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The Incredible Honeymoon
XVI
CAERNARVON
SOMEHOW or other Chester failed to charm. Neither of them could understand why. Perhaps the Stratford Hotel had given them a momentary surfeit of half-timber; perhaps the fact that the skies turned gray and substituted drizzle for sunshine had something to do with it; perhaps it was the extreme badness of the hotel to which ill-luck led them, a hotel that smelt of stale seed-cake and bad coffee and bad mutton-fat, and was furnished almost entirely with bentwood chairs and wicker tables; perhaps it was the added aggravation of seeing a river which might have been to them a second Medway, and seeing it quite impossible and miserably pitted with little rain-spots. Whatever the reason, even next morning's sunshine and the beauty of the old walls and the old walks failed to dispel the gloom. They bought rain-coats and umbrellas in a shop that had known ruffs and farthingales, paid their hotel bill, which was as large as the hotel was bad, and took the afternoon train to Caernarvon.
The glimpse of Conway Castle from the train cheered them a little. The sight of the sea did more – but still he felt a cloud between them, and still she felt more and more that he was aware of it. Charles sat between them, as before, and over that stout white back his eyes met hers.
"What is it?" he asked, suddenly. "Yesterday I thought it was the half-timber and the rain – this morning I thought it was yesterday, but it isn't. Something's happened that you haven't told me."
She turned her eyes from his and stroked the flappy white ears of Charles.
"Hasn't it?" he urged. "Ah, you will tell me, won't you? Was it something from the aunts?"
For there had been letters that morning, sent on from Warwick.
"No, the letters were all right. Everybody's furious except Aunt Alice, but she's the only one that matters."
"Then what is it?"
"It's almost gone," she said. "Oh, look at the rocks and the heather on that great hill."
"Then there was something," he said; "something you won't tell me."
"Not won't," she said, gently.
"Can't? Something that's happened and you can't tell me?"
He remembered how on the last night at Warwick he had held that hand of hers against his face. They had seemed so very near then. And now there was a gulf suddenly opened between them – the impassable gulf of a secret – a secret that was hers and not his.
"Yes, something did happen and I have promised not to tell you. If ever I can, I will."
"Something has come between us and you have promised not to tell me what it is?"
"Oh no – no!" she said, very earnestly, and her dear eyes looked full in his. "Nothing has come between us – nothing could – "
He realized, with some impatience, that Charles, at least, was between them. But for Charles he could, quite naturally and ayant l'air de rien have leaned a little toward her as he spoke – so that his shoulder might, perhaps, if she had leaned also, have just touched hers. But across Charles this could not be. And to lean, after the removal of Charles, would bear an air of premeditation not to be contemplated for an instant.
"If it's nothing that comes between us – " he said. "But even then, it's something that's made you sad, made you different. I suppose, though, it's unreasonable to expect that there shall be no secrets between any two human beings, no matter how – how friendly they are," he ended, with conscious lameness.
"Of course it's unreasonable," she said; "it would mean, wouldn't it, that neither of us could ever be trusted by any one else? Whereas now people can tell you things they wouldn't want to tell me, and tell me things they wouldn't care about telling you."
"Then this – I'm not worrying you to tell me – but if it is somebody else's secret – "
"Well, it is," she said. "Now, are you satisfied? And if you'll only let me look at the sea and the mountains and the heather the Chester cloud will go right away. It's nearly gone now. And I've never seen any real mountains before, not mountains like these, with warm colors and soft shapes – only the Pyrenees and the Maritime Alps, and they look just like white cardboard cut into points and pasted on blue sugar-paper – that's the sky."
"It's prettier at sunrise, with the mountains like pink and white sugar, and Corsica showing like a little cloud over the sea. We had a villa at Antibes when I was a little chap, before we lost our money. We'll go there again some day, shall we, and see if the mountains have changed at all? Not this winter, I think. I've never had an English winter free from work I didn't like. I must have just this one. You don't mind?"
What he hoped she wouldn't mind was less the English winter than his calm assumption that there was plenty of time, that they would always be together and might go where they would and when – since all the future was before them – all the future, and each other's companionship all through it.
"Why should I mind?" she answered. "I've never had a free winter in England, either, or anywhere else, for that matter."
