by Edith Nesbit
“Oh, don’t pretend you aren’t one,” said Olive. “You can’t deceive us — we know. We heard you rattling the silver, but we’ll never tell — and you will be good now, won’t you? And learn an honest trade?”
“Oh, Miss,” gasped the burglar, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, “don’t say a word more or I shall go off again! An honest trade — well, well.”
“Do you know of any stations between here and London?” Alan asked suddenly.
And the man surprisingly said, “Every blessed one.”
“Could you say them?”
And still more surprisingly he began, “Stamford, Helpstone, Walton, Peterborough, Holme, Huntingdon, Offord, St. Neots, Charrington, Tempsford—”
“Stop, stop,” cried Olive, dancing with excitement on the stone floor—”Charrington... that’s the place’s name. Our uncle lives at Charrington — him we’re running away to. Will you tell us about the trains and help us to go?”
“That’ll want some thinking about,” said the burglar. “What do you want to run away for? Here, let’s have a sit down in the kitchen and you tell me all about it.” And then out it all came, the miserable story of those two weeks — the bread and water and the punishments — the thinness of Carlie and her inability to deal with strings and buttons — and the letters that were opened and not sent.
“And, oh,” said Olive, “if Mother only knew! I know she’d want us to run away to Uncle Edward. You will help us — won’t you?”
By this time the burglar had Olive in one arm and Alan in the other and Carlie half asleep on his knee. He pressed the three in one great hug.
“You poor little mites,” he said. “No — I won’t help you to run away. I’ll telegraph to your uncle and he can come and fetch you. If I do it now he might get here to-night.”
He tried to get up, but they clung to him with arms and legs.
“Don’t leave us,” they said. “Oh, don’t leave us. We can’t bear it — oh, we can’t!” Olive began to cry — Alan was very near it, and Carlie woke up just in time to add her wails to theirs.
“There, stow it,” said the young man resignedly. “What must be must — and Jane’s leaving at the end of the month anyhow.”
“Jane?”
“Yes, Jane. I ain’t no burglar, Miss,” he said. “I’m Jane’s young man — and it’s my birthday, and we got a party on. And Jane she knit me a tie and forgot to bring it, and she gave me the key of the back door to slip in and get the tie — and here it is. And if so be as you won’t go back to bed like good children...”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
“Then come along home with me — and we’ll chance it with the tabbies if Uncle doesn’t turn up before closing time.”
But he did.
The children have only a confused memory of a walk along pleasant streets where the lights of windows shone through the purple dusk, of a small room with hot smelling lamps, of lots of people, all very kind and astonished, of being kissed by a good many strangers, and of Jane saying she didn’t care what happened, she’d often wondered how she could stand by and see it, that she had. Also they remembered having a great many curious things to eat and drink, and that people sang songs — Jane was just beginning the fourth or fifth verse of the “Bird in a Gilded Cage” — when there was a toot-toot outside and a snorting and a snuffling, and when Jane’s young man opened the door some one came blinking in, in a funny motor-coat. And it was Uncle Edward.
“If you’d let me have a word outside, Sir,” the children remember Jane’s young man saying, and that he and Jane went out and talked to Uncle Edward just outside the window for ever so long.
And then he drove them home through the moonlight to his own home — not to Miss Minto’s; and he was not at all cross.
And then after a while they all went to sleep wrapped up in rugs at the back of the car until they were lifted out by Uncle Edward’s housekeeper, and given warm drinks and put to bed: Olive and Carlie in a big bed together, where they could cuddle each other all night, and with nothing to frighten them.
They wrote to Jane’s young man to thank him. But they did not write to Miss Minto. Uncle did that.
Jane’s young man turned out to be a railway porter. That is how he came to know all the names of the stations. When he and Jane got married Uncle Edward gave them an overmantel for a wedding present, and Olive made them a kettle-holder in red and grey wool, to hang just under the overmantel. This overmantel was Jane’s choice.
