Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “Quite sure — they promised. Are you going to be married, Princess?”

  The question came sharp as a pistol shot.

  “Yes,” she said. “Wish me joy, dear.” And she came behind the low seat where he sat. “Kiss me, dear Denny. This is the most beautiful day of my life. Kiss me, and wish me joy.”

  “Not like this,” he said — turned in his chair, and sank on one knee, — the poor helpless foot dragging awkwardly behind him, and looked up at her, folding his hands as worshippers fold theirs.

  “Now,” he said. “Now. Kiss me, Princess, if you will.”

  And she bent over him, took the golden head in her arms and kissed him on the forehead and on the lips.

  Next day she went down to the Wood House. The house looked as it had looked while she was meeting him on the river, when the days were days of magic, and it, at nights, the silent house of joy. Nothing had happened — only a china plate had been broken, and the key of “the ice-safe mislaid. But there was a plenty of china plates — and the weather had grown suddenly chill, so that iced food was no longer a necessity of life.

  On Sunday morning she went about the garden cutting armfuls of flowers, stocks and dahlias, little red fuchsias, from the tall bushes by the door, — Japanese anemones, tea roses and tight handfuls of sweet peas. She must make the house beautiful, for him. Denny was in one of his states and could not help her. So she was busy.

  By two o’clock the house was a flowery bower, and she herself in a pinky white gown with much lace, that made her look like a rose that has tried to turn into a carnation. Afternoon, he had said. Well — one o’clock was afternoon. By two o’clock she was waiting at the window. By three she was standing at the gate. Four o’clock saw her in the meadow down by the road. — And by eleven o’clock at night he had not come.

  By twelve he trod, noiselessly, the garden path, — but by that time the Dragon had persuaded her to go to bed. He could not be coming. There was no train that could get in so late. The house looked dark and unwelcoming. He could not rouse them at that hour, and worry them with his excuses and the explanation of his lateness.

  He turned away, his footsteps noiseless on the grass. A blot of darkness lay to the left. That, he supposed, was the shrubbery in which she had met that brute. His soul flamed with anger at the thought of her, alone — unprotected save by her brave spirit, at bay, and her brave hand on the trigger.

  “If I had been here,” he told himself, “ and had had that pistol, I should have shot him like a dog.”

  He took the path that led through the shrubbery. A late moon was rising between the old cedars on the lawn. Its beams shone in white lines through the stems of the shrubs. The shrubbery smelt of autumn and decay.

  * * * * *

  Sandra slept brokenly and awoke with dry hands, tired eyes and the sense of something wrong. Yes, he had not come — something had happened. Ah, what could have happened to him?

  Her heart leapt and then seemed to stop, and she felt as though she had not had anything to eat for a very long time. She felt a little sick. I think this is what authors mean when they say “ her heart sank.”

  You know the infinite desolating variations that can be played on the simple theme, “ What can have happened to him?” — Sandra went through them all da capo, and then all through them again, as she bathed and dressed.

  There was a letter, the letter written by Templar after the chain had been riveted on him by his aunt at Waterloo. It had been meant to reach her on Sunday morning. You cannot expect a man who has been out of England for eight years to remember all about country posts. It was a very delightful letter, and told her that though he might be late he would certainly come. It cheered her for a little, till she remembered that it had no bearing whatever on the theme, since, late or early he had not come. She caught the first train to London. The Wood House was offensively full of flowers, and she was glad to be out of it.

  “No, Aunt Dusa, dear,” she said. “You must stay here. He may come this morning. I’ve had a letter saying that he would take a taxi and ride down that way if he couldn’t catch the train. It may have broken down somewhere, and then he’ll come on later. If he does, give him Forrester’s address, and this note, look. I’ll put it on the mantel-piece. I’ve told him to go to Forrester, and he’ll bring him to me. I’ve got lots of shopping to do. He says we are to be married this week. But I say next. Denny can come up by the four-nineteen.”

