by Edith Nesbit
“Archibald Bastable.”
So I suppose rays of remorse penetrated that cold heart, and now perhaps he will be a reformed Bastable. I am sure I hope so, but I believe it is difficult, if not impossible, for a leopard to change his skin.
Still, I remember how indelibly black he looked when he came out of the fatal bath-room; and it nearly all wore off. And perhaps spots on the honourable inside parts of your soul come off with time. I hope so. The dye never came off the inside of the bath though. I think that was what annoyed our good great-uncle the most.
OVER THE WATER TO CHINA
Oswald is a very modest boy, I believe, but even he would not deny that he has an active brain. The author has heard both his Father and Albert’s uncle say so. And the most far-reaching ideas often come to him quite naturally — just as silly notions that aren’t any good might come to you. And he had an idea which he meant to hold a council; about with his brothers and sisters; but just as he was going to unroll his idea to them our Father occurred suddenly in our midst and said a strange cousin was coming, and he came, and he was strange indeed! And when Fate had woven the threads of his dark destiny and he had been dyed a dark bright navy-blue, and had gone from our midst, Oswald went back to the idea that he had not forgotten. The words “tenacious of purpose” mean sticking to things, and these words always make me think of the character of the young hero of these pages. At least I suppose his brothers Dicky and Noël and H.O. are heroes too, in a way, but somehow the author of these lines knows more about Oswald’s inside realness than he does about the others. But I am getting too deep for words.
So Oswald went into the common-room. Every one was busy. Noël and H.O. were playing Halma. Dora was covering boxes with silver paper to put sweets in for a school treat, and Dicky was making a cardboard model of a new screw he has invented for ocean steamers. But Oswald did not mind interrupting, because Dora ought not to work too hard, and Halma always ends in a row, and I would rather not say what I think of Dicky’s screw. So Oswald said —
“I want a council. Where’s Alice?”
Every one said they didn’t know, and they made haste to say that we couldn’t have a council without her. But Oswald’s determined nature made him tell H.O. to chuck that rotten game and go and look for her. H.O. is our youngest brother, and it is right that he should remember this and do as he was told. But he happened to be winning the beastly Halma game, and Oswald saw that there was going to be trouble—”big trouble,” as Mr. Kipling says. And he was just bracing his young nerves for the conflict with H.O., because he was not going to stand any nonsense from his young brother about his not fetching Alice when he was jolly well told to, when the missing maiden bounced into the room bearing upon her brow the marks of ravaging agitatedness.
“Have any of you seen Pincher?” she cried, in haste.
We all said, “No, not since last night.”
“Well, then, he’s lost,” Alice said, making the ugly face that means you are going to blub in half a minute.
Every one had sprung to their feet. Even Noël and H.O. saw at once what a doddering game Halma is, and Dora and Dicky, whatever their faults, care more for Pincher than for boxes and screws. Because Pincher is our fox-terrier. He is of noble race, and he was ours when we were poor, lonely treasure-seekers and lived in humble hard-upness in the Lewisham Road.
To the faithful heart of young Oswald the Blackheath affluent mansion and all it contains, even the stuffed fox eating a duck in the glass case in the hall that he is so fond of, and even the council he wanted to have, seemed to matter much less than old Pincher.
“I want you all to let’s go out and look for him,” said Alice, carrying out the meaning of the faces she had made and beginning to howl. “Oh, Pincher, suppose something happens to him; you might get my hat and coat, Dora. Oh, oh, oh!”
We all got our coats and hats, and by the time we were ready Alice had conquered it to only sniffing, or else, as Oswald told her kindly, she wouldn’t have been allowed to come.
“Let’s go on the Heath,” Noël said. “The dear departed dog used to like digging there.”
So we went. And we said to every single person we met —
“Please have you seen a thorough-bred fox-terrier dog with a black patch over one eye, and another over his tail, and a tan patch on his right shoulder?” And every one said, “No, they hadn’t,” only some had more polite ways of saying it than others. But after a bit we met a policeman, and he said, “I see one when I was on duty last night, like what you describe, but it was at the end of a string. There was a young lad at the other end. The dog didn’t seem to go exactly willing.”
