Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  The dye was pale pink, a brilliant scarlet, or a deep crimson, according to the measure of its dilution. Several minor articles were irrev- irrevocably ocably ruined, and gallons of ruddy dye stood about the bath-room in pails, before the right shade of delicate pink was achieved in one of my best white silk ties. Then the primrose gown became rose-colored, and was rinsed and dried and ironed till it looked like a newly blown hollyhock blossom.

  “I wish there was something more to do,” Chloe said, sighing; “it does seem such a pity to waste all this lovely dye.”

  My cousin, an experimental chemist, had given me the dye, with the words: “The only thing is, it’s such a pure, perfect color, your wife will want to dye everything in the house with it. Don’t let her!”

  Thus forewarned, I was firm, and I carried away the pails. Yolande followed me, begging that the dye might not be thrown away. She would find a use for it. So I put it in the tool-shed among the rakes and forks, the garden syringe, and the grass-cutter — the only place where I could feel sure that no uncle would kick it over inadvertently, no aunt absently sit down on it.

  And now it was the day of the house-warming. It was a fine day, and, acting on a sudden inspiration, Yolande and I rode over to Blackheath on our bicycles, returning laden with light, enor- enormous mous parcels. They were colored Chinese lanterns. We hung them from the trees near the house. And then, further inspired, I tore off for more, and we strung them on wires and made the house beautiful with them. The big drawing-room, with its evergreen garlands, its little white-draped tables, sparkling with borrowed glass and silver, its bowls of radiant dahlias, its tall green glasses of Japanese anemones, its pinkshaded candles, and over all the mellow glow of the many-colored lanterns, was a picture at which our hearts beat high with pride. The sideboard groaned (it really did groan, and that in no mere commonplace metaphorical way, but honestly, because it was, in its inmost heart, only packing-cases) beneath the weight of as fine a cold supper as any aunt could wish to see, any uncle wish to eat. Chloe’s pink hollyhock gown was an exquisite success. Yolande’s was like a white hollyhock bloom. All was ready. The first wheels crushed the gravel of our drive. The first uncle was relieved of his great-coat by my hands, the first aunt escorted by Chloe to “take off her things.” Aunts will not dispense with personal attendance in this ceremony. Gradually the hall filled. Ponderous uncles and portly aunts occupied the heavier chairs. Lean aunts and uncles stood conversing with frosty geniality. A great-uncle and a second-cousin who had not spoken for years — a family affair about a trust and an Australian gold-mine, nothing personally discreditable to either — sank their old feud and found out how much they still had in common, as they discussed in a wheezy undertone the extraordinary extravagance of their host and hostess — agreeing almost cordially in the opinion that we were living in a style far, far beyond our means. Cousins of every degree enthusiastically compared notes as to the difficulty of getting to our house. Three nice nieces and a manly nephew or two offered conventional amiabilities to their elders. We had furnished and adorned the hall, and no one, we felt, could look on its marble floor and wainscoted walls without feeling himself privileged in being allowed to take part in such a pageant, so admirably staged. My aunt George objected to the wainscot as dark and out of date, and said the marble floor was cold to the feet. My uncle Reginald agreed with her, but added handsomely that beggars mustn’t be choosers, and no doubt we were wise not to waste our money on carpets. Altogether, everything was going splendidly.

  When the gong sounded I think it was felt to be an extravagance. I remedied this as far as I could by telling Aunt George, as I gave her my arm, that the gong was a wedding-present to Chloe. And so it was, but I bought it.

  We crowded into the big drawing-room. Even Aunt George admitted that it looked very nice — but not until I had asked her if it didn’t. And then she said it would have looked better without those Christmas decorations! These were our loops and swags. I saw more than one uncle cast a glance at the foot of the sideboard as he passed, and I wondered in anguish whether the drapery had displaced itself and the naked packing-cases were disclosed to the shocked eyes of aunts. But I could not see. Yet the suspense was unbearable. Under pretext of turning down a lamp, I went to see. I must know the worst. The worst was a row — a long row — of gold-topped bottles.

  I flashed reproachful glances at Chloe, and as I passed behind her chair, she murmured: “It’s all right. Asti. The new tenant.”

  It seemed to me, in my agitation, to be like the new tenant’s cheek, and not at all like Chloe, but this was no time for anything but the duties of a host. I returned to Aunt George, who said, “I wish to goodness you wouldn’t run about so!”

