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, rectangular elevations of the tombs, capped by recumbent mail-clad statues, with here and there a gleam of gilt or scarlet retained from their ancient ornamentation; even as he had walked slowly up the aisle, his downcast eyes had noticed the chiseled heraldry of stones beneath his feet. Everywhere about him was the historic impact of the Torrs. Their ashes were here—their banners and shields and tilting-helmets, their symbolical quarterings of the best arms of the West, their own proudest device of all. Their white bull on the green ground was familiar in England long before the broom-corn of the Angevins had been thought of. The clerkly pun on Tor and Taurus was as like as not older than the English language itself. All this made something mightier, more imposing and enduring, than any edifice to be reared by man alone. It was only in part human, this structure of the family. The everlasting hills were a part of it, the dark ranges of forests, the spirits and legends of the ancient Marches.

“In the morning it is green, and groweth up; but in the evening it is cut down, dried up and withered,” droned the young clergyman.

But if man seemed to count for but little in this tremendous, forceful aggregation of tradition and custom, yet again he might be all in all. The tall old man under the purple pall, there—it was easy to think contemptuously of him. Christian recalled, in a kind of affrighted musing, that one view of his grandfather that he had had. The disgust with which he had heard the stupid, violent words from those aged lips revived within him—then changed to wonder. Was it not, after all, the principle of strength which most affected men’s minds? There had been discernible in that grandfather of his a certain sort of strength—dull, unintelligent, sinister, half-barbarous, but still strength. Was it not that which had brought forth the two hundred horsemen? And if this one element, of strength—yes, you might call it brute strength—were lacking, then would all the other fine qualities in the world avail to hold the impalpable, intangible combination together?

“‘He shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power.’” It was the old parson who was reading now.

“‘For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet.’”

Yes, even in this Protestant religion to which he had passively become committed, force was the real ideal! Christian’s wandering mind fastened itself for a moment upon the ensuing words of the lesson, but got nothing from their confusing reiterations. He lapsed into reverie again, then started abruptly with the sudden perception that everybody in the church behind him must be looking at him. In the pew immediately behind, there would be Captain Edward and his wife, and Augustine; in the one behind that Lady Cressage, Lord Chobham and his son; beyond them scores and scores of others seated in rows, and then a throng in the aisle and the doorway—all purporting to think of the dead, but fixing their eyes none the less on the living. And it was not alone in the church, but through the neighborhood, for miles round about: when men spoke of the old Duke who was gone, their minds would in truth be dwelling upon the new Duke who was come. A thrill ran through his veins as the words spelled themselves out before his inner vision. The new Duke! He seemed never to have comprehended what it meant before.

No; and till this moment no genuine realization had come to him of this added meaning—this towering superstructure which the message of Julius and Emanuel had reared. It was only now that he hit upon the proper mental focus with which to contemplate this amazing thing. Not only was he a territorial ruler, one of the great nobles of Europe, but he was the master of wealth almost beyond counting as well!

Those nearest to him were rising now, and he, obeying imperative impulses within him, lifted himself proudly to his feet. While the air throbbed with deep-voiced organ notes, in the pause which here ensued, his gaze rested upon the pall before him. There was a sense of transfiguration in the spectacle. The purple mantle became imperial Tyrian to his eyes—and something which was almost tenderness, almost reverence, yearned within him toward that silent, incased figure hidden beneath it. The mystic, omnipotent tie of blood gripped his heart.

With a collected sidelong look he surveyed the profiles of Emanuel and Lord Julius to his left. Theirs were the lineaments of princes. As if he had eyes in the back of his head, he beheld Edward and Augustine, as fancy revealed them standing in the pew behind him. Tall, slim, athletic, fair—the figures his imagination made of them appealed to the new patriarchal spirit in his heart. Perhaps they were not wholly nice, these young men, but they also were princes, and they were of his race, and no one should persecute them, or despitefully use them.

The uncouth little bearers of the dead had come forward again, and taken up their burden. In a small lady-chapel, extending from the transept at the left, the interment was to take place, and thither Christian now followed the pall, leading the menfolk of his family and the male guests of position who attached themselves to the group. Thus some score of black-clad figures clustered round the oblong opening in the old stone floor, and Christian, standing at its head, glanced impassively over the undefined throng of spectators gathered at the doorway.

“‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery,’” proclaimed the younger priest, with a sudden outburst of high-pitched, nasal tones which pierced the unexpectant ear. “‘He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.’”

Christian, watching abstractedly the impersonal wedge of faces at the door, all at once caught his breath in a sharp spasm of bewildered amazement. The little book he had been holding fell from his hands, balanced on its edge for an instant and toppled over into the dark vault below. He seemed unconscious of the incident—but stared fixedly, with parted lips and astonished eyes, at the image of something he had seen outside of the chapel. The thing itself had apparently vanished. He perceived vaguely that people were looking at him—and with a determined effort regained control of his face and bearing. The puzzling thought that it might have been an illusion—that perhaps he had seen nothing at all—brought mingled confusion and solace to his mind. He put his hand to the open book which Lord Julius at his side held toward him, and pretended to look at it.

The coffin, now bereft of its purple covering, had been lowered to its final place. One of the bearers, standing over the cavity, crumbled dry earth from his tanned and clumsy fingers, and it fell with a faint rattle upon some resonant, unseen surface.

The phrase, “‘Our dear brother, here departed,’” stuck out with awkward obtrusiveness from among the words of the priest. “‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’” the sing-song went on. Then they were repeating the Lord’s Prayer together in a buzzing, fitful murmur. There were other prayers—and then Christian read in the faces of those about him that the ceremony was finished. Accepting the suggestion of Lord Julius’s movement, he also bent over, and looked blankly down into the obscurity of the vault. But when he lifted his head again, it was to throw a more searching and strenuous glance than ever over the knot of people outside the door. And yes!—he had not been deceived. He distinctly saw the face again, and with lightning swiftness verified its features. Beyond a shadow of doubt it was Frances Bailey whom he beheld, mysteriously present in this most unlikely of places.

He withdrew his eyes and did not look that way again. The question whether she knew that he had recognized her, occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else, as he returned at the head of his followers to the body of the church. It still possessed his thoughts when he had joined the family group of chief mourners, loosely collecting itself in the aisle before the front pews, in waiting for the summons to the carriages. To some one he ought to speak at once, and for the moment his eye rested speculatively upon Cora. He identified her confidently, not only by her husband’s proximity, but by the fact that her mourning veil was much thicker and longer than any of the others. Some unshaped consideration, however, restrained him, and on a swift second thought he turned to Kathleen.

“I want you to look,” he whispered to her, inclining his head—“on the other side of the church, just in a line between the second pillar and the white-bearded figure in the window—there is a tall young woman, with the gray and black hat. Do you see her? In a kind of way she belongs to us—she is Cora’s sister, but I’m afraid if Cora asked her, she would not come to the Castle.”

“Yes—once you talked to me about her,” Kathleen reminded him.

“Well, will you do this for me?” he continued, in an eager murmur. “Go to her, and make sure that she promises to come up with the rest. It would be unforgivable—if we let her go away.”

He had an uneasy feeling that Mrs. Emanuel’s veil did not prevent her shrewd glance from reading him through and through—but he did not seek to dissemble the breath of relief with which he heard her assent.