Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  The bookseller was speaking.

  “I see a face also, pale, with dark eyes. The face of a man you think you love. To-day he will tell you he loves you. There is wealth coming to him, but with it a strange sorrow. There is something here which I do not understand. A beautiful woman dead. No, it is not your face. I see—”He stopped abruptly, and bent silently over the crystal; then rose, and drew up the blinds. The pale dusky light crept in. The incense was burnt out, and he replaced the brass vessel and the crystal in his bag, and began to fold up the velvet cloth.

  “Well,” she said, “did you see any more?”

  “I tell you no more,” he said, and there was a new agitation in his voice; “but I confess you this. I did not think I should see so much. Always I believed in the crystal when I have seen in it hints and half-hints, wandering shapes like dreams just distinguished. But this time I see it all so plain as how I see you, and I now believe no more. It is impossible. Illusion.”

  “Do tell me what you saw,” she said, hiding an agitation not less than his own.

  “No, it is not good. If some day a terrible trouble comes, ask me, and perhaps I may tell. But not now.

  I do not believe. But if I did believe — —”

  “Well, if you did?” she persisted, still consciously calm.

  “If I did believe, I should entreat you to love only a poor man, and if wealth should come to your lover, wealth that he has not earned, bid him refuse it, reject it; have nothing to do with the accursed thing.”

  He spoke strongly, vehemently.

  “Oh!” said Rose, with a laboured lightness, “of course that’s just your Socialism coming out.”

  “It is not Socialism, nor any politics-affair. I tell you it is life and death; or would be, if I believed it.”

  “But what is it?” she persisted.

  “Life and death. I can no more than that tell you. It is death, and life, and joy, and horror, and sorrow for you, and worse than sorrow for him.”

  “What is? You must tell me. You mean if I marry him.” Rose was being shaken out of her reticences. “Will that bring sorrow?”

  “There is no sorrow in your marriage,” he said. “It is the wealth. For him wealth is the beginning of tragedy. But why say all this? — I do not believe it; it is only a game we play in sport. There are no such miracles. It is as you say. I act no more on impulse, Miss Royal. This place has the atmosphere too congenial to the magic. I regret I came to it.”

  “Oh, don’t say that,” said Rose, trying to speak and feel as she usually spoke and felt. It had for her the effect of repeating a lesson learnt by heart. “It was very kind of you; very kind indeed. Won’t you come to the little house by the gate? It is quite a good house for having tea in; even if it’s no good for fortune-telling. Let me give you some tea?”

  But Mr. Abrahamson picked up his bag and his parcel, and said “Good-bye!”

  “It’s all dreams, and not to be believed,” he said; “think no more of it, Miss Royal.”

  And of course she thought of nothing else. She put all in order to leave the laboratory as she had found it, passed out, locked the door, and went to her own neat, matted-floored, airy room, thinking all the time.

  “It has been a day,” she said, lighting the two candles on the mantelpiece that cast such pleasant reflections in her sparse polished furniture. But the reflections reminded her. She lighted the green-shaded lamp. She drew the curtains, coaxed the neglected fire to little blue and red activities, and set out the simple supper she would eat later — bread, milk, and Tasmanian apples. And still she thought — if, as I said, you can call it thinking.

  Then she pulled out the table, and sat down to work at some pen-and-ink drawings to illustrate a story of Esther Raven’s. For Rose was a worker, and the fact that in the daytime she painted ambitious amateurish pictures which nobody bought, and dreamed of fame, did not at all prevent her working in the evening at the clever little illustrations which people did buy. She had the confessed desire to make money; and the secret dream of making enough to be useful to Anthony transfigured and vitalized the sordid details of business. For she knew that he needed money — would always need it — for the scientific work that was his life. Since he had lived at Malacca Wharf he had fallen into the habit of coming for odd half-hours to sit in that little parlour of hers, whose unnatural neatness was her own protest and revolt against her own innate untidiness. “I’ll have one room tidy anyhow,” she told herself. And she had. You can easily keep one room tidy by the simple process of carrying everything out of it every morning except the furniture, and just dumping down what you have carried out in the other rooms. Only, of course, the other rooms suffer. You know the things one cannot somehow get rid of? Piles of newspapers and pamphlets, brown paper, cardboard boxes, pictures that you don’t want to hang, odds and ends left over from dressmaking, music that wants mending, books that want binding, lace that wants ironing, letters that you mean to answer sometime, photographs of people you only care a little about, bits of ribbon, ends of sealing-wax. Rose always seemed to have more of these things than other people. It is an effect untidy people give.