  Mary and Mrs. Bates waited, and the wait- waiting ing was excellent. So was the Chianti, which was all I had intended our wine-bill to run to. But the uncles looked at the gold-topped bottles, so did some of the cousins. The aunts looked away from them. So I said: “Aunt George, we’ve some very fine Italian sparkling wine here — a present. I should like you to try it.”

  As soon as I had said “a present,” I caught my wife’s shocked glance, and knew the truth; she had bought the Asti on the strength of our new tenant. But the words were out; so, in a few moments, were the corks. The avuncular condemnation of Italian vintages was almost unanimous — but avuncular eyes sparkled, and a sort of soft current of cheerfulness passed round the room. At the round table at the other end where sat the nephews and nieces and the few young people whom we had asked to meet them, there was a low buzz of chattering and laughter. Yolande was at that table. She had insisted on it.

  “Your uncle George always said,” my aunt George was saying, as she held out her glass to be refilled, “that no sparkling wine was worth the drinking except—” when a sudden rapping on the table left her with only time for a, “Well, I’m sure,” before a general silence abashed her into quiet.

  Uncle Bletherthwaite rose heavily in his place. He made a speech. The Fates forbid that I should render it to you. It was of a studied temperateness; it dwelt on our blessings; expressed, tepidly, the pleasure he felt in seeing us at last (he repeated “at last,” and I knew he was thinking that it was eight months since he had dined with us) in our home and with our family (he looked at Yolande) gathered about us. It dwelt, and I thought at somewhat too great a length, on the good dinners he had eaten in this house in my uncle Thomas’s days, and the good wine he had drunk (he looked disparagingly at the Asti); it ended by a formal hope that we and those now assembled round our board might long be spared (which I could see he didn’t think likely), and with a wish that our new home might be a blessing to us. (Of course it was perfectly plain that, however much he might wish it, it appeared to him but too improbable.) He said, finally, and with a sigh, “I and your aunts and cousins and other relations, including, I am sure, those present who are not members of the family, drink to the prosperity of the Red House.”

  The toast was drunk in the gloomiest silence — as to the memory of those who had fallen.

  All the lights seemed to burn lower; there was an awkward pause. Chloe bit her lip and would not look at me.

  Then suddenly there was another buzz from the youthful table, and our eldest nephew rose in his place.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began (adding by what was scarcely a happy after-thought, “and aunts and uncles”), “we have drunk to the old house, and now I want to call another toast — with your kind permission,” he said, catching the eye of an elderly cousin. “So fill your glasses, please — no heel-taps — bumpers, please! Here’s to the jolliest aunt and uncle that ever were. The dearest and kindest and jolliest and best — Aunt Chloe and Uncle Len. Long life and happiness to them! God bless them! There!”

  It was his first speech, dear boy, and I think he hoped then that it might be his last. I saw his hand trembling as he lifted his glass. Then suddenly all the young people stood up; a momentary hesitation ended in the rustling rising of elder relatives, and
through the rustle came the first words of the refrain, from the young table:

  “For they are jolly good fellows,

  For they are jolly good fellows,

  Oh, they are jolly good fellows,

  And so say all of us.”

  Before the singing was over Aunt George was leading it in her high sweet old voice, and Uncle Bletherthwaite was thundering an irresponsible bass. I did not know where to look, and I believe Chloe nearly wept. I made some sort of speech — I don’t know how. Having one’s health drunk like that is a thing that doesn’t happen often — thank goodness. So one feels it oddly.

  The party “went” like wildfire after that. It was almost as delightful as if none of us had been related to each other at all. The tables were cleared, then with the help of nephews and the less frail among the cousins, cleared away bodily. Yolande sang to the guitar, and aunts nodded approval. A niece and a nephew danced a minuet, and cousins were mildly pleased. Then Yvonne and the prettiest niece danced a cachucha, and uncles were enchanted. Some one sang — an uncle, I think; some one sniffed — no doubt an aunt; and coffee was served at the absolutely right moment. Then shawls and hats were handed like refreshments, and we all trooped out into the garden by the moat to look at the moonlight and the Chinese lanterns, craftily lighted by Mrs. Bates while the cachucha was enchanting us. The night was warm as June. Groups of persons — all related, yet for the moment all at peace with each other — stood “beneath the dreaming garden trees.” Chloe and I glowed with a flush of successful hospitality.

