Part 5

"Any one else lunching here to-day?" he asked, restraining Charles.

"Mostly over by now, sir," said the waiter. "That dog--dangerous, ain't he, sir?"

"Not a bit," said Edward; "he only took a fancy to you."

"Wouldn't let me pass--like," said the waiter.

"Only his play," said Edward. "He merely wants his dinner. You've been rather a long time bringing his biscuits. I expect he thought you'd got them in your pocket."

"Sorry, sir," the waiter said, and explained that, being single-handed at that hour, he had had to attend to the other party's lunch, "in the garden, sir," he added, "though why the garden when everything's nice and ready in here--to say nothing of earwigs in your glass, and beetles, and everything to be carried half a mile--" He ceased abruptly.

"I should like to see the garden," said Edward, "while I'm waiting."

"Lunch ready directly, sir," said the waiter. "Hardly worth while to have it out there now, sir--"

"Which way?" Edward asked, and was told. He went through the hall, under a vine-covered trellis, and the garden blazed before him--a really charming garden, all green and red and yellow; beyond the lawn was an arbor with a light network of hops above it. In that arbor was a white-spread table. There was also movement; people were seated at the table.

Edward stood in the sunshine between two tall vases overflowing with nasturtiums and lobelias and opened his letter.

"Good-by," it said, "and thank you a thousand times. I shall never forget your kindness. But when I had time to think I saw that it wasn't fair to you. But you showed me the way out of the trap. And, now I am free, I can go on by myself. I don't want to drag you into any bother there may be. It would be a poor return for your kindness."

Initials followed--"K. D."

Mr. Basingstoke dragged at the chain of Charles, who was already gardening industrially in a bed of begonias, and walked straight to the arbor. It could not, of course, be she whose skirt he saw through the dappled screen of leaf and shadow. The waiter would never have called her a "party"--still, one might as well make sure before one began to make inquiries of the hotel people. So he walked around to the arbor's entrance and looked in. A man and woman were seated with a little table between them; coffee, peaches, and red wine announced the meal's completion. The man was a stranger. The woman was Herself. She raised her eyes as he darkened the doorway and they stared at each other for an instant in a stricken silence. It was a terrible moment for Edward. Recognition might be the falsest of false steps. On the other hand. . . . The question was, of course, one that must be left to her to decide. The man with her was too young to be her father; he might, of course, be an uncle or a brother. Untimely recognition on Edward's part might mean the end of all things. It was only a moment, though an incredibly long one. Then she smiled.

"Oh," she said, "here you are!" And before Edward had time to wonder what his next move was, or was expected to be, she had turned to her companion and said, "This is my brother; he will be able to thank you better than I can for your kindness."

The stranger, a strongly built man with blue eyes and a red neck, looked from one to the other. It may have been Mr. Basingstoke's fancy, but to him it seemed that the stranger's glance was seeking that elusive thing, a family likeness. His look said that he did not find it. His voice said,

"Not at all. Delighted to have been of the slightest service."

"What's happened?" asked Edward, feeling his way.

"Why," she hastened to explain, "when you didn't turn up I started to walk, and I didn't put on sensible shoes." A foot shod in a worn satin slipper crept out to point the confession and vanished at once. "And I sat down on a heap of stones to wait for you. And then this gentleman came by and offered me a lift. And I couldn't think what had become of you--and you know how important it was to get to London--so, of course, I was most grateful. And then something went wrong with the motor, so we stopped here for lunch--and I can't think how you found me--but I'm so glad you did. And all's well that ends well."

Edward felt that he was scowling, and all his efforts could not smooth out the scowl. She was patting Charles and looking at Charles's master.

"We are very much indebted to you, sir," said Edward, coldly.

"Nothing, I assure you," said the gentleman with the red neck. "Only too happy to be of service to Miss--er--"

"Basingstoke," said Edward, and saw in her eyes that he had not done the right thing. "I suppose you forgot to write to Aunt Emily and Uncle James," he said, seeking to retrieve the last move.

