Set in Silver
haven't enough luggage to make much bother) was to walk out and see the
town. I kept Dick with me, not because I wanted him, you may be sure,
but because I can see he is a blot on the 'scutcheon for Sir Lionel, and
I feel so guilty, having forced him into the party, that I try to
attract the Blot to myself. If I mention the Blot in future, you'll know
what it is. When I'm very desperate, I may just fling a drop of ink on
the paper to relieve my feelings, and that will mean the same thing. The
Blot puts on an air of the most exaggerated respect for Sir Lionel.
You'd fancy he was talking to a centenarian. Horrid, pert little pig! (I
think pigs run in their family.) I know he does it on purpose to be
nasty, and make Sir Lionel feel an old stager. Do you remember the
pig-baby in "Alice's Adventures"?
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.
Not that it need, for Sir Lionel looks about thirty-four. Nobody would
give him forty unless they saw it in books; and he is like a knight of
romance. There! Now you have the opinion I have come to hold of
Ellaline's dragon. For me, the Dragon has turned into a Knight. But, of
course, I may be mistaken. Mrs. Senter says that no girl can ever
possibly understand a man, and that a man is really much more
complicated than a woman, though the novelists tell you it's the other
way round.
We started out, all of us, except Emily, who lies down after tea, to
walk to John Halle's Hall, a most interesting banqueting room, which is
now a china-shop, but was built by a rich wool-stapler (such a nice
word!) in 1470, as you can see on the oak carvings. But there was so
much to do on the way, that we saw the Hall, and the old George
Inn--where Pepys lay "in a silk bed and had very good diet"--last of
all.
The antique furniture shops were simply enthralling, and I wanted nearly
everything I saw. Travelling is good for the mind, but it develops one
or two of the worst passions, such as Greed of Possession. We went into
several shops, and I could have purred with joy when Sir Lionel asked me
to help him choose several things for Graylees, which he would have sent
on there, direct. He seemed to care more for my advice than for Mrs.
Senter's, and I don't think she quite liked that, for she really knows a
good deal about old English furniture, whereas I know nothing--only a
little about French and Italian things.
The streets of Salisbury, with their mediaeval houses, look exactly as if
they had been originally planned to give the most delightful effects
possible when their pictures were taken. Every corner is a gem; and Sir
Lionel told us that the old rectangular part of the town _was_ planned
more or less at one time. Of course, the people who did the planning had
plenty of time to think it all over, before moving down from Old Sarum,
which was so high and bleak they couldn't hear the priest saying mass in
the cathedral, because of the wind. Fancy! Salisbury used to be called
the "Venice of England"; but I must say, if one can judge now, the
simile was far-fetched.
Lots of martyrs were burnt in Salisbury, it seems, when that sort of
thing was in fashion, so no wonder they have to keep Bloody Queen Mary's
chair in Winchester instead of Salisbury, where they've a right to feel
a grudge against the wretched little, bilious bigot of a lovesick woman.
Sir Lionel has several well-known martyrs on his family tree, Mrs.
Norton says; and she is as proud of them as most people are of royal
bar-sinisters. I never thought martyrs particularly interesting myself,
though perhaps that's an uneasy jealousy, as we've none in our family
that I know of--only a witch or so on father's side. Poor dears, what a
pity they couldn't have waited till now to be born, when, instead of
burning or drowning them, people would have paid them to tell nice
things about the past and predict lovers for the future!
Witches were fascinating; but many martyrs probably marted out of sheer
obstinacy, don't you think? Of course, it was different when they
executed you without giving you a chance to recant, as they did with
political prisoners; and do you know, they cut off poor witty
Buckingham's head in Salisbury market-place? "So much for Buckingham!"
Where it came off, there's an inn, now, called the Saracen's Head. I
wonder if _it_ was chopped off in the neighbourhood, too, or if it's
only a pleasant fancy, to cover up the Buckingham stain in the yard?
Anyhow, they tell you there that in 1838 Buckingham's skeleton was dug
up under the kitchen of what used to be the Blue Boar Inn. But even that
isn't as ghastly a tale as another one of Salisbury: how one of Jack
Cade's "quarters" was sent to the town when he'd been executed. I should
have liked to know if it's still to be seen, but I thought it would be
hardly nice to ask.
We saved the cathedral for the last, and just as we were in the midst of
sight-seeing there, it was time for service, so we sat down and listened
to music which seemed to fall from heaven. There's nothing more glorious
than music in a cathedral, is there? Usually it makes me feel good; but
this time it made me feel so sinful, on account of Ellaline, and Sir
Lionel and Dick, that I almost cried. Do you think, dear, that if I were
in a novel they would have me for a heroine or a wicked adventuress? I
hae me doots; but my one hope is, that you can't be an adventuress if
you really mean well at heart, and are under twenty-two.
Maybe I'd expected too much of Salisbury Cathedral, because I'd always
heard more about it than others in England, but it wasn't quite so
glorious to me as Winchester. It's far more harmonious, because it was
planned all at one time, like the town, and there's singularly little
foreign influence to be traced in the architecture, which makes it
different from most others, and extraordinarily interesting in its way.
