Part 8

"I'm not so sure," said he. "Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the Baconians are right, and he was an intellectual giant, almost like Plato and Aristotle rolled into one? We'll go to Stratford some day, and look at Shakespeare's bust and see if we think he could have written 'The Tempest.'"

"You shouldn't judge people by their faces," she said. "Handsome is as handsome does."

"Oh, but you should," said he. "It's handsome does as handsome is. I always go by appearances. Don't you? But of course, I know you do--"

She opened one of the books and began to turn the pages. "Look what I found," she said, and all the time their voices had been lowered to the key of that studious place. "Look, isn't it pretty? And do you see?--the e's are like the Greek [Greek: th]. Can you read it?"

He read:

"Fair Lucrece, kind Catherine, gentle Jane, But Maria is the dearest name. Robert Swinford, 1863."

"Yes, that's what I make it. It doesn't rhyme, but I expect Maria was very pleased. Do you think they were studying with a stern tutor, and he wrote that and pushed it over to her when no one was looking? It's an odd thing to have written in a Natural History book. There's something more on another page--but it doesn't make sense:

"I am true rew Hebrew--CXIX--101."

"I expect he was just trying a pen. Come, the librarian has his scholarly eye on you."

"I should like to look through all the old books and find out all the names people have written and make stories about them," she said, and he received the curious impression that she was talking against time; there was about her a sort of hanging back from the needful movement of departure. He picked the books up and carried them to the counter, she following, and they walked in silence down the gallery hung with Wouvermans and his everlasting gray horse.

"Let's go into the Hall," he said. So they turned under the arch and went into the beautiful great vaulted Guildhall, where the giants Gog and Magog occupy the gallery, and little human people can sit below on stone benches against the wall, and gaze on the monuments of the elder and the younger Pitt, and talk at long leisure, undisturbed and undisturbing, which is not the case in the Library, as Edward pointed out.

"Now, then," he began.

"Yes," she said, hurriedly. "Something will have to be done about Aunt Alice."

"Yes. But what?"

"I don't know." She turned and leaned one hand on the stone seat so that she faced him. "You do believe that I don't regret coming away? I think it would have been splendid to have gone on--like yesterday--but you see it's impossible."

"No, I don't," he said, stoutly.

She made a movement of impatience. "Oh yes, it is--quite," she said. "However rich you are, you can't go on forever being blackmailed. Every one would know us, or else you'd have to give up Charles, and even then I expect you'd be obliged to pay twenty pounds every three-quarters of an hour. It can't be done. And, besides, we should never know a moment's peace. Wherever we went we should imagine a blackmailer behind every bush, and every one we spoke to might be a detective. It's no use. I must go back. Do say you know I must."

"I don't."

"Well, say you know I don't want to."

"I can't say that . . . because, if you don't want to . . . there's always the old alternative, you know." He was looking straight before him at the majestic form of the Earl of Chatham.

"What alternative?"

"Marrying me," he said, humbly. "Do. I don't believe that you'd regret it."

"When I marry," she said, strongly, "it won't be just because I want to get myself out of a scrape."

"I hoped there might be other considerations," he said, still gazing at the marble. "You were happy yesterday. You said so."

"You talk as though marrying were just nothing--like choosing a partner for a dance. It's like--like choosing what patterns you'd be tattooed with, if you were a savage. It's for life."

"And you can't like me well enough to choose me?"

"I do like you," she answered, with swift and most disheartening eagerness, "I do like you awfully; better than any man I've ever known--oh, miles better--not that that's saying much. But I don't know you well enough to marry you."

"You don't think it would turn out well?"

She faltered a little. "It--it mightn't."

"We could go on being friends just as we are now," he urged.

"It wouldn't be the same," she said, "because there'd be no way out. If we found we didn't like each other, to-morrow, or next month, or on Tuesday week, we could just say good-by and there'd be no harm done. But if we were married--no--no--no!"

"Do you feel as though you would dislike me by Tuesday week?"

