Complete Novels of E Nesbit, page 143
“Markham will bring you some warm milk. Drink it up and sleep well, darling,” said the lady; and with the idea very near and plain he put his arms round her neck and hugged her.
“Good-bye,” he said; “you are good. I do love you.” The lady went away very pleased.
When Markham came with the milk Dickie said, “You want me gone, don’t you?”
Markham said she didn’t care.
“Well, but how am I to get away — with my crutch?”
“Mean to say you’d cut and run if you was the same as me — about the legs, I mean?”
“Yes,” said Dickie.
“And not nick anything?”
“Not a bloomin’ thing,” said he.
“Well,” said Markham, “you’ve got a spirit, I will say that.”
“You see,” said Dickie, “I wants to get back to farver.”
“Bless the child,” said Markham, quite affected by this.
“Why don’t you help me get out? Once I was outside the park I’d do all right.”
“Much as my place is worth,” said Markham; “don’t you say another word getting me into trouble.”
But Dickie said a good many other words, and fell asleep quite satisfied with the last words that had fallen from Markham. These words were: “We’ll see.”
It was only just daylight when Markham woke him. She dressed him hurriedly, and carried him and his crutch down the back stairs and into that very butler’s pantry through whose window he had crept at the bidding of the red-haired man. No one else seemed to be about.
“Now,” she said, “the gardener he has got a few hampers ready — fruit and flowers and the like — and he drives ’em to the station ‘fore any one’s up. They’d only go to waste if ‘e wasn’t to sell ‘em. See? An’ he’s a particular friend of mine; and he won’t mind an extry hamper more or less. So out with you. Joe,” she whispered, “you there?”
Joe, outside, whispered that he was. And Markham lifted Dickie to the window. As she did so she kissed him.
“Cheer-oh, old chap!” she said. “I’m sorry I was so short. An’ you do want to get out of it, don’t you?”
“No error,” said Dickie; “an’ I’ll never split about him selling the vegetables and things.”
“You’re too sharp to live,” Markham declared; and next moment he was through the window, and Joe was laying him in a long hamper half-filled with straw that stood waiting.
“I’ll put you in the van along with the other hampers,” whispered Joe as he shut the lid. “Then when you’re in the train you just cut the string with this ‘ere little knife I’ll make you a present of and out you gets. I’ll make it all right with the guard. He knows me. And he’ll put you down at whatever station you say.”
“Here, don’t forget ‘is breakfast,” said Markham, reaching her arm through the window. It was a wonderful breakfast. Five cold rissoles, a lot of bread and butter, two slices of cake, and a bottle of milk. And it was fun eating agreeable and unusual things, lying down in the roomy hamper among the smooth straw. The jolting of the cart did not worry Dickie at all. He was used to the perambulator; and he ate as much as he wanted to eat, and when that was done he put the rest in his pocket and curled up comfortably in the straw, for there was still quite a lot left of what ordinary people consider night, and also there was quite a lot left of the sleepiness with which he had gone to bed at the end of the wonderful day. It was not only just body-sleepiness: the kind you get after a long walk or a long play day. It was mind-sleepiness — Dickie had gone through so much in the last thirty-six hours that his poor little brain felt quite worn out. He fell asleep among the straw, fingering the clasp-knife in his pocket, and thinking how smartly he would cut the string when the time came.
“THREE OR FOUR FACES LOOKED DOWN AT DICKIE”
And he slept for a very long time. Such a long time that when he did wake up there was no longer any need to cut the string of the hamper. Some one else had done that, and the lid of the basket was open, and three or four faces looked down at Dickie, and a girl’s voice said —
“Why, it’s a little boy! And a crutch — oh, dear!” Dickie sat up. The little crutch, which was lying corner-wise above him in the hamper, jerked out and rattled on the floor.
“Well, I never did — never!” said another voice. “Come out, dearie; don’t be frightened.”
“How kind people are!” Dickie thought, and reached his hands to slender white hands that were held out to him. A lady in black — her figure was as slender as her hands — drew him up, put her arms round him, and lifted him on to a black bentwood chair.
