Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ remarked the gentleman in the fur cap, who had snatched the girl out of danger; ‘it’s the nearest shave as ever I see.’

  It had been a near shave; but the old gentleman was unhurt, though considerably flustered, and immeasurably indignant.

  ‘Hurt? No, I’m not hurt — no thanks to that fool of a driver; such idiots ought to be hanged. But I ought to thank the gentleman who saved me.’

  As he spoke the young man came forward deadly pale and without a hat.

  ‘I do hope you’re not hurt,’ he said, in a singularly low, soft voice, speaking with a little catching of the breath. It was he who had leaned against the wall in the theatre. His hands were evidently good for something better than twisting tobacco. ‘I hope the pole did not touch you? I am afraid I was hardly quick enough, but I couldn’t get through the people before.’

  ‘My dear sir, you were quick enough to save me from being impaled against this wall; but I really feel quite upset.

  I must get my daughter home. She looks rather queer.’

  She was holding his arm tightly between her hands.

  ‘Do let’s go home,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’ll get you a cab,’ said the hero. ‘You’ll probably get one easily now the mischief’s done.’

  ‘He’s lost his hat,’ observed the rescued one, as the other disappeared. ‘Do you feel very bad, my pet? Pull yourself together. Here he comes.’

  A hansom drew up in front of them, and their new acquaintance threw back the apron himself.

  ‘You’d better take it yourself,’ said papa. ‘You seem rather lame, and your hat’s gone.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter at all. I can get another cab in an instant. Pray jump in.’

  ‘No; but look here. I haven’t half thanked you. After all, you saved my life, you know. Come and see me tomorrow evening, will you, and let me thank you properly. Here’s my card — I’m at Morley’s.’

  ‘I will come with pleasure to see if you are all right after it, but please don’t talk any more about thanks, Mr — Stanley. Here’s my card. Good night — Morley’s Hotel,’ he shouted to the cabman, and as they drove off he mechanically raised his hand to the place where his hat should have been. Have you ever seen a man do that when hat there was none? The effect is peculiar — much like a rustic pulling a forelock when t’squire goes by.

  ‘I hope he will come to-morrow,’ said Mr Stanley as the hansom drove off.

  ‘Why, I think he’s staying at our hotel, papa, I am almost sure I’ve seen him at the table d’hôte.’

  ‘Dear, dear! How extraordinary.’

  Clare was more than ‘almost sure’ in fact, she knew perfectly well that this handsome stranger was not only staying at the hotel, but that he in his turn was quite aware of their presence there. Of her presence he could hardly be oblivious, since his eyes had been turned on her without much intermission all through dinner every evening since she had been in town.

  Before Clare went to her room that night she managed to possess herself of the slip of cardboard on which was engraved — Michael Litvinoff.

  What an uncommon name! How strange that he of all people should have been the one to come forward at the critical moment.

  Yes, but not quite so strange as it seemed to Miss Stanley; for Litvinoff had gone to the theatre for no other purpose than to be near her. It was not only to gaze at her fair face that he thus followed her; but because he was determined to catch at any straw which might lead to an introduction, and the fates had favoured him, as they had often done before, in a degree beyond his wildest hopes. He was well contented to have lost his hat, and did not care much about his bruised foot. These were a cheap price to pay for admittance to the acquaintance of the girl who had occupied most of his thoughts during the few days that had passed since he had first seen her.

  ‘A very fair beginning. The gods have certainly favoured me so far; and now, O Jupiter, aid us! or rather Cupid, for I suppose he’s the proper deity to invoke in an emergency like this.’

  And Michael Litvinoff stretched out his slippered feet to the blazing fire in his bedroom.

  ‘By-the-way, I might as well look at the address. I know it’s somewhere down North.’

  He rose, walked with some difficulty to the chair, where he had flung his great coat, and took the card from one of its pockets. ‘Mr John Stanley, Aspinshaw, Firth Vale.’

  ‘By Jove! ‘ he said, sinking into his chair again. ‘Firth Vale — Firth Vale. That’s in Derbyshire. Ah me!’

