The Incredible Honeymoon Part 17

That, too, he put away to be taken out and loved later.

"We won't stay in London," he said, "if the answer is what I think it will be. We'll go out into the green country and decide what we're going to do."

"But if she _did_ put the advertis.e.m.e.nt in, it means that she's _very_ ill. And then I must go to her."

"But if she didn't--and I more and more think she didn't--they may send some one to the General Post-Office post-haste--so it won't do for you to go for the telegram. Do you know the Guildhall Library?"

"No."

"It's a beautiful place--very quiet, very calm. And the officials are the best chaps I've ever found in any library anywhere. We'll go there.

You must want to look up something. Let's see--the dates of the publication of Bacon's works. Write your name in the book--any name you like, so long as it isn't your own; then ask one of the officials to help you, and go and sit at one of the side tables--they're like side chapels in a cathedral--and stay there till I come. You'll be as safe and as secret as if you were in the Bastille. And I'll baffle pursuit and come to you as soon as I can."

"Yes," she said, meekly.

"And don't worry," he urged. "The more I think of it, the more certain I am that it was not the aunt you like who wrote that advertis.e.m.e.nt--"

He was right. The telegram with which, an hour later, he presented himself at the Guildhall Library ran thus:

I did not write advertis.e.m.e.nt and I am not specially ill, but I am very anxious. Write at once. Aunt Loo and Aunt Enid are both here. I think they must have inserted the advertis.e.m.e.nt. A.

"Your Aunt Alice is a sportsman," he said, "to warn you like that."

"I told you she was a darling," she answered--and her whole face had lighted up with relief--"and you are the cleverest person in the world!

I should never have thought about its not being her doing, never in a thousand years. You deserve a medal and a statue and a pension."

"I don't deserve more than I've got," said he, "nor half so much. The sun s.h.i.+nes again."

She flashed a brilliant smile at him, and pushed a brown book along the table.

"I suppose we ought to look studious," she said, "or they'll turn us out. I am so glad Aunt Alice isn't really worse. You don't know how I've felt while you've been away. It seemed so horribly selfish--to have been so happy and all while she was ill and worried. But, of course, you do know."

"Let us go out," he said, putting the books together.

"Yes," she said, "I know all about Bacon. Not that I'll ever want to know."

"I'm not so sure," said he. "Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the Baconians are right, and he was an intellectual giant, almost like Plato and Aristotle rolled into one? We'll go to Stratford some day, and look at Shakespeare's bust and see if we think he could have written 'The Tempest.'"

"You shouldn't judge people by their faces," she said. "Handsome is as handsome does."

"Oh, but you should," said he. "It's handsome does as handsome is. I always go by appearances. Don't you? But of course, I know you do--"

She opened one of the books and began to turn the pages. "Look what I found," she said, and all the time their voices had been lowered to the key of that studious place. "Look, isn't it pretty? And do you see?--the e's are like the Greek [Greek: th]. Can you read it?"

He read:

"Fair Lucrece, kind Catherine, gentle Jane, But Maria is the dearest name.

Robert Swinford, 1863."

"Yes, that's what I make it. It doesn't rhyme, but I expect Maria was very pleased. Do you think they were studying with a stern tutor, and he wrote that and pushed it over to her when no one was looking? It's an odd thing to have written in a Natural History book. There's something more on another page--but it doesn't make sense:

"I am true rew Hebrew--CXIX--101."

"I expect he was just trying a pen. Come, the librarian has his scholarly eye on you."

"I should like to look through all the old books and find out all the names people have written and make stories about them," she said, and he received the curious impression that she was talking against time; there was about her a sort of hanging back from the needful movement of departure. He picked the books up and carried them to the counter, she following, and they walked in silence down the gallery hung with Wouvermans and his everlasting gray horse.

"Let's go into the Hall," he said. So they turned under the arch and went into the beautiful great vaulted Guildhall, where the giants Gog and Magog occupy the gallery, and little human people can sit below on stone benches against the wall, and gaze on the monuments of the elder and the younger Pitt, and talk at long leisure, undisturbed and undisturbing, which is not the case in the Library, as Edward pointed out.

"Now, then," he began.

"Yes," she said, hurriedly. "Something will have to be done about Aunt Alice."

"Yes. But what?"

"I don't know." She turned and leaned one hand on the stone seat so that she faced him. "You do believe that I don't regret coming away? I think it would have been splendid to have gone on--like yesterday--but you see it's impossible."

"No, I don't," he said, stoutly.

She made a movement of impatience. "Oh yes, it is--quite," she said.

"However rich you are, you can't go on forever being blackmailed. Every one would know us, or else you'd have to give up Charles, and even then I expect you'd be obliged to pay twenty pounds every three-quarters of an hour. It can't be done. And, besides, we should never know a moment's peace. Wherever we went we should imagine a blackmailer behind every bush, and every one we spoke to might be a detective. It's no use. I must go back. Do say you know I must."

"I don't."

"Well, say you know I don't want to."

"I can't say that ... because, if you don't want to ... there's always the old alternative, you know." He was looking straight before him at the majestic form of the Earl of Chatham.

"What alternative?"

"Marrying me," he said, humbly. "Do. I don't believe that you'd regret it."

"When I marry," she said, strongly, "it won't be just because I want to get myself out of a sc.r.a.pe."

"I hoped there might be other considerations," he said, still gazing at the marble. "You were happy yesterday. You said so."

"You talk as though marrying were just nothing--like choosing a partner for a dance. It's like--like choosing what patterns you'd be tattooed with, if you were a savage. It's for life."

"And you can't like me well enough to choose me?"

"I do like you," she answered, with swift and most disheartening eagerness, "I do like you awfully; better than any man I've ever known--oh, miles better--not that that's saying much. But I don't know you well enough to marry you."

"You don't think it would turn out well?"

She faltered a little. "It--it mightn't."

"We could go on being friends just as we are now," he urged.

"It wouldn't be the same," she said, "because there'd be no way out. If we found we didn't like each other, to-morrow, or next month, or on Tuesday week, we could just say good-by and there'd be no harm done.

But if we were married--no--no--no!"