Lucy (Nesbit)

By E. NESBIT.

HE other day an old gentleman was turning out an old desk, and in the drawer politely termed secret he found a withered rose that a girl had given him, and a bit of old ribbon that had been smart and brisk when she wore it. Also he found a little oblong book with a yellow morocco back, edged and clasped with tarnished gilt, a book that had nothing to do with the girl, who was nobody in particular, and whose name, even, he had forgotten long and long ago. But the little book he had not forgotten; because it was his first diary. On the fly-leaf was written in the violet ink that does not

"To dear Peter, from Mamma, with best love."

And the old gentleman remembered how, in a velvet suit with an embroidered collar, he had coaxed mamma to spend a shilling on that book at the fancy shop near Aunt Ingram's house—the fancy shop which was also the toy-shop and the circulating library.

He read the entries—they were not many; at nine years old one does not keep a diary for many days.

and so on L.L.L. for a fortnight. Then the entries ceased because mamma came back from Switzerland and swept in to where, wrapped in dreams, he sat over a lonely bread-and-butter-and-cold-milk-in-a-mug tea. She swept in with violet silk flounces and a white shawl with a paisley border, and a lace veil to her big bonnet, and kissed him and hugged him and put him to bed herself with many kisses. And next day he went into the garden and was told things. To this very day he cannot remember what happened after that. The next thing he remembers is being at Brighton, very jolly, with the others. A second cousin once told him that after mamma took him away, he was very ill with something the second cousin called brain-fever, and that the doctor had said he would have gone out of his mind but for the child next door, of whom, in the wanderings of his fever, he talked incessantly.

As the old gentleman looked at those entries in the first diary—very crookedly and painfully written with one of those sharp styles of lead, ivory mounted, that were sold with that kind of book, and would only, so to speak, strike on the box, the remembrance of the agony, of which those faint scratchings were the record, came over him. He remembered all abont the next-door neighbour, and all that she was to him when he was not Peter Somebody, Esq., quite grown up, with an office in the City, all respectful clerks and shining mahogany; with money in both pockets, able to choose which way he would go for a walk, and how long he would stay in the garden, and what he would have for meals, and whom he would have to talk to—but just Peter—little Peter who had no voice in any of these things, Peter who had to do as he was told and be a good boy. As he held the yellow book in his hand, and smelt the faint, sweet, musty scent of it, the old gentleman saw again the next-door house.

He used to call it the next-door house, but really, the school front door opened out of the flat face of a Georgian house with wire blinds to the windows, straight on to the High Street. Whereas, the front door of the next-door hunse opened on to a garden, with a flagged path leading to a locked gate which opened into a side lane. The lane was twisted and interesting, with different kinds of houses and gardens and most attractive summer-houses—the kind of place that you can make up stories about. Therefore, Peter was never allowed to walk that way. But the next-door house was close to the school garden, so that you could see the patterns on the curtains, and the white square of a transparency that in the day was just a white square, but at night when the lamp was lighted became a beautiful, soft, pencilly picture of a castle gate, and six men in chains kneeling before a king. There was no one to tell Peter that it was the Burgesses of Calais surrendering to King Edward, and he only saw it once, on the first evening when they forgot about him, and he stayed in the garden till it was quite dark, looking at everything, and afraid to touch anything, and crying every now and then because he was such a wicked boy, and nobody could ever love him. His aunt had explained this carefully to him before she sent him away to school.

Mamma—she who gave the pocket-book with her best love—had gone to Switzerland with papa, so that she might get quite well again, and Peter was left with an aunt who had never had any children of her own.

At first he was so unhappy that he was quite good: that is to say, he sat still, or went out for a walk and did exactly as he was told and nothing else. But presently he grew happier—one of the housemaids was quite kind to him, when there was no one about—and having grown happier, he began to be busy. The old gardener was cutting down nettles in the paddock with a reaping-hook. Peter got half a hoop of an old barrel out of the woodshed, and cut down nettles too, only he chose the large red and green kind that were in the garden. He worked vigorously, thinking how pleased Aunt Ingram would be.

