by Edith Nesbit
The children went, and looked once more in the faces of the King and Queen of the Under Folk, but now they did not know those faces, which seemed to them only the faces of some very nice strangers.
“I think Reuben’s jolly lucky, don’t you?” said Mavis.
“Yes,” said Bernard.
“So do I,” said Cathay.
“I wish Aunt Enid had let me bring the aquarium,” said Francis.
“Never mind,” said Mavis, “it will be something to live for when we come back from the sea, and everything is beastly.”
And it was.
THE END
FIVE OF US AND MADELINE
Five of Us and Madeline appeared posthumously in 1925, published by T. Fisher Unwin, illustrated by Nora Spicer Unwin and edited by Nesbit’s daughter Mrs. Rosamond Sharp.
The original frontispiece
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE. THE DOLL’S HOUSE
CHAPTER TWO. THE YOUNG DETECTIVE
CHAPTER THREE. TAMMY LEE’S JACK
CHAPTER FOUR. RUNNING AWAY
CHAPTER FIVE. THE SLEUTH WORM
CHAPTER SIX. THE COMING OF MADELINE
CHAPTER SEVEN. THE MADNESS OF MADELINE
CHAPTER EIGHT. THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE IN THE WOOD
CHAPTER NINE. THE DWELLERS
CHAPTER TEN. THE CRIMINALS; OR, THE STOLEN ELEPHANT
CHAPTER ONE. THE DOLL’S HOUSE
When we were quite little something happened to us. It changed our lives, as books say. It was as though a wicked magician had waved a wand and not suddenly, as in most magic, but in a gradual and much more terrible way, everything changed.
Father was changed from a rich man to a poor one, and Mother was changed from a darling who wore lovely new dresses and drove in a car and was always gay and loving with us, to a darling who was very ill and could not be gay with us at all — nervous breakdown the doctor called it, and I heard him say to Father that it was only to be expected after such a shock and the altered circumstances and all. I suppose he meant us being poor. We ourselves were changed from children who went to the best sort of schools into children who had to be taught at home by a sort of relation called Miss Knox. She wasn’t a real relation like an aunt or a cousin, but something much further off than that. Even Father always called her Miss Knox. We didn’t like her, and it couldn’t be expected of us to, because our parents didn’t really, though Mother tried. She said Miss Knox had seen better days and that we must be kind to her. We try to, but we cannot like her whatever she may have seen. We have seen better days ourselves too, but it hasn’t made us like Miss Knox — at least not yet. I should say, myself, that the fairest sights were thrown away on Miss Knox. I once saw an inn on the Sevenoaks road that was called the Baldfaced Stag, and the painted sign hangs out in front, the baldest-faced stag you ever saw. Miss Knox is like that to look at. She always put everyone right, even Mother. And as for us, she seems to contradict every single thing we say. She always knows best.
The worst of it was, we had to live with her-for Father went away to Dominica, to “restore our fallen fortunes,” he said, and Aunt Emma took Mother to the South of France to make her well again in the sun. Aunt Emma lent her house for us and Miss Knox to live in, until things were more settled.
There are five of us — and Madeline. Only Madeline came later, and you’ll hear all about that in another story. She is but a mere cousin and not really one of us and not a bit like us either.
Our names are Clifford — which is me — Martin, Olive, Alan and Carlotta. I never can see that it is any use telling people’s names if you don’t at once tell what they are like. But the finest authors do it — so I suppose it is right.
Carlotta was almost a baby when we descended into poverty and had to live with Miss Knox. She wasn’t quite five years old and was young even for that, because Mother said we all grew up too fast and she must keep one of us to cuddle. So she encouraged Carlotta to be a baby and did everything for her, herself, and called her Carlie. Carlie had always slept in Mother’s room, and so it was really worse for her than for us when Mother and Father went away and she had to sleep with Miss Knox instead. She cried and cried and, really, I can’t blame the poor kid. Mother told us before she went away to remember how little Carlie was and to try to make up to her and not leave her out of our play. We did try, but it was awfully difficult because she was too little to understand lots of things. She couldn’t even understand about our being poor, and was always wanting things we couldn’t have.
