Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “I hope you didn’t quarrel with her,” said Daphne, nervously. She remembered the advice of Green Eyes — to keep friends with every one, because who knew when they might be able to do one a bad turn. And Mrs. Delarue knew about her and That Man. What nonsense — when, of course, there was nothing to know. None the less she was conscious of relief when Cousin Jane answered.

  “Quarrelled? Of course not. Have you ever known me quarrel with anyone?” she laughed, a dreary, nervous little laugh that helped Daphne to self-control and conscious mastery of the situation.

  “How are you going to get home?” she asked briskly.

  “I thought,” said Cousin Jane, looking down—”I thought perhaps you ‘d let me stay. I’ve run away, too! May I stay?”

  Daphne had taken off her cloak and was shaking her dress out. She did not at once answer.

  Do you remember playing hide and seek when you were young, but not so young as to be unable to find a really good hiding-place for yourself? And do you remember how the triumph of the perfect concealment in the unlikely spot was dashed with mingled emotions when a smaller child, beloved but not at that moment wanted — blundered into your cache with a glad cry, and rejoiced that now it could “hide with you”? You liked the trust — but you did not like your game to be spoiled — and the child with its important whispers, its quivering anxiety and delight its fidgetty adjustments to the hiding-place, would certainly betray you both. That is how Daphne felt. You remember also how you had to risk the spoiling of your game, had to say “All right, darling, only do keep very still.”

  This was what Daphne said.

  “Of course you’re welcome to stay to-night,” she answered the wistfulness of the faded eyes. “I suppose the rest of them will turn up in the morning?”

  “No, they won’t,” said Cousin Jane, delightedly, “because they don’t know where you are. They haven’t found out.”

  “But you have?”

  “Oh — I’ve know it since ten days after you went.”

  “And you didn’t tell? Cousin Jane — you are a brick! How long have you been here? Have you had any supper? No? What a shame. I’ll make you some cocoa. Take off your bonnet, and tell me all about everything. What happened when they found out we’d gone. Were they awfully wild?”

  Cousin Jane told, taking off her bonnet.

  “So that’s why they haven’t found me — because they were afraid of Uncle Hamley.”

  “They’re going to find you now,” said Cousin Jane. That’s why I came.”

  “You’re a dear,” said Daphne, pouring out the cocoa—”here, have the comfy chair. And how did you find out?”

  “Well, my dear,” said Cousin Jane, stirring the steaming stuff nervously, “I’m afraid you’ll think it very forward and interfering of me — and it’s a thing I’ve never been accustomed to — to set myself up against your Aunt Emily in any way — as you know — but when it came to you two being alone in London, and not to know whether you were alive even — oh, no, my dear — I couldn’t bear it. I never was strong-minded like your Aunt Emily. It wasn’t any good arguing with her. It never is. So when she wouldn’t have me tell the police I just went off quietly to New Cross and told a private inquiry that I’d seen in the paper. It was a very bold-faced thing to do, I’m aware — but I couldn’t help that.”

  “And he found us at once?”

  “Quite quickly, my dear, really; only it seemed a very long time to me. I went every day till I heard. I told Emily I was going to the dentist. Oh, no, my dear — I did really go, too. I wasn’t so untruthful as that. But I did tell him I had the toothache, and I assure you directly I got into that horrible curly chair of his — I had. And it went on all day. So if I did tell a lie it was a sort of judgment on me, and the lie only lasted about two minutes. And then I heard where you were, and that you ‘d got friends. Your school friends, I suppose, my dear? So I knew you were all right. Ana I do hope you know I shouldn’t have done it out of just curiosity. But I was so frightfully anxious about you and the child. And I never said a word to your aunt, Daphne, though I felt dreadfully deceitful when they talked about where could you possibly have got to. I do hope you don’t think it was very dreadful of me.”

  The timid appeal touched the girl. She really did, for a moment, perceive what all this must have cost the shrinking woman who sat there awaiting her judgment. She put her arm around Cousin Jane’s neck, and kissed her, not once but three or four times — the first spontaneous kisses that the tired woman had felt since she was a child on her mother’s knee. The kisses of greeting which women give each other, the formal kisses of good morning and good night, and how do you do? and good-bye, do not somehow warm the heart.