  But her parlour was tidy, and she sat in it working quickly and neatly. All the neatness of her seemed to be spent on her dress and her work, and, by an effort of will, on that parlour.

  Presently she heard the yard gate click.

  “William,” she told herself.

  Footsteps came to her door, and when she opened it she found herself for the second time that day confronting some one who was not William. But this time it was Anthony.

  “Oh, you!” she said, with an indescribable intonation. “Oh, come in.”

  It was that intonation that decided him. For he had come to her after hours of indecision. He came in, shut the door, and followed her into the room.

  “Now sit down,” she said comfortably, “and tell me all about it. What was it, and was it to your advantage?”

  He looked round the pleasant familiar room; he looked at the beautiful familiar face. It was like coming home. These four days in Lewes had been very long, lonely ones.

  “I will tell you,” he said; “but there is something else I want to tell you first. I’ve been thinking all the way up.” He stood by the mantelpiece, fingering the brass candlesticks. “I should like always to come home to you. Life’s a lonely thing.”

  “You’ve got your experiments to come home to,” said Rose clumsily, with the sudden sense of things happening.

  “Don’t you care about me, then?” he asked, like a child, wounded, incredulous.

  “Of course I care,” she said; “we’ve always been such friends.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” he said. “You know I’m trying to ask you to marry me.”

  “No — I mean, you don’t really mean it,” she said, still clumsy with what was half hurt and half happiness; “no one could possibly believe that you — What are you asking me for?”

  “Because I want you,” he said, still fumbling with the candlesticks. “Rose, I feel so lost — as if I were going to Australia by myself in a convict ship. It was so lonely down there.”

  “It’s just a mood. You don’t mean it. You’ll wish you hadn’t to-morrow. I mean you would, if I said Yes. You’re asking me for some other reason. Some one’s been saying something about our living down at Malacca Wharf, or something. No. It’s not good enough, Tony. I don’t care twopence what people say, and you don’t either. You don’t love me, and I’m not going to pretend to believe you do. I’ll get some supper, and then you’ll feel better.”

  “Bother supper,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” she said. “How can I? — when you don’t really want me to. You don’t really love me a little bit.”

  “Love’s such a great thing,” he said. “It’s dangerous to use the great names’.”

  “There,” she said. “You see. You don’t care — or you couldn’t talk like that.”

  She knew now what it was to have
the wine of life offered in a cup to which she could not bring herself to put her lips.

  “No, thank you,” she said bitterly.

  Then for the first time he looked at her.

  “My beautiful Rose,” he said. “I do love you. But I don’t want to love you too much. I want to keep my head for my work. Oh yes, I love you, and you must know it; just as I know you love me. Promise that you’ll marry me, and nothing shall come between us.”

  And still she would not take the cup.

  “If you really mean it,” she said, “you can ask me again in — oh, in June, and I’ll tell you then.”

  “No,” said he, “that’s not a game I can play, Rose; and it’s a game you couldn’t play either. Oh, I’m so tired. Be good to me. I know I’ve told you in a silly sort of way. But I want you more than anything.”

  Suddenly he was kneeling beside her, and her arms went round his neck.

  “This is worth everything,” he said, “to come home to this.”

  “And,” he said presently, “there’s no more worry about money — I’m rich, rich, rich! No more work that we don’t want to do. Only the real things of life, the work we want to do. What’s the matter? “ For she had moved uneasily.

