Complete Novels of E Nesbit, page 544
“Fathers generally die when the stepmother comes; or else they can’t help themselves. You know that as well as I do.”
“I suppose your father is a good sort?”
“He’s the best man there is,” said Charling indignantly, “and the kindest and bravest, and cleverest and amusingest, and he can sit any horse like wax; and he can fence with real swords, and sing all the songs in all the world. There!”
Harry was silent, racking his brain for arguments.
“Look here, kiddie,” he said slowly, “if your father’s such a good sort, he’d have more sense than to choose a stepmother who wasn’t nice. He’s a much finer chap than the fathers in fairy tales. You never read of them being able to do all the things your father can do.”
“No,” said Charling, “that’s true.”
“He’s sure to have chosen someone quite jolly, really,” Harry went on, more confidently.
Charling looked up suddenly. “Who was it chose the chap that you weren’t going to stand having set over you?” she said.
The boy bit his lip.
“I swore eternal friendship, so I can never tell your secrets, you know,” said Charling softly, “and I’ve told you every single thing.”
“Well, it’s my sister, then,” said he abruptly, “and she’s married a chap I’ve never seen — and I’m to go and live with them, if you please; and she told me once she was never going to marry, and it was always going to be just us two; and now she’s found this fellow she knew when she was a little girl, and he was a boy — as it might be us, you know — and she’s forgotten all about what she said, and married him. And I wasn’t even asked to the beastly wedding because they wanted to be married quietly; and they came home from their hateful honeymoon this evening, and the holidays begin to-day, and I was to go to this new chap’s house to spend them. And I only got her letter this morning, and I just took my journey money and ran away. My boxes were sent on straight from school, though — so I’ve got no clothes but these. I’m just going to look at the place where she’s to live, and then I’m off to sea.”
“Why didn’t she tell you before?”
“She says she meant it to be a pleasant surprise, because we’ve been rather hard up since my father died, and this chap’s got horses and everything, and she says he’s going to adopt me. As if I wanted to be adopted by any old stuck-up money-grubber!”
“But you haven’t seen him,” said Charling gently. “If I’m silly, you are too, aren’t you?”
She hid her face on her sleeve to avoid seeing the effect of this daring shot. Only silence answered her.
Presently Harry said —
“Now, kiddie, let me take you home, will you? Give the stepmother a fair show, anyhow.”
Charling reflected. She was very tired. She stroked Harry’s hand absently, and after a while said —
“I will if you will.”
“Will what?”
“Go back and give your chap a fair show.”
And now the boy reflected.
“Done,” he said suddenly. “After all, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Come on.”
He stood up and held out his hand. This was about the time when the cook packed her box and went off, leaving it to be sent after her. Public opinion in the servants’ hall was too strong to be longer faced.
The shadows of the trees lay black and level across the pastures when the two children reached the lodge gates. A floral arch was above the gate, and wreaths of flowers and flags made the avenue gay. Charling had grown very tired, and Harry had carried her on his back for the last mile or two — resting often, because Charling was a strong, healthy child, and, as he phrased it, “no slouch of a weight.”
Now they paused at the gate of the lodge.
“This is my house,” said Charling. “They’ve put all these things up for her, I suppose. If you’ll write down your address I’ll give you mine, and we can write and tell each other what they are like afterwards. I’ve got a bit of chalk somewhere.”
She fumbled in the dusty confusion of her little pocket while Harry found the envelope of his sister’s letter and tore it in two. Then, one on each side of the lodge gate-post, the children wrote, slowly and carefully, for some moments. Presently they exchanged papers, and each read the words written by the other. Then suddenly both turned very red.
“But this is my address,” said she. “The Grange, Falconbridge.”
“It’s where my sister’s gone to live, anyhow,” said he.
“Then — then—”
Conviction forced itself first on the boy.
“What a duffer I’ve been! It’s him she’s married.”
“Your sister?”
“Yes. Are you sure your father’s a good sort?”
“How dare you ask!” said Charling. “It’s your sister I want to know about.”
“She’s the dearest old darling!” he cried. “Oh! kiddie, come along; run for all you’re worth, and perhaps we can get in the back way, and get tidied up before they come, and they need never know.”
He held out his hand; Charling caught at it, and together they raced up the avenue. But getting in the back way was impossible, for Murchison met them full on the terrace, and Charling ran straight into his arms. There should have been scolding and punishment, no doubt, but Charling found none.
And, now, who so sleek and demure as the runaways, he in Eton jacket and she in spotless white muslin, when the carriage drew up in front of the hall, amid the cheers of the tenants and the bowing of the orderly, marshalled servants?
And then a lady, pretty as a princess in a fairy tale, with eyes as blue as Harry’s, was hugging him and Charling both at once; while a man, whom Harry at once owned to be a man, stood looking at the group with grave, kind eyes.
“We’ll never, never tell,” whispered the boy. The servants had been sworn to secrecy by Murchison.
Charling whispered back, “Never as long as we live.”
