by Edith Nesbit
“You are changed, said Daphne, abruptly. “ You never used to throw the door open like this.
“No, I used to keep the door shut — and pinch anyone’s fingers who tried to get it open, pretending there was something real inside, when really there wasn’t anything.”
“You were saying — ?”
“I was saying? Oh, yes, about that chap’s pictures. Well, I said to myself, ‘Suppose he’d never put brush to canvas? Take the best of them — take the whole lot — are they worth making one girl miserable for, for half a day? And I knew they weren’t. And then I thought of my rotten work—”
“It isn’t,” said Daphne: “You can say what you like of yourself — I dare say you know best — but your work is all right.”
“Even if it were, the whole lot of it isn’t worth all that I’ve paid for it — let alone making you sad for half an hour. That was what I saw — though even then I didn’t know I saw it — and I wanted to tell you, that’s all.”
“I see,” she said: “That’s all?”
“I don’t suppose I shall ever see you again,” he said—”not to talk to really, I mean. And! wanted to tell you. I was a vain, blind fool and I’ve paid for it; I think I’ve paid a little of the price. And there’s more to pay.. Oh, quite a lot more. And I thought I’d like you to know. That’s all.”
“That’s all!” said Daphne slowly. “Yes — well — it was nice of you to tell me — and I’m sorry if you’ve had to pay. Because it was really quite unimportant to me. I mean it didn’t hurt me really. Those sort of sentimental sufferings are almost all imagination and romance, aren’t they? And now I must really go. I’m so glad I met you. Goodbye!”
“Mayn’t I walk home with you?” he asked. To walk along the streets of Pans beside Mr. St. St. Hilary’s wife could not ease heartache. It was not ease he wanted, it seems. It was to turn the knife in the wound — see her eyes and her hair — to hear that voice of hers — to feel her presence beside him, and know to the depths of his awakened heart what it was that he had thrown away.
“Certainly,” she said “I shall be charmed. We really ought to have heaps of things to talk of, besides you — oughtn’t we?”
“Heaps,” he agreed; and they walked in unbroken silence to the door of the flats where her lodging was in the Rue de Rennes.
At the foot of her stairs she paused and held out her hand to him.
“I’ll see you, if I may, to your very door,” he said, and, as they went up the stairs, “I haven’t asked after any one I ought to have asked after. How’s your cousin, and Doris, and your — Mr. St Hilary?
“My cousin blossoms like the rose,” said Daphne; “and Doris flourishes like a green baize tree, as she says.”
“And Mr. St. Hilary?” If you are going to turn knives in wounds you may as well turn them with vigour and no relentings.
“Mr. St Hilary? On, he’s very well, I believe,” was Daphne’s astonishing reply. “I do wish I could have gone to the wedding!”
“What wedding?” Henry asked, and stopped short, above and below them the hollow solitude of the empty staircase. They were now at the second story.
“Why, his and Green Eyes’,” said Daphne, her foot on the first step of the next flight “Didn’t you know they were married?”
“But,” said Henry, leaning an arm on the polished bannisters and looking up at her, “but if he’s married Green Eyes — who is it that you’ve married?”
“Oh — I?” she said, steadily mounting, “I’m not married, and not likely to be.”
Then it was the old Henry, the Henry of the charcoal and the Great Ormonde Street studio, who took three steps at once and caught her arm.
“Not likely to be? — aren’t you — aren’t you?” And his eyes, as of old, implored, wooed, commanded.
“No,” she said, very definitely. “Let me go — I don’t love you any more.”
“Don’t you? Don’t you? Ah, what’s the use of saying that? Don’t I know you?”
“No; you don’t know me. I’m not the Daphne you used to know.”
“You ‘re my Daphne anyhow,” he said, in the old masterful way, and put his arms round her.
“No — no — no. I’m not that silly girl. You’ve taught me too much. I can’t unlearn it all. I don’t love you — I don’t love you.”
“You do, you do! I’ll teach you new wisdom —
I Oh, my love. And it’s not too late after all?”
