The House of Arden, E. Nesbit [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

I should just take a book and read till something happens. Mrs. Honeysett’s sure to come back some time.”

“I can’t hear half you say,” said Edred. “You do whiffle so.”

“Take a book!” shouted his sister. “Read! Mrs.⁠—Honeysett⁠—will⁠—come⁠—back⁠—some⁠—time.”

So Edred got down a book called Red Cotton Nightcap Country, which he thought looked interesting; but I don’t advise you to try it. And Elfrida, her heart beating rather heavily, put out her hands and felt her way along the passage to the stairs.

“It’s all very well,” she told herself, “the secret panel is there all right, like it was when I went into the past, but suppose the stairs are gone, or weren’t really ever there at all? Or suppose I walked straight into a wall or something? Or perhaps not a wall⁠—a well,” she suggested to herself with a sudden thrill of terror; and after that she felt very carefully with each foot in turn before she ventured to put it down in a fresh step.

The boards were soft to tread on, as though they had been carpeted with velvet, and so were the stairs. For there were stairs, sure enough. She went up them very slowly and carefully, reaching her hands before her. And at last her hands came against something that seemed like a door. She stroked it gently, feeling for the latch, which she presently found. The door had not been opened for such a very long time that it was not at all inclined to open now. Elfrida had to shove with shoulder and knee, and with all the strength she had. The door gave way⁠—out of politeness, I should think, for Elfrida’s knee and shoulder and strength were all quite small⁠—and there was the room just as she had seen it when the Chevalier St. George stood in it bowing and smiling by the light of one candle in a silver candlestick. Only now Elfrida was alone, and the light was a sort of green twilight that came from a little window over the mantelpiece, that was hung outside with a thick curtain of ivy. If Elfrida had come out of the sunlight she would have called this a green darkness. But she had been so long in the dark that this shadowy dusk seemed quite light to her. All the same she made haste, when she had shut the door, to drag a chair in front of the fireplace and to get the window open. It opened inwards, and it did not want to open at all. But it, also, was polite enough to yield to her wishes, and when it had suddenly given way she reached out and broke the ivy-leaves off one by one, making more and more daylight in the secret room. She did not let the leaves fall outside, but on the hearthstone, “for,” said she, “we don’t want outside people to get to know all about the Ardens’ secret hiding-place. I’m glad I thought of that. I really am rather like a detective in a book.”

When all the leaves were plucked from the window’s square, and only the brown ivy boughs left, she turned back to the room. The furniture was all powdered heavily with dust, and what had made the floor so soft to walk upon was the thick carpet of dust that lay there. There was the table on which the Chevalier St. George⁠—no, Sir Edward Talbot⁠—had set the tray. There were the chairs, and there, sure enough, was the corner cupboard in which he had put the jewels. Elfrida got its door open with I don’t know what of mingled hopes and fears. It had three shelves, but the jewels were on none of them. In fact there was nothing on any of them. But on the inside of the door her hand, as she held it open, felt something rough. And when she looked it was a name carved, and when she swung the door well back so that the light fell full on it she saw that the name was “E. Talbot.” So then she knew that all she had seen in that room before must have really happened two hundred years before, and was not just a piece of magic Mouldiwarpiness.

She climbed up on the chair again and looked out through the little window. She could see nothing of the Castle walls⁠—only the distant shoulder of the downs and the path that cut across it towards the station. She would have liked to see a red figure or a violet one coming along that path. But there was no figure on it at all.

What do you usually do when you are shut up in a secret room, with no chance of getting out for hours? As for me, I always say poetry to myself. It is one of the uses of poetry⁠—one says it to oneself in distressing circumstances of that kind, or when one has to wait at railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night. You will find poetry most useful for this purpose. So learn plenty of it, and be sure it is the best kind, because this is most useful as well as most agreeable.

Elfrida began with “Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!” but there were parts of that which she liked best when there were other people about⁠—so she stopped it, and began “Horatius and the Bridge.” This lasts a long time. Then came the “Favourite Cat drowned in a tub of Goldfish”⁠—and in the middle of that, quite suddenly, and I don’t know why, she thought of the Mouldiwarp.

“We didn’t quite quarrel,” she told herself. “At least not really, truly quarrelling. I might try anyhow.”

So she set to work to make a piece of poetry to call up the Mouldiwarp with.

This was how, after a long time, the first piece came out⁠—

“ ‘The Mouldiwarp of Arden
By the nine gods it swore
That Elfrida of Arden
Should be shut up no more.
By the nine gods it swore it
And named