Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “She really is,” said Daphne, apologetic but insistent. “You know she said we had only sixty pounds a year. And really we’ve got a hundred and twenty pounds — that’s two pounds one and fourpence and some odd farthings and things a week. I did the sum in the cab coming along. The lap of, my dears.”

  “The lap of? And is that sum quite.. “The lap of luxury. The cab was the beginning of the lap. Oh, I do hope he thinks this is a suitable house. I’ll go out and buy the Wesleyan Magazine, and the Rock, and the Record, and leave them on the stairs so that he may see what sort of suitable house it is. Dearest Sister Jane, I am so glad you came. Everything’s going to be perfectly heavenly. I am happier than any old bird.”

  She explained her happiness to Claud that afternoon when she met him on the stairs. He smiled embarrassedly and looked thoughtful.

  Later on she received a note — very unlike his usual notes. For one thing, it was almost legible, and seemed to have been written with a pen, instead of with a hat-pin, or a skewer dipped in Higgins’s waterproof ink.

  “Dear Miss Carmichael,” it said, “I have let my rooms for an unlimited term to Miss Sabrina Severn — a very amiable elderly lady — one of the Shropshire Severns — a good old family. She takes possession this evening.

  “Yours sincerely,

  “CLAUD WINSTON.”

  When she went down to buy the galantine for supper, a large and beautifully lettered card was nailed on his door.

  MISS SABRINA SEVERN BOOKBINDING IN ALL ITS BRANCHES

  Uncle Hamley could not fail to see this when he came up. He did not, indeed, fail.

  “Your downstairs neighbour a nice girl?” he asked, casually, at his third cup of tea.

  “I don’t how her,” said Daphne, truthfully.

  “I hear she’s an elderly lady, one of the Shropshire Severns.”

  “You want some more furniture,” said Uncle Hamley. “I’ve one or two chairs and things at home. I’ll send them along.”

  “You are good,” said Daphne. “Oh, uncle, it is nice to be with nice people, that don’t hate you — and like you to have comfy chairs and things.”

  “You are a charming hostess,” he said at parting. “You won’t think me unappreciative if I avail myself but seldom of what is really a great pleasure.

  My time is so much occupied with public work. Good-bye. Your cheque shall be forwarded to-night.

  I should advise you to open an account with the South-western Bank. Good-bye my — my dears.” He included the three in the one endearment and stumbled ‘down through the trap-door. —

  Next day Miss Sabrina Severn’s card was not, and Claud was, at his door. —

  “Why — Claud?” said Daphne, as though she had not had her doubts. She had paused, her hands full of parcels — for the portals of the heaven of shopping had been flung wide, or at any rate set ajar, by Uncle Hamley’s first cheque.

  “Miss Severn,” said Claud, unblushing, “did not like the rooms. She found them not sufficiently airy, and too low. The outlook also appeared low to her. She objected to the view of the dust-bins in the back yards.”

  “So she’s gone,” said Daphne, and for the life of her she could not control her dimples.

  “She’s gone — bag and baggage,” said Claud, “of course it’s a great financial loss to me. And she was such a good tenant — one of the Shropshire Severns, you know, and that makes such a difference. But after all — I’m not sorry to be back again. There’s no place like home, is there, when you come to think of it?”

  “No,” Daphne agreed, and turned to climb her attic stairs; “now you come to mention it, there really is no place like home.”

  “Was the uncle all right?” Claud asked.

  “Right as rain,” said Daphne. “Oh Claud, it was most frightfully wicked of you—”

  “WICKED? ME? WHAT?”

  “But I do think it helped,” she went on. “Wicked things do sometimes. That’s what’s so odd.”

  “I don’t understand in the least,” he protested, looking at her with those honest eyes of his. “Miss Sabrina Severn—”

  “Yes,” said Daphne, “Miss Sabrina Severn.”

  “Well then — all I can say is — may I bring her to call on your aunt—”

  “Cousin,” said Daphne, “but we call her sister.”

  “Yes—” said he, and a long pause followed the yes; one could fill it as one chose—”only I call you cousin.”

