Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “You’ve arranged it all very neatly. You have a talent for arranging things.”

  “And you haven’t. That’s why we ought to get on. We always have got on, haven’t we?”

  If her tone was wistful, there was no one to hear it except Anthony, and he did not. He said —

  “Get on is hardly the term. You’ve been the light of my life from the beginning.”

  “That’s better,” she said. And they both laughed. “I like you to say things like that, that sound nice and that we both know the other one knows is nonsense.”

  “Is that grammar?” he asked.

  “Good enough for my humble needs. What’s the good of grammar so long as people understand what you say? And let’s just go on with our work just as usual. And you mustn’t come to see me in the mornings, and — oh, Tony! do you really care about me at all?”

  “You know I do,” he answered, and laid his hand in hers. The most impassioned lover could have done little more in such a moment.

  “If you found you’d found out that you didn’t, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” she asked, and this time he heard the wistful note.

  “I should hasten to you at once with the glad news,” he assured her; “even calling in the morning for the purpose. Rose of the world, your fur is trailing in the water.”

  “Then it’s all settled.”

  “Yes; all settled. Beautifully settled. Only it won’t really be like that. Going on as we did before, I mean; because I’ve got to go down and take possession of my Ancestral Halls. And then there’ll be a week or two of the settled part. And then my experience will be complete. And then you’ll come and stay at the A.H. Shall we ask the Septet?”

  “That would be ripping,” she asserted rather than admitted. “But you’ll be having County Families there, won’t you? Aren’t chaperons de rigueur in those exalted circles which my Lord is going to move in?”

  “There is a chaperon,” he said; “at least there’s a Lady Blair, a second cousin once removed of mine, who kept house for my Uncle — she’s still there.”

  “What is a second cousin once removed?”

  “Lady Blair is. I could show you exactly with pencil and paper, or with bits of bread if we were at dinner, but not in the Muddy Duck.”

  “I hope she’ll not be very harsh. Titles are so alarming. I suppose they’re really almost human, like monkeys, these lords and ladies. But I always feel that you and I and all the rest of the human people are somewhere halfway between the English Aristocracy and the apes — don’t you think? I expect they look on villa-dwellers as we do on Zoo-dwellers, and now you’re going to be one of them.”

  “You wander in your speech,” he said. “ I am neither lord nor monkey — a mere laboratory dweller.

  Wigram & Bucks think Lady Blair eccentric, if that’s any comfort to you. Anyhow, if you don’t like her, we’ll send her off, and import a tame chaperon from the British Museum Reading Room.”

  “What a lot of jolly things one could do with money,” she mused. “Just think of one of those poor old dears who live in one room and go to the Museum in the winter, to save fires. You know they spend half the time in the ladies’ cloak-room gossiping together. Just think of one of them if a glorious Apollo of a chemist came suddenly up to them, when they were crumbling buns in bags in the Assyrian Gallery, and said: ‘ Madam, pardon the intrusion. I am Sir Anthony Drelincourt, and I venture to ask whether you would be disposed to undertake the duties of housekeeper at Drelincourt at a salary of one hundred pounds a year, beer and washing found.’ It would be almost enough to make one endure having her there afterwards — just the sight of her face when you said it.”

  “I think I hope it mayn’t come to that. Lady Blair’s face when I introduced her supplanter might be less alluring.”

  “But she’ll have to go some time, I suppose?”

  “When we’re married,” he said. “Yes, of course. I forgot that.”

  The pause was imperceptible to him that divided his words from her next ones, which were —

  “How glorious it is out here. Look at the water — it looks like an enchanted river of silver — and everything is so clearly drawn — I should like to stay here all day.”

  “Why not?” said he.

  “Because there’s work to do,” she answered gaily, “paid work, Tony. Oh, I forgot that doesn’t appeal to you now. I’ve got some illustrations to finish, and back we go, alas!”

  He put out the sculls.

  “I’ve got a lot of things on too,” he said, “but we’ll have tea together, shall we? May I come?”

