by Edith Nesbit
‘Why, then,’ said Clements, ‘comes this letter — this very morning — from a lawyer, to say as this bad egg of a son wasn’t drowned at all: he was in foreign parts, and only now heard of his father’s decease, and tends without delay to claim the property, which all comes to him, the deceased have died insensate — that means without a will.’
‘I say, Clements,’ Molly sung out, ‘you must have read the letter. Did aunt show it to you?’
There was a dead silence; the kitchenmaid giggled. Someone whispered inside the room. Then the housekeeper’s voice called softly, ‘Come in here a minute, miss,’ and the window was sharply shut.
Molly emptied the peascods out of her pinafore and went in.
Directly she was inside the door Clements caught her by the arm and shook her.
‘You nasty mean, prying little cat!’ she said; ‘and me getting you jelly and custard, and I don’t know what all.’
‘I’m not,’ said Molly. ‘Don’t, Clements; you hurt.’
‘You deserve me to,’ was the reply. ‘Doesn’t she, Mrs. Williams?’
‘Don’t you know it’s wrong to listen, miss?’ asked Mrs. Williams.
‘I didn’t listen,’ said Molly indignantly. ‘You were simply shouting. No one could help hearing. Me and Jane would have had to put our fingers in our ears not to hear.’
‘I didn’t think it of you,’ said Clements, beginning to sniff.
‘I don’t know what you’re making all this fuss about,’ said Molly; ‘I’m not a sneak.’
‘Have a piece of cake, miss,’ said Mrs. Williams, ‘and give me your word it shan’t go any further.’
‘I don’t want your cake; you’d better give it to Clements. It’s she that tells things — not me.’
Molly began to cry.
‘There, I declare, miss, I’m sorry I shook you, but I was that put out. There! I ask your pardon; I can’t do more. You wouldn’t get poor Clements into trouble, I’m sure.’
‘Of course I wouldn’t; you might have known that.’
Well, peace was restored; but Molly wouldn’t have any cake.
That evening Jane wore a new silver brooch, shaped like a horseshoe, with an arrow through it.
It was after tea, when Uncle Toodlethwaite was gone, that Molly, creeping quietly out to see the pigs fed, came upon her aunt at the end of the hollyhock walk. Her aunt was sitting on the rustic seat that the crimson rambler rose makes an arbour over. Her handkerchief was held to her face with both hands, and her thin shoulders were shaking with sobs.
And at once Molly forgot how disagreeable Aunt Maria had always been, and how she hated her. She ran to her aunt and threw her arms round her neck. Aunt Maria jumped in her seat, but she let the arms stay where they were, though they made it quite difficult for her to use her handkerchief.
‘Don’t cry, dear ducky darling Aunt Maria,’ said Molly—’oh, don’t! What is the matter?’
‘Nothing you would understand,’ said Aunt Maria gruffly; ‘run away and play, there’s a good child.’
‘But I don’t want to play while you’re crying. I’m sure I could understand, dear little auntie.’
Molly embraced the tall, gaunt figure of the aunt.
‘Dear little auntie, tell Molly.’
She used just the tone she was used to use to her baby brother.
‘It’s — it’s business,’ said Aunt Maria, sniffing.
‘I know business is dreadfully bad — father says so,’ said Molly. ‘Don’t send me away, auntie; I’ll be as quiet as a mouse. I’ll just sit and cuddle you till you feel better.’
She got her arms round the aunt’s waist, and snuggled her head against a thin arm. Aunt Maria had always been one for keeping children in their proper places. Yet somehow now Molly’s proper place seemed to be just where she was — where she had never been before.
‘You’re a kind little girl, Maria,’ she said presently.
‘I wish I could do something,’ said Molly. ‘Wouldn’t you feel better if you told me? They say it does you good not to grieve in solitary concealment. I’m sure I could understand if you didn’t use long words.’
And, curiously enough, Aunt Maria did tell her, almost exactly what she had heard from Clements.
‘And I know there was a will leaving it all to your father and me,’ she said; ‘I saw it signed. It was witnessed by the butler we had then — he died the year after — and by Mr. Sheldon: he died, too, out hunting.’
