Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “You have been ill,” said Rose, pressing her hand; “everything will seem quite different when you are well again.”

  “That is what they say when people are — what is it? insane, is it not?” Eugenia spoke with a sudden terror in her eyes. “You don’t mean I’m that?”

  “No, no,” Rose reassured; “only you are tired with your illness, and of course everything seems different.”

  “Yes,” said Eugenia, looking around her, “everything is different. This room is different.”

  “The doctor said you were not to talk too much.”

  “Ah, that you all say,” said Eugenia, with a movement half-petulant, half-despairing. “Well, I talk no more. I go to my bed, sweet Rose. And to-morrow I must talk with Mr. Drelincourt, and tell him that I am not ill, and that I cannot live in silence. I choke in it. I stifle. I want to tell you everything, dear Rose. May I not tell you?”

  Rose had many weaknesses, but in this moment she yielded to none of them.

  “No,” she said very decidedly. “Of course I’d love to hear anything you’d care to tell me, but not if it’s bad for you. The doctor said, don’t talk. And you mustn’t talk. Come, I’ll help you to bed.”

  Rose joined the party below. They were full of polite questions for a few moments; but soon it was plain to Rose that their interest in her journey, and in the newly discovered relative, was only a matter of politeness, mingled with curiosity. When they found that she had nothing to add to the story Anthony had already told them, their interest flagged. Lord Alfriston was still of the house-party. Could it be only the day before yesterday that he had covered his request that he might be asked to stay by a quotation about a Mr. Whitehead? It seemed impossible that one could have lived in so little time, so much. He and Esther and Linda and Mullinger seemed in this little time to have, on their part, also lived much. They seemed to have cemented themselves into a quartette which Rose could only contemplate from the outside. Mr. St. Maur had gone; Lady Blair was invisible; Anthony was deep in talk with Bats and Wilton. The three had given her but the briefest greeting when she entered the drawing-room. And now the quartette, having done its duty by her, fell back on allusions to little things that had happened after her going away. She was “out of it.” So quickly, so completely, one dropped out. She left the group of four and went to the window and looked forth. The moonlight was casting black shadows of the vases on the terrace. Beyond it, poplars stood tall and sentimental.

  Somewhere to the right a late nightingale sang fitfully. The voices behind her sounded detached, far away, like the voices you hear in the garden of an hotel where you know nobody.

  “No one really wants me,” she told herself; “not even Anthony.” And as she said it a voice behind her said —

  “You’re very tired. Why don’t you go to bed?”

  It was Bats, of course. Anthony and the doctor were still in earnest talk at the window farthest from that where Rose stood.

  “I’m choking; I’m stifling,” said Rose suddenly. “I wish nothing ever happened. Oh, how different everything was before Anthony got his money. What’s all this mystery? What’s — No, I don’t mean to worry. Only everything is detestable. What’s going to become of her?” she said. But at the back of her mind the question was, “ What is going to become of me?”

  She stretched out her arms towards the night and breathed deeply, as though indeed she felt stifled.

  “I hate all mysteries,” she said; “ and I hate you, Billy, for catching me with my guard off! You’re always doing it. Go away. Send Anthony to me. It’s a dignified position, isn’t it?” she said, laughing drearily,44 to have to send for him? Oh, go away! You make me say things I hate myself for saying.”

  She turned her face from him and looked steadily out into the moonlight. When next she turned her face it was to look into Anthony’s.

  “I couldn’t come before,” he said; “I was trying to make the doctor understand.”

  “She says,” Rose told him, disdaining to accept or reply to his excuse, “that she must see you. That she wants me to love her and that I cannot while she is forbidden to talk freely to me. Don’t you think it’s rather silly to limit her in this way? Why not let everything go on naturally? I should have thought talk would be a relief.”

