I had to make use of Eric's old plea, "pressure of work," to account for his going away without seeing my mother.
I watched the clock that next afternoon in a state of fever. Would he come again at three, so that we might talk alone? No. The torturing minute-hand felt its way slowly round the clock-face, its finger, like a surgeon's on my heart, pressing steadily1, for all my flinching2, to verify the seat and the extent of pain.
Four o'clock. Five. Half-past. No hope now of his coming, I told myself, as those do who cannot give up hope.
My mother questioned me. What had Mr. Annan said the day before? Had he, then, come so early for "nothing in particular"? I said that I supposed he had come early because he found he could not come late.
About six o'clock, as I was counting out some drops for my mother, a ring at the front door made me start and spill the liquid on the table.[Pg 151] He had relented! He was coming to say the things I had been so mad as to prevent his saying yesterday. We listened. My heart fell down as a woman's voice came up. Lady Helmstone! Wanting to see my mother "very particularly." We wondered, while the maid went down to bring her, what the errand might be which could not be entrusted3 to Bettina. For, wonderful to say, Bettina was to be allowed to go to a real dinner-party that night at the Hall. Hermione had written from London, begging that Betty might come and hear all about the yachting party.
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 fixed4 for the coming June. We felt ourselves sensibly closer to the august event through our acquaintance with the Helmstones. Lesser5 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 Potentates6, the State officials, and by our Peer of the[Pg 152] Realm with all his brother Lords and Barons7 in scarlet8 and ermine; and the flower of the British Army, a glancing, flaming glory in the rear.
The highly fortunate might see this Greatest Pageant9 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."[Pg 153] 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 revel10 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 symbolic11 act of Coronation a public testimony12 to English devotion to the Monarchy13. What would become of the significance of the occasion if the aristocracy (upholders of that order typified by the King) deserted14 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 reverence15. With bated breath[Pg 154] Bettina and I had reported these lapses16, as well as the late ironic18 reference to "the bourgeois19 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."
We saw we were wrong to dwell upon so grave a lapse17. Lord Helmstone's taste was questionable20, we heard. "He does not scorn the distinctions His Majesty21 confers." There were people—my mother was sorry if Lord Helmstone was one—who thought it superior to smile at the Fount of Honour.
Smiling at Founts was one thing. But to go a-yachting when you might help to crown the King of England, Emperor of India, Defender............