Her voice softened, and Molly snuggled closer and said:
‘Poor Mr. Sheldon!’
‘He and I were to have been married,’ said Aunt Maria suddenly. ‘That’s his picture in the hall between the carp and your Great-uncle Carruthers.’
‘Poor auntie!’ said Molly, thinking of the handsome man in scarlet next the stuffed carp—’oh, poor auntie, I do love you so!’
Aunt Maria put an arm round her.
‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, ‘you don’t understand. All the happy things that ever happened to me happened here, and all the sad things too; if they turn me out I shall die — I know I shall. It’s been bad enough,’ she went on, more to herself than to Molly; ‘but there’s always been the place just as it was when I was a girl, when he used to come here: so bold and laughing he always was. I can see him here quite plainly; I’ve only to shut my eyes. But I couldn’t see him anywhere else.’
‘Don’t wills get hidden away sometimes?’ Molly asked; for she had read stories about such things.
‘We looked everywhere,’ said Aunt Maria—’everywhere. We had detectives from London, because there were things he’d left to other people, and we wanted to carry out his wishes; but we couldn’t find it. Uncle must have destroyed it, and meant to make another, only he never did — he never did. Oh, I hope the dead can’t see what we suffer! If my Uncle Carruthers and dear James could see me turned out of the old place, it would break their hearts even up in heaven.’
Molly was silent. Suddenly her aunt seemed to awake from a dream.
‘Good gracious, child,’ she said, ‘what nonsense I’ve been talking! Go away and play, and forget all about it. Your own troubles will begin soon enough.’
‘I do love you, auntie,’ said Molly, and went.
Aunt Maria never unbent again as she had done that evening; but Molly felt a difference that made all the difference. She was not afraid of her aunt now, and she loved her. Besides, things were happening. The White House was now the most interesting place in the world.
Be sure that Molly set to work at once to look for the missing will. London detectives were very careless; she was certain they were. She opened drawers and felt in the backs of cupboards; she prodded the padding of chairs, listening for the crackling of paper inside among the stuffing; she tapped the woodwork of the house all over for secret panels; but she did not find the will.
She could not believe that her Great-uncle Carruthers would have been so silly as to burn a will that he knew might be wanted at any moment. She used to stand in front of his portrait, and look at it; he did not look at all silly. And she used to look at the portrait of handsome, laughing Mr. Sheldon, who had been killed out hunting instead of marrying Aunt Maria, and more than once she said:
‘You might tell me where it is; you look as if you knew.’
But he never altered his jolly smile.
Molly thought of missing wills from the moment her eyes opened in the morning to the time when they closed at night.
Then came the dreadful day when Uncle Toodlethwaite and Mr. Bates came down, and Uncle Toodlethwaite said:
‘I’m afraid there’s no help for it, Maria; you can delay the thing a bit, but you’ll have to turn out in the end.’
It was on that night that the wonderful thing happened — the thing that Molly has never told to anyone except me, because she thought no one could believe it. She went to bed as usual and to sleep, and she woke suddenly, hearing someone call ‘Molly, Molly!’
She sat up in bed; the room was full of moonlight. As usu
al her first waking thought was of the missing will. Had it been found? Was her aunt calling her to tell the good news? No, the room was quite still. She was alone.
The moonlight fell full on the old black and red and gold cabinet; that, she had often thought, was just the place where a will would be hidden. It might have a secret drawer, that the London detectives had missed. She had often looked over it carefully, but now she got out of bed and lighted her candle, and went over to the cabinet to have one more look. She opened all the drawers, pressed all the knobs in the carved brasswork. There was a little door in the middle; she knew that the little cupboard behind it was empty. It had red lacquered walls, and the back wall was looking-glass. She opened the little cupboard, held up her candle, and looked in. She expected to see her own face in the glass as usual, but she did not see it; instead there was a black space, the opening to something not quite black. She could see lights — candle-lights — and the space grew bigger, or she grew smaller, she never knew which. And next moment she was walking through the opening.
‘Now I am going to see something really worth seeing,’ said Molly.