  Then suddenly, sharply, the silence of the night, with its soft embroidery of talking and laughter, was shattered — torn roughly asunder by a scream, and another scream, from the walled garden beyond the moat. Feminine cousins paled; male cousins spoke ejaculatorily of pistols; stout uncles breathed heavily of police. A few of us hastened towards the walled garden. At the door that leads to it from the moat garden we came face to face with two figures, a man and a woman, who staggered as they walked; both were in white, and both were stained on face and hands and garments with dark, ominous stains.

  “Just our luck!” I murmured. “What an end to a family party!” For the light of a saffron-colored lantern showed us unmistakably that the stains were blood-red.

  I flung an arm round the blood-stained woman to sustain her. And the woman was Yolande. And I heard my uncle Bletherthwaite murmur, “Well, I never!” as though he had foreseen the whole thing.

  VIII. THE TENANT

  A GARDEN hung with soft-tinted Chinese lanterns glowing amid gleams of green leaf-lights and deeps of black leaf-shadow; a company of aunts and uncles placated by food, drink, and the servile attentions of nephews and nieces; a silvery atmosphere of peace, shot with faint streaks of something almost approaching a modified approval; a host and hostess weary, though not wholly exhausted — yet counting the moments till the last uncle, having consumed the ultimate whiskey, should depart in the last of the cabs — and the rest of us — Chloe, Yolande, and I — should be left to look back on the party and “talk it over.”

  And now, on this almost pastoral stage, where uncles were all but in tune to pipe, and aunts not far from the mood when one wreathes one’s crook with flowers, intrudes a harsh shriek from the darkness of the farther garden, to be fol- followed lowed by the unspeakably dramatic entrance of a man and a woman stained with — well, it looked like blood, exactly.

  The woman, as I have said, was Yolande; the man, whom she led familiarly, yet with a certain ferocity, by the hand, was a perfect stranger. His eyes were closed and his face was stained with crimson. It dripped still from his head and ears on to the flannels which earlier in the evening must have been pearly white.

  Every aunt shuddered, every uncle winced. Uncle Bletherthwaite so far forgot himself as to mutter, “Good God!” which, in the “presence of ladies,” was more from him than a good round damn might be from the lighter brethren.

  The nephews and nieces crowded round, cousins drew cautiously near, and as soon as it had been inferred from my attitude in respect to Yolande that she at least was no stranger to me, the semicircle of aunts and uncles closed up about us. Uncle Reginald told me afterwards that he feared the worst just then, for none of them recognized Yolande under her new crimson disguise. As Uncle Reginald said, “They none of them knew her from Adam.” He added, “By Jove! just for the moment I forgot my morals, and I was sorry for you, my boy — I was indeed.”

  I do not seek to know what he meant. Chloe was very angry when I told her.

  And now there was a breathless silence. It was like the scene in Kipling’s His Wedded Wife.

  I broke the silence. I shook Yolande, and said, I fear not too amiably, “My dear girl, what on earth is it?”

  “Lend me your handkerchief,” she said, irrelevantly; and, taking it, wiped scarlet dews from her brow and hands. “Oh, let me get away. And take him away and clean him, won’t you? It’s all got into his eyes.”

  She dropped the hand of the stranger, and would have fled, but Aunt George barred the way.

  “After this scene we’ve just seen,” she said, “I think it’s due to your company to explain.”

  The flannelled man got at his handkerchief.

  “Jove! it does sting,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “I can’t get my eyes open. Won’t somebody take me where there’s a tap and put me under it?”

  He had a pleasant voice, but it did not soften the aunts and uncles. Curiosity had taken the place of terror.

  “Asking for taps like this,” said Uncle Bletherthwaite, “is no excuse for this unwarrantable intrusion into the midst of a family gathering. This young person—”

  “A member of the family gathering,” I urged.

  Then Yolande detached herself from me, gave her face a final scrub, and spoke sweetly: “Oh, please don’t be alarmed. There were some pails of red stuff put aside for the fruit trees, and this gentleman, who lives next door, unfortunately came in contact with them; and I had remembered the pails were there, and was just going to attend to them” (“In that dress!” said Aunt George, with a sniff), “and I brought him in to be washed. I think I myself will also wash. Good-night. I am so sorry to have alarmed you.”