He also told us the lad and the dog had gone over Greenwich way. So we went down, not quite so wretched in our insides, because now it seemed that there was some chance, though we wondered the policeman could have let Pincher go when he saw he didn’t want to, but he said it wasn’t his business. And now we asked every one if they’d seen a lad and a thoroughbred fox-terrier with a black patch, and cetera.
And one or two people said they had, and we thought it must be the same the policeman had seen, because they said, too, that the dog didn’t seem to care about going where he was going.
So we went on and through the Park and past the Naval College, and we didn’t even stop to look at that life-sized firm ship in the playground that the Naval Collegians have to learn about ropes and spars on, and Oswald would willingly give a year of his young life to have that ship for his very own.
And we didn’t go into the Painted Hall either, because our fond hearts were with Pincher, and we could not really have enjoyed looking at Nelson’s remains, of the shipwrecks where the drowning people all look so dry, or even the pictures where young heroes are boarding pirates from Spain, just as Oswald would do if he had half a chance, with the pirates fighting in attitudes more twisted and Spanish than the pirates of any nation could manage even if they were not above it. It is an odd thing, but all those pictures are awfully bad weather — even the ones that are not shipwrecks. And yet in books the skies are usually a stainless blue and the sea is a liquid gem when you are engaged in the avocation of pirate-boarding.
The author is sorry to see that he is not going on with the story.
We walked through Greenwich Hospital and asked there if they have seen Pincher, because I heard Father say once that dogs are sometimes stolen and taken to hospitals and never seen again. It is wrong to steal, but I suppose the hospital doctors forget this because they are so sorry for the poor ill people, and like to give them dogs to play with them and amuse them on their beds of anguish. But no one had seen our Pincher, who seemed to be becoming more dear to our hearts every moment.
When we got through the Hospital grounds — they are big and the buildings are big, and I like it all because there’s so much room everywhere and nothing niggling — we got down to the terrace over the river, next to the Trafalgar Hotel. And there was a sailor leaning on the railings, and we asked him the usual question. It seems that he was asleep, but of course we did not know, or we would not have disturbed him. He was very angry, and he swore, and Oswald told the girls to come away; but Alice pulled away from Oswald and said,
“Oh, don’t be so cross. Do tell us if you’ve seen our dog? He is — —” and she recited Pincher’s qualifications.
“Ho yes,” said the sailor — he had a red and angry face. “I see ‘im a hour ago ‘long of a Chinaman. ‘E crossed the river in a open boat. You’d best look slippy arter ‘im.” He grinned and spat; he was a detestable character, I think. “Chinamen puts puppy-dogs in pies. If ‘e catches you three young chaps ‘e’ll ‘ave a pie as’ll need a big crust to cover it. Get along with your cheek!”
So we got along. Of course, we knew that the Chinese are not cannibals, so we were not frightened by that rot; but we knew, too, that the Chinese do really eat dogs, as well as rats and birds’ nests and other disgraceful forms of eating.
H.O. was very tired, and he said his
boots hurt him; and Noël was beginning to look like a young throstle — all eyes and beak. He always does when he is tired. The others were tired too, but their proud spirits would never have owned it. So we went round to the Trafalgar Hotel’s boathouse, and there was a man in slippers, and we said could we have a boat, and he said he would send a boatman, and would we walk in?
IT SEEMS THE SAILOR WAS ASLEEP, BUT OF COURSE WE DID NOT KNOW, OR WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DISTURBED HIM.
We did, and we went through a dark room piled up to the ceiling with boats and out on to a sort of thing half like a balcony and half like a pier. And there were boats there too, far more than you would think any one could want; and then a boy came. We said we wanted to go across the river, and he said, “Where to?”
“To where the Chinamen live,” said Alice.
