Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  The children exchanged discouraged glances. But the eyes of Rekh-mara and the learned gentleman met, and were kind to each other, and promised each other many things, secret and sacred and very beautiful.

  Anthea saw the look. ‘Oh, but,’ she said, without at all meaning to say it, ‘dear Jimmy’s soul isn’t at all like Rekh-mara’s. I’m certain it isn’t. I don’t want to be rude, but it ISN’T, you know. Dear Jimmy’s soul is as good as gold, and—’

  ‘Nothing that is not good can pass beneath the double arch of my perfect Amulet,’ said the voice. ‘If both are willing, say the word of Power, and let the two souls become one for ever and ever more.’

  ‘Shall I?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The voices were those of the Egyptian Priest and the learned gentleman, and the voices were eager, alive, thrilled with hope and the desire of great things.

  So Jane took the Amulet from Robert and held it up between the two men, and said, for the last time, the word of Power.

  ‘Ur Hekau Setcheh.’

  The perfect Amulet grew into a double arch; the two arches leaned to each other making a great A.

  ‘A stands for Amen,’ whispered Jane; ‘what he was a priest of.’

  ‘Hush!’ breathed Anthea.

  The great double arch glowed in and through the green light that had been there since the Name of Power had first been spoken — it glowed with a light more bright yet more soft than the other light — a glory and splendour and sweetness unspeakable. ‘Come!’ cried Rekh-mara, holding out his hands.

  ‘Come!’ cried the learned gentleman, and he also held out his hands.

  Each moved forward under the glowing, glorious arch of the perfect Amulet.

  Then Rekh-mara quavered and shook, and as steel is drawn to a magnet he was drawn, under the arch of magic, nearer and nearer to the learned gentleman. And, as one drop of water mingles with another, when the window-glass is rain-wrinkled, as one quick-silver bead is drawn to another quick-silver bead, Rekh-mara, Divine Father of the Temple of Amen-Ra, was drawn into, slipped into, disappeared into, and was one with Jimmy, the good, the beloved, the learned gentleman.

  And suddenly it was good daylight and the December sun shone. The fog has passed away like a dream.

  The Amulet was there — little and complete in jane’s hand, and there were the other children and the Psammead, and the learned gentleman. But Rekh-mara — or the body of Rekh-mara — was not there any more. As for his soul...

  ‘Oh, the horrid thing!’ cried Robert, and put his foot on a centipede as long as your finger, that crawled and wriggled and squirmed at the learned gentleman’s feet.

  ‘THAT,’ said the Psammead, ‘WAS the evil in the soul of Rekh-mara.’

  There was a deep silence.

  ‘Then Rekh-mara’s HIM now?’ said Jane at last.

  ‘All that was good in Rekh-mara,’ said the Psammead.

  ‘HE ought to have his heart’s desire, too,’ said Anthea, in a sort of stubborn gentleness.

  ‘HIS heart’s desire,’ said the Psammead, ‘is the perfect Amulet you hold in your hand. Yes — and has been ever since he first saw the broken half of it.’

  ‘We’ve got ours,’ said Anthea softly.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Psammead — its voice was crosser than they had ever heard it—’your parents are coming home. And what’s to become of ME? I shall be found out, and made a show of, and degraded in every possible way. I KNOW they’ll make me go into Parliament — hateful place — all mud and no sand. That beautiful Baalbec temple in the desert! Plenty of good sand there, and no politics! I wish I were there, safe in the Past — that I do.’

  ‘I wish you were,’ said the learned gentleman absently, yet polite as ever.

  The Psammead swelled itself up, turned its long snail’s eyes in one last lingering look at Anthea — a loving look, she always said, and thought — and — vanished.

  ‘Well,’ said Anthea, after a silence, ‘I suppose it’s happy. The only thing it ever did really care for was SAND.’

  ‘My dear children,’ said the learned gentleman, ‘I must have fallen asleep. I’ve had the most extraordinary dream.’

  ‘I hope it was a nice one,’ said Cyril with courtesy.

