by E. Nesbit
CHAPTER VII
DICKIE LEARNS MANY THINGS
THAT night Dickie could not sleep. And as he lay awake a great resolvegrew strong within him. He would try once more the magic of themoon-seeds and the rattle and the white seal, and try to get back intothat other world. So he crept down into the parlor where a little layerof clear, red fire still burned.
And now the moon-seeds and the voices and the magic were over and Dickieawoke, thrilled to feel how cleverly he had managed everything, movedhis legs in the bed, rejoicing that he was no longer lame. Then heopened his eyes to feast them on the big, light tapestried room. But theroom was not tapestried. It was panelled. And it was rather dark. And itwas so small as not to be much better than a cupboard.
This surprised Dickie more than anything else that had ever happened tohim, and it frightened him a little too. If the spell of the moon-seedsand the rattle and the white seal was not certain to take him where hewished to be, nothing in the world was certain. He might be anywherewhere he didn't wish to be--he might be any one whom he did not wish tobe.
"I'll never try it again," he said: "if I get out of this I'll stick tothe wood-carving, and not go venturing about any more among dreams andthings."
He got up and looked out of a narrow window. From it he saw a garden,but it was not a garden he had ever seen before. It had marble seats,balustrades, and the damp dews of autumn hung chill about its almostunleafed trees.
"It might have been worse; it might have been a prison yard," he toldhimself. "Come, keep your heart up. Wherever I've come to it's anadventure."
He turned back to the room and looked for his clothes. There were noclothes there. But the shirt he had on was like the shirt he had sleptin at the beautiful house.
He turned to open the door, and there was no door. All was dark, evenpanelling. He was not shut in a room but in a box. Nonsense, boxes didnot have beds in them and windows.
And then suddenly he was no longer the clever person who had managedeverything so admirably--who was living two lives with such credit inboth, who was managing a grown man for that grown man's good; but just alittle boy rather badly frightened.
The little shirt was the only thing that helped, and that only gave himthe desperate courage to beat on the panels and shout, "Nurse! Nurse!Nurse----!"
A crack of light split and opened between two panels, they slid back andbetween them the nurse came to him--the nurse with the ruff and thefrilled cap and the kind, wrinkled face.
He got his arms round her big, comfortable waist.
"There, there, my lamb!" she said, petting him. His clothes hung overher arm, his doublet and little fat breeches, his stockings and theshoes with rosettes.
"Oh, I _am_ here--oh, I am so glad. I thought I'd got to somewheredifferent."
She sat down on the bed and began to dress him, soothing him back toconfidence with gentle touches and pet names.
"Listen," she said, when it came to the silver sugar-loaf buttons of thedoublet. "You must listen carefully. It is a month since you went away."
"But I thought time didn't move--I thought...."
"It was the money upset everything," she said; "it always does upseteverything. I ought to have known. Now attend carefully. No one knowsyou have been away. You've seemed to be here, learning and playing anddoing everything like you used. And you're on a visit now to yourcousins at your uncle's town house. And you all have lessonstogether--thy tutor gives them. And thy cousins love him no better thanthou dost. All thou hast to do is to forget thy dream, and take up thylife here--and be slow to speak, for a day or two, till thou hast grownused to thine own place. Thou'lt have lessons alone to-day. One of thecousins goes with his mother to be her page and bear her train at theKing's revels at Whitehall, and the other must sit and sew her sampler.Her mother says she hath run wild too long."
So Dickie had lessons alone with his detested tutor, and his relief fromthe panic fear of the morning raised his spirits to a degree thatunfortunately found vent in what was, for him, extreme naughtiness. Hedrew a comic picture of his tutor--it really was rather like--with ascroll coming out of his mouth, and on the scroll the words, "Because Iam ugly I need not be hateful!" His tutor, who had a nasty way ofcreeping up behind people, came up behind him at the wrong moment.Dickie was caned on both hands and kept in. Also his dinner was of breadand water, and he had to write out two hundred times, "I am a bad boy,and I ask the pardon of my good tutor. The fifth day of November, 1608."So he did not see his aunt and cousin in their Whitehall finery--and itwas quite late in the afternoon before he even saw his other cousin, whohad been sampler-sewing. He would not have written out the lines, hefelt sure he would not, only he thought of his cousin and wanted to seeher again. For she was the only little girl friend he had.
