ONLY those who have gone through the ceremony of a mock marriage, from
the gentlest motives, and have soothed the solicitude of a beloved and
invalid aunt by the gift of the marriage certificate thus obtained, can
have any idea of the minor difficulties which beset the path of the
really unselfish. Had the ceremony been one in which either party was
deceived as to its real nature the sequent embarrassments would have
been far less. The first and greatest was the question of names. The
persons mentioned in the certificate now bedewed by the joyful tears of
the invalid aunt, and scorched by the fierce fires of a first-class
family row, were committed, so far as the family and the world knew, to
a wedding-journey. That is to say, Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke, after
posting the certificate, were to proceed on their honeymoon. But cold
mock marriages claim no honeymoon. So far the only explanation of the
relations of the now mockly married had been made to Mr. Schultz across
the peaches in the sunned and shadowy arbor at Tunbridge Wells. To Mr.
Schultz the two were brother and sister. To travel as Mr. and Mrs.
Basingstoke presented difficulties almost insurmountable--to pursue
their wanderings as Mr. and Miss Basingstoke involved bother about
letters and the constant risk of explanations to any of the friends and
relations of either across whose path fate might be spiteful enough to
drive them. Because, of course, your friends and relations know how many
brothers and sisters you have and what they look like, and those sort of
people never forget. You could never persuade them that the young man
with whom you were traveling was a brother whom they had overlooked or
forgotten.
A long silence in the train that meant to go to Warwick was spent by
each in the same tangle of puzzle and conjecture. They had the carriage
to themselves. Her eyes were on the green changing picture framed by the
window; his eyes noted the firm, pretty line of her chin, the way her
hair grew, the delicate charm of the pale roses under the curve of her
hat-brim--the proud carriage of head and neck; he liked the way she held
herself, the way her hands lay in her lap, the self-possession and
self-respect that showed in every line of that gracious figure.
The four walls of the carriage seemed to shut them in with a new and
deeper intimacy than yesterday's. He would have liked to hold her hand
as he had held it on the way to Richmond--to have her shoulder lightly
touching his and to sit by her and watch the changing of that green
picture from which she never turned her eyes. And all the time the two
alternatives seesawed at the back of his mind: "Mr. and Mrs. or Mr. and
Miss?"
Her eyes suddenly left the picture and met his. In that one glance she
knew what sort of thoughts had been his, and knew also quite surely and
unmistakably, as women do know such things, that the relations between
them had been changed by that mock marriage--that now it would not be he
who would make the advances. That he was hers for the asking, she knew,
but she also knew that there would have to be asking, and that asking
hers. She knew then, as well as she knew it later, that that act had set
a barrier between them and that his would never be the hand to break it
down; a barrier strong as iron, behind which she could, if she would,
remain alone forever--and yet a barrier which, if she chose that it
should be so, her choice could break at a touch, as bubbles are broken.
She felt as perhaps a queen in old romance might have felt traveling
through the world served only by a faithful knight. That they had held
each other's hand on their wedding-day had been an accident. This would
never happen again--unless she made it happen.
"We must have our letters sent to the post-offices where we go," she
said, suddenly, turning to the problem at the back of her mind. "Then
the aunts can call me 'Mrs.' when they write to me. I suppose they'll
want to _call_ me that?"
"Mrs. Basingstoke," he said, slowly. "Yes, it seems likely that they
_will_ want to."
"Then," she went on, "we needn't pretend to the hotel people that we're
married. They'd be sure to find out we weren't, or something, and we
should always be trembling on the perilous edge of detection. I couldn't
bear to be always wondering whether the landlord had found us out."
"It would be intolerable," he agreed, deeply conscious of the admirable
way in which she grasped this delicate nettle. "Whereas. . . ."
"Whereas if we're Mr. and Miss Basingstoke at our hotels, and Mr. and
Mrs. at the post-office, it's all as simple as the Hebrew alphabet."
"The Hebrew. . . ?"
