by E. Nesbit
XIV
STRATFORD-ON-AVON
WHEN you have seen Warwick Castle and Guy's Cliff and the SaxonMill--which is so old that it must be soothing to the most tempestuoustemperament--and you hasten back to your hotel and get your dog--if thatdog be Charles--on purpose to expose him to its calm influences, you goto St. Mary's Church, which is, the guide-book tells you, "one of themost remarkable specimens of ecclesiastical architecture extant," andyou see the Norman Crypt, and the clumsy sarcophagus of Fulke Greville,Lord Brooke, who wrote his own epitaph, and you read how he was "servantto Queen Elizabeth, Canceller to King James, and friend to Sir PhilipSidney."
Also you see the Beauchamp Chapel, and love it and linger in it,admiring the tombs of the earls of Warwick and other grown-ups, andfeeling, even after all these years, a thrill of sadness at the sight ofthe little effigy of the child whose brocaded gown the marble sowonderfully produces and whose little years knock at your heart forpity.
"Here resteth," says the monument, "the body of the noble Impe Robert ofDudley, . . . a child of greate parentage, but of farre greater hope andtowardness, taken from this transitory unto the everlasting life in histender age, . . . on Sunday the 19 of July, in the yeare of our LordeGod 1584."
You see, also, the Warwick pew, and wish you could have worshiped there.
Then you go to Leicester's Hospital, half timbered and beautiful, withthe row of whispering limes on its terraced front, where the "brethren"still wear the "gown of blew stuff with the badge of the bear and raggedstaff on the left sleeve." And the badges are still those provided byLord Leicester in 1571.
You are sorry that the old banqueting-hall should now be used for thecoal-cellar and the laundry of the brethren, and still more sorry thatthe minstrels' gallery should have been cut off to enlarge thedrawing-room of the Master's house. If you are of a rude and democraticnature you may possibly comment on this in audible voices beneath theMaster's windows, which, I am sorry to say, was what Mr. Basingstoke andhis companion did.
You will see the Sidney porcupine on the wall of the quadrangle, somegilded quills missing, and no wonder, after all these years. You willsee--and perhaps neglect to reverence, as they did--the great chair onceoccupied by that insufferable monarch and prig, James the First. Youwill visit the Brethren's Chapel, which seems to be scented by all theold clothes ever worn by any of the old brethren, and you will come outagain into the street, and, as you cross the threshold, it will be likestepping across three hundred years, and you will say so. Then you willprobably say, "What about Stratford for this afternoon?" At least, thatis what Edward said. And as he said it he was aware of a figure in blackwhich said,
"Can you tell me the way to Droitwich?"
It was a woman, spare and pale, in black that was green, but brushed tothreadbareness.
"Do you want to walk?" Edward asked.
"I've got to, sir," she said.
"Do you mind," he asked, "telling me why you want to go?"
"I've got relations there, sir," said the woman in black, raising to histhe plaintive blue eyes of a child set in a face that fifty years andmore had wrinkled like a February apple. "My husband's relations, thatis. They might do something to help me. I might be able to be of use tothem, just to work out my keep. It isn't much I require. But Icouldn't--"
She stopped, and Edward Basingstoke knew that she couldn't even bringherself to name the great terror of the poor--the living tomb which theEnglish call the workhouse.
"I'm afraid you've had a hard time," said Mr. Basingstoke.
"I had many happy days," she said, simply. "I always think you pay foreverything you have, sooner or later. And I'm paying now. I don't grudgeit, but I'd like to end respectable. And thank you for asking so kindly,sir, and now I'll be getting on." And he saw in her eyes the fear thathe would offer her money to pay her way to Droitwich.
Instead he said: "We're motoring your way this afternoon. If you'll letus give you a lift--"
The woman looked from one to the other. "Well," she said, "I do callthat kind. But I wasn't asking for any help. And I'd best be gettingon."
Then the other woman came quite close to the woman in black. "Won'tyou," she said, "come and have dinner with us--and then we'll drive youover? Do come. We're so happy and we do hate to think that you aren't.Perhaps we can think of some way to help you . . . find you some workor something," she added, hastily, answering the protest in the blueeyes.
