A LEGITIMIST DEMONSTRATION
THE carriage which brought the Duchess of Trent and Miss Vanbrugh to
the Legitimist bazaar set them down at the door of a mean-looking,
brick-built schoolroom, over the door of which was a niche containing
the statue of a woman holding a babe in her arms.
This woman was intended for a Jewish peasant, wife of the carpenter
Joseph of Nazareth. This babe was her Divine Son, the second person of
the Christian Triad.
The woman wore an emblem of glory in the form of a crown on her
head. The babe’s head was undecorated. The group was copied without
alteration from the ancient pagan idols of the Great Mother and her
Child, worshipped for countless ages in the Mediterranean zone.
Beneath the niche four letters were cut. They were the four initials,
A.M.D.G., of the Latin words, _Ad majorem Dei gloriam_--“To the greater
glory of God.”
It was the motto of the famous Society of Jesus, set up over a building
in which the children of Protestant Churchmen were being educated.
Only the Jesuit motto was not set out in full; it was merely hinted at
by those cryptic letters. This was a touch that Ignatius Loyola would
have admired.
Neither of the two ladies observed the unobtrusive initials, nor,
if they had done so, would they have understood their significance.
But they could scarcely avoid seeing the idol in its niche; and
just as they were stepping out of the carriage a bright little lad,
attractively robed in a white gown with a red vest above, evidently a
singing-boy from the church hard by, passed through the doorway, bowing
reverently to the sacred image as he went up the steps.
The Duchess of Trent was amazed. Her works of charity had never brought
her into this part of the parish, and she had always kept herself from
contact with the religious activities of St. Jermyn’s.
“If that is not Popery, I should like to know what is?” she exclaimed
bluntly to her young friend. “Did you see that boy bowing to the Virgin
Mary? I have no doubt they are taught to pray to her as well.”
This surmise was perfectly just. Such slight control as the episcopate,
or at least the lay judges of the Privy Council, exercised over the
services in St. Jermyn’s Church, appeared to cease altogether on the
threshold of the school. Within that building Dr. Coles was supreme,
and taught what religion he pleased. If it had suited him to set up
an image of Siva for the adoration of his scholars, or to inculcate
the most degrading beliefs of primitive savagery, no one would have
interfered with his discretion. Thus, while the Vicar maintained
some of the forms of Anglican worship in the parish church, in the
schoolroom he had long laid them aside. The catechism taught to the
boys was one prepared by a clerical secret society, and was carefully
contrived to fill the learner’s mind with hatred for the Protestant
heresy, and to turn it in the direction of Catholic Unity.
A special liturgy, compiled by the same hands, was also provided
for the use of the scholars. In it the Mother of God figured as the
principal, though not the sole, object of worship, the Apostle Peter
taking the second place. Among the prayers, precedence was given to
one for the Patriarch of the West--“Thy servant Leo, that he may be
inspired rightly to define and zealously to defend the faith once
delivered to Thy saints.” After this came petitions on behalf of a
personage discreetly referred to as “the lawful Sovereign of these
realms,” the souls of the dead “now awaiting Thy judgment,” and the
reunion, “under one visible Head on earth,” of all branches of the Holy
Catholic Church. Dr. Coles himself was responsible for a supplementary
prayer in which “our blessed patron, Saint Jermyn,” was complimented on
his influence with the Mother of God, due to the continence of his life
on earth, and implored to use that influence on behalf of the area for
which he was, as it were, the spiritual County Councillor.
It was a document breathing the spirit of the Dark Ages, when God
figured in men’s minds as a sort of Byzantine Emperor, surrounded by a
court of heavenly chamberlains and eunuchs, each dispensing favours to
his own train of followers, and none incapable of being bribed.
Miss Vanbrugh, regarding the symbolical sculpture with the indifference
born of ignorance, smiled at her friend’s indignation.
“Let us go in,” she said; “I don’t think it’s so bad inside.”
The whitewashed walls of the room in which they found themselves
offered a curious medley of science and religion, evidencing a painful
struggle in the mind of Dr. Coles between proselytizing zeal and a
desire to earn the grants of an heretical Government. A large crucifix
over the teacher’s desk was flanked by a geological map of Great
Britain, and a glass case containing silk in various stages from the
cocoon to the finished skein. The Ten Commandments on one wall were
faced by the two hemispheres on the other; and an illuminated calendar
of Holy Days was half concealed by a chart depicting screws, wedges,
levers, and other mechanical appliances. The cloven, or at least the
clerical, hoof peeped out in a series of cartoons illustrative of
English history, the scenes chosen being all in one category--the
landing of Augustine, the martyrdom of Edmund, Thomas à Becket defying
Henry II., and Langton, with a formidable crozier, extorting Magna
Charta from King John apparently by the threat of physical violence,
while the barons respectfully looked on.