When the last was done he rushed into the room where she was--he wasastonished to find that he knew his way about the house quite well,though he could not remember ever having been there before--and criedout--
"Thy task done? Mine is, too. Old Parrot-nose kept me hard at it, but Ithought of thee, and for this once I did all his biddings. So now we arefree. Come play ball in the garden!"
His cousin looked up from her sampler, set the frame down and jumped up.
"I am so glad," she said. "I do hate this horrid sampler!"
And as she said it Dickie had a most odd feeling, rather as if a clockhad struck, or had stopped striking--a feeling of sudden change. But hecould not wait to wonder about it or to question what it was that hereally felt. His cousin was waiting.
"Come, Elfrida," he said, and held out his hand. They went together intothe garden.
Now if you have read a book called "The House of Arden" you will alreadyknow that Dickie's cousins were called Edred and Elfrida, and that theirfather, Lord Arden, had a beautiful castle by the sea, as well as ahouse in London, and that he and his wife were great favorites at theCourt of King James the First. If you have not read that book, anddidn't already know these things--well, you know them now. And Arden wasDickie's own name too, in this old life, and his father was Sir RichardArden, of Deptford and Aylesbury. And his tutor was Mr. Parados, calledParrot-nose "for short" by his disrespectful pupils.
Dickie and Elfrida played ball, and they played hide-and-seek, and theyran races. He preferred play to talk just then; he did not want to letout the fact that he remembered nothing whatever of the doings of thelast month. Elfrida did not seem very anxious to talk, either. Thegarden was most interesting, and the only blot on the scene was theblack figure of the tutor walking up and down with a sour face and histhumbs in one of his dull-looking books.
The children sat down on the step of one of the stone seats, and Dickiewas wondering why he had felt that queer clock-stopping feeling, when hewas roused from his wonderings by hearing Elfrida say--
"Please to remember The Fifth of November, The gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason Why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot."
"How odd!" he thought. "I didn't know that was so old as all this." Andhe remembered hearing his father, Sir Richard Arden, say, "Treason's adangerous word to let lie on your lips these days." So he said--
"'Tis not a merry song, cousin, nor a safe one. 'Tis best not to sing oftreason."
"But it didn't come off, you know, and he's always burnt in the end."
So already Guy Fawkes burnings went on. Dickie wondered whether therewould be a bonfire to-night. It _was_ the Fifth of November. He had hadto write the date two hundred times so he was fairly certain of it. Hewas afraid of saying too much or too little. And for the life of him hecould not remember the date of the Gunpowder Plot. Still he must saysomething, so he said--
"Are there more verses?"
"No," said Elfrida.
"I wonder," he said, trying to feel his way, "what treason the balladdeals with?"
He felt it had been the wrong thing to say, when Elfrida answered insurprised tones--
"Don't you know?
_I_ know. And I know some of the names of theconspirators and who they wanted to kill and everything."
"Tell me" seemed the wisest thing to say, and he said it as carelesslyas he could.
"The King hadn't been fair to the Catholics, you know," said Elfrida,who evidently knew all about the matter, "so a lot of them decided tokill him and the Houses of Parliament. They made a plot--there were awhole lot of them in it."
The clock-stopping feeling came on again. Elfrida was different somehow.The Elfrida who had gone on the barge to Gravesend and played with himat the Deptford house had never used such expressions as "a whole lot ofthem in it." He looked at her and she went on--
"They said Lord Arden was in it, but he wasn't, and some of them were topretend to be hunting and to seize the Princess Elizabeth and proclaimher Queen, and the rest were to blow the Houses of Parliament up whenthe King went to open them."
"I never heard this tale from my tutor," said Dickie. And withoutknowing why he felt uneasy, and because he felt uneasy he laughed. Thenhe said, "Proceed, cousin."
Elfrida went on telling him about the Gunpowder Plot, but he hardlylistened. The stopped-clock feeling was growing so strong. But he heardher say, "Mr. Tresham wrote to his relation, Lord Monteagle, that theywere going to blow up the King," and he found himself saying, "WhatKing?" though he knew the answer perfectly well.
