[Illustration: And through it, in trailing velvet, came a lady.—P.
392.]
THE
WONDERFUL GARDEN
OR
THE THREE C.’s
BY
E. NESBIT
AUTHOR OF
‘THE WOULD-BE-GOODS,’ ‘THE AMULET,’ ETC. ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. R. MILLAR
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1911
_COPYRIGHT_
TO
CECILY, KATHLEEN
AND
MAVIS CARTER
WITH LOVE FROM
E. NESBIT
CROWLINK, SUSSEX,
1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
THE BEGINNING 1
CHAPTER II
THE MANOR HOUSE 13
CHAPTER III
THE WONDERFUL GARDEN 34
CHAPTER IV
IN THESSALONIANS 50
CHAPTER V
THE MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 67
CHAPTER VI
HUNTED 83
CHAPTER VII
BEING DETECTIVES 98
CHAPTER VIII
THE HEROINE 119
CHAPTER IX
THE MORNING AFTER 132
CHAPTER X
BREWING THE SPELL 152
CHAPTER XI
THE ROSICURIANS 175
CHAPTER XII
THE OTHER BOOK 191
CHAPTER XIII
THE ROSY CURE 209
CHAPTER XIV
THE MINERAL WOMAN 222
CHAPTER XV
JUSTICE 244
CHAPTER XVI
THE APPEAL TO CÆSAR 259
CHAPTER XVII
THE LE-O-PARD 282
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LEOPARD’S-BANE 298
CHAPTER XIX
F. OF H.D. 319
CHAPTER XX
THE WAXEN MAN 340
CHAPTER XXI
THE ATONEMENT OF RUPERT 355
CHAPTER XXII
THE PORTRAIT 370
CHAPTER XXIII
THE END 386
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
And through it, in trailing velvet, came a lady _Frontispiece_
There was a good deal of whispered talk and mystery 15
‘You sit next him, Charles’ 19
‘They burned her for a witch’ 31
‘How beautifully everything grows here’ 43
Of course they all liked to try 55
A hand was raised 65
‘Just remember we’re yours to the death’ 81
‘_I_ believed you—without that,’ said Charlotte 93
They were the footprints, beyond any doubt, of a boy 111
‘Fetches him a bite of something’ 127
‘If I whistle, you lay low’ 141
Showed her a green parrot sitting on a nest 155
He screwed up his nose 165
‘It’s a Nihilist bomb, come away!’ 187
Rupert rolled into bed 205
He looked over his head as though Rupert had not been there 229
‘I can’t attend to you. Go away!’ 237
Found the broken paling and slipped through 261
Rupert was bundled into the body of the car 277
Something four-footed, spotted, furry, creeping along the
passage 299
‘It’s me; it’s Rupert,’ he shouted 313
Charles had his first swimming lesson 321
Nothing much happened except smoke 349
Charlotte found a thin black-coated shoulder a very good
place to cry on 365
‘Take your last look,’ he said 379
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING
It was Caroline’s birthday, and she had had some very pleasant
presents. There was a blotting-book of blue leather (at least, it
looked like leather), with pink and purple roses painted on it,
from her younger sister Charlotte; and a paint-box—from her brother
Charles—as good as new.
‘I’ve hardly used it at all,’ he said, ‘and it’s much nicer than
anything I could have bought you with my own money, and I’ve wiped all
the paints clean.’
‘It’s lovely,’ said Caroline; ‘and the beautiful brushes, too!’
‘Real fitch,’ said Charles proudly. ‘They’ve got points like needles.’
‘Just like,’ said Caroline, putting them one after the other into her
mouth, and then holding them up to the light.
Besides the paint-box and the blotting-book, a tin-lined case had come
from India, with a set of carved chess-men from father, and from mother
some red and blue scarves, and, most glorious of imaginable gifts, a
leopard-skin.
‘They will brighten the play-room a little,’ said mother in her letter.
And they did.
Aunt Emmeline had given a copy of _Sesame and Lilies_, which is
supposed to be good for girls, though a little difficult when you
are only twelve; and Uncle Percival had presented a grey leather
pocket-book and an olive-wood paper-knife with ‘Sorrento’ on the
handle. The cook and housemaid had given needle-book and pin-cushion;
and Miss Peckitt, the little dressmaker who came to the house to make
the girls’ dresses, brought a small, thin book bound in red, with
little hard raised spots like pin-heads all over it, and hoped Miss
Caroline would be kind enough to accept.
‘The book,’ said Miss Peckitt, ‘was mine when a child, and my dear
mother also, as a young girl, was partial to it. Please accept it,
Miss, with my humble best wishes.’
‘Thanks most awfully,’ said Caroline, embracing her.
‘Thank you,’ said Miss Peckitt, straightening her collar after the
sudden kiss. ‘Quite welcome, though unexpected; I _had_ a bit of
southernwood given to me this morning, which, you will find in the
book, means a surprise.’
