Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  And though Edred and Aunt Edith searched every corner of the secret hiding-place they never found that key.

  Elfrida alone knows that she gave it to the Mouldiwarp. And as Mrs. Honeysett declared that there had never been a parlour key with a label on it in her time it certainly does seem as though the Mole must have put the key he got from Elfrida on the path for Aunt Edith to find, after carefully labelling it to prevent mistakes. How the Mole got the label is another question, but I really think that finding a label for a key is quite a simple thing to do–I have done it myself. Whereas making a clock-face of white pigeon feathers is very difficult indeed–and a thing that I have never been able to do. And as for making that clock-face the means of persuading time to go fast or slow, just as one wishes–well, I don’t suppose even you could do that.

  Elfrida found it rather a relief to go back to the ordinary world, where magic moles did not upset the clock–a world made pleasant by nice aunts and the old delightful games that delight ordinary people. Games such as “Hunt the thimble,” “What is my thought like,” and “Proverbs.” The three had a delightful weekend, and Aunt Edith told them all about the lodgers and the seaside house, which already seemed very long ago and far away. On Sunday evening, as they walked home from Arden Church, where they had tried to attend to the service, and not to look too much at the tombs and monuments of dead-and-gone Ardens that lined the chancel, the three sat down on Arden Knoll, and Aunt Edith explained things a little to them. She told them much more than they could understand about wills, and trustees, and incomes, but they were honoured by her confidence, and pleased by the fact that she seemed to think they could understand such grown-up kind of things. And the thing that remained on their minds after the talk, like a ship cast up by a high tide, was this: that Arden Castle was theirs, and that there was very little money to “keep it up” with. So that every one must be very careful, and no one must be at all extravagant. And Aunt Edith was going back to the world of lawyers, and wills, and trustees, early on Monday morning, and they must be very good children, and not bother Mrs. Honeysett, and never, never lock themselves in and hide the key in safe places.

  All this remained, as the lasting result of the pleasant talk on the downs in the softly lessening light.

  And another thing remained, which Edred put into words as the two children walked back from the station, where they had seen Aunt Edith into the train and waved their goodbyes to her.

  “It is very important indeed,” he said, “for us to find the treasure. Then we could ‘keep up’ the Castle without any bother. We must have it built up again first, of course, and then we’ll keep it up. And we won’t have any old clocks and not keeping together, this time. We’ll both of us go and find the attic the minute our quarrel’s three days old, and we’ll ask the Mouldiwarp to send us to a time when we can really see the treasure with our own eyes. I do think that’s a good idea, don’t you?” he asked, with modest pride.

  “Very,” Elfrida said. “And I say, Edred, I don’t mean to quarrel any more if I can help it. It is such a waste of time,” she added in her best grown-up manner, “and does delay everything so. Delays are dangerous. It says so in the ‘proverb’ game. Suppose there really was a chance of getting the treasure and we had to wait three days because of quarrelling. But I’ll tell you one thing I found out: you can get the Mole to come and help you, even if you have quarrelled a little. Because I did.” And she told him how.

  “But, I expect,” she added, “it would only come if I were in the most awful trouble and all human aid despaired of.”

  “Well, we’re not that now,” said Edred, knocking the head off a poppy with his stick, “and I’m jolly glad we’re not.”

  “I wonder,” said Elfrida, “who lives in that cottage where the witch was. I know exactly where it is. I expect it’s been pulled down, though. Let’s go round that way. It’ll be something to do.”

  So they went round that way, and the way was quite easy to find. But when they got to the place where the tumbledown cottage had been in Boney’s time, there was only a little slate-roofed house with a blue bill pasted up on its yellow-brick face saying that somebody’s A1 ginger-beer and up-to-date minerals were sold there. The house was dull to look at, and they did not happen to have any spare money for ginger-beer, so they turned round to go home and suddenly found themselves face to face with a woman. She wore a red-and-black plaid blouse and a bought ready-made black skirt, and on her head was a man’s peaked cap such as women in the country wear now instead of the pretty sunbonnets that they used to wear when I was a little girl.