  “Of course,” she said. And they rowed back along the silver river to Malacca Wharf.

  CHAPTER VIII. MYSTERY

  THE law business took longer than any one expected. And it was not till May that Anthony Drelincourt went down to the house where his father had been born. But thanks to Messrs. Wigram & Bucks, who not only consented to advance cash for present expenses but positively pressed loans upon him, Anthony passed the month of April very pleasantly. He worked hard, but the play time that lay between the work times was a very different play time to any he had ever had. He was able to take cabs now, taxi-cabs which Rose adored. The modern drama was now accessible from the stalls instead of from the gallery. One could dine, take Rose to dine, which was much more important, instead of merely eating. Also one could buy clothes, and one did.

  “You know,” Rose said quite early in the engagement, “you ought to get some new clothes now. Then you won’t be bran-new when you go down.”

  “Some of them will, if I get many; though, of course, I might wear three suits at a time, to try and shab them a little before I display them to the lynx eyes of Lady Blair.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I expect even the aristocracy have new clothes sometimes. They must, if you come to think of it; or, perhaps, their valet or valets wear them first to take the newness off. By the way, Tony, you ought to have a valet.”

  “The question is,” he put it to her, “is one bound to do just as all other baronets do? Or can one still live one’s own life when one has ceased to be Mr and become Sir Anthony? I only ask for information.”

  “If it was me,” she told him, “I should try doing as they do — just to show them you know how.”

  “But I don’t,” he interrupted.

  “And, then, if you don’t like it, you can always start living your own life at any moment. You must get some clothes, Anthony; let’s go and buy some now.”

  “Even at my worst I have not bought reach-me-downs,” he said. “Men’s clothes are not ‘bought,’ my child. They are ordered. From the most expensive tailors, I presume,” he added dreamily. “And hats are built.”

  “I didn’t mean dull coats and hats,” she said, “but the nice things. Ties and socks and dressing-cases, and Gladstone bags and interesting shirts, with violet and green stripes, and the ties and socks match, you know, like Americans.”

  “Do Americans match?”

  “Yes — come along. You know the shop — in Shaftesbury Avenue.”

  They were in Regent Street.

  “If I allow you to come and see me buy my socks and ties, you must let me buy you something first. A quiet little tiara now, just to wear of a morning?”

  “The very thing!” she said, and they stood gazing in at the window where the diamonds lie and look more beautiful on their cream-coloured velvet beds than ever they will on the mottled necks of the aged rich for whom they are so largely designed.

  “There’s one thing I would like,” she said. “I’ll have it instead of the tiara, if you don’t mind.”

  “What is it? Come to think of it, I’ve never bought you anything, except things to eat.”

  “And rides in cabs. I want a ring!”

  “An engagement ring! Idiot! Of course I ought to have come with that in my pocket that night. Come along in,” he said eagerly.

  He would have bought her half-a-dozen of the bright circlets displayed. But she drew back
.

  “There’s one at a shop in Vigo Street,” she said; “an old one — I’d rather have that. And it’s got A.D. inside it, and 1866. And A.D. stands for you.”

  “As well as for the year of our Lord. Come on. What stone is it?”

  “It’s greeny, with diamonds round. It’s rather expensive,” she told him.

  It was a beryl, set as she had said. And he bought it without asking the price, which was less than he expected.

  “Thank you very, very,” she said, walking down the street beside him pulling on her glove.

  “It was idiotic of me not to get you a ring off my own bat,” he said; “but, you see, I’ve never been engaged before. And it was much jollier to get you something you really liked than to come along like a roaring Jew, oozing diamonds from every pore. All the same—”

  Then they went and bought ties and socks, and trunks and portmanteaus, and suit-cases and dressing-cases, and things like that.

  “Let’s get second-hand bags and boxes,” she said. “You simply mustn’t look new all over.”

  A fortnight later he brought her a necklace that he had had made for her.

