by Edith Nesbit
“I think I’ll marry a dumb husband,” said Mabel, “and there shan’t be any heroes in my books when I write them, only a heroine. Come on, Cathy.”
Coming out of that cool, shadowy summer-house into the sunshine was like stepping into an oven, and the stone of the terrace was burning to the children’s feet.
“I know now what a cat on hot bricks feels like,” said Jimmy.
The antediluvian animals are set in a beech-wood on a slope at least half a mile across the park from the castle. The grandfather of the present Lord Yalding had them set there in the middle of last century, in the great days of the late Prince Consort, the Exhibition of 1851, Sir Joseph Paxton, and the Crystal Palace. Their stone flanks, their wide, ungainly wings, their lozenged crocodile-like backs show grey through the trees a long way off.
Most people think that noon is the hottest time of the day. They are wrong. A cloudless sky gets hotter and hotter all the afternoon, and reaches its very hottest at five. I am sure you must all have noticed this when you are going out to tea anywhere in your best clothes, especially if your clothes are starched and you happen to have a rather long and shadeless walk.
Kathleen, Mabel, and Jimmy got hotter and hotter, and went more and more slowly. They had almost reached that stage of resentment and discomfort when one “wishes one hadn’t come” before they saw, below the edge of the beech-wood, the white waved handkerchief of the bailiff.
That banner, eloquent of tea, shade, and being able to sit down, put new heart into them. They mended their pace, and a final desperate run landed them among the drifted coppery leaves and bare grey and green roots of the beech-wood.
“Oh, glory!” said Jimmy, throwing himself down. “How do you do?”
The bailiff looked very nice, the girls thought. He was not wearing his velveteens, but a grey flannel suit that an Earl need not have scorned; and his straw hat would have done no discredit to a Duke; and a Prince could not have worn a prettier green tie. He welcomed the children warmly. And there were two baskets dumped heavy and promising among the beech-leaves.
He was a man of tact. The hot, instructive tour of the stone antediluvians, which had loomed with ever-lessening charm before the children, was not even mentioned.
“You must be desert-dry,” he said, “and you’ll be hungry, too, when you’ve done being thirsty. I put on the kettle as soon as I discerned the form of my fair romancer in the extreme offing.”
The kettle introduced itself with puffings and bubblings from the hollow between two grey roots where it sat on a spirit-lamp.
“Take off your shoes and stockings, won’t you?” said the bailiff in matter-of-course tones, just as old ladies ask each other to take off their bonnets; “there’s a little baby canal just over the ridge.”
The joys of dipping one’s feet in cool running water after a hot walk have yet to be described. I could write pages about them. There was a mill-stream when I was young with little fishes in it, and dropped leaves that spun round, and willows and alders that leaned over it and kept it cool, and — but this is not the story of my life.
THE JOYS OF DIPPING ONE’S FEET IN COOL RUNNING WATER.
When they came back, on rested, damp, pink feet, tea was made and poured out, delicious tea, with as much milk as ever you wanted, out of a beer bottle with a screw top, and cakes, and gingerbread, and plums, and a big melon with a lump of ice in its heart — a tea for the gods!
This thought must have come to Jimmy, for he said suddenly, removing his face from inside a wide-bitten crescent of melon-rind: —
“Your feast’s as good as the feast of the Immortals, almost.”
“Explain your recondite allusion,” said the grey-flanneled host; and Jimmy, understanding him to say, “What do you mean?” replied with the whole tale of that wonderful night when the statues came alive, and a banquet of unearthly splendour and deliciousness was plucked by marble hands from the trees of the lake island.
When he had done the bailiff said: —
“Did you get all this out of a book?”
“No,” said Jimmy, “it happened.”
“You are an imaginative set of young dreamers, aren’t you?” the bailiff asked, handing the plums to Kathleen, who smiled, friendly but embarrassed. Why couldn’t Jimmy have held his tongue?
“No, we’re not,” said that indiscreet one obstinately; “everything I’ve told you did happen, and so did the things Mabel told you.”