"Indeed I didn't," she said, with plain relief. "I wrote directly I got here, and gave them to the waiter to post."

Another silence longer than the first was broken by the waiter, who came to announce that the gentleman's lunch was ready in the coffee-room. The other gentleman--red-necked--asked for his bill.

While the waiter was gone for it, Edward put a sovereign on the table. "For my sister's share," he said.

The red-necked gentleman protested.

"You know," she said, in a low voice, "I said I should pay my share."

The red-necked gentleman rose. "I will tell them," he said, "to make out your bill separately. And now, if I cannot be of any further service to you, I think I'll be getting on. Good day to you."

"Good day," said Edward, "and thank you for your kindness to my sister."

"Good-by," said she, "and thank you a thousand times." She held out her hand. He bowed over it and went away through the sunlit garden, resentment obvious in every line of his back.

Neither Edward nor the girl spoke. There was no sound in the arbor save the convulsive gulpings of Charles absorbing the sponge fingers which she absently offered him from among the scattered dessert.

It was she who broke the silence. "I did write," she said.

"Yes. I got the letter." He laid it and Miss Davenant's on the table. "What does it mean?"

"What it says--"

"You won't let _me_ help you--but you let that man, right enough."

"What was I to do? The important thing was to get away."

"What tale did you tell that man?"

"The truth."

He scowled with bitter skepticism.

"I did. Except that you're not my brother. I told him I'd missed you and that I'd got to get to London to-day as early as I could. And he was awfully nice and kind."

"I can well believe it."

"_Nice_ and kind," she repeated, with emphasis. "And you were most horrid to him. And I do think you're unkind--"

"I don't mean to be," said Edward, "and it's not my province to be horrid and unkind to you, any more than it is to be nice and kind. In this letter you say good-by. Am I to understand that you mean good-by--that I am to leave you, here--now?"

She did not answer, and there was that in her silence which laid a healing touch on his hurt vanity.

"If my manner doesn't please you," he went on, "do remember that you have brought a fairly solid Spanish castle about my ears and that I am still a little bewildered and bruised."

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I didn't think."

"You see," he went on, "I thought I'd found a girl who wasn't just like other girls. . . ."

"I'm afraid I am," she said--"just."

"I thought that you were brave and truthful and strong--and that you trusted me; and then I find you haven't the courage to stick to the way we planned; you haven't even the courage to wait for me and tell me you've changed your mind. You bolt off like a frightened rabbit and make friends with the first bounder who comes along. I was a fool to think I could help you. You don't need my help. Anybody else can help you just as well. Good-by--"

"Good-by," she said, not looking up. And he perceived that she was weeping. Also that he was no longer angry.

"Don't!" he said, "oh, don't! Do forgive me. I don't know what I've said. But I didn't mean it, whatever it was, if it's hurt you. I'll do just what you say. Shall I call that chap back?"

She shook her head and hid her face in her hands.

"Forgive me," he said again. "Oh, don't cry! I'm not worth it. Nothing's worth it. Charles, you brute, lie down." For Charles, in eager sympathy with beauty in distress, was leaping up in vain efforts to find and kiss the hidden face.

"Don't scold him," she said. "I like him." And Edward could have worshiped her for the words. "And, oh," she said, after a minute, "don't scold me, either! I'm so frightfully tired and everything's been so hateful. I thought you'd understand, and that if you cared to find me, you would."

"How could I? You sent no address."

"I did. On the handkerchief. . . . But I suppose you couldn't read it."

"And still," he said, but quite gently now, "I don't understand--"

"Don't you? Don't you see, I thought when you'd had time to think it over you'd be sorry and wish yourself well out of it, and yet feel obliged to go on. And I thought how horrid for you. And how much easier for you if you just thought I'd changed my mind. And then I set out to walk to Seaford and take the train. And then my shoes gave out, and I was so awfully afraid of aunt coming along that way, so that when Mr. Schultz came along it seemed a perfect godsend."