“It’s fairly beastly Daddy and Mother going away,” said Olive. “But they’ll come back.”
“That’s all very well,” said Clifford, “but we have got to have Miss Knox all over us.”
“I don’t mind that so much,” said Martin; “it will be fun escaping from her clutches. It’s Aunt Emma’s house I mind. That’s what will be so awful.”
“It’s not the being poor,” I said; “I don’t care about money. It’s the things.”
“But they won’t sell everything,” said Olive. “I looked at the book of the sale, and there’s not half the things there.”
“There’s a second volume,” said Alan. “Mother told me. They take two days to sell the things, and there’s a list of things for each day.”
We were camping on a heap of mattresses in the hall. No one could have hated our things being sold more than we did, but it was not bad fun in a way, having everything turned out, and having mattresses in the hall.
Also the gardener was so changed from his old self that he seemed to feel quite differently about peaches and grapes since what everyone called the smash. He surprisingly let us pick as many as we liked. We had a waste-paper basket of them now in our midst. I remember the juice ran down on to the blue-room mattress and made sticky streaks that wouldn’t come off when Carlie licked them, a thing I was much too old to have done myself.
And nurse herself was so changed that she never said a word even about the peach-stones that we happened to leave in the holey parts of the mattress where the leather discs are.
“Were all our things in the list?” Olive asked.
“Not our clothes,” said Alan.
“Bother clothes,” said Olive; “who cares about clothes? Our dolls and toys and things, I mean.”
“Not the little things,” said Martin, in a tone that sent Carlie off to measure her best doll.
“They’re not really selling our things?” I said, feeling hot all over.
“Oh, aren’t they!” said Martin. “Mike’s in the second list,” he added, trying to look as if he didn’t care. Mike was our donkey. “And the rocking-horse and the big ninepins and the croquet and the tennis things and the big chest of wooden bricks Daddy made for us — not the terra-cotta bricks,” he added, as though the terra-cotta bricks mattered one way or another.
I didn’t see why the terra-cotta bricks should be spared to us, and said so.
“Don’t you see?” Martin explained carefully. “It’s the bigness of things that counts. Aunt Emma’s house is too small for donkeys and rocking-horses. Why, it’s more like a doll’s house.”
Olive sat up very straight and the halfeaten peach dribbled from her nerveless fingers.
“The doll’s house,” she said—”our doll’s house. Don’t say there won’t be room at Aunt Emma’s for the doll’s house.”
But Martin had to say it, and Olive threw herself face down on the mattress all juicy as she was, and did not even try not to cry.
I myself was rather upset, though I am a boy and even then was getting too old for dolls’ houses.
“I don’t know how Carlie will bear it,” Olive sobbed. “I believe Carlie will go mad — I really do.”
“Carlie’ll have to bear it the same as the rest of us,” I said; “and it’s worse for us because we’ve had it longer than she has.”
“The younger you are the more things hurt,” said Olive through her sniffs. “I almost wish we’d never had the doll’s house.”
/> “I wish we’d got the pocket-money we’ve spent buying things for it,” said I, not very nobly perhaps.
“I wish — oh, what’s the use of wishing?” said Martin in gloom. “And come to that, what’s the use of blubbing, Olive? It only makes things worse.”
“Nothing can’t make anything worse,” sobbed Olive from despair’s deep depths.
“That’s bad grammar,” said Clifford, thoughtless, but not really meaning to be unkind.
“I know it is, and I like it,” said Olive, howling more than ever.
“Men must work and women must weep,” said Clifford, “though I never could see why. Suppose we go and pack the things they’ve spared — shall we, Martin?”
So we went.