The bailiff looked a little uncomfortable. “All right, old chap,” he said. And there was a short, uneasy silence.
“Look here,” said Jimmy, who seemed for once to have got the bit between his teeth, “do you believe me or not?”
“Don’t be silly, Jimmy!” Kathleen whispered.
“Because, if you don’t I’ll make you believe.”
“Don’t!” said Mabel and Kathleen together.
“Do you or don’t you?” Jimmy insisted, lying on his front with his chin on his hands, his elbows on a moss-cushion, and his bare legs kicking among the beech-leaves.
“I think you tell adventures awfully well,” said the bailiff cautiously.
“Very well,” said Jimmy, abruptly sitting up, “you don’t believe me. Nonsense, Cathy! he’s a gentleman, even if he is a bailiff.”
“Thank you!” said the bailiff with eyes that twinkled.
“You won’t tell, will you?” Jimmy urged.
“Tell what?”
“Anything.”
“Certainly not. I am, as you say, the soul of honour.”
“Then — Cathy, give me the ring.”
“Oh, no!” said the girls together.
Kathleen did not mean to give up the ring; Mabel did not mean that she should; Jimmy certainly used no force. Yet presently he held it in his hand. It was his hour. There are times like that for all of us, when what we say shall be done is done.
“Now,” said Jimmy, “this is the ring Mabel told you about. I say it is a wishing-ring. And if you will put it on your hand and wish, whatever you wish will happen.”
“Must I wish out loud?”
“Yes — I think so.”
“Don’t wish for anything silly,” said Kathleen, making the best of the situation, “like its being fine on Tuesday or its being your favourite pudding for dinner to-morrow. Wish for something you really want.”
“I will,” said the bailiff. “I’ll wish for the only thing I really want. I wish my — I wish my friend were here.”
The three who knew the power of the ring looked round to see the bailiff’s friend appear; a surprised man that friend would be, they thought, and perhaps a frightened one. They had all risen, and stood ready to soothe and reassure the new-comer. But no startled gentleman appeared in the wood, only, coming quietly through the dappled sun and shadow under the beech-trees, Mademoiselle and Gerald, Mademoiselle in a white gown, looking quite nice and like a picture, Gerald hot and polite.
“Good-afternoon,” said that dauntless leader of forlorn hopes. “I persuaded Mademoiselle — —”
That sentence was never finished, for the bailiff and the French governess were looking at each other with the eyes of tired travellers who find, quite without expecting it, the desired end of a very long journey. And the children saw that even if they spoke it would not make any difference.
“You!” said the bailiff.
“Mais . . . c’est donc vous,” said Mademoiselle, in a funny choky voice.
THEY STOOD STILL AND LOOKED AT EACH OTHER.
And they stood still and looked at each other, a long time.
“Is she your friend?” Jimmy asked.
“Yes — oh yes,” said this bailiff. “You are my friend, are you not?”
“But yes,” Mademoiselle said softly. “I am your friend.”
“There! you see,” said Jimmy, “the ring does do what I said.”
“We won’t quarrel about that,” said the bailiff. “You can say it’s the ring. For me — it’s a coincidence — the happiest, the
dearest — —”
“Then you —— ?” said the French governess.
“Of course,” said the bailiff. “Jimmy, give your brother some tea. Mademoiselle, come and walk in the woods: there are a thousand things to say.”
“Eat then, my Gerald,” said Mademoiselle, now grown young, and astonishingly like a fairy princess. “I return all at the hour, and we re-enter together. It is that we must speak each other. It is long time that we have not seen us, me and Lord Yalding!”
“So he was Lord Yalding all the time,” said Jimmy, breaking a stupefied silence as the white gown and the grey flannels disappeared among the beech-trunks. “Landscape painter sort of dodge — silly, I call it. And fancy her being a friend of his, and his wishing she was here! Different from us, eh? Good old ring!”
“His friend!” said Mabel with strong scorn: “don’t you see she’s his lover? Don’t you see she’s the lady that was bricked up in the convent, because he was so poor, and he couldn’t find her. And now the ring’s made them live happy ever after. I am glad! Aren’t you, Cathy?”
