Complete Novels of E Nesbit, page 418
The doctor obeyed. And when Anthony had mounted the stairs, staggering a little, and came out into the Empire room, the doctor set down the lamp on a console table where it burned palely in the sunshine.
“That’s right, put the fur in the box,” he said. “Put those sofa cushions in first. That’s it. Now keep the lid steady. Right!”
He stooped and laid the body in the woolly nest, smoothed the dark hair, and arranged the hands across the quiet breast.
“The lungs are not acting? You’re sure of that?”
“Quite.”
“Then more sofa pillows. There must be no chance of bruising her against the chest.”
“But if she’s alive? “ said the doctor. It was his first concession.
“But you say she isn’t. And anyhow it’s all right for a few hours. We must travel in the guard’s van with her. Fetch up some odds and ends from the lab., will you? To look as though we’d been packing apparatus. Strew some straw about. There’s a case of glass under the bench downstairs.”
“Yes,” said Wilton. “I say! The way the arms fell over your shoulder—”
“Yes, I know,” Anthony interrupted; “you’ll have to come round to my view. Hurry up with that straw.” Anthony spread the veil over the face in the chest, and gently laid the sofa cushions on it, and folded the ends of the lambskin up over all. Then he shut the lid.
“Now,” he said, when Wilton came back with the straw, “just lock it, will you? while I go down and collect one or two things! need.”
He went down and began to put together certain objects from the inner room.
The doctor, left alone, lifted the pillow and the veil for one more look. Hearing Anthony returning, he hastily lowered the lid and turned the key. But it would not turn; something obstructed it. He tried again; something resisted, yielded, the lock turned, and he took the key out. Then he saw that what had withstood him was a fold of filmy red stuff which, overflowing from the chest, had caught in the lock. It showed more fully at the side of the lock. He did not want to unlock the box again, so he tore at the stuff and a piece came away in his hand. He drove in the broken edges under the lid with his penknife.
“Locked? Right! “ said Anthony. He had a bundle of knobbly things in a cloth.
“I’ll cut up and pack these things in a bag,” he said. “ You ring and tell them to bring the cart round, and we’ll see the chest taken down ourselves.”
They did. And they reached the station in time to oversee the lifting of the chest from the cart. It was an easy matter for Sir Anthony Drelincourt to arrange to travel up in the guard’s van beside the chest that “contained valuable apparatus.” Wilton kept him company. The journey was tedious. Both men were tired, and responded with effort to the guard’s subservient commonplaces.
The glory of the day faded as they neared London, and it was under grey skies that Wilton sought out a greengrocer near London Bridge, who — one of the porters assured them—”kept a van.” Anthony remained at the station guarding the chest, and was an object of deep interest to a girls’ school on its way to the Crystal Palace. After a very long time Wilton came back with the van and two beery satellites. The traffic was heavy and the eastward journey slow. Anthony, with the calmness of a man the natural impatience of whose temperament had been schooled to quietness by his stronger will, sat by the driver looking straight out over the horse’s ears. It was Wilton who criticized the driver’s choice of route, and besought him, more than once, to “hurry up.”
“The ‘orse is doing of ‘er best,” the driver always answered; “it’s a bit thick to-day, you see. We’re a-gettin’ on now.”
And so, at long last, skirting the mean streets and the waste ground, the van stopped at the big gates of Malacca Wharf; the gates were jerked back on their rusty hinges, and the carved chest was carried across moss-grown stones, up the stairway, and into the laboratory, already dusty with solitude.
“Thankee, guvner,” said the major satellite, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand; “I don’t mind if I do. It’s bin as ‘eavy a job as ever I done. Full of gold and silver, I s’pose.” He laughed and spat on the half-crown that had been Anthony’s largesse. “I’d as lief carry a corfin,” he said. “Thankee, sir!”
