Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  Jane has always thought it a pity that Milly had not troubled to ask the name of the girl whom Edgar intended to marry, because the name proved, on enquiry, to be Jane.

  THE MILLIONAIRESS

  I

  It is a dismal thing to be in London in August. The streets are up for one thing, and your cab can never steer a straight course for the place you want to go to. And the trees are brown in the parks, and every one you know is away, so that there would be nowhere to go in your cab, even if you had the money to pay for it, and you could go there without extravagance.

  Stephen Guillemot sat over his uncomfortable breakfast-table in the rooms he shared with his friend, and cursed his luck. His friend was away by the sea, and he was here in the dirty and sordid blackness of his Temple chambers. But he had no money for a holiday; and when Dornington had begged him to accept a loan, he had sworn at Dornington, and Dornington had gone off not at all pleased. And now Dornington was by the sea, and he was here. The flies buzzed in the panes and round the sticky marmalade jar; the sun poured in at the open window. There was no work to do. Stephen was a solicitor by trade; but, in fact and perforce, an idler. No business came to him. All day long the steps of clients sounded on the dirty, old wooden staircase — clients for Robinson on the second, for Jones on the fourth, but none for Guillemot on the third. Even now steps were coming, though it was only ten o’clock. The young man glanced at the marmalade jar, at the crooked cloth stained with tea, which his laundress had spread for his breakfast.

  “Suppose it is a client — —” He broke off with a laugh. He had never been able to cure himself of that old hope that some day the feet of a client — a wealthy client — would pause at his door, but the feet had always gone by — as these would do. The steps did indeed pass his door, paused, came back, and — oh wonder! it was his knocker that awoke the Temple echoes.

  He glanced at the table. It was hopeless. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “I daresay it’s only a bill,” he said, and went to see.

  The newcomer was impatient, for even as Guillemot opened the door, the knocker was in act to fall again.

  “Is Mr Guillemot —— Oh, Stephen, I should have known you anywhere!”

  A radiant vision in a white linen gown — a very smart tailor-made-looking linen gown — and a big white hat was standing in his doorway, shaking him warmly by the hand.

  “Won’t you ask me in?” asked the vision, smiling in his bewildered face.

  He drew back mechanically, and closed the door after him as she went in. Then he followed her into the room that served him for office and living-room, and stood looking at her helplessly.

  “You don’t know me a bit,” she said; “it’s a shame to tease you. I’ll take off my hat and veil; you will know me then. It’s these fine feathers!”

  And take them off she did — in front of the fly-spotted glass on the mantel-piece; then she turned a bright face on him, a pretty mobile face, crowned with bright brown hair. And still he stood abashed.

  “I never thought you would have forgotten the friend of childhood’s hour,” she began again. “I see I must tell you in cold blood.”

  “Why, it’s Rosamund!” he cried suddenly. “Do forgive me! I never, never dreamed —— My dear Rosamund, you aren’t really changed a bit it’s only — your hair being done up and — —”

  “And the fine feathers,” said she, holding out a fold of her dress. “They are very pretty feathers, aren’t they?”

  “Very,” said he. And then suddenly a silence of embarrassment fell between them.

  The girl broke it with a laugh that was not quite spontaneous.

  “How funny it all is!” she said. “I went to New York with my uncle when dear papa died — and then I went to Girton, and now poor uncle’s dead, and — —” Her eye fell on the tablecloth. “I’m going to clear away this horrid breakfast of yours,” she said.

  “Oh, please!” he pleaded, taking the marmalade jar up in his helpless hands. She took the jar from him.

  “Yes, I am,” she said firmly; “and you can just sit down and try to remember who I am.”

  He obediently withdrew to the window-seat and watched her as she took away the ugly crockery and the uglier food to hide them in his little kitchen; and as he watched her he remembered many things. The lonely childhood in a country rectory — the long, dull days with no playfellows; then the arrival of the new doctor and his little daughter Rosamund Rainham — and almost at the same time, it seemed, the invalid lady with the little boy who lodged at the Post Office. Then there were playfellows, dear playfellows, to cheer and teach him — poor Stephen, he hardly knew what play or laughter meant. Then the invalid lady died, and Stephen’s father awoke from his dreams amid his old books, as he had a way of doing now and then, enquired into the circumstances of the boy, Andrew Dornington, and, finding him friendless and homeless, took him into his home to be Stephen’s little brother and friend. Then the long happy time when the three children were always together: walking, boating, birdsnesting, reading, playing and quarrelling; the storm of tears from Rosamund when the boys went to College; the shock of surprise and the fleeting sadness with which Stephen heard that the doctor was dead and that Rosamund had gone to America to her mother’s brother. Then the fulness of living, the old days almost forgotten, or only remembered as a pleasant dream. Stephen had never thought to see Rosamund again — had certainly never longed very ardently to see her; at any rate, since the year of her going. And now — here she was, grown to womanhood and charm, clearing away his breakfast things! He could hear the tap running, and knew that she must be washing her hands at the sink, using the horrid bit of yellow soap with tea-leaves embedded in it. Now she was drying her hands on the dingy towel behind the kitchen door. No; she came in drying her pink fingers on her handkerchief.