  “One doesn’t know what to do or think,” said Anthony wearily; “but I thought I’d better not talk to her again, by ourselves, I mean. I thought you wouldn’t like it. And I did think it best for her not to talk. Good Heavens, Rose!” he said, with sudden heat, “don’t you see that she’ll go and tell every one that I’m engaged to her? And it doesn’t seem fair to her to go warning everybody that they mustn’t believe a word she says.”

  “The mistake was bringing her here,” said Rose. “If I’d only not been a coward! It’s simply insane to pitchfork that poor girl and her delusions into the middle of a lot of strangers. I ought to have kept her at Malacca.”

  “It’s no use crying over spilt milk,” he said; “she’s here. And we must make the best of it. By the way, did anything happen — before I came, I mean? Because when I arrived Lady Blair had gone to bed with a headache. She got up on purpose to see me.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” said Rose. “I wasn’t here, you know. I was with her — and you,” she added more graciously.

  “Of course you were. I must ask the others.”

  “Then good night,” said she; “the others are just a little bit too much for me to-night. I’m tired, Tony.” She gave the words a note of appeal.

  “Of course you are, my brave, clever, sensible Rose,” he said remorsefully. “It’s my fault. But if you knew—”

  “Oh, I know,” she said, made herself smile at him, and went.

  He crossed to Esther and put his question about Lady Blair.

  “I don’t know,” she said; “she seemed depressed all day. And the evening before, too. I think she was annoyed about the straw.”

  “The straw?”

  “Where you’d been packing, you know. And it hadn’t been cleared up. She let one of the footmen have it about leaving the room in such a state. I suppose things like that do upset you when you’re old and when you’ve always had footmen to do every little thing. But, Anthony, do tell me about this new relation you’ve discovered.”

  He told his careful, guarded little lies.

  “What a rum world it is, though,” was her comment.

  “Fancy going to see an interesting case and then it turns out to be your own flesh and blood! I hope she’s all right again now?”

  “It was a curious sort of seizure,” said Anthony; “she has not quite recovered her memory. Treat her like a child who’s forbidden to tell a secret, will you? I’m afraid if she taxes her brain by trying to recall things—”

  Rose, deep in one of those dreams wherein Anthony looked as he bad looked in the crystal, and spoke as he had never in this world spoken, and kissed her as one kisses the goddess who benignly stoops with unhoped-for respondings, woke to feel lips still on hers, a butterfly touch, instantly withdrawn; Eugenia’s touch.

  “I couldn’t help it,” she said, “you looked so pretty asleep.”

  Rose rubbed her eyes. “And you,” she said, “how pretty you are. What a pretty dress. Where did you get it?”

  “It was in the room beside mine,” she said. “It is a little dressy for morning, but it is mine and it fits me. I could not find any of the others.”

  It was a blue silk dress, very full in the skirt, very pointed as to the bodice, with trimmings of black and white, and a collar of white lace. It fitted Eugenia as though it had been made for her.

  “It is a French chest of drawers,” she explained. “The lowest drawer is not with a lock. It appears part of the case. The other drawers are locked. The dress is new; still in its silver paper. I have never worn it. But it was not well packed.”

  She smoothed its creases carefully.

  “It was in your room?”

  “Yes. Next to where
I slept. The door was bolted, and they had set a wardrobe over it. But the maid who called me moved it. And I helped. You see now how I am strong.”

  Rose dressed with the miserable certainty that Eugenia’s brain had been touched by the strange happenings that had befallen her. She must tell Anthony. It was not safe. The girl ought to be in an asylum. Her heart welcomed the thought while repelling it.

  She was late for breakfast. Only Esther was there. The others were out on the terrace. As Esther poured the tea Rose slid to the window and looked out. She could see a glint of blue, surrounded. A glint of pink, solitary. Linda in the pink and white gown — how fresh she had kept it — was leaning on the balustrade alone. All the men were surrounding the blue silk with the black and white trimmings.

  “Your new friend has a way with her,” said Esther, handing tea.

