by Edith Nesbit
“But this isn’t. . . . Isn’t this. . . . Surely that’s the bookcase you bought at Warwick — and these chairs and those candlesticks.”
“I own it, Princess; I would scorn to deceive you.”
“Then this is your house?”
“It is; just that.”
“Only that? Is there nothing else that it is? Wasn’t it once my house, for a very little while? Wasn’t it here that you left me, that night when I ran away and I met Mr. Schultz? . . . No, I forgot. . . . Of course I didn’t meet any one. . . . I mean when you came after me and found me at Tunbridge Wells. Oh! Suppose you hadn’t found me!”
“How am I to suppose the impossible? You couldn’t be in the same world with me and I not find you. Yes, you are right, as always; this is the house. Did you ever try bananas with chicken? Do! They rhyme perfectly.”
“Don’t seek to put me off with bananas. Was the house yours when you brought me here?”
“Yes; I had just bought it. All concealment is really at an end now. And I am rather glad I did buy it, because this is certainly better than the coffee-room of an inn, isn’t it?”
“How proud he is of his house! And well he may be! And when did he arrange all this beautiful furniture?”
“When she banished him from London. It was something to do; and she does like it?”
“She does indeed. Have you furnished it all?”
“Not nearly all. I wanted your advice about the other parlor and the housekeeper’s room and — oh, lots of things. Yes, you are quite right in the surmise which I see trembling on those lips. Mrs. Burbidge is going to be our housekeeper. She’s staying at old nurse’s, ready to come in whenever she’s wanted. If any one else decides to keep house for me she can be sewing-maid, or still-room maid, or lady-in-waiting to the hen-roost.”
“I see,” she said, crumbling bread and looking at him across the glass and the silver and the white flowers. “So this was the house! When I was in the straw nest you made me I never thought the house could be like this. I imagined it damp and desolate, with strips of torn paper — ugly patterns — hanging from the wall, and dust and cobwebs and mice, perhaps even a rat. I was almost sure I heard a rat!”
“Poor, poor little princess.”
“Yes, I will!” she said, suddenly, answering a voice that was certainly not his. “I don’t care what you say, I will tell him. Edward, when I ran away it wasn’t only because I didn’t want to be a burden and all that — though that was true, too — the real true truth was that I was frightened. Yes, I was! I shivered in that straw nest and listened and listened and listened, and held my breath and listened again, and I was almost sure I heard something moving in the house; and it was so velvet-dark, and I had to get up every time I wanted to strike a match, because of not setting fire to the straw, and at last there were only four matches left. And I kept thinking — suppose something should come creeping, creeping, very slowly and softly, through the darkness, so that I shouldn’t know it until it was close to me and touched me! I couldn’t bear it — so I ran away. Now despise me and call me a coward.”
But he only said, “My poor Princess, how could I ever have left you alone for a moment?” and came around the table expressly to cut just the right number of white grapes for her from the bunch in the silver basket. Being there, his hand touched her head, lightly, as one might touch the plumage of a bird.
“How soft your hair is!” he said, in a low voice, and went back to his place.
When the meal was over, “Let’s clear away,” she said, “it won’t look so dismal for your nurse when she comes in the morning.”
“Let me do it,” said he. “Why should you?”
“Ah, but I want to,” she said. “And I want to see the kitchen.”
And the kitchen was worth seeing, with its rows of shining brasses, its tall clock, its high chintz-flounced mantelpiece. When all was in order, when the table shone bare in its bright, dark mahogany, he mended the fire, for the evening was still chill with the rain, and drew up the big chair for her to the hearth she had just swept. He stood a moment looking down at her.
“May I sit at your feet, Princess?” he asked.
She swept aside her muslin and her gold embroideries to make a place for him. The house was silent, so silent that the crackle of the wood on the hearth seemed loud, and louder still the slow ticking of the tall clock on the other side of the wall. Outside not a breath stirred, only now and then came the tinkle of a sheep-bell, the sound of a hoof on the cobblestones of the stable across the yard, or the rattle of the ring against the manger as some horse, turning, tossed his head.