CHAPTER XV. THREE TELEGRAMS
THE filling of a chest with any object which you may wish to remove, the superintending of its removal from your Ancestral Halls in Sussex to your laboratory in London, may present difficulties; but the task is simplicity itself compared with playing a conspirator’s part at a picnic when your fellow conspirators are far away and you, besides being afraid of committing yourself, are racked with a thousand curiosities and anxieties in regard to the conspiracy, its cause, its progress, and what the deuce is going to be the end of it all.
William Bats carried out Drelincourt’s programme, and Lady Blair played up beautifully: was surprised and desolated to hear that Anthony had been called away to London, and assuaged and comforted to hear that he would return that night if possible. The other guests behaved quite naturally: except Rose. Rose said nothing whatever at first. And then she said too much, regretting Anthony’s absence with transparent falseness, and saying how much too bad it was of him, till Bats longed to shake her. He did mutter, as he offered her salad, “Don’t overdo it;” but she did not seem to hear. Fortunately the picnic party was enjoying itself, and Bats perceived that only he and Lady Blair were observant of Rose.
One picnic is very like another. This one was at Bodiam, and the cloth was spread in the courtyard of the old castle. After luncheon every one wandered except Lady Blair, who said she would like to sit quietly for a little while and think of the past.
“Ruined castles always make me think of the past,” she said. “The ravages of time, you know. And the past is the past, whether it’s fifty years ago or five hundred.”
So they left her. And she went to sleep at once. The ravages of time are wonderfully resisted by sleep. And Lady Blair had this much in common with Napoleon and the Iron Duke, that she could take sleep as she found it, by the minute or by the hour.
The rest of the picnic party divided itself into couples, as all well-regulated picnic parties should do, and began to explore. Lord Alfriston and Miss Raven found the old punt, and went round and round the broad moat that is half choked with water-lilies under the shadow of the tall towers. Mullinger and Linda Smith found the scaling of the crumbling walls worth while. Miss Royal and Mr. Bats stood and looked at each other.
“Well?” said she.
He replied like an echo. “Well?”
“Let’s climb a tower,” she said; “or no, let’s climb on to that bit of broken wall by where they say the refectory used to be. Then I can smoke, and if any tourists come, I can see them in time and hide the cigarette. In towers people come upon you unawares. I must smoke.”
“You’re feeling like that, are you?” said he, for it was a recognized convention that Rose only smoked when she was worried. (“One must smoke or drink,” she was used to say, “and drinking would be disgusting, whereas smoking is merely repulsive.”)
“Yes; exactly like that,” she said, setting hand and foot to the climbing of the mound. “There, now you get up on the other side. That’s it. Now then, what’s the matter with Tony?”
“Tony?” he echoed blankly.
“Yes, Tony! Not you or me or Mullinger, but Tony. What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“Of course if you won’t tell me, you won’t,” said Rose; “but it’s no use repeating what I say like a parrot. Something has happened to Tony. Something important. And I want to know what it is.”
“How should I know?” he said. “How should I know that anything has happened?”
“Do you know why he’s gone to London?”
“No,” lied Bats loyally. It was the first lie he had ever told Rose, and he did not enjoy it.
“Now look here, Billy,” Rose was saying; “don’t be crusty and tiresome. Anthony was different this morning. Didn’t you notice it? I can’t make you understand if you didn’t notice it. But he was different. And I wonder whether it had anything to do with his going to London. Has it?”
“I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t know where he’s gone. And I don’t pry into his business.”
“You mean I do? Of course I do. I ought to. You pretend to be fond of him.”
“I don’t.”
“And yet you can’t see that he’s no more fit to take care of himself than a baby.”
“I wonder how you’d like it if any one said that of you?”
“They couldn’t say it of me. Why didn’t you go with him?”
“My name isn’t Whitehead,” said Bats.
