Several thousand people caught that day their first curious glimpse of the new master of Caermere. At the most there were but a handful of aged persons, in the throng clustered along the sides of the road winding down from the Castle to the partially restored medieval collegiate church in the valley, who could remember any other duke than the one being borne now to lie among his fathers. The fact that these venerable folk, without exception, were in the enjoyment of a day’s holiday from the workhouse, might have interested a philosopher, had it been pressed upon his attention.
Quite two hundred horsemen, mounted in their own saddles on their own beasts, rode in the long procession which descended from Caermere toward the close of the noon hour. Clad in decent black for the greater part, with old silk hats or other formal and somber headgear, they jogged sedately in unison as the curbed horses stepped with caution down the hill. Their browned and large-featured faces wore a uniform mask of solemnity—distinguished chiefly by a resolute contraction of brows and lips, and eyes triumphantly cleared of all traces of speculation. They looked down, as they passed, upon the humbler dalesmen and laborers of the hillsides, and their womenfolk and swarming children, with an impassive, opacated gaze.
On the green, before the little covered gateway to the churchyard, dull murmurs spread through this cortege, propelled sidelong from mouths which scorned to open; the main principles of a proposed evolution came slowly, in some mysterious way, to be comprehended among them: after almost less backing and pushing into one another than might have been expected, they perceived themselves emerging into an orderly arrangement, by which they lined the two sides of the carriage-way crossing the green. They regarded each other across this significant strip of gravel with a gloomy stolidity of pride: the West Salop Yeomanry could scarcely have done it better. Then another rustle of whispered sounds along their ranks toward the church—and the civic side of their demonstration came uppermost. With a tightened left hand upon the reins, they removed their hats, and held them so that they could most readily read the names of the makers inside.
The carriages bearing the family of Torr, preceded by the curtained hearse, and followed by a considerable number of broughams and closed landaus recognizable as the property of the neighboring gentry, moved silently forward along this lane of uncovered horsemen. The distant swelling moan of the organ floated on the May air, in effect a comment upon the fact that the tolling of the bell in the tower had ceased.
The intermittent noise of carriage-doors being sharply shut, and of wheels getting out of the way, proceeded from the head of the procession at the gate—and tenants and other undistinguished people on foot began to press forward between the ranks. The horsemen, with furtive glances to right and left, put on their hats again, and let the restive animals stretch their muscles in the path. A few, dismounting, and giving their bridles over to boys, joined those who were moving toward the church. The majority, drawing their horses aside into groups formed at random, and incessantly shifting, lent their intellects, and in some restrained measure their tongues, to communion upon the one great problem of the day:—would the new Duke set the Hunt on its legs again?
The question was so intimately connected with their tenderest emotions and convictions, that no one liked to speak of it thoughtlessly or upon hasty impulse. Even those who doubted most, shrank from hearing the prophecies of evil they felt prone to utter. Men who nourished almost buoyant hopes still hesitated to create a confidence which must be so precarious. While the faint sustained recitative of the priest in the church could be heard, insistent and disturbing like the monotone of a distant insect, and then the sounds of the organ once more, and of singing, fell upon the sunlit green, the horsemen spoke cautiously about the hounds. Even before Lord Porlock’s death, things had not been what they should have been. The pack was even then, as one might say, falling between two stools. The Torrs hadn’t the money to keep the thing up properly themselves, but they showed their teeth savagely the minute mention was made of getting in some outside help. But since Porlock’s death—well, the condition of affairs had been too painful for words. The horsemen shook their heads in dumb eloquence upon this tragic interval. The Kennels had lapsed into a state hardly to be thought of, much less discussed. There had been no puppy-walk. Were there any young dogs at all? And, just heavens! if there were, what must they be like!
And yet the country-side, outraged as it felt itself to be in its finest feelings, beheld itself helpless. The old Duke—but really this was not just the time and place for saying what they felt about the old Duke They glanced uneasily toward the church when this theme suggested itself, and nodded with meaning to one another. It could be taken for granted that there were no illusions among them concerning him. But what about the new man? Eyes brightened, lips quivered in beseeching inquiry, at the mention of this omnipotent stranger. What was he like? Had anybody heard anything that Welldon had said about him? It seemed that he was French bred, and that, considered by itself, might easily involve the worst. But then, was there not a story that he had ridden to the hounds in Derbyshire? Perhaps the younger generation of Frenchmen were better fellows than their fathers—but then, there was the reported fact that the Duke of Orleans fell off his horse and broke his leg whenever he tried to ride. Sir George had been informed in Paris that he would have been King of France by this time if he had been able to stick in a saddle. Yet, when one thought of it, did not this very fact indicate a fine new public sentiment in France, on the subject of horsemanship—and perhaps even of sport in general?
Christian, at the door of the church, had thought most of clenching his teeth, and straining his upper-arms against his sides, to keep from trembling. He had not pictured himself, beforehand, as entering this burial place of his ancestors alone. Yet, in the churchyard, that was how the matter arranged itself. His first idea had been to lead, with Kathleen on his arm—but she had said her place was with Emanuel instead. Then the alternative of walking arm-in-arm with Lord Julius had seemed to him even more appropriate—but this too, in the confused constraint of the moment, had gone wrong. Stealing an anxious half-glance over his shoulder, he discovered that Lord Julius had placed himself at Kathleen’s other side. The slight gesture of appealing invitation which he ventured upon did not catch the old man’s eye. There was nothing for it but to stand alone.
To be the strange, unsupported central figure in such a pageant unnerved him. He stood tremulously behind the pall—a burden draped with a great purple embroidered cloth, and borne upon the shoulders of eight peasant-laborers from the estate—and noted fleetingly that, so stunted and mean of stature were these poor hinds, he looked with ease above them, over their load, into the faces of the two priests advancing down the walk toward him.
These persons, an elderly, dark man, with a red hood folded upon his shoulders, and a thin-faced fair young man, seemed to return the gaze with meaning. He caught himself feeling that their eyes deferred to him; yes, if they had bowed to the ground, the effect of their abasement before him could not have been more palpable. Looking perfunctorily across the chasm of death, their glances sought to, make interest with the living. He hated them both on the instant. As they wheeled, and by their measured steps forward drew slowly in their wake the bearers of the pall, the chant of the elder—“I am the Resurrection and the Life”—came vaguely to his ears, and found them hostile.
The interior of the old church—dim, cool, cloistral—was larger than Christian had assumed from its outer aspect. Many people were present, crowded close in the pews nearest the door—and strangely enough, it was his perception that these were chiefly women, of some unlabeled class which at least was not his own, that brought to him of a sudden self-command. He followed the bier up the aisle to its resting-place before the rail, took tacit cognizance of the place indicated to him by some man in professional black, and stood aside to let Kathleen pass in before him, all with a restored equanimity in which he was himself much interested. Through the reading of the Psalm and the Epistle he gave but the most vagrant attention to their words. The priests read badly, for one thing; the whining artificiality of their elocution annoyed and repelled him. But still more, his thoughts were diverted by the suggestiveness of everything about him.
Especially, the size of the funeral gathering, and of the mounted and wheeled procession, had impressed him. There need be no pretense that affection or esteem for the dead man had brought out, from the sparsely populated country round about, this great multitude. Precisely for that reason, it became a majestic fact. The burial of a Duke of Glastonbury had nothing to do with, personal qualities or reputation. It was like the passing away of a monarch. People who cared nothing for the individual were stirred and appealed to by the vicissitudes of an institution. Inset upon the walls around him were marble tablets, and more archaic canopies of stone over little carved effigies of kneeling figures; beyond, at the sides of the chancel, he could see the dark, ............