The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (123 page)

Gerald remembered.

“Hit him on the head, and he fell where you see him. The others dispersed, and I myself was just going for assistance when I saw you.”

Here Jimmy was discovered to be in tears and Kathleen white as any drawing-paper.

“What’s the matter, my little man?” said the respectable Ugly-Wugly kindly. Jimmy passed instantly from tears to yells.

“Here, take the ring!” said Gerald in a furious whisper, and thrust it on to Jimmy’s hot, damp, resisting finger. Jimmy’s voice stopped short in the middle of a howl. And Gerald in a cold flash realized what it was that Mabel had gone through the night before. But it was daylight, and Gerald was not a coward.

“We must find the others,” he said.

“I imagine,” said the elderly Ugly-Wugly, “that they have gone to bathe. Their clothes are in the wood.”

He pointed stiffly.

“You two go and see,” said Gerald. “I’ll go on dabbing this chap’s head.”

In the wood Jimmy, now fearless as any lion, discovered four heaps of clothing, with broomsticks, hockeysticks, and masks complete all that had gone to make up the gentlemen Ugly-Wuglies of the night before. On a stone seat well in the sun sat the two lady Ugly-Wuglies, and Kathleen approached them gingerly. Valour is easier in the sunshine than at night, as we all know. When she and Jimmy came close to the bench, they saw that the Ugly-Wuglies were only Ugly-Wuglies such as they had often made. There was no life in them. Jimmy shook them to pieces, and a sigh of relief burst from Kathleen.

“The spell’s broken, you see,” she said; “and that old gentleman, he’s real. He only happens to be like the Ugly-Wugly we made.”

“He’s got the coat that hung in the hall on, anyway,” said Jimmy.

“No, it’s only like it. Let’s get back to the unconscious stranger.”

They did, and Gerald begged the elderly Ugly-Wugly to retire among the bushes with Jimmy; “because,” said he, “I think the poor bailiff’s coming round, and it might upset him to see strangers—and Jimmy’ll keep you company. He’s the best one of us to go with you,” he added hastily.

And this, since Jimmy had the ring, was certainly true.

So the two disappeared behind the rhododendrons. Mabel came back with the salts just as the bailiff opened his eyes.

“It’s just like life,” she said; “I might just as well not have gone. However—” She knelt down at once and held the bottle under the sufferer’s nose till he sneezed and feebly pushed her hand away with the faint question: “What’s up now?”

“You’ve hurt your head,” said Gerald. “Lie still.”

“No—more—smelling-bottle,” he said weakly, and lay.

Quite soon he sat up and looked round him. There was an anxious silence. Here was a grown-up who knew last night’s secret, and none of the children were at all sure what the utmost rigour of the law might be in a case where people, no matter how young, made Ugly-Wuglies, and brought them to life dangerous, fighting, angry life. What would he say—what would he do? He said: “What an odd thing! Have I been insensible long?”

“Hours,” said Mabel earnestly.

“Not long,” said Kathleen.

“We don’t know. We found you like it,” said Gerald.

“I’m all right now,” said the bailiff, and his eye fell on the blood-stained handkerchief. “I say, I did give my head a bang. And you’ve been giving me first aid. Thank you most awfully. But it is rum.”

“What’s rum?” politeness obliged Gerald to ask.

“Well, I suppose it isn’t really rum—I expect I saw you just before I fainted, or whatever it was—but I’ve dreamed the most extraordinary dream while I’ve been insensible and you were in it.”

“Nothing but us?” asked Mabel breathlessly.

“Oh, lots of things—impossible things—but
you
were real enough.”

Everyone breathed deeply in relief. It was indeed, as they agreed later, a lucky let-off.

“Are you
sure
you’re all right?” they all asked, as he got on his feet.

“Perfectly, thank you.” He glanced behind Flora’s statue as he spoke. “Do you know, I dreamed there was a door there, but of course there isn’t. I don’t know how to thank you,” he added, looking at them with what the girls called his beautiful, kind eyes; “it’s lucky for me you came along. You come here whenever you like, you know,” he added. “I give you the freedom of the place.”

“You’re the new bailiff, aren’t you?” said Mabel.

“Yes. How did you know?” he asked quickly; but they did not tell him how they knew. Instead, they found out which way he was going, and went the other way after warm handshakes and hopes on both sides that they would meet again soon.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Gerald, as they watched the tall, broad figure of the bailiff grow smaller across the hot green of the grass slope, “have you got any idea of how we’re going to spend the day? Because I have.”

The others hadn’t.

“We’ll get rid of that Ugly-Wugly—oh, we’ll find a way right enough—and directly we’ve done it we’ll go home and seal up the ring in an envelope so that its teeth’ll be drawn and it’ll be powerless to have unforeseen larks with us. Then we’ll get out on the roof, and have a quiet day—books and apples. I’m about fed up with adventures, so I tell you.”

