by E. Nesbit
XIX
HURSTMONCEAUX
THE sky was gray; gray mists veiled the sea and wisps of sea-fog lay inthe hollows of the downs. The young morning had not yet decided whetherit meant to be, when it was a grown-up day, a very wet day, when yourumbrella is useless and you give it up and make up your mind to be wetthrough and change as soon as you get home; or a very fine day, one ofthose radiant, blazing days that are golden to the very end, days whenyou almost forget it ever has rained, and find it hard to believe thatit will ever rain again. It was one of those mornings whose developmentis as darkly hid as the future of any babe smiling at you from itscradle and defying you to foresee whether it will grow up to be a greatcriminal or a great saint. If you love the baby, and trim its cradlewith hopes and dreams, you will find it hard to believe that the darlingcan grow up just nobody in particular, like the rest of us.
To Edward, lying at his long length on the short turf and looking outto the opalescent mist that hid the sea, it was not possible to believethat this day of all days could be anything but very good or very bad.The elements must be for him or against him, must help or hinder. Thatthey could be indifferent was unthinkable.
For this was the day of days, come, at last, after weeks of a waitingthat had not been patient, the day when he should, indeed, and not indreams, see her again.
This was the thought, insistent, even in his sleep, that had at lastbroken up that sleep, as a trickle of water breaks up the embankment ofa reservoir, letting out the deep floods inclosed by that barrier, thedeep flood of pent-up longing which sleep could no longer restrain fromconsciousness.
So he had got up and come out to look over the sea and think of her.
Her letters made a bulge in his coat pocket; he pulled them out--a fatlittle bundle secured by an elastic band--and he read:
It is strange that you should have been expecting to see me just then, because just then I really had come as far as the door of your house--only everything was dark except for a murky star of gas that had been turned down in the hall. So I told myself that you weren't there, and I didn't want to be told so by any one else, and I went home. I like your letter; I like it very, very much, but it makes me see how stupid and selfish I have been to let you stay in London in the summer-time, waiting all the time for some one who never comes. And I want you to go away, right into the country, and I'll write to you as soon as Aunt Alice goes abroad. She is very, very much better. It won't be long now. A week, perhaps? Two weeks? Go away where it is green and glorious, and I shall think of you all the time and wish myself where you are.
At first when I read your letter I thought that I must see you just once before you go away. But now I see that I won't see you. If I were to see you it would not really make anything any easier. And nothing is very easy, as it is. You understand, don't you?
He hoped he did understand. If he understood, her letter meant thebeginning of the end of the incredible honeymoon. For he dared to readthe letter as he desired to read it, and where she had written, "If Iwere to see you it would not really make anything easier, and nothing isvery easy," he had read, "If I were to see you I should find it too hardto part from you again," and next moment cursed himself for apresumptuous fool. What was he that the gods should now and thus renewto him an assurance that had once been his for a few magic hours, in thewild night-rush of a London-bound train, when the air was scented withthe roses of dreams and the lady of all dreams slept upon his shoulder?For in those long and lonely days, in his London lodging, thatassurance had dwindled, shriveled, faded to a maddening incertitude; thewhole splendid pageant of his days had faded and shrunk to the palesubstance of a vision.
Presumptuous or not, foolish or wise, the meaning which her letter mighthave revived his spirit, as the sweet air of dawn revives a man whocomes out of a darkened prison to meet the waxing light and the firsttwitter of the newly awakened birds.
He had written:
I will go away--I will go away to the sea and wait there for you. You are right, as always. If I am not to see you it is less intolerable not to be near you. I hardly dare to read in your letter what I wish you could have meant me to read. But I warn you that when once I have you again I shall never let you go.
She had not answered that, though she had written every day, little,friendly, intimate notes, telling him of every day's little happeningsand what were to be the happenings of the morrow. She told him, at last,that the aunt was really going, and when. She wrote:
The aunts are going to Scotland and I shall be left to see Aunt Alice off, and then, when she is gone, I will write and make an assignation with my friend and comrade, and we will go back to the good, green country. It won't be all different, will it? People meet again after years and don't recognize each other. I suppose they have been changing, changing a little bit every day. Do you think we shall have changed--contrariwise? You one way and I the other, I mean, so that when we do meet we sha'n't be the same?
The last letter of all was the shortest. "Monday," it said at the top ofits page, and then:
Auntie leaves Folkestone to-morrow by the morning boat. I will let you know where to find me. Would Thursday suit you, in the afternoon?
He had felt no doubt as to that. Thursday would not suit him--butTuesday would--and not the afternoon, but the morning. Had she reallythought that he would wait two days?
