The Incredible Honeymoon

"Oh, dear!" her voice was plaintive. "You must have had some idea or you wouldn't have come to-day instead of Thursday. Hadn't you any idea, any scheme, any plan?"

"Yes," he said, "but it does not matter; I'll do anything you say."

"Oh, well," she said, "if you won't tell me your plans – " and she sketched the gesture of one who turns away and goes on her way alone.

"But I will," he said, quickly. Yet still he spoke like a very stupid child saying a lesson which it does not quite know. "I will tell you – I thought if you liked the car we might just get in and drive off – "

"Where?"

"Oh, just anywhere," he said, and hastened to add, "but I see now how silly it was. Of course I ought to have written and explained. Surprises are always silly, aren't they?"

And he felt as one who sits forlorn and feels the cold winds blow through the ruined arches of a castle in Spain. He had not read her letter as she had meant him to read it. Everything was different. Perhaps, after all, she did not – never had – he had deceived himself, like the fatuous fool he was.

"I ought to have thought," he blundered. "Of course you would not care to go motoring in that beautiful gown – and that hat – that makes you look like the Gardener's Daughter – 'a sight to make an old man young'" – he added, recovering a very little – "and no coat! But I did buy a coat."

He leaned over and pulled out of the car a mass of soft brown fur lined with ermine. "Though, of course, it would have been better to ask you to choose one – I expect it's all wrong," and he heaved up the furry folds half-heartedly, without looking at her. "I just thought you might not have thought of getting one." and his voice trailed away into silence, a silence that hers did not break.

Slowly she put out her hand and touched the fur, still without speaking. Then he did look at her, and suddenly the light of life sprang up again and the world was illumined from end to end. For her face that had been pale was pink as the wild rose is pink, and her mouth that had been sad was smiling; in her eyes was all, or almost all, that he had hoped to see there when, at last, after this long parting they should meet; and her hand was stroking the fur as if she loved it.

"It's the most beautiful coat in the world," she said, and her voice, like her face, was transfigured. She turned her shoulders to him that he might lay the coat on them, slipped her arms into the sleeves, and wheeled to confront him, her face alight with a mingled tenderness and gaiety that turned him, for a moment, faint and giddy.

"You really like it, Princess?" he faltered.

"I love it," she made answer; "and now, my lord, will you take me in your nice new motor-car to my unworthy hotel, that I may pay my miserable bill and secure my despicable luggage? Even a princess, you know, can't go to the world's end without a pair of slippers, a comb, and a clean pocket-handkerchief."

With that she was in the car, and he followed, gasping, in the sudden wave of enchantment that had changed the world. What had happened? Why had she suddenly changed? How had the cloud vanished? Whence had the cloud arisen?

His heart, or his vanity, or both, had been too bruised by the sudden blow to recover all in a minute. His brain, too, was stunned by the lack of any reason in what had happened. Why had she not been glad to see him? Why had she so suddenly turned from a cold stranger to her very self? What had worked the bad magic? Not, surely, the sight of a friend two days before she expected that sight? What had worked the good magic? It was not thinkable that any magic at all could be worked by a fur coat or even by the foresight that had provided it. His mind busied itself with such questions and felt no pain in them because it knew that his heart held in reserve, to be contemplated presently, the glorious fact that the good magic had, somehow, been wrought. But he would not call his heart into court yet. So that it was in silence that he drove through the steep streets. His own slight luggage was already at the back of the car, and when hers was added to it and they had left the town behind he still said nothing but the few words needed to such little matters as the disposing of the luggage and the satisfying of the hotel porter.

And when all the tall, stuccoed houses were left behind and they were rushing smoothly through the fresh morning, with the green sea on one side and the green marshland on the other, still he did not speak and kept his eyes on the white ribbon of road unrolling itself before him. It was just as they passed the third Martello tower that her hand crept under his arm. He took his from the steering-wheel for a moment to lay it on hers, and after that his heart had its way, and the silence, though still unbroken, was no longer the cloak for anxious questionings, but the splendid robe of a tender, tremulous joy.

