Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “I feel hateful,” said Rose; “but I can’t explain it. Only I know if I kept her I couldn’t go on with it. There would come a time, to-night most likely, when I should rush out and leave her. Oh, say what you think. You can’t despise me more than I despise myself.”

  Bats did not say what he thought. Instead he said —

  “Of course I’ll come up. Anthony’s always in the clouds. We must think out some practical scheme. Of course she must go back to her friends.”

  The idea that the stranger had friends was in itself vaguely comforting to Rose.

  “And Wilton must see her presently,” said Bats; “see if she’s fit to be moved, and all that. Now look here, Rose, don’t you worry. Because Wilton and I are here, and,” he added with a not too obvious afterthought, “and Anthony. You’ve not got it all on your shoulders, you know.”

  “I know I always think I’m so necessary and important,” said Rose humbly, “but Anthony, does seem to want me.”

  Again Bats did not say what he thought. They went up the stairs together.

  Rose entered the little bedroom with much the feelings one might have who explored a mausoleum alone at midnight. Yet, when her eyes fell on the quiet face of the stranger, she experienced again and more strongly the feelings of the horse who has unreasonably shied.

  She laid her hand on the shoulder of the sleeper, warm and slenderly rounded under the thin nightdress, and said, smiling with a conscious effort into the awakening eyes, “I’ve brought your breakfast. Do you feel better?”

  “I feel quite well, quite,” Eugenia said; “how kind you are.”

  She sat up and threw back her hair which had loosened itself from the plait Rose had woven last night. She took the proffered glass and drained it. Then, “Where is he?” she asked.

  “He is not far off,” was all Rose found to say.

  “I must see him, you know,” she said, “as soon as I am dressed. I have important business to talk with him.”

  The poor little pretence was transparent to Rose, who knew her strange delusion.

  “I will tell him,” she said. “But your dress is torn. I must get you one of mine.”

  “Your dress will not fit me,” said Eugenia, smiling.

  “You are great like a queen. I am small like—”

  “Like a fairy,” said Rose kindly, and again smile answered smile. Poor little thing! How could she have been so heartless, so imbecile? Rose asked herself. This girl before her was no deathly terror to run from, shrieking, but a living, breathing, friendly fellow-creature to be helped and — yes, she was stroking the little hand now — to be petted.

  “I have a loose gown,” she said; “we can draw it up at the neck. It will trail a little, but that’s graceful. I’ll go and fetch it.”

  “You won’t be long?” Eugenia asked. “Oh, I am so glad to have a friend like you.”

  Rose passed softly through the laboratory, only answering Anthony’s inquiring look with a whispered, “I’m going to get her a dress. She’s asking for you. You’ll have to see her.”

  She felt very brave and very trusting as she said it. Somehow she must pay for this morning’s folly and cowardice. Anthony should see that she trusted him.

  The dark blue dress, embroidered in pale cornflowers and their grey-green leaves, became Eugenia’s dark beauty as a frame becomes a picture. When she was dressed, the dark hair banded neatly, Rose left her a moment and came into the laboratory. Bats was looking out of the far window.

  “You must see her now,” she said to Anthony; “I’ll bring her in.”

  “Rose,” Anthony caught her hand. “I see I was asking too much. It’s all right, dear. I’ll wire to Lady Blair. She’ll be able to see to things. She’s the only woman friend I have, except you.”

  If anything had been wanting, this was it.

  “Nonsense!” Rose said briskly. “Of course I’ll do everything. I was out of my mind just now, I think. I was tired and—”

  “You’re an angel,” he said. And she crossed to Bats.

  “Wait for me outside,” she said. “She wants to talk to Anthony. She thinks she has ‘business ‘ to transact with him. It’s a delusion, of course, but it’s got to be humoured.”

  Bats went, Rose hesitated a moment. She longed to tell her lover she “trusted him entirely,” but she refrained. She would not detract from the price she was paying for her suspicions and cowardice.

  “I’ll bring her in,” she told him, instead.

  And Anthony Drelincourt had the experience, not easily forgotten, of seeing those two women come through the door and towards him, with their arms round each other.

