Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “You mean you will?” said Dickie eagerly.

  “More fool me,” said the Jew, feeling in his pocket.

  “You won’t be sorry; not in the end you won’t,” said Dickie, as the pawnbroker laid certain monies before him on the mahogany counter. “You’ll lend me this? You’ll trust me?”

  “Looks like it,” said the Jew.

  “Then some day I shall do something for you. I don’t know what, but something. We never forget, we — —” He stopped. He remembered that he was poor little lame Dickie Harding, with no right to that other name which had been his in the dream.

  He picked up the coins, put them in his pocket — felt the moon-seeds.

  “I cannot repay your kindness,” he said, “though some day I will repay your silver. But these seeds — the moon-seeds,” he pulled out a handful. “You liked the flowers?” He handed a generous score across the red-brown polished wood.

  “Thank you, my lad,” said the pawnbroker. “I’ll raise them in gentle heat.”

  “I think they grow best by moonlight,” said Dickie.

  So he came to Gravesend and the common lodging-house, and a weary, sad, and very anxious man rose up from his place by the fire when the clickety-clack of the crutch sounded on the threshold.

  “It’s the nipper!” he said; and came very quickly to the door and got his arm round Dickie’s shoulders. “The little nipper, so it ain’t! I thought you’d got pinched. No, I didn’t, I knew your clever ways — I knew you was bound to turn up.”

  “Yes,” said Dickie, looking round the tramps’ kitchen, and remembering the long, clean tapestry-hung dining-hall of his dream. “Yes, I was bound to turn up. You wanted me to, didn’t you?” he added.

  “Wanted you to?” Beale answered, holding him close, and looking at him as men look at some rare treasure gained with much cost and after long seeking. “Wanted you? Not ‘arf! I don’t think,” and drew him in and shut the door.

  “Then I’m glad I came,” said Dickie. But in his heart he was not glad. In his heart he longed for that pleasant house where he was the young master, and was not lame any more. But in his soul he was glad, because the soul is greater than the heart, and knows greater things. And now Dickie loved Beale more than ever, because for him he had sacrificed his dream. So he had gained something. Because loving people is the best thing in the world — better even than being loved. Just think this out, will you, and see if I am not right.

  There were herrings for tea. And in the hard bed, with his clothes and his boots under the pillows, Dickie slept soundly.

  But he did not dream.

  Yet when he woke in the morning, remembering many things, he said to himself —

  “Is this the dream? Or was the other the dream?”

  And it seemed a foolish question — with the feel of the coarse sheets and the smell of the close room, and Mr. Beale’s voice saying, “Rouse up, nipper, there’s sossingers for breakfast.”

  CHAPTER V. “TO GET YOUR OWN LIVING”

  “No,” said Mr. Beale, “we ain’t a-goin’ to crack no more cribs. It’s low — that’s what it is. I quite grant you it’s low. So I s’pose we’ll ‘ave to take the road again.”

  Dickie and he were sitting in the sunshine on a sloping field. They had been sitting there all the morning, and Dickie had told Mr. Beale all his earthly adventures from the moment the redheaded man had lifted him up to the window of Talbot Court to the time when he had come in by the open door of the common lodging-house.

  “What a nipper it is, though!” said Mr. Beale regretfully. “For the burgling, I mean — sharp — clever — no one to touch him. But I don’t cotton to it myself,” he added quickly, “not the burgling, I don’t. You’re always liable to get yourself into trouble over it, one way or the other — that’s the worst of it. I don’t know how it is,” he ended pensively, “but somehow it always leads to trouble.”

  Dickie picked up seven straws from among the stubble and idly plaited them together; the nurse had taught him this in the dream when he was still weak from the fever.

  “That’s very flash, that what you’re doing,” said Beale; “who learned you that?”

  “I learned it in a dream,” said Dickie slowly. “I dreamed I ‘ad a fever — and — I’ll tell you if you like: it’s a good yarn — good as Here Ward, very near.”

  Beale lay back on the dry stubble, his pipe between his teeth.

  “Fire away,” he said, and Dickie fired away.

  When the long tale ended, the sun was beginning to go down towards its bed in the west. There was a pause.

