Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “She wouldn’t use her illness as a lever to move events to her liking?”

  “Never!” she said, almost indignantly.

  “Then I think that this advertisement is some one else’s. Where does she live.”

  “Hyde Park Square.”

  “Let us telegraph her, and not go to Warwick.”

  They stopped the taxi and composed a message. He despatched it.

  Did you put advertisement in paper to-day? And are you ill? I am quite well and will write at once. Wire reply to Silver Locks, General Post-Office.

  Then they told the man to drive around Regent’s Park, to pass the time till there should be an answer.

  In the park the trees were already brown, and on the pale, trampled grass long heaps of rags, like black grave-mounds, showed where weary men who had tramped London all night, moved on by Law and Order, inexorable in blue and silver, now at last had their sleep out, in broad sunshine, under the eyes of the richest city in the world. Little children, dirty and poor — their childhood triumphant over dirt and poverty — played happily in the grass that was less grass than dust.

  “What a horrible place London is!” she said. “Think of yesterday.”

  That, too, he put away to be taken out and loved later.

  “We won’t stay in London,” he said, “if the answer is what I think it will be. We’ll go out into the green country and decide what we’re going to do.”

  “But if she did put the advertisement in, it means that she’s very ill. And then I must go to her.”

  “But if she didn’t — and I more and more think she didn’t — they may send some one to the General Post-Office post-haste — so it won’t do for you to go for the telegram. Do you know the Guildhall Library?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a beautiful place — very quiet, very calm. And the officials are the best chaps I’ve ever found in any library anywhere. We’ll go there. You must want to look up something. Let’s see — the dates of the publication of Bacon’s works. Write your name in the book — any name you like, so long as it isn’t your own; then ask one of the officials to help you, and go and sit at one of the side tables — they’re like side chapels in a cathedral — and stay there till I come. You’ll be as safe and as secret as if you were in the Bastille. And I’ll baffle pursuit and come to you as soon as I can.”

  “Yes,” she said, meekly.

  “And don’t worry,” he urged. “The more I think of it, the more certain I am that it was not the aunt you like who wrote that advertisement—”

  He was right. The telegram with which, an hour later, he presented himself at the Guildhall Library ran thus:

  I did not write advertisement and I am not specially ill, but I am very anxious. Write at once. Aunt Loo and Aunt Enid are both here. I think they must have inserted the advertisement. A.

  “Your Aunt Alice is a sportsman,” he said, “to warn you like that.”

  “I told you she was a darling,” she answered — and her whole face had lighted up with relief—”and you are the cleverest person in the world! I should never have thought about its not being her doing, never in a thousand years. You deserve a medal and a statue and a pension.”

  “I don’t deserve more than I’ve got,” said he, “nor half so much. The sun shines again.”

  She flashed a brilliant smile at him, and pushed a brown book along the table.

  “I suppose we ought to look studious,” she said, “or they’ll turn us out. I am so glad Aunt Alice isn’t really worse. You don’t know how I’ve felt while you’ve been away. It seemed so horribly selfish — to have been so happy and all while she was ill and worried. But, of course, you do know.”

  “Let us go out,” he said, putting the books together.

  “Yes,” she said, “I know all about Bacon. Not that I’ll ever want to know.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said he. “Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the Baconians are right, and he was an intellectual giant, almost like Plato and Aristotle rolled into one? We’ll go to Stratford some day, and look at Shakespeare’s bust and see if we think he could have written ‘The Tempest.’”

  “You shouldn’t judge people by their faces,” she said. “Handsome is as handsome does.”

  “Oh, but you should,” said he. “It’s handsome does as handsome is. I always go by appearances. Don’t you? But of course, I know you do—”

  She opened one of the books and began to turn the pages. “Look what I found,” she said, and all the time their voices had been lowered to the key of that studious place. “Look, isn’t it pretty? And do you see? — the e’s are like the Greek θ. Can you read it?”

