Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  Everything was deadly still. The only sounds were the trickling of the stream as it flowed past, and his own heavy breathing. He was becoming unaccountably sleepy. Why should he not sleep here? He would go on to Thornsett in the morning. He stumbled downward till he reached the wall of the mill. He soon found a window that could be unfastened by passing his hand through one of its broken panes and turning round the primitive hasp. It was rusty, and moved, as it were, reluctantly. Still, it did move, and he opened the window and crept through it. He found himself on the edge of a huge stone tank, or vat. One more forward movement and he would have been plunged in the dark-looking water that half filled it. He shuddered. How could he have been such a fool as to forget the position of that tank? He crept round the edge of it, and reached the stone-paved floor of the basement. There lay a mass of something dark. It was the great stone that had thundered through the roof of the mill just after young Roland Ferrier had given the deputation their answer. Hatfield looked up at the ugly hole in the ceiling, a hole that repeated itself in the two upper floors and the roof, through which he could see the sky. The moon was shining brightly by this time, and the many-windowed building was lighted well enough for the man to find his way about. Had it been dark, he thought he should not have had much difficulty. He went up the stairs, and made his way to a room on the second storey, where he fancied there would be some soft rubbish he could lie down on. He was not disappointed, and, yielding to the utter weariness that had come to him, he lay down, and in a moment slept.

  He had not been asleep three minutes when he awoke with a start to find himself sitting up and listening. What had he heard? The click of a door and a footstep. He was widely, nervously, intensely awake now. Had it been fancy, born of the utter desolation and loneliness of the place where he was? He listened strainedly. No. This at least was no fancy. There was a footstep resounding hollowly through the great empty rooms.

  Some watcher, perhaps, from whom he ought to keep himself hidden if he did not want to be handed over to the constable as a vagrant What an ending, that, to his journey! Yes, he must lie quiet, and yet, how could he? Suppose — and at the thought his blood ran coldly through his veins — suppose old Richard Ferrier had got up from under that white stone in Thornsett churchyard, and had come down to keep watch over what his sons had so little regarded. The footsteps came nearer, and Hatfield sprang to his feet and walked not away from, but towards, the sound. The impulse of a naturally brave man when he is frightened is to face the fearsome thing as speedily as may be. Hatfield opened the door. Then he sprang forward, for he saw no ghost, but, as it seemed to him, the object of his search — not old Richard, but young Roland, standing with his back to him. The bright moonlight lighting up the figure left no room in his mind for a doubt. At the sight, all his ideas of asking for explanation vanished in an instant, and left him with no impulse but to catch the young man by the throat and to squeeze the life out of him.

  As the other turned at the sound of the opening door he gave a cry of horror at the sight of the wild, haggard figure springing at him — the white, angry, maddened face close to his own.

  ‘Keep back!’ he almost screamed, as Hatfield rushed upon him, but even as he spoke the man’s hands fastened on his throat, and the two closed in a silent, deadly struggle. They had hardly grasped each other when both remembered the danger that lay behind them — that black gap in the floor — and each tried to edge away from it without loosening his hold. Too late, though. The strain of the strong men wrestling was too much for the splintered boards already rotted through by the rain and snow of the past months. Crash went the flooring beneath their feet, and as the two went through, fast locked in each other’s arms, Hatfield, above his adversary, saw, in a flash of intensest horror, that the face below him was not that of Roland, but of Richard.

  It was the last thing he ever saw in this world. In another moment he was lying, a dead man, at the bottom of the great tank. Again the stillness of the empty mill was undisturbed, and the only movement in it was that of the heavy-coloured, water as it settled down again into stagnation over him.

  * * *

  Roland went to bed that night without troubling himself much about his brother. He had been deeply wronged, and he was a man who, not easily offended, was, when once alienated, implacable. He did not find it easy to forgive. Though he had shaken hands with his brother he had not forgiven him, and he came down to breakfast the next morning quite prepared to keep up his rôle of injured innocence, and to prevent his brother from experiencing much satisfaction in the reconciliation. Richard had always been an early riser, and Roland quite expected to find him in the dining-room waiting, but he was not there. He waited some little time, and then desired Mrs Brock to see if Mr Ferrier was in his room, and it was not till she returned with the intelligence that he was not and that his bed had not been slept in, that Roland began to wonder in anxious earnest where his brother could be.