“Rather!” said Kathleen; “it’s as good as marrying a sailor or a bandit.”
“It’s the ring did it,” said Jimmy. “If the American takes the house he’ll pay lots of rent, and they can live on that.”
“I wonder if they’ll be married to-morrow!” said Mabel.
“Wouldn’t it be fun if we were bridesmaids,” said Cathy.
“May I trouble you for the melon,” said Gerald. “Thanks! Why didn’t we know he was Lord Yalding? Apes and moles that we were!”
“I’ve known since last night,” said Mabel calmly; “only I promised not to tell. I can keep a secret, can’t I?”
“Too jolly well,” said Kathleen, a little aggrieved.
“He was disguised as a bailiff,” said Jimmy; “that’s why we didn’t know.”
“Disguised as a fiddle-stick-end,” said Gerald. “Ha, ha! I see something old Sherlock Holmes never saw, nor that idiot Watson, either. If you want a really impenetrable disguise, you ought to disguise yourself as what you really are. I’ll remember that.”
“It’s like Mabel, telling things so that you can’t believe them,” said Cathy.
“I think Mademoiselle’s jolly lucky,” said Mabel.
“She’s not so bad. He might have done worse,” said Gerald. “Plums, please!”
* * * * *
There was quite plainly magic at work. Mademoiselle next morning was a changed governess. Her cheeks were pink, her lips were red, her eyes were larger and brighter, and she had done her hair in an entirely new way, rather frivolous and very becoming.
“Mamselle’s coming out!” Eliza remarked.
Immediately after breakfast Lord Yalding called with a wagonette that wore a smart blue cloth coat, and was drawn by two horses whose coats were brown and shining and fitted them even better than the blue cloth coat fitted the wagonette, and the whole party drove in state and splendour to Yalding Towers.
Arrived there, the children clamoured for permission to explore the castle thoroughly, a thing that had never yet been possible. Lord Yalding, a little absent in manner, but yet quite cordial, consented. Mabel showed the others all the secret doors and unlikely passages and stairs that she had discovered. It was a glorious morning. Lord Yalding and Mademoiselle went through the house, it is true, but in a rather half-hearted way. Quite soon they were tired, and went out through the French windows of the drawing-room and through the rose garden, to sit on the curved stone seat in the middle of the maze, where once, at the beginning of things, Gerald, Kathleen, and Jimmy had found the sleeping Princess who wore pink silk and diamonds.
The children felt that their going left to the castle a more spacious freedom, and explored with more than Arctic enthusiasm. It was as they emerged from the little rickety secret staircase that led from the powdering-room of the state suite to the gallery of the hall that they came suddenly face to face with the odd little man who had a beard like a goat and had taken the wrong turning yesterday.
“This part of the castle is private,” said Mabel, with great presence of mind, and shut the door behind her.
“I am aware of it,” said the goat-faced stranger, “but I have the permission of the Earl of Yalding to examine the house at my leisure.”
“Oh!” said Mabel. “I beg your pardon. We all do. We didn’t know.”
“You are relatives of his lordship, I should surmise?” asked the goat-faced.
“Not exactly,” said Gerald. “Friends.”
The gentleman was thin and very neatly dressed; he had small, merry eyes and a face that was brown and dry-looking.
“You are playing some game, I should suppose?”
“No, sir,” said Gerald, “only exploring.”
“May a stranger propose himself as a member of your Exploring Expedition?” asked the gentleman, smiling a tight but kind smile.
The children looked at each other.
“You see,” said Gerald, “it’s rather difficult to explain — but — you see what I mean, don’t you?”
“He means,” said Jimmy, “that we can’t take you into an exploring party without we know what you want to go for.”
“Are you a photographer?” asked Mabel, “or is it some newspaper’s sent you to write about the Towers?”
“I understand your position,” said the gentleman. “I am not a photographer, nor am I engaged by any journal. I am a man of independent means, travelling in this country with the intention of renting a residence. My name is Jefferson D. Conway.”
