Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  ‘If your intentions are correct, fear nothing and follow me.’

  And she went down into the hall. We all followed chanting ‘Heroes.’ It is a gloomy thing the girls learnt at the High School, and we always use it when we want a priestly chant.

  Alice stopped short by the hat-stand, and held up her hands as well as she could for the tablecloth, and said —

  ‘Now, great altar of the golden idol, yield me the divining-rod that I may use it for the good of the suffering people.’

  The umbrella-stand was the altar of the golden idol, and it yielded her the old school umbrella. She carried it between her palms.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I shall sing the magic chant. You mustn’t say anything, but just follow wherever I go — like follow my leader, you know — and when there is gold underneath the magic rod will twist in the hand of the priestess like a live thing that seeks to be free. Then you will dig, and the golden treasure will be revealed. H. O., if you make that clatter with your boots they’ll come and tell us not to. Now come on all of you.’

  So she went upstairs and down and into every room. We followed her on tiptoe, and Alice sang as she went. What she sang is not out of a book — Noel made it up while she was dressing up for the priestess.

  Ashen rod cold

  That here I hold,

  Teach me where to find the gold.

  When we came to where Eliza was, she said, ‘Get along with you’; but Dora said it was only a game, and we wouldn’t touch anything, and our boots were quite clean, and Eliza might as well let us. So she did.

  It was all right for the priestess, but it was a little dull for the rest of us, because she wouldn’t let us sing, too; so we said we’d had enough of it, and if she couldn’t find the gold we’d leave off and play something else. The priestess said, ‘All right, wait a minute,’ and went on singing. Then we all followed her back into the nursery, where the carpet was up and the boards smelt of soft soap. Then she said, ‘It moves, it moves! Once more the choral hymn!’ So we sang ‘Heroes’ again, and in the middle the umbrella dropped from her hands.

  ‘The magic rod has spoken,’ said Alice; ‘dig here, and that with courage and despatch.’ We didn’t quite see how to dig, but we all began to scratch on the floor with our hands, but the priestess said, ‘Don’t be so silly! It’s the place where they come to do the gas. The board’s loose. Dig an you value your lives, for ere sundown the dragon who guards this spoil will return in his fiery fury and make you his unresisting prey.’

  So we dug — that is, we got the loose board up. And Alice threw up her arms and cried —

  ‘See the rich treasure — the gold in thick layers, with silver and diamonds stuck in it!’

  ‘Like currants in cake,’ said H. O.

  ‘It’s a lovely treasure,’ said Dicky yawning. ‘Let’s come back and carry it away another day.’

  But Alice was kneeling by the hole.

  ‘Let me feast my eyes on the golden splendour,’ she said, ‘hidden these long centuries from the human eye. Behold how the magic rod has led us to treasures more — Oswald, don’t push so! — more bright than ever monarch — I say, there is something down there, really. I saw it shine!’

  We thought she was kidding, but when she began to try to get into the hole, which was much too small, we saw she meant it, so I said, ‘Let’s have a squint,’ and I looked, but I couldn’t see anything, even when I lay down on my stomach. The others lay down on their stomachs too and tried to see, all but Noel, who stood and looked at us and said we were the great serpents come down to drink at the magic pool. He wanted to be the knight and slay the great serpents with his good sword — he even drew the umbrella ready — but Alice said, ‘All right, we will in a minute. But now — I’m sure I saw it; do get a match, Noel, there’s a dear.’

  ‘What did you see?’ asked Noel, beginning to go for the matches very slowly.

  ‘Something bright, away in the corner under the board against the beam.’

  ‘Perhaps it was a rat’s eye,’ Noel said, ‘or a snake’s,’ and we did not put our heads quite so close to the hole till he came back with the matches.

  Then I struck a match, and Alice cried, ‘There it is!’ And there it was, and it was a half-sovereign, partly dusty and partly bright. We think perhaps a mouse, disturbed by the carpets being taken up, may have brushed the dust of years from part of the half-sovereign with his tail. We can’t imagine how it came there, only Dora thinks she remembers once when H. O. was very little Mother gave him some money to hold, and he dropped it, and it rolled all over the floor. So we think perhaps this was part of it. We were very glad. H. O. wanted to go out at once and buy a mask he had seen for fourpence. It had been a shilling mask, but now it was going very cheap because Guy Fawkes’ Day was over, and it was a little cracked at the top. But Dora said, ‘I don’t know that it’s our money. Let’s wait and ask Father.’

