Part 16

So now, after the wind and the rain and the car, the girl finds herself in a long, low, chintz-curtained room where a wood fire burns on an open hearth and a devoted nurse of his is pulling off wet shoes and offering cups 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 felt very 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 sure of him, thank God!"

The appointments about her were so charming, all so perfectly in keeping with one another and with the room that held them, that she found herself making a comfortable, complete, and ceremonious toilette. She had with her, by a fortunate accident, as she told herself, a dress of soft, cream-colored India muslin, fine as gauze. But when she looked at herself in the glass she said, "Too white . . . it's like a wedding-dress," and sought for some color to mitigate the dress's bridal simplicity. There was no scarf that quite stifled criticism, but there was the Burmese coat, long and red, with gold-embroidered hems a foot deep. 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 was dressed 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 how long she sat there, and reverie had almost given place to dreaming when a 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 been at a dance. And, indeed, they might have been at a dance, as far as their dress went, except that he wore a dinner-jacket in place of the tail-coat which dances demand.

He offered his arm, and she took it and they went together down the shallow, wide, polished, uncarpeted stairs on which the lamps from the corridor above threw the shadows of the slender, elegant balustrades.

"What a beautiful house!" she said. "And how nice of you to make yourself pretty for supper!"

"Well, we had to change into something, and I won't attack you with the obvious rejoinder. But you'll let me say, won't you, that you're like a princess in a fairy-tale? Did your fairy godmother give you a hundred dresses at your christening, each one more beautiful than the other?"

"She gave me something," the girl answered--"a secret amulet. It's invisible, but it brings me good fortune. It's brought me here," she added, "where everything is perfect. My room's lovely, and those stuffed sea-gulls over there . . . nothing else could have been absolutely right in that recess. How odd that I never knew before how much I loved stuffed 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 it now? The other one was the symbol of something you didn't mean. Let this one stand for--whatever you will."

Without a word she held out her hand, so he set the diamond and crystal above the golden circlet.

"I am a fairy princess," she said then. "No one but a fairy princess ever 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 middle a 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 we make it another picnic and wait on ourselves? My old nurse was anxious to get back to her babies--she's got five of them--so I ran her down in the 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-plated candlesticks on table and mantelpiece and gleamed reflected in china and silver and the glass of pictures and bookcases. A little mellow fire burned on the hearth.

"What a darling room!" she said, "and how all the things fit it, every single thing, exactly right. They couldn't go any other way, possibly."

"You told me they would," he said, "at Warwick. I remember you told me they would fit in if one only loved them and gave them the chance. I drink to you, Princess; and I know sparkling wine is extravagant; but to-day isn't every day, and it's only Moselle, which is not nearly so expensive as champagne, and much nicer."

Raising their glasses, they toasted each other.

"But I thought," she said, presently--"I thought--there were to be no concealments."

"No more there are."

"But this isn't. . . . Isn't this. . . . Surely that's the bookcase you bought 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 night when I ran away and I met Mr. Schultz? . . . No, I forgot. . . . Of course I didn't meet any one. . . . I mean when you came after me and found 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 world with me and I not find you. Yes, you are right, as always; this is the house. 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 you brought me here?"

"Yes; I had just bought it. All concealment is really at an end now. And I am rather glad I did buy it, because this is certainly better than the coffee-room of an inn, isn't it?"

"How proud he is of his house! And well he may be! And when did he arrange all this beautiful furniture?"

"When she banished him from London. It was something to do; and she does like it?"

"She does indeed. Have you furnished it all?"

"Not nearly all. I wanted your advice about the other parlor and the housekeeper's room and--oh, lots of things. Yes, you are quite right in the surmise which I see trembling on those lips. Mrs. Burbidge is going to be our housekeeper. She's staying at old nurse's, ready to come in whenever she's wanted. If any one else decides to keep house for me she can be sewing-maid, or still-room maid, or lady-in-waiting to the hen-roost."

"I see," she said, crumbling bread and looking at him across the glass and the silver and the white flowers. "So this was the house! When I was in the straw nest you made me I never thought the house could be like this. I imagined it damp and desolate, with strips of torn paper--ugly patterns--hanging from the wall, and dust and cobwebs and mice, perhaps even 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 certainly not his. "I don't care what you say, I _will_ tell him. Edward, when I ran away it wasn't only because I didn't want to be a burden and all that--though that was true, too--the real true truth was that I was frightened. Yes, I was! I shivered in that straw nest and listened and listened and listened, and held my breath and listened again, and I was almost sure I heard something moving in the house; and it was so velvet-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 only four matches left. And I kept thinking--suppose something should come creeping, creeping, very slowly and softly, through the darkness, so that I shouldn't know it until it was close to me and touched me! I couldn'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 you alone for a moment?" and came around the table expressly to cut just the right number of white grapes for her from the bunch in the silver basket. Being there, his hand touched her head, lightly, as one might touch the plumage of a bird.

"How soft your hair is!" he said, in a low voice, and went back to his place.

When the meal was over, "Let's clear away," she said, "it won't look so dismal 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, its tall clock, its high chintz-flounced mantelpiece. When all was in order, when the table shone bare in its bright, dark mahogany, he mended the fire, for the evening was still chill with the rain, and drew up the big chair for her to the hearth she had just swept. He stood a moment looking 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 for him. The house was silent, so silent that the crackle of the wood on the hearth seemed loud, and louder still the slow ticking of the tall clock on the other side of the wall. Outside not a breath stirred, only now and then came the tinkle of a sheep-bell, the sound of a hoof on the cobblestones of the stable across the yard, or the rattle of the ring against the manger as some horse, turning, tossed his head.

He leaned back against her chair and threw his head back until he could look at her face. The tips of her fingers touched his forehead lightly and his head rested against her knee; and now he could not see her face any more. Only he felt those smooth finger-tips passing across his brow with 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 came up and found her other hand. For a long time neither spoke. Then suddenly she said, "What is it?" for she had felt the tiniest movement of the head her hand rested on, a movement that told her he had been about to speak and had then thought, "Not now, not yet."

So she said, "What is it?" because she had a secret, and she feared that he knew it.

Then he did speak. He said: "I have something to tell you; I hope you will forgive me. I must tell you now. Ah! let your hand lie there while I tell you. Princess, I have deceived you. If I did not think you would forgive me, I don't think I could tell you, even now."

"I could forgive you anything," she said, so low that he hardly knew he heard 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; I tricked you into a real marriage. It seemed to be the only way not to lose 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 desperate tune of hope and fear. Could she forgive him? Dared he hope it? This moment, so long foreseen, held terrors he had not foretold for it. Was it 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 fell past slowly, slowly. He could bear it no longer. He sprang up, walked across the room, came back, leaned on the mantelpiece so that she could not see his face.

"Oh, Princess, oh, my dearest!" he said, brokenly, "don't say that you can't forgive me."

She, too, had risen and stood beside him. Now she laid her hand on his shoulder. "It's not that," she said. "I don't know how to tell you. I've nothing 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't look like that! My dear, I knew it all the time."

And there they were, clinging to each other like two children saved from a 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 incredulous gladness that lovers know when, at last, all barriers are down and true love 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 their dream, a clatter and a clangor, a rattling of chains and a volley of resonant 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, knocking over 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 had been fed with the remains of the supper. "You won't be afraid to be left alone 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

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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)