Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  We did not meet a soul. Everything was quite quiet and wetter than you would believe, with dew. The window yielded to our burglar’s jemmy — I mean the dinner-knife — and we got in.

  You have no idea how loud our boots sounded on the floor of that lumber-room. We got the doll’s house door open in a great hurry and filled the attaché cases with the very best of the furniture.

  “But suppose she does open it,” said I; “suppose she really bought it to play with? Louis the Eleventh had lead images, and Charles the Something or Other of France had toys, I believe.”

  We quickly put all the things back.

  “I don’t believe she does want to play with them. Anyway, she can’t want them all,” said Martin. “Look here, let’s be fair.”

  So we only filled one of the cases. Then with our boots on we got our legs over the window ledge, got the window shut, and were just off when we heard the front gate creak. A beastly early worm of a gardener was coming in. He didn’t see us. In a moment we were round the corner.

  You wouldn’t believe that grass would make a noise when you walk on it. But it does — if you don’t want it to. We gained the cover of the rhododendrons and I glanced round. There was no pursuit. My heart felt like a steam-hammer. And the rhododendrons shrieked like trees in tropical forests during monsoons in books of travel. The gate-hinges went home with a report like a hundred-ton gun — and we could not help running under cover of the hedge till we got to the road. Even then we went very fast.

  We got in unobserved and cleaned our boots with our sponge. Then I said:

  “I say — I suppose it isn’t really stealing, is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Martin; “I didn’t think it was until I saw that gardener, and then I didn’t feel so beastly sure.”

  “Let’s reason it out,” said Clifford, who has always been noted for his logical mind.

  “The things were ours. We’ve taken them back. She didn’t want them. We do. No. It isn’t stealing. It’s more like Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor.”

  “But we’re not the poor,” said Martin.

  “Yes, we are,” I said, “compared with what we used to be. And anyway Carlie is. Poor Carlie! look how she cried. And Mother said we were not to let her cry. It’s Robin Hood we’ve been playing at, and not Bill Sikes. We must get that clear in our logical minds, Martin, or we shall have all sorts of bother explaining to the girls.” We did get it clear in our minds, at least Clifford did, but we didn’t have any bother with the girls. Olive said afterwards she thought we knew what was right; at any rate we were always saying we knew.

  But at the time the girls were almost speechless with joy. They fingered and stroked the little chairs and tables, and I believe Carlie kissed the little glass chandelier and the knife-box and churn.

  We had to use force to get them away from the cupboard for meals.

  Having those things seemed to make up to the girls for all our sorrows. When I saw how happy they were I could not be sorry that we had acted like Robin Hood. But at the same time I did wish that I had not felt quite so like Bill Sikes when we were getting away from that gardener.

  Martin said that life was a difficult thing, and the greatest tragedies came not from the conflict of right and wrong but from the conflict of opposing duties. He liked saying this: he got it from our Uncle Jim, who is a clergyman.

  “You see,” said Martin, “even if it was our duty to the Peebles not to take our things out of her lumber-room, we had our duty to our little sisters.”

  And I quite saw that, but I made up my mind not to think about it more than I could help, and to try to fit up the shelves of the cupboard to be as like the doll’s house as possible.

  This was done — and when I felt the Bill Sikes feeling coming on I used to get the better of it by hating Miss Peebles as hard as I could. Martin has told me since that he did too. The girls, poor butterflies, sported gaily, unpreyed on by such thoughts as ours.

  Then quite suddenly...

  I really do not know how to tell this part of the story. It is too perfectly awful. You cannot possibly guess what is coming any more than we did. Prepare yourself for a frightful shock. No one prepared us. We had to bear it as best we could. What I am going to say was the limit. No one could have expected it. It was this.

  We came in one day from a long walk, and there, blocking up Aunt Emma’s little hall, was our doll’s house! Also Miss Knox was smiling. Also a strange lady, quite kind-looking, and smiling partly. Partly she looked more like crying. It was Miss Peebles. She had only bought the doll’s house to give it to us.

