Part 6

He wanted to tell her that she looked adorable in it, and that she would look adorable not only in a Paris model, but in a Whitechapel one. But he didn't tell her this. Nor did he tell her much else. The dinner owed to her any brightness that it showed when shelved as a memory. She exerted herself to talk. And it was the talk of a lady to her dinner partner--light, gay, and sparkling, anything but intimate--hardly friendly, even; polite, pleasant, indifferent. He did not like it; he did not like, either, his own inability to carry on the duet in the key she had set, and at the same time he knew that he could not change the key. The surge of the world was round them again, even though it was only the world of the provincial haberdasher and the haberdasher's provincial wife. The smooth, swift passage of laden waiters across the thick carpets of the dining-room; the little tables gay with pink sweet-peas and rosy-hued lamps; the women in smart blouses, most of them sparkling beadily; the rare evening toilettes, worn in every case with an air of conscious importance, as of one to whom wearing evening dress was a rare and serious exception to the rule of life; the buzz of conversation curiously softer and lower in pitch than the talk at the Ritz and the Carlton--all made an atmosphere of opposition, an atmosphere in which all that appeared socially impossible--which, under the stars last night, had seemed natural, inevitable--the only thing to do. This world to which he had brought her had, at least, this in common with the world which dines at the Carlton and the Ritz, that it bristled with the negation of what last night had seemed the simplest solution in the world. But it had only seemed simple, as he now saw, because the solution had been arrived at out of the world. Here, beyond any doubt, was the antagonism to all that he and she had planned. This was the world where the worst scandal is the unusual--where it would be less socially blighting to steal another man's wife than to set off on a tramp with a princess to whom you were tied neither by marriage nor by kinship.

It was a lengthy silence in which he thought these things. She, in the silence, had been making little patterns with bread-crumbs till the waiter swept all away, made their table tidy, and brought the dessert. She looked up from the table-cloth just in time to see Edward smile grimly.

"What is it?" she asked, a little timidly.

"I was only thinking," he said, "what a two-penny halfpenny business we've made of life, with our electric light and our motors and our ugly houses and our civilization generally. A civilization replete with every modern inconvenience! In the good old days nobody would have minded a knight and a princess traveling through the world together, or even around the world, for that matter. Whereas now. . . ."

She looked at him, gauging this thought. And he knew that he had said enough to make a stupid woman say, "I thought you would want to back out of it." What would she say? For a moment she said nothing. Then, sure of herself as of him, she smiled and said:

"We're going to teach Nobody to mind . . . its own business."

And then he said what he had come near to being afraid she would say.

"You don't want to back out of it, then?" he said, and she shook her head.

"No," she answered, slowly, and then, after a pause, again, "No."

"You are willing to go through the wood with your faithful knight, Princess? He will be a faithful knight."

"Yes," she said, "I know."

And then suddenly he perceived what before had not been plain to him--that the elopement that had seemed to offer so royal a road to all that he really desired was not a road, but a barrier. That he was now in a position far less advantageous than that of a man who meets a girl all hedged around with the machinery of chaperonage, since, whereas the courtship may, where there is chaperonage, evade and escape it, where there is none the lover must himself supply its need--must, in fine, be lover and chaperon in one. Far from placing himself in a position where love-making would be easy, he had set himself where it was well-nigh impossible. He who courts a lady in her own home, surrounded by all the fences set up by custom and convention, can, at least, be sure that if his courtship be unwelcome it will be rejected. The lady need not listen unless she will. But when the princess rides through the wood with the knight whom she has chosen to be her champion she must needs listen if he chooses to speak. She can, of course, leave him and his championing, but what sort of championship is it which drives the princess back to the very dragon from which it rescued her? Edward saw, with dismal exactness, the intolerable impossibilities of the situation. They would go on--supposing her friends didn't interfere--as friends and comrades, brother and sister, she more and more friendly, he more and more tongue-tied, till at last every spark of the fire of the great adventure was trampled out by the flat foot of habit.