She was not frightened — from first to last she was not at all frightened.
She walked straight through the back of the cabinet in the best bedroom upstairs into the library on the ground-floor. That sounds like nonsense, but Molly declares it was so.
There were candles on the table and papers, and there were people in the library; they did not see her.
There was great-uncle Carruthers and Aunt Maria, very pretty, with long curls and a striped gray silk dress, like in the picture in the drawing-room. There was handsome, jolly Mr. Sheldon in a brown coat. An old servant was just going out of the door.
‘That’s settled, then,’ said Great-uncle Carruthers; ‘now, my girl, bed.’
Aunt Maria — such a young, pretty Aunt Maria, Molly would never have known her but for the portrait — kissed her uncle, and then she took a Christmas rose out of her dress and put it in Mr. Sheldon’s buttonhole, and put up her face to him and said, ‘Good-night, James.’ He kissed her; Molly heard the loud, jolly sound of the kiss, and Aunt Maria went away.
Then the old man said: ‘You’ll leave this at Bates’ for me, Sheldon; you’re safer than the post.’
Handsome Mr. Sheldon said he would. Then the lights went out, and Molly was in bed again.
Quite suddenly it was daylight. Jolly Mr. Sheldon, in his red coat, was standing by the cabinet. The little cupboard door was open.
‘By George!’ he said, ‘it’s ten days since I promised to take that will up to Bates, and I never gave it another thought. All your fault, Maria, my dear. You shouldn’t take up all my thoughts; ‘I’ll take it to-morrow.’
Molly heard something click, and he went out of the room whistling.
Molly lay still. She felt there was more to come. And the next thing was that she was looking out of the window, and saw something carried across the lawn on a hurdle with two scarlet coats laid over it, and she knew it was handsome Mr. Sheldon, and that he would not carry the will to Bates to-morrow, or do anything else in this world ever any more.
When Molly woke in the morning she sprang out of bed and ran to the cabinet. There was nothing in the looking-glass cupboard.
All the same, she ran straight to her aunt’s room. It was long before the hour when Clements soberly tapped, bringing hot water.
‘Wake up, auntie!’ she cried.
And auntie woke up, very cross indeed.
‘Look here, auntie,’ she said, ‘I’m certain there’s a secret place in that cabinet in my room, and the will’s in it; I know it is.’
‘You’ve been dreaming,’ said Aunt Maria severely; ‘go back to bed. You’ll catch your death of cold paddling about barefoot like that.’
Molly had to go, but after breakfast she began again.
‘But why do you think so?’ asked Aunt Maria.
And Molly, who thought she knew that nobody would believe her story, could only say:
‘I don’t know, but I am quite sure.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Aunt Maria.
‘Aunty,’ Molly said, ‘don’t you think uncle might have given the will to Mr. Sheldon to take to Mr. Bates, and he may have put it in the secret place and forgotten?’
‘What a head the child’s got — full of fancies!’ said Aunt Maria.
‘If he slept in that room — did he ever sleep in that room?’
‘Always, whenever he stayed here.’
‘Was it long after the will-signing that poor Mr. Sheldon died?’
‘Ten days,’ said Aunt Maria shortly; ‘run away and play. I’ve letters to write.’
But because it seemed good to leave no stone unturned, one of those letters was to a cabinet-maker in Rochester, and the groom took it in the dog-cart, and the cabinet-maker came back with him.
And there was a secret hiding-place behind the looking-glass in the little red lacquered cupboard in the old black and red and gold cabinet, and in that secret hiding-place was the missing will, and on it lay a brown flower that dropped to dust when it was moved.
‘It’s a Christmas rose,’ said Molly.
‘So, you see, really it was a very good thing the others pretended to have measles, because if they hadn’t I shouldn’t have come to you, and if I hadn’t come I shouldn’t have known there was a will missing, and if I hadn’t known that I shouldn’t have found it, should I, aunty, should I, uncle?’ said Molly, wild with delight.
‘No, dear,’ said Aunt Maria, patting her hand.
