Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  That’s you, Colombe,” said Daphne, contemplating the hideous folding of serge and silk that twenty yards away looked like a human being. “Now you run. Keep behind the espaliers and keep low. Rendez-vous at your (desk. You’re going to get your embroidery if you’re caught. Mina you get it. Lies are of the devil. Now I’ll do Madeleine.”

  Daphne, born general, had arranged her group at the one point where a budding sycamore obscured ever so little the view from the corridor windows. She arranged another deceptive heap. “Run, Madeleine,’ she said, “and see why Columbine is so long gone.”

  Madeleine giggled and ran.

  Soon a convincing group occupied the stone seat and the twisted beech-root beside it, and all the girls were gone.

  “’Tis well,” whispered Daphne, as she and Doris crept along behind the pear-blossom, “the secret deed is done, and no human eye has marked our proceedings,”

  Daphne was wrong. Two human ‘eyes had marked, with tepid but quickly warming interest, the making of that group on the curved stone seat. Those eyes were gray, and they looked, from very far, through a particularly good pair of racing-glasses.

  “Well,” said he whom the eyes served. “I really am! Little villains — I wonder what devilry that’s the screen for!”

  He lowered the glasses. Yes; it was good work. Anyone could have said, glancing terraceward, “A group of school-girls reading and sewing.”

  “Mighty clever,” said he.

  Daphne had counted only on the vantage point of the school corridor windows. She had not imagined it possible that anyone could scale the wall of the college next door and thence look down with racing glasses on her little world of school intrigue and adventure.

  And now the peace of a great freedom lay over the school. The tail porte cochère had closed behind Madame, and her sister’s piebald steeds, neighing joyously, had carried her away to the sister’s bald-faced villa. The mistresses had gone, each to her own place, and the English governess, to-day on duty, was rejoicing in the trustworthiness of, Daphne, the priceless quality that made it possible for a hard-driven English girl to sit at her open window that the pear-blossom crept round and nodded into, closely covering thin gray sheets of foreign note-paper, and every now and then pausing to look at her life’s hidden joy and pride, or to flutter the leaves of the dictionary to make quite sure how one spelt “judgment” or “embarrassed” or “unnecessary.” The really important words, “love,” “hope,” “dearest,” are fortunately easy, even when one is a half-educated girl of twenty earning hard bread in a foreign land.

  The very sunlight, now warm as an English June’s, lay more peacefully upon the garden, and the shadows of trees and buildings were dark and strong. Up in the grenier Daphne’s lieutenants were carrying out her orders with a pathetic exactness taught by experience. And Daphne herself, crouched in a clump of white lilac in the allée défendue where the sun shone warmest and all the leaves were already out, was whistling with perfect accuracy the morning song of the blackbird. The song ended. From the other side of the wall should have come the answering twitter of a young linnet. But no sound came. The garden was very silent. A bee buzzed in the wall-flowers on the gray crumbling buttresses. The wall-flowers nodded, drenching the air with perfume. The blackbird’s note sounded again. And this time there was a reply. A very faint and not convincing representation of the April notes of the cuckoo.

  “Silly to change the pass-word,” Daphne told herself. “French boys always think they know better than you do.

  She stood, her hands behind her, erect, alert, looking up at the top of the wall. Something showed there, something that moved. A crowded blue handkerchief knotted at the comers. It remained a moment balanced at the top and slowly began to crawl down the wall. It descended some ten feet, then hung a yard above her reach.

  “Little idiot,” said Daphne, “he ought to know the proper length by now!”

  She dared not call out. She could not reach the packet. There was only one thing to do, and Daphne did it. She awaited events, and again the blackbird’s song rang shrill and true. Horror! The blue bundle was slowly drawn up and hung just below the wall’s level for any fool to see. If she could climb the chestnut that pressed close to the wall she might, or might not, be able to reach the cord.

  And Marie Thibault should be instructed how to teach her little brother not to play tricks on an English girl.

