Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “Not safe?” he said with an agitation which could not escape her notice.

  “Not safe,” she repeated. “Mr Brent, there is a very malicious person in this part of the country — a perfectly dreadful person.”

  “What do you mean?” he managed to ask.

  “These three Saturdays I have come along this road; each time I have had a puncture. And each time I have found embedded in my tyre the evidence of some one’s malice. This is one piece of evidence.” She held out her ungloved hand. On its pink palm lay a good sized tin-tack. “Once might be accident; twice a coincidence; three times is too much. The road’s impossible.”

  “Do you think some one did it on purpose?”

  “I know it,” she said calmly.

  Then he grew desperate.

  “Try to forgive me,” he said. “I was so lonely, and I wanted so much — —”

  She turned wide eyes on him.

  “You!” she cried, and began to laugh.

  Her laughter was very pretty, he thought.

  “Then you didn’t know it was me?” said the Greek student.

  “You!” she said again. “And has it amused you — to see all these poor people in difficulties, and to know that you’ve spoilt their poor little holiday for them — and three times, too.”

  “I never thought about them,” he said; “it was you I wanted to see. Try to forgive me; you don’t know how much I wanted you.” Something in his voice kept her silent. “And don’t laugh,” he went on. “I feel as if I wanted nothing in the world but you. Let me come to see you — let me try to make you care too.”

  “You’re talking nonsense,” she said, for he stopped on a note that demanded an answer. “Why, you told Camilla — —”

  “Yes — but you — but I meant you. I thought I cared about her once — but I never cared really with all my heart and soul for any one but you.”

  She looked at him calmly and earnestly.

  “I’m going to forget all this,” she said; “but I like you very much, and if you want to come and see me, you may. I will introduce you to my aunts at Felsenden as — as a friend of Camilla’s. And I will be friends with you; but nothing else ever. Do you care to know my aunts?”

  Maurice had inspirations of sense sometimes. One came to him now, and he said: “I care very much.”

  “Then help me to mend my bicycle, and you can call there to-morrow. It’s ‘The Grange’ — you can’t miss it. No, not another word of nonsense, please, or we can’t possibly be friends.”

  He helped her to mend the bicycle, and they talked of the beauty of spring and of modern poetry.

  It was at “The Grange,” Felsenden, that Maurice next saw Miss Redmayne — and it was from “The Grange,” Felsenden, that, in September, he married her.

  “And why did you say you would never, never be anything but a friend?” he asked her on the day when that marriage was arranged. “Oh! you nearly made me believe you! Why did you say it?”

  “One must say something!” she answered. “Besides, you’d never have respected me if I’d said ‘yes’ at once.”

  “Could you have said it? Did you like me then?”

  She looked at him, and her look was an answer. He stooped and gravely kissed her.

  “And you really cared, even then? I wish you had been braver,” he said a little sadly.

  “Ah, but,” she said, “I didn’t know you then — you must try to forgive me, dear. Think how much there was at stake! Suppose I had lost you!”

  THE AUNT AND THE EDITOR

  Aunt Kate was the great comfort of Kitty’s existence. Always kindly, helpful, sympathetic, no girlish trouble was too slight, no girlish question too difficult for her tender heart — her delicate insight. How different from grim Aunt Eliza, with whom it was Kitty’s fate to live. Aunt Eliza was severe, methodical, energetic. In household matters she spared neither herself nor her niece. Kitty could darn and mend and bake and dust and sweep in a way which might have turned the parents of the bluest Girtonian green with envy. She had read a great deal, too — the really solid works that are such a nuisance to get through, and that leave a mark on one’s mind like the track of a steamroller. That was Aunt Eliza’s doing. Kitty ought to have been grateful — but she wasn’t. She didn’t want to be improved with solid books. She wanted to write books herself. She did write little tales when her aunt was out on business, which was often, and she dreamed of the day when she should write beautiful books, poems, romances. These Aunt Eliza classed roughly as “stuff and nonsense”; and one day, when she found Kitty reading the Girls’ Very Own Friend, she tore that harmless little weekly across and across and flung it into the fire. Then she faced Kitty with flushed face and angry eyes.

