Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “You’ve hit it, Mrs. Jilks,” he said—”the lady. If she comes before I come back — but I don’t think she will — beg her to wait and say I’ll be back by noon. Come on, Charles.”

  He went and sat in Regents Park and tried to fancy himself once more in the deep peace of the Welsh Hills till Charles had a difference of opinion with a Cocker spaniel and dreams were set to flight.

  He went back, hoping against hope that he might find her there. She was not there, nor did she come. Why should she? In the middle of the afternoon came a letter; it had no beginning. It said:

  I had a stiff and stifling interview with my aunt — the one Charles came to life under the knees of in the cart. She was as horrid as any one could possibly be. She reproached me for marrying a pauper, and said I’d better have stuck to the piano-tuner unless you were he in disguise! I was as dumb as a mule — indeed, I almost felt my ears beginning to lie back, as mules’ ears do when they’ve decided they aren’t going to, whatever it is. Presently I got it out of her that Aunt Alice’s attack is very serious. If she gets over it she’s to go to Switzerland; there’s an old school friend out there that she loves, and who wants frightfully to have her there. So then I shall be able to come back, and we’ll go out together again and see the world. You won’t worry about me, will you? Because this house is quite the lap of. And you know that I wouldn’t have broken off our mock-wedding tour for anything in the world except for her — because . . . but you know all that. Give my love to Charles.

  “Yours sincerely” was crossed out, and a postscript added:

  I don’t know how to end this letter. I won’t end it. I’ll just put something at the end to show that this isn’t the end — of our times together, I mean.

  (To be continued.)

  He thought it the prettiest, wittiest ending in the world.

  His room was neat as a new pin, as Mrs. Jilks had promised. The roses and the lilies made it what Mrs. Jilks called a perfect bower. “Any one could tell,” she assured him, “that it was the young lady you was expecting. Why, it’s like a wedding already! She’s sure to come soon, sir, and I’ll have the kettle on the boil and make her a nice cup of tea the minute she comes.”

  But she did not come, and he had the nice cup of tea alone, unless you count Charles, who ate seven large doughnuts — seven for sixpence — in seven great gulps — with no resultant modification of his natural high spirits. Another day went by, and another, and she did not come. Edward realized that she would not come, and that he had been a fool ever to half hope that she would.

  He drugged the empty hours with shopping. He wandered about London buying things — the oddest things. He bought a pair of cut-crystal lusters and the skin of a leopard, a papier-mâché fire-screen and a string of amber beads six feet long. He sent the amber to her in a sandalwood box cunningly carved and inlaid with ivory and ebony and silver. That was on the first day. Her second letter thanked him for it:

  How did you know that yellow was my fortunate color? I was born under the sign of the lion, so a fortune-teller told me, so all yellow stones are lucky for me. I am so sorry that you have to be in London in the summer. Wouldn’t you like to go into the country? Auntie is a little better.

  So then he went out and bought the topaz brooch that he had thought of buying when he first saw it in that jolly little shop in Vigo Street. And he sent her that with the topaz necklace he had bought in Warwick.

  They are beautiful [she wrote] and I love them, but you are not to be extravagant. I should like to write you a long letter, but auntie gets restless if I’m not sitting beside her. She’s really getting better, but I’m afraid it will be several weeks . . . and she keeps asking me not to leave her. I wish I could ask you to come here, to see me. There are lots of odd minutes, when she’s asleep. But my other aunt would certainly be hateful to you — and I couldn’t stand that.

  Again and again he asked himself why he had promised, voluntarily promised, not to call at the house. What had he been thinking of? He had been thinking of her, of course; he had wanted to make things easy for her. He had at least made them very hard for himself. He missed her every hour of the day; he would not have believed that he could have missed anything so much.

  The time crawled by; the hours were long and the days interminable. Even buying things — a luxury in which he allowed himself considerable latitude — could not possess the empty spaces in a life that had been filled with her presence.

