Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  ‘A secret staircase,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, it can’t be, really. How lovely!’

  ‘I daresay it was a secret once,’ said William, striking a match and lighting a candle that stood at the top of the stairs in a brass candlestick. ‘You see there wasn’t always these banisters, and you can see that ridge along the wall. My grandfather says it used to be boarded over and that’s where the joists went. They’d have a trap-door or something over the stairway, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘But what’s the stair for? — Where does it go? Are we going down?’ the children asked.

  ‘Yes, and sharp too. Nobody’s supposed to go this way except the Master. But you’ll not tell on me. I’ll go first. Mind the steps, Miss. They’re a bit wore at the edges, like.’ They minded the steps, going carefully down, following the blinking, winking, blue and yellow gleam of the candle.

  There were not many steps.

  ‘Straight ahead now,’ said William, holding the candle up to show the groined roof of a long straight passage, built of stone, and with stone flags for the floor of it.

  ‘How perfectly ripping!’ said Charlotte breathlessly. ‘It is brickish of you to bring us here. Where does it go to?’

  ‘You wait a bit,’ said William, and went on. The passage ended in another flight of steps — up this time, — and the steps ended in a door, and when William had opened this every one blinked and shut their eyes, for the doorway framed green leaves with blue sky showing through them, and —

  ‘‘Ere’s the garden,’ said William; and here, indeed, it was.

  ‘There’s another door the other end what the gardeners go in and out of,’ said William. ‘I’ll get you a key sometime.’

  The door had opened into a sort of arch — an arbour, for its entrance was almost veiled by thick-growing shrubs.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Caroline; ‘but when did they make this passage, and what for?’

  ‘They made that passage when the folks in the house was too grand to go through the stable-yard and too lazy to go round,’ said William. ‘There’s no stable-yard way now,’ he added. ‘So long! I must be getting back, Miss. Don’t you let on as I brought you through.’

  ‘Of course not,’ every one said. Charles added, ‘But I didn’t know the house was as old as secret passages in history times.’

  ‘It’s any age you please,’ said William; ‘ the back parts is.’

  He went back through the door, and the children went out through the leafy screen in front, into the most beautiful garden that could be, with a wall. I like unwalled gardens myself, with views from the terraces. From this garden you could see nothing but tall trees and — the garden itself.

  The lower half was a vegetable garden arranged in squares with dwarf fruit-trees and flower - borders round them, like the borders round old - fashioned pocket - handkerchiefs. Then about half-way up the garden came steps — stone balustrades, a terrace, and beyond that a flower garden with smooth green turf paths, box-edged, a sundial in the middle, and in the flower-beds flowers — more flowers than I could give names to.

  ‘How perfectly perfect!’ Charlotte said.

  ‘I do wish I’d brought out my Language Of!’ said Caroline.

  ‘How awfully tidy everything is!’ said Charles in awe-struck tones.

  It was.

  There was nowhere an imperfect leaf, a deformed bud, or a misshapen flower. Every plant grew straight and strong, and with an extraordinary evenness.

  ‘They look like pictures of plants more than like real ones,’ said Caroline quite truly.

  An old gardener was sweeping the terrace steps, and gave the children ‘Good morning.’

  They gave it back, and stayed to watch him. It seemed polite to say something before turning away. So Caroline said:

  ‘How beautifully everything grows here.’

  ‘Ay,’ said the old man, ‘it do. Say perfect and you won’t be far out.’

  ‘It’s very clever of you,’ said Charlotte. ‘Ill weeds don’t grow in a single place in your garden.’

  ‘I don’t say as I don’t do something,’ said the old man, ‘but seems as if there was a blessing on the place — everything thrives and grows just-so. It’s the soil or the aspick, p’raps. I dunno. An’ I’ve noticed things.’

  ‘What things?’ was the natural question.

  ‘Oh, just things,’ the gardener answered shortly, and swept away to the end of the long steps.

  ‘I say’ — Caroline went after him to do it—’I say, may we pick the flowers?’

  ‘In moderation,’ said the gardener, and went away.

