Complete Novels of E Nesbit, page 653
“What a big hole you’ve made,” said I. “I believe I could get into it if I curled up very much.”
“Ah!” said my brother grimly, “you thought I couldn’t do it.”
“Do you mean to say you aren’t going to let us go shares,” said Harry, reading his brother’s tone instantly.
“Not a share,” said Alfred firmly, “this is going to be my cave, and if I find anyone in it without my leave, I’ll throw him to the alligators.”
“There aren’t any alligators,” said Harry, “there are only ducks,” and indeed, there were several swimming about the yellow waters of the pond.
“All right,” said Alfred cheerfully, sending a large spadeful of clay splashing into the pond, “I’ll throw you to the ducks then, I daresay they’ll do just as well.”
Alfred worked with what seemed to us superhuman vigour, and before evening there really was a hole in the clay bank big enough for him to get into, if, as I said, he curled himself up very much.
“He’ll be tired of it to-morrow,” said Harry to me privately, reasoning from his former experience of his brother, “and then he’ll let us have it.” But the next day we found that the roof of the cave had fallen in.
“No one need want to have it now,” I said, but I was mistaken. The landslip, while filling up, had enlarged the hole, so that when the loose clay was cleared out, there was a space large enough for us all to have got in, even with the dogs. Alfred twisted some straw into a rope and made it, with string, into a rough mat. This be put at the bottom of his rough cave. I timidly offered to help with this, but my offers were sternly rejected.
“You said I couldn’t do it,” he said, “and I’ll jolly well show you I can.”
Harry came to me a little later when I was feeding my rabbits. “He’s got it all so nice,” he said, “he’s roofed it over with a hurdle and he’s put a bit of old tarpaulin over it, and he’s fastening it down with big stones like the people in the Swiss Family Robinson; I wish he’d let us share in it.”
“Look here,” I said, “let’s walk into town and get him a present, then he’ll see we’re sorry we said he couldn’t do it.”
In the broiling sun we walked the five miles into the town and back, returning with a large green sugarstick wrapped in coloured paper which had taken all our half-pence to buy. With this we approached the pond. Alfred was sitting in his cave with the raft moored at his feet; I waved the sugarstick in the air.
“Look here, Alfred,” I said “here’s a sucre de pomme for you; we’ve been all the way to Dinan to get it, and we’re sorry we said you couldn’t.”
“You little duffers,” he cried, “I don’t want your sucre de pomme, I only wanted you to say you were sorry. You needn’t have walked five miles in the broiling sun to do that. You’d like to come over, wouldn’t you?” he added, unmooring the raft.
“We really didn’t mean to vex you,” I said, as he came across.
“Not another word,” he said handsomely, and rowed us to the cave.
It was a very soft cave, and we had no means of breaking the sucre de pomme, so we took it in turns to suck it; Alfred after some persuasion, consenting to join us in the feast, so as not to hurt our feelings, he said.
That cave was a joy to us for many a day, though there was generally at least half an inch of water in it; and we didn’t abandon it till the autumn rains had swelled the pond water, and raised it above the level of our cave.
It was a grand day for us when we first discovered our stream; it was three or four fields from our house, and ran through a beautiful meadow with sloping woods on each side. Its bottom was partly of shining sand and stone, and in some places of clay. We built dams and bridges with the clay, we caught fish with butterfly nets in the sandy shallows; we called it the Nile and pretended that there were crocodiles in it, and that the rocks among the woods were temples and pyramids.
One day Alfred proposed that we should try and find the source of it. “We shall have to travel through a very wild country,” he said, “explorers always do and we shall want a good lot of provisions, for I don’t suppose we shall get back before dinner-time, so you kids had better sneak as much bread-and-butter as you can at breakfast, and I’ll sneak what I can out of the larder, and we’ll start directly after breakfast to-morrow.”
We secured a goodly stock of provisions in an old nose-bag which we found in the stables, but it was so heavy that we were glad to hide it under the second hedge that we passed and go on with only what we could carry in our pockets. We struck the river at the usual point.
