by Edith Nesbit
‘So that’s all right,’ said Caroline. ‘Now we must walk fast and yet not look as if we were hurrying. I think it does that best if you take very long steps. I wish we knew where the front door was. It would be awful if we went to the back one by mistake, and got turned back by Lord Andore’s my-myrmidons.’
‘I expect his back door is grander than our front,’ said Charlotte; ‘so we shan’t really know till the myr-what’s-its-names have gone for us.’
‘If we’d had time to disguise ourselves like grown-ups — Char, for goodness’ sake tear that strip off your hat, it looks like a petticoat’s tape that’s coming down,’ said Caroline—’they’d have thought we’d come to call, with cards, and then they’d have had to show us in, unless he wasn’t at home.’
‘He must be at home,’ said Charlotte, tearing a long streamer from the wretched hat, which now looked less like a hat than a fading flower that has been sat on; ‘it would be too much if he wasn’t.’
They passed through the trees and on to a very yellow gravelled drive, hot and gritty to the foot, and distressing to the eye. Following this, they came suddenly, round a corner, on the castle. It was much bigger than they expected, and there seemed to be no doubt which was the front entrance. Two tall grey towers held a big arched gateway between them, and the drive led straight in to this. There seemed to be no door-bell and no knocker, nor, as far as they could see, any door.
‘I feel like Jack the Giant Killer,’ said Charles; ‘only there isn’t a trumpet to blow.’
His voice, though he spoke almost in a whisper, sounded loud and hollow under the echoing arch of the gateway.
Beyond its cool depths was sunshine, with grass and pink geraniums overflowing from stone vases. A fountain in the middle leapt and sank and plashed in a stone basin.
There was a door at the other side of the courtyard — an arched door with steps leading up to it. On the steps stood a footman.
‘He’s exactly like the one in Alice,’ said Caroline; ‘courage and despatch.’
The footman looked curiously at the three children, hot, dusty, and untidy, who advanced through the trim parterre. His glance dwelt more especially on the battered bouquet, on Charlotte’s unspeakable hat, and the riven stocking of Charles.
‘If you please,’ said Caroline, her heart beating heavily, ‘we want to see Lord Andore.’
‘‘Slordship’s not at heum,’ said the footman, looking down upon them.
‘When will he be back?’ Charlotte asked, while Caroline suddenly wished that they had at least brought their gloves.
‘Can’t say’m sheur,’ said the footman, doing something to his teeth with a pin; and his tone was wondrous like Mrs. Wilmington’s.
‘We want very much to see him, said Charles. ‘You see we’ve brought him a bouquet.’
‘I see you ‘ave — have,’ said the footman, more like Mrs. Wilmington than ever. ‘Would you like to leave it? It’ll be a surprise for his Lordship when ‘e comes in,’ and the footman tittered.
‘He is here, then,’ said Caroline. ‘I mean, he’s not in London?’
‘His Lordship is not in London,’ said the footman. ‘Any other questions? Always happy to say me catechism, ‘m sheur.’
The children turned to go. They felt the need of a private consultation.
‘Any particular neem?’ said the footman, and tittered again. ‘‘Slordship’ll be dying to know who it was called,’ and once more he tittered.
Charlotte turned suddenly and swiftly.
‘You need not trouble about our names,’ she said, ‘and I don’t believe Lord Andore knows how you behave when he’s not there. He doesn’t know yet, that is.’
‘No offence, Miss,’ said the footman very quickly.
‘We accept your apology,’ said Charlotte; ‘and we shall wait till Lord Andore comes in.’
‘But, I say! Look here, you know’ — the footman came down one step in his earnestness—’you can’t wait here, you know.’
‘Oh yes, we can,’ said Caroline, sitting down on the second step. The others also sat down. It was Charles who said, ‘So there!’ and Caroline had to nudge him and say, ‘Hush!’
‘We never called before at a house where they didn’t ask you in and give you a chair to sit on. But if this is that kind of house,’ said Charlotte grandly, ‘it does not matter. It is a fine day, luckily.’
