Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “Let him,” said Dickie to himself. He was too sleepy to be afraid.

  But for a policeman, who is usually of quite a large pattern, the voice was unusually soft and small. It said briskly —

  “Now, then, where do you want to go to?”

  “I ain’t particular,” said Dickie, who supposed himself to be listening to an offer of a choice of police-stations.

  There were whispers — two small and soft voices. They made a sleepy music.

  “He’s more yours than mine,” said one.

  “You’re more his than I am,” said the other.

  “You’re older than I am,” said the first.

  “You’re stronger than I am,” said the second.

  “Let’s spin for it,” said the first voice, and there was a humming sound ending in a little tinkling fall.

  “That settles it,” said the second voice—”here?”

  “And when?”

  “Three’s a good number.”

  Then everything was very quiet, and sleep wrapped Dickie like a soft cloak. When he awoke his eyelids no longer felt heavy, so he opened them. “That was a rum dream,” he told himself, as he blinked in broad daylight.

  He lay in bed — a big, strange bed — in a room that he had never seen before. The windows were low and long, with small panes, and the light was broken by upright stone divisions. The floor was of dark wood, strewn strangely with flowers and green herbs, and the bed was a four-post bed like the one he had slept in at Talbot House; and in the green curtains was woven a white pattern, very like the thing that was engraved on Tinkler and on the white seal. On the coverlet lavender and other herbs were laid. And the wall was hung with pictures done in needlework — tapestry, in fact, though Dickie did not know that this was its name. All the furniture was heavily built of wood heavily carved. An enormous dark cupboard or wardrobe loomed against one wall. High-backed chairs with tapestry seats were ranged in a row against another. The third wall was almost all window, and in the fourth wall the fireplace was set with a high-hooded chimney and wide, open hearth.

  Near the bed stood a stool, or table, with cups and bottles on it, and on the necks of the bottles parchment labels were tied that stuck out stiffly. A stout woman in very full skirts sat in a large armchair at the foot of the bed. She wore a queer white cap, the like of which Dickie had never seen, and round her neck was a ruff which reminded him of the cut-paper frills in the ham and beef shops in the New Cross Road.

  “What a curious dream!” said Dickie.

  The woman looked at him.

  “So thou’st found thy tongue,” she said; “folk must look to have curious dreams who fall sick of the fever. But thou’st found thy tongue at last — thine own tongue, not the wandering tongue that has wagged so fast these last days.”

  “But I thought I was in the front room at — —” Dickie began.

  “Thou’rt here,” said she; “the other is the dream. Forget it. And do not talk of it. To talk of such dreams brings misfortune. And ’tis time for thy posset.”

  She took a pipkin from the hearth, where a small fire burned, though it was summer weather, as Dickie could see by the green tree-tops that swayed and moved outside in the sun, poured some gruel out of it into a silver basin. It had wrought roses on it and “Drink me and drink again” in queer letters round the rim; but this Dickie only noticed later. She poured white wine into the gruel, and, having stirred it with a silver spoon, fed Dickie as one feeds a baby, blowing on each spoonful to cool it. The gruel was very sweet and pleasant. Dickie stretched in the downy bed, felt extremely comfortable, and fell asleep again.

  Next time he awoke it was with many questions. “How’d I come ‘ere? ‘Ave I bin run over agen? Is it a hospital? Who are you?”

  “Now don’t you begin to wander again,” said the woman in the cap. “You’re here at home in the best bed in your father’s house at Deptford. And you’ve had the plague-fever. And you’re better. Or ought to be. But if you don’t know your own old nurse — —”

  “I never ‘ad no nurse,” said Dickie, “old nor new. So there. You’re a-takin’ me for some other chap, that’s what it is. Where did you get hold of me? I never bin here before.”

  “Don’t wander, I tell you,” repeated the nurse briskly. “You lie still and think, and you’ll see you’ll remember me very well. Forget your old nurse — why, you will tell me next that you’ve forgotten your own name.”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Dickie.

