Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “It must be one of those,” Edred said. “We’ll try all the keys and all the doors till we find it.”

  So they tried all the keys and all the doors. One door led to a loft where apples were stored. Another to a cellar, where brooms and spades and picks leaned against the damp wall, and there were baskets and piles of sacks. A third opened into a tower that seemed to be used as a pigeon-cote. It was the very last door they tried that led into the long garden between two high walls, where already the weeds had grown high among the forget-me-nots and pansies. And at the end of this garden was a narrow house with a red roof, wedged tightly in between two high grey walls that belonged to the castle.

  All the blinds were down; the garden was chill and quiet, and smelt of damp earth and dead leaves.

  “Oh, Edred, do you think we ought?” Elfrida said, shivering.

  “Yes, I do,” said Edred; “and you’re not being good, whatever you may think. You’re only being frightened.”

  Elfrida naturally replied, “I’m not. Come on.”

  But it was very slowly, and with a feeling of being on tiptoe and holding their breaths, that they went up to those blinded windows that looked like sightless eyes.

  The front door was locked, and none of the keys would fit it.

  “I don’t care,” said Edred. “If I am Lord Arden I’ve got a right to get in, and if I’m not I don’t care about anything, so here goes.”

  Elfrida almost screamed, half with horror and half with admiration of his daring, when he climbed up to a little window by means of an elder-tree that grew close to it, tried to open the window, and when he found it fast deliberately pushed his elbow through the glass.

  “Thus,” he said rather unsteadily, “the heir of Arden Castle re-enters his estates.”

  He got the window open and disappeared through it. Elfrida stood clasping and unclasping her hands, and in her mind trying to get rid of the idea of a very large and sudden policeman appearing in the garden door and saying, in that deep voice so much admired in our village constables, “Where’s your brother?”

  No policeman came, fortunately, and presently a blind went up, a French window opened, and there was Edred beckoning her with the air of a conspirator.

  It needed an effort to obey his signal, but she did it. He closed the French window, drew down the blind again, and–

  “Oh, don’t let’s,” said Elfrida.

  “Nonsense,” said Edred; “there’s nothing to be frightened of. It’s just like our rooms at home.”

  It was. They went all over the house, and it certainly was. Some of the upper rooms were very bare, but all the furniture was of the same kind as Aunt Edith’s, and there were the same kind of pictures. Only the library was different. It was a very large room, and there were no pictures at all. Nothing but books and books and books, bound in yellowy leather. Books from ceiling to floor, shelves of books between the windows and over the mantelpiece–hundreds and thousands of books. Even Edred’s spirits sank. “It’s no go. It will take us years to look in them all,” he said.

  “We may as well look at some of them,” said Elfrida, always less daring, but more persevering than her brother. She sat down on the worn carpet. and began to read the names on the backs of the books nearest to her. “Burton’s Atomy of Melon something,” she read, and “Locke on Understanding,” and many other dull and wearying titles. But none of the books seemed at all likely to contain a spell for finding treasure. “Burgess on the Precious Metals” beguiled her for a moment, but she saw at once that there was no room in its closely-printed, brown-spotted pages for anything so interesting as a spell. Time passed by. The sunlight that came through the blinds had quite changed its place on the carpet, and still Elfrida persevered. Edred grew more and more restless.

  “It’s no use,” he kept saying, and “Let’s chuck it,” and “I expect that old chap was just kidding us. I don’t feel a bit like I did about it,” and “Do let’s get along home.”

  But Elfrida plodded on, though her head and her back both ached. I wish I could say that her perseverance was rewarded. But it wasn’t; and one must keep to facts. As it happened, it was Edred who, aimlessly running his finger along the edge of the bookshelf just for the pleasure of looking at the soft, mouse-coloured dust that clung to the finger at the end of each shelf, suddenly cried out, “What about this?” and pulled out a great white book that had on its cover a shield printed in gold with squares and little spots on it, and a gold pig standing on the top of the shield, and on the back, “The History of the Ardens of Arden.”

