Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “Shut your mug!” whispered the red-whiskered man. Dickie knew his voice even in that velvet-black darkness. “Shut your mug, or I’ll give you what for!”

  “Don’t, father,” said Dickie, and said it all the more for that threat.

  “I can’t go back on my pals, matey,” said Mr. Beale; “you see that, don’t yer?”

  Dickie did see. The adventure was begun: it was impossible to stop. It was helped and had to be eaten, as they say in Norfolk. He crouched behind the open door, and heard the soft pad-pad of the three men’s feet on the stones of the passage grow fainter and fainter. They had woolen socks over their boots, which made their footsteps sound no louder than those of padded pussy-feet. Then the soft rustle-pad died away, and it was perfectly quiet, perfectly dark. Dickie was tired; it was long past his proper bedtime, and the exertion of being so extra clever had been very tiring. He was almost asleep when a crack like thunder brought him stark, staring awake — there was a noise of feet on the stairs, boots, a blundering, hurried rush. People came rushing past him. There was another sharp thunder sound and a flash like lightning, only much smaller. Some one tripped and fell; there was a clatter like pails, and something hard and smooth hit him on the knee. Then another hurried presence dashed past him into the quiet night. Another — No! there was a woman’s voice.

  “Edward, you shan’t! Let them go! You shan’t — no!”

  And suddenly there was a light that made one wink and blink. A tall lady in white, carrying a lamp, swept down the stairs and caught at a man who sprang into being out of the darkness into the lamplight.

  “Take the lamp,” she said, and thrust it on him. Then with unbelievable quickness she bolted and chained the door, locked it, and, turning, saw Dickie.

  “What’s this?” she said. “Oh, Edward, quick — here’s one of them!. . . Why — it’s a child — —”

  Some more people were coming down the stairs, with candles and excited voices. Their clothes were oddly bright. Dickie had never seen dressing-gowns before. They moved in a very odd way, and then began to go round and round like tops.

  The next thing that Dickie remembers is being in a room that seemed full of people and lights and wonderful furniture, with some one holding a glass to his lips, a little glass, that smelled of public-houses, very nasty.

  “No!” said Dickie, turning away his head.

  “Better?” asked a lady; and Dickie was astonished to find that he was on her lap.

  “Yes, thank you,” he said, and tried to sit up, but lay back again because that was so much more pleasant. He had had no idea that any one’s lap could be so comfortable.

  “Now, young man,” said a stern voice that was not a lady’s, “just you tell us how you came here, and who put you up to it.”

  “I got in,” said Dickie feebly, “through the butler’s pantry window,” and as he said it he wondered how he had known that it was the butler’s pantry. It is certain that no one had told him.

  “What for?” asked the voice, which Dickie now perceived came from a gentleman in rumpled hair and a very loose pink flannel suit, with cordy things on it such as soldiers have.

  “To let — —” Dickie stopped. This was the moment he had been so carefully prepared for. He must think what he was saying.

  “Yes,” said the lady gently, “it’s all right — poor little chap, don’t be frightened — nobody wants to hurt you!”

  “I’m not frightened,” said Dickie—”not now.”

  “To let —— ?” reminded the lady, persuasively.

  “To let the man in.”

  “What man?”

  “I dunno.”

  “There were three or four of them,” said the gentleman in pink; “four or five — —”

  “What man, dear?” the lady asked again.

  “The man as said ‘e knew w’ere my farver was,” said Dickie, remembering what he had been told to say; “so I went along of ‘im, an’ then in the wood ‘e said ‘e’d give me a dressing down if I didn’t get through the winder and open the door; ‘e said ‘e’d left some tools ‘ere and you wouldn’t let ‘im ‘ave them.”

  “You see,” said the lady, “the child didn’t know. He’s perfectly innocent.” And she kissed Dickie’s hair very softly and kindly.

  Dickie did not understand then why he suddenly felt as though he were going to choke. His head felt as though it were going to burst. His ears grew very hot, and his hands and feet very cold.

  “I know’d right enough,” he said suddenly and hoarsely; “an’ I needn’t a-gone if I ‘adn’t wanted to.”