  He thrust his feet forward again to the warmth, and leaning back gazed long into the fire, but not quite so complacently as he had done before it had occurred to him to make that journey across the room to his great-coat.

  CHAPTER III. THE NEW MASTERS.

  THE funeral was over, and Thornsett Mill was closed for the day. Fortunately the ‘Spotted Cow’ was not closed, so that the majority of the hands did not find themselves without resources. Added to the subtle pleasure which so many derive from drinking small beer in a sanded kitchen furnished with oak benches, there was to-day the excitement of discussing a great event, for to the average mind of Thornsett the death and burial of old Richard Ferrier were great events indeed. And then there appears to be something inherent in the nature of a funeral which produces intense and continued thirst in all persons connected, however remotely, with the ceremony. So John Bolt, the landlord, had his hands pretty full, and the state of the till was so satisfactory that it was a really praiseworthy sacrifice to the decencies of society for him to persist in not shortening by one fraction of an inch the respectfully long face which he had put on in the morning as appropriate to the occasion.

  ‘Well, for my part, I’m sorry he’s gone,’ he said, drawing himself a pot of that tap which seemed best calculated to assist moral reflections. ‘That I am! He was always a fair dealer, if he wasn’t a giving one.’

  ‘He was more a havin’ nor a givin’ one,’ said old Bill Murdoch. ‘Givin’ don’t build mills, my lad, nor yet muck up two acres o’ good pasture wi’ bits o’ flowers wi’ glass windows all over ‘em. I never seen sic foolin’.’

  ‘Surely a man’s a right to do what he will with his own,’ ventured a meek-looking man, who had himself a few pounds laid by, and felt acutely the importance of leaving unchallenged the rights of property.

  ‘I’m none so sure o’ that,’ remarked Bill, who had a conviction which is shared by a few more of us, that one’s superiority shows itself naturally and unmistakably in one’s never agreeing with any statement whatever which is advanced by anyone else.

  ‘There’ll be more flowers than ever now, if Mr Roland has his way,’ said Sigley the meek.

  ‘D’ye think, now, Sigley, he’ll be like to get that where Mr Richard is?’ asked Bill. ‘Mr Roland thinks too much o’ flowers and singin’, and book learnin’, to give much time to getten o’ his own way.’

  ‘Mr Roland may be this, or he may be that,’ Potters, the village grocer, observed, with the air of one clearly stating a case, ‘but he can get his way where he cares to.’

  ‘Tha’s fond o’ saying words as might mean owt — or nowt, for that matter. Can’t tha say what tha does mean?’

  ‘Tha’d know what I mean if tha weren’t too blind to see owt. How about Alice Hatfield?’

  ‘Gently, gently,’ said Bolt. ‘Tha was i’ the right, Potters, not to name names, but when it comes to namin’ o’ names I asks tha where’s tha proof?’

  Here there was a general ‘movement of adhesion,’ and an assenting murmur ran round, while the mild man repeated like an echo, ‘Where’s your proof?’

  ‘Her father don’t think ther’s proof,’ said Sigley.

  ‘A man dosen’t want to prove the bread out of his mouth, and the roof off his children.’

  ‘John Hatfield wouldn’t work for a man as had ruined his girl.’

  ‘Hungry dogs eat dirty pudding,’ remarked Potters.

  ‘Hatfield does na’ deal o’ thee, Potte
rs,’ observed Murdoch, drily.

  ‘And it would be just one if he did,’ answered Potters, his large face growing crimson, ‘and Alice was a good lass and a sweet lass till she took up wi’ fine notions and told a’ the lads as none on ’em was good enough to tie her shoon, and as she’d be a lady, and I don’t know what all, and Mr Roland was the only gentleman as ever took any notice of her, except Mr Richard; and Mr Roland, he went away when she went away, and it’s all as plain as the nose on your face.’

  ‘Tha says too much,’ said Murdoch slowly, ‘ for’t a’ to be true.’