  “What is it, then?” the nurse asked, laughing a fat, comfortable laugh.

  Dickie’s reply was naturally “Dickie Harding.”

  “Why,” said the nurse, opening wide eyes at him under gray brows, “you have forgotten it. They do say that the fever hurts the memory, but this beats all. Dost mean to tell me the fever has mazed thy poor brains till thou don’t know that thy name’s Richard —— ?” And Dickie heard her name a name that did not sound to him at all like Harding.

  “Is that my name?” he asked.

  “It is indeed,” she answered.

  Dickie felt an odd sensation of fixedness. He had expected when he went to sleep that the dream would, in sleep, end, and that he would wake to find himself alone in the empty house at New Cross. But he had wakened to the same dream once more, and now he began to wonder whether he really belonged here, and whether this were the real life, and the other — the old, sordid, dirty New Cross life — merely a horrid dream, the consequence of his fever. He lay and thought, and looked at the rich, pleasant room, the kind, clear face of the nurse, the green, green branches of the trees, the tapestry and the rushes. At last he spoke.

  “Nurse,” said he.

  “Ah! I thought you’d come to yourself,” she said. “What is it, my dearie?”

  “If I am really the name you said, I’ve forgotten it. Tell me all about myself, will you, Nurse?”

  “I thought as much,” she muttered, and then began to tell him wonderful things.

  She told him how his father was Sir Richard — the King had made him a knight only last year — and how this place where they now were was his father’s country house. “It lies,” said the nurse, “among the pleasant fields and orchards of Deptford.” And how he, Dickie, had been very sick of the pestilential fever, but was now, thanks to the blessing and to the ministrations of good Dr. Carey, on the highroad to health.

  “And when you are strong enough,” said she, “and the house purged of the contagion, your cousins from Sussex shall come and stay a while here with you, and afterwards you shall go with them to their town house, and see the sights of London. And now,” she added, looking out of the window, “I spy the good doctor a-coming. Make the best of thyself, dear heart, lest he bleed thee and drench thee yet again, which I know in my heart thou’rt too weak for it. But what do these doctors know of babes? Their medicines are for strong men.”

  The idea of bleeding was not pleasant to Dickie, though he did not at all know what it meant. He sat up in bed, and was surprised to find that he was not nearly so tired as he thought. The excitement of all these happenings had brought a pink flush to his face, and when the doctor, in a full black robe and black stockings and a pointed hat, stood by his bedside and felt his pulse, the doctor had to own that Dickie was almost well.

  “We have wrought a cure, Goody,” he said; “thou and I, we have wrought a cure. Now kitchen physic it is that he needs — good broth and gruel and panada, and wine, the Rhenish and the French, and the juice of the orange and the lemon, or, failing those, fresh apple-juice squeezed from the fruit when you shall have brayed it in a mortar. Ha, my cure pleases thee? Well, smell to it, then. ’Tis many a day since thou hadst the heart to.”

  He reached the gold knob of his cane to Dickie’s nose, and Dickie was surprised to find that it smelled sweet and strong, something like grocers’ shops and something like a chemist’s. There were little holes in the gold knob, such as you see in the tops of pepper castors, and the scent seemed to come through them.<
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  “What is it?” Dickie asked.

  “He has forgotten everything,” said the nurse quickly; “’tis the good doctor’s pomander, with spices and perfumes in it to avert contagion.”

  “As it warms in the hand the perfumes give forth,” said the doctor. “Now the fever is past there must be a fumigatory. Make a good brew, Goody, make a good brew — amber and nitre and wormwood — vinegar and quinces and myrrh — with wormwood, camphor, and the fresh flowers of the camomile. And musk — forget not musk — a strong thing against contagion. Let the vapor of it pass to and fro through the chamber, burn the herbs from the floor and all sweepings on this hearth; strew fresh herbs and flowers, and set all clean and in order, and give thanks that you are not setting all in order for a burying.”

