by E. Nesbit
Then Gerald said, in his most business-like manner: “Sit down, Princess, and we’ll have a thorough good palaver about it.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Jimmy, “if we was to wake up and find it was dreams.”
“No such luck,” said the voice.
“Well,” said Gerald, “first of all, what’s your name, and if you’re not a Princess, who are you?”
“I’m—I’m,” said a voice broken with sobs, “I’m the—housekeeper’s—niece—at—the—castle—and my name’s Mabel Prowse.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” said Jimmy, without a shadow of truth, because how could he? The others were silent. It was a moment full of agitation and confused ideas.
“Well, anyhow,” said Gerald, “you belong here.”
“Yes,” said the voice, and it came from the floor, as though its owner had flung herself down in the madness of despair. “Oh yes, I belong here right enough, but what’s the use of belonging anywhere if you’re invisible?”
CHAPTER III
Those of my readers who have gone about much with an invisible companion will not need to be told how awkward the whole business is. For one thing, however much you may have been convinced that your companion is invisible, you will, I feel sure, have found yourself every now and then saying, “This must be a dream!” or “I know I shall wake up in half a sec!” And this was the case with Gerald, Kathleen, and Jimmy as they sat in the white marble Temple of Flora, looking out through its arches at the sunshiny park and listening to the voice of the enchanted Princess, who really was not a Princess at all, but just the housekeeper’s niece, Mabel Prowse; though, as Jimmy said, “she was enchanted, right enough.”
“It’s no use talking,” she said again and again, and the voice came from an empty-looking space between two pillars; “I never believed anything would happen, and now it has.”
“Well,” said Gerald kindly, “can we do anything for you? Because, if not, I think we ought to be going.”
“Yes,” said Jimmy; “I do want my tea!”
“Tea!” said the unseen Mabel scornfully. “Do you mean to say you’d go off to your teas and leave me after getting me into this mess?”
“Well, of all the unfair Princesses I ever met!” Gerald began. But Kathleen interrupted.
“Oh, don’t rag her,” she said. “Think how horrid it must be to be invisible!”
“I don’t think,” said the hidden Mabel, “that my aunt likes me very much as it is. She wouldn’t let me go to the fair because I’d forgotten to put back some old trumpery shoe that Queen Elizabeth wore—I got it out from the glass case to try it on.”
“Did it fit?” asked Kathleen, with interest.
“Not it—much too small,” said Mabel. “I don’t believe it ever fitted anyone.”
“I do want my tea!” said Jimmy.
“I do really think perhaps we ought to go,” said Gerald. “You see, it isn’t as if we could do anything for you.”
“You’ll have to tell your aunt,” said Kathleen kindly.
“No, no, no!” moaned Mabel invisibly; “take me with you. I’ll leave her a note to say I’ve run away to sea.”
“Girls don’t run away to sea.”
“They might,” said the stone floor between the pillars, “as stowaways, if nobody wanted a cabin boy—cabin girl, I mean.”
“I’m sure you oughtn’t,” said Kathleen firmly.
“Well, what am I to do?”
“Really,” said Gerald, “I don’t know what the girl can do. Let her come home with us and have—”
“Tea—oh, yes,” said Jimmy, jumping up.
“And have a good council.”
“After tea,” said Jimmy.
“But her aunt’ll find she’s gone.”
“So she would if I stayed.”
“Oh, come on,” said Jimmy.
“But the aunt’ll think something’s happened to her.”
“So it has.”
“And she’ll tell the police, and they’ll look everywhere for me.”
“They’ll never find you,” said Gerald. “Talk of impenetrable disguises!”
“I’m sure,” said Mabel, “aunt would much rather never see me again than see me like this. She’d never get over it; it might kill her—she has spasms as it is. I’ll write to her, and we’ll put it in the big letter-box at the gate as we go out. Has anyone got a bit of pencil and a scrap of paper?”
Gerald had a note-book, with leaves of the shiny kind which you have to write on, not with a blacklead pencil, but with an ivory thing with a point of real lead. And it won’t write on any other paper except the kind that is in the book, and this is often very annoying when you are in a hurry. Then was seen the strange spectacle of a little ivory stick, with a leaden point, standing up at an odd, impossible-looking slant, and moving along all by itself as ordinary pencils do when you are writing with them.
“May we look over?” asked Kathleen.
There was no answer. The pencil went on writing.
“Mayn’t we look over?” Kathleen said again.
“Of course you may!” said the voice near the paper. “I nodded, didn’t I? Oh, I forgot, my nodding’s invisible too.”
The pencil was forming round, clear letters on the page torn out of the note-book. This is what it wrote:
DEAR AUNT,
I am afraid you will not see me again for some time. A lady in a motor-car has adopted me, and we are going straight to the coast and then in a ship. It is useless to try to follow me. Farewell, and may you be happy. I hope you enjoyed the fair.
MABEL.
“But that’s all lies,” said Jimmy bluntly.
“No, it isn’t; it’s fancy,” said Mabel. “If I said I’ve become invisible, she’d think that was a lie, anyhow.”
“Oh, come along,” said Jimmy; “you can quarrel just as well walking.”
