A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus

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.’

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.’

There now, it was done!  They were one, never more to part until the coffin-lid closed over one or the other.  They were kneeling together now, and the vicar was rapidly repeating some psalms and prayers.  But Frank’s mind was not with the ritual.  He looked slantwise at the graceful, girlish figure by his side.  Her hair hung beautifully over her white neck, and the reverent droop of her head was lovely to his eyes.  So gentle, so humble, so good, so beautiful, and all his, his sworn life-companion for ever!  A gush of tenderness flowed through his heart for her.  His love had always been passionate, but, for the instant, it was heroic, tremendous in its unselfishness.  Might he bring her happiness, the highest which woman could wish for!  God grant that he might do so!  But if he were to make her unhappy, or to take anything from her beauty and her goodness, then he prayed that he might die now, at this supreme moment, kneeling at her side before the altar rails.  So intense was his prayer that he looked up expectantly at the altar, as if in the presence of an imminent catastrophe.  But every one had risen to their feet, and the service was at an end.  The vicar led the way, and they all followed him, into the vestry.  There was a general murmur all round them of congratulation and approval.

‘Heartiest congratulations, Crosse!’ said Hale.

‘Bravo, Maude, you looked ripping!’ cried Jack, kissing his sister.  ‘By Jove, it simply went with a buzz from the word “go.”’

‘You sign it here and here,’ said the vicar, ‘and the witnesses here and here.  Thank you very much.  I am sure that I wish you every happiness.  I need not detain you by any further formality.’

And so, with a curious dream-like feeling, Frank Crosse and Maude found themselves walking down the aisle, he very proud and erect, she very gentle and shy, while the organ thundered the wedding-march.  Carriages were waiting: he handed in his wife, stepped in after her, and they drove off, amidst a murmur of sympathy from a little knot of idlers who had gathered in the porch, partly from curiosity, and partly to escape the rain.

Maude had often driven alone with Frank before, but now she felt suddenly constrained and shy.  The marriage-service, with all its half-understood allusions and exhortations, had depressed and frightened her.  She hardly dared to glance at her husband.  But he soon led her out of her graver humour.

‘Name, please?’ said he.

‘O Frank!’

‘Name, if you please?’

‘Why, you know.’

‘Say it.’

‘Maude.’

‘That all?’

‘Maude Crosse—O Frank!’

‘You blessing!  How grand it sounds!  O Maude, what a jolly old world it is!  Isn’t it pretty to see the rain falling?  And aren’t the shining pavements lovely?  And isn’t everything splendid, and am I not the luckiest—the most incredibly lucky of men.  Dear girlie, give me your hand!  I can feel it under the glove.  Now, sweetheart, you are not frightened, are you?’

‘Not now.’

‘You were?’

‘Yes, I was a little.  O Frank, you won’t tire of me, will you?  I should break my heart if you did.’

‘Tire of you!  Good heavens!  Now you’ll never guess what I was doing while the parson was telling us about what Saint Paul said to the Colossians, and all the rest of it.’

‘I know perfectly well what you were doing.  And you shouldn’t have done it.’

‘What was I doing, then?’

‘You were staring at me.’

‘Oh, you saw that, did you?’

‘I felt it.’

‘Well, I was.  But I was praying also.’

‘Were you, Frank?’

‘When I saw you kneeling there, so sweet and pure and good, I seemed to realise how you had been given into my keeping for life, and I prayed with all my heart that if I should ever injure you in thought, or word, or deed, I might drop dead now before I had time to do it.’

‘O Frank, what a dreadful prayer!’

‘But I felt it and I wished it, and I could not help it.  My own darling, there you are just a living angel, the gentlest, most sensitive, and beautiful living creature that walks the earth, and please God I shall keep you so, and ever higher and higher if such a thing is possible, and if ever I say a word or do a deed that seems to lower you, then remind me of this moment, and send me back to try to live up to our highest ideal again.  And I for my part will try to improve myself and to live up to you, and to bridge more and more the gap that is between us, that I may feel myself not altogether unworthy of our love.  And so we shall act and re-act upon each other, ever growing better and wiser, and dating what is best and brightest in our minds and souls from the day that we were married.  And that’s my idea of a marriage-service, and here endeth the first lesson, and the windows are blurred with rain, and hang the coachman, and it’s hard lines if a man may not kiss his own wife—you blessing!’