He leaned back against her chair and threw his head back until he could look at her face. The tips of her fingers touched his forehead lightly and his head rested against her knee; and now he could not see her face any more. Only he felt those smooth finger-tips passing across his brow with the touch of a butterfly caress.
“Are you happy?” he said, once again and very softly.
And once again she answered, “Yes!”
Her hand ceased its movement and lay softly on his hair. His hand came up and found her other hand. For a long time neither spoke. Then suddenly she said, “What is it?” for she had felt the tiniest movement of the head her hand rested on, a movement that told her he had been about to speak and had then thought, “Not now, not yet.”
So she said, “What is it?” because she had a secret, and she feared that he knew it.
Then he did speak. He said: “I have something to tell you; I hope you will forgive me. I must tell you now. Ah! let your hand lie there while I tell you. Princess, I have deceived you. If I did not think you would forgive me, I don’t think I could tell you, even now.”
“I could forgive you anything,” she said, so low that he hardly knew he heard it.
“It is this,” he said. “That marriage of ours — that mock marriage — ah, try to forgive me for deceiving you! It was a real marriage, my dear; I tricked you into a real marriage. It seemed to be the only way not to lose you. It was a real marriage. You are my wife.”
The clock ticked on in the kitchen, the fire crackled on the hearth, far on the down a sheep-bell tinkled and was still. He sat there, immobile, rigid, like a statue of a man, his heart beating a desperate tune of hope and fear. Could she forgive him? Dared he hope it? This moment, so long foreseen, held terrors he had not foretold for it. Was it possible that this deceit of his should come between them, even now? He almost held his breath in a passion of suspense, and the moments fell past slowly, slowly. He could bear it no longer. He sprang up, walked across the room, came back, leaned on the mantelpiece so that she could not see his face.
“Oh, Princess, oh, my dearest!” he said, brokenly, “don’t say that you can’t forgive me.”
She, too, had risen and stood beside him. Now she laid her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not that,” she said. “I don’t know how to tell you. I’ve nothing to forgive — unless you have, too.”
He turned to meet her eyes, and they fell before his.
“Oh, Edward,” she said, with a little laugh that was half tears, “don’t look like that! My dear, I knew it all the time.”
And there they were, clinging to each other like two children saved from a shipwreck.
“You knew?” he said at last.
“Of course I knew,” she said.
They drew back to let their eyes meet in that look of incredulous gladness that lovers know when, at last, all barriers are down and true love meets true love without veils or reservations.
“Thank God for this day,” he said, reverently.
And at that a thunderous clamor at the house-door broke in on their dream, a clatter and a clangor, a rattling of chains and a volley of resonant reverberatory barks.
“Why, it’s Charles!” he cried. “How could he know I was here?”
How, indeed? For it was indeed Charles, incredibly muddy and wet, bounding round in the room the moment the doors were opened, knocking over a chair, clatte
ring the fire-irons, and coming to heavy anchor, with all four feet muddy, on the edge of her white gown.
“I must go and chain him up in the stable,” he said, when Charles had been fed with the remains of the supper. “You won’t be afraid to be left alone in the house, Princess, dear?”
“I sha’n’t be afraid now,” she said, caressing Charles’s bullet head. “You see, it’s all different now. How could I be afraid in my own home?”
THE END
THE LARK
Nesbit’s last novel was published in 1922 and presents a realistic depiction of two unmarried women struggling to maintain their financial independence by operating a boarding house. The novel is set in and around a house called Cedar Court, which is modelled on Nesbit’s grand home Well Hall at Eltham, detailing the author’s own own struggling efforts to make a large, dilapidated house pay its way.
Well Hall, Eltham
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER I
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Wouldn’t I? That’s all you know!”
“You mustn’t dare her,” said a third voice anxiously from the top of the library steps; “if you dare her she’ll do it as sure as Fate.”
