The Incredible Honeymoon

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."

The points of her white shoes showed like stars among the filth of the pavement, her clean, clear beauty shining against the drab and dirty houses like a lily against a dust-heap. He felt a surge of impotent fury that such a background should be possible. The children, tired and pale with the summer heat that had been so glad and gay and shining to him and to her yesterday on the quiet river, looked like some sort of living fungus – and their clothes looked like decaying vegetables. If Mr. Basingstoke had been alone he would have solaced himself by going to the nearest baker's and buying buns for every child in sight. But somehow it is very difficult to do that sort of thing unless you are alone or have a companion who trusts you and whom you trust beyond the limit of life's cheaper confidences. He felt that self-exculpatory eagerness to give which certain natures experience in the presence of sufferings which they do not share. Also he felt – and hated himself for feeling – a fear lest, if he should act naturally, she might think he wanted to "show off." To show off what, in the name of all that was pretentious and insincere? Had civilization come to this, that a man was "showing off" who took want as he found it and changed it, without its costing him the least little loss or self-denial, into a radiant, if momentary, satisfaction? And yet, somehow, he found he could not say, "Let's go and raid the bun-shop for these kiddies."

"We're to pass our lives together, and I can't say a simple thing like that," he thought, with curious bitterness – but, indeed, all his thoughts were confused and bitter just then.

What a travesty of a wedding-day! He would have liked his wedding-feast to be in the big barn of the bride's father, and every neighbor, rich and poor, to have drunk their health in home-brewed ale of the best, and the tables cleared away and a jolly dance to follow, and when the fun was at its merriest he and she would have slipped out and ridden home to his own house on the white horse – Dobbin, his name – she on the pillion behind him, her arm soft about his waist, and the good horse so sure of foot that he never stumbled, however often his master turned his face back to the dear face over his shoulder. Instead of which she had consented to a mock marriage in a registry-office – and this.

"Let's get out of this," he repeated.

"We are getting out of it," she said, and, abruptly, "Don't people who have real weddings pay the ringers and the beadle and give a feast to the villagers – open house, and all that?"

He thrilled to the magic of that apt capping of his thought.

"Yes," he said, and, not knowing why, hung on her next words.

"Couldn't we?" she said, and her eyes wandered to the rose he still carried. "Of course it was only pretending, but we might pretend a little longer. Couldn't we give our wedding-feast here? The guests are all ready," she added, and her voice trembled a little.

How seldom can man follow his desire. Edward would have liked to fall on his knees among the cabbage-stalks and the drifting dust and straw and paper – to kneel before her and kiss her feet. For, in that moment, and for the first time, he worshiped her.

The imbecile irrationality of this will not have escaped you. He worshiped her for the very thought, the very impulse of simple loving-kindness which he had been ashamed to let her know as his own.

She kindled to the lighting of his face. "I knew you would," she said. "You are a dear." The same irrational admiration shone in her eyes. "Sweets? Pounds and pounds of?"

"Buns," he answered, "buns and rock-cakes. Sweets afterward, if you like," and enthusiastically led the way to the nearest baker's.

Now this is difficult to believe and quite impossible to explain, but it is true. No human ear but their own had heard this interchange. "Sweets," "buns," and "rock-cakes," those words of power had, in fact, been spoken in the softest whisper, but from the moment of their being spoken a sort of wireless telegraphy ran down that mean street from end to end, and by the time they reached the baker's they had a ragged following of some fifty children, while from court and alley and narrow side-street came ever more and more children, ragged children, stuffily dressed children, children carrying bags, children carrying parcels, children carrying babies and jugs and jars and bundles. The crowd of children pressed around the baker's door, and noses flattened like the suckers of the octopus in aquariums marked a long line across the window a little above the level of the bun-trays. I do not pretend to explain how this happened. Good news proverbially travels fast. It also travels by ways past finding out.

She began to take the buns by twos and threes from the tray in the window, and held them out. A forest of lean arms reached up and a shrill chorus of, "Me, teacher! Me!" varied by, "She's 'ad one – me next, teacher! Let the little boy 'ave one, lady; 'e 'ain't 'ad nuffin."

The woman of the shop rolled forward. She was as perfectly spherical as is possible to the human form.

"Treat, sir?" she said, in a thick, rich, husky voice (like cake, as Edward said later). They owned her guess correct.

"How much'll you go to?"

"A bun apiece," said Edward.

"For the whole street? Why, there's hundreds!"

"The more the merrier," said Mr. Basingstoke.

"Do 'e mean it?" the woman asked, turning to the bun-giver.

"Yes, oh yes." The girl turned from the door to lean over the smooth deal counter. "It's our wedding-day," she whispered, "and we didn't give any wedding-breakfast, so we thought we'd give one now."

Edward had turned to the door and was making a speech.

"You shall all have a bun," he said, "to eat the lady's health in. But it's one at a time. Now you just hold on a minute and don't be impatient."

"Bless your good 'art, my dear," the globular lady was wheezing into the ear of the mock bride. "Married to-day, was you? I'm sure you look it, both of you – every inch you do. But we 'aven't got the stuff in the place for 'arf that lot."

"How soon could you get it?"

"I could send a couple of the men out. Do it in ten minutes – or less, if Prickets around the corner's not sold out."

"How much will it cost – something for each of them – cake if not buns – sweets if not cake – ?"

The round woman made a swift mental calculation and announced the result.

She who looked so much like a bride turned to him who seemed her bridegroom. "Give me some money, please, will you?"

Money changed hands, and changed again.

"Now, lookee 'ere," said the round one, "you let me manage this 'ere for you. If you don't you'll be giving three times over to the pushing ones, and the quiet ones won't get nothing but kicked shins and elbows in the pit of stomachs. I know every man jack of them 'cept the hinfans in arms, and even them I knows the ones as is carrying of them. Wait till I send the chaps off for the rest of the stuff."

The crowd outside surged excitedly, and the frail arms still waved to the tune of, "Me next, teacher!" All along the street the faces of the houses changed features as slatternly women and shirt-sleeved men leaned out of the windows to watch and wonder. When the baker's wife rolled back into the shop she found the girl silent, with lips that trembled.

"There, don't you upset yourself, my pretty," said the round one. "You'll like to give it to 'em with your own hands, I lay. Take and begin on what's before you – let 'em come in one door and out of the other, and I'll see as they don't come twice."