  Daphne made a leap, caught at a bough, and with a swift swing of black ankles disappeared in rustling green. The tree was easy to climb — the only reason she had never climbed it before was that there had been no need, and recreations needing time, like tree-climbing, were best taken elsewhere than in the allée défendue. Sure-footed, strong-handed, she went from bough to bough, up and up, pushing through the resilient twigs. The change in the light told her when she had reached the level of the wall’s top; she trusted herself to a stout bough that had grown straight toward the wall, and, then, baffled, frown at right angles to it; parted the leaves with er arms, caught at the wall and leaned there panting, her head thrown back and her hands gripping the coping stone on its farther side.

  Swift as ever hawk swooped on pigeon two heavy, strong hands fell on her wrists.

  “All is well,” said a voice in French with an accent unmistakable, “resty tron heel.”

  Daphne had sense enough even in the suddenness and completeness of that shock, to move not at all, save to tighten her grip on the wall. She tried to see, but the hands had come out of the thick of the tree where its green waves surged over the wall-top. She could see only the hands and the cuffs — white flannel. There was a dark signet ring on one of the hands.

  “Let me go,” she said, and her voice was low and fierce. “Otez vos mains! allez-vous en!”

  “Oh,” said the other voice, “you’re English. That’s all right. Are you safe? I’m sorry if I startled you. I thought if I spoke you’d be more startled still, and if you’d come face to face with me —— you would have in another moment — you’d have been startled out of your wits.”

  “It takes a good deal,” said Daphne, firing, “to startle me out of my wits. Take your hands away, please.”

  “Half a moment. Why didn’t you take your bundle?”

  “I couldn’t reach,” said Daphne. “Cord too short. Who are you?”

  “English master at the college. Are you safe if I let go?”

  “Of course I’m safe,” said Daphne, impatiently, but the hands on her wrists did not move.

  “Look here,” he said, “go down the tree a bit —— and I’ll come down too. We must talk this business over. Do as I tell you — don’t be a silly child. It’s all right. Go on.”

  Daphne went. There seemed to be nothing else to do. She could, of course, get down and fly the scene, leaving the English spy to complete his treachery as he chose. But it would be more amusing to stay and tell him what she thought about him. Horrid, interfering old thing! Also to show him that she was not a child. She went down till she found a convenient branch, and, bracing her feet on it, leaned against another, safely away from the tree-trunk by which he must descend. The tree shook and shivered to the weight of that descent, and out of the green above her came a young man in flannels. He came to a stay on a bough a little below hers and their eyes, level, met for the first time.

  “Why,” she said, “you’re quite young! I did think you were old. That would have been some excuse for you.”

  “And you,” he said, “are quite old. I did think you were a child. That would have been some excuse for you.”

  “I don’t want excuses,” said Daphne.

  “Neither do I,” he said.

  There was a pause. Again their eyes met.

  “What I want,” he said, sternly, “is explanations.”

  “Then we want the same thing,” said Daphne, shortly.

  “Is it quite safe?” he asked anxiously.

  “Do you think I’m a baby, or a Frenchman, to tumble out of a tree?” Scorn ba
rbed the inquiry.

  “I didn’t mean that. I mean, won’t they be looking for you, and won’t you get into a row if they find me here?”

  “Nobody’ll find me here — unless you’ve sent a note round already to tell them where to look for me — or for some one looking out for a blue bundle.”

  “If you’re sure you’re safe,” he said, “I don’t mind beginning the explanations. Only, please remember that I’m quite as bewildered as you, and, I should judge, much more embarrassed.”

  “You don’t look it,” she said, and the gray eyes of him looked at her so frankly that she began to wonder. Was it possible that —— ? Oh thought to be buried for ever under mountains of oblivion! No, Daphne! the young man is not a fairy prince who has seen you from afar and has taken this romantic means of offering you his hand, heart, and sceptre. Listen, he is telling you who he is. Listen, never mind if your ears are crimson, he can’t possibly know what reddened them. He may think they are always crimson. Loathsome thought. No, don’t think about that either. Listen.