His eyes, turning swiftly here and there, showed him that he was in a shop — a shop full of flowers and fruit.
“Mr. Rosenberg,” said the slender lady—”oh, do come here, please! This extra hamper — —”
A dark, handsome, big-nosed man came towards them.
“It’s a dear little boy,” said the slender lady, who had a pale, kind face, dark eyes, and very red lips.
“It’th a practical joke, I shuppothe,” said the dark man. “Our gardening friend wanth a liththon: and I’ll thee he getth it.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” said Dickie, wriggling earnestly in his high chair; “it was my fault. I fell asleep.”
The girls crowded round him with questions and caresses.
“I ought to have cut the string in the train and told the guard — he’s a friend of the gardener’s,” he said, “but I was asleep. I don’t know as ever I slep’ so sound afore. Like as if I’d had sleepy-stuff — you know. Like they give me at the orspittle.”
I should not like to think that Markham had gone so far as to put “sleepy-stuff” in that bottle of milk; but I am afraid she was not very particular, and she may have thought it best to send Dickie to sleep so that he could not betray her or her gardener friend until he was very far away from both of them.
“But why,” asked the long-nosed gentleman—”why put boyth in bathketth? Upthetting everybody like thith,” he added crossly.
“It was,” said Dickie slowly, “a sort of joke. I don’t want to go upsetting of people. If you’ll lift me down and give me me crutch I’ll ‘ook it.”
But the young ladies would not hear of his hooking it.
“We may keep him, mayn’t we, Mr. Rosenberg?” they said; and he judged that Mr. Rosenberg was a kind man or they would not have dared to speak so to him; “let’s keep him till closing-time, and then one of us will see him home. He lives in London. He says so.”
Dickie had indeed murmured “words to this effect,” as policemen call it when they are not quite sure what people really have said.
“Ath you like,” said Mr. Rosenberg, “only you muthn’t let him interfere with bithneth; thath all.”
They took him away to the back of the shop. They were dear girls, and they were very nice to Dickie. They gave him grapes, and a banana, and some Marie biscuits, and they folded sacks for him to lie on.
And Dickie liked them and was grateful to them — and watched his opportunity. Because, however kind people were, there was one thing he had to do — to get back to the Gravesend lodging-house, as his “father” had told him to do.
The opportunity did not come till late in the afternoon, when one of the girls was boiling a kettle on a spirit-lamp, and one had gone out to get cakes in Dickie’s honor, which made him uncomfortable, but duty is duty, and over the Gravesend lodging-house the star of duty shone and beckoned. The third young lady and Mr. Rosenberg were engaged in animated explanations with a fair young gentleman about a basket of roses that had been ordered, and had not been sent.
“Cath,” Mr. Rosenberg was saying—”cath down enthureth thpeedy delivery.”
And the young lady was saying, “I am extremely sorry, sir; it was a misunderstanding.”
And to the music of their two voices Dickie edged along close to the grapes and melons, holding on to the shelf on which they lay so as not to attract attention by the tap-tapping of his crutch.
He passed silently and slowly between the rose-filled window and the heap of bananas that adorned the other side of the doorway, turned the corner, threw his arm over his crutch, and legged away for dear life down a sort of covered Arcade; turned its corner and found himself in a wilderness of baskets and carts and vegetables, threaded his way through them, in and out among the baskets, over fallen cabbage-leaves, under horses’ noses, found a quiet street, a still quieter archway, pulled out the knife — however his adventure ended he was that knife to the good — and prepared to cut the money out of the belt Mr. Beale had buckled round him.
And the belt was not there! Had he dropped it somewhere? Or had he and Markham, in the hurry of that twilight dressing, forgotten to put it on? He did not know. All he knew was that the belt was not on him, and that he was alone in London, without money, and that at Gravesend his father was waiting for him — waiting, waiting. Dickie knew what it meant to wait.
He went out into the street, and asked the first good-natured-looking loafer he saw the way to Gravesend.
“Way to your grandmother,” said the loafer; “don’t you come saucing of me.”
