Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “At the earliest possible moment,” said he. “I must see my friend about it at once. Would you mind waiting for me — say in St. Paul’s? And then we’ll end our day in the country, after all.”

  “You are good,” she said, and laid her hand for a fleeting instant on his arm. “I do think it’s good of you to give way about the mock marriage. You know I had really set my heart on it. Now everything will be plain sailing, won’t it? And we’ll go to Warwick the minute we’re mock-married, because my putting my finger on it and Kenilworth ought to count, oughtn’t it?”

  “It shall,” he said, gravely.

  XII. WESTMINSTER

  A WEDDING-DAY — even a real wedding-day — leaves at best but a vague and incoherent memory. To the bridegroom it is a confused whirling recollection of white satin and tears and smiles and flowers and music — or perhaps a dingy room with a long table and an uninterested registrar at the end of it.

  Edward Basingstoke thought with regret of the flowers and the white satin. If he had accepted her submission, had consented to the real marriage, there should have been white roses by the hundred, and the softest lace and silk to set off her beauty. As it was —

  “We shall have to go through some sort of form,” he told her, “because of the clerks. If my friend were just to tear out a certificate and give it to us the people in the office. . . . You understand.”

  “Quite,” she said.

  “It’ll be rather like a very dingy pretense at a marriage. You won’t mind that?”

  “Of course not. Why should I?”

  “Then, if you’re sure you really want to go through with it . . . shall we go to my friend’s now, and get it over?”

  “He doesn’t mind?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “He must be a very accommodating friend.”

  “He is,” said Edward.

  “Where did you leave the luggage?” she asked, suddenly. They were walking along the Embankment.

  “At Charing Cross.”

  “Well, I’m going to get it. And I shall go to the Charing Cross Hotel with it, and you can meet me in three hours.”

  “But that’ll only just give us time,” he said. “Why not come with me now?”

  “Because,” she said, firmly, “I won’t play at mock marriages unless I like, and I won’t play at all unless you let me do as I like first.”

  “Won’t you tell me why?”

  “I’ll tell you when I meet you again.”

  “Where?” he asked. And she stopped at the statue of Forster in the Embankment Gardens, and answered:

  “Here.”

  Then she smiled at him so kindly that he asked no more questions, but just said:

  “In three hours, then,” and they walked on together to Charing Cross.

  And after three hours, in which he had time to be at least six different Edwards, he met, by the statue of the estimable Mr. Forster, a lady all in fine white linen, wearing a white hat with a wreath of white roses around it, and long white gloves, and little white shoes. And she had a white lace scarf and a live white rose at her waist.

  “I thought I’d better dress the part,” she said, a little nervously, “for the sake of the clerks, you know.”

  “How beautiful you are,” he said, becoming yet another kind of Edward at the sight of her, and looking at her as she stood in the afternoon sunshine. “Why didn’t you tell me before how beautiful you were?”

  “I. . . . How silly you are,” was all she found to say.

  “I wish, though,” he said, as they walked together along the gravel of the garden, “that you’d done it for me, and not for those clerks, confound them!”

  “I didn’t really do it for them,” she said. “Oh no — and not for you, either. I did it for myself. I couldn’t even pretend to be married in anything but white. It would be so unlucky.”

  All that he remembered well. And what came afterward — the dingy house with the grimy door-step, and the area where dust and torn paper lay, the bare room, the few words that were a mockery of what a marriage service should be, the policeman who met them as they went in, the charwoman who followed them as they went out, the man at the end of the long, leather-covered table — Edward’s old acquaintance, but that seemed negligible — who who wished them joy with, as it were, his tongue in his cheek. And there was signing of names and dabbing of them with a little oblong of pink blotting-paper crisscrossed with the ghosts of the names of other brides and bridegrooms — real ones, these — and then they were walking down the sordid street, she rather pale and looking straight before her, and in her white-gloved hand the prize of the expedition, the marriage certificate, to gain which the mock marriage had been undertaken.