When he had been jumped at from behind, had been shaken, and had had his ears boxed so that they burned and hurt even after he was put to bed, he learned that the nettles he had cut down were not nettles at all, but were called Coal-yusses, and were very precious, and that lie was a very naughty little boy.

Then he tried to make up for this unfortunate mistake by being more than usually polite, and, jumping up to open the door for his aunt, he caught his foot in a rug, and came heavily to the ground, bringing with him a thing called a whatnot, covered with cups and saucers that nobody ever used. Most of the cups and saucers were broken, and Peter's head had a lump on it like a large plum. He was quite glad to be put to bed, that time.

Later, he wished to model with clay, and got a hard lump out of the garden; to soften it, he washed it in the bath, a new installation which interested Peter mightily, and left the tap running. The hall ceiling was dripping like the roof of a stalactite cave before it was discovered that the clay had choked the waste-pipe of the newly fitted bath. Things like this constantly happened, without Peter at all meaning them to.

But the worst thing of all was also the last. Cheered by two whole days during which nothing regrettable had occurred, he made a booby trap for his friend the house-maid—a waste-paper basket, a paper bag with flour in it, some green plums, and so forth.

The drawing-room door was broad and heavy, and the housemaid had not yet "done" the room. All things were propitious. But the first person to come into the room was not the housemaid. It was Snubs, his aunt's fat pug, who came quietly in, without disturbing the booby-trap, sniffed carelessly, and turned to go out. Just then Aunt Ingram, in gardening gloves and mushroom hat, passed the French window, glanced through it, and saw the booby trap. She opened the window, and she and the wind rushed in together. Peter from his hiding-place behind the door saw what was coming, and ducked. The blow intended for his ear struck the door, and, the wind helping, closed it with violence—the booby trap discharged itself upon him and his aunt impartially. And Snubs—poor Snubs, on his hurried way out, was caught in the closing door.

Peter cried a good deal over this. He really was sorry. He would have liked to show his respect for Snubs, whom he had not liked in life, by giving him a magnificent funeral, such as his Mamma had given the canary that had died, with the cats in black bows as chief mourners, but he was shut up in the spare bedroom, and they would not let him out, even for the funeral.

It is dreadful to be shut up in a strange room all alone with your guilty conscience and your confused remorses and exonerations.

When his aunt came to him much later in the day, he had fallen asleep on the floor. She awoke him to tell him austerely that he was to go to school at once.

"But it's holiday time," said Peter.

"Not for wicked little boys who kill innocent dogs, it isn't," said Aunt Isabel. "Miss Snape has kindly consented to receive you at once."

"To-night? " said Peter miserably.

"To-morrow. She has sent me an electric telegram. You can go to bed now. And be sure you say your prayers, and ask for a new heart. Suppose you were to die to-night, where would you go?"

"I don't know," said Peter, quite truly.

"But I do—No," for Peter, with the incurably forgiving spirit of the natural child, had moved towards her for the customary "Good night" kiss. "No. Nobody can love such a wicked little boy. Nobody would speak to you if they knew. You are almost the same as a murderer."

"I'm very, very sorry," said Peter. "I won't ever do it again."

"I'll take care of that," said Aunt Ingram; "and mind you say your prayers."

His prayers included an earnest request that God would make Peter a good boy for ever and ever, amen. He was very sleepy.

And next day they sent him to school. He went in the charge of the railway guard, a kind and friendly man, who made jokes and tried to cheer people up. Peter did cheer up until he remembered that if the guard knew about Snubs, he would not speak to him any more. So then he left off being cheered up, and the guard thought he was tired and let him alone. And Peter wondered whether his crime showed in his face, and whether the guard had become so quiet because he had somehow found out that this was the little boy who had killed a dog—quite by accident, but still killed a dog.

A strange servant in a plaid shawl and a spoon bonnet with a blue curtain to it met him at a railway station a long way off, and took him through a town to a large, strange house. There was bread-and-butter and a blue mug of milk at one end of a long table—also a vague lady with ringlets who kissed him as if she did not want to, and told him to be a good boy, and that he was to do exactly what Jane said. He never saw this lady again. Then he was sent into the garden to play, and forgotten. When they remembered him, ifc was bed-time, and after that an interval that seemed no interval ended in the awakening in a brightly sunlit, bare-boarded attic room, to the awful sense of some crime committed and forgotten, then sudden, hot, shameful remembrance. He was little better than a murderer. No one would speak to him if they knew. The old man who turned out the desk the other day recalls with a thrill of reflected misery that guilty awakening.