  “You’d make a tidy bit on the ‘alls,” said Beale, quite awestruck. “The things you think of! When did you make all that up?”

  “I dreamed it, I tell you,” said Dickie.

  “You always could stick it on,” said Mr. Beale admiringly.

  “I ain’t goin’ to stick it on never no more,” said Dickie. “They called it lying and cheating, where I was — in my dream, I mean.”

  “Once let a nipper out of yer sight,” said Mr. Beale sadly, “and see what comes of it! ‘No. 2’ a-goin’ to stick it on no more! Then how’s us to get a honest living? Answer me that, young chap.”

  “I don’t know,” said Dickie, “but we got to do it som’ow.”

  “It ain’t to be done — not with all the unemployed there is about,” said Mr. Beale. “Besides, you’ve got a regular gift for sticking it on — a talent I call it. And now you want to throw it away. But you can’t. We got to live.”

  “In the dream,” said Dickie, “there didn’t seem to be no unemployed. Every one was ‘prenticed to a trade. I wish it was like that here.”

  “Well, it ain’t,” said Mr. Beale shortly. “I wasn’t never ‘prenticed to no trade, no more’n what you’ll be.”

  “Worse luck,” said Dickie. “But I started learning a lot of things — games mostly, in the dream, I did — and I started making a boat — a galleon they called it. All the names is different there. And I carved a little box — a fair treat it was — with my father’s arms on it.”

  “Yer father’s what?”

  “Coat of arms. Gentlemen there all has different things — patterns like; they calls ’em coats of arms, and they put it on their silver and on their carriages and their furniture.”

  “Put what?” Beale asked again.

  “The blazon. All gentlepeople have it.”

  “Don’t you come the blazing toff over me,” said Beale with sudden fierceness, “‘cause I won’t ‘ave it. See? It’s them bloomin’ Talbots put all this rot into your head.”

  “The Talbots?” said Dickie. “Oh! the Talbots ain’t been gentry more than a couple of hundred years. Our family’s as old as King Alfred.”

  “Stow it, I say!” said Beale, more fiercely still. “I see what you’re after; you want us to part company, that’s what you want. Well, go. Go back to yer old Talbots and be the nice lady’s little boy with velvet kicksies and a clean anky once a week. That’s what you do.”

  Dickie looked forlornly out over the river.

  “I can’t ‘elp what I dreams, can I?” he said. “In the dream I’d got lots of things. Uncles and aunts an’ a little brother. I never seen him though. An’ a farver and muvver an’ all. It’s different ‘ere. I ain’t got nobody but you ‘ere — farver.”

  “Well, then,” said Beale more gently, “what do you go settin’ of yourself up agin me for?”

  “I ain’t,” said Dickie. “I thought you liked me to tell you everythink.”

  Silence. Dickie could not help noticing the dirty shirt, the dirty face, the three days’ beard, the filthy clothes of his friend, and he thought of his other friend, Sebastian of the Docks. He saw the pale blue reproachful eyes of Beale looking out of that dirty face, and he spoke aloud, quite without meaning to.

  “All that don’t make no difference,” he said.

  “Eh?” said Beale with miserable, angry eyes.

  “Look ‘ere,” said Dickie desperate
ly. “I’m a-goin’ to show you. This ‘ere’s my Tinkler, what I told you about, what pawns for a bob. I wouldn’t show it to no one but you, swelp me, I wouldn’t.”

  He held the rattle out.

  Beale took it. “It’s a fancy bit, I will say,” he owned.

  “Look ‘ere,” said Dickie, “what I mean to say — —”

  He stopped. What was the use of telling Beale that he had come back out of the dream just for his sake? Beale who did not believe in the dream — did not understand it — hated it?

  “Don’t you go turning agin me,” he said; “whether I dream or not, you and me’ll stand together. I’m not goin’ to do things wot’s wrong — low, dirty tricks — so I ain’t. But I knows we can get on without that. What would you like to do for your living if you could choose?”

  “I warn’t never put to no trade,” said Beale, “‘cept being ‘andy with a ‘orse. I was a wagoner’s mate when I was a boy. I likes a ‘orse. Or a dawg,” he added. “I ain’t no good wiv me ‘ands — not at working, you know — not to say working.”