"You know I don't," she said, impatiently, "but I might. Or you might. One never knows. It isn't safe. It isn't wise. I may be silly, but I'm not silly enough to marry for any reason but one."

"And that?"

"That I couldn't bear to part with him, I suppose."

"And you can bear to part with me. There hasn't been much, has there? Just these three days, and all our talks, and. . . ." He stopped. A tear had fallen on her lap. "I won't worry any more," he said, in an altered voice. "You shall do just what you like. Shall I get a taxi and take you straight to your aunt's? I will if you like. Come."

"There's no such hurry as all that," she said, "and it's no use being angry with me because I won't jump over a wall without knowing what's on the other side. No, why I should jump, either," she added, on the impulse of a sudden thought. "You haven't told me that yet. What good would my getting married do to Aunt Alice? I don't mean that I would, because you know I couldn't--even for her--but what good would it do if I did?"

"If we were married," he said, with a careful absence of emotion, "we could send your aunt a copy of our marriage certificate and a reference to my solicitor. She would then know that you had married a respectable person with an assured income, instead of which you now appear to be running about the country stealing ducks with Heaven knows who."

"Yes," she said, "I see that. Oh, I have a glorious idea! It will suit you and me and Aunt Alice and make everybody happy!--like in books. Let's have a mock marriage, and forge the certificate."

"Have you ever seen a marriage certificate?"

"No, of course not."

"Well, it would be as difficult to forge as a bank-note."

"Why--have you ever seen one?" she asked, and he hoped it was anxiety he read in her tone.

"Yes; I know a chap who's a registrar. I've witnessed a marriage before now."

"Then there's no need to forge," she said, light-heartedly. "Your friend would give you one of the certificates, of course, if you asked him, and we could fill it in and make Aunt Alice happy."

He laughed, and the sound, echoing in the gray emptiness of the Hall, drew on him the sour glance of a barrister, wigged and gowned, hastening to the mayor's court.

"He's wondering what you've got to laugh at," she said, "and I don't wonder. _I_ don't know. Why shouldn't we pretend to be married? I'm sure your friend would help us to. Oh, do!" she said, clasping her hands with an exaggerated gesture that could not quite hide the genuine appeal behind it. "Then we sha'n't have to part. I mean I sha'n't have to go back to the aunts and all the worry that I thought I'd got away from."

"You're not really serious."

"But I am. You will--oh, do say you will."

"No," he said, "it's impossible--Princess, don't ask if I can't."

"Then it's all over?"

"I suppose so, if you insist on going back."

"I don't insist. But I must do something about Aunt Alice. She's always been a darling to me. I can't go away and be happy and not care whether she's miserable or not. You'd hate me if I could. I'll go back to-morrow or to-night. You said we should go into the country and think things out. At least we can do that--we can have one more day. Shall we?"

Her sweet eyes tempted and implored.

"What sort of day would it be," he said, "with the end of everything at the end of it? How could we be happy as we were yesterday?--for you were happy, you owned it. How could we be happy together when we knew we'd got to part in six hours--five hours--two hours--half an hour? Besides, why should I give you the chance to grow any dearer? So as to make it hurt more when you took yourself away from me? No--"

"I didn't know I was dear," she said, in a very small voice.

Perhaps he did not hear it, for he went on: "If the splendid adventure is to end like this, let it end here--now. I've had the two days; you can't take those from me."

"I don't want to take anything from you, but--"

"Let's make an end of it, then," he said, ruthlessly, "since that's what you choose. Good-by, Princess. Let's shake hands and part friends." He rose. "Let's part friends," he repeated, and paused, remembering that you cannot go away and leave a lady planted in the Guildhall. Yet he could not say, "Let us part friends, and now I will call a cab."

She was more expert. "At least," she put it, "we needn't part here in the dark among the images of dead people. Come out into the sunshine and look at the pretty pigeons."

He was grateful to her. In the Guildhall yard the cab would happen, if it happened at all, naturally and without any effect of bathos.

They stood watching the sleek birds strutting on little red feet, and fluttering gray wings in the sunshine. She thought of the wood-pigeon in the wood by the river, and the calm brightness of yesterday held out beckoning hands to her.