  ‘I wonder what he’d call moderation,’ said Charles; and they discussed this question so earnestly that the dinner-bell rang before they had picked any flowers at all.

  The gate at the end of the garden was open, and they went out that way. Over the gate was a stone with words and a date. They stopped to spell out the carved letters:

  HERE BE DREAMES

  1589

  RESPICE FINEM.

  Caroline copied the last two words in the grey-covered pocket-book; and when Mrs. Wilmington came in to carve the mutton, Caroline asked what the words meant.

  ‘I never inquired,’ said the housekeeper. ‘It must be quite out of date now, whatever it meant once. But you must have been in the garden to see that. How did you get in?’

  An awkward question. There was nothing for it but to say:

  ‘By the secret passage.’ And Charles said it.

  ‘No one uses that but your uncle,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘and you were requested to keep out of doors till dinner-time.’

  She shut her mouth with a snap and went on carving.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Granted,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, but not cordially; and having placed two slices of mutton on each plate went away.

  ‘It is jolly having meals by ourselves,’ said Charlotte; ‘only I wish she wasn’t cross.’

  ‘We ought to be extra manner-y, I expect, when we’re by ourselves,’ said Caroline. ‘May I pass you the salt, Charles?’

  ‘No, you mayn’t,’ said Charles. ‘Thank you, I mean; but there’s one at each corner.

  That’s one each for us, and one over for —

  For her.’ Charlotte pointed to the picture of the dark-eyed, fair-haired lady.

  ‘Let’s put a chair for her,’ said Charlotte, ‘and pretend she’s come to dinner. Then we shall have to behave like grown - up people.’

  ‘I never can remember about behaving,’ said Charles wearily; ‘such a lot of things — and none of them seem to matter. Why shouldn’t you drink with your mouth full? It’s your own mouth.’

  ‘And eating peas with your knife. I think it would be as good as conjuring, doing it without cutting yourself’ — Charlotte tried to lift the peas from her plate with her knife—’let alone the balancing,’ she added, as they rolled off among the mutton.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Caroline. ‘She’s looking at you. Charles, you’re the only gentleman, worse luck — I wish I was a boy — put a chair for her.’

  And a large green-seated chair, whose mahogany back was inlaid with a brass scroll pattern, was wheeled to the empty space on the fourth side of the table.

  ‘Now we must none of us look at her — in the picture, I mean. And then we can’t be sure that she isn’t sitting in that chair,’ said Caroline.

  After dinner Caroline looked up ‘Remorse’s regret’ in The Language of Flowers. It was agreed that Mrs. Wilmington had better have a bouquet.

  ‘Brambles,’ Caroline said, her finger in the book, ‘they’re Remorse — but they wouldn’t make a very comfortable nosegay. And Regret’s verbena, and I don’t even know what it is.’

  ‘Put pansies with the brambles,’ said Charlotte; ‘that’ll be thoughts of remorse.’

  So the housekeeper, coming down very neat in her afternoon dress of shiny black alpaca, was met by a bunch of pansies.

  ‘To show we think we’re remors
ish about the secret stairs,’ said Charlotte; ‘and look out, because the brambles are the remorse and they prick like Billy-o!’

  Mrs. Wilmington smiled, and looked quite nice-looking.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I am sure you will remember not to repeat the fault.’

  Which wasn’t the nicest way of receiving a remorse bouquet; but, then as Charlotte said, perhaps she couldn’t help not knowing the nice ways. And anyhow, she seemed pleased, and that was the great thing, as Charlotte pointed out.

  Then, having done something to please Mrs. Wilmington, they longed to do something to please some one else, and the Uncle was the only person they could think of doing anything to please.

  ‘Suppose we arranged all the books in the dining-room bookcase, in colours, — all the reds together and all the greens, and the ugly ones all on a shelf by themselves,’ Charlotte suggested. And the others agreed. So that the afternoon flew by like any old bird, as Caroline put it; and when tea came, and the floor and sofa and chairs were covered with books, and one shelf was gay with red books and half a shelf demure in green —

  ‘Your uncle isn’t coming in to-day,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘and I’m sure it’s just as well. What a mess! Here, let me put them back, and go and wash your hands.’

