Hardly credible is it? that a man of ninety years—a man of no common intelligence—a man of books, and coins, and antiquities, should, in this nineteenth century, bend his aged knees in such a worship. Incredible as it may seem it is certainly true.
Such loyalty in others of old time, remember, seems very beautiful when we read of the devotion that was shown towards Charles Stuart.
With all his heart and soul he worshipped the very ground the Pamments trod on. He loved to see them in the Abbey church; when they were at home he never failed to attend service, rain, snow, thunder, ninety years notwithstanding, he always attended that he might bow his venerable head to them as they swept up the aisle, receiving the faintest, yet most gracious, smile of recognition in return.
He was quite happy in his pew if he could see them at their carved desks in the chancel; the organ sounded very beautiful then; the light came sweetly through the painted windows; a sanctity and heavenly presence was diffused around.
Rebellious Amaryllis knew all this, and hated it. Her Flamma foot tapped the sacred sward.
Grandfather Iden, after mopping his mouth with his silk handkerchief, began to point with his cudgel—a big hockey stick—at the various parts of the building. This was Elizabethan, that dated from James II., that went back to Henry VII., there were walls and foundations far more ancient still, out of sight.
Really, it was a very interesting place archæologically, if only you could have got rid of the Pamments.
Amaryllis made no remark during this mumbling history. Iden thought she was listening intently. At the conclusion he was just moving her—for she was passive now, like a piece of furniture—when he spied some one at a window.
Off came the great white hat, and down it swept till the top brushed the grass in the depth of his homage. It was a bow that would have delighted a lady, so evidently real in its intent, so full of the gentleman, so thoroughly courtier-like, and yet honest. There was nothing to smile at in that bow; there was not a young gentleman in Belgravia who could bow in that way, for, in truth, we have forgotten how to bow in this generation.
A writing and talking is always going on about the high place woman occupies in modern society, but the fact is, we have lost our reverence for woman as woman; it is after-dinner speech, nothing more, mere sham. We don't venerate woman, and therefore we don't bow.