Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  When she complained that his letters were cold he knew that he had been wise. She found it very difficult to write to him. It was far easier to write to Cousin Reginald, who always wrote such long, interesting letters, all about interesting things — Cousin Reginald who had lived with them at the White House till a year ago, and who knew all the little family jokes, and the old family worries.

  They had been engaged for eight months when he came down to see her without any warning letter.

  She was alone in the drawing-room when he was announced, and with a cry of joy, she let fall her work on the floor, and ran to meet him with arms outstretched. He caught her wrists.

  “No,” he said, and the light of joy in her face made it not easy to say it. “My dear, I’ve come to say something to you, and I mustn’t kiss you till I’ve said it.”

  The light had died out.

  “You’re not tired of me?”

  He laughed. “No, not tired of you, my little princess, but I am going away for a year. If you still love me when I come back we’ll be married. But before I go I must say something to you.”

  Her eyes were streaming with tears.

  “Oh, how can you be so cruel?” she said, and her longing to cling to him, to reassure herself by personal contact, set her heart beating wildly.

  “I don’t want to be cruel,” he said; “you understand, dear, that I love you, and it’s just because I love you that I must say it. Now sit down there and let me speak. Don’t interrupt me if you can help it. Consider it a sort of lecture you’re bound to sit through.”

  He pushed her gently towards a chair. She sat down sulkily, awkwardly, and he stood by the window, looking out at the daffodils and early tulips.

  “Dear, I am afraid I have found something out. I don’t think you love me—”

  “Oh, how can you, how can you?”

  “Be patient,” he said. “I’ve wondered almost from the first. You’re almost a child, and I’m an old man — oh, no, I don’t mean that that’s any reason why you shouldn’t love me, but it’s a reason for my making very sure that you do before I let you marry me. It’s your happiness I have to think of most. Now shall I just go away for a year, or shall I speak straight out and tell you everything? If your father were alive I would try to tell him; I can’t tell your mother, she wouldn’t understand. You can understand. Shall I tell you?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking at him with frightened eyes.

  “Well: look back. You think you love me. Haven’t my letters always bored you a little, though they were about all the things I care for most?”

  “I don’t understand politics,” she said sullenly.

  “And I don’t understand needle-work, but I could sit and watch you sew for ever and a day.”

  “Well, go on. What other crime have I committed besides not going into raptures over Parliament?”

  She was growing angry, and he was glad. It is not so easy to hurt people when they are angry.

  “And when I am talking to your mother, that bores you too, and when we are alone, you don’t care to talk of anything, but — but—”

  This task was harder than he had imagined possible.

  “I’ve loved you too much, and I’ve shown it too plainly,” she said bitterly.

  “My dear, you’ve never loved me at all. You have only been in love with me.”

  “And isn’t that the same thing?”

  “Oh! it’s no use,” he said, “I must be a brute then. No, it’s not the same thing. It’s your poets and novelists who pretend it is. It’s they who have taught you all wrong. It’s only half of love, and the worst half, the most untrustworthy, the least lasting. My little girl, when I kissed you first, you were just waking up to your womanhood, you were ready for love, as a flower-bud is ready for sunshine, and I happened to be the first man who had the chance to kiss you and hold your dear little hands.”

  “Do you mean that I should have liked anyone else as well if he had only been kind enough to kiss me?”

  “No, no; but ... I wish girls were taught these things out of books. If you only knew what it costs me to be honest with you, how I have been tempted to let you marry me and chance everything! Don’t you see you’re a woman now — women were made to be kissed, and when a man behaves like a brute and kisses a girl without even asking first, or finding out first whether she loves him, it’s not fair on the girl. I shall never forgive myself. Don’t you see I took part of you by storm, the part of you that is just woman nature, not yours but everyone’s; and how were you to know that you didn’t love me, that it was only the awakening of your woman nature?”

  “I hate you,” she said briefly.