But long before bedtime came each of the runaways felt that concealment was foolish in the face of the new circumstances, and with some embarrassment, a tear or two, and a little gentle laughter, the tale was told.
“Oh, Harry! how could you?” said the stepmother, and went quietly out by the long window with her arm round her brother’s shoulders.
Charling was left alone with her father.
“Why didn’t you tell me, father?”
“I wish I had, childie; but I thought — you see — I was going away — I didn’t want to leave you alone for a fortnight to think all sorts of nonsense. And I thought my little girl could trust me.” Charling hid her face in her hands. “Well! it’s all right now! don’t cry, my girlie.” He drew her close to him.
“And you’ll love Harry very much?”
“I will. He brought you back.”
“And I’ll love her very much. So that’s all settled,” said Charling cheerfully. Then her face fell again. “But, father, don’t you love mother any more? Cook said you didn’t.”
He sighed and was silent. At last he said, “You are too little to understand, sweetheart. I have loved the lady who came home to-day all my life long, and I shall love your mother as long as I live.”
“Cook said it was like being unkind to mother. Does mother mind about it, really?”
He muttered something inaudible — to the cook’s address.
“I don’t think they either of them mind, my darling Charling,” he said. “You cannot understand it, but I think they both understand.”
WITH AN E
SHE had been thinking of him all day — of the incredible insignificance of the point on which they had quarrelled; the babyish folly of the quarrel itself, the silly pride that had made the quarrel strong till the very memory of it was as a bar of steel to keep them apart. Three years ago, and so much had happened since then. Three years! and not a day of them all had passed without some thought of him; sometimes a happy, quiet remembrance transfigured by a wise forgetfulness; sometimes a sudden recollection, sharp as a knife. But not on many days had she allowed the quiet remembrance to give place to the knife-thrust, and then kept the knife in the wound, turning it round with a scientific curiosity, which, while it ran an undercurrent of breathless pleasure beneath the pain, yet did not lessen this — intensified it, rather. To-day she had thought of him thus through the long hours on deck, when the boat sped on even keel across the blue and gold of the Channel, in the dusty train from Ostend — even in the little open carriage that carried her and her severely moderate luggage from the station at Bruges to the Hôtel du Panier d’Or. She had thought of him so much that it was no surprise to her to see him there, drinking coffee at one of the little tables which the hotel throws out like tentacles into the Grande Place.
There he sat, in a grey flannel suit. His back was towards her, but she would have known the set of his shoulders anywhere, and the turn of his head. He was talking to someone — a lady, handsome, but older than he — oh! evidently much older.
Elizabeth made the transit from carriage to hotel door in one swift, quiet movement. He did not see her, but the lady facing him put up a tortoiseshell-handled lorgnon and gazed through it and through narrowed eyelids at the new comer.
Elizabeth reappeared no more that evening. It was the waiter who came out to dismiss the carriage and superintend the bringing in of the luggage. Elizabeth, stumbling in a maze of forgotten French, was met at the stair-foot by a smiling welcome, and realised in a spasm of grateful surprise that she need not have brought her dictionary. The hostess of the “Panier d’Or,” like everyone else in Belgium, spoke English, and an English far better than Elizabeth’s French had been.
She secured a tiny bedroom, and a sitting room that looked out over the Place, so that whenever he drank coffee she might, with luck, hope to see the back of his dear head.
“Idiot!” said Elizabeth, catching this little thought wandering in her mind, and with that she slapped the little thought and put it away in disgrace. But when she woke in the night, it woke, too, and cried a little.
That night it seemed to her that she would have all her meals served in the little sitting-room, and never go downstairs at all, lest she should meet him. But in the morning she perceived that one does not save up one’s money for a year in order to have a Continental holiday, and sweeten all one’s High-school teaching with one thought of that holiday, in order to spend its precious hours between four walls, just because — well, for any reason whatsoever.
So she went down to take her coffee and rolls humbly, publicly, like other people.
The dining-room was dishevelled, discomposed; chairs piled on tables and brooms all about. It was in the hotel café, where the marble-topped little tables were, that Mademoiselle would be served. Here was a marble-topped counter, too, where later in the day apéritifs and petits verres would be handed. On this, open for the police to read, lay the list of those who had spent the night at the “Panier d’Or.”
The room was empty. Elizabeth caught up the list. Yes, his name was there, at the very top of the column — Edward Brown, and below it “Mrs. Brown—”
Elizabeth dropped the paper as though it had bitten her, and, turning sharply, came face to face with that very Edward Brown. He raised his hat gravely, and a shiver of absolute sickness passed over her, for his glance at her in passing was the glance of a stranger. It was not possible.... Yet it was true. He had forgotten her. In three little years! They had been long enough years to her, but now she called them little. In three little years he had forgotten her very face.
Elizabeth, chin in air, marched down the room and took possession of the little table where her coffee waited her.
She began to eat. It was not till the sixth mouthful that her face flushed suddenly to so deep a crimson that she dared not raise her eyes to see how many of the folk now breaking their rolls in her company had had eyes for her face. As a matter of fact, only one observed the sudden colour, and he admired and rejoiced, for he had seen such a colour in that face before.