  In an instant it was open on the floor between them, and they were turning its pages with quick, anxious hands. But, alas! it was as empty of spells as dull old Burgess himself.

  It was only when Edred shut it with a bang and the remark that he had had jolly well enough of it that a paper fluttered out and swept away like a pigeon, settling on the fireless hearth. And it was the spell. There was no doubt of that.

  Written in faint ink on a square yellowed sheet of letter-paper that had been folded once, and opened and folded again so often that the fold was worn thin and hardly held its two parts together, the writing was fine and pointed and ladylike. At the top was written: “The Spell Aunt Anne Told Me.–December 24, 1793.”

  And then came the spell:–

  “Hear, Oh badge of Arden’s house,

  The spell my little age allows;

  Arden speaks it without fear,

  Badge of Arden’s house, draw near,

  Make me brave and kind and wise,

  And show me where the treasure lies.”

  “To be said,” the paper went on, “at sun-setting by a Lord Arden between the completion of his ninth and tenth years. But it is all folly and not to be believed.”

  “This is it, right enough,” said Edred. “Come on, let’s get out of this.” They turned to go, and as they did so something moved in the corner of the library–something little, and they could not see its shape.

  “THEY WERE TURNING ITS PAGES WITH QUICK ANXIOUS HANDS.”

  Neither drew free breath again till they were out of the house, and out of the garden, and out of the castle, and on the wide, thymy downs, with the blue sky above, where the skylarks sang, and there was the sweet, fresh scent of the seaweed and the bean-fields.

  “Oh,” said Elfrida, then, “I am so glad it’s not at midnight you’ve got to say the spell. You’d be too frightened.”

  “I shouldn’t,” said Edred, very pale and walking quickly away from the castle. “I should say it just the same if it was midnight.” And he very nearly believed what he said.

  Elfrida it was who had picked up the paper that Edred had dropped when that thing moved in the corner. She still held it fast.

  “I expect it was only a rat or something,” said Edred, his heart beating nineteen to the dozen, as they say in Kent and elsewhere.

  “Oh, yes,” said Elfrida, whose lips were trembling a little; “I’m sure it was only a rat or something.”

  When they got to the top of Arden Knoll there was no sign of sunset. There was time, therefore, to pull oneself together, to listen to the skylarks, and to smell the bean-flowers, and to wonder how one could have been such a duffer as to be scared by a “rat or something.” Also there were some bits of sandwich and crumbled cake, despised at dinner-time, but now, somehow, tasting quite different. These helped to pass the time till the sun almost seemed to rest on a brown shoulder of the downs, that looked as though it were shrugging itself up to meet the round red ball that the evening mists had made of the sun.

  The children had not spoken for several minutes. Their four eyes were fixed on the sun, and as the edge of it seemed to flatten itself against the hill-shoulder Elfrida whispered, “Now!” and gave her brother the paper.

  They had read the spell so often, as they sat there in the waning light, that both knew it by heart, so there was no need for Edred to read it. And that was lucky, for in that thick, pink light the faint ink hardly showed at all
on the yellowy paper.

  Edred stood up.

  “Now!” said Elfrida, again. “Say it now.” And Edred said, quite out loud and in a pleasant sort of sing-song, such as he was accustomed to use at school when reciting the stirring ballads of the late Lord Macaulay, or the moving tale of the boy on the burning deck:–

  “‘Hear, Oh badge of Arden’s house,

  The spell my little age allows;

  Arden speaks it without fear,

  Badge of Arden’s house, draw near,

  Make me brave and kind and wise,

  And show me where the treasure lies.’”

  He said it slowly and carefully, his sister eagerly listening, ready to correct him if he said a word wrong. But he did not.

  “Where the treasure lies,” he ended, and the great silence of the downs seemed to rush in like a wave to fill the space which his voice had filled.

