Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “No — am I to repeat what I began about? Ah — but I will. I began by saying what I came here to say: that you, as a married woman, have no right to turn men’s heads and make them long for what can never be.”

  “But you don’t know,” she said. “My husband—”

  “I don’t wish to know,” he interrupted. “Your husband is alive, and you are bound to be faithful to him, in thought, word, and deed. What I saw and heard in the little copse last night—”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t,” she said. “You talk as if—”

  “No,” he said, “I’m willing — even anxious, I think — to believe that you would not — could not—”

  “Oh,” she cried, jumping up, “this is intolerable! How dare you!”

  He had risen too.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” he said. “I’m not afraid of your anger, nor of your — your other weapons. Think what you are! Think of your great powers — and you are wasting them all in making fools of a pack of young idiots—”

  “But what could I do with my gifts — as you call them?”

  “Do? — why, you could endow and organise and run any one of a hundred schemes for helping on God’s work in the world.”

  “For instance?” Her charming smile enraged him.

  “For instance? Well — for instance — you might start a home for those women who began as you have begun, and who have gone down into hell, as you will go — unless you let yourself be warned.”

  She was for the moment literally speechless. Then she remembered how he had said: “I am not afraid of — your weapons.” She drew a deep breath and spoke gently —

  “I believe you don’t mean to be insulting — I believe you mean kindly to me. Please say no more now. I’ll think over it all. I’m not angry — only — do you really think you understand everything?”

  He might have answered that he did not understand her. She did not mean him to understand. She knew well enough that she was giving him something to puzzle over when she smiled that beautiful, troubled, humble, appealing half-smile.

  He did not answer at all. He stood a moment twisting his soft hat in his hands: she admired his hands very much.

  “Forgive me if I’ve pained you more than was needed,” he said at last, “it is only because—” here her smile caught him, and he ended vaguely in a decreasing undertone. She heard the words “king’s jewels,” “pearl of great price.”

  When he was gone she said “Well!” more than once. Then she ran to the low mirror over the mantelpiece, and looked earnestly at herself.

  “You do look rather nice to-day,” she said. “And so he’s not afraid of any of your weapons! And I’m not afraid of any of his. It’s a fair duel. Only all the provocation came from him — so the choice of weapons is mine. And they shall be my weapons: he has weapons to match them right enough, only the poor dear doesn’t know it.” She went away to dress for dinner, humming gaily —

  “My love has breath o’ roses,

  O’ roses, o’ roses;

  And arms like lily posies

  To fold a lassie in!”

  Not next day — she was far too clever for that, but on the day after that he received a note. Her handwriting was charming; no extravagances, every letter soberly but perfectly formed.

  “I have been thinking of all you said the other day. You are quite mistaken about some things — but in some you are right. Will you show me how to work? I will do whatever you tell me.”

  Then the Reverend Christopher was glad of the courage that had inspired him to denounce to his parishioners all that seemed to him amiss in them.

  “I am glad,” he said to himself, “that I had the courage to treat her exactly as I have done the others — even if she has beautiful hair, and eyes like — like—”

  He stopped the thought before he found the simile — not because he imagined that there could be danger in it, but because he had been trained to stop thoughts of eyes and hair as neatly as a skilful boxer stops a blow.

  She had not been so trained, and she admired his eyes and hair quite as much as he might have admired hers if she had not been married.

  So now the Reverend Christopher had a helper in his parish work; and he needed help, for his plain-speaking had already offended half his parish. And his helper was, as he had had the sense to know she could be, the most accomplished organiser in the country. She ran the parish library, she arranged the school treat, she started evening classes for wood carving and art needlework. She spent money like water, and time as freely as money. Quietly, persistently, relentlessly, she was making herself necessary to the Reverend Christopher. He wrote to her every day — there were so many instructions to give — but he seldom spoke with her. When he called she was never at home. Sometimes they met in the village and exchanged a few sentences. She was always gravely sweet, intensely earnest. There was a certain smile which he remembered — a beautiful, troubled, appealing smile. He wondered why she smiled no more.