It's very, very old, too, but it is so white and clean that it looks
new. And one great beauty it has: its whiteness seems always flooded
with moonlight, even when sunshine is streaming over the noble pillars
and lovely tombs.
This morning I went back, with Emily, to service, and wandered from
chapel to chapel, till nearly luncheon time. Then Sir Lionel came, and
took me up strange, hidden, winding stairs, to the den of the librarian.
It was like stealing into an enchanted castle, where all save the
librarian slept, and had slept for centuries. When it was time to go
away, I was afraid that Sir Lionel might have forgotten the magic spell
which would open the door and let us escape. There were interesting
things there, but we weren't allowed to look at the ones we wanted to
see most, till we were too tired to enjoy them, after seeing the ones we
didn't want to see at all. But you know, in another enchanted castle,
that of the Sleeping Beauty, there was only _one_ lovely princess, and
goodness knows how many snorey bores.
At three, we started to motor out to Stonehenge; and Sir Lionel chose to
be late, because he wanted to be there at sunset, which he knew--from
memory--to be the most thrilling picture for us to carry away in our
heads.
Nobody ever told me what an imposing sight Old Sarum remains, to this
day, so I was surprised and impressed by the giant conical knoll
standing up out of the plain and its own intrenchments. I'd just been
reading about it in the guide-book, how important it used to be to
England, when it was still a city, and how it was a fortress of the
Celts when the Romans came and snatched it from them; but I had no idea
of its appearance. I would have liked to go with Sir Lionel to walk
round the intrenchments, but he asked only Dick. However, Mrs. Senter
volunteered to go, at the last moment, just as they were starting, and
Emily and I were left, flotsam and jetsam, in the car, to wait till they
came back.
I wasn't bored, however, because Emily read a religious novel by Marie
Corelli, and didn't worry to talk. So I could sit in peace, seeing with
my mind's eye the pageant of William the Conqueror reviewing his troops
in the plain over which Old Sarum gloomily towers. Such a lurid plain it
is, this month of poppies, red as if its arid slopes were stained with
the blood of ghostly armies slain in battle.
But it was going back further into history to come to Amesbury. You
know, dear, Queen Guinevere's Amesbury, where she repented in the
nunnery she'd founded, and the little novice sang to her "Too late! Too
late!" When she was buried, King Arthur had "a hundred torches ever
burning about the corpse of the queen." Can't you see the beautiful
picture? And when her nunnery was gone in 980, another queen, far, far
more wicked than Guinevere, built on the same spot a convent to expiate
the murder of her stepson at Corfe Castle. We are going to Corfe, by and
by, so I shall send my thoughts back to Amesbury from there, in spite of
the fact that Elfreda's nuns became so naughty they had to be banished.
Nor shall I forget a lover who loved at Amesbury--Sir George Rodney, who
adored the fascinating Countess of Hertford so desperately, that after
her marriage he composed some verses in her honour, and fell then upon
his sword. Why don't men do such things for us nowadays? Were the "dear,
dead women" so much more desirable than we?
Wasn't Amesbury a beautiful "leading up" to Stonehenge? It's quite near,
you know. It doesn't seem as if anything ought to be near, but a good
many things are--such as farms. Yet they don't spoil it. You never even
think of them, or of anything except Stonehenge itself, once you have
seen the first great, dark finger of stone, pointing mysteriously
skyward out of the vast plain.
That is the way Stonehenge breaks on you, suddenly, startlingly, like a
cry in the night.
I was very glad we had the luck to arrive alone, for not long after we'd
entered the charmed, magic circle of the giant plinths, a procession of
other motor-cars poured up to the gates. Droves of chauffeurs, and
bevies of pretty ladies in motor hats swarmed like living anachronisms
among the monuments of the past. Of course, _we_ didn't seem to
ourselves to be anachronisms, because what is horrid in other people is
always quite different and excusable, or even piquant, in oneself; and I
hastily argued that _our_ motor, Apollo, the Sun God, was really
appropriate in this place of fire worship. Even the Druids couldn't have
objected to _him_, although they would probably have sacrificed all of
_us_ in a bunch, unless we could have hastily proved that we were a new
kind of god and goddess, driving chariots of fire. (Anyhow, motor-cars
are making history just as much as the Druids did, so they ought to be
welcome anywhere, in any scene, and they seem to have more right to be
at Stonehenge than patronizing little Pepys.)
You remember Rolde, in Holland, don't you, with its miniature
Stonehenge? Well, it might have been made for Druids' children to play
dolls with, compared to this.
If the Phoenicians raised Stonehenge in worship of their fiery god,
they had good reason to flatter themselves that it would attract his
attention. And I do think it was sensible to choose the sun for a god.
Next to our own true religion, that seems the most comforting. There was
your deity, in full sight, looking after one side or the other of his
world, all through the twenty-four hours.
I never felt more awe-stricken than I did passing under the shadow of
those great sentinel plinths, guarding their sunken altar, hiding their
own impenetrable mysteries. The winds seemed to blow more chill, and to
whisper strangely, as if trying to tell secrets we could never
understand. I love the legend of the Friar's Heel, but, after all, it's
only a mediaeval legend, and it's more interesting to think that, from