  “What a horrid old charwoman you must have!” she said; “everything is six inches deep in dust — and all your crockery is smeary.”

  “I am sorry it’s not nicer,” he said. “Oh, but it’s good to see you again! What times we used to have! Do you remember when we burned your dolls on the 5th of November?”

  “I should think I did. And do you remember when I painted your new tool-chest and the handles of your saws and gimlets and things with pale green enamel? I thought you would be so pleased.”

  She had taken her place, as she spoke, in the depths of the one comfortable chair, and he answered from his window-seat; and in a moment the two were launched on a flood of reminiscences, and the flight of time was not one of the things they remembered. The hour and the quarters sounded, and they talked on. But the insistence of noon, boomed by the Law Courts’ clock, brought Miss Rainham to her feet.

  “Twelve!” she cried. “How time goes! And I’ve never told you what I came for. Look here. I’m frightfully rich; I only heard it last week. My uncle never seemed very well off. We lived very simply, and I used to do the washing-up and the dusting and things; and now he’s died and left me all his money. I don’t know where he kept it all. The people on the floor above here wrote me about it. I was going to see them, and I saw your name; and I simply couldn’t pass it. Look here, Stephen — are you very busy?”

  “Not too busy to do anything you want. I’m glad you’ve had luck. What can I do for you?”

  “Will you really do anything I want? Promise.”

  “Of course I promise.” He looked at her and wondered if she knew how hard it would be to him to refuse her anything: for Mr Guillemot had been fancy free, and this gracious vision, re-risen from old times, had turned his head a little.

  “Good! You must be my solicitor.”

  “But I can’t. Jones — —”

  “Bother Jones!” she said. “I shan’t go near him. I won’t be worried by Jones. What is the use of having a fortune — and it’s a big fortune, I can tell you — if I mayn’t even choose my own solicitor? Look here, Stephen — really — I have no relations and no friends in England — no man friends, I mean �
� and you won’t charge me more than you ought, but you will charge me enough. Oh, I feel like Mr Boffin — and you are Mortimer Lightwood, and Andrew is Eugene. Do you call him Dora still?”

  It was the first question she had asked about the boy who had shared all their youth with them.

  “Oh, Dornington is all right. He’d be awfully sick if you called him Dora nowadays. He’s got on a little — not much. He goes in for journalism. He’s at Lymchurch just now; he lives here with me generally.”

  “Yes — I know; I saw his name on the door.” And Stephen did not wonder till later why she had not mentioned that name earlier in the interview.

  “Here, give me paper and pens, the best there is time to procure. Now tell me what to say to Jones. I want to tell him that I loathe his very name; that I know I could never bear the sight of him; and that you are going to look after everything for me.”

  He resisted — she pleaded; and at last the letter was written, not quite in those terms, and Stephen at her request reluctantly instructed her as to the method of giving a Power of Attorney.

  “You must arrange everything,” she said; “I won’t be bothered. Now I must go. Jones is human, after all. He knew I should want money, and he sent me quite a lot. And I am going away for a holiday — just to see what it feels like to be rich.”

  “You’re not going about alone, I hope,” said Stephen. And then, for the first time, he remembered that beautiful young ladies are not allowed to clear away tea-things in the Temple, without a chaperon — even for their solicitors.

  “No; Constance Grant is with me. You don’t know her. I got to know her at Girton. She’s a dear.”

  “Look here,” he said, awkwardly standing behind her as she pinned her hat and veil in front of his glass, “when you come back I’ll come to see you. But you mustn’t come here again; it’s — it’s not customary.” She smiled at his reflection in the glass.

  “Oh, I forgot your stiff English notions! So absurd! Not going to see one’s old friend and one’s solicitor! However, I won’t come where I’m not wanted — —”

  “You know — —” he began reproachfully; but she interrupted.

  “Oh yes, it’s all right. Now remember that all my affairs are in your hands, and when I come back you will have to tell me exactly what I am worth — between eight and fourteen hundred thousand pounds, they say; but that’s nonsense, isn’t it? Good-bye.”

  And with a last switch of white skirts against the dirty wainscot, and a last wave of a white-gloved hand, she disappeared down the staircase.

  Stephen drew a long breath. “It can’t be fourteen hundred thousand,” he said slowly; “but I wish to goodness it wasn’t four-pence.”

  II

  The tide was low, the long lines of the sandbanks shone yellow in the sun — yellower for the pools of blue water left between them. Far off, where the low white streak marked the edge of the still retreating sea, little figures moved slowly along, pushing the shrimping-nets through the shallow water.

  On one of the smooth wave-worn groins a girl sat sketching the village; her pink gown and red Japanese umbrella made a bright spot on the gold of the sand.

  Further along the beach, under the end of the grass-grown sea-wall, a young man and woman basked in the August sun. Her sunshade was white, and so were her gown and the hat that lay beside her. Since her accession to fortune Rosamund Rainham had worn nothing but white.

  “It is the prettiest wear in the world,” she had told Constance Grant; “and when you’re poor, it’s the most impossible. But now I can have a clean gown every day, and a clean conscience as well.”