  And suddenly the romantic exaltation of the day yielded to deepest depression, and Edward Basingstoke, earnestly and from the heart, wished the day’s work undone. It was all very well to talk about mock marriages, but he knew well enough that his honor was as deeply engaged as though he had been well and truly married in Westminster Abbey by His Grace of York assisted by His Grace of Canterbury. Freedom was over, independence was over, and all his life lay at the mercy of a girl — the girl who, a week ago, had no existence for him. The whole adventure, from his first sight of her among dewy grass and trees, had been like a fairy-tale, like a romance of old chivalry. He had played his part handsomely, but with the underlying consciousness that it was a part — a part sympathetic to his inclinations, but a part, none the less. The whole thing had been veiled in the mists of poetry, illuminated by the glow of adventure. And now it seemed as though he had thoughtlessly plucked the flower of romance which, with patience and careful tending, would have turned to the fruit of happiness. He had plucked the flower, and all he had gained was the power to keep a beautiful stranger with him — on false pretenses. He wished that she, at least, had not so gaily entered on the path of deception. Never a scruple had disturbed her — the idea of deceiving an aunt who loved her had been less to her than — than what? Less, at least, than the pain of losing him forever, he reminded himself. He tried to be just — to be generous. But at the back of his mind, and not so very far back, either, Iago’s words echoed, “She did deceive her father, and may thee.” His part of the deception now seemed to him the blackest deed of his life, and he could not undo it. It was impossible to turn to this white shape, moving so quietly beside him, with:

  “Let’s burn the certificate. Deceit is dishonorable.”

  If she did not think so . . . well, women’s code of honor was different from men’s. And she had been willing to marry him in earnest, with no deceptions or reservations. This mock business had been, in the end, his doing, not hers. And now they had gone through with it, and here he was walking beside her, silent, like a resentful accomplice. They had walked the street’s length, its whole dingy length, in silence. The light of life had, once more, for Mr. Basingstoke, absolutely gone out. They turned the corner, and still he could find nothing to say; nor, it appeared, could she. The hand with the paper hung loosely. The other hand was busy at her belt — and now the white rose fell on the dusty pavement, between a banana-skin and a bit of torn printed paper. He stooped, automatically, to pick up the rose.

  “Don’t,” she said. “It’s faded.”

  It so manifestly wasn’t that he looked at her, and on the instant the light of life began to be again visible to him, very faint and far, like the pin-point of daylight at the end of a long tunnel, but still visible. For he now perceived that for her, too, the light had gone out — blown out, most likely, by the same breath of remorse. Sublime egoist! He was to have the monopoly of fine sentiments and regretful indecisions, was he? Not a thought for her, and what she must have been feeling. But perhaps what she had felt had not been that at all; yet something she had felt, something not happy — something that led to the throwing away of white roses.

  “I can’t let it lie there,” he said, holding it in his hand. “I should like to think,” he added, madly trying to find s
ome words to break the spell that, he now felt, held them both—”I should like to think it would never fade.”

  She smiled at that — a small and pitiful smile.

  “Cheer up,” she said; “lots of people have got really married and then parted, as they say, at the church door. This is a perfect spot for a parting,” she added, a little wildly, waving toward a corn-chandler’s and a tobacconist’s; “or, if your chivalry won’t let you desert me in this desolate neighborhood . . . let me tell you something, something to remember; you’ll find it wonderfully soothing and helpful. From this moment henceforth, forever, every place in the world where we are will be the best place for parting — if we want to part. Isn’t that almost as good as the freedom you’re crying your eyes out for?”

  “I’m not,” he said, absurdly; but she went on.

  “Do you think I don’t understand? Do you think I don’t know how you feel twenty times more bound to me than if we were really married? Perhaps it’s only because everything’s so new and nasty. Perhaps you won’t feel like that when you get used to things. But if you do — if you don’t get over it then — it’s all been for nothing, and we might as well have parted among the pigeons.”