"So that's his foreign and unhappy name?" said Edward. "How did he come to tell it to you?"

"He had to," she said. "I borrowed ten pounds of him. I couldn't have gone to Claridge's without money, you know."

"Why Claridge's?"

"It's the only hotel that I know. And I had to have his name and address to send it back."

"May I send it back this afternoon?" Edward asked.

"Yes--"

"And you take back all you said in the letter? You don't mean it?"

"Not if you didn't want me to."

"And it wasn't really only because you thought I. . . ."

"Of course. At least. . . ."

"Well, then," said Mr. Basingstoke, happily, "it never happened. I fetched you as we arranged. We go on as we arranged. And Mr. Schultz is only a bad dream to which I owe ten pounds."

"And you're not angry? Then will you lend me some money to buy a hat, and then we will go straight on to London."

"Yes," said Edward, controlling Charles, who had just seen the peaches and thought they looked like something to eat. "But--if you won't think me a selfish brute I should like to say just one thing."

"Yes--" She wrinkled her brows apprehensively.

"Neither Charles nor I have had any luncheon. Would you very much mind if we--"

"Oh, how hateful of me not to remember!" she said. "Let me come and talk to you and feed Charles. What a darling he is! And you do forgive me, and you do understand? And we're friends again, just as we were before?"

"Yes. Just as we were."

"It's curious," she said, as they went back through the red and green and blue and yellow of the garden, "that I feel as though I knew you ever so much better, now we've quarreled."

Mr. Schultz had, it appeared, after all, paid for the two luncheons. Edward sent him two ten-pound notes and the sovereign, "with compliments and thanks."

"And that's the end of poor Mr. Schultz," she said, gaily, and, as it proved, with complete inaccuracy.

VIII

THE ROAD TO ----

THE drive to London was a silent one. Mr. Basingstoke did not want to talk; he had come on one of those spaces where the emotions sleep, exhausted. He felt nothing any more, neither anxiety as to the future nor pleasure at the nearness of the furry heap beside him under which, presently, his companion slumbered peacefully as a babe in its cot. His mind was blank, his heart was numbed; it was not till the car reached the houses spilled over the pretty fields like ugly toys emptied out of the 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 lifted it, and he saw her little face softly flushed with sleep, lying very near him, and his heart seemed all at once to come to life again with an awakening stab of something that was not affection or even passion, but a kind of protective exultation--a deep, keen longing to take care of, to guard, to infold safely from all possible dangers and sorrows her who slept so happy-helpless beside him. Then his mind awoke, too, and he found 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 a soft touch of intimacy to their friendship. Further, he now in his heart had the memory that, for an instant, his thoughts had wronged her, that he had suspected her of wavering, almost of light-mindedness, though his thought had taken no such definite lines even to itself in its secret heart--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 lions like Schultz become shy and safe. Imagine a subject who has suspected his princess of being, perhaps, not a princess at all, but one masquerading in the robes and crown of a princess . . . when he shall find her to be indeed royal, to what an ecstasy of loyalty will not his heart attain? So it was now with Mr. Basingstoke. He caught the corner of the fur and reverently covered the face of his princess.

And now the houses were thick and the shops began to score the streets with lines of color. He stopped at one of those big shops where they sell 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 other things. 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 thoughts when you're asleep."

Then she laughed. "Well, you must give me the money," she said, holding out a bare, unashamed hand, "because I haven't any."

He composed himself to wait, and he waited a long time, a very, very long 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 first glance, seemed. He watched the doorway, and his eye became weary of the useless snippets of lace and silk at something eleven-three with which the windows at each side of the door were plastered. He noticed the people who went in, and the many more who waited outside and longed for these absurd decorations--longed with that passion which, almost alone of the passions, a girl may display to the utmost immoderation without fear of censure or of shame. He observed the longing in the eyes of little, half-developed, half-grown girls for this or that bit of worthless frippery; he would have liked to call to them and say, "My dear children, do go in and buy yourself each a fairing, and let me pay." But he knew that so straightforward and simple a kindness would draw 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 titter together and look at him.