  ‘Now, now!’ interposed Bolt. ‘Enow said on all sides, I’m sure. The poor old master’s gone, and the mill’s got a holiday, and I think you’ll all be better employed i’ turning your thoughts on him as is gone than i’ picking holes i’ them as is to be your masters, and raking up yesterday’s fires i’ this fashion. And so I say, as I said before, I for one am sorry he’s gone.’

  ‘Yes; and so am I,’ said Bill; ‘for as long as he lived I always expected him to do summat for me, as worked alongside o’ him when he were a lad i’ Carrington’s Mills, and now I know that chance is ower.’

  ‘Well, he gave thee work here, and he’d always a kind word for thee.’

  ‘Kind words spread no butties, and when he was rolling in brass, work at the usual wages was a’ he ever give me.’

  ‘Did’st thee ever gie him owt, lad?’

  ‘I never had owt to give him, or anyone else for that matter.’

  A general laugh arose, and Bill buried his face in his mug of beer.

  ‘The next work-day the mill’s closed’ll be a wedden-day, I s’pose,’ said Sigley, after a pause.

  ‘Ay, and not long fust.’

  ‘Mr Roland’s always up at Aspinshaw.’

  ‘So’s Mr Richard if you come to that.’

  ‘They can’t both marry the girl.’

  ‘No, nor I shouldn’t think either of them would yet a bit. Miss Clare’s only just come home fro’ endin’ her schoolin’.’

  ‘And a gradely lass she is.’

  ‘Ay, that’s so,’ cut in old Murdoch. ‘She thinks a sight more o’ workin’-folk nor either o’ they boys do.’

  ‘Where’s your proof o’ that, Bill?’ asked Bolt, the village logician.

  ‘Proof,’ snarled Murdoch; ‘don’t ‘ee call to mind two years agone when we had a kind o’ strike like, and didn’t she go about speakin’ up for us like a good un?’

  A murmur of assent mingled with the gurgling of liquor down half-a-dozen throats.

  ‘There’s one I hope she’ll never take to,’ Potters was beginning, but Bolt interrupted him with —

  ‘Whichever has her will have a fine wife. Let’s drink good luck to the new masters, lads.’

  ‘Or, so to say, to oursel’, for their’s ‘ll be ours,’ said Sigley.

  ‘Their bad luck ‘ll be ours; but their good luck’s their own, said Bill Murdoch sententiously.

  This startling economic theory meeting with no support, the original toast was drunk with a feeble attempt at honours.

  The ‘new masters’ whose health had thus been unenthusiastically drunk found it hard to realise the peculiar position in which they found themselves.

  The will was a great surprise to them both. Neither had thought that the slight breach which had come between them was sufficiently wide to be noticed, and the very fact of its having been noticed made it appear deeper and more serious than they had before considered it to be.

  It was a bitter thought to Richard Ferrier that the old man’s last moments should have been made unquiet through any conduct of his, and he reproached himself for not having concealed his own feelings better, and for not having watched more keenly over those of his father. The most crushing part of bereavement is always the consciousness that so little more thought, so little more tact and tenderness, would have sufficed to spare that ended life many an hour of sorrow, that quiet heart many a pang of pain. It is then that we would give our heart’s blood for one hour with the beloved in which to tell them all that we might have said so easily while they were here. This universal longing is responsible for that deeply rooted belief in the life beyond the grave which causes two-thirds of human-kind to dispense with evidence and to set reason at nought. So long as the sons and daughters of men

  Weep by silent graves alone, so long will the priest find his penitent, the professor of modern spiritualism his open-mouthed dupe, and the shrine its devotee. The ages roll on, each year the old earth opens her bosom for our dearest, and still man — slow learner that he is — will not realise that (whatever may be the chances of another life in which to set right what has been here done amiss) in this life, which is the only one he can be sure of having, it rests with him to decide whether there shall be any acts of unkindness that will seem to need atonement.

  The consolation which so many find in the idea of a future life was a closed door to Dick. He had belonged to the ‘advanced’ school of thought at college, and to him the gulf which separated him from his father was one that could never be bridged over.

