Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

Lucilla hesitated. “No,” she said, “how could we, with that insane board? It doesn’t let you have orders to view.” The young man threw his head back and laughed.

  “Come! “he said, “ what have you been up to? Tell me all about it.

  “Well,” said Lucilla, who had slowly been recovering her wind and her sang-froid, “the first thing to tell you is that my friend has pitched head first down your treacherous back-stairs and broken her leg.”

  “Good Lord!” said the young man. “And you’re standing here talking to me about boards!”

  “I’m only just recovering from your catching hold of me like a ghost,” said Lucilla. “And before we go any further, do you mind defining the situation?”

  “Defining?...”

  “Yes. Are you arresting us for burglars, or—”

  “Oh, don’t be silly!” said the young man, with a lamentable want of polish.

  “Well, then,” said Lucilla, coldly and carefully explanatory, “my friend has fallen down the back-stairs of this hateful house. She thinks she’s broken her leg. Will you help me?”

  “What do you take me for?” he said. “Where is she? Come on!”

  “You won’t send us to prison?” Lucilla insisted.

  “Don’t be so extremely silly,” said the young man. (“No manners,” said Lucilla to herself.) “Where is she? Come on.”

  So it happened that Jane in that shivery strange borderland that lies between you as you are and you as you are in mad dreams, heard footsteps coming near, and voices. “Look out,” said Lucilla, “you’ll tread on her!”

  “But you said she was at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “I heard... you... scream... and... I.., came... as... far... as... I... could,” said Jane very carefully, not opening her eyes.

  “Help me to get hold of her — that’s right,” said the young man. “Now cut along down and open the shutters in the dining-room. No, the kitchen will be best. Yes you can take the candle.”

  He had Jane in his arms by now — quite easily, for Jan was thin and slight.

  It was no fine figure of a woman that he laid on the long kitchen table, but a small, slender, brown-haired person with a white, sharp-chinned, elfish face, which she instantly covered with an arm.

  The young man took off his coat and rolled it up and laid it under her head.

  Then, very matter of fact, “Which foot?” he said.

  “The other one,” said Jane, kicking slightly with the uninjured leg.

  He took off her shoe and felt the ankle. “Oh, don’t!” said Jane. But he took no notice. Presently he said:

  “No bones broken, thank goodness. Now look here,” he went on; “there’s a copper full of hot water in here — the char was charing. Get a basin or something on this chair, and bathe her foot — as hot as you can bear your hands in it. Keep on with that, and don’t let the water get cold. I’ll go and get some brandy and a carriage.”

  “I’m all right,” said Jane. “ I don’t want brandy — I hate brandy.”

  “Go ahead with the hot water,” he said to Lucilla. “ Yes, that’s the scullery in there. But I’ve just thought.. He pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket. “There might be something in the cellar — it’s just worth trying.”

  “Anyhow, we haven’t stolen anything,” Lucilla comforted herself as she lifted pails and jugs and copper-lids. “ If he steals things out of the cellar he can’t have the face to give us up to justice.”

  She had set a clean pail of hot water on a chair augmented by a hassock, had got Jane’s stocking off and was bathing the swollen ankle before he came back — the keys clinking against a bottle.

  “Where,” he asked sternly, “where do people keep corkscrews — kitchen corkscrews?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucilla. “I never have corkscrews to keep anywhere. Is that brandy?”

  “No — old port; well, there are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter.”

  He retreated to the scullery, and they heard the tinkle of broken glass. He came back with the beheaded bottle and two tea-cups.

  “Here,” he said to Lucilla, “you first. Oh, don’t be silly. Think what a shock you’ve had.”

  “I thought you were a ghost — or pretending to be; it’s just as bad. I don’t like wine.”

  “Well, drink this, or I shall think it’s a ghost I’m seeing. I’m sure you’re white enough. That’s right. Now lift her head and I’ll hold the cup. I hope she isn’t going to make a fuss.”

