by E. Nesbit
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Alice. “We might dress up for it, and wear spectacles, and we could all read papers. It would be lovely—something to fill up the Christmas holidays—the part before the wedding, I mean. Do let’s.”
“All right, I don’t mind. I suppose it would be improving,” said Dora. “We should have to read a lot of history. You can settle it. I’m going to show Daisy our bridesmaids’ dresses.”
It was, alas! too true. Albert’s uncle was to be married but shortly after, and it was partly our faults, though that does not come into this story.
So the two D.’s went to look at the clothes—girls like this—but Alice, who wishes she had never consented to be born a girl, stayed with us, and we had a long and earnest council about it.
“One thing,” said Oswald, “it can’t possibly be wrong—so perhaps it won’t be amusing.”
“Oh, Oswald!” said Alice, and she spoke rather like Dora.
“I don’t mean what you mean,” said Oswald in lofty scorn. “What I mean to say is that when a thing is quite sure to be right, it’s not so—well—I mean to say there it is, don’t you know; and if it might be wrong, and isn’t, it’s a score to you; and if it might be wrong, and is—as so often happens—well, you know yourself, adventures sometimes turn out wrong that you didn’t think were going to, but seldom, or never, the uninteresting kind, and——”
Dicky told Oswald to dry up—which, of course, no one stands from a younger brother, but though Oswald explained this at the time, he felt in his heart that he has sometimes said what he meant with more clearness. When Oswald and Dicky had finished, we went on and arranged everything.
Every one was to write a paper—and read it.
“If the papers are too long to read while we’re there,” said Noël, “we can read them in the long winter evenings when we are grouped along the household hearthrug. I shall do my paper in poetry—about Agincourt.”
Some of us thought Agincourt wasn’t fair, because no one could be sure about any knight who took part in that well-known conflict having lived in the Red House; but Alice got us to agree, because she said it would be precious dull if we all wrote about nothing but Sir Thomas Whatdoyoucallhim—whose real name in history Oswald said he would find out, and then write his paper on that world-renowned person, who is a household word in all families. Denny said he would write about Charles the First, because they were just doing that part at his school.
“I shall write about what happened in 1066,” said H.O. “I know that.”
Alice said, “If I write a paper it will be about Mary Queen of Scots.”
Dora and Daisy came in just as she said this, and it transpired that this ill-fated but good-looking lady was the only one they either of them wanted to write about. So Alice gave it up to them and settled to do Magna Charta, and they could settle something between themselves for the one who would have to give up Mary Queen of Scots in the end. We all agreed that the story of that lamented wearer of pearls and black velvet would not make enough for two papers.
Everything was beautifully arranged, when suddenly H.O. said—
“Supposing he doesn’t let us?”
“Who doesn’t let us what?”
“The Red House man—read papers at his Red House.”
This was, indeed, what nobody had thought of—and even now we did not think any one could be so lost to proper hospitableness as to say no. Yet none of us liked to write and ask. So we tossed up for it, only Dora had feelings about tossing up on Sunday, so we did it with a hymn-book instead of a penny.
We all won except Noël, who lost, so he said he would do it on Albert’s uncle’s typewriter, which was on a visit to us at the time, waiting for Mr. Remington to fetch it away to mend the “M.” We think it was broken through Albert’s uncle writing “Margaret” so often, because it is the name of the lady he was doomed to be married by.
The girls had got the letter the Maidstone Antiquarian Society and Field Clubs Secretary had sent to Albert’s uncle—H.O. said they kept it for a momentum of the day—and we altered the dates and names in blue chalk and put in a piece about might we skate on the moat, and gave it to Noël, who had already begun to make up his poetry about Agincourt, and so had to be shaken before he would attend. And that evening, when Father and our Indian uncle and Albert’s uncle were seeing the others on the way to Forest Hill, Noël’s poetry and pencil were taken away from him and he was shut up in Father’s room with the Remington typewriter, which we had never been forbidden to touch. And I don’t think he hurt it much, except quite at the beginning, when he jammed the “S” and the “J” and the thing that means per cent. so that they stuck—and Dicky soon put that right with a screwdriver.
He did not get on very well, but kept on writing MOR7E HOAS5 or MORD6M HOVCE on new pieces of paper and then beginning again, till the floor was strewn with his remains; so we left him at it, and went and played Celebrated Painters—a game even Dora cannot say anything about on Sunday, considering the Bible kind of pictures most of them painted. And much later, the library door having banged once and the front door twice, Noël came in and said he had posted it, and already he was deep in poetry again, and had to be roused when requisite for bed.
It was not till next day that he owned that the typewriter had been a fiend in disguise, and that the letter had come out so odd that he could hardly read it himself.
“The hateful engine of destruction wouldn’t answer to the bit in the least,” he said, “and I’d used nearly a wastepaper basket of Father’s best paper, and I thought he might come in and say something, so I just finished it as well as I could, and I corrected it with the blue chalk—because you’d bagged that B.B. of mine—and I didn’t notice what name I’d signed till after I’d licked the stamp.”
