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.