The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (184 page)

“Well, if you would be happier in a partially cleansed state?” said Mr. Red House. And Mrs. Red House, who is my idea of a feudal lady in a castle, said, “Oh, come along, let’s go and partially clean ourselves. I’m dirtier than anybody, though I haven’t explored a bit. I’ve often noticed that the more you admire things the more they come off on you!”

So we all washed as much as we cared to, and went to tea at the gentleman’s house, which was only a cottage, but very beautiful. He had been a war correspondent, and he knew a great many things, besides having books and books of pictures.

It was a splendid party.

We thanked Mrs. R.H. and everybody when it was time to go, and she kissed the girls and the little boys, and then she put her head on one side and looked at Oswald and said, “I suppose you’re too old?”

Oswald did not like to say he was not. If kissed at all he would prefer it being for some other reason than his being not too old for it. So he did not know what to say. But Noël chipped in with—

“You’ll never be too old for it,” to Mrs. Red House—which seemed to Oswald most silly and unmeaning, because she was already much too old to be kissed by people unless she chose to begin it. But every one seemed to think Noël had said something clever. And Oswald felt like a young ass. But Mrs. R.H. looked at him so kindly and held out her hand so queenily that, before he knew he meant to, he had kissed it like you do the Queen’s. Then, of course, Denny and Dicky went and did the same. Oswald wishes that the word “kiss” might never be spoken again in this world. Not that he minded kissing Mrs. Red House’s hand in the least, especially as she seemed to think it was nice of him to—but the whole thing is such contemptible piffle.

We were seen home by the gentleman who wasn’t Mr. Red House, and he stood a glorious cab with a white horse who had a rolling eye, from Blackheath Station, and so ended one of the most adventuring times we ever got out of a play-beginning.

The time ended as the author has pointed out, but not its resultingness. Thus we ever find it in life—the most unharmful things, thoroughly approved even by grown-ups, but too often lead to something quite different, and that no one can possibly approve of, not even yourself when you come to think it over afterwards, like Noël and H.O. had to.

It was but natural that the hearts of the young explorers should have dwelt fondly on everything underground, even drains, which was what made us read a book by Mr. Hugo, all the next day. It is called “The Miserables,” in French, and the man in it, who is a splendid hero, though a convict and a robber and various other professions, escapes into a drain with great rats in it, and is miraculously restored to the light of day, unharmed by the kindly rodents. (N.B.—Rodents mean rats.)

When we had finished all the part about drains it was nearly dinner-time, and Noël said quite suddenly in the middle of a bite of mutton—

“The Red House isn’t nearly so red as ours is outside. Why should the cellars be so much cellarier? Shut up H.O.!” For H.O. was trying to speak.

Dora explained to him how we don’t all have exactly the same blessings, but he didn’t seem to see it.

“It doesn’t seem like the way things happen in books,” he said, “In Walter Scott it wouldn’t be like that, nor yet in Anthony Hope. I should think the rule would be the redder the cellarier. If I was putting it into poetry I should make our cellars have something much wonderfuller in them than just wooden things. H.O., if you don’t shut up I’ll never let you be in anything again.”

“There’s that door you go down steps to,” said Dicky; “we’ve never been in there. If Dora and I weren’t going with Miss Blake to be fitted for boots we might try that.”

“That’s just what I was coming to. (Stow it, H.O.!) I felt just like cellars to-day, while you other chaps were washing your hands for din.—and it was very cold; but I made H.O. feel the same, and we went down, and—that door isn’t shut now.”

The intelligible reader may easily guess that we finished our dinner as quickly as we could, and we put on our outers, sympathising with Dicky and Dora, who, owing to boots, were out of it, and we went into the garden. There are five steps down to that door. They were red brick when they began, but now they are green with age and mysteriousness and not being walked on. And at the bottom of them the door was, as Noël said, not fastened. We went in.

“It isn’t beery, winey cellars at all,” Alice said; “it’s more like a robber’s store-house. Look there.”