She might--and probably would, since men and women invariably misunderstand one another--believe his delicate reticences to be merely the indications of a waning interest, and construe knightly chivalry into mere indifference. If he made love to her--who could not get away from the love-making without destroying that which made it possible--he would be a presuming cad. If he didn't, what could she think but that he regretted his bargain? As he sat there opposite his princess, alone with her among the thickly thinning crowd, he wondered whether out of this any happiness could come to them.

When he had proposed the elopement he had meant marriage; the incurable temperamental generosity which had prompted him to offer her the help of the escape, on her own terms, now seemed to him the grossest folly. Yet how could he have held the pistol to her head, saying, "No marriage, no elopement."

Her voice broke his reverie. "I am very tired," she said. "I think I'll say good night. Do you mind?"

He almost fancied that her lip trembled a little, like a child's who is unhappy.

"Of course you're tired," he said, "and, I say, you don't mind my not having talked for the last few minutes? I've been thinking of you--nothing else but you."

"Yes," said she, "it all looks very different here, as you say. Perhaps it will look more different even than this to-morrow. Shall we start on our tramp to-morrow--or shall I just go back and let's forget we ever tried to do something out of a book? I think you will tell me honestly to-morrow whether you think I had better go back."

"To-morrow," he said, looking into her eyes, "I will tell you everything you wish to hear. We'll spend to-morrow in telling each other things. Shall we? Good night, Princess. Sleep well, and dream of the open road."

"I shall probably," said the princess, "dream of my aunts."

IX

THE MEDWAY

"IF you had a map and I could put my finger on any place I chose, I should open my eyes the least bit in the world and put my finger on the Thames," she said at the breakfast-table, where she had for the first time sat opposite to him and poured his coffee, looking as demurely domestic as any haberdasher's wife of them all.

"The Thames?" he said. "I know a river worth two of that. . . ."

"A river that's worth two of the Thames must be the river of Paradise."

"So it is," he assured her, "and probably the Thames is infested by your relations. For a serious and secret conference such as we propose to ourselves there is no place like the Medway."

She had thought the Medway to be nothing but mud and barges, and said so.

"Ah, that's below Maidstone. Above-- But you'll see. Wear a shady hat and bring that conspirator-looking cloak you wore last night--the fine weather can't possibly last forever. Twenty minutes for breakfast, half an hour for a complete river toilette, and we catch the ten-seventeen from Cannon Street, easily."

"I haven't a complete river toilette. And you? I thought you left all your possessions at the Five Bells--"

"I am not the homeless orphan you deem me," he said, accepting kidneys and bacon from a sleepy waiter. "I have a home, though a humble one, and, what's more, it's just around the corner--Montague Street, to be exact. Next door to the British Museum. So central, is it not? Some inward monitor whispered to me, 'She will want to go on the river,' and I laid out the complete boating-man's costume, down to white shoes with new laces."

"Did you really think I should think of the river? How clever of you."

"I am clever," he said, modestly, "and good. It is better to be good than clever. That is why I cannot conceal from you that I never thought of the river till you spoke about it. But I really have some flannels, little as you may think it, and we'll stop and get some boating-shoes for you, if you want them. Only you'll have to buy them with lightning speed and change them at Yalding."

"Is that the name of the place? How lovely! If I had a title I should like it to be Lady Yalding--or the Duchess of Yalding. Her Grace the Duchess of Yalding will give you some more coffee, if you like."

"Why come down in the world? You were a princess last night."

"Princess of where?" she asked.

"We will give a morning to a proper definition of the boundaries of your territory one of these days. Meantime, are you aware that I don't even know the name by which the common world knows you?"

"I know you don't," she said, "and I'd much rather you didn't. If I'm to be a princess I'll be the Princess of Yalding, and if she has to have another name we'll choose a new one. I should like everything to be new for our new adventure."

They got the shoes and they caught the train, and, now the little gritty walk from Yalding station was over, they stood on the landing-stage of the Anchor, looking down on a sort of Sargasso Sea of small craft that stretched along below the edge of the Anchor garden.