"Why, King James the First," said Elfrida, and suddenly the horribletutor pounced and got Elfrida by the wrist. Then all in a momenteverything grew confused. Mr. Parados was asking questions and littleElfrida was trying to answer them, and Dickie understood that theGunpowder Plot _had not happened y_et, and that Elfrida had given thewhole show away. How did she know? And the verse?
"Tell me all--every name, every particular," the loathsome tutor wassaying, "or it will be the worse for thee and thy father."
Elfrida was positively green with terror, and looked appealingly atDickie.
"Come, sir," he said, in as manly a voice as he could manage, "youfrighten my cousin. It is but a tale she told. She is always merry andfull of many inventions."
But the tutor would not be silenced.
"And it's in history," he heard Elfrida say.
What followed was a mist of horrible things. When the mist clearedDickie found himself alone in the house with Mr. Parados, the nurse, andthe servants, for the Earl and Countess of Arden, Edred, and Elfridawere lodged in the Tower of London on a charge of high treason.
For this was, it seemed, the Fifth of November, the day on which theGunpowder Plot should have been carried out; and Elfrida it was, and notMr. Tresham, Lord Monteagle's cousin, who had given away the wholebusiness.
But how had Elfrida known? Could it be that she had dreams like his, andin those dreams visited later times when all this was matter of history?Dickie's brain felt fat--swollen--as though it would burst, and he wasglad to go to bed--even in that cupboardy place with the panels. But hebegged the nurse to leave the panel open.
And when he woke next day it was all true. His aunt and uncle and histwo cousins were in the Tower and gloom hung over Arden House in Soholike a black thunder-cloud over a mountain. And the days went on, andlessons with Mr. Parados were a sort of Inquisition torture to Dickie.For the tutor never let a day pass without trying to find out whetherDickie had shared in any way that guilty knowledge of Elfrida's whichhad, so Mr. Parados insisted, overthrown the fell plot of the Papistsand preserved to a loyal people His Most Gracious Majesty James theFirst.
And then one day, quite as though it were the most natural thing in theworld, his cousin Edred and Lady Arden his aunt were set free from theTower and came home. The King had suddenly decided that they at leasthad had nothing to do with the plot. Lady Arden cried all the time, and,as Dickie owned to himself, "there was enough to make her." But Edredwas full of half thought-out plans and schemes for being revenged on oldParrot-nose. And at last he really did arrange a scheme for gettingElfrida out of the Tower--a perfectly workable scheme. And what is more,it worked. If you want to know how it was done, ask some grown-up totell you how Lady Nithsdale got her husband out of the Tower when he wasa prisoner there, and in danger of having his head cut off, and you willreadily understand the kind of scheme it was. A necessary part of it wasthe dressing up of Elfrida in boy's clothes, and her coming out of theTower, pretending to be Edred, who, with Richard, had come in to visitLord Arden. Then the guard at the Tower gateway was changed, and anotherEdred came out, and they all got into a coach, and there was Elfridaunder the coach seat among the straw and other people's feet, and theyall hugged each other in the dark coach as it jolted through the snowystreets to Arden House in Soho.
Dickie, feeling very small and bewildered among all these dangeroushappenings, found himself suddenly caught by the arm. The nurse's handit was.
"Now," she said, "Master Richard will go take off his fine suit,and----" He did not hear the end, for he was pushed out of the room.Very discontentedly he found his way to his panelled bed-closet, andtook off the smart velvet and fur which he had worn in his visit to theTower, and put on his every-day things. You may be sure he made everypossible haste to get back to his cousins. He wanted to talk over thewhole wonderful adventure with them. He found them whispering in acorner.
"What is it?" he asked.
"We're going to be even with old Parrot-nose," said Edred, "but youmustn't be in it, because we're going away, and you've got to stay here,and whatever we decide to do you'll get the blame of it."
"I don't see," said Richard, "why I shouldn't have a hand in what I'vewanted to do these four years." He had not known that he had known thetutor for four years, but as he said the words he felt that they weretrue.
"There is a reason," said Edred. "You go to bed, Richard."
"Not me," said Dickie of Deptford firmly.