We had got to the inner cellar, and there were heaps of carrots and other vegetables.

“Halt, my men!” cried Oswald, “advance not an inch further! The bandits may lurk not a yard from you!”

“Suppose they jump out on us?” said H.O.

“They will not rashly leap into the light,” said the discerning Oswald. And he went to fetch a new dark-lantern of his that he had not had any chance of really using before. But some one had taken Oswald’s secret matches, and then the beastly lantern wouldn’t light for ever so long. But he thought it didn’t matter his being rather a long time gone, because the others could pass the time in wondering whether anything would jump out on them, and if so, what and when.

So when he got back to the red steps and the open door and flashed his glorious bull’s-eye round it was rather an annoying thing for there not to be a single other eye for it to flash into. Every one had vanished.

“Hallo!” cried Oswald, and if his gallant voice trembled he is not ashamed of it, because he knows about wells in cellars, and, for an instant, even he did not know what had happened.

But an answering hullo came from beyond, and he hastened after the others.

“Look out,” said Alice; “don’t tumble over that heap of bones.”

Oswald did look out—of course, he would not wish to walk on any one’s bones. But he did not jump back with a scream, whatever Noël may say when he is in a temper.

The heap really did look very like bones, partly covered with earth. Oswald was glad to learn that they were only parsnips.

“We waited as long as we could,” said Alice, “but we thought perhaps you’d been collared for some little thing you’d forgotten all about doing, and wouldn’t be able to come back, but we found Noël had, fortunately, got your matches. I’m so glad you weren’t collared, Oswald dear.”

Some boys would have let Noël know about the matches, but Oswald didn’t. The heaps of carrots and turnips and parsnips and things were not very interesting when you knew that they were not bleeding warriors’ or pilgrims’ bones, and it was too cold to pretend for long with any comfort to the young Pretenders. So Oswald said—

“Let’s go out on the Heath and play something warm. You can’t warm yourself with matches, even if they’re not your own.”

That was all he said. A great hero would not stoop to argue about matches.

And Alice said, “All right,” and she and Oswald went out and played pretending golf with some walking-sticks of Father’s. But Noël and H.O. preferred to sit stuffily over the common-room fire. So that Oswald and Alice, as well as Dora and Dicky, who were being measured for boots, were entirely out of the rest of what happened, and the author can only imagine the events that now occurred.

When Noël and H.O. had roasted their legs by the fire till they were so hot that their stockings quite hurt them, one of them must have said to the other—I never knew which:

“Let’s go and have another look at that cellar.”

The other—whoever it was—foolishly consented. So they went, and they took Oswald’s dark-lantern in his absence and without his leave.

They found a hitherto unnoticed door behind the other one, and Noël says he said, “We’d better not go in.” H.O. says he said so too. But any way, they did go in.

They found themselves in a small vaulted place that we found out afterwards had been used for mushrooms. But it was long since any fair bud of a mushroom had blossomed in that dark retreat. The place had been cleaned and new shelves put up, and when Noël and H.O. saw what was on these shelves the author is sure they turned pale, though they say not.

For what they saw was coils, and pots, and wires; and one of them said, in a voice that must have trembled—

“It is dynamite, I am certain of it; what shall we do?”

I am certain the other said, “This is to blow up Father because he took part in the Lewisham Election, and his side won.”

The reply no doubt was, “There is no time for delay; we must act. We must cut the fuse—all the fuses; there are dozens.”

Oswald thinks it was not half bad business, those two kids—for Noël is little more than one, owing to his poetry and his bronchitis—standing in the abode of dynamite and not screeching, or running off to tell Miss Blake, or the servants, or any one—but just doing the right thing without any fuss.

I need hardly say it did not prove to be the right thing—but they thought it was. And Oswald cannot think that you are really doing wrong if you really think you are doing right. I hope you will understand this.