"I don't like to, miss," she said, "thanking you all the same. It'struly good of you--but--"
Edward moved away a pace or two and lit a cigarette. He never knew whathis lady said to the woman in black, but when he turned again ahandkerchief was being restored to a rubbed black leather reticule andthe woman in black was saying,
"Well, ma'am, since you say that, of course I can't say no, and thankyou kindly."
The three had dinner together in the little private room over the porchat the Warwick Arms, and as they passed through the hall there couldhave been, for the little woman in black, no better armor against thesniffs of chambermaids and the cold eyes of the lady in the glass casethan the feel of another woman's hand on her arm. She was very silentand shy, but not awkward or clumsy, during the meal, and when it wasfinished Edward got up and said,
"Well, Katherine, I'll leave you two to talk things over."
It was the first time he had called her by her name. She flushed andsparkled, and was startled and amazed next moment to know that she hadanswered,
"Yes, dear, do--"
Edward, however, was not unduly elated. He knew how women will play thepart set for them, to the least detail. She hoped he had not noticed theslip which, quite unconsciously, the opening of her heart toward thissad sister-woman had led her to make. He wished that she had not firstcalled him that in a mere desire to act up to what this woman wouldexpect.
He left them, and then the pitiful little story all came out, with fitaccompaniment of sighs, and presently tears, together with those sweetand tender acts and words which blend with the sighs and tears of thesorrowful into a melody as sad as beautiful. They had been marriedthirty-seven years next Michaelmas; they had had a little shop--a littleneedlework and fancy shop. She had done well enough with the customers,but he had always done the buying, and when he was taken. . . .
"Ah, my dear, don't cry," said the one who was young and happy, "don'tcry. You'll make him so sad."
"Do you think he knows?" the widow asked.
"Of course he knows. He knows everything's going to be all right, onlyhe hates to see you miserable. _He_ knows it's only a little time,really, before you and he will be together again, and happy for ever andever."
"I wish I could believe that."
"You must, because it's true. I expect he's been praying for you, andthat's why you met us--because, you know, I'm certain my"--shehesitated, but the word came instead of "brother," which was what shethought she meant to say--"my husband will think of something for you todo to earn your living; he's so clever. And I suppose the business--"
Yes. The business had gone to pieces. Fashions change so, and the widowhad not known how to follow the fashions in needlework. There was onlyenough left to pay the creditors, but every one _had_ been paid, andwith the pound or two left over she had lived, trying to get needlework, or even, at last, charring or washing. But it had all been nogood; nothing had been any good.
"And now," said Katherine, "everything's going to be good. You'll see.Edward will think of something. Don't cry any more. You must not cry. Ican't bear it, dear. Don't."
"I'm only crying for joy," said the woman whose life was over. "Even ifhe doesn't think of anything, I can't ever despair again, and you beinglike you have to me."
But when Edward came back he had thought of something. His old nurse, itseemed, was in temporary charge of a house that wanted a housekeeper,and he was sure Mrs. Burbidge understood housekeeping.
Mrs. Burbidge owned to an understanding of plain cooking and plainhousekeeping. Also needlework, both th
e plain and the fine. "But notwhere butlers are kept," she said, apprehensively.
"This is a farm-house," said Edward. "Not a butler within miles."
"My father was a farmer, in Somerset," said Mrs. Burbidge, "but, oh,sir, you don't know anything about me. Suppose I was a fraud like youread of in the newspapers. But the vicar at home would speak for me."
"Your face speaks for you," said Katherine, and within half an hour allwas settled--the old nurse telegraphed to, money found for such modestoutfit as even a farmer's housekeeper must have, the train fixed thatshould take the widow to London, the little hotel named where she shouldspend a night, and the train decided on that should take her in themorning to the farm-house that needed a housekeeper.
"It's no use me saying anything," said Mrs. Burbidge, at parting,"but--"
"There's nothing to say," said Katherine, and kissed her, "only you willwrite to the Reverend Smilie at Eccles vicarage. I can't be easy unlessyou do," were her last words.
