The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (173 page)

There are two sorts of people in the world, besides others; one sort understand what you’re driving at, and the other don’t. This lady was the one sort.

After everyone had had as much to eat as they could possibly want, the lady said, ‘What was it you particularly wanted to see at Canterbury?’

‘The cathedral,’ Alice said, ‘and the place where Thomas A Becket was murdered.’

‘And the Danejohn,’ said Dicky.

Oswald wanted to see the walls, because he likes the Story of St Alphege and the Danes.

‘Well, well,’ said the lady, and she put on her hat; it was a really sensible one—not a blob of fluffy stuff and feathers put on sideways and stuck on with long pins, and no shade to your face, but almost as big as ours, with a big brim and red flowers, and black strings to tie under your chin to keep it from blowing off.

Then we went out all together to see Canterbury. Dicky and Oswald took it in turns to carry Denny on their backs. The lady called him ‘The Wounded Comrade.’

We went first to the church. Oswald, whose quick brain was easily aroused to suspicions, was afraid the lady might begin talking in the church, but she did not. The church door was open. I remember mother telling us once it was right and good for churches to be left open all day, so that tired people could go in and be quiet, and say their prayers, if they wanted to. But it does not seem respectful to talk out loud in church. (See Note A.)

When we got outside the lady said, ‘You can imagine how on the chancel steps began the mad struggle in which Becket, after hurling one of his assailants, armour and all, to the ground—’

‘It would have been much cleverer,’ H. O. interrupted, ‘to hurl him without his armour, and leave that standing up.’

‘Go on,’ said Alice and Oswald, when they had given H. O. a withering glance. And the lady did go on. She told us all about Becket, and then about St Alphege, who had bones thrown at him till he died, because he wouldn’t tax his poor people to please the beastly rotten Danes.

And Denny recited a piece of poetry he knows called ‘The Ballad of Canterbury.’

It begins about Danish warships snake-shaped, and ends about doing as you’d be done by. It is long, but it has all the beef-bones in it, and all about St Alphege.

Then the lady showed us the Danejohn, and it was like an oast-house. And Canterbury walls that Alphege defied the Danes from looked down on a quite common farmyard. The hospital was like a barn, and other things were like other things, but we went all about and enjoyed it very much. The lady was quite amusing, besides sometimes talking like a real cathedral guide I met afterwards. (See Note B.) When at last we said we thought Canterbury was very small considering, the lady said—

‘Well, it seemed a pity to come so far and not at least hear something about Canterbury.’

And then at once we knew the worst, and Alice said—

‘What a horrid sell!’ But Oswald, with immediate courteousness, said—

‘I don’t care. You did it awfully well.’ And he did not say, though he owns he thought of it—

‘I knew it all the time,’ though it was a great temptation. Because really it was more than half true. He had felt from the first that this was too small for Canterbury. (See Note C.)

The real name of the place was Hazelbridge, and not Canterbury at all. We went to Canterbury another time. (See Note D.) We were not angry with the lady for selling us about it being Canterbury, because she had really kept it up first-rate. And she asked us if we minded, very handsomely, and we said we liked it. But now we did not care how soon we got home. The lady saw this, and said—

‘Come, our chariots are ready, and our horses caparisoned.’

That is a first-rate word out of a book. It cheered Oswald up, and he liked her for using it, though he wondered why she said chariots. When we got back to the inn I saw her dogcart was there, and a grocer’s cart too, with B. Munn, grocer, Hazelbridge, on it. She took the girls in her cart, and the boys went with the grocer. His horse was a very good one to go, only you had to hit it with the wrong end of the whip. But the cart was very bumpety.

The evening dews were falling—at least, I suppose so, but you do not feel dew in a grocer’s cart—when we reached home. We all thanked the lady very much, and said we hoped we should see her again some day. She said she hoped so.

The grocer drove off, and when we had all shaken hands with the lady and kissed her, according as we were boys or girls, or little boys, she touched up her horse and drove away.

She turned at the corner to wave to us, and just as we had done waving, and were turning into the house, Albert’s uncle came into our midst like a whirling wind. He was in flannels, and his shirt had no stud in at the neck, and his hair was all rumpled up and his hands were inky, and we knew he had left off in the middle of a chapter by the wildness of his eye.

‘Who was that lady?’ he said. ‘Where did you meet her?’

Mindful, as ever, of what he was told, Oswald began to tell the story from the beginning.

