A Duet (with an occasional chorus) by Arthur Conan Doyle (best classic books to read .txt) 📕

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 matinee 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.’