Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

In Holborn she bought white jackets for herself and the child. The inquiries would be for the clothes they had had — not for new ones. And she had the wit to see that smart, new, showy clothes would be a better disguise than any attempt at frowsy shabbiness. Besides, everyone was wearing white jackets that year; and so far, she and Doris had not had white jackets.

  In Oxford Street they had a bun and milk lunch-breakfast, and Daphne there asked the girl who waited on them where Bloomsbury was. Delighted to find that some instinct or chance had led her to the very district of which her aunt least approved, she began to look among its streets and squares for a home for herself and the Dormouse.

  “We’ll find a nest very soon, my pigeon,” she said, “and then we’ll go in a boat and see the trees and flowers.” And the child skipped joyously, in her new white jacket and slapped the pavement with her best buckled shoes.

  But Bloomsbury nests do not easily please one whose life-nest has been in the clean quiet of an old convent, whose only strange perch has been in the well-ordered cleanly comfort of a middle-class suburban house. Daphne hated all the rooms she saw. They were dark, they were stuffy, they were frowsy and fusty. They smelt as if the windows were never opened, and they looked as though the window curtains were never taken down and me carpets never taken up.

  “We shall have to try some more countrified place,” she told herself. “Nicholas Nickleby had a cottage at Bow; and Mr. Wemmick lived at Walworth.”

  Destiny spared her the disillusionment. A big house, very newly painted, its door kept open by a brick, wooed her eyes with its fresh clean paint and an air of having just been thoroughly done up. A very large board was on its front. “Rooms to let,” it said. And rooms there were, all the rooms of a very handsome old family mansion, with a stone staircase and carved mantelpieces and elaborately moulded ceilings. But even for the third floor, with its three pleasant rooms, the man in charge asked a rent she couldn’t dream of. And the rooms were not furnished. And the fourth floor was let.

  “It’s no use,” said she, sadly. “I can’t possibly pay thirty shillings a week.”

  There’s the attic,” said the man doubtfully:

  “that’s only thirteen—”

  He opened a door and led the way up a narrow flight of stairs, opened a trap door and vanished. Daphne following, stepped out into a great bare room, lighted by a row of low windows and by a skylight. “Artist’s studio,” said the man—”fine light.”

  “Yes,” breathed Daphne, “very fine. But the room’s enormous.”

  “The more the merrier,” said the man, vaguely. “But the cisterns!” said Daphne. There were no fewer than three cisterns, and they occupied an eighth part of the big room.

  “Keep you cool,” said the man.

  “I don’t think — such a lot of furniture,” said the girl.

  “Oh, do, Daffy,” said the child; “it’s got four fireplaces.”

  It had.

  “They was four rooms,” said the man—”servants’ bedrooms, I expect, thrown into one for convenience in letting. No real artis’ ‘ud mind th’ cisterns,” he added, meaningly.

  “Do — do the chimneys smoke, any of them?” It was the only sensible, grown-up sort of question she could think of. And she wished to be sensible and grown up.

  “Not as I knows on. Don’t suppose there’s much soot in ‘em.” He bent and with one eye looked up the nearest chimney. “Clean as a whistle,” he said.

  “You really like it?” Daphne asked the child.

  “I love it,” Doris answered.

  “Then we’ll take it, please,” said Daphne.

  A brief business interval followed, and then —

  “And now we’ll go and buy our furniture — our very own furniture,” said Daphne; and they went.

  There are side streets, and back streets, and odd criss-cross streets in Bloomsbury where second-hand furniture may be bought. It takes a long time to buy. A table, two chairs, a kettle—’and oh, Daffy, a looking-glass to do your golden hair in,” — two clips and saucers, a teapot, two jugs—”the ones like Indian corn — yes, they are pretty, Daff — I don’t care what you say — just peeping out of the green leaves lovely” — four towels, two tablecloths, blankets, four sheets, four pillow-cases, a jug and basin, a chest of drawers.

  “Oh, dear,” said Daphne, “I had no idea things cost so much!”

  The bed she bought in the Tottenham Court Road. “That, at least, must be new,” she said.

  The furniture made little impression on the vast emptiness of their new home.