“I tell you I don’t love you now — I don’t know how I ever could have,” she said, and, saying it, yielded to his arms and hid her eyes against his neck.
“Kiss me,” he said.
“No, no,” she said. “I tell you, I’m not the girl you used to love.”
His lips were close to hers. “You are, you are; it’s not true,” he said.
But it was true. Her whole soul and body trembled and thrilled to the unbelievable joy of his arms about her — but the girl who had loved him last year, the girl whose innocent passion of hope and faith had drawn him even to this, was not there in his arms, could never, whatever life might hold for those two, be in his arms again.
The Daphne of Fitzroy Street, was not now anymore, anywhere — could never, anywhere, anymore, be again.
THE END
DORMANT
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. MALACCA WHARF
CHAPTER II. A BOOK LIKE ANOTHER
CHAPTER III. THE SEPTET
CHAPTER IV. THE ADVERTISEMENT
CHAPTER V. FAMILY SECRETS
CHAPTER VI. ALL NONSENSE
CHAPTER VII. THE DAY AFTER
CHAPTER VIII. MYSTERY
CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT DISCOVERY
CHAPTER X. THE MISSING WINDOW
CHAPTER XI. THE SECRET ROOM
CHAPTER XII. ANCIENT HISTORY
CHAPTER XIII. THE DISCOVERY
CHAPTER XIV. MOVING THE CHEST
CHAPTER XV. THREE TELEGRAMS
CHAPTER XVI. ACHIEVEMENT
CHAPTER XVII. LIES
CHAPTER XVIII. THE TRUTH
CHAPTER XIX. EUGENIA
CHAPTER XX. FIFTY YEARS AGO
CHAPTER XXI. THE OLD LOVE
CHAPTER XXII. THE END
TO
THE LADY DUNSANY
FROM E. NESBIT
CHAPTER I. MALACCA WHARF
MALACCA WHARF lies on a little creek of the great muddy river, a creek into which the ooze has silted till it is, at low water, merely a stretch of smooth glistening mud, and even when the tide is high the water that looks so profound has not the depth that shall float an unladen barge. The wharf has dropped out of its place in the great come and go, the round game of trade with the round world, where fate and tide and the winds deal the cards, and, sooner or later, every player loses. It had been worth no one’s while to spend a fortune on clearing the creek. So the wharf and its warehouses stood deserted, decaying. At night, lit by the dipping lanterns on the ships at anchor in the stream, and by the gas lamp in the rough road outside the great shut gates, the place was still imposing enough. Seen thus, it might have been a wharf where ships bound for the Fortunate Islands took on their lovely varied freights, where scented cargoes from tropic lands were unloaded from strange ships of unfamiliar rig, manned by out-land men with musical speech and daggers in their boots. The dark buildings might have held bloomy tea, rich silk from the Flowery Land, carpets from Persian looms, broideries worked in purdah by hidden Indian beauties, and sent out across two continents to lie among strange wonders in that tall house of treasure from over-seas.
But dawn tore down the kind shadows, and the mystery of the darkness turned, in the daylight, to ancient disorder and a decay almost complete enough to be called ruin.
Grass grew between the cobble-stones of the yard; the timbers at the water’s edge were rotting apart. On the heap of old barrels, cracked and distorted, black moss grew. The warehouses and sheds showed grey light through many chinks and rifts, and in their roofs were squares of grey l
ight, the places whence slates had slipped in old storms; in the dulled windows cobwebs replaced the shattered panes. All the wooden buildings were broken, crooked, settling into dissolution.
Only the large brick-built warehouse and the little house by the yard gate were still whole, and, whether their windows were broken or not, they kept their secrets behind close-nailed boards and heavy shutters.
