Queen Alexandra came to tea. The Archbishop, as the Rev. Randall Davidson, had been for eight years Dean of Windsor, and naturally had seen much of the Royal Family. I suppose I may say that he had in time become a trusted friend of the Queen, perhaps her most trusted adviser. People who opposed his promotion called him a courtier, as any man who lives much in the atmosphere of courts may be. It was easy to see from the Queen's manner how much she liked the Bishop and looked to him for counsel. If a point were in question, it was to him she turned. The Princess Victoria was with the Queen, and there too was a friendship.
Those were days when affairs in the United States were in a critical state, or seemed to be, and when we were beginning to think that the good-will of other countries might be important to us; as it was, and always will be, as ours is to them. So I hope I shall not do amiss if I repeat now a word which the Queen then said to me:
"I hope all the news from your own country is good. We all hope that."
That expressed the Queen's personal, womanly sympathy, and something more. Far gone were the days when English sympathies were for our enemies. They are now for us, and Queen Victoria was our friend and Queen Alexandra and the late King were our friends. They shared the friendship of their people. The Queen spoke for herself and for them. The Bishop stood by Her Majesty's side as she said it. His face brightened. He knew, as well as anybody, how much it meant.
CHAPTER XLII
A SCOTTISH LEGEND
Among the recollections of Scotland which come thronging on from other days, the supernatural always plays a part. I admit they are not easy to deal with. If you believe in ghosts or in legends, a great majority of your readers do not believe in you. If you are a sceptic, the credulous pass you by with an air of pained superiority. If you neither believe nor disbelieve, you are set down as an agnostic; and there are great numbers of excellent people to whom the word agnostic implies reproach. An agnostic, however, is not one who believes or disbelieves, but who, whatever his private conviction may be, declines either to affirm or deny the truth of the matter in question.
But, although an unbeliever, I know of one story connecting itself with a famous legend, which is, so far as it goes, absolutely true, and this I am going to tell exactly as it happened.