  “We’ll get curtains to-morrow,” said Daphne, “and a fender and a poker and coals and a scuttle and pails. And now comes the tug of war.”

  The tug of war was the recovery of the boxes.

  “What am I to do with you?” Daphne wondered. “If I take you to Lewisham to get the boxes, we may be taken alive. And I can t leave you here alone.”

  “Yes, you can,” said Doris, eagerly. “I’ll play at being a mouse — not a dor one. I’ll be as good as anything. You go, my Daffy-down-dilly, my lovally lily, and get the boxes. Only go now, so as you get back before dark.”

  And Daphne went, though with some misgivings. The trains were tiresome, the hour late, and the soft summer twilight was thick in the streets, where already the lamps were lighted, when the cabman, staggering under the biggest of the boxes, went before Daphne up the stairs to the trap door.

  “Lorlumme!” said he, “if I ever see such a place.” He slammed the box down on the bare floor and wiped his forehead, breathing hard. Beyond his breathing was a silence that chilled Daphne to the bone.

  “Doris,” she called, and pushed up past the cabman into the great, gray, empty room. For it was empty — Doris was not there. The cabman blundered down after other boxes. There was the furniture in the room — the poor little “sticks” that she and the child had bought together. And silence. Nothing else.

  CHAPTER VIII. COUSIN

  DORIS!” Daphne called softly in the still twilight. “Dormouse!” The comers of the room were full of shadows. “Are you asleep?” She made sure of the comers. There was nothing there. Nothing on the naked bed.

  The cabman came heavily up the stairs, dumped down a box, and disappeared again. When he had brought up all the luggage, she asked:

  “How much?”

  “Ten shillings,” said the man, very promptly, “and all them stairs. I wouldn’t do it again for thribble the money.”

  “Here,” she said, and gave him a gold coin. “What,” she asked suddenly, “would you do if you lost a child?”

  “I’ve lost two, if you come to that,” said the cabman, hoarsely.

  “And did you get them back?”

  The man stared at her in the deepening dusk. “They died, miss,” he said; “scarlet fever, it was.”

  “Oh, said Daphne. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything to make you unhappy. But we’re all alone in London, and I’ve lost my little sister. I left her here when I went for the boxes, and now she’s gone. What can I do?”

  “Police,” said the cabman. “I should pop round to the station if I was you. ‘Spect she s run out. Children are that venturesome nowadays.”

  Will you show me the way to the police? I’ll pay you.’

  I don’t want no pay for a hact of common kindness,” said the cabman, and he fingered the gold coin in a momentary hesitation. Then he decided that she could doubtless afford it. If it had been four half-crowns he might have left one — or even two — lying about careless on the floor, but the gold coin — Explanations were habitually difficult to him. And the point was a delicate one.

  “You come along er me,” he said. “I’ll ride you along to the station in my keb and never charge you a halfpenny.”

  “You are good,” Daphne’s voice broke on what was almost a sob. “You see, we’ve only got each other; we haven’t any friends in England. And I haven’t got any money to pay detectives, like people do in books. Let’s go now, will you?�
��

  Fingering the half-sovereign, and greatly affected by Daphne’s distress, the cabman stumped down the stairs. She followed. He was waiting for her on the landing.

  “‘Ush!” he said, as her noiseless footfall stopped beside him; “there’s a kid a talking in there.” There was a light on the landing. She saw that he pointed to a door. Almost before she saw it she heard, and the door was open, its handle in her hand.

  “Oh, here she is!” cried Doris’s little voice, and Doris’s arms and legs were curled round her sister. “Oh, Daffy, I thought you was never coming and — —”

  “It’s all right,” said Daphne to the cabman. “Thank you a thousand times. I hope if ever you’re in trouble someone will be as kind to you as you’ve been to me. Good night.” She got a hand free from Doris and held it out.

  The cabman shook it loosely.

  “Welcome, I’m sure,” he said. And achieved’ the difficult feat of getting away with the half sovereign. It was difficult, but he did it.

  “He’s been so nice to me,” Doris was saying; “he’s a real dear.”