  “I got the idea of it out of that book you gave me. Bats read it to me. All the stones mean something. And the lot of them bring luck — so they say; you’ll live and die loving and beloved. Only you mustn’t ever take it off. I ought to have it welded on, oughtn’t I?”

  “And about that ‘valet or valets,’” she said, the day before he left for Drelincourt. “How does one get a valet?”

  “You really insist?”

  “I do.” This time they were in Soho.

  “There are registry offices in Charlotte Street. Oh!”

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Abrahamson said there was a young man who was devoted to me. It would be nice if your valet or valets were devoted to me, wouldn’t it?”

  “I really don’t think I want one.”

  “Nonsense,” she insisted, “you simply must. We’ll go to old Abrahamson, and ask who it is.”

  The old bookseller looked at them over his spectacles with wise eyes.

  “So?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Rose. “I must tell you, but we aren’t telling any one else yet. Mr. Abrahamson told my fortune, Tony, and he foretold — you!”

  “I wish you every happiness,” said the Jew very quietly.

  “Thank you,” they said. And told why they had come.

  The valet was that same young Sebastien who had risked and lost his fifty centimes, and had called on the saints for the sake of Rose Royal. And he was still in the hands of the patron of the Hôtel Simplon — very deeply in, for he owed him a month’s pension.

  He flushed a deep pink when he entered the large oilcloth carpeted room with the bent-wood chairs, where clients and servants meet and engage, or do not engage.

  “I remember you,” said Rose. “You picked up some parcels for me one day in the mud.”

  “Au service,” said Sebastien, red to the ears.

  “Ce Monsieur,” said Rose, “wants a valet.”

  “Au service,” said Sebastien, and ten minutes later Sebastien, alone, in his mean little bedroom, agonized with relief, gratitude, and romantic joy, was informing Saints Ursula, Agnes, and Sebastien that, thanks entirely to their good offices, he was now free of the Hôtel Simplon, and was, moreover, devoted to the service of Monsieur, who was himself devoted to the service of Mademoiselle.

  And so it was Sebastien who travelled with Anthony when first he went to Drelincourt.

  “It was rummer than rum,” he wrote to Rose, “going down first-class, and all the station people behaving like worms. I’m not sure I like it. There was a glorious creature in top-boots touching a hat I should be proud to be seen with — and a ‘bang-up horse in a slap-up dog-cart,’ and village people ducking and touching foreheads. And the lodge-gates — more ducking from an old woman — a green park, trees just coming out. You’d love it. One of those parks like billiard tables, with trees like cauliflowers. And then the house — a dream, a long terrace with urns, rather like the picture of Sir Leicester’s place in Lincolnshire.

  “A Being at the door to welcome me. (I wish I could overcome my nervous terror of butlers. I don’t even know the thing’s name yet.) Rows of servants to welcome me. At the end of the row a little lady like a Dresden shepherdess grown old, gracefully holding out two perfect little hands to welcome me.

  “‘Lady Blair,’ I said — not another word. ‘Second cousin once removed,’ I added. ‘Thank Heaven, you’re not the hag I have sometimes feared you might be,’ or other words to that effect.

  “‘ You’re not such a bounder as I was afraid you might be,’ she answered (or words to that effect).

  “Then (when she had dissipated the cloud of footmen and things) we had tea. She is quite an old dear. You’ll like her. And no old Museum rat will ever get the surprise we planned for her. I am writing this at a Buhl table in a library sixty feet long. The inkstand is silver, and this pen the worst I have ever used. Sebastien has disappeared. I suppose he’s all right. He knows a valet’s place well enough. I only wish I knew a Baronet’s. But Lady Blair will see me through. I wish you were here. I want to talk to you. It’s rather fine, you know, this coming back to the Ancestral Hall. I shall have a lab fitted up here, and finish the experiment. It only went wrong last time through my having to go and answer that advertisement. But this time I really shall pull it off. My beautiful Rose, I never wanted you as much as I do at this moment.