When she was gone they stood a moment looking at each other, and eachwould have liked to hold out hands to the other, to come quite close inthe ecstasy of a kind deed jointly done. Instead of which he said,awkwardly:
"I suppose that was a thoroughly silly thing to do."
And she answered, "Oh, well, let's hope it will turn out all right."
An interchange which left both of them chilled and a littledisenchanted.
It was Edward who had the sense to say, as the motor whirled them towardStratford, "That was all nonsense, you know, that we said just now."
She was disingenuous enough to say, "What--"
"About Mrs. Burbidge perhaps not being all right. She's as right asrain. I don't know what made me say it."
"A sort of 'do-good-by-stealth-and-blush-to-find-it-fame' feeling, Iexpect, wasn't it? Of course she's all right. You know I knew you knewshe was, don't you?"
"I know now," said he. "Yes, of course I knew it. Don't let's pretend wearen't both jolly glad we met her."
"No, don't let's," said she. And laid her hand on his. His turned underit and held it, lightly yet tenderly, as his hand knew that hers wouldwish to be held, and not another word did either say till their car drewup at the prosperous, preposterous Shakespeare Inn at Stratford-on-Avon.But all through the drive soft currents of mutual kindness andunderstanding, with other electricities less easy to classify, ran fromhim to her and from her to him, through the contact of their quietclasped hands.
The inn at Stratford is intolerably half timbered. Whatever there mayhave been of the old woodwork is infinitely depreciated by the modernimitation which flaunts itself everywhere. The antique mockery is onlyskin deep and does not extend to the new rooms, each named after one ofShakespeare's works, and all of a peculiarly unpleasing shape, andfurnished exactly like the rooms of any temperance hotel. The room whereKatherine washed the dust of the road from her pretty face was called"The Tempest," and the sitting-room where they had tea was a hideousoblong furnished in the worst taste of the middle-Victorian lower middleclass, and had "Hamlet" painted on its door.
"We must see the birthplace, I suppose," said Edward, "but before we goI should like to warn you that there is not a single authentic relic ofShakespeare, unless it's the house where they say he was born, and eventhat was never said to be his birthplace till a hundred and fifty yearsafter his death, and even then two other houses claimed the same honor.If ever a man was born in three places at once, like a bird, that manwas William Shakespeare."
"You aren't a Baconian, are you?" she asked, looking at him rathertimidly across the teacups. "But you can't be, because I know they'reall mad."
"A good many of them are very, very silly," he owned, "but don't beafraid. I'm not a Baconian, for Baconians are convinced that Bacon wrotethe whole of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature off his own bat. I onlythink there's a mystery. You remember Dickens said the life ofShakespeare was a fine mystery and he trembled daily lest somethingshould turn up."
"And nothing has."
"Nothing. That's just it. There's hardly anything known about the man.He was born here--died here. He went to London and acted. One of hiscontemporaries says that the top of his performance was the Ghost in'Hamlet.' He married, he had children, he got hold of money enough tobuy a house, he got a coat of arms, he lent money and dunned people forit, he speculated in corn, he made a will in which he mentions neitherhis plays nor his books, but is very particular about his second-bestbed and his silver-gilt bowl. He died, and was buried. That's all that'sknown about him. I'm not a Baconian, Princess, but I'm pretty sure thatwhoever wrote 'Hamlet,' that frowzy, money-grubbing provincial neverdid."
"But we'll go and see his birthplace, all the same, won't we?" she said.
And they went.
If she desired to worship at the shrine of Shakespeare he did not giveher much chance. She listened to the talk of the caretaker, but alwayshe was at her ear with the tale of how often Shakespeare's chair hadbeen sold and replaced by a replica, how the desk shown as his is thatof an eighteenth-century usher and not of a sixteenth-century scholar.How the ring engraved "W. S." was found in the surface of the ground,near the church, in 1810, where, one supposes, it had lain unnoticedsince Shakespeare dropped it there two hundred years before.