  ‘Yes.... I feel a new man after it. Absolutely a new man.’

  There was a ring at the front-door bell. The opening of a door. Voices.

  ‘It’s THEM!’ cried Robert, and a thrill ran through four hearts.

  ‘Here!’ cried Anthea, snatching the Amulet from Jane and pressing it into the hand of the learned gentleman. ‘Here — it’s yours — your very own — a present from us, because you’re Rekh-mara as well as... I mean, because you’re such a dear.’

  She hugged him briefly but fervently, and the four swept down the stairs to the hall, where a cabman was bringing in boxes, and where, heavily disguised in travelling cloaks and wraps, was their hearts’ desire — three-fold — Mother, Father, and The Lamb.

  ‘Bless me!’ said the learned gentleman, left alone, ‘bless me! What a treasure! The dear children! It must be their affection that has given me these luminous apercus. I seem to see so many things now — things I never saw before! The dear children! The dear, dear children!’

  THE END

  The House of Arden Series

  Nesbit lived in the Grove Park area of Lewisham from 1894 to 1899.

  THE HOUSE OF ARDEN

  First published in England by T. Fisher Unwin in 1908, and illustrated by H.R. Millar, The House of Arden is one of E. Nesbit’s popular fantasies for children. Young Edred Arden inherits Arden Castle and moves in with his sister, Elfrida, hoping that at long last they may leave behind their longtime poverty and misfortune. However, they soon discover that in order to keep the castle, they must search for and find the missing Arden family treasure before Edred’s next birthday. Adventures follow after summoning the magical Mouldiwarp of Arden, a golden-furred mole, which sends them back through time to a variety of settings, among others, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and Napoleon’s proposed invasion of the United Kingdom in 1807. Harding’s Luck, a companion to The House of Arden, appeared in 1909.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. ARDEN’S LORD

  CHAPTER II. THE MOULDIWARP

  CHAPTER III. IN BONEY’S TIMES

  CHAPTER IV. THE LANDING OF THE FRENCH

  CHAPTER V. THE HIGHWAYMAN AND THE —

  CHAPTER VI. THE SECRET PANEL

  CHAPTER VII. THE KEY OF THE PARLOUR

  CHAPTER VIII. GUY FAWKES

  CHAPTER IX. THE PRISONERS IN THE TOWER

  CHAPTER X. WHITE WINGS AND A BROWNIE

  CHAPTER XI. DEVELOPMENTS

  CHAPTER XII. FILMS AND CLOUDS

  CHAPTER XIII. MAY-BLOSSOM AND PEARLS

  CHAPTER XIV. THE FINDING OF THE TREASURE

  The original title page

  TO

  JOHN BLAND

  CHAPTER I. ARDEN’S LORD

  IT had been a great house once, with farms and fields, money and jewels–with tenants and squires and men-at-arms. The head of the house had ridden out three days’ journey to meet King Henry at the boundary of his estate, and the King had ridden back with him to lie in the tall State bed in the castle guest-chamber. The heir of the house had led his following against Cromwell; younger sons of the house had fought in foreign lands, to the honour of England and the gilding and regilding with the perishable gold of glory of the old Arden name. There had been Ardens in Saxon times, and there were Ardens still–but few and impoverished. The lands were gone, and the squires and men-at-arms; the castle itself was roofless, and its unglazed windows stared blankly across the fields of strangers, that stretched right up to the foot of its grey, weather-worn walls. And of the male Ardens there were now known two only–an old man and a child.

  The old man was Lord Arden, the head of the house, and he lived lonely in a little house built of the fallen stones that
Time and Cromwell’s round-shot had cast from the castle walls. The child was Edred Arden, and he lived in a house in a clean, wind-swept town on a cliff.

  It was a bright-faced house with bow-windows and a green balcony that looked out over the sparkling sea. It had three neat white steps and a brass knocker, pale and smooth with constant rubbing. It was a pretty house, and it would have been a pleasant house but for one thing–the lodgers. For I cannot conceal from you any longer that Edred Arden lived with his aunt, and that his aunt let lodgings. Letting lodgings is one of the most unpleasant of all possible ways of earning your living, and I advise you to try every other honest way of earning your living before you take to that.

