by Edith Nesbit
“You can get pictures of them on the illustrated post-cards. So nice to send to one’s relations at home.”
She was getting angry with him. He played the game too well.
“Ah! yes,” he answered, “the dear people like these little tokens, don’t they?”
“He’s getting exactly like a curate,” she thought, and a doubt assailed her. Perhaps he was not playing the game at all. Perhaps in these three years he had really grown stupid.
“How different it all is from England, isn’t it?”
“Oh, quite!” said he.
“Have you ever been in Holland?”
“Yes, once.”
“What was it like?” she asked.
That was a form of question they had agreed to hate — once, long ago.
“Oh, extremely pleasant,” he said warmly. “We met some most agreeable people at some of the hotels. Quite the best sort of people, you know.”
Another phrase once banned by both.
The sun sparkled on the moving duckweed of the canal. The sky was blue overhead. Here and there a red-roofed farm showed among the green pastures. Ahead the avenues tapered away into distance, and met at the vanishing point. Elizabeth smiled for sheer pleasure at the sight of two little blue-smocked children solemnly staring at the boat as it passed. Then she glanced at him with an irritated frown. It was his turn to smile.
“You called the tune, my lady,” he said to himself, “and it is you shall change it, not I.”
“Foreign countries are very like England, are they not?” he said. “The same kind of trees, you know, and the same kind of cows, and — and everything. Even the canals are very like ours.”
“The canal system,” said Elizabeth instructively, “is the finest in the world.”
“Adieu, Canal, canard, canaille,” he quoted. They had always barred quotations in the old days.
“I don’t understand Latin,” said she. Then their eyes met, and he got up abruptly and walked to the end of the boat and back. When he sat down again, he sat beside her.
“Shall we go on?” he said quietly. “I think it is your turn to choose a subject—”
“Oh! have you read Alice in Wonderland?” she said, with simple eagerness. “Such a pretty book, isn’t it?”
He shrugged his shoulders. She was obstinate; all women were. Men were not. He would be magnanimous. He would not compel her to change the tune. He had given her one chance; and if she wouldn’t — well, it was not possible to keep up this sort of conversation till they got to Sluys. He would —
But again she saved him.
“I won’t play any more,” she said. “It’s not fair. Because you may think me a fool. But I happen to know that you are Mr. Brown, who writes the clever novels. You were pointed out to me at the hotel; and — oh! do tell me if you always talk like this to strangers?”
“Only to English ladies on canal boats,” said he, smiling. “You see, one never knows. They might wish one to talk like that. We both did it very prettily. Of course, more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows, but I think I may congratulate you on your first attempt at the English-abroad conversation.”
“Do you know, really,” she said, “you did it so well that if I hadn’t known who you were, I should have thought it was the real you. The felicitations are not all mine. But won’t you tell me about Holland? That bit of yours about the hotel acquaintances was very brutal. I’ve heard heaps of people say that very thing. You just caught the tone. But Holland—”
“Well, this is Holland,” said he; “but I saw more of it than this, and I’ll tell you anything you like if you won’t expect me to talk clever, and turn the phrase. That’s a lost art, and I won’t humiliate myself in trying to recover it. To begin with, Holland is flat.”
“Don’t be a geography book,” Elizabeth laughed light-heartedly.
“The coinage is—”
“No, but seriously.”
“Well, then,” said he, and the talk lasted till the little steamer bumped and grated against the quay-side at Sluys.
When they had landed the two stood for a moment on the grass-grown quay in silence.
“Well, good afternoon,” said Elizabeth suddenly. “Thank you so much for telling me all about Holland.” And with that she turned and walked away along the narrow street between the trim little houses that look so like a child’s toy village tumbled out of a white wood box. Mr. Edward Brown was left, planted there.
“Well!” said he, and spent the afternoon wandering about near the landing-stage, and wondering what would be the next move in this game of hers. It was a childish game, this playing at strangers, yet he owned that it had a charm.