“Well, mine is,” said Rose, her head turned away from him. She was picking bits of moss from between the stones and pulling them to pieces: the cigarette had gone out. “If I’d called myself his friend I’d have gone with him. Billy, do be nice. I’m awfully worried about him. I want you to tell me something.”
“Well?”
“Has he ever been in love with any one else?”
“You really think I should tell you if he had?”
“No, of course not, but you might tell me if he hasn’t.”
“I should tell you that if he had.”
“Oh, don’t be clever! Tell me, has he?”
“On the distinct understanding that I should say the same whether he had or had not, I don’t mind telling you that to the best of my knowledge and belief he’s never been in love with any one.”
“Not even with me?”
“You know I didn’t mean that,” he answered, knowing that he had meant it, though he hjid not meant to say it.
“If you hadn’t — I mean if I hadn’t — I mean if I didn’t feel sure that he hadn’t cared for any one else I should feel as though he had cared for some one, and that this going to London is something to do with her.”
“I may set your mind at rest then,” said Bats, “because really I don’t believe he ever has.”
There was a silence. Then Rose said: “I’ll tell you one reason why I’m worried. Old Abrahamson told my fortune for me once. He looked in the crystal. And I looked—”
“And saw — your fate? Anthony?”
“I saw Anthony, yes. But Abrahamson saw something else. It was that day I brought the coffee, and we sat on the stairs. Do you remember?”
Bats remembered.
“Well, I went into the laboratory after you’d gone I don’t care,” she said, answering some voice that was not hers or Bats. “I don’t care. I shall tell if I like. I got Ben Levi to send a telegram to Linda and she sent me one. And I told you it was from the Glorious Weekly, and you went out with the illustrations. Then I got my key and went into the laboratory.”
“When you knew he didn’t wish it?”
“Yes. I wanted to find out why he didn’t wish it.”
“How extraordinarily dishonourable,” said Bats deliberately.
“Yes, it was. I’m glad you know it, though. I wanted to tell Anthony, but I was afraid if I did I should let out what Mr. Abrahamson said.”
“What did he say?”
“He came almost as soon as you’d gone. He seemed much less English than usual — very mysterious; and he looked in the crystal and he told me the man I cared about would ask me to marry him that day. And Anthony did, that very evening. So that came true. Then he said that the man I cared about would be very rich, and that came true too. So it looks as though there were something in it, doesn’t it? And it’s that that torments me. Because if two things have come true, the others may.”
“What were the others?”
“He said something about a strange sorrow. And he said if wealth came to my — to him, I mean — I ought to make him refuse it. And I didn’t, of course, when the time came. And he said it was a matter of life and death. And then he pretended not to believe it and went away.”
“What did he see in the crystal? Didn’t he tell you?”
“He said he saw something he didn’t understand. He said he saw a beautiful woman — dead.”
“What? “ said Bats, almost falling off the mound.
“It wasn’t me” she went on ingenuously. “Some other woman. And it was after he’d seen that, that he pretended not to believe in it. So I know the strange sorrow had something to do with her.”
“I see,” Bats forced himself to say.
“So I wondered whether Tony’s going to-day had anything to do with any one else he’d cared for. I thought she might be dying and have sent for him. He might have told me. I shouldn’t have been jealous or horrid about it.”
“Not if she was really dying, you wouldn’t. No!” said Bats.
“Billy. You are fond of me, aren’t you? “ said Rose quickly. “Because if you are, don’t say unkind things. I feel so helpless. As if I were alone at sea in a boat without oars. You know I’ve always felt so strong. As if I could always trust myself to keep going and to have a dozen people hanging on to me and keep them going too.”
“I know,” he said, “and so you have.”
“Yes, but,” she went on, “it’s not like that now. I feel like a person that’s lost its way. I’ve always felt as if — well, don’t you know, sort of George Eliot-y about Fate — as if one made one’s own fate, and that people who were unfortunate were really only silly. I always felt I could do anything I wanted, and that other people ought to be able to too. If I wanted any one to like me, they always did.”