  She was glad that she had always insisted on managing everything, when there was no reason why she should impose her will on others. Now that there was a reason the settled habit was useful. It is a good thing to get into the way of ordering people about on all occasions and refusing explanations. It makes them easy to deal with and prevents their asking “Why?” when why is awkward or tiresome.

  In the train a new theme mingled with the other. Would there be a letter waiting for her at the house without an address. Or would perhaps he himself . . . .? He knew that Forrester came at eight. It would be easy to leave a letter. Or to get Forrester to let him in. No, of course, Forrester wouldn’t do that.

  She would hear if he had been, when Forrester met her at Charing Cross. As they neared the station she put on the bundry disfiguring tussore cloak and let down her thick sprigged veil.

  But Forrester was not there. She decided that an omnibus was safer than a cab, for a Princess travelling incognita, and thus reached Oxford Circus. She went in through Uncle Mosenthal’s house — there was a way, but it was dangerous to use it often.

  There was no letter from him.

  But hope was so strong in her that when she entered her sitting room it would not have surprised her to see her lover standing there — he might have worked the lift himself. He was an engineer — he could easily have found out how to do things. He could have found some way of raising the trap-door and making it fast again. It was possible — and what was the use of making difficulties?

  She had to open every door and look in every room before she could be sure that he was not there waiting for her. But the rooms were all empty and very orderly and quiet. Agar had done her work early and gone. There was nothing to show that he had ever been there — nothing to remind her of that night of wonder when she had slept in his arms, the morning of magic when she had awakened to find herself there.

  The “What can have happened to him?” theme was resumed by the full orchestra of fears and hopes, terror and reason. She walked in and out of the rooms, took things up and put them down again — and all to the thunder of that insistent orchestra. It was not the first time by many that she had been alone in The House With No Address. Solitude was, to her as to most persons of genius, at times a necessity. The first time she insisted on being left alone in that strange house, Aunt Dusa’s sense of propriety had driven her to an appeal to Mr. Mosenthal. He had supported Sylvia.

  “Ah, young girls they love to be alone — it is natural — to dream — to regret the pasts they have not had — to taste the beautiful sadness of the young-time — and to be very sorry for themselves. And nowhere can she so safely alone be, as here — with Uncle Moses in his houses all around her. Go where you are sent, my good Dusa, and leave the child to her joyous melancholy. She is Princess here — do not distract her from her art by questioning her royal commands.”

  So said Uncle Moses, millionaire and incurable romanticist.

  She was used to the empty house, and loved the sense of space and freedom conveyed by its inviolable solitude. But to-day she felt shut in, immured. The house that had been the love-nest was now cold and a prison.

  She walked up and down, waiting, waiting.

  Suddenly she stopped, and through the bewildering orchestra the chord of common-sense made itself heard.

  What was she waiting for? She knew perfectly well that he couldn’t come here. Forrester was gone, and besides .... What could have happened to him Why — nothing I Some silly business bother — But yesterday had been Sunday when there is no business. We
ll, the Uncle might have come back to town and wanted him. A thousand things might have happened — quite ordinary, harmless things, nothing to worry about or be afraid of. Well, but why hadn’t he written? No doubt he had. But letters posted in London aren’t delivered in the country till the second post. Why hadn’t she waited for the second post? She would go out and telegraph to Denny to bring up the letter if there was one. Of course there would be one.

  Even the genius of a Mosenthal cannot keep a young woman hidden in London, without allowing her to shop. The fertile, childlike imagination that had secured his success in business of all sorts, had found it simple to arrange a way. Sandra must have a disguise. Aunt Dusa, too. Aunt Dusa’s consisted of clothes smarter than her real self was ever expressed in, — a “ soupcon “ of shocking pink and a scandalous red wig. Sandra in disguise — a disguise of her own designing — was a white-haired lady in an old-fashioned hat and veil and a mantle of elegant shabbiness.