On the other side of a desolate, sordid, waste space, where weeds and sickly grass strove with old tins and broken crockery, lay the mean nearest street. The more adventurous of the children, whose home this street was, had been used to leave the waste space, their playground, to seek the keener joys of play in the deserted wharf. The smaller sheds could be explored; a loose plank or a hole in the masonry let in the little, curious, prying, human animals. But the big warehouse and the little square house resisted firmly. It was fun to creep through the little door in the great gate — there was a hole that you could put your hand through and so draw the bolts — and to hide when you heard the far-away, unmistakable boots of the rare policeman. To the unwashed, illsmelling, ragged, bright-eyed boys the old wharf was the greatest wonder of their world — a quiet, secret place where you could do what you liked, and nobody scolded or swore at you except your friends and equals, on whom you could joyously and confidently retaliate.
Malacca Wharf had always been there, it always would be there. There was a board up that said, “To Let,” but no one ever answered what it said. And year after year the woodwork and the stonework and the bricks and the slates and the tiles, under sun and frost, moved a little — a very little — nearer the time when they should all be dust together.
And the boys played there.
It was with a shock of surprise that they found one day the big gates closed, and when the daring leader climbed to the top of the wall and looked down, he almost fell from that eminence, and the word “Jimminy!” sprang unbidden to his lips.
“What’s up, Aelf?” asked his followers from below.
“It’s a chap. In a napron. Puttin’ in the windows!”
“They’ve got thome fool to take it,” suggested a business-like child with a straight nose and beautiful dark eyes. “Won’t ‘e be gay when ‘e findth out about the thallow water?”
“There’s another chap with a paint pot,” said the leader, in low, awe-struck tones. “Green paint. ‘E’s doing the door-posts.”
“Letth ‘ave a thquint,” said the business-like child, pulling at the leg of the leader, who fell off the wall. And before he had picked himself out of the mud, the dark-eyed one was in his place, the only place where the broken bottles were broken enough to be disregarded.
“Let’s come when these chaps is gone an’ bust all the winders,” suggested an undistinguished boy.
“No profith in that,” said he on the wall; “thome of uth might get took on ‘ere before they knowth about the water. ’Twouldn’t latht, but there’d be thomething thticking to it. I thay, mithter,” he added over the wall, addressing the “chap in a napron,”
“want any one to lend a hand?”
The glazier, used to the boys of the neighbourhood, answered by a brief description of the inquirer’s character, delivered without malice; and the business child retorted, also without malice, but with a superior vocabulary. The glazier replied, the boy rejoined, while the deposed leader and the others listened admiringly.
The glazier was the first to weary of the complimentary exchange.
“Here, you run along home, you young unmentionable,” he said amiably.
“Tell uth who’th took the old pig-thtye,” said the boy persuasively.
“If I tell you, will you cut along and not come back? Not to-day anyhow.”
“If you tellth me enough, I will,” said the child, pleased with any bargain in which he might gain more than he gave.
“Well, then — no one’s took it.”
“That ain’t enough, not for me to cut along on.”
“Well, then; the owner’s a-coming to live ‘ere.”
“That’s a lie,” said half-a-dozen voices from beyond the wall.
“It’s gospel truth,” said the glazier; “now, hook it!”
With much talk, and very slowly, they did hook it, and the glazier went on with his work. The painter went on with his too, and so did the plasterer and the bricklayer; and when the boys came next day firm set cement and a chevaux-de-frise of bottles said “No!” very sharply to their curiosity. Also the loose bricks had been replaced in the wall, and there was no foothold. And after a day or two it did not seem to be worth while to take half-an-hour out of your free time just to cut across to Malacca and shout abuse outside a very high brick wall.
And inside the wall the workmen went on working, and late one night, when there were no boys about, a little van-load of furniture came along the old broken road that skirted the desolate waste space, and “The Owner” set up housekeeping in the little house by the gate, and there were muslin curtains and window-boxes, and a wire netting over the windows that did not look on the yard. So that it was no use to throw stones. Carter Paterson was always leaving boxes and things there. But no one could say what trade the owner proposed to ply.
The boys watched in vain for the first barge to come failing up the creek, for no barge came. And then they watched for the owner, and weeks went on, and presently it was no secret that the owner was a woman, and lived there alone.