  With which agreeable words the black-gowned doctor nodded and smiled at the little patient, and went out.

  And now Dickie literally did not know where he was. It was all so difficult. Was he Dickie Harding who had lived at New Cross, and sown the Artistic Parrot Seed, and taken the open road with Mr. Beale? Or was he that boy with the other name whose father was a knight, and who lived in a house in Deptford with green trees outside the windows? He could not remember any house in Deptford that had green trees in its garden. And the nurse had said something about the pleasant fields and orchards. Those, at any rate, were not in the Deptford he knew. Perhaps there were two Deptfords. He knew there were two Bromptons and two Richmonds (one in Yorkshire). There was something about the way things happened at this place that reminded him of that nice Lady Talbot who had wanted him to stay and be her little boy. Perhaps this new boy whose place he seemed to have taken had a real mother of his own, as nice as that nice lady.

  The nurse had dropped all sorts of things into an iron pot with three legs, and had set it to boil in the hot ashes. Now it had boiled, and two maids were carrying it to and fro in the room, as the doctor had said. Puffs of sweet, strong, spicy steam rose out of it as they jerked it this way and that.

  “Nurse,” Dickie called; and she came quickly. “Nurse, have I got a mother?”

  She hugged him. “Indeed thou hast,” she said, “but she lies sick at your father’s other house. And you have a baby brother, Richard.”

  “Then,” said Dickie, “I think I will stay here, and try to remember who I am — I mean who you say I am — and not try to dream any more about New Cross and Mr. Beale. If this is a dream, it’s a better dream than the other. I want to stay here, Nurse. Let me stay here and see my mother and my little brother.”

  “And shalt, my lamb — and shalt,” the nurse said.

  And after that there was more food, and more sleep, and nights, and days, and talks, and silences, and very gradually, yet very quickly, Dickie learned about this new boy who was, and wasn’t, himself. He told the nurse quite plainly that he remembered nothing about himself, and after he had told her she would sit by his side by the hour and tell him of things that had happened in the short life of the boy whose place he filled, the boy whose name was not Dickie Harding. And as soon as she had told him a thing he found he remembered it — not as one remembers a tale that is told, but as one remembers a real thing that has happened.

  And days went on, and he became surer and surer that he was really this other Richard, and that he had only dreamed all that old life in New Cross with his aunt and in the pleasant country roads with Mr. Beale. And he wondered how he could ever have dreamed such things.

  Quite soon came the day when the nurse dressed him in clothes strange, but strangely comfortable and fine, and carried him to the window, from which, as he sat in a big oak chair, he could see the green fields that sloped down to the river, and the rigging and the masts of the ships that went up and down. The rigging looked familiar, but the shape of the ships was quite different. They were shorter and broader than the ships that Dickie Harding had been used to see, and they, most of them, rose up much higher out of the water.

  “I should like to go and look at them closer,” he told the nurse.

  “Once thou’rt healed,” she said, “thou’lt be forever running down to the dockyard. Thy old way — I know thee, hearing the master mariners’ tales, and setting thy purpose for a galleon of thine own and the golden South Americas.”

  “What’s a galleon?” said Dickie. And was told. The nurse was very patient with his forgettings.

  He was very happy. There seemed somehow to be more room in this new life than in the old one, and more time. No one was in a hurry, and there was not another house within a quarter of a mile. All green fields. Also he was a person of consequence. The servants called him “Master Richard,” and he felt, as he heard them, that being called Master Richard meant not only that the servants respected him as their master’s son, but that he was somebody from whom great things were expected. That he had duties of kindness and protection to the servants; that he was expected to grow up brave and noble and generous and unselfish, to care for those who called him master. He felt now very fully, what he had felt vaguely and dimly at Talbot Court, that he was not the sort of person who ought to do anything mean and dishonorable, such as being a burglar, and climbing in at pantry windows; that when he grew up he would be expected to look after his servants and laborers, and all the men and women whom he would have under him — that their happiness and well-being would be his charge. And the thought swelled his heart, and it seemed that he was born to a great destiny. He — little lame Dickie Harding of Deptford — he would hold these people’s lives in his hand. Well, he knew what poor people wanted; he had been poor — or he had dreamed that he was poor — it was all the same. Dreams and real life were so very much alike.