"If we tell you," said Elfrida, explaining affectionately, "you won'tbelieve us."
"You might at least," said Richard Arden, catching desperately at thegrand manner that seemed to suit these times of ruff and sword and cloakand conspiracy--"you might at least make the trial."
"Very well, I will," said Elfrida abruptly. "No, Edred, he has a rightto hear. He's one of us. He won't give us away. Will you, Dickie dear?"
"You know I won't," Dickie assured her.
"Well, then," said Elfrida slowly, "we are.... You listen hard andbelieve with both hands and with all your might, or you won't be able tobelieve at all. We are not what we seem, Edred and I. We don't reallybelong here at all. I don't know what's become of the _real_ Elfrida andEdred who belong to this time. Haven't we seemed odd to you at all?Different, I mean, from the Edred and Elfrida you've been used to?"
The remembrance of the stopped-clock feeling came strongly on Dickie andhe nodded.
"Well, that's because we're _not_ them. We don't belong here. We belongthree hundred years later in history. Only we've got a charm--because inour time Edred is Lord Arden, and there's a white mole who helps us, andwe can go anywhere in history we like."
"Not quite," said Edred.
"No; but there are chests of different clothes, and whatever clothes weput on we come to that time in history. I know it sounds like sillyuntruths," she added rather sadly, "and I knew you wouldn't believe it,but it _is_ true. And now we're going back to our times--QueenAlexandra, you know, and King Edward the Seventh and electric light andmotors and 1908. Don't try to believe it if it hurts you, Dickie dear. Iknow it's most awfully rum--but it's the real true truth."
Richard said nothing. Had never thought it possible but that he was theonly one to whom things like this happened.
"You don't believe it," said Edred complacently. "I knew you wouldn't."
Dickie felt a swimming sensation. It _was_ impossible that thiswonderful change should happen to any one besides himself. This justmeant that the whole thing was a dream. And he said nothing.
"Never mind," said Elfrida in comforting tones; "don't try to believeit. I know you can't. Forget it. Or pretend we were just kidding yo
u."
"Well, it doesn't matter," Edred said. "What can we do to pay out oldParrot-nose?"
Then Richard found a voice and words.
"I don't like it," he said. "It's never been like this before. It makesit seem not real. It's only a dream, really, I suppose. And I'd got tobelieve that it was really real."
"I don't understand a word you're saying," said Edred; and, darting to acorner, produced a photographic camera, of the kind called "Brownie."
"Look here," he said, "you've never seen anything like _this_ before.This comes from the times we belong to."
Richard knew it well. A boy at school had had one. And he had borrowedit once. And the assistant master had had a larger one of the same kind.It was horrible to him, this intrusion of the scientific attainments ofthe ugly times in which he was born into the beautiful times that he hadgrown to love.
"Oh, stow it!" he said. "I know now it's all a silly dream. But it's notworth while to pretend I don't know a Kodak when I see it. That's aBrownie."
"If you've dreamed about our time," said Elfrida.... "Did you ever dreamof fire carriages and fire-boats, and----"
Richard explained that he was not a baby, that he knew all aboutrailways and steamboats and the triumphs of civilization. And added thatKent made 615 against Derbyshire last Thursday. Edred and Elfrida beganto ask questions. Dickie was much too full of his own questionings toanswer theirs.
"I shan't tell you anything more," he said. "But I'll help you to geteven with old Parrot-nose." And suggested shovelling the snow off theroof into the room of that dismal tyrant through the skylightconveniently lighting it.
But Edred wanted that written down--about Kent and Derbyshire--so thatthey might see, when they got back to their own times, whether it wastrue. And Dickie found he had a bit of paper in his doublet on which towrite it. It was a bill--he had had it in his hand when he made themagic moon-seed pattern, and it had unaccountably come with him. It wasa bill for three ship's guns and compasses and six flags, which Mr.Beale had bought for him in London for the fitting out of a little shiphe had made to order for the small son of the amiable pawnbroker. Hescribbled on the back of this bill, gave it to Edred, and then they allwent out on the roof and shovelled snow in on to Mr. Parados, and whenhe came out on the roof very soon and angry, they slipped round thechimney-stacks and through the trap-door, and left him up on the roof inthe snow, and shut the trap-door and hasped it.
