This was not the first we had heard of the project. It had been introduced in a way never to be forgotten. We had counted on hearing from the Helmstones all the thrilling details about the Coronation which was fixed for the coming June. We felt ourselves sensibly closer to the august event through our acquaintance with the Helmstones. Lesser folk than they might hope to see the great Procession going to the Abbey—King and Queen in the golden Coach of State, our particular friends the little Princes and the young Princess in yet another shining chariot, followed by the foreign Potentates, the State officials, and by our Peer of the Realm with all his brother Lords and Barons in scarlet and ermine; and the flower of the British Army, a glancing, flaming glory in the rear.
The highly fortunate might see this Greatest Pageant of the Age on its return from the Abbey, when the Sovereigns would be wearing their crowns and their Coronation robes.
But the Helmstones! They would actually see the anointing and the crowning from their High Seats in the Abbey. Even a girl like Hermione would be asked to the State Ball.
Never before had we realised so clearly the advantages of being a Peer.
We thought the Helmstones very modest not to be talking continually about the Coronation. While we waited, impatient to hear more on the great theme, they had introduced the subject of the yachting trip. I remembered this while Lady Helmstone was coming up the stair—I remembered our bewilderment at learning that they hoped to sail "about Easter," and to be cruising in the Ægean at the end of June.
They had forgotten the Coronation!
Then the shock of hearing Lord Helmstone thank God that he would "be well out of it." London, he said, would be intolerable this season. He had let the house in Grosvenor Square "at a good round Coronation figure" to a new-made law-lord—"sort of chap who'll revel in it all." Many of the greatest houses in London were to be let to strangers.
The yachting trip was one of many arranged that people might escape "the Coronation fuss."
According to my mother, Lord Helmstone and his like showed a kind of treason to the country in not doing their share to make the symbolic act of Coronation a public testimony to English devotion to the Monarchy. What would become of the significance of the occasion if the aristocracy (upholders of that order typified by the King) deserted the King on a day when the eyes of the world would be upon the English throne.
Oh, it was pitiable! this leaving the great inherited task to the upstart rich. Lord Helmstone's act showed blacker in the light of remembered honour done him both by the present King and by his father. We knew Lord Helmstone had liked the late King best. Yet even of him we had heard this unworthy subject speak with something less than reverence. With bated breath Bettina and I had reported these lapses, as well as the late ironic reference to "the bourgeois standards of the present Court." Our mother said that only meant that the life of the King and Queen was a model for their people. "But Lord Helmstone laughed," we persisted—"they all laughed."