by E. Nesbit
VIII
THE ROAD TO ----
THE drive to London was a silent one. Mr. Basingstoke did not want totalk; he had come on one of those spaces where the emotions sleep,exhausted. He felt nothing any more, neither anxiety as to the futurenor pleasure at the nearness of the furry heap beside him under which,presently, his companion slumbered peacefully as a babe in its cot. Hismind was blank, his heart was numbed; it was not till the car reachedthe houses spilled over the pretty fields like ugly toys emptied out ofthe play-box of a giant child, that mind or heart made any movement.Then it happened that the breeze caught the edge of the fur and liftedit, and he saw her little face softly flushed with sleep, lying verynear him, and his heart seemed all at once to come to life again with anawakening stab of something that was not affection or even passion, buta kind of protective exultation--a deep, keen longing to take care of,to guard, to infold safely from all possible dangers and sorrows her whoslept so happy-helpless beside him. Then his mind awoke, too, and hefound himself wondering. The Schultz episode, his suspicions,resentment--the explication--all this should, one would have thought,have brushed, like a rough hand, the bloom from the adventure. And,instead of taking anything away, it had, even as she had said, added asoft touch of intimacy to their friendship. Further, he now in his hearthad the memory that, for an instant, his thoughts had wronged her, thathe had suspected her of wavering, almost of light-mindedness, though histhought had taken no such definite lines even to itself in its secretheart--and all the time there had only been thought for him, sincere,delicate consideration, and, in the matter of that man's accepted help,the trust of a child, and that innocence of Una before which even lionslike Schultz become shy and safe. Imagine a subject who has suspectedhis princess of being, perhaps, not a princess at all, but onemasquerading in the robes and crown of a princess . . . when he shallfind her to be indeed royal, to what an ecstasy of loyalty will not hisheart attain? So it was now with Mr. Basingstoke. He caught the cornerof the fur and reverently covered the face of his princess.
And now the houses were thick and the shops began to score the streetswith lines of color. He stopped at one of those big shops where theysell everything, and she awoke and said, "Are we there?"
"I thought," said he, "that you said something about a hat."
"Here?" she said, looking at the shop with strong distaste.
"Better here than really in London, I thought. And you'll want otherthings. And do you mind buying a box or a portmanteau or something?Because hotels like you to have luggage."
"I've been thinking--" she said, but he interrupted her.
"Forgive me," he said, "but even you cannot think your best thoughtswhen you're asleep."
Then she laughed. "Well, you must give me the money," she said, holdingout a bare, unashamed hand, "because I haven't any."
He composed himself to wait, and he waited a long time, a very, verylong time. He cheered the waiting by the thought that she could not,after all, have found the shop so unsuitable as it had, at the firstglance, seemed. He watched the doorway, and his eye became weary of theuseless snippets of lace and silk at something eleven-three with whichthe windows at each side of the door were plastered. He noticed thepeople who went in, and the many more who waited outside and longed forthese absurd decorations--longed with that passion which, almost aloneof the passions, a girl may display to the utmost immoderation withoutfear of censure or of shame. He observed the longing in the eyes oflittle, half-developed, half-grown girls for this or that bit ofworthless frippery; he would have liked to call to them and say, "Mydear children, do go in and buy yourself each a fairing, and let mepay." But he knew that so straightforward and simple a kindness woulddraw on him and on the children shame and censure almost immeasurable.So he just sat and was sorry for them, till he saw two of them tittertogether and look at him.
Then he got out of the car and went into the shop--they sold toys thereas well as everything else--to buy something himself. He could not findexactly what he wanted--in shops crowded with glittering uselessnessesit is rarely that you can find the particular uselessness on which youhave set your heart--but Tommy of the Five Bells had no fault to findwith the big, brown-papered parcel which reached him by the next day'safternoon post. He could not imagine any soldiers more perfectlysatisfying than these, no bricks more solid and square, no drafts moreneatly turned, no dominoes more smoothly finished. To Mr. Basingstoke'sold nurse the world seemed to hold nothing fairer than the lace collarand the violet-silk necktie. "Do me for Sundays for years," she said,putting them back in their tissue-paper and turning her attention to thebox of sweets and the stockings for the children. The girl who sold Mr.Basingstoke the lace collar sniggered apart with a kindred sniggerer asshe sold it to him, and delayed to make out his bill, but the othergirl, almost a child, with a black bow tying her hair, sold him thestockings and was sympathetic and helpful.
"How many stockings ought a child to have, so as to have plenty?" heasked her, confidentially. At the lace-counter he had made his ownchoice, in stern silence.
"Three pairs," said the girl; "that's one in wear, one in the wash, andone in case of accidents." She glanced through the glass door at themotor, and decided that he could afford it. "But, of course, four wouldbe better."
"I should think six would be best," said he, "that's one for each day inthe week, and on Saturday they can stay in bed while their mother doesthe washing."
