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 pa.s.ser-by. The pavements were choked with slow pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.s 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 p.r.i.c.kets 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.