  Cousin Jane fumbled for her handkerchief in a bag small and mangy with a dulled gilt clasp, and said, “God bless you my dear — you’re far too good to me.”

  And Daphne felt the hot shame of being overpaid for a thing that had cost nothing — or so little.

  “Nonsense,” she said, briskly, “and you’re not eating anything. Yes — you must have some more bread and butter. And now tell me how you came to run away. It is fun running away, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, great fun,” said Cousin Jane and giggled, “but, oh, my dear, I was so frightened. I just packed up a bag, and went out the back way when the servants were changing — about three o’clock it was. Your Aunt Emily was resting — so was Uncle Harold, and Cousin Henrietta was writing letters. And I just went down to Greenwich Park and waited. I thought you’d be in by nine.”

  “And didn’t you have any tea or anything?”

  “I — I had a bun, but I was so terrified of meeting your Aunt Emily I didn’t dare to go into a shop for even that till I got to London. And you are pleased to see me, aren’t you, Daphne?”

  “Of course I am,” said Daphne as cordially as she could, “and now — you’re sure you won’t have another cup? — do, do tell me exactly what’s happened.”

  What had happened was very simple. Uncle Harold, taking advantage of a really bright day to visit his solicitors, had ventured, the thermometer marking 82 in the shade, to fold his muffler more comprehensively round him, and to ride on the top of an omnibus. From this position he had seen, quite unmistakably, Daphne, without gloves, and with a foreign miscreant. Though he had had the presence of mind to wave his umbrella without any unnecessary delay, he had not been able to attract her attention. She turned up Museum Street. He was quite sure of that, but though he lost no time in stopping the omnibus, and descended as quickly as was consistent with safety, he had lost sight of her, and had failed to trace her farther.

  “But depend upon it, I’ve run her to earth,” he said, again, as he detailed his adventure at we’ll tell the police. That man she was with was shockingly shabby — almost like a working man.”

  “Yes,” said Aunt Emily, “that must certainly be stopped. But the police — I don’t know. It would be simpler if we could find out privately, and then get hold of the child. That would bring her to her senses if anything would.”

  “But suppose Uncle Hamley finds out that she has been away all this time,” Cousin Henrietta suggested; “of course it’s no business of mine, but—”

  “He won’t find out,” said Aunt Emily, “she’ll be too humbled to tell, and we shall not expose her. Now we must talk it all over and decide what to do.” They had talked it over, it seemed, ever since, without any pauses save those necessary for food and sleep. So Jane had run away.

  “To warn you, my dear,” she said, “and to advise you — if you won’t be offended at a little advice from me. After all, you know — Daphne, I am older than you.” She advanced this as a little fact that might have escaped Daphne’s notice, “and what I advise is this.”

  What she advised was that Daphne should, without delay, go to Uncle Hamley and tell him the truth.

  “And I thought, dear,” she added, “that if I’m here it’ll make a difference to his letting you stop. Because, though not a married lad
y, I am quite old enough to be a chaperon. And I should go to-morrow if I were you, in the morning I think, so as to get things settled with your uncle before your Aunt Emily has time to do anything dreadful.”

  “I always meant to go,” said Daphne, “that’s why I wrote. Why didn’t you answer, Cousin Jane?”

  But, Cousin Jane had never had the letter. Daphne suspected Aunt Emily till, weeks later, she found the letter in the pocket of the gold and white cloth dress she had worn at the sketch-club on that night when she had sat on the stairs with a lame man. Heaven knew what she had posted — some old letter or empty envelope.

  “Come,” said Daphne, “you must go to bed. It’s nearly two o’clock. Oh — yes — you must sleep with Doris — I can sleep in the deck chair. I can really. I’m almost as much of a dormouse as she is.”

  Daphne did indeed sleep soundly. Cousin Jane slept, for the first time in her life, with her arm across a child.