  She walked faster and faster.

  “What we have to remember — oh yes, it’s for me as well as you — what we’ve got to remember is that we’re to be perfectly free. We needn’t stay with each other an instant after we wish not to stay. Doesn’t that help?”

  “You’re a witch,” he said, keeping pace with her quickened steps, “but you don’t know everything. And you’re tired and—”

  “I know quite enough,” she said.

  Never had he felt more helpless. Their aimless walking was leading them into narrower and poorer streets where her bridal whiteness caught the eye and turned the head of every passer-by. The pavements were choked with slow passengers and playing children, small, dirty, pale, with the anxious expression of little old men and women.

  “Do you like deer?” he asked, suddenly.

  “Deer?”

  “Yes — fawns, does, stags, antlers?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then let’s go to Richmond Park. Let’s get out of this.”

  The points of her white shoes showed like stars among the filth of the pavement, her clean, clear beauty shining against the drab and dirty houses like a lily against a dust-heap. He felt a surge of impotent fury that such a background should be possible. The children, tired and pale with the summer heat that had been so glad and gay and shining to him and to her yesterday on the quiet river, looked like some sort of living fungus — and their clothes looked like decaying vegetables. If Mr. Basingstoke had been alone he would have solaced himself by going to the nearest baker’s and buying buns for every child in sight. But somehow it is very difficult to do that sort of thing unless you are alone or have a companion who trusts you and whom you trust beyond the limit of life’s cheaper confidences. He felt that self-exculpatory eagerness to give which certain natures experience in the presence of sufferings which they do not share. Also he felt — and hated himself for feeling — a fear lest, if he should act naturally, she might think he wanted to “show off.” To show off what, in the name of all that was pretentious and insincere? Had civilization come to this, that a man was “showing off” who took want as he found it and changed it, without its costing him the least little loss or self-denial, into a radiant, if momentary, satisfaction? And yet, somehow, he found he could not say, “Let’s go and raid the bun-shop for these kiddies.”

  “We’re to pass our lives together, and I can’t say a simple thing like that,” he thought, with curious bitterness — but, indeed, all his thoughts were confused and bitter just then.

  What a travesty of a wedding-day! He would have liked his wedding-feast to be in the big barn of the bride’s father, and every neighbor, rich and poor, to have drunk their health in home-brewed ale of the best, and the tables cleared away and a jolly dance to follow, and when the fun was at its merriest he and she would have slipped out and ridden home to his own house on the white horse — Dobbin, his name — she on the pillion behind him, her arm soft about his waist, and the good horse so sure of foot that he never stumbled, however often his master turned his face back to the dear face over his shoulder. Instead of which she had consented to a mock marriage in a registry-office — and this.

  “Let’s get out of this,” he repeated.

  “We are getting out of it,” she said, and, abruptly, “Don’t people who have real weddings pay the ringers and the beadle and give a feast to the villagers — open house, and all that?”

  He thrilled to the magic of that apt capping of his thought.

  “Yes,” he said, and, not knowing why, hung on her next words.

  “Couldn’t we?” she said, and her eyes wandered to the rose he still carried. “Of course it was only pretending, but we might pretend a little longer. Couldn’t we give our wedding-feast here? The guests are all ready,” she added, and her voice trembled a little.

  How seldom can man follow his desire. Edward would have liked to fall on his knees among the cabbage-stalks and the drifting dust and straw and paper — to kneel before her and kiss her feet. For, in that moment, and for the first time, he worshiped her.

  The imbecile irrationality of this will not have escaped you. He worshiped her for the very thought, the very impulse of simple loving-kindness which he had been ashamed to let her know as his own.

  She kindled to the lighting of his face. “I knew you would,” she said. “You are a dear.” The same irrational admiration shone in her eyes. “Sweets? Pounds and pounds of?”

  “Buns,” he answered, “buns and rock-cakes. Sweets afterward, if you like,” and enthusiastically led the way to the nearest baker’s.