  “No, I’m not,” said Jane shortly, raised her head and drank steadily. “Thank you. That’ll do me lots of good. But really, I’m all right, you know.”

  “Yes, you look all right,” said he, and for the first time his eyes dwelt on Jane’s face. Lucilla, who happened to be looking at him, remarked an extraordinary flash of something. It couldn’t be recognition, because he had not seen Jane at all on the morning of the inn breakfast. It could not be admiration, for poor old Jane was looking like a cross, sick kid. But there was something. No doubt of that. Whatever it was, there it was, Lucilla told herself. Then she looked at Jane to see if Jane had noticed — and there was something about Jane’s face too, something odd.

  The young man was moving about the kitchen, picking things up and putting them down quite aimlessly. Embarrassed by a dish-cover, he walked to the window and absently set the cover down on a chair. Then he tapped a copper warming-pan as though it had been a barometer.

  Lucilla continued her splashing ministrations.

  “I’m much better now, thank you,” said Jane suddenly. “I believe I could walk home.” —

  “I will go now for that carriage,” said he. “And I’ll get some bandages. You stick to the hot water.”

  “I say,” said Jane feebly.

  “Well?...”

  “Don’t tell anybody, will you? Not till we’ve had a chance to explain. We’re not really so black as — as your fancy painted us. If you let people know, we shall have to fly the neighbourhood. You won’t, will you?”

  “By Jove,” he said, “you are better?”

  “I told you I was,” said Jane impatiently. “You won’t tell, will you?”

  “Silent as the grave,” said he. “You can trust me. The secret shall be buried with me.”

  And he went.

  The moment the sound of his footsteps had died away on the gravel outside Jane sat up and swung herself round so that both feet hung from the table.

  “Lucy,” she said, “let’s go. Let’s get out of it. I can’t face him and tell him what fools we were.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Lucilla.

  “Thank you, dear,” said Jane. “What a fool I was, then. If I lean on you we could get away and be gone when he comes back with the carriage.”

  “We should meet him,” said Lucilla, stolidly bathing the ankle, “half way home, and then we should, look like fools, both of us. What do you want to run away for? He’s very nice. I like him very much. I think he’s got a very nice face.”

  “You think all young men have such nice faces — even chauffeurs,” said Jane.

  “Well, he has. And look here, Jane. What was he doing here, anyhow? What right had he to send the charwoman off? How did he come by the keys of the cellar? How did he know how big the kitchen table was? You mark my words. He’s the owner....”

  “But he’s not old,” said Jane, feebly resisting the flood of Lucilla’s eloquence.

  “He’s thirty, I daresay — and boys think everybody’s old.”

  But Mrs. Doveton?”

  “Oh, hers was only hearsay. You mark my words...”

  “You said that before.”

  “And I’ll keep on saying it. You mark my words. He’s the owner, and if we play our cards well he’ll let us the house.”

  “But you said it’s too big, and we couldn’t afford the rent and the army of gardeners and—”

  “I don’t care what I said — that was before I’d seen him. He’s the owner. I feel it in my bones.
Jane, do be decent to him — I feel this is a turning-point in our careers. I fee) that this house is going to be the making of us.”

  “It’s very nearly been the unmaking of me,” said Jane, raised on her elbow to discuss the question more actively.

  I feel as though I’d had about enough of the house. No, don’t tell me to mark your words — I can’t bear it. If you say that again I shall scream. Let me get off this table, anyhow, and be right side up before your nice young friend comes back. Look here, if that ankle’s to be bandaged at all it ought to be now. I feel it in my bones, as you’re so fond of saying. Can’t you find something — a roller towel?” Lucilla found one and split it into bandages with a carving-knife.

  “If he takes wine we may take towels,” she said, and bandaged the red, swollen ankle.

  “Now get my stocking on before he comes back. What a blessing we wear sensible, opaque stockings. I don’t think there’s anything in the world more loathsome than red legs showing through the thin black of imitation silk stockings. Now shut the shutters. Give me that broom — it’ll make a lovely crutch.”

  “Where are you off to?” Lucilla followed the clump, clump of the broom.

