Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  ‘How do you know it wasn’t him,’ says master very sharp. ‘If you didn’t take it, how do you know who did?’

  ‘How do I know?’ I cried, forgetting for a moment who I was speaking to. ‘Why, if you’d half a grain of sense among the lot of you, you’d know why I know it’s not him. If you felt to a young man like I feel to James, you’d know in your heart that he could not have done such a thing, not if there was fifty diamond necklaces found in fifty pockets on him at the same time.’

  They said nothing, but Mr. Oliver chuckled in his collar till I’d have liked to strangle him with my two hands round his fat throat. And I went on —

  ‘I’m as sure he didn’t do it as I am that I didn’t do it myself, and as he would have been that I didn’t if he had really loved me, as he said, instead of believing that I could do such a thing, and trying to save me with a black lie — God bless him for it.’

  And James he never looked at me, but he said again, ‘Don’t mind her — she’s off her head with fright about me. You send me off to prison as soon as you like, sir.’

  And still none of the others spoke, but Mr. Oliver leaned back in his chair, and he clapped his hands softly as though he was at a play. ‘Bravo!’ he says, ‘bravo!’

  And the others looked at him as if they thought he had gone out of his mind.

  ‘It’s a very pretty drama, very nicely played, but now it’s time to put an end to it. Do you want to see the villain?’ he says to master, and master never answering him, only staring, he turned quite sharp and sudden and pointed to John as he stood near the door with his black eyes burning like coals. ‘You took it,’ said Mr. Oliver, ‘and you put it in Mary’s box. Oh! you needn’t start. I know it’s true without that.’

  John had started, but he pulled himself together in a minute. The man had pluck, I will say that. He spoke quite firm and respectful. ‘And why should I have done that, sir, if you please, when all the house knows that I have been courting Mary fair and honest this two year?’

  Mr. Oliver tapped his snuff-box and grinned all over his big smooth face. ‘When you do your courting fair and honest, young man, you should be careful not to do it in the library with the window open. I was in the verandah, and I heard you threaten that she should never marry James, and that she should marry you; and that you would be revenged on her for her bad taste in preferring him to you.’

  John drew a deep breath. ‘That’s nothing, sir, is it?’ he says to master. ‘Every one in the house knows I have been sorry for a hasty word, and have been the best friends with both of them for these three weeks.’

  Mr. Oliver got up and put his snuff-box on the table, and his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘You can send for the police, William,’ he said to master, ‘because as a matter of fact, I saw the black-whiskered gentleman with the necklace in his hand. I did get home late to-night, but not so late as you thought, and I came in through the open door and was up in my dressing-room when that scoundrel sneaked into my wife’s room and took the necklace to ruin an innocent girl with. What a thorough scoundrel you are, though, aren’t you?’ he said to John.

  Then John, he shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, ‘It’s all up now,’ and he said to Mr. Oliver very politely, ‘You are always fond of poking your nose into other people’s business, sir, and I daresay you’d like to know why I did it. Oh yes. You know everything, you do,’ says John, growing very white, and speaking angry and quick, ‘with your writing, and your snuff, and your gossiping with the servants, which no gentleman would do, and your nasty, sneaking, Jaeger-felt boots, and your silly old tub of a wife. I knew that smooth-spoken man of yours would believe anything against her, and I knew he would never marry her after a set-out like this, and I knew I should get her when she found I stuck to her through it all, as I should have done, and as I would have done too, if she had taken fifty diamond necklaces.’

  ‘Send for the police,’ said master, but nobody moved. For Mrs. Oliver, who had been crying like a waterworks ever since we came down into the library, said quite sudden, ‘O Dick dear! let him go. Don’t prosecute him. See, he’s lost everything, and he’s lost her, and he must have been mad with love for her or he wouldn’t have done such a thing.’