  “And so,” the young man was saying, “when I saw young Emil staggering in under a camel’s load of provender, with his arms so full of parcels that they stuck up above the level of his long, long ears, and when he told me he had come back for a ball he had mislaid, I was naturally interested in his regrettable lapse from truth. So I took him into my room, locked the door on him, his parcels, and the Grand Inquisitor — myself, gracious lady — and the inquiry by torture began.”

  “You didn’t?” said Daphne.

  “If milder measures had failed,” said he, “who knows? For my strongest passion was aroused. Curiosity. But he melted like wax before the flame of a crafty generosity. In return for a stick of chocolate Menier and a promise of eternal secrecy, he told me all. I promised to see things through for him, and bade him return to the bosom of his family, and we parted with expressions of mutual confidence and regard.”

  “Do you always talk like a book?” Daphne asked, raising her chin a contemptuous half-inch. “Only in the spring time, and when I’m in royal company. Permit me, tor the moment, to regard you as a fairy princess.”

  That jumped too near the thought that writhed buried beneath oblivion’s mount. Daphne did not know what to say or where to look. So she looked straight at him under proud level brows, and said perhaps the best thing possible.

  “I beg your pardon. It was very rude of me. Please go on.”

  “Well — when I found that though the blackbird whistled — you do whistle like a bird, don’t you? — that though the blackbird whistled and the cuckoo replied—”

  “It ought to have been a linnet,” said Daphne. “Yes, but I don’t know how linnets talk. When I found that nothing happened I made the cord fast to a rusty nail, and hastening to my room I locked the door, climbed along the gutter to the wall, and reached the fatal spot at exactly the same moment as your highness. The agony of apprehension that led me to lay profane hands on the royal wrists has already been explained, and I trust pardoned?” He stopped abruptly on the question.

  “Is it pardoned?” he insisted.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Daphne, confusedly. “It’s all right. Goon.”

  “That’s all. Except that the youthful Thibault expressly warned me that sirop de groseille was part of the royal outfit for this evening’s banquet. Have I explained myself to the satisfaction of her highness?

  Daphne smiled. For the first time in her life she smiled in answer to a man’s smile, and because it was the first time, she smiled fully and frankly with her eyes in his. He drew back, a little dazzled. And there was a moment’s silence in the chestnut tree.

  “Now tell me,” he said, “your side of the story.”

  “There’s nothing — except that it’s my birthday, so I spent all my money on the feast to-night, and that’s why there was such a lot.”

  “Your birthday! I wonder. May one offer a flower or two to her highness on the day of days?”

  “You haven’t got any flowers. And you don’t know me. Why should you give me flowers?”

  “The moth knows the star when it sees it.” Daphne felt very uncomfortable. But it was a delicious discomfort.

  “I ought to go now,” she said.

  “But what about the royal feast?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” was what Daphne said, Daphne, the organizer, the born general. What she thought, with a fascinated new feeling of dependence, was, “Why should I bother? He’ll arrange it all.” He answered the thought.

  “Your highness is right. I’ll arrange it all. When you come — at two — three? — right! you’ll find everything in the lowest bough of this tree. Will that meet with her highness’s approval?”

  “Yes — but you oughtn’t to call me that. I’m Daphne Carmichael.”

  “And I’m Stephen St. Hilary. Pretty names both. So you’re the Princess Daphne. I thought you were the Princess Belle Etoile.”

  “You talk a lot of nonsense,” said Daphne, vigorously shaking off this new spell, “but I’m very much obliged to you — and we’ll drink your health in the sirop de groseille to-night.”

  “Shall you tell the others?” he asked curiously.

  “Of course,” said Daphne, and wondered why she was so sure she would not tell them. Then she said, “I must go,” and suddenly held out her hand between the branches. “Good-bye,” she said, “thank you very much.”

