As I grew older problems thickened around me, and I often envied the passive resignation with which so spirited a temperament as my father’s could find refuge from the exciting questions of the day in the quiet of his books and favorite pursuits. Coming home from college or from an occasional excursion into the great world without, Leighstone would seem to me a hermitage, where life was extinct, and there was room for nothing save meditation. And there I meditated much, and pondered and read, as I then thought, deeply. The quaint, old churchyard was my favorite ground for colloquy with myself, and admirably adapted, with its generations of silent dead, was it for the purpose. In that very tomb lay bones, once clothed with flesh, through which coursed lustily blood that had filtered down through the ages into my veins. In my thoughts I would question that quiet old Herbert stretched out there on his tomb centuries ago, and lying so still, with his calm, stony face upturned immovably and confidently to heaven. The face was not unlike my father’s; Leighstone folk said it was still more like mine. That Herbert was a Catholic, and believed earnestly in all that I and my father as earnestly disbelieved. Was he the worse or the better man for his faith? To what had his faith led him, and to what had ours led us? What was his faith, and what was ours? To us he was a superstitious creature, born in dark ages, and the victim of a cunning priestcraft, that, in the name of heaven, darkened the minds and hearts of men; while, had he dreamed that a degenerate child of his would ever, even in after-ages, turn heretic, as he would say, the probabilities were that in his great-hearted earnestness, had it rested solely with him, he would rather have ended the line in his own person than that such disgrace should ever come upon it. The man who in his day had dared tell him that flesh of his would ever revile the church in which he believed, and the Sacrament which he adored, would likely enough have been piously knocked on the head for his pains. What a puzzle it all was! Could a century or two make all this difference in the manner of regarding the truths on which men professed to bind their hopes of an eternal hereafter?
One afternoon of one of those real English summer days that when they come are so balmy and bright and joyous, while sauntering through the churchyard, I lighted upon a figure half buried in the long grass, so deeply intent on deciphering the inscription around the tomb of my ancestor that he did not notice my approach. There he lay, his hat by his side, and an open sketch-book near it, peering into the dim, old, half-effaced characters as curiously as ever did alchemist of eld into an old black-letter volume. His years could not be many more than mine. His form would equally attract the admiration of a lady or a prize-fighter. The sign of ruddy health burned on the bronzed cheek. The dress had nothing particular in it to stamp the character of the wearer. The sketch-book and his absorbing interest in the grim old characters around a tomb might denote the enthusiasm of an artist, or of an antiquarian like my father, though he looked too full of the robust life of careless youth for the one, and too evidently in the enjoyment of life as it was for the other. Altogether a man that, encountered thus in a country churchyard on a warm July afternoon, would at once excite the interest and attract the attention of a passer-by.
While I was mentally noting down, running up, and calculating to a nicety the sum of his qualities, the expression of his face indicated that he was engaged in a hopeless task. “I can make all out about the old Crusader except the date, and that is an all-important point. The date—the date—the date,” he repeated to himself aloud. “I wonder what Crusade he fought in?”
“Perhaps I could assist you,” I broke in. “Sir Roger Herbert followed the good King Edward to the Holy Land, and for the sake of Christ’s dear rood made many a proud painim to bite the dust. So saith the old chronicle of the Abbey of S. Wilfrid which you see still standing—the modernized version of it, at least—on yonder hill. The present abbot of S. Wilfrid is the florid gentleman who has just saluted me. That handsome lady beside him is the abbot’s wife. The two pretty girls seated opposite are the abbot’s daughters. The good and gentle Abbot Jones is taking the fair abbess, Mrs. Jones, out for her afternoon airing. She is a very amiable lady; he is a very genial gentleman, and the author of the pamphlet in reply to Maitland’s Dark Ages. Mr. Jones is very severe on the laziness and general good-for-nothingness of the poor monks.”
My companion, who still remained stretched on the grass, scanned my face curiously and with an amused glance while I spoke. He seemed lost in a half-revery, from which he did not recover until a few moments after I had ceased speaking. With sudden recollection, he said:
“I beg your pardon, I was thinking of something else. Many thanks for your information about this old hero, whom the new train of ideas, called up by your mention of the Abbot Jones and his family, drove out of my mind a moment. The Abbot Jones!” he laughed. “It is very funny. Yet why do the two words seem so little in keeping?”
“It is because, as my father would tell you, this is the century of the Joneses. Centuries ago Abbot Jones would have sounded just as well and as naturally as did Queen Joan. But, in common with many another good thing, the name has become vulgarized by a vulgar age.”
My companion glanced at me curiously again, and seemed more inwardly amused than before, whether with me or at me, or both, it was impossible to judge from his countenance, though that was open enough. He turned from the abbot to the tomb again.
“And so this old hero,” said he, patting affectionately the peaked toe of the figure of Sir Roger, “drew his sword long ago for Christ’s dear rood, and probably scaled the walls of Damietta at the head of a lusty band. What a doughty old fellow he must have been! I should have been proud to have shaken hands with him.”
“Should you, indeed? Then perhaps you will allow a remote relative of that doughty old fellow to act as his unworthy representative in his absence?” said I, offering my hand.