The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (185 page)

And we made up parcels to look outside as if their inside was full of the delicious attributes described in the list. It was rather difficult to get anything the shape of a turkey but with coals and crushed newspapers and firewood we did it, and when it was done up with lots of string and the paper artfully squeezed tight to the firewood to look like the Turk’s legs it really was almost lifelike in its deceivingness. The chains, or sausages, we did with dusters—and not clean ones—rolled tight, and the paper moulded gently to their forms. The plum-pudding was a newspaper ball. The mince-pies were newspapers too, and so were the almonds and raisins. The box of figs was a real fig-box with cinders and ashes in it damped to keep them from rattling about. The French-plum bottle was real too. It had newspaper soaked in ink in it, and the cake was half a muff-box of Dora’s done up very carefully and put at the bottom of the hamper. Inside the muff-box we put a paper with—

“Revenge is not wrong when the other people begin. It was you began, and now you are jolly well served out.”

We packed all the bottles and parcels into the hamper, and put the list on the very top, pinned to the paper that covered the false breast of the imitation Turk.

Dicky wanted to write—“From an unknown friend,” but we did not think that was fair, considering how Dicky felt.

So at last we put—“From one who does not wish to sign his name.”

And that was true, at any rate.

Dicky and Oswald lugged the hamper down to the shop that has Carter Paterson’s board outside.

“I vote we don’t pay the carriage,” said Dicky, but that was perhaps because he was still so very angry about being pulled off the train. Oswald had not had it done to him, so he said that we ought to pay the carriage. And he was jolly glad afterwards that this honourable feeling had arisen in his young bosom, and that he had jolly well made Dicky let it rise in his.

We paid the carriage. It was one-and-five-pence, but Dicky said it was cheap for a high-class revenge like this, and after all it was his money the carriage was paid with.

So then we went home and had another go in of grub—because tea had been rather upset by Dicky’s revenge.

The people where we left the hamper told us that it would be delivered next day. So next morning we gloated over the thought of the sell that porter was in for, and Dicky was more deeply gloating than any one.

“I expect it’s got there by now,” he said at dinner-time; “it’s a first class booby-trap; what a sell for him! He’ll read the list and then he’ll take out one parcel after another till he comes to the cake. It was a ripping idea! I’m glad I thought of it!”

“I’m not,” said Noël suddenly. “I wish you hadn’t—I wish we hadn’t. I know just exactly what he feels like now. He feels as if he’d like to kill you for it, and I daresay he would if you hadn’t been a craven, white-feathered skulker and not signed your name.”

It was a thunderbolt in our midst Noël behaving like this. It made Oswald feel a sick inside feeling that perhaps Dora had been right. She sometimes is—and Oswald hates this feeling.

Dicky was so surprised at the unheard-of cheek of his young brother that for a moment he was speechless, and before he got over his speechlessness Noël was crying and wouldn’t have any more dinner. Alice spoke in the eloquent language of the human eye and begged Dicky to look over it this once. And he replied by means of the same useful organ that he didn’t care what a silly kid thought. So no more was said. When Noël had done crying he began to write a piece of poetry and kept at it all the afternoon. Oswald only saw just the beginning. It was called

“THE DISAPPOINTED PORTER’S FURY

Supposed to be by the Porter himself,”

and it began:—

“When first I opened the hamper fair

And saw the parcel inside there

My heart rejoiced like dry gardens when

It rains—but soon I changed and then

I seized my trusty knife and bowl

Of poison, and said ‘Upon the whole

I will have the life of the man

Or woman who thought of this wicked plan

To deceive a trusting porter so.

No noble heart would have thought of it. No.’”

There were pages and pages of it. Of course it was all nonsense—the poetry, I mean. And yet… (I have seen that put in books when the author does not want to let out all he thought at the time.)

That evening at tea-time Jane came and said—

“Master Dicky, there’s an old aged man at the door inquiring if you live here.”

So Dicky thought it was the bootmaker perhaps; so he went out, and Oswald went with him, because he wanted to ask for a bit of cobbler’s wax.

But it was not the shoemaker. It was an old man, pale in the face and white in the hair, and he was so old that we asked him into Father’s study by the fire, as soon as we had found out it was really Dicky he wanted to see.

When we got him there he said—

“Might I trouble you to shut the door?”

This is the way a burglar or a murderer might behave, but we did not think he was one. He looked too old for these professions.

When the door was shut, he said—

“I ain’t got much to say, young gemmen. It’s only to ask was it you sent this?”

He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and it was our list. Oswald and Dicky looked at each other.

“Did you send it?” said the old man again.

So then Dicky shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yes.”