  He took the hand, bent, and kissed it.

  “It’s only the royal salute,” he assured her when she snatched it away. She dropped from bough to bough, and as her feet touched earth she looked up; she could not help it. He was looking down. “Au revoir, Princesse,” he said, softly. “Everything shall be ready for you at three.”

  She looked down. Before her lay the ordered sunlit quiet of the garden. It seemed a very long time since she had seen it. A very long time that she had spent in that green world of leafy transparencies, that strange world, between earth and heaven, where one was a princess and where one’s hand was — . She hid the hand hastily in the pocket of her black pinafore.

  She had not noticed before that the box trees had little powdery flowers. Perhaps they had come out while she has been away.

  CHAPTER III. PRINCESS

  IT WAS easy for Daphne, the daring, the trusted leader, to evade her comrades that afternoon. She told them nothing that was not true. “I could not get the things this morning,” she said. “I must try again now. You all sit on the terrace and do embroidery in open blamelessness. Your dauntless leader has the interests of the bandits at heart.”

  “I do love you,” said Doris. “I love you extra when you talk like a book.”

  It was not to Daphne the least of the day’s experiences to have learned that there was at least one other person in the world who could “talk like a book.” She had always thought before that she was the only one.

  “Farewell, my faithful brigands,” she cried dramatically and kissed the smallest brigand on both cheeks; “here, in my bosom, I bear the magic secret.”

  She showed a corner of the Berlin wool worked kettleholder. “That shall bring all our plans to a triumphant conclusion. Farewell! Punctuality and dispatch!” she added and left them to their blamelessness.

  She herself, the Daphne she had always known and mostly liked, slipped guiltily away behind the pear-trees to —

  “To fetch the things,” she asserted, stoutly. But she could hardly hear herself speak for other words that sounded in her ears—”Princess Belle Etoile”—”moth and star” — and there was something about her hand that confused her when she thought of it.

  “But, of course, he won’t be there,” she told herself, at every third step.

  “If he is,” she found herself adding, “I hope I know how to behave. I was startled this morning — he said himself I was startled, and one isn’t oneself when one’s startled out of one’s wits. I shall behave with perfect dignity, and not let him call me Princesses and things. I don’t think I’ll
go at all. ‘expect he’s been thinking me a horrid, forward, sentimental idiot.”

  What he had been thinking was so different that when he spoke to her, looking down to her fresh upturned face from among the quivering chestnut fans his voice sounded like that of a stranger. (“So he is: of course he’s a stranger — you’ve only seen him once,” she told herself, with a quite distinct sinking at the heart.)

  “Do come up, just a little way, Miss Carmichael,” he said. “I want to beg your pardon.”

  Daphne set her foot on a mossy stone in the wall, and thence reached the lowest of the chestnut boughs.

  “Here are all your cakes and sweets and candles and things,” he said; and indeed there they all were, in many-shaped, many-coloured packages, fastened to the chestnut boughs. “And here’s a forked branch just meant for an armchair. Do take it just for one moment.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be here,” said she.

  “Ah, you say that out of politeness,” he answered, and she wondered what he meant and was ashamed of her little lie. “After the idiotic way I behaved this morning you must, I’m sure, have been afraid that I should be here again. The fact is, life as an English master in a French school is not a dazzling round of gaiety. And boredom tends to crime. The leads beyond my window give an excellent view of your wonderful garden. And I am ashamed to say I’ve sometimes watched you all, through my field glasses. Of course, it’s base spying, but I really believe it’s kept me alive. And this morning I saw you making effigies out of overcoats, on the terrace. And I was thrilled with the most delicious inquisitiveness. And then I caught young Emil. And then I found a dryad in a tree, and talked like a badly written fairy tale. When you are as young as I am you’ll understand and forgive me, Miss Carmichael. It was so delightful to play a part that wasn’t the English master’s.”