“I know,” said Bats again.
“Until,” she was going on, but Bats’ voice seemed to awaken her. She stopped short. “I’m talking an awful lot of nonsense,” she said; “the cigarette must have got into my head. Oh! it’s gone out and I’ve broken it at the waist. Give me another. What I was trying to say was that I’m anxious about Anthony. And I know it’s silly. But I wish you were with him.”
“He’s got Wilton.”
“Wilton’s no good. He’ll look after Wilton. But you’d look after him. It was Wilton going too that made me wonder whether he’d gone to see some one who’s ill.”
“You’re worrying yourself about nothing,” said Bats. “I believe Anthony’s gone up on some business connected with his great discovery. And he’ll tell you all about it if you ask him, I’ve no doubt.”
“I never like to ask him about his work,” said Rose. “I simply can’t understand it, and when he takes a bit of paper and a pencil and says he’ll make it as simple as ABC, my brain spins round like a — what are those tops that go crooked? — yes, a gyroscope.”
“Cheer up,” said Bats. “I suppose the wives of geniuses always have a poor time. And I suppose that there’s something that compensates. He probably thinks it’s a noble reticence that makes you not ask questions about his work. When really it’s your gyroscopic mind.”
“Yes,” said she, “and it’s hateful, isn’t it, when people think you much nicer than you are?”
“I don’t know,” said Bats; “do you? It works both ways, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose that’s clever,” said Rose. “Look, the Fairy Godmother is signalling. It can’t be tea-time already. Yes, I can get down all right.”
It seemed to Bats that he had had enough for one day. But Destiny thought otherwise. It elected that he should occupy the second seat in the little motor. The other seat was Lady Blair’s, and no sooner were they alone in the little motor’s whirring luxury than she opened on him with —
“What’s the matter with Anthony?”
Mr. Bats wanted to be quiet, wanted to think, but he roused himself to defend the position with —
“What do you mean?”
“He seemed different this morning,” said the terribly observant old lady. “More vivid, more alert. As though something wonderful had happened to him. I’ve seen the look before,” she sighed.
“Then you ought to know what it means better than I, who can’t even recognize it from your description.”
“But that’s just it,” said she. “When I’ve observed that look before, it’s been because the young man who wore the look had just fallen in love.”
“It’s not that, at any rate.”
“I understand from Anthony,” said Lady Blair, “that you and I are at present his sole confidants in the matter of his engagement to our magnificent Rose. What a girl, what strength, what force of character, what integrity, what noble beauty!”
Bats felt half-inclined to say “Thank you!” and more than half-inclined to say “Don’t be impertinent, woman!”
He said neither.
“So of course it can’t be falling in love that’s given him that queer look. It’s not the look of an engaged man, you know — I know that look well enough, a sort of exalted sheepishness. No, the look I mean is when a man has just that minute discovered that there’s only one woman in the world; a sort of beautiful madness. But of course that’s all over in this case. I do wonder what the transfiguring influence could have been.”
“Science, Madam,” said Bats severely. “Science is a mistress whose least smile transfigures the world to her devotee. I have seen our friend lost to the world before now by some sudden luminous aperçu in the matter of bacteria or crystals or a dog’s inside.”
“Yes, I know,” Lady Blair interrupted. “But you waste your eloquence, You can’t throw dust in my eyes, or crystals either. Have you ever heard of the resurrection of love?
‘Love we deemed dead rises again,
Greets us re-risen,’
or whatever it is.”
She looked at him keenly. “In my opinion a young man would look just as our Anthony looked if some one he had loved and parted from ‘for ever’, as they say, had suddenly let him know that it wasn’t for ever. But in that case, what a pity about our Rose!”
“You may dismiss that idea from your mind,” said Bats very decidedly; “there’s never been any one else.”
“Then, from an old woman’s sentimental point of view,” said Lady Blair, “there’s never been any one.”
