Edith Nesbit - The Incredible Honeymoon

And as he went he told himself that she was right. She had been mad to come, and he had been mad to let her come. But there was no going back now.

There was no looking back, even. From the brow of the hill the road was down-hill all the way, and he ran, his rubber shoes patting almost noiselessly in the dust. At his inn the bolt yielded to his knife-point's pressure, the well-oiled lock let him in without a murmur, the stairs hardly creaked more than stairs can creak in their dark solitudes when we lie awake and listen to them and wonder… The night was as silent as a thought, and when at last the silence was shattered by the clatter of hoofs and the jangle of harness, Mr. Basingstoke's head turned a little on his pillow, not restlessly.

He heard the clanging bell echo in the flagged passage; heard through the plaster walls the heavy awakening of his host, the scrape of a match, the hasty, blundering toilet; heard the big bar dropped from the front door; voices – the groom's voice, the host's voice, the aunt's voice.

Then heavy steps on the stairs and a knock at his door.

"Very sorry to disturb you, sir," came the muffled tones through the door, almost cringingly apologetic, "but could you get up, sir, just for a minute? Miss Davenant from the Hall wants a word with you – about your dawg, sir, as I understand. If you could oblige, sir – very inconvenient, I know, sir, but the Hall is very highly thought of in the village, sir."

"What on earth – ?" said Mr. Basingstoke, very loudly, and got out of bed. "I'll dress and come down," he said.

He did dress, to the accompaniment of voices below – replaced, that is, the collar, tie, and boots he had taken off – and then he began to pack, his mind busy with the phrases in which he would explain that a house in which these nocturnal disturbances occurred was not fit for the sojourning of… No, hang it all, that would not be fair to the landlord – he must find some other tale.

When he had kept the lady waiting as long as he thought a man might have kept her who had really a toilet to make, he went slowly down. Voices sounded in the parlor, and a slab of light from its door lay across the sanded passage.

He went in; the landlord went out, closing the door almost too discreetly.

Mr. Basingstoke and the aunt looked at each other. She was very upright and wore brown gloves and a brown, boat-shaped hat with an aggressive quill.

"You are here, then?" she said.

"Where else, madam?" said Mr. Basingstoke.

"I should like you," said the aunt, deliberately, "to be somewhere else within the next hour. I will make it worth your while."

"Thank you," Edward murmured.

"I think I ought to tell you," said she, "that I saw through that business of the dog. He was well trained, I admit. But I can't have my niece annoyed in this way."

"The lady must certainly not be annoyed," said Edward, with feeling.

"I came to-night to see if you were here.."

"It is an unusual hour for a call," said Edward, "but I am proportionally honored."

" – to see if you were here, and, if you were, to tell you that my niece is not."

Edward cast a puzzled eye around the crowded parlor. "No," he said. "No."

"I mean," Miss Davenant went on, "that my niece has left this neighborhood and will not return while you are here; so you are wasting your time and trouble."

" I see," said Edward, helpfully.

"You will gain nothing by this attitude," said Miss Davenant. "If you will consent to leave Jevington to-night I will give you twenty pounds."

"Twenty pounds!" he repeated, softly.

"Yes, twenty pounds, on condition that you promise not to molest this defenseless girl."

"Put up your money, madam," said Edward Basingstoke, with a noble gesture copied from the best theatrical models, "and dry your eyes. Never shall it be said that Edward Basingstoke was deaf to the voice of a lady in distress. Lay your commands on me, and be assured that, for me, to hear is to obey."

"You are very impertinent, young man," Miss Davenant told him, "and you won't do yourself any good by talking like a book. Clear out of this to-night, and I'll give you twenty pounds. Stay, and take the consequences."

"Meaning – ?"

"Well, stay if you like. You won't see her. She won't return to Jevington till you're gone. So I tell you you'd better accept my offer and go."

"Accept your offer and go," repeated Edward.

"Twenty pounds," said the lady, persuasively.

"Tempt me not!" said Edward. "To a man in my position.."

"Exactly."

"Nay," said Edward, "there are chords even in a piano-tuner's breast – chords which, too roughly touched, will turn and rend the smiter."

"Good gracious!" said Miss Davenant, "I believe the man's insane."

"Withdraw that harsh expression," he pleaded. And then, without warning, the situation ceased to amuse him. Here he was, swimming in the deep, smooth waters of diplomacy, and suddenly diplomacy seemed a sticky medium. He would have liked Miss Davenant to be a man – a man in green-silk Georgian coat and buckled shoes; himself also gloriously Georgian, in murray-colored cut velvet, with Mechlin at wrists and throat. Then they could have betaken themselves to the bowling-green and fought it out with ringing rapiers, by the light of the lantern held in the landlord's trembling fingers. Or at dawn, in the meadow the red wall bounded, there could have been measured pacings – a dropped handkerchief, two white puffs drifting away on the chill, sweet air, and Edward Basingstoke could have handed his smoking pistol to his second and mounted his horse – Black Belial – and so away to his lady, leaving his adversary wounded slightly ("winged," of course, was the word). Thus honor would have been satisfied, and Edward well in the lime-light. But in this little box of an overfurnished room, by the light of an ill-trimmed paraffin-lamp, to rag an anxious aunt… He withdrew himself slowly from diplomacy – tried to find an inch or two of dry truth to stand on.

"Well, why don't you say something?" asked the anxious aunt.

"I will," said Mr. Basingstoke. "Madam, I have to ask your pardon for an unpardonable liberty. I have deceived you. I am not what you think. I am not a piano-tuner, but an engineer."

"But you said you were.."

"Pardon me. I said there were chords in the breasts of piano-tuners."

"But if you aren't, how did you know there was one?"

This riposte he had not anticipated. Frankness had its drawbacks – so small a measure of it as he had allowed himself. He leaped headlong into diplomacy again.

"Look back on what you have said, not only to me, but to others," he said, solemnly, and saw that the chance shot had gone home. "Now," he said, "don't let us prolong an interview which cannot but be painful to us both. I am not the piano-tuner for whom you take me. You are a complete stranger to me. The only link that binds us is the fact that your horse ran over my dog and that you bore the apparently lifeless body home for me. Yet if you wish me to leave the neighborhood, I will leave it. In fact, I was going in any case," he added, struggling against diplomacy.

Miss Davenant looked at him. "You're speaking the truth," she said; "you're not the piano-tuner. But you got as red as fire yesterday. So did my niece. What was that for?"

"I cannot explain my complicated color-scheme," said Edward, "without diagrams and a magic-lantern. And as for your niece, I can lay my hand on my heart and say that the light of declining day never illumined that face for me till the moment when it also illumined yours."

"Are you deceiving me?" Miss Davenant asked, weakly, and Edward answered:

"Yes, I am; but not in the way you think. We all have our secrets, but mine are not the secrets of the piano-tuner."