by E. Nesbit
“Not even the police,” said Jimmy.
“Now let’s get Mademoiselle’s tea ready,” said Gerald.
“And ours,” said Jimmy.
“No,” said Gerald, “we’ll have our tea out. We’ll have a picnic and we’ll take Eliza. I’ll go out and get the cakes.”
“I sha’n’t eat no cake, Master Jerry,” said Eliza’s voice, “so don’t you think it. You’d see it going down inside my chest. It wouldn’t he what I should call nice of me to have cake showing through me in the open air. Oh, it’s a dreadful judgment—just for a borrow!”
They reassured her, set the tea, deputed Kathleen to let in Mademoiselle—who came home tired and a little sad, it seemed—waited for her and Gerald and the cakes, and started off for Yalding Towers.
“Picnic parties aren’t allowed,” said Mabel.
“Ours will be,” said Gerald briefly. “Now, Eliza, you catch on to Kathleen’s arm and I’ll walk behind to conceal your shadow. My aunt! take your hat off; it makes your shadow look like I don’t know what. People will think we’re the county lunatic asylum turned loose.”
It was then that the hat, becoming visible in Kathleen’s hand, showed how little of the sprinkled water had gone where it was meant to go—on Eliza’s face.
“Me best ’at,” said Eliza, and there was a silence with sniffs in it.
“Look here,” said Mabel, “you cheer up. Just you think this is all a dream. It’s just the kind of thing you might dream if your conscience had got pains in it about the ring.”
“But will I wake up again?”
“Oh yes, you’ll wake up again. Now we’re going to bandage your eyes and take you through a very small door, and don’t you resist, or we’ll bring a policeman into the dream like a shot.”
* * * *
I have not time to describe Eliza’s entrance into the cave. She went head first: the girls propelled and the boys received her. If Gerald had not thought of tying her hands, someone would certainly have been scratched. As it was, Mabel’s hand was scraped between the cold rock and a passionate boot-heel. Nor will I tell you all that she said as they led her along the fern-bordered gully and through the arch into the wonderland of Italian scenery. She had but little language left when they removed her bandage under a weeping willow where a statue of Diana, bow in hand, stood poised on one toe—a most unsuitable attitude for archery, I have always thought.
“Now,” said Gerald, “it’s all over—nothing but niceness now and cake and things.”
“It’s time we did have our tea,” said Jimmy. And it was.
Eliza, once convinced that her chest, though invisible, was not transparent, and that her companions could not by looking through it count how many buns she had eaten, made an excellent meal. So did the others. If you want really to enjoy your tea, have minced veal and potatoes and rice-pudding for dinner, with several hours of excitement to follow, and take your tea late.
The soft, cool green and grey of the garden were changing—the green grew golden, the shadows black, and the lake where the swans were mirrored upside down, under the Temple of Phoebus, was bathed in rosy light from the little fluffy clouds that lay opposite the sunset.
“It is pretty,” said Eliza, “just like a picture-postcard, ain’t it? The tuppenny kind.”
“I ought to be getting home,” said Mabel.
“I can’t go home like this. I’d stay and be a savage and live in that white hut if it had any walls and doors,” said Eliza.
“She means the Temple of Dionysus,” said Mabel, pointing to it.
The sun set suddenly behind the line of black fir-trees on the top of the slope, and the white temple, that had been pink, turned grey.
“It would be a very nice place to live in even as it is,” said Kathleen.
“Draughty,” said Eliza, “and law, what a lot of steps to clean! What they make houses for without no walls to ’em? Who’d live in—” She broke off, stared, and added: “What’s that?”
“What?”
“That white thing coming down the steps. Why, it’s a young man in statooary.”
“The statues do come alive here, after sunset,” said Gerald in very matter-of-fact tones.
“I see they do.” Eliza did not seem at all surprised or alarmed. “There’s another of ’em. Look at them little wings to his feet—like pigeons.”
“I expect that’s Mercury,” said Gerald.
