_THE ABBEY_.
This interruption of the pleasure sights was alone in its kind. Pitt
let the subject that day so thoroughly handled thenceforth drift out of
sight; he referred to it no more; and continually, day after day, he
gave himself up to the care of providing new entertainment for his
guests. Drives into the country, parties on the river, visits to grand
places, to picture galleries, to curiosities, to the British Museum,
alternated with and succeeded each other. Pitt seemed untireable. Mrs.
Dallas was in a high state of contentment, trusting that all things
were going well for her hopes concerning her son and Miss Frere; but
Betty herself was going through an experience of infinite pain. It was
impossible not to enjoy at the moment these enjoyable things; the life
at Pitt's old Kensington house was like a fairy tale for strangeness
and prettiness; but Betty was living now under a clear impression of
the fact that it _was_ a fairy tale, and that she must presently walk
out of it. And gradually the desire grew uppermost with her to walk out
of it soon, while she could do so with grace and of her own accord. The
pretty house which she had so delighted in began to oppress her. She
would presently be away, and have no more to do with it; and somebody
else would be brought there to reign and enjoy as mistress. It
tormented Betty, that thought. Somebody else would come there, would
have a right there; would be cherished and cared for and honoured, and
have the privilege of standing by Pitt in his works and plans, helping
him, and sympathizing with him. A floating image of a fair, stately
woman, with speaking grey eyes and a wonderful pure face, would come
before her when she thought of these things, though she told herself it
was little likely that _she_ would be the one; yet Betty could think of
no other, and almost felt superstitiously sure at last that Esther it
would be, in spite of everything. Esther it would be, she was almost
sure, if she, Betty, spoke one little word of information; would she
have done well to speak it? Now it was too late.
'I think, Mrs. Dallas,' she began, one day, 'I cannot stay much longer
with you. Probably you and Mr. Dallas may make up your minds to remain
here all the winter; I should think you would. If I can hear of
somebody going home that I know, I will go, while the season is good.'
Mrs. Dallas roused up, and objected vehemently. Betty persisted.
'I am in a false position here,' she said. 'It was all very well at
first; things came about naturally, and it could not be helped; and I
am sure I have enjoyed it exceedingly; but, dear Mrs. Dallas, I cannot
stay here always, you know. I am ashamed to remember how long it is
already.'
'My dear, I am sure my son is delighted to have you,' said Mrs. Dallas,
looking at her.
'He is not delighted at all,' said Betty, half laughing. Poor girl, she
was not in the least light-hearted; bitterness can laugh as easily as
pleasure sometimes. 'He is a very kind friend, and a perfect host; but
there is no reason why he should care about my coming or going, you
know.'
'Everybody must care to have you come, and be sorry to have you go,
Betty.'
'"Everybody" is a general term, ma'am, and always leaves room for
important exceptions. I shall have his respect, and my own too, better
if I go now.'
'My dear, I cannot have you!' said Mrs. Dallas uneasily, but afraid to
ask a question. 'No, we shall not stay here for the winter. Wait a
little longer, Betty, and we will take you down into the country, and
make the tour of England. It is more beautiful than you can conceive.
Wait till we have seen Westminster Abbey; and then we will go. You can
grant me that, my dear?'
Betty did not know how to refuse.
'Has Pitt got over his extravagancies of last year?' the older lady
ventured, after a pause.
'I do not think he gets over anything,' said Betty, with inward bitter
assurance.
The day came that had been fixed for a visit to the Abbey. Pitt had not
been eager to take them there; had rather put it off. He told his
mother that one visit to Westminster Abbey was nothing; that two visits
were nothing; that a long time and many hours spent in study and
enjoyment of the place were necessary before one could so much as begin
to know Westminster Abbey. But Mrs. Dallas had declared she did not
want to _know_ it; she only desired to see it and see the monuments;
and what could be answered to that? So the visit was agreed upon and
fixed for this day.
'You did not want to bring us here, because you thought we would not
appreciate it?' Betty said to Pitt, in an aside, as they were about
entering.
'Nobody can appreciate it who takes it lightly,' he answered.
That day remained fixed in Betty's memory for ever, with all its
details, sharp cut in. The moment they entered the building, the
greatness and beauty of the place seemed to overshadow her, and roused
up all the higher part of her nature. With that, it stirred into keen
life the feeling of being shut out from the life she wanted. The Abbey,
with the rest of all the wonders and antiquities and rich beauties of
the city, belonged to the accessories of Pitt's position and home;
belonged so in a sort to him; and the sense of the beauty which she
could not but feel met in the girl's heart with the pain which she
could not bid away, and the one heightened the other, after the strange
fashion that pain and pleasure have of sharpening each other's powers.
