by Edith Nesbit
The respectable Ugly-Wugly leading with the lamp, the others following trustfully, one and all disappeared into that narrow doorway; and Gerald and Mabel standing without, hardly daring to breathe lest a breath should retard the procession, almost sobbed with relief. Prematurely, as it turned out. For suddenly there was a rush and a scuffle inside the passage, and as they strove to close the door the Ugly-Wuglies fiercely pressed to open it again. Whether they saw something in the dark passage that alarmed them, whether they took it into their empty heads that this could not be the back way to any really respectable hotel, or whether a convincing sudden instinct warned them that they were being tricked, Mabel and Gerald never knew. But they knew that the Ugly-Wuglies were no longer friendly and commonplace, that a fierce change had come over them. Cries of “No, No!” “We won’t go on!” “Make him lead!” broke the dreamy stillness of the perfect night. There were screams from ladies’ voices, the hoarse, determined shouts of strong Ugly-Wuglies roused to resistance, and, worse than all, the steady pushing open of that narrow stone door that had almost closed upon the ghastly crew. Through the chink of it they could be seen, a writhing black crowd against the light of the bicycle lamp; a padded hand reached round the door; stick-boned arms stretched out angrily towards the world that that door, if it closed, would shut them off from for ever. And the tone of their consonantless speech was no longer conciliatory and ordinary; it was threatening, full of the menace of unbearable horrors.
The padded hand fell on Gerald’s arm, and instantly all the terrors that he had, so far, only known in imagination became real to him, and he saw, in the sort of flash that shows drowning people their past lives, what it was that he had asked of Mabel, and that she had given.
“Push, push for your life!” he cried, and setting his heel against the pedestal of Flora, pushed manfully.
“I can’t any more — oh. I can’t!” moaned Mabel, and tried to use her heel likewise, but her legs were too short.
“They mustn’t get out, they mustn’t!” Gerald panted.
“You’ll know it when we do,” came from inside the door in tones which fury and mouth-rooflessness would have made unintelligible to any ears but those sharpened by the wild fear of that unspeakable moment.
“What’s up, there?” cried suddenly a new voice — a voice with all its consonants comforting, clean-cut, and ringing, and abruptly a new shadow fell on the marble floor of Flora’s temple.
“Come and help push!” Gerald’s voice only just reached the newcomer. “If they get out they’ll kill us all.”
A strong, velveteen-covered shoulder pushed suddenly between the shoulders of Gerald and Mabel; a stout man’s heel sought the aid of the goddess’s pedestal; the heavy, narrow door yielded slowly, it closed, its spring clicked, and the furious, surging, threatening mass of Ugly-Wuglies was shut in, and Gerald and Mabel — oh, incredible relief! — were shut out. Mabel threw herself on the marble floor, sobbing slow, heavy sobs of achievement and exhaustion. If I had been there I should have looked the other way, so as not to see whether Gerald yielded himself to the same abandonment.
The newcomer he appeared to be a gamekeeper, Gerald decided later — looked down on — well, certainly on Mabel, and said:
“Come on, don’t be a little duffer.” (He may have said, “a couple of little duffers.”) “Who is it, and what’s it all about?”
“I can’t possibly tell you,” Gerald panted.
“We shall have to see about that, shan’t we,” said the newcomer amiably. “Come out into the moonlight and let’s review the situation.”
Gerald, even in that topsy-turvy state of his world, found time to think that a gamekeeper who used such words as that had most likely a romantic past. But at the same time he saw that such a man would be far less easy to “square” with an unconvincing tale than Eliza, or Johnson, or even Mademoiselle. In fact, he seemed, with the only tale that they had to tell, practically unsquarable.
Gerald got up — if he was not up already, or still up — and pulled at the limp and now hot hand of the sobbing Mabel; and as he did so the unsquarable one took his hand, and thus led both children out from under the shadow of Flora’s dome into the bright white moonlight that carpeted Flora’s steps. Here he sat down, a child on each side of him, drew a hand of each through his velveteen arm, pressed them to his velveteen sides in a friendly, reassuring way, and said: “Now then! Go ahead!”