  “There,” said Rose, placing Eugenia in a chair. “All right? Good. Sit down, Anthony. Telephone if you want anything, won’t you?”

  With that she left them. It was perhaps the proudest moment of her life.

  As soon as the sound of Rose’s feet had died away on the stair, Eugenia rose.

  Anthony, whose emotions defy analysis, sat still in his chair. She moved towards him, a little feebly, a little uncertainly, and still he sat like a statue. With a little rush her transit ended. She was on her knees by him, her arms round his neck. And again the world was stars and roses, meteors and thorns. It was not pleasure that thrilled him, rather the faintness of a mortal agony. But his arms enfolded her.

  * * * * *

  “It was silly of me to be frightened,” said Rose to Bats, “but I can do it all right. I don’t know what made me so silly. She’s a dear, isn’t she?” said Rose, feeling herself a heroine.

  “If you have her at your house, I shall be at the laboratory all day and all night,” said Bats. “I can get across in half a minute, or less.”

  There was something to lean on here. Rose felt it. And Bats had meant her to feel it. She made little plans for taking care of Eugenia, keeping her happy and amused till her friends could be found, laughing, talking, almost reassured.

  But there had been, it seemed later, no need for reassurance.

  “My idea was right,” Anthony told Rose later; “she is the daughter of the Eugenia who ran away. No, she can’t remember any details about how she got there. She thinks she’ll remember if she goes to Drelincourt. I’m going on at once to prepare Lady Blair. I can’t tell her the truth, Rose. I hate lying, but it’s impossible. If I told her the truth, she’d never believe it. I shall say we found Eugenia in a hospital, and I’m bringing her home because she’s a relation.”

  “Whatever you like,” said Rose, hating the familiar “Eugenia,” of which he seemed unconscious.

  “Will you and Bats bring her on by the five o’clock train? “ Anthony went on. “And here’s that money. Buy her clothes. And boxes, you know, to put them in.”

  “You can’t buy clothes like that, to fit,” said Rose. “Don’t you remember what you told me about men’s clothes?”

  “Oh! Lady Blair’s maid can make them smaller,” said Anthony, with the memory of a slender shape in his arms; “do the best you can, Rose. I’ll never forget what you’ve been to me in all this — never.”

  “I am not likely to forget either,” said Rose to herself. To him she said: “The seven o’clock train. The five’s impossible. And even so, I shall have to leave her alone nearly all day.”

  “Wilton will be here and Bats and your char. And she’ll sleep most of the time,” said Anthony. “Get everything she’s likely to want. Everything. Is that enough?”

  She counted the notes he had given her.

  “I should think so,” she said drily. He had given her notes for three hundred pounds.

  “I shouldn’t have thought it safe to carry so much money about,” she said.

  “I never feel it’s safe to have less,” he answered; “you never know what may happen.”

  “No,” said Rose, “you never do, do you?”

  CHAPTER XIX. EUGENIA

  THERE is a pleasure in spending money, even if you are spending it on some one else’s trousseau. Rose enjoyed herse
lf, entered thoroughly into the work in which she had engaged, and looked back with scorn at the hysterical girl who had met her lover’s claim on her help with, “I can’t do it!” Careful measurements enabled her to buy clothes that would, more or less accurately, fit the other girl. Even hats — the head once measured and the face kept well in mind — were not impossible. For shoes, she took with her one of those Eugenia had worn, a slender satin thing with a sandal of perished elastic cord. She bought everything that a girl could need, from silk stockings to silver-backed brushes, and back again from tortoise-shell combs to scarlet slippers. It was a beautiful trousseau. Rose had a taxi-cab and kept it waiting and collected things in it. At the last shop she deposited the collection, whirled away and bought the trunks and bags, at the same shop where Anthony’s had been bought, whirled back with them to the last shop where everything was waiting, had everything packed, save the walking dress, hat, gloves, shoes, that Eugenia was to wear, and then gave the word that should cause her to be whirled to Malacca Wharf. As the taxi slid down St. Martin’s Lane, a sudden impulse made her stop it at the shop of Mr. Abrahamson. He had written to her, only two days before, that he had more books with the same bookplate. She might buy them for Anthony; with his own money. He wouldn’t mind. He ought to be pleased.

