A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus. Артур Конан Дойл
pluck that sculptor had! It is an effect which must be either ludicrous or great, and he has made it great.’
‘Roubillac is his name,’ said Maude, reading it from the pedestal.
‘A Frenchman, or a man of French descent. Isn’t that characteristic! In the whole great Abbey the one monument which has impressed us with its genius and imagination is by a foreigner. We haven’t got it in us. We are too much afraid of letting ourselves go and of giving ourselves away. We are heavy-handed and heavy-minded.’
‘If we can’t produce the monuments, we can produce the men who deserve them,’ said Maude, and Frank wrote the aphorism down upon his shirt-cuff.
‘We are too severe both in sculpture and architecture,’ said he. ‘More fancy and vigour in our sculptors, more use of gold and more ornament in our architects – that is what we want. But I think it is past praying for. It would be better to subdivide the work of the world, according to the capacity of the different nations. Let Italy and France embellish us. We might do something in exchange – organise the French colonies, perhaps, or the Italian exchequer. That is our legitimate work, but we will never do anything at the other.’
The guide had already reached the end of his round, an iron gate corresponding to that by which they had entered, and they found him waiting impatiently and swinging his keys. But Maude’s smile and word of thanks as she passed him brought content into his face once more. A ray of living sunshine is welcome to the man who spends his days among the tombs.
They walked down the North Transept and out through Solomon’s Porch. The rain-cloud had swept over, and the summer sun was shining upon the wet streets, turning them all to gold. This might have been that fabled London of which young Whittington dreamed. In front of them lay the lawns of vivid green, with the sunlit raindrops gleaming upon the grass. The air was full of the chirping of the sparrows. Across their vision, from the end of Whitehall to Victoria Street, the black ribbon of traffic whirled and circled, one of the great driving-belts of the huge city. Over it all, to their right, towered those glorious Houses of Parliament, the very sight of which made Frank repent his bitter words about English architecture. They stood in the old porch gazing at the scene. It was so wonderful to come back at one stride from the great country of the past to the greater country of the present. Here was the very thing which these dead men lived and died to build.
‘It’s not much past three,’ said Frank. ‘What a gloomy place to take you to! Good heavens, we have one day together, and I take you to a cemetery! Shall we go to a matinée to counteract it?’
But Maude laid her hand upon his arm.
‘I don’t think, Frank, that I was ever more impressed, or learned more in so short a time, in my life. It was a grand hour – an hour never to be forgotten. And you must not think that I am ever with you to be amused. I am with you to accompany you in whatever seems to you to be highest and best. Now before we leave the dear old Abbey, promise me that you will always live your own highest and never come down to me.’
‘I can very safely promise that I will never come down to you,’ said Frank. ‘I may climb all my life, and yet there are parts of your soul which will be like snow-peaks in the clouds to me. But you will be now and always my own dear comrade as well as my sweetest wife. And now, Maude, what shall it be, the theatre or the Australians?’
‘Do you wish to go to either very much?’
‘Not unless you do.’
‘Well, then, I feel as if either would be a profanation. Let us walk together down to the Embankment, and sit on one of the benches there, and watch the river flowing in the sunshine, and talk and think of all that we have seen.’
TWO SOLOS AND A DUET
The night before the wedding, Frank Crosse and his best man, Rupton Hale, dined at the Raleigh Club with Maude’s brother, Jack Selby, who was a young lieutenant in a Hussar regiment. Jack was a horsy, slangy young sportsman who cared nothing about Frank’s worldly prospects, but had given the match his absolute approval from the moment that he realised that his future brother had played for the Surrey Second. ‘What more can you want?’ said he. ‘You won’t exactly be a Mrs. W. G., but you will be on the edge of first-class cricket.’ And Maude, who rejoiced in his approval, without quite understanding the grounds for it, kissed him, and called him the best of brothers.
The marriage was to be at eleven o’clock at St. Monica’s Church, and the Selbys were putting up at the Langham. Frank stayed at the Metropole, and so did Rupton Hale. They were up early, their heads and nerves none the better for Jack Selby’s hospitality of the night before.
Frank could eat no breakfast, and he shunned publicity in his wedding-garments, so they remained in the upstairs sitting-room. He stood by the window, drumming his fingers upon the pane, and looking down into Northumberland Avenue. He had often pictured this day, and associated it with sunshine and flowers and every emblem of joy. But Nature had not risen to the occasion. A thick vapour, half smoke half cloud, drifted along the street, and a thin persistent rain was falling steadily. It pit-patted upon the windows, splashed upon the sills, and gurgled in the water-pipes. Far down beneath him on the drab-coloured slimy road stood the lines of wet cabs, looking like beetles with glistening backs. Round black umbrellas hurried along the shining pavements. A horse had fallen at the door of the Constitutional Club, and an oil-skinned policeman was helping the cabman to raise it. Frank watched it until the harness had been refastened, and it had vanished into Trafalgar Square. Then he turned and examined himself in the mirror. His trim black frock-coat and pearl grey trousers set off his alert athletic figure to advantage. His glossy hat, too, his lavender gloves, and dark-blue tie, were all absolutely irreproachable. And yet he was not satisfied with himself. Maude ought to have something better than that. What a fool he had been to take so much wine last night! On this day of all days in their lives she surely had a right to find him at his best. He was restless, and his nerves were all quivering. He would have given anything for a cigarette, but he did not wish to scent himself with tobacco. He had cut himself in shaving, and his nose was peeling from a hot day on the cricket-field. What a silly thing to expose his nose to the sun before his wedding! Perhaps when Maude saw it she would – well, she could hardly break it off, but at least she might be ashamed of him. He worked himself into a fever over that unfortunate nose.
‘You are off colour, Crosse,’ said his best man.
‘I was just thinking that my nose was. It’s very kind of you to come and stand by me.’
‘That’s all right. We shall see it through together.’
Hale was a despondent man, though the most loyal of friends, and he spoke in a despondent way. His gloomy manner, the London drizzle, and the nervousness proper to the occasion, were all combining to make Frank more and more wretched. Fortunately Jack Selby burst like a gleam of sunshine into the room. The sight of his fresh-coloured smiling face – or it may have been some reminder of Maude which he found in it – brought consolation to the bridegroom.
‘How are you, Crosse? How do, Hale? Excuse my country manners! The old Christmas-tree in the hall wanted to send for you, but I knew your number. You’re looking rather green about the gills, old chap.’
‘I feel a little chippy to-day.’
‘That’s the worst of these cheap champagnes. Late hours are bad for the young. Have a whisky and soda with me. No? Hale, you must buck him up, for they’ll all be down on you if you don’t bring your man up to time in the pink of condition. We certainly did ourselves up to the top hole last night. Couldn’t face your breakfast, eh? Neither could I. A strawberry and a bucket of soda-water.’
‘How are they all at the Langham?’ asked Frank eagerly.
‘Oh, splendid! At least I haven’t seen Maude. She’s been getting into parade order. But mother is full of beans. We had to take her up one link in the curb, or there would have been no holding her.’
Frank’s eyes kept turning to the slow-moving minute-hand. It was not ten o’clock yet.
‘Don’t you think that I might go round to the Langham and see them?’
‘Good