The others told him the same thing.

“Now,
think
,” said he—“think as you never thought before—how to get rid of that Ugly-Wugly.”

Everyone thought, but their brains were tired with anxiety and distress, and the thoughts they thought were, as Mabel said, not worth thinking, let alone saying.

“I suppose Jimmy’s all right,” said Kathleen anxiously.

“Oh,
he’s
all right: he’s got the ring,” said Gerald.

“I hope he won’t go wishing anything rotten,” said Mabel, but Gerald urged her to shut up and let him think.

“I think I think best sitting down,” he said, and sat; “and sometimes you can think best aloud. The Ugly-Wugly’s
real
—don’t make any mistake about that. And he got made real inside that passage. If we could get him back there he might get changed again, and then we could take the coats and things back.”

“Isn’t there any other way?” Kathleen asked; and Mabel, more candid, said bluntly: “I’m not going into that passage, so there!”

“Afraid! In broad daylight,” Gerald sneered.

“It wouldn’t be broad daylight in there,” said Mabel, and Kathleen shivered.

“If we went to him and suddenly tore his coat off,” said she—“he is only coats—he couldn’t go on being real then.

“
Couldn’t
he!” said Gerald. “You don’t know what he’s like under the coat.”

Kathleen shivered again. And all this time the sun was shining gaily and the white statues and the green trees and the fountains and terraces looked as cheerfully romantic as a scene in a play.

“Anyway,” said Gerald, “we’ll try to get him back, and shut the door. That’s the most we can hope for. And then apples, and Robinson Crusoe or the Swiss Family, or any book you like that’s got no magic in it. Now, we’ve just got to do it. And he’s not horrid now;
really
he isn’t. He’s real, you see.”

“I suppose that makes all the difference,” said Mabel, and tried to feel that perhaps it did.

“And it’s broad daylight—just look at the sun,” Gerald insisted. “Come on!”

He took a hand of each, and they walked resolutely towards the bank of rhododendrons behind which Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly had been told to wait, and as they went Gerald said: “He’s real”—“The sun’s shining”—“It’ll all be over in a minute.” And he said these things again and again, so that there should be no mistake about them.

As they neared the bushes the shining leaves rustled, shivered, and parted, and before the girls had time to begin to hang back Jimmy came blinking out into the sunlight. The boughs closed behind him, and they did not stir or rustle for the appearance of anyone else. Jimmy was alone.

“Where is it?” asked the girls in one breath.

“Walking up and down in a fir-walk,” said Jimmy, “doing sums in a book. He says he’s most frightfully rich, and he’s got to get up to town to the Stocks or something where they change papers into gold if you’re clever, he says. I should like to go to the Stocks-change, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t seem to care very much about changes,” said Gerald. “I’ve had enough. Show us where he is—we must get rid of him.”

“He’s got a motor-car,” Jimmy went on, parting the warm varnished-looking rhododendron leaves, “and a garden with a tennis-court and a lake and a carriage and pair, and he goes to Athens for his holiday sometimes, just like other people go to Margate.”

“The best thing,” said Gerald, following through the bushes, “will be to tell him the shortest way out is through that hotel that he thinks he found last night. Then we get him into the passage, give him a push, fly back, and shut the door.”

“He’ll starve to death in there,” said Kathleen, “if he’s really real.”

“I expect it doesn’t last long, the ring magics don’t—anyway, it’s the only thing I can think of.”

“He’s frightfully rich,” Jimmy went on unheeding amid the cracking of the bushes; “he’s building a public library for the people where he lives, and having his portrait painted to put in it. He thinks they’ll like that.”

The belt of rhododendrons was passed, and the children had reached a smooth grass walk bordered by tall pines and firs of strange different kinds. “He’s just round that corner,” said Jimmy. “He’s simply rolling in money. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s been building a horse-trough and drinking fountain with a bust of himself on top. Why doesn’t he build a private swimming-bath close to his bed, so that he can just roll off into it of a morning? I wish
I
was rich; I’d soon show him—”

“That’s a sensible wish,” said Gerald. “I wonder we didn’t think of doing that. Oh, crikey!” he added, and with reason. For there, in the green shadows of the pine-walk, in the woodland silence, broken only by rustling leaves and the agitated breathing of the three unhappy others, Jimmy got his wish. By quick but perfectly plain-to-be-seen degrees Jimmy became rich. And the horrible thing was that though they could see it happening they did not know what was happening, and could not have stopped it if they had. All they could see was Jimmy, their own Jimmy, whom they had larked with and quarrelled with and made it up with ever since they could remember, Jimmy continuously and horribly growing old. The whole thing was over in a few seconds. Yet in those few seconds they saw him grow to a youth, a young man, a middle-aged man; and then, with a sort of shivering shock, unspeakably horrible and definite, he seemed to settle down into an elderly gentleman, handsomely but rather dowdily dressed, who was looking down at them through spectacles and asking them the nearest way to the railway-station. If they had not seen the change take place, in all its awful details, they would never have guessed that this stout, prosperous, elderly gentleman with the high hat, the frock-coat, and the large red seal dangling from the curve of a portly waistcoat, was their own Jimmy. But, as they
had
seen it, they knew the dreadful truth.

