The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  Then I liked him better. I always like people who know the same songs we do, and books and tunes and things.

  The others came out. The lady looked very uncomfy, and partly as if she was going to cry. But she couldn’t help laughing too, as more and more of us came out.

  ‘And who,’ the clergyman went on, ‘who in fortune’s name is Albert? And who is his uncle? And what have they or you to do in this galery—I mean garden?’

  We all felt rather silly, and I don’t think I ever felt more than then what an awful lot there were of us.

  ‘Three years’ absence in Calcutta or elsewhere may explain my ignorance of these details, but still—’

  ‘I think we’d better go,’ said Dora. ‘I’m sorry if we’ve done anything rude or wrong. We didn’t mean to. Good-bye. I hope you’ll be happy with the gentleman, I’m sure.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ said Noël, and I know he was thinking how much nicer Albert’s uncle was.

  We turned to go. The lady had been very silent compared with what she was when she pretended to show us Canterbury. But now she seemed to shake off some dreamy silliness and caught hold of Dora by the shoulder.

  ‘No, dear, no,’ she said, ‘it’s all right, and you must have some tea—we’ll have it on the lawn. John, don’t tease them any more. Albert’s uncle is the gentleman I told you about. And, my dear children, this is my brother that I haven’t seen for three years.’

  ‘Then he’s a long-lost too,’ said H. O.

  The lady said ‘Not now’ and smiled at him.

  And the rest of us were dumb with confounding emotions. Oswald was particularly dumb. He might have known it was her brother, because in rotten grown-up books if a girl kisses a man in a shrubbery that is not the man you think she’s in love with; it always turns out to be a brother, though generally the disgrace of the family and not a respectable chaplain from Calcutta.

  The lady now turned to her reverend and surprising brother and said, ‘John, go and tell them we’ll have tea on the lawn.’

  When he was gone she stood quite still a minute. Then she said, ‘I’m going to tell you something, but I want to put you on your honour not to talk about it to other people. You see it isn’t everyone I would tell about it. He, Albert’s uncle, I mean, has told me a lot about you, and I know I can trust you.’

  We said ‘Yes,’ Oswald with a brooding sentiment of knowing all too well what was coming next.

  The lady then said, ‘Though I am not Albert’s uncle’s grandmother I did know him in India once, and we were going to be married, but we had a—a—misunderstanding.’

  ‘Quarrel?’ ‘Row?’ said Noël and H. O. at once.

  ‘Well, yes, a quarrel, and he went away. He was in the Navy then. And then…well, we were both sorry, but well, anyway, when his ship came back we’d gone to Constantinople, then to England, and he couldn’t find us. And he says he’s been looking for me ever since.’

  ‘Not you for him?’ said Noël.

  ‘Well, perhaps,’ said the lady.

  And the girls said ‘Ah!’ with deep interest. The lady went on more quickly, ‘And then I found you, and then he found me, and now I must break it to you. Try to bear up.’

  She stopped. The branches cracked, and Albert’s uncle was in our midst. He took off his hat. ‘Excuse my tearing my hair,’ he said to the lady, ‘but has the pack really hunted you down?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, and when she looked at him she got miles prettier quite suddenly. ‘I was just breaking to them…’

  ‘Don’t take that proud privilege from me,’ he said. ‘Kiddies, allow me to present you to the future Mrs Albert’s uncle, or shall we say Albert’s new aunt?’

  * * * *

  There was a good deal of explaining done before tea—about how we got there, I mean, and why. But after the first bitterness of disappointment we felt not nearly so sorry as we had expected to. For Albert’s uncle’s lady was very jolly to us, and her brother was awfully decent, and showed us a lot of first-class native curiosities and things, unpacking them on purpose; skins of beasts, and beads, and brass things, and shells from different savage lands besides India. And the lady told the girls that she hoped they would like her as much as she liked them, and if they wanted a new aunt she would do her best to give satisfaction in the new situation. And Alice thought of the Murdstone aunt belonging to Daisy and Denny, and how awful it would have been if Albert’s uncle had married her. And she decided, she told me afterwards, that we might think ourselves jolly lucky it was no worse.

