Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “Get up off the floor and come and be washed,” said Daphne, now nearly dressed. “Then you can put on your rabbit fur yourself — while Daffy gets breakfast.”

  “Sister Jenny gets the breakfast,” said Doris. “You come and be a rabbit like me.”

  The breakfast was ready in the part of the room that looked like a studio now that the screening curtains were drawn, and Daphne was calling Doris to her bread and milk.

  “I can’t come yet. I want to be a boy. Why can’t I be a boy, Daff?” Doris was saying when a tap came at the trap-door.

  Daphne, in the blue muslin, drew up the door, and a bright green hat with pink roses in it bobbed up through the opening like a Jack-in-the-box.

  “Is Miss Carmichael within?” said a voice she knew and didn’t know.

  “I am Miss Carmichael,” said Daphne.

  “You’re the queen of my heart,” said the wearer of the hat, and threw her arms round Daphne’s knees, unable, as it seemed, to defer the embrace till they should meet on an equal footing.

  Daphne sat down suddenly on the floor and found herself much kissed.

  It was, as you will have suspected, Columbine from France.

  “You?” said Daphne. “You might have told me!”

  “Not I,” said Columbine. “I wanted to surprise you. Have I?”

  Daphne reassured her on that point.

  “I am the handsome St. Hilary’s secret,” said Columbine. “Aren’t you glad to know me? Haven’t you been eating your heart out to know his secret?”

  “Of course,” said Daphne, realizing that she had not once remembered that he had a secret; “and you’re staying in London?”

  “I’m at the Langham, of course. That’s my free American blood, and papa’s orders. Say, Daff, I could sit and kiss you all day in this four-foot bottomless box, but I’ve got a companion. May I call it up?”

  “You’re not — married?”

  “I knew you’d ask that,” cried Columbine, deeply delighted. “No — it’s a humble companion, my poor put-upon drudge that heiresses always keep with them — and then, when the crisis arises, you pretend that you are they, and thus secure the disinterested affections of the tutor next door. Come up, my down-trodden worm.”

  She herself stepped into the room and someone else came up the stairs, radiant, conscious, beautifully dressed in the fairest fabrics that Liberty can furnish. Her sleek mouse-coloured hair loosely and becomingly arranged, her eyes bright with excitement, her mouth running over with English; Madeleine, little Madeleine, who was to be a nun.

  “Oh, Daphne, this hour supreme!” she cried between two French kisses. “Colombe, she have learned me the English. She makes my life handsome like the sky.”

  “Beau comme le ciel — yes, don’t I? Who read to me when I had mumps, and did my French exercises and — but these compliments weary our hostess — Daphne, where’s the infant?”

  It was for this that the child behind her curtain had waited. Now the curtains were flung apart, and Doris in a towel, turban, a towel mantle, and the little green silk knickerbockers that went with her best soft green silk frock rushed out, struck an attitude, and cried: “Behold it! It has stopped being an infant since it came to England. It is a Turkish boy! And,” she added pensively, through the shower of kisses that followed, “it has not had its breakfast yet.”

  “Neither have we,” said Colombe.

  “You’ll have it with us,” said Daphne. “Oh —— yes — and, — Sister Jenny — here are my two dearest friends that I’ve told you about — Columbine and Madeleine — Miss Claringbold.”

  Cousin Jane emerged from the kind shelter of the largest cistern.

  “Pleased to know you, Miss Claringbold,” said Columbine. “What a beautiful apartment it is you’ve got here. Isn’t it, Madeleine?”

  “But it is a true dream!” said Madeleine, with clasped hands.

  It was a merry breakfast though there was nothing in it but coffee and eggs and bread and butter.

  Doris was permitted to retain the character of the Turkish little boy. The three girls chattered like cockatoos — which indeed in their pink and green and blue they did rather resemble, and Miss Claringbold was not left out. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to her that no one wished to leave her out — except Aunt Emily and Uncle Harold. It is not easy to include a strange, middle-aged lady in a conversation which is almost wholly: “Do you remember?” and “Have you forgotten?” but the girls did it. For the first five minutes, perhaps, the two newcomers were a little timid, a little embarrassed, but the more confident key was set by Doris’s fearless loving demands on Sister Jenny, and Daphne’s daring in reminiscences.