On this particular occasion the eye was quickly distracted from these
mural decorations by the exhibition beneath. The room, which was
large enough to contain one or two hundred people, was lined round
three sides by stalls loaded with that extraordinary description of
articles which are manufactured specially for sale at bazaars, and in
which the greatest possible uselessness is combined with the greatest
possible fragility. Children’s frocks, which no child could wear for
an hour without damaging them, embroidered tobacco-pouches sufficient
to dismay the most stout-hearted smoker, weird contrivances of paper
and cheap ribbon described as toilet-tidies, ridiculous pin-cushions,
and impossible patchwork quilts formed the staple of the display. In
one corner a lottery was being conducted by the Rev. Aloysius Grimes,
happy in that immunity from the law which newspaper editors cannot
obtain; and pretty little choristers, in their sacred vestments, were
passing to and fro among the ladies doing a roaring trade in the sale
of tickets. But the great attraction of the afternoon was the theatre,
which had been organized in an adjoining classroom, and in which it was
announced that a Miracle Play would be produced at four o’clock, under
the direction of Egerton Vane, Esq.
As soon as Mr. Grimes caught sight of the Duchess of Trent and her
companion, he handed over the care of the lottery to a young lady
assistant, and hastened forward to greet them. He was just shaking
hands, when a stir in the doorway announced the arrival of Dr. Coles.
In appearance the Vicar of St. Jermyn’s contrasted very favourably
with his curate. It was easy to see that he was a man of education and
refinement, and his white hairs gave him a certain dignity. His face
was that of a sensualist, but the benevolent smile, which had become
almost stereotyped on his lips, produced an impression of cordiality
and goodness of heart. The Doctor’s career had not been quite
untroubled by the voice of scandal. But any bygone slips on the part of
a saintly man had been forgotten or forgiven. The reverent murmur which
welcomed his appearance among his flock was a striking testimony to the
influence he had secured over those among whom he worked.
The Rev. Aloysius, breaking away from the two ladies in the middle of a
sentence, without apology, was the first to cast himself on both knees
before his employer, and respectfully kiss a large ring on the Vicar’s
extended forefinger.
“What in the name of goodness does that mean?” the astonished Duchess
asked of Hero.
She spoke loudly enough to be heard by several persons in the throng,
who turned and cast rebuking glances at her. Directly afterwards she
saw a number of well-dressed women advance one after the other and
salute the Vicar of St. Jermyn’s with the same ceremonial as that
observed by Mr. Grimes.
“Are they all mad, or what is it?” the Duchess whispered. “I have
never seen such a thing before in my life, except when I was abroad,
in Roman Catholic society. But even they don’t kneel to their priests,
only to a Bishop.”
Hero blushed guiltily. She was better informed than the Duchess,
but she was not sure that her knowledge might not damage her in her
friend’s eyes.
“Perhaps these people regard Dr. Coles as a Bishop,” she suggested
timidly. “Have you never heard it whispered that he had been secretly
consecrated by--an Armenian Bishop, I think?”
The Duchess stared at her in honest bewilderment.
“How could that be? I don’t understand. Why should an English clergyman
go to Armenia to be consecrated?”
Hero saw that she must make her revelation complete.
“I understand the object was to renew the Apostolical Succession in the
Church of England.”
“It has never been broken,” said the Duchess, with decision. She had
been told so as a girl, and had never given the subject a second
thought. To her devout mind, too candid to be taken in logical
snares, the presence or absence of one or two or three Bishops at
the consecration of another could not seem a matter of real concern.
To attribute to such details the awful consequences they possess for
Catholic minds would have seemed to her to attribute the technical
instincts of a small attorney to the Maker of the sun and stars.
“The Pope of Rome refuses to recognize Anglican Orders, you know,”
Hero explained gently. “The application was made to him the other day
by Lord Bargreave on behalf of a third of the clergy, and he told them
that the English Church had no Bishops, no priests, and no Sacraments.”
The Duchess flushed to the roots of her hair.