  Then the lady led Oswald aside, pretending to show him the parrot which he had explored thoroughly before, and told him she was not like some people in books. When she was married she would never try to separate her husband from his bachelor friends, she only wanted them to be her friends as well.

  Then there was tea, and thus all ended in amicableness, and the reverend and friendly drove us home in a wagonette. But for Martha we shouldn’t have had tea, or explanations, or lift or anything. So we honoured her, and did not mind her being so heavy and walking up and down constantly on our laps as we drove home.

  And that is all the story of the long-lost grandmother and Albert’s uncle. I am afraid it is rather dull, but it was very important (to him), so I felt it ought to be narrated. Stories about lovers and getting married are generally slow. I like a love-story where the hero parts with the girl at the garden-gate in the gloaming and goes off and has adventures, and you don’t see her any more till he comes home to marry her at the end of the book. And I suppose people have to marry. Albert’s uncle is awfully old—more than thirty, and the lady is advanced in years—twenty-six next Christmas. They are to be married then. The girls are to be bridesmaids in white frocks with fur. This quite consoles them. If Oswald repines sometimes, he hides it. What’s the use? We all have to meet our fell destiny, and Albert’s uncle is not extirpated from this awful law.

  Now the finding of the long-lost was the very last thing we did for the sake of its being a noble act, so that is the end of the Wouldbegoods, and there are no more chapters after this. But Oswald hates books that finish up without telling you the things you might want to know about the people in the book. So here goes.

  We went home to the beautiful Blackheath house. It seemed very stately and mansion-like after the Moat House, and everyone was most frightfully pleased to see us.

  Mrs Pettigrew cried when we went away. I never was so astonished in my life. She made each of the girls a fat red pincushion like a heart, and each of us boys had a knife bought out of the housekeeping (I mean housekeeper’s own) money.

  Bill Simpkins is happy as sub-under-gardener to Albert’s uncle’s lady’s mother. They do keep three gardeners—I knew they did. And our tramp still earns enough to sleep well on from our dear old Pig-man.

  Our last three days were entirely filled up with visits of farewell sympathy to all our many friends who were so sorry to lose us. We promised to come and see them next year. I hope we shall.

  Denny and Daisy went back to live with their father at Forest Hill. I don’t think they’ll ever be again the victims of the Murdstone aunt—who is really a great-aunt and about twice as much in the autumn of her days as our new Albert’s-uncle aunt. I think they plucked up spirit enough to tell their father they didn’t like her—which they’d never thought of doing before. Our own robber says their holidays in the country did them both a great deal of good. And he says us Bastables have certainly taught Daisy and Denny the rudiments of the art of making home happy. I believe they have thought of several quite new naughty things entirely on their own—and done them too—since they came back from the Moat House.

  I wish you didn’t grow up so quickly. Oswald can see that ere long he will be too old for the kind of games we can all play, and he feels grown-upness creeping inevitably upon him. But enough
of this.

  And now, gentle reader, farewell. If anything in these chronicles of the Wouldbegoods should make you try to be good yourself, the author will be very glad, of course. But take my advice and don’t make a society for trying in. It is much easier without.

  And do try to forget that Oswald has another name besides Bastable. The one beginning with C., I mean. Perhaps you have not noticed what it was. If so, don’t look back for it. It is a name no manly boy would like to be called by—if he spoke the truth. Oswald is said to be a very manly boy, and he despises that name, and will never give it to his own son when he has one. Not if a rich relative offered to leave him an immense fortune if he did. Oswald would still be firm. He would, on the honour of the House of Bastable.

