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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Buch 1"

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The Railway Children

E >> E. Nesbit >> The Railway Children




"Well, there it is. I don't know but what I'd have given it to her
before if I'd thought of it. Only I didn't quite know if she'd
accept of it from me. You tell her it was my Emmie's little one's
pram--"

"Oh, ISN'T it nice to think there is going to be a real live baby in
it again!"

"Yes," said Mrs. Ransome, sighing, and then laughing; "here, I'll
give you some peppermint cushions for the little ones, and then you
run along before I give you the roof off my head and the clothes off
my back."

All the things that had been collected for Perks were packed into
the perambulator, and at half-past three Peter and Bobbie and
Phyllis wheeled it down to the little yellow house where Perks
lived.

The house was very tidy. On the window ledge was a jug of wild-
flowers, big daisies, and red sorrel, and feathery, flowery grasses.

There was a sound of splashing from the wash-house, and a partly
washed boy put his head round the door.

"Mother's a-changing of herself," he said.

"Down in a minute," a voice sounded down the narrow, freshly
scrubbed stairs.

The children waited. Next moment the stairs creaked and Mrs. Perks
came down, buttoning her bodice. Her hair was brushed very smooth
and tight, and her face shone with soap and water.

"I'm a bit late changing, Miss," she said to Bobbie, "owing to me
having had a extry clean-up to-day, along o' Perks happening to name
its being his birthday. I don't know what put it into his head to
think of such a thing. We keeps the children's birthdays, of
course; but him and me--we're too old for such like, as a general
rule."

"We knew it was his birthday," said Peter, "and we've got some
presents for him outside in the perambulator.

As the presents were being unpacked, Mrs. Perks gasped. When they
were all unpacked, she surprised and horrified the children by
sitting suddenly down on a wooden chair and bursting into tears.

"Oh, don't!" said everybody; "oh, please don't!" And Peter added,
perhaps a little impatiently: "What on earth is the matter? You
don't mean to say you don't like it?"

Mrs. Perks only sobbed. The Perks children, now as shiny-faced as
anyone could wish, stood at the wash-house door, and scowled at the
intruders. There was a silence, an awkward silence.

"DON'T you like it?" said Peter, again, while his sisters patted
Mrs. Perks on the back.

She stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun.

"There, there, don't you mind me. I'M all right!" she said. "Like
it? Why, it's a birthday such as Perks never 'ad, not even when 'e
was a boy and stayed with his uncle, who was a corn chandler in his
own account. He failed afterwards. Like it? Oh--" and then she
went on and said all sorts of things that I won't write down,
because I am sure that Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis would not like
me to. Their ears got hotter and hotter, and their faces redder and
redder, at the kind things Mrs. Perks said. They felt they had done
nothing to deserve all this praise.

At last Peter said: "Look here, we're glad you're pleased. But if
you go on saying things like that, we must go home. And we did want
to stay and see if Mr. Perks is pleased, too. But we can't stand
this."

"I won't say another single word," said Mrs. Perks, with a beaming
face, "but that needn't stop me thinking, need it? For if ever--"

"Can we have a plate for the buns?" Bobbie asked abruptly. And then
Mrs. Perks hastily laid the table for tea, and the buns and the
honey and the gooseberries were displayed on plates, and the roses
were put in two glass jam jars, and the tea-table looked, as Mrs.
Perks said, "fit for a Prince."

"To think!" she said, "me getting the place tidy early, and the
little 'uns getting the wild-flowers and all--when never did I think
there'd be anything more for him except the ounce of his pet
particular that I got o' Saturday and been saving up for 'im ever
since. Bless us! 'e IS early!"

Perks had indeed unlatched the latch of the little front gate.

"Oh," whispered Bobbie, "let's hide in the back kitchen, and YOU
tell him about it. But give him the tobacco first, because you got
it for him. And when you've told him, we'll all come in and shout,
'Many happy returns!'"

It was a very nice plan, but it did not quite come off. To begin
with, there was only just time for Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis to
rush into the wash-house, pushing the young and open-mouthed Perks
children in front of them. There was not time to shut the door, so
that, without at all meaning it, they had to listen to what went on
in the kitchen. The wash-house was a tight fit for the Perks
children and the Three Chimneys children, as well as all the wash-
house's proper furniture, including the mangle and the copper.

"Hullo, old woman!" they heard Mr. Perks's voice say; "here's a
pretty set-out!"

"It's your birthday tea, Bert," said Mrs. Perks, "and here's a ounce
of your extry particular. I got it o' Saturday along o' your
happening to remember it was your birthday to-day."