  “And I’m sorry you’ve been so long without it, my dears,” she said; “but my cousin was so ill I had to go to her, and I didn’t want to send it to you till I’d put new dresses on the dolls and added a few little things that were mine when I was a little girl.”

  They were lovely things that she had added, too; the same beautiful kind of things as ours. Little pictures with real gilt frames and chairs made out of the white ends of peacocks’ feathers — like ivory, and vases of flowers for mantelpieces, under glass cases, and a whole set of copper saucepans and kettles. But I have not the heart to go on.

  We did not say anything then except the things you have to say, like “Thank you very much indeed,” and “How kind of you!”

  And the doll’s house was got up into our room by that gardener and another man, and the things in the cupboard felt to me more like Bluebeard’s wives than doll’s house furniture.

  When we were alone the girls cried and said they wished we hadn’t. This is girl’s gratitude, and we said so, though of course we wished it too. But there was no row. We were too crushed.

  Martin and I knew what we had to do, and of course we went down to Miss Peebles and did it. She was very decent about it.

  Of course that made us feel worse. We did not try to explain. We only owned to our horrid crime, for such it now appeared.

  Though quite old — nearly forty, I believe — Miss Peebles has not lost the faculty of her mind. She said, and quite out of her own head, without our having said anything in the least like it, “I expect you felt like Robin Hood... at first.”

  Think what we felt to know that we had stolen furniture and clocks and chandeliers from one who could understand everything like that.

  Miss Peebles is a woman in a million — a trump of the first water. We know her quite well now, and though she has actually played with the doll’s house with the girls, she has never talked about our fatal act — not even to us.

  CHAPTER TWO. THE YOUNG DETECTIVE

  This happened when we went to stay with our Uncle John. At least... but you will see!

  It was the first time that Martin and I had been allowed to travel quite by ourselves. We were still in the custody of Miss Knox in Aunt Emma’s house. Miss Knox always thinks we are much younger that we are: and of course we aren’t.

  Aunt Kitty is Uncle John’s bride and quite a decent sort, in some ways, but I think grown-up people ought to be taught to write plainly. We have to, and why shouldn’t they? I should like to know what would happen to a chap at school if he showed up an ekker with writing like Aunt Kitty’s. An insane spider escaping from an inky death could hardly have done worse.

  However, Miss Knox puzzled the letter out, and read it aloud to us: and when she had gone on for several long, thin pages about mountains and lakes and fjords and the people they had met at hotels, the letter said:

  What I am really writing to tell you is that we have taken a house at Lymchurch for the rest of the summer and we shall be very glad to have Clifford and Martin down for a month. They can travel down alone quite well, they are quite old enough to be trusted. [Aunt Kitty is quite sound in many ways.] I am sorry we cannot have all the children, but we have only room for two, and they must share a room. They can come by the five o’clock train on the 17th and we will meet them at the station. The address is The Beeches, Lymchurch.

  This is what Miss
Knox read out to us at breakfast, and Martin was so excited at the idea of getting away from Aunt Emma’s mimsy house for a month, that he upset his tea, but Clifford, who is made of sterner stuff, went on with his breakfast and had one more piece of toast than usual, just to show he was too old to lose his head about going to the seaside. The little ones were terribly disappointed at having to stay behind with Miss Knox — it was rotten luck, I must say — and Carlie burst into tears as usual.

  The ladies of the house were at once plunged in clothes, darning and buttons and things like that. We men had other tasks, overhauling our fishing-rods, oiling our bats and seeing to our hooks and lines. I do not take much interest in clothes. Whatever do they matter? I like plenty of handkerchiefs; they are useful for so many different things.

  We had far more luggage than I should have taken if it had been left to me — and when we were getting into the cab Eliza, she was the general and the other “lady of the house,” came tearing after us with a little extra dispatch case.