“She is angry — good!” said he, and poured out more coffee with a steady hand.
The thought that flooded Elizabeth’s face and neck and ears with damask was one quite inconsistent with the calm eating of bread-and-butter. She laid down her knife and walked out, chin in air to the last. Alone in her sitting-room she buried her face in a hard cushion and went as near to swearing as a very nice girl may.
“Oh! oh! oh! — oh! bother! Why did I go down? I ought to have fled to the uttermost parts of the earth: or even to Ghent. Of course. Oh, what a fool I am! It’s because he’s married that he won’t speak to me. You fool! you fool! you fool! Yes, of course, you knew he was married; only you thought you’d like the silly satisfaction of hearing his voice speak to you, and yours speaking to him. But — oh! fool! fool! fool!”
Elizabeth put on the thickest veil she had, and the largest hat, and went blindly out. She walked very fast, never giving a glance to the step-and-stair gables of the old houses, the dominant strength of the belfry, the curious, un-English groups in the streets. Presently she came to a bridge — a canal — overhanging houses — balconies — a glimpse like the pictures of Venice. She leaned her elbows on the parapet and presently became aware of the prospect.
“It is pretty,” she said grudgingly, and at the same moment turned away, for in a flower-hung balcony across the water she saw him.
“This is too absurd,” she said. “I must get out of the place — at least, for the day. I’ll go to Ghent.”
He had seen her, and a thrill of something very like gratified vanity straightened his shoulders. When a girl has jilted you, it is comforting to find that even after three years she has not forgotten you enough to be indifferent, no matter how you may have consoled yourself in the interval.
Elizabeth walked fast, but she did not get to the railway station, because she took the wrong turning several times. She passed through street after strange street, and came out on a wide quay; another canal; across it showed old, gabled, red-roofed houses. She walked on and came presently to a bridge, and another quay, and a little puffing, snorting steamboat.
She hurriedly collected a few scattered items of her school vocabulary —
“Est-ce que — est-ce que — ce bateau à vapeur va — va — anywhere?”
A voluble assurance that it went at twelve-thirty did not content her. She gathered her forces again.
“Oui; mais où est-ce qu’il va aller — ?”
The answer sounded something like “Sloosh,” and the speaker pointed vaguely up the green canal.
Elizabeth went on board. This was as good as Ghent. Better. There was an element of adventure about it. “Sloosh” might be anywhere; one might not reach it for days. But the boat had not the air of one used to long cruises; and Elizabeth felt safe in playing with the idea of an expedition into darkest Holland.
And now by chance, or because her movements interested him as much as his presence repelled her, this same Edward Brown also came on board, and, concealed by the deep daydream into which she had fallen, passed her unseen.
When she shook the last drops of the daydream from her, she found herself confronting the boat’s only other passenger — himself.
She looked at him full and straight in the eyes, and with the look her embarrassment left her and laid hold on him.
He remembered her last words to him —
“If ever we meet again, we meet as strangers.” Well, he had kept to the very letter of that bidding, and she had been angry. He had been very glad to see that she was angry. But now, face to face for an hour and a half — for he knew the distance to Sluys well enough — could he keep silence still and yet avoid being ridiculous? He did not intend to be ridiculous; yet even this might have happened. But Elizabeth saved him.
She raised her chin and spoke in chill, distant courtesy.
“I think you must be English, because I saw you at the ‘Panier d’Or’; everyone’s English there. I can’t make these people understand anything. Perhaps you could be so kind as to tell me how long the boat takes to get to wherever it does get to?”
It was a longer speech than she would have made had he been the stranger as whom she proposed to treat him, but it was necessary to let him understand at the outset what was the part she intended to play.
He did understand, and assumed his rôle instantly.
“Something under two hours, I think,” he said politely, still holding in his hand the hat he had removed on the instant of her breaking silence. “How cool and pleasant the air is after the town!” The boat was moving now quickly between grassy banks topped by rows of ash trees. The landscape on each side spread away like a map intersected with avenues of tall, lean, wind-bent trees, that seemed to move as the boat moved.
“Good!” said she to herself; “he means to talk. We shan’t sit staring at each other for two hours like stuck pigs. And he really doesn’t know me? Or is it the wife? Oh! I wish I’d never come to this horrible country!” Aloud she said, “Yes, and how pretty the trees and fields are—”
“So — so nice and green, aren’t they?” said he.
And she said, “Yes.”
Each inwardly smiled. In the old days each had been so eager for the other’s good opinion, so afraid of seeming commonplace, that their conversations had been all fine work, and their very love-letters too clever by half. Now they did not belong to each other any more, and he said the trees were green, and she said “Yes.”
“There seem to be a great many people in Bruges,” said she.
“Yes,” he said, in eager assent. “Quite a large number.”
“There is a great deal to be seen in these old towns. So quaint, aren’t they?”
She remembered his once condemning in a friend the use of that word. Now he echoed it.
“So very quaint,” said he. “And the dogs drawing carts! Just like the pictures, aren’t they?”
