THE HOUSE OF ARDEN - A Children's Fanyasy book by e. Nesbit

CHAPTER I Arden’s Lord-3

“Well, then,” said the old man, “you see the Ardens was always great gentry. I’ve heard say there’s always been Ardens here since before William the Conker, whoever he was.”

“Ten-sixty-six,” said Edred to himself.

“An’ they had their ups and downs like other folks, great and small. And once, when there was a war or trouble of some sort abroad, there was a lot of money, and jewlery, and silver plate hidden away. That’s what it means by treasure. And the men who hid it got killed—ah, them was unsafe times to be alive in, I tell you—and nobody never knew where the treasure was hid.”

“Did they ever find it?”

“Ain’t I telling you? An’ a wise woman that lived in them old ancient times, they went to her to ask her what to do to find the treasure, and she had a fit directly, what you’d call a historical fit nowadays. She never said nothing worth hearing without she was in a fit, and she made up the saying all in potery whilst she was in her fit, and that was all they could get out of her. And she never would say what the spell was. Only when she was a-dying, Lady Arden, that was then, was very took up with nursing of her, and before she breathed her lastest she told Lady Arden the spell.” He stopped for lack of breath.

“And what is the spell?” said the children, much more breathless than he.

“Nobody knows,” said he.

“But where is it?”

“Nobody knows. But I’ve ’eard say it’s in a book in the libery in the house yonder. But it ain’t no good, because there’s never been a Lord Arden come to his title without he’s left his ten years far behind him.”

Edred had a queerer feeling in his head than you can imagine; his hands got hot and dry, and then cold and damp.

“I suppose,” he said, “you’ve got to be Lord Arden? It wouldn’t do if you were just plain John or James or Edred Arden? Because my name’s Arden, and I would like to have a try?”

The old man stooped, caught Edred by the arm, pulled him up, and stood him between his knees.

“Let’s have a look at you, sonny,” he said; and had a look. “Aye,” he said, “you’re an Arden, for sure. To think of me not seeing that. I might have seen your long nose and your chin that sticks out like a spur. I ought to have known it anywhere. But my eyes ain’t what they was. If you was Lord Arden—— What’s your father’s name—his chrissened name, I mean?”

“Edred, the same as mine. But father’s dead,” said Edred gravely.

“And your grandf’er’s name? It wasn’t George, was it—George William?”

“Yes, it was,” said Edred. “How did you know?”

The old man let go Edred’s arms and stood up. Then he touched his forehead and said—

“I’ve worked on the land ’ere man and boy, and I’m proud I’ve lived to see another Lord Arden take the place of him as is gone. Lauk-alive, boy, don’t garp like that,” he added sharply. “You’re Lord Arden right enough.”

“I—I can’t be,” gasped Edred.

“Auntie said Lord Arden was a relation of ours—a sort of great-uncle—cousin.”

“That’s it, missy,” the old man nodded. “Lord Arden—chrissen name James—’e was first cousin to Mr. George as was your grandf’er. His son was Mr. Edred, as is your father. The late lord not ’avin’ any sons—nor daughters neither for the matter of that—the title comes to your branch of the family. I’ve heard Snigsworthy, the lawyer’s apprentice from Lewis, tell it over fifty times this last three weeks. You’re Lord Arden, I tell you.”

“If I am,” said Edred, “I shall say the spell and find the treasure.”

“You’ll have to be quick about it,” said Elfrida. “You’ll be over ten the day after to-morrow.”

“So I shall,” said Edred.

“When you’re Lord Arden,” said the old man very seriously,—“I mean, when you grow up to enjoy the title—as, please God, you may—you remember the poor and needy, young master—that’s what you do.”

“If I find the treasure I will,” said Edred.

“You do it whether or no,” said the old man. “I must be getting along home. You’d like to play about a bit, eh? Well, bring me the keys when you’ve done. I can trust you not to hurt your own place, that’s been in the family all these hundreds of years.”

“I should think you could!” said Edred proudly. “Goodbye, and thank you.”

“Goodbye, my lord,” said the old man, and went.

“I say,” said Edred, with the big bunch of keys in his hand,—“if I am Lord Arden!”

“‘AYE,’ HE SAID, ‘YOU’RE AN ARDEN, FOR SURE.’”

“You are! you are!” said Elfrida. “I am perfectly certain you are. And I suppose I’m Lady Arden. How perfectly ripping! We can shut up those lodging-children now, anyhow. What’s up?”