  THE ROAD TO ROME; OR, THE SILLY STOWAWAY

  We Bastables have only two uncles, and neither of them, are our own natural-born relatives. One is a great-uncle, and the other is the uncle from his birth of Albert, who used to live next door to us in the Lewisham Road. When we first got to know him (it was over some baked potatoes, and is quite another story) we called him Albert-next-door’s-Uncle, and then Albert’s uncle for short. But Albert’s uncle and my father joined in taking a jolly house in the country, called the Moat House, and we stayed there for our summer holidays; and it was there, through an accident to a pilgrim with peas in his shoes—that’s another story too—that we found Albert’s uncle’s long-lost love; and as she was very old indeed—twenty-six next birthday—and he was ever so much older in the vale of years, he had to get married almost directly, and it was fixed for about Christmas-time. And when our holidays came the whole six of us went down to the Moat House with Father and Albert’s uncle. We never had a Christmas in the country before. It was simply ripping. And the long-lost love—her name was Miss Ashleigh, but we were allowed to call her Aunt Margaret even before the wedding made it really legal for us to do so—she and her jolly clergyman brother used to come over, and sometimes we went to the Cedars, where they live, and we had games and charades, and hide-and-seek, and Devil in the Dark, which is a game girls pretend to like, and very few do really, and crackers and a Christmas-tree for the village children, and everything you can jolly well think of.

  And all the time, whenever we went to the Cedars, there was all sorts of silly fuss going on about the beastly wedding; boxes coming from London with hats and jackets in, and wedding presents—all glassy and silvery, or else brooches and chains—and clothes sent down from London to choose from. I can’t think how a lady can want so many petticoats and boots and things just because she’s going to be married. No man would think of getting twenty-four shirts and twenty-four waistcoats, and so on, just to be married in.

  “It’s because they’re going to Rome, I think,” Alice said, when we talked it over before the fire in the kitchen the day Mrs. Pettigrew went to see her aunt, and we were allowed to make toffee. “You see, in Rome you can only buy Roman clothes, and I think they’re all stupid bright colours—at least I know the sashes are. You stir now, Oswald. My face is all burnt black.”

  Oswald took the spoon, though it was really not his turn by three; but he is one whose nature is so that he cannot make a fuss about little things—and he knows he can make toffee.

  “Lucky hounds,” H.O. said, “to be going to Rome. I wish I was.”

  “Hounds isn’t polite, H.O., dear,” Dora said; and H.O. said—

  “Well, lucky bargees, then.”

  “It’s the dream of my life to go to Rome,” Noël said. Noël is our poet brother. “Just think of what the man says in the ‘Roman Road.’ I wish they’d take me.”

  “They won’t,” Dicky said. “It costs a most awful lot. I heard Father saying so only yesterday.”

  “It would only be the fare,” Noël answered; “and I’d go third, or even in a cattle-truck, or a luggage van. And when I got there I could easily earn my own living. I’d make ballads and sing them in the streets. The Italians would give me lyres—that’s the Italian kind of shilling, they spell it with an i. It shows how poetical they are out there, their calling it that.”

  “But you couldn’t make Italian poetry,” H.O. said, staring at Noël with his mouth open.

  “Oh, I don’t know so much about that,” Noël said. “I could jolly soon learn anyway, and just to begin with I’d do it in English. There are sure to be some people who would understand. And if they didn’t, don’t you think their warm Southern hearts would be touched to see a pale, slender, foreign figure singing plaintive ballads in an unknown tongue? I do. Oh! they’d chuck along the lyres fast enough—they’re not hard and cold like North people. Why, every one here is a brewer, or a baker, or a banker, or a butcher, or something dull. Over there they’re all bandits, or vineyardiners, or play the guitar, or something, and they crush the red grapes and dance and laugh in the sun—you know jolly well they do.”