  Dickie suppressed a wild notion he had had of getting into that dream again, learning some useful trade there, waking up and teaching it to Mr. Beale.

  “Ain’t there nothing else you’d like to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know as there is,” said Mr. Beale drearily; “without it was pigeons.”

  Then Dickie wondered whether things that you learned in dreams would “stay learned.” Things you learned to do with your hands. The Greek and the Latin “stayed learned” right enough and sang in his brain encouragingly.

  “Don’t you get shirty if I talks about that dream,” he said. “You dunno what a dream it was. I wasn’t kidding you. I did dream it, honor bright. I dreamed I could carve wood — make boxes and things. I wish I ‘ad a bit of fine-grained wood. I’d like to try. I’ve got the knife they give me to cut the string of the basket in the train. It’s jolly sharp.”

  “What sort o’ wood?” Beale asked.

  “It was mahogany I dreamed I made my box with,” said Dickie. “I would like to try.”

  “Off ‘is poor chump,” Beale murmured with bitter self-reproach; “my doin’ too — puttin’ ‘im on to a job like Talbot Court, the nipper is.”

  He stretched himself and got up.

  “I’ll get yer a bit of mahogany from somewheres,” he said very gently. “I didn’t mean nothing, old chap. You keep all on about yer dreams. I don’t mind. I likes it. Let’s get a brace o’ kippers and make a night of it.”

  So they went back to the Gravesend lodging-house.

  Next day Mr. Beale produced the lonely leg of a sofa — mahogany, a fat round turned leg, old and seasoned.

  “This what you want?” he asked.

  Dickie took it eagerly. “I do wonder if I can,” he said. “I feel just exactly like as if I could. I say, farver, let’s get out in the woods somewheres quiet and take our grub along. Somewheres where nobody can’t say, ‘What you up to?’ and make a mock of me.”

  They found a place such as Dickie desired, a warm, sunny nest in the heart of a green wood, and all through the long, warm hours of the autumn day Mr. Beale lay lazy in the sunshine while Dickie, very pale and determined, sliced, chipped, and picked at the sofa leg with the knife the gardener had given him.

  It was hard to make him lay the work down even for dinner, which was of a delicious and extravagant kind — new bread, German sausage, and beer in a flat bottle. For from the moment when the knife touched the wood Dickie knew that he had not forgotten, and that what he had done in the Deptford dockyard under the eyes of Sebastian, the shipwright who had helped to sink the Armada, he could do now alone in the woods beyond Gravesend.

  It was after dinner that Mr. Beale began to be interested.

  “Swelp me!” he said; “but you’ve got the hang of it somehow. A box, ain’t it?”

  “A box,” said Dickie, smoothing a rough corner; “a box with a lid that fits. And I’ll carve our arms on the top — see, I’ve left that bit stickin’ up a purpose.”

  It was the hardest day’s work Dickie had ever done. He stuck to it and stuck to it and stuck to it till there was hardly light left to see it by. But before the light was wholly gone the box had wholly come — with the carved coat of arms and the lid that fitted.

  “Well,” said Mr. Beale, striking a match to look at it; “if that ain’t a fair treat! There’s many a swell bloke ‘ud give ‘arf a dollar for that to put ‘is baccy in. You’ve got a trade, my son, that’s sure. Why didn’t you let on before as you could? Blow the beastly match! It’s burned me finger.”

  The match went out and Beale and Dickie went back to supper in the crowded, gas-lit room. When supper was over — it was tripe and onions and fried potatoes, very luxurious — Beale got up and stood before the fire.

  “I’m a-goin’ to ‘ave a hauction, I am,” he said to the company at large. “Here’s a thing and a very pretty thing, a baccy-box, or a snuff-box, or a box to shut yer gold money in, or yer diamonds. What offers?”

  “‘And it round,” said a black-browed woman, with a basket covered in American cloth no blacker than her eyes.

  “That I will,” said Beale readily. “I’ll ‘and it round in me ‘and. And I’ll do the ‘andin’ meself.”

  He took it round from one to another, showed the neat corners, the neat carving, the neat fit of the square lid.

  “Where’d yer nick that?” asked a man with a red handkerchief.