  “If I ever catch you bringing such rubbish into the house again, I’ll — I’ll stop your music lessons.”

  This was a horrible threat. Kitty went twice a week to the Guildhall School of Music. She had no musical talent whatever, but the journey to London and back was her one glimpse of the world’s tide that flowed outside the neat, gloomy, ordered house at Streatham. Therefore Kitty was careful that Aunt Eliza should not again “catch her bringing such rubbish into the house.” But she went on reading the paper all the same, just as she went on writing her little stories. And presently she got one of her little stories typewritten, and sent it to the Girls’ Very Own Friend. It was a silly little story — the heroine was svelte, I am sorry to say, and had red-gold hair and a soft, trainante voice — and the hero was a “frank-looking young Englishman, with a bronzed face and honest blue eyes.” The plot was that with which I firmly believe every career of fiction begins — the girl who throws over her lover because he has jilted her friend. Then she finds out that it was not her lover, but his brother or cousin. We have all written this story in our time, and Kitty wrote it much worse than many, but not nearly so badly as most of us.

  And the Girls’ Very Own Friend accepted the story and printed it, and in its columns notified to “George Thompson” that the price, a whole guinea, was lying idle at the office till he should send his address. For, of course, Kitty had taken a man’s name for her pen-name, and almost equally, of course, had called herself “George.” George Sand began it, and it is a fashion which young authors seem quite unable to keep themselves from following.

  Kitty longed to tell some one of her success — to ask admiration and advice; but Aunt Eliza was more severe and less approachable than usual that week. She was busy writing letters. She had always a sheaf of dull-looking letters to answer, so Kitty could only tell Mary in the kitchen under vows of secrecy, and Mary in the kitchen only said: “Well, to be sure, Miss, it’s beautiful! I suppose you wrote the story down out of some book?”

  Therefore Kitty felt that it was vain to apply to her for intellectual sympathy.

  “I will write to Aunt Kate,” said she, “she will understand. Oh, how I wish I could see her! She must be a dear, soft, pussy, cuddly sort of person. Why shouldn’t I go and see her? I will.”

  And on this desperate resolve she acted.

  Now I find it quite impossible any longer to conceal from the intelligent reader that the reason why Kitty had never seen Aunt Kate was that “Aunt Kate” was merely the screen which sheltered from a vulgar publicity the gifted person who wrote the “Answers to Correspondents” for the Girls’ Very Own Friend.

  In fear and trembling, and a disguised hand-writing; with a feigned name and a quickly-beating heart, Kitty, months before, had written to this mysterious and gracious being. In the following week’s number had appeared these memorable lines:

  “Sweet Nancy. — So pleased, dear, with your little letter. Write to me quite freely. I love to help my girls.”

  So Kitty wrote quite freely, and as honestly as any girl of eighteen ever writes: her hopes and fears, her household troubles, her literary ambitions. And in the columns of the Girls’ Very Own Friend Aunt Kate replied with all the tender grace and delightful warmth that characterised her utterances
.

  The idea of calling on Aunt Kate occurred to Kitty as she was “putting on her things” to go to the Guildhall. She instantly threw the plain “everyday” hat from her, and pulled her best hat from its tissue-paper nest in the black bandbox. She put on her best blouse — the cream-coloured one with the browny lace on it, and her best brown silk skirt. She recklessly added her best brown shoes and gloves, and the lace pussy-boa. (I don’t know what the milliner’s name for the thing is. It goes round the neck, and hangs its soft and fluffy ends down nearly to one’s knees.) Then she looked at herself in the glass, gave a few last touches to her hair and veil, and nodded to herself.

  “You’ll do, my dear,” said Kitty.

  Aunt Eliza was providentially absent at Bath nursing a sick friend, and the black-bugled duenna, hastily imported from Tunbridge Wells, could not be expected to know which was Kitty’s best frock, and which the gloves that ought only to have been worn at church.