"The canoe would be nice," she said.

"It would not be nice with Charles," he said, firmly. "Charles's first conscious act after we became each other's was to upset me out of a canoe, to the heartless delight of three picnic parties, four pairs of sweethearts, two dons, and a personal friend."

"If Charles is to come _in_ the boat," she said, "perhaps that fishing-punt. . . ."

"Water within, water without," he said, spurning the water-logged punt. "This little sculling-boat will do. No--no outriggers for us, thank you," he said to the Anchor's gloomy boatman, who came toward them like a sort of fresh-water Neptune with a boat-hook for trident.

"He might, at least, have smiled," she said, as the sour-faced Neptune man turned toward the boat-house. "I hope he'll give us red cushions and a nice, 'arty sort of carpet."

"You get no carpets here," he assured her. "Lucky if we have so much as a strip of cocoanut matting. This is not the languid, luxurious Thames. On the Medway life is real, life is earnest. You mostly pull a hundred yards, anchor and fish; or if you do go farther from harbor you open your own locks, with your own crowbar. The best people are always a bit shabby. You and I, no doubt, are the cynosure of every eye. Yes, that'll do; we'll put the basket in the stern, then the ginger-beer here. We'll put the cloak over it to keep it cool. All right, thank you. Crowbar in? Right. Throw in the painter. Right."

Neptune pushed them with his trident and the boat swung out into midstream. A few strokes took them out of sight of the Anchor, its homely, flowered garden, its thatched house, its hornbeam arbor; they passed, too, the ugly, bare house that some utilitarian misdemeanant has built next to it, then nothing but depths of willow copse, green and gray, and the grassy curves of the towing-path where the loosestrife grows, and the willow herb, the yellow yarrow, and the delicate plumes of the meadow-sweet.

"'Blond loosestrife and red meadow-sweet among, We tracked the shy Thames shore.'"

he quoted.

"It's like a passport," she said--"or finding that you haven't lost your ticket, after all--when people have read the same things and remembered them. But don't you love the bit that begins about 'the tempestuous moon in early June,' and ends up with the 'uncrumpling fern and scent of hay new-mown'? I wonder why it is that when people quote poetry in books you feel that they're Laura-Matilda-ish, and when they do it really you quite like it. Do you write poetry?"

He looked at her guiltily. "Look out to the left," he said; "there's an absolutely perfect thatched barn, and four oast-houses--you know, where they dry the hops, with little fires of oak chips. Have you ever been in an oast-house? We will some day--"

She was silent as the boat slipped past the old farm buildings, the old trees, the long perfection of the barn, and the deep red and green of the mossy oast-house wall going down sheer to the smooth, brown water, and hung at crevice and cranny with little ferns and little flowers--herb-robert and stonecrop. The reflection, till his oars shattered it, was as perfect as the building itself, and she drew a deep breath and turned to look back as the boat slid past.

"You were right," she said, "it is a darling little river. And you _do_ write poetry, don't you?"

"Is this the confessional or the Medway?" he asked.

"I know you do," she said. "Of course you do--everybody does, as well as they can, I suppose; I can't, but I do," she added, encouragingly. "We will write poems for each other, on wet nights in the caravan, about Nature and Fate and Destiny, and things like that--won't we?"

The quiet river, wandering by wood and meadow, bordered by its fringe of blossoms and flowering grasses, the smooth backwaters where leaning trees touched hands across the glassy mirror, and water-lilies gleamed white and starry, the dappled shadows, the arch of blue sky, the gay sunshine, and the peace of the summer noon all wrought in one fine spell to banish from their thoughts all fear and dismay, all doubts and hesitations. Here they were, two human beings--young, healthy, happy--with all fair things before them and all sad things behind. It seemed to them both, at that moment, that they need ask nothing more of life than a long chain of days like this. They were silent, and each felt in the other's silence no embarrassment or weariness, but only a serene content. Even Charles, overcome by the spirit of the hour, was silent, slumbering on the matting between them, in heavy abandonment.