"Then that's settled," said he, comfortably, "and you can't think what a comfort it is to me that you don't hate Charles. You might so easily have hated dogs."
"If I'd been that sort of person I shouldn't be here."
"Ah, but Charles might so easily have been the one kind of dog you couldn't stand. He's not everybody's dog, by any means. Are you, Charles? Of course it's almost incredible that this earth should contain people who don't like Charles, yet so it is."
"The people he's bitten?"
"Oh, those!" said Edward, adding, with a fine air of tolerance, "I could almost find excuses for them – they've not seen the finer aspects of his character. No, there are actually human beings to whom Charles's personality does not appeal – persons whom he has borne with patiently, whom he has refrained from biting, or even sniffing at the trousers legs of. Prejudice is a mysterious and terrible thing. Oh, but it's a good world – all the same."
"Isn't it," she said, "with the sun shining and the mountains and the rocks and the sea all there, just like a picture? Oh, there's no doubt but it's a beautiful world."
"And you and I and Charles going out to see it all together. It's a fine world, every bit of it – and the little bit we're just coming to is Caernarvon."
Caernarvon it was, and they spent nearly a week there. The castle is all that a castle should be; and as for the sea, what can be better, unless it's in Cornwall; and there is Anglesea, lying flat against the sky, and the Elephant Mountain and the Seven Sisters, and old Snowdon topping all.
The inn was comfortable, the weather had grown kind again, the hostler was one of those to whom Charles's personality so much appealed that the dog was almost too replete with good living to appreciate the rats provided for his recreation. This hostler, Owen Llewellyn, became such an enthusiast in the service of Charles that Mr. Basingstoke was only able by a fortunate chance, the strong exercise of authority, and a golden offering for the soothing of wounded feelings to stop the entertainment which Owen had arranged with several of his friends in a handy field and the cool of the evening: a quiet little dog-fight, as the friends indignantly explained, with Charles and a worthy antagonist filling the leading rôles.
"It isn't as if the dogs wouldn't enjoy it more than any one else, and me putting all my money on your dog, sir," one of the friends (from London) complained. "There ain't nothing that that there dog 'u'd love better nor a bit of a scrap. An' you to go agin the animal's natural desires and keep him for a lap-dog for the lady. It ain't right," he ended, feelingly, as the lap-dog was led off, yapping defiance at the adversary whom, so his admirers swore, he could have licked hollow with one paw tied behind him.
It was at Caernarvon that Edward and his princess lived the quiet life that does not lead to sight-seeing. There was something poignantly domestic to his mind in those long mornings in green fields or among the broken and still beautiful colonnades of the castle, he with a book from which he read to her, she with some work of embroidery in which a bright needle flashed among pleasant-colored silks. It was in the castle, in one of those mysterious narrow passages, that they came face to face with a tall, handsome man of middle age, who shook Edward's hand with extreme vigor, clapped him on the back, and announced that he would have run a mile for the sake of seeing him. Edward would have run two to avoid the meeting, because the eyes of the back-clapper were turned on Katherine, awaiting the introduction which must come. Colonel Bertram, an old friend of Edward's father's, knew well enough that Edward was an only child. No brother-and-sister tale was possible here.
"Do you hang out in these parts?" Edward asked. "I wonder you knew me. I don't believe we've met since I was about sixteen."
While he spoke he looked a question at her, and read the slightest possible sign with which she answered.
"Colonel Bertram – my wife. Katherine, the Colonel used to tip me sovereigns when I was at school, and he gave me my first pony."
The colonel's grip ground her rings into her hand. "'Pon my word!" he said, "I don't know when I've been so pleased. You must come and dine with us, my boy, to-night – To-morrow? Make him come, Mrs. Basingstoke. I know it's not manners to intrude on a honeymoon, but I am such an old friend, and our meeting like this is such a remarkable coincidence, almost like the finger of Providence – upon my soul it is."
"It's very, very nice of you to ask us," she said, in a voice of honey, "but, unfortunately, we're leaving this afternoon."
"Well, at any rate, let's lunch together. No, of course; too late for that. Well, look here, you've seen the castle, of course; come and see over the prison. I'm governor there, for my sins. Come and let me show you my prison!"