  And nothing else happened at all. A flush of pink from the sun-setting spread over the downs, the grass-stems showed up thin and distinct, the skylarks had ceased to sing, but the scent of the bean-flowers and the seaweed was stronger than ever. And nothing happened till Edred cried out, “What’s that?” For close to his foot something moved, not quickly or suddenly so as to startle, but very gently, very quietly, very unmistakably–something that glittered goldenly in the pink, diffused light of the sun-setting.

  “Why,” said Elfrida stooping, “why, it’s–”

  CHAPTER II. THE MOULDIWARP

  AND it was–it was the living image of the little pig-like animal that was stamped in gold above the chequered shield on the cover of the white book in which they had found the spell. And as on the yellowy white of the vellum book-cover, so here on the thymy grass of the knoll it shone golden. The children stood perfectly still. They were afraid to move lest they should scare away this little creature which, though golden, was alive and moved about at their feet, turning a restless nose to right and left.

  “It is,” said Elfrida again, very softly, so as not to frighten it.

  “What?” Edred asked, though he knew well enough.

  “Off the book that we got the spell out of.”

  “That was our crest on the top of our coat-of-arms, like on the old snuff-box that was great-grandpapa’s.”

  “Well, this is our crest come alive, that’s all.”

  “Don’t you be too clever,” said Edred. “It said badge; I don’t believe badge is the same thing as crest. A badge is leeks, or roses, or thistles–something you can wear in your cap. I shouldn’t like to wear that in my cap.”

  And still the golden thing at their feet moved cautiously and without ceasing.

  “Why,” said Edred suddenly, “it’s just a common old mole.”

  “It isn’t; it’s our own crest, that’s on the spoons and things. It’s our own old family mole that’s our crest. How can it be a common mole? It’s all golden.”

  And, even as she spoke, it left off being golden. For the last bit of sun dipped behind the shoulder of the downs, and in the grey twilight that was left the mole was white–any one could see that.

  “Oh!” said Elfrida–but she stuck to her point. “So you see,” she went on, “it can’t be just a really-mole. Really-moles are black.”

  “Well,” said Edred, “it’s very tame, I will say that.”

  “Well–” Edred was beginning; but, at that same moment the mole also, suddenly and astonishingly, said, “Well?”

  There was a hushed pause. Then–

  “Did you say that?” Elfrida whispered.

  “No,” said Edred, “you did.”

  “Don’t whisper, now,” said the mole; “‘tain’t purty manners, so I tells ‘ee.”

  With one accord the two children came to their knees, one on each side of the white mole.

  “I say!” said Edred.

  “Now, don’t,” said the mole, pointing its nose at him quite as disdainfully as any human being could have pointed a finger. “Don’t you go for to pretend you don’t know as Mouldiwarps ‘as got tongues in dere heads same’s what you’ve got.”

  “But not to talk with?” said Elfrida softly.

  “Don’t you tell me,” said the Mouldiwarp, bristling a little. “Hasn’t no one told you e’er a fairy tale? All us beastes has tongues, and when we’re dere us uses of en.”

  “When you’re where?” said Edred, rather annoyed at being forced to believe in fairy tales, which he had never really liked.

  “Why, in a fairy tale for sure,” said the mole. “Wherever to goodness else on earth do you suppose you be?”

  “We’re here,” said Edred, kicking the ground to make it feel more solid and himself more sure of things, “on Arden Knoll.”

  “An’ ain’t that in a fairy tale?” demanded the Mouldiwarp triumphantly. “You do talk so free. You called me, and here I be. What do you want?”

  “Are you,” said Elfrida, thrilling with surprise and fear, and pleasure and hope, and wonder, and a few other things which, taken in the lump, are usually called “a thousand conflicting emotions,”–”are you the ‘badge of Arden’s house’?”

  “Course I be,” said the mole,–”what’s left of it; and never did I think to be called one by the Arden boy and gell as didn’t know their own silly minds. What do you want, eh?”

  “We told you in the spell,” said Elfrida.

  “Oh, be that all?” said the mole bitterly; “nothing else? I’m to make him brave and wise and show him de treasure. Milksop!” it said, so suddenly and fiercely that it almost seemed to spit the words in poor Edred’s face.