And now, lying on the turf, he read her letters through and laid hisface down on the last and dreamed a little, with closed eyes; and whenhe lifted his head again the mist had grown thin as a bridal veil andthe sun was plain to be seen, showing a golden face above the sea, wherea million points of light gleamed like tinsel through a curtain ofgossamer. The air was warmer, the scent of the wild thyme sweeter andstronger, and overhead, in the gray that was growing every momentclearer and bluer, the skylarks were singing again.
"I knew," said Edward, as he went down toward the town where the smokeof the newly lighted fires rose straight from the chimneys--"I knew itcouldn't have the heart not to be fine, on this day of all days."
He went back to his hotel and inspected once more certain of thepurchases he had made since her decree had banished him from London.Resisting a momentary impulse toward asceticism in the matter ofbreakfast, as an outward and visible testimony to the unimportance ofmaterial things at such a time as this, he found himself at the otherend of the pendulum's swing, ordering just such a meal as he would haveordered had she been with him, and ate his grape-fruit and omelette anddelicately browned fish with thoughtful appreciation, making of them abanquet in her honor. He toasted her in the coffee, and, as he ate,romance insisted that it was not himself, but her man, whom he wastreating to that perfectly served breakfast; and common sense added,"Yes, and no man's at his best if he's hungry." Before he reached themarmalade he had come to regard that impulse to tea and toast as a manmight regard a vanished temptation to alcoholic excess.
"A hungry man's only half a man--the bad-tempered half," he said,lighting his first cigarette, and strolling out into the sunny inn-yard,where a hostler with a straw in his mouth was busy with a bucket ofwater and a horse's legs; a pleasanter man, Edward thought, than theother man there, busy with oil and petrol and cotton-waste and a verynew motor-car.
"I wish motors had never been invented," he told himself.
All the same, when the hour-glass of time had let through the last grainof the space of their separation, and a pale girl withdrew her eyes fromthe speck of a boat growing smaller and smaller on a sea that sparkledso brilliantly that you could hardly look at it, and almost listlesslyturned to walk back alone to her hotel, she was confronted with a verypale young man standing beside a very new motor-car.
"You!" she said, and, as once before, the blood rushed to her face, andhis to his, answering.
This was the moment for whi
ch he had lived for weeks--and they shookhands like strangers! She was grave and cold. What would her first wordsbe?
"But I said Thursday," she said.
He looked like a criminal detected in a larceny.
"_I_ said Tuesday," he told her. "Do you mind?"
In his anticipations of this moment he had always counted on a mutualwave of gladness in their reunion, in which all doubts should beresolved and all explanations be easy. Now, he himself felt awkward as aschool-boy. And he noted in her a quite inexplicable restraint andembarrassment, although she was certainly saying that she did not mind,and that it did not matter at all.
"Where were you going?" he asked, mechanically, just for something tosay as they stood there by the motor, jostled by all the people who hadbeen seeing other people off.
"To my hotel, to pack and to write to you, as I said I would."
"Shall I go away and wait for the letter?" he asked, feeling that teaand toast would have done well enough.
"No. Don't be silly!" she said.
Now that the flush had died from her face he saw that it was paler andthinner. She saw in him a curious hardness. It was one of those momentswhen the light of life has gone out and there is nothing to be said thatis not futile and nothing to be done that is of any use.
"It's a new car!" she said. "Yours?"
"Yes," he answered.
She wore a silky, soft-brown, holland-colored dress and a white hat withsome black velvet about it and a dark rose. A wine-colored scarffluttered about her, and in spite of her paleness and thinness she wasmore beautiful than ever and far more dear.
"Do you like the car?" he added, stupidly.
"Very much," she said, without so much as glancing at it. She looked up."Well, what are we going to do?" she asked, almost crossly.
"Whatever you like."
"Oh, dear!" her voice was plaintive. "You must have had _some_ idea oryou wouldn't have come to-day instead of Thursday. Hadn't you any idea,any scheme, any plan?"
"Yes," he said, "but it does not matter; I'll do anything you say."
"Oh, well," she said, "if you won't tell me your plans--" and shesketched the gesture of one who turns away and goes on her way alone.
"But I will," he said, quickly. Yet still he spoke like a very stupidchild saying a lesson which it does not quite know. "I will tell you--Ithought if you liked the car we might just get in and drive off--"
"Where?"
"Oh, just anywhere," he said, and hastened to add, "but I see now howsilly it was. Of course I ought to have written and explained. Surprisesare always silly, aren't they?"
And he felt as one who sits forlorn and feels the cold winds blowthrough the ruined arches of a castle in Spain. He had not read herletter as she had meant him to read it. Everything was different.Perhaps, after all, she did not--never had--he had deceived himself,like the fatuous fool he was.
"I ought to have thought," he blundered. "Of course you would not careto go motoring in that beautiful gown--and that hat--that makes you looklike the Gardener's Daughter--'a sight to make an old man young'"--headded, recovering a very little--"and no coat! But I did buy a coat."