  “How jolly your cousin is,” said Columbine, when Miss Claringbold had gone to the tap to fill the kettle anew. And Miss Claringbold heard. Perhaps Columbine had meant her to hear. If she had Miss Claringbold never knew it. And all her days she treasured that comment as the finest compliment that had ever been paid to her — at least since she was young and beloved. She was good, she was unselfish, sympathetic, kind — but she was not, and never could have been “jolly.” Perhaps this was why it pleased her so much to be called so.

  “Ana you’re staying in London?” Daphne asked. “For a long time I do hope and trust.”

  “Till the end of August most likely.”

  Daphne’s heart sank. And she was ashamed of its sinking. Oh, what was friendship worth? Was it possible that she was sorry that her friends were to be near her, because their being near might make it a little more difficult to spend eight hours a day in watching the work of a silent man who only remembered her when there was nothing more important to think of.

  “And now,” said Doris, laying down her spoon—”For what we have Lord make’s truly thankful Amen I’ll be a girl again, because it was Doris girl that was invited to the picnic, and not Aladdin and the wonderful towels and Colombe and Madeleine must come to the picnic an’ if there’s not enough places in the motor carriage I’ll sit on everybody’s lap.”

  “If there were not room—” began Miss Claringbold. And at the same moment: “Could you come to the picnic?” Daphne asked.

  “It’s what we re here for — so early I mean — to be asked to it. Mr. St. Hilary told us about it. We only got here last night. And — if you won’t have us we’ll have a picnic of our own, three yards away from yours, and say rude things about your hats all day.”

  “And Colombe, she has retained an automobile of the most chic, so that we shall not have need to sit us the one upon the other. Au moment où je vous parle he is there at the portal who makes teuf-teuf.”

  Here Doris returned, remarking that she was Doris-girl now, and would Sister Jenny please button her up at the back.

  “It is ripping to see you both,” Daphne said, and meant it much more than half an hour ago she had expected to mean it. They were standing on the steps waiting for Claud to come back with the motor which he had gone to “hurry up.”

  He had been presented, had found favour and had bestowed it.

  “We’re going to have the day of our lives —

  I know it. Madeleine, pretend to be the heiress. I have a presentiment that a duke is to be won this day.”

  “I understand not the half of that which you say,” Madeleine protested. “Oh, that the world is large and beautiful. And my parents who destined me to the cellule of a convent.”

  “Yes — you’d have missed something, wouldn’t you?” said Colombe. “Say, let’s stand back a bit — I guess our plumage agitates your neighbours some. They turn back from two blocks away to look at us.”

  The three were worth looking at. Madeleine in her perfect Liberty draperies, seemed to have stepped out of some old Italian picture. Colombe had certainly hit on the style of dress that alone could give to that long, pale face and drab hair the cachet of beauty. Columbine herself, very smart, very small-waisted, dressed as only American girls can dress — Doris skipping in the best green frock —— and Daphne, as always, a pictu
re that men, and women, too, turned round to look at. Cousin Jane better dressed than she had ever been in her life, looked almost comely.

  “I’ve seen Seddon,” Winston came back and said. “Something’s gone wrong with his infernal machine — no, it s not swearing, Miss Claringbold —— it’s what the most respectable papers call it when it’s dynamite. But hearing that we had already Miss Pinsent’s automobile champing its bit at our door, he said if you didn’t mind giving us a lift he’d catch us up before we got to Sevenoaks.”

  “Oh, he will, will he?” said Columbine turning to the chauffeur. “This is a 40 h p. Panhard, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said the chauffeur, with a sort of military salute. “I take it you do not think that your friend will catch you at Sevenoaks.”

  “I’m sure he won’t,” said Columbine, and flashed her prettiest smile right into the chauffeur’s face.

