by Edith Nesbit
“Isn’t it,” she said, “with the sun shining and the mountains and the rocks and the sea all there, just like a picture? Oh, there’s no doubt but it’s a beautiful world.”
“And you and I and Charles going out to see it all together. It’s a fine world, every bit of it — and the little bit we’re just coming to is Caernarvon.”
Caernarvon it was, and they spent nearly a week there. The castle is all that a castle should be; and as for the sea, what can be better, unless it’s in Cornwall; and there is Anglesea, lying flat against the sky, and the Elephant Mountain and the Seven Sisters, and old Snowdon topping all.
The inn was comfortable, the weather had grown kind again, the hostler was one of those to whom Charles’s personality so much appealed that the dog was almost too replete with good living to appreciate the rats provided for his recreation. This hostler, Owen Llewellyn, became such an enthusiast in the service of Charles that Mr. Basingstoke was only able by a fortunate chance, the strong exercise of authority, and a golden offering for the soothing of wounded feelings to stop the entertainment which Owen had arranged with several of his friends in a handy field and the cool of the evening: a quiet little dog-fight, as the friends indignantly explained, with Charles and a worthy antagonist filling the leading rôles.
“It isn’t as if the dogs wouldn’t enjoy it more than any one else, and me putting all my money on your dog, sir,” one of the friends (from London) complained. “There ain’t nothing that that there dog ‘u’d love better nor a bit of a scrap. An’ you to go agin the animal’s natural desires and keep him for a lap-dog for the lady. It ain’t right,” he ended, feelingly, as the lap-dog was led off, yapping defiance at the adversary whom, so his admirers swore, he could have licked hollow with one paw tied behind him.
It was at Caernarvon that Edward and his princess lived the quiet life that does not lead to sight-seeing. There was something poignantly domestic to his mind in those long mornings in green fields or among the broken and still beautiful colonnades of the castle, he with a book from which he read to her, she with some work of embroidery in which a bright needle flashed among pleasant-colored silks. It was in the castle, in one of those mysterious narrow passages, that they came face to face with a tall, handsome man of middle age, who shook Edward’s hand with extreme vigor, clapped him on the back, and announced that he would have run a mile for the sake of seeing him. Edward would have run two to avoid the meeting, because the eyes of the back-clapper were turned on Katherine, awaiting the introduction which must come. Colonel Bertram, an old friend of Edward’s father’s, knew well enough that Edward was an only child. No brother-and-sister tale was possible here.
“Do you hang out in these parts?” Edward asked. “I wonder you knew me. I don’t believe we’ve met since I was about sixteen.”
While he spoke he looked a question at her, and read the slightest possible sign with which she answered.
“Colonel Bertram — my wife. Katherine, the Colonel used to tip me sovereigns when I was at school, and he gave me my first pony.”
The colonel’s grip ground her rings into her hand. “‘Pon my word!” he said, “I don’t know when I’ve been so pleased. You must come and dine with us, my boy, to-night — To-morrow? Make him come, Mrs. Basingstoke. I know it’s not manners to intrude on a honeymoon, but I am such an old friend, and our meeting like this is such a remarkable coincidence, almost like the finger of Providence — upon my soul it is.”
“It’s very, very nice of you to ask us,” she said, in a voice of honey, “but, unfortunately, we’re leaving this afternoon.”
“Well, at any rate, let’s lunch together. No, of course; too late for that. Well, look here, you’ve seen the castle, of course; come and see over the prison. I’m governor there, for my sins. Come and let me show you my prison!”
His simple pride in the only sight he had to show prevailed even against the shrinking she felt and did not wholly understand.
“When are you leaving? The six o’clock train? Plenty of time. We’ve made wonderful reforms, I can tell you. The cells are pictures, perfect pictures. ‘Pon my word, I never was so glad to see any one. And so you’re married. Dear, dear, dear! Makes me feel an old boy, that it does! The young ones growing up around us — eh, what?”
He led the way out of the castle, and Edward and Katherine exchanged behind his cordial back glances almost of despair. They had not wanted to leave Caernarvon, but Edward could only bless Katherine for her decision. The relations of Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke could never have stood the affectionate cross-questionings of Mrs. Bertram. They must go; Katherine was right.
Katherine, meantime, was wishing she had invented a headache, an appointment at the local dentist’s, had even simulated a swoon at Colonel Bertram’s feet, before she had consented to visit a prison.
From the first moment of her entrance there the prison appalled her. It was a very nice prison, as prisons go. But the grating at the door, the locks that clicked, the polished keys, the polished handcuffs, the prison records which their host exhibited with so much ingenuous enthusiasm; the cells, one little cage after another in which human birds were pent. . . .
“What have they all done?” she asked, as they walked along a stone-paved gallery; and wished she had not asked, for the details of horrible crimes were the last things she wished to hear.
“Oh, petty felonies, mostly,” said the governor, airily.
It seemed more and more horrible to her that she and he and the governor should tread the mazes of this place free to come and go as they chose, while these other human beings, for whatever fault — and it seemed the faults could hardly rank as crimes — should be here encaged, never more to go out free till their penance should have purged them.
