by Edith Nesbit
“And we haven’t quarrelled or anything,” said Elfrida, despairing when they had searched the East House again and again, and found no door that would consent to lead them to the wonderful attic where the chests stood in their two wonderful rows. She sat down on the top step of the attic stairs, quite regardless of the dust that lay there thick.
“It’s all up–I can see that,” said Edred. “We’ve muffed it somehow. I wonder whether we oughtn’t to have taken those photographs.”
“Do you think perhaps . . . could we have dreamed it all?”
“No,” said Edred, “there are the prints–at least, I suppose they’re there. We’ll go down and see.”
Miserably doubting, they went down and saw that the photographs were where they had put them, in between the pages of the “History of Arden.”
“I don’t see what we can do. Do you?” said Edred forlornly. It was a miserable ending to the happenings that had succeeded each other in such a lively procession ever since they had been at Arden. It seemed as though a door had been shut in their faces, and “Not any more,” written in very plain letters across the chapter of their adventures.
“I wish we could find the witch again,” said Elfrida, “but she said she couldn’t come into these times more than once.”
“I wonder why,” said Edred, kicking his boots miserably against the leg of the table on which he sat. “That Dicky chap must have been here pretty often, to have an address at New Cross. I say, suppose we wrote to him. It would be something to do.”
So they wrote. At least Elfrida did, and they both signed it. This was the letter:–
“DEAR COUSIN RICHARD,–You remember meeting us at the Gunpowder Plot. If you are at these modern times again we should like to know you and to know how you get into the future. Perhaps we could get into the past the same way, because the way we used to get we can’t any more.
“Perhaps you could come here next time instead of New Cross.
“Your affectionate friends at a distance,
(MISS) ELFRIDA ARDEN,
(LORD) EDRED ARDEN.
“PS.–I don’t know how lords sign letters because I have not been it long, but you’ll know who it is.
“PSS.–Remember old Parrot-nose.”
They walked down to the post with this, and as they went they remembered how they had gone to the “George” with old Lady Arden’s letter in Boney’s time; and Edred remarked, listlessly, that it would be rather fun to find the smugglers’ cave. So when they had bought a stamp and licked it and put it on the letter they went up on the cliff and looked among the furze-bushes for the entrance to the smugglers’ cave. But they did not find it. Nothing makes you hotter than looking for things that you can’t find–and there is no hotter place to look for things than a furze forest on the downs on a sunny summer afternoon. The children were glad to sit down on a clean, smooth, grassy space and look out at the faint blue line of the sea.
They had not really enjoyed looking for the smugglers’ cave. Vain regrets were busy in each breast. Edred gave voice to them when he said–
“Oh, if only we had put those gold clothes on when we had the chance!”
And Elfrida echoed the useless heartfelt wail with, “Oh, if we only had!”
And then they sat in silence and looked at the sea for quite a long time.
Now, if you sit perfectly silent for a long time and look at the sea, or the sky, or the running water of a river, something happens to you–a sort of magic. Not the violent magic that makes the kind of adventure that I have been telling you about, but a kind of gentle but very strong inside magic, that makes things clear and shows you what things are important, and what are not. You try it next time you are in a very bad temper or when you think some one has been very unjust to you, or when you are very disappointed and hurt about anything.
The magic worked in Edred and Elfrida till Edred said–
“After all, we’ve got the castle;” and Elfrida said–
“And we have had some ripping times.”
And then they looked at the sea in more silence, during which Hope came and whispered to Elfrida, who instantly said–
“The Mouldiwarp! Perhaps it’s not all over. It told us to find the door. And we did find the door. Perhaps it would tell us something new if we called it now–and if it came.”
“And if it came,” said Edred.
“Don’t talk–make poetry,” said Elfrida. But that was one of the things that Edred never could do. Trying to make poetry was, to him, like trying to remember a name you have never heard, or to multiply a number that you’ve forgotten by another number that you don’t recollect.