And then the nurse caught them and Richard was sent to bed. But he didnot go. There was no sleep in that house that night. Sleepiness filledit like a thick fog. Dickie put out his rushlight and stayed quiet for alittle while, but presently it was impossible to stay quiet anothermoment, so very softly and carefully he crept out and hid behind a tallpress at the end of the passage. He felt that strange things werehappening in the house and that he must know what they were. Presentlythere were voices below, voices coming up the stairs--the nurse's voice,his cousins', and another voice. Where had he heard that other voice?The stopped-clock feeling was thick about him as he realized that thiswas one of the voices he had heard on that night of the first magic--thevoice that had said, "He is more yours than mine."
The light the nurse carried gleamed and disappeared up the second flightof stairs. Dickie followed. He had to follow. He could not be left outof this, the most mysterious of all the happenings that had sowonderfully come to him.
He saw, when he reached the upper landing, that the others were by thewindow, and that the window was open. A keen wind rushed through it, andby the blown candle's light he could see snowflakes whirled into thehouse through the window's dark, star-studded square. There waswhispering going on. He heard her words, "Here. So! Jump."
And then a little figure--Edred it must be; no, Elfrida--climbed up onto the window-ledge. And jumped out. Out of the third-floor windowundoubtedly jumped. Another followed it--that was Edred.
"It _is_ a dream," said Dickie to himself, "but if they've been made tojump out, to punish them for getting even with old Parrot-nose oranything, I'll jump too."
He rushed past the nurse, past her voice and the other voice that wastalking with hers, made one bound to the window, set his knee on it,stood up and jumped; and he heard, as his knee touched the icywindow-sill, the strange voice say, "Another," and then he was in theair falling, falling.
"I shall wake when I reach the ground," Dickie told himself, "and then Ishall know it's all only a dream, a silly dream."
But he never reached the ground. He had not fallen a couple of yardsbefore he was caught by something soft as heaped feathers or driftedsnow; it moved and shifted under him, took shape; it was a chair--no, acarriage. And there were reins in his hand--white reins. And a horse?No--a swan with wide, white wings. He grasped the reins and guided thestrange steed to a low swoop that should bring him near the flare oftorches in the street, outside the great front door. And as the swanlaid its long neck low in downward flight he saw his cousins in acarriage like his own rise into the sky and sail away towards the south.Quite without meaning to do it he pulled on the reins; the swan rose. Hepulled again and the carriage stopped at the landing window.
Hands dragged him in. The old nurse's hands. The swan glided awaybetween snow and stars, and on the landing inside the open window thenurse held him fast in her arms.
"My lamb!" she said; "my dear, foolish, brave lamb!"
Dickie was pulling himself together.
"If it's a dream," he said slowly, "I've had enough. I want to wake up.If it's real--real, with magic in it--you've got to explain it all tome--every bit. I can't go on like this. It's not fair."
"Oh, tell him and have done," said the voice that had begun all themagic, and it seemed to him that something small and white slid alongthe wainscot of the corridor and vanished quite suddenly, just as acandle flame does when you blow the candle out.
"I will," said the nurse. "Come, love, I _will_ tell you everything."She took him down into a warm curtained room, blew to flame the grayashes on the open hearth, gave him elder wine to drink, hot and spiced,and kneeling before him, rubbing his cold, bare feet, she told him.
"There are certain children born now and then--it does not often happen,but now and then it does--children who are not bound by time as otherpeople are. And if the right bit of magic comes their way, thosechildren have the power to go back and forth in time just as otherchildren go back and forth in space--the space of a room, aplaying-field, or a garden alley. Often children lose this power whenthey are quite young. Sometimes it comes to them gradually so that theyhardly know when it begins, and leaves them as gradually, like a dreamwhen you wake and stretch yourself. Sometimes it comes by the saying ofa charm. That is how Edred and Elfrida found it. They came from the timethat you were born in, and they have been living in this time with you,and now they have gone back to their own time. Didn't you notice anydifference in them? From what they were at Deptford?"
"I should think I did," said Dickie--"at least, it wasn't that I_noticed_ any difference so much as that I _felt_ something queer. Icouldn't understand it--it felt stuffy--as if something was going toburst."