  “You may call,” said Daphne, “to-morrow at five. And,” the dimples left a face that had suddenly grown appealing, “you’ll be as nice as ever you can to Sister Jenny, won’t you?”

  “Aren’t I always nice?”

  “Ah, but extra. I think it’s so dreadful, don’t you, when people have grown quite old, and no one ever seems to have been nice to them — worth mentioning?”

  “You wait,” said Claud, “you mayn’t suspect your ignorance, but I assure you you don’t know what niceness really is. Wait till you see me with Sister Jenny!”

  CHAPTER XV. KISSED

  UNCLE HAMLEY’S chairs and tables included a carpet, a coal-scuttle, fenders — quite a miscellany of useful objects.

  “And,” said Miss Claringbold, “you know, my dear, they’re new, most of them. He must have felt very kindly toward you. He’s certainly bought those brass fenders. And four of them! At the Stores, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder either,” said Daphne. “Oh, people are nice really, all of them — if you take them the right way.”

  “Not Laburnum aunts; they’re not nice,” said Doris, firmly. “Oh, what a beauty rocking chair.” She climbed into it. “I can rock all round the room on it. I do love Uncle Hamley. I do love everybody. What time’s Claud coming?”

  “Claud?” Miss Claringbold dropped the corner of the carpet which, with Daphne, she was unfolding.

  “He’s—” began Daphne.

  “He’s a fairy prince,” said Doris, pulling the brown paper off the brass coal-scuttle handle; ‘he’s going to marry Daphne!”

  “Doris! You are too bad. It’s nothing of the kind. You know it’s not true.” Daphne’s ears were crimson.

  “He said so,” said Doris, “he did, he did. The night you dressed up and he was a king and you were a beggar maid. He said so!”

  Cousin Jane had sat down very abruptly.

  “Oh, that,” said Daphne relieved; that was just acting you know, Sister Jenny.”

  “I see,’ said Cousin Jane, slowly.

  “Oh dear,” Daphne’s thought told her, “now there’s going to be no end of a bother.”

  “And are you acquainted with many gentlemen?” Cousin Jane asked.

  “Heaps,” Daphne answered, recklessly, “and heaps of girls, too. It’s not like Lewisham. We’re all friends together here — like a big family of brothers and sisters. You’ll see. I thought it was odd when we came first But you wait There’s no nonsense of that sort — you’ll see.”

  “I may be old-fashioned,” said Cousin Jane, “but—”

  “No, you mayn’t,” cried Daphne, “you mayn’t be old-fashioned, not for a minute. Aunt Emily’s old-fashioned. You’re going to be new, new, new — like Doris and me. Don’t you see, Laburnum Villa was arranged on purpose for people to be unhappy in. Fitzroy Street’s arranged for people to do as they like.”

  This was true, and discreet Fate decreed that neither Daphne nor Cousin Jane should ever, in all their experience of Fitzroy Street, have the least little glimmering of the extent to which it was true.

  “But—” said Cousin Jane.

  “Yes, I know,” said Daphne, smoothing out the carpet, “but—”

  “When I was young—” said Cousin Jane.

  “Things are always different from what they were when other people were young,” Daphne enounced another great truth and stood up, flushed from carpet-pulling. “And oh, Sister Jenny, aren’t you glad things are different from Laburnum Villa? know you are. Aunt Emily would hate it all because it’s so d
ifferent, but you won’t, because you’re different too.”

  It was different. The life in the one room, where you did for yourself, with pleasant flutter of timid amusement, all the things that all your life servants had done for you. The tentative essays in cookery, where failure was a joke, and success a triumph. The very shops were different. In Lewisham you went through dull decorous roads to a shop where the shopman’s face was as familiar, and as uninteresting, as your own, with a list of someone else’s writing, left it, and presently the shopman sent the things home — to some one else’s house. Here, you went out into a street that was a bazaar, bought in strange, foreign-looking shops objects of your own choice, paid for them, and brought them home in your own tired, delighted arms. Sometimes, even, you bought things off barrows — flowers, for instance, or lettuces, or strawberries, or cherries. And in the streets something was forever happening. Through them flowed the stream of life, muddy perhaps, turbulent sometimes, but still a stream. The Lewisham roads were mere canals; and their water was stagnant.