Mabel merely sobbed. We must excuse her. She had been very brave, and I have no doubt that all heroines, from Joan of Arc to Grace Darling, have had their sobbing moments.
But Gerald said: “It’s no use. If I made up a story you’d see through it.”
“That’s a compliment to my discernment, anyhow,” said the stranger. “What price telling me the truth?”
“If we told you the truth,” said Gerald, “you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Try me,” said the velveteen one. He was clean-shaven, and had large eyes that sparkled when the moonlight touched them.
“I can’t,” said Gerald, and it was plain that he spoke the truth. “You’d either think we were mad, and get us shut up, or else — oh, it’s no good. Thank you for helping us, and do let us go home.”
“I wonder,” said the stranger musingly, “whether you have any imagination.”
“Considering that we invented them,” Gerald hotly began, and stopped with late prudence.
“If by ‘them’ you mean the people whom I helped you to imprison in yonder tomb,” said the stranger, loosing Mabel’s hand to put his arm round her, “remember that I saw and heard them. And with all respect to your imagination, I doubt whether any invention of yours would be quite so convincing.”
Gerald put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.
“Collect yourself,” said the one in velveteen; “and while you are collecting, let me just put the thing from my point of view. I think you hardly realise my position. I come down from London to take care of a big estate.”
“I thought you were a gamekeeper,” put in Gerald.
Mabel put her head on the stranger’s shoulder. “Hero in disguise, then, I know,” she sniffed.
“Not at all,” said he; “bailiff would be nearer the mark. On the very first evening I go out to take the moonlit air, and approaching a white building, hear sounds of an agitated scuffle, accompanied by frenzied appeals for assistance. Carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, I do assist and shut up goodness knows who behind a stone door. Now, is it unreasonable that I should ask who it is that I’ve shut up — helped to shut up, I mean, and who it is that I’ve assisted?”
“It’s reasonable enough,” Gerald admitted.
“Well then,” said the stranger.
“Well then,” said Gerald, “the fact is —— No,” he added after a pause, “the fact is, I simply can’t tell you.”
“Then I must ask the other side,” said Velveteens. “Let me go — I’ll undo that door and find out for myself.”
“Tell him,” said Mabel, speaking for the first time. “Never mind if he believes or not. We can’t have them let out.”
“Very well,” said Gerald, “I’ll tell him. Now look here, Mr. Bailiff, will you promise us on an English gentleman’s word of honour — because, of course, I can see you’re that, bailiff or not — will you promise that you won’t tell any one what we tell you and that you won’t have us put in a lunatic asylum, however mad we sound?”
“Yes,” said the stranger, “I think I can promise that. But if you’ve been having a sham fight or anything and shoved the other side into that hole, don’t you think you’d better let them out? They’ll be most awfully frightened, you know. After all, I suppose they are only children.”
“Wait till you hear,” Gerald answered. “They’re not children — not much! Shall I just tell about them or begin at the beginning?”
“The beginning, of course,” said the stranger.
Mabel lifted her head from his velveteen shoulder and sa
id, “Let me begin, then. I found a ring, and I said it would make me invisible. I said it in play. And it did. I was invisible twenty-one hours. Never mind where I got the ring. Now, Gerald, you go on.”
Gerald went on; for quite a long time he went on, for the story was a splendid one to tell.
“And so,” he ended, “we got them in there; and when seven hours are over, or fourteen, or twenty-one, or something with a seven in it, they’ll just be old coats again. They came alive at half-past nine. I think they’ll stop being it in seven hours — that’s half-past four. Now will you let us go home?”
“I’ll see you home,” said the stranger in a quite new tone of exasperating gentleness. “Come — let’s be going.”
“You don’t believe us,” said Gerald. “Of course you don’t. Nobody could. But I could make you believe if I chose.”
All three stood up, and the stranger stared in Gerald’s eyes till Gerald answered his thought.
“No, I don’t look mad, do I?”