  “I’m not,” said Edred, turning turkey-red. “I got into the house and found the spell, anyway.”

  “Yes; and who did all the looking for it? She did. Bless you, I was there; I know all about it. If it was showing her the treasure, now, there’d be some sense in it.”

  “I think you’re very unfair,” said Elfrida, as earnestly as though she had been speaking to a grown-up human being; “if he was brave and wise we shouldn’t want you to make him it.”

  “You ain’t got nothing to do with it,” said the mole crossly.

  “Yes, she has,” said Edred. “I mean to share and share with her–whatever I get. And if you could make me wise I’d teach her everything you taught me. But I don’t believe you can. So there!”

  “Do you believe I can talk?” the mole asked; and Edred quite definitely and surprisingly said–

  “No, I don’t. You’re a dream, that’s all you are,” he said, “and I’m dreaming you.”

  “And what do you think?” the mole asked Elfrida, who hesitated.

  “I think,” she said at last, “that it’s getting very dark, and Aunt Edith will be anxious about us; and will you meet us another day? There isn’t time to make us brave and wise to-night.”

  “That there ain’t, for sure,” said the mole meaningly.

  “But you might tell us where the treasure is,” said Edred.

  “That comes last, greedy,” said the mole. “I’ve got to make you kind and wise first, and I see I’ve got my work cut out. Good-night.”

  It began to move away.

  “Oh, don’t go!” said Elfrida; “we shall never find you again. Oh, don’t! Oh, this is dreadful!”

  The mole paused.

  “I’ve got to let you find me again. Don’t upset yourself,” it said bitterly. “When you wants me, come up on to the knoll and say a piece of poetry to call me, and I’ll come,” and it started again.

  “But what poetry?” Edred asked.

  “Oh, anything. You can pick and choose.”

  Edred thought of “The Lays of Ancient Rome.”

  “Only ‘tain’t no good without you makes it up yourselves,” said the Mouldiwarp.

  “Oh!” said the two, much disheartened.

  “And course it must be askin’ me to kindly come to you. Get along home.”

  “Where are you going?” Elfrida asked.

  “Home too, of course,” it said, and this t
ime it really did go.

  The two children turned towards the lights of Ardenhurst Station in perfect silence. Only as they reached the place where the down-turf ends and the road begins Edred said, in tones of awe, “I say!”

  And Elfrida answered, “Yes–isn’t it?”

  Then they walked, still without talking, to the station.

  The lights there, and the voices of porters and passengers, the rattle of signal-wires and the “ping, ping” of train signals, had on them the effect of a wet sponge passed over the face of a sleeper by some “already up” person. They seemed to awaken from a dream, and the moment they were in the train, which fortunately came quite soon, they began to talk. They talked without stopping till they got to Cliffville Station, and then they talked all the way home, and by the time they reached the house with the green balconies and the smooth, pale, polished door-knocker they had decided, as children almost always do in cases of magic adventure, that they had better not say anything to any one. As I am always pointing out, it is extremely difficult to tell your magic experiences to people who not only will not, but cannot believe you. This is one of the drawbacks of really wonderful happenings.

  Aunt Edith had not come home, but she came as they were washing their hands and faces for supper. She brought with her presents for Edred’s birthday–nicer presents, and more of them, than he had had for three years.

  She bought him a box of wonderfully varied chocolate and a box of tools, a very beautiful bat and a cricket-ball and a set of stumps, and a beetle-backed paint-box in which all the colours were whole pans, and not half ones, as they usually are in the boxes you get as presents. In this were beautiful paint-brushes–two camel’s-hair ones and a sable with a point as fine as fine.

  “You are a dear, auntie,” he said, with his arms very tight round her waist. He was very happy, and it made him feel more generous than usual. So he said again, “You are a dear. And Elfrida can use the paint-box whenever I’m out, and the camel’s-hair brushes. Not the sable, of course.”