  “So they’ve pulled the old cottage down,” she said. “This new house’ll be fine and dry inside, I lay. The rain comes in through the roof of the old one so’s you might a’most as well be laying in the open medder.”

  The children listened politely, and both were wondering where they had seen this woman before, for her face was strangely familiar to them, and yet they didn’t seem really to know her either.

  “Most of the cottages ‘bout here is just as bad as they always was,” she went on. “When Arden has the handling of the treasure he’ll see to it that poor folks lie warm and dry, won’t he now?”

  And then all in a minute the children both knew, and she knew that they knew.

  “Why,” said Edred, “you’re the–”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m the witch come from old ancient times. If you can go back I can go forth, because then and now’s the same if I know how to make a clock.”

  “Can you make clocks?” said Elfrida. “I thought it was only–”

  “So it be,” said the witch. “I can’t make ‘em, but I know them as can. And I’ve come ‘ere to find you, ‘cause you brought me the tea and sugar. I’ve got the wise eye, I have. I can see back and forth. I looked forrard and I saw ye, and I looked back and I saw what you’re seeking, and I know where the treasure is and–”

  “But where did you get those clothes?” Edred asked; and it was a question he was afterwards to have reason to regret.

  “Oh, clothes is easy come by,” said the witch. “If it was only clothes I could be a crowned queen this very minute.”

  The children had a fleeting impression of seeing against the criss-cross fence of the potato patch a lady in crimson and ermine with a gold crown. They blinked, startled, and saw that there was no crimson and gold, only the dull clothes of the witch against the background of potato patch.

  “And how did you get here?” Edred asked.

  “That speckled hen of mine’s a-settin’ on the clock-face now,” she said. “I quieted her with a chalk-line drawn from her beak’s end straight out into the world of wonders. If she rouses up, then I’m back there, and I can’t never come back here, my dears, not more than once, I can’t. So let’s make haste down to the Castle, and I’ll show you where my great granny see them put the treasure when she was a little gell.”

  The three hurried down the steep-banked lane.

  “Many’s the time,” the witch went on, “my granny pointed it out to me. It’s just alongside where–”

  And then the witch was not there any more. Edred and Elfrida were alone in the lane. The speckled hen must have recovered from her “quieting,” and got off the clock.

  “She’s gone right enough,” said Edred, “and now we’ll never know. And just when she was going to tell us where it was. I do think it’s too jolly stupid for anything.”

  “A LADY IN CRIMSON AND ERMINE WITH A GOLD CROWN.”

  “It’s you that’s too jolly stupid for anything,” said Elfrida hotly. “What did you want to go asking her about her silly clothes for? It was that did it. She’d have told us where it was before now if you hadn’t taken her time up with clothes. As if clothes mattered! I do wish to goodness you’d sometimes try to behave as if you’d got some sense.”

  “Go it!” said Edred bitterly. “As if everything wasn’t tiresome enough. Now there’s another three days to wait, because of your nagging. Oh, it�
��s just exactly like a girl, so it is!”

  “I’m–I’m sorry,” said Elfrida, awestricken. “Let’s do something good to make up. I’ll give you that notebook of mine with the lead-pointed mother-of-pearl pencil, and we’ll go round to all the cottages and find out which are leaky, so as to be ready to patch them up when we’ve got the treasure.”

  “I don’t want to be good,” said Edred bitterly. “I haven’t quarrelled and put everything back, but I’m going to now,” he said, with determination. “I don’t see why everything should be smashed up and me not said any of the things I want to say.”

  “Oh, don’t!” cried Elfrida; “it’s bad enough to quarrel when you don’t want to, but to set out to quarrel! Don’t!”

  Edred didn’t. He kicked the dust up with his boots, and the two went back to the Castle in gloomy silence.

  At the gate Edred paused. “I’ll make it up now if you like,” he said. “I’ve only just thought of it–but perhaps it’s three days from the end of the quarrel.”

