Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “But,” said Dickie, very much bewildered, as I am myself, and as I am afraid you too must be, “if they’re seven months ahead, won’t they always be seven months ahead?”

  “Odds bodikins,” said the nurse impatiently, “how often am I to tell you that there’s no such thing as time? But there’s seasons, and the season they came out of was summer, and the season you’ll go back to ’tis autumn — so you must live the seven months in their time, and then it’ll be summer and you’ll meet them.”

  “And what about Lord Arden in the Tower? Will he be beheaded for treason?” Dickie asked.

  “Oh, that’s part of their magic. It isn’t in your magic at all. Lord Arden will be safe enough. And now, my lamb, I’ve more to tell thee. But come into thy panelled chamber where thy tutor cannot eavesdrop and betray us, and have thee given over to him wholly, and me burned for a witch.”

  These terrible words kept Dickie silent till he and the nurse were safe in his room, and then he said, “Come with me to my time, nurse — they don’t burn people for witches there.”

  “No,” said the nurse, “but they let them live such lives in their ugly towns that my life here with all its risks is far better worth living. Thou knowest how folk live in Deptford in thy time — how all the green trees are gone, and good work is gone, and people do bad work for just so much as will keep together their worn bodies and desolate souls. And sometimes they starve to death. And they won’t burn me if thou’lt only keep a still tongue. Now listen.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, and Dickie cuddled up against her stiff bodice.

  “Edred and Elfrida first went into the past to look for treasure. It is a treasure buried in Arden Castle by the sea, which is their home. They want the treasure to restore the splendor of the old Castle, which in your time is fallen into ruin and decay, and to mend the houses of the tenants, and to do good to the poor and needy. But you know that now they have used their magic to get back their father, and can no longer use it to look for treasure. But your magic will hold. And if you lay out your moon-seeds round them, in the old shape, and stand with them in the midst, holding your Tinkler and your white seal, you will all go whithersoever you choose.”

  “I shall choose to go straight to the treasure, of course,” said practical Dickie, swinging his feet in their rosetted shoes.

  “That thou canst not. Thou canst only choose some year in the past — any year — go into it and then seek for the treasure there and then.”

  “I’ll do it,” Dickie said, “and then I may come back to you, mayn’t I?”

  “If thou’rt not needed elsewhere. The Ardens stay where duty binds them, and go where duty calls.”

  “But I’m not an Arden there,” said Dickie sadly.

  “Thou’rt Richard Arden there as here,” she said; “thy grandfather’s name got changed, by breathing hard on it, from Arden to Harden, and that again to Harding. Thus names are changed ever and again. And Dickie of Deptford has the honor of the house of Arden to uphold there as here, then as now.”

  “I shall call myself Arden when I go back,” said Dickie proudly.

  “Not yet,” she said; “wait.”

  “If you say so,” said Dickie rather discontentedly.

  “The time is not ripe for thee to take up all thine honors there,” she said. “And now, dear lamb, since thy tutor is imagining unkind things in his heart for thee, go quickly. Set out thy moon-seeds and, when thou hearest the voices, say, ‘I would see both Mouldiwarps,’ and thou shalt see them both.”

  “Thank you,” said Dickie. “I do want to see them both.”

  See them he did, in a blue-gray mist in which he could feel nothing solid, not even the ground under his feet or the touch of his clenched fingers against his palms.

  They were very white, the Mouldiwarps, outlined distinctly against the gray blueness, and the Mouldiwarp he had seen in that wonderful adventure in the far country smiled, as well as a mole can, and said —

  “Thou’rt a fair sprig of de old tree, Muster Dickie, so ‘e be,” in the thick speech of the peasant people round about Talbot house where Dickie had once been a little burglar.

  “He is indeed a worthy scion of the great house we serve,” said the other Mouldiwarp with precise and gentle utterance. “As Mouldierwarp to the Ardens I can but own that I am proud of him.”

  The Mouldierwarp had, as well as a gentle voice, a finer nose than the Mouldiwarp, his fur was more even and his claws sharper.

  “Eh, you be a gentleman, you be,” said the Mouldiwarp, “so’s ‘e — so there’s two of ye sure enough.”