“No, you aren’t. But, come, you’re an extraordinarily sensible boy; don’t you think you may be sickening for a fever or something?”
“And Cathy and Jimmy and Mademoiselle and Eliza, and the man who said ‘Guy Fawkes, swelp me!’ and you, you saw them move — you heard them call out. Are you sickening for anything?”
“No — or at least not for anything but information. Come, and I’ll see you home.”
“Mabel lives at the Towers,” said Gerald, as the stranger turned into the broad drive that leads to the big gate.
“No relation to Lord Yalding,” said Mabel hastily—”housekeeper’s niece.” She was holding on to his hand all the way. At the servants’ entrance she put up her face to be kissed, and went in.
“Poor little thing!” said the bailiff, as they went down the drive towards the gate.
He went with Gerald to the door of the school.
“Look here,” said Gerald at parting. “I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to try to undo that door.”
“Discerning!” said the stranger.
“Well — don’t. Or, any way, wait till daylight and let us be there. We can get there by ten.”
“All right — I’ll meet you there by ten,” answered the stranger. “By George! you’re the rummest kids I ever met.”
“We are rum,” Gerald owned, “but so would you be if —— Good night.”
* * * * *
As the four children went over the smooth lawn towards Flora’s Temple they talked, as they had talked all the morning, about the adventures of last night and of Mabel’s bravery. It was not ten, but half-past twelve; for Eliza, backed by Mademoiselle, had insisted on their “clearing up,” and clearing up very thoroughly, the “litter” of last night.
“You’re a Victoria Cross heroine, dear,” said Cathy warmly. “You ought to have a statue put up to you.”
“It would come alive if you put it here,” said Gerald grimly.
“I shouldn’t have been afraid,” said Jimmy.
“By daylight,” Gerald assured him, “everything looks so jolly different.”
“I do hope he’ll be there,” Mabel said; “he was such a dear, Cathy — a perfect bailiff, with the soul of a gentleman.”
A PAINTED POINTED PAPER FACE PEERED OUT.
“He isn’t there, though,” said Jimmy. “I believe you just dreamed him, like you did the statues coming alive.”
They went up the marble steps in the sunshine, and it was difficult to believe that this was the place where only in last night’s moonlight fear had laid such cold hands on the hearts of Mabel and Gerald.
“Shall we open the door,” suggested Kathleen, “and begin to carry home the coats?”
“Let’s listen first,” said Gerald; “perhaps they aren’t only coats yet.”
They laid ears to the hinges of the stone door, behind which last night the Ugly-Wuglies had shrieked and threatened. All was still as the sweet morning itself. It was as they turned away that they saw the man they had come to meet. He was on the other side of Flora’s pedestal. But he was not standing up. He lay there, quite still, on his back, his arms flung wide.
“Oh, look!” cried Cathy, and pointed. His face was a queer greenish colour, and on his forehead there was a cut; its edges were blue, and a little blood had trickled from it on to the white of the marble.
At the same time Mabel pointed too — but she did not cry out as Cathy had done. And what she pointed at was a big glossy-leaved rhododendron bush, from which a painted pointed paper face peered out — very white, very red, in the sunlight — and, as the children gazed, shrank back into the cover of the shining leaves.
CHAPTER VIII
It was but too plain. The unfortunate bailiff must have opened the door before the spell had faded, while yet the Ugly-Wuglies were something more than mere coats and hats and sticks. They had rushed out upon him, and had done this. He lay there insensible — was it a golf-club or a hockey-stick that had made that horrible cut on his forehead? Gerald wondered. The girls had rushed to the sufferer; already his head was in Mabel’s lap. Kathleen had tried to get it on to hers, but Mabel was too quick for her.
Jimmy and Gerald both knew what was the first thing needed by the unconscious, even before Mabel impatiently said: “Water! water!”
“What in?” Jimmy asked, looking doubtfully at his hands, and then down the green slope to the marble-bordered pool where the water-lilies were.
“Your hat — anything,” said Mabel.
The two boys turned away.