“I suppose one mustn’t give them anything?”
“A little good advice wouldn’t be amiss. ‘Don’t do it any more,’ and so on. Would you like to give them an address, Mrs. Basingstoke?”
She hated his badinage. “I mean tobacco or chocolate or books, or anything that they’d like,” she explained, patiently.
“No, no,” said the governor. “They aren’t pets, you know. Mustn’t feed them through the bars as though they were rabbits or guinea-pigs. The townspeople will throw tobacco over into the yard. Can’t stop them. But of course we punish the offenders very severely whenever we manage to bring it home to them.”
The horrible sense of slavery grew on her — the prisoners were slaves to the warders, the warders slaves, and super-subservient slaves, to the governor, the governor himself a slave to some power unseen but all-potent.
She watched her opportunity and while Colonel Bertram was explaining to Edward the method of the manufacture of post-office bags she opened her purse in her pocket and let all its contents fall loose, therein. Then she gathered the money in a handful, careful that no rattle or chink should betray her, and when the governor was explaining how wire netting, spread over each gallery to catch any object thrown from above rendered suicide difficult, if not impossible, she knotted the money in her handkerchief. Then she watched for further opportunity, hoping against hope, for it seemed that her chance would never come. There were eyes everywhere.
“If I can’t do it here, I’ll buy tobacco and throw it over the wall,” she told herself.
It was in the kitchen that the chance came. Three prisoners were there acting as cooks, and the governor had sent the attendant warder on some errand, to order tea for them in his office, as events showed.
“Very nice — very neat — very clean.” She praised all in the simplest and most direct words.
The governor again addressed himself to Edward. It was a tale of poaching that he told — the theft of two hares and a pheasant — a desperate crime duly punished. He and Edward left the kitchen, talking. She followed, but first she laid her hand on a table near the door and looked full at the nearest prisoner. Then she smiled. The three smiled back at her. Then she opened her hand, showing plainly the knotted
handkerchief. “Good luck!” she said, low, but so that they all heard her.
Then she followed the governor and Edward, but at the door she turned and kissed her hand to the three prisoners. The faces they turned to her will stay with her as long as she lives. Wonder, delight, incredulity — that any one — that she should have cared to say “good luck,” should have smiled at them, should have left them her handkerchief, though they did not yet know what was in it. The wonder and worship in their eyes brought tears to her own.
They were still there when the governor turned.
“A cup of tea, now, Mrs. Basingstoke,” he said, “it’s all ready.”
She answered hurriedly, “It’s very kind of you, but, do you know, if you don’t mind, I think we ought to be going. We’ve got to pack and all that.”
Colonel Bertram, who was no fool, heard the quivering voice and saw the swimming eyes. “So sorry,” he said, “but charmed to have met you — charmed,” and stood back for her to pass the door of the corridor. “I understand,” he said; “your wife’s a bit upset. Ladies often are; they don’t understand the law, you know, the great principles of property and the law. Don’t mention it; I like them soft-hearted. You’re a fortunate man, my boy — deuced fortunate. Good-by. So very, very pleased we happened to meet. Good-by.”
The well-oiled locks clicked to let them out. In the street she caught his arm and clung to it.
“There, there!” he spoke as one speaks to a frightened child. “It’s all over; don’t distress yourself.”
“It’s not all over for them,” she said.
“Prisons have to be,” said Edward.
“Have they?” said she. “I suppose they do, but such little things. To take a pair of boots because your feet are cold and you have no money, and to pay for what you’ve done — with that. Horrible! horrible!”
Neither of them spoke again till they were nearly at the hotel. Then he said, “What did you give them?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you knotting something in that little scented handkerchief of yours. What was it you gave them.”
“Every penny I had. And I said, ‘Good luck to you,’ and I kissed my hand to them. There!” she said, defiantly.
“It was like you,” he said, and took her arm. “But I wish I hadn’t let you go inside the place. I didn’t realize how it would be to you. I didn’t realize what it would be to me.”
“It was silly of me, I suppose,” she said.
“I dare say. But you were lucky; I only managed to drop my tobacco-pouch among the post-office bags, but our guilt is equal. The sooner we get out of Caernarvon the better. By the way, don’t let’s catch the six-o’clock train to nowhere in particular. Let’s take a carriage and drive to Llanberis and see the slate-quarries and go up Snowdon.”
“Don’t let’s ever go into another prison,” she said, blinking so that the tears should drop off her eyelashes and not run down her face, “it hurts so horribly, and we can’t do any good.”
“Not do any good?” he said. “Do you suppose that life can ever be the same to a man to whom you’ve smiled and kissed your hand? Ah, I don’t mean it for empty gallantry, my dear. I mean that to know that you, free and beautiful, care for them in their misery and imprisonment — don’t you think that’s worth something?”
“If it is, I’m glad we went,” said she.
Their departure for Llanberis, though sudden, was the less deplored by the hotel management because of a regrettable misunderstanding which had arisen during the afternoon between Charles and the house cat.
