Chapter II: Part 2

‘Never mind, dear, it wasn’t such a big jump as all that. Where are we going?’

‘Come here, Maude, into the waiting-room.’

She followed him into the gloomy, smoky, dingy room. Bare yellow benches framed an empty square of brown linoleum. A labouring man with his wife and a child sat waiting with the stolid patience of the poor in one corner. They were starting on some Saturday afternoon excursion, and had mistimed their train. Maude Selby and Frank Crosse took the other corner. He drew a jeweller’s box from his pocket and removed the lid. Something sparkled among the wadding.

‘O Frank! Is that really it?’

‘Do you like it?’

‘What a broad one it is! Mother’s is quite thin.’

‘They wear thin in time.’

‘It is beautiful. Shall I try it on?’

‘No, don’t. There is some superstition about it.’

‘But suppose it won’t fit?’

‘That is quite safe. I measured it with your sapphire ring.’

‘I haven’t half scolded you enough about that sapphire ring. How could you go and give twenty-two guineas for a ring?—oh yes, sir, that was the price, for I saw a duplicate yesterday in the Goldsmith’s Company. You dear extravagant old boy!’

‘I had saved the money.’

‘But not for that!’

‘For nothing half or quarter as important. But I had the other to the same size, so it is sure to fit.’

Maude had pushed up her veil, and sat with the little golden circlet in her hand, looking down at it, while the dim watery London sunlight poured through the window, and tagged all her wandering curls with a coppery gleam. It was a face beautiful in itself, but more beautiful for its expression—sensitive, refined, womanly, full of innocent archness and girlish mischief, but with a depth of expression in the eyes, and a tender delicacy about the mouth, which spoke of a great spirit with all its capacities for suffering and devotion within. The gross admirer of merely physical charms might have passed her over unnoticed. So might the man who is attracted only by outward and obvious signs of character. But to the man who could see, to the man whose own soul had enough of spirituality to respond to hers, and whose eye could appreciate the subtlety of a beauty which is of the mind as well as of the body, there was not in all wide London upon that midsummer day a sweeter girl than Maude Selby, as she sat in her grey merino dress with the London sun tagging her brown curls with that coppery glimmer.

She handed back the ring, and a graver expression passed over her mobile face.

‘I feel as you said in your letter, Frank. There _is_ something tragic in it. It will be with me for ever. All the future will arrange itself round that little ring.’

‘Are you afraid of it?’

‘Afraid!’ her grey glove rested for an instant upon the back of his hand. ‘I _couldn’t_ be afraid of anything if you were with me. It is really extraordinary, for by nature I am so easily frightened. But if I were with you in a railway accident or anywhere, it would be just the same. You see I become for the time part of you, as it were, and you are brave enough for two.’

‘I don’t profess to be so brave as all that,’ said Frank. ‘I expect I have as many nerves as my neighbours.’

Maude’s grey toque nodded up and down. ‘I know all about that,’ said she.

‘You have such a false idea of me. It makes me happy at the time and miserable afterwards, for I feel such a rank impostor. You imagine me to be a hero, and a genius, and all sorts of things, while I _know_ that I am about as ordinary a young fellow as walks the streets of London, and no more worthy of you than—well, than any one else is.’

She laughed with shining eyes.

‘I like to hear you talk like that,’ said she. ‘That is just what is so beautiful about you.’

It is hopeless to prove that you are not a hero when your disclaimers are themselves taken as a proof of heroism. Frank shrugged his shoulders.

‘I only hope you’ll find me out gradually and not suddenly,’ said he. ‘Now, Maude, we have all day and all London before us. What shall we do? I want you to choose.’

‘I am quite happy whatever we do. I am content to sit here with you until evening.’

Her idea of a happy holiday set them both laughing.

‘Come along,’ said he, ‘we shall discuss it as we go.’