The hearts of his kind brothers and sisters sank low. But they kept them up as well as they could, and said—
“What name did you sign?”
And Noël said, “Why, Edward Turnbull, of course—like at the end of the real letter. You never crossed it out like you did his address.”
“No,” said Oswald witheringly. “You see, I did think, whatever else you didn’t know, I did think you knew your own silly name.”
Then Alice said Oswald was unkind, though you see he was not, and she kissed Noël and said she and he would take turns to watch for the postman, so as to get the answer (which of course would be subscribed on the envelope with the name of Turnbull instead of Bastable) before the servant could tell the postman that the name was a stranger to her.
And next evening it came, and it was very polite and grown-up—and said we should be welcome, and that we might read our papers and skate on the moat. The Red House has a moat, like the Moat House in the country, but not so wild and dangerous. Only we never skated on it because the frost gave out the minute we had got leave to. Such is life, as the sparks fly upwards. (The last above is called a moral reflection.)
So now, having got leave from Mr. Red House (I won’t give his name because he is a writer of worldly fame and he might not like it), we set about writing our papers. It was not bad fun, only rather difficult because Dora said she never knew which Encyclo. volume she might be wanting, as she was using Edinburgh, Mary, Scotland, Bothwell, Holywell, and France, and many others, and Oswald never knew which he might want, owing to his not being able exactly to remember the distinguished and deathless other appellation of Sir Thomas Thingummy, who had lived in the Red House.
Noël was up to the ears in Agincourt, yet that made but little difference to our destiny. He is always plunged in poetry of one sort or another, and if it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. This, at least, we insisted on having kept a secret, so he could not read it to us.
H.O. got very inky the first half-holiday, and then he got some sealing-wax and a big envelope from Father, a
nd put something in and fastened it up, and said he had done his.
Dicky would not tell us what his paper was going to be about, but he said it would not be like ours, and he let H.O. help him by looking on while he invented more patent screws for ships.
The spectacles were difficult. We got three pairs of the uncle’s, and one that had belonged to the housekeeper’s grandfather, but nine pairs were needed, because Albert-next-door mouched in one half-holiday and wanted to join, and said if we’d let him he’d write a paper on the Constitutions of Clarendon, and we thought he couldn’t do it, so we let him. And then, after all, he did.
So at last Alice went down to Bennett’s in the village, that we are such good customers of, because when our watches stop we take them there, and he lent us a lot of empty frames on the instinctive understanding that we would pay for them if we broke them or let them get rusty.
And so all was ready. And the fatal day approached; and it was the holidays. For us, that is, but not for Father, for his business never seems to rest by day and night, except at Christmas and times like that. So we did not need to ask him if we might go. Oswald thought it would be more amusing for Father if we told it all to him in the form of an entertaining anecdote, afterwards.
Denny and Daisy and Albert came to spend the day.
We told Mrs. Blake Mr. Red House had asked us, and she let the girls put on their second-best things, which are coats with capes and red Tam-o’shanters. These capacious coats are very good for playing highwaymen in.
We made ourselves quite clean and tidy. At the very last we found that H.O. had been making marks on his face with burnt matches, to imitate wrinkles, but really it only imitated dirt, so we made him wash it off. Then he wanted to paint himself red like a clown, but we had decided that the spectacles were to be our only disguise, and even those were not to be assumed till Oswald gave the word.
No casuist observer could have thought that the nine apparently light-headed and careless party who now wended their way to Blackheath Station, looking as if they were not up to anything in particular, were really an Antiquarian Society of the deepest dye. We got an empty carriage to ourselves, and halfway between Blackheath and the other station Oswald gave the word, and we all put on the spectacles. We had our antiquarian papers of lore and researched history in exercise-books, rolled up and tied with string.
The stationmaster and porter, of each of which the station boasted but one specimen, looked respectfully at us as we got out of the train, and we went straight out of the station, under the railway arch, and down to the green gate of the Red House. It has a lodge, but there is no one in it. We peeped in at the window, and there was nothing in the room but an old beehive and a broken leather strap.
We waited in the front for a bit, so that Mr. Red House could come out and welcome us like Albert’s uncle did the other antiquaries, but no one came, so we went round the garden. It was very brown and wet, but full of things you didn’t see every day. Furze summer-houses, for instance, and a red wall all round it, with holes in it that you might have walled heretics up in in the olden times. Some of the holes were quite big enough to have taken a very small heretic. There was a broken swing, and a fish-pond—but we were on business, and Oswald insisted on reading the papers.
He said, “Let’s go to the sundial. It looks dryer there, my feet are like ice-houses.”
It was dryer because there was a soaking wet green lawn round it, and round that a sloping path made of little squares of red and white marble. This was quite waterless, and the sun shone on it, so that it was warm to the hands, though not to the feet, because of boots. Oswald called on Albert to read first. Albert is not a clever boy. He is not one of us, and Oswald wanted to get over the Constitutions. For Albert is hardly ever amusing, even in fun, and when he tries to show off it is sometimes hard to bear. He read—
“The Constitutions of Clarendon.
