Wyndham had finished Lady Betty's portrait on the previous morning, and
had taken it back with him to his studio. To-day the frame, a copy of a
fine old Venetian model, came early in the morning, and Wyndham had soon
fixed the canvas within it. He was enchanted with the effect. If the
Salon had only a corner to spare for it, he was certain they would not
turn it away. And--entrancing idea!--why should not Lady Betty deign to
come here on this last day, and snatch a glimpse of herself in this
charming setting which he had selected with such loving interest. There
was a long day before them, and he might well seize the mood and the
auspicious moment.
He lingered before his picture, then brusquely tore himself away from
it, and sat down and wrote instructions to the frame-maker, who was to
come and fetch it away on the morrow, and despatch it to Paris
immediately.
For this was his great day; that was to leave with him for ever the
memory of gracious companionship and irrevocable farewell! The day on
which he would live for Lady Betty and forget all else! Then she would
pass out of his life. He strove to face the stern decree. But only a
blank met his vision. He turned his eyes away; his thoughts should be of
the day only.
He had hardly considered what their programme should be. But now, on his
way, he began to ponder it lazily, dwelling fancifully on possibilities
rather than arriving at anything rigid or definite. They would roam
about at random, like two sweethearts of the people; their evening they
would spend at a theatre, no doubt something out of the way, and they
would find their meals as the bizarre occasion might offer itself. They
would invest this everyday London with the romantic light of their own
spirit; they would wander as through a strange capital, and observe
humanity with a new eye. And then, of course, he must keep before him
the possibility of the visit to his own studio, in which Lady Betty had
never as yet set foot.
At midday he rang the bell at Grosvenor Place, and was shown up into the
great drawing-room. In a minute or two Lady Betty came tripping in. A
glance showed she was ready to go out at once; her simple coat and skirt
formed a costume unobtrusive enough for any expedition, and her hat and
veil matched the occasion to a nicety.
She was radiant with an unaffected gaiety; he could hardly conceive the
weight of sadness that must lie at the bottom of her heart.
"We shall have a happy day," she said, smiling at the thought of it;
"something to remember always."
He was quick to grasp her spirit. They were to have this happiness as if
the day were one of many days, some past, more to come. They were to
give themselves up to the joy of each other's companionship in simple
acceptance of the passing hour; not dilating on the occasion as a
parting; not letting it be overshadowed by the sense of what they had so
tragically missed in life. Parting there would be; and then sadness
would descend swiftly enough. Till that bitter moment--sparkle and
enjoyment! He had come prepared to talk much of themselves; but he saw
she was wiser than he, and at once fell in with her mood. There would be
all the rest of his life to lament in.
"Have you thought of any plan?" he asked.
"None," she replied. "To tell the truth, I rather shrank from anything
definite. 'The wind bloweth as it listeth.' Let us go on without end or
purpose. That seems to me the ideal way."
"But we are bound to make a beginning. After that the game may play
itself."
"Let us get away from the London we know; let us go to a romantic,
wonderful London that we have never seen." She was almost echoing his
thought. "We shall glide discreetly among the crowds as if we belonged
to them."
"Then away!" he laughed. "To horse--or rather, to omnibus! Or is it to
be hansom?"
"Everything in turn, and nothing long."
It was a cold day, yet though the sky was lightly clouded, the air was
free from mist. As they stepped into the street a few patches of blue
were visible, and a wintry sunshine filtered down with a pleasant sense
of promise. The neighbouring houses were for the most part shuttered and
silent, but the outlook on the great triangular space before them was
cheerfully busy.
"How unlike the scene of your painting!" she exclaimed. "There is no
suggestion of drama here, but just the average feeling of the London
thoroughfare--busy people going their way, and a procession of omnibuses
mixed up with carts and hansoms."
"Yet my own scene swims before my eyes--I have lived with it so long."
"You have still to live with it," she reminded him.
"If I do not die of it," he answered pleasantly. "Seriously, I came near
to doing so."
"This omnibus is marked 'Aldgate,'" she flew off. "Now that makes me
think of Aldgate Pump. I wonder if it goes near the Pump?"
Wyndham jumped on the foot-board, and put the question to the conductor.
"We pass within a yard of it," was the reply.
"Good," said Wyndham. The omnibus drew up, and Lady Betty mounted the
stairway, and they seated themselves on the roof.
"Look!" he exclaimed. "The clouds are suddenly breaking; it will be all
blue and sunshine soon."
"A grey ghostly blue, a cold, charming sunshine."
"Yet the promise is splendid after all this winter."
"The promise is splendid," she echoed; "and we are so happy to-day."
"We are so happy," he repeated.
He let himself lapse into a dreamy mood; he was enchanted to have her so
near him, to feel the afternoon and evening stretching endlessly before
them--a veritable lifetime of golden moments. Lady Betty's manner
offered a marked contrast. Hers was a frank exhilaration, an excited
gaiety, of which he had the full impression; though she kept it in a low
key, like love's whisper intended for his ear alone. Soon, as he had
predicted, the sky grew bluer, the sunshine warmer; the traffic and the
bustle of the streets were cheerfully pleasant to the eye and the ear in
the fresh day.
"Even the London we know seems delightful," he remarked.
"London, though sometimes impelling to revolt, is always wonderful--it
has always the fascination of the unknown."
"And is as supremely problematic as the unknowable of the philosophers."
"But it is solid and real, comes to us through all the five senses. Look
at that strange old man with the tiger-lilies. I wonder how he comes by
them at this time of year."
