Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  ‘Perhaps it was written since he has been in exile, and he was wretched and out of sorts. By the way, he doesn’t seem wretched now. Now, Clare,’ coming and sitting down on the rug at the other’s feet and leaning her arms on the black dress, and turning her bright mignonne face upward, ‘ I think it is only due to our ancient friendship — which, you remember, was founded on the noble principle, halves and no secrets, that you should confide in me. What are you going to do with him? How are you going to serve him?’

  ‘Well, dear, would it be best to grill him or to serve him on toast with caviare? How would it look on the menu? Nihiliste à la Révolution.’

  ‘Count Litvinoff à la married man would be more humane, perhaps. I wonder how it feels to be adored by a lover who has passionate eyes and a long blond moustache, who has had no end of adventures, has as many lives as a cat, and seems to be rolling in gold, judging by the bouquets he brings to — mamma.

  ‘If you are very anxious to know,’ said Clare, smiling and smoothing the rough head at her knee, ‘you had better try to attract him; I don’t fancy you would find it difficult.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have found it so. Really and truly, Clare; do you mean to be a countess? Shall you refuse him?’

  ‘He has never asked me but one thing, and that I did not refuse.’

  ‘What a teasing girl you are! Does that mean anything or nothing?’

  ‘Whichever you like, sweetheart.’

  ‘Well, he deserves a better fate than to be allowed to singe his wings at the flame of your prettiness. You always were a flirt, Clare; and I am afraid you have not improved.’

  ‘I don’t think I have ever flirted,’ Clare answered, growing suddenly grave; ‘ but I know I have been foolish enough to wish people to like me and to be interested in me. But you don’t know how contemptible all that sort of thing seems to me now. Fancy caring about the opinion of people when you don’t care about the people themselves.’

  ‘Well, any one can see he’s over head and ears in love with you — you nice, pretty little woman.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Clare answered; ‘for I am not in the least in love with him.’

  ‘ — Then don’t you think it’s a little too bad of you to encourage him as you do — reading his books and all that?’

  ‘I don’t know what “all that” may be, but as for the books he lends me, they don’t borrow their interest from him. Every book I read seems to draw up a curtain and let new light into my mind. You can’t imagine how different everything is tome since I began to read and to try to think. All that I have learned lately is like a new religion to me.’ All the flippancy was gone from her voice, and in her eyes shone a new light, ‘And I read all I can because I want to understand well enough to teach other people what I fed to be true. And oh, Cora! I do so want to do something to help the poor and show them their position.’

  ‘Yes; I quite agree with you that they ought to know their position and keep in it. The Catechism tells us that, you know. I should think you might employ half a dozen curates. Papa says there are lots out of work.’

  ‘I don’t think curates are quite what are wanted. There are curates enough and to spare. Besides,

  “The millions suffer still and grieve,

  And what can helpers heal,

  With old world cures they half believe

  For woes they wholly feel? “‘

  ‘That sounds dreadful,’ said Cora.

  ‘Why, you used to be so fond of it!’

  ‘Yes; but I didn’t think it meant anything so wicked as that; and, what’s more, I don’t believe it does.’

  ‘I haven’t changed the words, Cora. I did not say they meant anything more than they have always meant. But, you see, too, don’t you, what a ghastly mockery it is to send religious teaching to people who never had a good dinner in their lives? What a frightful system it is that allows all these horrors!’

  ‘ — But, my dearest Clare, even if it is horrible, I don’t see what you can do to alter it. Why, papa was saying only the other night that the social order was never so strong as now.’

  ‘I’m in the humour for quoting, and I must keep on, I see,’ said Clare, with a smile. ‘Don’t you remember? —

  “Strong was its arm, each thew and bone

  Seemed puissant and alive;

  But, ah 1 its heart, its heart was stone,

  And so it could not thrive.”’

  ‘Clare,’ said the other affectionately, putting her arms round her friend’s waist, ‘ you really oughtn’t to take up these ideas. Do you know mamma says it’s not natural for girls of our age to take such dismal views of things? You’ll make yourself quite miserable if you go on with these books.’