This news decided the gang. The very next Sunday they repaired to the wharf to enjoy themselves. They had not quite decided what form the enjoyment should take — vaguely it was phrased as “letting her have it.” To this end they collected a good many stones. And one of the boys, whose father was often out at night and exercised a profession involving unusual implements, brought a cold chisel to knock out the newly inserted bricks. Another brought a piece of old carpet for the negotiating of the bottles on the top of the wall.
The campaign was opened by yells, a few snatches of unsavoury comic songs, and a shower of stones at the great gates. Then Benny, the business-like child, began to use the chisel, and the rest collected more stones. They had just collected a nice heap, and a brick was getting quite loose, when there was a sound from within — bolts were being withdrawn. The besieging army drew back, a little uncertain. One or two of the more stalwart stooped for stones. One stone was thrown. It was a very fair shot. It hit the little door in the big gate just under the keyhole, and the marksman stooped for another stone. But before he could grasp it the little door was opened, and a young woman in a blue dress stood there looking at them.
They looked at her, doubtful, astonished, grave, hostile. She smiled brilliantly at them. It is a very difficult thing to smile in the face of serious hostility, but she did it. She did more. She threw back the door, and said amazingly —
“Won’t you come in?”
No one moved.
“Do come in,” she said. “Come and look at my funny garden. It’s so pretty. I’ve been wanting to show it to some one. You’ll come, won’t you?” She turned the appeal of voice and eye and smile directly on the beautiful Benjamin, standing chisel in hand.
“I don’t mind,” he said, “tho long ath ith understood you arthkt uth. It ain’t trethpath, you know, Mith, the if you’ve got the copperth up your thleeve we ain’t done nothing. Thee?”
“Of course, you haven’t done anything,” she said; “but there’s something I wish you would do. I want to move one of my trees, and it’s too heavy for me. Would you mind helping me?”
“What’ll you give uth?” asked the child.
“I was asking you as a friend,” she said reproachfully. And for a moment it was touch and go. A rowdy guffaw answered her; a snigger answered the guffaw, and a voice cried —
“Ho, yus; let’s be friends, lidy;” and a voice uplifted in song urged —
“Let us be true,
Me and you,
Ever the best of friends.”
But her fearless eyes conquered. A
fter all, they were only a lot of children.
“Come on,” she said. “Don’t let’s waste time in talking. You come in,” she said to Benny, “and I’ll leave the door open, and the rest of you can come in just when you like. See!”
She held out her hand to the business-like child, and he took it, and stepped across the wooden threshold.
“This is the tree,” she said, putting her hand on the smooth stem of a little bay tree in a green tub. “And I want to move it as far as this.” She indicated the spot with the tip of a real Sunday shoe. “Lend me a hand, won’t you?”
Benny, with a vision of red and blue and yellow and great cleanness dazzling his dark eyes, lent a hand.
When the tub had been moved, the lady looked round, and the little yard was dark with crowding boys.
“Are we all in?” she asked, and half - a - dozen voices answered, “Yus, lidy.” Half-a-dozen others said, “Yus, teacher.”
“Good,” she said; “then shut the door, one of you.” The door was shut, and the Lady of the Malacca turned to her guests.
“Now,” she said, “isn’t it pretty?”
It was. On the flagged pavement of her little yard stood four bay trees in tubs. All round was a narrow border of black mould, trimmed with red and white geraniums and lobelias and calceolarias. The windows of the house had white curtains, and each window had its window-box, ardent with primary colours. A wall with a door in it divided the little sunny yard from the big cobbled yard of the wharf. It, with all the woodwork in sight, was painted a soft, bright, pleasant green. And in the middle stood the lady in blue, smiling.
“I can’t ask you all to tea,” she said, “because I haven’t enough milk.”
Somebody said, “Never mind about milk.”
“Or enough tea, or sugar, or teacups, or anything. But there’s one thing I have got enough of. That’s biscuits. Hands up for biscuits.”