He leaned over and pulled out of the car a mass of soft brown fur linedwith ermine. "Though, of course, it would have been better to ask you tochoose one--I expect it's all wrong," and he heaved up the furry foldshalf-heartedly, without looking at her. "I just thought you might nothave thought of getting one . . ." and his voice trailed away intosilence, a silence that hers did not break.
Slowly she put out her hand and touched the fur, still without speaking.Then he did look at her, and suddenly the light of life sprang up againand the world was illumined from end to end. For her face that had beenpale was pink as the wild rose is pink, and her mouth that had been sadwas smiling; in her eyes was all, or almost all, that he had hoped tosee there when, at last, after this long parting they should meet; andher hand was stroking the fur as if she loved it.
"It's the most beautiful coat in the world," she said, and her voice,like her face, was transfigured. She turned her shoulders to him that hemight lay the coat on them, slipped her arms into the sleeves, andwheeled to confront him, her face alight with a mingled tenderness andgaiety that turned him, for a moment, faint and giddy.
"You really like it, Princess?" he faltered.
"I love it," she made answer; "and now, my lord, will you take me inyour nice new motor-car to my unworthy hotel, that I may pay mymiserable bill and secure my despicable luggage? Even a princess, youknow, can't go to the world's end without a pair of slippers, a comb,and a clean pocket-handkerchief."
With that she was in the car, and he followed, gasping, in the suddenwave of enchantment that had changed the world. What had happened? Whyhad she suddenly changed? How had the cloud vanished? Whence had thecloud arisen?
His heart, or his vanity, or both, had been too bruised by the suddenblow to recover all in a minute. His brain, too, was stunned by the lackof any reason in what had happened. Why had she not been glad to seehim? Why had she so suddenly turned from a cold stranger to her veryself? What had worked the bad magic? Not, surely, the sight of a friendtwo days before she expected that sight? What had worked the goodmagic? It was not thinkable that any magic at all could be worked by afur coat or even by the foresight that had provided it. His mind busieditself with such questions and felt no pain in them because it knew thathis heart held in reserve, to be contemplated presently, the gloriousfact that the good magic had, somehow, been wrought. But he would notcall his heart into court yet. So that it was in silence that he drovethrough the steep streets. His own slight luggage was already at theback of the car, and when hers was added to it and they had left thetown behind he still said nothing but the few words needed to suchlittle matters as the disposing of the luggage and the satisfying of thehotel porter.
And when all the tall, stuccoed houses were left behind and they wererushing smoothly through the fresh morning, with the green sea on oneside and the green marshland on the other, still he did not speak andkept his eyes on the white ribbon of road unrolling itself before him.It was just as they passed the third Martello tower that her hand creptunder his arm. He took his from the steering-wheel for a moment to layit on hers, and after that his heart had its way, and the silence,though still unbroken, was no longer the cloak for anxiousquestionings, but the splendid robe of a tender, tremulous joy.
They sped on; through Dymchurch, where the great sea-wall is, and wherethe houses are built lower than the sea, so that the high tide lapsagainst the sea-wall level with the bedroom windows of the little housesthat nestle behind its strong shelter.
It was she who spoke then. "Isn't it a dear little place?" she said."Wouldn't you like to live in a Martello tower? They have one beautifulbig room with a Norman-looking pillar in the middle, and a down-stairspart for kitchens, and an up-stairs, where the big gun is, that youcould roof in for bedrooms. I should like a Martello! Don't you want tobuy one? You know they built them to keep out Napoleon--and the canal aswell--but no one uses them now. They just keep fishing-nets in them andwheelbarrows and eel-spears."
"Let's buy the haunted one," he said, and hoped that his voice wassteady, for it was not of haunted towers that he desired to speak. "Asoldier's ghost walks there; the village people say 'it's one of themthere Roman soldiers that lived here when them towers was built in oldancient Roman times.'"
She laughed. "You know Dymchurch, then? Isn't it nice when people knowthe same places? Almost as nice as it is when they've read the samebooks."
But the silence was not broken, only lifted. Her hand crept a littlefarther into the crook of his arm.
It was as they passed the spick-and-span white-painted windmill at NewRomney that he said: "Don't you think it would be nicer to buy awindmill? There are four stories to that, and you can shift the top onearound so that your window's always away from the wind."
"Yes," she said, "we really ought to buy a windmill."
The "we" lay warm at his heart u
ntil they came near Rye that stands uponits hill, looking over the marshes to the sea that deserted it so manyyears ago.
"There's a clock in Rye church that Sir Walter Raleigh presented to thetown," he said, instructively.
"And Henry James lived there," said she.