The workman’s family was still waiting, and Maude handed the child a shilling as she went out. She was so happy herself that she wanted every one else to be happy also. The people turned to look at her as she passed. With the slight flush upon her cheeks and the light in her eyes, she seemed the personification of youth, and life, and love. One tall old gentleman started as he looked, and watched her with a rapt face until she disappeared. Some cheek had flushed and some eye had brightened at his words once, and sweet old days had for an instant lived again.

‘Shall we have a cab?’

‘O Frank, we must learn to be economical. Let us walk.’

‘I can’t and won’t be economical to-day.’

‘There now! See what a bad influence I have upon you.’

‘Most demoralising! But we have not settled yet where we are to go to.’

‘What _does_ it matter, if we are together?’

‘There is a good match at the Oval, the Australians against Surrey. Would you care to see that?’

‘Yes, dear, if you would.’

‘And there are matinées at all the theatres.’

‘You would rather be in the open air.’

‘All I want is that you should enjoy yourself.’

‘Never fear. I shall do that.’

‘Well, then, first of all I vote that we go and have some lunch.’

They started across the station yard, and passed the beautiful old stone cross. Among the hansoms and the four-wheelers, the hurrying travellers, and the lounging cabmen, there rose that lovely reconstruction of mediævalism, the pious memorial of a great Plantagenet king to his beloved wife.

‘Six hundred years ago,’ said Frank, as they paused and looked up, ‘that old stone cross was completed, with heralds and armoured knights around it to honour her whose memory was honoured by the king. Now the corduroyed porters stand where the knights stood, and the engines whistle where the heralds trumpeted, but the old cross is the same as ever in the same old place. It is a little thing of that sort which makes one realise the unbroken history of our country.’

Maude insisted upon hearing about Queen Eleanor, and Frank imparted the little that he knew as they walked out into the crowded Strand.

‘She was Edward the First’s wife, and a splendid woman. It was she, you remember, who sucked the wound when he was stabbed with a poisoned dagger. She died somewhere in the north, and he had the body carried south to bury it in Westminster Abbey. Wherever it rested for a night he built a cross, and so you have a line of crosses all down England to show where that sad journey was broken.’

They had turned down Whitehall, and passed the big cuirassiers upon their black chargers at the gate of the Horse Guards. Frank pointed to one of the windows of the old banqueting-hall.

‘You’ve seen a memorial of a queen of England,’ said he. ‘That window is the memorial of a king.’

‘Why so, Frank?’

‘I believe that it was through that window that Charles the First passed out to the scaffold when his head was cut off. It was the first time that the people had ever shown that they claimed authority over their king.’

‘Poor fellow!’ said Maude. ‘He was so handsome, and such a good husband and father.’

‘It is the good kings who may be the dangerous ones.’

‘O Frank!’

‘If a king thinks only of pleasure, then he does not interfere with matters of state. But if he is conscientious, he tries to do what he imagines to be his duty, and so he causes trouble. Look at Charles, for example. He was a very good man, and yet he caused a civil war. George the Third was a most exemplary character, but his stupidity lost us America, and nearly lost us Ireland. They were each succeeded by thoroughly bad men, who did far less harm.’

They had reached the end of Whitehall, and the splendid panorama of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament lay before them. The most stately of ancient English buildings was contrasted with the most beautiful of modern ones. How anything so graceful came to be built by this tasteless and utilitarian nation must remain a marvel to the traveller. The sun was shining upon the gold-work of the roof, and the grand towers sprang up amid the light London haze, like some gorgeous palace in a dream. It was a fit centre for the rule to whose mild sway one-fifth of the human race acquiesces—a rule upheld by so small a force that only the consent of the governed can sustain it.

Frank and Maude stood together looking up at it.

‘How beautiful it is!’ she cried. ‘How the gilding lights up the whole building!’

‘And how absurd it is not to employ it more in our gloomy London architecture!’ said Frank. ‘Imagine how grand a gilded dome of St. Paul’s would look, hanging like a rising sun over the City. But here is our restaurant, Maude, and Big Ben says that it is a quarter to two.

