by E. Nesbit
XIII
WARWICK
ONLY those who have gone through the ceremony of a mock marriage, fromthe gentlest motives, and have soothed the solicitude of a beloved andinvalid aunt by the gift of the marriage certificate thus obtained, canhave any idea of the minor difficulties which beset the path of thereally unselfish. Had the ceremony been one in which either party wasdeceived as to its real nature the sequent embarrassments would havebeen far less. The first and greatest was the question of names. Thepersons mentioned in the certificate now bedewed by the joyful tears ofthe invalid aunt, and scorched by the fierce fires of a first-classfamily row, were committed, so far as the family and the world knew, toa wedding-journey. That is to say, Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke, afterposting the certificate, were to proceed on their honeymoon. But coldmock marriages claim no honeymoon. So far the only explanation of therelations of the now mockly married had been made to Mr. Schultz acrossthe peaches in the sunned and shadowy arbor at Tunbridge Wells. To Mr.Schultz the two were brother and sister. To travel as Mr. and Mrs.Basingstoke presented difficulties almost insurmountable--to pursuetheir wanderings as Mr. and Miss Basingstoke involved bother aboutletters and the constant risk of explanations to any of the friends andrelations of either across whose path fate might be spiteful enough todrive them. Because, of course, your friends and relations know how manybrothers and sisters you have and what they look like, and those sort ofpeople never forget. You could never persuade them that the young manwith whom you were traveling was a brother whom they had overlooked orforgotten.
A long silence in the train that meant to go to Warwick was spent byeach in the same tangle of puzzle and conjecture. They had the carriageto themselves. Her eyes were on the green changing picture framed by thewindow; his eyes noted the firm, pretty line of her chin, the way herhair grew, the delicate charm of the pale roses under the curve of herhat-brim--the proud carriage of head and neck; he liked the way she heldherself, the way her hands lay in her lap, the self-possession andself-respect that showed in every line of that gracious figure.
The four walls of the carriage seemed to shut them in with a new anddeeper intimacy than yesterday's. He would have liked to hold her handas he had held it on the way to Richmond--to have her shoulder lightlytouching his and to sit by her and watch the changing of that greenpicture from which she never turned her eyes. And all the time the twoalternatives seesawed at the back of his mind: "Mr. and Mrs. or Mr. andMiss?"
Her eyes suddenly left the picture and met his. In that one glance sheknew what sort of thoughts had been his, and knew also quite surely andunmistakably, as women do know such things, that the relations betweenthem had been changed by that mock marriage--that now it would not be hewho would make the advances. That he was hers for the asking, she knew,but she also knew that there would have to be asking, and that askinghers. She knew then, as well as she knew it later, that that act had seta barrier between them and that his would never be the hand to break itdown; a barrier strong as iron, behind which she could, if she would,remain alone forever--and yet a barrier which, if she chose that itshould be so, her choice could break at a touch, as bubbles are broken.She felt as perhaps a queen in old romance might have felt travelingthrough the world served only by a faithful knight. That they had heldeach other's hand on their wedding-day had been an accident. This wouldnever happen again--unless she made it happen.
"We must have our letters sent to the post-offices where we go," shesaid, suddenly, turning to the problem at the back of her mind. "Thenthe aunts can call me 'Mrs.' when they write to me. I suppose they'llwant to _call_ me that?"
"Mrs. Basingstoke," he said, slowly. "Yes, it seems likely that they_will_ want to."
"Then," she went on, "we needn't pretend to the hotel people that we'remarried. They'd be sure to find out we weren't, or something, and weshould always be trembling on the perilous edge of detection. I couldn'tbear to be always wondering whether the landlord had found us out."
"It would be intolerable," he agreed, deeply conscious of the admirableway in which she grasped this delicate nettle. "Whereas. . . ."
"Whereas if we're Mr. and Miss Basingstoke at our hotels, and Mr. andMrs. at the post-office, it's all as simple as the Hebrew alphabet."