  He read:

  “Fair Lucrece, kind Catherine, gentle Jane,

  But Maria is the dearest name.

  Robert Swinford, 1863.”

  “Yes, that’s what I make it. It doesn’t rhyme, but I expect Maria was very pleased. Do you think they were studying with a stern tutor, and he wrote that and pushed it over to her when no one was looking? It’s an odd thing to have written in a Natural History book. There’s something more on another page — but it doesn’t make sense:

  “I am true rew Hebrew — CXIX — 101.”

  “I expect he was just trying a pen. Come, the librarian has his scholarly eye on you.”

  “I should like to look through all the old books and find out all the names people have written and make stories about them,” she said, and he received the curious impression that she was talking against time; there was about her a sort of hanging back from the needful movement of departure. He picked the books up and carried them to the counter, she following, and they walked in silence down the gallery hung with Wouvermans and his everlasting gray horse.

  “Let’s go into the Hall,” he said. So they turned under the arch and went into the beautiful great vaulted Guildhall, where the giants Gog and Magog occupy the gallery, and little human people can sit below on stone benches against the wall, and gaze on the monuments of the elder and the younger Pitt, and talk at long leisure, undisturbed and undisturbing, which is not the case in the Library, as Edward pointed out.

  “Now, then,” he began.

  “Yes,” she said, hurriedly. “Something will have to be done about Aunt Alice.”

  “Yes. But what?”

  “I don’t know.” She turned and leaned one hand on the stone seat so that she faced him. “You do believe that I don’t regret coming away? I think it would have been splendid to have gone on — like yesterday — but you see it’s impossible.”

  “No, I don’t,” he said, stoutly.

  She made a movement of impatience. “Oh yes, it is — quite,” she said. “However rich you are, you can’t go on forever being blackmailed. Every one would know us, or else you’d have to give up Charles, and even then I expect you’d be obliged to pay twenty pounds every three-quarters of an hour. It can’t be done. And, besides, we should never know a moment’s peace. Wherever we went we should imagine a blackmailer behind every bush, and every one we spoke to might be a detective. It’s no use. I must go back. Do say you know I must.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, say you know I don’t want to.”

  “I can’t say that . . . because, if you don’t want to . . . there’s always the old alternative, you know.” He was looking straight before him at the majestic form of the Earl of Chatham.

  “What alternative?”

  “Marrying me,” he said, humbly. “Do. I don’t believe that you’d regret it.”

  “When I marry,” she said, strongly, “it won’t be just because I want to get myself out of a scrape.”

  “I hoped there might be other considerations,” he said, still gazing at the marble. “You were happy yesterday. You said so.”

  “You talk as though marrying were just nothing — like choosing a partner for a dance. It’s like — like choosing what patterns you’d be tattooed with, if you were a savage. It’s for life.”

 
“And you can’t like me well enough to choose me?”

  “I do like you,” she answered, with swift and most disheartening eagerness, “I do like you awfully; better than any man I’ve ever known — oh, miles better — not that that’s saying much. But I don’t know you well enough to marry you.”

  “You don’t think it would turn out well?”

  She faltered a little. “It — it mightn’t.”

  “We could go on being friends just as we are now,” he urged.

  “It wouldn’t be the same,” she said, “because there’d be no way out. If we found we didn’t like each other, to-morrow, or next month, or on Tuesday week, we could just say good-by and there’d be no harm done. But if we were married — no — no — no!”

  “Do you feel as though you would dislike me by Tuesday week?”

  “You know I don’t,” she said, impatiently, “but I might. Or you might. One never knows. It isn’t safe. It isn’t wise. I may be silly, but I’m not silly enough to marry for any reason but one.”

  “And that?”

  “That I couldn’t bear to part with him, I suppose.”