  Roland’s grief was more absorbing than his brother’s, though it was not so acute; and by its very nature could not be so lasting. Yet through it all he felt rather — not vexed — but grieved that his father should have not only divined his inmost feelings, but should have published them to the world by means of this will. He had an uneasy consciousness that he was made to appear ridiculous, and for Roland to be possibly absurd was to be certainly wretched. It was very irritating that two brothers could not have an occasional difference without having their ‘ sparring’ made the subject of a solemn legal document; and without being themselves placed in such a situation that the eyes of all their acquaintances must be turned expectantly on them to see what they would do next.

  The differences arose from an only too complete agreement on one particular point. When they had come back from Cambridge a year before, they had found a new and interesting feature in the social aspect of Firth Vale. Clare Stanley had come home from the German boarding-school where she had spent the last three years. The young men had not seen her since she was a child, and now they met her in the full blossom of very pretty and sufficiently-conscious young womanhood.

  For about two months they discussed her freely in their more sociable hours, admired her prodigiously, and congratulated each other on their good luck. Then came reticence; then occasional half-hearted sarcasms, directed against her, varied by a criticism of each other, the sincerity of which was beyond a doubt. For some months before the old man’s death the rivalry that had sprung up between them had been too strong to be always kept under, even in his presence, and he had seen the effect, though not guessed the cause.

  Strangely enough, another cause of dissension between the brothers had been also touched on by their critics in the tap of the Spotted Cow: Alice Hatfield. When Mrs. Ferrier had died Mrs. Hatfield had been foster-mother to the two boys, and during their childhood they were the constant playfellows of little Alice. Of course as they grew older the distance between them increased, but Richard was still very fond of Alice, and it was a great blow to him when one day, about three months after their return from college, the girl suddenly disappeared, taking leave of no one, and leaving no word of explanation. All that anyone could gather was that during a visit she had recently paid to an aunt in Liverpool she had been seen to talk more than once to a gentleman, and that she had left the Firth Vale Station for Manchester by an early train alone. But the worst of it was that Roland had that very day abruptly announced his intention of taking a holiday, and had gone North without any apparent object; and village gossip busied itself rarely with this portentous coincidence. At the end of a month Roland returned, looking worn and harassed. His brother asked him point blank where he had been, and for what. Roland indignantly denied his right to question, and flatly refused to answer. A quarrel ensued — the first of many, which grew more frequent as they saw more of Miss Stanley.
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  On the morning on which Mr Ferrier died, she and her father had gone to London to spend a month; and the time of her absence was the most peaceful the young men had known for some time.

  Clare herself was glad to go to London, though not so glad to leave the scene of her conquests. One cannot blame her much for knowing that she was charming. The two Ferriers were the most desirable young men the country-side could offer, and no girl could have wished a finer pair of captives to grace her chariot-wheels. And — Aspinshaw was very dull.

  CHAPTER IV. A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.

  WHEN Miss Stanley opened her hazel eyes the morning after the mischance on the way home from the theatre, her first waking impression was that something pleasant was to happen. She laughed at herself a little when complete wakefulness made her conscious that, after all, it was only Count Litvinoff’s acquaintance and promised call which were answerable for that dreamy feeling of anticipated enjoyment.

  She let her thoughts stray in his direction several times that day, and at the table d’hôte looked out for him with interest. But he was not there. Bearing in mind Mr Stanley’s invitation, Count Michael Litvinoff had thought it as well to absent himself from the table d’hote. It would have been rather awkward to meet his new acquaintances at dinner and then to call on them immediately afterwards.

  ‘I don’t see our Russian friend, Clare,’ remarked Mr Stanley as the fish was removed. ‘I think you must have been mistaken about his staying here.’

  ‘Perhaps I was, papa,’ said Clare, submissively, but with a sparkle in her eyes that contradicted her words. ‘ Or perhaps his foot hurt him so much that he couldn’t come down.’

  ‘If he doesn’t come up after dinner we’d better make inquiries.’

  But he did come up after dinner, and when he entered, limping slightly, Mr Stanley received him with as much effusion as could be shown by an old gentleman after a heavy meal.