“When I was a girl,” she said sternly, “the Church of England would
have refused to recognize the Pope of Rome. I was brought up to believe
that the Roman communion was a half-pagan, half-political body, which
had corrupted the Gospel with idolatry and superstition, and forfeited
its right to be called a Christian Church.”
It was Hero’s turn to be astonished as she listened to the language
of an extinct generation. Brought up in the age which had witnessed
the triumph of the Ritualist propaganda, it was news to her that the
national Church had ever occupied any attitude but one of envious
imitation or suppliant apology towards that of Rome. And yet Hero
Vanbrugh was a girl who had read a good deal, travelled much, and used
her own powers of observation and reasoning. She had seen the ignorant
priesthoods of Spain and Italy, and their brutish flocks, the most
degraded element in the European population. The sight of the Rev.
Aloysius Grimes cringing to Mike Finigan had roused her indignation.
And yet the spectacle of a great society of Grimeses cringing to
Mike Finigan’s master, in the name of Elizabeth’s and Cromwell’s
countrymen, had scarcely moved her to a passing sigh.
“Times have changed,” she murmured to the Duchess.
And times had. Even the Duchess realized dimly that it had become
unsafe to utter aloud her sentiments of loyalty to the English Church
or to the English Throne in a Church of England schoolroom, while it
had ceased to be unsafe for Dr. Coles to parade openly his treason
to both. His episcopal character was no secret in the theological
colleges from which a steady stream of young men like the Rev. Aloysius
turned their steps to the obscure Lambeth Vicarage in search of those
supernatural powers which they deemed the neighbouring Archbishop had
no power to bestow. In this way the whole Church was being gradually
leavened, so that the time was at hand when some portion of the
mysterious virtue brought from Armenia would have found its way into
all the channels of ordination, and obstinate Evangelicals would be
receiving Armenian Orders unknown to themselves, and would be working
the great Transubstantiation miracle in which they personally did not
believe.
For the sake of achieving this object Dr. Coles had put on one side the
prospect of promotion in the English Church. With abilities sufficient
to have raised him perhaps to the House of Lords, he had deliberately
accepted the part of priest of an obscure parish, content if his
underground revolution was allowed to proceed without interference.
His motives were mixed, perhaps, but great revolutions are the result
of mixed motives, and never of wholly small and base ones. The Vicar of
St. Jermyn’s was blinded to the degrading character of his methods by
the loftiness of his aims. He took the guilt of fraud and perjury on
his conscience, and he did so contentedly, looking forward to the time
when the Church he served would re-enter the Catholic unity, and the
Body of Christ be made whole.
As soon as he had finished receiving the homage of his peculiar
adherents, the old priest went up to the Duchess of Trent, for whom
he had a warm regard. In spite of the theological gulf that sundered
them, she commanded his sympathy far more than the vain and hysterical
women who grovelled in his confessional, and her simple and unselfish
piety displayed in those good works which all religions enjoin had
won his gratitude and respect. Had he been able to make a convert
of the Duchess he would have felt it as great a triumph as when the
State-appointed Bishop of Linchester, laying aside his jewelled crozier
and mitre, came and knelt in the humble study of St. Jermyn’s Vicarage
to receive them again at the hands of the “Bishop of Lambeth.”
On her side the Duchess was not blind to the merits of Dr. Coles,
his indefatigable zeal, unworldliness, and kindly temper. They met
as friends meet, seated in different trains, and going in opposite
directions, who exchange a brief word of greeting before they pass out
of each other’s sight.
The Duchess had never referred to the religious aberrations of the
Doctor, but she thought she might safely challenge him on the subject
of loyalty to the Throne.
“I had no idea that you sympathized with the Legitimists,” she observed.
The Vicar smiled indulgently.
“This bazaar, I suppose you mean? It is more Father Grimes’s doing than
mine. I hold entirely aloof from politics.”
“But you have lent your schoolroom.”
Dr. Coles frowned.
“My schoolroom, as you call it, is a public building,” he said, with
a touch of anger. “I find I am expected to lend it for the purposes
of political meetings, even to the party which almost openly aims at
Disestablishment. I sometimes wonder I don’t receive an application to
lend it for an infidel lecture.”
The Duchess was impressed. Dr. Coles had struck the one note which
brought them into perfect accord, in his reference to infidelity.
In the view of the Duchess this was the one thing worse than Popery.