‘Little girls,’ said Uncle Toodlethwaite, ‘should be seen and not heard. But I admit that simulated measles may sometimes be a blessing in disguise.’
All the young Carruthers thought so when they got the five pounds that Aunt Maria sent them. Miss Simpshall got five pounds too because it was owing to her that Molly was taken to the White House that day. Molly got a little pearl necklace as well as five pounds.
‘Mr. Sheldon gave it to me,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘I wouldn’t give it to anyone but you.’
Molly hugged her in silent rapture.
That just shows how different our Aunt Marias would prove to be if they would only let us know them as they really are. It really is not wise to conceal everything from children.
You see, if Aunt Maria had not told Molly about Mr. Sheldon, she would never have thought about him enough to see his ghost. Now Molly is grown up she tells me it was only a dream. But even if it was it is just as wonderful, and served the purpose just as well.
Perhaps you would like to know what Aunt Maria said when the cabinet-maker opened the secret hiding-place and she saw the paper with the brown Christmas rose on it? Clements was there, as well as the cabinet-maker and Molly. She said right out before them all, ‘Oh, James, my dear!’ and she picked up the flower before she opened the will. And it fell into brown dust in her hand.
BILLY AND WILLIAM
A HISTORICAL TALE FOR THE YOUNG
‘Have you found your prize essay?’
‘No; but I have found the bicycle of the butcher’s boy.’
It is rather trying to have to walk three miles to the station, to say nothing of the three miles back, to meet a cousin you have never seen and never wish to see, especially if you have to leave a kite half made, and there is no proper lock to the shed you are making your kite in.
The road was flat and dusty, the sun felt much too warm on his back, the hill to the station was long and steep, and the train was nearly an hour late, because it was a train on the South-Eastern Railway. So William was exceedingly cross, and he would have been crosser still if he could have known that I should ever call him William, for though that happened to be his name, the one he ‘answered to’ (as the stolen-dog advertisements say) was ‘Billy.’ So perhaps it would be kind of me to speak of him as Billy, because it is rather horrid to do things you know people won’t like, even if you think they’ll never know you’ve done them.
Well, the train came in
, and it was annoying to Billy, very, that four or five boys should bundle out of the train, and he should have to go up to them one after the other and say:
‘I say, is your name Harold St. Leger?’
He did not particularly like the look of any of the boys, and of course it happened that the very last one he spoke to was Harold, and that he was also the one whom Billy liked least particularly of the whole lot.
‘Oh, you are, are you?’ was all he could find to say when Harold had blushingly owned to his name. Then in manly tones Billy gave the order about Harold’s luggage and the carrier, said ‘Come along!’ and Harold came.
Harold was a fattish boy with whitey-brown hair, and he was as soft and white as a silkworm. Billy did not admire him. He himself was hard and brown, with thin arms and legs and joints like the lumps of clay on branches that the gardener has grafted. And Harold did not admire him.
There was little conversation on the way home; when you don’t want to have a visitor and he doesn’t want to be one, talking is not much fun. When they got home there was tea. Billy’s mother talked politely to Harold, but that did not make anyone any happier. Then Billy took his cousin round and showed him the farm and the stock, and Harold was less interested than you would think a boy could be. At last, weary of trying to behave nicely, Billy said:
‘I suppose there must be something you like, however much of a muff you are. Well, you can jolly well find it out for yourself. I’m going to finish my kite.’
The silkworm-soft face of Harold lighted up.
‘Oh, I can make kites,’ he said; ‘I’ve invented a new kind. I’ll help you if you’ll let me.’
Harold, eager, quick fingered, skilful, in the shed among the string, and the glue, and the paper, and the bendable, breakable laths, was quite a different person from Harold, nervous and dull, among the farmyard beasts. Billy allowed him to help with the kite, and he began to respect his cousin a little more.
‘Though it’s rather like a girl, being so neat with your fingers,’ he said disparagingly.
‘I wish I’d got the proper sort of paper,’ Harold said, ‘then I’d make my new patent kite that I’ve invented; but it’s a very extra sort of kind of paper. I got some once at a butter-shop in Bermondsey, but that was in a dream.’