His simple pride in the only sight he had to show prevailed even against the shrinking she felt and did not wholly understand.
"When are you leaving? The six o'clock train? Plenty of time. We've made wonderful reforms, I can tell you. The cells are pictures, perfect pictures. 'Pon my word, I never was so glad to see any one. And so you're married. Dear, dear, dear! Makes me feel an old boy, that it does! The young ones growing up around us – eh, what?"
He led the way out of the castle, and Edward and Katherine exchanged behind his cordial back glances almost of despair. They had not wanted to leave Caernarvon, but Edward could only bless Katherine for her decision. The relations of Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke could never have stood the affectionate cross-questionings of Mrs. Bertram. They must go; Katherine was right.
Katherine, meantime, was wishing she had invented a headache, an appointment at the local dentist's, had even simulated a swoon at Colonel Bertram's feet, before she had consented to visit a prison.
From the first moment of her entrance there the prison appalled her. It was a very nice prison, as prisons go. But the grating at the door, the locks that clicked, the polished keys, the polished handcuffs, the prison records which their host exhibited with so much ingenuous enthusiasm; the cells, one little cage after another in which human birds were pent..
"What have they all done?" she asked, as they walked along a stone-paved gallery; and wished she had not asked, for the details of horrible crimes were the last things she wished to hear.
"Oh, petty felonies, mostly," said the governor, airily.
It seemed more and more horrible to her that she and he and the governor should tread the mazes of this place free to come and go as they chose, while these other human beings, for whatever fault – and it seemed the faults could hardly rank as crimes – should be here encaged, never more to go out free till their penance should have purged them.
"I suppose one mustn't give them anything?"
"A little good advice wouldn't be amiss. 'Don't do it any more,' and so on. Would you like to give them an address, Mrs. Basingstoke?"
She hated his badinage. "I mean tobacco or chocolate or books, or anything that they'd like," she explained, patiently.
"No, no," said the governor. "They aren't pets, you know. Mustn't feed them through the bars as though they were rabbits or guinea-pigs. The townspeople will throw tobacco over into the yard. Can't stop them. But of course we punish the offenders very severely whenever we manage to bring it home to them."
The horrible sense of slavery grew on her – the prisoners were slaves to the warders, the warders slaves, and super-subservient slaves, to the governor, the governor himself a slave to some power unseen but all-potent.
She watched her opportunity and while Colonel Bertram was explaining to Edward the method of the manufacture of post-office bags she opened her purse in her pocket and let all its contents fall loose, therein. Then she gathered the money in a handful, careful that no rattle or chink should betray her, and when the governor was explaining how wire netting, spread over each gallery to catch any object thrown from above rendered suicide difficult, if not impossible, she knotted the money in her handkerchief. Then she watched for further opportunity, hoping against hope, for it seemed that her chance would never come. There were eyes everywhere.
"If I can't do it here, I'll buy tobacco and throw it over the wall," she told herself.
It was in the kitchen that the chance came. Three prisoners were there acting as cooks, and the governor had sent the attendant warder on some errand, to order tea for them in his office, as events showed.
"Very nice – very neat – very clean." She praised all in the simplest and most direct words.
The governor again addressed himself to Edward. It was a tale of poaching that he told – the theft of two hares and a pheasant – a desperate crime duly punished. He and Edward left the kitchen, talking. She followed, but first she laid her hand on a table near the door and looked full at the nearest prisoner. Then she smiled. The three smiled back at her. Then she opened her hand, showing plainly the knotted handkerchief. "Good luck!" she said, low, but so that they all heard her.
Then she followed the governor and Edward, but at the door she turned and kissed her hand to the three prisoners. The faces they turned to her will stay with her as long as she lives. Wonder, delight, incredulity – that any one – that she should have cared to say "good luck," should have smiled at them, should have left them her handkerchief, though they did not yet know what was in it. The wonder and worship in their eyes brought tears to her own.
They were still there when the governor turned.
"A cup of tea, now, Mrs. Basingstoke," he said, "it's all ready."
She answered hurriedly, "It's very kind of you, but, do you know, if you don't mind, I think we ought to be going. We've got to pack and all that."