  She became the white-haired lady, and went out through a door expressly contrived to lead her, through a short passage, to the first floor of Uncle Mosenthal’s house, there to emerge boldly on to the landing by a door on which the name of Miss Gertrude Steinhart, Palmist, shone in white letters. She sent off her telegram, and then with a self-control that was its own reward, shopped.

  If nothing had happened — and of course nothing had, then Sandra Mundy was to be married almost at once, — and Sandra Mundy’s wardrobe would never do for Sandra Templar. So Miss Gertrude Steinhart shopped, and the young women who served her thought her wonderfully sympathetic with the bride who was to wear all these lovely things. The old lady seemed to know exactly the tastes of “ someone who was going to be married,” and was as exacting for her, they thought, as any bride could be for herself.

  By the time Miss Steinhart had spent a hundred pounds or so, and ordered the fluffy rustling prettinesses to be sent home to her address, Sandra was ready to believe what she had so earnestly told herself — that everything really was all right — that she should see him at the theatre to-night — that he would perhaps come home with her as he had done that other time.

  So she let herself in by Miss Steinhart’s door, humming the Allegro of Denny’s Symphony. And a letter lay on Miss Steinhart’s table. “Ah,” she said without time for the wonder as to how it had come there, “he has written.” She caught up the letter and tore it open. It was not from him. It was from Forrester.

  “How exactly like life!” she said, as she turned the page. A respectful note detailed a broken collar bone, achieved during a boxing bout at the gymnasium. She had often wondered how Forrester passed his spare time. Now she knew.

  You may be as distracted as you choose because your lover has failed to keep his appointment. But business is business, and Sylvia’s business was to insist on the public’s minding its own. Of course she could get into her house in the Steinhart disguise that served her quite efficiently in her London excursions, — but it was not easy to assume that disguise in the theatre. She had the disguise there, in duplicate and a thin deed-box with Richard Mundy on it that had held the legal papers of the grandfather’s unfortunate financial experiences — One never knew what might happen, and Uncle Moses had thought it safe to have it — in case of accidents.

  “Never in this so complicated life, my maiden,” he had declared, “ do we of any day the forth bringing know. Be fore-armed — the most unlikely dangers the most probable certainly are.”

  But it is one thing to have a disguise ready; another to assume it. Her dresser, and — oh, it would never do. She would be giving away the secret of an invaluable alias to the dresser — to a whole little world of interested recipients. Besides there were the presents and the flowers. Miss Steinhart couldn’t carry those off — nor could Sylvia leave them behind.

  It was plain that she must have another chauffeur. But .... yes, she knew all that. All the same, there must be some man she could trust.

  In one of those inspirations that only real talent knows and only real genius trusts, she thought of the driver of the taxicab from the stand in Trafalgar Square, who already on at least three occasions — two of Forrester’s influenza, and one of his failure to receive a letter — had driven her. She liked his face. It was the face of the falcon — she liked his voice. And the idea of appealing to his chivalry appealed to her romance.

  So, on the moment’s impulse, rather enjoying the liberty of action given her by the absence of Eagle, Dragon and Lion, she went, in a common hansom, to St. George’s Church, and when the hansom had crawled away like a wounded thing, she walked across to where the taxicabs lay sunning themselves in a row like pigeons on a farm roof. Fortune was kind — or at least responsive. The man she was looking for was there.

  A white-haired lady in a shabby mantle of Parisian cut stood on the curb and spoke.

  It was interesting to feel that, as you spoke you held, so to speak, your life — and anyhow, your secret — in your hands. It was also interesting, though not so pleasant, to be looked at by a man, even a taxicab driver, with complete indifference. It was an experience to which Sylvia was unused.

  “You have driven me once or twice, I think,” she said.

  “I think not,” he said, touching his cap.

  “At any rate you have driven Sylvia.”

  “Ah,” he said, and his eyes met hers. His attention stiffened as a pointer does at a sitting partridge. And the indifference that had piqued her had disappeared.