I believe the kids tried cutting the fuses with Dick’s pocket-knife that was in the pocket of his other clothes. But the fuses would not—no matter how little you trembled when you touched them.

But at last, with scissors and the gas pliers, they cut every fuse. The fuses were long, twisty, wire things covered with green wool, like blind-cords.

Then Noël and H.O. (and Oswald for one thinks it showed a goodish bit of pluck, and policemen have been made heroes for less) got cans and cans of water from the tap by the greenhouse and poured sluicing showers of the icy fluid in among the internal machinery of the dynamite arrangement—for so they believed it to be.

Then, very wet, but feeling that they had saved their Father and the house, they went and changed their clothes. I think they were a little stuck-up about it, believing it to be an act unrivalled in devotedness, and they were most tiresome all the afternoon, talking about their secret, and not letting us know what it was.

But when Father came home, early, as it happened, those swollen-headed, but, in Oswald’s opinion, quite-to-be-excused, kiddies learned the terrible truth.

Of course Oswald and Dicky would have known at once; if Noël and H.O. hadn’t been so cocky about not telling us, we could have exposed the truth to them in all its uninteresting nature.

I hope the reader will now prepare himself for a shock. In a wild whirl of darkness, and the gas being cut off, and not being able to get any light, and Father saying all sorts of things, it all came out.

Those coils and jars and wires in that cellar were not an infernal machine at all. It was—I know you will be very much surprised—it was the electric lights and bells that Father had had put in while we were at the Red House the day before.

H.O. and Noël caught it very fully; and Oswald thinks this was one of the few occasions when my Father was not as just as he meant to be. My uncle was not just either, but then it is much longer since he was a boy, so we must make excuses for him.

We sent Mrs. Red House a Christmas card each. In spite of the trouble that her cellars had lured him into, Noël sent her a homemade one with an endless piece of his everlasting poetry on it, and next May she wrote and asked us to come and see her. We try to be just, and we saw that it was not really her fault that Noël and H.O. had cut those electric wires, so we all went; but we did not take Albert Morrison, because he was fortunately away with an aged god-parent of his mother’s who writes tracts at Tunbridge Wells.

The garden was all flowery and green, and Mr. and Mrs. Red House were nice and jolly, and we had a distinguished and first-class time.

But would you believe it?—that boxish thing in the cellar, that H.O. wanted them to make a rabbit-hutch of—well, Mr. Red House had cleaned it and mended it, and Mrs. Red House took us up to the room where it was, to let us look at it again. And, unbelievable to relate, it turned out to have rockers, and some one in dark, bygone ages seems, for reasons unknown to the present writer, to have wasted no end of carpentry and carving on it, just to make it into a Cradle. And what is more, since we were there last Mr. and Mrs. Red House had succeeded in obtaining a small but quite alive baby to put in it.

I suppose they thought it was wilful waste to have a cradle and no baby to use it. But it could so easily have been used for something else. It would have made a ripping rabbit-hutch, and babies are far more trouble than rabbits to keep, and not nearly so profitable, I believe.

THE TURK IN CHAINS; OR, RICHARD’S REVENGE

The morning dawned in cloudless splendour. The sky was a pale cobalt colour, as in pictures of Swiss scenery. The sun shone brightly, and all the green things in the garden sparkled in the bewitching rays of the monarch of the skies.

The author of this does not like to read much about the weather in books, but he is obliged to put this piece in because it is true; and it is a thing that does not very often happen in the middle of January. In fact, I never remember the weather being at all like that in the winter except on that one day.

Of course we all went into the garden directly after brekker. (PS.—I have said green things: perhaps you think that is a lapsus lazuli, or slip of the tongue, and that there are not any green things in the winter. But there are. And not just evergreens either. Wallflowers and pansies and snapdragons and primroses, and lots of things, keep green all the year unless it’s too frosty. Live and learn.)

And it was so warm we were able to sit in the summer-house. The birds were singing like mad. Perhaps they thought it was springtime. Or perhaps they always sing when they see the sun, without paying attention to dates.