“It’s ‘Hermes’ under the statue that’s got wings on its feet,” said Mabel, “but—”
“I don’t see any statues,” said Jimmy. “What are you punching me for?”
“Don’t you see?” Gerald whispered; but he need not have been so troubled, for all Eliza’s attention was with her wandering eyes that followed hither and thither the quick movements of unseen statues. “Don’t you see? The statues come alive when the sun goes down—and you can’t see them unless you’re invisible—and I—and if you do see them you’re not frightened—unless you touch them.”
“Let’s get her to touch one and see,” said Jimmy.
“’E’s lep’ into the water,” said Eliza in a rapt voice. “My, can’t he swim neither! And the one with the pigeons wings is flying all over the lake having larks with ’im. I do call that pretty. It’s like cupids as you see on wedding-cakes. And here’s another of ’em, a little chap with long ears and a baby deer galloping alongside! An look at the lady with the biby, throwing it up and catching it like as if it was a ball. I wonder she ain’t afraid. But it’s pretty to see ’em.”
The broad park lay stretched before the children in growing greyness and a stillness that deepened. Amid the thickening shadows they could see the statues gleam white and motionless. But Eliza saw other things. She watched in silence presently, and they watched silently, and the evening fell like a veil that grew heavier and blacker. And it was night. And the moon came up above the trees.
“Oh,” cried Eliza suddenly, “here’s the dear little boy with the deer—he’s coming right for me, bless his heart!”
Next moment she was screaming, and her screams grew fainter and there was the sound of swift boots on gravel.
“Come on!” cried Gerald; “she touched it, and then she was frightened, Just like I was. Run! she’ll send everyone in the town mad if she gets there like that. Just a voice and boots! Run! Run!
They ran. But Eliza had the start of them. Also when she ran on the grass they could not hear her footsteps and had to wait for the sound of leather on far-away gravel. Also she was driven by fear, and fear drives fast.
She went, it seemed, the nearest way, invisibly through the waxing moonlight, seeing she only knew what amid the glades and groves.
“I’ll stop here; see you tomorrow,” gasped Mabel, as the loud pursuers followed Eliza’s clatter across the terrace. “She’s gone through the stable yard.”
“The back way,” Gerald panted as they turned the corner of their own street, and he and Jimmy swung in past the water-butt.
An unseen but agitated presence seemed to be fumbling with the locked back-door. The church clock struck the half-hour.
“Half-past nine,” Gerald had just breath to say. “Pull at the ring. Perhaps it’ll come off now.”
He spoke to the bare doorstep. But it was Eliza, dishevelled, breathless, her hair coming down, her collar crooked, her dress twisted and disordered, who suddenly held out a hand a hand that they could see; and in the hand, plainly visible in the moonlight, the dark circle of the magic ring.
* * * *
“’Alf a mo!” said Eliza’s gentleman friend next morning. He was waiting for her when she opened the door with pail and hearthstone in her hand. “Sorry you couldn’t come out yesterday.”
“So’m I.” Eliza swept the wet flannel along the top step. “What did you do?”
>
“I ’ad a bit of a headache,” said the gentleman friend. “I laid down most of the afternoon. What were you up to?”
“Oh, nothing pertickler,” said Eliza.
* * * *
“Then it was all a dream,” she said, when he was gone; “but it’ll be a lesson to me not to meddle with anybody’s old ring again in a hurry.”
“So they didn’t tell ’er about me behaving like I did,” said he as he went—“sun, I suppose like our Army in India. I hope I ain’t going to be liable to it, that’s all!”
CHAPTER VI
Johnson was the hero of the hour. It was he who had tracked the burglars, laid his plans, and recovered the lost silver. He had not thrown the stone—public opinion decided that Mabel and her aunt must have been mistaken in supposing that there was a stone at all. But he did not deny the warning letter. It was Gerald who went out after breakfast to buy the newspaper, and who read aloud to the others the two columns of fiction which were the Liddlesby Observer’s report of the facts. As he read every mouth opened wider and wider, and when he ceased with “this gifted fellow-townsman with detective instincts which out-rival those of Messrs. Lecoq and Holmes, and whose promotion is now assured,” there was quite a blank silence.