“I think we ought to wade up,” said Alfred, “there are no crocodiles in this part of the river, but the lions and tigers on the banks are something awful.”
So we waded up stream, which is tiring work, let me tell you.
“I don’t see a single lion,” I said presently, “but I’m sure I saw a crocodile just now under that bank.”
So we got out and walked by the stream’s edge on the short, fine, sun-warmed turf. But presently we came to the end of the field; the stream ran through a wood, and we had to take to wading again, but the water was much shallower and it was easy. We ate some of our provisions, sitting upon a large, flat, moss-covered stone, in the middle of the stream. Then we went on again. Harry began to get rather tired.
“We shall never find the source of the stream,” he said. “I shouldn’t wonder if it’s thousands of miles away, somewhere up by Paris I daresay. I vote we turn back.”
But his suggestion was howled down by the exploring party, and we went on. Through a meadow where the flax was drying in stocks, then through another wood we followed the stream, and then with a thrill of delight, we saw that the water ran from a little brick tunnel, the mouth of which was draped in a green veil of maiden-hair. I suppose it was about four feet high.
“You’ll turn back now,” said Harry triumphantly.
For all answer, Alfred stooped and plunged into the darkness of the little tunnel. I followed, and Harry brought up the rear. It was back-breaking work, but the floor was smooth. If we had had to pick our way, we could never have done it, for Alfred had only a few matches, and lighted one very occasionally.
At last we found ourselves again in the dazzling sunlight, and behold our stream was meandering through a wonderful swamp full of grasses and curious flowers, whose like I have never seen elsewhere. Our stream got narrower and narrower, but we followed it faithfully, and at last, crashing through a hedge, found ourselves in a roadway. Opposite us in the high bank was a little stone basin into which water trickled from above. From this basin a narrow stream of water, not more than a foot wide, ran across the road and under the hedge. This was the source of our stream-this, a wayside well we had passed a thousand times!
We finished our provisions, and knowing now where we were, went home by road. The swamp had coated us with black mud almost from head to foot, and in this condition we marched gaily into the garden where my mother was entertaining a company of rather smart friends at afternoon tea.
The sequel was bed.
PART XI.
The happy memories of that golden time crowd thickly upon me. I see again the dewy freshness as of an enchanted world, that greeted us when we stole down, carrying our shoes in our hands long before the rest of the household was astir. I smell the scents of dead leaves and wood smoke, and it brings back to me the bonfires on autumn evenings when we used to play at Red Indians and sit round the fire telling stories, and when that palled, dig out from the grey and red ashes the potatoes we had put there to roast, and eat the halfcooked, blackened, smoke-flavoured dainties with keenest appreciation; the rare days when we went to Dinard and paddled in the shallow waters of the bay between blue sky and gold sand, picking limpets from the rocks and wishing for wooden spades, which Dinard then, at least, did not produce.
A part of the infinite charm of those days lies in the fact that we were never bored, and children are bored much more often and much more deeply than their elders suppose.
I remember an occasion when some well-meaning friends persuaded my mother that my education was being neglected. I was sent to a select French school, Mademoiselle Fauchet’s in Divan, but owing to some misunderstanding I arrived five days before the other girls. Mademoiselle Fauchet kindly consented to overlook the mistake and keep me till the other girls arrived. I had a paintbox which pleased me for the first day, but the boredom of the other four days is branded on my memory in grey letters. Mademoiselle Fauchet was busy in visiting her friends and receiving them. She took me out for a serious walk every day. We walked for an hour, and then Mademoiselle Fauchet returned to her visiting and I to the bare schoolroom. I had brought few books with me and these I devoured in an hour or two. There were no books in the schoolroom but lesson-books, thumbed, dog’s eared and ink-stained. There was no one to talk to save the severe cook, who was kind to me in her way but didn’t understand children. There was a grey-walled garden full of fruit that I must not touch and a locked book-case in Mademoiselle Fauchet’s salon, full of books that I must not read.
