Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  But there was another person in the house, whose name I will not put down. She came continually between me and my adored Miss Fairfield. She had a sort of influence over me which made it impossible for me ever to do anything well while she was near me. Miss Fairfield’s health compelled her to leave much to Miss —— , and I was, in consequence, as gloomy a cynic as any child of my age in Lincolnshire. My chief troubles were three — my hair, my bands, and my arithmetic.

  My hair was never tidy — I don’t know why. Perhaps it runs in the family — for my little daughter’s head is just as rough as mine used to be. This got me into continual disgrace. I am sure I tried hard enough to keep it tidy — I brushed it for fruitless hours till my little head was so sore that it hurt me to put my hat on. But it never would look smooth and shiny, like Katie Martin’s, nor would it curl prettily like the red locks of Cissy Thomas. It was always a rough, impossible brown mop. I got into a terrible scrape for trying to soften it by an invention of my own. As we all know, Burleigh House is by Stamford Town, and in Burleigh Park we children took our daily constitutional. We played under the big oaks there, and were bored to extinction, not because we disliked the park, but because we went there every day at the same hour.

  Now Harry Martin (he wore striped stockings and was always losing his handkerchief) suffered from his hair almost as much as I did; so when I unfolded my plan to him one day in the park, he joyfully agreed to help me.

  We each gathered a pocketful of acorns, and when we went to wash our hands before dinner, we cut up some of the acorns into little bits, and put them into the doll’s bath with some cold water and a little scent that Cissy Thomas gave us, out of a bottle she had bought for twopence at the fair at home.

  “This,” I said, “will be acorn oil — scented acorn oil.”

  “ Will it?” said Harry doubtfully.

  “Yes,” I replied, adding confidently, “and there is nothing better for the hair.”

  But we never had a chance of even seeing whether acorns and water would turn to oil — a miracle which I entirely believed in. The dinner-bell rang, and I only had time hastily to conceal the doll’s bath at the back of the cupboard where Miss —— kept her dresses. That was Saturday.

  Next day we found that Miss — —’s best dress (the blue silk with the Bismarck brown gimp) had slipped from its peg and fallen on to the doll’s bath. The dress was ruined, and when Harry Martin and I owned up, as in honour bound — Miss Fairfield was away in London — we were deprived of dinner, and had a long Psalm to learn. I don’t know whether punishment affects the hair, but I thought, next morning at prayers, that Harry’s tow-crop looked more like bay than ever.

  My hands were more compromising to me than anyone would have believed who had ever seen their size, for, in the winter especially, they were never clean. I can see now the little willow-patterned basin of hard cold water, and smell the unpleasant little square of mottled soap with which I was expected to wash them. I don’t know how the others managed, but for me the result was always the same -failure; and when I presented myself at breakfast, trying to hide my red and grubby little paws in my pinafore, Miss — used to say:

  “Show your hands, Daisy — yes as I thought. Not fit to sit down with young ladies and gentlemen. Breakfast in the schoolroom for Miss Daisy.”

  Then little Miss Daisy would shiveringly betake herself to the cold bare schoolroom, where the fire had but just been kindled.

  I used to sit cowering over the damp sticks with my white mug —— mauve spotted it was I remember, and had a brown crack near the handle —— on a chair beside me. Sometimes I used to pull a twig from the fire, harpoon my bread-and-butter with it, and hold it to the fire: the warm, pale, greasy result I called toast.

