Sacred to the Memory
of
WILLIAM DEVEREUX,
Elder Son of Sir GEORGE CAMPION, Bart., of Campion Place,
in the County of Kent,
Who nobly lost his life in rescuing
a brother officer from death, while serving his Queen and
Country, on the Field of Battle
in South Africa.
Also of
RUPERT LOVEL,
Younger Son of the above,
Who not less heroically died in saving
the life of a fellow-creature on a less glorious field.
“They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they
were not (long) divided.”
By the time that Susan Darcy’s eyes have reached the last line of leaded
letters, they serve her but ill; yet she can see the hackneyed text well
enough to feel sure that it is not of Lavinia’s choosing. In her mind’s
eye she can see the lonely pair bending together over the drafted
inscription; the first mute, and then hesitatingly murmured hint of
disapproval on the part of Lavinia, and the determined angry overriding
of her gentle objection on that of the poor old man.
“Bill would not have cared,” says Susan to herself, quaintly calling
back to life the two dead young men to give a verdict on their own
tombstone; “but Rupert would have hated it.”
Her musings are broken into by an objection of another sort, whispered
with the accompaniment of eyes shining in distressed partisanship by
her eldest daughter.
“Oh, mother, ‘not less heroically’! Surely it was not nearly so grand as
carrying off Captain Binning!”
“It was not so showy,” answers Mrs. Darcy, lifting her eyes to the high
summit of the cross itself, where, if she has been defeated as to the
choice of a memorial text, it is clear that Lavinia’s taste has
prevailed.
Once again with sure intuition the rector’s wife sees the contest that
has been waged, and in which Lavinia has came off victor, between the
Necropolis polished granite or alien white marble shivering under
England’s weeping skies, of Sir George’s preference; and the rough stone
of the country, soaring up in the fashion of the solemnly beautiful old
Saxon crosses, wrought with figures and emblems of a faith yet young, of
Lavinia’s predilection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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