“Oh, Jimmy,
don’t
!” cried Mabel desperately.

Gerald said: “This is perfectly beastly,” and Kathleen broke into wild weeping.

“Don’t cry, little girl!” said That-which-had-been Jimmy; “and you, boy, can’t you give a civil answer to a civil question?”

“He doesn’t know us!” wailed Kathleen.

“Who doesn’t know you?” said That-which-had-been impatiently.

“Y-y-
you
don’t!” Kathleen sobbed.

“I certainly don’t,” returned That-which—“but surely that need not distress you so deeply.”

“Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!” Kathleen sobbed louder than before.

“He
doesn’t
know us,” Gerald owned, “or look here, Jimmy, y-you aren’t kidding, are you? Because if you are—it’s simply abject rot—”

“My name is Mr.——” said That-which-had-been-Jimmy, and gave the name correctly. By the way, it will perhaps be shorter to call this elderly stout person who was Jimmy grown rich by some simpler name than I have just used. Let us call him ‘That’—short for ‘That-which-had-been Jimmy.’

“What
are
we to do?” whispered Mabel, awestruck; and aloud she said: “Oh, Mr. James, or whatever you call yourself,
do
give me the ring.” For on That’s finger the fatal ring showed plain.

“Certainly not,” said That firmly. “You appear to be a very grasping child.”

“But what are you going to
do
?” Gerald asked in the flat tones of complete hopelessness.

“Your interest is very flattering,” said That. “Will you tell me, or won’t you, the way to the nearest railway station?”

“No,” said Gerald, “we won’t.”

“Then,” said That, still politely, though quite plainly furious, “perhaps you’ll tell me the way to the nearest lunatic asylum?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” cried Kathleen. “You’re not so bad as that.”

“Perhaps not. But
you
are,” That retorted; “if you’re not lunatics you’re idiots. However, I see a gentleman ahead who is perhaps sane. In fact, I seem to recognize him.” A gentleman, indeed, was now to be seen approaching. It was the elderly Ugly-Wugly.

“Oh! Don’t you remember Jerry?” Kathleen cried, “and Cathy, your own Cathy Puss Cat? Dear, dear Jimmy,
don’t
be so silly!”

“Little girl,” said That, looking at her crossly through his spectacles, “I am sorry you have not been better brought up.” And he walked stiffly towards the Ugly-Wugly. Two hats were raised, a few words were exchanged, and two elderly figures walked side by side down the green pine-walk, followed by three miserable children, horrified, bewildered, alarmed, and, what is really worse than anything, quite at their wits end.

“He wished to be rich, so of course he is,” said Gerald; “he’ll have money for tickets and everything.

And when the spell breaks—it’s sure to break, isn’t it?—he’ll find himself somewhere awful—perhaps in a really good hotel and not know how he got there.”

“I wonder how long the Ugly-Wuglies lasted,” said Mabel.

“Yes,” Gerald answered, “that reminds me. You two
must
collect the coats and things. Hide them, anywhere you like, and we’ll carry them home tomorrow—if there
is
any tomorrow—” he added darkly.

“Oh, don’t!” said Kathleen, once more breathing heavily on the verge of tears: “you wouldn’t think everything
could
be so awful, and the sun shining like it does.

“Look here,” said Gerald, “of course I must stick to Jimmy. You two must go home to Mademoiselle and tell her Jimmy and I have gone off in the train with a gentleman—say he looked like an uncle. He does—some kind of uncle. There’ll be a beastly row afterwards, but it’s got to be done.

“It all seems thick with lies,” said Kathleen; “you don’t seem to be able to get a word of truth in edgewise hardly.”

“Don’t you worry,” said her brother; “they aren’t lies—they’re as true as anything else in this magic rot we’ve got mixed up in. It’s like telling lies in a dream; you can’t help it.”

“Well, all I know is I wish it would stop.”

“Lot of use your wishing
that
is,” said Gerald, exasperated. “So long. I’ve
got
to go, and you’ve
got
to stay. If it’s any comfort to you, I don’t believe
any
of it’s real: it can’t be; it’s too thick. Tell Mademoiselle Jimmy and I will be back to tea. If we don’t happen to be I can’t help it. I can’t help
anything
, except perhaps Jimmy.” He started to run, for the girls had lagged, and the Ugly-Wugly and That (late Jimmy) had quickened their pace.

The girls were left looking after them.