Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “Oh! there’s a family secret, is there,” said Anthony; “well, I don’t think I want to hear it.”

  Mr. Wigram supposed the young man to be mad; and at the same moment ceased to suppose him to be an impostor.

  “There is family property awaiting Mr. Anthony Drelincourt,” he said.

  Anthony looked at him.

  “You mean there’s money left to me?”

  “Mr. Anthony Drelincourt inherits money — yes.”

  “Well, if I can’t have it without hearing something I’d rather not hear, I’d rather not have it.”

  “You can’t expect me to know what you’d rather not hear, don’t you know? “ said the lawyer, dropping, in his mystification, into the colloquial.

  Anthony wondered whether he was being more than usually silly. Surely if there were anything — he looked at the other man, and saw no embarrassment behind that calm mask, no intolerable knowingness, no insolent pity.

  “He looks just ordinary,” Anthony told himself. But he was not skilled in the penetration of the masks of solicitors. What the other man was thinking was —

  “Mad as a hatter. Well, that’s evidence, as far as it goes. They all have bees of one kind or other in their bonnets.”

  “What I mean,” said Anthony, twisting his hands between his knees, “is that I don’t want to hear anything about dead people that they’d rather I didn’t hear. If this money was left by some one who did wrong, and then was sorry — look here, I won’t have the money at all. I’m sorry I came. I’ll go. Let the rightful heirs have it.”

  He got up so quickly that Mr. Wigram had to get up too, and catch him by the arm to keep him from going. And on Mr. Wigram’s face was the decorous smile of sudden and complete enlightenment.

  “My dear sir,” he said, “we seem to have been at cross-purposes. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to cause you a moment’s uneasiness. If you can establish your identity — as I feel sure you can,” he added comfortably, “you inherit by succession a title and a considerable property. You are a very fortunate young gentleman. Now be reasonable, my dear sir. Sit down, and tell me all about yourself. Where you were born, for instance?”

  “Somewhere near here, I believe,” Anthony answered.

  “Good,” the other nodded. “ Your mother’s name was — ?”

  “Frewen. Her father was a farmer somewhere near here.”

  “Quite so. And your father?”

  “He died in the Zulu war in 1881.”

  “Exactly. Then it is only a matter of a few certificates — easily obtainable.”

  “I haven’t my mother’s marriage certificate,” said Anthony, not having meant to say anything of the kind.

  “But I have,” said Mr. Wigram. “There is no reasonable doubt, my dear sir, that you are the heir to the Drelincourt title and estates.”

  Anthony suddenly produced a silver snuff-box.

  “These are my father’s arms, I believe,” he said.

  “Quite so, quite so,” said the solicitor. “And now,” he said, “do you wish to hear the family secrets? Your mother’s marriage certificate is in that black box,” he added, hastily forestalling some possible imminent Quixotry.

  “If you please,” said Anthony.

  “Your father,” said the solicitor, “was the youngest son of Sir Hamnet Drelincourt. He married in defiance of his father’s wishes, and Sir Hamnet Drelincourt refused to recognize your father’s wife, or to make the young couple any allowance. When your father, Mr. Bartholomew Drelincourt, was killed in the Zulu war, your paternal grandfather wrote to your mother offering her an allowance on condition that she took another name, and never claimed for you any relationship with your father’s family.”

  “Brute!” said the grandson.

  “De mortuis—”said the solicitor.

  “Your mother indignantly refused. And before time had had — in short — time to soften these regrettable animosities, your maternal grandfather — by the way, do you know how he met his death?”

  “In the hunting field,” said Anthony. “Go on.”

  “Quite so,” said Mr. Wigram, “and on his decease your mother disappeared and could not be traced.”

  “I don’t suppose they tried much,” said Anthony.

  “Perhaps their efforts were not very whole-hearted,” Mr. Wigram admitted. “At any rate, she, with her baby, disappeared. On the death of Sir Hamnet Drelincourt, his eldest son succeeded; the second and third sons have succumbed to the lot of all men.