IN BRITAIN’S VALHALLA

THEY had discussed the rooms in their new house, and the bridesmaids’ dresses, and Maude’s cooking, and marriage-presents, and the merits of Brighton, and the nature of love, and volleying at tennis (Maude was the lady-champion of a tennis club), and season tickets, and the destiny of the universe—to say nothing of a small bottle of Perrier Jouet. It was reprehensibly extravagant, but this would be their last unmarried excursion, and so they drank to the dear days of the past, and the dearer ones of the future. Good comrades as well as lovers, they talked freely, and with pleasure. Frank never made the common mistake of talking down, and Maude justified his confidence by eagerly keeping up. To both of them silence was preferable to conventional small talk.

‘We’ll just get down there after lunch,’ said Frank, as he paid his bill. ‘You have not seen the Australians, have you?’

‘Yes, dear, I saw them at Clifton four years ago.’

‘But this is a new lot. There are nine of the present team who have never played in England before.’

‘They are very good, are they not?’

‘Very good indeed. And the dry summer has helped them. It is the sticky English wickets which put them off. The wickets are very fast over there. Giffen is their best all-round man, but Darling and Iredale and young Hill are good enough for anything. Well, then—O Lord, what a pity!’

He had turned towards the window as he rose, and saw one of those little surprises by which Nature relieves the monotony of life in these islands. The sun had gone, a ragged slate-coloured cloud was drifting up from over the river, and the rain was falling with a soft persistency which is more fatal than the most boisterous shower. There would be no more cricket that day.

‘Two coffees and two benedictines,’ cried Frank, and they relapsed into their chairs. But a half-hour passed and the grey cloud was thicker and the rain more heavy. The cheerless leaden river flowed slowly under drifting skies. Beyond an expanse of shining pavement the great black Abbey towered amidst the storm.

‘Have you ever done the Abbey, Maude?’

‘No, Frank; I should love to.’

‘I have only been once—more shame to me to say so! Is it not a sin that we young Englishmen should be familiar with every music-hall in London and should know so little of this which is the centre of the British race, the most august and tremendous monument that ever a nation owned. Six hundred years ago the English looked upon it as their holiest and most national shrine, and since then our kings and our warriors and our thinkers and our poets have all been laid there, until there is such an accumulation that the huge Abbey has hardly space for another monument. Let us spend an hour inside it.’

They made for Solomon’s porch, since it was the nearest and they had but the one umbrella. Under its shelter they brushed themselves dry before they entered.

‘Whom does the Abbey belong to, Frank?’

‘To you and me!’

‘Now you are joking!’

‘Not at all. It belongs in the long-run to the British taxpayer. You have heard the story of the Scotch visitor who came on board one of our battleships and asked to see the captain. “Who shall I say?” said the sentry. “One of the proprietors,” said the Scotchman. That’s _our_ position towards the Abbey. Let us inspect our property.’

They were smiling as they entered, but the smile faded from their lips as the door closed behind them. In this holy of holies, this inner sanctuary of the race, there was a sense of serene and dignified solemnity which would have imposed itself upon the most thoughtless. Frank and Maude stood in mute reverence. The high arches shot up in long rows upon either side of them, straight and slim as beautiful trees, until they curved off far up near the clerestory and joined their sister curves to form the lightest, most delicate tracery of stone. In front of them a great rose-window of stained glass, splendid with rich purples and crimsons, shone through a subdued and reverent gloom. Here and there in the aisles a few spectators moved among the shadows, but all round along the walls two and three deep were ranged the illustrious dead, the perishable body within, the lasting marble without, and the more lasting name beneath. It was very silent in the home of the great dead—only a distant footfall or a subdued murmur here and there. Maude knelt down and sank her face in her hands. Frank prayed also with that prayer which is a feeling rather than an utterance.