They sped on; through Dymchurch, where the great sea-wall is, and where the houses are built lower than the sea, so that the high tide laps against the sea-wall level with the bedroom windows of the little houses that nestle behind its strong shelter.

It was she who spoke then. "Isn't it a dear little place?" she said. "Wouldn't you like to live in a Martello tower? They have one beautiful big room with a Norman-looking pillar in the middle, and a down-stairs part for kitchens, and an up-stairs, where the big gun is, that you could roof in for bedrooms. I should like a Martello! Don't you want to buy one? You know they built them to keep out Napoleon – and the canal as well – but no one uses them now. They just keep fishing-nets in them and wheelbarrows and eel-spears."

"Let's buy the haunted one," he said, and hoped that his voice was steady, for it was not of haunted towers that he desired to speak. "A soldier's ghost walks there; the village people say 'it's one of them there Roman soldiers that lived here when them towers was built in old ancient Roman times.'"

She laughed. "You know Dymchurch, then? Isn't it nice when people know the same places? Almost as nice as it is when they've read the same books."

But the silence was not broken, only lifted. Her hand crept a little farther into the crook of his arm.

It was as they passed the spick-and-span white-painted windmill at New Romney that he said: "Don't you think it would be nicer to buy a windmill? There are four stories to that, and you can shift the top one around so that your window's always away from the wind."

"Yes," she said, "we really ought to buy a windmill."

The "we" lay warm at his heart until they came near Rye that stands upon its hill, looking over the marshes to the sea that deserted it so many years ago.

"There's a clock in Rye church that Sir Walter Raleigh presented to the town," he said, instructively.

"And Henry James lived there," said she.

"Shall we have lunch at the Mermaid Tavern? Or would you rather have a picnic? I've got a basket."

"How clever of you! Of course we'll have the picnic. And it's quite early. How beautifully the car is going!"

"Yes, isn't she?"

"Has she a name yet?"

"No. You must christen her."

"I should call her Time, because she flies so fast."

"You'd have to particularize. All time doesn't fly."

"No," she said, "ah, no! And she ought to have a splendid sort of name, she is so magnificently triumphant over space and time. Raleigh would have called her the 'Gloriana.'"

"So will we," said he. And they left Rye behind, and again the silence folded them round, and still her hand lay close in the crook of his arm.

At Winchelsea she suddenly asked, "Where's Charles?"

"Charles," he said, gravely, "is visiting my old nurse. He is well and happy – a loved and honored guest."

"The dear!" she said, absently. They were nearing Hastings before he spoke again, almost in a whisper, and this time what he said was what he meant to say.

"Are you happy?" he asked.

And she said, "Yes!"

It was at Hurstmonceaux that they opened the picnic basket – Hurstmonceaux, the great ruined Tudor castle, all beautiful in red brick and white stone. Less than a hundred years ago it was perfect to the last brick of it. But its tall old twisted red chimneys smoked. So a Hastings architect was called in. "I cannot cure your smoky chimneys, sir," said he, "but with the lead and some of the bricks of your castle I can build you a really comfortable and convenient modern house in the corner of your park, and I pledge you my word as an architect that the chimneys of the new house sha'n't smoke." So he did, and they didn't. And Hurstmonceaux was turned from a beautiful house to a beautiful ruin, and no one can live there; but parties of sightseers and tourists can be admitted on Mondays and Thursdays for a fee of sixpence a head, children half-price. All of which she read to him from the Guide to Sussex, as they sat in the grass-grown courtyard, where moss and wild flowers have covered the mounds of fallen brick.

"But this isn't Monday or Thursday," she said. "How did you get in?"

"You saw – with the big key, the yard of cold iron. I got special leave from the owner – for this."

"How very clever of you! How much better than anything I could have arranged."

"Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley," he said, drawing the cork of the Rüdesheimer. "I do hope you really like lobster salad."

"And chicken and raspberries and cream, and everything. I like it all – and our dining-room – it's the most beautiful dining-room I ever had. I only thought of a wood, or a field, or perhaps a river, for Thursday."

"You did mean to have a picnic for Thursday?"

"Yes, but this is much better. It's a better place than I could have found, and besides – "

"Besides – ?"

"It isn't Thursday."