A Duet

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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 matinees 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 mediaevalism, 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.

CHAPTER V--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 mediaeval 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.

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