England -- Fiction; Honeymoons -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
The moment she was out of his sight she quickened her pace, found Mr.
Edward Basingstoke in the bar putting his change in his pocket, and, the
moment the two were outside the street door, said, just, "We must run
for it." This was, providentially, true. And they ran for it, just
catching it, without a breath to spare.
Why did she not tell him that she had seen Schultz, that stout squire of
the South Coast road? For one thing, Mr. Schultz seemed long ago and
irrelevant. For another, he was discordant, and his very name, spoken,
would break the spell of a very charming quiet which had infolded her
and Edward all day long. Then there was the crowded carriage with the
Brazilian gentleman, all observant, black, beady eye, and long yellow
ear. And then, anyhow, what was the good of raking up Mr. Schultz, whom
Edward had never really liked. So she did not tell him. Nor, for much
the same reason, did he tell her that one of that shouting party who
climbed into the train after it had actually started, and whom he saw as
he leaned out of the window to buy chocolate from an accidental boy, was
very like that chap Schultz--as like, in fact, as two peas.
And the next day she packed up everything, and he packed up a good deal,
and they started for Warwick; arrived there, had luncheon, and became
immediately a pair of ardent sight-seers.
The guide-book in the coffee-room assured them that "no visitor to
Warwick with any sense of propriety thinks of remaining long without
paying his respects to that historic and majestic pile known as Warwick
Castle," and this, they agreed, settled the question.
So they went and saw Warwick Castle, with its great gray towers and its
high gray walls, its green turf, and old, old trees. They saw the
banqueting-hall that was burned down, and Guy's punch-bowl that holds
Heaven knows how many gallons.
"It makes you thirsty to look at it," said Edward.
Also they saw the Portland vase which lives in a glass house all by
itself, and the bed where Queen Anne slept, and the cedar drawing-room
and the red drawing-room and the golden drawing-room, and all the other
rooms which are "shown to visitors," and longed lawlessly to see the
rooms that are not so shown.
"There must be _some_ comfortable rooms in the house," she said. "Even
lords and ladies and Miss O'Gradys couldn't really live in these
museums." And, indeed, all the rooms they saw were much too full of
things curious, precious, beautiful, and ugly; but mostly large and all
costly.
"It must be pretty awful to be as rich as all this," said Edward, as
they came out of the castle gate.
"Would it be? The guide-books say Lady Warwick says she strives to
fulfil, imperfectly, it may be, the duties of her stewardship and the
privileges of her heritage. It would be interesting, don't you think,
to find out just exactly what those were?"
"If I had a castle," said he, "there shouldn't be a knickknack in it,
nor a scrap of furniture later than seventeen hundred."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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