  ‘I seem to have nothing but Matthew Arnold in my head this afternoon, —

  “But now the old is out of date,

  The new is not yet born;

  And who can be alone elate,

  While the world lies forlorn?”

  I don’t see how anyone can be anything else but miserable at the thought of all the wretchedness there is in the world. The only thing to keep one from despairing over it would be to do something, even if it were ever so little, to help forward a better time. I dare say your father is right, and this present state is very strong, and perhaps none of us’ (with whom was she classing herself?) ‘ will live to see what we are longing for! It would be rather nice,’ she went on meditatively, ‘to have that other verse on one’s grave, —

  “The day I lived in was not mine,

  Man gets no second day;

  In dreams I saw the future shine,

  But, ah! I could not stay.”’

  ‘This is too much,’ cried Cora, jumping up. ‘When it comes to choosing your own epitaph I think it’s high time we gave the March winds a chance of blowing the cobwebs out of your brain. We’ll have a run. Come along; the streets are deliciously dusty.’

  Clare rose, smilingly obedient, and as she did so the room door opened slowly and admitted Mrs Quaid. She sank on to the sofa from which Miss Stanley had just risen.

  ‘ — Such a fatiguing time I have had,’ she said, with a long-drawn breath of relief, as she leaned back on the cushions and loosened her bonnet-strings. ‘Mrs Paget was out, and of the ten ladies who are on our Educational Committee only two attended besides myself. Really, people have no energy. And then, my shopping took me so much longer than I expected — these new shades are so difficult to match — and at last, when I felt quite worn out, and was just going into Roper’s for a glass of sherry and a biscuit, whoever do you think I ran across, treating two ragged children to buns?’

  ‘Count Litvinoff?’ from Cora.

  ‘No — ;oh no. It was Mr Petrovitch, and when he saw me he hustled the poor little things out of the shop as though he were ashamed of them, and he stayed talking to me ever so long, and was quite delightful, and — Clare, my sweet, this will please you, you were so much taken with him — he is coming to see us this evening. Won’t that be charming?’

  ‘I am very glad,’ said Clare simply, while Cora busied herself in loosening her mother’s cloak, and waiting on her in various little ways. ‘I seemed to learn so much from him the last time I heard him.’

  ‘Yes, and a friend of his is coming as well — a deliciously savage-looking Austrian, named Hirsch — who was there too, and who seems quite like our friend’s shadow, and, as Mr Vernon is coming also, we shall be quite a pleasant little party, all sympathising with each other’s feelings, and that’s the great thing, you know.’

  ‘I wonder if Count Litvinoff will look in,’ mused Cora, rubbing her mother’s rich sable muff round and round the wrong way.

  ‘Not to-night. He is lecturing at some East-end club. What a man he is; so devoted to the cause. It seems so sad that he should be so very extreme in his views. Force is such a terrible thing, and I very much fear that he believes in that more than in the power of love.’

  ‘I think he does,’ answered Clare, seeing herself app
ealed to.

  ‘Ah, well; we must try to convert him,’ Mrs Quaid said, smiling. ‘I should imagine him to be a most reasonable person to talk to, and not difficult to convince. I like him so much. It is so seldom one meets a man with just his polish of manner and strength of mind. Cora, dear, I’ve had no lunch. Just ring and order some for me. I really feel quite faint.’

  At eight o’clock that evening Petrovitch stood in the softly-lighted hall of Marlborough Villa. He felt more interested in the coming evening than he generally was on such occasions. Hirsch, who was with him, was very much surprised to find himself within the portals of one of those middle-class establishments against which he had always inveighed so bitterly. But Mrs Quaid’s manner had overborne his determinations with its resistless flow of gush, and he had accepted her invitation from sheer inability to edge in a word of refusal. He had been in a state of mingled remorse and terror ever since, and only Petrovitch’s strong representations to the effect that men who set themselves against Society should at least not fall below Society in the matter of keeping their word, had induced him to face the dreadful ordeal of meeting half-a-dozen well-dressed Social Reformers in a large and luxurious drawing-room.