  “The nipper made it.”

  “Pinched it more likely,” some one said.

  “I see ‘im make it,” said Beale, frowning a little.

  “Let me ‘ave a squint,” said a dingy gray old man sitting apart. For some reason of his own Beale let the old man take the box into his hand. But he kept very close to him and he kept his eyes on the box.

  “All outer one piece,” said the old man. “I dunno oo made it an’ I don’t care, but that was made by a workman as know’d his trade. I was a cabinet-maker once, though you wouldn’t think it to look at me. There ain’t nobody here to pay what that little hobjec’s worth. Hoil it up with a drop of cold linseed and leave it all night, and then in the morning you rub it on yer trouser leg to shine it, and then rub it in the mud to dirty it, and then hoil it again and dirty it again, and you’ll get ‘arf a thick ‘un for it as a genuwine hold antique. That’s wot you do.”

  “Thankee, daddy,” said Beale, “an’ so I will.”

  He slipped the box in his pocket. When Dickie next saw the box it looked as old as any box need look.

  “Now we’ll look out for a shop where they sells these ‘ere hold antics,” said Beale. They were on the road and their faces were set towards London. Dickie’s face looked pinched and white. Beale noticed it.

  “You don’t look up to much,” he said; “warn’t your bed to your liking?”

  “The bed was all right,” said Dickie, thinking of the bed in the dream. “I diden sleep much, though.”

  “Any more dreams?” Beale asked kindly enough.

  “No,” said Dickie. “I think p’raps it was me wanting so to dream it again kep’ me awake.”

  “I dessey,” said Beale, picking up a straw to chew.

  Dickie limped along in the dust, the world seemed very big and hard. It was a long way to London and he had not been able to dream that dream again. Perhaps he would never be able to dream it. He stumbled on a big stone and would have fallen but that Beale caught him by the arm, and as he swung round by that arm Beale saw that the boy’s eyes were thick with tears.

  “Ain’t ‘urt yerself, ‘ave yer?” he said — for in all their wanderings these were the first tears Dickie had shed.

  “No,” said Dickie, and hid his face against Beale’s coat sleeve. “It’s only — —”

  “What is it, then?” said Beale, in the accents of long-disused tenderness; “tell your old farver, then — —”

  “It’s silly,” sobbed Dickie.

  “Never you mi
nd whether it’s silly or not,” said Beale. “You out with it.”

  “In that dream,” said Dickie, “I wasn’t lame.”

  “Think of that now,” said Beale admiringly. “You best dream that every night. Then you won’t mind so much of a daytime.”

  “But I mind more,” said Dickie, sniffing hard; “much, much more.”

  Beale, without more words, made room for him in the crowded perambulator, and they went on. Dickie’s sniffs subsided. Silence. Presently —

  “I say, farver, I’m sorry I acted so silly. You never see me blub afore and you won’t again,” he said; and Beale said awkwardly, “That’s all right, mate.”

  “You pretty flush?” the boy asked later on.

  “Not so dusty,” said the man.

  “‘Cause I wanter give that there little box to a chap I know wot lent me the money for the train to come to you at Gravesend.”

  “Pay ‘im some other day when we’re flusher.”

  “I’d rather pay ‘im now,” said Dickie. “I could make another box. There’s a bit of the sofer leg left, ain’t there?”

  There was, and Dickie worked away at it in the odd moments that cluster round meal times, the half-hours before bed and before the morning start. Mr. Beale begged of all likely foot-passengers, but he noted that the “nipper” no longer “stuck it on.” For the most part he was quite silent. Only when Beale appealed to him he would say, “Farver’s very good to me. I don’t know what I should do without farver.”

  And so at last they came to New Cross again, and Mr. Beale stepped in for half a pint at the Railway Hotel, while Dickie went clickety-clack along the pavement to his friend the pawnbroker.

  “Here we are again,” said that tradesman; “come to pawn the rattle?”

  Dickie laughed. Pawning the rattle seemed suddenly to have become a very old and good joke between them.

  “Look ‘ere, mister,” he said; “that chink wot you lent me to get to Gravesend with.” He paused, and added in his other voice, “It was very good of you, sir.”