The Trespasser | Page 6

but presently the organist was heard alone, and then the choir
afterwards sang:
"Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech: And to have
my habitation among the tents of Kedar."
Simple, dusty, ancient church, thick with effigies and tombs; with
inscriptions upon pillars to virgins departed this life; and tablets telling
of gentlemen gone from great parochial virtues: it wakened in
Belward's brain a fresh conception of the life he was about to live--he
did not doubt that he would live it. He would not think of himself as
inacceptable to old Sir William Belward. He glanced to the tomb under
his hand. There was enough daylight yet to see the inscription on the
marble. Besides, a single candle was burning just over his head. He
stooped and read:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SIR GASTON ROBERT
BELWARD, BART., OF RIDLEY COURT, IN THIS PARISH OF
GASTONBURY, WHO, AT THE AGE OF ONE AND FIFTY
YEARS, AFTER A LIFE OF DISTINGUISHED SERVICE FOR HIS
KING AND COUNTRY, AND GRAVE AND CONSTANT CARE
OF THOSE EXALTED WORKS WHICH BECAME A
GENTLEMAN OF ENGLAND; MOST NOTABLE FOR HIS LOVE
OF ARTS AND LETTERS; SENSIBLE IN ALL GRACES AND
ACCOMPLISHMENTS; GIFTED WITH SINGULAR VIRTUES
AND INTELLECTS; AND DELIGHTING AS MUCH IN THE JOYS
OF PEACE AS IN THE HEAVY DUTIES OF WAR: WAS SLAIN
BY THE SIDE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, THE BELOVED AND
ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE RUPERT, AT THE BATTLE OF NASEBY,
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD MDCXLV.
"A Sojourner as all my Fathers were."
"'Gaston Robert Belward'!"
He read the name over and over, his fingers tracing the letters.

His first glance at the recumbent figure had been hasty. Now, however,
he leaned over and examined it. It lay, hands folded, in the dress of
Prince Rupert's cavaliers, a sword at side, and great spurs laid beside
the heels.
"'Gaston Robert Belward'!"
As this other Gaston Robert Belward looked at the image of his dead
ancestor, a wild thought came: Had he himself not fought with Prince
Rupert? Was he not looking at himself in stone? Was he not here to
show England how a knight of Charles's time would look upon the life
of the Victorian age? Would not this still cold Gaston be as strange at
Ridley Court as himself fresh from tightening a cinch on the belly of a
broncho? Would he not ride from where he had been sojourning as
much a stranger in his England as himself?
For a moment the idea possessed him. He was Sir Gaston Robert
Belward, Baronet. He remembered now how, at Prince Rupert's side, he
had sped on after Ireton's horse, cutting down Roundheads as he passed,
on and on, mad with conquest, yet wondering that Rupert kept so long
in pursuit while Charles was in danger with Cromwell: how, as the
word came to wheel back, a shot tore away the pommel of his saddle;
then another, and another, and with a sharp twinge in his neck he fell
from his horse. He remembered how he raised himself on his arm and
shouted "God save the King!" How he loosed his scarf and stanched the
blood at his neck, then fell back into a whirring silence, from which he
was roused by feeling himself in strong arms, and hearing a voice say:
"Courage, Gaston." Then came the distant, very distant, thud of hoofs,
and he fell asleep; and memory was done.
He stood for a moment oblivious to everything: the evening bird
fluttering among the rafters, the song of the nightingale without, the
sighing wind in the tower entry, the rustics in the doorway, the group in
the choir. Presently he became conscious of the words sung:
"A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone; Short as the
watch that ends the night Before the rising sun.

"Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly,
forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day."
He was himself again in an instant. He had been in a kind of dream. It
seemed a long time since he had entered the church--in reality but a few
moments. He caught his moustache in his fingers, and turned on his
heel with a musing smile. His spurs clinked as he went down the aisle;
and, involuntarily, he tapped a boot-leg with his riding-whip. The
singing ceased. His spurs made the only sound. The rustics at the door
fell back before him. He had to go up three steps to reach the threshold.
As he stood on the top one he paused and turned round.
So, this was home: this church more so even than the Court hard by.
Here his ancestors--for how long he did not know, probably since the
time of Edward III--idled time