The perfection of their surroundings left them free to catch the delicate flavor of the wonderful adventure--a flavor which the dust and hurry of yesterday had disguised and distorted a little.

He looked at her and thought, "It is worth while--it is indeed worth while"--and knew that if only the princess were for his winning the moment of rashness which only yesterday he had almost regretted would be in its result the most fortunate moment of his life.

She looked at him, and a little fear lifted its head and stung her like a snake. What if he were to regret the adventure? What if he were to like her less and less--she put it to herself like that--while she grew to like him more and more? She looked at his eyes and his hands, and the way the hair grew on brow and nape, and it seemed to her that thus and not otherwise should a man's hair and eyes and hands be.

But they did not look at each other so that their eyes met till the boat rounded the corner to the weir-pool below Stoneham Lock. Then their eyes met, and they smiled, and she said:

"I am very glad to be here."

It seemed to her that she owed him the admission. He took it as she would have wished him to take it.

"I am glad you like my river," he said.

She was very much interested in the opening of the lock gates and deplored the necessity which kept her in the boat, hanging on to the edge of the lock with a boat-hook while he wielded the crowbar. The locks on the Medway are primitive in their construction and heavy to work. There are no winches or wheels or artful mechanical contrivances of weights and levers and cables. There are sluices, and from the sluice-gates posts rise, little iron-bound holes in them, holes in which the urgent nose of the crowbar exactly fits. The boatman leans indolently against the tarred, unshaped tree trunk whose ax-wrought end is the top of the lock gate; the tree trunk swings back above the close sweet-clover mat that edges the lock; the lock gates close--slow, leisurely, and dignified. Then the boatman stands on the narrow plank hung by chains to each lock gate, and with his crowbar chunks up the sluice, with a pleasant ringing sound of iron on iron, securing the raised sluice with a shining iron pin that hangs by a little chain of its own against the front of the lock gate, like an ornament for a gentleman's fob. If you get your hand under the pin and the sluice happens to sink, you hurt your hand.

Slowly the lock fills with gentle swirls of foam-white water, slowly the water rises, and the boat with it, the long gates unclose to let you out--slow, leisurely, dignified--and your boat sweeps out along the upper tide, smoothly gliding like a boat in a dream.

Thus the two passed through Stoneham Lock and the next and the next, and then came to the Round Lock, which is like a round pond whose water creeps in among the roots of grass and forget-me-not and spearmint and wild strawberry. And so at last to Oak Weir Lock, where the turtledoves call from the willow wood on the island where the big trees are, and the wide, sunny meadows where the sheep browse all day till the shepherd calls them home in the evening--the shepherd with his dog at his heels and his iron crook, polished with long use and stately as a crozier in a bishop's hand.

They met no one--or almost no one. At East Peckham a single rustic looked at them over the middle arch of the seven-arched bridge built of fine, strong stone in the days of the Fourth Edward, and at Lady White Weir a tramp gave them good day and said it was a good bit yet to Maidstone. He spat in the water, not in insolence, but contemplatively, and Edward gave him a silver token of good will and a generous pinch of dark tobacco, with a friendly, "Here's for luck."

"You're a gentleman," the tramp retorted, grudgingly, and spat again, and slouched off along the green path. These two were all. Not another human face did they see for all the length of their little voyage.

All the long and lovely way it was just these two and the river and the fields and the flowers and the blue sky and youth and summer and the sun.

At Oak Weir they put the boat through the lock, and under the giant trees they unpacked the luncheon-basket they had brought from the Midlothian--how far away and how incredibly out of the picture such a place now seemed!--and sat among the twisted tree roots, and ate and drank and were merry like children on a holiday. It was late when they reached the weir, and by the time the necessity of the return journey urged itself upon them the shadows were growing longer and blacker till they stretched almost across the great meadow. The shepherd had taken the sheep away, passing the two with a nod reserved, but not in its essence unfriendly. Edward had smoked a good many cigarettes, and they had talked a good deal. It was as he had said at their first meeting, they were like two travelers who, meeting, hasten to spread, each before the other, the relics and spoils of many a long and lonely journey.