  It was very odd to see and hear these white moles talking like real people and looking like figures on a magic-lantern screen. But Dickie did not enjoy it as much as perhaps you or I would have done. It was not his pet kind of magic. He liked the good, straightforward, old-fashioned kind of magic that he was accustomed to — the kind that just took you out of one life into another life, and made both lives as real one as the other. Still one must always be polite. So he said —

  “I am very glad to see you both.”

  “There’s purty manners,” the Mouldiwarp said.

  “The pleasure is ours,” said the Mouldierwarp instantly. Dickie could not help seeing that both these old creatures were extremely pleased with him.

  “When shall I see the other Mouldiwarp?” he asked, to keep up the conversation—”the one on our shield of arms?”

  “You mean the Mouldiestwarp?” said the Mouldier, as I will now call him for short; “you will not see him till the end of the magic. He is very great. I work the magic of space, my brother here works the magic of time, and the Great Mouldiestwarp controls us, and many things beside. You must only call on him when you wish to end our magics and to work a magic greater than ours.”

  “What could be greater?” Dickie asked, and both the creatures looked very pleased.

  “He is a worthier Arden than those little black and white chits of thine,” the Mouldier said to the Mouldy (which is what, to save time, we will now call the Mouldiwarp).

  “An’ so should be — an’ so should be,” said the Mouldy shortly. “All’s for the best, and the end’s to come. Where’d ye want to go, my lord?”

  “I’m not ‘my lord’; I’m only Richard Arden,” said Dickie, “and I want to go back to Mr. Beale and stay with him for seven months, and then to find my cousins.”

  “Back thou goes then,” said the Mouldy; “that part’s easy.”

  “And for the second half of thy wish no magic is needed but the magic of steadfast heart and the patient purpose, and these thou hast without any helping or giving of ours,” said the courtly Mouldierwarp.

  They waved their white paws on the gray-blue curtain of mist, and behold they were not there any more, and the blue-gray mist was only the night’s darkness turning to dawn, and Dickie was able again to feel solid things — the floor under him, his hand on the sharp edge of the armchair, and the soft, breathing, comfortable weight of True, asleep against his knee. He moved, the dog awoke, and Dickie felt its soft nose nuzzled into his hand.

  “And now for seven months’ work, and not one good dream,” said Dickie, got up, put Tinkler and the seal and the moon-seeds into a very safe place, and crept back to bed.

  He felt rather heroic. He did not want the treasure. It was not for him. He was going to help Edred and Elfrida to get it. He did not want the life at Lavender Terrace. He was going to help Mr. Beale to live it. So let him feel a little bit of a hero, since that was what indeed he was, even though, of course, all right-minded children are modest and humble, and fully sensible of their own intense unimportance, no matter how heroically they may happen to be behaving.

  CHAPTER VIII. GOING HOME

  In Deptford the seven months had almost gone by; Dickie had worked much, learned much, and earned much. Mr. Beale, a figure of cleanly habit and increasing steadiness, seemed like a plant growing quickly towards the sun of respectability, or a lighthouse rising bright and important ou
t of a swirling sea — of dogs.

  For the dog-trade prospered exceedingly, and Mr. Beale had grown knowing in thoroughbreeds and the prize bench, had learned all about distemper and doggy fits, and when you should give an ailing dog sal-volatile and when you should merely give it less to eat. And the money in the bank grew till it, so to speak, burst the bank-book, and had to be allowed to overflow into a vast sea called Consols.

  The dogs also grew, in numbers as well as in size, and the neighbors, who had borne a good deal very patiently, began, as Mr. Beale said, to “pass remarks.”

  “It ain’t so much the little ‘uns they jib at,” said Mr. Beale, taking his pipe out of his mouth and stretching his legs in the back-yard, “though to my mind they yaps far more aggravatin’. It’s the cocker spannel and the Great Danes upsets them.”

  “The cocker spannel has got rather a persevering bark,” said Dickie, looking up at the creeping-jenny in the window-boxes. No flowers would grow in the garden, now trampled hard by the india-rubber-soled feet of many dogs; but Dickie did his best with window-boxes, and every window was underlined by a bright dash of color — creeping-jenny, Brompton stocks, stonecrop, and late tulips, and all bought from the barrows in the High Street, made a brave show.

