Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  Elfrida, whose mouth was equally full, looked at the gentleman who seemed to be leading the others, and remarked–

  “This is a nice time of night to come knocking people up!”

  “‘NOW,’ SAID A DOZEN VOICES, ‘THE TRUTH, LITTLE MISS.’”

  “All hours are alike to a loyal subject,” said a round, fat, blue-eyed gentleman in a green suit. “Have you any strangers under your roof to-night?”

  “Oh!” cried Bet,” all is lost!”

  The gentlemen exchanged glances and crowded round her. Elfrida shrugged the shoulders of her mind–if a mind has shoulders–and told herself that it didn’t matter. History knew best, no doubt, and whatever seemed to be happening now was only history.

  “You have a stranger here?” they asked; and, “Where is he? You cannot refuse to give him up.”

  “My heart told me so,” cried Bet. “I knew it was he you were seeking,” and with that she fainted elegantly into the arms of the nearest gentleman, who was dressed in plum-colour, and seemed to be struggling with some emotion which made him look as if he were laughing.

  “Ask the child–children and fools speak the truth,” said the fat, blue-eyed gentleman.

  Elfrida found herself suddenly lifted on to the table, from which she could see over the heads of the gentlemen who stood all round her. She could see Bet reclining on the sofa, and the open door with servants crowding in it, all eyes and ears.

  “Now,” said a dozen voices, “the truth, little miss.”

  “What do you want to know?” she asked; and, in a much lower tone, “I shan’t tell you anything unless you send the servants away.”

  The door was closed and the truth was asked for again.

  “If you’ll only tell me what you want to know,” she said again.

  “Does any stranger lie here to-night?”

  “No,” said Elfrida. She knew that the beautiful gentleman in the secret chamber was not lying down, but sitting to his supper.

  “But Miss Arden said ‘All is lost,’ and she knew ’twas he whom we sought.”

  “Well,” Elfrida carefully explained, “it’s like this. You see, we were robbed by a highwayman to-day, and I think that upset my cousin. She’s rather easily upset, I’m afraid.”

  “Very easily,” several voices agreed, and some one added that it was a hare-brained business.

  “The shortest way’s the best,” said the plum-coloured gentleman. “Is Sir Edward Talbot here?”

  “No, he isn’t,” said Elfrida downrightly, “and I don’t believe you’ve got any business coming into people’s houses and frightening other people into fits, and I shall tell Lord Arden when he comes home. So now you know.”

  “Zooks!” some one cried, “the child’s got a spirit; and she’s right, too, strike me if she isn’t.”

  “But, snails!” exclaimed another, “we do but protect Lord Arden’s house in his absence.”

  “If,” said Elfrida, “you think your Talbot’s playing hide-and-seek here, and if he’s done anything wrong, you can look for him if you like. But I don’t believe Lord Arden will be pleased. That’s all. I should like to get down on to the floor, if you please!”

  I don’t know whether Elfrida would have had the courage to say all this if she had not remembered that this was history-times, and not now-times. But the gentlemen seemed delighted with her bravery.

  They lifted her gently down, and with many apologies for having discommoded the ladies, they went out of the room and out of the castle. Through the window Elfrida heard the laughing voices and clatter and stamp of their horses’ hoofs as they mounted and rode off. They all seemed to be laughing. And she felt that she moved in the midst of mysteries.

  She could not bear to go back into her own time without seeing the end of the adventure. So she went to bed in a large four-poster, with Cousin Bet for company. The fainting fit lasted exactly as long as the strange gentlemen were in the house and no longer, which was very convenient.

  Elfrida got up extremely early in the morning and went down into the parlour. She had meant to go and see how the King was, and whether he wanted his shaving-water first thing, as her daddy used to do. But it was so very, very early that she decided that it would be better to wait a little. The King might be sleepy, and sleepy people were not always grateful, she knew, for early shaving-water.