"Well, it's not quite as simple as A B C, but very nearly. So that's
settled."
"What," he asked, hastily, anxious to show his sense of a difficulty
avoided, a subject dismissed--"what do you think about when you look
out of the windows in trains? Or don't you think at all--just let the
country flow through your soul as though it were music?"
"One does that when one's _in_ it," she answered, "in woods and meadows
and in those deep lanes where you see nothing but the hedges and the
cart-tracks--and on the downs--yes. But when you look out at the country
it's different, isn't it? One looks at the churches and thinks about all
the people who were christened and married and buried there, and then
you look at the houses they lived in--the old farm-houses more than
anything. Do you know, all my life I've wished I'd been born a farmer's
daughter. All the little things of life in those thatched homesteads are
beautiful to me. The smell of the wood smoke, and the way all your life
is next door to out-of-doors--always having to go out and feed the
calves or the pigs or the fowls, and always little young things, the
goslings and the ducklings and the chicks--you know how soft and pretty
they are. And all these lovely little live things dependent on you. And
the men as well--they come home tired from their work and you have their
meals all ready--the bread you've baked yourself, and the pasties you've
made--perhaps, even, you brew the beer and salt the pork--and they come
in, your husband and your father and your brothers, and they think what
a good housekeeper you are, and love you for it. Or if you're a man
yourself, all your work's out of doors with the nice, clean earth and
making things grow, and seeing the glorious seasons go round and round
like a splendid kaleidoscope; and in the winter coming home through the
dusk and seeing the dancing light of your own hearth-fire showing
through the windows, till you go into the warm, cozy place, and then the
red curtains are drawn and the door is shut, and you're safe inside--at
home."
He felt in every word a new intimacy, a new confidence. For the first
time she was speaking to him from the heart without afterthought and
without reservations. And he knew why. He knew that the queen, confident
and confiding, spoke to the faithful knight. And the matter of her
speech no less than its manner enchanted him so that he could think of
nothing better to say than:
"Go on--tell me some more."
"There isn't any more, only I think that must have been the life I lived
in my last incarnation, because a little house in the country--any
little house, even an old turnpike cottage--always seems to call out to
me, 'Here I am! Come home! What a long time you've been away!'"
"And yet," he said, and felt, as he said it, how stupid he was
being--"and yet you love traveling and adventure--seeing the world and
the wonders of the world."
"Ah!" she said, "that's my new incarnation. But what the old one loved
goes deeper than that. I love adventure and new bits of the world as I
love strawberries and ice-cream, and waltzing and Chopin, but the little
house in the green country is like the daily bread of the heart."
"I understand you," he said, slowly. "I understand you in the only
possible way. I mean that's the way I feel about it, too. If you were
really my sister, what a united family the last of the Basingstokes
would be."
"Do you really feel the same about it--you, too?" she asked. "Oh, what a
pity I wasn't born Basingstoke, and we would have lived on our own farm
and been happy all our lives."
He would not say what he might have said, and her heart praised him for
not saying it. And so at last they came to Warwick, and Charles had
bounded from the dog-box all pink tongue and white teeth and strenuous
white-covered muscles, and knocked down a little boy in a blue jersey,
who had to be consoled by chocolate which came out of the machine like
the god in the Latin tag. And then all the luggage was retrieved--there
was getting to be a most respectable amount of it, as she pointed
out--and it and they and Charles got into a fly (for there are still
places where an open carriage bears that ironic name) and drove through
the afternoon sunshine to the Warwick Arms. But when they were asked to
write their names in the visitors' book, each naturally signed a
Christian name, and the management, putting two and two together,
deduced Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke, and entered this result in more
intimate books, living in retirement in the glass case which preserves
the young lady who knows all about which rooms you can have. The
chambermaid and the boots agreed that Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke were a
handsome couple. Also, when a new-comer, signing his name, asked a
question about the signatures just above his, "Mr. and Mrs.
Basingstoke," was the answer he got.