  “Yes,” he answered simply, “I knew you would. Hate is only one step from passion.”

  She rose in a fury. “How dare you use that word to me!” she cried. “Oh, you are a brute! You are quite right: I don’t love you — I hate you, I despise you. Oh, you brute!”

  “Don’t,” he said; “I only used that word because it’s what people call the thing when it’s a man who feels it. With you it’s what I said, the unconscious awakening of the womanhood God gave you. Try to forgive me. Have I said anything so very dreadful? It’s a very little thing, dear, the sweet kindness you’ve felt for me. It’s nothing to be ashamed or angry about. It’s not a hundredth part of what I have felt when you have kissed me. It’s because it’s such a poor foundation to build a home on that I am frightened for you. Suppose you got tired of my kisses, and there was nothing more in me that you did care for. And that sort of ... lover’s love doesn’t last for ever — without the other kind of love—”

  “Oh, don’t say any more,” she cried, jumping up from her chair. “I did love you with all my heart. I was sorry for you. I thought you were so different. Oh, how could you say these things to me? Go!”

  “Shall I come back in a year?” he asked, smiling rather sadly.

  “Come back? Never! I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll never see you again. I hope to God I shall never hear your name again. Go at once!”

  “You’ll be grateful to me some day,” he said, “when you’ve found out that love and being in love are not the same thing.”

  “What is love, then? The kind of love you’d care for?”

  “I care for it all,” he said. “I think love is tenderness, esteem, affection, interest, pity, protection, and passion. Yes, you needn’t be frightened by the word; it is the force that moves the world, but it’s only a part of love. Oh, I see it’s no good. God bless you, child: you’ll understand some day!”

  She does understand now; she has married her Cousin Reginald, and she understands deeply and completely. But she only admits this in that deep, shadowy, almost disowned corner of her heart. In the reception room of her mind she still thinks of her first lover as “That Brute!”

  DICK, TOM, AND HARRY

  “AND so I look in to see her whenever I can spare half an hour. I fancy it cheers her up a bit to have some one to talk to about Edinburgh — and all that. You say you’re going to tell her about its having been my doing, your getting that berth. Now, I won’t have it. You promised you wouldn’t. I hate jaw, as you know, and I don’t want to have her gassing about gratitude and all that rot. I don’t like it, even from you. So stow all that piffle. You’d do as much for me, any day. I suppose Edinburgh is a bit dull, but you’ve got all the higher emotions of our fallen nature to cheer you up. Essex Court is dull, if you like! It’s three years since I had the place to myself, and I tell you it’s pretty poor sport. I don’t seem to care about duchesses or the gilded halls nowadays. Getting old, I suppose. Really, my sole recreation is going to see another man’s girl, and letting her prattle prettily about him. Lord, what fools these mortals be! Sorry I couldn’t answer your letter before. I suppose you’ll be running up for Christmas! So long! I’m taking her down those Ruskins she wanted. Here’s luck!”

  The twisted knot of three thin initials at the end of the letter stood for one of the set of
names painted on the black door of the Temple Chambers. The other names were those of Tom, who had strained a slender competence to become a barrister, and finding the achievement unremunerative, had been glad enough to get the chance of sub-editing a paper in Edinburgh.

  Dick enveloped and stamped his letter, threw it on the table, and went into his bedroom. When he came back in a better coat and a newer tie he looked at the letter and shrugged his shoulders, and he frowned all the way down the three flights and as far as Brick Court. Here he posted the letter. Then he shrugged his shoulders again, but after the second shrug the set of them was firmer.

  As his hansom swung through the dancing lights of the Strand, he shrugged his shoulders for the third time.

  And, at that, his tame devil came as at a signal, and drew a pretty curtain across all thoughts save one — the thought of the “other man’s girl.” Indeed, hardly a thought was left, rather a sense of her — of those disquieting soft eyes of hers — the pretty hands, the frank laugh — the long, beautiful lines her gowns took on — the unexpected twists and curves of her hair — above all, the reserve, veiling tenderness as snowflakes might veil a rose, with which she spoke of the other man.