“Oh!” said Mabel; “then you’re the American millionaire.”
“I do not like the description, young lady,” said Mr. Jefferson D. Conway. “I am an American citizen, and I am not without means. This is a fine property — a very fine property. If it were for sale — —”
“It isn’t, it can’t be,” Mabel hastened to explain. “The lawyers have put it in a tale, so Lord Yalding can’t sell it. But you could take it to live in, and pay Lord Yalding a good millionairish rent, and then he could marry the French governess — —”
“Shish!” said Kathleen and Mr. Jefferson D. Conway together, and he added: —
“Lead the way, please; and I should suggest that the exploration be complete and exhaustive.”
Thus encouraged, Mabel led the millionaire through all the castle. He seemed pleased, yet disappointed too.
“It is a fine mansion,” he said at last when they had come back to the point from which they had started; “but I should suppose, in a house this size, there would mostly be a secret stairway, or a priests’ hiding place, or a ghost?”
“There are,” said Mabel briefly, “but I thought Americans didn’t believe in anything but machinery and newspapers.” She touched the spring of the panel behind her, and displayed the little tottery staircase to the American. The sight of it worked a wonderful transformation in him. He became eager, alert, very keen.
“Say!” he cried, over and over again, standing in the door that led from the powdering-room to the state bed-chamber. “But this is great — great!”
The hopes of every one ran high. It seemed almost certain that the castle would be let for a millionairish rent and Lord Yalding be made affluent to the point of marriage.
“If there were a ghost located in this ancestral pile, I’d close with the Earl of Yalding to-day, now, on the nail,” Mr. Jefferson D. Conway went on.
“If you were to stay till to-morrow, and sleep in this room, I expect you’d see the ghost,” said Mabel.
“There is a ghost located here then?” he said joyously.
HE BECAME EAGER, ALERT, VERY KEEN.
“They say,” Mabel answered, “that old Sir Rupert, who lost his head in Henry the Eighth’s time, walks of a night here, with his head under his arm. But we’ve not seen that. What we have seen is the lady in a pink dress with diamonds in her hair. She carries a lighted taper,” Mabel hastily added. The others, now suddenly aware of Mabel’s p
lan, hastened to assure the American in accents of earnest truth that they had all seen the lady with the pink gown.
He looked at them with half-closed eyes that twinkled.
“Well,” he said, “I calculate to ask the Earl of Yalding to permit me to pass a night in his ancestral best bed-chamber. And if I hear so much as a phantom footstep, or hear so much as a ghostly sigh, I’ll take the place.”
“I am glad!” said Cathy.
“You appear to be very certain of your ghost,” said the American, still fixing them with little eyes that shone. “Let me tell you, young gentlemen, that I carry a gun, and when I see a ghost, I shoot.”
He pulled a pistol out of his hip-pocket, and looked at it lovingly.
“And I am a fair average shot,” he went on, walking across the shiny floor of the state bed-chamber to the open window. “See that big red rose, like a tea-saucer?”
They saw.
The next moment a loud report broke the stillness, and the red petals of the shattered rose strewed balustrade and terrace.
The American looked from one child to another. Every face was perfectly white.
“Jefferson D. Conway made his little pile by strict attention to business, and keeping his eyes skinned,” he added. “Thank you for all your kindness.”
* * * * *
“Suppose you’d done it, and he’d shot you!” said Jimmy cheerfully. “That would have been an adventure, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m going to do it still,” said Mabel, pale and defiant. “Let’s find Lord Yalding and get the ring back.”
Lord Yalding had had an interview with Mabel’s aunt, and lunch for six was laid in the great dark hall, among the armour and the oak furniture — a beautiful lunch served on silver dishes. Mademoiselle, becoming every moment younger and more like a Princess, was moved to tears when Gerald rose, lemonade-glass in hand, and proposed the health of “Lord and Lady Yalding.”
When Lord Yalding had returned thanks in a speech full of agreeable jokes the moment seemed to Gerald propitious, and he said: —
“The ring, you know — you don’t believe in it, but we do. May we have it back?”