Oswald said, “How did you know and who are you?”

The old man got whiter than ever. He pulled out a piece of paper—it was the greenish-grey piece we’d wrapped the Turk and chains in. And it had a label on it that we hadn’t noticed, with Dicky’s name and address on it. The new bat he got at Christmas had come in it.

“That’s how I know,” said the old man. “Ah, be sure your sin will find you out.”

“But who are you, anyway!” asked Oswald again.

“Oh, I ain’t nobody in particular,” he said. “I’m only the father of the pore gell as you took in with your cruel, deceitful, lying tricks. Oh, you may look uppish, young sir, but I’m here to speak my mind, and I’ll speak it if I die for it. So now!”

“But we didn’t send it to a girl,” said Dicky. “We wouldn’t do such a thing. We sent it for a—for a——” I think he tried to say for a joke, but he couldn’t with the fiery way the old man looked at him—“for a sell, to pay a porter out for stopping me getting into a train when it was just starting, and I missed going to the Circus with the others.” Oswald was glad Dicky was not too proud to explain to the old man. He was rather afraid he might be.

“I never sent it to a girl,” he said again.

“Ho,” said the aged one. “An’ who told you that there porter was a single man? It was his wife—my pore gell—as opened your low parcel, and she sees your lying list written out so plain on top, and, sez she to me, ‘Father,’ says she, ’ere’s a friend in need! All these good things for us, and no name signed, so that we can’t even say thank you. I suppose it’s some one knows how short we are just now, and hardly enough to eat with coals the price they are,’ says she to me. ‘I do call that kind and Christian,’ says she, ‘and I won’t open not one of them lovely parcels till Jim comes ‘ome,’ she says, ‘and we’ll enjoy the pleasures of it together, all three of us,’ says she. And when he came home—we opened of them lovely parcels. She’s a cryin’ her eyes out at home now, and Jim, he only swore once, and I don’t blame him for that one—though never an evil speaker myself—and then he set himself down on a chair and puts his elbows on it to hide his face like—and ‘Emmie,’ says he, ‘so help me. I didn’t know I’d got an enemy in the world. I always thought we’d got nothing but good friends,’ says he. An’ I says nothing, but I picks up the paper, and comes here to your fine house to tell you what I think of you. It’s a mean, low-down, dirty, nasty trick, and no gentleman wouldn’t a-done it. So that’s all—and it’s off my chest, and good-night to you gentlemen both!”

He turned to go out. I shall not tell you what Oswald felt, except that he did hope Dicky felt the same, and would behave accordingly. And Dicky did, and Oswald was both pleased and surprised.

Dicky said—

“Oh, I say, stop a minute. I didn’t think of your poor girl.”

“And her youngest but a bare three weeks old,” said the old man angrily.

“I didn’t, on my honour I didn’t think of anything but paying the porter out.”

“He was only a doing of his duty,” the old man said.

“Well, I beg your pardon and his,” said Dicky; “it was ungentlemanly, and I’m very sorry. And I’ll try to make it up somehow. Please make it up. I can’t do more than own I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t—there!”

“Well,” said the old man slowly, “we’ll leave it at that. Next time p’r’aps you’ll think a bit who it’s going to be as’ll get the benefit of your payings out.”

Dicky made him shake hands, and Oswald did the same.

Then we had to go back to the others and tell them. It was hard. But it was ginger-ale and seed-cake compared to having to tell Father, which was what it came to in the end. For we all saw, though Noël happened to be the one to say it first, that the only way we could really make it up to James Johnson and his poor girl and his poor girl’s father, and the baby that was only three weeks old, was to send them a hamper with all the things in it—real things, that we had put on the list in the revengeful hamper. And as we had only six-and-sevenpence among us we had to tell Father. Besides, you feel better inside when you have. He talked to us about it a bit, but he is a good Father and does not jaw unduly. He advanced our pocket-money to buy a real large Turk-and-chains. And he gave us six bottles of port wine, because he thought that would be better for the poor girl who had the baby than rum or sherry or even sparkling champagne.

We were afraid to send the hamper by Carter Pat. for fear they should think it was another Avenging Take-in. And that was one reason why we took it ourselves in a cab. The other reason was that we wanted to see them open the hamper, and another was that we wanted—at least Dicky wanted—to have it out man to man with the porter and his wife, and tell them himself how sorry he was.

So we got our gardener to find out secretly when that porter was off duty, and when we knew the times we went to his house at one of them.

Then Dicky got out of the cab and went in and said what he had to say. And then we took in the hamper.

