The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  “I hope to goodness there isn’t a real ghost,” Jimmy whispered.

  “Not likely,” Gerald whispered back.

  “But I don’t want to see Sir Rupert’s ghost with its head under its arm,” Jimmy insisted.

  “You won’t. The most you’ll see’ll be the millionaire seeing it. Mabel said he was to see it, not us. Very likely you’ll sleep all night and not see anything. Shut your eyes and count up to a million and don’t be a goat!”

  As soon as Mabel had learned from her drab-haired aunt that this was indeed the night when Mr. Jefferson D. Conway would sleep at the castle she had hastened to add a wish, “that Sir Rupert and his head may appear tonight in the state bedroom.”

  Jimmy shut his eyes and began to count a million. Before he had counted it he fell asleep. So did his brother.

  They were awakened by the loud echoing bang of a pistol shot. Each thought of the shot that had been fired that morning, and opened eyes that expected to see a sunshiny terrace and red-rose petals strewn upon warm white stone.

  Instead, there was the dark, lofty state chamber, lighted but little by six tall candles; there was the American in shirt and trousers, a smoking pistol in his hand; and there, advancing from the door of the powdering-room, a figure in doublet and hose, a ruff round its neck—and no head! The head, sure enough, was there; but it was under the right arm, held close in the slashed-velvet sleeve of the doublet. The face looking from under the arm wore a pleasant smile. Both boys, I am sorry to say, screamed. The American fired again. The bullet passed through Sir Rupert, who advanced without appearing to notice it.

  Then, suddenly, the lights went out. The next thing the boys knew it was morning. A grey daylight shone blankly through the tall windows and wild rain was beating upon the glass, and the American was gone.

  “Where are we?” said Jimmy, sitting up with tangled hair and looking round him. “Oh, I remember. Ugh! It was horrid. I’m about fed up with that ring, so I don’t mind telling you.”

  “Nonsense!” said Gerald. “I enjoyed it. I wasn’t a bit frightened, were you?”

  “No,” said Jimmy, “of course I wasn’t.

  * * * *

  “We’ve done the trick,” said Gerald later when they learned that the American had breakfasted early with Lord Yalding and taken the first train to London; “he’s gone to get rid of his other house, and take this one. The old ring’s beginning to do really useful things.”

  * * * *

  “Perhaps you’ll believe in the ring now,” said Jimmy to Lord Yalding, whom he met later on in the picture-gallery; “it’s all our doing that Mr. Jefferson saw the ghost. He told us he’d take the house if he saw a ghost, so of course we took care he did see one.”

  “Oh, you did, did you?” said Lord Yalding in rather an odd voice. “I’m very much obliged, I’m sure.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Jimmy kindly. “I thought you’d be pleased—and him too.”

  “Perhaps you’ll be interested to learn,” said Lord Yalding, putting his hands in his pockets and staring down at Jimmy, “that Mr. Jefferson D. Conway was so pleased with your ghost that he got me out of bed at six o clock this morning to talk about it.”

  “Oh, ripping!” said Jimmy. “What did he say?”

  “He said, as far as I can remember,” said Lord Yalding, still in the same strange voice “he said: ‘My lord, your ancestral pile is Al. It is, in fact, The Limit. Its luxury is palatial, its grounds are nothing short of Edenesque. No expense has been spared, I should surmise. Your ancestors were whole-hoggers. They have done the thing as it should be done—every detail attended to. I like your tapestry, and I like your oak, and I like your secret stairs. But I think your ancestors should have left well enough alone, and stopped at that.’ So I said they had, as far as I knew, and he shook his head and said:

  “‘No, Sir. Your ancestors take the air of a night with their heads under their arms. A ghost that sighed or glided or rustled I could have stood, and thanked you for it, and considered it in the rent. But a ghost that bullets go through while it stands grinning with a bare neck and its head loose under its own arm and little boys screaming and fainting in their beds—no! What I say is, If this is a British hereditary high-toned family ghost, excuse me!’ And he went off by the early train.”