  But H. O. did not care about waiting, and I felt for him. Dora is rather like grown-ups in that way; she does not seem to understand that when you want a thing you do want it, and that you don’t wish to wait, even a minute.

  So we went and asked Albert-next-door’s uncle. He was pegging away at one of the rotten novels he has to write to make his living, but he said we weren’t interrupting him at all.

  ‘My hero’s folly has involved him in a difficulty,’ he said. ‘It is his own fault. I will leave him to meditate on the incredible fatuity — the hare-brained recklessness — which have brought him to this pass. It will be a lesson to him. I, meantime, will give myself unreservedly to the pleasures of your conversation.’

  That’s one thing I like Albert’s uncle for. He always talks like a book, and yet you can always understand what he means. I think he is more like us, inside of his mind, than most grown-up people are. He can pretend beautifully. I never met anyone else so good at it, except our robber, and we began it, with him. But it was Albert’s uncle who first taught us how to make people talk like books when you’re playing things, and he made us learn to tell a story straight from the beginning, not starting in the middle like most people do. So now Oswald remembered what he had been told, as he generally does, and began at the beginning, but when he came to where Alice said she was the priestess, Albert’s uncle said —

  ‘Let the priestess herself set forth the tale in fitting speech.’

  So Alice said, ‘O high priest of the great idol, the humblest of thy slaves took the school umbrella for a divining-rod, and sang the song of inver — what’s-it’s-name?’

  ‘Invocation perhaps?’ said Albert’s uncle. ‘Yes; and then I went about and about and the others got tired, so the divining-rod fell on a certain spot, and I said, “Dig”, and we dug — it was where the loose board is for the gas men — and then there really and truly was a half-sovereign lying under the boards, and here it is.’

  Albert’s uncle took it and looked at it.

  ‘The great high priest will bite it to see if it’s good,’ he said, and he did. ‘I congratulate you,’ he went on; ‘you are indeed among those favoured by the Immortals. First you find half-crowns in the garden, and now this. The high priest advises you to tell your Father, and ask if you may keep it. My hero has become penitent, but impatient. I must pull him out of this scrape. Ye have my leave to depart.’

  Of course we know from Kipling that that means, ‘You’d better bunk, and be sharp about it,’ so we came away. I do like Albert’s uncle.

  I shall be like that when I’m a man. He gave us our Jungle books, and he is awfully clever, though he does have to write grown-up tales.

  We told Father about it that night. He was very kind. He said we might certainly have the half-sovereign, and he hoped we should enjoy ourselves with our treasure-trove.

  Then he said, ‘Your dear Mother’s Indian Uncle is coming to dinner here to-morrow night. So will you not drag the furniture about overhead, please, more than you’re absolutely obliged; and H. O. might wear slippers or something. I can always dis
tinguish the note of H. O.’s boots.’

  We said we would be very quiet, and Father went on —

  ‘This Indian Uncle is not used to children, and he is coming to talk business with me. It is really important that he should be quiet. Do you think, Dora, that perhaps bed at six for H. O. and Noel—’

  But H. O. said, ‘Father, I really and truly won’t make a noise. I’ll stand on my head all the evening sooner than disturb the Indian Uncle with my boots.’

  And Alice said Noel never made a row anyhow. So Father laughed and said, ‘All right.’ And he said we might do as we liked with the half-sovereign. ‘Only for goodness’ sake don’t try to go in for business with it,’ he said. ‘It’s always a mistake to go into business with an insufficient capital.’