And the old man and his daughter and the porter were most awfully decent to us, and the porter’s wife said, “Lor! let bygones be bygones is what I say! Why, we wouldn’t never have had this handsome present but for the other. Say no more about it, sir, and thank you kindly, I’m sure.”

And we have been friends with them ever since.

We were short of pocket-money for some time, but Oswald does not complain, though the Turk was Dicky’s idea entirely. Yet Oswald is just, and he owns that he helped as much as he could in packing the Hamper of the Avenger. Dora paid her share, too, though she wasn’t in it. The author does not shrink from owning that this was very decent of Dora.

This is all the story of—

THE TURK IN CHAINS;
or, RICHARD’S REVENGE.

(His name is really Richard, the same as Father’s. We only call him Dicky for short.)

THE GOLDEN GONDOLA

Albert’s uncle is tremendously clever, and he writes books. I have told how he fled to Southern shores with a lady who is rather nice. His having to marry her was partly our fault, but we did not mean to do it, and we were very sorry for what we had done. But afterwards we thought perhaps it was all for the best, because if left alone he might have married widows, or old German governesses, or Murdstone aunts, like Daisy and Denny have, instead of the fortunate lady that we were the cause of his being married by.

The wedding was just before Christmas, and we were all there. And then they went to Rome for a period of time that is spoken of in books as the honeymoon. You know that H.O., my youngest brother, tried to go too, disguised as the contents of a dress-basket—but was betrayed and brought back.

Conversation often takes place about the things you like, and we often spoke of Albert’s uncle.

One day we had a ripping game of hide-and-seek-all-over-the-house-and-all-the-lights-out, sometimes called devil-in-the-dark, and never to be played except when your father and uncle are out, because of the screams which the strongest cannot suppress when caught by “he” in unexpectedness and total darkness. The girls do not like this game so much as we do. But it is only fair for them to play it. We have more than once played doll’s tea-parties to please them.

Well, when the game was over we were panting like dogs on the hearthrug in front of the common-room fire, and H.O. said—

“I wish Albert’s uncle had been here; he does enjoy it so.”

Oswald has sometimes thought Albert’s uncle only played to please us. But H.O. may be right.

“I wonder if they often play it in Rome,” H.O. went on. “That post-card he sent us with the Colly-whats-its-name-on—you know, the round place with the arches. They could have ripping games there——”

“It’s not much fun with only two,” said Dicky.

“Besides,” Dora said, “when people are first married they always sit in balconies and look at the moon, or else at each other’s eyes.”

“They ought to know what their eyes look like by this time,” said Dicky.

“I believe they sit and write poetry about their eyes all day, and only look at each other when they can’t think of the rhymes,” said Noël.

“I don’t believe she knows how, but I’m certain they read aloud to each other out of the poetry books we gave them for wedding presents,” Alice said.

“It would be beastly ungrateful if they didn’t, especially with their backs all covered with gold like they are,” said H.O.

“About those books,” said Oswald slowly, now for the first time joining in what was being said; “of course it was jolly decent of Father to get such ripping presents for us to give them. But I’ve sometimes wished we’d given Albert’s uncle a really truly present that we’d chosen ourselves and bought with our own chink.”

“I wish we could have done something for him,” Noël said; “I’d have killed a dragon for him as soon as look at it, and Mrs. Albert’s uncle could have been the Princess, and I would have let him have her.”

“Yes,” said Dicky; “and we just gave rotten books. But it’s no use grizzling over it now. It’s all over, and he won’t get married again while she’s alive.”

This was true, for we live in England which is a morganatic empire where more than one wife at a time is not allowed. In the glorious East he might have married again and again and we could have made it all right about the wedding present.

“I wish he was a Turk for some things,” said Oswald, and explained why.

“I don’t think she would like it,” said Dora.

Oswald explained that if he was a Turk, she would be a Turquoise (I think that is the feminine Turk), and so would be used to lots of wives and be lonely without them.

And just then… You know what they say about talking of angels, and hearing their wings? (There is another way of saying this, but it is not polite, as the present author knows.)

Well, just then the postman came, and of course we rushed out, and among Father’s dull letters we found one addressed to “The Bastables Junior.” It had an Italian stamp—not at all a rare one, and it was a poor specimen too, and the post-mark was Roma.

That is what the Italians have got into the habit of calling Rome. I have been told that they put the “a” instead of the “e” because they like to open their mouths as much as possible in that sunny and agreeable climate.

The letter was jolly—it was just like hearing him talk (I mean reading, not hearing, of course, but reading him talk is not grammar, and if you can’t be both sensible and grammarical, it is better to be senseless).