  “I say,” the stricken Jimmy remarked, “I am sorry, and I don’t think we did faint, really I don’t—but we thought it would be just what you wanted. And perhaps someone else will take the house.”

  “I don’t know anyone else rich enough,” said Lord Yalding. “Mr. Conway came the day before he said he would, or you’d never have got hold of him. And I don’t know how you did it, and I don’t want to know. It was a rather silly trick.”

  There was a gloomy pause. The rain beat against the long windows.

  “I say—” Jimmy looked up at Lord Yalding with the light of a new idea in his round face—“I say, if you’re hard up, why don’t you sell your jewels?”

  “I haven’t any jewels, you meddlesome young duffer,” said Lord Yalding quite crossly; and taking his hands out of his pockets, he began to walk away.

  “I mean the ones in the panelled room with the stars in the ceiling,” Jimmy insisted, following him.

  “There aren’t any,” said Lord Yalding shortly; “and if this is some more ring-nonsense I advise you to be careful, young man. I’ve had about as much as I care for.”

  “It’s not ring-nonsense,” said Jimmy: “there are shelves and shelves of beautiful family jewels. You can sell them and—”

  “Oh, no!” cried Mademoiselle, appearing like an oleograph of a duchess in the door of the picture-gallery; “don’t sell the family jewels—”

  “There aren’t any, my lady,” said Lord Yalding, going towards her. “I thought you were never coming.”

  “Oh, aren’t there!” said Mabel, who had followed Mademoiselle. “You just come and see,”

  “Let us see what they will to show us,” cried Mademoiselle, for Lord Yalding did not move; “it should at least be amusing.”

  “It is,” said Jimmy.

  So they went, Mabel and Jimmy leading, while Mademoiselle and Lord Yalding followed, hand in hand.

  “It’s much safer to walk hand in hand,” said Lord Yalding; “with these children at large one never knows what may happen next.”

  CHAPTER XII

  It would be interesting, no doubt, to describe the feelings of Lord Yalding as he followed Mabel and Jimmy through his ancestral halls, but I have no means of knowing at all what he felt. Yet one must suppose that he felt something: bewilderment, perhaps, mixed with a faint wonder, and a desire to pinch himself to see if he were dreaming. Or he may have pondered the rival questions, “Am I mad? Are they mad?” without being at all able to decide which he ought to try to answer, let alone deciding what, in either case, the answer ought to be. You see, the children did seem to believe in the odd stories they told—and the wish had come true, and the ghost had appeared. He must have thought but all this is vain; I don’t really know what he thought any more than you do.

  Nor can I give you any clue to the thoughts and feelings of Mademoiselle. I only know that she was very happy, but anyone would have known that if they had seen her face. Perhaps this is as good a moment as any to explain that when her guardian had put her in a convent so that she should not sacrifice her fortune by marrying a poor lord, her guardian had secured that fortune (to himself) by going off with it to South America. Then, having no money left, Mademoiselle had to work for it. So she went out as governess, and took the situation she did take because it was near Lord Yalding’s home. She wanted to see him, even though she thought he had forsaken her and did not love her any more. And now she had seen him. I dare say she thought about some of these things as she went along through his house, her hand held in his. But o
f course I can’t be sure.

  Jimmy’s thoughts, of course, I can read like any old book. He thought, “Now he’ll have to believe me.” That Lord Yalding should believe him had become, quite unreasonably, the most important thing in the world to Jimmy. He wished that Gerald and Kathleen were there to share his triumph, but they were helping Mabel’s aunt to cover the grand furniture up, and so were out of what followed. Not that they missed much, for when Mabel proudly said, “Now you’ll see,” and the others came close round her in the little panelled room, there was a pause, and then—nothing happened at all!

  “There’s a secret spring here somewhere,” said Mabel, fumbling with fingers that had suddenly grown hot and damp.

  “Where?” said Lord Yalding.

  “Here,” said Mabel impatiently, “only I can’t find it.”