  So Dickie changed, every hour of every day and every moment of every hour, from the little boy who lived at New Cross among the yellow houses and the ugliness, who tramped the white roads, and slept at the Inn of the Silver Moon, to Richard of the other name who lived well and slept softly, and knew himself called to a destiny of power and helpful kindness. For his nurse had told him that his father was a rich man; and that father’s riches would be his one day, to deal with for the good of the men under him, for their happiness and the glory of God. It was a great and beautiful thought, and Dickie loved it.

  He loved, indeed, everything in this new life — the shapes and colors of furniture and hangings, the kind old nurse, the friendly, laughing maids, the old doctor with his long speeches and short smiles, his bed, his room, the ships, the river, the trees, the gardens — the very sky seemed cleaner and brighter than the sky that had been over the Deptford that Dickie Harding had known.

  And then came the day when the nurse, having dressed him, bade him walk to the window, instead of being carried, as, so far, he had been.

  “Where . . .” he asked, hesitatingly, “where’s my. . .? Where have you put the crutch?”

  Then the old nurse laughed.

  “Crutch?” she said. “Come out of thy dreams. Thou silly boy! Thou wants no crutch with two fine, straight, strong legs like thou’s got. Come, use them and walk.”

  Dickie looked down at his feet. In the old New Cross days he had not liked to look at his feet. He had not looked at them in these new days. Now he looked. Hesitated.

  “Come,” said the nurse encouragingly.

  He slid from the high bed. One might as well try. Nurse seemed to think. . . . He touched the ground with both feet, felt the floor firm and even under them — as firm and even under the one foot as under the other. He stood up straight, moved the foot that he had been used to move — then the other, the one that he had never moved. He took two steps, three, four — and then he turned suddenly and flung himself against the side of the bed and hid his face in his arms.

  “What, weeping, my lamb?” the nurse said, and came to him.

  “Oh, Nurse,” he cried, clinging to her with all his might. “I dreamed that I was lame! And I thought it was true. And it isn’t! — it isn’t! — it isn’t!”

  Quite soon Dickie was able to w
alk down-stairs and out into the garden along the grassy walks and long alleys where fruit trees trained over trellises made such pleasant green shade, and even to try to learn to play at bowls on the long bowling-green behind the house. The house was by far the finest house Dickie had ever been in, and the garden was more beautiful even than the garden at Talbot Court. But it was not only the beauty of the house and garden that made Dickie’s life a new and full delight. To limp along the leafy ways, to crawl up and down the carved staircase would have been a pleasure greater than any Dickie had ever known; but he could leap up and down the stairs three at a time, he could run in the arched alleys — run and jump as he had seen other children do, and as he had never thought to do himself. Imagine what you would feel if you had lived wingless all your life among people who could fly. That is how lame people feel among us who can walk and run. And now Dickie was lame no more.

  His feet seemed not only to be strong and active, but clever on their own account. They carried him quite without mistake to the blacksmith’s at the village on the hill — to the centre of the maze of clipped hedges that was the centre of the garden, and best of all they carried him to the dockyard.

  Girls like dolls and tea-parties and picture-books, but boys like to see things made and done; else how is it that any boy worth his salt will leave the newest and brightest toys to follow a carpenter or a plumber round the house, fiddle with his tools, ask him a thousand questions, and watch him ply his trade? Dickie at New Cross had spent many an hour watching those interesting men who open square trap-doors in the pavement and drag out from them yards and yards of wire. I do not know why the men do this, but every London boy who reads this will know.