  Dick had known Tom for all of their men’s lives, and they had been friends. Both had said so often enough. But now he thought of him as the “other man.”

  The lights flashed past. Dick’s eyes were fixed on a picture. A pleasant room — an artist’s room — prints, sketches, green curtains, the sparkle of old china, fire and candle light. A girl in a long straight dress; he could see the little line where it would catch against her knee as she came forward to meet him with both hands outstretched. Would it be both hands? He decided that it would — to-night.

  He was right, even to the little line in the sea-blue gown.

  Both hands; such long, thin, magnetic hands.

  “You are good,” she said at once. “Oh — you must let me thank you. Tom’s told me who it was that got him that splendid berth. Oh — what a friend you are! And lending him the money and everything. I can’t tell you — It’s too much — You are—”

  “Don’t,” he said; “it’s nothing at all.”

  “It’s everything,” said she. “Tom’s told me quite all about it, mind! I know we owe everything to you.”

  “My dear Miss Harcourt,” he began. But she interrupted him.

  “Why not Harry?” she asked. “I thought—”

  “Yes. Thank you. But it was nothing. You see I couldn’t let poor old Tom go on breaking his heart in silence, when just writing a letter or two would put him in a position to speak.”

  She had held his hands, or he hers, or both, all this time. Now she moved away to the fire.

  “Come and sit down and be comfortable,” she said. “This is the chair you like. And I’ve got some cigarettes, your very own kind, from the Stores.”

  She remembered a time when she had thought that it was he, Dick, who might break his heart for her. The remembrance of that vain thought was a constant pin-prick to her vanity, a constant affront to her modesty. She had tried to snub him in those days — to show him that his hopes were vain. And after all he hadn’t had any hopes: he’d only been anxious about Tom! In the desolation of her parting from Tom she had longed for sympathy. Dick had given it, and she had been kinder to him than she had ever been to any man but her lover — first, because he was her lover’s friend, and, secondly, because she wanted to pretend to herself that she had never fancied that there was any reason for not being kind to him.

  She sat down in the chair opposite to his.

  “Now,” she said, “I won’t thank you any more, if you hate it so; but you are good, and neither of us will ever forget it.”

  He sat silent for a moment. He had played for this — for this he had delayed to answer the letter wherein Tom announced his intention of telling Harriet the whole fair tale of his friend’s goodness. He had won the trick. Yet for an instant he hesitated to turn it over. Then he shrugged his shoulders — I will not mention this again, but it was a tiresome way he had when the devil or the guardian angel were working that curtain I told you of — and said —

  “Dear little lady — you make me wish that I were good.”

  Then he sighed: it was quite a real sigh, and she wondered whether he could possibly not be good right through. Was it possible that he was wicked in some of those strange, mysterious ways peculiar to men: billiards — barmaids — opera-balls flashed into her mind. Perhaps she might help him to be good. She had heard the usual pretty romances about the influence of a good woman.

  “Come,” she said, “light up — and tell me all about everything.”

  So he told her many things. And now and then he spoke of Tom, just to give himself the pleasure-pain of that snow-veiled-rose aspect.

  He kissed her hand when he left her — a kiss of studied brotherliness. Yet the kiss had in it a tiny heart of fire, fierce enough to make her wonder, when he had left her, whether, after all.... But she put the thought away hastily. “I may be a vain fool,” she said, “but I won’t be fooled by my vanity twice over.”

  And she kissed Tom’s portrait and went to bed.

  Dick went home in a heavenly haze of happiness — so he told himself as he went. When he woke up at about three o’clock, and began to analyse his sensations, he had cooled enough to call it an intoxication of pleasurable emotion. At three in the morning, if ever, the gilt is off the ginger-bread.