"Shall we have lunch at the Mermaid Tavern? Or would you rather have apicnic? I've got a basket."
"How clever of you! Of course we'll have the picnic. And it's quiteearly. How beautifully the car is going!"
"Yes, isn't she?"
"Has she a name yet?"
"No. You must christen her."
"I should call her Time, because she flies so fast."
"You'd have to particularize. All time doesn't fly."
"No," she said, "ah, no! And she ought to have a splendid sort of name,she is so magnificently triumphant over space and time. Raleigh wouldhave called her the 'Gloriana.'"
"So will we," said he. And they left Rye behind, and again the silencefolded them round, and still her hand lay close in the crook of his arm.
At Winchelsea she suddenly asked, "Where's Charles?"
"Charles," he said, gravely, "is visiting my old nurse. He is well andhappy--a loved and honored guest."
"The dear!" she said, absently. They were nearing Hastings before hespoke again, almost in a whisper, and this time what he said was what hemeant to say.
"Are you happy?" he asked.
And she said, "Yes!"
It was at Hurstmonceaux that they opened the picnicbasket--Hurstmonceaux, the great ruined Tudor castle, all beautiful inred brick and white stone. Less than a hundred years ago it was perfectto the last brick of it. But its tall old twisted red chimneys smoked.So a Hastings architect was called in. "I cannot cure your smokychimneys, sir," said he, "but with the lead and some of the bricks ofyour castle I can build you a really comfortable and convenient modernhouse in the corner of your park, and I pledge you my word as anarchitect that the chimneys of the new house sha'n't smoke." So he did,and they didn't. And Hurstmonceaux was turned from a beautiful house toa beautiful ruin, and no one can live there; but parties of sightseersand tourists can be admitted on Mondays and Thursdays for a fee ofsixpence a head, children half-price. All of which she read to him fromthe _Guide to Sussex_, as they sat in the grass-grown courtyard, wheremoss and wild flowers have covered the mounds of fallen brick.
"But this isn't Monday or Thursday," she said. "How did you get in?"
"You saw--with the big key, the yard of cold iron. I got special leavefrom the owner--for this."
"How very clever of you! How much better than anything _I_ could havearranged."
"Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley," he said, drawing the cork of theRuedesheimer. "I do hope you _really_ like lobster salad."
"And chicken and raspberries and cream, and everything. I like itall--and our dining-room--it's the most beautiful dining-room I everhad. I only thought of a wood, or a field, or perhaps a river, forThursday."
"You did mean to have a picnic for Thursday?"
"Yes, but this is much better. It's a better place than I could havefound, and besides--"
"Besides--?"
"It isn't Thursday."
When luncheon, a merry meal and a leisurely, was over, they leanedagainst a fallen pillar and rested their eyes on the beauty of greenfloor, red walls, and the blue sky roofing all. And above the skylarkssang.
"There's nothing between us now," he said, contentedly--"no cloud, nomisunderstanding."
"No," she answered, "and I don't want there ever to be anything betweenus. So I'm going to tell you about Chester--the thing that worried meand I couldn't tell. Do you remember?"
"I think I do," he said, grimly.
"Only you must promise you won't be angry."
"With you?" he asked, incredulously.
"No . . . with him . . . and you must try to believe that it is true.No, of course not; I don't mean you're not likely to believe what _I_say, but what he said."
"Please," he pleaded, "I'm a patient man, but. . . ."
So she told him the whole story of Mr. Schultz, and, at the end, waitedfor him to give voice to the anger that, from the very touch of his handon hers, she knew he felt. But what he said was:
"It was entirely my fault. I ought never to have left you alone for aninstant."
"You thought I was to be trusted," she said, a little bitterly, "and Icouldn't even stay where you left me. But you do believe what he said?"
"I'll try to," he answered. "After all, he needn't have saidanything--and if _you_ believe it-- Look here, let's never think of himor speak of him again, will you? We agreed, didn't we, that Mr. Schultzwas only a bad dream, and that he never really happened. And there'snothing now between us at all . . . no concealments?"
"There's one," she said, in a very small voice, "but it's so silly Idon't think I _can_ tell you."
"Try," said he. "I could tell of the silliest things. And after thatthere's one more thing I wish you'd tell me, if you can. You _are_happy, aren't you? You are glad that we're together again?"
"Yes," she said. "Oh yes!"
"And this morning you weren't?"
"Oh, but I was, I was! It was only-- That's the silly thing I want totell you. But you'll laugh."
"It wasn't a laughing matter to me."
"I know I was hateful."
"It was--bewildering. I couldn't understand why everything was all wrongand then, suddenly, everything was all right."