Now all this time, for all her frankness, she had been concealing
something from him.
You must know that the wedding-dinner, if a mock marriage can be said to
involve a wedding-dinner, had been at the Star and Garter, and after the
wooded slopes and the shining spaces of the river her London hotel had
seemed but a dull and dusty resting-place. And it was she who had met
him when he called to take her out to breakfast with a petition for more
river. So they had taken more river, in the shape of a Sunday at
Coohmah, where the beautiful woods lean down to the water, and the many
boats keep to the stream and the few creep into backwaters whither the
swans follow you, and eat all the lunch if you will only give them half
a chance. It was a delightful day, full of incident and charm. The cool,
gleaming river, the self-possessed gray poplars, the generous,
green-spreading beeches, the lovelorn willows trailing their tresses in
the stream, the reeds and the rushes, the quiet, emphasized by the
knowledge that but for the supremest luck they might have been two in a
very large and noisy party, such as that on the steam-launch which
thrust its nose into their backwater and had to back out with fussings
and snortings, like a terrier out of a rabbit-hole. The dappled shadows
on the spread carpet of lily-leaves, the green gleams in the deep
darkness of the woods, the slow, dripping veil of dusk through which
they rowed slowly back to the inn--even being late for the train and
having to run for it--all, as he said, when they had caught the train
and were crammed into a first-class carriage with three boating-men, a
painted lady, an aged beau, and a gentleman almost of color, from
Brazil--all had been very good. But he did not know all. There had been
a moment, while he had gone in to the bar of the inn to settle for the
boat--a moment in which she waited in the little grassy garden that
shelves down to the river's edge--and in that moment a boat slid up to
the landing-stage. The first man to get out of it was nobody, and didn't
matter. The second was Mr. Schultz. As it happened, her face was lighted
by a yellow beam from one of the inn windows, and as he landed the beam
from the other window fell across his face, so that they saw and
recognized each other in a blaze of light that might have been arranged
for no other purpose.
He raised his cap and she saw that he meant to speak, but one of his
companions thrust the painter into his hand at exactly the nick of time.
He was held there, for the moment. She had the sense to walk slowly into
the inn, and Mr. Schultz might well have thought that she was staying
there. She meant him to think so. Anyhow, he did not cast the painter
from him, as he might have done, and hurry after her. "Later on will
do," was what his attitude and his look expressed.
The moment she was out of his sight she quickened her pace, found Mr.
Edward Basingstoke in the bar putting his change in his pocket, and, the
moment the two were outside the street door, said, just, "We must run
for it." This was, providentially, true. And they ran for it, just
catching it, without a breath to spare.
Why did she not tell him that she had seen Schultz, that stout squire of
the South Coast road? For one thing, Mr. Schultz seemed long ago and
irrelevant. For another, he was discordant, and his very name, spoken,
would break the spell of a very charming quiet which had infolded her
and Edward all day long. Then there was the crowded carriage with the
Brazilian gentleman, all observant, black, beady eye, and long yellow
ear. And then, anyhow, what was the good of raking up Mr. Schultz, whom
Edward had never really liked. So she did not tell him. Nor, for much
the same reason, did he tell her that one of that shouting party who
climbed into the train after it had actually started, and whom he saw as
he leaned out of the window to buy chocolate from an accidental boy, was
very like that chap Schultz--as like, in fact, as two peas.
And the next day she packed up everything, and he packed up a good deal,
and they started for Warwick; arrived there, had luncheon, and became
immediately a pair of ardent sight-seers.
The guide-book in the coffee-room assured them that "no visitor to
Warwick with any sense of propriety thinks of remaining long without
paying his respects to that historic and majestic pile known as Warwick
Castle," and this, they agreed, settled the question.
So they went and saw Warwick Castle, with its great gray towers and its
high gray walls, its green turf, and old, old trees. They saw the
banqueting-hall that was burned down, and Guy's punch-bowl that holds
Heaven knows how many gallons.
"It makes you thirsty to look at it," said Edward.
