Edith Nesbit

“ Yolande was not allowed to help at all in the organizing of the house-warming. An obedient execution of Chloe's orders was all that was permitted her. And when I saw the charming docility with which she carried these out, and her rigorous abstention from even the pointing of an uninvited finger at any pie of Chloe's, I confess that I was humbled and abashed, as in the presence of a soul greater than my own.
No one who has not given a party of the dimensions of ours can have the least idea of the Herculean labors involved. ”

“ Chloe asked, picking up the rabbit by its ears. It had followed her, as usual.
“Very much.” I held my breath. The very cigarette trembled in my dusty fingers. Could it be that already that tenant had taught Yolande to be surprised at herself? A sigh of relief broke from me as she went on: “I am absolutely astounded—and charmed too, of course—at my own cleverness. But all this is a swan-song. I shall have my finger in no more pies—for good or ill. My career of usefulness is at an end. Henceforth I shall be a female fogy; never a pie shall be the worse nor the better for me. ”

“ Our comfortable beds were now nothing but rolls of striped ticking and long, iron bands—lying about where one could best trip over them. The wall-papers, which had looked so bright and pleasant with our books and pictures on them, now showed, in patches of aggressively unfaded color, the outlines of the shelves and frames that had hung against them. The fire that had boiled our breakfast-kettle had gone out, and the cold ashes looked inexpressibly desolate.
As we sat awaiting the arrival of our green-grocer, who had undertaken to “move” us, I pointed out the ashes to Chloe. ”

“ Not to live with his wife?”
“Oh, mum,” said Mary, giggling through her tears, “Miss Yo arranged it all. Him and me is to have all the rooms beyond the kitchen. He's got a beautiful lot of furniture as come to him from his aunt at Canterbury. He won't be in no one's way, mum, being out so much, and I'm to do for you just the same as ever; and I am so glad as never was, for I couldn't abide the notion of leaving you, mum, and you putting roses in my bedroom and all, as if I was the Queen, and now working those things for me with your own pretty hands!” ”

“ But even if I had a house and a garden and cottages and all the rest of it—”
“If you had a husband,” said Chloe, looking up suddenly from the red heart of the fire at which she had been blinking, “wouldn't you like to sew on his buttons and mend his socks?”
“Never,” cried Yolande, with energy. “You can get them done for a penny a pair, and men ought to sew on their own buttons—”
We laughed.
“He may divert his energies so far?”
“Yes; it's good for a man, because he never does it—or he never does it because it's good for him.” ”

“ There is no one else who understands everything. But why did you? You never made jokes about kissing other people before!”
“It is detestable,” I said, “and it's no excuse to repeat that it was only because I am so happy. And yet it's true. Am I forgiven?”
Now what made me talk that nonsense? And suppose Chloe had laughed at it or, on the other hand, had taken it seriously, where should we have been? Now, Heaven be praised for the gift of understanding. If Chloe had done, had looked, anything but what she did do and look—But Chloe is Chloe, and, thank God, mine. ”

“ Her dainty dress of muslin, sown with little bunches of violets, her charming hat, her perfect gloves and shoes—these alone might not have thrust her identity on me. Thank Heaven, more than one Englishwoman wears pretty muslin gowns and picture-hats, and has gloves and shoes that fit her. It was the set of her shoulders, the poise of her head, the modest, graceful self-possession of her attitude that made me bold to step behind her, and, without even a sight of her face, to murmur over her shoulder and into the prettiest ear—almost—in the world, “Yolande!” ”

“ Now I let my breath go in a sigh.
“It is blood, dripping,” said Chloe.
“It can't be,” I said; “there's no one in the house to kill any one else—and no one to be killed, either. Don't be a darling idiot.”
“Perhaps it's some one who was killed long ago!” Her teeth chattered.
“A ghost, you mean?” I said, cheerfully. “Not it! I expect some tramp's got in and upset a beer-bottle. Let me get my boots and the poker.”
I had always resolved that in no straits would I ever, barefooted, face a burglar. Think of the horrible advantage of hobnailed burglar-boots over shrinking, bare toes. ”

