by E. Nesbit
He had put on his coat as he spoke and now ran up the stairs. The others, herding in the hall, could hear his light-hearted there’s-nothing-unusual-the-matter-whatever-did-you-bolt-like-that-for knock at Mademoiselle’s door, the reassuring “It’s only me—Gerald, you know,” the pause, the opening of the door, and the low-voiced parley that followed; then Mademoiselle and Gerald at Eliza’s door, voices of reassurance; Eliza’s terror, bluntly voluble, tactfully soothed.
“Wonder what lies he’s telling them,” Jimmy grumbled.
“Oh! Not lies,” said Mabel; “he’s only telling them as much of the truth as it’s good for them to know.”
“If you’d been a man,” said Jimmy witheringly, “you’d have been a beastly Jesuit, and hid up chimneys.”
“If I were only just a boy,” Mabel retorted, “I shouldn’t be scared out of my life by a pack of old coats.”
“I’m so sorry you were frightened,” Gerald’s honeyed tones floated down the staircase; “we didn’t think about you being frightened. And it was a good trick, wasn’t it?”
“There!” whispered Jimmy, “he’s been telling her it was a trick of ours.”
“Well, so it was,” said Mabel stoutly.
“It was indeed a wonderful trick,” said Mademoiselle; “and how did you move the mannikins?”
“Oh, we’ve often done it—with strings, you know,” Gerald explained.
“That’s true, too,” Kathleen whispered.
“Let us see you do once again this trick so remarkable,” said Mademoiselle, arriving at the bottom-stair mat.
“Oh, I’ve cleared them all out,” said Gerald. (“So he has,” from Kathleen aside to Jimmy.) “We were so sorry you were startled; we thought you wouldn’t like to see them again.”
“Then,” said Mademoiselle brightly, as she peeped into the untidy dining-room and saw that the figures had indeed vanished, “if we supped and discoursed of your beautiful piece of theatre?”
Gerald explained fully how much his brother and sister would enjoy this. As for him—Mademoiselle would see that it was his duty to escort Mabel home, and kind as it was of Mademoiselle to ask her to stay the night, it could not be, on account of the frenzied and anxious affection of Mabel’s aunt. And it was useless to suggest that Eliza should see Mabel home, because Eliza was nervous at night unless accompanied by her gentleman friend.
So Mabel was hatted with her own hat and cloaked with a cloak that was not hers; and she and Gerald went out by the front door, amid kind last words and appointments for the morrow.
The moment that front door was shut Gerald caught Mabel by the arm and led her briskly to the corner of the side street which led to the yard. Just round the corner he stopped.
“Now,” he said, “what I want to know is—are you an idiot or aren’t you?”
“Idiot yourself!” said Mabel, but mechanically, for she saw that he was in earnest.
“Because I’m not frightened of the Ugly-Wuglies. They’re as harmless as tame rabbits. But an idiot might be frightened, and give the whole show away. If you’re an idiot, say so, and I’ll go back and tell them you’re afraid to walk home, and that I’ll go and let your aunt know you’re stopping.”
“I’m not an idiot,” said Mabel; “and,” she added, glaring round her with the wild gaze of the truly terror-stricken, “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“I’m going to let you share my difficulties and dangers,” said Gerald; “at least, I’m inclined to let you. I wouldn’t do as much for my own brother, I can tell you. And if you queer my pitch I’ll never speak to you again or let the others either.”
“You’re a beast, that’s what you are! I don’t need to be threatened to make me brave. I am.”
“Mabel,” said Gerald, in low, thrilling tones, for he saw that the time had come to sound another note, “I know you’re brave. I believe in you, That’s why I’ve arranged it like this. I’m certain you’ve got the heart of a lion under that black-and-white exterior. Can I trust you? To the death?”
Mabel felt that to say anything but “Yes” was to throw away a priceless reputation for courage. So “Yes” was what she said.
“Then wait here. You’re close to the lamp. And when you see me coming with them remember they’re as harmless as serpents—I mean doves. Talk to them just like you would to anyone else. See?”