  Now, wasn’t that a true lady to speak up like that for him after what he’d said of her? Mr. Oliver looked surprised at her speaking up like that, her that hardly ever said a word except ‘Yes, Dick dear,’ and ‘No, Dick dear,’ and then he shrugs his shoulders and he says, ‘You are right, my dear, he’s punished enough.’

  And John turned to go like a dog that has been whipped; but at the door he faced round, and he said to Mrs. Oliver, ‘You’re a good woman, and I’m sorry I said what I did about you. But for the other I’m not sorry, not if it was my last word.’

  And with that he went out of the room, and out of the house through the front door. He had no relations and he had no friends, and I suppose he had nowhere to go with his character gone, and so it happened that was truly his last word as far as any one knows. For he was found next morning on the level-crossing after the down express had passed.

  You never saw such a fuss as every one made of me and James afterwards. I might have been a queen and him a king. But when it was all over it stuck in my mind that he oughtn’t to have doubted me, and so I wouldn’t name the day for over a year, though Mrs. Oliver had bought him a nice little hotel and given it to him herself; but when the year was up, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver came down to stay again, and seeing them brought it all back, and his having tried to save me as he had seemed more than his having doubted me. And so I married him, and I don’t think any one ever made a better match. James says he made a better match, and if I don’t agree with him, it’s only right and proper that he should think so, and I thank God that he does every hour of my life.

  SON AND HEIR

  SIR JASPER was always the best of masters to me and to all of us; and he had that kind of way with him, masterful and gentle at the same time, like as if he was kind to you for his own pleasure, and ordering you about for your own good, that I believe any of us would have cut our hand off at the wrist if he had told us to.

  Lady Breynton had been dead this many a year. She hadn’t come to her husband with her hands empty. They say that Sir Jasper had been very wild in his youth, and that my Lady’s money had come in very handy to pull the old place together again. She worshipped the ground Sir Jasper walked on, as most women did that he ever said a kind word to. But it never seemed to me that he took to her as much as you might have expected a warm-hearted gentleman like him to do. But he took to her baby wonderful. I was nurse to that baby from the first, and a fine handsome little chap he was, and when my Lady died he was wholly given over to my care. And I loved the child; indeed, I did love him, and should have loved him to the end but for one thing, and that comes in its own place in my story. But even those who loved young Jasper best couldn’t help seeing he hadn’t his father’s winning ways. And when he grew up to man’s estate, he was as wild as his father had been before him. But his wild ways were the ways that make young men enemies, not friends, and out of all that came to the house, for the hunting, or the shooting, or what not, I used to think there wasn’t one would have held out a hand to my young master if he had been in want of it. And yet I loved him because I had brought him up, and I never had a child of my own. I never wished to be married, but I used to wish that little Jasper had been my own child. I could have had an authority over him then that I hadn’t as his nurse, and perhaps it might have all turned out differently.

  There were many tales about Sir Jasper, but I didn’t think it was my place to listen to them.

  Only, when it’s your own eyes, it’s different, and I couldn’t help seeing how like young Robert, the under-gamekeeper, was to the Family. He had their black, curly hair, and merry Irish eyes, and he, if you please, had just Sir Jasper’s winning ways.

  Why he was taken on as gamekeeper no one could make out, for when he first came up to the Hall to ask
the master for a job, they tell me he knew no more of gamekeeping than I do of Latin. Young Robert was a steady chap, and used to read and write of an evening instead of spending a jolly hour or two at the Dove and Branch, as most young fellows do, and as, indeed, my young master did too often. And Sir Jasper, he gave him books without end and good advice, and would have him so often about him he set everybody’s tongue wagging to a tune more merry than wise. And young Robert loved the master, of course. Who didn’t?

  Well, there came a day when the Lord above saw fit to put out the sunshine like as if it had been a bedroom candle; for Sir Jasper, he was brought back from the hunting-field with his back broke.

  I always take a pleasure in remembering that I was with him to the last, and did everything that could be done for him with my own hands. He lingered two days, and then he died.