I was not conscious of being unhappy, only bored, bored to extinction. On the fourth day I persuaded Mademoiselle Faucher to vary our prim walk round the town. She asked me where I would like to go, and I said La Fontaine.
Mademoiselle Fauchet meant to be kind according to her lights, but she was the ideal schoolmistress, grey-haired, prim, bloodless; however she conceded this to me and I was grateful. We started for La Fontaine.
La Fontaine is one of the show places of Divan, as it has a natural fountain of mineral water. There is a casino where balls and fêtes and merry-makings are held, where bands play and little coloured lamps glimmer in the trees. All this awakened no associations, stirred nothing in me, for I had never been to a fête at La Fontaine, but below the platform on which the casino was built, ran a stream, our stream, our Nile, on its way to join the river. The sight of it was too much for me. I remembered our happy exploring parties the muddy dams we had built across it; I thought of the rabbits and the garden at home, and my brothers and my mother, and in the midst of one of mademoiselle’s platitudes on the beauty of the scene, I began to run. Mademoiselle Fauchet called after me, she even ran a little, I believe, but the legs of fifty are not a match for the legs of ten. I ran faster and faster down the avenue of chestnuts. I reached our meadow where our stream ran just the same as in the days when I was free to make a paradise of it. I ran on and on, up the slope over the cornfield, across the road, through our own meadow, and never stopped till I flung myself into my sister’s arms. Then, and not till then, the fact dawned upon me that I had run away from school. I don’t recall the explanations that must have followed on my return. I know that I cried a great deal, and felt that I had committed an awful crime. I couldn’t explain my feelings to myself, but I knew that in the same circumstances I should have done the same again, though I wept heartfelt tears of penitence for having done it at all. I think my mother must have understood something of what I went through, for she did not send me back.
Another period of acute boredom came to me some years later when I went to stay with some friends of my mother’s in the north of London. They lived in a dreary square apart from the main thoroughfare, so that if you looked out over the brown wire blinds you never saw anything pass but butchers’ and bakers’ carts. If I went for a walk, the sordid ugliness of Islington outraged the feelings of a child who had always found her greatest pleasures and life’s greatest beauties in the green country. The people with whom I was staying were the kindest-hearted people in the world; they would have done anything to please me if they had only known what I wanted, but they didn’t know, that was just it.
The dining-room was mahogany and leather with two books in it, the Bible and Family Prayers. They stood on the side-board, flanked on one side by a terra-cotta water-bottle oozing sad tears all day into a terracotta saucer, and on the other by a tea-caddy. Upstairs in the drawing-room, which was only used on Sundays, were a few illustrated giftbooks, albums, and types of beauty arranged on a polished, oval, walnut centre table. The piano was kept locked. There were a few old bound volumes of Good Words, which I had read again and again.
The master of the house, a doctor, was, my mother tells me, a man of brains, but I only saw him at meals and then he seldom spoke. The lady of the house had a heart full of kindness, and a mind full of court circular, she talked of nothing else. Her daughters were kind to me in their way, and the games I had with them were my only relaxation. The doctor talked very occasionally of his patients, and this interested me. One night I went into the surgery and found the bottles of medicine which his assistant had made up, standing in a row waiting for their white paper wrappers. I didn’t in the least realise what I was doing when I thought to escape from my boredom by mixing the contents of these bottles in a large jug, and then in partially filling up the bottles again with the mixture. When I had filled and corked them all, I slipped away; it was done in pure mischief with no thought of consequences; but when I woke that night in bed and suddenly remembered that I had heard that medicines that were given for some complaints were bad for others, and absolutely harmful, my heart stood still. Suppose some poor sick person died, whom Dr. —— would have cured, because I had mixed his medicine with something else. I fully resolved to own up the next morning, but the next morning I reflected that perhaps some of the people that had taken my mixture might die of it and then I should be hanged for murder; ‘it seemed to me wiser to wait and see what happened. If any one did die, and Dr. —— were accused of poisoning