  “You mean they died?”

  “Quite so. Without issue. And now, on the decease of Sir Jocelyn, your paternal uncle, the title and the property devolve upon the eldest son of the late Bartholomew Drelincourt. I feel convinced that a few simple formalities will establish your claim, which, indeed, there is none to dispute. Sir Anthony Drelincourt, allow me to congratulate you.”

  “Is there much money? “ Anthony asked across the sudden handshake.

  “The estates bring in something between six and seven thousand a year, and the late Sir Jocelyn Drelincourt having lived well within his income, there is a considerable amount invested in sound securities.”

  “You mean,” said Anthony abruptly, “that I am rich, and I am Sir Anthony Drelincourt.”

  “I believe that to be the case. A very few days will suffice to make everything quite certain.”

  Anthony smiled for the first time during the interview.

  “I’m glad,” he said. “I’m afraid I behaved rather foolishly just now, but — but—”

  “Not another word,” said the solicitor. “My dear Sir Anthony, I understand perfectly.”

  “Not you,” said Anthony to himself.

  But of course Mr. Wigram did understand thoroughly. Anthony, on the other hand, did not even begin to understand what it was which he so suddenly and astonishingly inherited.

  CHAPTER VI. ALL NONSENSE

  “HERE’S some coffee!”

  “Hold on a minute.”

  Rose Royal stood at the top of the rickety wooden stairs holding a tray. William Bats responded from the other side of the locked laboratory door, which presently he opened a very little.

  “Aren’t you going to let me in?” she asked, standing radiant and distracting with the tray in her hands.

  “No,” said William Bats, reaching for the tray; “but if you’ll let me carry this back to your house and invite me to share it—”

  “You’re sillier than I should have believed possible, even for a Baconian,” said Rose Royal; “and why mayn’t I come in, please? Tony always lets me.”

  “Tony’s not here, and his last conscious words ere leaving this scene expressly forbade it.”

  “Nonsense! Why?”

  “He is experimenting on the brains of mummies, and he knows you would turn their heads; and just now it is most important that they should preserve their agelong immobility.”

  “And you know that’s nonsense.”

  “Granted, lidy! But it has a lining of sense — a doublure, as the French have it. He really has some experiments going. And you know he’s morbidly sensitive about his experiments.”

  “How silly! Of course, I shouldn’t touch any of his wretched experiments.”

  “You’d put things down on things; you always do.”

  “No, but really — oh, take the tray if you like. There isn’t really anything, is there? Guinea-pigs without brains, or anything horrible like that?”

  “Agreeable Rose, please don’t. You know our Anthony’s tender sympathetic nature. Give me the tray.”

  “The coffee’s getting cold,” she said; “let me come in and talk.”

  Bats closed the door, and its Yale lock clicked softly. Then he sat down abruptly against it. “Sit on the stairs,” he said. “If you won’t invite me to your house, we’ll have a picnic.”

  “Yes; but—”she said, letting him take the tray and sinking among green draperies on the top step. “I don’t want guinea-pigs to be cut up.”

&n
bsp; “You’re not alone in the kindly thought. But pour out the coffee. We’re not here to discuss guinea-pigs. Though if it hadn’t been for them, Linda would probably have gone out that time she had diphtheria.”

  “The question is, whether it wouldn’t have been better for — yes, even for Linda to die than to have those poor little beasts, thousands of them, tortured—”

  “They aren’t tortured. Don’t be silly. No, don’t fetch a cup; I prefer to drink out of the saucer. And think of the things you accept without turning a hair. Have you ever been made at all uncomfortable by Harvey’s theory of the Circulation of the Blood?”

  “Of course not,” said Rose, pouring coffee. “Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. Only he left some notes of his methods. Most explicit. They daren’t publish them. There were no anaesthetics in those days, Rose.”