  It was the hour before the dawn, when there is always a wind, no matter how still the night, a chilly wind that seems to find out the marrow of your bones, and if you are nursing sick folk, you bank up the fire high and watch them extra careful till the sun gets up.

  Sir Jasper opened his eyes and looked at me — oh! so kindly. It brings tears into my eyes when I think of it. ‘Nelly,’ he says, ‘I know I can trust you.’

  And I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ And so he could, whatever it might have been. What happened afterwards wasn’t my fault, and couldn’t have been guarded against.

  ‘Then go,’ he said, ‘to my old secretaire and open it.’

  And I did. There was rows of pigeon-holes inside, and little drawers with brass knobs.

  ‘You take hold of the third knob from the right, Nelly,’ said he. ‘Don’t pull it; give it a twist round.’ I did, and lo and behold! a little drawer jumped out at me from quite another part of the secretaire.

  ‘You see what’s in it, Nelly?’ says he.

  It was a green leather case tied round with a bit of faded ribbon.

  ‘Now, what I want you to do,’ he says, ‘is to lay that beside me when it’s all over. I have always had my doubts about the dead sleeping so quiet as some folks say. But I think I shall sleep if you lay that beside me, for I am very tired, Nelly,’ he said, ‘very tired.’

  Then I went back to his bed, where he lay looking quite calm and comfortable.

  ‘The end has come very suddenly,’ says he; ‘but it is best this way.’

  Then we was both quiet a bit.

  ‘I may be wrong,’ he went on presently, his face quite straight, but a laugh in his blue eye. ‘I may be wrong, Nelly, but I think you would like to kiss me before I die — I know well enough you’ll do it after.’

  And when he said that, I was glad I had never kissed another man. And soon after that, it being the coldest hour of all the night, he moved his head on his pillow and said —

  ‘I’m off now, Nelly, but you needn’t wake the doctors. It’s very dark outside. Hand me out, my girl, hand me out.’ So I gave him my hand, and he died holding it. Whether I grieved much or little over my old master is no one’s business but my own. I went about the house, and I did my duty — ever since Master Jasper had been grown up I had been housekeeper. I did my duty, I say, and before the coffin lid was screwed down I laid that green leather case under the shroud by my master’s side; and just as I had done it I turned round feeling that some one was in the room, and there stood young Master Jasper at the door looking at me.

  ‘All’s ready now,’ I said to the undertaker’s men, and called them in, and young Master Jasper, he followed me along the passage. ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘I was putting something in the master’s coffin he told me to put there.’

  ‘What was it?’ he asked, very sharp and sudden.

  ‘How should I know?’ says I. ‘It’s in a case. It may be some old letter or a lock of hair as belonged to your mother.’

  ‘Come into my room,’ he said, and I followed him in. He looked very pale and anxious, and when he’d shut the door he spoke —

  ‘Look here, Nelly, I’m going to trust you. My father was very angry with me about some little follies of mine, and he told me the other night he had left a good slice of the estate away from me. Do you think that packet you put in the coffin had anything to do with it?’

  ‘Good Lord, bless your soul, sir, no,’ I said. ‘That was no will or lawyer’s letters, it was but some little token of remembrance he set store by.’

  ‘Thanks, Nelly, that was all I wanted to know.’

  No one ever knows who tells these things, but it had leaked out somehow that that slice of the estate was to belong to young Robert the gamekeeper, and you may be sure the tongues went wagging above a bit. But it seemed to me, if it was so, my master was right to make a proper provision for Robert as well as for Jasper. However, nobody could be sure of anything until after the funeral.