  It was Daphne who woke first, perplexed and stiff. She got up and the shawls fell from her — and she stood looking at the other two — who lay very close together, their heads on one pillow. She had been sick with vexation the night before, that Cousin Jane should have followed her, like some faithful mongrel that one has tried to lose. She had felt that Cousin Jane would be a tie — a drag — in this new free life. She would be also a critic — a watcher. And Daphne did not want criticism or watchfulness. But now, as she looked at the two, she saw that Cousin Jane would be, more than anything else, the lover of the child. The child had always been inclined to like her. Daphne would, in fact, if Uncle Hamley should prove amenable, be more free than ever to “live her own life,” an exercise which now seemed to hold more possibilities than she cared at the moment to analyze. Because now there would be someone to look after Doris — someone who could be trusted — and no remorse for neglecting the child could mingle with the intense retrospective satisfaction of having, say, sat for the sketch-club, or gone to tea with a Russian, or visited a picture gallery in company with Green Eyes, or exchanged a few words with a charcoal-covered artist whom she disliked. It behoved her now to brace herself for the interview with Uncle Hamley.

  The loud splashings behind the dressing-room curtain woke Cousin Jane. To rub sleep from her eyes she tried to raise her arms — one of them was held fast by something warm, heavy, adorable. Some intimate thrill of pleasure fluttered her dry eyelids and set her thin throat pulsing. Her arm recurved on what it held — her hand felt the warm rhythmic expansion and contraction of a ribbed barrel, human, beloved. The child lay in her arm. She lay still, fearing to breathe lest she should break the spell, change this live thing that, trusting, clinging, lay against her side, to a child, awakened, surprised, possibly antagonistic.

  Daphne came out from behind the curtain in a white and quite effective substitute for evening dress.

  “Daphne,” said Cousin Jane, very softly because of the still sleeping Doris, “I’ve thought of something. Uncle Hamley is a woman’s suffrage man. Can’t you tell him what it’s really like at Laburnum Villa?”

  “I should think I could,” said Daphne, beginning to brush out her hair. “Cousin Jane — do you like being a cousin?”

  “I don’t know — my dear. It’s so long since I was anything else.”

  “Perhaps you’d like being an aunt better,” suggested Daphne — who had decided that “Auntie Jenny” would be a pleasant change for the crushed “poor relation.”

  “Perhaps dear,” said Cousin Jane, still very careful not to move because of that sleeping sweetness cuddled so closely to her side, “but you see, there’s Aunt Emily.”

  Daphne, her hair standing out like copper wire from the strenuousness of the brush, was poignantly inspired.

  ‘I think Cousin Jane’s so stiff. Would you mind? Would you think it disrespectful if we were to call you — if we were to — won’t you be our sister, and then we can call you — Jenny.”

  “Oh,” said Cousin Jane, “if you only would!” And suddenly Daphne perceived, in a strange flash of enlightenment, how Cousin Jane might have looked, twenty years ago, to the eyes of a man who might have loved her. Doris woke.

  “Own Daffy,” she murmured, flinging out a protective arm.

  Daphne’s arm was over the two of them.

  “It’s Cousin Jane that’s come,” she said. “Dear Cousin Jane that loves us. She’s come to stay — and she’s going to be our sister, and let us call her Jenny.”

  “I say,” said Doris, in awestruck tones, “that will be grand!” She wriggled herself up till she was sitting squarely on the pillow. “May we really?” she asked — and stooping, put her arms under the chin of Cousin Jane.

  “Good morning, Jenny,” she said. “Jenny,” she repeated ecstatically, “oh, Daffy darling, wouldn’t Aunt Emily think it cheek!”

  The one alleviation to the tedium of an articled clerk’s professional life is the possibility of interest always latent in clients. Some clients are comic, some contemptible. There is the angry client, always a boon — also there is the incoherent client, sometimes a joke. But the really perfect client, a rare bird flitting but too seldom across the Fields of Lincoln’s Inn, is the radiant young woman with whom a whole office full of clerks can fall in love, without effort or, of course, hope. Such was Daphne in her clay-coloured, rough silk, and the hat that was a rose garden.