“Suppose they come after us,” said Jimmy.
“What come after us?” Gerald snapped rather than asked.
“The Ugly-Wuglies,” Jimmy whispered.
“Who’s afraid?” Gerald inquired.
But he looked to right and left very carefully, and chose the way that did not lead near the bushes. He scooped water up in his straw hat and returned to Flora’s Temple, carrying it carefully in both hands. When he saw how quickly it ran through the straw he pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket with his teeth and dropped it into the hat. It was with this that the girls wiped the blood from the bailiff’s brow.
“We ought to have smelling salts,” said Kathleen, half in tears. “I know we ought.”
“They would be good,” Mabel owned.
“Hasn’t your aunt any?”
“Yes, but — —”
“Don’t be a coward,” said Gerald; “think of last night. They wouldn’t hurt you. He must have insulted them or something. Look here, you run. We’ll see that nothing runs after you.”
There was no choice but to relinquish the head of the interesting invalid to Kathleen; so Mabel did it, cast one glaring glance round the rhododendron bordered slope, and fled towards the castle.
The other three bent over the still unconscious bailiff.
“He’s not dead, is he?” asked Jimmy anxiously.
“No,” Kathleen reassured him, “his heart’s beating. Mabel and I felt it in his wrist, where doctors do. How frightfully good-looking he is!”
“Not so dusty,” Gerald admitted.
“I never know what you mean by good-looking,” said Jimmy, and suddenly a shadow fell on the marble beside them and a fourth voice spoke — not Mabel’s; her hurrying figure, though still in sight, was far away.
“Quite a personable young man,” it said.
The children looked up — into the face of the eldest of the Ugly-Wuglies, the respectable one. Jimmy and Kathleen screamed. I am sorry, but they did.
“Hush!” said Gerald savagely: he was still wearing the ring. “Hold your tongues! I’ll get him away,” he added in a whisper.
“Very sad affair this,” said the respectable Ugly-Wugly. He spoke with a curious accent; there was something odd about his r’s, and his m’s and n’s were those of a person labouring under an almost intolerable cold in the head. But it was not the dreadful “oo” and “ah” voice of the night before. Kathleen and Jimmy stooped over the b
ailiff. Even that prostrate form, being human, seemed some little protection. But Gerald, strong in the fearlessness that the ring gave to its wearer, looked full into the face of the Ugly-Wugly — and started. For though the face was almost the same as the face he had himself painted on the school drawing-paper, it was not the same. For it was no longer paper. It was a real face, and the hands, lean and almost transparent as they were, were real hands. As it moved a little to get a better view of the bailiff it was plain that it had legs, arms — live legs and arms, and a self-supporting backbone. It was alive indeed — with a vengeance.
“How did it happen?” Gerald asked with an effort at calmness — a successful effort.
“Most regrettable,” said the Ugly-Wugly. “The others must have missed the way last night in the passage. They never found the hotel.”
“Did you?” asked Gerald blankly.
“Of course,” said the Ugly-Wugly. “Most respectable, exactly as you said. Then when I came away — I didn’t come the front way because I wanted to revisit this sylvan scene by daylight, and the hotel people didn’t seem to know how to direct me to it — I found the others all at this door, very angry. They’d been here all night, trying to get out. Then the door opened — this gentleman must have opened it — and before I could protect him, that underbred man in the high hat — you remember — —”
Gerald remembered.
“Hit him on the head, and he fell where you see him. The others dispersed, and I myself was just going for assistance when I saw you.”
Here Jimmy was discovered to be in tears and Kathleen white as any drawing-paper.
“What’s the matter, my little man?” said the respectable Ugly-Wugly kindly. Jimmy passed instantly from tears to yells.
“Here, take the ring!” said Gerald in a furious whisper, and thrust it on to Jimmy’s hot, damp, resisting finger. Jimmy’s voice stopped short in the middle of a howl. And Gerald in a cold flash realised what it was that Mabel had gone through the night before. But it was daylight, and Gerald was not a coward.
“We must find the others,” he said.