  “Their things for the night, mum,” she screamed at Miss Knox; “their nighties and comb and brush,” she shrieked, right out loud like that for everyone to hear. The very cabman grinned — I saw him.

  That was the first thing and, considering we have worn pyjamas for years, it was pretty rotten, I do think, and I had hardly got over it when we reached the station.

  Miss Knox let me take the tickets, but she stood beside me to see that I didn’t ask for one to Manchester, or Rio, or Aden, I suppose.

  Then we got into the train, and while she was enjoying a final fuss with the luggage I said to Martin:

  “In two more minutes we shall be free,” and the next moment she came back to the carriage and said, “I have a good mind to go with you after all. I don’t feel quite easy in my mind letting you go alone like this,” and our hearts sank to our boots. But the engine shrieked encouragingly and the porter slammed the door, and Miss Knox is not the sort of person to travel without a ticket, and the train moved off and we were saved.

  Our heroes were well provided with cash, so they could buy buns and butterscotch and bananas at any station that had any, and the journey passed like a lovely dream. Being on our complete own was what made it so dreamlike.

  “I wonder if they’ll meet us with a motor or an open carriage with horses,” said Martin.

  “An aeroplane, perhaps,” said Clifford, but I did not really think so. I am not a baby. I knew there are some things it is no use wishing for.

  But when we got to Hythe station, which Lymchurch is obliged to use, not having a station of its own, we found that our kind aunt and uncle had not met us with anything, not even a wheelbarrow or a scooter. In fact, they had not met us at all By the time we were quite sure of this all the other carts and carriages and motors had gone and with them our last chance of getting even a lift on our way.

  “We shall have to walk it,” said Clifford, and it was he who thought of asking the station-master to take care of our box and portmanteau until they were sent for. We thought we could carry the dispatch case, but it got heavier and heavier as we went along, and Clifford carried it most of the way, because Martin is my younger brother and smaller than me, and I know my duty. But I do not brag about this.

  Well, we got through the town, only pausing to buy some jam puffs and strawberries and shortbread and bullseyes, which we ate when we came to the canal, so as not to have to carry them — in sticky bags, I mean. It was green and shady by the canal, but the road to Lymchurch was white-hot dust.

  Lymchurch is every bit of five miles from the town. The road runs along by the side of the sea-wall and on the other side of this is the sea. We could hear its voice talking to itself and that was all the company we had. We met a few people on bicycles and a few motors, but on the whole it was a most abandoned road. We went on and on like the woodcutter’s sons when they go out to seek their fortunes, and we were as thirsty as deserts, not having had the sense to buy ginger-beer in Hythe, as, of course, more experienced travellers would have done, instead of bullseyes, which only make you worse.

  We sat down several times on the top of the sea-wall and gazed at the sea, and wished it was ginger-beer, which it looked rather like, frothing up on the sand in little creamy waves. But of course it was not, and looking at it only seemed to make us thirstier.

  And then came our first bit of luck since we left the station. A man with a cart with a mangle in it came by and offered us a lift. We were very glad to get in, though the mangle was cornery, and bit us when the cart bumped.

  We told him we were going to The Beeches, and he said:

  “First house this side the village. I’ll drop you there. Afore I drops the mangle.” And he did.

  The Beeches stands alone in a field. It is quite a large house. We heard afterwards that it called itself a bungalow. Where we lived it would be called a villa. It has a paling round a bit of ground that tries to be a garden. No trees. It is red, and had green shutters that fasten outside. A brass plate on the door said “Knock and ring.” We couldn’t ring because there wasn’t any bell. There wasn’t any knocker either, but luckily you can knock without a knocker, so we did, both with hands and feet. Feet make most noise, being booted; besides not hurting as hands do when you get despairing and knock as hard as you can.

  But however hard we knocked it made no difference. And long before we stopped knocking we knew there was no one at home. If you knock on an empty house the knocking sounds different somehow.