  A very short search showed that he was not in the house or grounds. Could he have gone to the churchyard? No, thought Roland; Dick wasn’t that sort of fellow. Perhaps he had gone over to Gates, and had stayed all night. In a very short time Roland was at The Hollies questioning eagerly, and, with an inexplicable feeling of dread and anxiety growing stronger upon him with each moment, he learned that Dick had not been there. He would go down to the village, and Mr Gates volunteered to come with him, though he laughed cheerfully at the idea of there being anything to worry about in Dick’s non-appearance.

  ‘ — He’s playing off some trick on you,’ he said. ‘However, come along, and we’ll soon find him.’ So they walked together towards the village.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Mr Gates, as they passed the mill, ‘ that door’s no business open! Perhaps Dick’s up to some games in there.’

  The door he pointed at was one opening from the mill on to a flight of stone steps that ran sideways outside the building from the second storey to the ground.

  ‘ — Whether he’s there or not,’ the lawyer went on, ‘some one has been there, and we’d better see who it is.’

  So they went down, and, crossing the courtyard, between whose stones the grass was springing already, ran up the steps and passed through the open door.

  The whole place was flooded with the brilliant morning sunlight.

  The two made a few steps forward. They saw the hole in the floor, and paused. Then Roland’s heart seemed to stand still, for he saw on the board at the edge of the gap a hat, and his brother’s silver-headed walking stick, and he knew what had happened. With an exceeding bitter cry he turned from Gates and sprang down an inner staircase, glancing at each floor as he passed it, and on the stones at the bottom he found what he sought — Dick. Or was it Dick? Could this mangled, twisted, bloody mass be his brother? The pitiless light came through the cobwebbed windows, and showed plainly enough that it was Dick, or Dick’s body.

  ‘ — Run for Bailey,’ he shouted to Gates, who had followed him; and he went.

  Then Roland lifted Richard’s head. Was he alive? Yes. At the movement a spasm of agony contracted his face’ and his eyes opened. A look of relief came into them when he saw his brother.

  ‘Don’t move me, old man,’ he whispered; and the other knelt beside him, his arms under the poor head. He could not speak, for he saw that his brother was dying.

  After a moment Richard spoke again, very faintly.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come.’ He could only say a few words at a time, and between the sentences came long pauses, in each of which Roland fancied the last silence had come.

  ‘I wanted you, old fellow’. It’s nearly over now. It’s been like hell lying here. I know he’s somewhere near, and I couldn’t help him. It was Hatfield, and he mistook me for you. It was through me he believed you had wronged Alice. He was hiding here, and attacked me. We struggled and fell. I’m afraid he’s dead. You’ll see presently.’

  Then came a longer pause than any that had gone before, and still Roland could not speak.r />
  Gates had sent down a man from the cottage above, but when he came Richard made impatient signs, and he went and stood outside.

  ‘You didn’t care about making it up, Rowley; but it’s all right between us now, isn’t it?’

  Roland’s tears were falling over his brother’s face.

  ‘Oh, Dick, Dick, Dick!’ He could say nothing else.

  ‘It’s hard lines,’ Richard said; ‘ but it’s all my own fault. Never mind, old chap. Water!’

  Roland called to the labourer, and when the water had been brought Dick seemed to gather his strength together.

  ‘ — Since I’ve been lying here, I’ve wished I could believe I was going to see father again, and I half believe it’s possible. I shouldn’t care if I was going to the old dad again.’

  ‘Oh, Dick! Can I do nothing for you?’

  ‘No, old chap; only tell her I sent her my love. She has it, and she won’t mind now.’

  Then he lay silent, with closed eyes. Presently he made a movement. Roland interpreted it, and kissed his face.