  And to her, moving gently in the curtained stillness of the sick-room, among the medicine-bottles and the apparatus of sickness as the rich know it, holding the thin hand that came out of a scented, soft bed to cling to hers, it seemed that either this ordered quietude was a dream, or else that nothing in the last few weeks was true, had been true, could ever be true again. The escape, the flight, the Medway days, the reckless mock marriage, the life of fine and delicate adventure, the blue sky, the green leaves, the mystery of mountains, the sparkle of water, and the velvet of old lawns, the constant and deepening comradeship of a man of whose existence a month ago she had not so much as dreamed — could these be real — all these which she had renounced to come to the sick woman who longed for her — had these really been hers — could they ever be hers again?

  Suffering had broken down the consistent unselfishness of a lifetime, and the aunt clung to her as children cling, frightened in the dark. “You won’t leave me,” she said, over and over again. “Your husband won’t mind. It won’t be for long.”

  “Of course I’ll not leave you,” she said, and wondered at the thrill her aunt’s words gave her and the pang she felt as she uttered her own.

  Every day while the aunt slept she crept away and went out into the air — the first day into bright sunshine which was unbearable; after that into the quiet, lamp-lit dusk of the square at night. The London night was so unlike night on the Welsh Hills that it seemed a medium that could not torment her with memories. Whereas the sunshine was the same sunshine which had lain like a benediction in that far country of delight. The lilacs and snowberries in the square inclosure, which were dried and dusty by day, borrowed from the kindly twilight the air of fresh groves, and among their somber shadows she walked as in some garden of dusky enchantments, where, alone with her dreams and her memories, she could weave, out of the past and the future, a web of glory to clothe the cold walls of the empty room which, she began to perceive, life without Edward was, and must be.

  It was on the third evening, as she stood, fumbling with the key of the garden, she knew that some one stood on the pavement just behind her, and, turning sharply, was face to face with Mr. Schultz.

  He raised his hat and smiled at her; held out a hand, even. She was child enough to put her two hands behind her, and woman enough to hope that he hated to see her do it. She was surprised to find herself alert and alive to the interest of the encounter; not afraid at all, only interested. Gone was the panic terror which had overwhelmed her in the Kenilworth dungeon. Anger and resentment remained, but stronger than either was curiosity, so she stood with her hands behind her, looking at him.

  “Oh, very well,” he said; “just as you like. I want a few words with you.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said, and locked the square gate again.

  “Couldn’t we walk around the garden once or twice?” he asked. “I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I want to talk to you. I’m sorry if I upset you that day in the ruins, but it’s nothing to the way your dog upset me. I had to have it cauterized, besides doing completely for the only decent suit I had with me. Besides, you hit me, you know, with your parasol. Come, don’t bare malice. I don’t. Call it quits and open the square door.”

  Now you may think it was quite easy for her to turn her back on Mr. Schultz and go back to her aunt’s house, leaving him planted there, but it was not really easy, because she wanted something of the man, and if she turned her back with sufficient firmness it might be that she would never see him again. What sh
e wanted was the remission of the promise she had made him, unasked and of her own initiative — the promise that she would not tell Edward of that day in the dungeon.

  “I can’t open the square gate for you,” she said. “If you’ve really anything to say, you can say it here. I can spare you three minutes,” she added, conclusively.

  “Then let’s walk around outside the railings. It’s better than standing here; it won’t look so odd if any one comes along who knows you,” he said, and it seemed strange to her that he should have so much consideration for her. She was pleased. Her soul was of the order that delights to find others better than her mind had led her to expect. There are people, as you know, to whom it is always somewhat of a disappointment to find that any one is not so black as their fancy painted him. She turned and they walked slowly along the pavement that encircles the railings of the square garden.

  “Well?” she said, “you said you had something to say to me.”