  “He’s feverish,” said the lady, “he doesn’t know what he’s saying. Look how flushed he is.”

  “I wanted to,” said Dickie; “I thought it ‘ud be a lark. And it was too.”

  He expected to be shaken and put down. He wondered where his crutch was. Mr. Beale had had it under his arm. How could he get to Gravesend without a crutch? But he wasn’t shaken or put down; instead, the lady gathered him up in her arms and stood up, holding him.

  “I shall put him to bed,” she said; “you shan’t ask him any more questions to-night. There’s time enough in the morning.”

  She carried Dickie out of the drawing-room and away from the other people to a big room with blue walls and blue and gray curtains and beautiful furniture. There was a high four-post bed with blue silk curtains and more pillows than Dickie had ever seen before. The lady washed him with sweet-smelling water in a big basin with blue and gold flowers on it, dressed him in a lace-trimmed nightgown, which must have been her own, for it was much too big for any little boy.

  Then she put him into the soft, warm bed that was like a giant’s pillow, tucked him up and kissed him. Dickie put thin arms round her neck.

  “I do like you,” he said, “but I want farver.”

  “Where is he? No, you must tell me that in the morning. Drink up this milk” — she had it ready in a glass that sparkled in a pattern—”and then go sound asleep. Everything will be all right, dear.”

  “May Heavens,” said Dickie, sleepily, “bless you, generous Bean Factress!”

  “A most extraordinary child,” said the lady, returning to her husband. “I can’t think who it is that he reminds me of. Where are the others?”

  “I packed them off to bed. There’s nothing to be done,” said her husband. “We ought to have gone after those men.”

  “They didn’t get anything,” she said.

  “No — dropped it all when I fired. Come on, let’s turn in. Poor Eleanor, you must be worn out.”

  “Edward,” said the lady, “I wish we could adopt that little boy. I’m sure he comes of good people — he’s been kidnapped or something.”

  “Don’t be a dear silly one!” said Sir Edward.

  That night Dickie slept in sheets of the finest linen, scented with lavender. He was sunk downily among pillows, and over him lay a down quilt covered with blue-flowered satin. On the foot-board of the great bed was carved a shield and a great dog on it.

  Dickie’s clothes lay, a dusty, forlorn little heap, in a stately tapestry-covered chair. And he slept, and dreamed of Mr. Beale, and the little house among the furze, and the bed with the green curtains.

  CHAPTER III. THE ESCAPE

  When Lady Talbot leaned over the side of the big bed to awaken Dickie Harding she wished with all her heart that she had just such a little boy of her own; and when Dickie awoke and looked in her kind eyes he felt quite sure that if he had had a mother she would have been like this lady.

  “Only about the face,” he told himself, “not the way she’s got up; nor yet her hair nor nuffink of that sort.”

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked him, stroking his hair with extraordinary gentleness.

  “A fair treat,” said he.

  “Was your bed comfortable?”

  “Ain’t it soft, neither,” he answered. “I don’t know as ever I felt of anythink quite as soft without it was the geese as ‘angs up along the Broadway Chr
istmas-time.”

  “Why, the bed’s made of goose-feathers,” she said, and Dickie was delighted by the coincidence.

  “‘Ave you got e’er a little boy?” he asked, pursuing his first waking thought.

  “No, dear; if I had I could lend you some of his clothes. As it is, we shall have to put you into your own.” She spoke as though she were sorry.

  Dickie saw no matter for regret. “My father ‘e bought me a little coat for when it was cold of a night lying out.”

  “Lying out? Where?”

  “In the bed with the green curtains,” said Dickie. This led to Here Ward, and Dickie would willingly have told the whole story of that hero in full detail, but the lady said after breakfast, and now it was time for our bath. And sure enough there was a bath of steaming water before the fireplace, which was in quite another part of the room, so that Dickie had not noticed the cans being brought in by a maid in a pink print dress and white cap and apron.

  “Come,” said the lady, turning back the bed-clothes.