"I know--I was detestable. I can't think how I could. But, you see, Iwas disappointed. I meant to arrange for you to meet me at some verypretty place and I was going to have a very pretty luncheon. I'd thoughtit all out . . . and it was exactly the same as yours, almost, only Ishouldn't have known the name of the quite-perfect wine and, then . . .there you were, you know, and I hadn't been able to make things nice foryou."
"Was that really all, my Princess?"
"Yes, that was all."
"But still I don't understand why everything was suddenly all right."
"It was what you said. That made everything all right."
"What I said?"
"You see, I meant it all to be as pretty as I could make it, and I'd gota new dress, very, very pretty, and a new hat . . . and then you cameupon me, suddenly, in this old rag and last year's hat and scarf I onlywore because aunty gave them to me. And I felt caught, and defrauded,and . . . and dowdy."
"Oh, Princess!"
"And then you said . . . you said you liked my dress . . . so, then, itdid not matter."
It was then that he lifted her hand to hold it against his face as oncebefore he had held it, and silence wrapped them around once more--alovely silence, adorned with the rustle of leaves and grass and theskylark's passionate song.
XX
THE END
THE memory of luncheon died away and the picnic-basket, again appealedto, yielded tea. They had explored the towers, and talked of Kenilworth,the underground passages, and talked of the round tower of Wales. Andhalf their talk was, "Do you remember?" and, "Have you forgotten?" Theearly days of the incredible honeymoon had been days of exploration,each seeking to discover the secrets of that unknown land, each other'smind and soul; this day of reunion was one gladly given over to thecontemplation of the memories they had together amassed. It was a daydedicated to the counting of those treasures of memory which they nowheld in common, treasures among which this golden day itself would, alltoo soon, have to be laid aside to be, for each of them, forever, thechief jewel of that priceless treasury.
It was when they were repacking the picnic-basket that they firstnoticed how the color had gone out of the grass, that was their carpet,and how the blue had faded from the sky, that was their roof. The dayhad changed its mind, after all. Having been lovely in its youth andglorious in its prime, it had, in its declining hours, fallen a prey tothe grayest melancholy and was now very sorry for itself indeed.
"Oh dear!" said she, "I do believe it's going to rain."
Even as she s
poke the first big tears of the dejected day fell on thelid of the teapot.
"We must hurry," he said, briskly. "I can't have my princess getting wetthrough and catching cold in her royal head. Run for it, Princess! Runto the big gateway!"
She ran; he followed with the basket, went out to cover the seats of hiscar with mackintosh rugs and put up the hood, and came back, dampish, todiscuss the situation. They told each other that it was only a shower,that it couldn't possibly, as they put it, have "set in." But it had;the landscape framed in the arch of the gateway lost color moment bymoment, even the yellow of the gorse was blotted and obscured; the rain,which at first had fallen in a fitful, amateurish sort of way, settleddown to business and fell in gray, diagonal lines, straight and sharp asramrods.
"And it's getting late," he said, "and your Highness will be hungry."
"We've only just had tea," she reminded him.
"Ah, but we've got some way to go," he told her.
"Where _are_ we going?"
"I had thought," he said, "of going to a place beyond Eastbourne; . . .my old nurse lives there. She's rather fond of me; . . . she'll havegotten supper for us. I thought you'd like it. It's a farm-house, rathera jolly one, and then I thought, if you liked, we could drive back tothe Eastbourne hotel by moonlight."
"That would have been nice."
"But there won't be any moonlight. Perhaps we'd better go straight tothe hotel."
"But your nurse will expect you."
"I can telegraph."
"But she'll be so disappointed."
"Why didn't I get a car that would shut up and be weather-tight? Therain will drift under that hood like the deluge."
She laughed. "A little rain won't hurt us."
"Your beautiful hat!"
"I'll tie my ugly scarf around my head and put my beautiful hat underthe rug. Come, don't let us disappoint your old nurse. No! It's notgoing to leave off; it's only taking breath to go on harder than ever."
It was said afterward that never, in the memory of the oldestinhabitant, had there been such a storm of rain in those parts--rainwithout thunder, rain in full summer, rain without reason and withoutrestraint. The rain drifted in, as he had said it would, and abruptly awild wind arose and tore at the hood of the car, flapped her scarf inher eyes, and whipped their faces with sharp, stinging rain. He stoppedat the village inn and brought her out ginger-brandy in a little glassshaped like a thistle-flower, "to keep the cold out." Also he went intothe post-office and bought peppermint bull's-eyes, "to keep us warm," hesaid. "How admirably fortunate that we both like peppermint!" And thejourney began in earnest, up hills that were torrents, through hollowsthat were ponds, where the water splashed like a yellow frill from theirwheels as they rushed through it. One village street was like a river,and the men were busy with spades, digging through the hedge-bankschannels by which the water might escape into the flooded fields.