"Good old girl!" said Mr. Perks, and there was a sound of a kiss.

"But what's that pram doing here? And what's all these bundles?
And where did you get the sweetstuff, and--"

The children did not hear what Mrs. Perks replied, because just then
Bobbie gave a start, put her hand in her pocket, and all her body
grew stiff with horror.

"Oh!" she whispered to the others, "whatever shall we do? I forgot
to put the labels on any of the things! He won't know what's from
who. He'll think it's all US, and that we're trying to be grand or
charitable or something horrid."

"Hush!" said Peter.

And then they heard the voice of Mr. Perks, loud and rather angry.

"I don't care," he said; "I won't stand it, and so I tell you
straight."

"But," said Mrs. Perks, "it's them children you make such a fuss
about--the children from the Three Chimneys."

"I don't care," said Perks, firmly, "not if it was a angel from
Heaven. We've got on all right all these years and no favours
asked. I'm not going to begin these sort of charity goings-on at my
time of life, so don't you think it, Nell."

"Oh, hush!" said poor Mrs Perks; "Bert, shut your silly tongue, for
goodness' sake. The all three of 'ems in the wash-house a-listening
to every word you speaks."

"Then I'll give them something to listen to," said the angry Perks;
"I've spoke my mind to them afore now, and I'll do it again," he
added, and he took two strides to the wash-house door, and flung it
wide open--as wide, that is, as it would go, with the tightly packed
children behind it.

"Come out," said Perks, "come out and tell me what you mean by it.
'Ave I ever complained to you of being short, as you comes this
charity lay over me?"

"OH!" said Phyllis, "I thought you'd be so pleased; I'll never try
to be kind to anyone else as long as I live. No, I won't, not
never."

She burst into tears.

"We didn't mean any harm," said Peter.

"It ain't what you means so much as what you does," said Perks.

"Oh, DON'T!" cried Bobbie, trying hard to be braver than Phyllis,
and to find more words than Peter had done for explaining in. "We
thought you'd love it. We always have things on our birthdays."

"Oh, yes," said Perks, "your own relations; that's different."

"Oh, no," Bobbie answered. "NOT our own relations. All the
servants always gave us things at home, and us to them when it was
their birthdays. And when it was mine, and Mother gave me the
brooch like a buttercup, Mrs. Viney gave me two lovely glass pots,
and nobody thought she was coming the charity lay over us."

"If it had been glass pots here," said Perks, "I wouldn't ha' said
so much. It's there being all this heaps and heaps of things I
can't stand. No--nor won't, neither."

"But they're not all from us--" said Peter, "only we forgot to put
the labels on. They're from all sorts of people in the village."

"Who put 'em up to it, I'd like to know?" asked Perks.

"Why, we did," sniffed Phyllis.

Perks sat down heavily in the elbow-chair and looked at them with
what Bobbie afterwards described as withering glances of gloomy
despair.

"So you've been round telling the neighbours we can't make both ends
meet? Well, now you've disgraced us as deep as you can in the
neighbourhood, you can just take the whole bag of tricks back w'ere
it come from. Very much obliged, I'm sure. I don't doubt but what
you meant it kind, but I'd rather not be acquainted with you any
longer if it's all the same to you." He deliberately turned the
chair round so that his back was turned to the children. The legs
of the chair grated on the brick floor, and that was the only sound
that broke the silence.

Then suddenly Bobbie spoke.

"Look here," she said, "this is most awful."

"That's what I says," said Perks, not turning round.

"Look here," said Bobbie, desperately, "we'll go if you like--and
you needn't be friends with us any more if you don't want, but--"

"WE shall always be friends with YOU, however nasty you are to us,"
sniffed Phyllis, wildly.

"Be quiet," said Peter, in a fierce aside.

"But before we go," Bobbie went on desperately, "do let us show you
the labels we wrote to put on the things."

"I don't want to see no labels," said Perks, "except proper luggage
ones in my own walk of life. Do you think I've kept respectable and
outer debt on what I gets, and her having to take in washing, to be
give away for a laughing-stock to all the neighbours?"

"Laughing?" said Peter; "you don't know."

"You're a very hasty gentleman," whined Phyllis; "you know you were
wrong once before, about us not telling you the secret about the
Russian. Do let Bobbie tell you about the labels!"

"Well. Go ahead!" said Perks, grudgingly.

"Well, then," said Bobbie, fumbling miserably, yet not without hope,
in her tightly stuffed pocket, "we wrote down all the things
everybody said when they gave us the things, with the people's
names, because Mother said we ought to be careful--because--but I
wrote down what she said--and you'll see."