“Well,” said Jimmy, breaking it, “he doesn’t stick it on neither, does he?”
“I feel,” said Kathleen, “as if it was our fault—as if it was us had told all these whoppers; because if it hadn’t been for you they couldn’t have, Jerry. How could he say all that?”
“Well,” said Gerald, trying to be fair, “you know, after all, the chap had to say something. I’m glad I—” He stopped abruptly.
“You’re glad you what?”
“No matter,” said he, with an air of putting away affairs of state. “Now, what are we going to do today? The faithful Mabel approaches; she will want her ring. And you and Jimmy want it too. Oh, I know. Mademoiselle hasn’t had any attention paid to her for more days than our hero likes to confess.”
“I wish you wouldn’t always call yourself ‘our hero’,” said Jimmy; “you aren’t mine, anyhow.”
“You’re both of you mine,” said Kathleen hastily.
“Good girl.” Gerald smiled annoyingly. “Keep baby brother in a good temper till Nursie comes back.”
“You’re not going out without us?” Kathleen asked in haste.
“I haste away,
‘Tis market day,”
sang Gerald,
“And in the market there
Buy roses for my fair.
If you want to come too, get your boots on, and look slippy about it.”
“I don’t want to come,” said Jimmy, and sniffed.
Kathleen turned a despairing look on Gerald.
“Oh, James, James,” said Gerald sadly, “how difficult you make it for me to forget that you’re my little brother! If ever I treat you like one of the other chaps, and rot you like I should Turner or Moberley or any of my pals—well, this is what comes of it.”
“You don’t call them your baby brothers,” said Jimmy, and truly.
“No; and I’ll take precious good care I don’t call you it again. Come on, my hero and heroine. The devoted Mesrour is your salaaming slave.”
The three met Mabel opportunely at the corner of the square where every Friday the stalls and the awnings and the green umbrellas were pitched, and poultry, pork, pottery, vegetables, drapery, sweets, toys, tools, mirrors, and all sorts of other interesting merchandise were spread out on trestle tables, piled on carts whose horses were stabled and whose shafts were held in place by piled wooden cases, or laid out, as in the case of crockery and hardware, on the bare flag-stones of the market-place.
The sun was shining with great goodwill, and, as Mabel remarked, “all Nature looked smiling and gay.” There were a few bunches of flowers among the vegetables, and the children hesitated, balanced in choice.
“Mignonette is sweet,” said Mabel.
“Roses are roses,” said Kathleen.
“Carnations are tuppence,” said Jimmy; and Gerald, sniffing among the bunches of tightly-tied tea-roses, agreed that this settled it.
So the carnations were bought, a bunch of yellow ones, like sulphur, a bunch of white ones like clotted cream, and a bunch of red ones like the cheeks of the doll that Kathleen never played with. They took the carnations home, and Kathleen’s green hair-ribbon came in beautifully for tying them up, which was hastily done on the doorstep.
Then discreetly Gerald knocked at the door of the drawing-room, where Mademoiselle seemed to sit all day.
“Entrez!” came her voice; and Gerald entered. She was not reading, as usual, but bent over a sketch-book; on the table was an open colour-box of un-English appearance, and a box of that slate-coloured liquid so familiar alike to the greatest artist in watercolours and to the humblest child with a sixpenny paintbox.
“With all of our loves,” said Gerald, laying the flowers down suddenly before her.
“But it is that you are a dear child. For this it must that I embrace you—no?” And before Gerald could explain that he was too old, she kissed him with little quick French pecks on the two cheeks.
“Are you painting?” he asked hurriedly, to hide his annoyance at being treated like a baby.