And so, along through Pevensey, where the great Norman castle stillstands gray and threatening, through Eastbourne, like an ant-heap wherethe ants all use umbrellas, and, at long last, out on to the downs. Herhands were ice-cold with the rain and the effort of holding mackintoshrugs about herself and him. Her hair was blown across her eyes, thelash of rain was on her lips. Breathless, laughing for the joy of thewild rush through wind and water, they gained the top of Friston Hill,where the tall windmill is, and the pond and the sign-post and thesmall, gray, quiet church. And here, as suddenly as it had begun, therain ceased; the clouds drifted away.
"As though some great tidy angel had swept them up with his wings," saidshe.
The sea showed again, gray with chalk stolen from the cliffs, and whitewith the crests of waves left angry by the wind. Under the frowningpurple clouds in the west glowed a long line of sullen crimson, and theywent on along the down road in the peace of a clear, translucenttwilight. Below them, in a hollow, shone lights from a little house.
"Wasn't it somewhere here," she asked him, "that you left me and Ididn't stay?"
"Yes," he said, "somewhere here."
And then they had reached the house--not so little, either, when youcame close to it--and there were steady lights shining through the lowerwindows, and, in the upper rooms, the fitful, soft glimmer of firelight.The car stopped at the wooden gate from which a brick path led to thefront door, hospitably open, showing gleams of brass and old mahoganyin a wide hall paved with black-and-white checkered marble.
He peeled the streaming waterproof from her shoulders and gave her hishand for the descent. Side by side they passed down the wet path betweendripping flower-beds, but at the threshold he stepped before her,entered the house, and turned to receive her.
"Welcome!" he said, caught her by the elbows, and lifted her lightlyover the threshold.
"Why did you do that?" she asked, breathless and smiling through thedrift of wet, disordered tresses.
"It's an old custom for welcoming a princess," he said.
The old nurse came from the kitchen, rustling in stiff print and whiteapron.
"Oh, Master Edward, sir," she said, beaming, "I never thought you'd comein all this rain, not even when I got the telegraph. Nicely, ma'am,thanking you kindly and hoping you're the same," she said, in answer tothe greeting and the hand that the girl offered. "And your good lady,Master Edward, she must be wet through, but I've got a lovely fire inher room, if you'll come along with me, ma'am, and I'll bring up somehot water in two ticks."
So now, after the wind and the rain and the car, the girl finds herselfin a long, low, chintz-curtained room where a wood fire burns on an openhearth and a devoted nurse of his is pulling off wet shoes and offeringcups of tea and hot water.
"And are you quite sure there ain't nothing more I can do for you,ma'am, for I'm sure it's a pleasure?"
The girl, left alone at last, found herself wondering. He must have feltvery sure of her, surely, to have brought her thus to his nurse, as if. . . as if their marriage had been a real marriage, like other people's.
"Well, and why shouldn't he be sure of me?" she asked herself. "I'm sureof him, thank God!"
The appointments about her were so charming, all so perfectly in keepingwith one another and with the room that held them, that she foundherself making a comfortable, complete, and ceremonious toilette. Shehad with her, by a fortunate accident, as she told herself, a dress ofsoft, cream-colored India muslin, fine as gauze. But when she looked atherself in the glass she said, "Too white . . . it's like awedding-dress," and sought for some color to mitigate the dress's bridalsimplicity. There was no scarf that quite stifled criticism, but therewas the Burmese coat, long and red, with gold-embroidered hems a footdeep. She slipped it over the white gown and was satisfied.
She thought of the morning when she had last worn the Burmese coat, and"He liked the red rose," she said, as she put it on. When she wasdressed she sat down in the great arm-chair before the fire and rested,tasting the simple yet perfect luxury of it all. She did not know howlong she sat there, and reverie had almost given place to dreaming whena tap at the door aroused her.
She opened it. Edward stood there.
"Shall we go down to supper?" he said, exactly as though they had beenat a dance. And, indeed, they might have been at a dance, as far astheir dress went, except that he wore a dinner-jacket in place of thetail-coat which dances demand.
He offered his arm, and she took it and they went together down theshallow, wide, polished, uncarpeted stairs on which the lamps from thecorridor above threw the shadows of the slender, elegant balustrades.
"What a beautiful house!" she said. "And how nice of you to makeyourself pretty for supper!"
"Well, we had to change into something, and I won't attack you with theobvious rejoinder. But you'll let me say, won't you, that you're like aprincess in a fairy-tale? Did your fairy godmother give you a hundreddresses at your christening, each one more beautiful than the other?"
"She gave me something," the girl answered--"a secret amulet. It'sinvisible, but it brings me good fo
rtune. It's brought me here," sheadded, "where everything is perfect. My room's lovely, and those stuffedsea-gulls over there . . . nothing else could have been absolutely rightin that recess. How odd that I never knew before how much I lovedstuffed sea-gulls," she added, meditatively.