  She shuddered.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “Shall I describe the pavilion at the end of the garden where he kept his subjects — till he was ready for them? The good time he gave them until he was ready. The sudden summons. The—”

  “I do hate you,” she said. “ You don’t mean that Tony—”

  “On the contrary. That’s just what I’m trying to make you see. All the great big cruel experiments are over; and you never knew. And now whatever’s done doesn’t hurt. And anyhow, Anthony doesn’t keep guinea-pigs, and why row? And it’s very draughty, too. Won’t you ask me to come to your house, kind lidy?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “ Either let me in, or we’ll sit here and drink our coffee and catch our deaths of—”

  “Mademoiselle en est l’arbitre,” he said. And she told him she had not known that he knew his Villette.

  And they drank their coffee and were gay. And then the biscuit boys came, and he entertained them. And Rose sent off a telegram by one of the biscuit boys. And presently a telegram came to her: “Please send drawings at once. Glorious Weekly And when she asked William Bats what on earth she was to do since she had no one to send with the drawings, he made the obvious suggestion and locked up the laboratory; and she gave him a brown paper parcel and saw him off at the gate.

  The moment he was out of sight she got rid of the biscuit boys, and, key in hand, flew to the door of Anthony’s laboratory. She opened it, and went in. There were some violets, withered and ill-smelling, in a squat bowl. Nothing else which, with the best will in the world, she could connect with anything vital and real.

  “What on earth did he make such a fuss for, then?” she asked. The place looked just as it always looked, only tidier in the oasis where the table and chairs were, because William Bats was living in it and not Drelincourt. She sat down in the armchair and pleated the faded silk of the work-table in her fingers, and wondered whether it had belonged to Anthony’s mother. And then she thought of Anthony, if that can be called thinking which is no ordered sequence of ideas but only confused hopes, dreams, and longings strung at random on the string of memory.

  He had been gone now three days. He had sent a long telegram to William Bats saying, “All right,” and asking for a portmanteau and clothes to be sent by passenger train to Lewes. Rose had wondered why he had gone to Lewes, and William Bats had let her wonder. Whatever it was, he ought to be home soon. When he came she would ask him to dinner — a very nice dinner — and get the whole story out of him: why he had gone away, and where he had been, and who he had been with? Relations possibly. But she had never heard that he had any relations. Cousins, perhaps; girl cousins.

  “Nonsense,” she told herself. “You can’t expect him to live in a glass case and never even see other girls. Don’t be an idiot.”

  But you know the sort of things that girls think. And time went on.

  The sound of boots on the flagstones outside made her start guiltily.

  “William! He’s come back for something.” And at once she felt that distressing hollow sensation which is the portion of the thoroughly found out. Anthony had not wanted her to come in, and she had come. It was a mean thing to do, and now William Bats would know. And she had not found anything out either. So that she was not only mean but silly. And now the boots were on the stairs.

  She sprang up. She must go. Better meet him on the stairs than here. It was on the landing that she met — not Mr. Bats, but another.

  “Oh, how do you do?” she said.

  “I seek Mr. Bats,” said the other. “He gave me this address, and I have business in this part, so I come to show him a book of beauty — the De Augmentis, 1623 edition, with marginal notes by the hand of the great Bacon himself written.”

  “He’s not in,” said Rose; “will you leave the book in case he wants to buy it?”

  “No, no,” the other laughed. “He will not buy it. It is for the very rich or the public library. I only come to show it. He love to see the beauty book, even if he cannot buy. And since I am here, Miss Royal, shall I tell that fortune of the which we speak?”

  “Oh, Mr. Abrahamson!” said Rose; “thank you, but — yes — I should love it, only — yes, come over to my house. I live in the little house by the gate.”

  “It is here,” said the bookseller, waving his hand towards the laboratory door; “it is here, that is the atmosphere congenial to the fortune-telling. Not in little houses by gates. We go in. Yes?”

  “But I don’t think there are any cards here.”