  Dick lay on his back, his hands clenched at his sides, and, gazing open-eyed into the darkness, he saw many things. He saw all the old friendship: the easy, jolly life in those rooms, the meeting with Harriet Harcourt — it was at a fancy-ball, and she wore the white-and-black dress of a Beardsley lady; he remembered the contrast of the dress with her eyes and mouth.

  He saw the days when his thoughts turned more and more to every chance of meeting her, as though each had been his only chance of life. He saw the Essex Court sitting-room as it had looked on the night when Tom had announced that Harriet was the only girl in the world — adding, at almost a night’s length, that impassioned statement of his hopeless, financial condition. He could hear Tom’s voice as he said —

  “And I know she cares!”

  Dick felt again the thrill of pleasure that had come with the impulse to be, for once, really noble, to efface himself, to give up the pursuit that lighted his days, the dream that enchanted his nights. His own voice, too, he heard —

  “Cheer up, old chap! We’ll find a lucrative post for you in five minutes, and set the wedding bells a-ringing in half an hour, or less! Why on earth didn’t you tell me before?”

  The glow of conscious nobility had lasted a long while — nearly a week, if he recollected aright. Then had come the choice of two openings for Tom, one in London, and one, equally good, in Edinburgh. Dick had chosen to offer to his friend the one in Edinburgh. He had told himself then that both lovers would work better if they were not near enough to waste each other’s time, and he had almost believed — he was almost sure, even now, that he had almost believed — that this was the real reason.

  But when Tom had gone there had been frank tears in the lovers’ parting, and Dick had walked up the platform to avoid the embarrassment of witnessing them.

  “You beast, you brute, you hound!” said Dick to himself, lying rigid and wretched in the darkness. “You knew well enough that you wanted him out of the way. And you promised to look after her and keep her from being dull. And you’ve done all you can to keep your word, haven’t you? She hasn’t been dull, I swear. And you’ve been playing for your own hand — and that poor stupid honest chap down there slaving away and trusting you as he trusts God. And you’ve written him lying letters twice a week, and betrayed him, as far as you got the chance, every day, and seen what a cur you are, every night, as you see it now. Oh, yes — you’re succeeding splendidly. She forgets to think of Tom when she’s talking to you. How often did she mention him last night? It was you every time. You
’re not fit to speak to a decent man, you reptile!”

  He relaxed the clenched hands.

  “Can’t you stop this infernal see-saw?” he asked, pounding at his pillow; “light and fire every day, and hell-black ice every night. Look at it straight, you coward! If you’re game to face the music, why, face it! Marry her, and friendship and honesty be damned! Or perhaps you might screw yourself up to another noble act — not a shoddy one this time.”

  Still sneering, he got up and pottered about in slippers and pyjamas till he had stirred together the fire and made himself cocoa. He drank it and smoked two pipes. This is very unromantic, but so it was. He slept after that.

  When he woke in the morning all things looked brighter. He almost succeeded in pretending that he did not despise himself.

  But there was a letter from Tom, and the guardian angel took charge of the curtain again.

  He was tired, brain and body. The prize seemed hardly worth the cost. The question of relative values, at any rate, seemed debatable. The day passed miserably.

  At about five o’clock he was startled to feel the genuine throb of an honest impulse. Such an impulse in him at that hour of the day, when usually the devil was arranging the curtain for the evening’s tragi-comedy, was so unusual as to rouse in him a psychologic interest strong enough to come near to destroying its object. But the flame of pleasure lighted by the impulse fought successfully against the cold wind of cynical analysis, and he stood up.

  “Upon my word,” said he, “the copy-books are right—’Be virtuous and you will be happy.’ At least if you aren’t, you won’t. And if you are.... One could but try!”

  He packed a bag. He went out and sent telegrams to his people at King’s Lynn, and to all the folk in town with whom he ought in these next weeks to have danced and dined, and he wrote a telegram to her. But that went no further than the floor of the Fleet Street Post Office, where it lay in trampled, scattered rhomboids.