  “And you can bear to part with me. There hasn’t been much, has there? Just these three days, and all our talks, and. . . .” He stopped. A tear had fallen on her lap. “I won’t worry any more,” he said, in an altered voice. “You shall do just what you like. Shall I get a taxi and take you straight to your aunt’s? I will if you like. Come.”

  “There’s no such hurry as all that,” she said, “and it’s no use being angry with me because I won’t jump over a wall without knowing what’s on the other side. No, why I should jump, either,” she added, on the impulse of a sudden thought. “You haven’t told me that yet. What good would my getting married do to Aunt Alice? I don’t mean that I would, because you know I couldn’t — even for her — but what good would it do if I did?”

  “If we were married,” he said, with a careful absence of emotion, “we could send your aunt a copy of our marriage certificate and a reference to my solicitor. She would then know that you had married a respectable person with an assured income, instead of which you now appear to be running about the country stealing ducks with Heaven knows who.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I see that. Oh, I have a glorious idea! It will suit you and me and Aunt Alice and make everybody happy! — like in books. Let’s have a mock marriage, and forge the certificate.”

  “Have you ever seen a marriage certificate?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Well, it would be as difficult to forge as a bank-note.”

  “Why — have you ever seen one?” she asked, and he hoped it was anxiety he read in her tone.

  “Yes; I know a chap who’s a registrar. I’ve witnessed a marriage before now.”

  “Then there’s no need to forge,” she said, light-heartedly. “Your friend would give you one of the certificates, of course, if you asked him, and we could fill it in and make Aunt Alice happy.”

  He laughed, and the sound, echoing in the gray emptiness of the Hall, drew on him the sour glance of a barrister, wigged and gowned, hastening to the mayor’s court.

  “He’s wondering what you’ve got to laugh at,” she said, “and I don’t wonder. I don’t know. Why shouldn’t we pretend to be married? I’m sure your friend would help us to. Oh, do!” she said, clasping her hands with an exaggerated gesture that could not quite hide the genuine appeal behind it. “Then we sha’n’t have to part. I mean I sha’n’t have to go back to the aunts and all the worry that I thought I’d got away from.”

  “You’re not really serious.”

  “But I am. You will — oh, do say you will.”

  “No,” he said, “it’s impossible — Princess, don’t ask if I can’t.”

  “Then it’s all over?”

  “I suppose so, if you insist on going back.”

  “I don’t insist. But I must do something about Aunt Alice. She’s always been a darling to me. I can’t go away and be happy and not care whether she’s miserable or not. You’d hate me if I could. I’ll go back to-morrow or to-night. You said we should go into the country and think things out. At least we can do that — we can have one more day. Shall we?”

  Her sweet eyes tempted and implored.

  “What sort of day would it be,” he said, “with the end of everything at the end of it? How could we be happy as we were yesterday? — for you were happy, you owned it. How could we be happy together when we knew we’d got to part in six hours — five hours — two hours — half an hour? Besides, why should I give you the chance to grow any dearer? So as to make it hurt more when you took yourself away from me? No—”

  “I didn’t know I was dear,” she said, in a very small voice.

  Perhaps he did not hear it, for he went on: “If the splendid adventure is to end like this, let it end here — now. I’ve had the two days; you can’t take those from me.”

  “I don’t want to take anything from you, but—”

  “Let’s make an end of it, then,” he said, ruthlessly, “since that’s what you choose. Good-by, Princess. Let’s shake hands and part friends.” He rose. “Let’s part friends,” he repeated, and paused, remembering that you cannot go away and leave a lady planted in the Guildhall. Yet he could not say, “Let us part friends, and now I will call a cab.”

  She was more expert. “At least,” she put it, “we needn’t part here in the dark among the images of dead people. Come out into the sunshine and look at the pretty pigeons.”

  He was grateful to her. In the Guildhall yard the cab would happen, if it happened at all, naturally and without any effect of bathos.