Colonel Bertram, who was no fool, heard the quivering voice and saw the swimming eyes. "So sorry," he said, "but charmed to have met you – charmed," and stood back for her to pass the door of the corridor. "I understand," he said; "your wife's a bit upset. Ladies often are; they don't understand the law, you know, the great principles of property and the law. Don't mention it; I like them soft-hearted. You're a fortunate man, my boy – deuced fortunate. Good-by. So very, very pleased we happened to meet. Good-by."
The well-oiled locks clicked to let them out. In the street she caught his arm and clung to it.
"There, there!" he spoke as one speaks to a frightened child. "It's all over; don't distress yourself."
"It's not all over for them," she said.
"Prisons have to be," said Edward.
"Have they?" said she. "I suppose they do, but such little things. To take a pair of boots because your feet are cold and you have no money, and to pay for what you've done – with that. Horrible! horrible!"
Neither of them spoke again till they were nearly at the hotel. Then he said, "What did you give them?"
"What do you mean?"
"I saw you knotting something in that little scented handkerchief of yours. What was it you gave them."
"Every penny I had. And I said, 'Good luck to you,' and I kissed my hand to them. There!" she said, defiantly.
"It was like you," he said, and took her arm. "But I wish I hadn't let you go inside the place. I didn't realize how it would be to you. I didn't realize what it would be to me."
"It was silly of me, I suppose," she said.
"I dare say. But you were lucky; I only managed to drop my tobacco-pouch among the post-office bags, but our guilt is equal. The sooner we get out of Caernarvon the better. By the way, don't let's catch the six-o'clock train to nowhere in particular. Let's take a carriage and drive to Llanberis and see the slate-quarries and go up Snowdon."
"Don't let's ever go into another prison," she said, blinking so that the tears should drop off her eyelashes and not run down her face, "it hurts so horribly, and we can't do any good."
"Not do any good?" he said. "Do you suppose that life can ever be the same to a man to whom you've smiled and kissed your hand? Ah, I don't mean it for empty gallantry, my dear. I mean that to know that you, free and beautiful, care for them in their misery and imprisonment – don't you think that's worth something?"
"If it is, I'm glad we went," said she.
Their departure for Llanberis, though sudden, was the less deplored by the hotel management because of a regrettable misunderstanding which had arisen during the afternoon between Charles and the house cat.
XVII
LLANBERIS
LLANBERIS, prim and small, and very, very Welsh, lies in the shadow of great Snowdon, and all about it the lesser and more gracious mountains – the mountains of green and purple and brown – stand with their heads against the sky, bathing their feet in great lakes of smooth, brown water. The inn has a beautiful and terraced garden; the stream from the waterfall under Snowdon runs tumbling and gurgling down its rocky bed. "The peace that is upon the lonely hills" may be yours at the cost of a little breathless, happy climbing; the deeper peace of valleys and lake may be yours for no more trouble than it takes to walk a couple of hundred yards from the door of your inn. That the hotel was full did not seem to matter – the other guests were off early, in breaks and wagonettes, spending the long days in excursions from which they returned late and hilarious, breaking the soft night quiet with loud laughter and snatches of the kind of songs that nowadays delight the great heart of the people. Trippers from Manchester and Liverpool came for the day, but never strayed far from the inn, or, if they did, went up Snowdon by the tiny railway. Everywhere, save on the way that led to Snowdon, you were sure of quiet or peace, of a world where two could be alone together.
Here the two tried to take up again the life of ordered ease that had been theirs at Caernarvon, the little life they had prized and cherished till the governor of Caernarvon prison had thrown a stone into their magic pool, shattering all its mirrored beauty. They spent long mornings on the hillside, cushioned by the heather; long evenings by the lakeside, always careful to choose their resting-place so that they need not see the scars where the waste slate is tipped into the lake, slowly overlaying the green and graceful margin with which Nature, if you let her alone, frames all water mirrors. And once they went as far as the mysterious Round Tower, which stands alone, with no entrance but the doorway high above your head.
"What a place to keep your enemy in," he said, "or your friend! Suppose the tower had been my stronghold, in the old days. I could have brought my princess here, and snapped my fingers at her relations drawn round the tower in a ring, shaking their fists at me from their coal-black steeds, and vowing vengeance when the tower should yield – which, of course, it never would."