“You can go to Millwall if you want to,” he said, beginning to put oars into the boat.
“Are there any Chinese people there?” Alice asked.
And the boy replied, “I dunno.” He added that he supposed we could pay for the boat.
By a fortunate accident — I think Father had rather wanted to make up to us for our martyr-like enduring when our cousin was with us — we were fairly flush of chink. Oswald and Dicky were proudly able to produce handfuls of money; it was mostly copper, but it did not fail of its effect.
The boy seemed not to dislike us quite so much as before, and he helped the girls into the boat, which was now in the water at the edge of a sort of floating, unsteady raft, with openings in it that you could see the water through. The water was very rough, just like real sea, and not like a river at all. And the boy rowed; he wouldn’t let us, although I can, quite well. The boat tumbled and tossed just like a sea-boat. When we were about half-way over, Noël pulled Alice’s sleeve and said —
“Do I look very green?”
“You do rather, dear,” she said kindly.
“I feel much greener than I look,” said Noël. And later on he was not at all well.
The boy laughed, but we pretended not to notice. I wish I could tell you half the things we saw as our boat was pulled along through the swishing, lumpy water that turned into great waves after every steamer that went by. Oswald was quite fit, but some of the others were very silent. Dicky says he saw everything that Oswald saw, but I am not sure. There were wharves and engines, and great rusty cranes swinging giant’s handfuls of iron rails about in the air, and once we passed a ship that was being broken up. All the wood was gone, and they were taking away her plates, and the red rust was running from her and colouring the water all round; it looked as though she was bleeding to death. I suppose it was silly to feel sorry for her, but I did. I thought how beastly it was that she would never go to sea again, where the waves are clean and green, even if no rougher than the black waves now raging around our staunch little bark. I never knew before what lots of kinds of ships there can be, and I think I could have gone on and on for ever and ever looking at the shapes of things and the colours they were, and dreaming about being a pirate, and things like that, but we had come some way; and now Alice said —
“Oswald, I think Noël will die if we don’t make land soon.”
And indeed he had been rather bad for some time, only I thought it was kinder to take no notice.
So our ship was steered among other pirate craft, and moored at a landing-place where there were steps up.
Noël was now so ill that we felt we could not take him on a Chinese hunt, and H.O. had sneaked his boots off in the boat, and he said they hurt him too much to put them on again; so it was arranged that those two should sit on a dry corner of the steps and wait, and Dora said she would stay with them.
“I think we ought to go home,” she said. “I’m quite sure Father wouldn’t like us being in these wild, savage places. The police ought to find Pincher.”
But the others weren’t going to surrender like that, especially as Dora had actually had the sense to bring a bag of biscuits, which all, except Noël, were now eating.
“Perhaps they ought, but they won’t,” said Dicky. “I’m boiling hot. I’ll leave you my overcoat in case you’re cold.”
Oswald had been just about to make the same manly proposal, though he was not extra warm. So they left their coats, and, with Alice, who would come though told not to, they climbed the steps, and went along a narrow passage and started boldly on the Chinese hunt. It was a strange sort of place over the river; all the streets were narrow, and the houses and the pavements and the people’s clothes and the mud in the road all seemed the same sort of dull colour — a sort of brown-grey it was.
All the house doors were open, and you could see that the insides of the houses were the same colour as the outsides. Some of the women had blue, or violet or red shawls, and they sat on the doorsteps and combed their children’s hair, and shouted things to each other across the street. They seemed very much struck by the appearance of the three travellers, and some of the things they said were not pretty.
That was the day when Oswald found out a thing that has often been of use to him in after-life. However rudely poor people stare at you they become all right instantly if you ask them something. I think they don’t hate you so much when they’ve done something for you, if it’s only to tell you the time or the way.
WE WENT ROUND A CORNER RATHER FAST, AND CAME SLAP INTO THE LARGEST WOMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN.
