The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (23 page)

“Well!” said Peter.

“
Well
!” said Bobbie.

“
Well!
” said Phyllis.

“Whatever on earth does that mean?” asked Peter, but he did not expect any answer.

“
I
don’t know,” said Bobbie. “Perhaps the old gentleman told the people at his station to look out for us and wave. He knew we should like it!”

Now, curiously enough, this was just what had happened. The old gentleman, who was very well known and respected at his particular station, had got there early that morning, and he had waited at the door where the young man stands holding the interesting machine that clips the tickets, and he had said something to every single passenger who passed through that door. And after nodding to what the old gentleman had said—and the nods expressed every shade of surprise, interest, doubt, cheerful pleasure, and grumpy agreement—each passenger had gone on to the platform and read one certain part of his newspaper. And when the passengers got into the train, they had told the other passengers who were already there what the old gentleman had said, and then the other passengers had also looked at their newspapers and seemed very astonished and, mostly, pleased. Then, when the train passed the fence where the three children were, newspapers and hands and handkerchiefs were waved madly, till all that side of the train was fluttery with white like the pictures of the King’s Coronation in the biograph at Maskelyne and Cook’s. To the children it almost seemed as though the train itself was alive, and was at last responding to the love that they had given it so freely and so long.

“It is most extraordinarily rum!” said Peter.

“Most stronery!” echoed Phyllis.

But Bobbie said, “Don’t you think the old gentleman’s waves seemed more significating than usual?”

“No,” said the others.

“I do,” said Bobbie. “I thought he was trying to explain something to us with his newspaper.”

“Explain what?” asked Peter, not unnaturally.

“
I
don’t know,” Bobbie answered, “but I do feel most awfully funny. I feel just exactly as if something was going to happen.”

“What is going to happen,” said Peter, “is that Phyllis’s stocking is going to come down.”

This was but too true. The suspender had given way in the agitation of the waves to the 9.15. Bobbie’s handkerchief served as first aid to the injured, and they all went home.

Lessons were more than usually difficult to Bobbie that day. Indeed, she disgraced herself so deeply over a quite simple sum about the division of 48 pounds of meat and 36 pounds of bread among 144 hungry children that Mother looked at her anxiously.

“Don’t you feel quite well, dear?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” was Bobbie’s unexpected answer. “I don’t know how I feel. It isn’t that I’m lazy. Mother, will you let me off lessons today? I feel as if I wanted to be quite alone by myself.”

“Yes, of course I’ll let you off,” said Mother; “but—”

Bobbie dropped her slate. It cracked just across the little green mark that is so useful for drawing patterns round, and it was never the same slate again. Without waiting to pick it up she bolted. Mother caught her in the hall feeling blindly among the waterproofs and umbrellas for her garden hat.

“What is it, my sweetheart?” said Mother. “You don’t feel ill, do you?”

“I
don’t
know,” Bobbie answered, a little breathlessly, “but I want to be by myself and see if my head really
is
all silly and my inside all squirmy-twisty.”

“Hadn’t you better lie down?” Mother said, stroking her hair back from her forehead.

“I’d be more alive in the garden, I think,” said Bobbie.

But she could not stay in the garden. The hollyhocks and the asters and the late roses all seemed to be waiting for something to happen. It was one of those still, shiny autumn days, when everything does seem to be waiting.

Bobbie could not wait.

“I’ll go down to the station,” she said, “and talk to Perks and ask about the signalman’s little boy.”

So she went down. On the way she passed the old lady from the Post-office, who gave her a kiss and a hug, but, rather to Bobbie’s surprise, no words except:—

“God bless you, love—” and, after a pause, “run along—do.”

The draper’s boy, who had sometimes been a little less than civil and a little more than contemptuous, now touched his cap, and uttered the remarkable words:—

“’Morning, Miss, I’m sure—”

The blacksmith, coming along with an open newspaper in his hand, was even more strange in his manner. He grinned broadly, though, as a rule, he was a man not given to smiles, and waved the newspaper long before he came up to her. And as he passed her, he said, in answer to her “Good morning”:—

“Good morning to you, Missie, and many of them! I wish you joy, that I do!”

“Oh!” said Bobbie to herself, and her heart quickened its beats, “something
is
going to happen! I know it is—everyone is so odd, like people are in dreams.”