‘Look here,’ said the footman behind them, now thoroughly uneasy, ‘this won’t do, you know. There’s company expected. I can’t have a lot of ragged children sitting on the steps like the First of May.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlotte, without turning her head; ‘but if you haven’t any rooms fit to ask us into, I’m afraid you’ll have to have us sitting here.’
The three sat staring at the bright garden and the dancing fountain.
‘Look here,’ said the footman, weakly-blustering; ‘this is cheek. That’s what this is. But you go now. Do you hear? Or must I make you?’
‘We hear,’ said Caroline, speaking as calmly as one can speak when one is almost choking with mingled rage, disappointment, fear, and uncertainty.
‘And I defy you to lay a finger on your master’s visitors,’ said Charlotte. ‘How do you know who we are? We haven’t given you our names.’
The footman must have felt a sudden doubt He hesitated a moment, and then, muttering something about seeing Mr. Checkles, he retired, leaving the children in possession of the field. And there they sat, in a row, on Lord Andore’s steps, with the bouquet laid carefully on the step above them.
It was very silent there in the grey-walled courtyard.
‘I say,’ whispered Charles, ‘let’s go. We’ve got the better of him, anyhow. Let’s do a bunk before he comes back with some one we can’t get the better of, thousands of stately butlers perhaps.’
‘Never,’ said Charlotte, whose hands were cold and trembling with excitement. But Caroline said:
‘I wish Mr. Checkles might turn out to be a gentleman, the everyday kind that we know. Lords’ servants seem more common than other people’s, and I expect the Lord’s something like them. They say, Like master like man.’
As if in answer to Caroline’s wish, a door in the wall opened, showing a glimpse of more garden beyond, and a jolly-faced youth came towards them. He was a very big young man, and his clothes, which were of dust-coloured Harris tweed, were very loose. He looked like a sixth-form boy, and Charles at once felt that here was a man and a brother. So he got up and went towards the new-comer with the simple greeting, ‘Hullo!’
‘Hullo!’ said the sixth-form boy, with a friendly and cheerful grin.
‘I say,’ said Charles confidentially, as he and the big boy met on the grass, ‘there isn’t really any reason why we shouldn’t wait here if we want to?’
‘None in the world,’ said the big boy; ‘if you’re sure that what you’re waiting for is likely to come, and that this is the best place to wait for it in.’
‘We’re waiting for Lord Andore,’ said Caroline, who had picked up the bouquet and advanced with it. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come, because we don’t understand English men-servants. In India they behave differently when you call.’
‘What have the servants here done?’ the youth asked, frowning, with his hands in his pockets.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Charles in a hurry; ‘at least, I mean, we accepted his apologies, so we can’t sneak.’
‘I wouldn’t call it sneaking to tell you,’ said Caroline confidingly, ‘because, of course, you’d promise on your honour not to tell Lord Andore. We don’t want to get other people’s servants into trouble when we’ve accepted their apologies. But the footman was rather—’
At this moment the footman himself appeared at the top of the steps with an elderly whiskered man in black, whom the children rightly judged to be the butler. The two had come hastily out of the door, but when they saw the children and their companion, the footman stopped as if, as Charles said later, he had been turned to stone, and only the bu
tler advanced when the youth in the Harris tweed said rather shortly, ‘Come here, Checkles!’ Checkles came, quickly enough, and when he was quite close he astonished the three C.’s much more than he will astonish you, by saying, ‘Yes, m’lord!’
‘Tea on the terrace at once,’ said the Harris-tweeded one, ‘and tell them not to be all day about it.’
Checkles went, and the footman too. Charlotte always believed that the last glance he cast at her was not one of defiance but of petition.
‘So you’re him,’ Charles was saying.
‘How jolly!’
But to Caroline it seemed that there was no time to waste in personalities, however flattering. Lord Andore’s tea was imminent. He was most likely in a hurry for his tea; it was past most people’s tea-time already. So she suddenly held out the flowers, and said, ‘Here’s a bouquet. We made it for you. Will you please take it.’
‘That’s awfully good of you, you know,’ said Lord Andore; ‘thanks no end!’ He took the bouquet and smelt it, plunged his nose into the midst of the columbine, roses, cornflowers, lemon verbena, wistaria, gladiolus and straw.