“But which is the way?” said Dickie.
The man looked hard at him and then pointed with a grimy thumb over his shoulder.
“It’s thirty mile if it’s a yard,” he said. “Got any chink?”
“I lost it,” said Dickie. “My farver’s there awaitin’ for me.”
“Garn!” said the man; “you don’t kid me so easy.”
“I ain’t arstin’ you for anything except the way,” said Dickie.
“More you ain’t,” said the man, hesitated, and pulled his hand out of his pocket. “Ain’t kiddin’? Sure? Father at Gravesend? Take your Bible?”
“Yuss,” said Dickie.
“Then you take the first to the right and the first to the left, and you’ll get a blue ‘bus as’ll take you to the ‘Elephant.’ That’s a bit of the way. Then you arst again. And ‘ere — this’ll pay for the ‘bus.” He held out coppers.
This practical kindness went to Dickie’s heart more than all the kisses of the young ladies in the flower-shop. The tears came into his eyes.
“Well, you are a pal, and no error,” he said. “Do the same for you some day,” he added.
The lounging man laughed.
“I’ll hold you to that, matey,” he said; “when you’re a-ridin’ in yer carriage an’ pair p’raps you’ll take me on ter be yer footman.”
“When I am, I will,” said Dickie, quite seriously. And then they both laughed.
The “Elephant and Castle” marks but a very short stage of the weary way between London and Gravesend. When he got out of the tram Dickie asked the way again, this time of a woman who was selling matches in the gutter. She pointed with the blue box she held in her hand.
“It’s a long way,” she said, in a tired voice; “nigh on thirty mile.”
“Thank you, missis,” said Dickie, and set out, quite simply, to walk those miles — nearly thirty. The way lay down the Old Kent Road, and presently Dickie was in familiar surroundings. For the Old Kent Road leads into the New Cross Road, and that runs right through the yellow brick wilderness where Dickie’s aunt lived. He dared not follow the road through those well-known scenes. At any moment he might meet his aunt. And if he met his aunt . . . he preferred not to think of it.
Outside the “Marquis of Granby” stood a van, and the horses’ heads were turned away from London. If one could get a lift? Dickie looked anxiously to right and left, in front and behind. There were wooden boxes in the van, a lot of them, and on the canvas of the tilt was painted in fat, white letters —
FRY’S TONIC
THE ONLY CURE
There would be room on the top of the boxes — they did not reach within two feet of the tilt.
Should he ask for a lift, when the carter came out of the “Marquis”? Or should he, if he could, climb up and hide on the boxes and take his chance of discovery on the lift? He laid a hand on the tail-board.
“Hi, Dickie!” said a voice surprisingly in his ear; “that you?”
Dickie owned that it was, with the feeling of a trapped wild animal, and turned and faced a boy of his own age, a schoolfellow — the one, in fact, who had christened him “Dot-and-go-one.”
“Oh, what a turn you give me!” he said; “thought you was my aunt. Don’t you let on you seen me.”
“Where you been?” asked the boy curiously.
“Oh, all about,” Dickie answered vaguely. “Don’t you tell me aunt.”
“Yer aunt? Don’t you know?” The boy was quite contemptuous with him for not knowing.
“Know? No. Know what?”
“She shot the moon — old Hurle moved her; says he don’t remember where to. She give him a pint to forget’s what I say.”
“Who’s livin’ there now?” Dickie asked, interest in his aunt’s address swallowed up in a sudden desperate anxiety.
“No one don’t live there. It’s shut up to let apply Roberts 796 Broadway,” said the boy. “I say, what’ll you do?”
“I don’t know,” said Dickie, turning away from the van, which had abruptly become unimportant. “Which way you goin’?”
“Down home — go past your old shop. Coming?”
“No,” said Dickie. “So long — see you again some day. I got to go this way.” And he went it.
All the same the twilight saw him creeping down the old road to the house whose back-yard had held the rabbit-hutch, the garden where he had sowed the parrot food, and where the moonflowers had come up so white and beautiful. What a long time ago! It was only a month really, but all the same, what a long time!