And now, when all his brothers and sisters were sitting on the rustic seats in the summer-house, the far-sighted Oswald suddenly saw that now was the moment for him to hold that council he had been wanting to hold for some time.

So he stood in the door of the summer-house, in case any of the others should suddenly remember that they wanted to be in some other place. And he said—

“I say. About that council I want to hold.”

And Dicky replied: “Well, what about it?”

So then Oswald explained all over again that we had been Treasure Seekers, and we had been Would-be-Goods, and he thought it was time we were something else.

“Being something else makes you think of things,” he said at the end of all the other things he said.

“Yes,” said H.O., yawning, without putting up his hand, which is not manners, and we told him so. “But I can think of things without being other things. Look how I thought about being a clown, and going to Rome.”

“I shouldn’t think you would want us to remember that,” said Dora. And indeed Father had not been pleased with H.O. about that affair. But Oswald never encourages Dora to nag, so he said patiently—

“Yes, you think of things you’d much better not have thought of. Now my idea is let’s each say what sort of a society we shall make ourselves into—like we did when we were Treasure Seekers—about the different ways to look for it, I mean. Let’s hold our tongues (no, not with your dirty fingers, H.O., old chap; hold it with your teeth if you must hold it with something)—let’s hold our tongues for a bit, and then all say what we’ve thought of—in ages,” the thoughtful boy added hastily, so that every one should not speak at once when we had done holding our tongues.

So we were all silent, and the birds sang industriously among the leafless trees of our large sunny garden in beautiful Blackheath. (The author is sorry to see he is getting poetical. It shall not happen again, and it was an extra fine day, really, and the birds did sing, a fair treat.)

When three long minutes had elapsed themselves by the hands of Oswald’s watch, which always keeps perfect time for three or four days after he has had it mended, he closed the watch and observed—

“Time! Go ahead, Dora.”

Dora went ahead in the following remarks:

“I’ve thought as hard as I can, and nothing will come into my head except—

“‘Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.’

Don’t you think we might try to find some new ways to be good in?”

“No, you don’t!” “I bar that!” came at once from the mouths of Dicky and Oswald.

“You don’t come that over us twice,” Dicky added. And Oswald eloquently said, “No more Would-be-Goods, thank you, Dora.”

Dora said, well, she couldn’t think of anything else. And she didn’t expect Oswald had thought of anything better.

“Yes, I have,” replied her brother. “What I think is that we don’t know half enough.”

“If you mean extra swat,” said Alice; “I’ve more homers than I care for already, thank you.”

“I do not mean swat,” rejoined the experienced Oswald. “I want to know all about real things, not booky things. If you kids had known about electric bells you wouldn’t have——” Oswald stopped, and then said, “I won’t say any more, because Father says a gentleman does not support his arguments with personal illusions to other people’s faults and follies.”

“Faults and follies yourself,” said H.O. The girls restored peace, and Oswald went on—

“Let us seek to grow wiser, and to teach each other.”

“I bar that,” said H.O. “I don’t want Oswald and Dicky always on to me and call it teaching.”

“We might call the society the Would-be-Wisers,” said Oswald hastily.

“It’s not so dusty,” said Dicky; “let’s go on to the others before we decide.”

“You’re next yourself,” said Alice.

“Oh, so I am,” remarked Dicky, trying to look surprised. “Well, my idea is let’s be a sort of Industrious Society of Beavers, and make a solemn vow and covenant to make something every day. We might call it the Would-be-Clevers.”

“It would be the Too-clever-by-half’s before we’d done with it,” said Oswald.

And Alice said, “We couldn’t always make things that would be any good, and then we should have to do something that wasn’t any good, and that would be rot. Yes, I know it’s my turn—H.O., you’ll kick the table to pieces if you go on like that. Do, for goodness’ sake, keep your feet still. The only thing I can think of is a society called the Would-be-Boys.”