“It wouldn’t have been mine,” said Uncle Edward.
CHAPTER FIVE. THE SLEUTH WORM
Most people live very uneventful lives. This is not so with our family — especially Clifford. But you will see....
When we had been separated from our sorrowing parents for nearly four months Mother came home from the South of France quite well and jolly, with Aunt Emma. And Miss Knox went away.
Clifford cannot say he was sorry, though, when Miss Knox kissed everybody and said brightly, “Well, we shall all meet again soon, I trust,” of course he joined with the others in saying, “Oh, yes, I hope so.” Really in his innermost heart he hoped that her words would not come true. But he knows that you must be polite to ladies whatever the inside feelings may be.
Our other sorrowing parent was still in Dominica trying to restore the fallen fortunes of our house, and until he had done it we had to go on living in Aunt Emma’s house near Blackheath. We went to a day-school there, and so did the girls. Having Mother again, made it jolly though, in spite of our impoverishment.
Blackheath is a place where they are always having Bazaars or Rummage Sales, or Tennis Teas, or Garden Parties; and sometimes we went with Mother to them. Clifford does not care much about such things himself, but sometimes they lead to other adventures. And this is exactly what happened.
Mother came into our playroom one afternoon when we were cleaning out our aquarium, and said:
“Clifford, you remember that lady you helped at the Bazaar last Saturday — the very rich lady with all the expensive things on her stall that nobody could afford to buy?”
Clifford did. The lady had wanted to move her stall to another place because of the sun, and our hero had found a convenient wheelbarrow lurking in a conservatory, and had carted all her gewgaws for her.
“Well,” said Mother, “it appears that she also remembers you. She has written to ask if my ‘charming son’ will go and spend a month with her children these holidays. She says they are older than you, but that you seemed so manly for your age that she is sure you will get on splendidly together. I’ve written to say that of course you are delighted.”
Fathers and Mothers are often very clever and know a great many things, but they do not know everything.
Clifford was so upset at this news that he dropped a newt he was just transferring from a jar to the clean tank, and by the time the newt was retrieved and returned to its native element, Mother had gone, and Clifford could not explain his true feelings to her. He registered a vow there and then that it would be a long time before he was helpful at any old Bazaar again.
It was bad enough to have the others calling him “charming” and “manly” every time they spoke to him, but to have it said that he was delighted, when what he really felt was utter loth and despair, was rather too much.
* * * * * *
Clifford did not at all want to go and stay with these people in the country. To begin with, they were strangers to him; secondly, it was just holiday time, and Clifford and his brothers had plans of their own, which included an organized digging for treasure in the back garden of Aunt Emma’s yellow brick villa; being explorers, and the thorough damming of the Kidbrook, a stream which runs beyond the brickfield, and whose banks are clay where they are not sardine tins and old kettles and saucepans with holes in them, and odd boots, not pairs of boots, because for some mysterious reason no one ever seems to throw away two boots at the same time. There was, besides,
an intention of buying dark-lanterns and being detectives with them in case the bank, which was just round the corner, should be robbed again as we heard it had been last holidays.
“You must always change for the evening,” said Mother; and when Alan said, “Change what?” Mother said, “Everything.”
Then there were no end of tiresome instructions about sitting upright at meals, and things to remember about knives and forks and finger-bowls — if there should be finger-bowls — and about cleaning your nails, and about a collar never being clean enough to wear unless you don’t ask yourself whether it’s clean enough or not. There were new clothes, however, a good many of them, and even boys like those.
Then Olive said:
“You are lucky, Clifford. Don’t I just wish it was me!” And that cheered him up a little. But Martin said, “I’m jolly glad it’s not me, then,” which depressed our hero so much that he went and asked his mother whether he need go.
“Of course, dear,” she said brightly. “You’ll enjoy it tremendously when you get there. Just think of it, quite in the country, ponies to ride, perhaps, and a stream to fish in, and dessert every day most likely. Think of the peaches.”