"I didn't think it was going to end like this," she said.

"Nor I," he answered, inexorably.

"Are you quite sure it's impossible? The mock marriage, I mean? In books it's always so frightfully easy, even when the girl isn't helping?"

"I'm afraid it's impossible," said he. "I wish it wasn't. Look at that blue chap," he added, indicating a fat pigeon for the benefit of a passing boy. "You must go back to your aunts. And I must go back to . . . oh, well, there's nothing much for me to go back to."

They were walking along King Street now. "It does seem rather as though a sponge were going to pass over the slate . . . and there wouldn't be much left," she said.

He glanced at her, suddenly alert. If she felt that . . . why, then. . . .

He wished that the scene had not been in one of the most frequented streets of the City of London. If it had been in a drawing-room, for instance--her drawing-room--it would have been possible to say the words of parting with something of dignity and finality. But here, with--in the background and not to be evaded--that snorting taxicab over whose closed door their farewells must be made. . . . But need it be across a taxicab door?

"Let us," he said, "take a cab. I will go with you as far as Hyde Park Square."

"Shall we have the hood down?" she asked, with intention. "It doesn't matter now if any one does see us." But he pretended not to hear, and the hood remained as it was.

They were silent all the crowded way along Cheapside, where there were blocks, as usual, and the drivers of lorries and wagons were cheerfully profane. Silent, too, along Newgate Street and New Oxford Street. The driver, being a wise man, turned up Bloomsbury Street to escape from the blocks in Oxford Street; they passed the British Museum and, presently, the Midlothian Hotel. And as they passed it, each thought of the breakfast there only that morning, when she had poured the coffee of one from whom she had then had no mind to part.

"Oh, why are we doing it?" She spoke suddenly, and her speech had the effect of a cry. "We didn't mean to say good-by, and now we're going to. Don't let's."

"But your aunt," he said, feeling as foolish as any young man need wish. "If you don't go back to her now you'll want to to-morrow--and I can't. . . . I told you why I want to part now, if we are to part. Now, before it gets any worse."

"We shall be at Hyde Park Square in a minute," she said, desperately.

"Yes," he said, "it's nearly over. What number is it? I must tell the man."

"Tell him to turn around and go somewhere else--into the country; we said we would, you know. I'm not going back to Hyde Park Square. Tell him. . . ."

"Princess," he said, "I can't bear it. Let him go on."

"But I'm not asking you to bear anything. Don't you understand?"

"Not. . . ?"

"Yes, I will; if you'll ask me."

"You'll marry me?"

"Yes," she said, "rather than have everything end in absolute silliness, like this."

He looked at her, at her clasped hands and the frown of her great resolve. He perceived that he was worth something to her--that she was prepared to pay a price--the price he set--rather than lose him altogether. Her eyes met his with a mingling of courage and desperation, as of one who has chosen a difficult and dangerous path, one who makes a great sacrifice, leads a forlorn hope. And his eyes dwelt for a moment on hers, appreciatively, thoughtfully. And in that moment his resolve was taken.

"No," he said, "you didn't want to jump the wall without knowing what it would be like on the other side. I won't have an unwilling wife. On the other hand, I won't lose you now, Princess, for a thousand fathers and ten thousand aunts. Make up your mind to the mock marriage, and that shall be the way out."

"But I thought you said it was impossible."

"So it was. But it isn't now. I've been thinking."

She leaned back, turned toward him from the corner, and faced him with fearless eyes.

"What a nightmare of a day it's been," she said. "Aren't you glad we're awake again? When can I send the certificate?" she asked, eager and alert.

"At the earliest possible moment," said he. "I must see my friend about it at once. Would you mind waiting for me--say in St. Paul's? And then we'll end our day in the country, after all."

"You are good," she said, and laid her hand for a fleeting instant on his arm. "I do think it's good of you to give way about the mock marriage. You know I had really set my heart on it. Now everything will be plain sailing, won't it? And we'll go to Warwick the minute we're mock-married, because my putting my finger on it and Kenilworth ought to count, oughtn't it?"