But Bobbie could not read the labels just at once. She had to
swallow once or twice before she could begin.

Mrs. Perks had been crying steadily ever since her husband had
opened the wash-house door. Now she caught her breath, choked, and
said:--

"Don't you upset yourself, Missy. _I_ know you meant it kind if he
doesn't."

"May I read the labels?" said Bobbie, crying on to the slips as she
tried to sort them. "Mother's first. It says:--

"'Little Clothes for Mrs. Perks's children.' Mother said, 'I'll
find some of Phyllis's things that she's grown out of if you're
quite sure Mr. Perks wouldn't be offended and think it's meant for
charity. I'd like to do some little thing for him, because he's so
kind to you. I can't do much because we're poor ourselves.'"

Bobbie paused.

"That's all right," said Perks, "your Ma's a born lady. We'll keep
the little frocks, and what not, Nell."

"Then there's the perambulator and the gooseberries, and the
sweets," said Bobbie, "they're from Mrs. Ransome. She said: 'I dare
say Mr. Perks's children would like the sweets. And the
perambulator was got for my Emmie's first--it didn't live but six
months, and she's never had but that one. I'd like Mrs. Perks to
have it. It would be a help with her fine boy. I'd have given it
before if I'd been sure she'd accept of it from me.' She told me to
tell you," Bobbie added, "that it was her Emmie's little one's
pram."

"I can't send that pram back, Bert," said Mrs Perks, firmly, "and I
won't. So don't you ask me--"

"I'm not a-asking anything," said Perks, gruffly.

"Then the shovel," said Bobbie. "Mr. James made it for you himself.
And he said--where is it? Oh, yes, here! He said, 'You tell Mr.
Perks it's a pleasure to make a little trifle for a man as is so
much respected,' and then he said he wished he could shoe your
children and his own children, like they do the horses, because,
well, he knew what shoe leather was."

"James is a good enough chap," said Perks.

"Then the honey," said Bobbie, in haste, "and the boot-laces. HE
said he respected a man that paid his way--and the butcher said the
same. And the old turnpike woman said many was the time you'd lent
her a hand with her garden when you were a lad--and things like that
came home to roost--I don't know what she meant. And everybody who
gave anything said they liked you, and it was a very good idea of
ours; and nobody said anything about charity or anything horrid like
that. And the old gentleman gave Peter a gold pound for you, and
said you were a man who knew your work. And I thought you'd LOVE to
know how fond people are of you, and I never was so unhappy in my
life. Good-bye. I hope you'll forgive us some day--"

She could say no more, and she turned to go.

"Stop," said Perks, still with his back to them; "I take back every
word I've said contrary to what you'd wish. Nell, set on the
kettle."

"We'll take the things away if you're unhappy about them," said
Peter; "but I think everybody'll be most awfully disappointed, as
well as us."

"I'm not unhappy about them," said Perks; "I don't know," he added,
suddenly wheeling the chair round and showing a very odd-looking
screwed-up face, "I don't know as ever I was better pleased. Not so
much with the presents--though they're an A1 collection--but the
kind respect of our neighbours. That's worth having, eh, Nell?"

"I think it's all worth having," said Mrs. Perks, "and you've made a
most ridiculous fuss about nothing, Bert, if you ask me."

"No, I ain't," said Perks, firmly; "if a man didn't respect hisself,
no one wouldn't do it for him."

"But everyone respects you," said Bobbie; "they all said so."

"I knew you'd like it when you really understood," said Phyllis,
brightly.

"Humph! You'll stay to tea?" said Mr. Perks.

Later on Peter proposed Mr. Perks's health. And Mr. Perks proposed
a toast, also honoured in tea, and the toast was, "May the garland
of friendship be ever green," which was much more poetical than
anyone had expected from him.

* * * * * *

"Jolly good little kids, those," said Mr. Perks to his wife as they
went to bed.

"Oh, they're all right, bless their hearts," said his wife; "it's
you that's the aggravatingest old thing that ever was. I was
ashamed of you--I tell you--"

"You didn't need to be, old gal. I climbed down handsome soon as I
understood it wasn't charity. But charity's what I never did abide,
and won't neither."

* * * * * *

All sorts of people were made happy by that birthday party. Mr.
Perks and Mrs. Perks and the little Perkses by all the nice things
and by the kind thoughts of their neighbours; the Three Chimneys
children by the success, undoubted though unexpectedly delayed, of
their plan; and Mrs. Ransome every time she saw the fat Perks baby
in the perambulator. Mrs. Perks made quite a round of visits to
thank people for their kind birthday presents, and after each visit
felt that she had a better friend than she had thought.