  Mr. Hamley was engaged. If Miss Carmichael could wait? Only a few moments — Miss Carmichael’s card should be taken in at once, and the speaker was sure — with much to the same purpose.

  Daphne arranged herself in a perfect pose — a pose completed in the mere act of permitting one of the dull leather chairs to support her eight stone odd of slender young womanhood, and the clerks in their hutches of brass and mahogany felt that this was indeed June. The selfish ones, biting the feathers of their pens, hoped that the Old Boy would not hurry himself — those capable of a really unselfish passion felt that it would be a shame if the Old Buffer should keep her waiting. When she unfurled the squat black fan than hung from her waist, the least attractive clerk was also the most prompt. To him was the honour of opening the window which everyone had thought of opening. For him the smile which rewards alert chivalry. The handsomest of Mr. Hamley’s clerks had the happy idea of offering the Times. She refused it, and all the others were glad, till she added to her “No thank you,” the memorable words, “It’s awfully kind of you, but I want to think over what I’ve got to say to Mr. Hamley,” and then every one was overpowered by the keen longing to know what it was that she wanted to think over. The youngest clerk of all made a transparent excuse about wanting the letter-book, and passed so close to her that he could smell the live rose she wore in her belt and see that it was a live rose. But he lost something by the move, too, for when he came back the door of Mr. Hamley’s private room had just closed upon the vision.

  “Ward in Chancery, I expect,” said the handsomest clerk.

  “Heiress to the missing will fortune,” suggested the ugliest.

  “Rot,” said the clerk who had shown her in. “She’s the old boy’s niece. ‘Good morning, Uncle Hamley!’ Oh — it’s a fine thing to be an uncle.”

  “Did she — did she — —”

  “No — they didn’t, either of them. She wanted to get something out of him, though. Well, God speed the plough! I hope she’ll get it.”

  Daphne did get it. The interview was long. It began with surprise on one side, nervousness on the other, and on both sides distrust. It ended in the complete victory of Daphne. She had been adroit, she had been clever — she had worked woman’s rights for all they were worth, and she had painted Laburnum Villa with the studied restraint of your true artist. She dwelt lightly on the unchaperoned interval between her flight and Cousin Claringbold’s and drove home strongly the weighty point of Cousin Claringbold’s presence in Fitzroy Street. She mentioned the addressing of envelopes, and the little bits of embroidery with which she had helped Green Eyes. It did not seem worth while to menti
on that she had made quite a number of shillings by sitting as a model to the sketch-club, and others. The world, she already knew, cannot readily believe that there is employment for any but undraped models, and she did not want to labour explanations of the high-necked character of this vocation. She had, half unconsciously, embroidered the embroidery incident, and Uncle Hamley had admitted such work to be a not undesirable employment for a young woman. Also, he had admitted that a rational human being has some right of choice as to companions and employment. “And if,” he added, you are happy with your Cousin Jane, I am willing to allow you to remain with her. I shall come to see you to-morrow afternoon; if I consider the house to be a suitable one for you to lodge in I will write to your aunt, Mrs. Veale, and explain that I have given my sanction to this new arrangement.”

  “Oh, thank you,” came from Daphne’s heart “You’ll come to tea, won’t you? At five?”

  Something in the frank hospitality pleased Uncle Hamley. “I will,” he said heartily, and Daphne, handshaken, and “shown out” by the most fortunate of the clerks, felt in the fresh air of Lincoln’s Inn Fields a sudden intoxication of freedom and success that claimed as its full expression a hansom, no less!

  “It’s all settled,” she appeared through her trapdoor sparkling with joy as a harlequin sparkles with spangles. “You’re to live with us, Sister Jenny, and we’re to live with you — and Uncle Hamley’s coming to tea to-morrow — to see that the house is a suitable lodging. And I’m to have the whole allowance. Oh Sister Jane, dear, Aunt Emily is really a downright-no-nonsense-about-it pig!”

  “My dear!” Cousin Jane gently reproved. “Isn’t she just!” said Doris — coming out from beneath the table where she had happily played wigwams all the morning, Cousin Jane being by turns a squaw, a bear, a forest, and the Hostile Tribe. “A very big pig.”