And Aunt Emma said, “Never refuse a new experience, Clifford, they are always interesting. And this will be a new experience. You’ve always been the eldest, so far.” And there was something not very nice about the way she said it.
Clifford did think, for a minute, and then he thought of the Kidbrook being dammed without him, the treasure, without him again, being discovered in the garden, and the bank manager’s gratitude when the bank was saved by bold amateur detectives, of whom he would not be one.
The only person who really reconciled him at all to his fate was his Uncle John, who happened to hear he was going and who gave him a new silver watch as well as a morocco pocket-book and a yellow and totally unexpected coin; with no good advice except the suggestion that he should try not to be a young muff.
And so, with a new leather trunk and a hat-box for the topper which he was to wear at church, and which felt whenever he tried it on so very insecure; with a shilling’s-worth of stamps for writing home with, and a new umbrella — he had never used an umbrella and never meant to — he was seen off by his mother, and, in charge of a red-faced guard, set out for the unknown.
All the talk about top-hats and finger-bowls had upset him a good deal. Why couldn’t everybody live as we lived, comfortable, fairly shabby, never having any clothes that mattered much? That was the right way to live, surely, and if it was, why was Clifford to go to these people pretending he was used to living quite differently with toppers and finger-bowls, and changing your clothes for the evening?
“It’ll be simply beastly,” he said to himself in the train, “but anyhow I shan’t be disappointed. I know what to expect.”
As it happened he didn’t. Nobody could have. The strange children met him at the station with a little pony-cart, which Rupert, the eldest, drove himself. As a matter of politeness he asked if Clifford would like to drive, but Clifford saw that the offer was not made to be accepted, so he said, “No, thank you.”
Arthur, the other boy, slapped him on the back and said:
“You shall to-morrow, but Rupert makes him go best. He’s called Dandy. He’s our very own.”
“We’ve got four horses for riding,” said Rupert. “You can ride, I suppose?”
It was hard to have to say no, but safer, and our hero got it said.
“Oh, can’t you?” said Arthur.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Rupert. “Shut up, Arthur. Old Clay’ll soon show him. It’s quite easy. Do you like fishing?”
“Yes,” said Clifford, quite truly. Like so many, he had often fished, but again, like so many, he had never caught anything.
The girls made room for him in the cart and talked to him quite kindly. But he was very shy, and couldn’t think of anything to say. Rupert signalled to Arthur that he thought Clifford was a muff, and I am sorry to say our hero saw and understood the signal. It made him even more uncomfortable than before.
“I shall have to do something rather splendid just to show them,” he thought in his secret self, and for the rest of the drive his thoughts were busy with the idea of saving these people (1) from drowning, (2) from mad bulls, (3) from a burning house, (4) from bandits, (5) from the Germans in the event of an invasion — so that he was more silent than before, and their opinion of him was confirmed.
Mabel and Constance, the two girls, seemed to try to be kind to him and to find it uphill work.
They wore blue linen smocks and sun-bonnets, and nobody could suppose that they took any care of their clothes. The Norfolks of Rupert and his brother were quite as dusty as even Clifford could wish.
While they were driving through the green lanes and afterwards while he was being shown the rabbits, the guinea-pigs, the tortoise and the hedge-pig, about none of which he could find much to say, he felt half sorry that he had brought the brand new Eton suit and the stack of white collars. But when, later on, he met the others on the stairs and saw how very black and white were the boys and how lacey and blue-ribbony the girls, he was not sorry.
The drawing-room seemed full of people, all in evening dress and very smart. A large black-haired man with a pointed nose said:
“Well, young man?” and Clifford supposed it must be his host, and when a languid lady in sea-green satin said how glad she was his dear mother had let him come Clifford had no difficulty in concluding she was his hostess, and the lady he had been so unfortunately polite to at the Bazaar, though she looked quite different without a hat.