  But the change in the outdoor world was a mere ripple compared to the great change in the inner life. For her to be welcomed and petted, who had so long been snubbed or ignored, to find herself listened to when she spoke — spoken to when she was silent, to find herself treated as though she mattered, as though, so she put it to herself, as though she were any one else. From her chill position of domestic doormat at Aunt Emily’s the spinster lady found herself caught up as in a warm compelling cloud — lifted to a pedestal, by hands that loved her. Her opinions seemed to count, her little speeches were answered, her little jokes laughed at. Daphne seemed to have thrown an arm about her — against the world. And the child loved her. Little unimportant things treasured from her long ago childhood — the things memory holds to the last — these were important now. When Doris in the sudden bursts of affection that come when a child is tired of play, hugged her and said: “Now Sister Jenny, you tell me all about when you was a little girl,” there was incredibly much to tell. About the old man who had lived next door, and cared for nothing only to collect pins. “He stuck them into his coat-sleeves, dear, rows and rows and rows of them, till his arm looked as if it were encased in silver armour, it did indeed.” And about how she had used to go fishing with her cousin James—”a little stream between Hildenborough and Sevenoaks, it was, my dear,” and had caught trout. “Your grandmamma used to let the cook grill them for our breakfast. They were quite delicious.” And how she had once shot at a rook, with a bow and arrow, and killed it. “Your father said I was a an, my dear, and I remember how proud your father. I used to take the rabbit to bed with me every night. I couldn’t go to sleep unless I had it in my arms.”

  “I wish I had a rabbit,” said Doris. “I’m sure I’ll never sleep again unless I’ve got a rabbit to be in my arms.’

  “I’ll buy you one,” said Cousin Jane.

  “Ah, but that wouldn’t be a tame rabbit,” said Doris, rubbing her face coaxingly against the other face. “I’d like this one, Sister Jenny — cause it’s tame and used to going to sleep in people’s armses. Do let me have this rabbit, Sister Jenny.”

  Cousin Jane let her have that rabbit — and within the day Doris had dropped it on the hearth and broken it into three pieces. Then the rabbit was mended with cement, and went back to the shell-box, with a new set of memories wrapped round it.

  Claud came to call on her, also Green Eyes. Green Eyes was “nice” to Cousin Jane, but it was Claud who, as she said later, treated her like a queen. He brought her tea, brought her cake, brought her a cushion, talked to her, not all the time, which would have made her uncomfortable, but much more than he talked to anyone else. He made jokes — to her — showing that he really considered her clever enough to understand jokes. He talked to her about the Royal Academy, and St. Ives, and the Welsh mountains, and his mother and his “work,” and never seemed to notice that she was a person whom people had not been used to speak to unless they wanted her to do something for them. Miss Claringbold watched anxiously for any signs of what she would have called the tender passion, and surprised Claud’s open secret in the first five minutes. But she looked in vain for any corresponding manifestation from Daphne.

  “Poor young man,” she said to herself. “Well, perhaps she’ll be a good influence.”

  “You must let me take you to the National Gallery,” Claud was saying, “or the Tate perhaps, or both. There are lots of pictures you’d like.”

  “I have not been to any picture gallery since I was a young girl,” said Miss Claringbold. “My Cousin James, Daphne’s father, you know, took me four times.”

  Claud noted the careful numeral, and in the dry-bones of his duty-kindness, live pity and understanding awoke.

  “I am so glad you have come to live with Daphne,” he lied. “If she should be ill — or Doris. And it’s so nice to have some one to show things to — I feel as though you were a distinguished foreigner.”

  “I know I’m very ignorant,” said Miss Claringbold.

  “You know I didn’t mean that,” said Claud, “how can you!” And her heart warmed to the nice boy who spoke to her almost as to an equal, who did not seem to remember the twenty-five sad years that lay between her and him. “You know I only meant — why, of course, when you live in a place you never see the sights. I knew a chap who d lived in Paris for years and had never seen the Venus of Milo.”