  ‘We’ll put them back,’ the children said, but in vain. They had to go to wash their hands, and Mrs. Wilmington continued to put the books back all the time they were having tea. Patiently and carefully she did it, not regarding the colours at all, and her care and her patience seemed to say, more loudly than any words she could have spoken, ‘Yes; there you sit, having your nice tea, and I cannot have my tea; because I have to clear up after you. But I do not complain. No.’

  They would have much rather she had complained, of course. But they couldn’t say so.

  CHAPTER IV. IN THESSALONIANS

  Now you may say it was Chance, or you may say it was Fate; or you may say it was Destiny, or Fortune; in fact, you may say exactly what you choose. But the fact remains unaltered by your remarks.

  When Mrs. Wilmington placed a fat brown volume of sermons on the shelf and said, ‘There, that’s the last,’ she, quite without meaning it, said what was not true. For when tea was over the children found that the fat sermon-book had not been the last. The last was Shadoxhurst on Thessalonians, a dull, large book, and Mrs. Wilmington had not put it back in its place because she had not seen it. It was, in fact, lying on the floor, hidden by the table-cloth. If Charles had not happened to want his handkerchief, and gone down to look for it on the floor — its usual situation when it was needed — they would not have seen the book either. so Charles picked up Thessalonians, and the cover ‘came off in his hand,’ as the handles of cups do in the hands of washing-up maids.

  What was inside the cover fell on the floor with a thump, and Caroline picked that up.

  ‘Shadoxhurst on Thessalonians,’ Charles read from the cover.

  ‘This isn’t,’-said Caroline, looking at what had been inside. ‘It’s — I say! Suppose it was the book—’

  She looked up at the picture.

  It was certainly like the painted book.

  ‘Only it hasn’t any brass clasps,’ said Caroline; ‘but look — it used to have clasps. You can see the marks where they used to go.’ You could.

  ‘Glory!’ cried Charlotte. ‘Fancy finding it the very first day! Let’s take it to Uncle Charles.’

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t it,’ suggested Charlotte.

  ‘Then he’d be furious perhaps.’

  ‘We’ll soon see.’ Charles reached out a hand. ‘Let’s have a squint. It ought to be all magic and Abracadabra and crossed triangles like in Ingoldsby Legends’

  ‘I’ll have first look any way,’ said Caroline.

  ‘I found it.’

  ‘I found it,’ said Charles. ‘You only picked it up.’

  You only dropped it. Oh, bother—’ she had opened the book, and now let her hands fall, still holding it.

  ‘Bother what?’ asked the others.

  ‘It isn’t English. It’s French or Latin or something. Isn’t that just like things! Here, you can look.’

  Charles took the book. ‘It’s Latin,’ he said.

  ‘I could read it if I knew a little more Latin. I can read some of it as it is. I know quam, or apud, and rara. Let’s take it to the Uncle.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Caroline. ‘Let’s find out what it is, first.’

  It was not easy to find out. The title-page was missing, and quam, apud, and rara, though quite all right in their way, gave but little clue to what the book was about.

  ‘I wish we’d some one we could ask,’ said Charles. ‘I don’t suppose the Wilmington knows any Latin. I don’t suppose she knows even apud and quam and rara. If we had the Murdstone chap handy he could tell us, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m glad we haven’t,’ Charlotte said. ‘I don’t suppose he’d tell us. And he’d take it away. I say. I suppose there’s a church somewhere near. And a clergyman. He’d know.’

  ‘Of course he would,’ Caroline said with returning brightness. ‘Let’s go and ask him.’

  Half an hour later the children, coming down a deep banked lane, saw before them the grey tower of the church, with elm-trees round it, standing among old gravestones and long grass.

  A white faced house stood on the other side of the churchyard.