  “To where there’s a looking-glass,” said Jane. “I don’t agree with you about his nice, kind face, but if he was a criminal insane South Sea Islander I shouldn’t like to show myself to him, upright, with my head like a bird’s nest and my face wet with your tears. Oh yes, I felt you crying over me when he’d gone for the wine.”

  “I didn’t,” said Lucilla indignantly.

  “Dear old thing,” said Jane, “I enjoyed it. You’re not half a bad old thing, are you, Lucy?”

  It was some time before the young man returned with the mouldering relics of a landau, drawn by something which must once, as he said, have been a horse. The blue cloth lining of the carriage had turned to a livid green, and the cushions were, as he did not fail to point out, fossilised by the centuries. But, he humbly confessed, it was the best he could do.

  “Where shall I tell him to go?” he asked, when Jane had been made comfortable, with Lucilla beside her. “Or would you rather” — he lowered his voice beyond the hearing of the tottering relic enthroned on the box—”would you rather I told him to drive along and you’ll tell him later?”

  “Thank you,” said Jane; but Lucilla said, “No, of course not! Tell him Hope Cottage. And thank you ever so. And...”

  “Good-bye,” said Jane.

  “But look here,” said he. “I must know how the ankle goes on. May I call — this evening — to-morrow? I can’t just say good-bye in this heartless way, and not know whether our first aid was successful.”

  “Of course not,” said Lucilla heartily; “besides, we owe you a roller towel. No, I can’t explain now. But will you come to-morrow and...”

  “What time?” said he.

  “Oh — er — I don’t know. Tea-time, I suppose, “said Lucilla. “Tell him to drive on, please,” said Jane coldly.

  The decayed remains of a carriage were set in motion, and the young man was left planted there, as the French say, on the doorstep of Cedar Court.

  “Well,” he said, as he turned to lock the big dark door. “Well —— — I really am! Completely and without any nonsense about it, I am!”

  The parlour was made very pretty with flowers. (“Not too many,” Lucy; “we don’t want to look like the florists we are. Keep out the professional touch if you can,” said Jane.) And Jane, her foot hardly hurting at all, lay on the narrow Empire sofa, covered with the Paisley shawl that Lucilla had most opportunely found that very day in a previously unexplored hair-trunk in the attic.

  “And there are all sorts of other things there too,” she told her friend: “ silk gowns and scarves, and fans and parasols — but I wouldn’t really explore till you could too. I just took the shawl. It was on the top — it seemed like the hand of Providence. And there were satin shoes and lace petticoats, and satin ones. They’d be gorgeous, those things, for dressing up or charades. And another thing: we can cut them up and make dresses for ourselves. That’s the best of those old dresses six yards round.”

  “You seem very jolly to-day,” said Jane, almost morosely, from her nest of Paisley and holland-coloured silk — tussore they call it, I believe.

  “Well, you see, our first tea-party is just going to happen. And you...”

  “Don’t tell me to mark your words,” said Jane, “ because I can’t bear it.”

  “I won’t,” said Lucilla, stopping short in her final touches to the already almost over-arranged room. “ I’ll say something quite different. Where did you see him before?”

  “What?” said Jane, sitting bolt upright.

  “Well, you have seen him before, haven’t you?”

  “Who?” said Jane uselessly.

  “Him. The man that you won’t let me tell you to mark my words about. You have seen him before, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t think so.... I... I really don’t exactly know. No... of course I haven’t.”

  “Well!” said the exasperated Lucilla, and then the doorbell rang.

  “Why,” said Jane, “it’s hardly half-past three! He must be simply longing for his tea.”

  “It’s all right,” said Lucilla. “Thank goodness we’re perfectly tidy!”

  “Too tidy,” murmured Jane. “He’ll know we can’t always live like this. Nobody could.”

  And then Mrs. Doveton flung back the door. And:

  “The gentleman you was expecting,” she announced sympathetically.