  When Kitty’s music lesson was over, she stood for a moment on the steps of the Guildhall School, looking down towards the river. Then she shrugged her pretty shoulders.

  “I don’t care. I’m going to,” she said, and turned resolutely towards Tudor Street. Kitty had been to a high school: therefore she was not obviously shy. She asked her way frankly and easily of carman, or clerk, or errand-boy; and though, at the door of the dingy office in a little court off Fleet Street, her heart beat thickly as she read the blue-enamelled words, Girls’ Very Own Friend, her manner as she walked into the office betrayed no nervousness, and, indeed, struck the grinning idle office boy as that of “a bloomin’ duchess.”

  “I want to see — —” she began; and then suddenly the awkwardness of her position struck her. She did not know Aunt Kate’s surname. Abruptly to ask this grinning lout for “Aunt Kate” seemed absolutely indecorous. “I want to see the editor,” she ended.

  She waited in the grimy office while the boy disappeared through an inner door, marked in dingy white letters with the magic words, “Editor — Private.” A low buzz of voices came to her through the door. She looked at the pigeon-holes where heaps of back numbers of the Girls’ Very Own lay in a dusty retirement. She looked at the insurance company’s tasteless almanack that hung all awry on the wall, and still the buzz went on. Then suddenly some one laughed inside, and the laugh did not please Kitty. The next moment the boy returned, grinning more repulsively than ever, and said: “Walk this way.”

  She walked that way, past the boy; the door fell to behind her, and she found herself in a cloud of tobacco smoke, compressed into a small room — a very dusty, untidy room — in which stood three young men. Their faces were grave and serious, but Kate could not forget that one of them had laughed, and laughed like that. Her chin went up about a quarter of an inch further.

  “I am sorry to have disturbed you,” she said severely. “I wanted to see — to see the lady who signs herself Aunt Kate.”

  There was a moment of silence which seemed almost breathless. Two of the young men exchanged a glance, but though Kitty perceived it to be significant, she could not interpret its meaning. Then one of the three turned to gaze out of the window at the blackened glass roof of the printing office below. Kitty felt certain he was concealing a smile; and the second hurriedly arranged a bundle of papers beside him.

  The third young man spoke, and Kitty liked the gentle drawl, the peculiar enunciation. The poor girl, in her Streatham seclusion, had never before heard the “Oxford voice.”

  “I am very sorry,” he said, “but ‘Aunt Kate’ is not here to-day. Perhaps — is there anything I could do?”

  “No, thank you,” said Kitty, wishing herself miles away; the tobacco smoke choked her, the backs of the two other men seemed an outrage. She turned away with a haughty bow, and went down the grimy stairs full of fury. She could have slapped herself. How could she have been such a fool as to come there? There were feet coming down the stair behind her — she quickened her pace. The feet came more quickly. She stopped on the landing and turned with an odd feeling of being at bay. It was the fair-haired young man with the Oxford voice.

  “I am so very sorry,” he said gently, “but I did not know. I did not expect to see — I mean, I did not know who you were. And we had all been smoking — I am so sorry,” he said again, rather lamely.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Kitty, more shyly than she had ever spoken in her life. She liked his eyes and his voice as much as she loathed the expressive backs of his two companions.

  “If you could come again: perhaps Aunt Kate will be here on Thursday. I know she will be sorry to miss you,” the young man went on.

  “I think I won’t call again, thank you,” said Kitty. “I — I’ll write, thank you; it is all right. I oughtn’t to have come. Good-bye.”

  There was nothing for it but to stand back and let her pass. The editor went back slowly to his room. His friends had relighted their pipes.

  “Appeased the outraged goddess?” asked one of them.

  “Good old Aunt Kate!” said the other.

  “Shut up, Sellars!” said the editor, frowning.

  “Now, which of your correspondents is it?” pondered Sellars, ruffling the bundle of papers in his hand. “Is it ‘Wild Woodbine,’ who wants to know what will make her hands white? Chilcott, did you see her hands? Oh no, of course — bien chaussée, bien gantée. All brown, too. Is it ‘Sylph’? — no; she wants a pattern for a Zouave. What is a Zouave, if you please, Mr Editor?”