  Her friends shrugged their shoulders over her new fancy.

  “It is odd,” her bosom friend said. “It can’t be the parson, though he’s as beautiful as he can possibly be, because she sees next to nothing of him. And yet I can’t think that Betty of all people could really—”

  “Oh — I don’t know,” said the bosom friend of her bosom friend. “Women often do take to that sort of thing, you know, when they get tired of—”

  “Of?”

  “The other sort of thing, don’t you know!”

  “How horrid you are,” said Betty’s bosom friend. “I believe you’re a most dreadful cynic, really.”

  “Not at all,” said the friend, complacently stroking his moustache.

  Betty certainly was enjoying herself. She had the great gift of enjoying thoroughly any new game. She enjoyed, first, the newness; and, besides, the hidden lining of her new masquerade dress enchanted her. But as her new industries developed she began to enjoy the things for themselves. It is always delightful to do what we can do well, and the Reverend Christopher had been right when he said she was a born general.

  “How easy it all is,” she said, “and what a fuss those clergy-hags make about it! What a wife I should be for a bishop!” She smiled and sighed.

  It was pleasant, too, to wake in the morning, not to the recollection of the particular stage which yesterday’s flirtation happened to have reached, but to the sense of some difficulty overcome, some object achieved, some rough place made smooth for her Girls’ Friendly, or her wood carvers, or her Parish Magazine. And within it all the secret charm of a purpose transfiguring with its magic this eager, strenuous, working life.

  Her avoidance of the Reverend Christopher struck him at first as modest, discreet, and in the best possible taste. But presently it seemed to him that she rather overdid it. There were many things he would have liked to discuss with her, but she always evaded talk with him. Why? he began to ask himself why. And the question wormed through his brain more and more searchingly. He had seen her at work now; he knew her powers, and her graces — the powers and the graces that made her the adored of her Friendly girls and her carving boys. He remembered, with hot ears and neck crimson above his clerical collar, that interview. The things he had said to her! How could he have done it? Blind idiot that he had been! And she had taken it all so sweetly, so nobly, so humbly. She had only needed a word to turn her from the frivolities of the world to better things. It need not have been the sort of word he had used. And at a word she had turned. That it should have been at his word was not perhaps a very subtle flattery — but the Reverend Christopher swallowed it and never tasted it. He was not trained to distinguish the flavours of flatteries. He never tasted it, but it worked in his blood, for all that. And why, why, why would she never speak to him? Could it be that she was afraid that he would speak to her now as he had once spoken? He blushed again.

  Next time he met her she was coming up to the church with a big basket of flowers for the altar. He took th
e basket from her and carried it in.

  “Let me help you,” he said.

  “No,” she said in that sweet, simple, grave way of hers. “I can do it very well. Indeed, I would rather.”

  He had to go. The arrangement of the flowers took more than an hour, but when she came out with the empty basket, he was waiting in the porch. Her heart gave a little joyful jump.

  “I want to speak to you,” said he.

  “I’m rather late,” she said, as usual; “couldn’t you write?”

  “No,” he said, “I can’t write this. Sit down a moment in the porch.”

  She loved the masterfulness of his tone. He stood before her.

  “I want you to forgive me for speaking to you as I did — once. I’m afraid you’re afraid that I shall behave like that again. You needn’t be.”

  “Score number one,” she said to herself. Aloud she said —

  “I am not afraid,” and she said it sweetly, seriously.

  “I was wrong,” he went on eagerly. “I was terribly wrong. I see it quite plainly now. You do forgive me — don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said she soberly, and sighed.

  There was a little silence. Her serious eyes watched the way of the wind dimpling the tall, feathery grass that grew above the graves.

  “Are you unhappy?” he asked; “you never smile now.”

  “I am too busy to smile, I suppose!” she said, and smiled the beautiful, humble, appealing smile he had so longed to see again, though he had not known the longing by its right name.

  “Can’t we be friends?” he ventured. “You — I am afraid you can never trust me again.”