“With you and Dora for members.”

“And Noël—poets aren’t boys exactly,” said H.O.

“If you don’t shut up you shan’t be in it at all,” said Alice, putting her arm round Noël. “No; I meant us all to be in it—only you boys are not to keep saying we’re only girls, and let us do everything the same as you boys do.”

“I don’t want to be a boy, thank you,” said Dora, “not when I see how they behave. H.O., do stop sniffing and use your handkerchief. Well, take mine, then.”

It was now Noël’s turn to disclose his idea, which proved most awful.

“Let’s be Would-be-Poets,” he said, “and solemnly vow and convenient to write one piece of poetry a day as long as we live.”

Most of us were dumb at the dreadful thought. But Alice said—

“That would never do, Noël dear, because you’re the only one of us who’s clever enough to do it.”

So Noël’s detestable and degrading idea was shelved without Oswald having to say anything that would have made the youthful poet weep.

“I suppose you don’t mean me to say what I thought of,” said H.O., “but I shall. I think you ought all to be in a Would-be-Kind Society, and vow solemn convents and things not to be down on your younger brother.”

We explained to him at once that he couldn’t be in that, because he hadn’t got a younger brother.

“And you may think yourself lucky you haven’t,” Dicky added.

The ingenious and felicitous Oswald was just going to begin about the council all over again, when the portable form of our Indian uncle came stoutly stumping down the garden path under the cedars.

“Hi, brigands!” he cried in his cheerful unclish manner. “Who’s on for the Hippodrome this bright day?”

And instantly we all were. Even Oswald—because after all you can have a council any day, but Hippodromes are not like that.

We got ready like the whirlwind of the desert for quickness, and started off with our kind uncle, who has lived so long in India that he is much more warm-hearted than you would think to look at him.

Half-way to the station Dicky remembered his patent screw for working ships with. He had been messing with it in the bath while he was waiting for Oswald to have done plunging cleanly in the basin. And in the desert-whirlwinding he had forgotten to take it out. So now he ran back, because he knew how its cardboardiness would turn to pulp if it was left.

“I’ll catch you up,” he cried.

The uncle took the tickets and the train came in and still Dicky had not caught us up.

“Tiresome boy!” said the uncle; “you don’t want to miss the beginning—eh, what? Ah, here he comes!” The uncle got in, and so did we, but Dicky did not see the uncle’s newspaper which Oswald waved, and he went running up and down the train looking for us instead of just getting in anywhere sensibly, as Oswald would have done. When the train began to move he did try to open a carriage door but it stuck, and the train went faster, and just as he got it open a large heavy porter caught him by the collar and pulled him off the train, saying —

“Now, young shaver, no susansides on this ere line, if you please.”

Dicky hit the porter, but his fury was vain. Next moment the train had passed away, and us in it. Dicky had no money, and the uncle had all the tickets in the pocket of his fur coat.

I am not going to tell you anything about the Hippodrome because the author feels that it was a trifle beastly of us to have enjoyed it as much as we did considering Dicky. We tried not to talk about it before him when we got home, but it was very difficult—especially the elephants.

I suppose he spent an afternoon of bitter thoughts after he had told that porter what he thought of him, which took some time, and the station-master interfered in the end.

When we got home he was all right with us. He had had time to see it was not our faults, whatever he thought at the time.

He refused to talk about it. Only he said—

“I’m going to take it out of that porter. You leave me alone. I shall think of something presently.”

“Revenge is very wrong,” said Dora; but even Alice asked her kindly to dry up. We all felt that it was simply piffle to talk copy-book to one so disappointed as our unfortunate brother.

“It is wrong, though,” said Dora.

“Wrong be blowed!” said Dicky, snorting; “who began it I should like to know! The station’s a beastly awkward place to take it out of any one in. I wish I knew where he lived.”

“I know that,” said Noël. “I’ve known it a long time—before Christmas, when we were going to the Moat House.”