  Jane looked stony, but Lucilla turned with a kind and welcoming smile. But the smile was, as old novelists say, frozen on her lips, when she confronted, not the young man with the nice, kind face, but a tall, gaunt, grizzelled old man, with bushy eyebrows and uncompromising side-whiskers.

  Er...” said Lucilla.

  “Quite so,” said the old man; “allow me to introduce myself. I am the master of Cedar Court, which you yesterday did me the honour to explore.”

  “Er...” said Lucilla, fluttering hopelessly.

  But Jane said, “ How do you do?” and held out a warm, welcoming hand. “ How very good of you to come,” she went on. “I can’t get up because I sprained my ankle on your dark stairs yesterday. That’s the most comfortable chair. Do sit down and let us tell you all about everything.”

  “Humph,” said the master of Cedar Court. But he sat down.

  CHAPTER VI

  AND then with the most graceful self-possession, lying pale and interesting under the Paisley shawl, Jane told the master of Cedar Court all about it, Lucilla uttering timid confirmatory noises.

  “So you see,” Jane wound up, “if we’d had the least idea that you were — at all like you are, we should have come and asked you....”

  “Butter,” said the old gentleman shortly.

  “It’s the best butter,” quoted Jane. “I mean that it’s quite true; and I wish we had asked you.”

  “You mean to tell me, then,” he said, looking very straight at her,” that you crept into that house and explored it by candlelight merely because you thought it a suitable residence for two young ladies who wish to sell flowers?”

  “Well,” said Jane handsomely, “of course there were other reasons, but I’ve given you the best ones. The others aren’t so respectable. Of course there was curiosity, and the-soul-of-romance feeling that there is about old houses; and... and... well, I suppose the sort of idea that we weren’t going to let a silly old board keep us out if we wanted to get in.”

  “I admire your candour,” said the visitor, and he quite evidently did; “but suppose the house had been locked up for some really romantic reason — because someone had lived there so dear that no one else was good enough to live there after her?”

  “We never would have,” said Jane indignantly. “Of course we wouldn’t. You see, we knew it was only temper... distemper, I mean.... I mean paint,..

  The visitor laughed. Jane, cold with excitement and
rigid to the ends of her fingers and feet with the stress of the struggle, relaxed a little.

  “And what does the other young lady say? “ He turned to the still inarticulate Lucilla.

  “I say what Jane says,” she answered, still fluttered.

  “Do you always?”

  “No, of course she doesn’t,” Jane put in, “ but she can’t say anything true without blaming me, because the whole thing was entirely my fault.”

  “And you’re paying for it, eh?”

  He glanced at the hump that her bandaged foot made under the shawl.

  “Well, a little, perhaps,” said Jane. And Lucilla said, “ It was really my fault quite as much. I wanted to, just as badly, only I shouldn’t have had the pluck. Jane’s so brave.”

  “Yes,” he said musingly, “so it appears. And your relations, how do they regard these heroic exploits?”

  “We haven’t any relations,” said Lucilla, and explained their position.

  He listened, and when she had done, said: “That guardian ought to be shot. And you’re left like that, with only a few hundred pounds and this little house between you and destitution?”

  “It’s a dear little house,” said Lucilla, gaining courage, “but you see it is so little. We can’t grow enough flowers to sell; and all the flowers in your garden... We couldn’t help gloating over them and wishing we could sell them. We’ve sold quite a lot even here. And we absolutely must do something before all our money is gone. You see, Jane might be an artist, or I might go on the stage, but we should have to learn how — and that takes time; and you have to have meals every day, don’t you? So you see we must begin to earn money at once. If it wasn’t for that, how lovely to live in this dear little house and learn how to paint and act!”

  “I am glad you appreciate the house,” he said; “it is a lady’s house. The lady from whom you inherited it was one of my very oldest friends.”

  “You knew my Aunt Lucy? “ cried Lucilla. “How splendid!

  “Yes. I have often been in this house — when I was a boy your aunt and her mother lived here. Your great-aunt, she must have been, by the way. I am pleased to see that you haven’t altered anything.”