  Now this is difficult to believe and quite impossible to explain, but it is true. No human ear but their own had heard this interchange. “Sweets,” “buns,” and “rock-cakes,” those words of power had, in fact, been spoken in the softest whisper, but from the moment of their being spoken a sort of wireless telegraphy ran down that mean street from end to end, and by the time they reached the baker’s they had a ragged following of some fifty children, while from court and alley and narrow side-street came ever more and more children, ragged children, stuffily dressed children, children carrying bags, children carrying parcels, children carrying babies and jugs and jars and bundles. The crowd of children pressed around the baker’s door, and noses flattened like the suckers of the octopus in aquariums marked a long line across the window a little above the level of the bun-trays. I do not pretend to explain how this happened. Good news proverbially travels fast. It also travels by ways past finding out.

  She began to take the buns by twos and threes from the tray in the window, and held them out. A forest of lean arms reached up and a shrill chorus of, “Me, teacher! Me!” varied by, “She’s ‘ad one — me next, teacher! Let the little boy ‘ave one, lady; ‘e ‘ain’t ‘ad nuffin.”

  The woman of the shop rolled forward. She was as perfectly spherical as is possible to the human form.

  “Treat, sir?” she said, in a thick, rich, husky voice (like cake, as Edward said later). They owned her guess correct.

  “How much’ll you go to?”

  “A bun apiece,” said Edward.

  “For the whole street? Why, there’s hundreds!”

  “The more the merrier,” said Mr. Basingstoke.

  “Do ‘e mean it?” the woman asked, turning to the bun-giver.

  “Yes, oh yes.” The girl turned from the door to lean over the smooth deal counter. “It’s our wedding-day,” she whispered, “and we didn’t give any wedding-breakfast, so we thought we’d give one now.”

  Edward had turned to the door and was making a speech.

  “You shall all have a bun,” he said, “to eat the lady’s health in. But it’s one at a time. Now you just hold on a minute and don’t be impatient.”

  “Bless your g
ood ‘art, my dear,” the globular lady was wheezing into the ear of the mock bride. “Married to-day, was you? I’m sure you look it, both of you — every inch you do. But we ‘aven’t got the stuff in the place for ‘arf that lot.”

  “How soon could you get it?”

  “I could send a couple of the men out. Do it in ten minutes — or less, if Prickets around the corner’s not sold out.”

  “How much will it cost — something for each of them — cake if not buns — sweets if not cake — ?”

  The round woman made a swift mental calculation and announced the result.

  She who looked so much like a bride turned to him who seemed her bridegroom. “Give me some money, please, will you?”

  Money changed hands, and changed again.

  “Now, lookee ‘ere,” said the round one, “you let me manage this ‘ere for you. If you don’t you’ll be giving three times over to the pushing ones, and the quiet ones won’t get nothing but kicked shins and elbows in the pit of stomachs. I know every man jack of them ‘cept the hinfans in arms, and even them I knows the ones as is carrying of them. Wait till I send the chaps off for the rest of the stuff.”

  The crowd outside surged excitedly, and the frail arms still waved to the tune of, “Me next, teacher!” All along the street the faces of the houses changed features as slatternly women and shirt-sleeved men leaned out of the windows to watch and wonder. When the baker’s wife rolled back into the shop she found the girl silent, with lips that trembled.

  “There, don’t you upset yourself, my pretty,” said the round one. “You’ll like to give it to ’em with your own hands, I lay. Take and begin on what’s before you — let ’em come in one door and out of the other, and I’ll see as they don’t come twice.”

  “You do it,” said the girl, and she spoke to Edward over her shoulder. “I didn’t think it would be like this. Tell them we’ve got to go, but Mrs. Peacock will give them each a bun.”

  “How clever of her to have noticed the name,” he thought; but he said, “Are you sure you don’t want to have the pleasure of seeing their pleasure?”