  ‘ — I’m going, old man!’ he said. ‘ Good-bye. Clare! Clare! Clare!’ He murmured her name over and over again, more and more faintly.

  Roland put the water to his lips again, but it was too late. He had drunk of the Nepenthe of Death.

  CHAPTER XXIX. BACK FROM THE DEAD.

  THE Clare Stanley who studied Bakounin and quoted Matthew Arnold was a very different girl from the Clare Stanley who had in the autumn entertained the reprehensible idea of bringing to her feet the interesting stranger at Morley’s Hotel. In looking back on that time, which she did with hot cheeks and uncomfortable self-condemnation, it really seemed to her that she had changed into another being — development, when it is rapid, being always bewildering. It would be interesting to know with what emotions the rose remembers being a green bud. Pleasanter ones perhaps than those of the woman whose new earnest sense of the intense seriousness of life leads her to look back — not with indulgent eyes — on the follies of her unawakened girlhood. The story of the sleeping beauty is an allegory with a very real meaning. Every woman’s mind has its time of slumber, when the creed of the day is truth and the convention of the day is morality. The fairy prince’s awakening kiss may come in the pages of a book, in the words of a speaker, through love, through suffering, through sorrow, through a thousand things glad or sad, and to some it never comes, and that is the saddest thing of all. Clare had slept, and now was well awake, and it was no word of Count Litvinoff’s that had broken the slumbrous spell.

  Sometimes she almost wished it had been, for she could not conceal from herself the fact that she had succeeded in doing what she had desired to do, and that Count Litvinoff was at her feet. The position became him, certainly, but she felt a perverse objection to being placed on a pedestal, and a new conviction that she would rather look up to a lover than down at one. And yet why should she look down on him? He was cleverer than she, with a larger knowledge of life — had done incomparably more for the cause she had espoused. He was brave, handsome, and, to some extent, a martyr, and he loved her, or she thought so, which came to the same thing. Verily, a man with all these qualifications was hardly the sort of lover for a girl under the twenties to look down upon. But could she help looking down on him, for was he not at her feet? And that was not the place, she thought, for a man who had drawn the sword in such a war as she and he had entered upon. What right had a man who had taken up arms in that cause to lay them down, even at her feet? No, no. Her lover, if she had one, must be at her side — not there.

  This reaction to the Count’s detriment had set in on New Year’s Day, when he had told her that he held no cause sacred enough to give her even inconvenience for the sake of it, and the tide was still ebbing. Litvinoff appeared quite unconscious of that fact though, for he continued to call on Mrs Quaid with a persistence which quite justified all Cora’s animadversions. Miss Quaid’s penetration was at fault, but the Count’s was not. He was perfectly conscious of the change in her state of mind, and knew that his chance of being master of the Stanley money-bags was far less than he had thought shortly after their late master’s death.

  Suspense was the one thing Count Litvinoff could not bear — at least, he could bear it when the balance of probabilities was in his favour; but when the chances did not seem to be on his side — no. He knew perfectly well that it is hardly ‘correct’ to ask a girl to marry one three months after her father’s death; but he was not an enthusiastic devotee of ‘correctness.’ He habitually posed as a despiser of conventions, and this attitude very often stood him in good stead, even with people who preferred the stereotyped rôles of life for themselves. Avowed unconventionality serves as a splendid excuse for doing all sorts of pleasant things which conventional people daren’t do; hence perhaps its growing popularity.

  ‘He either fears his fate too much,

  Or his deserts are small,

  Who dares not put it to the touch,

  To gain or lose it all.’

  The lines ran in Count Litvinoff’s head persistently one spring morning while he sat at his late breakfast As he despatched his last mouthful of grilled sardine and looked round for the marmalade, the servant came in with a letter.

  ‘It really is time I struck for fortune. I do hope this is not a bill,’ he said to himself as he took it. ‘I retrench and retrench, and still they come.’

  He tore it open. It was not a bill. It ran thus: —

  ‘I shall call upon you between four and five this afternoon;

  I wish to see you on an important matter. — Petrovitch.’