But Elfrida, that youthful poet, frowned and bit her lip and twisted her hands, and reached out in her mind to words that she just couldn’t quite think of, till the words grew tame and flew within reach, and she caught them and caged them behind the bars of rhyme. This was her poem–
“Dear Mouldiwarp, do come if you can,
And tell us if there is any plan
That you can tell us of for us two
To get into the past like we used to do.
Dear Mouldiwarp, we don’t want to worry
You–but we are in a frightful hurry.”
“So you be always,” said the white Mouldiwarp, suddenly appearing between them on the yellowy dry grass. “Well, well! Youth’s the season for silliness. What’s to do now? I be turble tired of all this. I wish I’d only got to give ye the treasure and go my ways. You don’t give a poor Mouldiwarp a minute’s rest. You do terrify me same’s flies, you do.”
“Is there any other way,” said Elfrida, “to get back into the past? We can’t find the door now.”
“Course you can’t,” said the mole. “That’s a chance gone, and gone for ever.
“‘He that will not when he may,
He shall not when he would-a.’
Well, tell me where you want to go, and I’ll make you a backways-working white clock.”
“Anywhere you like,” said Edred incautiously.
“Tch, tch!” said the mole, rubbing its nose with vexation. “There’s another chance gone, and gone for ever. You be terrible spending with your chances, you be. Now, answer sharp as weasel’s nose. Be there any one in the past you’d like to see?
“‘If you don’t know,
Then you don’t go.’
And that’s poetry as good as yours any day of the week.”
“Cousin Richard,” said Elfrida and Edred together. This was the only name they could think of.
“Bide ye still, my dears,” said the Mouldiwarp, “and I’ll make you a white road right to where he is.”
So they sat still, all but their tongues.
“Is he in the past?” said Elfrida; “because if he is, it wasn’t much good our writing to him.”
“You hold your little tongues,” said the Mouldiwarp, “and keep your little mouths shut, and your little eyes open, and wish well to the white magic. There never was a magic yet,” the mole went on, “that was the worse for being well-wished.”
“May I say something,” said Elfrida, “without its stopping the magic?”
“Put your white handkerchief over your face and talk through it, and then you may.”
By a most fortunate and unusual chance, Elfrida’s handkerchief was white: it was, in fact, still folded in the sixteen blameless squares into which the laundress had ironed it. She threw it over her face as she lay back on the turf and spoke through it.
“I’d like to see the nurse witch again,” she said.
“Instead of Cousin Richard?”
“No: as well as.”
“That’s right,” said the magic mole. “You shouldn’t change your wishes; but there’s no rule against enlarging them–on the contrary. Now look!”
Elfrida whisked away the handkerchief and looked.
Have you ever noticed the way the bath water runs away when you pull up the bath tap? Have you ever seen bottles filled through a funnel?<
br />
The white Mouldiwarp reached up its hands–its front feet I ought perhaps to say–towards the deep blue sky, where white clouds herded together like giant sheep.
And it spoke. At least, it did not speak, but it sang. Yet I don’t know that you could call it singing either. It was more like the first notes that a violin yields to the bow wielded by the hand of a master musician. And the white clouds stooped to answer it. Round and round in the blue sky they circled, drawing together and swirling down, as the bath water draws and swirls when you pull up the knob labelled “Waste”–round and round till they showed like a vast white funnel whose neck hung, a great ring, above the group on the dry grass of the downs. It stooped and stooped. The ring fitted down over them, they were in a white tower, narrow at its base where that base touched the grass, but widening to the blue sky overhead.
“Take hands,” cried the Mouldiwarp. “Always hold hands when there is magic about.”
The children clasped hands.
“Both hands,” said the Mouldiwarp; and each child reached out a hand, that was caught and held. Round and round, incredibly swifter and swifter, went the cloud funnel, and the voice of the mole at their feet sounded faint and far away.
