Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “And you and he are of one blood, you say?” Anthony asked, suddenly seeing light in the great darkness.

  “Yes, he and I, but not I and you; oh, my dear love, not I and you!”

  She wept on his shoulder.

  “Then the way is plain,” said he, holding her softly. “I shall go where you have been. I shall — Eugenia — you were to have worked the charm for your lover when he had worked it for you. You knew’ it all — if you have forgotten, I will teach it you again. Will you do this? Then at least you can never say that there is any gulf between us.”

  “It is a terrible sacrifice that you ask me to let you make,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said simply, “but I want you more than anything that can be sacrificed.”

  “And everything that I care for in myself says No. It is not — oh, Anthony, don’t you understand?”

  “It may be wrong,” he said doggedly. “I don’t know. Yes — I do know. God would not put any secret in our way, and then forbid us to find it out.”

  “But to use it?”

  “Well, if it is,” he said, “am I nothing to you? I would go through hell for you. Will you do nothing for me? I tell you you shall do it. You are mine and you shall do it.”

  “I must do what you command,” she said, and trembled.

  “What? Then I command you to marry me tomorrow,” he said, and a sudden flush of triumph dashed his pale face.

  “I must do it if you say so. I love you,” she said. “But I could not live afterwards. The first moment you left me alone, I should find a way out.”

  “There is no way out,” he said. “You are safe from disease and old age. Let me take you as you are.”

  “I must do as you say,” she told him again.

  “Then I say do this. Make me your peer, your equal. And whatever terrors the future may have we shall share them together.”

  She wrung her hands in an agony.

  “No, no, no,” she cried, “don’t make me do it! Let me take the antidote rather. It would not kill me.”

  “If I did,” he said slowly, “and it did not kill you, you would be old, old, old, like Lady Blair.”

  “Then at least I could die,” she said, like one who perceives a loophole not undesired.

  “You are going to live,” he said strongly; “you are going to live for me. And I am going to live for you.” But she trembled and shivered.

  “That room,” she said. “That horrible vault. I could not face it. The floor was up and we were cut off from every one. The machinery needed a strong man. Were you suddenly faint, overcome? Did you try to get help and were met by that barricade, and died before you could get help? Was that it, Tony?”

  He covered her wide eyes with his hand.

  “Hush!” he said. “We are just a man and woman who love each other. All the rest that has happened is less than nothing. Only you think that there is a gulf between us. I know of none. But if there is one I am going to leap it. And you are going to help me. And it shall not be in that room. It shall be out here, in the moonlight. The full moon helps, you know. It must have been a full moon when you were put to sleep. At the full moon. You promise?”

  “I must promise if you command,” she said again. And even then he was not warned.

  He clasped her in his arms, and once more the world spun in a wild splendour of stars and flowers.

  CHAPTER XXII. THE END

  WILLIAM BATS, leaping from a whirring taxi-cab at London Bridge Station, almost knocked down a hurrying stranger who, turning, showed the face of a friend and became Mr. Abrahamson.

  “Sorry!” said Bats. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Abrahamson; I’m in a frightful hurry to catch the 8.50. There’s something wrong at Drelincourt. Excuse me.”

  Mr. Abrahamson walked beside him into the station. “ I will escort you if I do not intrude,” he said, and followed Bats to the booking-office, and when Bats had taken a ticket, Mr. Abrahamson took one also.

  “You find first your train,” said he. “ Then I have a little talk with you.”

  Bats found an empty carriage. Abrahamson spoke to an official. Next moment the carriage door was locked on the two men.

  “You are going my way? “ Bats asked, surprised.

  “I go your way,” said Abrahamson. “ You go to Drelincourt and you say there is something wrong. May I ask in sympathy if our fortunate physiologist is ill?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bats shortly. He was in no mood for talk.

  “You go down then,” said Abrahamson, with a sudden kindly interest,44 for the only real reason, the unreasoning impulse. I also. It is the only guide. Not the reasonable impulse which you by analysis can explain and justify, but the one which you can neither justify nor explain. The impulse that permits not itself to be analysed and explained, only recognized — and, if you are wise, followed.”

  The train started.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have those impulses,” said Bats, interested in his turn. “I am going because I have had a telegram. It arrived last night and I did not find it.”

  “It is from him? “ Abrahamson asked.

  “There is no reason why I should not tell you,” Bats began, but the other interrupted.

  “Yet you say to yourself it is no business of mine, and that I ask too many questions. My young friend, Nathan Abrahamson does not ask idle questions. I know many things. I have foreseen much. You and I are perhaps on our guard because we do not know what the other knows. Yet I know you know much, for Miss Royal told me that it is you who transcribe the cypher. And I have attained my knowledge by another path. And I am now in this train to go to]the young Anthony to warn him, if there should still be time.”

  “Of what?”

  “The unreasoning impulse I call him,” Abrahamson went on. “Perhaps it is another name for what my fathers were used to say, ‘Warned of God in a dream.’ The impulse came yesterday at noon. It came last night, very strong and clear, but I would not listen. And this morning, for the third time. And now I go, and I fear I have been false to the light.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Bats.