  She passed the cordon of relations and fled, her last words a whisper to me:

  “Their carriages are beginning to come. Leave Chloe to get rid of them. That man must be washed, or he’ll die or be blind, or something.”

  So I took him to the bath-room and left him with the hot tap and the cold tap, and the hip-bath and the foot-bath and the long bath, and the hand-basin and the soap and a pile of towels, and some clothes of mine. And all seemed inadequate. I did not believe he would ever be his right color again.

  Then, Heaven be praised! there were cabs and trains, and the house-warming party melted away, Aunt George protesting to the last against Yolande’s explanation as a mere excuse for “goings-on,” and Uncle Bletherthwaite feverishly anxious, even through the cab window, as to the nature of the crimson dressing designed for our fruit trees. At long last the last lingering cab-borne cousin left our gates, and Chloe and I turned to each other in the empty hall. A pale and cautious Yolande in a white wrapper peered down the stairs.

  “Are they gone? Oh, give him lemons — many lemons; I’ve got it all off my face with that. My hands are past praying for.”

  Our strangely introduced guest was still splashing and laughing and — well, grumbling — to himself over the lemons when Yolande rejoined us in the drawing-room.

  “He’ll be ages yet,” she said. “You don’t know what it is to get off. And he’s simply soaked through and through.”

  “Yolande,” I said, sternly, “I have borne enough; this ensanguined masquerade requires, as Uncle Bletherthwaite says, some explanation more convincing—”

  “Oh, bother!” she cried. “I am a dog, and an outcast, and an abject idiot — and I’ll tell you everything.” She fell a dejected heap into the easy-chair where Aunt George had sat so upright during
the minuet and the cachucha. “I know you’ll scorn me forever. But ‘a fault that’s owned is half atoned,’ and I’ll own my fault. It was only my only and always fault — I have but the one, you know — being too jolly clever by half. I’ll never try to do anything again.”

  “Tell us quickly, before he gets clean,” Chloe pleaded. “Who is he? What was it? How did it happen? Quick — before he bursts upon us with his clean face.”

  “There’s no hurry,” said Yolande, gloomily, twisting her reddened fingers tightly together. “You needn’t be afraid of seeing his face clean yet awhile. Well, when you talked about the fruit-thief, I thought to myself, if one could only mark the thief thoroughly, it would be as good as catching him, because you could wire to all the police stations, ‘Lost, Stolen, or Strayed, a Pink-spotted Fruit-stealer!’ I thought I was quite clever, and really I was a mere lunatic.”

  I had never seen Yolande so near tears.

  “It was a good idea,” said Chloe, perfunctorily sympathetic; “and so you took that pink dye—”

  “Yes. I hid two pails of it, one among the currant-bushes and one under the quince-tree. And then when we were in the garden I saw a flash, and I knew some one had struck a match — to see where the peaches were, I thought. Really, of course, it must have been this wretched man lighting his hateful pipe. So I stole away, and I got the big brass garden syringe.”

  “It was a good idea,” said Chloe, with more conviction. “Well?”

  “Well — oh, then I stalked him; and even when I was close to him I never knew he was just a human being in flannels. I thought he was playing ghost, and I said to myself, ‘All the better to mark you on, my friend!’ Oh, it was funny.” She began to laugh shakily. “There was I creeping along with my syringe full charged, and the pail in my other hand — held well out, because of my gown — and he, poor soul, sauntering along in the shadows of the nut-walk, thinking nothing less than that some one was advancing with his pink doom. When he was a couple of yards off I fired a volley — slap in his face — and turned to run. He swore — but I forgive him that. My pail caught in a bough, and went over his feet, for he jumped towards the noise; he is not a coward. He caught hold of my dress, in the dark (he’s torn a yard out at the gathers, but it doesn’t matter; the dress was ruined anyway), and as soon as I had heard his voice, even though it was swearing — I knew what I’d done, and I said: ‘It’s all a mistake. I’m Yolande Riseborough. Can’t you see?’ for he was staggering about. And then I saw he couldn’t, and I said: ‘Come and be cleaned. Give me your hand.’ And so I brought him in, and on the way we tumbled over the other pail. And nous voici—”