He turned to leave her, but stopped at her natural question:
“What hotel did you say you were going to take them to?”
“Oh, Jimminy!” the harassed Gerald caught at his hair with both hands. “There! You see, Mabel, you’re a help already.” He had, even at that moment, some tact left. “I clean forgot! I meant to ask you—isn’t there any lodge or anything in the Castle grounds where I could put them for the night? The charm will break, you know, some time, like being invisible did, and they’ll just be a pack of coats and things that we can easily carry home any day. Is there a lodge or anything?”
“There’s a secret passage,” Mabel began—but at the moment the yard-door opened and an Ugly-Wugly put out its head and looked anxiously down the street.
“Righto!” Gerald ran to meet it. It was all Mabel could do not to run in an opposite direction with an opposite motive. It was all she could do, but she did it, and was proud of herself as long as ever she remembered that night.
And now, with all the silent precaution necessitated by the near presence of an extremely insane uncle, the Ugly-Wuglies, a grisly band, trooped out of the yard door.
“Walk on your toes, dear,” the bonneted Ugly-Wugly whispered to the one with a wreath; and even at that thrilling crisis Gerald wondered how she could, since the toes of one foot were but the end of a golf club and of the other the end of a hockey-stick.
Mabel felt that there was no shame in retreating to the lamp-post at the street corner, but, once there, she made herself halt—and no one but Mabel will ever know how much making that took. Think of it—to stand there, firm and quiet, and wait for those hollow, unbelievable things to come up to her, clattering on the pavement with their stumpy feet or borne along noiselessly, as in the case of the flower-hatted lady, by a skirt that touched the ground, and had, Mabel knew very well, nothing at all inside it.
She stood very still; the insides of her hands grew cold and damp, but still she stood, saying over and over again: “They’re not true—they can’t be true. It’s only a dream—they aren’t really true. They can’t be.” And then Gerald was there, and all the Ugly-Wuglies crowding round, and Gerald saying:—
“This is one of our friends, Mabel—the Princess in the play, you know. Be a man!” he added in a whisper for her ear alone.
Mabel, all her nerves stretched tight as banjo strings, had an awful instant of not knowing whether she would be able to be a man or whether she would be merely a shrieking and running little mad girl. For the respectable Ugly-Wugly shook her limply by the hand.
(“He can’t be true,” she told herself), and the rose-wreathed one took her arm with a soft-padded glove at the end of an umbrella arm, and said:—
“You dear, clever little thing! Do walk with me!” in a gushing, girlish way, and in speech almost wholly lacking in consonants.
Then they all walked up the High Street as if, as Gerald said, they were anybody else.
It was a strange procession, but Liddlesby goes early to bed, and the Liddlesby police, in common with those of most other places, wear boots that one can hear a mile off. If such boots had been heard, Gerald would have had time to turn back and head them off. He felt now that he could not resist a flush of pride in Mabel’s courage as he heard her polite rejoinders to the still more polite remarks of the amiable Ugly-Wuglies. He did not know how near she was to the scream that would throw away the whole thing and bring the police and the residents out to the ruin of everybody.
Mabel felt as though she were taking part in a very completely arranged nightmare, but Gerald was in it too Gerald, who had asked if she was an idiot. Well, she wasn’t. But she soon would be, she felt. Yet she went on answering the courteous vowel-talk of these impossible people. She had often heard her aunt speak of impossible people. Well, now she knew what they were like.
Summer twilight had melted into summer moonlight. The shadows of the Ugly-Wuglies on the white road were much more horrible than their more solid selves. Mabel wished it had been a dark night, and then corrected the wish with a hasty shudder.
Gerald, submitting to a searching interrogatory from the tall-hatted Ugly-Wugly as to his schools, his sports, pastimes, and ambitions, wondered how long the spell would last. The ring seemed to work in sevens. Would these things have seven hours’ life—or fourteen—or twenty-one? His mind lost itself in the intricacies of the seven-times table (a teaser at the best of times) and only found itself with a shock when the procession found itself at the gates of the Castle grounds.
Locked of course.