"I wish we could have stayed here," she said at last. "If we had only had the sense to fold our tents, like the Arabs, and bring them with us, I suppose we could have camped here."

"It isn't only tents," he said; "it's all the elegancies of the toilette--brushes and combs and slippers. You must return to the _Caravansary_ that guards these treasures. The nine-fifty-five will do us. But we haven't much more than time. There's the boat to pay for and the basket to get to the station. Come, Princess, if we could stay here forever we would, but since we can't we won't stay another minute."

Once in the boat, and in the lock, she leaned back, holding the edge of the lock with the boat-hook, and with the other hand detaining Charles. She looked back dreamily on the day which had been, and she did not pretend that it had not been, the happiest day in her life. To be with one who pleased--he certainly did please--and to whom one's every word and look was so obviously pleasing! It is idle to deny that she felt smoothed, stroked the right way, like a cat who is fortunate in its friends. And now all days were to be like this. The crowbar began its chinking--once, twice--then a jarring sound, and a low but quite distinct "Damn!"

She started out of her dream.

"I beg your pardon," he was saying, "but I've caught my finger, like a fool. I can't do anything. Can you come here?"

"Of course." She stepped out of the boat. The water in the lock had hardly begun to subside. She took the painter and, holding it, went to him, Charles following with cheerful bounds. The sluice had slipped a little and its iron pin held his finger firmly clipped against the tarred wood below.

She did not cry out nor tremble nor do any of the things a silly woman might have done. "Tell me what to do," was all she said.

He told her how to hold the crowbar, how to raise the sluice so that the finger might be released. She did it all exactly and carefully. When the finger was released he wrapped his handkerchief around it.

"Does it hurt?" she said.

And he said, "Yes."

"You must put it in the water," she said. "You can't reach it here. Come into the boat."

He obeyed her. She came and sat by him in the stern--sat there quite silently. No "I'm so sorry!" or "Can't I do anything?" Her hand was on Charles's collar. His eyes were closed. His finger was badly crushed; the blood stained the water, and presently she saw it. She kept her eyes fixed on the spreading splash of red.

"You haven't fainted, have you?" she said at last. "It's getting very dark."

"No," he said, and opened his eyes. She raised hers, and both perceived one reason for the darkness--the boat had sunk nine feet or so. The dark, dripping walls of the lock towered above them. While he had fought his pain and she her sympathy the lock had been slowly emptying itself. They were at the bottom, or almost, and up those smooth walls there was no climbing out.

"Push the boat against the lower gate," he said; and as she obeyed he added, "I must try to climb up somehow. I'll pitch the crowbar up on shore first. Where is it?"

"I left it on the lock gate," she said. "Wasn't that right?"

"It doesn't matter," he told her; but even as he spoke the sluice, which the weight of the water had held in place after the pin had been removed, now, as the waters above and below it grew level with each other, fell into its place with a splash and an echoing boom, and with the shock the crowbar fell from its resting-place on the tarred ledge and disappeared in the water below.

"Lucky it didn't fall on us," he said, and laughed. "It's no use my climbing out now, Princess. I couldn't open the gate, anyhow. We're caught like two poor little rabbits in a trap--or three, if you count Charles--and here we must stay till some one comes along with a crowbar. I dare say there'll be a barge by and by. D'you mind very much?"

"Not a bit," she assured him, cheerfully. "It's all my fault, anyhow, and, besides, I enjoy it. Let me tie your hand up, and then you must smoke till rescue comes."

"Aren't you cold?" he asked, for indeed the air was chill in that watery inclosure.

"Not a bit. I have my cloak," she said, and snuggled into it. "But you'll be cold. Have half--it's a student's cloak, eight yards around."

He accepted the offer, and they sat with the cloak wrapped around them both, with Charles snuggling under the lower folds of it.