  “Oh, Columbe, ce n’es pas convenable,” Madeleine murmured: “un mécanicien — et tu ne connais pas même son nom.”

  “It would make all the difference if I did, wouldn’t it?” Columbine answered, and turned the same smile on Claud, who stood waiting to hand her in.

  “I wonder if she smiles like that at Stephen St. Hilary,” Daphne found herself asking, and wondered why the question should disturb her “She has learned that smile since I left school I wonder whether she learned it in the chestnut-tree?”

  With motor cars careering not only on all our roads but through all our fiction and up and down the columns of our daily press, a narrator may be excused for announcing Sevenoaks” as the next stage in his story. Daphne had insisted on occupying the front seat, enjoying in silence the wild exhilaration of laughing at the law to the tune of some fifty miles an hour. The chauffeur sat silent also, his eyes on the track. As they reached the foot of River Hill, a timber waggon lumbering across the road called a halt. It was then that the chauffeur turned and met the eyes of Columbine. Again she smiled. And this time Claud confounded, to himself, the impudence of the fellow. For he had been sitting face to face with Columbine for the best part of an hour — and in the hopeless condition of his feelings for Daphne it was only fitting that he should be interested in Daphne’s schoolfellow. Columbine stood up to look back along the road.

  “No sign of your friend,” she said.

  “Nor was there any sign of him when the car reached Bodiam Castle, and they got out on to dull firm ground, easily first at the rendez-vous.

  “That was very well done,” said Columbine to the chauffeur. “I shall ask to have you whenever I hire a motor.”

  “Why don’t you buy one?” he asked.

  “I — well, I don’t see why I shouldn’t. Papa —— my father wouldn’t mind. Only he’d want it to be the best.”

  “I should be delighted to advise you,” said the chauffeur, with calm courtesy.

  “You’re real kind,” said she.. “I won’t forget.”

  “Colombe!” called Madeleine, in a shocked whisper.

  The castle lies in a hollow of the Sussex down; trees are about it, and a moat. Its eight towers stand gray and strong as when the Normans built them; and on the moat are white water-lilies and a peace beyond words.

  “It’s very different,” said Claud, who had managed to lag behind with Daphne as they slowly walked down the grassy slope, “it’s very different from what our picnic was to be. Just you and me, and Doris, in Chevening Park — all quiet, among the beech-trees, looking down on the warren and watching the rabbits. I was to be allowed to tell you things. Don’t you remember? Will you give me the chance of telling you to-day? If you only knew — oh, Daphne, if you only knew!”

  Daphne felt herself immeasurably the elder of this boy. Secure in their position at the rear of the party, she took his arm and pressed it gently.

  “Dear Claud,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t what?” he asked, his boy’s pride in arms.

  “Want the impossible,” she said. “You know it’s not possible to talk secrets in a crowd like this,” she added, hastily. “And, besides, I want you to be nice to Columbine.”

  “While you’re nice to Henry, I suppose?”

  “He isn’t coming,” said Daphne, steadily. “You know he isn’t.”

  “Oh yes, he is,” said Claud, with extreme bitterness. He’s coming right enough. Seddon went round and got him this morning before he was half awake. Why are you letting him paint your portrait? No one else sees you at all now.”

  “You are the most unreasonable boy I ever met,” said Daphne. “You know you told me ages ago that you wanted him to do my portrait.”

  And indeed he had.

  “But to sit eight hours a day to him — no one ever does that.”

  “He wants to get it done for his exhibition,” said she; and purposely tripped over a blue flounce. The sacrifice was vain.

  “His exhibition! The misery of the West End! He can’t put your portrait in that.”

  “He means to, anyhow,” she said. “Come, don’t be silly. I do so want to enjoy myself.”

  The possibility of this had suddenly grown alive. “Come on,” he said; “let’s run. The others are waiting for us.” He held out his hand, she put hers in it, and like playing children they ran down what was left of the slope.