A broad-brimmed hat with a curling feather is not a good shape for driving with an ardent young bridegroom in a discreetly rain-blurred carriage.  Frank demonstrated the fact, and it took them all the way to the Langham to get those pins driven home again.  And then after an abnormal meal, which was either a very late breakfast or a very early lunch, they drove on to Victoria Station, from which they were to start for Brighton.  Jack Selby and the two regimental fizzers, who had secured immortality for the young couple, if the deep and constant drinking of healths could have done it, had provided themselves with packages of rice, old slippers, and other time-honoured missiles.  On a hint from Maude, however, that she would prefer a quiet departure, Frank coaxed the three back into the luncheon-room with a perfectly guileless face, and then locking the door on the outside, handed the key and a half-sovereign to the head-waiter, with instructions to release the prisoners when the carriage had gone—an incident which in itself would cause the judicious observer to think that, given the opportunity, Mister Frank Crosse had it in him to go pretty far in life.  And so, quietly and soberly, they rolled away upon their first journey—the journey which was the opening of that life’s journey, the goal of which no man may see.

It was in the roomy dining-room of the Hotel Metropole at Brighton.  Maude and Frank were seated at the favourite small round table near the window, where they always lunched.  Their immediate view was a snowy-white tablecloth with a shining centre dish of foppish little cutlets, each with a wisp of ornamental paper, and a surrounding bank of mashed potatoes.  Beyond, from the very base of the window, as it seemed, there stretched the huge expanse of the deep blue sea, its soothing mass of colour broken only by a few white leaning sails upon the furthest horizon.  Along the sky-line the white clouds lay in carelessly piled cumuli, like snow thrown up from a clearing.  It was restful and beautiful, that distant view, but just at the moment it was the near one which interested them most.  Though they lose from this moment onwards the sympathy of every sentimental reader, the truth must be told that they were thoroughly enjoying their lunch.

With the wonderful adaptability of women—a hereditary faculty, which depends upon the fact that from the beginning of time the sex has been continually employed in making the best of situations which were not of their own choosing—Maude carried off her new character easily and gracefully.  In her trim blue serge dress and sailor hat, with the warm tint of yesterday’s sun upon her cheeks, she was the very picture of happy and healthy womanhood.  Frank was also in a blue serge boating-suit, which was appropriate enough, for they spent most of their time upon the water, as a glance at his hands would tell.  Their conversation was unhappily upon a very much lower plane than when we overheard them last.

‘I’ve got such an appetite!’

‘So have I, Frank.’

‘Capital.  Have another cutlet.’

‘Thank you, dear.’

‘Potatoes?’

‘Please.’

‘I always thought that people on their honeymoon lived on love.’

‘Yes, isn’t it dreadful, Frank?  We must be so material.’

‘Good old mother Nature!  Cling on to her skirt and you never lose your way.  One wants a healthy physical basis for a healthy spiritual emotion.  Might I trouble you for the pickles?’

‘Are you happy, Frank?’

‘Absolutely and completely.’

‘Quite, quite sure?’

‘I never was quite so sure of anything.’

‘It makes me so happy to hear you say so.’

‘And you?’

‘O Frank, I am just floating upon golden clouds in a dream.  But your poor hands!  Oh, how they must pain you!’

‘Not a bit.’

‘It was that heavy oar.’

‘I get no practice at rowing.  There is no place to row in at Woking, unless one used the canal.  But it was worth a blister or two.  By Jove, wasn’t it splendid, coming back in the moonlight with that silver lane flickering on the water in front of us?  We were so completely alone.  We might have been up in the interstellar spaces, you and I, travelling from Sirius to Arcturus in one of those profound gulfs of the void which Hardy talks about.  It was overpowering.’

‘I can never forget it.’

‘We’ll go again to-night.’

‘But the blisters!’

‘Hang the blisters!  And we’ll take some bait with us and try to catch something.’

‘What fun!’

‘And we’ll drive to Rottingdean this afternoon, if you feel inclined.  Have this last cutlet, dear!’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Well, it seems a pity to waste it.  Here goes!  By the way, Maude, I must speak very severely to you.  I can’t if you look at me like that.  But really, joking apart, you must be more careful before the waiters.’

‘Why, dear?’

‘Well, we have carried it off splendidly so far.  No one has found us out yet, and no one will if we are reasonably careful.  The fat waiter is convinced that we are veterans.  But last night at dinner you very nearly gave the thing away.’

‘Did I, Frank?’

‘Don’t look so sweetly penitent, you blessing.  The fact is that you make a shocking bad conspirator.  Now I have a kind of talent for that, as I have for every other sort of depravity, so it will be pretty safe in my hands.  You are as straight as a line by nature, and you can’t be crooked when you try.’