"That is one of the wonders of London," said Wyndham. "One sees the
flowers of all seasons at every season."
"And sometimes the weather of all seasons at every season. Has Aldgate
Pump a history?"
He confessed to ignorance, though he had an idea that he had read much
about it in his boyhood, an epoch when he had been fascinated by all the
odd monuments of the town. He recalled, however, after a time, that
there was a legend connected with it, not unlike that of the wandering
Jew.
"Is it actually a pump?" she asked.
"Oh, it's a real pump," he assured her.
"Because I had a suspicion just now; it struck me it might be a sort of
old coaching-inn or something of the kind. I've often been deceived like
that, have gone off to see strange things, and have found a
coaching-inn."
"At least there is the consolation of refreshment at the inn."
"Not a bad idea," she conceded. "It would be a thing to boast about for
the rest of one's life--to have refreshed one's self at the Aldgate
Pump."
Both laughed. The omnibus pursued its way with a steady rumble. They had
turned out of Piccadilly and passed through Waterloo Place, and soon
after through Trafalgar Square into the Strand, where the scene proved
much busier. The pavements were thronged; people were pressing forward
with an appearance of being very much in earnest. A sprinkling of
tourists, clearly self-proclaimed by their holiday air and the style of
their attire and grooming, paraded at leisure or gazed into the
shop-windows. Here and there a young girl, in a picture frock and a big
hat, tripped along daintily, holding her skirt with a touch that
suggested Paris, and swinging her little bag from her free hand.
"Actresses going to rehearsal?" hazarded Wyndham, in response to his
companion's interrogation.
"How charming they are!" she exclaimed. "And they are most of them
frightfully poor. They struggle for years, and then drop out gradually.
Fortunately we women have the gift of living intensely for the day. A
few weeks' engagement, the guinea or two assured for the time being, and
see how we bloom."
"Ah, yes," said Wyndham reflectively; "life for them, as for many
others, is pretty much of a game of roulette. They stake their all on
the table, fortune fluctuates during a few turns of the wheel, and
then--everything is swept away."
"Away, please, with these sad reflections! Why look too searchingly at
things? The world is pleasant; why spoil it by examining it? Why turn
one's eyes willingly away from the good to see the evil?"
"And at any rate the good is as real as the evil," he agreed.
"We must make things contribute to our happiness while we may. All these
crowds of people have no idea that they are there for our entertainment;
they do not know, poor things, that we have willed they should be
masquerading to please us. They have the delusion they are going about
their own affairs, and they see only an ordinary omnibus, full on the
roof--that is, if they cared to look at us. To them what more
commonplace than a journey on an omnibus from Hyde Park Corner to
Aldgate Pump? Yet, to us, what a whimsical universe it is!"
The omnibus rattled along with a not unpleasing vibration. They passed
through the heart of the City, swept alongside St. Paul's, and then the
humour of country cousins took possession of them. They pretended to be
roused to excitement by all these guide-book regions and monuments,
affected to be seeing them for the first time and to be recognising them
from the engravings. Down Leadenhall Street they clattered at last, and
presently to their surprise the conductor's head appeared above the
stairway with the announcement of "Aldgate Pump, sir."
They descended. The omnibus passed on, and they stood hesitating, a
little lost, but greatly amused.
"Here it is!" she exclaimed. "And a street arab in the very act of
pumping! Why, it's real water."
They contemplated it for a moment or two. "Well, what do you think of
it?" he asked.
"Thrilling," she admitted. "All pumps are interesting--in these days of
universal taps. But look at those warehouses opposite, beyond the
hoarding. Aren't they fascinating?"
"I believe the river lies beyond." Probably no existence had been less
intertwined with the City of London than his, but he remembered the
immediate neighbourhood pretty well from ancient wanderings, and he told
her as an interesting fact that Mark Lane and Mincing Lane lay
thereabouts.
"I think I have heard of them." Her face lighted with the pleasure of
recognition. "Indeed, I'm sure I've seen them mentioned in the
newspapers."
He tried to plumb her knowledge, but found no deeps. She knitted her
brows prettily, or at least he imagined she did, under her veil. "A sort
of Latin Quarter--an artist's colony?" she hazarded. "No, wait a bit,
there was a wealthy, humdrum sort of man I once met, and everybody
whispered he came out of Mincing Lane. He was not artistic. I give it
up."
"He imported tea?"
"That's not unlikely," she agreed.
"That's what Mincing Lane is for. And Mark Lane is for corn and
produce."
"How useful! What a good world it is! I think I like this part."
"Beyond is Eastcheap, famous for groceries, and beyond that again the
water-side where all these things are landed."
"Let us come to Eastcheap." She was eager to see all the places he had
enumerated, so he took her through the famous side-streets.
"I certainly do like this part of the world," she repeated emphatically.
"And do you know, your talk of tea, and corn, and produce, and
warehouses has made me very hungry. If we stumble up against a charming
place, we shall lunch."
And, a minute or two later, as they strolled down Eastcheap, at the
corner of a narrow winding lane, they came upon a sort of cafe, which
nice-looking merchants were entering, besides a goodly sprinkling of
brisk young women. Lady Betty peered in through the door. The place
seemed pretty full, but a stairway led to regions below. In a box, at
the head of the stairway, and busily taking the cash, was a charming old
man of mildest aspect.
Lady Betty declared it all fascinating, especially the part below
stairs, which had the attraction of the as yet unseen.