  And she couldn’t. She found the spring of the secret panel under the window all right, but that seemed to everyone dull compared with the jewels that everyone had pictured and two at least had seen. But the spring that made the oak panelling slide away and displayed jewels plainly to any eye worth a king’s ransom—this could not be found. More, it was simply not there. There could be no doubt of that. Every inch of the panelling was felt by careful fingers. The earnest protests of Mabel and Jimmy died away presently in a silence made painful by the hotness of one’s ears, the discomfort of not liking to meet anyone’s eyes, and the resentful feeling that the spring was not behaving in at all a sportsmanlike way, and that, in a word, this was not cricket.

  “You see!” said Lord Yalding severely. “Now you’ve had your joke, if you call it a joke, and I’ve had enough of the whole silly business. Give me the ring—it’s mine, I suppose, since you say you found it somewhere here—and don’t let’s hear another word about all this rubbish of magic and enchantment.”

  “Gerald’s got the ring,” said Mabel miserably.

  “Then go and fetch him,” said Lord Yalding “both of you.”

  The melancholy pair retired, and Lord Yalding spent the time of their absence in explaining to Mademoiselle how very unimportant jewels were compared with other things.

  The four children came back together.

  “We’ve had enough of this ring business,” said Lord Yalding. “Give it to me and we’ll say no more about it.”

  “I—I can’t get it off,” said Gerald. “It—it always did have a will of its own.”

  “I’ll soon get it off,” said Lord Yalding. But he didn’t. “We’ll try soap,” he said firmly. Four out of his five hearers knew just exactly how much use soap would be.

  “They won’t believe about the jewels,” wailed Mabel, suddenly dissolved in tears, “and I can’t find the spring. I’ve felt all over—we all have—it was just here, and—”

  Her fingers felt it as she spoke; and as she ceased to speak the carved panels slid away, and the blue velvet shelves laden with jewels were disclosed to the unbelieving eyes of Lord Yalding and the lady who was to be his wife.

  “Jove!” said Lord Yalding.

  “Misericorde!” said the lady.

  “But why now?” gasped Mabel. “Why not before?”

  “I expect it’s magic,” said Gerald. “There’s no real spring here, and it couldn’t act because the ring wasn’t here. You know Phoebus told us the ring was the heart of all the magic.”

  “Shut it up and take the ring away and see.”

  They did, and Gerald was (as usual, he himself pointed out) proved to be right. When the ring was away there was no spring; when the ring was in the room there (as Mabel urged) was the spring all right enough.

  “So you see,” said Mabel to Lord Yalding.

  “I see that the spring’s very artfully concealed,” said that dense peer. “I think it was very clever indeed of you to find it. And if those jewels are real—”

  “Of course they’re real,” said Mabel indignantly.

  “Well, anyway,” said Lord Yalding, “thank you all very much. I think it’s clearing up. I’ll send the wagonette home with you after lunch. And if you don’t mind, I’ll have the ring.”

  Half an hour of soap and water produced no effect whatever, except to make the finger of Gerald very red and very sore. Then Lord Yalding said something very impatient indeed, and then Gerald suddenly became angry and said: “Well, I’m sure I wish it would come off,” and of course instantly, “slick as butter,” as he later pointed out, off it came.

  “Thank you,” said Lord Yalding.

  “And I believe now he thinks I kept it on on purpose,” said Gerald afterwards when, at ease on the leads at home, they talked the whole thing out over a tin of preserved pineapple and a bottle of ginger-beer apiece. “There’s no pleasing some people. He wasn’t in such a fiery hurry to order that wagonette after he found that Mademoiselle meant to go when we did. But I liked him better when he was a humble bailiff. Take him for all in all, he does not look as if we should like him again.

  “He doesn’t know what’s the matter with him,” said Kathleen, leaning back against the tiled roof) “it’s really the magic—it’s like sickening with measles.”

  Don’t you remember how cross Mabel was at first about the invisibleness?”

  “Rather!” said Jimmy.

  “It’s partly that,” said Gerald, trying to be fair, “and partly it’s the being in love. It always makes people like idiots—a chap at school told me. His sister was like that—quite rotten, you know. And she used to be quite a decent sort before she was engaged.”