The one who must not be dared looked up and laughed. The golden light of midsummer afternoon falling through the tall library windows embroidered new patterns on the mellow Persian carpets, and touched to a dusky splendour the shelves on shelves of old calf and morocco, where here and there gilded lettering shone like rows of little sparks. It touched also the hair of the girl who must not be dared; she sat cross-legged on the floor among a heap of books, nursing a fat quarto volume with onyx-inlaid clasps and bosses, and touched the hair into glory, turning it from plain brown, which was its everyday colour, to a red gold halo which became her small white face very well.
“Fate, indeed!” she said. “Why, the whole thing’s Fate. Emmeline asks us here — good old Emmy! — because we’d nowhere to go when everybody got mumps. I shall always respect mumps for getting us this extra month’s holiday. I wish it had a prettier name — Mompessa, or something like that; we have the time of our lives amid all this ancestral splendour.” She indicated the great beams and tall windows of the library with a gesture full of appreciation. “No, don’t interrupt. I’m telling the story. Angel Emmeline protects us from the footman and doesn’t let the butler trample on us. She’s given us the run of the baronial halls, and the stately ball-room, and the bed where Queen Elizabeth slept, and the library that came over with the Conqueror. We grub about and we find this, and because this isn’t the first library I’ve been in I happen to be able to read it.” She thumped the book on her lap. “Don’t tell me it’s not Fate. Fate arranged it all. Fate meant me to try the spell. And I mean to. And as for not daring — pooh, my darling Emmeline, pooh!... Likewise pshaw!” she added pensively.
Emmeline smiled with calm indulgence. She was stout, squarely-made, plain-faced, kind-eyed, with a long, thick, mouse-coloured pigtail and small, white, well-kept hands. She began to pick up her books one by one and to put them back in their proper places on the shelves.
“It’s all very well to say ‘pooh!’ “she said.
And pshaw!’” the not-to-be-dared interpolated.
“My Aunt Emmeline tried it. A spell — and I expect it was that very one; at least, she set out to try it, but she lost her way in the wood. The night was very dark, and she gave it up, and came back, and when she got to the garden gate she couldn’t open it and couldn’t find the handle. And then the moon came out, and she found it was the door of the mausoleum in the park she was trying to get in at.”
“Shut up!” said the girl on the top of the steps, a long-legged, long-armed, long-nosed, long-chinned girl rather like a well-bred filly. “Jane, do say you won’t do it. Not after that, will you?”
“It’s a perfectly horrid story,” said Jane, unmoved, “but you can’t frighten me in that way, Emmeline. However, it decides me to have lights. Those fairy lights and Chinese lanterns you had for what you called the ‘little’ dance — I suppose they’re somewhere about. Do you know where, exactly?” She urged the question with a firm hand-grasp.
“Don’t pinch,” said Emmeline, disengaging her ankle. “ You can have the lights. But we shouldn’t be allowed to do it.”
“Who’s going to be asked to allow anything?” Jane said innocently. “Hasn’t Fate arranged it all? Aren’t all the grown-ups going to the Duchess’s grand fête and gala — fireworks and refreshments free?”
“They’re going to Lady Hendon’s garden-party and dance, if that’s what you mean,” said Emmeline, rather coldly.
“That’s right — stand by your class. Ah, these old aristocrats!” said Jane.
“Lord Hendon was beer, wasn’t he?” Lucilla asked from the steps. “Or was it bacon? He looks rather like a ham himself.”
“Well, anyhow, beer or bacon or ham, all the grown-ups will be out of the way. We’re too young for these frantic dissipations. By the way “ — her straight forehead puckered itself anxiously—”I’m not too young to try that, am I? It says nothing about age in the book. It just says ‘any young maid or young bachelor.’ I was fifteen last June.”
“In James the First’s time, when this book was born, girls were married at fifteen,” Lucilla reassured her, “but I do hope you won’t let that encourage you.”