  “Yes, lots,” he told her. “I was just trying to think which to say first. You know you’ve upset me a good deal. Oh, I forgive you, but it ought to be mutual. Yes, I’ll put that first — I want us to forgive each other — forgive and forget and not bear grudge.”

  “Very well,” she said, coldly. “I forgive you, but—”

  He interrupted her before she could make the request that was on her lips. “That’ll do,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to tell you how it was that I acted like a fool. I admit I acted like a fool,” he added, handsomely. “I don’t suppose I shall ever see you again and I don’t want you to go on thinking me a perfect beast. I’d rather you didn’t, though I know I was one that day, and I don’t know why, but I would, even if I’m never to set eyes on you again. Well, you see, it’s like this: I dare say it’ll sound silly to you, but even when I was at school I always wanted to do something noble — romantic, you know — rescuing ladies in distress, like Scott’s novels, and things like that. I know it’s too rotten for words, nowadays, what with machinery and telegraphs and radium and things, but that’s what I used to think. And when I came up with you on the Seaford Road with no hat on and your poor little satin shoes all dusty and splitting, I thought, by Jove! my boy, here’s your chance! And I did behave all right that day, didn’t I?”

  His voice was wistful, and she said, eagerly: “You were very, very kind. No one could have been nicer and more — more—”

  “Respectful, eh? Well, I meant to be. I felt respectful; I do still. And you won’t mind me saying I felt like a knight and you were the lady. I don’t mean that you aren’t a lady now, but you see what I mean, and you can’t blame me if I thought it would all end in me and you being — well — you and me living happy ever after, the same as they do in books.”

  Enchanted by the revelation, she said, “Indeed, I don’t blame you,” more earnestly than she meant to do.

  “Don’t be too kind to me,” he said, grimly. “I know it doesn’t mean anything, but it puts a man out. Well, then he came along, and you said he was your brother, and anybody could see with half an eye that he wasn’t your brother; and I felt I’d been made a fool of, a complete, particular, first-class fool, and that put my back up. And I saw that things don’t happen like they do in books. And I hadn’t, somehow, thought you’d say anything that wasn’t true.”

  She felt her face burn, and realized for the first time that in their brief and stormy acquaintance he had not been the only one to blame, and that, anyhow, it was she who had taken the first false step.

  “I oughtn’t to have told you a lie,” she said, and added ingenuously, “especially after you’d been so kind; but I didn’t know what to do — it seemed so difficult to explain.” She could not tell him how difficult, nor why.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I should have said the same myself. It wasn’t exactly a lie. It’s a thing most people wouldn’t make any bones about, only I thought you were different, that’s all. And that was one of the things that made me feel it was fair to hunt you down, if I could — tit for tat, so to speak — and, besides, it was fun trying to see what I could find out. Then there’s another thing I must tell you, I used to think it would be fun to be other things out of books — highwaymen and detectives and things — and I got a lead when I saw you at Cookham. After that I tracked you down like any old Sherlock Holmes, and I’m afraid at Kenilworth I behaved more like a highwayman than a respectable solicitor — for that’s what I am.”

  “That’s forgiven and forgotten,” she told him.

  “Well, I tracked you to Warwick, and when I saw your name in the visitors’ book — Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke—”

  “But it wasn’t—”

  “It was, I assure you. Well, when I saw that I didn’t know what to think, but I saw, however it was, it was all up with me; but I didn’t want to see it, so I followed you to Kenilworth, and got a chance I didn’t expect to behave like a cad and an ass, and behaved like them. But I don’t think you know how pretty you are — and I didn’t believe you were married, and all the things I’d thought while I was driving you to Tunbridge came up into my head and turned themselves inside out, somehow, and I felt what a fool I’d been, and I lost my head. And then you told me you wouldn’t tell him, for fear he should hurt me; and that’s really what I came here to say. That’s what I can’t stick. I can take care of myself. I want you to tell him anything you like — see? Here’s my card — and he can write to me, and I’ll meet him anywhere he likes and let’s see who’s the best man. To set out to be a knight and all that, and end up with hiding behind a woman — and you to be the woman — no, I really can’t stick it. So will you tell him?”

