Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

“It’s the treasure we’ve got to find. Excuse our whispering, Mr. Beale. Thank you for the story–oh, and I wanted to ask you who owns the land now–all the land about here, I mean, that used to belong to us Ardens?”

  “That Jackson chap,” said old Beale, “him that made a fortune in the soap boiling. The Tallow King, they call him. But he’s got too rich for the house he’s got. He’s bought a bigger place in Yorkshire, that used to belong to the Duke of Sanderstead, and the Arden lands are to be sold next year, so I’m told.”

  “Oh,” said Edred, clasping his hands, “if we could only find the treasure, and buy back the land! We haven’t forgotten what we said the first time: if we found the treasure we’d make all the cottages comfortable, and new thatch everywhere.”

  “That’s a good lad,” said old Beale, “you make haste and find the treasure. And if you don’t find it never fret; there’s ways of helping other folks without finding of treasure, so there is. You come and see old Beale again, my lord, and I shouldn’t wonder but what I’d have a white rabbit for you next time you come along this way.”

  “He is an old dear,” said Elfrida, as they went home, “and I do think the films will be dry by the time we get back; but perhaps we’d better not print them till to-morrow morning.”

  “There’s plenty of light to-day,” said Edred, and Elfrida said–

  “I say?”

  “Well?”

  “Did you notice the kind of clothes we wore in those pictures–where they were stowing away the treasure?”

  “Oh!” groaned Edred, recalled to a sense of his wrongs. “If only Mrs. Honeysett hadn’t opened the door just when she did, we should know exactly where the treasure was. It was the West Tower they took it to, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Elfrida, “but–”

  “And if it had gone on we should have been sure–we should have seen them come away again.”

  “Yes,” said Elfrida, and again she remarked, “I say?”

  Edred again said, “Well–?”

  “Well–suppose we looked in the chests we should be sure to find clothes like those, and then we should be back there–living in those times, and we could see the treasure put away, and then we really should know.”

  “A1, first class, ripping!” was Edred’s enthusiastic rejoinder. “Come on–I’ll race you to the gate.”

  He did race her, and won by about thirty white Mouldiwarp’s lengths.

  There had been no quarrel now for quite a long time–if you count as time the days spent in the Gunpowder Plot adventure–so the attic was easily found, and once more the children stood among the chests, with the dusty roof, and the dusty sunbeams, and the clittering pigeon feet, and the soft pigeon noises overhead.

  “Come on,” cried Elfrida joyously. “I shall know the dress directly I see it. Mine was blue silk with sloping shoulders, and yours was black velvet and a Vandyke collar.”

  Together they flung back the lid of a chest they had not yet opened. It held clothes far richer than any they had seen yet. The doublets and cloaks and bodices were stiff with gold embroidery and jewels. But there was no blue silk dress with sloping shoulders and no black velvet suit and Vandyke collar.

  “Oh, never mind,” said Edred, bundling the splendid clothes back by double armfuls. “Help me to smooth these down so that the lid will shut properly, and we’ll try the next chest.”

  But the lid would not shut at all till Elfrida had taken all the things out and folded them properly, and then it shut quite easily.

  Then they went on to the next chest.

  “I have a magic inside feeling that they’re in this one,” said Elfrida gaily. And so they may have been. The children never knew–for the next chest was locked, and the utmost efforts of four small arms failed to move the lid a hair’s breadth.

  “Oh, bother!” said Edred; “we’ll try the next.”

  But the next was locked, too–and the next, and the one after that, and the one beyond, and–Well, the fact is, they were all locked.

  The children looked at each other in something quite like despair.

  “I feel,” said the boy, “like a baffled burglar.”

  “I feel,” said the girl, “as if I was just going to understand something. Oh, wait a minute; it’s coming. I think,” she added very slowly,–”I think it means if we go anywhere we’ve got to go wherever it was they wore those glorious stiff gold clothes. That’s what the chest’s open for; that’s what the others are locked for. See?”

  “Then let’s put them on and go,” said Edred.