  So she went out into the fields where the dew was grey on the grass, and up on to Arden Knoll. And she stood there and heard the skylarks, and looked at the castle and thought how new the mortar looked in the parts about the living house. And presently she saw two figures coming across the fields from where the spire of Arden Church rose out of the tops of trees as round and green as the best double-curled parsley. And one of the gentlemen wore a green coat and the other a purple coat, and she thought to herself how convenient it was to recognise people half a mile away by the colour of their clothes.

  Quito plainly they were going to the castle–so she went down, too, and met them at the gate with a civil “Good morning.”

  “You are no lie-abed at least,” said the green gentleman. “And so no stranger lay at Arden last night, eh?”

  Elfrida found this difficult to answer. No doubt the King had lain–was probably still lying–in the secret chamber. But was he a stranger? No, of course he wasn’t. So–

  “No,” she said.

  And then through the open window of the parlour came, very unexpectedly and suddenly, a leg in a riding-boot, then another leg, and the whole of the beautiful gentleman stood in front of them.

  “So-ho!” he said. “Speak softly, for the servants are not yet about.”

  “They are,” said Elfrida, “only they’re at the back. Creep along under the wall; you will get away without their seeing you then.”

  “Always a wonderful counsellor,” said the beautiful gentleman, bowing gracefully. “Come with us, little maid. I have no secrets from thee.”

  So they all crept along close to the castle wall to that corner from which, between two shoulders of down, you can see the sea. There they stopped.

  “And the wager’s mine,” said the beautiful gentleman, “for all you tried to spoil it. That was not in the bond, Fitzgerald, entering Arden at night at nine of the clock, to ferret me out like a pack of hounds after Reynard.”

  “There was nothing barred,” said the green gentleman. “We tried waylaying you on the road, but you were an hour early.”

  “Ah,” said the beautiful gentleman, “putting back clocks is easy work. And the ostler at the ‘Bull’ loves a handsome wager nigh as well as he loves a guinea.”

  “I do wish you’d explain,” said Elfrida, almost stamping with curiosity and impatience.

  “And so I will, my pretty,” said he, laughing.

  “Aren’t you the King? You said you were.”

  “Nay, nay–not so fast. I asked thee what thou wouldst say if I told you I was King James.”

  “Then who are you?” she asked.

  “Plain Edward Talbot, Baronet, at your ladyship’s service,” he said, with another of his fine bows.

  “But I don’t understand,” she said, “do tell me all about it from the beginning.” So he told her, and the other gentlemen stood by, laughing.

  “The other night I was dining with Mr. Fitzgerald here, and the talk turned on highway robbery, and on Arden Castle here, with other matters. And these gentlemen, with others of the party, laid me a wager–five hundred guineas it was–that I would not rob a coach. I took the wager. And I wagered beside that I would rob a coach of the Arden jewels, and that I would lie a night at Arden beside, and no one should know my name there. And I have done all three and won my wager. I am but newly come home from foreign parts, so your cousin could not know my face. But zounds, child! had it not been for thee I had lost my wager. I counted on Miss Arden’s help–and a pale-faced, fainting, useless fine lady I should have found her. But thou–thou’rt a girl in a thousand. And I’ll buy thee the finest fairing I can find next time
I go to London. We are all friends. Tell pretty miss to hold that tongue of hers, and none shall hear the tale from us.”

  “But all these gentlemen coming last night. All the servants know.”

  “The gentlemen came, no doubt, to protect Miss Arden, in case the villainous highwayman should have hidden behind the window curtain. Oh, but the wise child it is–has a care for every weak point in our armour!”

  Then he told his friends the whole of the adventure, and they laughed very merrily, for all they had lost their wager, and went home to breakfast across the dewy fields.

  “It’s nice of him to think me brave and all that,” Elfrida told herself, “but I do wish he’d really been the King.”

  When she had told Betty what had happened everything seemed suddenly to be not worth while; she did not feel as though she cared to stay any longer in that part of the past–so she ran upstairs, through the attic and the pigeon noises, back into her own times, and went down and found Edred sitting on the second hand of the daisy-clock; and he did not believe that she had been away at all. For all the time she had been away seemed no time to him, because he had been sitting on that second hand.

