The E. Nesbit MEGAPACK ®: 26 Classic Novels and Stories. E. Nesbit
arm round him and said nothing. And from her silence Pip drew the most desperate and harrowing conclusions. The silence lasted. The rain gurgled in the water-pipe and dripped on the ivy. The canary in the green cage that hung in the window put its head on one side and tweaked a seed husk out into Philip’s face, then twittered defiantly. But his sister said nothing.
“Don’t,” said Philip suddenly, “don’t break it to me; tell me straight out.”
“Tell you what?” she said again.
“What is it?” he said. “I know how these unforetold misfortunes happen. Some one always comes—and then it’s broken to the family.”
“What is?” she asked.
“The misfortune,” said Philip breathlessly. “Oh, Helen, I’m not a baby. Do tell me! Have we lost our money in a burst bank? Or is the landlord going to put bailiffs into our furniture? Or are we going to be falsely accused about forgery, or being burglars?”
All the books Philip had ever read worked together in his mind to produce these melancholy suggestions. Helen laughed, and instantly felt a stiffening withdrawal of her brother from her arm.
“No, no, my Pippin, dear,” she made haste to say. “Nothing horrid like that has happened.”
“Then what is it?” he asked, with a growing impatience that felt like a wolf gnawing inside him.
“I didn’t want to tell you all in a hurry like this,” she said anxiously; “but don’t you worry, my boy of boys. It’s something that makes me very happy. I hope it will you, too.”
He swung round in the circling of her arm and looked at her with sudden ecstasy.
“Oh, Helen, dear—I know! Some one has left you a hundred thousand pounds a year—some one you once opened a railway-carriage door for—and now I can have a pony of my very own to ride. Can’t I?”
“Yes,” said Helen slowly, “you can have a pony; but nobody’s left me anything. Look here, my Pippin,” she added, very quickly, “don’t ask any more questions. I’ll tell you. When I was quite little like you I had a dear friend I used to play with all day long, and when we grew up we were friends still. He lived quite near us. And then he married some one else. And then the some one died. And now he wants me to marry him. And he’s got lots of horses and a beautiful house and park,” she added.
“And where shall I be?” he asked.
“With me, of course, wherever I am.”
“It won’t be just us two any more, though,” said Philip, “and you said it should be, for ever and ever.”
“But I didn’t know then, Pip, dear. He’s been wanting me so long—”
“Don’t I want you?” said Pip to himself.
“And he’s got a little girl that you’ll like so to play with,” she went on. “Her name’s Lucy, and she’s just a year younger than you. And you’ll be the greatest friends with her. And you’ll both have ponies to ride, and—”
“I hate her,” cried Philip, very loud, “and I hate him, and I hate their beastly ponies. And I hate you!” And with these dreadful words he flung off her arm and rushed out of the room, banging the door after him—on purpose.
Well, she found him in the boot-cupboard, among the gaiters and galoshes and cricket-stumps and old rackets, and they kissed and cried and hugged each other, and he said he was sorry he had been naughty. But in his heart that was the only thing he was sorry for. He was sorry that he had made Helen unhappy. He still hated “that man,” and most of all he hated Lucy.
He had to be polite to that man. His sister was very fond of that man, and this made Philip hate him still more, while at the same time it made him careful not to show how he hated him. Also it made him feel that hating that man was not quite fair to his sister, whom he loved. But there were no feelings of that kind to come in the way of the detestation he felt for Lucy. Helen had told him that Lucy had fair hair and wore it in two plaits; and he pictured her to himself as a fat, stumpy little girl, exactly like the little girl in the story of “The Sugar Bread” in the old oblong “Shock-Headed Peter” book that had belonged to Helen when she was little.
Helen was quite happy. She divided her love between the boy she loved and the man she was going to marry, and she believed that they were both as happy as she was. The man, whose name was Peter Graham, was happy enough; the boy, who was Philip, was amused—for she kept him so—but under the amusement he was miserable.
And the wedding-day came and went. And Philip travelled on a very hot afternoon by strange trains and a strange carriage to a strange house, where he was welcomed by a strange nurse and—Lucy.
“You won’t mind going to stay at Peter’s beautiful house without me, will you, dear?” Helen had asked. “Every one will be kind to you, and you’ll have Lucy to play with.”
And Philip said he didn’t mind. What else could he say, without being naughty and making Helen cry again?
Lucy was not a bit like the Sugar-Bread child. She had fair hair, it is true, and it was plaited in two braids, but they were very long and straight; she herself was long and lean and had a freckled face and bright, jolly eyes.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said, meeting him on the steps of the most beautiful house he had ever seen; “we can play all sort of things now that you can’t play when you’re only one. I’m an only child,” she added, with a sort of melancholy pride. Then she laughed. “‘Only’ rhymes with ‘lonely,’ doesn’t it?” she said.
“I don’t know,” said Philip, with deliberate falseness, for he knew quite well.
He said no more.
Lucy tried two or three other beginnings of conversation, but Philip contradicted everything she said.
“I’m afraid he’s very, very stupid,” she said to her nurse, an extremely trained nurse, who firmly agreed with her. And when her aunt came to see her next day, Lucy said that the little new boy was stupid, and disagreeable as well as stupid, and Philip confirmed this opinion of his behaviour to such a degree that the aunt, who was young and affectionate, had Lucy’s clothes packed at once and carried her off for a few days’ visit.
So Philip and the nurse were left at the Grange. There was nobody else in the house but servants. And now Philip began to know what loneliness meant. The letters and the picture post-cards which his sister sent every day from the odd towns on the continent of Europe, which she visited on her honeymoon, did not cheer the boy. They merely exasperated him, reminding him of the time when she was all his own, and was too near to him to need to send him post-cards and letters.
The extremely trained nurse, who wore a grey uniform and white cap and apron, disapproved of Philip to the depths of her well-disciplined nature. “Cantankerous little pig,” she called him to herself.
To the housekeeper she said, “He is an unusually difficult and disagreeable child. I should imagine that his education has been much neglected. He wants a tight hand.”
She did not use a tight hand to him, however. She treated him with an indifference more annoying than tyranny. He had immense liberty of a desolate, empty sort. The great house was his to go to and fro in. But he was not allowed to touch anything in it. The garden was his—to wander through, but he must not pluck flowers or fruit. He had no lessons, it is true; but, then, he had no games either. There was a nursery, but he was not imprisoned in it—was not even encouraged to spend his time there. He was sent out for walks, and alone, for the park was large and safe. And the nursery was the room of all that great house that attracted him most, for it was full of toys of the most fascinating kind. A rocking-horse as big as a pony, the finest dolls’ house you ever saw, boxes of tea-things, boxes of bricks—both the wooden and the terra-cotta sorts—puzzle maps, dominoes, chessmen, draughts, every kind of toy or game that you have ever had or ever wished to have.
And