He stopped in front of the sea-gulls. "I got a ring for you at Warwick,"he said, "only I didn't dare to ask you to take it. Will you take itnow? The other one was the symbol of something you didn't mean. Let thisone stand for--whatever you will."
Without a word she held out her hand, so he set the diamond and crystalabove the golden circlet.
"I am a fairy princess," she said then. "No one but a fairy princessever had such a ring as this. Thank you, my Prince."
With the word, planted on the hour like a flag, they went on.
The dining-room was paneled with beech, gray and polished. In the middlea round table spread with silver and glass, white lawn and white roses,shone like a great wedding-cake.
"Do you mind," he said, as he set the chair for her--"do you mind if wemake it another picnic and wait on ourselves? My old nurse was anxiousto get back to her babies--she's got five of them--so I ran her down inthe car."
"She lives in the village, then? I thought she lived here."
"I thought the five children might be rather too much for you,especially when you're so tired."
"But I'm not," she said, "and oh, what a pretty supper!"
The curtains were drawn, wax candles shone from Sheffield-platedcandlesticks on table and mantelpiece and gleamed reflected in china andsilver and the glass of pictures and bookcases. A little mellow fireburned on the hearth.
"What a darling room!" she said, "and how all the things fit it, everysingle thing, exactly right. They couldn't go any other way, possibly."
"You told me they would," he said, "at Warwick. I remember you told methey would fit in if one only loved them and gave them the chance. Idrink to you, Princess; and I know sparkling wine is extravagant; butto-day isn't every day, and it's only Moselle, which is not nearly soexpensive as champagne, and much nicer."
Raising their glasses, they toasted each other.
"But I thought," she said, presently--"I thought--there were to be noconcealments."
"No more there are."
"But this isn't. . . . Isn't this. . . . Surely that's the bookcase youbought at Warwick--and these chairs and those candlesticks."
"I own it, Princess; I would scorn to deceive you."
"Then this is _your_ house?"
"It is; just that."
"Only that? Is there nothing else that it is? Wasn't it once my house,for a very little while? Wasn't it here that you left me, that nightwhen I ran away and I met Mr. Schultz? . . . No, I forgot. . . . Ofcourse I didn't meet any one. . . . I mean when you came after me andfound me at Tunbridge Wells. Oh! Suppose you hadn't found me!"
"How am I to suppose the impossible? You couldn't be in the same worldwith me and I not find you. Yes, you are right, as always; this is thehouse. Did you ever try bananas with chicken? Do! They rhyme perfectly."
"Don't seek to put me off with bananas. Was the house yours when youbrought me here?"
"Yes; I had just bought it. All concealment is really at an end now. AndI am rather glad I did buy it, because this is certainly better than thecoffee-room of an inn, isn't it?"
"How proud he is of his house! And well he may be! And when did hearrange all this beautiful furniture?"
"When she banished him from London. It was something to do; and she doeslike it?"
"She does indeed. Have you furnished it all?"
"Not nearly all. I wanted your advice about the other parlor and thehousekeeper's room and--oh, lots of things. Yes, you are quite right inthe surmise which I see trembling on those lips. Mrs. Burbidge is goingto be our housekeeper. She's staying at old nurse's, ready to come inwhenever she's wanted. If any one else decides to keep house for me shecan be sewing-maid, or still-room maid, or lady-in-waiting to thehen-roost."
"I see," she said, crumbling bread and looking at him across the glassand the silver and the white flowers. "So this was the house! When I wasin the straw nest you made me I never thought the house could be likethis. I imagined it damp and desolate, with strips of torn paper--uglypatterns--hanging from the wall, and dust and cobwebs and mice, perhapseven a rat. I was almost sure I heard a rat!"
"Poor, poor little princess."
"Yes, I will!" she said, suddenly, answering a voice that was certainlynot his. "I don't care what you say, I _will_ tell him. Edward, when Iran away it wasn't only because I didn't want to be a burden and allthat--though that was true, too--the real true truth was that I wasfrightened. Yes, I was! I shivered in that straw nest and listened andlistened and listened, and held my breath and listened again, and I wasalmost sure I heard something moving in the house; and it was sovelvet-dark, and I had to get up every time I wanted to strike a match,because of not setting fire to the straw, and at last there were onlyfour matches left. And I kept thinking--suppose something should comecreeping, creeping, very slowly and softly, through the darkness, sothat I shouldn't know it until it was close to me and touched me! Icouldn't bear it--so I ran away. Now despise me and call me a coward."