  So when the Mouldiwarp told them to go along in, they went; and the way they went was not in, but out, and round under the castle wall to the corner from which you could see the sea. And there they lay on the warm grass, and Elfrida told Edred the whole story, and at first he did not believe a word of it.

  “But it’s true, I tell you,” said she. “You don’t suppose I should make up a whole tale like that, do you?”

  “No,” said Edred. “Of course, you’re not clever enough. But you might have read it in a book.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” said Elfrida,–”so there!”

  “If it was really true, you might have come back for me. You know how I’ve always wanted to meet a highwayman–you know you do.”

  “How could I come back? How was I to get off the horse and run home and get in among the chests and the pigeon noises and come out here and take you back? The highwayman–Talbot, I mean–would have been gone long before we got back.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” said Edred obstinately. “You forget I was sitting on the clock and stopping it. There wasn’t any time while you were gone–if you were gone.”

  “There was with me,” said Elfrida. “Don’t you see–”

  “There wouldn’t have been if you’d come back where I was,” Edred interrupted.

  “How can you be so aggravating?” Elfrida found suddenly that she was losing her temper. “You can’t be as stupid as that, really.”

  “Oh, can’t I?” said Edred. “I can though, if I like. And stupider–much stupider,” he added darkly. “You wait.”

  “Edred,” said his sister slowly and fervently, “sometimes I feel as if I must shake you.”

  “You daren’t!” said Edred.

  “Do you dare me to?”

  “Yes,” said Edred fiercely.

  Of course, you are aware that after that, by all family laws, Elfrida was obliged to shake him. She did, and burst into tears. He looked at her for a moment and–but no–tears are unmanly. I would not betray the weakness of my hero. Let us draw a veil, or take a turn round the castle and come back to them presently.

  It is just as well that we went away when we did, for we really turned our backs on a most unpleasant scene. And now that we come back to them, though crying is still going on, Elfrida is saying that she is very sorry, and is trying to find her handkerchief to lend to Edred, whose own is unexpectedly mislaid.

  “Oh, all right,” he says, “I’m sorry too. There! But us saying we’re sorry won’t make us unquarrel. That’s the worst of it. We shan’t be able to find The Door for three days now. I do wish we hadn’t. It is sickening.”

  “Never mind,” said Elfrida; “we didn’t have a real I’ll-never-speak-to-you-again-you-see-if-I-do quarrel, did we?”

  “I don’t suppose it matters what sort of quarrel you had,” said the boy in gloom. “Look here–I’ll tell you what–you tell me all about it over again and I’ll try to believe you. I really will, on the honour of an Arden.”

  So she told him all over again.

  “And where,” said Edred, when she had quite finished,–”where did you put the jewels?”

  “ELFRIDA WAS OBLIGED TO SHAKE HIM.”

  “I–they–he put them in the corner cupboard in the secret room,” said Elfrida.

  “If you’d taken me and not been in such a hurry–no, I’m not quarrelling, I’m only reasoning with you like Aunt Edith–if I’d been there I should have buried those jewels somewhere and then come back for me, and we’d have dug them up, and been rich beyond the dreams of–what do they call it?”

  “But I never told Betty where they were. Perhaps they’re there now. Let’s go and look.”

  “If they are,” said he, “I’ll believe everything you’ve been telling me without trying at all.”

  “You’ll have to do that–if there’s a secret room, won’t you?”

  “P’r’aps,” said Edred; “let’s go and see. I expect I shall have got a headache presently. You didn’t ought to have shaken me. Mrs. Honeysett says it’s very bad for people to be shaken–it mixes up their brains inside their heads so that they ache, and you’re stupid. I expect that’s what made you say I was stupid.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Elfrida despairingly. “You know that was before I shook you, and I did say I was sorry.”

  “I know it was, but it comes to the same thing. Come on–let’s have a squint at your old secret room.”