And now his whole duty was to do what Jane said. Jane said very little. She was quite kind, but he seldom saw her except at meals and at bath-times, She was a trusted servant left in charge of the empty school-house and the embarrassing little boarder. The other servants, the teachers, the pupils, even the schoolmistress who received Peter on that first evening, all were away on their holidays. Peter and Jane were alone in the house. And Jane had her own friends and their own affairs. Peter had neither.

Jane's friendships prospered best when Peter was out of the house. Consequently he was directed for long hours to play in the garden. He did not like the garden—but, then, he did not like the house. Yet he liked either better than the "walks"—straight up to the gates of Burleigh Park and back again. There were chains hanging from stone posts outside Burleigh Park, and Peter would have liked to swing on them. But Jane was always in a hurry to get back.

"My orders is to take you a nice walk every day," she said, "and don't you forget I done it."

The house was gaunt and dusty—empty schoolrooms with black desks and low, shiny benches. A good many of the rooms were locked up. There was plenty to eat, and Peter and Jane ate it together.

"Who lives next door?" he questioned, over the very first day's mutton.

"A old gent an' 'is little girl."

"Couldn't I go and play with her?" Peter asked, who had always lived in the country and known everybody.

"Good gracious, no!" said Jane. "Her grandfather thinks there's no one good enough for her to play with. That's what's the matter with her, I think. Pining away like, for want of cheerful company, that's what I say."

Jane, Peter decided, was not likely to pine away for any such want. Shrieks of laughter came to him that afternoon in the hot, parched garden, through the bars of the kitchen window.

At tea-time he began again.

"The little girl isn't really pining away, is she, Jane?" he asked through thick bread-and-butter. They had meals in the kitchen to save trouble.

"She's white as a egg," said Jane; "coughs a lot—or used to. Now she's lost her voice even for coughing. You can see her at the window most days. I did hear they was going to take her to the seaside, to try what that'll do for her. But you couldn't play with her, anyway, Master Peter. Her grandfather wouldn't let her play with you."

""

Peter ate no more just then. It seemed quite certain that Jane now knew who had killed—quite unintentionally, but still killed—the pug. He got away as quickly as he could and went out into the garden. There was a quiet, weedy corner, between the stable and the wall of the other house. Face down among the bindweed and plaintains and the mayweed, Peter lay and wondered how he could have been so wicked, and whether such a stain would cling for ever, and he be pointed at when he grew up, as the man that killed the dog when he was a little boy. It seemed that he had been at school a very long time. Already he knew the garden better than he had known Aunt Ingram's. It was a pleasant, old-fashioned garden, with the stable-yard only divided from it by a pretence of a privet hedge. But there were no grooms in the yard, and no horses in the stable. The coach-house door, however, was open. One could climb up that and sit in the open window of the hayloft. But what was the good? There was no one to see him do it. So he lay face down among the weeds, and cried, and wished that his mamma had not gone away.

Mamma was in Switzerland, very far away, hoping that her boj was good and happy. She had said she should hope that every day. Well, he wasn't. He wasn't either.

He never knew when he first became aware that someone was looking at him. He felt it before he thought it was worth while to look up and see who it was. It couldn't be anyone but Jane—and—well, if she saw that he had been crying, she might take more notice of him. He knew well enough that she wouldn't scold him or call him a crybaby. Children know these sort of things with strange accuracy. So he lay there, and though the interest of wondering what Jane would say stopped his tears, His shoulders still shook to his sobs. But Jane said nothing. So presently he rolled over. And Jane was not there at all. So then he sat up and looked round. No one was there. And he had been quite certain that someone was.