  “I see,” said Elfrida; “so the longer we keep it up–”

  “Yes,” said Edred; “so let’s call it Pax and not waste any more time.”

  CHAPTER VIII. GUY FAWKES

  THREE days, because there had been a quarrel. But days pass quickly when the sun shines, and it is holiday-time, and you have a big ruined castle to explore and examine–a castle that is your own, or your brother’s.

  “After all,” said Elfrida sensibly, “we might quite likely find the treasure ourselves, without any magic Mouldiwarpiness at all. We’ll look thoroughly. We won’t leave a stone unturned.”

  “We shall have to leave a good many stones unturned,” said Edred, looked at the great grey mass of the keep that towered tall and frowning above them.

  “Well, you know what I mean,” said Elfrida. “Come on!” and they went.

  They climbed the steep, worn stairs that wound round and round in the darkness–stairs littered with dead leaves and mould and dropped feathers, and the dry, deserted nests of owls and jackdaws; stairs that ended suddenly in daylight and a steep last step, and the top of a broad ivy-grown wall from which you could look down, down, down; past the holes in the walls where the big beams used to be, past the old fireplace still black with the smoke of fires long since burnt out, past the doors and windows of rooms whose floors fell away long ago; down, down, to where ferns and grass and brambles grew green at the very bottom of the tower.

  Then there were arched doors that led to colonnades with strong little pillars and narrow windows, wonderful little unexpected chambers and corners–the best place in the whole wide world for serious and energetic hide and-seek.

  “How glorious,” said Elfrida, as they rested, scarlet and panting, after a thrilling game of “I spy”–”if all these broken bits were mended, so that you couldn’t see where the new bits were stuck on! And if it could all be exactly like it was when it was brand-new.”

  “There wasn’t the house when it was brand-new–the house like it is now, I mean,” said Edred. “I don’t suppose there was any attic with chests in when the castle was new.”

  “There couldn’t be, not with all the chests,” said Elfrida; “of course not, because some of the clothes in the chest weren’t made till long after the castle was built. I believe grown-ups can tell what a broken thing was like when it was new. I know they can with bones–mastodons and things. And they made out what Hercules was like out of one foot of him that they found, I believe,” she added hazily.

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Edred, “if we could get back to where the castle was all perfect like a model and draw pictures of every part. Then when we found the treasure we should know exactly what to build it up like, shouldn’t we?”

  “Yes,” said Elfrida very gently. “We certainly should. But then we should have to know how to draw first, shouldn’t we?”

  “Of course we should,” Edred agreed, “but that wouldn’t take long if we really tried. I never do try at school. I don’t like it. But it’s jolly easy. I know that. Burslem mi. always takes the drawing prize, and you know what a duffer he is. We might begin to learn now, don’t you think?”

  Elfrida sat down on a fallen stone in the middle of the castle yard, and looked at the intricate wonderful arches and pillars, the crenulated battlements of the towers, the splendid stoutness of the walls, and she sighed.

  “Yes,” she said, “let’s begin now–”

  “And you’ll have to lend me one of your pencils,” said he, “because I broke mine all to bits trying to get the parlour door open the day you’d got the key in your pocket. Quite a long one it was. You’ll have to lend me a long one, Elf. I can’t draw with those little endy-bits that get inside your hand and prick you with the other end.”

  “I don’t mind,” said she, “so long as you don’t put it in your mouth.”

  So they got large sheets of writing-paper, and brown calf-bound books for the paper to lie flat on, and they started to draw Arden Castle. And as Elfrida tried to draw everything she knew was there, as well as everything she could see, her drawing soon became almost entirely covered with black-lead.

  They had no indiarubber, and if you drew anything wrong it had to stay drawn. When you first begin to draw, you draw a good many things wrong, don’t you? I assure you that nobody would have known that the black and grey muddle on Elfrida’s paper was meant to be a picture of a castle. Edred’s was much more easily recognised, even before he printed “Arden Castle” under it in large, uneven letters. He never once raised his eyes from his paper, and just drew what he thought the front of the castle looked like from the outside. Also he sucked his pencil earnestly–Elfrida’s pencil, I mean–and this made the lines of his drawing very black.

  “There!” he said at last, “it’s ever so much liker than yours.”

  “Yes,” said Elfrida, “but there’s more in mine.”

  “It doesn’t matter how much there is in a picture if you can’t tell what it’s meant for,” said Edred, with some truth. “Now, in mine you can see the towers, and the big gate, and the windows, and the twiddly in-and-outness on top.

  “Yes,” said Elfrida, “but . . . well, let’s do something else. I don’t believe we should either of us learn to draw well enough to rebuild Arden by; not before we’ve found the treasure, I mean. Perhaps we might meet a real artist, like the one we saw drawing the castle yesterday–in the past I mean–and get him to draw it for us, and bring the picture back with us, and–”

  “Oh,” cried Edred, jumping up and dropping his masterpiece, and the calf-bound volume and the pencil. “I know. The Brownie!”

  “The Brownie?”

  “Yes–take it with us. Then we could photograph the castle all perfect.”

  “But we can’t take it with us.”

  “Can’t we?” said Edred; “that’s all you know. Now I’ll tell you something. That first time–a bit of plaster was in my shoe when we changed, and it was in my shoe when we got there, and I took it out when we were learning about ‘dog’s delight.’ And I flipped it out of the window. And when we got back, and I’d changed and everything, there was that bit of plaster in my own shoe. If we can take plaster we can take photographs–cameras, I mean.” This close and intelligent reasoning commanded Elfrida’s respect, and she wished she had thought of it herself. But then she had not had any plaster in her shoe. So she said–

  “You’re getting quite clever, aren’t you?”

  “Aha,” said Edred, “you’d like to have thought of that yourself, wouldn’t you? I can be clever sometimes same as you can.”

  It is very annoying to have our thoughts read. Elfrida said swiftly. “Not often you can’t,” and then stopped short. For a moment the children stood looking at each other with a very peculiar expression. Then a sigh of relief broke from each.

  “Fielded!” said Edred.

  “Just in time!” said Elfrida. “It wasn’t a quarrel; nobody could say it was a quarrel. Come on, let’s go and look at t
he cottages, like the witch told us to.”

  They went. They made a tour of inspection that day and the next and the next. And they saw a great many things that a grown-up inspector would never have seen. Poor people are very friendly and kind to you when you are a child. They will let you come into their houses and talk to you and show you things in a way that they would never condescend to do with your grown-up relations. This is, of course, if you are a really nice child, and treat them in a respectful and friendly way. Edred and Elfrida very soon knew more about the insides of the cottages round Arden than any grown-up could have learned in a year. They knew what wages the master of the house got, what there was for dinner, and what, oftener, there wasn’t, how many children were still living, and how many had failed to live. They knew exactly where the rain came through the rotten thatch in bad weather, and where the boards didn’t fit and so let the draughts in, and how some of the doors wouldn’t shut, some wouldn’t open, and how the bedroom windows were, as often as not, not made to open at all.

  And when they weren’t visiting the cottages or exploring the castle they found a joyous way of passing the time in the reading aloud of the history of Arden. They took it in turns to read aloud. Elfrida looked carefully for some mention of Sir Edward Talbot and his pretending to be the Chevalier St. George. There was none, but a Sir Edward Talbot had been accused, with the Lord Arden of the time, of plotting against His Most Christian Majesty King James I.

  “I wonder if he was like my Edward Talbot?” said Elfrida. “I would like to see him again. I wish I’d told him about us having been born so many years after he died. But it would have been difficult to explain, wouldn’t it? Let’s look in Green’s History Book and see what they looked like when it was his Most Christian Majesty King James the First.”

  Perhaps it was this which decided the children, when the three days were over, to put on the clothes which most resembled the ones in the pictures of James I.’s time in Green’s History.