Then he got out of the car and went into the shop--they sold toys there as well as everything else--to buy something himself. He could not find exactly what he wanted--in shops crowded with glittering uselessnesses it is rarely that you can find the particular uselessness on which you have set your heart--but Tommy of the Five Bells had no fault to find with the big, brown-papered parcel which reached him by the next day's afternoon post. He could not imagine any soldiers more perfectly satisfying than these, no bricks more solid and square, no drafts more neatly turned, no dominoes more smoothly finished. To Mr. Basingstoke's old nurse the world seemed to hold nothing fairer than the lace collar and the violet-silk necktie. "Do me for Sundays for years," she said, putting them back in their tissue-paper and turning her attention to the box of sweets and the stockings for the children. The girl who sold Mr. Basingstoke the lace collar sniggered apart with a kindred sniggerer as she sold it to him, and delayed to make out his bill, but the other girl, almost a child, with a black bow tying her hair, sold him the stockings and was sympathetic and helpful.

"How many stockings ought a child to have, so as to have plenty?" he asked her, confidentially. At the lace-counter he had made his own choice, in stern silence.

"Three pairs," said the girl; "that's one in wear, one in the wash, and one in case of accidents." She glanced through the glass door at the motor, and decided that he could afford it. "But, of course, four would be better."

"I should think six would be best," said he, "that's one for each day in the week, and on Saturday they can stay in bed while their mother does the washing."

"You don't wash on Saturdays," said the girl, her little, plain face lighting up with a smile. She saw the eye of the shop-walker on her and added, nervously, "Shall we say six, then, sir; and what size? I mean what 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's five sixes?"

"Thirty," the girl told him, with a glance at the shop-walker that was almost 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 some garters--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 up that'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 displeasure with the bill. "Anything more, sir?"

"I want some sweets," said Edward, and was directed to "the third shop on the left, through there."

It was not till two weeks later that a satined and beribboned box of sweets arrived by post for Miss Moore. "From Mary," said the legend within, and the postmark was Warwick. Mr. Basingstoke counted on every one's having at least one relation or friend bearing that commonest and most lovely of all names. And he was right. A distant cousin got the credit of the gift, which made the little apprentice happy for a day and interested for a week--exactly as Mr. Basingstoke had intended. His imagination pleased him with the picture of the sudden surprise of a gift, in that drab and subordinated life. By such simple means Mr. Basingstoke added enormously to his own agreeable sensations. And by such little exercises of memory as that which registered Miss Moore's name and the address of the shop he made those pleasures possible for himself. The sweets he bought on that first day of his elopement went to his nurse. He might have added more gifts, for the pleasure of spending money was still as new as nice, but the voice of Charles without drew him from the shop to settle a difference of opinion between that tethered 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 he felt the sight of her was worth waiting for. She wore now a white coat with touches of black velvet, and the hat was white, too, with black and a 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. All the ones they had were like Madge Wildfire--insane, wild, unrelated feathers 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 of parcels, and made rosetted dust-marks on the new cloak, her reception of these clumsy advances would have endeared her to any one to whom she was not already dear.

"Well," she said, tucking Charles in between them, setting the hat straight, and dusting the coat, all in one competent movement, "have you had 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 is that you should go, not to Claridge's, which is just the place where your relations will look for you, but to one of those large, comfortable hotels where strictly middle-class people stay when they come up to London on matters connected with their shops or their farms. I will give you 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. I don't propose to let you tramp in those worldly shoes." They were new and brown and soft to look at--as soft as other people's gloves, he thought.

"Don't dress for dinner," he said as they drew up in front of the Midlothian 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 for you."

The dress in which she rejoined him later was a walking-dress of dark blue 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 it was a Paris model--and, anyhow, it fits."