The Station Master wrung her hand warmly. In fact he worked it up and down like a pump-handle. But he gave her no reason for this unusually enthusiastic greeting. He only said:—

“The 11.54’s a bit late, Miss—the extra luggage this holiday time,” and went away very quickly into that inner Temple of his into which even Bobbie dared not follow him.

Perks was not to be seen, and Bobbie shared the solitude of the platform with the Station Cat. This tortoiseshell lady, usually of a retiring disposition, came today to rub herself against the brown stockings of Bobbie with arched back, waving tail, and reverberating purrs.

“Dear me!” said Bobbie, stooping to stroke her, “how very kind everybody is today—even you, Pussy!”

Perks did not appear until the 11.54 was signalled, and then he, like everybody else that morning, had a newspaper in his hand.

“Hullo!” he said, “’ere you are. Well, if
this
is the train, it’ll be smart work! Well, God bless you, my dear! I see it in the paper, and I don’t think I was ever so glad of anything in all my born days!” He looked at Bobbie a moment, then said, “One I must have, Miss, and no offence, I know, on a day like this ’ere!” and with that he kissed her, first on one cheek and then on the other.

“You ain’t offended, are you?” he asked anxiously. “I ain’t took too great a liberty? On a day like this, you know—”

“No, no,” said Bobbie, “of course it’s not a liberty, dear Mr. Perks; we love you quite as much as if you were an uncle of ours—but—on a day like
what
?”

“Like this ’ere!” said Perks. “Don’t I tell you I see it in the paper?”

“Saw
what
in the paper?” asked Bobbie, but already the 11.54 was steaming into the station and the Station Master was looking at all the places where Perks was not and ought to have been.

Bobbie was left standing alone, the Station Cat watching her from under the bench with friendly golden eyes.

Of course you know already exactly what was going to happen. Bobbie was not so clever. She had the vague, confused, expectant feeling that comes to one’s heart in dreams. What her heart expected I can’t tell—perhaps the very thing that you and I know was going to happen—but her mind expected nothing; it was almost blank, and felt nothing but tiredness and stupidness and an empty feeling, like your body has when you have been a long walk and it is very far indeed past your proper dinner-time.

Only three people got out of the 11.54. The first was a countryman with two baskety boxes full of live chickens who stuck their russet heads out anxiously through the wicker bars; the second was Miss Peckitt, the grocer’s wife’s cousin, with a tin box and three brown-paper parcels; and the third—

“Oh! my Daddy, my Daddy!” That scream went like a knife into the heart of everyone in the train, and people put their heads out of the windows to see a tall pale man with lips set in a thin close line, and a little girl clinging to him with arms and legs, while his arms went tightly round her.

* * * *

“I knew something wonderful was going to happen,” said Bobbie, as they went up the road, “but I didn’t think it was going to be this. Oh, my Daddy, my Daddy!”

“Then didn’t Mother get my letter?” Father asked.

“There weren’t any letters this morning. Oh! Daddy! it
is
really you, isn’t it?”

The clasp of a hand she had not forgotten assured her that it was. “You must go in by yourself, Bobbie, and tell Mother quite quietly that it’s all right. They’ve caught the man who did it. Everyone knows now that it wasn’t your Daddy.”

“
I
always knew it wasn’t,” said Bobbie. “Me and Mother and our old gentleman.”

“Yes,” he said, “it’s all his doing. Mother wrote and told me you had found out. And she told me what you’d been to her. My own little girl!” They stopped a minute then.

And now I see them crossing the field. Bobbie goes into the house, trying to keep her eyes from speaking before her lips have found the right words to “tell Mother quite quietly” that the sorrow and the struggle and the parting are over and done, and that Father has come home.

I see Father walking in the garden, waiting—waiting. He is looking at the flowers, and each flower is a miracle to eyes that all these months of Spring and Summer have seen only flagstones and gravel and a little grudging grass. But his eyes keep turning towards the house. And presently he leaves the garden and goes to stand outside the nearest door. It is the back door, and across the yard the swallows are circling. They are getting ready to fly away from cold winds and keen frost to the land where it is always summer. They are the same swallows that the children built the little clay nests for.

Now the house door opens. Bobbie’s voice calls:—

“Come in, Daddy; come in!”

He goes in and the door is shut. I think we will not open the door or follow him. I think that just now we are not wanted there. I think it will be best for us to go quickly and quietly away. At the end of the field, among the thin gold spikes of grass and the harebells and Gipsy roses and St. John’s Wort, we may just take one last look, over our shoulders, at the white house where neither we nor anyone else is wanted now.

