Waife indeed was striving hard to keep down emotion; but his lips were set firmly and the blood had left them, and his hands were trembling.
“We must, hide ourselves,” he said in a very low voice; “we must take false names; I—because—because of reasons I can’t tell even to you; and you, because I failed to get you a proper home, where you ought to be; and there is one who, if he pleases, and he may please it any day, could take you away from me, if he found you out; and so—and so—” He paused abruptly, looked at her fearful wondering soft face, and, rising, drew himself up with one of those rare outbreaks of dignity which elevated the whole character of his person. “But as for me,” said he, “if I have lost all name; if, while I live, I must be this wandering, skulking outcast,—look above, Sophy,—look up above: there all secrets will be known, all hearts read; and there my best hope to find a place in which I may wait your coming is in what has lost me all birthright here. Not to exalt myself do I say this,—no; but that you may have comfort, darling, if ever hereafter you are pained by what men say to you of me.”
As he spoke, the expression of his face, at first solemn and lofty, relaxed into melancholy submission. Then passing his arm into hers, and leaning on it as if sunk once more into the broken cripple needing her frail support, he drew her forth from the arbour, and paced the little garden slowly, painfully. At length he seemed to recover himself, and said in his ordinary cheerful tone, “But to the point in question, suppose we have done with acting and roaming, and keep to one name and settle somewhere like plain folks, again I ask, How shall we live?”
“I have been thinking of that,” answered Sophy. “You remember that those good Miss Burtons taught me all kinds of needlework, and I know people can make money by needlework. And then, Grandy dear, what can’t you do? Do you forget Mrs. Saunders’s books that you bound, and her cups and saucers that you mended? So we would both work, and have a little cottage and a garden, that we could take care of, and sell the herbs and vegetables. Oh, I have thought over it all, the last fortnight, a hundred hundred times, only I did not dare to speak first.”
Waife listened very attentively. “I can make very good baskets,” said he, rubbing his chin, “famous baskets (if one could hire a bit of osier ground), and, as you say, there might be other fancy articles I could turn out prettily enough, and you could work samplers, and urn-rugs, and doileys, and pincushions, and so forth; and what with a rood or two of garden ground, and poultry (the Mayor says poultry is healthy for children), upon my word, if we could find a safe place, and people would not trouble us with their gossip, and we could save a little money for you when I am—”
“Bees too,—honey?” interrupted Sophy, growing more and more interested and excited.
“Yes, bees,—certainly. A cottage of that kind in a village would not be above L6 a year, and L20 spent on materials for fancy-works would set us up. Ah but furniture, beds and tables,—monstrous dear!”
“Oh, no! very little would do at first.”
“Let us count the money we have left,” said Waife, throwing himself down on a piece of sward that encircled a shady mulberry-tree. Old man and child counted the money, bit by bit, gayly yet anxiously,—babbling, interrupting each other,—scheme upon scheme: they forgot past and present as much as in acting plays; they were absorbed in the future,—innocent simple future,—innocent as the future planned by two infants fresh from “Robinson Crusoe” or fairy tales.
“I remember, I remember, just the place for us,” cried Waife, suddenly. “It is many, many, many years since I was there; I was courting my Lizzy at the time,—alas! alas. But no sad thoughts now!—just the place, near a large town, but in a pretty village quite retired from it. ‘T was there I learned to make baskets. I had broken my leg; fall from a horse; nothing to do. I lodged with an old basketmaker; he had a capital trade. Rivulet at the back of his house; reeds, osiers, plentiful. I see them now, as I saw them from my little casement while my leg was setting. And Lizzy used to write to me such dear letters; my baskets were all for her. We had baskets enough to have furnished a house with bask’ts; could have dined in baskets, sat in baskets, slept in baskets. With a few lessons I could soon recover the knack of the work. I should like to see the place again; it would be shaking hands with my youth once more. None who could possibly recognize me could be now living. Saw no one but the surgeon, the basketmaker, and his wife; all so old they must be long since gathered to their fathers. Perhaps no one carries on the basket trade now. I may revive it and have it all to myself; perhaps the cottage itself may be easily hired.” Thus, ever disposed to be sanguine, the vagabond chattered on, Sophy listening fondly, and smiling up in his face. “And a fine large park close by: the owners, great lords, deserted it then; perhaps it is deserted still. You might wander over it as if it were your own, Sophy. Such wonderful trees,—such green solitudes; and pretty shy hares running across the vistas,—stately deer too! We will make friends with the lodge-keepers, and we will call the park yours, Sophy; and I shall be a genius who weaves magical baskets, and you shall be the enchanted princess concealed from all evil eyes, knitting doileys of pearl under leaves of emerald, and catching no sound from the world of perishable life, except as the boughs whisper and the birds sing.”