It was no use to begin crying again now, anyway. There was a vine growing up the stable wall; there were green grapes high up. He would climb up and see if they were ripe. He would not take any—that would be stealing. But he did not climb. Suddenly he saw that it would not be worth while. He went and walked in the garden and picked flowers to pieces, and tasted the petals. The rose-leaves were nice to eat, so were the nasturtiums. But the dahlias and sunflowers were horrid.

He went to bed early that night, because Jane was going out to a party. He said his prayers twice over and added a petition that was intended for a prayer: "Oh, please, dear God! Oh, dear mamma, come and take me away from here!"

It was his last act of faith. On the morning of the second day he settled down into the desperate, quiet misery of a child alone, for whom there is no joyous past, no hopeful future, only the interminable, intolerable present.

He spent nearly all his time in the garden, and he grew to hate it as men hate a prison. At first he had thought of writing to his mother and telling her. Telling her what? That he had been sent to school because he had killed—not on purpose, but still killed—Aunt Ingram's dog! Perhaps even mamma would not love him any more when she knew that.

Peter, an old man now, sitting musing with the first diary in his hand, could draw you the plan of that garden, and tell you what flowers grew where—indicate the exact whereabouts and number of the old seakale pots that the snails loved to hide in—distinguish the taste of the different petals, of the vine-leaves, and of the unripe grapes, for, compared with "murder almost," stealing soon grew to seem nothing much, one way or the other. And eating is the first distraction that suggests itself to a child's boredom.

And as he went about, the sense grew and grew on him of being watched, and there being someone else quite near. The loneliness of those days! It left a mark on his soul that will never be effaced. It might have marked brain as well as soul, but for the next-door neighbour.

He had been in that garden three long, long days, with intervals for sleep and food, and it seemed as though he must always have been there, when he first saw her—at a window of the first floor of the next-door house ~a pale, little face with large, dark eyes, and hair that hung in long, lean, black tresses drawn back from the forehead with a round comb, behind which the shorter hairs stood up in a sort of ragged frill. Some sort of white shawl thing was wrapped round her, and she waved a hand like a white bird's claw, and smiled at him.

"Hullo!" he said, thrilling to the adventure, "you better?"

She smiled and her lips moved, but she did not answer. Then he remembered.

"Oh," he said, standing as close to the dividing wall as he could stand and still see her, "I forgot you'd lost your voice. I suppose you can't come out?" She shook her head, still smiling.

"I'm so very glad to see you," said Peter; "they won't be angry with you for me talking to you, will they?"

And a shake of the head and a movement of the lips. Peter, watching carefully, thought the hps said: "Don't tell."

"I won't," said Peter; "of course, I won't. Aren't you tired being up there?"

He is not sure now whether it was only fancy, or whether he really could tell, by the way her lips moved, what she said. But at the time he had no doubt. Why should he have had? What she seemed to say

"I used to be very, very tired."

"Can I do anything for you?" was Peter's next question. And again the head shook with a "No, thank you," and it seemed to him that she added: "I used to like playing. I should like to see you play."

Under that inspiration, Peter climbed the coach-house door and sat in the opening of the hayloft, swinging his legs.

She applauded with smiles and softly clapping hands.

For the first time the call, "Come to bed, Master Peter!" seemed to come too soon.

Next morning, Peter woke early to a thrill of joyous anticipation: there was—oh, wonderful!—something to look forward to. But then he remembered. There had been nothing in the little girl's face or voice or manner to show that she knew who he was—he—the malign hero of a murder story.

He dressed slowly, maturing a resolution of martyrdom. When he went into the garden, he almost wished that she might not be at the window. When he saw that she was not there, he knew that he had only almost wished it. When next he looked up, there she was, smiling and waving the hand that was, like a bird-claw, white.

With the help of two seakale pots and an old hurdle he achieved the ascent of the dividing wall, she the while smiling approval of his acrobatic feats. Then not much more than a yard away from the window-sill, he told her. It was very difficult, but he told her quite plainly exactly what sort of boy he was—how wicked, how very like a real murderer. And as he thought of Snubs, he wept, though Snubs in life had not endeared himself to Peter.

The little girl was very nice to him. She said: "Never mind," and, "I'm sure you didn't mean to," with other kind and consoling things.