Betty took in with an intensity of perception all the riches of the
Abbey that she was capable of understanding; and her capacity in that
way was far beyond the common. She never in her life had been quicker
of appreciation. The taste of beauty and the delight of curiosity were
at times exquisite; never failing to meet and heighten that underlying
pain which had so moved her whole nature to sentient life. For the
commonplace and the indifferent she had to-day no toleration at all;
they were regarded with impatient loathing. Accordingly, the progress
round the Poets' corner, which Mrs. Dallas would make slowly, was to
Betty almost intolerable. She must go as the rest went, but she went
making silent protest.
'You do not care for the poets, Miss Betty,' remarked Mr. Dallas
jocosely.
'I see here very few names of poets that I care about,' she responded.
'To judge by the rest, I should say it was about as much of an honour
to be left out of Westminster Abbey as to be put in.'
'Fie, fie, Miss Betty! what heresy is here! Westminster Abbey! why, it
is the one last desire of ambition.'
'I am beginning to think ambition is rather an empty thing, sir.'
'See, here is Butler. Don't you read _Hudibras?_'
'No, sir.'
'You should. It's very clever. Then here is Spenser, next to him. You
are devoted to _The Faerie Queene_, of course!'
'I never read it.'
'You might do worse,' remarked Pitt, who was just before them with his
mother.
'Does anybody read Spenser now?'
'It is a poor sign for the world if they do not.'
'One cannot read everything,' said Betty. 'I read Shakspeare; I am glad
to see _his_ monument.'
It was a relief to pass on at last from the crowd of literary folk into
the nobler parts of the Abbey; and yet, as the impression of its
wonderful beauty and solemn majesty first fully came upon Miss Frere,
it was oddly accompanied by an instant jealous pang: 'He will bring
somebody else here some day, who will come as often as she likes, be at
home here, and enjoy the Abbey as if it were her own property.' And
Betty wished she had never come; and in the same inconsistent breath
was exceedingly rejoiced that she had come. Yes, she would take all of
the beauty in that she could; take it and keep it in her memory for
ever; taste it while she had it, and live on the after-taste for the
rest of her life. But the taste of it was at the moment sharp with pain.
Pitt had procured from one of the canons, who had been his uncle's
friend, an order which permitted them to go their own way and take
their own time, unaccompanied and untrammelled by vergers. No showman
was necessary in Pitt's presence; he could tell them all, and much more
than they cared about knowing. Mrs. Dallas, indeed, cared for little
beyond the tokens of England's antiquity and glory; her interest was
mostly expended on the royal tombs and those connected with them. For
was not Pitt now, virtually, one of the favoured nation, by habit and
connection as well as in blood? and did not England's greatness send
down a reflected light on all her sons?--only poetical justice, as it
was earlier sons who had made the greatness. But of that Mrs. Dallas
did not think. 'England' was an abstract idea of majesty and power,
embodied in a land and a government; and Westminster Abbey was in a
sort the record and visible token of the same, and testimony of it, in
the face of all the world. So Mrs. Dallas enjoyed Westminster Abbey,
and her heart swelled in contemplation of its glories; but its real
glories she saw not. Lights and shadows, colouring, forms of beauty,
associations of tenderness, majesties of age, had all no existence for
her. The one feeling in exercise, which took its nourishment from all
she looked upon, was pride. But pride is a dull kind of gratification;
and the good lady's progress through the Abbey could not be called
satisfactory to one who knew the place.
Mr. Dallas was neither proud nor pleased. He was, however, an
Englishman, and Westminster Abbey was intensely English, and to go
through and look at it was the right thing to do; so he went; doing his
duty.
And beside these two went another bit of humanity, all alive and
quivering, intensely sensitive to every impression, which must needs be
more or less an impression of suffering. Her folly, she told herself,
it was which had so stripped her of her natural defences, and exposed
her to suffering. The one only comfort left was, that nobody knew it;
and nobody should know it. The practice of society had given her
command over herself, and she exerted it that day; all she had.
They were making the tour of St. Edmund's chapel.
'Look here, Betty,' cried Mrs. Dallas, who was still a little apart
from the others with her son,--'come here and see this! Look here--the
tomb of two little children of Edward III.!'
'After going over some of the other records, ma'am, I can but call them
happy to have died little.'