Edred was frowning and pulling the velvet covering of moss off the big stone on which he had absently sat down.

“Do you think it’s burglarish,” he said slowly, “to go into your own house without leave?”

“Not if it is your own house. Of course not,” said Elfrida.

“But suppose it isn’t? They might put you in prison for it.”

“You could tell the policeman you thought it was yours. I say, Edred, let’s!”

“It’s not vulgar curiosity, like auntie says; it’s the spell I want,” said the boy.

“As if I didn’t know that,” said the girl contemptuously. “But where’s the house?”

She might well ask, for there was no house to be seen—only the great grey walls of the castle, with their fine fringe of flowers and grass showing feathery against the pale blue of the June sky. Here and there, though, there were grey wooden doors set in the grey of the stone.

“It must be one of those,” Edred said. “We’ll try all the keys and all the doors till we find it.”

So they tried all the keys and all the doors. One door led to a loft where apples were stored. Another to a cellar, where brooms and spades and picks leaned against the damp wall, and there were baskets and piles of sacks. A third opened into a tower that seemed to be used as a pigeon-cote. It was the very last door they tried that led into the long garden between two high walls, where already the weeds had grown high among the forget-me-nots and pansies. And at the end of this garden was a narrow house with a red roof, wedged tightly in between two high grey walls that belonged to the castle.

All the blinds were down; the garden was chill and quiet, and smelt of damp earth and dead leaves.

“Oh, Edred, do you think we ought?” Elfrida said, shivering.

“Yes, I do,” said Edred; “and you’re not being good, whatever you may think. You’re only being frightened.”

Elfrida naturally replied, “I’m not. Come on.”

But it was very slowly, and with a feeling of being on tiptoe and holding their breaths, that they went up to those blinded windows that looked like sightless eyes.

The front door was locked, and none of the keys would fit it.

“I don’t care,” said Edred. “If I am Lord Arden I’ve got a right to get in, and if I’m not I don’t care about anything, so here goes.”

Elfrida almost screamed, half with horror and half with admiration of his daring, when he climbed up to a little window by means of an elder-tree that grew close to it, tried to open the window, and when he found it fast deliberately pushed his elbow through the glass.

“Thus,” he said rather unsteadily, “the heir of Arden Castle re-enters his estates.”

He got the window open and disappeared through it. Elfrida stood clasping and unclasping her hands, and in her mind trying to get rid of the idea of a very large and sudden policeman appearing in the garden door and saying, in that deep voice so much admired in our village constables, “Where’s your brother?”

No policeman came, fortunately, and presently a blind went up, a French window opened, and there was Edred beckoning her with the air of a conspirator.

It needed an effort to obey his signal, but she did it. He closed the French window, drew down the blind again, and——

“Oh, don’t let’s,” said Elfrida.

“Nonsense,” said Edred; “there’s nothing to be frightened of. It’s just like our rooms at home.”

It was. They went all over the house, and it certainly was. Some of the upper rooms were very bare, but all the furniture was of the same kind as Aunt Edith’s, and there were the same kind of pictures. Only the library was different. It was a very large room, and there were no pictures at all. Nothing but books and books and books, bound in yellowy leather. Books from ceiling to floor, shelves of books between the windows and over the mantelpiece—hundreds and thousands of books. Even Edred’s spirits sank. “It’s no go. It will take us years to look in them all,” he said.

“We may as well look at some of them,” said Elfrida, always less daring, but more persevering than her brother. She sat down on the worn carpet and began to read the names on the backs of the books nearest to her. “Burton’s Atomy of Melon something,” she read, and “Locke on Understanding,” and many other dull and wearying titles. But none of the books seemed at all likely to contain a spell for finding treasure. “Burgess on the Precious Metals” beguiled her for a moment, but she saw at once that there was no room in its closely-printed, brown-spotted pages for anything so interesting as a spell. Time passed by. The sunlight that came through the blinds had quite changed its place on the carpet, and still Elfrida persevered. Edred grew more and more restless.

“It’s no use,” he kept saying, and “Let’s chuck it,” and “I expect that old chap was just kidding us. I don’t feel a bit like I did about it,” and “Do let’s get along home.”

But Elfrida plodded on, though her head and her back both ached. I wish I could say that her perseverance was rewarded. But it wasn’t; and one must keep to facts. As it happened, it was Edred who, aimlessly running his finger along the edge of the bookshelf just for the pleasure of looking at the soft, mouse-coloured dust that clung to the finger at the end of each shelf, suddenly cried out, “What about this?” and pulled out a great white book that had on its cover a shield printed in gold with squares and little spots on it, and a gold pig standing on the top of the shield, and on the back, “The History of the Ardens of Arden.”