"Your princess would have starved," she said, "and you with her."
"Not at all," he assured her; "you underrate the resources of round towers. To say nothing of the goats and sheep which we should drive in and lower to the basement when our scout brought news that your kinsmen were sending out the fiery cross or the blood eagle, or whatever it was that they did send out; and there's an inexhaustible well inside the tower, and of course we should have sacks of meal and casks of mead."
"But the enemy – her relations, I mean – would have all the sheep on the mountains and all the flour in the mills. You'd have to give in, in the end."
"You forget the underground passage. When we were tired of mocking your uncles and cousins through the arrow-slits of our tower we'd quietly creep away to our great castle – it's at Caernarvon, you know – and call together all my uncles and cousins and sally out and have a great battle, and the sound of our blows on their helmets would be heard on the far side of Anglesea, and down to the very southernmost marches of Merioneth."
"But suppose her relations won the battle and shut you up in a dungeon and put her into a convent?"
"Oh, they wouldn't. All our armor would be so perfectly tempered that nobody would be hurt. It would be like a tournament, and at the end, just as your senior uncle and I had unhorsed each other and were about to perish, mutually cloven to the chine, you would rush between us – in white, with your hair flowing like a thunder-cloud behind you – and say to each of us, 'Spare him for my sake.' And of course we should. And then there would be a banquet in the great hall at Caernarvon and clean rushes on the floor, and you and I and all our relations sitting in state on the dais, and you'd be wearing your gown of cloth of gold and your cloak of vair, and all your jewels – and I should have my furred gown and my great ring, and we should drink out of the big silver drinking-bowl – mead and strong ale – and feast our guests and their men-at-arms and all our own people on roast boars' heads and barons of beef, and all live happily ever afterward."
"I don't think she'd wear her ermine mantle. Wouldn't she wear the one of woven red, with your coat of arms embroidered on it, and the gold beads you brought her from the East when you went to the wars there?"
"Perhaps you would," he conceded. "I believe I could climb up to that doorway. I should like to – just to be sure there's really a well inside."
"No, don't," said she, "because you might find out that there wasn't; or that this isn't really the tower that has the underground passage leading to Caernarvon, and then we should know that we're not really remembering that other life when you carried her off, but only making it up."
"Of course we remember it. Do you remember whether you were angry with me for carrying you off."
"If she hadn't wanted to be carried off," she said, demurely, "she wouldn't have been. Or if she hadn't been able to help herself she'd have found a little knife, like the brown bride, or else something to put in your mead-cup, so that the first draught you had from her hand would have been the last. She wasn't the sort of woman to be taken against her will. Come away before you spoil the story with any more questions. I liked it best when we took the tale for granted – "
It was high up among the heather, with Charles safely tethered and the steep hillside dotted with hundreds and hundreds of sheep, that the talk grew earnest and dwelt not on dreams of old days, but the desire of new ones.
"Do you remember," he said, "what you told me when we were going to Warwick?" He spoke as though this had been a long time ago, as, indeed, by any count but time it was. "You remember about the scattered farms, and the way the little houses call to you to come home."
"Yes," she said.
"All that you said about the life – it was like my other self speaking."
"You mean that when I spoke, your inside self said, 'Yes, yes; that's what I mean'?"
"I mean more than that. My inside self said, 'Yes, yes, that's what I always meant. That's what I meant and what I wanted before ever I met you.' Then meeting you obscured everything else, but when you spoke I saw that what I had always wanted rhymed with what you had always wanted. But I want to be quite sure. May I ask questions?"
"Yes."
"Suppose we had been really married – would you have been contented to spend your working life on a farm, to live just that life that you spoke of that day going to Warwick?"
She did not speak for a moment, and for a moment he wished that he had not questioned. And when she did speak it was not to give him an answer.
"I didn't believe it was possible," she said. "I thought people couldn't make farming succeed, nowadays, and I don't think I could bear to spend my working life, as you call it, on a thing that is foredoomed to failure."
"Nor could I; and I don't mean to, either. My farm will succeed. If it costs me every penny I have it shall succeed. I shall go a new way to work. You know I've really got quite a lot of money, and I have a plan."
