The Enchanted Castle, E. Nesbit [books to read fiction .txt] 📗

never knew. But they knew that the Ugly-Wuglies were no longer friendly and commonplace, that a fierce change had come over them. Cries of “No, No!”

“We won’t go on!”

“Make him lead!” broke the dreamy stillness of the perfect night. There were screams from ladies voices, the hoarse, determined shouts of strong Ugly-Wuglies roused to resistance, and, worse than all, the steady pushing open of that narrow stone door that had almost closed upon the ghastly crew. Through the chink of it they could be seen, a writhing black crowd against the light of the bicycle lamp; a padded hand reached round the door; stick-boned arms stretched out angrily towards the world that that door, if it closed, would shut them off from forever. And the tone of their consonantless speech was no longer conciliatory and ordinary; it was threatening, full of the menace of unbearable horrors.

The padded hand fell on Gerald’s arm, and instantly all the terrors that he had, so far, only known in imagination became real to him, and he saw, in the sort of flash that shows drowning people their past lives, what it was that he had asked of Mabel, and that she had given.

“Push, push for your life!” he cried, and setting his heel against the pedestal of Flora, pushed manfully.

“I can’t any more⁠—oh, I can’t!” moaned Mabel, and tried to use her heel likewise but her legs were too short.

“They mustn’t get out, they mustn’t!” Gerald panted.

“You’ll know it when we do,” came from inside the door in tones which fury and mouth-rooflessness would have made unintelligible to any ears but those sharpened by the wild fear of that unspeakable moment.

“What’s up, there?” cried suddenly a new voice⁠—a voice with all its consonants comforting, clean-cut, and ringing, and abruptly a new shadow fell on the marble floor of Flora’s temple.

“Come and help push!” Gerald’s voice only just reached the newcomer. “If they get out they’ll kill us all.”

A strong, velveteen-covered shoulder pushed suddenly between the shoulders of Gerald and Mabel; a stout man’s heel sought the aid of the goddess’s pedestal; the heavy, narrow door yielded slowly, it closed, its spring clicked, and the furious, surging, threatening mass of Ugly-Wuglies was shut in, and Gerald and Mabel⁠—oh, incredible relief!⁠—were shut out. Mabel threw herself on the marble floor, sobbing slow, heavy sobs of achievement and exhaustion. If I had been there I should have looked the other way, so as not to see whether Gerald yielded himself to the same abandonment.

The newcomer⁠—he appeared to be a gamekeeper, Gerald decided later⁠—looked down on⁠—well, certainly on Mabel, and said:

“Come on, don’t be a little duffer.” (He may have said, “a couple of little duffers.”) “Who is it, and what’s it all about?”

“I can’t possibly tell you,” Gerald panted.

“We shall have to see about that, shan’t we,” said the newcomer amiably. “Come out into the moonlight and let’s review the situation.”

Gerald, even in that topsy-turvy state of his world, found time to think that a gamekeeper who used such words as that had most likely a romantic past. But at the same time he saw that such a man would be far less easy to “square” with an unconvincing tale than Eliza, or Johnson, or even Mademoiselle. In fact, he seemed, with the only tale that they had to tell, practically unsquarable.

Gerald got up⁠—if he was not up already, or still up⁠—and pulled at the limp and now hot hand of the sobbing Mabel; and as he did so the unsquarable one took his hand, and thus led both children out from under the shadow of Flora’s dome into the bright white moonlight that carpeted Flora’s steps. Here he sat down, a child on each side of him, drew a hand of each through his velveteen arm, pressed them to his velveteen sides in a friendly, reassuring way, and said: “Now then! Go ahead!”

Mabel merely sobbed. We must excuse her. She had been very brave, and I have no doubt that all heroines, from Joan of Arc to Grace Darling, have had their sobbing moments.

But Gerald said: “It’s no use. If I made up a story you’d see through it.”

“That’s a compliment to thy discernment, anyhow,” said the stranger. “What price telling me the truth?”

“If we told you the truth,” said Gerald, “you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Try me,” said the velveteen one. He was clean-shaven, and had large eyes that sparkled when the moonlight touched them.

“I can’t,” said Gerald, and it was plain that he spoke the truth. “You’d either think we were mad, and get us shut up, or else⁠—Oh, it’s no good. Thank you for helping us, and do let us go home.”

“I wonder,” said the stranger musingly, “whether you have any imagination.”

“Considering that we invented them⁠—” Gerald hotly began, and stopped with late prudence.

“If by ‘them’ you mean the people whom I helped you to imprison in yonder tomb,” said the Stranger, loosing Mabel’s hand to put his arm round her, “remember that I saw and heard them. And with all respect to your imagination, I doubt whether any invention of yours would be quite so convincing.”

Gerald put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

“Collect yourself,” said the one in velveteen; “and while you are collecting, let me just put the thing from my point of view. I think you hardly realize my position. I come down from London to take care of a big estate.”

“I thought you were a gamekeeper,” put in Gerald.

Mabel put her head on the stranger’s shoulder. “Hero in disguise, then, I know,” she sniffed.

“Not at all,” said he; “bailiff would be nearer the mark. On the very first evening I go out to take the moonlit air, and approaching a white building, hear sounds of an agitated scuffle, accompanied by frenzied appeals for assistance. Carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, I do assist and shut up goodness knows who behind a stone door. Now, is it unreasonable that I should ask who it is