  Because people who go to the seaside and take lodgings seem, somehow, much harder to please than the people who go to hotels. They. want ever so much more waiting on; they want so many meals, and at such odd times. They ring the bell almost all day long. They bring in sand from the shore in every fold of their clothes, and it shakes out of them on to the carpets and the sofa cushions, and everything in the house. They hang long streamers of wet seaweed against the pretty roses of the new wall-papers, and their washhand basins are always full of sea anemones and shells. Also, they are noisy; their boots seem to be always on the stairs, no matter how bad a headache you may have; and when you give them their bill they always think it is too much, no matter bow little it may be. So do not let lodgings if you can help it.

  Miss Arden could not help it. It happened like this.

  Edred and his sister were at school. (Did I tell you that he had a sister? Well, he had, and her name was Elfrida.) Miss Arden lived near the school, so that she could see the children often. She was getting her clothes ready for her wedding, and the gentleman who was going to marry her was coming home from South America, where he had made a fortune. The children’s father was coming home from South America, too, with the fortune that he had made, for he and Miss Arden’s sweetheart were partners. The children and their aunt talked whenever they met of the glorious time that was coming, and how, when father and Uncle Jim–they called him Uncle Jim already–came home, they were all going to live in the country and be happy ever after.

  And then the news came that father and Uncle Jim had been captured by brigands, and all the money was lost, too, and there was nothing left but the house on the cliff. So Miss Arden took the children from the expensive school in London, and they all went to live in the cliff house, and as there was no money to live on, and no other way of making money to live on except letting lodgings, Miss Arden let them, like the brave lady she was, and did it well. And then came the news that father and Uncle Jim were dead, and for a time the light of life went out in Cliff House.

  This was two years ago; but the children had never got used to the lodgers. They hated them. At first they had tried to be friendly with the lodgers’ children, but they soon found that the lodgers’ children considered Edred and Elfrida very much beneath them, and looked down on them accordingly. And very often the lodgers’ children were the sort of children on whom anybody might have looked down, if it were right and kind to look down on any one. And when Master Reginald Potts, of Peckham, puts his tongue out at you on the parade and says, right before everybody, “Lodgings! Yah!” it is hard to feel quite the same to him as you did before.

  When there were lodgers–and. there nearly always were, for the house was comfortable, and people who had been once came again–the children and their aunt had to live in the very top and the very bottom of the house–in the attics and the basement, in fact.

  When there were no lodgers they used all the rooms in turn, to keep them aired. But the children liked the big basement parlour room best, because there all the furniture had belonged to dead-and-gone Ardens, and all the pictures on the walls were of Ardens dead and gone. The rooms that the lodgers had were furnished with a new sort of furniture that had no stories belonging to it such as belonged to the old polished oak tables and bureaux that were in the basement parlour.

  Edred and Elfrida went to school every day and learned reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, spelling, and useful knowledge, all of which they hated quite impartially, which means they hated the whole lot–one thing as much as another.

  The only part of lessons they liked was the home-work, when, if Aunt Edith had time to help them, geography became like adventures, history like story-books, and even arithmetic suddenly seemed to mean something.

  “I wish you could teach us always,” said Edred, very inky, and interested for the first time in the exports of China; “it does seem so silly trying to learn things that are only words in books.”

  “I wish I could,” said Aunt Edith, “but I can’t do twenty-nine thousand and seventeen things all at once, and–” A bell jangled. “That’s the seventh time since tea.” She got up and went into the kitchen. “There’s the bell again, my poor Eliza. Never mind; answer the bell, but don’t answer them, whatever they say. It doesn’t do a bit of good, and it sometimes prevents their giving you half-crowns when they leave.”

  “I do love it when they go,” said Elfrida.

  “Yes,” said her aunt. “A cab top-heavy with luggage, the horse’s nose turned stationward, it’s a heavenly sight–when the bill is paid and–But, then, I’m just as glad to see the luggage coming. Chickens! when my ship comes home we’ll go and live on a desert island where there aren’t any cabs, and we won’t have any lodgers in our cave.”