At the grammar-school Edward pointed out that there is no evidence toshow that Shakespeare ever attended this or any other school. AnneHathaway's cottage could not be allowed to be Anne Hathaway's, since itwas only in 1770 that its identity was fixed on, two other houseshaving previously shared the honor. Like her husband, she would seem tohave possessed the peculiar gift of being born in three places at once.
"I don't think I like it," she said at last. "I'd rather believeeverything they say. It's such a very big lot of lies, if they are lies.Let's go to the church. The man's grave's his own, I suppose."
"I suppose so," said he, but not with much conviction; "anyhow, I won'tbore you with any more of the stuff. But it _is_ a fine mystery, andthere's a corner of me that would like to live in Bloomsbury and grubamong books all day at the British Mu. and half the night in my bookylittle den, and see if I couldn't find something out. But the rest of mewants different things, out-of-door things, and things that lead tosomething more than finding the key to a door locked three hundred yearsago."
The bust of Shakespeare in Stratford Church is a great blow to theenthusiast. A stubby, sensual, Dutch-looking face.
"I wish they'd been content with the gravestone," she said, and readaloud the words:
"Goodfrend for Jesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare Blest be ye man yt spares these stones And curst be he yt moves my bones."
"There's not much chance of any one doing that--look, the altar-stepgoes right across the tombstone. I wonder what they _would_ find, ifthey _did_ move the stone."
"Nothing, madam," said a voice behind her--"nothing human, that is."
She turned to face a tall, gaunt man in loose, ill-fitting clothes witha despatch-case in one hand and three or four note-books in the other."Excuse my joining in," he said, "but I couldn't help hearing what yousaid. Whatever there is in that tomb, there is not the body of the manShakespeare. Manuscripts there may be, but no corpse."
"What makes you think so?" she asked.
"Evidence, madam, evidence. The evidence of facts as well as ofciphers."
"Oh," she said, and smiled brilliantly, "you must be a Baconian. Howvery interesting!"
Now she had received all Edward's criticisms of Shakespearian legendwith a growing and visible impatience. Yet for this stranger she hadnothing but sympathy and interest.
"It _is_ interesting," said the stranger. "There's nothing like it. I'vespent eighteen years on it, and I know now how little I know. It isn'tonly Bacon and Shakespeare; it's a great system--a great cipher systemextending through all the great works of the period."
"But what is it that you hope to find out in the end?" she asked."Secrets of state, or the secret of the philosopher's stone, or what?"
"The truth," he said, simply. "There's nothing else worth looking for.The truth, whatever it is. To follow truth, no matter where it leads.I'd go on looking, even if I thought that at the end I should find thatthat Stratford man did write the plays." He looked up contemptuously atthe smug face of the bust.
"It's a life's work," said Mr. Basingstoke, "and I should think morethan one life's work. Do you find that you can bring your mind to anyother kind of work?"
"I gave up everything else," said the stranger. "I was an accountant,and I had some money and I'm living on it. But now . . . now I shallhave to do something else. I've got a situation in London. I'm goingthere next week. It's the end of everything for me."
"There ought to be some endowment for your sort of research," saidEdward.
"Of course there ought," said the man, eagerly, "but people don't care.The few who do care don't want the truth to come out. They want to keepthat thing"--he pointed to the bust--"to keep that thing enthroned onits pedestal forever. It pays, you see. Great is Diana of theEphesians."
"I suppose it wouldn't need to be a very handsome endowment. I mean thatsort of research work can be done at museums. You don't have to buy thebooks," Edward said.
"A lot can be done with libraries, of course. But I have a few books--agood few. I should like to show them to you some day--if you'reinterested in the subject."
"I am," said Edward, with a glance at the girl, "or I used to be.Anyhow, I should like very much to see your books. You have a Du Bartas,of course?"
"Three," said the stranger, "and six of the Sylva Sylvarum, and Argalusand Perthenia--do you know that--Quarles--and--"
Next moment the two men were up to the eyes in a flood of names, none ofwhich conveyed anything to her. But she saw that Edward was happy. Atthe same time, the hour was latish. She waited for the first pause--avery little one--but she drove the point of her wedge into it sharply.