“ I knew then that I had never believed she would come, and it had seemed futile to spread milk-white over the doorstep, just for Chloe and me, whose eyes its blotted gray and moss green had always delighted. Now I finished the doorstep con amore, and hastened to the kitchen where Chloe and a hammer were busy together. I scrubbed the dressers and the table and the deal shelf that pulls out under the window. Chloe is always wise enough to feed energy with praise—a diet too often grudged it. ”

“ I cried, and I am sure I must have turned pale.
“Len, do you love me?” she asked, clasping her hands with a charming dramatic movement.
“Better than my life, of course,” I said, hurriedly, “but I'm just starting on this story, and if it's some domestic detail—”
“No, it can't wait,” said she, sitting down on the edge of the table, “and it's not a variation on the domestic theme. It's the theme itself. Len—it's all over!” ”

“ Once again in the history of the Red House my wife and I had changed parts.
The hushed peace that brooded over us folded us in wings too soft and close to let any breath of outside tempest come near. Yolande and the tenant talked to us, as it were, through a soft, warm veil. Our relations—oh, fortunate destiny that was ours!—kept away. Chloe's mother (who is as nice as any one could be who is not Chloe, and is twice Chloe's age) sprained an opportune ankle and could not come to us as she had intended, and as I had thought I wished. ”

“ The clothes of the unskilled laborer always have this strange scent. It lingers about everything they touch in passing through a house, and after days its freshness is still unimpaired. But I never knew any scent so overpowering as that which clung to the clothes of Charley and his mates. They strayed loudly up the uncarpeted stairs, urgent in their insistence on “chesties of drawerses,” and Chloe would have followed them, but Harriet came forward with, “Please, 'm, could I speak to you for a moment?” ”

“ I think I may be pardoned for taking Yolande by the shoulders and shaking her as she held out to Chloe's eyes a trembling left hand on which shone the gold signet ring which I had noted a hundred times on our tenant's finger.
“Then why did you say it was so flat and unromantic, and drive me to inventing a romance for you? It was all your fault, Chloe. No, there isn't any man in India. There isn't any man at all but the one—there never has been. ”

“ Remorselessly I pursued my advantage, for Chloe seemed to be in a yielding mood.
“In the Bandbox—” I began, but she caught me by the shoulders and shook me and took the words out of my mouth.
“In the Bandbox,” she said, “I worked and you worked. And now we don't either of us work a bit more than we can help. And I know why it is, too—we've both found out how interesting other things are. You'd rather chop wood or clean the boots than write your nasty, dull articles and stories, and I'd rather put up shelves and arrange flowers than draw silly pictures of idiotic people for imbecile magazines. ”

“ A second, and much better, supper had risen for us, phœnix-like, from the ashes of the first; we had sung songs, told travellers' tales, made jokes, and when at last I saw the injured tenant to his door there were hints of gray in the east.
When I came back, Chloe and Yolande, candle-bearing, had paused on the stairs for a last word.
“He's wonderful,” I said. “The right sort.”
“One of our kind—yes,” said Chloe; “some people are, don't you know, and some aren't; quite nice people, too, sometimes, curiously enough. And people who aren't very clever are, now and then. ”

“ Chloe and I stole away, through the garden to the seat under the quince-tree.
“We are like babes in the wood,” she said. “I wonder whether she'll succeed.”
“She always succeeds,” I said, shortly; “it's her métier. Ours, I suppose, is that of these same babes—helplessness, appealing to the pity of all kindly passers-by—and I own that it's not a métier I'm particularly proud of.”
“Yolande isn't every passer-by.”
“Yes, she is,” I said, “every single one.”
“Dear,” said my wife, calmly, “you are very cross, and presently you will be sorry.” ”

“ The stars came out, one by one, and a little moon that had been like a cloudy ghost through the gold of the afternoon seemed to wash her face with liquid light, and set to work shining in bright earnest. ”

“ I whispered: “Chloe, in a very short time those people will come through that French window with the announcement of their engagement on their lips. This is the tamest love-affair I have ever witnessed. Everything has gone far too smoothly. Yolande has fallen in love obviously, bluntly, without any of those fine shades and nice feelings which you will remember to have noted in other cases—our own, for instance. She has grown rather dull.” ”

“ We ought to be very grateful to Yolande. She has practically organized the whole of our future for us. We are settled, fixed, planted—yes, that's it—we grow, ourselves, of course, but she has planted us in the right soil, with exactly the right aspect. Now our dear little characters can develop beautifully, and our hands keep pretty, and no wrinkles come in our nice, smooth foreheads. You've been a little I don't know what about Yolande. But you must own that what she undertakes she does well. ”