'But isn't it interesting? Pitt tells me there were _six_ of the little
princess's brothers and sisters that stood here at her funeral, the
Black Prince among them. Just think of it! Around this tomb!'
'Why should it be more interesting to us than any similar gathering of
common people? There is many a spot in country graveyards at home where
more than six members of a family have stood together.'
'But, my dear, these were Edward the Third's children.'
'Yes. He was something when he was alive; but what is he to us now? And
why should we care,'--Betty hastily went on to generalities, seeing the
astonishment in Mrs. Dallas's face,--'why should we be more interested
in the monuments and deaths of the great, than in those of lesser
people? In death and bereavement all come down to a common humanity.'
'Not a _common_ humanity!' said Mrs. Dallas, rather staring at Betty.
'All are alike on the other side, mother,' observed Pitt. 'The king's
daughter and the little village girl stand on the same footing, when
once they have left this state of things. There is only one nobility
that can make any difference then.'
'"One nobility!"' repeated Mrs. Dallas, bewildered.
'You remember the words,--"Whosoever shall do the will of my Father
which is in heaven, the same is _my mother_, _and my sister_, _and
brother_." The village girl will often turn out to be the daughter of
the King then.'
'But you do not think, do you,' said Betty, 'that _all_ that one has
gained in this life will be lost, or go for nothing?
Education--knowledge--refinement,--all that makes one man or woman
really greater and nobler and richer than another,--will _that_ be all
as though it had not been?--no advantage?'
'What we know of the human mind forbids us to think so. Also, the
analogy of God's dealings forbids it. The child and the fully developed
philosopher do not enter the other world on an intellectual level; we
cannot suppose it. _But_, all the gain on the one side will go to
heighten his glory or to deepen his shame, according to the fact of his
having been a servant of God or no.'
'I don't know where you are getting to!' said Mrs. Dallas a little
vexedly.
'If we are to proceed at this rate,' suggested her husband, 'we may as
well get leave to spend all the working days of a month in the Abbey.
It will take us all that.'
'After all,' said Betty as they moved, 'you did not explain why we
should be so much more interested in this tomb of Edward the Third's
children than in that of any farmer's family?'
'My dear,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'I am astonished to hear you speak so. Are
not _you_ interested?'
'Yes ma'am; but why should I be? For really, often the farmer's family
is the more respectable of the two.'
'Are you such a republican, Betty? I did not know it.'
'There is a reason, though,' said Pitt, repressing a smile, 'which even
a republican may allow. The contrast here is greater. The glory and
pomp of earthly power is here brought into sharp contact with the
nothingness of it, So much yesterday,--so little to-day. Those uplifted
hands in prayer are exceedingly touching, when one remembers that all
their mightiness has come down to that!'
'It is not every fool that thinks so,' remarked Mr. Dallas ambiguously.
'No,' said Betty, with a sudden impulse of championship; 'fools do not
think at all.'
'Here is a tablet to Lady Knollys,' said Pitt, moving on. 'She was a
niece of Anne Boleyn, and waited upon her to the scaffold.'
'But that is only a tablet,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'Who is this, Pitt?' She
was standing before an effigy that bore a coronet; Betty beside her.
'That is the Duchess of Suffolk; the mother of Lady Jane Grey.'
'I see,' said Betty, 'that the Abbey is the complement of the Tower.
Her daughter and her husband lie there, under the pavement of the
chapel. How comes she to be here?'
'Her funeral was after Elizabeth came to the throne. But she had been
in miserable circumstances, poor woman, before that.'
'I wonder she lived at all,' said Betty, 'after losing husband and
daughter in that fashion! But people do bear a great deal and live
through it!'
Which words had an application quite private to the speaker, and which
no one suspected. And while the party were studying the details of the
tomb of John of Eltham, Pitt explaining and the others trying to take
it in, Betty stood by with passionate thoughts. '_They_ do not care,'
she said to herself; 'but he will bring some one else here, some day,
who will care; and they will come and come to the Abbey, and delight
themselves in its glories, and in each other, alternately. What do I
here? and what is the English Abbey to me?'
She showed no want of interest, however, and no wandering of thought;
on the contrary, an intelligent, thoughtful, gracious attention to
everything she saw and everything she heard. Her words, she knew,
though she could not help it, were now and then flavoured with
bitterness.
In the next chapel Mrs. Dallas heard with much sympathy and wonder the
account of Catharine of Valois and her remains.
'I don't think she ought to lie in the vault of Sir George Villiers, if
he _was_ father of the Duke of Buckingham,' she exclaimed.