  “Dry up!” said the editor, but Sellars was busy with the papers.

  “Eureka! I know her. She’s ‘Nut-brown Maid’ — here’s the letter — wants to know if she may talk to ‘a young gentleman she has not been properly introduced to’ — spells it ‘interoduced,’ too — —”

  The editor snatched the papers out of the other’s hands.

  “Now clear out,” said he; “I’m busy.”

  “Am I dreaming?” said Sellars pensively; “or is this the editor who invited us to collaborate with him in his ‘Answers to Correspondents’?”

  “I am the editor who will kick you down the entire five flights if he is driven to it. You won’t drive him, will you?”

  The two laughed, but they took up their hats and went; Sellars put his head round the door for a last word.

  “What price love at first sight?” said he, and the office ruler dented the door as he disappeared round it. The editor, left alone, sat down in his chair and looked helplessly round him.

  “Well!” he said musingly, “well, well, well, well!” Then after a long silence he took up his pen and began the “Answers to Correspondents.”

  “Dieu-donnée. — Your hair is a very nice colour. I should not advise Aureoline.

  “Shy Fairy. — By all means consult your mother. Heliotrope would suit your complexion, if it is, as you say, of a brilliant fairness.

  “Contadina. — No, I should not advise scarlet velvet with the pale blue. Try myrtle green.”

  Presently he threw down the pen. “I suppose I shall never see her again,” he said, and he actually sighed.

  But he did see her again. For on her way home poor Kitty’s imagination suddenly spread its wings and alighted accurately on the truth; she formed a sufficiently vivid picture of what had happened in the office after she left. She knew that those other young men—”the pigs,” she called them to herself — had speculated as to whether she was “Little One,” who wanted to make her hair curl, and to know whether short waists would be worn; or “Moss Rose,” who was anxious about her complexion, and the proper way to treat a jibbing sweetheart. So that very night she wrote a note to Aunt Kate, but she did not sign it “Sweet Nancy” in the old manner, and she did not disguise her hand. She signed it George Thompson, in inverted commas, and she said that she would call on Thursday.

  And on Thursday she called. And was shown into the editor’s room at once.

  The editor rose to greet her.

  “Aunt Kate is not here,” said he hurrie
dly; “but if you can spare a few moments I should like to talk to you about business; I did not know the other day that you were the author of that charming story ‘Evelyn’s Error.’”

  The room was clear of tobacco smoke — the editor was alone — some red roses lay on the table. Kitty caught herself wondering for whom he had bought them. The chair he offered her was carefully dusted. She took it — and he began to talk about her story; criticising, praising, blaming, and that so skilfully that criticism seemed a subtle flattery, and the very blame conveyed a compliment. Then he asked for more stories. And a new heaven and a new earth seemed to unroll before the girl’s eyes. If she could only write — and succeed — and ——

  “Will you come again?” he said at last. “Aunt Kate — —”

  “Oh,” she said, with eyes shining softly, “it doesn’t matter about Aunt Kate now! I shall be so busy trying to write stories.”

  “The fact is — —” said the editor slowly, racking his brains for a reason that should bring her to the office again—”the fact is — I am Aunt Kate.”

  Kitty sprang to her feet. Her face flamed scarlet. She stood silent a moment. Then: “You?” she cried. “Oh, it’s not fair — it’s mean — it’s shameful! Oh — how could you! And girls write to you — and they think it’s a woman — and they tell you about their troubles. It’s horrible! It’s underhand — it’s abominable! I hate you for it. Every one ought to know. I shall write to the papers.”

  “Please, please,” said the editor hurriedly and humbly—”it’s not my fault. It is a lady who does it generally, but she had to go away — and I couldn’t get any one else to do it. And I didn’t see — till after you’d been the other day — that it wasn’t fair. And I was going to ask if you would do it — the correspondence, I mean — just for this week. I wish you would!”

  “Could I?” she said doubtfully.

  “Of course you could! And if you’d bring the copy on Monday — about two columns, you know — we could go through it together and — —”