“I don’t need encouragement. I’m just going to. I’ll try that spell or I’ll know the reason why. Don’t be surly, Emmy; let’s go down and arrange the lanterns now while the sun’s shining, and get the candles and matches and have it all ready. Then we’ll have that nice little quiet dinner your dear mother’s ordered for us, and go to bed early just as she said. And then get up again. And then..
“Don’t,” said Lucilla.
“But I shall,” said Jane.
“Very well,” said Lucilla with an air of finality, coming down the steps; “we have told you not to in at least seven different ways, because it was our duty, but if you really mean to — well, do, then! And I think it will be no end of a spree — if you don’t walk into the mausoleum and begin to scream and bring the retainers down on us, or do anything else silly that’ll get Emmy into rows.”
“She won’t do that,” said Emmeline. “We shan’t go beyond the park. Nobody minds anything if we don’t go outside. Besides, no one will know, if Jane manages it as well as she mostly does manage things.”
“Miss Jane Quested’s Meretricious Magic. Manager, or General, Jane,” said Jane, displaying herself as she rose with the square book under her arm. “I’m going to take this up to my room and learn the spell off by heart. It wouldn’t do to have any mistakes, would it? I may take it?”
“You may take anything — but only on one condition,” said Emmeline firmly.
“Conditions? How cautious and sordid! What condition?”
“That if you do see anything you’ll tell us exactly what it was like. You never can tell what it will be that you see. Sometimes you see a shroud, or skeleton, or a coffin, I believe, if you’re to die a maid.”
Jane laughed.
“What a merry companion
you are, Emmy; not a dull moment when you’re about! Pity it’s alone or not at all. I should have loved to have you with me to-night to keep my spirits up with your cheery chatter. But, alas! it can’t be. Don’t look so glum.
‘Come, Pallas, take your owl away, And let us have a lark instead!’”
“If you call this a lark,” said Emmeline, “I don’t.”
“Now look here, Em,” said Jane firmly; “if you don’t want me to do it, really I won’t. You’ve been such a brick to us. Say the word and I’ll chuck it. I really will. Don’t look so glum. I’m not wholly lost to all gratitude and proper feeling.”
“Oh, don’t chuck it now!” pleaded Lucilla, “just when Emmy and I have reconciled our yeasty consciences to the idea.”
“Shall I chuck it, Emmy?” Jane persisted. “Shall “No,” said Emmeline. “And stop talking about gratitude. And I won’t have your old owls thrown in my face for the rest of my life. Let’s have the lark.”
If Jane, Lucilla, and Emmeline had not been debarred by their fifteen, fourteen, and sixteen years from the enjoyment of Lady Hendon’s hospitality they would have had the pleasure of meeting — or at least, for it was a very big garden-party, they might have had the pleasure of meeting — the young man whom it is now my privilege to introduce to you.
John Rochester was young and, I am sorry to say, handsome. Sorry, because handsome men are, as a ride, so very stupid and so very vain. Still, there must be some exceptions to every rule. John Rochester was one of these exceptions: he was neither vain nor stupid. In fact he was more than rather clever, especially at his own game, which was engineering. Brains and beauty were not his only advantages. He had brains, beauty, and brawn — an almost irresistible combination. That is the bright side of the shield. The black side is this: he was not so tall, by three inches, as he could have wished to be, he had very big ambitions, very little money, very much less parsimony, and a temper.
He also had a mother who powdered too much, rouged rather too brightly, and appeared to govern almost her whole life by the consideration of “what people would say.” She was quite a good mother in other respects, and John Rochester was quite fond of her. It was she who dragged him to this garden-party — that is to say, it was she who suggested it as an agreeable way of occupying the last day of the short holiday which he was spending with her. The young man himself would have preferred to loaf about in flannels and make himself useful by attacking the green-fly on the roses in his mother’s garden with clouds of that smoke so hopefully supposed to be fatal to aphides. But Mrs. Rochester thought otherwise.