Also she told him, when he asked her, that her name was Lucy, and that she was eight years old. He never heard her voice, but one soon becomes expert in the silent language of the lips, especially if one has been very sad and very lonely.

It is impossible to play with a person who sits for ever at a window, but it is easy to play for her. Peter played for Lucy all the plays that he had thought of and not cared to carry out. He spun a top for her, though August is not the proper season for tops. He played marbles-quite nice boys played marbles in those days—and at each stroke of luck or skill looked up for her applause.

He sang to her the songs he had learned from his brothers or from the servants at home, the fashionable ditties of his moment. "Slap, bang I here we are again!" and "The Captain with his Whiskers," and "The Perfect Cure," and Lucy, pale, but always smiling, applauded and encored. She never talked much, but she was one of those people to whom one can tell everything. Peter told her more things than he had ever told anyone else. And different things. Things that he has never in all his life told to anyone else.

And gradually the grim, echoing house, and Jane and Jane's crinoline, and her gaily coloured spoon bonnets and her friends, and even meal-times, and going to bed, began to seem vague and dreamlike, and the only real thing in the world was Lucy. The thin face at the window with the lank hanks of hair hanging on each side of it, and the eyes that were interested in everything he did—the pale lips that always smiled and never said anything that was not kind.

He said nothing to Jane of the next-door neighbour. For a thousand reasons he could say nothing. Indeed, he now said hardly anything to Jane. She, on the contrary, began to talk more to him, and to take him out more, and to bring him into the kitchen when her friends were there. He hated it. He wanted nothing but the garden now. The garden, and Lucy.

The only things that seemed real, besides Lucy and what he did when he was with her, were his dreams, which grew very real. In them he played with Lucy inside the next-door house. Years afterwards he went into that house, and found his way about in it with his eyes shut. Every turn of it was familiar. Yet he had never been in it before, except in dreams.

And the days went on, and the dreams—and Peter ceased to wish that mamma would come and fetch him away. He ceased to wish that the others were there. He wished for nothing but Lucy, and Lucy was there. But he wished Jane would leave him alone and not bother so.

It was Jane, he learned from the second cousin long afterwards, who wrote to his mother—she lost her place for it, but mamma saw that she was in the end no loser—and Jane's letter brought mamma back from Switzerland. The letter remarked that "this came hopping to find you well as it leaves me at presint and I got your direction off of the child's letter, and I think it my duty to say that Master Peter do not look above aff the size he did wen he come, an dall pale an dall eyes an dif I was you dear Mam I would take him or not long for this world so no more at presint from your bedent servt." ."

So mother came, and kissed him and loved him, and put him to bed, and that night he did not dream.

He went out into the garden next morning while mother was packing his clothes—to say "Good-bye " to Lucy. She was not at the window, and before she could appear Jane came after him.

"Come in, Master Peter," she said. "You're to have your hands and face washed, and have a cup of milk and a nice piece of cake, before you go."

"I want," said Peter—there seemed now to be no reason for secrecy—"I want to see the little girl next door."

"You'll not see her," said Jane, catching his hand. "Come along, do. Poor little thing! I thought I'd told you about her! Pined away for lack of company, that's what I shall always say."

"I want to see her," Peter repeated, and offered a dragging resistance to the hand of Jane.

"Don't I tell you, you can't see her," Jane insisted, "she's dead."

Then a horror of great darkness came over Peter, and through it he remembers saying: "No, no, no!" a great many times, and stamping with his boots on the garden path.

"But I tell you she is," Jane said. "Don't you be so silly. She's dead, right enough, poor little thing, and an angel by this time, I shouldn't wonder."

And still Peter dragged at Jane's hand till he had actually dragged her to the place from which Lucy's window could be seen.

And the windows of the house were shuttered fast. "There, you see," said Jane, "it's been shut up ever since they went away."

And again Peter said "No."

"But I say 'Yes,'" said Jane, exasperated. "She died at the seaside three days after they got her there. They shut the house up and took her away the day after you come. I thought I'd mentioned it. You come along like a good boy now, and have your nice cake."

That is the end of what the little yellow bound gilt-bordered book brings back. After that nothing. . . . till it is Brighton, and being very jolly with the others.