‘The other day, protector of the poor,’ he began; ‘Dora and I were reading about the Canterbury pilgrims…’

Oswald thought Albert’s uncle would be pleased to find his instructions about beginning at the beginning had borne fruit, but instead he interrupted.

‘Stow it, you young duffer! Where did you meet her?’

Oswald answered briefly, in wounded accents, ‘Hazelbridge.’

Then Albert’s uncle rushed upstairs three at a time, and as he went he called out to Oswald—

‘Get out my bike, old man, and blow up the back tyre.’

I am sure Oswald was as quick as anyone could have been, but long ere the tyre was thoroughly blowed Albert’s uncle appeared, with a collar-stud and tie and blazer, and his hair tidy, and wrenching the unoffending machine from Oswald’s surprised fingers.

Albert’s uncle finished pumping up the tyre, and then flinging himself into the saddle he set off, scorching down the road at a pace not surpassed by any highwayman, however black and high-mettled his steed. We were left looking at each other. ‘He must have recognized her,’ Dicky said.

‘Perhaps,’ Noël said, ‘she is the old nurse who alone knows the dark secret of his highborn birth.’

‘Not old enough, by chalks,’ Oswald said.

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Alice, ‘if she holds the secret of the will that will make him rolling in long-lost wealth.’

‘I wonder if he’ll catch her,’ Noël said. ‘I’m quite certain all his future depends on it. Perhaps she’s his long-lost sister, and the estate was left to them equally, only she couldn’t be found, so it couldn’t be shared up.’

‘Perhaps he’s only in love with her,’ Dora said, ‘parted by cruel Fate at an early age, he has ranged the wide world ever since trying to find her.’

‘I hope to goodness he hasn’t—anyway, he’s not ranged since we knew him—never further than Hastings,’ Oswald said. ‘We don’t want any of that rot.’

‘What rot?’ Daisy asked. And Oswald said—

‘Getting married, and all that sort of rubbish.’

And Daisy and Dora were the only ones that didn’t agree with him. Even Alice owned that being bridesmaids must be fairly good fun. It’s no good. You may treat girls as well as you like, and give them every comfort and luxury, and play fair just as if they were boys, but there is something unmanly about the best of girls. They go silly, like milk goes sour, without any warning.

When Albert’s uncle returned he was very hot, with a beaded brow, but pale as the Dentist when the peas were at their worst.

‘Did you catch her?’ H. O. asked.

Albert’s uncle’s brow looked black as the cloud that thunder will presently break from.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Is she your long-lost nurse?’ H. O. went on, before we could stop him.

‘Long-lost grandmother! I knew the lady long ago in India,’ said Albert’s uncle, as he left the room, slamming the door in a way we should be forbidden to.

And that was the end of the Canterbury Pilgrimage.

As for the lady, we did not then know whether she was his long-lost grandmother that he had known in India or not, though we thought she seemed youngish for the part. We found out afterwards whether she was or not, but that comes in another part. His manner was not the one that makes you go on asking questions. The Canterbury Pilgriming did not exactly make us good, but then, as Dora said, we had not done anything wrong that day. So we were twenty-four hours to the good.

Note A.—Afterwards we went and saw real Canterbury. It is very large. A disagreeable man showed us round the cathedral, and jawed all the time quite loud as if it wasn’t a church. I remember one thing he said. It was this:

‘This is the Dean’s Chapel; it was the Lady Chapel in the wicked days when people used to worship the Virgin Mary.’

And H. O. said, ‘I suppose they worship the Dean now?’

Some strange people who were there laughed out loud. I think this is worse in church than not taking your cap off when you come in, as H. O. forgot to do, because the cathedral was so big he didn’t think it was a church.

Note B. (See Note C.)

Note C. (See Note D.)

Note D. (See Note E.)

Note E. (See Note A.)

This ends the Canterbury Pilgrims.

CHAPTER 13

THE DRAGON’S TEETH; OR, ARMY-SEED

Albert’s uncle was out on his bicycle as usual. After the day when we became Canterbury Pil
grims and were brought home in the dog-cart with red wheels by the lady he told us was his long-lost grandmother he had known years ago in India, he spent not nearly so much of his time in writing, and he used to shave every morning instead of only when requisite, as in earlier days. And he was always going out on his bicycle in his new Norfolk suit. We are not so unobserving as grown-up people make out. We knew well enough he was looking for the long-lost. And we jolly well wished he might find her. Oswald, always full of sympathy with misfortune, however undeserved, had himself tried several times to find the lady. So had the others. But all this is what they call a digression; it has nothing to do with the dragon’s teeth I am now narrating.