“ Our cellars are large and vaulted; from recollections of my childhood, I could conceive that they might seem well worth exploring. But I had not all Chloe's confidence in these strange children. From the little I had seen of them I felt that they were quite capable of organizing a Guy Fawkes play, and carrying it out with scrupulous, enthusiastic fidelity if one of their number should happen, as seemed only too likely, to have any matches and loose gunpowder in his pocket.
Yolande had just come from town, and by a curious coincidence our tenant had come on the same train. ”

“ There was I creeping along with my syringe full charged, and the pail in my other hand—held well out, because of my gown—and he, poor soul, sauntering along in the shadows of the nut-walk, thinking nothing less than that some one was advancing with his pink doom. When he was a couple of yards off I fired a volley—slap in his face—and turned to run. He swore—but I forgive him that. My pail caught in a bough, and went over his feet, for he jumped towards the noise; he is not a coward. ”

“ Yolande declined to join the glad throng.
“I think it's cruel,” she said, shortly.
“But you eat rabbit-pie,” objected Chloe.
“Yes, and I eat mutton chops. But I'm not a butcher.”
“It's very exciting sport,” said our tenant. “And we shall probably catch nothing.”
“Then doesn't that make your sport silly in fact as well as cruel in aspiration?”
“Do come!” he said. “You can sit in your favorite apple-tree with a volume of moral stories, and cheer us on by your presence and your disapprobation.”
So Yolande established herself in the low, forked bough of the apple-tree with a volume of Ruskin. ”

“ Our bedroom hearth-rug, also woven of reds and greens, showed up the beauty of the chintz flounce, which in its turn, by its neat newness, added lustre and importance to the hearth-rug. It was indeed a beautiful picture—a poem, even, set to music by the singing of the new kitchen kettle, and I did not grudge the sacrifice of the parlor table-cloth to the completion of that radiant harmony.
We had our lunch in a very great hurry, so as to get the plates washed up before our new servant came. By two o'clock all was ready. ”

“ OUR NEW TENANT
OF course we have our own little stereotyped code of honor and morality, laid by on the shelf, ready for use, and in it we read vaguely that one may not put one's name to another's work, or make money by another's success. Had any one offered to finish for me the story to which I should put my name, I had refused, though the offer had been made by Rudyard Kipling himself. But when a ghost finishes your story, what's to be done? As Chloe said, “What else did the ghost do it for?” ”

“ At first each new applicant was to me an object of interest, and to Chloe an object of jealous detestation. But as time wore on, and each new candidate told the same unflattering tale of the shocking state of repairs at the Red House, the hour came when at the accustomed formula I merely smiled. But Chloe laughed, a laugh of triumph and delight.
We used to ride over there every day to see if the house was let, and it never was; and more and more flowers came out in the garden—old, small sweet tulips and forget-me-nots and hearts-ease, and the roses were in tiny bud. ”

“ For myself, I admit that when I see my wife working about the house I experience a more intimate sense of possession even than when I walk with her in the garden, hand in hand, and certainly far deeper than I can ever feel when she is drawing away for dear life to add her share to our income. ”

“ Well, then, you all-round people, who can turn your hand to anything, you're always chopping firewood with razors; you're always diverting your energies from their proper channel, and doing a dozen people's work indifferent well, because you haven't time to do it properly. Len cleans boots and door-steps and candlesticks, and comes to his real work with only half a heart; Chloe can't do her drawing comfortably, because she has sweeping and dusting and cooking to see to. A really reasonable Len, a truly conscientious Chloe, would work at its own trade, and hire other people to work at theirs. ”

“ We had a patch-work quilt—the gift of a gaunt great-aunt of mine—and we sacrificed it to the fitness of things, and let it live with the dimity curtains. Chloe adorned the dimity-covered dressing-table with a smart, new pin-cushion with blue bows, and set a blue jug of pink roses on the broad window-sill. Our servant's bedroom was as pretty as paint. I said so, and Chloe said:
“Nonsense! it's only conventionally correct. All good girls' rooms in books are like this—if they're servants; if they're young ladies it is muslin instead of dimity. ”