He ate currant bread and drank coffee at a little inn by the quay, sitting at the table by the door and watching the boats. Two o’clock came and went. Four o’clock came, half-past four, and with that went the last return steamer for Bruges. Still Mr. Edward Brown sat still and smoked. Five minutes later Elizabeth’s blue cotton dress gleamed in the sunlight at the street corner.
He rose and walked towards her.
“I hope you have enjoyed yourself in Holland,” he said.
“I lost my way,” said she. He saw that she was very tired, even before he heard it in her voice. “When is the next boat?”
“There are no more boats to-day. The last left about ten minutes ago.”
“You might have told me,” she said resentfully.
“I beg your pardon,” said he. “You bade me good-bye with an abruptness and a decision which forbade me to tell you anything.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said humbly. “Can I get back by train?”
“There are no trains.”
“A carriage?”
“There are none. I have inquired.”
“But you,” she asked suddenly, “how did you miss the boat? How are you going to get back?”
“I shall walk,” said he, ignoring the first question. “It’s only eleven miles. But for you, of course, that’s impossible. You might stay the night here. The woman at this inn seems a decent old person.”
“I can’t. There’s a girl coming to join me. She’s in the sixth at the High School where I teach. I’ve promised to chaperon and instruct her. I must meet her at the station at ten. She’s been ten years at the school. I don’t believe she knows a word of French. Oh! I must go. She doesn’t know the name of my hotel, or anything. I must go. I must walk.”
“Have you had any food?”
“No; I never thought about it.”
She did not realise that she was explaining to him that she had been walking to get away from him and from her own thoughts, and that food had not been among these.
“Then you will dine now; and, if you will allow me, we will walk back together.”
Elizabeth submitted. It was pleasant to be taken care of. And to be “ordered about,” that was pleasant, too. Curiously enough, that very thing had been a factor in the old quarrel. At nineteen one is so independent.
She was fed on omelettes and strange, pale steak, and Mr. Brown insisted on beer. The place boasted no wine cellar.
Then the walk began. For the first mile or two it was pleasant. Then Elizabeth’s shoes began to hurt her. They were smart brown shoes, with deceitful wooden heels. In her wanderings over the cobblestones of Sluys streets one heel had cracked itself. Now it split altogether. She began to limp.
“Won’t you take my arm?” said he.
“No, thank you. I don’t really need it. I’ll rest a minute, though, if I may.” She sat down, leaning against a tree, and looked out at the darting swallows, dimpling here and there the still green water. The level sunlight struck straight across the pastures, turning them to gold. The long shadows of the trees fell across the canal and lay black on the reeds at the other side. The hour was full of an ample dignity of peace.
They walked another mile. Elizabeth could not conceal her growing lameness.
“Something is wrong with your foot,” said he. “Have you hurt it?”
“Take them off and let me see.”
She submitted without a protest, sat down, took off the shoes, and gave them to him. He looked at them kindly, contemptuously.
“Silly little things!” he said, and she, instead of resenting the impertinence, smiled.
Then he tore off the heels and dug out the remaining bristle of nails with his pocket-knife.
“That’ll be better,” said he cheerfully. Elizabeth put on the damp shoes. The evening dew lay heavy on the towing-path, and she hardly demurred at all to his fastening the laces. She was very tired.
Again he offered his arm; again she refused it.
Then, “Elizabeth, take my arm at once!” he said sharply.
She took it, and they had kept step for some fifty paces before she said —
“Then you knew all the time?”
“Am I blind or in my dotage? But you forbade me to meet you except as a stranger. I have an obedient nature.”
They walked on in silence. He held her hand against his side strongly, but, as it seemed, without sentiment. He was merely helping a tired woman-stranger on a long road. But the road seemed easier to Elizabeth because her hand lay so close to him; she almost forgot how tired she was, and lost herself in dreams, and awoke, and taught herself to dream again, and wondered why everything should seem so different just because one’s hand lay on the sleeve of a grey flannel jacket.