"That was because they were not the cousins you knew at Deptford."
"But where have the real cousins I knew at Deptford been then--all thistime--while those other kids were here pretending to be them?" Dickieasked.
"Oh, they were somewhere else--in Julius Caesar's time, to be exact--butthey don't know it, and never will know it. They haven't the charm. Tothem it will be like a dream that they have forgotten."
"But the swans and the carriages and the voice--and jumping out of thewindow..." Dickie urged.
"The swans were white magic--the white Mouldiwarp of Arden did allthat."
Then she told him all about the white Mouldiwarp of Arden, and how itwas the badge of Arden's house--its picture being engraved on Tinkler,and how it had done all sorts of magic for Edred and Elfrida, and woulddo still more.
Dickie and the nurse sat most of the night talking by the replenishedfir
e, for the tale seemed endless. Dickie learned that the Edred andElfrida who belonged to his own times had a father who was supposed tobe dead. "I am forbidden to tell them," said the nurse, "but _thou_canst help them, and shalt."
"I should like that," said Dickie--"but can't _I_ see the whiteMouldiwarp?"
"I dare not--even _I_ dare not call it again to-night," the nurse owned."But maybe I will teach thee a little spell to bring it on another day.It is an angry little beast at times, but kindly, and hard-working."
Then Dickie told her about the beginnings of the magic, and how he hadheard _two_ voices, one of them the Mouldiwarp's.
"There are three white Mouldiwarps friends to thy house," she toldhim--"the Mouldiwarp who is the badge, and the Mouldiwarp who is thecrest, and the Great Mouldiwarp who sits on the green and whitecheckered field of the Ardens' shield of arms. It was the first two whotalked of thee."
"And how can I find my cousins and help them to find their father?"
"Lay out the moon-seeds and the other charms, and wish to be where theyare going. Then thou canst speak with them. Wish to be there a weekbefore they come, that thou mayst know the place and the folk."
"Now?" Dickie asked, but not eagerly, for he was very tired.
"Not now, my lamb," she said; and so at last Dickie went to bed, hisweary brain full of new things more dream-like than any dreams he hadever had.
After this he talked with the nurse every day, and learned more and morewonders, of which there is no time now for me to tell you. But they areall written in the book of "The House of Arden." In that book, too, itis written how Dickie went back from the First James's time to the timeof the Eighth Henry, and took part in the merry country life of thosedays, and there found the old nurse herself, Edred and Elfrida, andhelped them to recover their father from a far country. There also youmay read of the marvels of the white clock, and the cliff that nonecould climb, and the children who were white cats, and the Mouldiwarpwho became as big as a polar bear, with other wonders. And when all thiswas over, Elfrida and Edred wanted Dickie to come back with them totheir own time. But he would not. He went back instead to the time heloved, when James the First was King. And when he woke in the littlepanelled room it seemed to him that all this was only dreams andfancies.
In the course of this adventure he met the white Mouldiwarp, and it wasjust a white mole, very funny and rather self-important. The secondMouldiwarp he had not yet met. I have told you all these things veryshortly, because they were so dream-like to Dickie, and not at all reallike the double life he had been leading.
"That always happens," said the nurse; "if you stumble into some oneelse's magic it never feels real. But if you bring them into yours it'squite another pair of sleeves. Those children can't get any more magicof their own now, but you could take them into yours. Only for thatyou'd have to meet them in your own time that you were born in, andyou'll have to wait till it's summer, because that's where they are now.They're seven months ahead of you in your own time."
"But," said Dickie, very much bewildered, as I am myself, and as I amafraid you too must be, "if they're seven months ahead, won't theyalways be seven months ahead?"
"Odds bodikins," said the nurse impatiently, "how often am I to tell youthat there's no such thing as time? But there's seasons, and the seasonthey came out of was summer, and the season you'll go back to 'tisautumn--so you _must_ live the seven months in their time, and thenit'll be summer and you'll meet them."
"And what about Lord Arden in the Tower? Will he be beheaded fortreason?" Dickie asked.