  The doctor was staying in the house, and master’s younger brother, besides the lawyer and young Master Jasper; so I had many things to see to, and ought to have been tired enough to get to sleep easy the night before he was buried. But somehow I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t help thinking of my master as I had known him all these years. Him being always so gentle and so kind, and so light-hearted, it didn’t seem likely he could have had young Robert on his conscience all the time; and yet what was I to think? And then my poor Jasper — I say ‘poor,’ but I never loved and pitied him less than I did that night. He had lost such a father, and he could go troubling about whether he had got the whole estate or not. So I lay awake, and I thought of the coffin lying between its burning tapers in the great bedroom, and I wished they had not screwed him down, for then I could have gone, late as it was, and had another look at my master’s face. And as I lay it seemed to me that I heard a door opened, and then a step, and then a key turned. Now, the master never locked his door, so the key of that room turned rusty in the lock, and before I had time to think more than that I was out of bed and in my dressing-gown, creeping along the passage. Sure enough, my master’s door was open, as I saw by the streak of light across the corridor. I walked softly on my bare feet, and no one could have heard me go along the thick carpet. When I got to the door, I saw that what I had been trying not to think of was really true. Master Jasper was there taking the screws out of his father’s coffin to see what was in that green leather case.

  I stood there and looked. I could not have moved, not for the Queen’s crown, if it had been offered me then and there. One after another he took the screws out and laid them on the little bedside table, where the master used to keep his pistols of a night. When all the screws was out he lifted the lid in both his arms and set it on the bed, where it lay looking like another coffin. Then he began to search for what I had put in beside his father.

  Now, I may be a heartless woman, and I suppose I am, or how account for it? But when I saw my young master go to his father’s coffin like that, and begin to serve his own interest and his own curiosity, every spark of love I had ever had for the boy died out, and I cared no more for him than if he had been the first comer.

  If he had kissed his father, or so much as looked kindly at the dead face in the coffin, it would have been different. But he hadn’t a look or a thought to spare for him as gave him life, and had humoured and spoiled and petted and made much of him all his twenty years. Not a thought for his father; all his thoughts was to find out what his father hadn’t wished him to know.

  Now I was feeling set that Master Jasper should never know what was in that green leather case, and I cared no more for what he thought or what he felt than I should have done if he had been a common thief as, God forgive me, he was in my eyes at that hour. So I crept behind him softly, softly, an inch at a time, till I got to where I could see the coffin; and if you’ll believe a foolish old woman, I kept looking at that dead face till I nigh forgot what I was there for. And while I was standing mazed like and stupid, young Master Jasper had got out the green case, and was turning over what was in it in his hands.

  I got him by the two elbo
ws behind, and he started like a horse that has never felt even the whip will do at the spur’s touch. Almost at the same time my heart came leaping into my mouth, and if ever a woman nearly died of fright, I was that woman, for some one behind me put a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘What’s all this?’

  Young Sir Jasper and I both turned sharp. It was the doctor. His ears were as quick as mine, and he had heard the key too, I suppose. Anyhow, there he was, and he picked up the papers young Sir Jasper had let fall, and says he, ‘I will deal with these, young gentleman. Go you to your room.’ And Sir Jasper, like a kicked hound, went. Then I began to tell my share in that night’s work. But the doctor stopped me, for he had seen me and watched me all along. Then he stood by the coffin, and went through what was in the little leather case.

  ‘I must keep these now,’ he said, ‘but you shall keep your promise and put them beside him before he is buried.’

  And the next day, before the funeral, I went alone and saw my master again, and gave him his little case back, and I thought I should have liked him to know that I had done my best for him, but he could not have known that without knowing of what young Sir Jasper had done, and that would have broken his heart; so when all’s said and done, perhaps it’s as well the dead know nothing.

  And after the funeral we was all in the library to hear the will read, and the lawyer he read out that the personal property went to Robert the gamekeeper, and the entailed property would of course be young Sir Jasper’s.

  And young Sir Jasper, oh that ever I should have called him my boy! — he rose up in his place and said that his father was a doting old fool and out of his mind, and he would have the law of them, anyhow, and my late dear master not yet turned of fifty! And then the doctor got up and he said —

  ‘Stop a bit, young man; I have a word or two to say here.’