“Why should I be so abominably happy?” she asked herself, and then lapsed again into the dreams that were able to wipe away three years, as a kind hand might wipe three little tear-drops from a child’s slate, scrawled over with sums done wrong.
When she remembered that he was married, she salved her conscience innocently. “After all,” she said, “it can’t be wrong if it doesn’t make him happy; and, of course, he doesn’t care, and I shall never see him again after to-night.”
So on they went, the deepening dusk turned to night, and in Elizabeth’s dreams it seemed that her hand was held more closely; but unless one moved it ever so little one could not be sure; and she would not move it ever so little.
The damp towing-path ended in a road cobblestoned, the masts of ships, pointed roofs, twinkling lights. The eleven miles were nearly over.
Elizabeth’s hand moved a little, involuntarily, on his arm. To cover the movement she spoke instantly.
“I am leaving Bruges to-morrow.”
“No; your sixth-form girl will be too tired, and besides—”
“Besides?”
“Oh, a thousand things! Don’t leave Bruges yet; it’s so ‘quaint,’ you know; and — and I want to introduce you to—”
“I won’t,” said Elizabeth almost violently.
“You won’t?”
“No; I don’t want to know your wife.”
He stopped short in the street — not one of the “quaint” streets, but a deserted street of tall, square-shuttered, stern, dark mansions, wherein a gas-lamp or two flickered timidly.
“My wife?” he said; “it’s my aunt.”
“It said ‘Mrs. Brown’ in the visitors’ list,” faltered Elizabeth.
“Brown’s such an uncommon name,” he said; “my aunt spells hers with an E.”
“Oh! with an E? Yes, of course. I spell my name with an E too, only it’s at the wrong end.”
Elizabeth began to laugh, and the next moment to cry helplessly.
“Oh, Elizabeth! and you looked in the visitors’ list and—” He caught her in his arms there in the street. “No; you can’t get away. I’m wiser than I was three years ago. I shall never let you go any more, my dear.”
The girl from the sixth looked quite resentfully at the two faces that met her at the station. It seemed hardly natural or correct for a classical mistress to look so happy.
Elizabeth’s lover schemed for and got a goodnight word with her at the top of the stairs, by the table where the beautiful brass candlesticks lay waiting in shining rows.
“Sleep well, you poor, tired little person,” he said, as he lighted the candle; “such little feet, such wicked little shoes, such a long, long, long walk.”
“You must be tired, too,” she said.
“Tired? with eleven miles, and your hand against my heart for eight of them? I shall remember that walk when we’re two happy old people nodding across our own hearthrug at each other.”
So he had felt it too; and if he had been married, how wicked it would have been! But he was not married — yet.
“I am not very, very tired, really,” she said. “You see, it was my hand against — I mean your arm was a great help—”
“It was your hand,” he said. “Oh, you darling!”
It was her hand, too, that was kissed there, beside the candlesticks, under the very eyes of the chambermaid and two acid English tourists.
UNDER THE NEW MOON
THE white crescent of the little new moon blinked at us through the yew boughs. As you walk up the churchyard you see thirteen yews on each side of you, and yet, if you count them up, they make twenty-seven, and it has been pointed out to me that neither numerical fact can be without occult significance. The jugglery in numbers is done by the seventh yew on the left, which hides a shrinking sister in the amplitude of its shadow.
The midsummer day was dying in a golden haze. Amid the gathering shadows of the churchyard her gown gleamed white, ghostlike.
“Oh, there’s the new moon,” she said. “I am so glad. Take your hat off to her and turn the money in your pocket, and you will get whatever you wish for, and be rich as well.”
I obeyed with a smile, half of whose meaning she answered.
“No,” she said, “I am not really superstitious; I’m not at all sure that the money is any good, or the hat, but of course everyone knows it’s unlucky to see it through glass.”