"It shall," he said, gravely.

XII

WESTMINSTER

A WEDDING-DAY--even a real wedding-day--leaves at best but a vague and incoherent memory. To the bridegroom it is a confused whirling recollection of white satin and tears and smiles and flowers and music--or perhaps a dingy room with a long table and an uninterested registrar at the end of it.

Edward Basingstoke thought with regret of the flowers and the white satin. If he had accepted her submission, had consented to the real marriage, there should have been white roses by the hundred, and the softest lace and silk to set off her beauty. As it was--

"We shall have to go through some sort of form," he told her, "because of the clerks. If my friend were just to tear out a certificate and give it to us the people in the office. . . . You understand."

"Quite," she said.

"It'll be rather like a very dingy pretense at a marriage. You won't mind that?"

"Of course not. Why should I?"

"Then, if you're sure you really want to go through with it . . . shall we go to my friend's now, and get it over?"

"He doesn't mind?"

"Not a bit."

"He must be a very accommodating friend."

"He is," said Edward.

"Where did you leave the luggage?" she asked, suddenly. They were walking along the Embankment.

"At Charing Cross."

"Well, I'm going to get it. And I shall go to the Charing Cross Hotel with it, and you can meet me in three hours."

"But that'll only just give us time," he said. "Why not come with me now?"

"Because," she said, firmly, "I won't play at mock marriages unless I like, and I won't play at all unless you let me do as I like first."

"Won't you tell me why?"

"I'll tell you when I meet you again."

"Where?" he asked. And she stopped at the statue of Forster in the Embankment Gardens, and answered:

"Here."

Then she smiled at him so kindly that he asked no more questions, but just said:

"In three hours, then," and they walked on together to Charing Cross.

And after three hours, in which he had time to be at least six different Edwards, he met, by the statue of the estimable Mr. Forster, a lady all in fine white linen, wearing a white hat with a wreath of white roses around it, and long white gloves, and little white shoes. And she had a white lace scarf and a live white rose at her waist.

"I thought I'd better dress the part," she said, a little nervously, "for the sake of the clerks, you know."

"How beautiful you are," he said, becoming yet another kind of Edward at the sight of her, and looking at her as she stood in the afternoon sunshine. "Why didn't you tell me before how beautiful you were?"

"I. . . . How silly you are," was all she found to say.

"I wish, though," he said, as they walked together along the gravel of the garden, "that you'd done it for me, and not for those clerks, confound them!"

"I didn't really do it for them," she said. "Oh no--and not for you, either. I did it for myself. I couldn't even pretend to be married in anything but white. It would be so unlucky."

All that he remembered well. And what came afterward--the dingy house with the grimy door-step, and the area where dust and torn paper lay, the bare room, the few words that were a mockery of what a marriage service should be, the policeman who met them as they went in, the charwoman who followed them as they went out, the man at the end of the long, leather-covered table--Edward's old acquaintance, but that seemed negligible--who who wished them joy with, as it were, his tongue in his cheek. And there was signing of names and dabbing of them with a little oblong of pink blotting-paper crisscrossed with the ghosts of the names of other brides and bridegrooms--real ones, these--and then they were walking down the sordid street, she rather pale and looking straight before her, and in her white-gloved hand the prize of the expedition, the marriage certificate, to gain which the mock marriage had been undertaken.