  “Nothing,” she said, and stroked his hair gently; “only everything’s so different from what you’d think it would be.”

  But in her heart she was remembering the crystal and the prophecy that had already come true. And she remembered the warning and his face as she had seen it in the crystal.

  “Let me look at you,” she said, and he raised his face. But it did not look as the face had looked which had, from the crystal, gazed answering love into her eyes.

  CHAPTER VII. THE DAY AFTER

  “It’s a beastly shame,” Bats was saying: “you don’t care twopence about her. You told me you didn’t.”

  “I never did. I do care very much,” said Drelincourt shortly.

  “Not you. You were wishing you could do something for her. When you got your miserable money you thought—’Hullo! I can make her Lady Drelincourt and give her diamonds.’”

  “Shut up,” said Anthony.

  “Oh, don’t I see it,” said Bats, his back to the laboratory fire. “You went away feeling gloomy — you grew gloomier. The gloomy fit culminated in an access of sentiment, and you’re going to tie that glorious girl to a dead fish. You’re no better.”

  Drelincourt laughed.

  “No good, my dear chap. I have the prize. You may have the grumble. It’s only fair. I have love, money, and the opportunity of work. What more can any one want? But if you’re interested in psychology — allow me to adopt the classic manner. I am, as you say, formed by nature to attract young ladies. My path of life is, as you justly remark, strewn with the victims of my fatal beauty. Haughty, unresponsive, I pass on my way heedless of the broken hearts which encumber it. It’s quite difficult, as you say, to avoid treading on some of them. But their sufferings are nothing to me.

  I see, far above me, a star, and worship it. One day when I am feeling rather lost and pathetic, I have a sudden access of mad courage and faith. I call to the star, and it slides down the ladder of its own rays and permits me to call it mine. There you have the whole thing.”

  “Rot!” said Bats, very much disturbed. It was the morning after Anthony’s return, and the two men were at the end of a late breakfast. “ You told me the night before you went away—”

  “Surely a man may mask his most sacred emotions even from you?”

  “You don’t kid me,” said Bats. “And it’s not fair to the girl.”

  “She thinks it is.”

  “She won’t think so long.”

  “Does it occur to your super-sensitive mind,” Anthony asked, “that if anything’s not fair to her it’s our talking her over like this?”

  “I’m not talking her over. I’m talking you over. Don’t you see — I want her to be happy? And she won’t be, with you.”

  “She thinks she will.”

  “She won’t think so long,” said Bats again. “ When are you going to be married?”

  “Quite soon. There’s nothing to wait for.”

  The fire-flame flickered, and tobacco smoke circled quietly above the dialogue. Bats was silent a moment.

  “Look here,” he spoke with a hesitation unusual to him, and new in this talk. “Look here. I don’t want to shove my oar in. But will you wait — only wait? Don’t spoil her life just because you happen to have felt that you could help her not to spoil it.”

  “If you’re asking me to give her up,” said Drelincourt.

  “Don’t be an ass. Of course I don’t want you to give her up. Just wait. Don’t announce the engagement. She won’t be keen on announcing it.”

  “Won’t she?”

  “No — she’ll be only too glad to keep the beautiful secret a secret; at least I should think that’s how a girl would feel about it.”

  “Well?”

  “Well — that’s all. If you’d only not announce the engagement. And don’t get married for six months. In six months you’ll both know where you are. If she still thinks she wants you, then — well, anyway you’ll both know your own minds for certain. You see — you may protest till you’re black in the face, but I know you don’t love her.”

  “And I know I do,” said Drelincourt quietly. “Look here. Did it ever strike you as odd that I’m twenty-five, and I’ve never had a love-affair — not the ghost of one?”

  “It has been the talk of the schools.”

