen at the door of the Constitutional Club, and an oil-skinned policeman was helping the cabman to raise it. Frank watched it until the harness had been refastened, and it had vanished into Trafalgar Square. Then he turned and examined himself in the mirror. His trim black frock-coat and pearl grey trousers set off his alert athletic figure to advantage. His glossy hat, too, his lavender gloves, and dark-blue tie, were all absolutely irreproachable. And yet he was not satisfied with himself. Maude ought to have something better than that. What a fool he had been to take so much wine last night! On this day of all days in their lives she surely had a right to find him at his best. He was restless, and his nerves were all quivering. He would have given anything for a cigarette, but he did not wish to scent himself with tobacco. He had cut himself in shaving, and his nose was peeling from a hot day on the cricket-field. What a silly thing to expose his nose to the sun before his wedding! Perhaps when Maude saw it she would—well, she could hardly break it off, but at least she might be ashamed of him. He worked himself into a fever over that unfortunate nose.

‘You are off colour, Crosse,’ said his best man.

‘I was just thinking that my nose was. It’s very kind of you to come and stand by me.’

‘That’s all right. We shall see it through together.’

Hale was a despondent man, though the most loyal of friends, and he spoke in a despondent way. His gloomy manner, the London drizzle, and the nervousness proper to the occasion, were all combining to make Frank more and more wretched. Fortunately Jack Selby burst like a gleam of sunshine into the room. The sight of his fresh-coloured smiling face—or it may have been some reminder of Maude which he found in it—brought consolation to the bridegroom.

‘How are you, Crosse? How do, Hale? Excuse my country manners! The old Christmas-tree in the hall wanted to send for you, but I knew your number. You’re looking rather green about the gills, old chap.’

‘I feel a little chippy to-day.’

‘That’s the worst of these cheap champagnes. Late hours are bad for the young. Have a whisky and soda with me. No? Hale, you must buck him up, for they’ll all be down on you if you don’t bring your man up to time in the pink of condition. We certainly did ourselves up to the top hole last night. Couldn’t face your breakfast, eh? Neither could I. A strawberry and a bucket of soda-water.’

‘How are they all at the Langham?’ asked Frank eagerly.

‘Oh, splendid! At least I haven’t seen Maude. She’s been getting into parade order. But mother is full of beans. We had to take her up one link in the curb, or there would have been no holding her.’

Frank’s eyes kept turning to the slow-moving minute-hand. It was not ten o’clock yet.

‘Don’t you think that I might go round to the Langham and see them?’

‘Good Lord, no! Clean against regulations. Stand by his head, Hale! Wo, boy, steady!’

‘It won’t do, Crosse, it really won’t!’ said Hale solemnly.

‘What rot it is! Here am I doing nothing, and I might be of some use or encouragement to her. Let’s get a cab!’

‘Wo, laddie, wo then, boy! Keep him in hand, Hale! Get to his head.’

Frank flung himself down into an armchair, and muttered about absurd conventions.

‘It can’t be helped, my boy. It is correct.’

‘Buck up, Crosse, buck up! We’ll make the thing go with a buzz when we do begin. Two of our Johnnies are coming, regular fizzers, and full of blood both of them. We’ll paint the Langham a fine bright solferino, when the church parade is over.’

Frank sat rather sulkily watching the slow minute-hand, and listening to the light-hearted chatter of the boy-lieutenant, and the more deliberate answers of his best man. At last he jumped up and seized his hat and gloves.

‘Half-past,’ said he. ‘Come on. I can’t wait any longer. I must do _something_. It is time we went to the church.’

‘Fall in for the church!’ cried Jack. ‘Wait a bit! I know this game, for I was best man myself last month. Inspect his kit, Hale. See that he’s according to regulations. Ring? All right. Parson’s money? Right oh! Small change? Good! By the right, quick march!’

Frank soon recovered his spirits now that he had something to do. Even that drive through the streaming streets, with the rain pattering upon the top of their four-wheeler, could not depress him any longer. He rose to the level of Jack Selby, and they chattered gaily together.

‘Ain’t we bringing him up fighting fit?’ cried Jack exultingly. ‘Shows that all the care we have taken of him in the last twenty-four hours has not been wasted. That’s the sort I like—game as a pebble! You can’t buy ’em, you have to breed ’em. A regular fizzer _he_ is, and full of blood. And here we are on the ground.’

It was a low, old-fashioned, grey church, with a Gothic entrance and two niches on either side, which spoke of pre-Lutheran days. Cheap modern shops, which banked it in, showed up the quaint dignity of the ancient front. The side-door was open, and they passed into its dim-lit interior, with high carved pews, and rich, old, stained glass. Huge black oak beams curved over their heads, and dim inscriptions of mediæval Latin curled and writhed upon the walls. A single step seemed to have taken them from the atmosphere of the nineteenth to that of the fifteenth century.

‘What a ripping old church!’ Jack whispered.

‘You can’t buy ’em. But it’s as festive as an ice-house. There’s a friendly native coming down the aisle. He’s your man, Hale, if you want the news.’

The verger was not in the best of tempers. ‘It’s at a quarter to four,’ said he, as Hale met him.

‘No, no, at eleven.’

‘Quarter to four, I tell you. The vicar says so.’

‘Why, it’s not possible.’

‘We have them at all hours.’

‘Have what?’

‘Buryin’s.’

‘But this is a marriage.’

‘I’m sure I beg your pardon, sir. I thought when I looked at you as you was the party about the child’s funeral.’

‘Good heavens, no.’

‘It was something in your expression, sir, but now that I can see the colour of your clothes, why of course I know better. There’s three marriages—which was it?’

‘Crosse and Selby are the names.’

The verger consulted an old crumpled notebook.

‘Yes, sir, I have it here. Mr. or Miss Crosse to Mr. or Miss Selby. Eleven o’clock, sir, _sharp_. The vicar’s a terrible punctual man, and I should advise you to take your places.’

‘Any hitch?’ asked Frank nervously, as Hale returned.

‘No, no.’

‘What was he talking about?’

‘Oh, nothing. Some little confusion of ideas.’

‘Shall we go up?’

‘Yes, I think that we had better.’

Their steps clattered and reverberated through the empty church as they passed up the aisle. They stood in an aimless way before the altar rails. Frank fidgeted about, and made sure that the ring was in his ticket-pocket. He also took a five-pound note and placed it where he knew he could lay his hands upon it easily. Then he sprang round with a flush upon his cheeks, for one of the side-doors had been flung open with a great bustle and clanging. A stout charwoman entered with a tin pail and a mop.

‘Put up the wrong bird that time,’ whispered Jack, and sniggered at Frank’s change of expression.