  All this happened when Miss Fairfield was laid up with bronchitis. It was at that time, too, that my battle with compound long division began. Now I was not, I think, a very dull child, and always had an indignant sense that I could do sums well enough if any one would tell me what they meant. But no one did, and day after day the long division sums, hopelessly wrong, disfigured my slate, and were washed off with my tears. Day after day I was sent to bed, my dinner was knocked off, or my breakfast, or my tea. I should literally have starved, I do believe, but for dear Mrs. Fairfield. She kept my little Body going with illicit cakes and plums and the like, and fed my starving little heart with surreptitious kisses and kind words. She would lie in wait for me as I passed down the hall, and in a whisper call me into the store closet. It had a mingled and delicious smell of pickles and tea and oranges and jam, and the one taper Mrs. Fairfield carried only lighted dimly the delightful mystery of its well-filled shelves. Mrs. Fairfield used to give me a great lump of cake or a broad slice of bread and jam, and lock me into the dark cupboard till it was eaten. I never taste black-currant jam now without a strong memory of the dark hole of happiness, where I used to wait — my sticky fingers held well away from my pinafore — till Mrs. Fairfield’s heavy step and jingling keys came to release me. Then she would sponge my hands and face and send me away clean, replete, and with a better heart for the eternal conflict with long division.

  I fancy that when Miss Fairfield came downstairs again she changed the field of my arithmetical studies; for during the spring I seem to remember a blessed respite from my troubles. It is true that Miss —— was away, staying with friends.

  I was very popular at school that term I remember, for I had learned to make dolls’ bedsteads out of match-boxes during the holidays, and my eldest sister’s Christmas present provided me with magnificent hangings for the same. Imagine a vivid green silk sash, with brilliant butterflies embroidered all over it in coloured silk and gold thread. A long sash, too, from which one could well spare a few inches at a time for upholstery. I acquired many marbles, and much gingerbread, and totally eclipsed Cissy Thomas who bad enjoyed the fleeting sunshine of popular favour on the insecure basis of paper dolls. Over my memory of this term no long division cast its hateful shade, and the scolding my dear mother gave me when she saw my sashes’ fair proportions docked to a waistband and a hard knot, with two brief and irregular ends, was so gentle that I endured it with fortitude, and considered my ten weeks of popularity cheaply bought. I went back to school in high spirits with a new set of sashes and some magnificent pieces of silk and lace from my mother’s lavendered wardrobe.

  But no one wanted dolls’ beds anymore; and Cissy Thomas had brought back a herbarium: the others all became botanists, and I, after a faint effort to emulate their successes, fell back on my garden.

  The seeds I had set in the spring had had a rest during the Easter holidays, and were already sprouting greenly, but alas, I never saw them flower. Long division set in again. Again, day after day, 1 sat lonely in the schoolroom — now like a furnace — and ate my dry bread and milk and water in the depths of disgrace, with the faux commencements and those revolting sums staring at me from my tear-blotted slate.

  Night after night I cried myself to sleep in my bed — whose coarse home-spun sheets were hotter than blankets — because I could not get the answers right. Even Miss Fairfield, I fancied, began to look coldly on me, and the other children naturally did not care to associate with one so deficient in arithmetic.

  One evening as I was sitting as usual sucking the smooth, dark slate pencil, and grieving over my troubles with the heart-broken misery of a child, to whom the present grief looks eternal, I heard a carriage drive up to the door. Our schoolroom was at the back, and I was too much interested in a visitor — especially one who came at that hour and in a carriage — to be able to bear the suspense of that silent schoolroom, so I cautiously opened its door and crept on hands and knees across the passage and looked down through the bannisters. They were opening the door. It was a lady, and Mrs. Fairfield came out of the dining-room to meet her. It was a lady in a black moire antique dress and Paisley shawl of the then mode. It was a lady whose face I could not see, because her back was to the red sunset light; but at th
at moment she spoke, and the next I was clinging round the moue skirts with my bead buried in the Paisley shawl. The world, all upside down, had suddenly righted itself. I, who had faced it alone, now looked out at it from the secure shelter of a moiré screen — for my mother had come to see me.

  I did not cry myself to sleep that night, because my head lay on her arm. But even then I could not express bow wretched I had been. Only when I heard that my mother was going to the South of France with my sisters, I clung about her neck, and with such insistence implored her not to leave me — not to go without me, that I think I must have expressed my trouble without uttering it, for when, after three delicious days of drives and walks, in which I had always a loving hand to hold, my mother left Stamford, she took me — trembling with joy like a prisoner reprieved — with her.