Clifford does not wish to brag of a kind action, and if one of the boys did pat the shoulder of his weeping sister as he passed and said, “Buck up, old girl,” it was only a brother’s duty and nothing to be proud about, though some would not have done it.
Aunt Emma’s house was small and new and mimsey, with very little garden and no stable at all. But it was near Blackheath and in an open part with fields and trees all round.
Sometimes when boys’ fathers lose their money they have to go and live in wretched sunless slums with absolutely indignant relatives, I believe, and beg for their bread till someone adopts them, and the book ends with ponies and cricket-bats and a high rate of pocket-money almost dreamlike.
Miss Knox was rather better than we expected, too. I think, myself, that she had had some instructions from Father, but Olive thought that perhaps our sorrows had changed her heart and she would never be the same Knox again, but it wasn’t so, as you will see later in another story.
Anyway she let us have a room to ourselves to play in, which we’d never expected of her. The room had only tables and chairs, but it was our own to mess about in and no fuss even if you brought up silkworms or brought in newts. Also it had a large cupboard with a window where you could put things away if you wanted to, and the cupboard had a lock, and Miss Knox, with rare gentlemanly feeling, gave us the key.
It was nowhere near our old home, so we were spared seeing strangers playing tennis on our old ground or drawing different curtains across our windows.
“We’ve got a good few things still,” I said, when we had finished unpacking; “chess, draughts, spillikins, Happy Families, bats and stumps, the clockwork engine, all our books...”
“And all the dear dollies,” said Carlie. “I’d give them all for the doll’s house,” said Olive; “I don’t know what you mean about not having room for it. It could have got in here as easy as easy. Our beautiful doll’s house…”
“That was it,” said Martin; “it was too beautiful. Somebody said it ought to have been in a museum, it was so beautiful — and someone paid twenty-five pounds for it at the sale. Aunt Emma told me.”
“Know the blighter’s name?” I asked. And Martin said:
“It wasn’t a blighter. It was an old frump called Miss Peebles,” he added, because we boys have all been taught to be chivalrous to women. “She lives somewhere near here. No children. No earthly excuse for her buying it.”
“I’m glad it’s near,” said Olive dreamily.
“Perhaps she’ll ask us to tea some day and we shall meet it again with rapturous hearts.”
“I couldn’t stand that,” said Clifford, Martin and Alan together; and Clifford, which is me, added, “I wouldn’t go to tea if she asked me. I’d much rather someone at the North Pole had bought it.” And all but Carlie thought so too.
I expect you think it was silly and babyish of us boys to bother about an old doll’s house. You are wrong. This was not a common doll’s house like yours — I mean like some people’s. It was made of some kind of grey foreign wood, and the outside of it all round was chiselled to look like stones; and the roof was jarrah wood, which is red, and looked like dark tiles, and it had chimneys you could look down — not just pretence. It had two staircases of polished mahogany with velvet ribbon for carpets and tiny stair-rods made out of blanket-pins. The doors were mahogany too, properly panelled and polished, with ivory door-knobs, and all the doors opened. The drawing-room mantelpiece was satin-wood, the dining-room one ebony — the windows were made to open and shut, and the front door had three steps up to it. It was given to an ancestor of ours by a Prince to whom he had been Equerry.
It was the way it was made and the smooth inlaid floors and little corner cupboards and shelves and window-ledges that we boys liked. But of course the girls liked the furniture and the silk curtains and brocade carpets and the little wooden four-post beds with curtains and flounces, and all the little dolls. Papa and Mamma and all the children and a baby and a nurse and the cook. And the kitchen was all smooth white wood — little plate-racks, and teeny Windsor chairs, and — But let me get on with the story.
We needn’t have bothered about Miss Peebles asking us to tea. She didn’t. She went away to stay with a cousin and her house was shut up until she came back.
When we heard of this we looked at each other, and when we were alone it did not need Carlie to say, “Couldn’t we go and peep into Miss Peebles’ windows and perhaps we should see IT?” For of course we all meant to.