  “IT HELD CLOTHES FAR RICHER THAN ANY THEY HAD SEEN YET.”

  “I don’t think I want any more Tower of Londons,” said Elfrida doubtfully.

  “I don’t mind what it is,” said Edred. “I’ve found out one thing. We always come safe out of it, whatever it is. And besides,” he added, remembering many talks with his good friend, Sir Walter Raleigh, “an English gentleman must be afraid of nothing save God and his conscience.”

  “All right,” said Elfrida, laying hands on the chest-lid that hid the golden splendour. “You might help,” she said.

  But Edred couldn’t. He laid hands on the chest, of course, and he pulled and Elfrida pulled, but the chest-lid was as fast now as any of the others.

  “Done in the eye!” said Edred. It was a very vulgar expression, and I can’t think where he picked it up.

  “‘He that will not when he may,

  He shall not when he would–a,’”

  said Elfrida–and I do know where she learned that. It was from an old song Mrs. Honeysett used to sing when she blackleaded the stoves.

  “I suppose we must chuck it for to-day,” said Edred, when he had quite hurt his fingers by trying all the chests once more, and had found that every single one was shut tight as wax. “Come on–we’ll print the photographs.”

  But the films were not dry enough. They never are when you just expect them to be; so they locked the still-room door on the outside and hung the key on a nail high up in the kitchen chimney. Mrs. Honeysett was not in the kitchen at that moment, but she came hurrying in the next.

  “Here you are, my lambs,” she said cheerily, “and just in time for the surprise.”

  “Oh, I’d forgotten the surprise. That makes two of it, doesn’t it?” said Elfrida. “Do tell us what it is. We need a nice surprise to make up for everything, if you only knew.”

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Honeysett, “you mean because of me opening that there door. Well, there is two surprises. One’s roast chicken. For supper,” she added impressively.

  “Then I know the other,” said Edred. “Aunt Edith’s coming.”

  And she was–indeed, at that very moment, as they looked through the window, they saw her blue dress coming over the hill, and joyously tore out to meet her.

  It was after the roast chicken, when it was nearly dark and almost bedtime, that Aunt Edith said, suddenly–

  “Children, there’s something I wanted to tell you. I’ve hesitated about it a good deal, but I think we oughtn’t to have any secrets from each other.”

  Edred and Elfrida exchanged guilty glances.

  “Not real secrets, of course,” said Edred, hastily; “but you don’t mind our having magic secrets, do you?”

  “Of course not,” said Aunt Edith, smiling; “and what I’m going to tell you is rather like magic–if it’s true. I don’t know yet whether it’s true or not.”

  Here Aunt Edith put an arm round each of the children as they sat on the broad window-seat, and swallowed something in her throat and sniffed.

  “Oh, it’s not bad news, is it?” Elfrida cried. “Oh, darling auntie, don’t be miserable, and don’t say that they’ve found out that Arden isn’t ours, or that Edred isn’t really Lord Arden, or something.”

  “Would you mind so very much,” said Aunt Edith gently, “if you weren’t Lord Arden, Edred? Because–”

  CHAPTER XII. FILMS AND CLOUDS

  THE films were quite dry by bedti
me, when, after a delightful evening with no magic in it at all but the magic of undisturbed jolliness, Edred slipped away, unpinned them and hid them in Elfrida’s corner drawer, which he rightly judged to be a cleaner resting-place for them than his own was likely to be. So there the precious films lay between Elfrida’s best lace collar and the handkerchief-case with three fat buttercups embroidered on it that Aunt Edith had given her at Christmas. And Edred went back to the parlour for one last game of Proverbs before bed. As he took up his cards he thought how strange it was that he, who had been imprisoned in the Tower and had talked with Sir Walter Raleigh, should be sitting there quietly playing Proverbs with his aunt and his sister, just like any other little boy.

  “Aha!” said Edred to himself, “I am living a double life, that’s what I’m doing.”

  He had seen the expression in a book and the idea charmed him.

  “How pleased Edred looks with himself!” said Aunt Edith; “I’m sure he’s got a whole proverb, or nearly, in his hand already.”