XVII. LLANBERIS
LLANBERIS, prim and small, and very, very Welsh, lies in the shadow of great Snowdon, and all about it the lesser and more gracious mountains — the mountains of green and purple and brown — stand with their heads against the sky, bathing their feet in great lakes of smooth, brown water. The inn has a beautiful and terraced garden; the stream from the waterfall under Snowdon runs tumbling and gurgling down its rocky bed. “The peace that is upon the lonely hills” may be yours at the cost of a little breathless, happy climbing; the deeper peace of valleys and lake may be yours for no more trouble than it takes to walk a couple of hundred yards from the door of your inn. That the hotel was full did not seem to matter — the other guests were off early, in breaks and wagonettes, spending the long days in excursions from which they returned late and hilarious, breaking the soft night quiet with loud laughter and snatches of the kind of songs that nowadays delight the great heart of the people. Trippers from Manchester and Liverpool came for the day, but never strayed far from the inn, or, if they did, went up Snowdon by the tiny railway. Everywhere, save on the way that led to Snowdon, you were sure of quiet or peace, of a world where two could be alone together.
Here the two tried to take up again the life of ordered ease that had been theirs at Caernarvon, the little life they had prized and cherished till the governor of Caernarvon prison had thrown a stone into their magic pool, shattering all its mirrored beauty. They spent long mornings on the hillside, cushioned by the heather; long evenings by the lakeside, always careful to choose their resting-place so that they need not see the scars where the waste slate is tipped into the lake, slowly overlaying the green and graceful margin with which Nature, if you let her alone, frames all water mirrors. And once they went as far as the mysterious Round Tower, which stands alone, with no entrance but the doorway high above your head.
“What a place to keep your enemy in,” he said, “or your friend! Suppose the tower had been my stronghold, in the old days. I could have brought my princess here, and snapped my fingers at her relations drawn round the tower in a ring, shaking their fists at me from their coal-black steeds, and vowing vengeance when the tower should yield — which, of course, it never would.”
“Your princess would have starved,” she said, “and you with her.”
“Not at all,” he assured her; “you underrate the resources of round towers. To say nothing of the goats and sheep which we should drive in and lower to the basement when our scout brought news that your kinsmen were sending out the fiery cross or the blood eagle, or whatever it was that they did send out; and there’s an inexhaustible well inside the tower, and of course we should have sacks of meal and casks of mead.”
“But the enemy — her relations, I mean — would have all the sheep on the mountains and all the flour in the mills. You’d have to give in, in the end.”
“You forget the underground passage. When we were tired of mocking your uncles and cousins through the arrow-slits of our tower we’d quietly creep away to our great castle — it’s at Caernarvon, you know — and call together all my uncles and cousins and sally out and have a great battle, and the sound of our blows on their helmets would be heard on the far side of Anglesea, and down to the very southernmost marches of Merioneth.”
“But suppose her relations won the battle and shut you up in a dungeon and put her into a convent?”
“Oh, they wouldn’t. All our armor would be so perfectly tempered that nobody would be hurt. It would be like a tournament, and at the end, just as your senior uncle and I had unhorsed each other and were about to perish, mutually cloven to the chine, you would rush between us — in white, with your hair flowing like a thunder-cloud behind you — and say to each of us, ‘Spare him for my sake.’ And of course we should. And then there would be a banquet in the great hall at Caernarvon and clean rushes on the floor, and you and I and all our relations sitting in state on the dais, and you’d be wearing your gown of cloth of gold and your cloak of vair, and all your jewels — and I should have my furred gown and my great ring, and we should drink out of the big silver drinking-bowl — mead and strong ale — and feast our guests and their men-at-arms and all our own people on roast boars’ heads and barons of beef, and all live happily ever afterward.”
“I don’t think she’d wear her ermine mantle. Wouldn’t she wear the one of woven red, with your coat of arms embroidered on it, and the go
ld beads you brought her from the East when you went to the wars there?”
“Perhaps you would,” he conceded. “I believe I could climb up to that doorway. I should like to — just to be sure there’s really a well inside.”
“No, don’t,” said she, “because you might find out that there wasn’t; or that this isn’t really the tower that has the underground passage leading to Caernarvon, and then we should know that we’re not really remembering that other life when you carried her off, but only making it up.”
“Of course we remember it. Do you remember whether you were angry with me for carrying you off.”
“If she hadn’t wanted to be carried off,” she said, demurely, “she wouldn’t have been. Or if she hadn’t been able to help herself she’d have found a little knife, like the brown bride, or else something to put in your mead-cup, so that the first draught you had from her hand would have been the last. She wasn’t the sort of woman to be taken against her will. Come away before you spoil the story with any more questions. I liked it best when we took the tale for granted—”
It was high up among the heather, with Charles safely tethered and the steep hillside dotted with hundreds and hundreds of sheep, that the talk grew earnest and dwelt not on dreams of old days, but the desire of new ones.
“Do you remember,” he said, “what you told me when we were going to Warwick?” He spoke as though this had been a long time ago, as, indeed, by any count but time it was. “You remember about the scattered farms, and the way the little houses call to you to come home.”