  “I’m not sure about the conscience,” Constance had answered with her demure smile. “Think of the millions of poor people.”

  “Oh, bother!” Miss Rainham had laughed, not heartlessly, but happily. “Thank Heaven, I’ve enough to be happy myself and make heaps of other people happy too. And the first step is that no one’s to know I’m rich, so remember that we are two high-school teachers on a holiday.”

  “I loathe play-acting,” Constance had said, but she had submitted, and now she sat sketching, and Rosamund in her white gown watched the seagulls and shrimpers from under the sea-wall of Lymchurch.

  “And so your holiday’s over in three days,” she was saying to the young man beside her; “it’s been a good time, hasn’t it?”

  He did not answer; he was piling up the pebbles in a heap, and always at a certain point the heap collapsed.

  “What are you thinking of? Poems again?”

  “I had a verse running in my head,” he said apologetically; “it has nothing to do with anything.”

  “Write it down at once,” she said imperiously, and he obediently scribbled in his notebook, while she took up the work of building the stone heap — it grew higher under her light fingers.

  “Read it!” she said, when the scribbling of the pencil stopped, and he read:

  “Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white, Long leaning wings across the sea and land; The waves creep back, bequeathing to our sight The treasure-house of their deserted sand; And where the nearer waves curl white and low, Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.

  Pale breadth of sand where clamorous gulls confer Marked with broad arrows by their planted feet, White rippled pools where late deep waters were, And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat, And the grey wind in sole supremacy O’er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea.”

  “Opal and amber cold,” she repeated; “it’s not like that now. It’s sapphire and gold and diamonds.”

  “Yes,” he said; “but that was how it was last week — —”

  “Before I came — —”

  “Yes, before you came;” his tone put a new meaning into her words.

  “I’m glad I brought good weather,” she said cheerfully, and the little stone heap rattled itself down under her hand.

  “You brought the light of the world,” he said, and caught her hand and held it. There was a silence. A fisherman passing along the sea-wall gave them good-day. “What made you come to Lymchurch?” he said presently, and his hand lay lightly on hers. She hesitated, and looked down at her hand and his.

  “I knew you were here,” she said. His eyes met hers. “I always meant to see you again some day. And you knew me at once. That was so nice of you.”

  “You have not changed,” he said; “your face has not changed, only you are older, and — —”

  “I’m twenty-two; you needn’t reproach me with it. Yours is the same to a month.”

  He moved on his elbow a little nearer to her.

  “Has it ever occurred to you,” he asked, looking out to sea, “that you and I were made for each other?”

  “No; never.”

  He looked out to sea still, and his face clouded heavily.

  “Ah — no — don’t look like that, dear; it never occurred to me — I think I must have always known it somehow, only — —”

  “Only what? — do you really? — only what?” A silence. Then, “Only what?” he asked again.

  “Only I was so afraid it would never occur to you!”

  There was no one on the wide, bare sands save the discreet artist — their faces were very near.

  “We shall be very, very poor, I’m afraid,” he said presently.

  “I can go on teaching.”

  “No” — his voice was decided—”my wife shan’t work — at least not anywhere but in our home. You won’t mind playing at love in a cottage for a bit, will you? I shall get on now I’ve something to work for. Oh, my dear, thank God I’ve enough for the cottage! When will you marry me? We’ve nothing to wait for, no relations to consult, no settlements to draw up. All that’s mine is thine, lassie.”

  “And all that’s mine — Oh! Stephen!”

  For, with a scattering of shingle, a man dropped from the sea-wall two yards from them.

  The situation admitted of no disguise, for Miss Rainham’s head was on
Mr Dornington’s shoulder. They sprang up.

  “Why, Stephen!” echoed Andrew, “this — this is good of you! You remember Rosamund? We have just found out that — —” But Rosamund had turned, and was walking quickly away over the sand.

  Stephen filled a pipe and lighted it before he said: “You’ve made good use of your time, old man. I congratulate you.” His tone was cold.

  “There is no reason why I should not make good use of my time,” Dornington answered, and his tone had caught the chill of the other’s.

  “None whatever. You have secured the prize, and I congratulate you. Whether it’s fair to the girl is another question.”

  In moments of agitation a man instinctively feels for his pipe. It was now Dornington’s turn to fill and light.

  “Of course it’s your own affair,” said Guillemot, chafing at the silence, “but I think you might have given the heiress a chance. However, it’s each for himself, I suppose, and — —”

  “Heiress?”

  “Yes, the heiress — the Millionairess, if you prefer it. I’ve been looking into her affairs: it is just about a million.”

  “Rather cheap chaff, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a very lucky thing for you,” said Stephen savagely. “Perhaps I ought not to grudge it to you. But I must say, Dornington — I see we look at the thing differently — but I must say, I shouldn’t have cared to grab at such luck myself.”

  Dornington had thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking at his friend.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “And her fortune is really so much? I didn’t think it had been so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it’s no good making a row about it; I don’t want to quarrel with my best friend. Go along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she’ll show you where I live. I’m going for a bit of a walk.”

  Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund’s beckoning hand at the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone bag in his hands.