THE MAGIC CITY

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNING

Philip Haldane and his sister lived in a little red-roofed house in a little red-roofed town. They had a little garden and a little balcony, and a little stable with a little pony in it—and a little cart for the pony to draw; a little canary hung in a little cage in the little bow-window, and the neat little servant kept everything as bright and clean as a little new pin.

Philip had no one but his sister, and she had no one but Philip. Their parents were dead, and Helen, who was twenty years older than Philip and was really his half-sister, was all the mother he had ever known. And he had never envied other boys their mothers, because Helen was so kind and clever and dear. She gave up almost all her time to him; she taught him all the lessons he learned; she played with him, inventing the most wonderful new games and adventures. So that every morning when Philip woke he knew that he was waking to a new day of joyous and interesting happenings. And this went on till Philip was ten years old, and he had no least shadow of a doubt that it would go on for ever. The beginning of the change came one day when he and Helen had gone for a picnic to the wood where the waterfall was, and as they were driving back behind the stout old pony, who was so good and quiet that Philip was allowed to drive it. They were coming up the last lane before the turning where their house was, and Helen said:

“Tomorrow we’ll weed the aster bed and have tea in the garden.”

“Jolly,” said Philip, and they turned the corner and came in sight of their white little garden gate. And a man was coming out of it—a man who was not one of the friends they both knew. He turned and came to meet them. Helen put her hand on the reins—a thing which she had always taught Philip was
never
done—and the pony stopped. The man, who was, as Philip put it to himself, “tall and tweedy,” came across in front of the pony’s nose and stood close by the wheel on the side where Helen sat. She shook hands with him, and said, “How do you do?” in quite the usual way. But after that they whispered. Whispered! And Philip knew how rude it is to whisper, because Helen had often told him this. He heard one or two words, “at last,” and “over now,” and “this evening, then.”

After that Helen said, “This is my brother Philip,” and the man shook hands with him—across Helen, another thing which Philip knew was not manners, and said, “I hope we shall be the best of friends.” Pip said, “How do you do?” because that is the polite thing to say. But inside himself he said, “I don’t want to be friends with
you
.”

Then the man took off his hat and walked away, and Philip and his sister went home. She seemed different, somehow, and he was sent to bed a little earlier than usual, but he could not go to sleep for a long time, because he heard the front-door bell ring and afterwards a man’s voice and Helen’s going on and on in the little drawing-room under the room which was his bedroom. He went to sleep at last, and when he woke up in the morning it was raining, and the sky was grey and miserable. He lost his collar-stud, he tore one of his stockings as he pulled it on, he pinched his finger in the door, and he dropped his tooth-mug, with water in it too, and the mug was broken and the water went into his boots. There are mornings, you know, when things happen like that. This was one of them.

Then he went down to breakfast, which tasted not quite so nice as usual. He was late, of course. The bacon fat was growing grey with waiting for him, as Helen said, in the cheerful voice that had always said all the things he liked best to hear. But Philip didn’t smile. It did not seem the sort of morning for smiling, and the grey rain beat against the window.

After breakfast Helen said, “Tea in the garden is indefinitely postponed, and it’s too wet for lessons.”

That was one of her charming ideas—that wet days should not be made worse by lessons.

“What shall we do?” she said; “shall we talk about the island? Shall I make another map of it? And put in all the gardens and fountains and swings?”

The island was a favourite play. Somewhere in the warm seas where palm trees are, and rainbow-coloured sands, the island was said to be—their own island, beautified by their fancy with everything they liked and wanted, and Philip was never tired of talking about it. There were times when he almost believed that the island was real. He was king of the island and Helen was queen, and no one else was to be allowed on it. Only these two.

But this morning even the thought of the island failed to charm. Philip straggled away to the window and looked out dismally at the soaked lawn and the dripping laburnum trees, and the row of raindrops hanging fat and full on the iron gate.

“What is it, Pippin?” Helen asked. “Don’t tell me you’re going to have horrid measles, or red-hot scarlet fever, or noisy whooping-cough.”

She came across and laid her hand on his forehead.

“Why, you’re quite hot, boy of my heart. Tell sister, what is it?”

“
You
tell
me
,” said Philip slowly.

“Tell you what, Pip?”

“You think you ought to bear it alone, like in books, and be noble and all that. But you
must
tell me; you promised you’d never have any secrets from me, Helen, you know you did.”