“Up!” it cried, “up! Shall the very clouds dance for your delight, and you alone refrain and tread not a measure?”
The children leaped up–and through the cloud came something that was certainly music, though it was so vague and far away that the sharpest music-master you ever had could not have made out the tune. But the rhythm of it was there, an insistent beat, beat, beat–and a beat that made your feet long to keep time to it. And through the rhythm presently the tune pierced, as the sound of the pipes pierces the sound of the drums when you see the Church Brigade boys go by when you are on your holiday by the sea near their white-tented, happy camps. And that time the children’s feet could not resist. They danced steps that they had not known they knew. And they knew, for the first time, the delight of real dancing: none of your waltzes, or even minuets, but the dancing that means youth and gaiety, and being out for a holiday, and determined to enjoy everything to the last breath.
And as they danced the white cloud funnel came down and closed about them, so that they danced, as it were, in a wrapping of white cotton wool too soft for them even to feel it. And there was a sweet scent in the air. They did not know in that cloudy, soft whiteness, what flower bore that scent, but they knew that it smelt of the spring, and of fields and hedges far away from the ugliness of towns. The cloud thinned as the scent thickened, and green lights showed through it.
The green lights grew, the cloud funnel lifted. And Edred and Elfrida, still dancing, found themselves but two in a ring of some thirty children, dancing on a carpet of green turf between walls of green branches. And every child wore a wreath of white May-blossoms on its head. And that was the magic scene that had come to them through the white cloud of the white Mouldiwarp’s magic.
“What is it? Why are we dancing?” Edred incautiously asked of the little girl whose hand–and not Elfrida’s–he found that his left hand was holding. The child laughed–just laughed, she did not answer. It was Elfrida who had his right hand, and her own right handy was clasped in that of a boy dressed in green.
“Oh!” she said, with a note of glad recognition. “It’s you! I’m so glad! What is it? Why are we dancing?”
“It’s May-day,” said Cousin Richard, “and the King is coming to look on at the revels.”
“What king?” she asked.
“Who but King Harry?” he said. “King Harry and his new Queen, that but of late was the Lady Anna Boleyn.”
“I say, Dick,” said Edred across his sister, “I am jolly glad to see you again. We–”
“Not now,” said Dick earnestly; “not a word now. It is not safe. And besides–here comes the King!”
CHAPTER XIII. MAY-BLOSSOM AND PEARLS
THE King came slowly on a great black horse, riding between the green trees. He himself wore white and green like the May-bushes, and so did the gracious lady who rode beside him on a white horse, whose long tail almost swept the ground and whose long mane fluttered in the breeze like a tattered banner.
The lady had a fine face–proud and smiling–and as her brave eyes met the King’s even the children could see that for the time at least, she and the King were all the world to each other. They saw that in the brief moment when, in the whirl of the ringed dance, their eyes were turned the way by which the King came with his Queen.
“I wish I didn’t know so much history,” gasped Elfrida through the quick music. “It’s dreadful to know that her head–” She broke off in obedience to an imperative twitch of Richard’s hand on hers.
“Don’t!” he said. “I have not to think. And I’ve heard that history’s all lies. Perhaps they’ll always be happy like they are now. The only way to enjoy the past is not to think of the future–the past’s future, I mean–and I’ve got something else to say to you presently,” he added rather sternly.
The ring broke up into an elaborate figure. The children found themselves fingering the coloured ribbons that hung from the Maypole that was the centre of their dance, twining, intertwining, handing on the streamers to other small, competent fingers. In and out, in and out–a most complicated dance. It was pleasant to find that one’s feet knew it, though one’s brain could not have foreseen, any more than it could have remembered, how the figures went. There were two rings round the Maypole–the inner ring, where Edred and Elfrida were, of noble children in very fine clothes, and the outer ring, of village children in clothes less fine but quite as pretty. Music from a band of musicians on a raised platform decked with May-boughs and swinging cowslip balls inspired the dancers. The King and Queen had reined up their horses and watched the play, well pleased.