  “Yes,” said Rose at the side-board, hesitating in a choice of foods for which she had no desire; “isn’t she beautiful?”

  “They all seem to think so,” said Miss Raven. “And so do I,” she added hastily. “But she’s very helpless. She couldn’t do anything for herself at brekker. Her bread had to be buttered for her, and her marmalade put on her plate, and her peach peeled. She makes me think of the ladies who were toasts, don’t you know —

  ‘That regal indolent air she had,

  So confident of her charm.’”

  “Does Lord Alfriston admire her too?” Rose asked, coming back with something she could not have named on a plate.

  “It looks like it,” said Esther. “But it looks like it With all of them; even with Saint Anthony, which is absurd. Q.E.D.”

  Rose wondered why she had only just begun to notice that Esther was a little vulgar. Esther thought it strange that she had never before perceived Rose to be malicious.

  There was a silence. Then —

  “She treats the place as if it belonged to her,” Esther said, “and the people too,” she added.

  “She’s an invalid, you know,” Rose made herself say, and tried to feel loyal; “they’re always privileged.”

  Esther had put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands.

  “Things never stay as you want them,” she said. “It was all so jolly, and a new person does change things so, don’t you think? If I had my way I’d never make another new acquaintance. They upset things so.”

  “I didn’t find Lord Alfriston upsetting; did you?” Rose asked.

  “No; but then he’s just as if he’d always been one of the Septet, much more than Tony ever was,” said Esther.

  And this time it was she who thought Rose vulgar, and Rose who thought her malicious. And another silence fell.

  Rose was surprised to find Esther’s hand in hers; Esther’s face averted.

  “Rose,” she said, “do help me. Do keep her away if you can. I’ve never been so happy in my life as I’ve been here. You’re all right. Everything’s printed and bound and indexed for you. But my life’s in manuscript, and she’ll go through it with a red pencil. Yes, I know it’s not like me, Rose. But I’m afraid of her. I wish she hadn’t come.”

  “She’s had,” said Rose, consciously tactful, “a long illness. I expect she’s frightfully glad to get out and talk to any one. You know, the bird-out-of-a-cage feeling.”

  “And why does she wear fancy dress in the morning?”. Esther asked. “It isn’t fair. Besides being silly. And look at Linda, completely out of it. And only yesterday she was—”

  “Don’t be a goose,” said Rose, and went out to join the others.

  Eugenia in the blue silk looked as out of place in the group of men as a tropical bird in a pigeon-loft. She smiled to greet Rose, but Rose saw behind the smile a tired anxiety.

  “Ah!” she said, catching at Rose’s hand. “Now my old friend you are here, I must leave my new friends. We have so much to say, so much to arrange, is it not?”

  And she led Rose towards the house. The moment they were out of earshot of the group she turned feverishly to Rose. “You come to deliver me from a dream. I understand nothing. I cannot bear it. You must find him. Tell him I must speak with him. I cannot live so — in a dream that I do not understand. Come, this way,” she said, dragging Rose towards the library. “In the little room here we can talk with no interruptions.” She went quickly to the Empire room.

  “You explored this morning then?” Rose said for something to say while she was thinking what to do.

  But Eugenia took no notice. She loosed Rose’s hand when the room was reached, and said —

  “Go now. Tell him to come now. I cannot understand, and I cannot bear it. Yesterday should have been my wedding day. This I tell you, because I would not have you think me unreasonable. I wait for him here.”

  “And you must go,” Rose told Tony two minutes later, when she had overtaken him with Bats walking silently in the rose-garden; “it’s no use. She says you told her not to talk. And that she doesn’t understand anything and she can’t bear it.”

  “You know what I told you,” said Anthony, as Bats fell behind to smell the roses; “she thinks—”

  “I know,” said Rose; “you’ll have to tell her.”

  “You send me? You tell me to go to her? Rose, it would be better if I went away.”