"The Hebrew. . . ?"
"Well, it's not quite as simple as A B C, but very nearly. So that'ssettled."
"What," he asked, hastily, anxious to show his sense of a difficultyavoided, a subject dismissed--"what do you think about when you lookout of the windows in trains? Or don't you think at all--just let thecountry flow through your soul as though it were music?"
"One does that when one's _in_ it," she answered, "in woods and meadowsand in those deep lanes where you see nothing but the hedges and thecart-tracks--and on the downs--yes. But when you look out at the countryit's different, isn't it? One looks at the churches and thinks about allthe people who were christened and married and buried there, and thenyou look at the houses they lived in--the old farm-houses more thananything. Do you know, all my life I've wished I'd been born a farmer'sdaughter. All the little things of life in those thatched homesteads arebeautiful to me. The smell of the wood smoke, and the way all your lifeis next door to out-of-doors--always having to go out and feed thecalves or the pigs or the fowls, and always little young things, thegoslings and the ducklings and the chicks--you know how soft and prettythey are. And all these lovely little live things dependent on you. Andthe men as well--they come home tired from their work and you have theirmeals all ready--the bread you've baked yourself, and the pasties you'vemade--perhaps, even, you brew the beer and salt the pork--and they comein, your husband and your father and your brothers, and they think whata good housekeeper you are, and love you for it. Or if you're a manyourself, all your work's out of doors with the nice, clean earth andmaking things grow, and seeing the glorious seasons go round and roundlike a splendid kaleidoscope; and in the winter coming home through thedusk and seeing the dancing light of your own hearth-fire showingthrough the windows, till you go into the warm, cozy place, and then thered curtains are drawn and the door is shut, and you're safe inside--athome."
He felt in every word a new intimacy, a new confidence. For the firsttime she was speaking to him from the heart without afterthought andwithout reservations. And he knew why. He knew that the queen, confidentand confiding, spoke to the faithful knight. And the matter of herspeech no less than its manner enchanted him so that he could think ofnothing better to say than:
"Go on--tell me some more."
"There isn't any more, only I think that must have been the life I livedin my last incarnation, because a little house in the country--anylittle house, even an old turnpike cottage--always seems to call out tome, 'Here I am! Come home! What a long time you've been away!'"
"And yet," he said, and felt, as he said it, how stupid he wasbeing--"and yet you love traveling and adventure--seeing the world andthe wonders of the world."
"Ah!" she said, "that's my new incarnation. But what the old one lovedgoes deeper than that. I love adventure and new bits of the world as Ilove strawberries and ice-cream, and waltzing and Chopin, but the littlehouse in the green country is like the daily bread of the heart."
"I understand you," he said, slowly. "I understand you in the onlypossible way. I mean that's the way I feel about it, too. If you werereally my sister, what a united family the last of the Basingstokeswould be."
"Do you really feel the same about it--you, too?" she asked. "Oh, what apity I wasn't born Basingstoke, and we would have lived on our own farmand been happy all our lives."
He would not say what he might have said, and her heart praised him fornot saying it. And so at last they came to Warwick, and Charles hadbounded from the dog-box all pink tongue and white teeth and strenuouswhite-covered muscles, and knocked down a little boy in a blue jersey,who had to be consoled by chocolate which came out of the machine likethe god in the Latin tag. And then all the luggage was retrieved--therewas getting to be a most respectable amoun
t of it, as she pointedout--and it and they and Charles got into a fly (for there are stillplaces where an open carriage bears that ironic name) and drove throughthe afternoon sunshine to the Warwick Arms. But when they were asked towrite their names in the visitors' book, each naturally signed aChristian name, and the management, putting two and two together,deduced Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke, and entered this result in moreintimate books, living in retirement in the glass case which preservesthe young lady who knows all about which rooms you can have. Thechambermaid and the boots agreed that Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke were ahandsome couple. Also, when a new-comer, signing his name, asked aquestion about the signatures just above his, "Mr. and Mrs.Basingstoke," was the answer he got.