And suddenly the dance ended and the children, formed into line, were saluting the royal onlookers.
“A fair dance and footed right featly,” said the King in a great, jolly voice. “Now get you wind, my merry men all, and give us a song for the honour of the May Queen and of my dear lady here.”
There was whispering and discussion. Then Richard Arden stepped out in front of the group of green-clad noble children.
“With a willing heart, my liege,” he said, “but first a song of the King’s good Majesty.”
And with that all the children began to sing–
“The hunt is up, the hunt is up,
And it is well-nigh day,
And Harry our King is gone a-hunting
To bring his deer to bay.”
It is a rousing tune, and it was only afterwards that Edred and Elfrida were surprised to find that they knew it quite well.
But even while they were singing Elfrida was turning over in her mind the old question, Could anything they did have any effect on the past? It seemed impossible that it should not be so. If one could get a word alone with that happy, stately lady on the white horse, if one could warn her, could help somehow! The thought of the bare scaffold and the black block came to Elfrida so strongly that she almost thought she saw them darkling among the swayed, sun-dappled leaves of the greenwood.
Somebody was pulling at her green skirt. An old woman in a cap that fitted tightly and hid all her hair–an old woman who was saying, “Go to her! go!” and pushing her forward. Some one else put a big bunch of wild flowers into her hand, and this person also pushed her forward. And forward she had to go, quite alone, the nosegay in her hand, across the open space of greensward under the eyes of several hundreds of people, all in their best clothes and all watching her.
She went on till she came to the spot where the King and Queen were, and then she paused and dropped two curtsies, one to each of them. Then, quite without meaning to do it, she found herself saying–
“May-day! May-day!
This is the happy play day!
All the woods with flowers are gay,
Lords and ladies, come and play!
Lords and
ladies, rich and poor,
Come to the wild woods’ open door!
Hinds and yeomen, Queen and King,
Come do honour to the Spring!
And join us in our merrymaking.”
And when she had said that she made two more nice little curtsies and handed up the flowers to the Queen.
“If we had known your Majesties’ purpose,” said a tall, narrow-faced man in a long gown, “your Majesties had had another than this rustic welcome.”
“Our purpose,” said the King, “was to surprise you. The Earl of Arden, you say, is hence?”
“His son and daughter are here to do homage to your Highness,” said the gowned man, and then Elfrida saw that Edred was beside her.
“Hither, lad,” said the King, and reaching down a hand caught Edred’s. “Your foot on mine,” said his Majesty. “So!” and he swung Edred up on to the saddle in front of him. Elfrida drew nearer to the white horse as the Queen beckoned her, and the Queen stooped low over her saddle to ask her name. Now was the moment that Elfrida had wished for, now was the chance, if ever, to warn the Queen.
“Elfrida Arden’s my name,” she said. “Your Majesty, may I say something?”
“Say on,” said the Queen, raising fine eyebrows, but smiling too.
“I should like to come quite close and whisper,” said Elfrida stoutly.
“Thou’rt a bold lass,” said the Queen, but she stooped still lower.
“I want to warn you,” said Elfrida, quickly whispering, “and don’t not pay attention because I’m only a little girl. I know. You may think I don’t know, but I do. I want to warn you–”
“Already once, this morning I have been warned,” said the Queen. “What croaking voices for May-day!”
“Who warned you, your Majesty?”
“An old hag who came to my chamber in spite of my maids, said she had a May charm to keep my looks and my lord’s love.”
“What was the charm?” Elfrida asked eagerly, forgetting to say “Majesty” again.
“It was quite simple,” said the Queen. “I was to keep my looks and my love so long as I never dropped a kerchief. But if I dropped a kerchief I should lose more than my looks and my love; she said I should lose my head,”–the Queen laughed low,–”within certain days from the dropping of that kerchief–this head you see here;” she laughed again.