"Tell me about it."
"It's quite simple, and absolutely opposed to all the accursed teachings of political economy. Of course I shall get the best machinery and the best seeds and the best implements. But I shall also get the best labor."
"Doesn't every one try to do that?"
"Oh yes, every farmer tries to get the best labor he can, at current rates. I sha'n't bother about the current rates. I shall get the best men that are to be got and I shall pay them wages that will make them glad to come to me rather than to any one else. If I find a man's good I shall give him a share in the profits of the farm; if I find he isn't any good I shall sack him."
"I wonder," she said, "whether you'd have the heart to sack any one?"
"I might hesitate to sack a mere fool," he admitted. "I might be tempted to keep him on and find some work for him that even a fool could do. But I'd chuck a slacker at a week's notice and never turn a hair. You'll see; I shall have failures, many of them, but the whole thing won't be a failure. Before I've done I shall have the best carters, the best dairy-women, the best bailiff, and the best plowman and the most successful farm in the country. You don't know how men can work who are working for themselves and not just for a master."
"You mean to make it a sort of communal farm?"
"Never," he said. "That's the last thing I mean it to be. But it will be a profit-sharing farm, and I shall run it. It's my own idea, the darling of my soul, and I won't trust its life to any other man. I'm almost afraid to trust it to you, for fear you should not be kind to it. But if what you said on the way to Warwick meant something that lasts in you – not just the beautiful thoughts of the moment – tell me, if we were really married could you endure a life like that?"
"I should know nothing about it; I should be of no use. And we're not married – "
"You could learn; we could both learn. Let's pretend for a moment that we're really going to spend our lives together, anyhow. Let's leave Mrs. Basingstoke out of it. Would Miss Basingstoke have been able to endure such a life?"
"Miss Basingstoke would have loved it," she said. "Miss Basingstoke would have done her best to learn, and – she isn't really stupid, you know – I think Miss Basingstoke would have succeeded."
"It would need patience," he said, "patience and bravery and loving-kindness and gentleness and firmness and unselfishness."
"And curiosity," she said. "That quality, at least, Miss Basingstoke has. She would have wanted to know all about everything, and that's one way of learning. She wants, now, to know ever so much more. Tell her everything that you've thought of about it, everything you've decided or not decided."
"You'll be kind to my darling dream, then," he said. "Well, here goes."
And with that he told her, and she listened and questioned, and he answered again till the shadows had grown heavy in the valley and they were very late indeed for dinner.
You cannot be long in Llanberis without wanting to "see over" a slate-quarry. It was on their fifth day that the desire came to these two. The mention of Colonel Bertram's name gained for them a personally conducted tour through the rows of little slate-roofed sheds where skilled workmen strip and chip and shape the flakes of quarried slate till they are the size and form needed for roofing cottages and schools and Nonconformist chapels. Having seen how the slate is treated in the sheds, they were taken into the quarry itself to see how the slate is got.
A big slate-quarry is a very impressive sight. You walk across a great amphitheater whose walls of slate rise high above you, their green-trimmed edges sharply cut against the sky. You pick your way among pools of water so smooth, so clear, that they reflect like mirrors the blue sky and the high slate walls of the quarry. One such pool – the largest – lay in the middle of the vast amphitheater, and in it the towering cliffs of slate were reflected even more clearly than in the others.
"I never saw such reflections," she was saying, as they skirted the big pond. "They're almost more real than the real thing. I am glad we came here; it's all so clear and bright and new-looking. I wonder – "
"I wouldn't walk quite so near the edge, if I was you, sir," said the foreman, who was their guide.
"Why?" Edward asked, gazing at the reflection of high cliffs in the pool at his side, "is the water deep – "
And even as he spoke his eyes were opened; but before he could obey their mandate, with a cry that went to his heart and held it she caught his arm and pulled him back. For in that instant she, too, had seen that this pool which reflected so perfectly the tall precipices of the quarry was not a pool at all, but another deep quarry within the first, and that what it held was no reflection, but a sheer and dreadful depth of precipice going down – she would not look to see how far. And he had been walking within six inches of its brink, carelessly and at ease, as one does walk by the safely shelving edge of any pond.