The news of his aunt’s departure had changed everything. The steadfast desire to get to Gravesend, to find his father, had given way, at any rate for the moment, to a burning anxiety about Tinkler and the white stone. Had his aunt found them and taken them away? If she hadn’t and they were still there, would it not be wise to get them at once? Because of course some one else might take the house and find the treasures. Yes, it would certainly be wise to go to-night, to get in by the front window — the catch had always been broken — to find his treasures, or at any rate to make quite sure whether he had lost them or not.
No one noticed him as he came down the street, very close to the railings. There are so many boys in the streets in that part of the world. And the front window went up easily. He climbed in, dragging his crutch after him.
He got up-stairs very quickly, on hands and knees, went straight to the loose board, dislodged it, felt in the hollow below. Oh, joy! His hands found the soft bundle of rags that he knew held Tinkler and the seal. He put them inside the front of his shirt and shuffled down. It was not too late to do a mile or two of the Gravesend road. But the moonflower — he would like to have one more look at that.
He got out into the garden — there stood the stalk of the flower very tall in the deepening dusk. He touched the stalk. It was dry and hard — three or four little dry things fell from above and rattled on his head.
“Seeds, o’ course,” said Dickie, who knew more about seeds now than he had done when he saved the parrot seeds. One does not tramp the country for a month, at Dickie’s age, without learning something about seeds.
He got out the knife that should have cut the string of the basket in the train, opened it and cut the stalk of the moonflower, very carefully so that none of the seeds should be, and only a few were, lost. He crept into the house holding the stalk upright and steady as an acolyte carries a processional cross.
“HE MADE, WITH TRIPLE LINES OF SILVERY SEEDS, A SIX-POINTED STAR”
The house was quite dark now, but a street lamp threw its light into the front room, bare, empty, and dusty. There was a torn newspaper on the floor. He spread a sheet of it out, kneeled by it and shook the moonflower head over it. The seeds came rattling out — dozens and dozens of them. They were bigger than sunflower seeds and flatter and rounder, and they shone like silver, or like the pods of the plant we call honesty.
“Oh, beautiful, beautiful!” said Dickie, letting the smooth shapes slide through his fingers. Have you ever played with mother-of-pearl card counters? The seeds of the moonflower were like those.
He pulled out Tinkler and the seal and laid them on the heap of seeds. And then knew quite suddenly that he was too tired to travel any further that night.
“I’ll doss here,” he said; “there’s plenty papers” — he knew by experience that, as bed-clothes, newspapers are warm, if noisy—”and get on in the morning afore people’s up.”
He collected all the paper and straw — there was a good deal littered about in the house — and made a heap in the corner, out of the way of the window. He did not feel afraid of sleeping in an empty house, only very lordly and magnificent because he had a whole house to himself. The food still left in his pockets served for supper, and you could drink quite well at the wash-house tap by putting your head under and turning it on very slowly.
And for a final enjoyment he laid out his treasures on the newspaper — Tinkler and the seal in the middle and the pearly counters arranged in patterns round them, circles and squares and oblongs. The seeds lay very flat and fitted close together. They were excellent for making patterns with. And presently he made, with triple lines of silvery seeds, a six-pointed star, something like this —
with the rattle and the seal in the middle, and the light from the street lamp shone brightly on it all.
“That’s the prettiest of the lot,” said Dickie Harding, alone in the empty house.
And then the magic began.
CHAPTER IV. WHICH WAS THE DREAM?
The two crossed triangles of white seeds, in the midst Tinkler and the white seal, lay on the floor of the little empty house, grew dim and faint before Dickie’s eyes, and his eyes suddenly smarted and felt tired so that he was very glad to shut them. He had an absurd fancy that he could see, through his closed eyelids, something moving in the middle of the star that the two triangles made. But he knew that this must be nonsense, because, of course, you cannot see through your eyelids. His eyelids felt so heavy that he could not take the trouble to lift them even when a voice spoke quite near him. He had no doubt but that it was the policeman come to “take him up” for being in a house that was not his.
