"IF you had a map and I could put my finger on any place I chose, I should open my eyes the least bit in the world and put my finger on the Thames," she said at the breakfast-table, where she had for the first time sat opposite to him and poured his coffee, looking as demurely1 domestic as any haberdasher's wife of them all.
"The Thames?" he said. "I know a river worth two of that. . . ."
"A river that's worth two of the Thames must be the river of Paradise."
"So it is," he assured her, "and probably the Thames is infested2 by your relations. For a serious and secret conference such as we propose to ourselves there is no place like the Medway."
She had thought the Medway to be nothing but mud and barges4, and said so.
"Ah, that's below Maidstone. Above— But you'll see. Wear a shady hat and bring that conspirator-looking cloak you wore last night—the fine weather can't possibly last forever. Twenty minutes for breakfast, half an hour for a complete river toilette, and we catch the ten-seventeen from Cannon5 Street, easily."
"I haven't a complete river toilette. And you? I thought you left all your possessions at the Five Bells—"
"I am not the homeless orphan6 you deem me," he said, accepting kidneys and bacon from a sleepy waiter. "I have a home, though a humble7 one, and, what's more, it's just around the corner—Montague Street, to be exact. Next door to the British Museum. So central, is it not? Some inward monitor whispered to me, 'She will want to go on the river,' and I laid out the complete boating-man's costume, down to white shoes with new laces."
"Did you really think I should think of the river? How clever of you."
"I am clever," he said, modestly, "and good. It is better to be good than clever. That is why I cannot conceal8 from you that I never thought of the river till you spoke9 about it. But I really have some flannels10, little as you may think it, and we'll stop and get some boating-shoes for you, if you want them. Only you'll have to buy them with lightning speed and change them at Yalding."
"Is that the name of the place? How lovely! If I had a title I should like it to be Lady Yalding—or the Duchess of Yalding. Her Grace the Duchess of Yalding will give you some more coffee, if you like."
"Why come down in the world? You were a princess last night."
"Princess of where?" she asked.
"We will give a morning to a proper definition of the boundaries of your territory one of these days. Meantime, are you aware that I don't even know the name by which the common world knows you?"
"I know you don't," she said, "and I'd much rather you didn't. If I'm to be a princess I'll be the Princess of Yalding, and if she has to have another name we'll choose a new one. I should like everything to be new for our new adventure."
They got the shoes and they caught the train, and, now the little gritty walk from Yalding station was over, they stood on the landing-stage of the Anchor, looking down on a sort of Sargasso Sea of small craft that stretched along below the edge of the Anchor garden.
"The canoe would be nice," she said.
"It would not be nice with Charles," he said, firmly. "Charles's first conscious act after we became each other's was to upset me out of a canoe, to the heartless delight of three picnic parties, four pairs of sweethearts, two dons, and a personal friend."
"If Charles is to come in the boat," she said, "perhaps that fishing-punt. . . ."
"Water within, water without," he said, spurning11 the water-logged punt. "This little sculling-boat will do. No—no outriggers for us, thank you," he said to the Anchor's gloomy boatman, who came toward them like a sort of fresh-water Neptune12 with a boat-hook for trident.
"He might, at least, have smiled," she said, as the sour-faced Neptune man turned toward the boat-house. "I hope he'll give us red cushions and a nice, 'arty sort of carpet."
"You get no carpets here," he assured her. "Lucky if we have so much as a strip of cocoanut matting. This is not the languid, luxurious13 Thames. On the Medway life is real, life is earnest. You mostly pull a hundred yards, anchor and fish; or if you do go farther from harbor you open your own locks, with your own crowbar. The best people are always a bit shabby. You and I, no doubt, are the cynosure15 of every eye. Yes, that'll do; we'll put the basket in the stern, then the ginger-beer here. We'll put the cloak over it to keep it cool. All right, thank you. Crowbar in? Right. Throw in the painter. Right."
Neptune pushed them with his trident and the boat swung out into midstream. A few strokes took them out of sight of the Anchor, its homely16, flowered garden, its thatched house, its hornbeam arbor14; they passed, too, the ugly, bare house that some utilitarian17 misdemeanant has built next to it, then nothing but depths of willow18 copse, green and gray, and the grassy19 curves of the towing-path where the loosestrife grows, and the willow herb, the yellow yarrow, and the delicate plumes20 of the meadow-sweet.
"'Blond loosestrife and red meadow-sweet among,
We tracked the shy Thames shore.'"
he quoted.
"It's like a passport," she said—"or finding that you haven't lost your ticket, after all—when people have read the same things and remembered them. But don't you love the bit that begins about 'the tempestuous21 moon in early June,' and ends up with the 'uncrumpling fern and scent22 of hay new-mown'? I wonder why it is that when people quote poetry in books you feel that they're Laura-Matilda-ish, and when they do it really you quite like it. Do you write poetry?"
He looked at her guiltily. "Look out to the left," he said; "there's an absolutely perfect thatched barn, and four oast-houses—you know, where they dry the hops23, with little fires of oak chips. Have you ever been in an oast-house? We will some day—"
She was silent as the boat slipped past the old farm buildings, the old trees, the long perfection of the barn, and the deep red and green of the mossy oast-house wall going down sheer to the smooth, brown water, and hung at crevice24 and cranny with little ferns and little flowers—herb-robert and stonecrop. The reflection, till his oars25 shattered it, was as perfect as the building itself, and she drew a deep breath and turned to look back as the boat slid past.
"You were right," she said, "it is a darling little river. And you do write poetry, don't you?"
"Is this the confessional or the Medway?" he asked.
"I know you do," she said. "Of course you do—everybody does, as well as they can, I suppose; I can't, but I do," she added, encouragingly. "We will write poems for each other, on wet nights in the caravan26, about Nature and Fate and Destiny, and things like that—won't we?"
The quiet river, wandering by wood and meadow, bordered by its fringe of blossoms and flowering grasses, the smooth backwaters where leaning trees touched hands across the glassy mirror, and water-lilies gleamed white and starry27, the dappled shadows, the arch of blue sky, the gay sunshine, and the peace of the summer noon all wrought28 in one fine spell to banish29 from their thoughts all fear and dismay, all doubts and hesitations30. Here they were, two human beings—young, healthy, happy—with all fair things before them and all sad things behind. It seemed to them both, at that moment, that they need ask nothing more of life than a long chain of days like this. They were silent, and each felt in the other's silence no embarrassment31 or weariness, but only a serene32 content. Even Charles, overcome by the spirit of the hour, was silent, slumbering33 on the matting between them, in heavy abandonment.
The perfection of their surroundings left them free to catch the delicate flavor of the wonderful adventure—a flavor which the dust and hurry of yesterday had disguised and distorted a little.
He looked at her and thought, "It is worth while—it is indeed worth while"—and knew that if only the princess were for his winning the moment of rashness which only yesterday he had almost regretted would be in its result the most fortunate moment of his life.
She looked at him, and a little fear lifted its head and stung her like a snake. What if he were to regret the adventure? What if he were to like her less and less—she put it to herself like that—while she grew to like him more and more? She looked at his eyes and his hands, and the way the hair grew on brow and nape, and it seemed to her that thus and not otherwise should a man's hair and eyes and hands be.
But they did not look at each other so that their eyes met till the boat rounded the corner to the weir............