“You see,” he explained, as the Ugly-Wuglies vainly shook the iron gates with incredible hands; “it’s so very late. There is another way. But you have to climb through a hole.”
“The ladies,” the respectable Ugly-Wugly began objecting; but the ladies with one voice affirmed that they loved adventures. “So frightfully thrilling,” added the one who wore roses.
So they went round by the road, and coming to the hole—it was a little difficult to find in the moonlight, which always disguises the most familiar things—Gerald went first with the bicycle lantern which he had snatched as his pilgrims came out of the yard; the shrinking Mabel followed, and then the Ugly-Wuglies, with hollow rattlings of their wooden limbs against the stone, crept through, and with strange vowel-sounds of general amazement, manly courage, and feminine nervousness, followed the light along the passage through the fern-hung cutting and under the arch.
When they emerged on the moonlit enchantment of the Italian garden a quite intelligible “Oh!” of surprised admiration broke from more than one painted paper lip; and the respectable Ugly-Wugly was understood to say that it must be quite a show-place—by George, sir!—yes.
Those marble terraces and artfully serpentining gravel walks surely never had echoed to steps so strange. No shadows so wildly unbelievable had, for all its enchantments, ever fallen on those smooth, grey, dewy lawns. Gerald was thinking this, or something like it (what he really thought was, “I bet there never was such ado as this, even here!”), when he saw the statue of Hermes leap from its pedestal and run towards him and his company with all the lively curiosity of a street boy eager to be in at a street fight. He saw, too, that he was the only one who perceived that white advancing presence. And he knew that it was the ring that let him see what by others could not be seen. He slipped it from his finger. Yes; Hermes was on his pedestal, still as the snow man you make in the Christmas holidays. He put the ring on again, and there was Hermes, circling round the group and gazing deep in each unconscious Ugly-Wugly face.
“This seems a very superior hotel,” the tall-hatted Ugly-Wugly was saying; “the grounds are laid out with what you might call taste.”
“We should have to go in by the back door,” said Mabel suddenly. “The front door’s locked at half-past nine.”
A short, stout Ugly-Wugly in a yellow and blue cricket cap, who had hardly spoken, muttered something about an escapade, and about feeling quite young again.
And now they had skirted the marble-edged pool where the goldfish swam and glimmered, and where the great prehistoric beast had come down to bathe and drink. The water flashed white diamonds in the moonlight, and Gerald alone of them all saw that the scaly-plated vast lizard was even now rolling and wallowing there among the lily pads.
They hastened up the steps of the Temple of Flora. The back of it, where no elegant arch opened to the air, was against one of those sheer hills, almost cliffs, that diversified the landscape of that garden. Mabel passed behind the statue of the goddess, fumbled a little, and then Gerald’s lantern, flashing like a searchlight, showed a very high and very narrow doorway: the stone that was the door, and that had closed it, revolved slowly under the touch of Mabel’s fingers.
“This way,” she said, and panted a little. The back of her neck felt cold and goose-fleshy.
“You lead the way, my lad, with the lantern,” said the suburban Ugly-Wugly in his bluff, agreeable way.
“I—I must stay behind to close the door,” said Gerald.
“The Princess can do that. We’ll help her,” said the wreathed one with effusion; and Gerald thought her horribly officious.
He insisted gently that he would be the one responsible for the safe shutting of that door.
“You wouldn’t like me to get into trouble, I’m sure,” he urged; and the Ugly-Wuglies, for the last time kind and reasonable, agreed that this, of all things, they would most deplore.
“You take it,” Gerald urged, pressing the bicycle lamp on the elderly Ugly-Wugly; “you’re the natural leader. Go straight ahead. Are there any steps?” he asked Mabel in a whisper.
“Not for ever so long,” she whispered back. “It goes on for ages, and then twists round.”
“Whispering,” said the smallest Ugly-Wugly suddenly, “ain’t manners.”
“He hasn’t any, anyhow,” whispered the lady Ugly-Wugly; “don’t mind him—quite a self-made man,” and squeezed Mabel’s arm with horrible confidential flabbiness.
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!”