  “You see,” said Cousin Jane, “I — I have not had much leisure. Being here with the girls is the first holiday I have had for a — for a considerable number of years.”

  “We’ll make it a jolly holiday if we can.” Claud was throwing himself more and more energetically into his part. He looked across to where Daphne and Green Eyes, deep in talk together, absently Kept up the ball of a conversation with Doris. “Daphne and Doris and I are going into the country for a day soon — of course you’ll come too. It will be most awfully nice. I’m sure you love the country.”

  “Yes,” she said, “oh, yes,” and told him of the country between Hildenborough and Sevenoaks. Claud hated to think how he hated the thought that that day in the country would be shared by anyone but Daphne and him. What a day it might have been! What a day it would be! Suddenly he decided that the more people who came on that expedition the better it would be for his enjoyment of it. So he spoke across the room to Green Eyes, and asked her if she, too, would not be of the party. She would.

  “Then I’ll ask one or two other people,” he said. “We’ll make a regular beano of it.

  “Beano? “ Cousin Jane repeated.

  “Beano — beanfeast — special occasion. In your honour, Miss Claringbold. Let’s fix the day.” So they fixed it.

  And all this time, days and days, almost a fortnight, Daphne had neither seen Henry, nor heard of him. He did not come to the sketch-club. There seemed to be a fixed resolve on every one’s part not to mention him. Even Mrs. Delarue, bristling to a possible conflict with Miss Claringbold, spoke of him no longer.

  Daphne felt a growing irritation with people because they were not Henry, with all the little incidents of her life because they had nothing to do with him.

  “I don’t like the man,” she told herself (and Columbine). “I think there’s something sinister about him. Sinister’s such an expressive word, isn’t it? And of course he’s most dreadfully conceited. Some one ought to give him a lesson.”

  It was on a Sunday that Daphne was spurred by a power she did not understand to do something which in any one else she would have termed rather horrid. Cousin Jane had gone to the Temple Church. Daphne and the child were to meet her afterward in the garden of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There are several ways of getting from Fitzroy Street to this garden. Daphne chose to choose as the shortest the one that lay through Great Ormonde Street. She noticed, in Southampton Row, that Doris’s shoelace was undone, and she deliberately forebore to tie it till she was close to the door that led to Mr. Henry’s studio. Then she said:

  “You
r shoe’s untied, my pigeon,” thought better of it, walked another hall dozen yards, and then stooped to tie the brown silk.

  Then the two walked on, down the length of his street. They did not meet him, and the adventurous sally yielded no result save hot ears in the remembrance.

  The picnic party was growing. Claud, the charm of the proposed tête-à-tête once broken, gave invitations recklessly. And everyone accepted. It was two days before the day that the letter came. Daphne knew the handwriting and felt that she would have known that it was from him even had the name and address been typed on the hand-made envelope. She opened the envelope with a hairpin, running it along the top to spare the seal —

  “DEAR MISS CARMICHAEL:

  “I am wanting a model for a thing I’m doing. Will you sit for me from nine to five daily, beginning next Monday?

  “Yours faithfully, “H. HENRY.”

  What had she expected?

  Not this.

  Suddenly, Pique disguising itself as Prudence and a dignified reserve seized on Daphne. She wrote:

  “DEAR MR. HENRY:

  “I am sorry to say that I have no time to spare at present.

  “Yours truly, “Daphne Carmichael.”

  posted the letter at once, and wished she hadn’t. Reading and answering the letter lasted five minutes. Wishing she hadn’t seemed likely to last indefinitely. The wishing was so intense that it gave her a headache, and she could not go to the theatre with the others, who had made up a party, at least Claud had made up a party, to go and see “The Gondoliers” from the gallery.

  She was very sorry, she said, but her head was too awful for anything. And to-morrow was the picnic.

  “Shan’t I stay with you,” Cousin Jane asked, adorned by a new bonnet and delightful anticipations.

  “No, really not,” said Daphne, seeing her off on the stairs.

  “Oh, do come,” Claud pleaded, “it’ll do you good. There’s nothing like the gallery to cure a headache. Do come.”