  ‘I suppose the clergyman lives there,’ said Caroline. ‘Please,’ she said to a pleasant-looking hook-nosed man who was mending the churchyard wall, and whistling ‘Blow away the morning dew’ as he slapped on the mortar and trimmed off the edges with a diamond-shaped trowel, ‘please, does the clergyman live in that house?’

  ‘He does,’ said the man with the trowel. ‘Do you want him?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Well, here he is,’ said the man with the trowel. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Do you mean to say that you’re It? — the clergyman, I mean, — I beg your pardon,’ said Caroline; and the man with the trowel said, ‘At your service.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Caroline again, very red as to her ears. ‘I thought you were a working man.’

  ‘So I am, thank God,’ said the man with the trowel. ‘You see we haven’t much money to spare. The parish is so poor. So we do any little repairs ourselves. Did you ever set a stone? It’s awfully jolly. The mortar goes on so nicely, and squeezes out pleasantly. Like to try?’ he asked Charles.

  Of course they all liked to try. And it was not till each had laid a stone and patted it into place, and scraped off the mortar, and got thoroughly dusty and dirty and comfortable, that any one remembered why they had come.

  ‘Oh, this?’ said the clergyman — for so I must call him, though anything less clergymanlike than he looked in his mortar-stained flannels and blue blazer you can’t imagine. ‘It looks interesting. Latin,’ he said, opening it carefully, for his hands were very dirty.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles with modest pride. ‘I told them it was. I saw rara and quam and apud!

  ‘Quite so,’ said the clergyman; ‘rara, quam, and apud. Words of Power.’

  ‘Oh, do you know about Words of Power?’

  ‘Rather! Do you?’

  ‘Rather!’ they said. And if anything had been needed to cement this new friendship well, there it was.

  ‘Look here,’ said the clergyman. ‘If you’ll just wait while I wash my hands I’ll walk up with you. And I’ll look through the book and report to you to-morrow.’

  ‘But what’s it about?’

  ‘About?’ said he, turning the leaves delicately with the least mortared of his fingers. ‘Oh, it’s about spells and charms and things.’

  ‘How perfectly too lovely,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, do read us-one — just only one’

  ‘Right O,’ was the response of this unusual clergyman, and he read: ‘“The seed of the fern if pulverised” — pounded — smashed, you know,—”and laid upon the eyes at the twelfth hour
” — midnight, you know — at least I think that’s it—”last before the feast of St. John” — that’s tomorrow by the way—”shall give to the eyes thus doctored” — treated — dealt with, you know,—”the power to see that which is not to be seen.” It means you’ll see invisible things. I say I must wash. I feel the dirt soaking into my bones. Will you wait?’

  The children looked at each other. Then Charlotte said:

  ‘Look here. Don’t think we don’t like you. We do — awfully. But if you walk up with us will you feel bound to tell uncle about the book? Because it’s a secret. He’s looking for a book, and we think perhaps this is it. But we don’t want to tell him till we’re quite sure.’

  ‘I found it inside Somebody-or-other-quite-dull on Thessalonians, you know,’ said Charles, ‘and I saw it was Latin because of quam and—’

  ‘My dear sir — and ladies,’ said the agreeable clergyman, ‘I am the soul of honour. I would perish at the stake before I would reveal a centimetre of your least secret. Trust me to the death.’

  And off he went.

  ‘What a different clergyman,’ said Charles; ‘he is just like anybody else — only nicer.’

  ‘He said thank God,’ Caroline reminded him; ‘he said it like being in church too, not like cabmen and people in the street.’

  ‘He said “Thank God he was a working man,”’ said Charlotte. ‘I wonder what he meant.’

  ‘I shall ask him some day,’ said Caroline, ‘when we know him better.’

  But any one who had met the party as they went talking and laughing up the hill would have thought they had known each other for long enough, and could hardly know each other any better than they did.

  Charles was dreaming of mortaring the Murdstone man securely into a first-class railway carriage, and tapping him on the head with a brass trowel which was also a candlestick, when he was awakened by a pinch given gently. At the same moment a hand was laid on his mouth, and a whisper said: