Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  As the time went on they grew more and more careful. It was like building a house of cards. As hour after hour of blameless politeness was added to the score, they grew almost breathlessly anxious. If, after all this, some natural annoyance should spoil everything!

  “I do hope,” said Edred, towards tea-time, “that you won’t go and do anything tiresome.”

  “Oh, dear, I do hope I shan’t,” said Elfrida.

  And this was just like them both.

  After tea they decided to read, so as to lessen the chances of failure. They both wanted the same book–”Treasure Island” it was–and for a moment the niceness of both hung in the balance. Then, with one accord, each said, “No–you have it!” and the matter ended in each taking a quite different book that it didn’t particularly want to read.

  At bedtime Edred lighted Elfrida’s candle for her, and she picked up the matches for him when he dropped them.

  “Bless their hearts,” said Mrs. Honeysett, in the passage.

  They parted with the heartfelt remark, “We’ve done it this time.”

  Now, of course, in the three days when they had not succeeded in being nice to each other they had “looked for the door,” but as the mole had not said where it was, nor what kind of a door, their search had not been fruitful Most of the rooms had several doors, and as there were a good many rooms the doors numbered fifty-seven, counting cupboards. And among these there was none that seemed worthy to rank above all others as the door. Many of the doors in the old part of the house looked as though they might be the one, but since there were many no one could be sure.

  “How shall we know?” Edred asked next morning, through his egg and toast.

  “I suppose it’s like when people fall in love,” said Elfrida, through hers. “You see the door and you know at once that it is the only princess in the world for you–I mean door, of course,” she added.

  And then, when breakfast was over, they stood up and looked at each other.

  “Now,” they said together.

  “We’ll look at every single door. Perhaps there’ll be magic writing on the door come out in the night, like mushrooms,” said the girl.

  “More likely that mole was kidding us,” said the boy.

  “Oh, no,” said the girl; “and we must look at them on both sides–every one. Oh, I do wonder what’s inside the door, don’t you?”

  “Bluebeard’s wives, I shouldn’t wonder,” said the boy, “with their heads–”

  “If you don’t stop,” said the girl, putting her fingers in her ears, “I won’t look for the door at all. No, I don’t mean to be aggravating; but please don’t. You know I hate it.”

  “Come on,” said Edred, “and don’t be a duffer, old chap.”

  The proudest moments of Elfrida’s life were when her brother called her “old chap.”

  So they went and looked at all the fifty-seven doors, one after the other, on the inside and on the outside; some were painted and some were grained, some were carved and some were plain, some had panels and others had none, but they were all of them doors–just doors, and nothing more. Each was just a door, and none of them had any claim at all to be spoken of as THE door. And when they had looked at all the fifty-seven on the inside and on the outside, there was nothing for it but to look again. So they looked again, very carefully, to see if there were any magic writing that they hadn’t happened to notice. And there wasn’t. So then they began to tap the walls to try and discover a door with a secret spring. And that was no good either.

  “There isn’t any old door,” said Edred. “I told you that mole was pulling our leg.”

  “I’m sure there is,” said Elfrida, sniffing a little from prolonged anxiety. “Look here–let’s play it like the willing game. I’ll be blindfolded, and you hold my hand and will me to find the door.”

  “I don’t believe in the willing game,” said Edred disagreeably.

  “No more do I,” said Elfrida; “but we must do something, you know. It’s no good sitting down and saying there isn’t any door.”

  “There isn’t, all the same,” said Edred. “Well, come on.”

  So Elfrida was blindfolded with her best silk scarf–the blue one with the hem-stitched ends–and Edred took her hands. And at once–this happened in the library, where they had found the spell–Elfrida began to walk in a steady and purposeful way. She crossed the hall and went through the green baize door into the other house; went along its corridor and up its dusty stairs–up, and up, and up–

  “We’ve looked everywhere here,” said Edred, but Elfrida did not stop for that.

  “I know I’m going straight to it,” she said. “Oh! do try to believe a little, or we shall never find anything,” and went on along the corridor, where the spiders had draped the picture-frames with their grey crape curtains. There were many doors in this corridor, and Elfrida stopped suddenly at one of them–a door just like the others.

  “This,” she said, putting her hand out till it rested on the panel, all spread out like a pink starfish,–”this is the door.”

  She felt for the handle, turned it, and went in, still pulling at Edred’s hand and with the blue scarf still on her eyes. Edred followed.

  “I say!” he said, and then she pulled off the scarf.

  The door closed itself very softly behind them.

  They were in a long attic room close under the roof–a room that they had certainly, in all their explorings, never found before. There were no windows–the roof sloped down at the sides almost to the floor. There was no ceiling–old worm-eaten roof-beams showed the tiles between–and old tie-beams crossed it so that as you stared up it looked like a great ladder with the rungs very far apart. Here and there through the chinks of the tiles a golden dusty light filtered in, and outside was the “tick, tick” of moving pigeon feet, the rustling of pigeon feathers, the “cooroocoo” of pigeon voices. The long room was almost bare; only along each side, close under the roof, was a row of chests, and no two chests were alike.

  “Oh!” said Edred. “I’m kind and wise now. I feel it inside me. So now we’ve got the treasure. We’ll rebuild the castle.”

  He got to the nearest chest and pushed at the lid, but Elfrida had to push too before he could get the heavy thing up. And when it was up, alas! there was no treasure in the chest–only folded clothes.

  So then they tried the next chest.

  And in all the chests there was no treasure at all–only clothes. Clothes, and more clothes again.

  “Well, never mind,” said Elfrida, trying to speak comfortably. “They’ll be splendid for dressing up in.”

  “That’s all very well,” said Edred, “but I want the treasure.”

  “Perhaps,” said Elfrida, with some want of tact,–”perhaps you’re not ‘good and wise’ yet. Not quite, I mean,” she hastened to add. “Let’s take the things out and look at them. Perhaps the treasure’s in the pockets.”

  But it wasn’t–not a bit of it; not even a threepenny-bit.

  The clothes in the first chest were full riding cloaks and long boots, short-waisted dresses and embroidered scarves, tight breeches and coats with bright buttons. There were very interesting waistcoats and odd-shaped hats. One, a little green one, looked as though it would fit Edred. He tried it on. And at the same minute Elfrida lifted out a little straw bonnet trimmed with blue ribbons. “Here’s one for me,” she said, and put it on.

  And then it seemed as though the cooing and rustling of the pigeons came right through the roof and crowded round them in a sort of dazzlement and cloud of pigeon noises. The pigeon noises came closer and closer, and garments were drawn out of the chest and put on the children. They did not know how it was done, any more than you do–but it seemed, somehow, that the pigeon noises were like hands that helped, and presently there the two children stood in clothing such as they had never worn. Elfrida had a short-waisted dress of green-sprigged cotton, with a long and skimpy skirt. Her square-toed brown shoes were gone, and her feet wore
flimsy sandals. Her arms were bare, and a muslin handkerchief was folded across her chest. Edred wore very white trousers that came right up under his arms, a blue coat with brass buttons, and a sort of frilly tucker round his neck.

  “I say!” they both said, when the pigeon noises had taken themselves away, and they were face to face in the long, empty room.

  “That was funny,” Edred added; “let’s go down and show Mrs. Honeysett.”

  But when they got out of the door they saw that Mrs. Honeysett, or some one else, must have been very busy while they were on the other side of it, for the floor of the gallery was neatly swept and polished; a strip of carpet, worn, but clean, ran along it, and prints hung straight and square on the cleanly, whitewashed walls, and there was not a cobweb to be seen anywhere. The children opened the gallery doors as they went along, and every room was neat and clean–no dust, no tattered curtains, only perfect neatness and a sort of rather bare comfort showed in all the rooms. Mrs. Honeysett was in none of them. There were no workmen about, yet the baize door was gone, and in its stead was a door of old wood, very shaky and crooked.

  The children ran down the passage to the parlour and burst open the door, looking for Mrs. Honeysett.

  There sat a very upright old lady and a very upright old gentleman, and their clothes were not the clothes people wear nowadays. They were like the clothes the children themselves had on. The old lady was hemming a fine white frill; the old gentleman was reading what looked like a page from some newspaper.

  “Hoity-toity,” said the old lady very severely; “we forget our manners, I think. Make your curtsey, miss.”

  Elfrida made one as well as she could.

  “To teach you respect for your elders,” said the old gentleman, “you had best get by heart one of Dr. Watts’s Divine and Moral Songs. I leave you to see to it, my lady.”

  “‘HOITY-TOITY,’ SAID THE OLD LADY VERY SEVERELY, ‘WE FORGET OUR MANNERS, I THINK.’”

  He laid down the sheet and went out, very straight and dignified, and without quite knowing how it happened the children found themselves sitting on two little stools in a room that was, and was not, the parlour in which they had had that hopeful eggy breakfast, each holding a marbled side of Dr. Watts’s Hymns.

  “You will commit to memory the whole of the one commencing–

  “‘Happy the child whose youngest years

  Receive instruction well,”

  And you will be deprived of pudding with your dinners,” remarked the old lady.

  “I say!” murmured Edred.

  “Oh, hush!” said Elfrida, as the old lady carried her cambric frills to the window-seat.

  “But I won’t stand it,” whispered Edred. “I’ll tell Aunt Edith–and who’s she anyhow?” He glowered at the old lady across the speckless carpet.

  “Oh, don’t you understand?” Elfrida whispered back. “We’ve got turned into somebody else, and she’s our grandmamma.”

  I don’t know how it was that Elfrida saw this and Edred didn’t. Perhaps because she was a girl, perhaps because she was two years older than he. They looked hopelessly at the bright sunlight outside, and then at the dull, small print of the marble-backed book.

  “Edred,” said the old lady, “hand me the paper.” She pointed at the sheet on the brightly polished table. He got up and carried it across to her, and as he did so he glanced at it and saw:–

  THE TIMES.

  June 16, 1807.

  And then he knew, as well as Elfrida did, exactly where he was, and when.

  CHAPTER III. IN BONEY’S TIMES

  EDRED crept back to his stool, and took his corner of the marble-backed book of Dr. Watts with fingers that trembled. If you are inclined to despise him, consider that it was his first real adventure. Even in ordinary life, and in the time he naturally lived in, nothing particularly thrilling had ever happened to happen to him until he became Lord Arden and explored Arden Castle. And now he and Elfrida had not only discovered a disused house and a wonderful garret with chests in it, but had been clothed by mysterious pigeon noises in clothes belonging to another age. But, you will say, pigeon noises can’t clothe you in anything, whatever it belongs to. Well, that was just what Edred told himself at the time. And yet it was certain that they did. This sort of thing it was that made the whole business so mysterious. Further, he and his sister had managed somehow to go back a hundred years. He knew this quite well, though he had no evidence but that one sheet of newspaper. He felt it, as they say, in his bones. I don’t know how it was, perhaps the air felt a hundred years younger. Shepherds and country people can tell the hour of night by the feel of the air. So perhaps very sensitive people can tell the century by much the same means. These, of course, would be the people to whom adventures in times past or present would be likely to happen. We must always consider what is likely, especially when we are reading stories about unusual things.

  “I say,” Edred whispered presently, “we’ve got back to 1807. That paper says so.”

  “I know,” Elfrida whispered. So she must have had more of that like-shepherds-telling-the time-of-night feeling than even her brother.

  “I wish I could remember what was happening in history in 1807,” said Elfrida, “but we never get past Edward IV. We always have to go back to the Saxons because of the new girls.”

  “But we’re not in history. We’re at Arden,” Edred said.

  “We are in history. It’ll be awful not even knowing who’s king,” said Elfrida; and then the stiff old lady looked up over very large spectacles with thick silver rims, and said–

  “Silence!”

  Presently she laid down the Times and got ink and paper–no envelopes–and began to write. She was finishing a letter, the large sheet was almost covered on one side. When she had covered it quite, she turned it round and began to write across it. She used a white goose-quill pen. The inkstand was of china, with gold scrolls and cupids and wreaths of roses painted on it. On one side was the ink-well, on the other a thing like a china pepper-pot, and in front a tray for the pens and sealing-wax to lie in. Both children now knew their unpleasant poem by heart; so they watched the old lady, who was grandmother to the children she supposed them to be. When she had finished writing she sprinkled some dust out of the pepper-pot over the letter to dry the ink. There was no blotting-paper to be seen. Then she folded the sheet, and sealed it with a silver seal from the pen-tray, and wrote the address on the outside. Then–

  “Have you got your task?” she asked.

  “Here it is,” said Elfrida, holding up the book.

  “No impudence, miss!” said the grandmother sternly. “You very well know that I mean, have you got it by rote yet? And you know, too, that you should say ‘ma’am’ whenever you address me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Elfrida; and this was taken to mean that she knew her task.

  “Then come and say it. No, no; you know better than that. Feet in the first position, hands behind you, heads straight, and do not fidget with your feet.”

  So then first Elfrida and then Edred recited the melancholy verses.

  “Now,” said the old lady, “you may go and play in the garden.”

  “Mayn’t we take your letter to the post?” Elfrida asked.

  “Yes; but you are not to stay in the ‘George’ bar, mind, not even if Mrs. Skinner should invite you. Just hand her the letter and come out. Shut the door softly, and do not shuffle with your feet.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Elfrida; and on that they got out.

  “They’ll find us out–bound to,” said Edred; “we don’t know a single thing about anything. I don’t know where the ‘George’ is, or where to get a stamp, or anything.”

  “We must find some one we can trust, and tell them the truth,” said Elfrida.

  “There isn’t any one,” said Edred, “that I’d trust. You can’t trust the sort of people who stick this sort of baby flummery round a chap’s neck. He crumpled his starched frill with hot, angry fingers.
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  “Mine prickles all round, too,” Elfrida reminded him, “and it’s lower, and you get bigger as you go down, so it prickles more of me than yours does you.”

  “Let’s go back to the attic and try and get back into our own time. I expect we just got in to the wrong door, don’t you? Let’s go now.”

  “Oh, no,” said Elfrida. “How dreadfully dull! Why, we shall see all sorts of things, and be top in history for the rest of our lives. Let’s go through with it.”

  “Do you remember which door it was–the attic, I mean?” Edred suddenly asked. “Was it the third on the left?”

  “I don’t know. But we can easily find it when we want it.”

  “I’d like to know now,” said Edred obstinately. “You never know when you are going to want things. Mrs. Honeysett says you ought always to be able to lay your hand on anything you want the moment you do want it. I should like to be quite certain about being able to lay our hands on our own clothes. Suppose some one goes and tidies them up. You know what people are.”

  “All right,” said Elfrida, “we’ll go and tidy them up ourselves. It won’t take a minute.”

  It would certainly not have taken five–if things had been as the children expected. They raced up the stairs to the corridor where the prints were.

  “It’s not the first door, I’m certain,” said Edred, so they opened the second. But it was not that either. So then they tried all the doors in turn, even opening, at last, the first one of all. And it was not that, even. It was not any of them.

  “We’ve come to the wrong corridor,” said the boy.

  “It’s the only one,” said the girl. And it was. For though they hunted all over the house, upstairs and downstairs, and tried every door, the door of the attic they could not find again. And what is more, when they came to count up, there were fifty-seven doors without it.

  “Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven,” said Elfrida, and ended in a sob,–”the door’s gone! We shall have to stay here for ever and ever. Oh, I want auntie–I do, I do!

  She sat down abruptly on a small green mat in front of the last door, which happened to be that of the kitchen.