  “When I grow up,” said Edred, “I shall go across the sea and look for your ship and bring it home. I shall take a steam-tug and steer it myself.”

  “Then I shall be captain,” said Elfrida.

  “No, I shall be captain.”

  You can’t if you steer.”

  “Yes, I can!”

  “No, you can’t!”

  “Yes, I can!”

  “Well, do, then!” said Elfrida; “and while you’re doing it–I know you can’t–I shall dig in the garden and find a gold-mine, and Aunt Edith will be rolling in money when you come back, and she won’t want your silly old ship.”

  “Spelling next,” said Aunt Edith. “How do you spell ‘disagreeable’?”

  “Which of us?” asked Edred acutely.

  “Both,” said Aunt Edith, trying to look very severe.

  When you are a child you always dream of your ship coming home–of having a hundred pounds, or a thousand, or a million pounds to spend as you like. My favourite dream, I remember, was a thousand pounds and an express understanding that I was not to spend it on anything useful. And when you have dreamed of your million pounds, or your thousand, or your hundred, you spend happy hour on hour in deciding what presents you will buy for each of the people you are fond of, and in picturing their surprise and delight at your beautiful presents and your wonderful generosity. I think very few of us spend our dream fortunes entirely on ourselves. Of course, we buy ourselves a motor-bicycle straight away, and footballs and bats–and dolls with real hair, and real china tea-sets, and large boxes of mixed chocolates, and “Treasure Island,” and all the books that Mrs. Ewing ever wrote, but, when we have done that we begin to buy things for other people. It is a beautiful dream, but too often, by the time it comes true–up to a hundred pounds or a thousand–we forget what we used to mean to do with our money, and spend it all in stocks and shares, and eligible building sites, and fat cigars and fur coats. If I were young again I would sit down and write a list of all the kind things I meant to do when my ship came home, and if my ship ever did come home I would read that list, and–But the parlour bell is ringing for the eighth time, and the front-door bell is ringing too, and the first-floor is ringing also, and so is the second-floor, and Eliza is trying to answer four bells at once–always a most difficult thing to do.

  The front-door bell was rung by the postman; he brought three letters. The first was a bill for mending the lid of the cistern, on which Edred had recently lighted a fire, fortified by an impression that wood could not burn if there were w
ater on the other side–a totally false impression, as the charred cistern lid proved. The second was an inquiry whether Miss Arden would take a clergyman in at half the usual price, because he had a very large family which had all just had measles. And the third was THE letter, which is really the seed, and beginning, and backbone, and rhyme, and reason of this story.

  Edred had got the letters from the postman, and he stood and waited while Aunt Edith read them. He collected postmarks, and had not been able to make out by the thick half-light of the hall gas whether any of these were valuable.

  The third letter had a very odd effect on Aunt Edith. She read it once, and rubbed her hand across her eyes. Then she got up and stood under the chandelier, which wanted new burners badly, and so burned with a very unlighting light, and read it again. Then she read it a third time, and then she said, “Oh!”

  “What is it, auntie?” Elfrida asked anxiously; “is it the taxes?” It had been the taxes once, and Elfrida had never forgotten. (If you don’t understand what this means ask your poorest relations, who are also likely to be your nicest and if they don’t know, ask the washerwoman.)

  “No; it’s not the taxes, darling,” said Aunt Edith; “on the contrary.”

  I don’t know what the contrary (or opposite) of taxes is, any more than the children did–but I am sure it is something quite nice–and so were they.

  “Oh, auntie, I am so glad,” they both said, and said it several times before they asked again, “What is it?”

  “I think–I’m not quite sure–but I think it’s a ship come home–oh, just a quite tiny little bit of a ship–a toy boat–hardly more than that. But I must go up to London to-morrow the first thing, and see if it really is a ship, and, if so, what sort of ship it is. Mrs. Blake shall come in, and you’ll be good as gold, children, won’t you?”