"Oh, _that's_ part of their magic. It isn't in your magic at all. LordArden will be safe enough. And now, my lamb, I've more to tell thee. Butcome into thy panelled chamber where thy tutor cannot eavesdrop andbetray us, and have thee given over to him wholly, and me burned for awitch."
These terrible words kept Dickie silent till he and the nurse were safein his room, and then he said, "Come with me to my time, nurse--theydon't burn people for witches there."
"No," said the nurse, "but they let them live such lives in their uglytowns 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 greentrees are gone, and good work is gone, and people do bad work for justso much as will keep together their worn bodies and desolate souls. Andsometimes they starve to death. And they won't burn me if thou'lt onlykeep 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 isa treasure buried in Arden Castle by the sea, which is their home. Theywant the treasure to restore the splendor of the old Castle, which inyour time is fallen into ruin and decay, and to mend the houses of thetenants, and to do good to the poor and needy. But you know that nowthey have used their magic to get back their father, and can no longeruse it to look for treasure. But your magic will hold. And if you layout your moon-seeds round _them_, in the old shape, and stand with themin the midst, holding your Tinkler and your white seal, you will all gowhithersoever you choose."
"I shall choose to go straight to the treasure, of course," saidpractical Dickie, swinging his feet in their rosetted shoes.
"That thou canst not. Thou canst only choose some year in the past--anyyear--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 namegot changed, by breathing hard on it, from Arden to Harden, and thatagain to Harding. Thus names are changed ever and again. And Dickie ofDeptford 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," shesaid. "And now, dear lamb, since thy tutor is imagining unkind things inhis heart for thee, go quickly. Set out thy moon-seeds and, when thouhearest the voices, say, 'I would see both Mouldiwarps,' and thou shaltsee 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 nothingsolid, not even the ground under his feet or the touch of his clenchedfingers against his palms.
They were very white, the Mouldiwarps, outlined distinctly against thegray blueness, and the Mouldiwarp he had seen in that wonderfuladventure 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 thethick speech of the peasant people round about Talbot house where Dickiehad once been a little burglar.
"He is indeed a worthy scion of the great house we serve," said theother Mouldiwarp with precise and gentle utterance. "As Mouldierwarp tothe Ardens I can but own that I am proud of him."
The Mouldierwarp had, as well as a gentle voice, a finer nose than theMouldiwarp, his fur was more even and his claws sharper.
"Eh, you be a gentleman, you be," said the Mouldiwarp, "so's 'e--sothere's two of ye sure enough."
It was very odd to see and hear these white moles talking like realpeople and looking like figures on a magic-lantern screen. But Dickiedid not enjoy it as much as perhaps you or I would have done. It was nothis pet kind of magic. He liked the good, straightforward, old-fashionedkind of magic that he was accustomed to--the kind that just took you outof one life into another life, and made both lives as real one as theother. 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 couldnot help seei
ng that both these old creatures were extremely pleasedwith him.
"When shall I see the other Mouldiwarp?" he asked, to keep up theconversation--"the one on our shield of arms?"
"You mean the Mouldiestwarp?" said the Mouldier, as I will now call himfor short; "you will not see him till the end of the magic. He is verygreat. I work the magic of space, my brother here works the magic oftime, 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 amagic greater than ours."
"What could be greater?" Dickie asked, and both the creatures lookedvery pleased.
"He is a worthier Arden than those little black and white chits ofthine," the Mouldier said to the Mouldy (which is what, to save time, wewill now call the Mouldiwarp).
"An' so should be--an' so should be," said the Mouldy shortly. "All'sfor 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 wantto go back to Mr. Beale and stay with him for seven months, and then tofind 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 ofsteadfast heart and the patient purpose, and these thou hast without anyhelping or giving of ours," said the courtly Mouldierwarp.
They waved their white paws on the gray-blue curtain of mist, and beholdthey were not there any more, and the blue-gray mist was only thenight's darkness turning to dawn, and Dickie was able again to feelsolid things--the floor under him, his hand on the sharp edge of thearmchair, and the soft, breathing, comfortable weight of True, asleepagainst his knee. He moved, the dog awoke, and Dickie felt its soft nosenuzzled 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 safeplace, 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 thelife at Lavender Terrace. He was going to help Mr. Beale to live it. Solet 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 howheroically they may happen to be behaving.