‘But what did I say?  Oh, I am so sorry!  I tried to be so careful.’

‘Well, about the curry, you know.  It was an error of judgment to ask if I took chutnee.  And then . . . ’

‘Something else?’

‘About the boots.  Did I get them in London or Woking.’

‘Oh dear, dear!’

‘And then . . . ’

‘Not another!  O Frank!’

‘Well, the use of the word “my.”  You must give that word up.  It should be “our.”’

‘I know, I know.  It was when I said that the salt water had taken the curl out of the feather in my—no, in our—well, in the hat.’

‘That was all right.  But it is our luggage, you know, and our room, and so on.’

‘Of course it is.  How foolish I am!  Then the waiter knows!  O Frank, what shall we do?’

‘Not he.  He knows nothing.  I am sure of it.  He is a dull sort of person.  I had my eye on him all the time.  Besides, I threw in a few remarks just to set the thing right.’

‘That was when you spoke about our travels in the Tyrol?’

‘Yes.’

‘O Frank, how could you?  And you said how lonely it was when we were the only visitors at the Swiss hotel.’

‘That was an inspiration.  That finished him.’

‘And about the closeness of the Atlantic staterooms.  I blushed to hear you.’

‘But he listened eagerly to it all.  I could see it.’

‘I wonder if he really believed it.  I have noticed that the maids and the waiters seem to look at us with a certain interest.’

‘My dear girlie, you will find as you go through life that every man will always look at you with a certain interest.’

Maude smiled, but was unconvinced.

‘Cheese, dear?’

‘A little butter, please.’

‘Some butter, waiter, and the Stilton.  You know the real fact is, that we make the mistake of being much too nice to each other in public.  Veterans don’t do that.  They take the small courtesies for granted—which is all wrong, but it shows that they are veterans.  That is where we give ourselves away.’

‘That never occurred to me.’

‘If you want to settle that waiter for ever, and remove the last lingering doubt from his mind, the thing is for you to be rude to me.’

‘Or you to me, Frank.’

‘Sure you won’t mind?’

‘Not a bit.’

‘Oh, hang it, I can’t—not even for so good an object.’

‘Well, then, I can’t either.’

‘But this is absurd.  It is only acting.’

‘Quite so.  It is only fun.’

‘Then why won’t you do it?’

‘Why won’t you?’

‘He’ll be back before we settle it.  Look here!  I’ve a shilling under my hand.  Heads or tails, and the loser has to be rude.  Do you agree?’

‘Very well.’

‘Your call.’

‘Heads.’

‘It’s tails.’

‘Oh goodness!’

‘You’ve got to be rude.  Now mind you are.  Here he comes.’

The waiter had come up the room bearing the pride of the hotel, the grand green Stilton with the beautiful autumn leaf heart shading away to rich plum-coloured cavities.  He placed it on the table with a solemn air.

‘It’s a beautiful Stilton,’ Frank remarked.

Maude tried desperately to be rude.

‘Well, dear, I don’t think it is so very beautiful,’ was the best that she could do.

It was not much, but it had a surprising effect upon the waiter.  He turned and hurried away.

‘There now, you’ve shocked him?’ cried Frank.

‘Where has he gone, Frank?’

‘To complain to the management about your language.’

‘No, Frank.  Please tell me!  Oh, I wish I hadn’t been so rude.  Here he is again.’

‘All right.  Sit tight,’ said Frank.

A sort of procession was streaming up the hall.  There was their fat waiter in front with a large covered cheese-dish.  Behind him was another with two smaller ones, and a third with some yellow powder upon a plate was bringing up the rear.

‘This is Gorgonzola, main,’ said the waiter, with a severe manner.  ‘And there’s Camembert and Gruyère behind, and powdered Parmesan as well.  I’m sorry that the Stilton don’t give satisfaction.’

Maude helped herself to Gorgonzola and looked very guilty and uncomfortable.  Frank began to laugh.

‘I meant you to be rude to me, not to the cheese,’ said he, when the procession had withdrawn.

‘I did my best, Frank.  I contradicted you.’

‘Oh, it was a shocking display of temper.’

‘And I hurt the poor waiter’s feelings.’

‘Yes, you’ll have to apologise to his Stilton before he will forgive you.’

‘And I don’t believe he is a bit more convinced that we are veterans than he was before.’

‘All right, dear; leave him to me.  Those reminiscences of mine must have settled him.  If they didn’t, then I feel it is hopeless.’