  “No — rotting apart. I’m not the sort of man that catches fire as the rest of you seem to do. I simply don’t understand it. I’m not sure that it isn’t just the literary influence with you others. The Romeo and Juliet business, you know. I’m simply not there. It’s in another world to the one I live in. If there really is that sort of love, and the poets haven’t just invented it — well, the capacity for it was left out of me — that’s all. And Rose isn’t silly in that sort of way either. She’s always had heaps of men at her feet, and kept them there. And I believe she and I are the normal people, and the desperate flaming wild passionate business is all moonshine out of the poets. I never cared twopence for any one but Rose. She never cared twopence for any one but me.”

  “That’s true enough.”

  “And we’re perfectly contented and perfectly happy.”

  “Humph!” said William Bats.

  “But all the same I do see there’s something in what you say. You know mine’s a trade that teaches patience. One can never hurry. One must always be quite sure. But, then, I can’t suggest waiting — to her. But if she should suggest it, I’ll agree. I can’t say more. And the same about announcing the engagement. But I don’t think she will suggest it; I think you’re wrong about that.”

  “Perhaps I am,” Bats admitted. “Anyhow, it’s well there’s no more to be said. You know I wish you happiness, and all that sort of thing.”

  “Yes,” said Drelincourt. “Yes — and I say, it’s all right your saying what you did. I don’t mind; I know it’s just out of decent feeling and all that. But — We’ll not talk about her again, do you mind? It doesn’t seem straight somehow.”

  “I don’t want to talk about her. I’ve said all I’ve got to say. And too much, I expect. Well, I must get back to work. And you’ll be going to see her, of course.”

  “Ought I to? So soon?”

  Bats laughed aloud.

  “Go over and say good morning, you old owl,” he said. “And take her some flowers or something.”

  “Flowers don’t grow here, you know; at least, not profusely,” Anthony reminded him.

  “Well, take her a culture or an ion or an electron or a guinea-pig’s ear, or whatever your sort finds as a gift for his fair. And if you can’t find anything else, take her your invaluable self, and say you’ve not been able to sleep for thinking how happy you are.”

  “She wouldn’t believe me,” said Drelincourt.

  “No,” said his
friend. “I shouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t. I’m off. Good-bye.”

  Drelincourt went across to Rose’s little house. He kissed her with respectful tenderness, and asked her if she had slept well. It was the first commonplace that occurred to him.

  “Not very,” she admitted. “I was thinking about you.”

  “That was very dear of you.”

  She smiled.

  “Now look here, Tony,” she said. “We’re engaged to be married, it’s true; but you’re under no contract to make those sort of speeches to me. Let’s go out in the boat, and I’ll tell you my ideas about being engaged and married, and all that.”

  They went out, and between blue March sky and black Thames water they threaded the boat’s way among moored ships and slow stately barges, and the little busy dangerous tugs that were everywhere.

  “Now,” he said, shifting his oars in a quiet place between two empty barges high and sheltering to the water between.

  “Well, then. I want it to go on just exactly as we have been doing. I want to keep it all to ourselves just for a little.”

  “You do?” he said, astounded by this proof of the insight of Bats.

  “Yes — we won’t tell any one—”

  “I’ve told Bill.”

  “Oh, Bill doesn’t count. Tell him not to tell the others. They’ll have quite enough to amuse them with your pretty money and your pretty estates without this.”

  “It’s just as you like, of course,” he told her. “And when shall we be married? It was June we said last night, wasn’t it?”

  “Was it? But I’ve been thinking. Wouldn’t it be jollier just to go on as we are till you’ve finished the great experiment — it is nearly done, isn’t it? and then we could go off to Rome, or Venice, or China, or Peru, or somewhere, and see the big round world.”

  “Would you really like that best?” he asked.

  “Yes, much. But, Tony, I see a sort of strained stupidness growing on you. You feel that you’ve got to behave as though you were engaged, and you don’t know how exactly. And if you keep that up you’ll be unbearable. You see, we’ve been chums for ages. I don’t want to lose all that just because we’ve decided to get married some day. I want to go on being chums, and for you only to remember we’re engaged when you — when you want very much to remember it. See.”