'That Duke of Buckingham had more honour than belonged to him, in life
and in death,' said Betty.
'It does not make much difference now,' said Pitt.
They went on to the chapel of Henry VII. And here, and on the way
thither, Betty almost for a while forgot her troubles in the exceeding
majesty and beauty of the place. The power of very exquisite beauty,
which always and in all forms testifies to another world where its
source and its realization are, came down upon her spirit, and hushed
it as with a breath of balm; and the littleness of this life, of any
one individual's life, in the midst of the efforts here made to deny
it, stood forth in most impressive iteration. Betty was awed and
quieted for a minute. Mr. and Mrs. Dallas were moved differently.
'And this was Henry the Seventh's work!' exclaimed Mr. Dallas, making
an effort to see all round him at once. 'Well, I didn't know they could
build so well in those old times. Let us see; when was he
buried?--1509? That is pretty long ago. This is a beautiful building!
And that is his tomb, eh? I should say this is better than anything he
had in his lifetime. Being king of England was not just so easy to him
as his son found it. Crowns are heavy in the best of times; and his was
specially.'
'It is a strange ambition, though, to be glorified so in one's funeral
monument,' said Betty.
'A very common ambition,' remarked Pitt. 'But this chapel was to be
much more than a monument. It was a chantry. The king ordered ten
thousand masses to be said here for the repose of his soul; and
intended that the monkish establishment should remain for ever to
attend to them. Here around his tomb you see the king's particular
patron saints,--nine of them,--to whom he looked for help in time of
need; all over the chapel you will find the four national saints, if I
may so call them, of the kingdom; and at the end there is the Virgin
Mary, with Peter and Paul, and other saints and angels innumerable. The
whole chapel is like those touching folded hands of stone we were
speaking of,--a continual appeal, through human and angelic mediation,
fixed in stone; though at the beginning also living in the chants of
the monks.'
'Well, I am sure that is being religious!' said Mrs. Dallas. 'If such a
place as this does not honour religion, I don't know what does.'
'Mother, Christ said, "_I_ am the door."'
'Yes, my dear, but is not all this an appeal to Him?'
'Mother, he said, "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." What
have saints and angels to do with it? "He that _belieth_."'
'Surely the builder of all this must have believed,' said Mrs. Dallas,
'or he would never have spent so much money and taken so much pains
about it.'
'If he had believed on Christ, mother, he would have known he had no
need. Think of those ten thousand masses to be said for him, that his
sins might be forgiven and his soul received into heaven; you see how
miserably uncertain the poor king felt of ever getting there.'
'Well,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'every one must feel uncertain! He cannot
_know_--how can he know?'
'How can he live and not know?' Pitt answered in a lowered tone.
'Uncertainty on that point would be enough to drive a thinking man mad.
Henry the Seventh, you see, could not bear it, and so he arranged to
have ten thousand masses said for him, and filled his chapel with
intercessory saints.'
'But I do not see how any one is to have certainty, Mr. Pitt,' Betty
said. 'One cannot see into the future.'
'It is only necessary to believe, in the present.'
'Believe what?'
'The word of the King, who promised,--"Whosoever liveth and believeth
in me _shall never die_." The love that came down here to die for us
will never let slip any poor creature that trusts it.'
'Yes; but suppose one cannot trust _so?_' objected Betty.
'Then there is probably a reason for it. Disobedience, even partial
disobedience, cannot perfectly trust.'
'How can sinful creatures do anything perfectly, Pitt?' his mother
asked, almost angrily.
'Mamma,' said he gravely, 'you trust _me_ so.'
Mrs. Dallas made no reply to that; and they moved on, surveying the
chapels. The good lady bowed her head in solemn approbation when shown
the place whence the bodies of Cromwell and others of his family and
friends were cast out after the Restoration. 'They had no business to
be there,' she assented.
'Where were they removed to?' Betty asked.
'Some of them were hanged, as they deserved,' said Mr. Dallas.
'Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, at Tyburn,' Pitt added. 'The others
were buried, not honourably, not far off. One of Cromwell's daughters,
who was a Churchwoman and also a royalist, they allowed to remain in
the Abbey. She lies in one of the other chapels, over yonder.'
'Noble revenge!' said Betty quietly.
'Very proper,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'It seems hard, but it is proper.
People who rise up against their kings should be treated with
dishonour, both before and after death.'
'How about the kings who rise up against their people?' asked Betty.
She could not help the question, but she was glad that Mrs. Dallas did
not seem to hear it. They passed on, from one chapel to another, going
more rapidly; came to a pause again at the tomb of Mary, Queen of Scots.