“Well, kiddies,” it began, and it went on to tell us about things he had seen, not dull pictures and beastly old buildings, but amusing incidents of comic nature. The Italians must be extreme Jugginses for the kind of things he described to be of such everyday occurring. Indeed, Oswald could hardly believe about the soda-water label that the Italian translated for the English traveller so that it said, “To distrust of the Mineral Waters too fountain-like foaming. They spread the shape.”

Near the end of the letter came this:—

“You remember the chapter of ‘The Golden Gondola’ that I wrote for the People’s Pageant just before I had the honour to lead to the altar, &c. I mean the one that ends in the subterranean passage, with Geraldine’s hair down, and her last hope gone, and the three villains stealing upon her with Venetian subtlety in their hearts and Toledo daggers (specially imported) in their garters? I didn’t care much for it myself, you remember. I think I must have been thinking of other things when I wrote it. But you, I recollect, consoled me by refusing to regard it as other than ‘ripping.’ ‘Clinking’ was, as I recall it, Oswald’s consolatory epithet. You’ll weep with me, I feel confident, when you hear that my Editor does not share your sentiments. He writes me that it is not up to my usual form. He fears that the public, &c., and he trusts that in the next chapter, &c. Let us hope that the public will, in this matter, take your views, and not his. Oh! for a really discerning public, just like you—you amiable critics! Albert’s new aunt is leaning over my shoulder. I can’t break her of the distracting habit. How on earth am I ever to write another line? Greetings to all from

“Albert’s Uncle and Aunt.

“PS.—She insists on having her name put to this, but of course she didn’t write it. I am trying to teach her to spell.”

“PSS.—Italian spelling, of course.”

“And now,” cried Oswald, “I see it all!”

The others didn’t. They often don’t when Oswald does.

“Why, don’t you see!” he patiently explained, for he knows that it is vain to be angry with people because they are not so clever as—as other people. “It’s the direct aspiration of Fate. He wants it, does he? Well, he shall have it!”

“What?” said everybody.

“We’ll be it.”

“What?” was the not very polite remark now repeated by all.

“Why, his discerning public.”

And still they all remained quite blind to what was so clear to Oswald, the astute and discernful.

“It will be much more useful than killing dragons,” Oswald went on, “especially as there aren’t any; and it will be a really truly wedding present—just what we were wishing we’d given him.”

The five others now fell on Oswald and rolled him under the table and sat on his head so that he had to speak loudly and plainly.

“All right! I’ll tell you—in words of one syllable if you like. Let go, I say!” And when he had rolled out with the others and the tablecloth that caught on H.O.’s boots and the books and Dora’s workbox, and the glass of paint-water that came down with it, he said—

“We will be the public. We will all write to the editor of the People’s Pageant and tell him what we think about the Geraldine chapter. Do mop up that water, Dora; it’s running all under where I’m sitting.”

“Don’t you think,” said Dora, devoting her handkerchief and Alice’s in the obedient way she does not always use, “that six letters, all signed ‘Bastable,’ and all coming from the same house, would be rather—rather——”

“A bit too thick? Yes,” said Alice; “but of course we’d have all different names and addresses.”

“We might as well do it thoroughly,” said Dicky, “and send three or four different letters each.”

“And have them posted in different parts of London. Right oh!” remarked Oswald.

“I shall write a piece of poetry for mine,” said Noël.

“They ought all to be on different kinds of paper,” said Oswald. “Let’s go out and get the paper directly after tea.”

We did, but we could only get fifteen different kinds of paper and envelopes, though we went to every shop in the village.

At the first shop, when we said, “Please we want a penn’orth of paper and envelopes of each of all the different kinds you keep,” the lady of the shop looked at us thinly over blue-rimmed spectacles and said, “What for?”

And H.O. said, “To write unonymous letters.”

“Anonymous letters are very wrong,” the lady said, and she wouldn’t sell us any paper at all.

But at the other places we did not say what it was for, and they sold it us. There were bluey and yellowy and grey and white kinds, and some was violetish with violets on it, and some pink, with roses. The girls took the florivorous ones, which Oswald thinks are unmanly for any but girls, but you excuse their using it. It seems natural to them to mess about like that.

We wrote the fifteen letters, disguising our handwritings as much as we could. It was not easy. Oswald tried to write one of them with his left hand, but the consequences were almost totally unreadable. Besides, if any one could have read it, they would only have thought it was written in an asylum for the insane, the writing was so delirious. So he chucked it.

Noël was only allowed to write one poem. It began—

“Oh, Geraldine! Oh, Geraldine!

You are the loveliest heroine!