"Yes," said Perks, reflectively, "it's not so much what you does as
what you means; that's what I say. Now if it had been charity--"

"Oh, drat charity," said Mrs. Perks; "nobody won't offer you
charity, Bert, however much you was to want it, I lay. That was
just friendliness, that was."

When the clergyman called on Mrs. Perks, she told him all about it.
"It WAS friendliness, wasn't it, Sir?" said she.

"I think," said the clergyman, "it was what is sometimes called
loving-kindness."

So you see it was all right in the end. But if one does that sort
of thing, one has to be careful to do it in the right way. For, as
Mr. Perks said, when he had time to think it over, it's not so much
what you do, as what you mean.



Chapter X. The terrible secret.


When they first went to live at Three Chimneys, the children had
talked a great deal about their Father, and had asked a great many
questions about him, and what he was doing and where he was and when
he would come home. Mother always answered their questions as well
as she could. But as the time went on they grew to speak less of
him. Bobbie had felt almost from the first that for some strange
miserable reason these questions hurt Mother and made her sad. And
little by little the others came to have this feeling, too, though
they could not have put it into words.

One day, when Mother was working so hard that she could not leave
off even for ten minutes, Bobbie carried up her tea to the big bare
room that they called Mother's workshop. It had hardly any
furniture. Just a table and a chair and a rug. But always big pots
of flowers on the window-sills and on the mantelpiece. The children
saw to that. And from the three long uncurtained windows the
beautiful stretch of meadow and moorland, the far violet of the
hills, and the unchanging changefulness of cloud and sky.

"Here's your tea, Mother-love," said Bobbie; "do drink it while it's
hot."

Mother laid down her pen among the pages that were scattered all
over the table, pages covered with her writing, which was almost as
plain as print, and much prettier. She ran her hands into her hair,
as if she were going to pull it out by handfuls.

"Poor dear head," said Bobbie, "does it ache?"

"No--yes--not much," said Mother. "Bobbie, do you think Peter and
Phil are FORGETTING Father?"

"NO," said Bobbie, indignantly. "Why?"

"You none of you ever speak of him now."

Bobbie stood first on one leg and then on the other.

"We often talk about him when we're by ourselves," she said.

"But not to me," said Mother. "Why?"

Bobbie did not find it easy to say why.

"I--you--" she said and stopped. She went over to the window and
looked out.

"Bobbie, come here," said her Mother, and Bobbie came.

"Now," said Mother, putting her arm round Bobbie and laying her
ruffled head against Bobbie's shoulder, "try to tell me, dear."

Bobbie fidgeted.

"Tell Mother."

"Well, then," said Bobbie, "I thought you were so unhappy about
Daddy not being here, it made you worse when I talked about him. So
I stopped doing it."

"And the others?"

"I don't know about the others," said Bobbie. "I never said
anything about THAT to them. But I expect they felt the same about
it as me."

"Bobbie dear," said Mother, still leaning her head against her,
"I'll tell you. Besides parting from Father, he and I have had a
great sorrow--oh, terrible--worse than anything you can think of,
and at first it did hurt to hear you all talking of him as if
everything were just the same. But it would be much more terrible
if you were to forget him. That would be worse than anything."

"The trouble," said Bobbie, in a very little voice--"I promised I
would never ask you any questions, and I never have, have I? But--
the trouble--it won't last always?"

"No," said Mother, "the worst will be over when Father comes home to
us."

"I wish I could comfort you," said Bobbie.

"Oh, my dear, do you suppose you don't? Do you think I haven't
noticed how good you've all been, not quarrelling nearly as much as
you used to--and all the little kind things you do for me--the
flowers, and cleaning my shoes, and tearing up to make my bed before
I get time to do it myself?"

Bobbie HAD sometimes wondered whether Mother noticed these things.

"That's nothing," she said, "to what--"

"I MUST get on with my work," said Mother, giving Bobbie one last
squeeze. "Don't say anything to the others."

That evening in the hour before bed-time instead of reading to the
children Mother told them stories of the games she and Father used
to have when they were children and lived near each other in the
country--tales of the adventures of Father with Mother's brothers
when they were all boys together. Very funny stories they were, and
the children laughed as they listened.

"Uncle Edward died before he was grown up, didn't he?" said Phyllis,
as Mother lighted the bedroom candles.