“Seen through glass,” I began, “a hat presents a gloss which on closer inspection—”
“No, no, not a hat, the moon, of course. And you might as well pretend that it’s lucky to upset the salt, or to kill a spider, especially on a Tuesday, or on your hat.”
“Hats,” I began again, “certainly seem to—”
“It’s not the hat,” she answered, pulling up the wild thyme and crushing it in her hands, “you know very well it’s the spider. Doesn’t that smell sweet?”
She held out the double handful of crushed sun-dried thyme, and as I bent my face over the cup made by her two curved hands, I was constrained to admit that the fragrance was delicious.
“Intoxicating even,” I added.
“Not that. White lilies intoxicate you, so does mock-orange; and white may too, only it’s unlucky to bring it into the house.”
I smiled again.
“I don’t see why you should call it superstitious to believe in facts,” she said. “My cousin’s husband’s sister brought some may into her house last year, and her uncle died within the month.”
“My husband’s uncle’s sister’s niece
Was saved from them by the police.
She says so, so I know it’s true—”
I had got thus far in my quotation when she interrupted me.
“Oh, well, if you’re going to sneer!” she said, and added that it was getting late, and that she must go home.
“Not yet,” I pleaded. “See how pretty everything is. The sky all pink, and the red sunset between the yews, and that good little moon. And how black the shadows are under the buttresses. Don’t go home — already they will have lighted the yellow shaded lamps in your drawing-room. Your sister will be sitting down to the piano. Your mother is trying to match her silks. Your brother has got out the chess board. Someone is drawing the curtains. The day is over for them, but for us, here, there is a little bit of it left.”
We were sitting on the lowest step of a high, square tomb, moss-grown and lichen-covered. The yellow lichens had almost effaced the long list of the virtues of the man on whose breast this ston
e had lain, as itself in round capitals protested, since the year of grace 1703. The sharp-leafed ivy grew thickly over one side of it, and the long, uncut grass came up between the cracks of its stone steps.
“It’s all very well,” she said severely.
“Don’t be angry,” I implored. “How can you be angry when the bats are flying black against the rose sky, when the owl is waking up — his is a soft, fluffy awakening — and wondering if it’s breakfast time?”
“I won’t be angry,” she said. “Besides the owl, it’s disrespectful to the dear, sleepy, dead people to be angry in a churchyard. But if I were really superstitious, you know, I should be afraid to come here at night.”
“At the end of the day,” I corrected. “It is not night yet. Tell me before the night comes all the wonderful things you believe. Recite your credo.”
“Don’t be flippant. I don’t suppose I believe more unlikely things than you do. You believe in algebra and Euclid and log — what’s-his-names. Now I don’t believe a word of all that.”
“We have it on the best authority that by getting up early you can believe six impossible things before breakfast.”
“But they’re not impossible. Don’t you see that’s just it? The things I like to believe are the very things that might be true. And they’re relics of a prettier time than ours, a time when people believed in ghosts and fairies and witches and the devil — oh, yes! and in God and His angels, too. Now the times are bound in yellow brick, and we believe in nothing but ... Euclid and — and company prospectuses and patent medicines.”
When she is a little angry she is very charming, but it was too dark for me to see her face.
“Then,” I asked, “it is merely the literary sense that leads you to make the Holy Sign when you find two knives crossed on your table, or to knock under the table and cry ‘Unberufen’ when you have provoked the Powers with some kind word of the destiny they have sent you?”
“I don’t,” she said. “I don’t talk foreign languages.”
“You say, ‘unbecalled for,’ I know, but this is mere subterfuge. Is it the literary sense that leads you to treasure farthings, to refuse to give pins, to object to a dinner party of thirteen, to fear the plucking of the golden elder, to avoid coming back to the house when once you’ve started, even if you’ve forgotten your prayer-book or your umbrella, to decline to pass under a ladder—”