It began with the pig dying—it was the one we had for the circus, but it having behaved so badly that day had nothing to do with its illness and death, though the girls said they felt remorse, and perhaps if we hadn’t made it run so that day it might have been spared to us. But Oswald cannot pretend that people were right just because they happen to be dead, and as long as that pig was alive we all knew well enough that it was it that made us run—and not us it.

The pig was buried in the kitchen garden. Bill, that we made the tombstone for, dug the grave, and while he was away at his dinner we took a turn at digging, because we like to be useful, and besides, when you dig you never know what you may turn up. I knew a man once that found a gold ring on the point of his fork when he was digging potatoes, and you know how we found two half-crowns ourselves once when we were digging for treasure.

Oswald was taking his turn with the spade, and the others were sitting on the gravel and telling him how to do it.

‘Work with a will,’ Dicky said, yawning.

Alice said, ‘I wish we were in a book. People in books never dig without finding something. I think I’d rather it was a secret passage than anything.’

Oswald stopped to wipe his honest brow ere replying.

‘A secret’s nothing when you’ve found it out. Look at the secret staircase. It’s no good, not even for hide-and-seek, because of its squeaking. I’d rather have the pot of gold we used to dig for when we were little.’ It was really only last year, but you seem to grow old very quickly after you have once passed the prime of your youth, which is at ten, I believe.

‘How would you like to find the mouldering bones of Royalist soldiers foully done to death by nasty Ironsides?’ Noël asked, with his mouth full of plum.

‘If they were really dead it wouldn’t matter,’ Dora said. ‘What I’m afraid of is a skeleton that can walk about and catch at your legs when you’re going upstairs to bed.’

‘Skeletons can’t walk,’ Alice said in a hurry; ‘you know they can’t, Dora.’

And she glared at Dora till she made her sorry she had said what she had. The things you are frightened of, or even those you would rather not meet in the dark, should never be mentioned before the little ones, or else they cry when it comes to bed-time, and say it was because of what you said.

‘We shan’t find anything. No jolly fear,’ said Dicky.

And just then my spade I was digging with struck on something hard, and it felt hollow. I did really think for one joyful space that we had found that pot of gold. But the thing, whatever it was, seemed to be longish; longer, that is, than a pot of gold would naturally be. And as I uncovered it I saw that it was not at all pot-of-gold-colour, but like a bone Pincher has buried. So Oswald said—

‘It
is
the skeleton.’

The girls all drew back, and Alice said, ‘Oswald, I wish you wouldn’t.’

A moment later the discovery was unearthed, and Oswald lifted it up, with both hands.

‘It’s a dragon’s head,’ Noël said, and it certainly looked like it.

It was long and narrowish and bony, and with great yellow teeth sticking in the jaw.

Bill came back just then and said it was a horse’s head, but H. O. and Noël would not believe it, and Oswald owns that no horse he has ever seen had a head at all that shape.

But Oswald did not stop to argue, because he saw a keeper who showed me how to set snares going by, and he wanted to talk to him about ferrets, so he went off and Dicky and Denny and Alice with him. Also Daisy and Dora went off to finish reading Ministering Children. So H. O. and Noël were left with the bony head. They took it away.

The incident had quite faded from the mind of Oswald next day. But just before breakfast Noël and H. O. came in, looking hot and anxious. They had got up early and had not washed at all—not even their hands and faces. Noël made Oswald a secret signal. All the others saw it, and with proper delicate feeling pretended not to have.

When Oswald had gone out with Noël and H. O. in obedience to the secret signal, Noël said—

‘You know that dragon’s head yesterday?’

‘Well?’ Oswald said quickly, but not crossly—the two things are quite different.

‘Well, you know what happened in Greek history when some chap sowed dragon’s teeth?’

‘They came up armed men,’ said H. O., but Noël sternly bade him shut up, and Oswald said ‘Well,’ again. If he spoke impatiently it was because he smelt the bacon being taken in to breakfast.

‘Well,’ Noël went on, ‘what do you suppose would have come up if we’d sowed those dragon’s teeth we found yesterday?’

‘Why, nothing, you young duffer,’ said Oswald, who could now smell the coffee. ‘All that isn’t History it’s Humbug. Come on in to brekker.’

‘It’s
not
humbug,’ H. O. cried, ‘it is history. We
did
sow—’