“Clarendon (sometimes called Clarence) had only one constitution. It must have been a very bad one, because he was killed by a butt of Malmsey. If he had had more constitutions or better ones he would have lived to be very old. This is a warning to everybody.”
To this day none of us know how he could, and whether his uncle helped him.
We clapped, of course, but not with our hearts, which were hissing inside us, and then Oswald began to read his paper. He had not had a chance to ask Albert’s uncle what the other name of the world-famous Sir Thomas was, so he had to put him in as Sir Thomas Blank, and make it up by being very strong on scenes that could be better imagined than described, and, as we knew that the garden was five hundred years old, of course he could bring in any eventful things since the year 1400.
He was just reading the part about the sundial, which he had noticed from the train when we went to Bexley Heath. It was rather a nice piece, I think.
“Most likely this sundial told the time when Charles the First was beheaded, and recorded the death-devouring progress of the Great Plague and the Fire of London. There is no doubt that the sun often shone even in these devastating occasions, so that we may picture Sir Thomas Blank telling the time here and remarking—O crikey!”
These last words are what Oswald himself remarked. Of course a person in history would never have said them.
The reader of the paper had suddenly heard a fierce, woodeny sound, like giant singlesticks, terrifyingly close behind him, and looking hastily round, he saw a most angry lady, in a bright blue dress with fur on it, like a picture, and very large wooden shoes, which had made the singlestick noise. Her eyes were very fierce, and her mouth tight shut. She did not look hideous, but more like an avenging sprite or angel, though of course we knew she was only mortal, so we took off our caps. A gentleman also bounded towards us over some vegetables, and acted as reserve support to the lady.
Her voice when she told us we were trespassing and it was a private garden was not so furious as Oswald had expected from her face, but it was angry. H.O. at once said it wasn’t her garden, was it? But, of course, we could see it was, because of her not having any hat or jacket or gloves, and wearing those wooden shoes to keep her feet dry, which no one would do in the street.
So then Oswald said we had leave, and showed her Mr. Red House’s letter.
“But that was written to Mr. Turnbull,” said she, “and how did you get it?”
Then Mr. Red House wearily begged us to explain, so Oswald did, in that clear, straightforward way some people think he has, and that no one can suspect for an instant. And he ended by saying how far from comfortable it would be to have Mr. Turnbull coming with his thin mouth and his tight legs, and that we were Bastables, and much nicer than the tight-legged one, whatever she might think.
And she listened, and then she quite suddenly gave a most jolly grin and asked us to go on reading our papers.
It was plain that all disagreeableness was at an end, and, to show this even to the stupidest, she instantly asked us to lunch. Before we could politely accept H.O. shoved his oar in as usual and said he would stop no matter how little there was for lunch because he liked her very much.
So she laughed, and Mr. Red House laughed, and she said they wouldn’t interfere with the papers, and they went away and left us.
Of course Oswald and Dicky insisted on going on with the papers; though the girls wanted to talk about Mrs. Red House, and how nice she was, and the way her dress was made. Oswald finished his paper, but later he was sorry he had been in such a hurry, because after a bit Mrs. Red House came out, and said she wanted to play too. She pretended to be a very ancient antiquary, and was most jolly, so that the others read their papers to her, and Oswald knows she would have liked his paper best, because it was the best, though I say it.
Dicky’s turned out to be all about that patent screw, and how Nelson would not have been killed if his ship had been built with one.
Da
isy’s paper was about Lady Jane Grey, and hers and Dora’s were exactly alike, the dullest by far, because they had got theirs out of books.
Alice had not written hers because she had been helping Noël to copy his.
Denny’s was about King Charles, and he was very grown-up and fervent about this ill-fated monarch and white roses.
Mrs. Red House took us into the summer-houses, where it was warmer, and such is the wonderful architecture of the Red House gardens that there was a fresh summer-house for each paper, except Noël’s and H.O.’s, which were read in the stable. There were no horses there.
Noël’s was very long, and it began—
“This is the story of Agincourt.
If you don’t know it you jolly well ought.
It was a famous battle fair,
And all your ancestors fought there
That is if you come of a family old.
The Bastables do; they were always very bold.
And at Agincourt
They fought
As they ought;
So we have been taught.”
And so on and so on, till some of us wondered why poetry was ever invented. But Mrs. Red House said she liked it awfully, so Noël said—
“You may have it to keep. I’ve got another one of it at home.”
“I’ll put it next my heart, Noël,” she said. And she did, under the blue stuff and fur.
H.O.’s was last, but when we let him read it he wouldn’t, so Dora opened his envelope and it was thick inside with blotting-paper, and in the middle there was a page with
“1066 William the Conqueror,”
and nothing else.
“Well,” he said, “I said I’d write all I knew about 1066, and that’s it. I can’t write more than I know, can I?” The girls said he couldn’t, but Oswald thought he might have tried.