  * * * *

  At tea and at supper Mademoiselle was radiant—as attractive as a lady on a Christmas card, as merry as a marmoset, and as kind as you would always be yourself if you could take the trouble. At breakfast, an equal radiance, kindness, attraction, merriment. Then Lord Yalding came to see her. The meeting took place in the drawing-room; the children with deep discreetness remained shut in the school-room till Gerald, going up to his room for a pencil, surprised Eliza with her ear glued to the drawing-room key-hole.

  After that Gerald sat on the top stair with a book.

  He could not hear any of the conversation in the drawing-room, but he could command a view of the door, and in this way be certain that no one else heard any of it. Thus it was that when the drawing-room door opened Gerald was in a position to see Lord Yalding come out. “Our young hero, as he said later, “coughed with infinite tact to show that he was there,” but Lord Yalding did not seem to notice. He walked in a blind sort of way to the hat-stand, fumbled clumsily with the umbrellas and macintoshes, found his straw hat and looked at it gloomily, crammed it on his head and went out, banging the door behind him in the most reckless way.

  He left the drawing-room door open, and Gerald, though he had purposely put himself in a position where one could hear nothing from the drawing-room when the door was shut, could hear something quite plainly now that the door was open. That something, he noticed with deep distress and disgust, was the sound of sobs and sniffs. Mademoiselle was quite certainly crying.

  “Jimminy!” he remarked to himself, “they haven’t lost much time. Fancy their beginning to quarrel already! I hope I’ll never have to be anybody’s lover.”

  But this was no time to brood on the terrors of his own future. Eliza might at any time occur. She would not for a moment hesitate to go through that open door, and push herself into the very secret sacred heart of Mademoiselle’s grief. It seemed to Gerald better that he should be the one to do this. So he went softly down the worn green Dutch carpet of the stairs and into the drawing-room, shutting the door softly and securely behind him.

  * * * *

  “It is all over,” Mademoiselle was saying, her face buried in the beady arum-lilies on a red ground worked for a cushion cover by a former pupil: “he will not marry me!”

  Do not ask me how Gerald had gained th
e lady’s confidence. He had, as I think I said almost at the beginning, very pretty ways with grown-ups, when he chose. Anyway, he was holding her hand, almost as affectionately as if she had been his mother with a headache, and saying “Don’t!” and “Don’t cry!” and “It’ll be all right, you see if it isn’t” in the most comforting way you can imagine, varying the treatment with gentle thumps on the back and entreaties to her to tell him all about it.

  This wasn’t mere curiosity, as you might think. The entreaties were prompted by Gerald’s growing certainty that whatever was the matter was somehow the fault of that ring. And in this Gerald was (“once more,” as he told himself) right.

  The tale, as told by Mademoiselle, was certainly an unusual one. Lord Yalding, last night after dinner, had walked in the park “to think of—”

  “Yes, I know,” said Gerald; “and he had the ring on. And he saw—”

  “He saw the monuments become alive,” sobbed Mademoiselle; “his brain was troubled by the ridiculous accounts of fairies that you tell him. He sees Apollo and Aphrodité alive on their marble. He remembers him of your story. He wish himself a statue. Then he becomes mad—imagines to himself that your story of the island is true, plunges in the lake, swims among the beasts of the Ark of Noé, feeds with gods on an island. At dawn the madness become less. He think the Panthéon vanish. But him, no he thinks himself statue, hiding from gardeners in his garden till nine less a quarter. Then he thinks to wish himself no more a statue and perceives that he is flesh and blood. A bad dream, but he has lost the head with the tales you tell. He say it is no dream but he is fool—mad—how you say? And a mad man must not marry. There is no hope. I am at despair! And the life is vain!”

  “There is,” said Gerald earnestly. “I assure you there is—hope, I mean. And life’s as right as rain really. And there’s nothing to despair about. He’s not mad, and it’s not a dream. It’s magic. It really and truly is.”