  And I have never seen — or wished to see — Stamford again.

  PART III. — SOUTH WITH THE SWALLOWS.

  With what delicious thrills of anticipation and excitement I packed my doll’s clothes on the eve of our journey! I had a little tin trunk with a real padlock; I have it still, by the way, only now it holds old letters and a bunch of violets and a few other little worthless things that I do not often have the courage to look at nowadays. It is battered now and the paint is worn off; but then it was fresh and shiny and I packed all the doll’s clothes in it with a light heart.

  I don’t remember anything about our leaving home, or saying good-bye to the boys; so I fancy that they must have gone back to school some time before; but I remember the night passage from Newhaven to Dieppe far too vividly to care to describe it. I was a very worn-out little girl indeed when we reached Rouen and I lay for the first time in a little white French bed.

  My mind was, I suppose, a little upset by my soul’s sorrows at Stamford and my body’s unspeakable discomforts on board the channel boat, and I was seized with a horror of the words Débit de Tabac which I had noticed on our way from the station; I associated them with the gravestone of my father, I don’t know why, I can only conjecture that the last syllable of Débit being the same as that of our name, may- have had something to do with it. I lay awake in the dark, the light from the oil lamp in the street came through the Persiennes and fell in bright bars on the wall. As I grew drowsier I seemed to read there in letters of fire “Débit de Tabac”

  Then I fell asleep, and dreamed that my father’s ghost came to me, and implored me to have the horrible French inscription erased from his tomb- “for I was an Englishman,” he said.

  Then I woke, rigid with terror, and finally summoned courage to creep across the corridor to my mother’s room and seek refuge in her arms. I am particular to mention this dream because it is the first remembrance I have of any terror of the dead, or of the supernatural. I do not at all know how it had its rise; perhaps in the chatter of some nurse-maid, long forgotten. By-and-by I should like to tell you about some of the things that used to frighten me when I was a child; but just now we are at Rouen where Joan of Arc was burned and where the church of St. Ouen is. Even then the beauty of that marvellous Gothic church filled me with a delight none the less intense for being incomprehensible to me.

  We went too, to St. Catharine du Mont. The ceiling of the church was blue, with gold stars. I thought it very beautiful. It was very windy on the mount, I remember, and the sky outside was blue, like the church ceiling, with white clouds instead of gold stars.

  There was a stall a little way clown the hill where a white-coifed woman sold crucifixes and medals and rosaries and pictures. My mother bought me a little painting of the church in an alabaster frame. It was for a long time one of my chief treasures.

  We went on to Paris. It was very hot and very dusty. It was the Exhibition year. I went to the Exhibition which seemed to me large, empty and very tiring. I saw the Emperor and the pretty Empress driving in a carriage with their little son. The boy was about my own age, and wore a velvet suit and an embroidered frilly collar. The crowd cheered them with wild enthusiasm. Three years later- But this is not a history-paper.

  The pleasantest part of our stay in Paris was the time that my cousin Fred spent with us. He lived in Paris, and knew that little girls like sweeties. Also he sang the comic songs of the day, “Kafoozleum” and “It’s really very unpleasant,” and taught me their long and dreary words. He was very kind to me, and I remember him with tenderness though I have never seen him since. On the whole, though I had a real silver daisy brooch bought at the Exhibition, and more toys than could conveniently be carried in my tin trunk, I was glad to get away from Paris.

  As this is not a guide-book I suppose I must not tell you about Tours, and the Convent of Marmoutier. I expected a convent to be a dark and terrible place, with perhaps a nun or two being built into the wall, and I was relieved to find a trim, well-kept garden and a pleasant house, where kindly-faced women in black gowns and white guimpes walked about breviary in hand. Nor must I linger at Poitiers, where we saw gloves made, and I, to my intense delight was measured for a small pair of bright blue kid. I liked Poitiers — especially the old Byzantine church now used as a stable. I picked up a bone there, and treasured it for months. It was human, I was convinced, and I wove many romances round the little brown relic-romances that considerably embittered the reality when I came to know it.