In an instant it was open on the floor between them, and they were turning its pages with quick, anxious hands. But, alas! it was as empty of spells as dull old Burgess himself.

It was only when Edred shut it with a bang and the remark that he had had jolly well enough of it that a paper fluttered out and swept away like a pigeon, settling on the fireless hearth. And it was the spell. There was no doubt of that.

Written in faint ink on a square yellowed sheet of letter-paper that had been folded once, and opened and folded again so often that the fold was worn thin and hardly held its two parts together, the writing was fine and pointed and ladylike. At the top was written: “The Spell Aunt Anne Told Me.—December , .”

And then came the spell:—

“Hear, Oh badge of Arden’s house,

The spell my little age allows;

Arden speaks it without fear,

Badge of Arden’s house, draw near,

Make me brave and kind and wise,

And show me where the treasure lies.”

“To be said,” the paper went on, “at sun-setting by a Lord Arden between the completion of his ninth and tenth years. But it is all folly and not to be believed.”

“THEY WERE TURNING ITS PAGES WITH QUICK, ANXIOUS HANDS.”

“This is it, right enough,” said Edred. “Come on, let’s get out of this.” They turned to go, and as they did so something moved in the corner of the library—something little, and they could not see its shape.

Neither drew free breath again till they were out of the house, and out of the garden, and out of the castle, and on the wide, thymy downs, with the blue sky above, where the skylarks sang, and there was the sweet, fresh scent of the seaweed and the bean-fields.

“Oh,” said Elfrida, then, “I am so glad it’s not at midnight you’ve got to say the spell. You’d be too frightened.”

“I shouldn’t,” said Edred, very pale and walking quickly away from the castle. “I should say it just the same if it was midnight.” And he very nearly believed what he said.

Elfrida it was who had picked up the paper that Edred had dropped when that thing moved in the corner. She still held it fast.

“I expect it was only a rat or something,” said Edred, his heart beating nineteen to the dozen, as they say in Kent and elsewhere.

“Oh, yes,” said Elfrida, whose lips were trembling a little; “I’m sure it was only a rat or something.”

When they got to the top of Arden Knoll there was no sign of sunset. There was time, therefore, to pull oneself together, to listen to the skylarks, and to smell the bean-flowers, and to wonder how one could have been such a duffer as to be scared by a “rat or something.” Also there were some bits of sandwich and crumbled cake, despised at dinner-time, but now, somehow, tasting quite different. These helped to pass the time till the sun almost seemed to rest on a brown shoulder of the downs, that looked as though it were shrugging itself up to meet the round red ball that the evening mists had made of the sun.

The children had not spoken for several minutes. Their four eyes were fixed on the sun, and as the edge of it seemed to flatten itself against the hill-shoulder Elfrida whispered, “Now!” and gave her brother the paper.

They had read the spell so often, as they sat there in the waning light, that both knew it by heart, so there was no need for Edred to read it. And that was lucky, for in that thick, pink light the faint ink hardly showed at all on the yellowy paper.

Edred stood up.

“Now!” said Elfrida, again. “Say it now.” And Edred said, quite out loud and in a pleasant sort of sing-song, such as he was accustomed to use at school when reciting the stirring ballads of the late Lord Macaulay, or the moving tale of the boy on the burning deck:—

“‘Hear, Oh badge of Arden’s house,

The spell my little age allows;

Arden speaks it without fear,

Badge of Arden’s house, draw near,

Make me brave and kind and wise,

And show me where the treasure lies.’”

He said it slowly and carefully, his sister eagerly listening, ready to correct him if he said a word wrong. But he did not.

“Where the treasure lies,” he ended, and the great silence of the downs seemed to rush in like a wave to fill the space which his voice had filled.

And nothing else happened at all. A flush of pink from the sun-setting spread over the downs, the grass-stems showed up thin and distinct, the skylarks had ceased to sing, but the scent of the bean-flowers and the seaweed was stronger than ever. And nothing happened till Edred cried out, “What’s that?” For close to his foot something moved, not quickly or suddenly so as to startle, but very gently, very quietly, very unmistakably—something that glittered goldenly in the pink, diffused light of the sun-setting.

“Why,” said Elfrida stooping, “why, it’s——”