So we got on very well, but it does not make me comfortable to see people so poor and we have such a jolly house. People in books feel this, and I know it is right to feel it, but I hate the feeling all the same. And it is worse when the people are nice to you.
And we asked and asked and asked, but nobody had seen a dog or a Chinaman, and I began to think all was indeed lost, and you can’t go on biscuits all day, when we went round a corner rather fast, and came slap into the largest woman I have ever seen. She must have been yards and yards round, and before she had time to be in the rage that we saw she was getting into, Alice said —
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I am so sorry, but we really didn’t mean to! I do so hope we didn’t hurt you!”
We saw the growing rage fade away, and she said, as soon as she got her fat breath —
“No ‘arm done, my little dear. An’ w’ere are you off to in such a ‘urry?”
So we told her all about it. She was quite friendly, although so stout, and she said we oughtn’t to be gallivanting about all on our own. We told her we were all right, though I own Oswald was glad that in the hurry of departing Alice hadn’t had time to find anything smarter-looking to wear than her garden coat and grey Tam, which had been regretted by some earlier in the day.
“Well,” said the woman, “if you go along this ‘ere turning as far as ever you can go, and then take the first to the right and bear round to the left, and take the second to the right again, and go down the alley between the stumps, you’ll come to Rose Gardens. There’s often Chinamen about there. And if you come along this way as you come back, keep your eye open for me, and I’ll arks some young chaps as I know as is interested like in dogs, and perhaps I’ll have news for you.”
“Thank you very much,” Alice said, and the woman asked her to give her a kiss. Everybody is always wanting to kiss Alice. I can’t think why. And we got her to tell us the way again, and we noticed the name of the street, and it was Nightingale Street, and the stairs where we had left the others was Bullamy’s Causeway, because we have the true explorer’s instincts, and when you can’t blaze your way on trees with your axe, or lay crossed twigs like the gypsies do, it is best to remember the names of streets.
So we said goodbye, and went on through the grey-brown streets with hardly any shops, and those only very small and common, and we got to the alley all right. It was a narrow place between high blank brown-grey walls. I think by the smell it was gasworks and tanneries. There was hardly any one there, but when we got into it we heard feet running ahead of us, and Oswald said —
“Hullo, suppose th
at’s some one with Pincher, and they’ve recognized his long-lost masters and they’re making a bolt for it?”
And we all started running as hard as ever we could. There was a turn in the passage, and when we got round it we saw that the running was stopping. There were four or five boys in a little crowd round some one in blue — blue looked such a change after the muddy colour of everything in that dead Eastern domain — and when we got up, the person the blue was on was a very wrinkled old man, with a yellow wrinkled face and a soft felt hat and blue blouse-like coat, and I see that I ought not to conceal any longer from the discerning reader that it was exactly what we had been looking for. It was indeed a Celestial Chinaman in deep difficulties with these boys who were, as Alice said afterwards, truly fiends in mortal shape. They were laughing at the old Chinaman, and shouting to each other, and their language was of that kind that I was sorry we had got Alice with us. But she told Oswald afterwards that she was so angry she did not know what they were saying.
“Pull his bloomin’ pigtail,” said one of these outcasts from decent conduct.
The old man was trying to keep them off with both hands, but the hands were very wrinkled and trembly.
Oswald is grateful to his good Father who taught him and Dicky the proper way to put their hands up. If it had not been for that, Oswald does not know what on earth would have happened, for the outcasts were five to our two, because no one could have expected Alice to do what she did.
IT WAS INDEED A CELESTIAL CHINAMAN IN DEEP DIFFICULTIES.
Before Oswald had even got his hands into the position required by the noble art of self-defence, she had slapped the largest boy on the face as hard as ever she could — and she can slap pretty hard, as Oswald knows but too well — and she had taken the second-sized boy and was shaking him before Dicky could get his left in on the eye of the slapped assailant of the aged denizen of the Flowery East. The other three went for Oswald, but three to one is nothing to one who has hopes of being a pirate in his spare time when he grows up.