  “Yes, I can,” she said. “It was very bitter at the time, but I thought it was so brave of you — and kind, too — to care what became of me. If you remember, I did want to trust you, even on that dreadful day, but you wouldn’t let me.”

  “I was a brute,” he said remorsefully.

  “I do want to tell you one thing. Even if that boy had been holding my hand I should have thought I had a right to let him, if I liked — just as much as though I were a girl, or a widow.”

  “I don’t understand. But tell me — please tell me anything you will tell me.” His tone was very humble.

  “My husband was a beast,” she said calmly. “He betrayed me, he beat me, he had every vile quality a man can have. No, I’ll be just to him: he was always good tempered when he was drunk. But when he was sober he used to beat me and pinch me—”

  “But — but you could have got a separation, a divorce,” he gasped.

  “A separation wouldn’t have freed me — really. And the Church doesn’t believe in divorce,” she said demurely. “I did, however, and I left him, and instructed a solicitor. But the brute went mad before I could get free from him; and now, I suppose, I’m tied for life to a mad dog.”

  “Good God!” said the Reverend Christopher.

  “I thought it all out — oh, many, many nights! — and I made up my mind that I would go out and enjoy myself. I never had a good time when I was a girl. And another thing I decided — quite definitely — that if ever I fell in love I would — I should have the right to — I mean that I wouldn’t let a horrible, degraded brute of a lunatic stand between me and the man I loved. And I was quite sure that I was right.”

  “And do you still think this?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Ah,” she said, “you’ve changed everything! I don’t think the same about anything as I used to do. I think those two years with him must have made me nearly as mad as he is. And then I was so young! I am only twenty-three now, you know — and it did seem hard never to have had any fun. I did want so much to be happy.”

  She had not intended to speak like this, but even as she spoke she saw that this truth-telling far outshone the lamp of lies she had trimmed ready.

  “You will be happy,” he said; “there are better things in the world than—”

  “Yes,” she said; “oh, yes!”

  Betty did nothing by halves. She had kept a barrier between her and him till she had excited him to break it down. The barrier once broken, she let it lie where he had thrown it, and became, all at once, in the most natural, matter-of-fact, guileless way, his friend.

  She consulted him about everything. Let him call when he would, she always received him. She surrounded him with the dainty feminine spider webs from which his life, almost monastic till now, had been quite free. She imported a knitting aunt, so that he should not take fright at long tête-à-têtes. The knitting aunt was deafish and blindish, and did not walk much in the rose garden. Betty knew a good deal about roses, and she taught the Reverend Christopher all she knew. She knew a little of the hearts of men, and she gently pushed him on the road to forgiveness from that half of the parish whom his first enthusiastic denunciations had offended. She rounded his angles. She turned a wayward ascetic into a fairly good parish priest. And he talked to her of ideals and honour and the service of God and the work of the world. And she listened, and her beauty spoke to him so softly that he did not know that he heard.

  One day after long silence she turned quickly and met his eyes. After that she ceased to spin webs, for she saw. Yet she was as blind as he, though she did not know it any more than he did.

  At last he saw, in his turn, and the flash of the illumination nearly blinded him.

  It was late evening: Betty was nailing up a trailing rose, and he was standing by the ladder holding the nails and the snippets of scarlet cloth. The ladder slipped, and he caught her in his arms. As soon as she had assured him that she was not hurt, he said good night and left her.

  Betty went indoors and cried. “What a pity!” she said. “Oh, what a pity! Now he’ll be frightened, and it’s all over. He’ll never come again.”

  But the next evening he came, and when they had walked through the rose garden and had come to the sun-dial he stopped and spoke —

  “I’ve been thinking of nothing else since I saw you. When I caught you last night. Forgive me if I’m a fool — but when I held you — don’t be angry — but it seemed to me that you loved me—”

  “Nothing of the sort,” said Betty very angrily.

  “Then I must be mad,” he said; “the way you caught my neck with your arm, and your face was against mine, and your hair crushed up against my ear. Oh, Betty, if you don’t love me, what shall I do? For I can’t live without you.”