Gerald folded up the note as a lady in India had taught him to do years before, and Mabel led them by another and very much nearer way out of the park. And the walk home was a great deal shorter, too, than the walk out had been.
The sky had clouded over while they were in the Temple of Flora, and the first spots of rain fell as they got back to the house, very late indeed for tea.
Mademoiselle was looking out of the window, and came herself to open the door.
“But it is that you are in lateness, in lateness!” she cried. “You have had a misfortune—no? All goes well?”
“We are very sorry indeed,” said Gerald. “It took us longer to get home than we expected. I do hope you haven’t been anxious. I have been thinking about you most of the way home.”
“Go, then,” said the French lady, smiling; “you shall have them in the same time—the tea and the supper.”
Which they did.
“How could you say you were thinking about her all the time?” said a voice just by Gerald’s ear, when Mademoiselle had left them alone with the bread and butter and milk and baked apples. “It was just as much a lie as me being adopted by a motor lady.”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Gerald, through bread and butter. “I was thinking about whether she’d be in a wax or not. So there!”
There were only three plates, but Jimmy let Mabel have his, and shared with Kathleen. It was rather horrid to see the bread and butter waving about in the air, and bite after bite disappearing from it apparently by no human agency; and the spoon rising with apple in it and returning to the plate empty. Even the tip of the spoon disappeared as long as it was in Mabel’s unseen mouth; so that at times it looked as though its bowl had been broken off.
Everyone was very hungry, and more bread and butter had to be fetched. Cook grumbled when the plate was filled for the third time.
“I tell you what,” said Jimmy; “I did want my tea.”
“I tell you what,” said Gerald; “it’ll be jolly difficult to give Mabel any breakfast. Mademoiselle will be here then. She’d have a fit if she saw bits of forks with bacon on them vanishing, and then the forks coming back out of vanishment, and the bacon lost for ever.”
“We shall have to buy things to eat and feed our poor captive in secret,” said Kathleen.
“Our money won’t last long,” said Jimmy, in gloom. “Have you got any money?”
He turned to where a mug of milk was suspended in the air without visible means of support.
“I’ve not got much money,” was the reply from near the milk, “but I’ve got heaps of ideas.”
“We must talk about everything in the morning,” said Kathleen. “We must just say good night to Mademoiselle, and then you shall sleep in my bed, Mabel. I’ll lend you one of my nightgowns.”
“I’ll get my own tomorrow,” said Mabel cheerfully.
“You’ll go back to get things?”
“Why not? Nobody can see me. I think I begin to see all sorts of amusing things coming along. It’s not half bad being invisible.”
It was extremely odd, Kathleen thought, to see the Princess’s clothes coming out of nothing. First the gauzy veil appeared hanging in the air. Then the sparkling coronet suddenly showed on the top of the chest of drawers. Then a sleeve of the pinky gown showed, then another, and then the whole gown lay on the floor in a glistening ring as the unseen legs of Mabel stepped out of it. For each article of clothing became visible as Mabel took it off. The nightgown, lifted from the bed, disappeared a bit at a time.
“Get into bed,” said Kathleen, rather nervously.
The bed creaked and a hollow appeared in the pillow. Kathleen put out the gas and got into bed; all this magic had been rather upsetting, and she was just the least bit frightened, but in the dark she found it was not so bad. Mabel’s arms went round her neck the moment she got into bed, and the two little girls kissed in the kind darkness, where the visible and the invisible could meet on equal terms.
“Good night,” said Mabel. “You’re a darling, Cathy; you’ve been most awfully good to me, and I shan’t forget it. I didn’t like to say so before the boys, because I know boys think you’re a muff if you’re grateful. But I am. Good night.”
Kathleen lay awake for some time. She was just getting sleepy when she remembered that the maid who would call them in the morning would see those wonderful Princess clothes.
“I’ll have to get up and hide them,” she said. “What a bother!”
And as she lay thinking what a bother it was, she happened to fall asleep, and when she woke again it was bright morning, and Eliza was standing in front of the chair where Mabel’s clothes lay, gazing at the pink Princess-frock that lay on the top of her heap and saying, “Law!”
“Oh, don’t touch, please!” Kathleen leaped out of bed as Eliza was reaching out her hand.
“Where on earth did you get hold of that?”
“We’re going to use it for acting,” said Kathleen, on the desperate inspiration of the moment. “It’s lent me for that.”
“You might show me, miss,” suggested Eliza.
“Oh, please not!” said Kathleen, standing in front of the chair in her nightgown. “You shall see us act when we are dressed up. There! And you won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“Not if you’re a good little girl,” said Eliza. “But you be sure to let me see when you do dress up. But where—”
Here a bell rang and Eliza had to go, for it was the postman, and she particularly wanted to see him.
“And now,” said Kathleen, pulling on her first stocking, “we shall have to do the acting. Everything seems very difficult.”
“Acting isn’t,” said Mabel; and an unsupported stocking waved in the air and quickly vanished. “I shall love it.,”
“You forget,” said Kathleen gently, “invisible actresses can’t take part in plays unless they’re magic ones.”