  “I’ll tell him everything,” she said, “and he won’t want to see who’s the best man, and I don’t want him to want it. And I don’t want you to, either. You were a very kind knight-errant — but you weren’t such a very good detective, or you’d have found out—”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you, if you’ll promise to give up wanting to find out who’s the best man. Will you?”

  “I’ll do anything you like as long as you don’t think I’m afraid of him, and don’t let him think it, either. I don’t think much of him, and I don’t know whether you’ll believe it, but it was that as much as anything set me to the detective business. I wanted to — to — I thought you wanted looking after. And then I acted like a brute — but I won’t go on about that. Now tell me what it was I didn’t find out?”

  She pulled a little pale-silk bag from her pocket and took out a stiff folded paper and gave it to him. By the light of the next gas-lamp he unfolded it; it was a long slip, partly printed, partly written. It was, in fact, the “marriage certificate” which had been obtained in order to quiet her family and to make possible the romance and adventure of the incredible honeymoon.

  He glanced at it, folded it, and gave it back. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t want to try who’s the best man. He is. He’s got you.”

  She could find nothing to say that should be at once true and kind.

  “So that’s all over,” he said, straightening his shoulders. “There’s only one thing more. You remember I went out to see about the car at Tunbridge, and I was rather a long time gone? Well, I rushed into a shop and bought this. I meant to throw it over Westminster Bridge as soon as I left you — but now, will you take it for a wedding-present? I’d like you to.”

  He fumbled at a spring, opened a case, and showed a half-hoop of sapphires.

  “But I can’t! It’s too—”

  “I’m awfully rich,” he said, bitterly. “I’ve come into my father’s business at Canterbury. I don’t know what to do with my money, and the thing didn’t cost much, really, but it was the best I could get. You believe that, don’t you? And I thought it might be the beginning of living happy ever after, and I should like you to have it, just to show you really have forgiven me. You will, won’t you?”

  “I can’t take the ring,” she said, “but I
wish I could, and I thank you very much for wishing me to have it — and for all your kindness and your kind thoughts of me.”

  “But you won’t take the ring. He said you wouldn’t.”

  “Who did?”

  “My confessor. You see, I’m a Catholic, and I had to tell him about Kenilworth, and so I told him the whole thing. If it hadn’t been for him I shouldn’t have tried to tell you about it all and get you to forgive me. I’m glad I did, though.”

  Then she understood, and ceased to wonder how this man had got his poor, complicated, involved little history straightened out to such a convincing simplicity.

  “I wish you’d have had the ring,” he said again, discontentedly. “I never know what to do with my money.”

  “If I had a lot of money I’d go about the world trying to be a real knight-errant — just looking out for people who want things and don’t ask for them — poor, proud, self-respecting people, poor schoolmasters and young men in shops who don’t have good times. There was a man in a book who thought he was ill, and his doctor told him to help one person a day with his money. He got cured in no time; and you’re not ill.”

  “I shouldn’t know how to begin,” he said. “You could have shown me, but you won’t. Look here, don’t go yet; stay a little and tell me how to begin.”

  Walking around and around the railings of the garden, she developed her thesis. They had been walking together for an hour and a half before they parted on her door-step, and at parting she did give him her hand.

  In the hall she stood a minute or two, thinking. Then she slipped quietly out again and took an omnibus to Museum Street, and from there walked to Montague Street. She felt that the only important thing was to see Edward, to clear away the one cloud of concealment that lay between them — no, not the only one. The other was a very little thing; he, at least, had never known that it was there.

  But when she reached number 37 it showed no light at any of its windows; only the basement window and the fanlight above the door gave out a dusky radiance. It seemed impossible to ring the bell and be faced with the assurance that he was not at home. So she walked slowly away.