And it did, for the book was _The Language of Flowers_. And really that
book was the beginning of this story, or, at least, if it wasn’t that
book, it was the other book. But that comes later.
‘It’s ripping,’ said Caroline. ‘I do like it being red.’
The last present was a very large bunch of marigolds and a halfpenny
birthday-card, with a gold anchor and pink clasped hands on it, from
the boy who did the boots and knives.
‘We’ll decorate our room,’ said Charlotte, ‘in honour of your birthday,
Caro. We’ve got lots of coloured things, and I’ll borrow cook’s Sunday
scarf. It’s pink and purple shot silk—a perfect dream! I’ll fly!’
She flew; and on her return they decorated their room.
You will perhaps wonder why they were so anxious to decorate their
room with coloured things. It was because the house they lived in had
so little colour in it that it was more like a print of a house in a
book—all black and white and grey, you know—than like a house for real
people to live in. It was a pale, neat, chilly house. There was, for
instance, white straw matting on the floors instead of warm, coloured
carpets; and on the stairs a sort of pale grey cocoa-nut matting. The
window curtains were of soft cotton, and were palely lavender; they
had no damask richness, no gay flowery patterns. The walls were not
papered, but distempered in clean pale tints, and the general effect
was rather like that of a very superior private hospital. The fact
that the floors were washed every week with Sanitas gave a pleasing
wood-yard scent. There were no coloured pictures in the house—only
brown copies of great paintings by Raphael and Velazquez and people
like that.
The Stanmore children lived here because their father and mother were
in India and their other relations in New Zealand—all except old Uncle
Charles, who was their mother’s uncle and who had quarrelled with, or
been quarrelled with by, their father and mother in bygone years.
The owners of the house, whose name was Sandal, were relations of some
sort—cousins, perhaps. Though they were called Uncle Percival and Aunt
Emmeline they were not really those relations.
There was one thing about this so-called aunt and uncle—they were never
cross and seldom unjust. Their natures seemed to be pale and calm like
the colours of their house; and though the children had meat every day
for dinner, Mr. and Miss Sandal never had anything but vegetables, and
vegetables are said to be calming.
Now India is a highly-coloured country, as you may have noticed in
pictures, and the Stanmore children felt faded in that grey house. And
that is why they loved colour so much, and made so much fuss about the
leopard-skin and the Indian embroideries and the marigold flowers and
the little old red book and the wreath of gold forget-me-nots outside
it encircling the words _Language of Flowers_.
‘When Aunt Emmeline sees how beautiful it is she’ll want to have the
whole house scarved and leoparded, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Charlotte,
hanging the pink scarf over a picture of a blind girl sitting on an
orange, which is called ‘Hope.’
‘I don’t suppose so,’ said Caroline. ‘I asked her once what old
Uncle Charles’s house was like, that mother said was so beautiful,
and she said it was far too full of things, and somewhat imperfectly
ventilated.’
‘It’s a pity Uncle Charles was quarrelled with, _I_ think,’ said
Charlotte. ‘I shouldn’t at all have minded going to stay with him. I
expect really he likes nice little girls. I wonder what the row was
all about, and why they didn’t all kiss and be friends before the sun
went down upon—like _we’re_ told to?’
I cannot tell you what the row was about, for I know no more than you
do, or than Charlotte did. And you must have noticed that grown-up
people’s quarrels are very large and most mysterious. When you quarrel
with your brothers or sisters it is always about some simple thing—as,
for instance, who left your paint-brushes in the water, or who forgot
your _Water Babies_ out in the hayfield, or whether it was you who
upset the gum over your brother’s map, or walked on the doll’s house
sofa that day when you all upset it scrapping, and the furniture was
put back in a hurry. Anyhow, your quarrels are soon over, because
quarrelling is so uncomfortable, and, besides, you have most likely
been taught, as Charlotte had, that you must not let the sun go down
upon your wrath. But with grown-up people it is different. They seem
sometimes to have forgotten about the sun not going down, and their
quarrels last on and on and on for weeks and months and years, till
you would think that they must have forgotten what the fuss was all
about. But they don’t, and when Aunt Jane comes to tea you will still
hear fragments about how Uncle William behaved, and what a pity it was
about Edward acting as he did. If the grown-ups notice you, they will
tell you to run away and play. You will never hear what the quarrel was
about, and if you did you wouldn’t understand, and if you understood
you’d probably think it was a silly fuss about nothing, and wonder
how they could have kept it up all these years—for it is as likely as
not that Uncle William did that unfortunate behaving of his many many
years ago, and that Edward acted in that extraordinary way long before
you were born. The only thing you can find out for certain about these
grown-up quarrels is that they seem to be always about money, or about
people having married people that their relations didn’t want them to
marry.