  It would be impossible for any human being to be quite as glad to see any other human being as Mrs Quaid appeared to be to see her two new friends. They came in together, and while Hirsch looked round on the handsome furniture with a savagely appraising glance, prompted equally by his Jewish blood and his Socialistic convictions, Petrovitch, having seen that Clare was present, delivered himself an unresisting prey to his hostess, knowing that to even her eloquence an end must come, and knowing, too, that sooner or later he would find himself beside the girl whom his paper on Socialism had seemed to impress so much, the first time he had ever been in that room. He had been in that room more than once since but never without seeing a very vivid vision of the fair face, shining eyes, and red lips, slightly parted in the interest of listening, the girlish figure bent forward the better to catch every word of his. It was not only the flattery of her undisguised interest in him which had painted for him this memory-picture, and had given him a constantly-recurring desire to see the original again. He was pretty well skilled by this time n reading the faces of his fellow-creatures, and when all the thanks and congratulations of the Cleon’s visitors were ringing in his ears, he had known perfectly well that the only heart he had touched, the only mind that had followed his reasoning, and the only soul that understood him, were those of the dark eyed girl at his side. And the look those dark eyes had given him when he said good-night, had haunted him ever since.

  From the seat of honour on the sofa beside Mrs Quaid, Petrovitch looked, perhaps rather longingly, towards the other end of the room, where Hirsch and Vernon were talking to the two girls.

  It was unworthy weakness, perhaps, in a Friend of Humanity, but he could not help straining his ears to try to catch what they were saying, and wondering what subject they could be discussing to bring such interest into Clare’s face. This effort interfered somewhat with the lucidity of his replies, until Mr Quaid, who had hardly spoken before, brought him up short with the question, —

  ‘What do you mean, now, by Socialism?’ and the Socialist, with an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders and a sort of ‘in for a penny in for a pound’ feeling, gave up trying to do two things at once, and plunged heart and soul into explanations, knowing quite well neither of his hearers would understand them.

  If there is any truth in the old adage his ears should have burned, for the group at the end of the room were discussing nothing less than himself.

  An enthusiastic remark from Vernon and sympathetic rejoinders from Clare and Cora had sufficed to mitigate in the Austrian that sense of being trapped by the enemy with which he had entered the room, for he saw that these young people had, at any rate, one thing in common with him — a great respect for and interest in his Russian friend. And knowing this, his tongue was loosed; and his love of his friend overcoming in some degree the difficulties presented to him by the English language, he began to tell tale after tale of Petrovitch’s kindness, bravery, self-sacrifice, and nobility. His knowledge of English had improved in the last four months, and his hearers found it easy to understand him.

  ‘I have only known him half a year,’ he said at last; ‘ and in that time I know of him more good than of any other man in half a lifetime.’

  ‘I’ve known him less time than that,’ chimed in young Vernon; ‘and even I can see that he’s different to any one else. The only person I ever knew who was in the least like him is Count Litvinoff.’

  ‘Thereby I see you know not well either the one or the other,’ said Hirsch, with some return to his normal grumpiness.

  ‘I don’t agree with Mr Vernon,’ put in Clare; ‘the principles of Count Litvinoff and Mr Petrovitch may be the same, but it seems to me that the two men are utterly different.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Quaid. ‘Count Litvinoff has much more of the dash and “go” that one expects in a revolutionist. Mr Petrovitch is very solid, I should think; but Count Litvinoff is certainly more brilliant and sparkling.’

  Hirsch smiled sardonically.

  ‘Mademoiselle is happy in her epithets. Froth sparkles in the sunshine and the most precious metal is the most solid. I will tell you one thing of Petrovitch. When you can tell me such another of Litvinoff, I will say Mr Vernon is right — the two men are like.

