The Incredible Honeymoon Part 24

"What makes you think so?" she asked.

"Evidence, madam, evidence. The evidence of facts as well as of ciphers."

"Oh," she said, and smiled brilliantly, "you must be a Baconian. How very interesting!"

Now she had received all Edward's criticisms of Shakespearian legend with a growing and visible impatience. Yet for this stranger she had nothing but sympathy and interest.

"It _is_ interesting," said the stranger. "There's nothing like it. I've spent eighteen years on it, and I know now how little I know. It isn't only Bacon and Shakespeare; it's a great system--a great cipher system extending through all the great works of the period."

"But what is it that you hope to find out in the end?" she asked.

"Secrets of state, or the secret of the philosopher's stone, or what?"

"The truth," he said, simply. "There's nothing else worth looking for.

The truth, whatever it is. To follow truth, no matter where it leads.

I'd go on looking, even if I thought that at the end I should find that that Stratford man did write the plays." He looked up contemptuously at the smug face of the bust.

"It's a life's work," said Mr. Basingstoke, "and I should think more than one life's work. Do you find that you can bring your mind to any other kind of work?"

"I gave up everything else," said the stranger. "I was an accountant, and I had some money and I'm living on it. But now ... now I shall have to do something else. I've got a situation in London. I'm going there next week. It's the end of everything for me."

"There ought to be some endowment for your sort of research," said Edward.

"Of course there ought," said the man, eagerly, "but people don't care.

The few who do care don't want the truth to come out. They want to keep that thing"--he pointed to the bust--"to keep that thing enthroned on its pedestal forever. It pays, you see. Great is Diana of the Ephesians."

"I suppose it wouldn't need to be a very handsome endowment. I mean that sort of research work can be done at museums. You don't have to buy the books," Edward said.

"A lot can be done with libraries, of course. But I have a few books--a good few. I should like to show them to you some day--if you're interested in the subject."

"I am," said Edward, with a glance at the girl, "or I used to be.

Anyhow, I should like very much to see your books. You have a Du Bartas, of course?"

"Three," said the stranger, "and six of the Sylva Sylvarum, and Argalus and Perthenia--do you know that--Quarles--and--"

Next moment the two men were up to the eyes in a flood of names, none of which conveyed anything to her. But she saw that Edward was happy. At the same time, the hour was latish. She waited for the first pause--a very little one--but she drove the point of her wedge into it sharply.

"Wouldn't it be nice if you were to come back to dinner with us, at Warwick, then we should have lots of time to talk."

"I was going to London to-night," said the stranger, "but if Warwick can find me a night's lodging I shall only too gladly avail myself of your gracious invitation, Mrs.--"

"Basingstoke," said Edward.

The stranger had produced a card and she read on it:

DR. C. P. VANDERVELDE, Ohio College, U. S. A.

"Yes," he said, "I'm an American. I think almost all serious Baconians are. I hope you haven't a prejudice against my country, Mrs.

Basingstoke--"

"It's Miss Basingstoke," she said, thinking of the hotel, "and I've never met an American that I didn't like."

He made her a ceremonious and old-fashioned bow. "Inscrutable are the ways of fate," he said. "Only this morning I was angry because the chambermaid at my inn in Birmingham destroyed my rubbing of the grave inscription, and I had to come to Stratford to get another. Yes, I could have written, but it was so near, and I shall soon be chained to an office desk--and now, in this of all spots, I meet youth and beauty and sympathy and hospitality. It is an omen."

"And what," she asked, as they paced down the church, "was the cipher that said there was nothing in the tomb? Or would you rather not talk about your ciphers?"

"I desire nothing better than to talk of them," he answered. "It's the greatest mistake to keep these things secret. We ought all to tell all we know--and if we all did that and put together the little fragment of knowledge we have gathered, we should soon piece together the whole puzzle. The first words I found on the subject are, 'Reader, read all, no corpse lies in this tomb,' and so on, and with the same letters another anagram in Latin, beginning '_Lector intra sepulcho jacet nullum cadaver_.' I'll show you how I got it when we're within reach of a table and light."

They lingered a moment on the churchyard terrace where the willows overhang the Avon and the swans move up and down like white-sailed ships.

"How hospitable we're getting," she said to Edward that night when their guest had gone to his humbler inn--"two visitors in one day!"

"Katherine," he said, just for the pleasure of saying it, for they two were alone, so he could not have been speaking to any one else--"Katherine, that man's ciphers are wonderful. And what a gift of the G.o.ds--to possess an interest that can never fail and that costs nothing for its indulgence, not like postage-stamps or orchids or politics or racing!"

"The ciphers were wonderful," she said. "I had no idea such things were possible. I understood quite a lot," she added, a little defiantly.

"But it's rather hateful to think of his being chained to a desk doing work that isn't _his_ work."

"That, or something like it, is the lot of most people," he said, "but it needn't be his lot. It's for you to say. I can very well afford a small endowment for research, if you say so."

"But why must _I_ decide?"

"Because," he said, slowly, "I felt when I was talking to you to-day that you hated everything I said; you wanted to go on believing in all the Shakespeare legends."

"I think I said so. I'm not sure that I meant it. Anyhow, if it rests with me I say give him his research endowment, if he'll take it."

"He'll take it. I'll get a man I know at Balliol to write, offering it.

In his beautiful transatlantic simplicity the dear chap will think the college is offering the money. He'll take it like a lamb. But won't you tell me--why was it that you hated me to be interested in this business and you are glad that this Vandervelde should be helped to go on with it?"

"I should like him to be happy," she said, "and there's nothing else in life for him--he has given up everything else for it. I want him, at least, to have the treasure he's paid everything for--the joy of his work. But that sort of joy should be reserved for the people who can have nothing else. But for you--well, somehow, I feel that people who take up a thing like this ought to be prepared to sacrifice everything else in life to it, as he has done. And I could not bear that you should do it. Life has so much besides for you."

"Yes," he said, "life holds very much for me."

"And for me, too," she said, and with that gave him her hand for good night.

He was certain afterward that it had not been his doing, and yet it must have been, for her hand had not moved in his. And yet he had found it laid not against his lips, but against his cheek, and he had held it there in silence for more than a moment before she drew it away and said good night.

At the door she turned and looked back over her shoulder. "Good night,"

she said again. "Good night, Edward."

And that was the first time she called him by his name.

XV

KENILWORTH

THERE are some very pleasant shops in Warwick, and if you have time and no money you can spend some very agreeable mornings wandering from one shop to another, asking the prices of things you have all the will but none of the means to buy. If you have money and time you will buy a few of the things whose prices you have asked. Edward bought a ring, crystal with brilliants around it, very lovely and very expensive, and some topazes set in old silver, quite as beautiful but not so dear.