  “He,” a very tall boy, with very nice eyes, was standing in the middle of the empty room, looking at them, cheerfully.

  “Thank you,” said Daphne, “but I was dreadfully frightened when I found she wasn’t there.”

  Of course you were,” said the boy, eagerly. “I am so frightfully sorry, but—”

  “You see,” said Doris, both arms round her sister’s waist, “the room was big enough for so many other people, and our furniture seemed to be getting littler and littler, and something kept on laughing at me in the dark — he says it was only cisterns, so I went and sat on the stairs where the gas was — and then he came and was nice to me.”

  “I brought her in here,” said the boy, “because of the gas being here — there’s none upstairs. I’ve taken these rooms, and I’m waiting for my things to come; so we kept each other company. I don’t know how we missed hearing you come in.”

  “It must have been when we were looking out at the tree,” said Doris, turning to where a great ash crushed its leaves against a window.

  “Mayn’t I light a candle for you?” said the boy. “I — oh, I haven’t got any candles — how stupid of me! Come, Dormouse — we’ll go and buy candles.”

  “Let me,” said the boy. “And isn’t there anything else you want? Have you got things to eat, and all that?”

  “I couldn’t think of troubling you,” said Daphne, stiffly.

  “I say, don’t,” he said. “You make me feel such a brute for frightening you about Doris. Do please pretend we’re on a desert island, and let me go down to the ship to bring up provisions.”

  Daphne smiled, and the boy realized that he had not, till then, seen her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “We want something to eat, and coals and candles and a pail and—”

  “Look here,” said the boy, “it’s too late for you and Doris to be out alone. Let’s all go together. My name’s Winston, and I really am respectable.” He’s a fairy prince, really,” said Doris; “he told me so.”

  “I told her fairy tales, lust to amuse her,” said Winston, apologetically. ‘I say, look here. Are you and she living here alone?’

  “Yes,” said Doris; “at least we’re going to — just us two — isn’t it lovely?”

  “Then we’re neighbours,” said he. “Look here —

  Miss — er—”? He paused on the interrogation.

  “Carmichael,” said Daphne “Miss Carmichael, the best thing we can do is to go and get something to eat.”

  “Oh, do let’s,” said the Dormouse. “I’m all empty inside, like an air balloon.”

  “I — I don’t know—” Daphne could not but feel that this was perhaps a little too Bohemian, even for her.

  “Do let’s go,” said Doris, and added with unerring instinct, “Aunt Emily would so hate us to.”

  The other two laughed.

  “Come,” said the nice boy. “The man can look out for my things, if they come, which I don’t think they ever will We’ll take a hansom, because Doris is tired, and we’ll go to a nice restaurant where they speak French, and you can fancy you’re in Paris.”

  “Does somebody else really speak French in England?” said the child, “I thought only Daff and me did.”

  “Is it very expensive?” Daphne prudently asked. “Rather not,’ said the nice boy, “or I shouldn’t know the way there. Do come, Miss Carmichael.”

  “Do come, Daffy,” said the Dormouse. So they went.

  Isn’t it nice to have the new fairy tale man to take care of us?” said Doris, as she snuggled between the other two in a swift-going hansom. And Daphne had to own that it was.

  The dinner, though of the simplest that the Petit Riche produces, was a fairy feast to the child, none the less that she fell asleep in the middle of it, and during the later courses lay curled up, half on her chair and half on her sister’s lap, to the deep interest and pity of Madame Legae, most charming and welcoming of all hostesses.

  “She is so tired,” said Daphne. “We got up this morning in the middle of the night, and she s not used to it.”

  “You came from the country, I suppose.”

  “No,” said Daphne, and stopped dead.

  “I did,” said the nice boy, so quickly that the pause was hardly a pause at au. “I’ve been working down in the Marshes the last six months. Do you know Romney Marsh? It’s simply but if you don’t know it, it’s no good. It’s just flat fields, you know, and a few trees and hedges all blown crooked with the winter winds; and sheep and the sea on one side, and the low hills on the other, and the most gorgeous sunsets and mists and skies. Oh, you ought to see it. And you can walk for miles and miles and never see a soul.”