  It was plain that our aunt and uncle were out. And the door was locked. We were much too hot to go on to the village and ask people. We sat down on the front door-step to wait till they came in. The door-step was in the shade, but we were frightfully thirsty. Martin said he believed he could drink someone’s blood, and I said it would be hot and beastly even if we had anybody’s blood to drink.

  We went round presently to see if the back door was open. Of course it wasn’t. So then we unbuttoned the shutters to see if we could get in by a window — but all was as tight as stuck-down envelopes. So we did the shutters up again. And then we found a little window and it was open behind its little shutter, and Martin gave me a leg-up and I got in, all among cold chicken and cheese and butter and lard and crocks and jars and tins, for it was the larder. I only knocked down one jar, and that was merely salt. Then I was in the kitchen. Our hero found the back door and let in his little brother: then he went round and buttoned up the pantry window. You know what grown-ups are like, they tell you always to leave everything just as you find it, and I thought it was as well to begin our visit without words if possible.

  Then we locked the back door again and looked searchingly for the water-tap. But there wasn’t one — we found out afterwards that your water is brought every day from a special pump in the village and you use rain-water and the sea for washing and baths — and I was just looking in the kettle to see if any water had been left in it when Martin found the ginger-beer, bottles and bottles of it, on the pantry floor. So then we were all right.

  The kitchen was not entirely without crockery and glass, though nothing like so much as we have at home — but we found two tumblers. I shall never forget that ginger-beer. We had three bottles between us — one instantly and more by degrees as we felt we needed it. We kept listening for the approaching footsteps of our uncle and aunt, so that we might run out as soon as we heard them coming and say, “How are you? And we hope you don’t mind our having used some of the G.B., but we were so thirsty.”

  But they did not come. And then we found we were hungry. Perhaps it was the sight of the things in the larder; but really we hadn’t had anything serious to eat for ages, and the little things we had had on the way, strawberries and jam puffs and so on, only seemed to have made us hungrier, if you understand what I mean. So we had supper. Not in a messy, untidy way. Oh, no!

  We spread a cloth as we had been shown by our kind relatives and we got the chicken and some cold ham and bread and butter, and knives and forks and
plates and everything that grown-ups think needful. (I once heard a man talk about the Simple Life. I think I should like that — no tablecloth and eat with your fingers.) I had never carved a fowl before, but it is quite easy if you pull at the ends of the legs and wings with your hands. It was delicious. So was the gooseberry pie. And so was everything.

  When we could not eat any more we cleared everything away; no one could blame us for not washing up because we couldn’t find any water. Even the cleanest person would think twice before washing up in such a valuable fluid as G.B.

  Then we went all over the house. There were several rooms, and we wondered why Aunt Kitty had said that she hadn’t room for the others, because there seemed to be heaps. Clifford thought that probably she and Uncle couldn’t be bothered with small kids, and that it was just a polite way of putting it, like you have to, not to hurt people’s feelings. The house was awfully tidy except for some men’s clothes in two of the bedrooms. No ladies’ hats or scent-bottles; so we saw that our Aunt Kitty must be one of those wonderful people who never forget to put things away.

  When we had looked at everything we went to the landing window to look out, like Bluebeard’s wife’s sister, and see if we could see our uncle and aunt coming. And they were not. In fact, nobody was. And it was getting evening, and dusky indoors, though still daylight outside. And we got wondering whether we had somehow missed our relations at the station and whether they were still there waiting for us, and wondering whether they would wait there all night and whether we should be able to find any water for tea in the morning or whether we should have to have ginger-beer for breakfast. Martin thought it would be rather nice, but I thought it would be too puffy to go with boiled eggs.

  And then we saw two men coming across the field towards the house.

  “Don’t let them see you,” said Clifford, pulling his young brother away from the window; “let them ‘knock and ring’ if they can. We don’t want to go down and have a lot of jaw about who we are and where our relations are and when they’ll be back, and perhaps have to remember messages. Let them ring and knock.”