  “Would you care,” said she, risking all,” for a private situation? Sylvia’s chauffeur is ill.”

  “Yes,” he said. “ You are Madame Sylvia.”

  “But can you leave? Don’t you have to sign something pledging you to stay forever — or something like that?”

  “I forget,” he said: “ perhaps I did, but in any case”

  “It’s all very silly and secret,” said she,” but I shall have to ask you to promise ....”

  “It’s unnecessary, I assure you,” he said. “ The sillier and the more secret, the more delighted I shall be to enter your service.”

  “Then I may rely on you, absolutely? The wages are good, I believe. A pound a day,” she said, and instantly wished that she had not said it.

  “Most handsome, I’m sure,” said the driver of the taxicab. It was absurd of Sylvia to say, “ I beg your pardon,” but she did it.

  “Thank you,” he said, “ I can get rid of this thing,” he kicked the taxicab gently, “in an hour. Where shall I report myself?”

  “I thought,” she said, “ if you would drive me home now — I could explain things — it would take too long, and I can’t go on standing here — and then you could come back later. Put the hood up, please.”

  He opened the door for her. But at Regent’s Circus she stopped him.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “ will you come to this address in a quarter of an hour? It’s better that you shouldn’t be seen driving me there.”

  In a quarter of an hour Sandra opened Miss Steinhart’s door to the falcon-faced driver of the taxicab.

  “Come in,” she said. “ You’ll understand — the whole thing is like something in a book.”

  “New Arabian Nights,” he said, “ only the other way round. Will you allow me to say that I am very grateful for the chance you are kind enough to give me, and that I consider myself very fortunate in being permitted to take part in a secret? There are so few nowadays,” he added plaintively, “ what with the newspapers and advertisements and wireless telegraphy.”

  “You see,” she said, and quite without knowing it she spoke as to an equal, “ it’s most important that no one should know where I live. It’s really a condition of my life: I couldn’t stand it, otherwise.”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “You’ll find it all very odd,” she said; “it’s like the Mysteries of Udolpho. I’ll show you the whole thing, and then I’ll explain.”

  She led him along the passage, shewed him the lift an
d its workings, and then led him into the bare room with the Middle Victorian embellishments.

  “Now what you’ve got to do,” she said, “when you fetch me from The Hilarity is just to drive into the garage and put out the motor lamps, then loose those pins: and be a very long time lighting the gas. That’s all.”

  “You’re trusting me a good deal,” he said: “it’s extremely good of you.”

  “I had to trust someone,” she said.

  “Exactly,” he said, “ that’s the beauty of it: that I should happen to be the someone.”

  Sylvia was surprised to find herself conscious of a faint not unpleasing sense of excitement — of things happening. Poor Forrester. But it was interesting to meet new people — How few people she had spoken to since she came to London.

  “And you come to the garage at eight — for orders,” she said. “I think that’s all.”

  “You’ll forgive me,” he said, “if I don’t quite know the ropes. You see I’ve never had a situation in a private family before.”

  Something, not his voice — his face perhaps, gave to the statement the decoration of inverted commas.

  “There’s something else,” said Sandra. “ I am engaged to be married to Mr. Edmund Templar. If he comes to the stage door tonight, tell him to wait at the corner of Dean Street and Old Compton Street, and after you have taken me from the theatre stop there for him. Oh — and Forrester, my old chauffeur, always drives a long way round, to mislead people, you know.”

  “I quite undertstand, Ma’am. Thank you. And when am I to be at the garage? At half past eight?”

  “At nine,” said Sylvia.

  He hesitated a moment, and then said gravely:

  “You engaged me on an impulse. But one so often regrets these sort of impulses afterwards. Please don’t, this time. I am perfectly competent with motors, and I am as safe as houses, really I am.”

  “Thank you,” she said, “ I am sure you are. Here’s the key of the Garage. It’s in Bentinck Mews, number seven. I’ll let you go out that way, and you’ll see how the motor works.”