  “More to-morrow. A howling dervish of a gong has just said, ‘ Get dressed, you Scientific outsider, and dine with the really select.’ Good-bye. — Your Tony.

  “P.S. — My beautiful Rose, I do hope I’m not getting too fond of you.”

  “Not you,” said Rose, as she refolded the letter. “ He seems extraordinarily gay,” she told herself. “I think he’s only really fond of me when he’s very happy or very miserable. The rest of the time it’s all habit.” She thought a minute, twisting the letter in her fingers. “Anyhow,” she said, “I’m the only one. If he doesn’t care for me, he doesn’t care for any one. It’s the second best. But if there is no best.... Don’t be an idiot.”

  She fingered the necklace softly for a moment and then sat down to write to her lover.

  He wrote again the next day: —

  “It’s all very like a dream. Lady Blair does not appear till the middle of the day I spent my morning with my agent — me with an agent! — a Balliol man of agreeable exterior and perfect manners. He hardly showed at all that I corresponded in no particular with his idea of a Baronet.

  “We drove round the estate. If my grandfather had not broken his neck hunting, I should have been able to ride a horse like any other fool. However, that can be mended. But it will be years before I know my own farms and fields. a It was jolly to get your note this morning.

  “Lady Blair appeared at luncheon — fresh and smiling as the dawn. Afterwards we walked on the terrace in the sunshine, and she told me family stories. We seem to have been the rummest lot! One of the Ancestors, it seems, was a friend of Bill’s friend, Bacon. There’s a picture of him in a ruff in the picture gallery. Did I tell you there was a P.G.? But I can’t tell you the half of it. I can’t begin to tell you — you must come and see. Lady Blair has the most beautiful manners in the world, except perhaps the butler’s. I have found out his name, and I feel weighted with so great a knowledge. His name is Wilkes. There is a secret staircase, only it’s no secret, though I thought it was when I found it. It ended in Wilkes’ room, and he was reading the Daily Mail in his shirt sleeves. I felt as though I had caught a bishop without his gaiters. He was smoking a cigar when I tumbled in on him. He forgave me at once. What noble natures these butlers have! I could never have forgiven anyone who had found me without my halo.

  “The agent is coming to dinner to-night. You should see the drawing-room; it’s as big as a barn, with cabinets, and sofas, and tables, and Chinese vases as big as you ar
e, and Chinese cabinets as big as pianos. And the windows go up to the ceiling, and the curtains are brocade — the sort of stuff most people make dresses of.

  “I haven’t told Lady Blair about you yet. But I shall to-morrow, and arrange about your coming home.

  I still feel as though it were her house, not mine. She is most awfully decent to me, and I like her. She talks awfully well. Chooses her words like that American girl. I expect it comes of being seventy-two, as she tells me she is. She looks any age you please down to thirty. I had no idea old ladies could be so nice to talk to. Tea. — More later.

  “Later. — I am not suspicious, as you know; but I have just told her about you, because she was telling me more than I could endure how charming some Emmeline or other is, and I find the Emmeline is her niece. She said I must marry well. Then she talked about hunting, and then she talked about archery and the days of her youth, and the Empress Eugénie; and then she got back to Emmeline. But I wasn’t going to have any more Emmeline. So I just told her. She was quite nice, but — surprised. I can’t think why. Ought I to have told her right away?

  “My beautiful Rose, I shall write to you every day. I never wanted you so much.

  “Everything I have ever done and been seems long ago and far away — even my work. No, that doesn’t express it. It’s really more as though I were taking part in a charade. I feel like somebody else.

  “And that doesn’t express it either.

  “I’m horribly glad all this is mine — and yours; and yet I feel that I have perhaps sold my soul. We’ve always been so down on rich people. And now I’m rich myself. I don’t know what I mean or what I feel, except that I feel rather as a kettle must the first time it boils. Things will settle down presently, and I shall be able to think again and to work.

  “Just now I only know that I wish every one had all this. Only of course they can’t have. It’s very difficult. Will you and the others come down next week?”