  They stood watching the sleek birds strutting on little red feet, and fluttering gray wings in the sunshine. She thought of the wood-pigeon in the wood by the river, and the calm brightness of yesterday held out beckoning hands to her.

  “I didn’t think it was going to end like this,” she said.

  “Nor I,” he answered, inexorably.

  “Are you quite sure it’s impossible? The mock marriage, I mean? In books it’s always so frightfully easy, even when the girl isn’t helping?”

  “I’m afraid it’s impossible,” said he. “I wish it wasn’t. Look at that blue chap,” he added, indicating a fat pigeon for the benefit of a passing boy. “You must go back to your aunts. And I must go back to . . . oh, well, there’s nothing much for me to go back to.”

  They were walking along King Street now. “It does seem rather as though a sponge were going to pass over the slate . . . and there wouldn’t be much left,” she said.

  He glanced at her, suddenly alert. If she felt that . . . why, then. . . .

  He wished that the scene had not been in one of the most frequented streets of the City of London. If it had been in a drawing-room, for instance — her drawing-room — it would have been possible to say the words of parting with something of dignity and finality. But here, with — in the background and not to be evaded — that snorting taxicab over whose closed door their farewells must be made. . . . But need it be across a taxicab door?

  “Let us,” he said, “take a cab. I will go with you as far as Hyde Park Square.”

  “Shall we have the hood down?” she asked, with intention. “It doesn’t matter now if any one does see us.” But he pretended not to hear, and the hood remained as it was.

  They were silent all the crowded way along Cheapside, where there were blocks, as usual, and the drivers of lorries and wagons were cheerfully profane. Silent, too, along Newgate Street and New Oxford Street. The driver, being a wise man, turned up Bloomsbury Street to escape from the blocks in Oxford Street; they passed the British Museum and, presently, the Midlothian Hotel. And as they passed it, each thought of the breakfast there only that morning, when she had poured the coffee of one from whom she had then had no mind to part.

  “Oh, why are we doing it?” She spoke suddenly, and her speech had the effect of a cry. “We didn’t mean to say good-by, and
now we’re going to. Don’t let’s.”

  “But your aunt,” he said, feeling as foolish as any young man need wish. “If you don’t go back to her now you’ll want to to-morrow — and I can’t. . . . I told you why I want to part now, if we are to part. Now, before it gets any worse.”

  “We shall be at Hyde Park Square in a minute,” she said, desperately.

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s nearly over. What number is it? I must tell the man.”

  “Tell him to turn around and go somewhere else — into the country; we said we would, you know. I’m not going back to Hyde Park Square. Tell him. . . .”

  “Princess,” he said, “I can’t bear it. Let him go on.”

  “But I’m not asking you to bear anything. Don’t you understand?”

  “Not. . . ?”

  “Yes, I will; if you’ll ask me.”

  “You’ll marry me?”

  “Yes,” she said, “rather than have everything end in absolute silliness, like this.”

  He looked at her, at her clasped hands and the frown of her great resolve. He perceived that he was worth something to her — that she was prepared to pay a price — the price he set — rather than lose him altogether. Her eyes met his with a mingling of courage and desperation, as of one who has chosen a difficult and dangerous path, one who makes a great sacrifice, leads a forlorn hope. And his eyes dwelt for a moment on hers, appreciatively, thoughtfully. And in that moment his resolve was taken.

  “No,” he said, “you didn’t want to jump the wall without knowing what it would be like on the other side. I won’t have an unwilling wife. On the other hand, I won’t lose you now, Princess, for a thousand fathers and ten thousand aunts. Make up your mind to the mock marriage, and that shall be the way out.”

  “But I thought you said it was impossible.”

  “So it was. But it isn’t now. I’ve been thinking.”

  She leaned back, turned toward him from the corner, and faced him with fearless eyes.

  “What a nightmare of a day it’s been,” she said. “Aren’t you glad we’re awake again? When can I send the certificate?” she asked, eager and alert.