  ‘The mysterious stranger doesn’t waste his words. He’s almost as careful of them as the fellow with the dirty collar — Bursch, or Kirsch, or Hirsch, or whatever it was. The best of being mixed up with the revolutionary party is that such beautifully unexpected things are always befalling one. I wonder why he couldn’t have waited till to-morrow night. It lends a spice to an important matter to discuss it at forbidden times and in a secret manner at the houses of friends. That’s another of our characteristics — to plot when we’re supposed to be talking frivol only, and to play cards or go to sleep when we’re supposed to be plotting. Wonder what the important matter is. The distressed lady friend again, perhaps. Well, before I commit myself on that matter, I’d better settle things one way or the other with la belle Clare. Upon my soul, I don’t much care which way they are settled. If I’m not to shine as the county magnate and the married man at Aspinshaw, by Heaven, I’ll find out my own little girl, and go in for virtuous retirement in the Quartier Latin. When I do swallow my principles they go down whole, like oysters; and if Miss Stanley doesn’t care to add the title of “countess” to her other endowments, some one will be glad to take that and me, even with nothing a year to keep state upon.’

  He pushed his chair back, and sat biting his moustache irresolutely, and frowning heavily at the breakfast-table.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last, rising; ‘I’ll have a shot for it now, as I’ve gone so far, and I’ll shoot as straight and as steady as I can. As for the other matter — well, Aspinshaw and the fruits thereof would not be a bad drug for inconvenient memories. I wonder if this is one of my good-looking days?’ he added, moving towards the looking-glass, and scrutinising his reflection therein. He seemed satisfied, lighted the inevitable cigarette, and half an hour after noon was in Mrs Quaid’s library, alone with Clare Stanley.

  Mrs Quaid, he had known, would be absent on some educational errand, and Cora would be at the National Gallery. He knew that Miss Stanley was not averse to a quiet morning spent in uninterrupted reading and copying, and he had rightly thought that he should have a very fair chance of finding her alone. The resolution of his, which had faltered before the remembrance of that other face, grew strong again as he saw her, for she looked charming, and it was not in his nature to be indifferent to the charms of any woman, even if she were not the woman.

  Miss Stanley had been making notes
in a MS. book, and Litvinoff noticed with a feeling not altogether pleasurable that ‘The Prophetic Vision’ and the ‘Ethics of Revolution ‘ both lay open on the writing-table, and that she seemed to have been comparing them one with the other.

  ‘ — I am afraid you will hate me for interrupting your studies,’ he began, apparently ignorant of the direction those studies had been taking, ‘but when the servant told me you were alone in the library, I could not resist the temptation of coming in.’

  ‘I don’t at all mind being interrupted,’ she answered, when he had settled himself down in a chair opposite to her with the air of a man who, having come in, meant to stay. ‘I was just looking through two of your books. One of them, indeed, I almost know by heart.’

  ‘And that is?’ — carelessly, as one who is sure of the answer —

  ‘“The Prophetic Vision.’”

  Somehow’ Count Litvinoff did not look delighted. Perhaps he wanted to talk about something else.

  ‘But, oh,’ she went on, ‘what a long way off it all seems!’

  ‘Yes, it does; I was an enthusiastic young rebel when I first put on the Prophet’s Mantle.’ Then, as a faint change in her face showed him that he had made a false move, he hastened to add, ‘But it will all happen some day, you know. It is a true vision, but knocking about in the world has taught me that the immediately practicable is the thing to aim for.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ she said. ‘Never let us lower our standard. We shall not do less noble work in the present for having the noblest of all goals before us.’

  Then she looked at him, at his handsome, insouciant face, at the half-cynical droop of his mouth, at the look in his eyes — the sort of look an old cardinal who knew the Church and the world might turn on an enthusiastic young monk — and she felt a sudden regret for that heart-warm speech of hers. What had she in common with this perfectly-dressed, orchid-button-holed young man? Why should she expect him to understand her? And yet had he not written “The Prophetic Vision”? She went on, smiling a little, —