“I achieve a sketch of yesterday,” she answered; and before he had time to wonder what yesterday would look like in a picture she showed him a beautiful and exact sketch of Yalding Towers.
“Oh, I say—ripping!” was the critic’s comment. “I say, mayn’t the others come and see?”
The others came, including Mabel, who stood awkwardly behind the rest, and looked over Jimmy’s shoulder.
“I say, you are clever,” said Gerald respectfully.
“To what good to have the talent, when one must pass one’s life at teaching the infants?” said Mademoiselle.
“It must be fairly beastly,” Gerald owned.
“You, too, see the design?” Mademoiselle asked Mabel, adding: “A friend from the town, yes?”
“How do you do?” said Mabel politely. “No, I’m not from the town. I live at Yalding Towers.”
The name seemed to impress Mademoiselle very much. Gerald anxiously hoped in his own mind that she was not a snob.
“Yalding Towers,” she repeated, “but this is very extraordinary. Is it possible that you are then of the family of Lord Yalding?”
“He hasn’t any family,” said Mabel; “he’s not married.”
“I would say are you—how you say?—cousin—sister—niece?”
“No,” said Mabel, flushing hotly, “I’m nothing grand at all. I’m Lord Yalding’s housekeeper’s niece.”
“But you know Lord Yalding, is it not?”
“No,” said Mabel, “I’ve never seen him.”
“He comes then never to his château?”
“Not since I’ve lived there. But he’s coming next week.”
“Why lives he not there?” Mademoiselle asked.
“Auntie says he’s too poor,” said Mabel, and proceeded to tell the tale as she had heard it in the housekeeper’s room: how Lord Yalding’s uncle had left all the money he could leave away from Lord Yalding to Lord Yalding’s second cousin, and poor Lord Yalding had only just enough to keep the old place in repair, and to live very quietly indeed somewhere else, but not enough to keep the house open or to live there; and how he couldn’t sell the house because it was “in tale.”
“What is it then—in tail?” asked Mademoiselle.
“In a tale that the lawyers write out,” said Mabel, proud of her knowledge and flattered by the deep interest of the French governess; “and when once they’ve put your house in one of their tales you can’t sell it or give it away, but you have to leave it to your son, ev
en if you don’t want to.”
“But how his uncle could he be so cruel to leave him the château and no money?” Mademoiselle asked; and Kathleen and Jimmy stood amazed at the sudden keenness of her interest in what seemed to them the dullest story.
“Oh, I can tell you that too,” said Mabel. “Lord Yalding wanted to marry a lady his uncle didn’t want him to, a barmaid or a ballet lady or something, and he wouldn’t give her up, and his uncle said, ‘Well then,’ and left everything to the cousin.”
“And you say he is not married.”
“No—the lady went into a convent; I expect she’s bricked-up alive by now.”
“Bricked—?”
“In a wall, you know,: said Mabel, pointing explainingly at the pink and gilt roses of the wall-paper, “shut up to kill them. That’s what they do to you in convents.”
“Not at all,” said Mademoiselle; “in convents are very kind good women; there is but one thing in convents that is detestable the locks on the doors. Sometimes people cannot get out, especially when they are very young and their relations have placed them there for their welfare and happiness. But brick—how you say it?—enwalling ladies to kill them. No—it does itself never. And this Lord—he did not then seek his lady?”
“Oh, yes—he sought her right enough,” Mabel assured her; “but there are millions of convents, you know, and he had no idea where to look, and they sent back his letters from the post-office, and—”
“Ciel!” cried Mademoiselle, “but it seems that one knows all in the housekeeper’s saloon.”
“Pretty well all,” said Mabel simply.
“And you think he will find her? No?”
“Oh, he’ll find her all right,” said Mabel, “when he’s old and broken down, you know and dying; and then a gentle Sister of Charity will soothe his pillow, and just when he’s dying she’ll reveal herself and say: ‘My own lost love!’ and his face will light up with a wonderful joy and he’ll expire with her beloved name on his parched lips.”