"Wouldn't it be nice if you were to come back to dinner with us, atWarwick, then we should have lots of time to talk."
"I was going to London to-night," said the stranger, "but if Warwick canfind me a night's lodging I shall only too gladly avail myself of yourgracious invitation, Mrs.--"
"Basingstoke," said Edward.
The stranger had produced a card and she read on it:
DR. C. P. VANDERVELDE, Ohio College, U. S. A.
"Yes," he said, "I'm an American. I think almost all serious Baconiansare. I hope you haven't a prejudice against my country, Mrs.Basingstoke--"
"It's Miss Basingstoke," she said, thinking of the hotel, "and I'venever met an American that I didn't like."
He made her a ceremonious and old-fashioned bow. "Inscrutable are theways of fate," he said. "Only this morning I was angry because thechambermaid at my inn in Birmingham destroyed my rubbing of the graveinscription, and I had to come to Stratford to get another. Yes, I couldhave written, but it was so near, and I shall soon be chained to anoffice desk--and now, in this of all spots, I meet youth and beauty andsympathy and hospitality. It is an omen."
"And what," she asked, as they paced down the church, "was the cipherthat said there was nothing in the tomb? Or would you rather not talkabout your ciphers?"
"I desire nothing better than to talk of them," he answered. "It's thegreatest mistake to keep these things secret. We ought all to tell allwe know--and if we all did that and put together the little fragment ofknowledge we have gathered, we should soon piece together the wholepuzzle. The first words I found on the subject are, 'Reader, read all,no corpse lies in this tomb,' and so on, and with the same lettersanother anagram in Latin, beginning '_Lector intra sepulcho jacet nullumcadaver_.' I'll show you how I got it when we're within reach of a tableand light."
They lingered a moment on the churchyard terrace where the willowsoverhang the Avon and the swans move up and down like white-sailedships.
"How hospitable we're getting," she said to Edward that night when theirguest had gone to his humbler inn--"two visitors in one day!"
"Katherine," he said, just for the pleasure of saying it, for they twowere alone, so he could not have been speaking to any oneelse--"Katherine, that man's ciphers are wonderful. And what a gift ofthe gods--to possess an interest that can never fail and that costsnothing for its indulgence, not like postage-stamps or orchids orpolitics or racing!"
"The ciphers were wonderful," she said. "I had no idea such things werepossible. I understood quite a lot," she added, a little defiantly."But it's rather hateful to think of his being chained to a desk doingwork that isn't _his_ work."
"That, or something like it, is the lot of most people," he said, "butit needn't be his lot. It's for you to say. I can very well afford asmall endowment for research, if you say so."
"But why must _I_ decide?"
"Because," he said, slowly, "I felt when I was talking to you to-daythat you hated everything I said; you wanted to go on believing in allthe Shakespeare legends."
"I think I said so. I'm not sure that I meant it. Anyhow, if it restswith me I say give him his research endowment, if he'll take it."
"He'll take it. I'll get a man I know at Balliol to write, offering it.In his beautiful transatlantic simplicity the dear chap will think thecollege is offering the money. He'll take it like a lamb. But won't youtell me--why was it that you hated me to be interested in this businessand you are glad that this Vandervelde should be helped to go on withit?"
"I should like him to be happy," she said, "and there's nothing else inlife for him--he has given up everything else for it. I want him, atleast, to have the treasure he's paid everything for--the joy of hiswork. But that sort of joy should be reserved for the people who canhave nothing else. But for you--well, somehow, I feel that people whotake up a thing like this ought to be prepared to sacrifice everythingelse in life to it, as he has done. And I could not bear that you shoulddo it. Life has so much besides for you."
"Yes," he said, "life holds very much for me."
"And for me, too," she said, and with that gave him her hand for goodnight.
He was certain afterward that it had not been his doing, and yet it musthave been, for her hand had not moved in his. And yet he had found itlaid not against his lips, but against his cheek, and he had held itthere in silence for more than a moment before she drew it away and saidgood night.
At the door she turned and looked back over her shoulder. "Good night,"she said again. "Good night, Edward."
And that was the first time she called him by his name.