his patients, I would come forward in the court of justice, as people did in the books, and own that I, and I alone, had been to blame, malting my confession among the sympathetic tears of usher and jury, the judge himself not remaining dry-eyed. This scene so much appealed to me that I almost forgot that before it could be enacted somebody would have to die of my mixture. When I remembered this I wept in secret; when I thought of the scene in which I should nobly own my guilt, I secretly exulted. I was not bored now. Whatever else might be the effect of my mixtures, they had certainly cured my boredom. Day after day passed by in spasms of alternate remorse and day-dreaming; every day I expected Dr. —— to announce at dinner that some of his patients had breathed their last in inexplicable circumstances, but he never said anything of the kind, and when a week had passed, I was convinced that so good a doctor never gave anybody any medicine that could do them any harm in any condition, and that one of his medicines was as good for any complaint as any others. Whether this was so, or whether someone had been a witness of my act in the surgery, and had re-made the mixtures, I shall never know, but in the reaction following my anxiety, boredom settled down upon me more heavily than ever. I wrote a frantic letter to my mother begging her to take me away, for I was so miserable, I wished I was dead. Not having any stamps, I gave this letter to Mrs. —— to post. I don’t suppose she thought she was doing any harm when she opened and read it, and I hope she was gratified by its contents. She added a note to my mother begging her to accede to my request, and to take me away at once. It was years before I forgave her for reading that letter, and to this day I am afraid she has never forgiven me for writing it.
My mother was at Penshurst at the time; I was sent down to her in deep disgrace, and my mother received me with gentle reproaches that cut me to the heart. My sister was exceedingly angry with me, perhaps with some cause, and pointed out to me how ungrateful it was to repay Mrs. —— by writing such a letter. I defended myself stoutly.
“I wrote it for mamma and not for her,” and though I was sorry for having hurt the feelings of one I knew had tried to be kind to me, yet I fear the verdict of my unregenerate heart was, “serve her right.” I felt that I was being unjustly blamed, and though I was sorry I would not say so, and the next morning I wandered up through Penshurst churchyard, and through a little wicket-gate into the park, where the splendour of a blaze of buttercups, burst upon me. The may-trees were silver-white, the skylarks singing overhead; I sat down under a white may-tree. The spirit of the spring breathed softly round me, and when I got up to go back I was in love and charity with all men and all women except Mrs. —— .
“I am sorry if I have been naughty,” I said to my sister; “I didn’t mean to be, but-” “That will do,” she said, skilfully stopping my confidences; “now I do hope you are going to try and be a good girl, and not make dear mamma unhappy.”
“I will be good,” I said; “ oh, I will indeed! “ And as long as I stayed among the golden buttercups and silver may-bushes, I believe I was moderately good.
PART XII.
When I began to write of the recollections of my childhood, I thought that all of those days which I remember could well be told in these twelve chapters. But the remembrances of that long ago time crowded thickly on me, and I wandered in the pleasant fields of memory, where time ceases to be. So my twelfth chapter is reached, and finds me still only ten years old, and finds me, moreover, with not one-tenth of the events of those ten years recorded. If only one’s memory were as good for the events of yesterday — of last week, of last year!
I have left myself no space to tell you of my adventures in Germany and France during the war of 1870, of my English school-days, of much that is not ever to be forgotten by me. Since I must needs choose one out of many remembrances, I choose my Kentish home, dearer to me than all. After many wanderings my mother took a house at Halstead, “The Hall” it was called but the house itself did not lend itself to the pretensions of its name. A long, low, red-brick house, that might have been common-place but for the roses and ivy that clung to the front of it, and the rich,-heavy jasmine that covered the side. There was a smooth lawn with chestnut-trees round it and a big garden, where flowers and fruit and vegetables grew together, as they should, without jealousy or class-distinction. There never were such peonies as grew among our currant-bushes, nor such apricots as hung among the leaves on the sunny south wall. From a laburnum-tree in a corner of the lawn we children slung an improvised hammock, and there I used to read and dream, and watch the swaying green gold of leaf and blossom.