Then they began to move round the short transept in which they found themselves—a part of the Abbey reserved for the great statesmen. Frank tried to quote the passage in which Macaulay talks about the men worn out by the stress and struggle of the neighbouring parliament-hall, and coming hither for peace and rest. Here were the men who had been strong enough to grasp the helm, and who, sometimes wisely, sometimes foolishly, but always honestly, had tried to keep the old ship before the wind. Canning and Peel were there, with Pitt, Fox, Grattan and Beaconsfield. Governments and oppositions moulder behind the walls. Beaconsfield alone among all the statues showed the hard-lined face of the self-made man. These others look so plump and smooth one can hardly realise how strong they were, but they sprang from those ruling castes to whom strength came by easy inheritance. Frank told Maude the little which he knew of each of them—of Grattan, the noblest Irishman of them all, of Castlereagh, whose coffin was pursued to the gates of the Abbey by a raging mob who wished to tear out his corpse, of Fox the libertine philosopher, of Palmerston the gallant sportsman, who rode long after he could walk. They marvelled together at the realism of the sculptor who had pitted Admiral Warren with the smallpox, and at the absurdity of that other one who had clad Robert Peel in a Roman toga.

Then turning to the right at the end of the Statesmen’s Transept, they wandered aimlessly down the huge nave. It was overwhelming, the grandeur of the roof above and of the contents below. Any one of hundreds of these tombs was worth a devout pilgrimage, but how could one raise his soul to the appreciation of them all. Here was Darwin who revolutionised zoology, and here was Isaac Newton who gave a new direction to astronomy. Here were old Ben Jonson, and Stephenson the father of railways, and Livingstone of Africa, and Wordsworth, and Kingsley, and Arnold. Here were the soldiers of the mutiny—Clyde and Outram and Lawrence,—and painters, and authors, and surgeons, and all the good sons who in their several degrees had done loyal service to the old mother. And when their service was done the old mother had stretched out that long arm of hers and had brought them home, and always for every good son brought home she had sent another forth, and her loins were ever fruitful, and her children loving and true. Go into the Abbey and think, and as the nation’s past is borne in upon you, you will have no fear for its future.

Frank was delighted with some of the monuments and horrified by others, and he communicated both his joy and his anger to Maude. They noticed together how the moderns and the Elizabethans had much in common in their types of face, their way of wearing the hair, and their taste in monuments, while between them lie the intolerable affectations—which culminated towards the end of last century.

‘It all rings false—statue, inscription, everything,’ said Frank. ‘These insufferable allegorical groups sprawling round a dead hero are of the same class as the pompous and turgid prose of Doctor Johnson. The greatest effects are the simplest effects, and so it always was and so it always will be. But that little bit of Latin is effective, I confess.’

It was a very much defaced inscription underneath a battered Elizabethan effigy, whose feet had been knocked off, and whose features were blurred into nothing. Two words of the inscription had caught Frank’s eye.

‘_Moestissima uxor_! It was his “most sad wife” who erected it! Look at it now! The poor battered monument of a woman’s love. Now, Maude, come with me, and we shall visit the famous Poets’ Corner.’

What an assembly it would be if at some supreme day each man might stand forth from the portals of his tomb. Tennyson, the last and almost the greatest of that illustrious line, lay under the white slab upon the floor. Maude and Frank stood reverently beside it.

‘“Sunset and evening Star
And one clear call for me.”’

Frank quoted. ‘What lines for a very old man to write! I should put him second only to Shakespeare had I the marshalling of them.’

‘I have read so little,’ said Maude.

‘We will read it all together after next week. But it makes your reading so much more real and intimate when you have stood at the grave of the man who wrote. That’s Chaucer, the big tomb there. He is the father of British poetry. Here is Browning beside Tennyson—united in life and in death. He was the more profound thinker, but music and form are essential also.’

‘What a splendid face!’ cried Maude.