  “This toffee’s about done,” said Oswald suddenly. “H.O., shut your silly mouth and get a cupful of cold water.” And then, what with dropping a little of the toffee into the water to see if it was ready, and pouring some on a plate that wasn’t buttered and not being able to get it off again when it was cold without breaking the plate, and the warm row there was about its being one of the best dinner-service ones, the wild romances of Noël’s poetical intellect went out of our heads altogether; and it was not till later, and when deep in the waters of affliction, that they were brought back to us.

  Next day H.O. said to Dora, “I want to speak to you all by yourself and me.” So they went into the secret staircase that creaks and hasn’t been secret now for countless years; and after that Dora did some white sewing she wouldn’t let us look at, and H.O. helped her.

  “It’s another wedding present, you may depend,” Dicky said—“a beastly surprise, I shouldn’t wonder.” And no more was said. The rest of us were busy skating on the moat, for it was now freezing hard. Dora never did care for skating; she says it hurts her feet.

  And now Christmas and Boxing Day passed like a radiating dream, and it was the wedding-day. We all had to go to the bride’s mother’s house before the wedding, so as to go to church with the wedding party. The girls had always wanted to be somebody’s bridesmaids, and now they were—in white cloth coats like coachmen, with lots of little capes, and white beaver bonnets. They didn’t look so bad, though rather as if they were in a Christmas card; and their dresses were white silk like pocket-handkerchiefs under the long coats. And their shoes had real silver buckles our great Indian uncle gave them. H.O. went back just as the waggonette was starting, and came out with a big brown-paper parcel. We thought it was the secret surprise present Dora had been making, and, indeed, when I asked her she nodded. We little recked what it really was, or how our young brother was going to shove himself forward once again. He will do it. Nothing you say is of any lasting use.

  There were a great many people at the wedding—quite crowds. There was lots to eat and drink, and though it was all cold, it did not matter, because there were blazing fires in every fireplace in the house, and the place all decorated with holly and mistletoe and things. Every one seemed to enjoy themselves very much, except Albert’s uncle and his blushing bride; and they looked desperate. Every one said how sweet she looked, but Oswald thought she looked as if she didn’t like being married as much as she expected. She was not at all a blushing bride really; only the tip of her nose got pink, because it was rather cold in the church. But she is very jolly.

  Her reverend but nice brother read the marriage service. He reads better than any one I know, but he is not a bit of a prig really, when you come to know him.

  When the rash act was done Albert’s uncle and his bride went home in a carriage all by themselves, and then we had the lunch and drank the health of the bride in real champagne, though Father said we kids must only have just a taste. I’m sure Oswald, for one, did not want any more; one taste was quite enoug
h. Champagne is like soda-water with medicine in it. The sherry we put sugar in once was much more decent.

  Then Miss Ashleigh—I mean Mrs. Albert’s uncle—went away and took off her white dress and came back looking much warmer. Dora heard the housemaid say afterwards that the cook had stopped the bride on the stairs with “a basin of hot soup, that would take no denial, because the bride, poor dear young thing, not a bite or sup had passed her lips that day.” We understood then why she had looked so unhappy. But Albert’s uncle had had a jolly good breakfast—fish and eggs and bacon and three goes of marmalade. So it was not hunger made him sad. Perhaps he was thinking what a lot of money it cost to be married and go to Rome.

  A little before the bride went to change, H.O. got up and reached his brown-paper parcel from under the sideboard and sneaked out. We thought he might have let us see it given, whatever it was. And Dora said she had understood he meant to; but it was his secret.

  The bride went away looking quite comfy in a furry cloak, and Albert’s uncle cheered up at the last and threw off the burden of his cares and made a joke. I forget what it was; it wasn’t a very good one, but it showed he was trying to make the best of things.

  Then the Bridal Sufferers drove away, with the luggage on a cart—heaps and heaps of it, and we all cheered and threw rice and slippers. Mrs. Ashleigh and some other old ladies cried.

  And then every one said, “What a pretty wedding!” and began to go. And when our waggonette came round we all began to get in. And suddenly Father said—

  “Where’s H.O.?” And we looked round. He was in absence.