  “What’s that?” Alfred asked picking the bone from its resting place in cotton-wool in my corner drawer months afterwards.

  “A human bone,” I said gravely.

  Alfred roared with aggravating laughter.

  “It’s only half a fowl’s back — you little silly.”

  Ashamed and confused I flung the bone into the inmost recesses of the drawer, and assured him that he was mistaken. But he wasn’t.

  We went from Poitiers to Angoulème — how often in school I have got into trouble for tracing that route on the map of France when I should have been tracing Cap Griz Nez, or the course of the Rhone! And so, by easy, stages we reached Bordeaux.

  Bordeaux was en fête — the great annual fair was in progress. The big market-place was covered with booths filled with the most fascinating objects.

  I was very happy at Bordeaux until it occurred to some one to take me to see the mummies. After that, “Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content.” And here I cannot resist the temptation to put a long parenthesis in my traveller’s tale, and to write a little about what used to frighten me when I was little. And then I shall tell you about my first experience of learning French.

  PART IV. — IN THE DARK

  How can I write of it, sitting here in the shifting shade of the lime-trees, with the sunny daisied grass stretching away to the border where the hollyhocks and lilies and columbines are, my ears filled with the soft swish-swish of the gardener’s scythe at the other end of the lawn, and the merry little voices of the children away in the meadow?

  Only by shutting my eyes and ears to the sweet sounds and sights of summer and the sun can I recall at all for you the dead silences, the frozen terrors of the long, dark nights when I was little, and lonely, and very very much afraid.

  The first thing I remember that frightened me was running into my father’s dressing-room and finding him playing at wild beasts with my brothers. He wore his great fur travelling coat inside out, and his roars were completely convincing. I was borne away screaming, and dreamed of wild beasts for many a long night afterwards.

  Then came some nursery charades. I was the high-born orphan, whom gipsies were to steal, and my part was to lie in a cradle, and, at the proper moment to be carried away shrieking. I understood my part perfectly — I was about three, I suppose — and had rehearsed it more than once. Being carried off in the arms of the gipsy (my favourite sister) was nothing to scream at, I thought, but she told me to scream, and I did it. Unfortunately, however, there had been no dress rehearsals, and when, on the night of the performance the high-born orphan found itself close to a big black bonnet and a hideous mask, it did scream to some purpose, and presently sc
reaming itself into some sort of fit or swoon, was put to bed, and stayed there for many days which passed dreamlike. But that old woman haunted my dreams for years —— haunts them still indeed. I tell you I come across her in my dreams to this day. She bends over me and puts her face close to mine, and I wake with a spasm of agonised terror; only now it is not horrible to me to waken “in the dark.” I draw a few long breaths and as soon as my heart beats a little less wildly I fall asleep again. But a child who wakes from an ugly dream does not fall asleep so quickly. For to a child who is frightened, the darkness and the silence of its lonely room are only a shade less terrible than the wild horrors of dreamland. One used to lie awake in the silence, listening, listening to the pad-pad of one’s heart, straining one’s ears to make sure that it was not the pad-pad of something else, something unspeakable creeping towards one out of the horrible dense dark. One used to lie quite, quite still, I remember, listening, listening. And when my nurse came to bed and tucked me up, she used to find my pillow wet, and say to the under-nurse —

  “Weakness, you know. The precious poppet doesn’t seem to get any stronger.”

  But my pillow was not wet with tears of weakness. These were the dews of agony and terror.

  My nurse — ah, how good she was to me — never went downstairs to supper after she found out my terrors which she very quickly did. She used to sit in the day nursery with the door open “a tiny crack,” and that light was company, because I knew I had only to call out, and someone who loved me would come and banish fear. But a light without human companionship was worse than darkness, especially a little light. Night-lights, deepening the shadows with their horrid possibilities are a mere refinement of cruelty, and some friends who thought to do me a kindness by leaving the gas burning low gave me one of the most awful nights I ever had.