Helen put her arm round him and said nothing. And from her silence Pip drew the most desperate and harrowing conclusions. The silence lasted. The rain gurgled in the water-pipe and dripped on the ivy. The canary in the green cage that hung in the window put its head on one side and tweaked a seed husk out into Philip’s face, then twittered defiantly. But his sister said nothing.

“Don’t,” said Philip suddenly, “don’t break it to me; tell me straight out.”

“Tell you what?” she said again.

“What is it?” he said. “
I
know how these unforetold misfortunes happen. Some one always comes—and then it’s broken to the family.”

“
What
is?” she asked.

“The misfortune,” said Philip breathlessly. “Oh, Helen, I’m not a baby. Do tell me! Have we lost our money in a burst bank? Or is the landlord going to put bailiffs into our furniture? Or are we going to be falsely accused about forgery, or being burglars?”

All the books Philip had ever read worked together in his mind to produce these melancholy suggestions. Helen laughed, and instantly felt a stiffening withdrawal of her brother from her arm.

“No, no, my Pippin, dear,” she made haste to say. “Nothing horrid like that has happened.”

“Then what is it?” he asked, with a growing impatience that felt like a wolf gnawing inside him.

“I didn’t want to tell you all in a hurry like this,” she said anxiously; “but don’t you worry, my boy of boys. It’s something that makes me very happy. I hope it will you, too.”

He swung round in the circling of her arm and looked at her with sudden ecstasy.

“Oh, Helen, dear—I know! Some one has left you a hundred thousand pounds a year—some one you once opened a railway-carriage door for—and now I can have a pony of my very own to ride. Can’t I?”

“Yes,” said Helen slowly, “you can have a pony; but nobody’s left me anything. Look here, my Pippin,” she added, very quickly, “don’t ask any more questions. I’ll tell you. When I was quite little like you I had a dear friend I used to play with all day long, and when we grew up we were friends still. He lived quite near us. And then he married some one else. And then the some one died. And now he wants me to marry him. And he’s got lots of horses and a beautiful house and park,” she added.

“And where shall I be?” he asked.

“With me, of course, wherever I am.”

“It won’t be just us two any more, though,” said Philip, “and you said it should be, for ever and ever.”

“But I didn’t know then, Pip, dear. He’s been wanting me so long—”

“Don’t
I
want you?” said Pip to himself.

“And he’s got a little girl that you’ll like so to play with,” she went on. “Her name’s Lucy, and she’s just a year younger than you. And you’ll be the greatest friends with her. And you’ll both have ponies to ride, and—”

“I hate her,” cried Philip, very loud, “and I hate him, and I hate their beastly ponies. And I hate
you!
” And with these dreadful words he flung off her arm and rushed out of the room, banging the door after him—on purpose.

Well, she found him in the boot-cupboard, among the gaiters and galoshes and cricket-stumps and old rackets, and they kissed and cried and hugged each other, and he said he was sorry he had been naughty. But in his heart that was the only thing he was sorry for. He was sorry that he had made Helen unhappy. He still hated “that man,” and most of all he hated Lucy.

He had to be polite to that man. His sister was very fond of that man, and this made Philip hate him still more, while at the same time it made him careful not to show how he hated him. Also it made him feel that hating that man was not quite fair to his sister, whom he loved. But there were no feelings of that kind to come in the way of the detestation he felt for Lucy. Helen had told him that Lucy had fair hair and wore it in two plaits; and he pictured her to himself as a fat, stumpy little girl, exactly like the little girl in the story of “The Sugar Bread” in the old oblong “Shock-Headed Peter” book that had belonged to Helen when she was little.

Helen was quite happy. She divided her love between the boy she loved and the man she was going to marry, and she believed that they were both as happy as she was. The man, whose name was Peter Graham, was happy enough; the boy, who was Philip, was amused—for she kept him so—but under the amusement he was miserable.

And the wedding-day came and went. And Philip travelled on a very hot afternoon by strange trains and a strange carriage to a strange house, where he was welcomed by a strange nurse and—Lucy.

“You won’t mind going to stay at Peter’s beautiful house without me, will you, dear?” Helen had asked. “Every one will be kind to you, and you’ll have Lucy to play with.”

And Philip said he didn’t mind. What else could he say, without being naughty and making Helen cry again?