Her religious scale was made up of five degrees. At the very bottom
came Infidelity, in which term she was disposed to include the
Unitarian denomination and those divines of her own Church whose Hebrew
studies had led them to take different views as to the authorship of
the Old Testament books from those at one time prevalent. The second
head, Popery, covered practically the whole Christian Church during the
ages between the death of Paul and the conversion of Martin Luther, and
two-thirds of existing Christendom. The third division, under the word
Idolatry, embraced the religions of the rest of mankind, including the
stern monotheists of Islam. The Jews formed a class apart; the Duchess
was too good a Conservative to blame that ancient race severely for
their stubbornness in resisting even a Divine reform; she regarded them
as a species of embryo Christians, whose development had been arrested
in the caterpillar stage. Her fifth division, Protestantism, applied to
the sects dating from the Lutheran revolt, and to stray heretics of the
past, such as the Socialist Lollards and the freethinking Albigeois,
who possessed the merit of having been persecuted by Rome. Among these,
of course, she distinguished between the converted Christian and the
much larger class of sinners for whom she wished to take for granted a
death-bed repentance.
It was not an unimportant matter that the Duchess of Trent should
have held these views. Money is always important, and the Duchess was
one of a very large moneyed class who were always ready to open their
purses on behalf of their favourite propaganda. The infidel and the
sinner were supposed to be reached by the ordinary machinery of the
Church, and the Papist and the Jew had been wellnigh abandoned as
hopeless, though a few Englishmen of the lower class still prowled
through countries like Spain and Portugal, distributing Protestant
tracts and increasing the dislike felt for their nation. But the great
field for missionary effort, of course, was that section of mankind
labelled idolaters or heathen. In the spirit of the hymn which singles
out the inoffensive Buddhists of Ceylon to brand them with the epithet
vile, the good Duchess firmly believed that to thrust, not merely
the theology, but the morals, social customs, marriage institutions,
language, manners, and even clothing of her own age and country upon
all the peoples of the earth was a Divine injunction to be neglected at
her peril.
This generous zeal had long been encouraged by the statesmen of the
Raj, who saw its possessions widened without the expense of arms. The
British Empire resembles no other that has ever existed in having come
into existence unconsciously. England has sent forth her outlaws on
the shores of distant continents, and they have come back soldiers for
her. Her merchants have gone forth seeking merchandise, and realms
Alexander sighed for have fallen like ripe fruit into their hands. Her
missionaries have Anglicized where they should have Christianized;
the bigoted worshippers of Allah and Vishnu imitate the language of
Macaulay, and every new church in Africa gives a new cotton-mill to
Lancashire.
Dr. Coles had a more personal argument in store for the Duchess of
Trent.
“Surely you cannot be very bigoted against the Legitimists,” he urged.
“I thought that all the old Scotch families were Jacobites at heart.
And Lord Alistair Stuart is a member of the Guild.”
“I have heard my mistress, the Queen, say: ‘I am the greatest Jacobite
of them all,’” the Duchess responded. “But I don’t think she ever
expected to hear of real Jacobites in the twentieth century. I don’t
take your friends very seriously, Dr. Coles, and I dare say my son
doesn’t either.”
Before the discussion could be carried further Alistair himself came
into view. His mother watched him anxiously, half afraid of seeing him
accord the same homage to Dr. Coles as the others. But whether because
he was wanting in reverence for Armenia, or because he was ashamed to
show greater respect to a man than to his own mother, Stuart contented
himself with shaking hands with the priest, after he had previously
greeted his parent.
He was surprised at first to see her at such a function. But the
diplomacy of the Duchess was very transparent. She at once turned to
Hero, and pronounced the formula which entitles two people in English
society to know of each other’s existence.
It was the first time Alistair had seen Miss Vanbrugh, but not the
first time he had heard her name. The eyes of society are very keen
where a man like the Duke of Trent and Colonsay is concerned, and its
whispering-gallery is very wide. Although the Duke himself had never
given any significance to his intercourse with Hero, the correct
significance had already been given to it by others, and the rumour
had reached Lord Alistair. For him the girl who stood before him was
the girl who was on the point of becoming his brother’s betrothed.
He raised his eyes to her face, and when he saw that picture of calm,
sweet maidenhood, with all the bloom of youth and purity upon it, and
those eyes radiant with high and happy thoughts, and when he recalled
that other face he had just quitted, with the paint peeling off under
the haggard eyes, and the cracked lips set in a querulous scowl because
he had not dared to bring her into the company of reputable women, and
when he compared his own lot, cast with that unhappy creature, with
the life that lay before his brother, blest in so dear a wife, then
his heart failed him, and he had to turn away his eyes to hide the
unexpected smart.
