The Green Mirror

BOOK I THE RAID

CHAPTER I THE CEREMONY

The fog had swallowed up the house, and the house had submitted. So thick was this fog that the towers of Westminster Abbey, the river, and the fat complacency of the church in the middle of the Square, even the three Plane Trees in front of the old gate and the heavy old-fashioned porch had all vanished together, leaving in their place, the rattle of a cab, the barking of a dog, isolated sounds that ascended, plaintively, from a lost, a submerged world.

The House had, indeed, in its time seen many fogs for it had known its first one in the days of Queen Anne and even then it had yielded, without surprise and without curiosity, to its tyranny. On the brightest of days this was a solemn, unenterprising, unimaginative building, standing four-square to all the winds, its windows planted stolidly, securely, its vigorous propriety well suited to its safe, unagitated surroundings. Its faded red brick had weathered many London storms and would weather many more: that old, quiet Square, with its uneven stones, its church, and its plane-trees, had the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the river for its guardians... the skies might fall, the Thames burst into a flaming fire, Rundle Square would not stir from its tranquillity.

The old house—No. 5, Rundle Square—had for its most charming feature its entrance. First came an old iron gate guarded, on either side, by weather-beaten stone pillars. Then a cobbled path, with little green lawns to right and left of it, ran to the door whose stolidity was crowned with an old porch of dim red brick. This was unusual enough for London, but there the gate, the little garden, the Porch had stood for some hundreds of years, and that Progress that had already its throttling fingers about London’s neck, had, as yet, left Rundle Square to its staid propriety.

Westminster abides, like a little Cathedral town, at the heart of London. One is led to it, through Whitehall, through Victoria Street, through Belgravia, over Westminster Bridge with preparatory caution. The thunder of London sinks, as the traveller approaches, dying gradually as though the spirit of the town warned you, with his finger at his lip. To the roar of the traffic there succeeds the solemn striking of Big Ben, the chiming of the Abbey Bells; so narrow and winding are many of the little streets that such traffic as penetrates them proceeds slowly, cautiously, almost sleepily; there are old buildings and grass squares, many clergymen, schoolboys in black gowns and battered top hats, and at the corners one may see policemen, motionless, somnolent, stationed one supposes, to threaten disturbance or agitation.

There is, it seems, no impulse here to pile many more events upon the lap of the day than the poor thing can decently hold. Behind the windows of Westminster life is passing, surely, with easy tranquillity; the very door-bells are, many of them, old and comfortable, unsuited to any frantic ringing; there does not sound, through every hour, the whirring clang of workmen flinging, with eager haste, into the reluctant air, hideous and contemptuous buildings; dust does not rise in blinding clouds from the tortured corpses of old and happy houses.... Those who live here live long.

No. 5, Rundle Square then, had its destiny in pleasant places. Upon a fine summer evening the old red brick with its windows staring complacently upon a comfortable world showed a fine colour. Its very chimneys were square and solid, its eaves and water pipes regular and mathematical. Whatever horrid catastrophe might convulse the rest of London, No. 5 would suffer no hurt; the god of propriety—the strongest of all the gods—had it beneath His care.

Now behind the Fog it waited, as it had waited so often before, with certain assurance, for its release.