  We talked it over all that evening, and we decided that as we were not to go into business with our half-sovereign it was no use not spending it at once, and so we might as well have a right royal feast. The next day we went out and bought the things. We got figs, and almonds and raisins, and a real raw rabbit, and Eliza promised to cook it for us if we would wait till tomorrow, because of the Indian Uncle coming to dinner. She was very busy cooking nice things for him to eat. We got the rabbit because we are so tired of beef and mutton, and Father hasn’t a bill at the poultry shop. And we got some flowers to go on the dinner-table for Father’s party. And we got hardbake and raspberry noyau and peppermint rock and oranges and a coconut, with other nice things. We put it all in the top long drawer. It is H. O.’s play drawer, and we made him turn his things out and put them in Father’s old portmanteau. H. O. is getting old enough now to learn to be unselfish, and besides, his drawer wanted tidying very badly. Then we all vowed by the honour of the ancient House of Bastable that we would not touch any of the feast till Dora gave the word next day. And we gave H. O. some of the hardbake, to make it easier for him to keep his vow. The next day was the most rememorable day in all our lives, but we didn’t know that then. But that is another story. I think that is such a useful way to know when you can’t think how to end up a chapter. I learnt it from another writer named Kipling. I’ve mentioned him before, I believe, but he deserves it!

  CHAPTER 15. ‘LO, THE POOR INDIAN!’

  It was all very well for Father to ask us not to make a row because the Indian Uncle was coming to talk business, but my young brother’s boots are not the only things that make a noise. We took his boots away and made him wear Dora’s bath slippers, which are soft and woolly, and hardly any soles to them; and of course we wanted to see the Uncle, so we looked over the banisters when he came, and we were as quiet as mice — but when Eliza had let him in she went straight down to the kitchen and made the most awful row you ever heard, it sounded like the Day of judgement, or all the saucepans and crockery in the house being kicked about the floor, but she told me afterwards it was only the tea-tray and one or two cups and saucers, that she had knocked over in her flurry. We heard the Uncle say, ‘God bless my soul!’ and then he went into Father’s study and the door was shut — we didn’t see him properly at all that time.

  I don’t believe the dinner was very nice. Something got burned I’m sure — for we smelt it. It was an extra smell, besides the mutton.

  I know that got burned. Eliza wouldn’t have any of us in the kitchen except Dora — till dinner was over. Then we got what was left of the dessert, and had it on the stairs — just round the corner where they can’t see you from the hall, unless the first landing gas is lighted. Suddenly the study door opened and the Uncle came out and went and felt in his greatcoat pocket. It was his cigar-case he wanted. We saw that afterwards. We got a much better view of him then. He didn’t look like an Indian but just like a kind of brown, big Englishman, and of course he didn’t see us, but we heard him mutter to himself —

  ‘Shocking bad dinner! Eh! — what?’

  When he went back to the study he didn’t shut the door properly. That door has always been a little tiresome since the day we took the lock off to get out the pencil sharpener H. O. had shoved into the keyhole. We didn’t listen — really and truly — but the Indian Uncle has a very big voice, and Father was not going to be beaten by a poor Indian in talking or anything else — so he spoke up too, like a man, and I heard him say it was a very good business, and only wanted a little capital — and he said it as if it was an imposition he had learned, and he hated having to say it. The Uncle said, ‘Pooh, pooh!’ to that, and then he said he was afraid that what that same business wanted was not capital but management. Then I heard my Father say, ‘It is not a pleasant subject: I am sorry I introduced it. Suppose we change it, sir. Let me fill your glass.’ Then the poor Indian said something about vintage — and that a poor, broken-down man like he was couldn’t be too careful. And then Father said, ‘Well, whisky then,’ and afterwards they talked about Native Races and Imperial something or other and it got very dull.

  So then Oswald remembered that you must not hear what people do not intend you to hear — even if you are not listening and he said, ‘We ought not to stay here any longer. Perhaps they would not like us to hear—’

  Alice said, ‘Oh, do you think it could possibly matter?’ and went and shut the study door softly but quite tight. So it was no use staying there any longer, and we went to the nursery.

  Then Noel said, ‘Now I understand. Of course my Father is making a banquet for the Indian, because he is a poor, broken-down man. We might have known that from “Lo, the poor Indian!” you know.’

  We all agreed with him, and we were glad to have the thing explained, because we had not understood before what Father wanted to have people to dinner for — and not let us come in.

  ‘Poor people are very proud,’ said Alice, ‘and I expect Father thought the Indian would be ashamed, if all of us children knew how poor he was.’