  “Once before in this matter I was warned. That time I obeyed. I went to Miss Royal. I made her gaze in the crystal. I warned her. But I did not tell her all.

  I had pity. If I had told her.... But I was false to the light.”

  “Miss Royal’s engagement is broken off,” said Bats, without feeling irrelevant, “and I will show you the telegram. It is from Lady Blair who keeps Drelincourt’s house.”

  The Jew took the bit of pink paper and read: —

  To William Bats, Esq.,

  Falstaffe Chambers,

  Dean Street, London, W.

  Please come at once you must come there is something different you must come to-night motor if there is no train do not fail most urgent come I am afraid.

  CECILY BLAIR.

  “And you received it?” he said.

  “Half an hour ago.”

  “There was no further telegram this morning. No?”

  “There wasn’t time. I left at a quarter-past eight.”

  “We will talk no more,” said the Jew. “Meditation is best, to clear and calm the mind, to cleanse the courage and make endurance strong. Mr. Bats, I fear that this train is carrying you into the land of sorrow. Let us meditate in silence.”

  He closed his eyes and spoke no more.

  Meditation was, in that hour, the last thing Bats wanted. He resolutely opened the book he carried and tried to think that he understood what he was reading, and whether he understood or no, the book served its purpose. It was an anodyne that he wanted, and to the Western mind meditation is no anodyne.

  There was no carriage to be had at the station. The two men walked over the fields and through the park, Mr. Abrahamson still in meditation and Bats intolerably anxious not to meditate.

  They were met on the terrace by Wilkes, and as soon as they saw his face they knew.

  “Yes, sir, the worst as could be, sir. Po
or Sir Anthony and the young lady and the child. All three of them dead, sir. They seem to have been at some play acting or another, and accidents happen so quick. But Lady Blair, she requested me not to enlarge, sir, but just to show you up as soon as you arrived and she will tell you herself. You was expected last night; I wish to God you had, if I may say so, sir. This gentleman to wait in the library? Quite so.”

  Wilkes led the way to Lady Blair’s sitting-room, and Bats went into a darkened chamber where a little heap of dark clothes cowered in the corner of a sofa. The maid who sat in a chair near by got up and went as Bats came in.

  “Will you ring, sir, please, if anything’s wanted,” she said, lowering her respectful voice to the key of the darkened room.

  Lady Blair’s voice sounded changed, harsh and low, such strange breaks and hesitancies.

  “I want to tell you how it happened and I am very weak. Don’t interrupt with questions. I woke in the night; the child was calling ‘Eugenia’ again and again. I got up to go to him. My door was locked on the outside. I called out to the child but he did not hear me, or else he would not answer. And I heard him go down and I heard the French window open. And I looked out and called to him. But he would not listen. He was going straight to them.”

  “But where were they?”

  “Down by the lake I saw them. It was a still night, very moonlight.... I read my first love-letter by moonlight,” she said, and stopped.

  “Don’t give way,” he urged her. “Tell me. Go on. You saw the child...”

  “They were down by the lake. I could not see who it was, but it was they. I know now. There was a white patch on the ground, and candles all round it, and some one in white moving about. And the child went through the shrubbery in his night-gown.”

  Again she paused.

  “I don’t understand being able to tell you all this,” she said wonderingly.

  “And then?”

  “The child got quite close to them. He was running, and I suppose one of the candles caught his night-dress, because there was a flare, and then it went out suddenly, and there was a sound of water, and everything was quite quiet, just the white thing lying there and the candles, nothing else. And I could do nothing, nothing. From the first moment I knew what they were doing. They were trying to make him like her. You’ve seen all the things, the things that were found when you found her. They tell me there was a lambskin and an altar. And she was trying to change him into what she was. But she couldn’t. Oh, thank God, she couldn’t!”

  “But why didn’t you ring?” asked Bats, “rouse the house — do something?”

  “I thought you knew,” she said simply. “When I first got to the window and saw the white things by the lake there was a sort of numb blankness, and then I watched and felt I couldn’t move from watching; and when I felt I must move, I couldn’t. I shall never move again.”

  The shawl fell back from her face, and his eyes, now grown used to the dim light, saw that it was all twisted and crooked.

  “The gardeners found them, and they sent up to me, and my maid sent for the doctor. And he came and told me Anthony was dead. Me? Oh, the doctor says it’s paralysis, and I shan’t live long. Thank God for that,” she said, “and they found Anthony dead and the girl and the child were in the lake. The swans were scolding and flapping and they went to see what it was. I told them to leave everything for you to see. I am alive still, in my brain. I wish I’d been able to go altogether and to go before he did. You were his friend, you will see to everything. Oh, one thing more. He told me sometime he had made a will, leaving you something. I wanted to say... don’t refuse it... because of any silly scruples. I want everything to be as he wanted it to be. Good-bye! I’m glad somebody’s going to be happy. You’ll be good to that Rose girl. I shan’t see you again. Ring for my maid, do you mind? Goodbye!”

  Bats went out into the sunlight and down to the lake. There everything was green and sparkling and the blue water laughed to the blue sky.