Now all this time, for all her frankness, she had been concealingsomething from him.
You must know that the wedding-dinner, if a mock marriage can be said toinvolve a wedding-dinner, had been at the Star and Garter, and after thewooded slopes and the shining spaces of the river her London hotel hadseemed but a dull and dusty resting-place. And it was she who had methim when he called to take her out to breakfast with a petition for moreriver. So they had taken more river, in the shape of a Sunday atCoohmah, where the beautiful woods lean down to the water, and the manyboats keep to the stream and the few creep into backwaters whither theswans follow you, and eat all the lunch if you will only give them halfa chance. It was a delightful day, full of incident and charm. The cool,gleaming river, the self-possessed gray poplars, the generous,green-spreading beeches, the lovelorn willows trailing their tresses inthe stream, the reeds and the rushes, the quiet, emphasized by theknowledge that but for the supremest luck they might have been two in avery large and noisy party, such as that on the steam-launch whichthrust its nose into their backwater and had to back out with fussingsand snortings, like a terrier out of a rabbit-hole. The dappled shadowson the spread carpet of lily-leaves, the green gleams in the deepdarkness of the woods, the slow, dripping veil of dusk through whichthey rowed slowly back to the inn--even being late for the train andhaving to run for it--all, as he said, when they had caught the trainand were crammed into a first-class carriage with three boating-men, apainted lady, an aged beau, and a gentleman almost of color, fromBrazil--all had been very good. But he did not know all. There had beena moment, while he had gone in to the bar of the inn to settle for theboat--a moment in which she waited in the little grassy garden thatshelves down to the river's edge--and in that moment a boat slid up tothe landing-stage. The first man to get out of it was nobody, and didn'tmatter. The second was Mr. Schultz. As it happened, her face was lightedby a yellow beam from one of the inn windows, and as he landed the beamfrom the other window fell across his face, so that they saw andrecognized each other in a blaze of light that might have been arrangedfor no other purpose.
He raised his cap and she saw that he meant to speak, but one of hiscompanions thrust the painter into his hand at exactly the nick of time.He was held there, for the moment. She had the sense to walk slowly intothe inn, and Mr. Schultz might well have thought that she was stayingthere. She meant him to think so. Anyhow, he did not cast the painterfrom him, as he might have done, and hurry after her. "Later on willdo," was what his attitude and his look expressed.
The moment she was out of his sight she quickened her pace, found Mr.Edward Basingstoke in the bar putting his change in his pocket, and, themoment the two were outside the street door, said, just, "We must runfor it." This was, providentially, true. And they ran for it, justcatching it, without a breath to spare.
Why did she not tell him that she had seen Schultz, that stout squire ofthe South Coast road? For one thing, Mr. Schultz seemed long ago andirrelevant. For another, he was discordant, and his very name, spoken,would break the spell of a very charming quiet which had infolded herand Edward all day long. Then there was the crowded carriage with theBrazilian gentleman, all observant, black, beady eye, and long yellowear. And then, anyhow, what was the good of raking up Mr. Schultz, whomEdward had never really liked. So she did not tell him. Nor, for muchthe same reason, did he tell her that one of that shouting party whoclimbed into the train after it had actually started, and whom he saw ashe leaned out of the window to buy chocolate from an accidental boy, wasvery like that chap Schultz--as like, in fact, as two peas.
And the next day she packed up everything, and he packed up a good deal,and they started for Warwick; arrived there, had luncheon, and becameimmediately a pair of ardent sight-seers.
The guide-book in the coffee-room assured them that "no visitor toWarwick with any sense of propriety thinks of remaining long withoutpaying his respects to that historic and majestic pile known as WarwickCastle," and this, they agreed, settled the question.
So they went and saw Warwick Castle, with its great gray towers and itshigh gray walls, its green turf, and old, old trees. They saw thebanqueting-hall that was burned down, and Guy's punch-bowl that holdsHeaven knows how many gallons.