Also they saw the Portland vase which lives in a glass house all by
itself, and the bed where Queen Anne slept, and the cedar drawing-room
and the red drawing-room and the golden drawing-room, and all the other
rooms which are "shown to visitors," and longed lawlessly to see the
rooms that are not so shown.
"There must be _some_ comfortable rooms in the house," she said. "Even
lords and ladies and Miss O'Gradys couldn't really live in these
museums." And, indeed, all the rooms they saw were much too full of
things curious, precious, beautiful, and ugly; but mostly large and all
costly.
"It must be pretty awful to be as rich as all this," said Edward, as
they came out of the castle gate.
"Would it be? The guide-books say Lady Warwick says she strives to
fulfil, imperfectly, it may be, the duties of her stewardship and the
privileges of her heritage. It would be interesting, don't you think,
to find out just exactly what those were?"
"If I had a castle," said he, "there shouldn't be a knickknack in it,
nor a scrap of furniture later than seventeen hundred."
"I sometimes wonder whether it's fair," she said, "the way we collect
old things. Have you noticed that poor people's houses haven't a decent
bit of furniture in them? When my mother was little the cottages used to
have old bureaus and tables and chests that had come down from father to
son and from mother to daughter."
"It's true," said he, "and the worst of it is that we've not only taken
away their furniture, but we've taken away their taste for it. They
prefer plush and machine-made walnut to the old oak and elm and beech
and apple-wood. It would be no good to give them back their old
furnishing unless we could give them back their love of it. And that we
can't do."
"But if we bought modern things?"
"Even then they wouldn't care for the old ones. And the only beautiful
modern things we have are imitations of the old ones. We've lost the art
of furniture-making, and the art of architecture, and we're losing even
the art of life. It's getting to be machine-made, like our chair-legs
and our stone facings. I sometimes wonder whether we are really on the
down-grade--and whether the grade is so steep that we sha'n't be able to
stop--and go on till there's no life possible except the life that's
represented by the plush and walnut at one end and motors and the Ritz
at the other."
"Can't we resist? all the people who still care for beautiful things?"
"We can collect them; it's not taking them from the poor now--it's
taking them from the dealers who have cleared out the farms and cottages
and little houses. I suppose one might make a nest, and live in it, but
that wouldn't change things or stop the uglification of everything. You
can't make people live beautifully by act of Parliament. The impulse to
make and own beautiful things has to come from within--and it seems as
though it were dead--killed by machinery and _laissez-faire_ and the
gospel of individualism, and I'm sorry to talk like a Fabian tract, but
there it is. Forgive me, and let's go down to Guy's Cliff and see the
Saxon Mill and the perfect beauty of mixed architecture that wasn't
trying to imitate anything."
"Yes, but go on with the tract."
"There isn't any more, except that what's so difficult is to know how to
live without hurting some one else. This is my wander year. I'm spending
my money just now for fun and to have a good time. I feel I deserve a
holiday and I'm taking one. But what's one to do with one's life? How
can one use one's money so as to do no harm?"
"If you invest it in mines or factories or railways, doesn't that employ
people and make trade better?" she asked, diffidently. "I'm sure I've
heard people say so."
"Yes," he said, grimly, "so have I. And, of course, it's true. You
launch your money into this horrible welter of hard work and chancy
wages, and it helps to keep some people in motors and fur coats and
champagne and diamonds, and it helps, too, to keep others on the
perilous edge of despair, to keep them alive in a world where they're
never sure of next week's meals, never free from worry from the cradle
to the grave, with no poetry in their lives but love, and no magic but
drink."
"But what are we to do?" she asked, and they paused a moment on the
bridge to look to the splendid mass of Warwick Castle along the river
where the swans float and the weeping willows trail their hair in the
water.
"I wish I knew," he said. "There must be some way to live without having
any part in the muddle."
"We'll find a way," said she. And his heart leaped, for he knew that
this was the most intimate thing she had ever said to him.