But he only said, "My poor Princess, how could I ever have left youalone for a moment?" and came around the table expressly to cut just theright number of white grapes for her from the bunch in the silverbasket. Being there, his hand touched her head, lightly, as one mighttouch the plumage of a bird.
"How soft your hair is!" he said, in a low voice, and went back to hisplace.
When the meal was over, "Let's clear away," she said, "it won't look sodismal for your nurse when she comes in the morning."
"Let me do it," said he. "Why should you?"
"Ah, but I want to," she said. "And I want to see the kitchen."
And the kitchen was worth seeing, with its rows of shining brasses, itstall clock, its high chintz-flounced mantelpiece. When all was in order,when the table shone bare in its bright, dark mahogany, he mended thefire, for the evening was still chill with the rain, and drew up the bigchair for her to the hearth she had just swept. He stood a momentlooking down at her.
"May I sit at your feet, Princess?" he asked.
She swept aside her muslin and her gold embroideries to make a place forhim. The house was silent, so silent that the crackle of the wood on thehearth seemed loud, and louder still the slow ticking of the tall clockon the other side of the wall. Outside not a breath stirred, only nowand then came the tinkle of a sheep-bell, the sound of a hoof on thecobblestones of the stable across the yard, or the rattle of the ringagainst the manger as some horse, turning, tossed his head.
He leaned back against her chair and threw his head back until he couldlook at her face. The tips of her fingers touched his forehead lightlyand his head rested against her knee; and now he could not see her faceany more. Only he felt those smooth finger-tips passing across his browwith the touch of a butterfly caress.
"Are you happy?" he said, once again and very softly.
And once again she answered, "Yes!"
Her hand ceased its movement and lay softly on his hair. His hand cameup and found her other hand. For a long time neither spoke. Thensuddenly she said, "What is it?" for she had felt the tiniest movementof the head her hand rested on, a movement that told her he had beenabout to speak and had then thought, "Not now, not yet."
So she said, "What is it?" because she had a secret, and she feared thathe knew it.
Then he did speak. He said: "I have something to tell you; I hope youwill forgive me. I must tell you now. Ah! let your hand lie there whileI tell you. Princess, I have deceived you. If I did not think you wouldforgive me, I don't think I could tell you, even now."
"I could forgive you anything," she said, so low that he hardly knew heheard it.
"It is this," he said. "That marriage of ours--that mock marriage--ah,try to forgive me for deceiving you! It was a real marriage, my dear; Itricked you
into a real marriage. It seemed to be the only way not tolose you. It was a real marriage. You are my wife."
The clock ticked on in the kitchen, the fire crackled on the hearth,far on the down a sheep-bell tinkled and was still. He sat there,immobile, rigid, like a statue of a man, his heart beating a desperatetune of hope and fear. Could she forgive him? Dared he hope it? Thismoment, so long foreseen, held terrors he had not foretold for it. Wasit possible that this deceit of his should come between them, even now?He almost held his breath in a passion of suspense, and the moments fellpast slowly, slowly. He could bear it no longer. He sprang up, walkedacross the room, came back, leaned on the mantelpiece so that she couldnot see his face.
"Oh, Princess, oh, my dearest!" he said, brokenly, "don't say that youcan't forgive me."
She, too, had risen and stood beside him. Now she laid her hand on hisshoulder. "It's not that," she said. "I don't know how to tell you. I'venothing to forgive--unless you have, too."
He turned to meet her eyes, and they fell before his.
"Oh, Edward," she said, with a little laugh that was half tears, "don'tlook like that! My dear, I knew it all the time."
And there they were, clinging to each other like two children saved froma shipwreck.
"You knew?" he said at last.
"Of course I knew," she said.
They drew back to let their eyes meet in that look of incredulousgladness that lovers know when, at last, all barriers are down and truelove meets true love without veils or reservations.
"Thank God for this day," he said, reverently.
And at that a thunderous clamor at the house-door broke in on theirdream, a clatter and a clangor, a rattling of chains and a volley ofresonant reverberatory barks.
"Why, it's Charles!" he cried. "How could he know I was here?"
How, indeed? For it was indeed Charles, incredibly muddy and wet,bounding round in the room the moment the doors were opened, knockingover a chair, clattering the fire-irons, and coming to heavy anchor,with all four feet muddy, on the edge of her white gown.
"I must go and chain him up in the stable," he said, when Charles hadbeen fed with the remains of the supper. "You won't be afraid to be leftalone in the house, Princess, dear?"
"I sha'n't be afraid now," she said, caressing Charles's bullet head."You see, it's all different now. How could I be afraid in my own home?"
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
Page 42, "Her" changed to "her" (her to suggest it)
Page 116, "wier" changed to "weir" (the weir-pool below)
Page 197, hyphen added between "to" and "find"(stealth-and-blush-to-find-it-fame)