  “It is not with cards I tell to-day,” he said, and led the way into the quiet large room adorned with the gleaming machinery of science. After all, she could not explain that Anthony did not want her in his rooms — could not at any rate explain it to this old man already too well-informed in matters that she would have desired to keep secret even from herself.

  He closed the door.

  “What a place of wonder!” he said. “So must the rooms of old alchemists have been. Is it not? What miracles are the dreams of men!”

  “I don’t believe in miracles,” she said.

  “And yet you see them every day. Yes, and you work them,” he told her. “Your boy savages that you have trained. Oh! you do well not to believe in miracles.”

  “They’re dear boys,” she said.

  “They are what you are making them. We all shape each other’s destiny. And then the stupid-wise ones talk of praise and blame, and crime and virtue, and reward and punishment. And another thing I tell before I tell your fortune, there exists a young man who adores you.”

  “That ought to be part of the fortune.”

  “I think, indeed, it might be. But it is not the love-adoring. It is as you Christians adore your saints. He is not of your class.”

  “I don’t know any one,” she was beginning, but he interrupted.

  “That makes nothing,” he said. “If some day you need a slave, a watch-dog. If your friend no longer lives here, and you need a — how do you say? — Take-carer for this building, then you tell me, and I tell you where to find a good watch-dog devoted to your service. And now sit you down here, Miss Royal, you who do not believe in miracles, and we shall try to show you one — a little pretty miracle for you alone.”

  He pushed forward the chair in which she had been sitting.

  “So! And now,” he said, “I make the little confession. I come not only to bring the book to Mr. Bats — that was the excuse; the reason—”

  “What was the reason?” she asked, defensively struggling to feel commonplace, and not to think about miracles.

  “The reason was the unreasoning impulse, the strongest reason in the world. I come, because I knew I find you.

  And this day and this hour are those propitious to the fortune-reading for you. The stars are for you this day. This is a great day in your life, and to-day the powers lift a little the veil, and I am permitted to behold.”

  “Really and truly,” said Rose, “I don’t believe in these things.”

  “What things?”

  “Fortune-telling and fate and miracles and stars, you know,” she told him, he
r heart fluttering a little.

  “But you do believe,” he said calmly, and felt in his pocket; “and yet, more, you shall believe. Give me your hand.” He set something cold and round in it. “Hold the crystal, and I will light the lamp.”

  It was a little brass lamp, that he took from the black bag he carried. From that also he took the black velvet cloth which he spread on the table, and the long-handled incense tray like a toy brass frying-pan with a foot.

  “Think of what you wish for most,” he said, shaking from a folded paper some grey rough powder into the brass tray thing; “and hold the crystal tightly with both hands.”

  He pulled down the wide dark blue blinds till the place was all dark. Then he unscrewed the top of the spirit lamp, and lighted it. And little answering sparks of reflected light sprang up among the crowded mystery of bench and shelves, from strange shapes of glass and metal. He lighted the incense, and its sweet thick smoke swirled about among the sparks of reflected light.

  “Now,” he said, “lay the crystal on the table, and gaze into it with all your heart. Think of nothing else. See nothing else.”

  “I don’t see anything,” she said at once.

  “You have not yet looked. Patience! Continue to look,” he said, “and when the vision appears tell me what you see.”

  “There isn’t any vision,” she said, “only clouds and lights.”

  “That comes first,” he said. “Now you shall speak no more till I speak.”

  There was a silence in the laboratory — a long silence.

  Then, “Now speak,” said he. “What is the vision you behold?”

  “A white road; no, it’s only the incense smoke; yes it is, a white road winding and great hills. Now it looks like a face. It is — I don’t want to see any more.” She pushed the crystal away.

  The bookseller caught her hand and held it strongly.

  “Be still,” he said, in a tone of authority. “I will look for you.”

  Again there was silence. Rose’s heart felt as though it were beating in her throat. For the face she had seen, plain, distinct as a miniature, lighted as by clear pale sunlight, alive as her own face, was the face of Anthony. And his eyes had looked at her as his eyes had never yet looked.