  “You’ll be looking pleased presently,” he said; “you always win.”

  And win she did, for Edred’s thoughts were wandering off after the idea how pleased Aunt Edith would look when he and Elfrida should come to her, take her by the hand, and lead her to the hiding-place of the treasure, and then say, “Behold the treasure of our home! Now we can rebuild the castle and mend the broken thatch on the cottages, and I can go to Eton and Oxford, and you can have a diamond tiara, and Elfrida can have a pony to ride, and so can I.”

  Elfrida’s thoughts were not unlike his–so Aunt Edith won the game of Proverbs.

  “You have been very good children, Mrs. Honeysett tells me,” said Aunt Edith, putting the cards together.

  “Not so extra,” said Edred; “I mean it’s easy to be good when everything’s so jolly.”

  “We have quarrelled once or twice, you know,” said Elfrida virtuously.

  “Yes, we have,” said Edred firmly.

  They needn’t, they felt, have confessed this–and that made them feel that they were good now, if never before.

  “Well, don’t quarrel any more. I shall be coming over for good quite soon, then we’ll have glorious times. Perhaps we’ll find the treasure. You’ve heard about the treasure?”

  “I should jolly well think we had,” Edred couldn’t help saying. And Elfrida added–

  “And looked for it, too–but we haven’t found it. Did you ever look for it?”

  “No,” said Aunt Edith, “but I always wanted to. My grandfather used to look for it when he was a little boy.”

  “Was your grandfather Lord Arden?” Edred asked.

  “No; he was the grandson of the Lord Arden who fought for King James the Third, as they called him–the Pretender, you know–when he was quite a boy. And they let him off because of his being so young. And then he mortgaged all the Arden lands to keep the Young Pretender–Prince Charlie, you know, in the ballads. He got money to send to him, and of course Prince Charlie was going to pay it back when he was king. Only he never was king,” she sighed.

  “And is that why the Tallow King got all the Arden land?”

  “Yes, dear–that’s why English people prefer Tallow kings to Stuart kings. And old Lord Arden mortgaged everything. That means he borrowed money, and if he didn’t pay back the money by a certain time he agreed to let them take the land instead. And he couldn’t pay; so they took the land–all except a bit in the village and Arden Knoll–that was fixed so that he couldn’t part from it.”

  “When we get the treasure we’ll buy back the land again,” said Edred. “The Tallow King’s going to sell it. He’s got so tallowy that Arden land isn’t good enough for him. Old Beale told us. And, I say, Auntie, we’ll rebuild the castle, too, won’t we, and mend the holes in the thatch–where the rain comes in–in people’s cottages, I mean.”

  “Have you been much into people’s cottages?” Aunt Edith asked anxiously–with the strange fear of infection which seems a part of a grown-up’s nature.

  “Every one in the village, I think,” said Elfrida cheerfully. “Old Beale told us we ought to–in case we found the treasure–so as to know what to do. The people are such dears. I believe they like us because we’re Ardens. Or is it because Edred’s a lord?”

  “We must find the treasure,” said Edred, looking as he always did when he was very much in earnest, so like his father that Aunt Edith could hardly bear it–”so as to be able to look after our people properly.”

  “And to kick out the Tallow King,” said Elfrida.

  “But you won’t be discontented if you don’t find it,” said Aunt Edith. “It’s only a sort of game really. No one I ever knew ever found a treasure. And think what we’ve found already! Arden Castle instead of Sea View Terrace–and the lodgers. Good-night, chicks.”

  She was gone before they were up in the morning, and the morning’s first business was the printing of the photographs.

  They printed them in the kitchen, because Mrs. Honeysett was turning out the parlour, and besides the kitchen window was wide and sunny, and the old table, scoured again and again till the grain of the wood stood up in ridges, was a nice, big, clear place to stand toning dishes on. They printed on matt paper, because it seemed somehow less common, and more like a picture than the shiny kind. The printing took the whole morning, and they had only one frame. And when they had done there were eighteen brown prints of the castle from all sorts of points of the compass–north and south and–but I explained all this to you before. When the prints were dried–which, as you know, is best done by sticking them up on the windows–it became necessary to find a place to put them in. One could not gloat over them for ever, though for quite a long time it seemed better to look at them again and again, and to say, “That’s how it ought to be–that’s the way we’ll have it,” than to do anything else.