  “But what work can you do there?” Daphne nearly asked, but stopped at the first three words.

  “Oh — I try to draw, you know. One gets through a lot of work in a day of twenty-four hours that has nothing in it but work — and walking and sleeping.”

  “I wish I had some work,” said Daphne.

  “And you haven’t? I was so hoping you were an art student, and yet I knew you couldn’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t look like one. But almost all the girls who lodge alone about here are going in for something or other — painting or music or enamels or bookbinding or doctoring or something.”

  “I wish I was,” said the girl again, “but my education’s been neglected.”

  The nice boy laughed and heaped haricot beans on her plate.

  “It’s awfully jolly for me,” he said, “having some one to dine with the very first evening after I get back. You’ll let me help you to get straight, won’t you? Things are so beastly when you’re all alone. You don’t know London very well, either, do you?”

  “How do you know that?” Daphne was leaning her elbows on the table over the child’s head, and talking in her old school voice, the low compelling voice that the aunts and uncles had never heard. “Is ‘from the country’ stamped on me?”

  “There’s something stamped on you,” said he, “that is battered out of London girls.’

  “What do you mean?” said she.

  “Do you know,” he said, “I am perfectly certain we are going to be friends. Don’t say we aren’t! I always know. Shall we make a compact to say what we like to each other, and not to be offended —— and not to pretend to misunderstand — just for the sake of a cheap score off each other?”

  “I like that,” Daphne told herself. “I do like that very much.” Aloud she said: “That’s a good compact, whether we’re friends or not.”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t.” He filled up her glass from the half-bottle of cheap red wine. “Unless people are going to be friends it’s no use their making compacts or anything. You know I don’t think it’s worth while being just acquainted with people. I never want to talk to people unless I do want to talk to them.”

  “No more do I,�
� said Daphne, thinking of the aunts and the rare visitors of the aunts.

  “Well, let me see, where was I? — Water? Oh, let me — Yes, I was going to say that a London girl, a nice London girl wouldn’t have been so sensible and manly about coming out to dinner with me.”

  “I oughtn’t to have, you mean?”

  “That’s just what I so very much don’t mean —— that sounds like Henry James, doesn’t it? Don’t you see it’s your being so perfectly straight and splendid about that that makes me sure that we’re going to be friends. I know we are, even if you don’t think so now. Have you got a brother?”

  “No,” said Daphne, “there’s only me and the Dormouse.” She bent her head a little over the little dark, heavy head, and suddenly remembered that other time when she had spoken with a stranger across the sleeping child. She flushed a slow scarlet.

  “What will’

  ‘you like now? Nothing? Let’s have some coffee to wind up with. Do you mind if I smoke? Well, look here — I’m not going to offer to be your brother — nobody would believe it anyhow. I’m as black as ink, and you’re as fair as Apollo. But what do you think about being cousins? No doubt we are — distant cousins.”

  “You take my breath away,” said Daphne, but she laughed.

  “Ah, but don’t you see,” he said, “I’m serious. We’re going to be friends — just keep that in your head, won’t you? Well then, it’ll be ever so much simpler if I’m your cousin, and then we can go about together, and people won’t be forever asking where we met each other and who each of us is, and all the rest of it. Do please try to remember that I’m your cousin, your cousin Claud, from Devonshire — Barnstaple, to be exact — your cousin Claud Winston — you’ll remember that, or shall I write it down?”

  “I shan’t forget it,” said Daphne, “but I never met anyone like you.”

  “Nor I anyone like you. Don’t you see that’s what makes it the event of the season? Mademoiselle, l’addition, s’il vous plait.”

  “How much is our share?”

  “Two and fourpence,” he answered, with puckered brow; “at least I think it’s two and fourpence, but we’ll settle that when we get home. Let me carry Doris. You might fetch my stick along, will you? Mind the door — this corner’s rather awkward.” Madame, who always treats all her clients as friends and in return reaps their rapturous regard, helped to enfold Doris in a shawl which she insisted on lending, kissed the child, and bade farewell to the others with that wonderful air of which she is the mistress, an air that makes all who leave her portals feel pleased with themselves and, very much more, with her.