On her part Hero was not much less moved. She saw standing before her
the figure around which her imagination had already woven its romance,
and he was handsomer than the hero of her romance. The gracefully-knit
form, with its statuesque neck and curling dark hair, breathed the
very spirit of the lays of Oisin. The swish of the heather was still
in his elastic tread, the sunlight of the rain-washed Hebrides was in
his glance. She seemed to see him in his kilt and plaid, the eagle’s
feather nodding in his bonnet, and the claymore by his side, a young
chieftain of the glens, starting at daybreak from his bed among the
fern, and setting forth perhaps to woo a maiden like herself with
the immemorial charms of song and dance. In the strait garb of the
decorous capital he seemed to her like a shorn Samson, and she thought
of violets fading in a city garret, and skylarks caged in a dark cellar
beating their wings in want of light and air.
She, also, drew her comparison, and the cold and perfect courtier of
Colonsay House suffered by it. For the first time she felt in its full
strength that instinct of self-sacrifice which lies at the core of
every noble nature. The task which Stuart’s mother had offered to her,
and in which she had only taken a sentimental interest, now became a
fascination. The longing to save this glorious soul, fallen among weeds
and briars, to lift it up and wipe away its stains, and set it on its
true path again, overcame her like the touch of love; the touch of
love overcame her like the longing to save, and her hand trembled in
Alistair Stuart’s.
The two Vanes sidled up, anxious to be recognized by their chief.
“So glad you have turned up, Stuart,” bleated the elder. “It’s quite a
demonstration, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Wickham echoed, “it is a blow. I think we are striking a blow.”
He meant at the hated middle classes. It was the only kind of a blow he
was ever likely to strike against that or any other enemy.
Stuart heard them with impatience. Somehow the presence of Hero made
the two brothers look tawdry and ridiculous with their decadent cant,
their untidy hair, and their silly, outlandish neckties. He answered
with irony:
“No doubt the middle classes will be frightened when they hear of this
bazaar. But you must see that it gets into the papers, otherwise the
effect will be lost. Are there any reporters here?”
The brothers looked around a little nervously.
“I hope so,” said Egerton, whose vanity was slightly greater than his
cowardice.
“It might vulgarize the thing,” suggested Wickham whose cowardice was
slightly greater than his vanity.
Stuart understood their fears, and played on them by way of distraction
from his secret emotion.
“I expect the place is crammed with detectives,” he observed. “I
fancied I saw one or two suspicious-looking fellows with notebooks as I
came in.”
Hero grasped the situation, and smiled.
“No; do you think so?” exclaimed the elder Vane in a tone of
exultation, tempered by alarm. “But surely there is nothing they can
take hold of--nothing illegal, I mean--in a bazaar?”
“They may shadow us after this, though,” muttered the junior, in whom
alarm had got the better of exultation.
“They may treat the bazaar as evidence of a conspiracy,” Stuart
suggested cheerfully. “But here comes St. Maur; you had better ask him.”
He turned, and led Hero away through the crowd, to escape from the
person he had indicated, leaving the brothers in a state of cruel
apprehension.
But Mr. St. Maur was not to be shaken off so easily. This gentleman,
who had spelt his name “Maher” in his native city of “Dahblin”
(as he was accustomed to pronounce it), was the son of a decent
butter-merchant, who had put him to the Bar. Coming over to the Temple,
in accordance with old custom to keep his terms, the ambitious youth
was surprised and charmed to find that his membership of the Roman
Church, which had stood somewhat in his light in the society of the
Irish capital, was here a fashionable distinction. To drink the Roman
Pontiff’s health before that of the British Sovereign appeared to be in
some mysterious way a passport to Court favour, and a Roman missionary
had just been given precedence over the heads of the English Church.
The policy of the Primrose League had been adapted to the purposes of
proselytism, and a club had been founded in the West End in which the
middle-class aspirant could enjoy the privilege of lunching in the
same room as a Roman Cabinet Minister and receiving the _Times_ fresh
from the hands of a Roman Duke. Unfortunately the Duke and the Cabinet
Minister failed to play their parts with sufficient zeal, or else there
were not enough of them to go around, and St. Bridget’s Club gradually
sunk from depth to depth till not merely Protestants, but Jews,
profaned its portals, and it became a refuge for all the suspicious
characters whom other clubs refused.