  On the grassy promontory that jutted into the lake lay quiet things covered with white cloths. There was just enough breeze to lift the corners a little and lay them softly down again. There were the lightless candles, there was the altar; there on the grass in bands of white cloth fastened by long nails to the grass was the sign that had been traced on the floor of that dark room where he had found the lady of Anthony’s life, in the death-sleep. All was, here in the sun and the glowing summer life, even as it had been in that dark and secret chamber.

  Some one lifted a corner of a sheet and he saw the face of his friend. He was glad afterwards that he had seen it with that look upon it. They replaced the sheet, and Abrahamson and another man came to him out of a group that had in it the gardeners, Wilkes and the same local constable who had come up that day to sell tickets for the fête.

  “This gentleman is the doctor,” said Mr. Abrahamson; “he will tell you what he thinks.”

  And the doctor told, with many dull words, how the unfortunate Baronet had been rehearsing for a play, something Greek, most likely, the doctor thought, probably a pastoral drama to which he would have invited the villagers, and the child’s clothes had caught fire and the lady had plunged with him into the lake. “They were extricated from the fatal stream near the bridge,” he said. “Poor Sir Anthony! He was probably playing the part of a dead Greek lying in state, and some sudden shock, — perhaps the child screamed, — caused a cessation of the heart’s action. I shall be, of course, happy to give the necessary certificate. Very sad, yes — very. In the midst of life we are in death. Yes, yes. I will call on my way home and see the undertaker,” he said, “unless you would like to call in a firm from town.”

  “I will see to all that, thank you,” said Bats. “You are sure he is dead? There must be no funeral till there is no least possible doubt that he is really dead. It might be a trance, mightn’t it? “ Bats put it to the doctor and hung on the answer. To have his friend back, safe as of old, and all this like a dream when one wakes; the thought had but time to brush his heart before he remembered what life would mean to Anthony, after that dream.

  “Dead? “ The man would have laughed but for the professional sadness demanded by the occasion. As it was he choked the laugh into a cough. “I am afraid there is no doubt about that,” he said. “Unfortunately, or fortunately, I know my business. I have heard of trances, my dear sir, but they are things doctors do not come across.”

  “Have no fear,” said Abrahamson softly, “your friend is dead.”

  The old Jew, of his larger and deeper knowledge, pieced the thing together for Bats when the lake-side had been cleared of the strange pitiful show and they paced there together in the sunshine.

  “As I see it,” he said, “the child missed his friend in the night and followed her out. Perhaps he came at the moment when life in your friend was extinguished, before the woman began the incantations and the needle-prickings of the destroyers of death and disease. And the appeal of the child and the flames caught her from even her lover and she and the child perished together.”

  “Then,” said Bats, “if the child had not run out... if she had not left Anthony to go to the child... he would have been alive now. She would have succeeded.”

  “No,” said the other, weighing the word, “and no and no. She could not. Waste no regrets, my Bats. The child came with an angel to bring him to them. But for the coming of the child, she would have lived to know that she had killed her lover, and lacked the power to bring him to life. She had surrendered all her will to him before she passed into her own death-sleep. How then could she control the powers of death and hell as he had done for her? They died in ignorance; that was the best that life could have given them.”

  “But,” said Bats wretchedly, “if you had come in time — if I had had the telegram last night.”

  “It all makes nothing,” he said. “I saw not that before. But now I see. She could not have lived; the child could not have lived. Death let them go as a cat lets go a mouse,
to snatch at them again. Man is such a little thing and he plays so foolishly among the giant greatnesses. Disease he can conquer, yes, and old age, but Death has many arrows in his quiver. She died because her allotted time was come, as you and I will die. Disease and old age? Yes, these he reckoned with, conquered them with infinite labour and the arrogant theft of forbidden things. God is not mocked. The child and the maiden were safe from sickness and from age, but who could secure her from the elemental forces, the lightning and the deep waters? It could not have been otherwise. Thus it must be with those who are bold to lift the curtain and adventure among forbidden things.”

  “It seems such waste, such stupid senseless waste,” said Bats. “His great thoughts, his fine body that loved life, all the friendship, the aspiration, the love... all thrown away, gone, wasted for ever.”

  “Who says that it is wasted?” said the Jew. “It is his body that has served its turn and is cast away. The great thoughts, the friendship, the aspiration, the love; can we say that these die? Nay, rather, these shall not die. These shall live in the Courts of the Lord, for ever.”

  THE END

  THE INCREDIBLE HONEYMOON

  One of E. Nesbit’s last novels for adults, The Incredible Honeymoon, appeared in 1916, published by Harper and Brothers of New York in 1916, though it did not find an English publication until 1921. By this time, Nesbit was dealing with depression over the death of her husband, as well as declining sales of her books. However, the novel is surprisingly lighthearted, a pleasant romantic tale following the travels of the adventurous and kindhearted Edward who takes a scenic tour of England, eventually meeting the troubled, but likeminded Katherine. Edward falls for Katherine, who is eager to leave her domineering aunt, but wary of marrying someone she hardly knows, and, in fact, her independent nature leads her to question the institution of marriage. She at first agrees to travel with Edward as brother and sister, but complications develop during their idyllic sojourn.