  Somehow Dickie could not bear to let that lady see him crawl clumsily across the floor, as he had to do when he moved without his crutch. It was not because he thought she would make fun of him; perhaps it was because he knew she would not. And yet without his crutch, how else was he to get to that bath? And for no reason that he could have given he began to cry.

  The lady’s arms were round him in an instant.

  “What is it, dear? Whatever is it?” she asked; and Dickie sobbed out —

  “I ain’t got my crutch, and I can’t go to that there barf without I got it. Anything ‘ud do — if ’twas only an old broom cut down to me ‘eighth. I’m a cripple, they call it, you see. I can’t walk like wot you can.”

  She carried him to the bath. There was scented soap, there was a sponge, and a warm, fluffy towel.

  “I ain’t had a barf since Gravesend,” said Dickie, and flushed at the indiscretion.

  “Since when, dear?”

  “Since Wednesday,” said Dickie anxiously.

  He and the lady had breakfast together in a big room with long windows that the sun shone in at, and, outside, a green garden. There were a lot of things to eat in silver dishes, and the very eggs had silver cups to sit in, and all the spoons and forks had dogs scratched on them like the one that was carved on the foot-board of the bed up-stairs. All except the little slender spoon that Dickie had to eat his egg with. And on that there was no dog, but something quite different.

  “Why,” said he, his face brightening with joyous recognition, “my Tinkler’s got this on it — just the very moral of it, so ‘e ‘as.”

  Then he had to tell all about Tinkler, and the lady looked thoughtful and interested; and when the gentleman came in and kissed her, and said, How were we this morning, Dickie had to tell about Tinkler all over again; and then the lady said several things very quickly, beginning with, “I told you so, Edward,” and ending with “I knew he wasn’t a common child.”

  Dickie missed the middle part of what she said because of the way his egg behaved, suddenly bursting all down one side and running over into the salt, which, of course, had to be stopped at all costs by some means or other. The tongue was the easiest.

  The gentleman laughed. “Weh! don’t eat the egg-cup,” he said. “We shall want it again. Have another egg.”

  But Dickie’s pride was hurt, and he wouldn’t. The gentleman must be very stupid, he thought, not to know the difference between licking and eating. And as if anybody could eat an egg-cup, anyhow! He was glad when the gentleman went away.

  After breakfast Dickie was measured for a crutch — that is to say, a broom was held up beside him and a piece cut off its handle. Then the lady wrapped flannel around the hairy part of the broom and sewed black velvet over that. It was a beautiful crutch, and Dickie said so. Also he showed his gratitude by inviting the lady to look “‘ow spry ‘e was on ‘is pins,” but she only looked a very little while, and then turned and gazed out of the window. So Dickie had a good look at the room and the furniture — it was all different from anything he ever remembered seeing, and yet he couldn’t help thinking he had seen them before, these high-backed chairs covered with flowers, like on carpets; the carved bookcases with rows on rows of golden-beaded books; the bow-fronted, shining sideboard, with handles that shone like gold, and the corner cupboard with glass doors and china inside, red and blue and goldy. It was a very odd feeling. I don’t think that I can describe it better than by saying that he looked at all these things with a double pleasure — the pleasure of looking at new and beautiful things, and the pleasure of seeing again things old and beautiful which he had not seen for a very long time.

  His limping survey of the room ended at the windows, when the lady turned suddenly, knelt down, put her hand under his chin and looked into his eyes.

  “Dickie,” she said, “how would you like to stay here and be my little boy?”

  “I’d like it right enough,” said he, “only I got to go back to father.”

  “But if father says you may?”

  “‘E won’t,” said Dickie, with certainty, “an’ besides, there’s Tinkler.”

  “Well, you’re to stay here and be my little boy till we find out where father is. We shall let the police know. They’re sure to find him.”

  “The pleece!” Dickie cried in horror. “Why, father, ‘e ain’t done nothing.”

  “No, no, of course not,” said the lady in a hurry; “but the police know all sorts of things — about where people are, I know, and what they’re doing — even when they haven’t done anything.”

  “The pleece knows a jolly sight too much,” said Dickie, in gloom.