‘It’s not a very nice one, I’m afraid,’ said Caroline; ‘but you can’t choose the nicest flowers when you have to look them out in two books at once. It means Welcome, fair stranger; An unexpected meeting; We are anxious and trembling; Confidence — no, we left that out, because we hadn’t any; and Agreement, because we hope you will.’
How awfully interesting. It was kind of you,’ said Lord Andore, and before he could say any more Charlotte hastened to say:
‘You see, it’s not just an ordinary nosegay, please, and don’t thank us, please, because it wasn’t to please you but to serve our own ends, though, of course, if we’d known how nice you are, and if we’d thought you’d care about one, we would have, in a minute.’
‘I see,’ said Lord Andore, quite as if he really had seen.
‘I’m sure you don’t,’ said Caroline; ‘don’t be polite, please. Say if you don’t understand. What we want is justice. It’s one of your tenants that had the cottage in your father’s time before you, and they’re turning her out because there are some week-endy people think the cottage is so pretty, with the flowers she planted, and the arbour her father made, and the roses that came from her mother’s brother in Cambridgeshire. And she said you didn’t know. And we decided you ought to know. So we made you the nosegay and we came. And we ought to go, and here’s her name and address on a bit of paper, and I’m sorry it’s only pencil. And you will see justice done, won’t you?’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Lord Andore slowly, ‘to take so much interest in my tenants.’
‘There,’ said Charlotte; ‘of course we were afraid-you’d say that. But we didn’t mean to shove our oar in. We just went in for ginger-beer, and Caro found her crying, and there’s a hornbeam arbour, ever so old, and a few shillings a week can’t make any difference to you, with a lovely castle like this to live in. And the motto on the tombs of your ancestors is Flat Justicia. And it’s only bare justice we want; and we saw the tomb on Sunday in church, with the sons and daughters in ruffs.’
‘Stop!’ said Lord Andore. ‘I am only a poor weak chap. I need my tea. Come and have some too, and I’ll try to make out what it’s all about.’
Thanks awfully,’ said the three C.’s, speaking all together. And Caroline added, ‘We mustn’t be long over tea, please, because we’ve got to get home by half-past six, and it must be nearly that now.’
‘You shall get back at half-past six all right,’ said Lord Andore, and led the way, a huge figure in the dust-coloured clothes, through the little door by which he had come, on to a pleasant stone terrace with roses growing all over and in and out and round about its fat old balustrades.
‘Here’s tea,’ he said. And there it was, set on a fair-sized table with a white cloth — a tea worth waiting for. Honey and jam and all sorts of cakes, and peaches and strawberries. The footman was hovering about, but Charles was the only one who seemed to see him. It was bliss to Charles to see this proud enemy humbly bearing an urn and lighting a spirit-lamp to make the tea of those whom he had tried to drive from even the lowly hospitality of Lord Andore’s doorstep.
‘Come on,’ said the big sixth-form-looking boy, who was Lord Andore; ‘you must be starved. Cake first (and bread and butter afterwards if you insist upon it) is the rule here. Milk and sugar?’
They all drank tea much too strong for them, out of respect to their host, who had forgotten that when he was a little boy milk was what one had at tea-time.
And slowly, by careful questioning, and by making a sudden rule that no one was to say more than thirty-seven words without stopping, Lord Andore got at the whole story in a form which he could understand.
‘I see,’ he would say, and ‘I see,’ and then ask another question.
And at last when tea was really over, to the last gladly accepted peach and the last sadly unaccepted strawberry, he stood up and said:
‘If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you are regular little bricks to have taken all this trouble. And I am really and truly very much obliged. Because I do mean to be just and right to my tenants, only it’s very difficult to know about things if nobody tells you. And you’ve helped me a lot, and I thank you very much.’
‘Then you will?’ said Charlotte breathlessly.
‘Not let her be turned out of her cottage, she means,’ Caroline explained.
‘She means the Mineral woman,’ said Charles.
‘Of course I won’t,’ said Lord Andore; ‘I mean, of course, I will. I mean it’s all right. And I’ll drive you home, and if you’re a minute or two late, I’ll make it all right with uncle.’