  Betty had won.

  “But — even if I had loved you — I’m married,” she urged softly.

  “Yes — do you suppose I’ve forgotten that? But you remember what you said — about being really free, and not being bound to that beast. I see that you were right — right, right. It’s the rest of the world that’s wrong. Oh, my dear — I can’t live without you. Couldn’t you love me? Let’s go away — right away together. No one will love you as I do. No one knows you as I do — how good and strong and brave and unselfish you are. Oh, try to love me a little!”

  Betty had leaned her elbows on the sun-dial, and her chin on her hands.

  “But you used to think ...” she began.

  “Ah — but I know better now. You’ve taught me everything. Only I never knew it till last night when I touched you. It was like a spark to a bonfire that I’ve been piling up ever since I’ve known you. You’ve taught me what life is, and love. Love can’t be wrong. It’s only wrong when it’s stealing. We shouldn’t be robbing anybody. We should both work better — happiness makes people work — I see that now. I should have to give up parish work — but there’s plenty of good work wants doing. Why, I’ve nearly finished that book of mine. I’ve worked at it night after night — with the thought of you hidden behind the work. If you were my wife, what work I could do! Oh, Betty, if you only loved me!”

  She lifted her face and looked at him gravely. He flung his arm round her shoulders and turned her face up to his. She was passive to his kisses. At last she kissed him, once, and drew herself from his arms.

  “Come,�
� she said.

  She led him to the garden seat in the nut-avenue.

  “Now,” she said, when he had taken his place beside her, “I’m going to tell you the whole truth. I was very angry with you when you came to me that first day. You were quite right. That boy had been holding my hand: what’s more, he had been kissing it. It amused me, and if it hurt him I didn’t care. Then you came. And you said things. And then you said you weren’t afraid of me or my weapons. It was a challenge. And I determined to make you love me. It was all planned, the helping in your work — and keeping out of your way at first was to make you wish to see me. And, you see, I succeeded. You did love me.”

  “I do,” he said. He caught her hand and held it fiercely. “I deserved it all. I was a brute to you.”

  “I meant you to love me — and you did love me. I lied to you in almost everything — at first.”

  “About that man — was that a lie?” he asked fiercely.

  “No,” she laughed drearily. “That was true enough. You see, it was more effective than any lie I could have invented. No lie could have added a single horror to that story! And so I’ve won — as I swore I would!”

  “Is that all,” he said, “all the truth?”

  “It’s all there’s any need for,” she said.

  “I want it all. I want to know where I am — whether I really was mad last night. Betty — in spite of all your truth I can’t believe one thing. I can’t believe that you don’t love me.”

  “Man’s vanity,” she began, with a flippant laugh.

  “Don’t!” he said harshly. “How dare you try to play with me? Man’s vanity! But it’s your honour! I know you love me. If you didn’t you would be—”

  “How do you know I’m not?”

  “Silence,” he said. “If you can’t speak the truth hold your tongue and let me speak it. I love you — and you love me — and we are going to be happy.”

  “I will speak the truth,” said Betty, giving him her other hand. “You love me — and I love you, and we are going to be miserable. Yes — I will speak. Dear, I can’t do it. Not even for you. I used to think I thought I could. I was bitter. I think I wanted to be revenged on life and God and everything. I thought I didn’t believe in God, but I wanted to spite Him all the same. But when you came — after that day in the porch — when you came and talked to me about all the good and beautiful things — why, then I knew that I really did believe in them, and I began to love you because you had believed them all the time, and because.... And I didn’t try to make you love me — after that day in the porch — at least, not very much — oh, I do want to speak the truth! I used to try so not to try. I — I did want you to love me, though; I didn’t want you to love anyone else. I wanted you to love me just enough to make you happy, and not enough to make you miserable. And so long as you didn’t know you loved me it was all right: and when you caught me last night I knew that you would know, and it would be all over. You made up your mind to teach me that there are better things in the world than love — truth and honour and — and — things like that. And you’ve taught it me. It was a duel, and you’ve won.”