  Then Dora said, ‘Poverty is no disgrace. We should honour honest Poverty.’

  And we all agreed that that was so.

  ‘I wish his dinner had not been so nasty,’ Dora said, while Oswald put lumps of coal on the fire with his fingers, so as not to make a noise. He is a very thoughtful boy, and he did not wipe his fingers on his trouser leg as perhaps Noel or H. O. would have done, but he just rubbed them on Dora’s handkerchief while she was talking.

  ‘I am afraid the dinner was horrid.’ Dora went on. ‘The table looked very nice with the flowers we got. I set it myself, and Eliza made me borrow the silver spoons and forks from Albert-next-door’s Mother.’

  ‘I hope the poor Indian is honest,’ said Dicky gloomily, ‘when you are a poor, broken-down man silver spoons must be a great temptation.’

  Oswald told him not to talk such tommy-rot because the Indian was a relation, so of course he couldn’t do anything dishonourable. And Dora said it was all right any way, because she had washed up the spoons and forks herself and counted them, and they were all there, and she had put them into their wash-leather bag, and taken them back to Albert-next-door’s Mother.

  ‘And the brussels sprouts were all wet and swimmy,’ she went on, ‘and the potatoes looked grey — and there were bits of black in the gravy — and the mutton was bluey-red and soft in the middle. I saw it when it came out. The apple-pie looked very nice — but it wasn’t quite done in the apply part. The other thing that was burnt — you must have smelt it, was the soup.’

  ‘It is a pity,’ said Oswald; ‘I don’t suppose he gets a good dinner every day.’

  ‘No more do we,’ said H. O., ‘but we shall to-morrow.’

  I thought of all the things we had bought with our half-sovereign — the rabbit and the sweets and the almonds and raisins and figs and the coconut: and I thought of the nasty mutton and things, and while I was thinking about it all Alice said —

  ‘Let’s ask the poor Indian to come to dinner with us to-morrow.’ I should have said it myself if she had given me time.

  We got the little ones to go to bed by promising to put a note on their dressing-table saying what had happened, so th
at they might know the first thing in the morning, or in the middle of the night if they happened to wake up, and then we elders arranged everything.

  I waited by the back door, and when the Uncle was beginning to go Dicky was to drop a marble down between the banisters for a signal, so that I could run round and meet the Uncle as he came out.

  This seems like deceit, but if you are a thoughtful and considerate boy you will understand that we could not go down and say to the Uncle in the hall under Father’s eye, ‘Father has given you a beastly, nasty dinner, but if you will come to dinner with us tomorrow, we will show you our idea of good things to eat.’ You will see, if you think it over, that this would not have been at all polite to Father.

  So when the Uncle left, Father saw him to the door and let him out, and then went back to the study, looking very sad, Dora says.

  As the poor Indian came down our steps he saw me there at the gate.

  I did not mind his being poor, and I said, ‘Good evening, Uncle,’ just as politely as though he had been about to ascend into one of the gilded chariots of the rich and affluent, instead of having to walk to the station a quarter of a mile in the mud, unless he had the money for a tram fare.

  ‘Good evening, Uncle.’ I said it again, for he stood staring at me. I don’t suppose he was used to politeness from boys — some boys are anything but — especially to the Aged Poor.

  So I said, ‘Good evening, Uncle,’ yet once again. Then he said —

  ‘Time you were in bed, young man. Eh! — what?’

  Then I saw I must speak plainly with him, man to man. So I did. I said —

  ‘You’ve been dining with my Father, and we couldn’t help hearing you say the dinner was shocking. So we thought as you’re an Indian, perhaps you’re very poor’ — I didn’t like to tell him we had heard the dreadful truth from his own lips, so I went on, ‘because of “Lo, the poor Indian” — you know — and you can’t get a good dinner every day. And we are very sorry if you’re poor; and won’t you come and have dinner with us to-morrow — with us children, I mean? It’s a very, very good dinner — rabbit, and hardbake, and coconut — and you needn’t mind us knowing you’re poor, because we know honourable poverty is no disgrace, and—’ I could have gone on much longer, but he interrupted me to say—’Upon my word! And what’s your name, eh?’