"You don't wash on Saturdays," said the girl, her little, plain facelighting up with a smile. She saw the eye of the shop-walker on her andadded, nervously, "Shall we say six, then, sir; and what size? I meanwhat aged child? About what price?"
"Three to eleven," said he.
"They're one and eleven-three," said she.
"I mean the children, not the stockings--there are five of them--what'sfive sixes?"
"Thirty," the girl told him, with a glance at the shop-walker that wasalmost defiant in its triumph.
"That's it, then," said he, "and sort out the sizes properly, please,will you? Three six, two sevens, ten and eleven. And put in somegarters--children's stockings are always coming down, you know--"
The girl had not before sold garters to insane but agreeable gentlemen.She hesitated and said in a low voice, "I don't think garters, sir.Suspenders are more worn now--"
"Well, suspenders then. The means doesn't matter--it's the keeping upthat's the important thing." He laid a five-pound note on the counter,just as the shop-walker came up to her with a slightly insolent,"Serving, Miss Moore?"
"Sign, sir," said Miss Moore, defending herself from his displeasurewith the bill. "Anything more, sir?"
"I want some sweets," said Edward, and was directed to "the third shopon the left, through there."
It was not till two weeks later that a satined and beribboned box ofsweets arrived by post for Miss Moore. "From Mary," said the legendwithin, and the postmark was Warwick. Mr. Basingstoke counted on everyone's having at least one relation or friend bearing that commonest andmost lovely of all names. And he was right. A distant cousin got thecredit of the gift, which made the little apprentice happy for a day andinterested for a week--exactly as Mr. Basingstoke had intended. Hisimagination pleased him with the picture of the sudden surprise of agift, in that drab and subordinated life. By such simple means Mr.Basingstoke added enormously to his own agreeable sensations. And bysuch little exercises of memory as that which registered Miss Moore'sname and the address of the shop he made those pleasures possible forhimself. The sweets he bought on that first day of his elopement went tohis nurse. He might have added more gifts, for the pleasure of spendingmoney was still as new as nice, but the voice of Charles without drewhim from the shop to settle a difference of opinion between thattethered dog and the chauffeur.
"Wanted to hang hisself over the side of the car," the man explained,"and no loss to his mourning relations, if you ask me," he added,sourly.
Edward had hardly adjusted the situation before she came out--and hefelt the sight of h
er was worth waiting for. She wore now a white coatwith touches of black velvet, and the hat was white, too, with black anda pink rose or two.
"It looks more like Bond Street than Peckham," he said as she got in."It surpasses my wildest dreams."
"I had to make them trim it," she said, "that's why I was such ages. Allthe ones they had were like Madge Wildfire--insane, wild, unrelatedfeathers and bows born in Bedlam."
Her eyes, under the brim of the new hat, thrilled him, and when Charles,leaping on her lap, knocked the hat crooked, scattered the mound ofparcels, and made rosetted dust-marks on the new cloak, her reception ofthese clumsy advances would have endeared her to any one to whom she wasnot already dear.
"Well," she said, tucking Charles in between them, setting the hatstraight, and dusting the coat, all in one competent movement, "have youhad time yet to think what you're going to do with me?"
"I have had time," he said, rearranging the mound.
"I'm so sorry I was so long, but. . . ."
"It was worth it," he said, looking at the hat. "Well, what I propose isthat you should go, not to Claridge's, which is just the place whereyour relations will look for you, but to one of those large, comfortablehotels where strictly middle-class people stay when they come up toLondon on matters connected with their shops or their farms. I will giveyou as long as you like to unpack your new portmanteau and your parcels.Then I'll call for you and take you out to dinner."
"But I thought we were going on tramp," she objected.
"Dinner first, tramping afterward," he said, "a long while afterward. Idon't propose to let you tramp in those worldly shoes." They were newand brown and soft to look at--as soft as other people's gloves, hethought.
"Don't dress for dinner," he said as they drew up in front of theMidlothian Hotel. "And, I say, I expect it would be safer to dine here;it's absolutely the last place where any of your people would look foryou."
The dress in which she rejoined him later was a walking-dress of darkblue melting to a half transparency at neck and sleeves.
"I bought it at that shop," she said. "It isn't bad, is it? They said itwas a Paris model--and, anyhow, it fits."