“Well, what is it, then?” asked Dicky savagely.

“Don’t bite his head off,” remarked Alice. “Tell us about it, Noël. How do you know?”

“It was when you were weighing yourselves on the weighing machine. I didn’t because my weight isn’t worth being weighed for. And there was a heap of hampers and turkeys and hares and things, and there was a label on a turkey and brown-paper parcel; and that porter that you hate so said to the other porter——”

“Oh, hurry up, do!” said Dicky.

“I won’t tell you at all if you bully me,” said Noël, and Alice had to coax him before he would go on.

“Well, he looked at the label and said, ‘Little mistake here, Bill—wrong address; ought to be 3, Abel Place, eh?’

“And the other one looked, and he said, ‘Yes; it’s got your name right enough. Fine turkey, too, and his chains in the parcel. Pity they ain’t more careful about addressing things, eh?’ So when they had done laughing about it I looked at the label and it said, ‘James Johnson, 8, Granville Park.’ So I knew it was 3, Abel Place, he lived at, and his name was James Johnson.”

“Good old Sherlock Holmes!” said Oswald.

“You won’t really hurt him,” said Noël, “will you? Not Corsican revenge with knives, or poisoned bowls? I wouldn’t do more than a good booby-trap, if I was you.”

When Noël said the word “booby-trap,” we all saw a strange, happy look come over Dicky’s face. It is called a far-away look, I believe, and you can see it in the picture of a woman cuddling a photograph-album with her hair down, that is in all the shops, and they call it “The Soul’s Awakening.”

Directly Dicky’s soul had finished waking up he shut his teeth together with a click. Then he said, “I’ve got it.”

Of course we all knew that.

“Any one who thinks revenge is wrong is asked to leave now.”

Dora said he was very unkind, and did he really want to turn her out?

“There’s a jolly good fire in Father’s study,” he said. “No, I’m not waxy with you, but I’m going to have my revenge, and I don’t want you to do anything you thought wrong. You’d only make no end of a fuss afterwards.”

“Well, it is wrong, so I’ll go,” said Dora. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, that’s all!”

And she went.

Then Dicky said, “Now, any more conscious objectors?”

And when no one replied he went on: “It was you saying ‘Booby-trap’ gave me the idea. His name’s James Johnson, is it? And he said the things were addressed wrong, did he? Well, I’ll send him a Turkey-and-chains.”

“A Turk in chains,” said Noël, growing owley-eyed at the thought—“a live Turk—or—no, not a dead one, Dicky?”

“The Turk I’m going to send won’t be a live one nor yet a dead one.”

“How horrible! Half dead. That’s worse than anything,” and Noël became so green in the face that Alice told Dicky to stop playing the goat, and tell us what his idea really was.

“Don’t you see yet?” he cried; “I saw it directly.”

“I daresay,” said Oswald; “it’s easy to see your own idea. Drive ahead.”

“Well, I’m going to get a hamper and pack it full of parcels and put a list of them on the top—beginning Turk-and-chains, and send it to Mister James Johnson, and when he opens the parcels there’ll be nothing inside.”

“There must be something, you know,” said H.O., “or the parcels won’t be any shape except flatness.”

“Oh, there’ll be something right enough,” was the bitter reply of the one who had not been to the Hippodrome, “but it won’t be the sort of something he’ll expect it to be. Let’s do it now. I’ll get a hamper.”

He got a big one out of the cellar and four empty bottles with their straw cases. We filled the bottles with black ink and water, and red ink and water, and soapy water, and water plain. And we put them down on the list—

1 bottle of port wine.

1 bottle of sherry wine.

1 bottle of sparkling champagne.

1 bottle of rum.

The rest of the things we put on the list were—

1 turkey-and-chains.

2 pounds of chains.

1 plum-pudding.

4 pounds of mince-pies.

2 pounds of almonds and raisins.

1 box of figs.

1 bottle of French plums.

1 large cake.