‘It is a bust to Longfellow, the American.’ They read the inscription. ‘This bust was placed among the memorials of the poets of England by English admirers of an American poet.’

‘I am so glad to have seen that. I know his poems so well,’ said Maude.

‘I believe he is more read than any poet in England.’

‘Who is that standing figure?’

‘It is Dryden. What a clever face, and what a modern type. Here is Walter Scott beside the door. How kindly and humorous his expression was! And see how high his head was from the ear to the crown. It was a great brain. There is Burns, the other famous Scot. Don’t you think there is a resemblance between the faces? And here are Dickens, and Thackeray, and Macaulay. I wonder whether, when Macaulay was writing his essays, he had a premonition that he would be buried in Westminster Abbey. He is continually alluding to the Abbey and its graves. I always think that we have a vague intuition as to what will occur to us in life.’

‘We can guess what is probable.’

‘It amounts to more than that. I had an intuition that I should marry you from the first day that I saw you, and yet it did not seem probable. But deep down in my soul I knew that I should marry you.’

‘I knew that I should marry you, Frank, or else that I should never marry at all.’

‘There now! We both had it. Well, that _is_ really wonderful!’

They stood among the memorials of all those great people, marvelling at the mysteries of their own small lives. A voice at their elbows brought them back to the present.

‘This way, if you please, for the kings,’ said the voice. ‘They are now starting for the kings.’

‘They’ proved to be a curiously mixed little group of people who were waiting at the entrance through the enclosure for the arrival of the official guide. There were a tall red-bearded man with a very Scotch accent and a small gentle wife, also an American father with his two bright and enthusiastic daughters, a petty-officer of the navy in his uniform, two young men whose attention was cruelly distracted from the monuments by the American girls, and a dozen other travellers of various sexes and ages. Just as Maude and Frank joined them the guide, a young fresh-faced fellow, came striding up, and they passed through the opening into the royal burying-ground.

‘This way, ladies and gentlemen,’ cried the hurrying guide, and they all clattered over the stone pavement. He stopped beside a tomb upon which a lady with a sad worn face was lying. ‘Mary, Queen of Scots,’ said he, ‘the greatest beauty of her day. This monument was erected by her son, James the First.’

‘Isn’t she just perfectly sweet?’ said one of the American girls.

‘Well, I don’t know. I expected more of her than that,’ the other answered.

‘I reckon,’ remarked the father, ‘that if any one went through as much as that lady did, it would not tend to improve her beauty. Now what age might the lady be, sir?’

‘Forty-four years of age at the time of her execution,’ said the guide.

‘Ah weel, she’s young for her years,’ muttered the Scotchman, and the party moved on. Frank and Maude lingered to have a further look at the unfortunate princess, the bright French butterfly, who wandered from the light and warmth into that grim country, a land of blood and of psalms.

‘She was as hard as nails under all her gentle grace,’ said Frank. ‘She rode eighty miles and hardly drew rein after the battle of Langside.’

‘She looks as if she were tired, poor dear!’ said Maude; ‘I don’t think that she was sorry to be at rest.’

The guide was narrating the names of the owners of the tombs at the further end of the chapel. ‘Queen Anne is here, and Mary the wife of William the Third is beside her. And here is William himself. The king was very short and the queen very tall, so in the sculptures the king is depicted standing upon a stool so as to bring their heads level. In the vaults beyond there are thirty-eight Stuarts.’

Thirty-eight Stuarts! Princes, bishops, generals, once the salt of the earth, the mightiest of men, and now lumped carelessly together as thirty-eight Stuarts. So Death the Republican and Time the Radical can drag down the highest from his throne.

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.