  And now all Dickie’s little soul was filled with one longing; all his little brain awake to one only thought: the police were to be set on the track of Beale, the man whom he called father; the man who had been kind to him, had wheeled him in a perambulator for miles and miles through enchanted country; the man who had bought him a little coat “to put on o’ nights if it was cold or wet”; the man who had shown him the wonderful world to which he awakens who has slept in the bed with the green curtains.

  The lady’s house was more beautiful than anything he had ever imagined — yet not more beautiful than certain things that he almost imagined that he remembered. The lady was better than beautiful, she was dear. Her eyes were the eyes to which it is good to laugh — her arms were the arms in which it is good to cry. The tree-dotted parkland was to Dickie the Land of Heart’s Desire.

  But father — Beale — who had been kind, whom Dickie loved!. . .

  The lady left him alone with a book, beautiful beyond his dreams — three great volumes with pictures of things that had happened and been since the days of Hereward himself. The author’s charming name was Green, and recalled curtains and nights under the stars.

  But even those beautiful pictures could not keep Dickie’s thoughts from Mr. Beale: “father” by adoption and love. If the police were set to find out “where he was and what he was doing?”. . . Somehow or other Dickie must get to Gravesend, to that house where there had been a bath, or something like it, in a pail, and where kindly tramp-people had toasted herrings and given apples to little boys who helped.

  He had helped then. And by all the laws of fair play there ought to be some one now to help him.

  The beautiful book lay on the table before him, but he no longer saw it. He no longer cared for it. All he cared for was to find a friend who would help him. And he found one. And the friend who helped him was an enemy.

  The smart, pink-frocked, white-capped, white-aproned maid, who, unseen by Dickie, had brought the bath-water and the bath, came in with a duster. She looked malevolently at Dickie.

  “Shovin’ yourself in,” she said rudely.

  “I ain’t,” said he.

  “If she wants to make a fool of a kid, ain’t I got clever brothers and sisters?” inquired the maid, her chin in the air.

  “Nobody says you ain’t, an
d nobody ain’t makin’ a fool of me,” said Dickie.

  “Ho no. Course they ain’t,” the maid rejoined. “People comes ‘ere without e’er a shirt to their backs and makes fools of their betters. That’s the way it is, ain’t it? Ain’t she arst you to stay and be ‘er little boy?”

  “Yes,” said Dickie.

  “Ah, I thought she ‘ad,” said the maid triumphantly; “and you’ll stay. But if I’m expected to call you Master Whatever-your-silly-name-is, I gives a month’s warning, so I tell you straight.”

  “I don’t want to stay,” said Dickie—”at least — —”

  “Oh, tell me another,” said the girl impatiently, and left him, without having made the slightest use of the duster.

  Dickie was taken for a drive in a little carriage drawn by a cream-colored pony with a long tail — a perfect dream of a pony, and the lady allowed him to hold the reins. But even amid this delight he remembered to ask whether she had put the police on to father yet, and was relieved to hear that she had not.

  It was Markham who was told to wash Dickie’s hands when the drive was over, and Markham was the enemy with the clever brothers and sisters.

  “Wash ’em yourself,” she said among the soap and silver and marble and sponges. “It ain’t my work.”

  “You’d better,” said Dickie, “or the lady’ll know the difference. It ain’t my work neither, and I ain’t so used to washing as what you are, and that’s the truth.”

  So she washed him, not very gently.

  “It’s no use your getting your knife into me,” he said as the towel was plied. “I didn’t arst to come ‘ere, did I?”

  “No, you little thief!”

  “Stow that!” said Dickie, and after a quick glance at his set lips she said, “Well, next door to, anyhow. I should be ashamed to show my face ‘ere, if I was you, after last night. There, you’re dry now. Cut along down to the dining-room. The servants’ hall’s good enough for honest people as don’t break into houses.”

  All through that day of wonder, which included real roses that you could pick and smell and real gooseberries that you could gather and eat, as well as picture-books, a clockwork bear, a musical box, and a doll’s house almost as big as a small villa, an idea kept on hammering at the other side of a locked door in Dickie’s mind, and when he was in bed it got the door open and came out and looked at him. And he recognized it at once as a really useful idea.