Well, we went. Miss Peebles’ garden had a high brick wall round it and the gates were padlocked, both the one leading to the road and the one leading to the field. But we knew something about gates, and one day we managed to lift the field one off its hinges, at that convenient time of the day when exhausted nature demands its Tea.
And we crept up like Iroquois under cover of the rhododendrons and got to the house and looked in at the windows. Clifford had to lift Carlie up — she was too little to see in. The first room was just a store-room — jars and crocks and tins, and the window barred too. The next was the kitchen — bright tins and white wood.
“Just like the darling doll’s house,” said Carlie.
“And look at the dish-covers,” said Olive; “they’re just like ours…”
But the third — it always is the third, you will have noticed that. The third was a sort of lumber-room with boxes and trunks and big old pictures leaning against the wall, and old fireguards and bundles done up in sheets and partly broken chairs and a clock that didn’t go and screens that had seen better days, like Miss Knox. And...
“Oh, look, look — it is!” cried Carlie. And indeed it was.
There, neglected and unloved and dusty, in the midst of that scene of desolation, stood our doll’s house. And its back was towards us — its beautiful back with the grey stones and the windows, and the balcony painted green — for our doll’s house would have scorned to be less handsome at the back than the front as too many houses are — not to mention waistcoats.
I will not seek to tell our inside feelings; but I will just tell you that our gentle Olive said:
“We could easily break the glass and get in and play with it. Let’s!”
And Carlie burst into tears and tried to do the breaking then and there with her fat fists.
We almost had to drag them from the spot, and that night Olive told us Carlie had talked about it in her sleep, and the next day the kid was quite ill.
Martin and I decided that we would not take the little ones again. They cannot lift gates. We did not say we would go again ourselves, but we were both thinking. Please remember from now till the end of’ this story that we were very young when all this happened — it is more than two years ago. We should not do such things at this date. We know better. At least I think so.
What we were both thinking came out when Martin said to me next night in our room, struggling with his collar stud:
“No one uses it.”
I said, “It’s all dusty.”
“She can’t want it,” said Martin; “she just bought it for spite. She lives only to give pain to others. There are people like that, I believe.”
“Look at Nero,” I said, “and Caligula.”
“And Herod. And the
Spanish Inquisition,” said Martin, conquering the stud.
“It’s a beastly shame,” said Clifford.
“It ought to be put down by Parliament,” said Martin. “Cliff,” he went on in a voice like Guy Fawkes, “when Parliament doesn’t do what it ought to the people take the law into their own hands.”
“Like Charles the First,” said I. “Or the French Revolution; but it’s much too heavy for us to lift, and we’ve nowhere to put it even if we could lift it.”
Martin told me not to be a duffer, and I said something and then he said something else, and I wasn’t going to stand that and he wasn’t either, and the gas was turned out ere peace was restored.
But in the dark Martin said, “Not the house, you silly cuckoo — no, I’m not beginning again — I mean — don’t you see? Carlie’s so unhappy about it all — and Mother said we mustn’t let her be unhappy — so perhaps it’s our duty. And I don’t suppose the Peebles woman will look inside it from year’s end to year’s end. The little things. If we took our attaché cases? And one of us could keep cave! Very early in the morning would be best — before even the milk. We could keep everything in our lock-up cupboard. The girls could play with them secretly. It would be like conspirators. And that window was only latched, you know.”
“I know it was,” I said, “and with a dinner-knife...”
“Exactly,” said Martin.
“We might begin with the Derbyshire marble table from Castleton. I love the feel of that.”
“And the eight-day clock.”
“And the secretaire bookcase. I like the way those doors fit and its good little brass hinges.”
I think we had made a complete invention, as they call it, of all the furniture of the doll’s house before we got to sleep, very late indeed.
And not the next morning, because we happened not to wake, but the morning after we got up and crept down with our boots in our hands and went out, and along to Miss Peebles’ house.