  Elfrida and Edred took the prints into the parlour, which was now neat as a new pin, and smelt almost too much of beeswax and turpentine, spread them on the polished oval dining-table and gloated over them.

  “You can see every little bit exactly right,” said Elfrida. “They’re a little tiny bit muzzy. I expect our distance wasn’t right or something, but that only makes them look more like real pictures, and us having printed them on paper that’s too big makes it more pictury too. And any one who knew how buildings are built would know how to set it up. It would be like putting bricks back into the box from the pattern inside the lid.”

  Here Mrs. Honeysett called from the kitchen, “You done with all this litter?” and both children shouted “Yes!” and went on looking at the pictures. It was well that the shout was from both. If only one had done it there might have been what Mrs. Honeysett called “words” about the matter later; for next moment both said, “The films!” and rushed to the kitchen–just in time to see the kitchen fire enlivened by that peculiar crackling flare which fire and films alone can produce. Mrs. Honeysett had thrown the films on the fire with the other “litter,” and it was no one’s fault but the children’s, as Mrs. Honeysett pointed out.

  “I ask you if you done with it all, an’ you says ‘Yes’–only yourselves to thank,” she repeated again and again amid their lamentations, and they had to own that she was right.

  “We must take extra special care of the prints, that’s all,” said Edred, and the “History of the Ardens” was chosen as a hiding-place both safe and appropriate.

  “It doesn’t matter so much about the films,” said Elfrida, “because we could never have shown them to any one. If we find the treasure we’ll arrange for Auntie to find these prints–leave the History about or something–and she’ll think they’re photographs of painted pictures. So that’ll be all right.”

  As they arranged the prints between the leaves of the History Elfrida’s eye was caught by the words “moat” and “water-supply,” and she read on and turned the page.

  “Don’t stop to read,” said Edred, but she waved him away.

  “
I say, listen,” she said, turning back; and she read–

  “‘In ancient times Arden Castle was surrounded by a moat. The original architects of the venerable pile, with that ingenuity whose fruits the thinking world so much admires in the lasting monuments of their labours, diverted from its subterraneous course a stream which rose through the chalk in the hills of the vicinity, and is said to be debouch into the sea about fifty yards below high-water mark. The engineering works necessary for this triumph of mind over matter endured till 1647, when the castle was besieged by the troops of that monster in human form Oliver Cromwell. To facilitate his attack on the castle the officer in command gave orders that the stream should be diverted once more into its original channel. This order was accordingly executed by his myrmidons, and the moat was left dry, this assisting materially the treacherous designs of the detestable regicides. It is rumoured that the stream, despite the lapse of centuries, still maintains its subterranean course; but the present author, on visiting, during the autumn of 1821, the residence of the present Earl of Arden, and by his permission, most courteously granted, exploring the site thoroughly, was unable to find any trace of its existence. The rural denizens of the district denied any knowledge of such a stream, but they are sunk in ignorance and superstition, and have no admiration for the works of philosophy or the awe-inspiring beauties of Nature.’”

  “What a dull chap he is!” said Edred. “But, I say, when was it printed–1822? . . . I believe I know why the rural What’s-his-names wouldn’t let on about the stream. Don’t you see, it’s the stream that runs through the smuggler’s cave? and they were smuggling then for all they were worth.”

  “That’s clever of you,” said Elfrida.

  “Well, I bet we find traces of its existence, when we’ve found the treasure. Come on; let’s try the chests again. We’ll put on the first things we find, and chance it, this time. There’s nothing to stop us. We haven’t quarrelled or anything.”

  They had not quarrelled, but there was something to stop them, all the same. And that something was the fact that they could not find The Door. It simply was not there.