  The old man came from the remote recesses of piled books as she darkened the door.

  “You come to see the books,” he said; “yes?”

  “Yes; thank you for writing.”

  He laid the books on the counter, a half-dozen or so of dusty volumes in worn brown calf.

  “See,” he said, fluttering the leaves of the topmost one, “the bookplate and the name in all.”

  “Where did you get them?” Rose asked.

  “From a person of no account. Where he obtained them I shall know later.”

  “And how much?” said Rose.

  “They are not for sale,” Mr. Abrahamson told her, and quickly, to meet her fallen face; “if Miss Royal will accept them, it is old Abrahamson’s marriage gift to Miss Royal.”

  “Oh! but I can’t,” she said; “I mean it’s too kind of you; but—”

  “You will not deny an old man who has now left so few pleasures; ah I so few, so few!” He spread a sheet of brown paper and began to arrange the books on it. “The enchanted chariot waits again,” he said. “You will take them?”

  “I don’t feel it’s fair.”

  “Not fair to grant me this little pleasure! Your betrothed, he paid me that hundred pounds, you know.”

  “Did he?” said Rose, relieved by the news from a sense of obligation which she did not like. “Of course I told him when I promised about the book. If it should bring him money; but I didn’t know—”

  “He told me it had enabled him to make a priceless discovery. Priceless,” he repeated meditatively.

  “Yes,” she said, “oh yes. And I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “And you are happy? “ the old bookseller asked, looking at her across the little heap of volumes. “And he is happy? His discovery has brought him joy; not?”

  “I — yes — I think so.”

  “And all is well — none of the nonsense I saw in the crystal?”

  Rose remembered what he had seen — a dead woman.

  “Part of it has come true,” she said slowly, and shivered. “But what I saw, hasn’t.”

  “You are sure? Yes? Ah! it will come.” There must be in life what you saw in the crystal. It was I who saw amiss. Things that could not be, that should not be.”

  “I wish,” said Rose abruptly, “you’d just tell me one thing. Did what you saw in the crystal end happily? Did everything come right?”

  “I saw all wrong,” he said, tying the string of the parcel. “I saw the impossible, the not to be believed. I saw death cheated by the wit of man. And no man’s wit can juggle with death and life, Miss Royal. Think of it no more. You love and you are beloved, and this is your marriage gift from the old man who knew that love was on the way to you. No, no; I myself will place the so worthless offering in the enchanted chariot of the Princess.”

  He carried the parcel out, and Rose, at the door of the taxi as he turned from placing the books within, gave him her hand, and on a quick impulse, both hands. A lingering errand boy with a basket was much intrigued by the little group, the dusty old man in his worn black, the brilliant young lady in the blue muslin and the hat of flowers.

  “The God of my fathers protect you,” he said. She gave him that smile of hers; it was all she could give him, and at that moment it cost her much.

  “Poor child,” he said to himself, as he turned back to his wilderness of books; “poor child, poor child! Yet the end is peace.”

  Rose, whirling once more in the enchanted chariot, was the battlefield of what used to be called “a thousand conflicting emotions.” Strongest, perhaps, was the sense that she had not, after all, been weak. She had been able to respond to her lover’s claims on her. She was doing what he wished her to do. And so the taxi whirled on to Malacca Wharf.

  Eugenia, still in the blue gown, was seated in Anthony’s chair, holding, it seemed, a little court. Bats and Wilton were on each side. Rose was aware of a new quality in the picture before it broke up at her entrance. The two men came forward to take the parcels she carried.

  “Take them all into the next room,” she said briskly. “Come, Eugenia, you must change your dress at once. The taxi’s waiting outside. There’s none too much time.” And Eugenia came obediently.

  It was rather annoying, after all the trouble Rose had taken, that Eugenia did not like her dress, and found the shoes clumsy. But the silk stockings she liked, and the white cloth coat and the mushroom hat and the scarf of dark blue chiffon.

  Rose caught Eugenia’s eyes in the glass; they met her own with a troubled wistful expression.