I never read about one before

That made me want to write more

Poetry. And your Venetian eyes,

They must have been an awful size;

And black and blue, and like your hair,

And your nose and chin were a perfect pair.”

and so on for ages.

The other letters were all saying what a beautiful chapter “Beneath the Doge’s Home” was, and how we liked it better than the other chapters before, and how we hoped the next would be like it. We found out when all too late that H.O. had called it the “Dog’s Home.” But we hoped this would pass unnoticed among all the others. We read the reviews of books in the old Spectators and Athenæums, and put in the words they say there about other people’s books. We said we thought that chapter about Geraldine and the garters was “subtle” and “masterly” and “inevitable”—that it had an “old-world charm,” and was “redolent of the soil.” We said, too, that we had “read it with breathless interest from cover to cover,” and that it had “poignant pathos and a convincing realism,” and the “fine flower of delicate sentiment,” besides much other rot that the author can’t remember.

When all the letters were done we addressed them and stamped them and licked them down, and then we got different people to post them. Our under-gardener, who lives in Greenwich, and the other under-gardener, who lives in Lewisham, and the servants on their evenings out, which they spend in distant spots like Plaistow and Grove Park—each had a letter to post. The piano-tuner was a great catch—he lived in Highgate; and the electric-bell man was Lambeth. So we got rid of all the letters, and watched the post for a reply. We watched for a week, but no answer came.

You think, perhaps, that we were duffers to watch for a reply when we had signed all the letters with fancy names like Daisy Dolman, Everard St. Maur, and Sir Cholmondely Marjoribanks, and put fancy addresses on them, like Chatsworth House, Loampit Vale, and The Bungalow, Eaton Square. But we were not such idiots as you think, dear reader, and you are not so extra clever as you think, either. We had written one letter (it had the grandest Spectator words in it) on our own letter-paper, with the address on the top and the uncle’s coat-of-arms outside the envelope. Oswald’s real own name was signed to this letter, and this was the one we looked for the answer to. See?

But that answer did not come. And when three long days had passed away we all felt most awfully stale about it. Knowing the great good we had done for Albert’s uncle made our interior feelings very little better, if at all.

And on the fourth day Oswald spoke up and said what was in everybody’s inside heart. He said—

“This is futile rot. I vote we write and ask that editor why he doesn’t answer letters.”

“He wouldn’t answer that one any more than he did the other,” said Noël. “Why should he? He knows you can’t do anything to him for not.”

“Why shouldn’t we go and ask him?” H.O. said. “He couldn’t not answer us if we was all there, staring him in the face.”

“I don’t suppose he’d see you,” said Dora; “and it’s ‘were,’ not ‘was.’”

“The other editor did when I got the guinea for my beautiful poems,” Noël reminded us.

“Yes,” said the thoughtful Oswald; “but then it doesn’t matter how young you are when you’re just a poetry-seller. But we’re the discerning public now, and he’d think we ought to be grown up. I say, Dora, suppose you rigged yourself up in old Blakie’s things. You’d look quite twenty or thirty.”

Dora looked frightened, and said she thought we’d better not.

But Alice said, “Well, I will, then. I don’t care. I’m as tall as Dora. But I won’t go alone. Oswald, you’ll have to dress up old and come too. It’s not much to do for Albert’s uncle’s sake.”

“You know you’ll enjoy it,” said Dora, and she may have wished that she did not so often think that we had better not. However, the dye was now cast, and the remainder of this adventure was doomed to be coloured by the dye we now prepared. (This is an allegory. It means we had burned our boats. And that is another.)

We decided to do the deed next day, and during the evening Dicky and Oswald went out and bought a grey beard and moustache, which was the only thing we could think of to disguise the manly and youthful form of the bold Oswald into the mature shape of a grown-up and discerning public character.

Meanwhile, the girls made tiptoe and brigand-like excursions into Miss Blake’s room (she is the housekeeper) and got several things. Among others, a sort of undecided thing like part of a wig, which Miss Blake wears on Sundays. Jane, our housemaid, says it is called a “transformation,” and that duchesses wear them.

We had to be very secret about the dressing-up that night, and to put Blakie’s things all back when they had been tried on.

Dora did Alice’s hair. She twisted up what little hair Alice has got by natural means, and tied on a long tail of hair that was Miss Blake’s too. Then she twisted that up, bun-like, with many hairpins. Then the wiglet, or transformation, was plastered over the front part, and Miss Blake’s Sunday hat, which is of a very brisk character, with half a blue bird in it, was placed on top of everything. There were several petticoats used, and a brown dress and some stockings and hankies to stuff it out where it was too big. A black jacket and crimson tie completed the picture. We thought Alice would do.