He wanted to tell her that she looked adorable in it, and that she wouldlook adorable not only in a Paris model, but in a Whitechapel one. Buthe didn't tell her this. Nor did he tell her much else. The dinner owedto her any brightness that it showed when shelved as a memory. Sheexerted herself to talk. And it was the talk of a lady to her dinnerpartner--light, gay, and sparkling, anything but intimate--hardlyfriendly, even; polite, pleasant, indifferent. He did not like it; hedid not like, either, his own inability to carry on the duet in the keyshe had set, and at the same time he knew that he could not change thekey. The surge of the world was round them again, even though it wasonly the world of the provincial haberdasher and the haberdasher'sprovincial wife. The smooth, swift passage of laden waiters across thethick carpets of the dining-room; the little tables gay with pinksweet-peas and rosy-hued lamps; the women in smart blouses, most of themsparkling beadily; the rare evening toilettes, worn in every case withan air of conscious importance, as of one to whom wearing evening dresswas a rare and serious exception to the rule of life; the buzz ofconversation curiously softer and lower in pitch than the talk at theRitz and the Carlton--all made an atmosphere of opposition, anatmosphere in which all that appeared socially impossible--which, underthe stars last night, had seemed natural, inevitable--the only thing todo. This world to which he had brought her had, at least, this in commonwith the world which dines at the Carlton and the Ritz, that it bristledwith the negation of what last night had seemed the simplest solution inthe world. But it had only seemed simple, as he now saw, because thesolution had been arrived at out of the world. Here, beyond any doubt,was the antagonism to all that he and she had planned. This was theworld where the worst scandal is the unusual--where it would be lesssocially blighting to steal another man's wife than to set off on atramp with a princess to whom you were tied neither by marriage nor bykinship.
It was a lengthy silence in which he thought these things. She, in thesilence, had been making little patterns with bread-crumbs till thewaiter swept all away, made their table tidy, and brought the dessert.She looked up from the table-cloth just in time to see Edward smilegrimly.
"What is it?" she asked, a little timidly.
"I was only thinking," he said, "what a two-penny halfpenny businesswe've made of life, with our electric light and our motors and our uglyhouses and our civilization generally. A civilization replete with everymodern inconvenience! In the good old days nobody would have minded aknight and a princess traveling through the world together, or evenaround the world, for that matter. Whereas now. . . ."
She looked at him, gauging this thought. And he knew that he had saidenough to make a stupid woman say, "I thought you would want to back outof it." What would she say? For a moment she said nothing. Then, sure ofherself as of him, she smiled and said:
"We're going to teach Nobody to mind . . . its own business."
And then he said what he had come near to being afraid she would say.
"You don't want to back out of it, then?" he said, and she shook herhead.
"No," she answered, slowly, and then, after a pause, again, "No."
"You are willing to go through the wood with your faithful knight,Princess? He will be a faithful knight."
"Yes," she said, "I know."
And then suddenly he perceived what before had not been plain tohim--that the elopement that had seemed to offer so royal a road to allthat he really desired was not a road, but a barrier. That he was now ina position far less advantageous than that of a man who meets a girl allhedged around with the machinery of chaperonage, since, whereas thecourtship may, where there is chaperonage, evade and escape it, wherethere is none the lover must himself supply its need--must, in fine, belover and chaperon in one. Far from placing himself in a position wherelove-making would be easy, he had set himself where it was well-nighimpossible. He who courts a lady in her own home, surrounded by all thefences set up by custom and convention, can, at least, be sure that ifhis courtship be unwelcome it will be rejected. The lady need not listenunless she will. But when the princess rides through the wood with theknight whom she has chosen to be her champion she must needs listen ifhe chooses to speak. She can, of course, leave him and his championing,but what sort of championship is it which drives the princess back tothe very dragon from which it rescued her? Edward saw, with dismalexactness, the intolerable impossibilities of the situation. They wouldgo on--supposing her friends didn't interfere--as friends and comrades,brother and sister, she more and more friendly, he more and moretongue-tied, till at last every spark of the fire of the greatadventure was trampled out by the flat foot of habit.
She might--and probably would, since men and women invariablymisunderstand one another--believe his delicate reticences to be merelythe indications of a waning interest, and construe knightly chivalryinto mere indifference. If he made love to her--who could not get awayfrom the love-making without destroying that which made it possible--hewould be a presuming cad. If he didn't, what could she think but that heregretted his bargain? As he sat there opposite his princess, alone withher among the thickly thinning crowd, he wondered whether out of thisany happiness could come to them.
When he had proposed the elopement he had meant marriage; the incurabletemperamental generosity which had prompted him to offer her the help ofthe escape, on her own terms, now seemed to him the grossest folly. Yethow could he have held the pistol to her head, saying, "No marriage, noelopement."
Her voice broke his reverie. "I am very tired," she said. "I think I'llsay good night. Do you mind?"
He almost fancied that her lip trembled a little, like a child's who isunhappy.
"Of course you're tired," he said, "and, I say, you don't mind my nothaving talked for the last few minutes? I've been thinking ofyou--nothing else but you."
"Yes," said she, "it all looks ve
ry different here, as you say. Perhapsit will look more different even than this to-morrow. Shall we start onour tramp to-morrow--or shall I just go back and let's forget we evertried to do something out of a book? I think you will tell me honestlyto-morrow whether you think I had better go back."
"To-morrow," he said, looking into her eyes, "I will tell you everythingyou wish to hear. We'll spend to-morrow in telling each other things.Shall we? Good night, Princess. Sleep well, and dream of the open road."
"I shall probably," said the princess, "dream of my aunts."