"It makes you thirsty to look at it," said Edward.
Also they saw the Portland vase which lives in a glass house all byitself, and the bed where Queen Anne slept, and the cedar drawing-roomand the red drawing-room and the golden drawing-room, and all the otherrooms which are "shown to visitors," and longed lawlessly to see therooms that are not so shown.
"There must be _some_ comfortable rooms in the house," she said. "Evenlords and ladies and Miss O'Gradys couldn't really live in thesemuseums." And, indeed, all the rooms they saw were much too full ofthings curious, precious, beautiful, and ugly; but mostly large and allcostly.
"It must be pretty awful to be as rich as all this," said Edward, asthey came out of the castle gate.
"Would it be? The guide-books say Lady Warwick says she strives tofulfil, imperfectly, it may be, the duties of her stewardship and theprivileges of her heritage. It would be interesting, don't you think,to find out just exactly what those were?"
"If I had a castle," said he, "there shouldn't be a knickknack in it,nor a scrap of furniture later than seventeen hundred."
"I sometimes wonder whether it's fair," she said, "the way we collectold things. Have you noticed that poor people's houses haven't a decentbit of furniture in them? When my mother was little the cottages used tohave old bureaus and tables and chests that had come down from father toson and from mother to daughter."
"It's true," said he, "and the worst of it is that we've not only takenaway their furniture, but we've taken away their taste for it. Theyprefer plush and machine-made walnut to the old oak and elm and beechand apple-wood. It would be no good to give them back their oldfurnishing unless we could give them back their love of it. And that wecan't do."
"But if we bought modern things?"
"Even then they wouldn't care for the old ones. And the only beautifulmodern things we have are imitations of the old ones. We've lost the artof furniture-making, and the art of architecture, and we're losing eventhe art of life. It's getting to be machine-made, like our chair-legsand our stone facings. I sometimes wonder whether we are really on thedown-grade--and whether the grade is so steep that we sha'n't be able tostop--and go on till there's no life possible except the life that'srepresented by the plush and walnut at one end and motors and the Ritzat the other."
"Can't we resist? all the people who still care for beautiful things?"
"We can collect them; it's not taking them from the poor now--it'staking them from the dealers who have cleared out the farms and cottagesand little houses. I suppose one might make a nest, and live in it, butthat wouldn't change things or stop the uglification of everything. Youcan't make people live beautifully by act of Parliament. The impulse tomake and own beautiful things has to come from within--and it seems asthough it were dead--killed by machinery and _laissez-faire_ and thegospel of individualism, and I'm sorry to talk like a Fabian tract, butthere it is. Forgive me, and let's go down to Guy's Cliff and see theSaxon Mill and the perfect beauty of mixed architecture that wasn'ttrying to imitate anything."
"Yes, but
go on with the tract."
"There isn't any more, except that what's so difficult is to know how tolive without hurting some one else. This is my wander year. I'm spendingmy money just now for fun and to have a good time. I feel I deserve aholiday and I'm taking one. But what's one to do with one's life? Howcan one use one's money so as to do no harm?"
"If you invest it in mines or factories or railways, doesn't that employpeople and make trade better?" she asked, diffidently. "I'm sure I'veheard people say so."
"Yes," he said, grimly, "so have I. And, of course, it's true. Youlaunch your money into this horrible welter of hard work and chancywages, and it helps to keep some people in motors and fur coats andchampagne and diamonds, and it helps, too, to keep others on theperilous edge of despair, to keep them alive in a world where they'renever sure of next week's meals, never free from worry from the cradleto the grave, with no poetry in their lives but love, and no magic butdrink."
"But what are we to do?" she asked, and they paused a moment on thebridge to look to the splendid mass of Warwick Castle along the riverwhere the swans float and the weeping willows trail their hair in thewater.
"I wish I knew," he said. "There must be some way to live without havingany part in the muddle."
"We'll find a way," said she. And his heart leaped, for he knew thatthis was the most intimate thing she had ever said to him.