  But, unfortunately it was now dinner-time. If you do happen to know the secret of a carved panel with a staircase hidden away behind it, you don’t want to tell that secret lightly–as though it were the day of the week, or the date of the Battle of Waterloo, or what nine times seven is–not even to a grown-up so justly liked as Mrs. Honeysett. And, besides, a hot beefsteak pudding and greens do not seem to go well with the romances of old days. To have looked for the spring of that panel while that dinner smoked on the board would have been as unseemly as to try on a new gold crown over curl-papers. Elfrida felt this. And Edred did not more than half believe in the secret, anyway. And besides he was very hungry.

  “Wait till afterwards,” was what they said to each other in whispers, while Mrs. Honeysett was changing the plates.

  “You do do beautiful cooking,” Edred remarked, as the gooseberry pie was cut open and revealed its chrysoprase-coloured contents.

  “You do the beautiful eating then,” said Mrs. Honeysett, “and you be quick about it. You ain’t got into no mischief this morning, have you? You look as though butter wouldn’t melt in either of your mouths, and that’s always a sign of something being up with most children.”

  “No, indeed we haven’t,” said Elfrida earnestly, “and we don’t mean to either. And our looking like that’s only because we brushed our hairs with wet brushes, most likely. It does make you look good, somehow; I’ve often noticed it.”

  “I’ve been flying round this morning,” Mrs. Honeysett went on, “so as to get down to my sister’s for a bit this afternoon. She’s not so well again, poor old dear, and I might be kept late. But my niece Emily’s coming up to take charge. She’s a nice lively young girl; she’ll get you your teas, and look after you as nice as nice. Now don’t you go doing anything what you wouldn’t if I was behind of you, will you? That’s dears.”

  Nothing could have happened better. Both children felt that Emily, being a young girl, would be more easy to manage than Mrs. Honeysett. As soon as they were alone they talked it over comfortably, and decided that the best thing would be to ask Emily if she would go down to the station and see if there was a parcel there for Master Arden or Miss Arden.

  “And if there isn’t,” Elfrida giggled, “we’ll say she’d better wait till it comes. We’ll run down and fetch her as soon as we’ve explored the secret chamber.”

  “I say,” Edred remarked thoughtfully, “we
haven’t bothered much about finding the treasure, have we? I thought that was what we were going into history for.”

  “Now, Edred,” said his sister, “you know very well we didn’t go into history on purpose.”

  “No; but,” said Edred, “we ought to have. Suppose the treasure is really those jewels. We’d sell them and rebuild Arden Castle like it used to be, wouldn’t we?”

  “We’d give Auntie Edith a few jewels, I think, wouldn’t we? She is such a dear, you know.”

  “Yes; she should have first choice. I do believe we’re on the brink, and I feel just exactly like as if something real was going to happen–not in history, but here at Arden–Now-Arden.”

  “I do hope we find the jewels,” said Elfrida. “Oh, I do! And I do hope we manage the lively young girl all right.”

  Mrs. Honeysett’s best dress was a nice bright red–the kind of colour you can see a long way off. They watched it till it disappeared round a shoulder of the downs, and then set about the task of managing Emily.

  The lively young girl proved quite easy to manage. The idea of “popping on her hat” and running down to the station was naturally much pleasanter to her than the idea of washing the plates that had been used for beefsteak pudding and gooseberry-pie, and then giving the kitchen a thorough scrub out–which was the way Mrs. Honeysett had meant her to spend the afternoon.

  Her best dress–she had slipped the skirt over her print gown so as to look smart as she came up through the village–was a vivid violet, another good distance colour. It also was watched till it dipped into the lane.

  “And now,” cried Elfrida, “we’re all alone, and we can explore the great secret!”

  “But suppose somebody comes,” said Edred, “and interrupts, and finds it out, and grabs the jewels, and all is lost. There’s tramps, you know, and gipsy-women with baskets.”

  “Yes–or drink of water, or to ask the time. I’ll tell you what–we’ll lock up the doors, back and front.”

  They did. But even this did not satisfy the suddenly cautious Edred.