The motor was waiting outside the great arch that is held between the two great towers of Andore Castle. It was a dream of a car, and there was room for the three C.’s in front beside the driver, who was Lord Andore himself.
The footman was there, and the proudest moment of the day for Charles was that in which Lord Andore gave the petition bouquet into that footman’s care, and told him to see that it was put in water, ‘Carefully, mind; and tell them to put it on the dinner-table to-night.’
The footman said ‘Yes, m’lord,’ as though he had never seen the bouquet before. Charlotte’s proudest moment was when the woman at the lodge gate had to curtsey when the motor passed out.
Rupert was waiting for them at their own lodge gate, and when he saw the motor, his eyes grew quite round like pennies.
‘Oh, do stop, it’s Rupert,’ said the three C.’s; and Rupert was bundled into the body of the car, where he travelled in lonely splendour. Yet, even after that, and when the motor had gone away, and the three C.’s had told him all their adventures and the splendid success of their magic nosegay, Rupert only said:
‘It’s Chance, I tell you. It’s just accidental. Co — what’s its name — incidence. It would all have happened just the same if you hadn’t taken that hideous old mixed assorted haystack with you.’
‘Still disagreeable?’ said Charlotte brightly.
Oh, been all the same, would it?’ said Charles; ‘that’s all you know.’
‘It’s not all I know,’ said Rupert; ‘as it happens, I know heaps of things that you don’t. And I could find out more if I wanted to. So there!’
‘Oh, Rupert, don’t be cross,’ said Caroline, ‘just when we’re all so happy. I do wish you’d been there, especially at tea-time.’
‘I’m not cross,’ said Rupert. ‘As it happens, I was feeling extra jolly until you came home.’
‘Oh, don’t,’ said Caroline; ‘do let’s call it Pax. We haven’t told you half the little interesting things that happened yet. And if you can’t believe in the magic, it’s your misfortune. We know you can’t help it. We know you don’t unbelieve on purpose. We know we’re right, and you think you know you are.’
‘It’s the other way round,’ said Rupert, still deep in gloom.
‘I know it is
, when you think it, and when we think it, it’s the other way,’ said Caroline.
‘Oh, Pax! Pax! Pax!’
‘All right,’ said Rupert. ‘I had a good swim. Your Mr. Penfold’s not half a bad sort. He taught me a new side-stroke.’ But it was plain that Rupert’s inside self still felt cloudy and far from comfortable.
Next day the three C.’s and Rupert, in the middle of Irish stew, were surprised by the sudden rustling entrance of Mrs. Wilmington.
‘A person wishes to see you,’ she said to Caroline; ‘quite a poor person. I asked her to wait till dinner was completed; but she says that she hopes you will see her now, as she ought to commence going home almost at once.’
‘Of course!’ said Caroline; ‘it must be the Mineral woman.’
‘She seemed to me,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘to have an animal face.’
But Caroline was already in the hall, and the figure that rose politely from the oak chair was plainly — though disguised in her Sunday clothes — that of the Mineral woman.
‘Oh, Miss!’ she said; ‘oh, Miss!’ She took hold of both Caroline’s hands and shook them, but that was not enough. Caroline found herself kissed on both cheeks, and then suddenly hugged; and ‘Oh, Miss!’ the Mineral woman said; ‘oh, Miss!’ And then she felt for her handkerchief in a black bag she carried, and blew her nose loudly.
Mrs. Wilmington had gone through the hall very slowly indeed; but even she could not go slowly enough not to be gone by the time the Mineral woman had, for the time being, finished with her nose. And as Mrs.
Wilmington went through the baize door, she heard again, ‘Oh, Miss!’
Mrs. Wilmington came back five minutes later, and this time she heard:
‘And it’s all right, Miss; and two bright new five-pound notes “to buy more rose trees with,” and a letter in his own write of hand thanking us for making the place so pretty; and I’m to be tenant for life, Miss. And it’s all your doing, bless your kind heart. So I came to tell you. I never thought I should feel like I do about any strange little gell. It was all your doing, Miss, my dear.’
Which was a very mysterious and exciting thing to be overheard by any housekeeper who was not in the secret. And a very heart-warming and pleasant thing to be listened to by a little girl who was.