Young Maher was not long in deciding to forsake the Irish Bar for the
English, and a slight alteration in the spelling of his name enabled
him to pose as an offshoot of one of the greatest families in Britain.
The difficulty of an accent which clove obstinately to his tongue was
met by a well-constructed legend of an Irish branch of the family in
question, supposed to have settled in the Emerald Isle about the time
of Strongbow. On the strength of this genealogy, which would have done
credit to the Heralds’ College in its best remunerated moments, Mr. St.
Maur was in the habit of referring to a nobleman of lofty rank as “the
head of our house,” thereby causing intolerable anguish to his friends,
the Vanes, who were only nephews of a baronet. Unfortunately they were
prevented from questioning the genuineness of St. Maur’s pedigree,
inasmuch as they had laid every stress upon it in introducing him to
their acquaintance. But they had an uneasy sense that the Irishman was
an impostor who had beaten them by mere bluff.
On his part the barrister having, as he conceived, surpassed the Vanes,
was seeking for loftier heights to scale. As soon as he met Lord
Alistair Stuart in the brothers’ flat he promptly marked him out for
attack. Undaunted by Stuart’s evident dislike for him, the Irishman
persistently forced himself on his notice. With this object he had
thrown himself heart and soul into the Legitimist cause, as he would
have thrown himself into the Independent Labour Party the day after if
the leaders of that movement had been members of the peerage.
Having come to the bazaar chiefly in order to push his acquaintance
with Lord Alistair, Mr. St. Maur was not the man to be balked of his
prey.
“Grand success, this, isn’t it, Stuart?” he bawled out from afar, as he
hustled his way through the throng.
Much as Stuart disliked his follower, he failed to give him credit
for the naked singleness of his aims. Had he fully understood the
Irishman’s character, he would have got rid of him before this by the
easy expedient of introducing him to his brother. Once anchored to the
coat-tails of a Duke, St. Maur would have left a mere younger brother
severely alone. As it was, Lord Alistair saw no way of repelling the
intruder except by a harshness which was not in his nature.
Mr. St. Maur shook hands effusively, and then, finding he was not going
to be introduced to Lord Alistair’s companion, began enlarging on the
prospects of the movement.
“I consider this affair will launch us as a serious party,” he
declared. “The public will begin to reckon with us. It will soon be
time to think of a Parliamentary candidature. What do you say, Stuart?”
Alistair shrugged his shoulders.
“I should think you would get about ten votes in any constituency in
England.”
“Ah, but what about Scotland? There is a feeling up there that might be
appealed to. If a man like yourself, now, a member of an old Highland
family, were to stand in your own part of the country, don’t you think
the clansmen would rally round you?”
“You forget that I should have my brother’s influence dead against me.
He is a member of the Government.”
“He would have to disavow you officially, of course. But privately, you
know? Don’t you think the Duke might be brought to show some sympathy
for the movement?”
“He would simply laugh at it, I expect,” said Stuart.
“The Duke of Gloucester does not laugh at it,” returned the other.
Alistair’s face darkened at the name, and he cast down his eyes.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
St. Maur swelled with importance.
“I happen to have private information that he watches the proceedings
of the Guild with the closest attention. He has everything that appears
in the press about us sent him by a press-cutting agency.”
“I wish I had known that before,” said Alistair. And, turning to Hero,
he explained: “I have let them have an autograph letter of the Prince’s
to sell at one of the stalls.”
The absurdity of this did not strike Hero so much as its ingratitude.
“A letter from the Prince to you, do you mean?” she asked, with an
accent of reproach.
“Yes; I used to know him very well when we were boys. I came across it
the other day among some old papers. But I shouldn’t like him to hear
that I had let it be sold.”
A purpose had swiftly formed in Hero’s mind.
“Whereabouts is the stall?” she inquired.
“Over here.”
Turning his back on Mr. St. Maur with unwonted rudeness, he conducted
Hero to a stall presided over by a pretty, overdressed little woman,
who had been persuaded by Mr. Grimes in the confessional that she would
thus atone for certain errors to which pretty, overdressed little women
are prone. Prince Herbert’s autograph had been entrusted to her for
sale, and by good luck it had not been disposed of when the two came up.
“What is the price of this letter?” Miss Vanbrugh asked quickly.