No doubt you will have noticed all this, and you will perhaps have
noticed as well that if you suddenly speak of a person, that person
very often turns up almost at once. So that when Charlotte said,
‘I wish Uncle Charles had not been quarrelled with,’ it would have
occasioned you no surprise if Uncle Charles had suddenly walked up to
the front door.
But this did not happen. But some one walked up to the front door. It
was the postman.
Caroline rushed out to see if there were any more birthday-cards for
her. It was now the beginning of the summer holidays, but some of the
girls at the High School might possibly have remembered her birthday.
So she rushed out, and rushed into Aunt Emmeline, who must have been
hurt, because afterwards Caroline’s head was quite sore where it had
banged against Aunt Emmeline’s mother-of-pearl waist-buckle. But Aunt
Emmeline only said:
‘Gently, my child, gently,’ which, as Caroline said later, was worse
than being scolded, and made you feel as if you were elephants. And
there weren’t any birthday-cards for her, either.
All the letters were for Miss Sandal. And just as the leopard-skin had
been spread on the floor she came to the door of the children’s room
with one of the letters in her hand.
‘I have a surprise for you,’ she said.
‘Do come in and sit down,’ said Caroline. That was another nice thing
about Aunt Emmeline. She always treated the children’s room as though
it really was the children’s room, and expected to be treated as a
visitor when she came into it. She never sat down without being asked.
‘Thank you,’ she now said, and sat down. ‘The surprise is that you are
going into the country for your holidays.’
There was a silence, only broken by Charles, and he only said:
‘We needn’t have bothered about decorating the room.’
‘Oh, is this decoration?’ Miss Sandal asked, as though she thought pink
scarves might get on to picture-frames and leopard-skins on to floors,
or marigolds on to mantelpieces, just by accident or untidiness.
‘I may say that I have known for some time that this was likely to
happen—but the letter which has just come makes everything settled. You
are to go the day after to-morrow.’
‘But _where_?’ Caroline asked. And Miss Sandal then uttered the
memorable and unusual words, ‘Did you ever hear of your Great-Uncle
Charles?’
‘The one that was quarrelled with?’ said Charles.
‘I did not know you knew of that. Yes. The quarrel is now at an end,
and he has invited you to spend your holidays at the Manor House.’
There was a deep silence, due to the children’s wanting to shout
‘Hooray!’ and feeling that it would not be manners.
‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Miss Sandal. ‘It is considered a
very beautiful house, and stands in a park.’
‘Are you going, Aunt Emmeline?’ Caroline asked.
‘No, dear. Only you children are invited. You will be quiet and gentle,
won’t you, and try to remember that your Great-Uncle Charles is a
quiet student, and not used to children. You will have a great deal
of liberty, and I hope you will use it well. You have never been on a
visit before without—without some one to remind you of—to tell you——’
‘Oh, that’s all right, Aunt Emmie,’ said Charlotte. ‘But who’ll sew on
our buttons and mend our stockings?’
‘There is a housekeeper, of course,’ said Miss Sandal. ‘I shall pack
your things to-morrow; and if you will decide what toys you would like
to take with you, I will pack them too.’
‘Yes,’ said Caroline, still feeling it polite not to look pleased.
‘Thank you, Aunt Emmeline.’
‘I hope he’ll like us,’ said Charles. ‘He ought to when we’re all named
after him. I say, couldn’t we all pretend to be called something else?
It’s bad enough now; but it’ll be awful when there’s an Uncle Charles
in the house as well as all us. I say, Aunt Emmie, are we to call him
“Great”?’
‘He means Great-Uncle Charles,’ Caroline explained. ‘I expect we’d
better call him plain “Uncle,” hadn’t we?’
‘He wouldn’t like being called “plain,”’ said Charles.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Caroline, still a prey to politeness. ‘He won’t
mind what little boys call him.’
‘I bet he would if I called him the sort of things you call me. Silly
yourself!’
‘Children! children!’ said Miss Sandal. ‘I thought you’d be so pleased.’
‘We _are_,’ said Caroline. ‘Only won’t you be rather dull without us?
That’s why we don’t seem so glad as you seem to think we ought to seem.’
Miss Sandal smiled, which made her long, whitey-brown-paper-coloured
face look much prettier.
‘Thank you, Caroline. Your Uncle Percival and I are also about to take
a holiday. We are going to Switzerland, the Italian Lakes, and to
Venice. You may be as happy as you like without worrying about us.’
And it was then that the three children felt that politeness and
sincerity might meet in a heartfelt shout of ‘Hooray!’
‘I shall take the leopard-skin and all my other presents,’ said
Caroline.
‘And I shall take the draughts and the spilikins,’ said Charlotte.
‘Mother said there were draughts made of ebony and ivory with lions’
heads and mother-of-pearl spilikins in the drawing-room when she was a
little girl,’ Caroline reminded her.
‘I shall take every single thing I’ve got, and my cricket set as well,’
said Charles.