  “I don’t say as they’re actin’ unneighborly in talking about the pleece, so long as they don’t do no more than talk,” said Beale, with studied fairness and moderation. “What I do say is, I wish we ‘ad more elbow-room for ‘em. An’ as for exercisin’ of ’em all every day, like the books say — well, ‘ow’s one pair of ‘ands to do it, let alone legs, and you in another line of business and not able to give yer time to ‘em?”

  “I wish we had a bigger place, too,” said Dickie; “we could afford one now. Not but what I should be sorry to leave the old place, too. We’ve ‘ad some good times here in our time, farver, ain’t us?” He sighed with the air of an old man looking back on the long-ago days of youth.

  “You lay to it we ‘as,” said Mr. Beale; “but this ‘ere back-yard, it ain’t a place where dogs can what you call exercise, not to call it exercise. Now is it?”

  “Well, then,” said Dickie, “let’s get a move on us.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Beale, laying his pipe on his knee, “now you’re talkin’. Get a move on us. That’s what I ‘oped you’d say. ‘Member what I says to you in the winter-time that night Mr. Fuller looked in for his bit o’ rent — about me gettin’ of the fidgets in my legs? An’ I says, ‘Why not take to the road a bit, now and again?’ an’ you says, ‘We’ll see about that, come summer.’ And ‘ere is come summer. What if we was to take the road a bit, mate — where there’s room to stretch a chap’s legs without kickin’ a dog or knockin’ the crockery over? There’s the ole pram up-stairs in the back room as lively as ever she was — only wants a little of paint to be fit for a dook, she does. An’ ‘ere’s me, an’ ‘ere’s you, an’ ‘ere’s the pick of the dogs. Think of it, matey — the bed with the green curtains, and the good smell of the herrings you toasts yerself and the fire you makes outer sticks, and the little starses a-comin’ out and a-winkin’ at you, and all so quiet, a-smokin’ yer pipe till it falls outer yer mouth with sleepiness, and no fear o’ settin’ the counterpin afire. What you say, matey, eh?”

  Dickie looked lovingly at the smart back of the little house — its crisp white muslin blinds, its glimpses of neat curtains, its flowers; and then another picture came to him — he saw the misty last light fainting beyond the great shoulders of the downs, and the “little starses” shining so bright and new through the branches of fir trees that interlaced above, a sweet-scented bed of soft fallen brown pine-needles.

  “What say, mate?” Mr. Beale repeated; and Dickie answered —

  “Soon as ever you like’s what I say. And what I say is, the sooner the better.”

  Having made up his mind to go, Mr. Beale at once found a dozen reasons why he could not leave home, and all the reasons were four-footed, and wagged loving tails at him. He was anxious, in fact, about the dogs. Could he really trust Amelia?

  “Dunno oo you can trust then,” said Amelia, tossing a still handsome head. “Anybody ‘ud think the dogs was babbies, to hear you.”

  “So they are — to me — as precious as, anyway. Look here, you just come and live ‘ere, ‘Melia — see? An’ we’ll give yer five bob a week. An’ the nipper ‘e shall write it all down in lead-pencil on a bit o’ paper for you, what they’re to ‘ave to eat an’ about their physic and which of ‘em’s to have what.”

  This took some time to settle, and some more time to write down. And then, when the lick of paint was nearly dry on the perambulator and all their shirts and socks were washed and mended, and lying on the kitchen window-ledge ready for packing, what did Mr. Beale do but go out one morning and come back with a perfectly strange dachshund.

  “An’ I can’t go and leave the little beast till he knows ‘imself a bit in ‘is noo place,” said Mr. Beale, “an’ ‘ave ‘im boltin’ off gracious knows where, and being pinched or carted off to the Dogs’ Home, or that. Can I, now?”

  The new dog was very long, very brown, very friendly and charming. When it had had its supper it wagged its tail, turned a clear and gentle eye on Dickie, and without any warning stood on its head.

  “Well,” said Mr. Beale, “if there ain’t money in that beast! A trick dog ‘e is. ‘E’s wuth wot I give for ‘im, so ‘e is. Knows more tricks than that ‘ere, I’ll be bound.”

  He did. He was a singularly well-educated dog. Next morning Mr. Beale, coming down-stairs, was just in time to bang the front door in the face of Amelia coming in, pail-laden, from “doing” the steps, and this to prevent the flight of the new dog. The door of one of the dog-rooms was open, and a fringe of inquisitive dogs ornamented the passage.