  “Nonsense!” said Rose briskly; “don’t be a coward. It’s got to be faced.”

  Anthony could find no words to explain to Rose what he knew and she did not know — what it was that had to be faced.

  “All right,” he said lamely, “I suppose I’d better get it over.”

  “Much better,” said Rose encouragingly, and went to join Mr. Bats among the roses.

  CHAPTER XX. FIFTY YEARS AGO

  THE sun shone full on the window where Eugenia stood waiting. The blue silk spread round her like a full blue rose. She made no move to meet Anthony, only her eyes were on him as he closed the door and came across the room to her. When he reached her she smiled and said, “At last.”

  “You wanted to see me,” he said stupidly.

  “And you; did not you wish to see me?” she asked, as with perfect knowledge of the answer, “Of course I did,” he said.

  “Only that?” she said. “Only so?” and challenged him with her pretty eyes.

  He could find no weapons save words to meet her challenge. So he said very awkwardly: “I mustn’t. It wouldn’t be fair. There are things I must tell you.”

  “I forgive them all,” she said. “You need not tell me. I know you could do nothing I should not forgive.”

  “I wanted to wait till you were quite strong,” he said, “but—”

  “I am strong. It is as you told me. A little weakness after the sleep, such as the butterfly has when first it is born, then the lightness and the confidence of a perfect creature for ever.”

  “I did not tell you that,” he said.

  “You have lost your memory while I slept,” she said, “but I will bring it back. It will come back after —

  Anthony, can’t you send all those people away, so that I may do for you what you did for me?”

  “I have done nothing for you,” he said, “except to awaken you. And you can do nothing for me.”

  She trembled and turned pale.

  “What is it?” she whispered. “Anthony, I am afraid. You are changed. You do not love me now? Has the great change made me so that you do not love me? No, no, no. It is not possible. Say that you love me, dear. I am afraid. Say it. You do love me still?”

  “I mustn’t say so,” was as near as he could go to the plump negative to whose utterance he tried to nerve himself. “I don’t know how to tell you — don’t — oh, my God — I can’t tell you!”

  She had come to him, put arms about his neck, laid her cheek to his. “Dearest,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except our love. Have you lost all your money? Is it that? Do you think I care? Don’t be afraid to tell your Eugenia who loves you.”

  “You don’t love me” he said. And it sounded almost like
the jesting lie of a lover. “Listen,” he went on, “sit down here on the window seat and let me hold your hands. So. Now tell me, how long is it since you were put to sleep?”

  “Two days, no, three,” she answered. “I thought that. But you say it was longer.”

  “Much longer. And I am not the man who put you to sleep.”

  “But Anthony—”

  “Listen,” he said, and expounded as calmly as he could that theory of his about his personality being impressed on her mind in the moment of her awakening.

  “But that’s nonsense, dear,” she said gently; “you are you and I am I, as we always were. I do not understand what it is that you want me to believe. Or why.

  We both know the truth. Why try to make me believe lies?”

  Her soft eyes caressed him; her hands fluttered in his hands like doves. It was harder than he had thought it would be. Yet he had known it would be hard. He looked at her, and her eyes filled with tears as they met the passionate sad tenderness of his.

  “What is it?” she breathed; “my love, my love! What is it?”

  He was no nearer making her understand that he was not her love. “See,” he said, with a sudden inspiration; “let us suppose that I have forgotten everything — that I do not remember you — only since you awakened. Will you tell me, as if I did not know, who you are, and who I am? And about the sleep?”

  “But yes,” she said; “I see now. You said there were risks, but I did not understand it was for you or I would never — My poor Anthony. You have forgotten all? Everything?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Who am I? Who are you?”

  “You are Anthony Drelincourt,” she said patiently, as one humouring a child, “and I am your sweetheart Eugenia Delmar. You found out the secret of the lasting life, and we shut ourselves up in the little vault.”

  “When?” he asked eagerly.