  Daphne, devoting herself wholly to Madeleine, Claud had the choice of the others. It would serve Daphne right, he thought, if he were to devote himself to the child, and leave Daphne’s smart friend to talk to Miss Claringbold, or to sit silent. But Columbine smiled at him, and he perceived that it would be rude not to talk to her, since he had been asked to talk. Besides, his destiny always led him to the side of the prettiest girl in any assembly. Daphne, of course, was hors concours.

  “Now, sit down right here, Mr. Winston,” said Columbine, “and tell me straight what you think of Daphne and the Dormouse.”

  He found himself saying that he had known them such a short time.

  “For shame, gentle stranger,” Columbine said. “You forget that she’s my best friend. What do you suppose the post is for? Do you think I don’t know all about your elopement with Doris the very first night, and the restaurant dinners and the parties and all? If she’s been at all loyal to me, you and I know each other most frightfully well.”

  “Then let’s start on that assumption” — Claud got his eyes away from Daphne’s profile. “I feel, of course, that I have known you all my life. If you feel it too — I had a presentiment that something beautiful was going to happen to-day — I saw a spider yesterday and didn’t kill it. That always brings luck.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “I always know when I’m going to be friends with people, don’t you?” he found himself saying fluently.

  I don’t care a bit to talk to people unless I do care to talk to them, do you?”

  “Your experience confirms my own Mr. Winston,” said Columbine. “And yet there are people who say that if you make friends in haste you repent at leisure.”

  “Oh, no!” said Claud, “that’s only marriage; not a serious thing like friendship. And what’s the use of going on being stuffy and formal and all that when you’re quite sure that the people are the real right sort?”

  “And the people? You are sure they are sure of that about you?”

  “Oh, well!” he said, “of course one always hopes they would be; and if they are the really right people that you’re sure they are, then they are sure to De sure about you and that’s sure to be all right.”

  “And are you always so sure about people?”

  “Of course not,” he said, looking at her tenderly with his nice eyes. “Why do you suppose people waste all the time they do in preliminaries instead of being friends the minute they set eyes on each other? It’s because they haven’t the sense to be sure.”

  “I take it,” said Columbine dryly, “this is what you call a heart-to-heart talk in your country, Mr. Winston?”

  “And now I’ve offended you.”


  “Don’t you think it! Why, I’m having the time of my life! You are talking just like I knew you would from Daphne’s letters. She tells me everything, you know.”

  And Winston wondered, not for the first time, how much girls do, in their letters, tell each other.

  Daphne was revelling in intimate school news from the transformed Madeleine, and Doris was using all her eloquence to persuade Miss Claringbold to climb to the top of the slope and roll down.

  “It’s a lovally game,” she assured her reluctant hearer. “Mrs. Delarue told it me. The boys and girls play it at Greenwich Park. They call it Praps because when you roll down p’raps you spoil your clothes and p’raps you don’t.”

  “How frightfully grown-up you and Colombe have got,” Daphne observed—”and you only left school the day before yesterday.”

  “Ah, but we have studied — since a month we have studied. Colombe has made make her dresses at Paris — and the mine have been made in London —— and then we have tried them, to learn to promener ourselves, to sit ourselves down, to hold ourselves on end, to bow, to smile, to kiss the hand. The night, in the grenier when we made the fêle — it is always we two who give the spectacle. Sometime I am the monsieur, sometime it is Colombe. Then we make the polite — as at a dinner, or sometimes one of us is a pretendu and makes the declaration of love. The last evening Guilberte and Inez were our cavaliers. We sat at table with their arms round our waists. I was Lucreizia Borgia — when she was jeune file and had not commenced her empoisonments, and Colombe was the Impératrice Eugénie. You see us armed at all point for the battle of life.”

  “You dear, wonderful children,” said Daphne. “Ah, Colombe has said that you would say that — you who are in advance of us by four little months, but it makes nothing, Daphne cherie — it is you who are the queen and we are your demoiselles d’honneur. And here your court that arrives.”

  It was the contingent from the second motor-car. Daphne’s attention had to be twice called to their approach before she turned her head to look at them. There was Green Eyes and the giraffe lady, the youth who leaned against walls, and four or five others whom she knew. St. Hilary was not there — Ah!