The other children were busy talking to the grown-ups, and our hero managed to creep to cover behind the corner of a large settee, and a plant in a pot concealed him almost entirely from public view.
“I wish I hadn’t come,” he told himself disheartedly, and he thought of the damming of the Kidbrook, and looked at his cuffs; how nice and muddy his brothers and sisters were, while he.... It would hardly bear thinking about.
It was a dreadful evening, is spite of the kaleidoscope and the stereoscope, and the other things that he was from time to time dragged from his retirement to look at. He had that dismal feeling that he was really quite a decent chap, and that it would be very hard to make these people see what a decent chap he was. And his mind dwelt more and more on the thought of doing something extra noble so as to convince them that he was not the muff they plainly took him for.
“Suppose there was to be a burglary,” he thought, looking at all the jewels that sparkled and gleamed on the necks and heads of the ladies, “and I was to catch the burglars on the stairs and compel them to surrender their prey single-handed?”
He thought of this until it was time to go to bed in a room much bigger than the drawing-room at home.
Next morning a manservant solemnly told Clifford the time, and he got up convinced that he had before him a melancholy and misunderstood day, of which the falling off a horse would be not the least pleasant part.
They had breakfast in the schoolroom, a pleasant room with French windows opening on to a lawn enclosed by a tall hedge of roses. All colours they were. Clifford wished the others at home could have seen them. And the children were really not bad, only he could not rid himself of the feeling that he was in an enemy’s country where the one necessary thing was to be on one’s guard.
Then, suddenly, quite without warning, a grown-up put his head in at the door and said in a tone of surprise:
“Oh, he isn’t here! I thought he wouldn’t be,” and took his head out again.
“Hullo!” said Rupert, “something must be up. Mr. Erskine’s in no end of a bait.” We all trooped out into the hall to ask questions of the first person we met, an aunt, and were told not to bother for goodness’ sake.
“Let’s go round to the kitchen,” Constance suggested, and we went round by the garden and through a laurel hedge that had a convenient thin patch in it.
In five minutes we knew all. Our hero’s dream had come true — at least a part of it. There had been a burglary, and a lot of the plate was gone, and everybody’s jewels except the ones belonging to those careful ladies who slept with their diamonds under their pillows. The other half of the dream had not come true. Clifford had not had the good fortune to meet the burglars on the stairs. Still, even half a dream come true is something.
The whole house buzzed like a hive. Ladies and their maids wept with equal violence. Gentlemen and footmen rubbed their chins and told each other again and again exactly how it must have happened. The house and the grounds were heavy with the boots of the police.
“Oh, bother it all,” said Rupert; “now we shan’t hear of anything else all the hols. Let’s go fishing.”
Clifford would much have preferred to stay in the house to watch and to listen, and to do, or to refrain from doing, all the things that detectives did and didn’t do. But he was only a guest, and had not the courage to say so.
Cook found getting rid of us and our questions cheap at the price of packing a luncheon basket; the grown-ups welcomed the idea of a fishing expedition with absent-minded but unmistakable enthusiasm, so presently we all set out, with baskets and rods and books of flies and a spade. The books for swank, and the spade to dig worms with.
“I suppose there wasn’t any clue?” said our hero, for his powerful mind was bent on discovering the miscreants, and he could not think about anything but the burglary.
“Now look here,” said Rupert, “I bar any more jaw about that burglary. I vote the one that mentions it again does all the digging.”
Our hero fell into meditation, and was silent for about five minutes.
“A penny for your thoughts?” said someone suddenly.
“I was wondering,” he said, “whether they’d found any rope-ladders, or jemmies, or dark-lanterns, and whether—”
“You’ve got it right in the neck this time, old chap,” said Arthur. “Come on, old wormdigger. We’ll find you a nice soft place. And the can won’t take you more than an hour to fill, unless the birds are shy — the worms, I mean.”