“One guinea,” the stallkeeper simpered. “It is from His Royal Highness
the Duke of Gloucester to Lord Alistair Stuart,” she added in ignorance
of who stood before her.
“Let me buy it, and give it to you!” cried Alistair, guessing Hero’s
design.
She took up the letter. It was a short schoolboy’s note, and contained
a misspelt word.
“DEAR ALISTAIR:
“I cannot meet you to-morrow, as the Crown Prince of Austria is
coming, but I will go out fishing on Saturday if you like. Come over
here at ten o’clock--mind, be punctual.
“Yours affectionately,
“HERBERT.
“P.S.--Sorry to break my promise, but they made me. Mind, bring your
fishing-rod.”
Hero handed the letter to her companion.
“I would rather you let me buy it, and give it back to you,” she said.
She handed the money to the lady of the stall, who was looking
considerably astonished.
Alistair understood the delicate rebuke. His glance took in the
contents of the friendly, boyish note afresh, and he felt ashamed that
he had parted with it.
“I am very grateful to you, Miss Vanbrugh, believe me,” he said
earnestly, as he slipped the letter into his pocket. “I ought not to
have let it go into strange hands. But I hope I needn’t count you as a
stranger. You are often at Colonsay House, aren’t you?”
“I have never met you there,” said Hero pointedly.
And Alistair was silent.
* * * * *
The Miracle Play was a great success, though not, perhaps, in the way
anticipated by Dr. Coles.
The Vicar had understood that the text of the Ober-Ammergau
performance was to furnish the basis of a version only slightly
modified by Mr. Egerton Vane. But Mr. Vane, being deeply imbued with
the spirit of Maeterlinck, had allowed his adaptation to become
tinctured to an unforeseen extent by the vein of symbolism peculiar to
the work of the Belgian master. The orthodox Christian interpretation
being repugnant to his feelings as a Pagan, he had, moreover, boldly
replaced it by something more congenial to his own sympathies.
The result was somewhat as though a conscientious Buddhist should
rewrite “Paradise Lost,” endeavouring to make it illustrate the
doctrine of metempsychosis.
In the opening scene Mary was introduced as the Spirit of Form,
receiving the Annunciation from the Angel Gabriel as the representative
of Creative Genius. The dialogue, which was fortunately unintelligible
to nine-tenths of the audience, turned on the sterility of the Jewish
nation in the department of the plastic arts. Mary was informed
that her Son would remove the prohibition contained in the Second
Commandment, thereby opening the way for the Christian school of
statuary and painting.
The whole of the sacred narrative was dealt with from the same
standpoint. The Wise Men were presented as the exponents of the three
arts of Poetry, Music, and Painting, whose respective merits were
discussed at some length. The dispute of the child Christ in the Temple
was made to turn on Keats’s famous identification of Truth with
Beauty. Satan, in the scene of the Temptation, appeared as the genius
of Utilitarianism and the middle classes, urging the Christ to abandon
the principle of Art for Art’s sake. Towards the end of the drama
Byron’s jest about Barabbas was almost literally incorporated, Barabbas
being designed as a type of commercial success in literature--a Jewish
Tennyson or Ruskin.
Every allusion to the Jews as a people was barbed with the bitterest
malignity. The Semitic spirit was branded, with some historical
confusion, as that of Philistinism _par excellence_; and Isaiah and
other prophets were ingeniously represented as having fallen martyrs to
their literary excellence rather than to their reforming energy.
The allegory was so vague and the dialogue so obscure that most of
those present entirely failed to grasp the enormity of the author’s
transgression. But it was otherwise with Dr. Coles. The Armenian
proselyte was a learned and thorough-going medievalist, and he had
taken it for granted that medieval traditions would be strictly adhered
to. He had left the work of superintending the rehearsals to his
curate, never deeming that Mr. Grimes was capable of betraying the
trust. Nor was he, had he been sufficiently intelligent to perceive
that he was being made a cat’s-paw by his pagan librettist. The actors
in the piece, being the choir-boys, were even less capable of judging
of the drift of the performance.
The deeply mortified Vicar restrained his wrath till the moment when
the High-Priest Caiaphas came upon the scene in the thinly-disguised
character of the proprietor of a morning paper with an enormous
circulation, when it became impossible to mistake the dramatist’s
intentions. Rising from his seat in the front row of the audience, Dr.
Coles gave a peremptory order for the curtain to be let down, and the
thoroughly mystified spectators seized the opportunity to escape.