"Yes, dear," said Mother, "you would have loved him. He was such a
brave boy, and so adventurous. Always in mischief, and yet friends
with everybody in spite of it. And your Uncle Reggie's in Ceylon--
yes, and Father's away, too. But I think they'd all like to think
we'd enjoyed talking about the things they used to do. Don't you
think so?"

"Not Uncle Edward," said Phyllis, in a shocked tone; "he's in
Heaven."

"You don't suppose he's forgotten us and all the old times, because
God has taken him, any more than I forget him. Oh, no, he
remembers. He's only away for a little time. We shall see him some
day."

"And Uncle Reggie--and Father, too?" said Peter.

"Yes," said Mother. "Uncle Reggie and Father, too. Good night, my
darlings."

"Good night," said everyone. Bobbie hugged her mother more closely
even than usual, and whispered in her ear, "Oh, I do love you so,
Mummy--I do--I do--"

When Bobbie came to think it all over, she tried not to wonder what
the great trouble was. But she could not always help it. Father
was not dead--like poor Uncle Edward--Mother had said so. And he
was not ill, or Mother would have been with him. Being poor wasn't
the trouble. Bobbie knew it was something nearer the heart than
money could be.

"I mustn't try to think what it is," she told herself; "no, I
mustn't. I AM glad Mother noticed about us not quarrelling so much.
We'll keep that up."

And alas, that very afternoon she and Peter had what Peter called a
first-class shindy.

They had not been a week at Three Chimneys before they had asked
Mother to let them have a piece of garden each for their very own,
and she had agreed, and the south border under the peach trees had
been divided into three pieces and they were allowed to plant
whatever they liked there.

Phyllis had planted mignonette and nasturtium and Virginia Stock in
hers. The seeds came up, and though they looked just like weeds,
Phyllis believed that they would bear flowers some day. The
Virginia Stock justified her faith quite soon, and her garden was
gay with a band of bright little flowers, pink and white and red and
mauve.

"I can't weed for fear I pull up the wrong things," she used to say
comfortably; "it saves such a lot of work."

Peter sowed vegetable seeds in his--carrots and onions and turnips.
The seed was given to him by the farmer who lived in the nice black-
and-white, wood-and-plaster house just beyond the bridge. He kept
turkeys and guinea fowls, and was a most amiable man. But Peter's
vegetables never had much of a chance, because he liked to use the
earth of his garden for digging canals, and making forts and
earthworks for his toy soldiers. And the seeds of vegetables rarely
come to much in a soil that is constantly disturbed for the purposes
of war and irrigation.

Bobbie planted rose-bushes in her garden, but all the little new
leaves of the rose-bushes shrivelled and withered, perhaps because
she moved them from the other part of the garden in May, which is
not at all the right time of year for moving roses. But she would
not own that they were dead, and hoped on against hope, until the
day when Perks came up to see the garden, and told her quite plainly
that all her roses were as dead as doornails.

"Only good for bonfires, Miss," he said. "You just dig 'em up and
burn 'em, and I'll give you some nice fresh roots outer my garden;
pansies, and stocks, and sweet willies, and forget-me-nots. I'll
bring 'em along to-morrow if you get the ground ready."

So next day she set to work, and that happened to be the day when
Mother had praised her and the others about not quarrelling. She
moved the rose-bushes and carried them to the other end of the
garden, where the rubbish heap was that they meant to make a bonfire
of when Guy Fawkes' Day came.

Meanwhile Peter had decided to flatten out all his forts and
earthworks, with a view to making a model of the railway-tunnel,
cutting, embankment, canal, aqueduct, bridges, and all.

So when Bobbie came back from her last thorny journey with the dead
rose-bushes, he had got the rake and was using it busily.

"_I_ was using the rake," said Bobbie.

"Well, I'm using it now," said Peter.

"But I had it first," said Bobbie.

"Then it's my turn now," said Peter. And that was how the quarrel
began.

"You're always being disagreeable about nothing," said Peter, after
some heated argument.

"I had the rake first," said Bobbie, flushed and defiant, holding on
to its handle.

"Don't--I tell you I said this morning I meant to have it. Didn't
I, Phil?"

Phyllis said she didn't want to be mixed up in their rows. And
instantly, of course, she was.

"If you remember, you ought to say."

"Of course she doesn't remember--but she might say so."

"I wish I'd had a brother instead of two whiny little kiddy
sisters," said Peter. This was always recognised as indicating the
high-water mark of Peter's rage.

Bobbie made the reply she always made to it.

"I can't think why little boys were ever invented," and just as she
said it she looked up, and saw the three long windows of Mother's
workshop flashing in the red rays of the sun. The sight brought
back those words of praise:--

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