  “What is it?” she asked a little impatiently; “aren’t the gloves the right size? What is it?”

  “You are sure,” Eugenia said, “that it is so that ladies dress? You would not buy me clothes except such as ladies wear?”

  “Of course not,” said Rose. “I’ve bought you absolutely the best things money can buy.”

  “Whose money?”

  “His money.” Rose wished she could have given any other answer. “I’ve bought you two trunks full of the nicest things I could find.”

  “Ah, that is so kind,” said the other, “but you know I have a beautiful trousseau of my own. It needed not to buy so many.”

  “But if you do not know where your trousseau is?” Rose could not help saying.

  A troubled look clouded the dark eyes. “But I do know,” she began. “No, I mean you know best. Thank you, dear Rose, for all the trouble you take, for all your kindness. I am ready now. We go?”

  Anthony met them at the journey’s end. Wilton and Bats were on each side of Eugenia, and he got a word with Rose.

  “Lady Blair was awfully upset,” he told her. “She’s gone to bed. Esther and Linda, I had to tell all of them then, of course, they’re frightfully interested. Best get Eugenia to bed as quickly as you can. I hope to God bringing her to Drelincourt’s the right thing. It seemed so this morning. But now I don’t know.”

  He looked harassed and old.

  “I’ve got some books for you,” Rose said, rather than say nothing; “old books that belonged to your uncle. Mr. Abrahamson got them for me for a wedding present. Wasn’t it sweet of him?”

  “Do you know,” said Anthony, who had only heard her first words, “I sometimes wish I had never seen a book, never learned to read. Yes, I brought the big motor. Keep her warm; these evenings are chilly.”

  “I got the clothes for her,” said Rose.

  “Oh!” he said; “were they what she wanted?”

  That was Rose’s reward for the long, well-organized, well-executed shopping.

  “She’s not seen them all yet,” she answered, and with that they reached the motor.

  “Another little train,”
said Eugenia.

  Sounds of laughter and talk came from the open window of the billiard-room and struck on Rose’s ears with a curiously desolating sensation. She had been through these pains and terrors, and these, her friends, had been merry and jolly all the time. She did not know what sort of welcome she had expected at Drelincourt, but not this. She felt as children feel who are sent to bed in disgrace and hear “the others “ laughing and talking just as though nothing had happened.

  They went up the steps, and Wilkes met them at the door.

  “You’ll come straight to bed,” said Rose, taking the hand of the little white-coated figure, and drawing it through her arm; “this way.”

  She led Eugenia to the stairs, too full of the desire to play perfectly the part of Anthony’s guardian angel to pause even to put the commonplace question, “Which room?” If she thought about it at all, she supposed that she would, find a maid waiting on the soft-carpeted corridor. But no maid was there. Rose turned to the right, intending to go to her own room and ring. Her door was the fifth in the corridor. But Eugenia stopped suddenly at the third door and turned the handle. It was locked.

  “Not there,” said Rose; come to my room. Then we’ll ring and find out where your room is.”

  “This is my room,” said Eugenia, resisting the gentle pressure of Rose’s arm.

  “No, no,” said Rose. “Come, it isn’t far.” And Eugenia’s resistance yielded.

  The maid who ought to have been waiting came in answer to Rose’s ringing. The room prepared for Eugenia was next to Rose’s; a wardrobe had been moved, and a door was revealed connecting the two rooms, and beyond Rose’s room was a sitting-room in which a table was whitely spread. Supper appeared here, appeared before Eugenia had even removed her hat and coat. The two girls ate together at the table by the window.

  Rose watched Eugenia eat chicken and sip champagne, and wondered how she could have been silly enough to shrink from this gentle charming little person, who ate and drank heartily as a child and daintily as a bird.

  Supper over, she leaned across the corner of the table and took Rose’s hand caressingly.

  “I feel I shall love you very much,” she said; “you are so brave and strong and beautiful. And so kind, so very kind. But I feel that you cannot love me because I am forbidden to speak. He has told me that I must say nothing that is real. And I do not know how to speak; I am stifled with all this mystery.”