Lucy was not a bit like the Sugar-Bread child. She had fair hair, it is true, and it was plaited in two braids, but they were very long and straight; she herself was long and lean and had a freckled face and bright, jolly eyes.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said, meeting him on the steps of the most beautiful house he had ever seen; “we can play all sort of things now that you can’t play when you’re only one. I’m an only child,” she added, with a sort of melancholy pride. Then she laughed. “‘Only’ rhymes with ‘lonely,’ doesn’t it?” she said.

“I don’t know,” said Philip, with deliberate falseness, for he knew quite well.

He said no more.

Lucy tried two or three other beginnings of conversation, but Philip contradicted everything she said.

“I’m afraid he’s very, very stupid,” she said to her nurse, an extremely trained nurse, who firmly agreed with her. And when her aunt came to see her next day, Lucy said that the little new boy was stupid, and disagreeable as well as stupid, and Philip confirmed this opinion of his behaviour to such a degree that the aunt, who was young and affectionate, had Lucy’s clothes packed at once and carried her off for a few days’ visit.

So Philip and the nurse were left at the Grange. There was nobody else in the house but servants. And now Philip began to know what loneliness meant. The letters and the picture post-cards which his sister sent every day from the odd towns on the continent of Europe, which she visited on her honeymoon, did not cheer the boy. They merely exasperated him, reminding him of the time when she was all his own, and was too near to him to need to send him post-cards and letters.

The extremely trained nurse, who wore a grey uniform and white cap and apron, disapproved of Philip to the depths of her well-disciplined nature. “Cantankerous little pig,” she called him to herself.

To the housekeeper she said, “He is an unusually difficult and disagreeable child. I should imagine that his education has been much neglected. He wants a tight hand.”

She did not use a tight hand to him, however. She treated him with an indifference more annoying than tyranny. He had immense liberty of a desolate, empty sort. The great house was his to go to and fro in. But he was not allowed to touch anything in it. The garden was his—to wander through, but he must not pluck flowers or fruit. He had no lessons, it is true; but, then, he had no games either. There was a nursery, but he was not imprisoned in it—was not even encouraged to spend his time there. He was sent out for walks, and alone, for the park was large and safe. And the nursery was the room of all that great house that attracted him most, for it was full of toys of the most fascinating kind. A rocking-horse as big as a pony, the finest dolls’ house you ever saw, boxes of tea-things, boxes of bricks—both the wooden and the terra-cotta sorts—puzzle maps, dominoes, chessmen, draughts, every kind of toy or game that you have ever had or ever wished to have.

And Pip was not allowed to play with any of them.

“You mustn’t touch anything, if you please,” the nurse said, with that icy politeness which goes with a uniform. “The toys are Miss Lucy’s. No; I couldn’t be responsible for giving you permission to play with them. No; I couldn’t think of troubling Miss Lucy by writing to ask her if you may play with them. No; I couldn’t take upon myself to give you Miss Lucy’s address.”

For Philip’s boredom and his desire had humbled him even to the asking for this.

For two whole days he lived at the Grange, hating it and every one in it; for the servants took their cue from the nurse, and the child felt that in the whole house he had not a friend. Somehow he had got the idea firmly in his head that this was a time when Helen was not to be bothered about anything; so he wrote to her that he was quite well, thank you, and the park was very pretty and Lucy had lots of nice toys. He felt very brave and noble, and like a martyr. And he set his teeth to bear it all. It was like spending a few days at the dentist’s.

And then suddenly everything changed. The nurse got a telegram. A brother who had been thought to be drowned at sea had abruptly come home. She must go to see him. “If it costs me the situation,” she said to the housekeeper, who answered:

“Oh, well—go, then. I’ll be responsible for the boy—sulky little brat.”

And the nurse went. In a happy bustle she packed her boxes and went. At the last moment Philip, on the doorstep watching her climb into the dog-cart, suddenly sprang forward.

“Oh, Nurse!” he cried, blundering against the almost moving wheel, and it was the first time he had called her by any name. “Nurse, do—do say I may take Lucy’s toys to play with; it
is
so lonely here. I may, mayn’t I? I may take them?”

Perhaps the nurse’s heart was softened by her own happiness and the thought of the brother who was not drowned. Perhaps she was only in such a hurry that she did not know what she was saying. At any rate, when Philip said for the third time, “May I take them?” she hastily answered:

“Bless the child! Take anything you like. Mind the wheel, for goodness’ sake. Good-bye, everybody!” waved her hand to the servants assembled at the top of the wide steps, and was whirled off to joyous reunion with the undrowned brother.