“Oh,” cried a voice from under a petticoat that hung in the air, “I’ve got such an idea!”
“Tell it us after breakfast,” said Kathleen, as the water in the basin began to splash about and to drip from nowhere back into itself. “And oh! I do wish you hadn’t written such whoppers to your aunt. I’m sure we oughtn’t to tell lies for anything.”
“What’s the use of telling the truth if nobody believes you?” came from among the splashes.
“I don’t know,” said Kathleen, “but I’m sure we ought to tell the truth.”
“You can, if you like,” said a voice from the folds of a towel that waved lonely in front of the wash-hand stand.
“All right. We will, then, first thing after brek—your brek, I mean. You’ll have to wait up here till we can collar something and bring it up to you. Mind you dodge Eliza when she comes to make the bed.”
The invisible Mabel found this a fairly amusing game; she further enlivened it by twitching out the corners of tucked-up sheets and blankets when Eliza wasn’t looking.
“Drat the clothes!” said Eliza; “anyone ’ud think the things was bewitched.”
She looked about for the wonderful Princess clothes she had glimpsed earlier in the morning. But Kathleen had hidden them in a perfectly safe place—under the mattress, which she knew Eliza never turned.
Eliza hastily brushed up from the floor those bits of fluff which come from goodness knows where in the best regulated houses. Mabel, very hungry and exasperated at the long absence of the others at their breakfast, could not forbear to whisper suddenly in Eliza’s ear:
“Always sweep under the mats.”
The maid started and turned pale. “I must be going silly,” she murmured; “though it’s just what mother always used to say. Hope I ain’t going dotty, like Aunt Emily. Wonderful what you can fancy, ain’t it?”
She took up the hearth-rug all the same, swept under it, and under the fender. So thorough was she, and so pale, that Kathleen, entering with a chunk of bread raided by Gerald from the pantry window, exclaimed:
“Not done yet. I say, Eliza, you do look ill! What’s the matter?”
“I thought I’d give the room a good turn-out,” said Eliza, still very pale.
“Nothing’s happened to upset you?” Kathleen asked. She had her own private fears.
“Nothing only my fancy, miss,” said Eliza. “I always was fanciful from a child—dreaming of the pearly gates and them little angels with nothing on only their heads and wings—so cheap to dress, I always think, compared with children.”
When she was got rid of, Mabel ate the bread and drank water from the tooth-mug.
“I’m afraid it tastes of cherry tooth-paste rather,” said Kathleen apologetically.
“It doesn’t matter,” a voice replied from the tilted mug; “it’s more interesting than water. I should think red wine in ballads was rather like this.”
“We’ve got leave for the day again,” said Kathleen, when the last bit of bread had vanished, “and Gerald feels like I do about lies. So we’re going to tell your aunt where you really are.”
“She won’t believe you.”
“That doesn’t matter, if we speak the truth,” said Kathleen primly.
“I expect you’ll be sorry for it,” said Mabel; “but come on—and, I say, do be careful not to shut me in the door as you go out. You nearly did just now.”
In the blazing sunlight that flooded the High Street four shadows to three children seemed dangerously noticeable. A butcher’s boy looked far too earnestly at the extra shadow, and his big, liver-coloured lurcher snuffed at the legs of that shadow’s mistress and whined uncomfortably.
“Get behind me,” said Kathleen; “then our two shadows will look like one.”
But Mabel’s shadow, very visible, fell on Kathleen’s back, and the ostler of the Davenant Arms looked up to see what big bird had cast that big shadow.
A woman driving a cart with chickens and ducks in it called out: “Halloa, missy, ain’t you blacked yer back, neither! What you been leaning up against?”
Everyone was glad when they got out of the town.
* * * *
Speaking the truth to Mabel’s aunt did not turn out at all as anyone—even Mabel—expected. The aunt was discovered reading a pink novelette at the window of the housekeeper’s room, which, framed in clematis and green creepers, looked out on a nice little courtyard to which Mabel led the party.
“Excuse me,” said Gerald, “but I believe you’ve lost your niece?”
“Not lost, my boy,” said the aunt, who was spare and tall, with a drab fringe and a very genteel voice.
“We could tell you something about her,” said Gerald.
“Now,” replied the aunt, in a warning voice, “no complaints, please. My niece has gone, and I am sure no one thinks less than I do of her little pranks. If she’s played any tricks on you it’s only her lighthearted way. Go away, children, I’m busy.”
“Did you get her note?” asked Kathleen.
The aunt showed rather more interest than before, but she still kept her finger in the novelette.
“Oh,” she said, “so you witnessed her departure? Did she seem glad to go?”
“Quite,” said Gerald truthfully.
“Then I can only be glad that she is provided for,” said the aunt. “I dare say you were surprised. These romantic adventures do occur in our family. Lord Yalding selected me out of eleven applicants for the post of housekeeper here. I’ve not the slightest doubt the child was changed at birth and her rich relatives have claimed her.”
“But aren’t you going to do anything—tell the police, or—”
“Shish!” said Mabel.
“I won’t shish,” said Jimmy. “Your Mabel’s invisible that’s all it is. She’s just beside me now.”