But almost at the same instant, the Selbys entered the church at the further end. Mr. Selby, with his red face and fluffy side-whiskers, had Maude upon his arm. She looked very pale and very sweet, with downcast eyes and solemn mouth, while behind her walked her younger sister Mary and her pretty friend Nelly Sheridan, both in pink dresses with broad pink hats and white curling feathers. The bride was herself in the grey travelling-dress with which Frank was already familiar by its description in her letter. Its gentle tint and her tenderly grave expression made a charming effect. Behind them was the mother, still young and elegant, with something of Maude’s grace in her figure and carriage. As the party came up the aisle, Frank was to be restrained no longer. ‘Get to his head!’ cried Jack to Hale in an excited whisper, but their man was already hurrying to shake hands with Maude. He walked up on her right, and they took their position in two little groups, the happy couple in the centre. At the same moment the clang of the church-clock sounded above them, and the vicar, shrugging his shoulders to get his white surplice into position, came bustling out of the vestry. To him it was all the most usual, commonplace, and unimportant thing in the world, and both Frank and Maude were filled with amazement at the nonchalant way in which he whipped out a prayer-book, and began to rapidly perform the ceremony. It was all so new and solemn and all-important to them, that they had expected something mystic and overpowering in the function, and yet here was this brisk little man, with an obvious cold in his head, tying them up in as business-like a fashion as a grocer uniting two parcels. After all, he had to do it a thousand times a year, and so he could not be extravagant in his emotions.

The singular service was read out to them, the exhortations, and the explanations, sometimes stately, sometimes beautiful, sometimes odious. Then the little vicar turned upon Frank—‘_Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife_, _to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony_? _Wilt thou love her_, _comfort her_, _honour her_, _in sickness and in health_, _and forsaking all other_, _keep thee only unto her as long as ye both shall live_?’

‘_I will_,’ cried Frank, with conviction.

‘_And wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband_, _to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony_? _Wilt thou obey him_, _and serve him_, _love_, _honour_, _and keep him_, _in sickness and in health_, _and forsaking all other_, _keep thee only unto him so long as ye both shall live_?’

‘_I will_,’ said Maude, from her heart.

‘_Who giveth this woman to be married to this man_?’

‘_I do_. Mr. John Selby—her father, you know.’

And then in turn they repeated the fateful words—‘_I take thee to have and to hold from this day forward_, _for better_, _for worse_, _for richer_, _for poorer_, _in sickness and in health_, _to love_, _cherish_, _and obey_, _till death us do part_, _according to God’s holy ordinance_, _and thereto I give thee my troth_.’

‘Ring! Ring!’ said Hale.

‘Ring, you Juggins!’ whispered Jack Selby.

Frank thrust his hands frantically into all his pockets. The ring was in the last one which he attempted. But the bank-note was not to be found. He remembered that he had put it in some safe place. Where could it have been? Was it in his boot, or in the lining of his hat? No, surely he could not have done anything so infatuated. Again he took his pockets two at a time, while a dreadful pause came in the ceremony.

‘Vestry—afterwards,’ whispered the clergyman.

‘Here you are!’ gasped Frank. He had come upon it in a last desperate dive into his watch-pocket, in which he never by any chance kept anything. Of course it was for that very reason, that it might be alone and accessible, that he had placed it there. Ring and note were handed to the vicar, who deftly concealed the one and returned the other. Then Maude’s little white hand was outstretched, and over the third finger Frank slipped the circlet of gold.

‘_With this ring I thee wed_,’ said Frank, ‘_and with my body I thee worship_ (he paused, and made a mental emendation of ‘with my soul also’), _and with all my worldly goods I thee endow_.’

There was a prayer, and then the vicar joined the two hands, the muscular sunburned one and the dainty white one, with the new ring gleaming upon it.

‘_Those whom God hath joined together_, _let no man put asunder_,’ said he. ‘_Forasmuch as Francis Crosse and Maude Selby have consented together in holy wedlock_, _and have witnessed the same before God and this company_, _and thereto have given and pledged their troth_, _either to other_, _and have declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring_, _and by joining of hands; I pronounce that they be man and wife together_.’