  ‘It was on your Christian festival of Christmas — in a Russian town, no matter to name it — there was a chase, and all the townspeople turned out of their doors for the pleasure-excitement of seeing it. The chased? Only a poor woman, on her way from Moscow to the Austrian frontier. Her crime? She was a Jewess. For this, men and boys, with savage dogs, with sticks, with stones, with all that their devilish brutality told them to use against her, hunted her down, shouting, deriding, exulting. And she fled from them, but slowly, for she was not young. And those who took no part in the bloody pursuing looked on, smiling, many of them, and those who smiled not, with interest; men who were well born, and had not the ignorant superstition for whose sake we can pardon any crime to the poor. Those who hunted her were men who knew not their right hand from their left — thanks to their priests — and those who looked on approving were men of your world—”cultured” how you say?

  ‘The poor woman fled, and still more slowly; a stone had hit her hard, and she felt already at the sickness of death. At a corner a tarantass across the road barred her way. Its coachman had stopped for the pleasure of seeing the sport. A Jewess stoned to death! The excellent pastime!

  ‘She looked around; no way of escape. The driver of the tarantass raised his whip. He, too, would taste the pleasures of cruelty. She threw her arms up, and called upon Jehovah, whom she worshipped. Before the lash could fall, from within the tarantass sprang a young man, and snatched from the driver’s hand the whip. To let it fall on her with more force? Not so. To sweep it full across the faces of the foremost in the crowd. He caught the despised Jewess in his arms, and lifted her into his carriage. The crowd — cowards as well as bullies — drew back. He sprang upon the seat beside the driver, seized the reins, turned the horses, and to them, too, used the whip — so well, that he carried away from that Russian town the saved life of a woman. He took her to a place of safety, and when she was strong enough sent her to join her son in Vienna. She was my mother. She owed her salvation from a death shameful and agonising to—’

  He stopped short suddenly and glanced expressively at the broad-shouldered figure at the other end of the room. Then he said, —

  ‘Such is my friend. Your Count Litvinoff — would he so have acted?’

  He looked at Vernon, but Clare answered quickly, —

  ‘Indeed he would. Only a little while ago he risked his life, not to save life, but to save working men from injuring their own cause by wild violence.’

  Hirsch looked at her with mingled interest and disfavour. ‘Possibly,’ he said
; ‘it may be I misjudge him, but for me he is too brilliant.’

  Cora looked at her friend, and smiled a smile which Clare interpreted easily enough as a reference to their conversation of that afternoon, and out of pure defiance she would probably have said something still more strong in Count Litvinoff’s favour if the door had not opened at that moment to admit two very dear, very sweet, and completely unexpected friends of Mrs Quaid’s. The advent of these two, who were dwellers in Gath, and brought in with them a breath of pure Philistine air, led to the rising and re-arrangement of seats, of which the children’s game of ‘General Post’ is a sort of caricature.

  Mrs Quaid being now completely occupied with the new arrivals, Petrovitch seized the golden opportunity, and when the room settled down again into repose, Clare found that he occupied the ottoman beside her, where Hirsch had been sitting before. Miss Quaid and young Vernon had gravitated towards the conservatory, for Cora was a great lover of flowers, and Eustace, while he liked the flowers well enough, liked her still better. Hirsch had been set going by one of Mr Quaid’s broad-based questions, and Miss Stanley and Petrovitch were virtually alone. And yet, though each had wished often enough to see the other again, now that they were side by side it seemed to be not so easy to talk. It is always so difficult to chatter about trifles when one is anxious to talk seriously, and it is difficult, almost up to the point of impossibility, to plunge into reasonable conversation in a room full of inconsequent prattle. Added to this, Petrovitch felt an unaccustomed and unaccountable shyness, and to Clare it was somehow less easy to ask his advice than she had thought it would have been, and than it had been to ask Count Litvinoff’s.

  She was the first to speak.

  ‘I find you have not yet converted Mrs Quaid to all your views, Mr Petrovitch,’ she said. ‘I fear you have not been making good use of your time.’

  Petrovitch did not answer; he looked at her and smiled, but it was a smile that conveyed the idea that, even to have succeeded in converting Mrs Quaid, would not have been making the best use of his time.