  “What you open that door at all for?” Mr. Beale asked Amelia.

  “I didn’t,” she said, and stuck to it.

  That afternoon Beale, smoking in the garden, got up, as he often did, to look through the window at the dogs. He gazed a moment, muttered something, and made one jump to the back door. It was closed. Amelia was giving the scullery floor a “thorough scrub over,” and had fastened the door to avoid having it opened with suddenness against her steaming pail or her crouching form.

  But Mr. Beale got in at the back-door and out at the front just in time to see the dachshund disappearing at full speed, “like a bit of brown toffee-stick,” as he said, round the end of the street. They never saw that dog again.

  “Trained to it,” Mr. Beale used to say sadly whenever he told the story; “trained to it from a pup, you may lay your life. I see ‘im as plain as I see you. ‘E listens an’ ‘e looks, and ‘e doesn’t ‘ear nor see nobody. An’ ‘e ups on his ‘ind legs and turns the ‘andle with ‘is little twisty front pawses, clever as a monkey, and hout ‘e goes like a harrow in a bow. Trained to it, ye see. I bet his master wot taught ‘im that’s sold him time and again, makin’ a good figure every time, for ‘e was a ‘andsome dawg as ever I see. Trained the dawg to open the door and bunk ‘ome. See? Clever, I call it.”

  “It’s a mean trick,” said Dickie when Beale told him of the loss of the dog; “that’s what I call it. I’m sorry you’ve lost the dog.”

  “I ain’t exactly pleased myself,” said Beale, “but no use crying over broken glass. It’s the cleverness I think of most,” he said admiringly. “Now I’d never a thought of a thing like that myself — not if I’d lived to a hundred, so I wouldn’t. You might ‘ave,” he told Dickie flatteringly, “but I wouldn’t myself.”

  “We don’t need to,” said Dickie hastily. “We earns our livings. We don’t need to cheat to get our livings.”

  “No, no, dear boy,” said Mr. Beale, more hastily still; “course we don’t. That’s just what I’m a-saying, ain’t it? We shouldn’t never ‘ave thought o’ that. No need to, as you say. The cleverness of it!”

  This admiration of the cleverness by which he himself had been cheated set Dickie
thinking. He said, very gently and quietly, after a little pause —

  “This ‘ere walking tower of ours. We pays our own way? No cadging?”

  “I should ‘ope you know me better than that,” said Beale virtuously; “not a patter have I done since I done the Rally and started in the dog line.”

  “Nor yet no dealings with that redheaded chap what I never see?”

  “Now, is it likely?” Beale asked reproachfully. “I should ‘ope we’re a cut above a low chap like wot ‘e is. The pram’s dry as a bone and shiny as yer ‘at, and we’ll start the first thing in the morning.”

  And in the early morning, which is fresh and sweet even in Deptford, they bade farewell to Amelia and the dogs and set out.

  Amelia watched them down the street and waved a farewell as they turned the corner. “It’ll be a bit lonesome,” she said. “One thing, I shan’t be burgled, with all them dogs in the house.”

  The voices of the dogs, as she went in and shut the door, seemed to assure her that she would not even be so very lonely.

  And now they were really on the road. And they were going to Arden — to that place by the sea where Dickie’s uncle, in the other life, had a castle, and where Dickie was to meet his cousins, after his seven months of waiting.

  You may think that Dickie would be very excited by the thought of meeting, in this workaday, nowadays world, the children with whom he had had such wonderful adventures in the other world, the dream world — too excited, perhaps, to feel really interested in the little every-day happenings of “the road.” But this was not so. The present was after all the real thing. The dreams could wait. The knowledge that they were there, waiting, made all the ordinary things more beautiful and more interesting. The feel of the soft dust underfoot, the bright, dewy grass and clover by the wayside, the lessening of houses and the growing wideness of field and pasture, all contented and delighted Dickie. He felt to the full all the joy that Mr. Beale felt in “‘oofing it,” and when as the sun was sinking they overtook a bent, slow-going figure, it was with a thrill of real pleasure that Dickie recognized the woman who had given him the blue ribbon for True.