'I am beginning to think,' said Betty, 'that the history of England is
one of the sorrowfullest things in the world. I wonder if all other
countries are as bad? Think of this woman's troublesome, miserable
life; and now, after Fotheringay, the honour in which she lies in this
temple is such a mockery! I suppose Elizabeth is here somewhere?'
'Over there, in the other aisle. And below, the two Tudor queens,
Elizabeth and Mary, lie in a vault together, alone. Personal rivalries,
personal jealousies, political hatred and religious enmity,--they are
all composed now; and all interests fade away before the one supreme,
eternal; they are gone where "the honour that cometh from God" is the
only honour left. Well for them if they have that! Here is the Countess
of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII. She was of kin or somehow
connected, it is said, with thirty royal personages; the grand-daughter
of Catharine of Valois, grandmother of Henry VIII., Elizabeth's
great-grandmother. She was, by all accounts, a noble old lady. Now all
that is left is these pitiful folded hands.'
Mrs. Dallas passed on, and they went from chapel to chapel, and from
tomb to tomb, with unflagging though transient interest. But for Betty,
by and by the brain and sense seemed to be oppressed and confused by
the multitude of objects, of names and stories and sympathies. The
novelty wore off, and a feeling of some weariness supervened; and
therewith the fortunes and fates of the great past fell more and more
into the background, and her own one little life-venture absorbed her
attention. Even when going round the chapel of Edward the Confessor and
viewing the grand old tombs of the magnates of history who are
remembered there, Betty was mostly concerned with her own history; and
a dull bitter feeling filled her. It was safe to indulge it, for
everybody else had enough beside to think of, and she grew silent.
'You are tired,' said Pitt kindly, as they were leaving the Confessor's
chapel, and his mother and father had gone on before.
'Of course,' said Betty. 'There is no going through the ages without
some fatigue--for a common mortal.'
'We are doing too much,' said Pitt. 'The Abbey cannot be properly seen
in this way. One should take part at a time, and come many times.'
'No chance for me,' said Betty. 'This is my first and my last.' She
looked back as she spoke towards the tombs they were leaving, and
wished, almost, that she were as still as they. She felt her eyes
suffusing, and hastily went on. 'I shall be going home, I expect, in a
few days--as soon as I find an opportunity. I have stayed too long now,
but Mrs. Dallas has over-persuaded me. I am glad I have had this, at
any rate.'
She was capable of no more words just then, and was about to move
forward, when Pitt by a motion of his hand detained her.
'One moment,' said he. 'Do you say that you are thinking of returning
to America?'
'Yes. It is time.'
'I would beg you, if I might, to reconsider that,' he said. 'If you
could stay with my mother a while longer, it would be, I am sure, a
great boon to her; for _I_ am going away. I must take a run over to
America--I have business in New York--must be gone several weeks at
least. Cannot you stay and go down into Westmoreland with her?'
It seemed to Betty that she became suddenly cold, all over. Yet she was
sure there was no outward manifestation in face or manner of what she
felt. She answered mechanically, indifferently, that she 'would see';
and they went forward to rejoin their companions. But of the rest of
the objects that were shown them in the Abbey she simply saw nothing.
The image of Esther was before her; in New York, found by Pitt; in
Westminster Abbey, brought thither by him, and lingering where her own
feet now lingered; in the house at Kensington, going up the beautiful
staircase, and standing before the cabinet of coins in the library.
Above all, found by Pitt in New York. For he would find her; perhaps
even now he had news of her; _she_ would be coming with hope and
gladness and honour over the sea, while she herself would be returning,
crossing the same sea the other way,--in every sense the other way,--in
mortification and despair and dishonour. Not outward dishonour, and yet
the worst possible; dishonour in her own eyes. What a fool she had
been, to meddle in this business at all! She had done it with her eyes
open, trusting that she could exercise her power upon anybody and yet
remain in her own power. Just the reverse of that had come to pass, and
she had nobody to blame but herself. If Pitt was leaving his father and
mother in England, to go to New York, it could be on only one business.
The game, for her, was up.
There were weeks of torture before her, she knew,--slow
torture,--during which she must show as little of what she felt as an
Indian at the stake. She must be with Mrs. Dallas, and hear the whole
matter talked of, and from point to point as the history went on; and
must help talk of it. For if Pitt was going to New York now, Betty was
not; that was a fixed thing. She must stay for the present where she
was.
She was a little pale and tired, they said on the drive home. And that
was all anybody ever knew.