And suddenly the romantic exaltation of the day yielded to deepest depression, and Edward Basingstoke, earnestly and from the heart, wished the day's work undone. It was all very well to talk about mock marriages, but he knew well enough that his honor was as deeply engaged as though he had been well and truly married in Westminster Abbey by His Grace of York assisted by His Grace of Canterbury. Freedom was over, independence was over, and all his life lay at the mercy of a girl--the girl who, a week ago, had no existence for him. The whole adventure, from his first sight of her among dewy grass and trees, had been like a fairy-tale, like a romance of old chivalry. He had played his part handsomely, but with the underlying consciousness that it was a part--a part sympathetic to his inclinations, but a part, none the less. The whole thing had been veiled in the mists of poetry, illuminated by the glow of adventure. And now it seemed as though he had thoughtlessly plucked the flower of romance which, with patience and careful tending, would have turned to the fruit of happiness. He had plucked the flower, and all he had gained was the power to keep a beautiful stranger with him--on false pretenses. He wished that she, at least, had not so gaily entered on the path of deception. Never a scruple had disturbed her--the idea of deceiving an aunt who loved her had been less to her than--than what? Less, at least, than the pain of losing him forever, he reminded himself. He tried to be just--to be generous. But at the back of his mind, and not so very far back, either, Iago's words echoed, "She did deceive her father, and may thee." His part of the deception now seemed to him the blackest deed of his life, and he could not undo it. It was impossible to turn to this white shape, moving so quietly beside him, with:

"Let's burn the certificate. Deceit is dishonorable."

If she did not think so . . . well, women's code of honor was different from men's. And she _had_ been willing to marry him in earnest, with no deceptions or reservations. This mock business had been, in the end, his doing, not hers. And now they had gone through with it, and here he was walking beside her, silent, like a resentful accomplice. They had walked the street's length, its whole dingy length, in silence. The light of life had, once more, for Mr. Basingstoke, absolutely gone out. They turned the corner, and still he could find nothing to say; nor, it appeared, could she. The hand with the paper hung loosely. The other hand was busy at her belt--and now the white rose fell on the dusty pavement, between a banana-skin and a bit of torn printed paper. He stooped, automatically, to pick up the rose.

"Don't," she said. "It's faded."

It so manifestly wasn't that he looked at her, and on the instant the light of life began to be again visible to him, very faint and far, like the pin-point of daylight at the end of a long tunnel, but still visible. For he now perceived that for her, too, the light had gone out--blown out, most likely, by the same breath of remorse. Sublime egoist! He was to have the monopoly of fine sentiments and regretful indecisions, was he? Not a thought for her, and what she must have been feeling. But perhaps what she had felt had not been that at all; yet something she had felt, something not happy--something that led to the throwing away of white roses.

"I can't let it lie there," he said, holding it in his hand. "I should like to think," he added, madly trying to find some words to break the spell that, he now felt, held them both--"I should like to think it would never fade."

She smiled at that--a small and pitiful smile.

"Cheer up," she said; "lots of people have got _really_ married and then parted, as they say, at the church door. This is a perfect spot for a parting," she added, a little wildly, waving toward a corn-chandler's and a tobacconist's; "or, if your chivalry won't let you desert me in this desolate neighborhood . . . let me tell you something, something to remember; you'll find it wonderfully soothing and helpful. From this moment henceforth, forever, every place in the world where we are will be the best place for parting--if we want to part. Isn't that almost as good as the freedom you're crying your eyes out for?"

"I'm not," he said, absurdly; but she went on.

"Do you think I don't understand? Do you think I don't know how you feel twenty times more bound to me than if we were really married? Perhaps it's only because everything's so new and nasty. Perhaps you won't feel like that when you get used to things. But if you do--if you don't get over it then--it's all been for nothing, and we might as well have parted among the pigeons."

She walked faster and faster.

"What we have to remember--oh yes, it's for me as well as you--what we've got to remember is that we're to be perfectly free. We needn't stay with each other an instant after we wish not to stay. Doesn't that help?"

"You're a witch," he said, keeping pace with her quickened steps, "but you don't know everything. And you're tired and--"

"I know quite enough," she said.

Never had he felt more helpless. Their aimless walking was leading them into narrower and poorer streets where her bridal whiteness caught the eye and turned the head of every passer-by. The pavements were choked with slow passengers and playing children, small, dirty, pale, with the anxious expression of little old men and women.

"Do you like deer?" he asked, suddenly.

"Deer?"

"Yes--fawns, does, stags, antlers?"

"Of course I do."

"Then let's go to Richmond Park. Let's get out of this."