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

were of snowflakes, joined together by some magic weaving, and warm and soft as white velvet. And the horses!

“There aren’t any horses; they’re swans⁠—white swans!” cried Elfrida, and the voice of the Mouldiwarp, behind and above, cried softly, “All white things obey me.”

Edred knew how to drive. And now he could not resist the temptation to drive the six white swans round to the front of the house and to swoop down, passing just over the heads of the soldiers of the guard who were still earnestly pounding at the door of Arden House, and yelled to them, “Ha, ha! Sold again!” Which seemed to startle them very much. Then he wheeled the swans round and drove quickly through the air along the way which he knew quite well, without being told, to be the right way. And as the snow-carriage wheeled, both Edred and Elfrida had a strange, sudden vision of another smaller snow-carriage, drawn by two swans only, that circled above theirs and vanished in the deep dark of the sky, giving them an odd, tantalising glimpse of a face they knew and yet couldn’t remember distinctly enough to give a name to the owner of it.

Then the swans spread their white, mighty wings to the air, and strained with their long, strong necks against their collars, and the snow equipage streamed out of London like a slender white scarf driven along in the wind. And London was left behind, and the snowstorm, and soon the dark blue of the sky was over them, jewelled with the quiet silver of watchful stars, and the deeper dark of the Kentish county lay below, jewelled with the quiet gold from the windows of farms already half-asleep, and the air that rushed past their faces as they went was no longer cold, but soft as June air is, and Elfrida always declared afterwards that she could smell white lilies all the way.

So across the darkened counties they went, and the ride was more wonderful than any ride they had ever had before or would ever have again.

All too soon the swans hung, poised on long, level wings, outside the window of a tower in Arden Castle⁠—a tower they did not know.

But though they did not know the tower, it was quite plain that they were meant to get in at the window of it.

“Dear swans,” said Elfrida, who had been thinking as she sat clutching her Brownie, “can’t we stay in your carriage till it’s light? We do so want to take a photograph of the castle.”

The swans shook their white, flat, snakelike heads, just as though they understood. And there was the open window, evidently waiting to welcome the children.

So they got out⁠—very much against their wills. And there they were in the dark room of the tower, and it was very cold.

But before they had time to begin to understand how cold it was, and how uncomfortable they were likely to be for the rest of the night, six swan’s heads appeared at the window and said something.

“Oh,” said Elfrida, “I do wish we’d learned Swanish instead of French at school!”

But it did not matter. The next moment the swans’ heads ducked and reappeared, holding in their beaks the soft, fluffy, white rugs that had kept the children so warm in the snow-carriage. The swans pushed the rugs through the window with their strong, white wings, and made some more remarks in swan language.

“Oh, thank you!” said the children. “Goodbye, goodbye.”

Then there was the rush of wide-going wings, and the children, tired out, cuddled on the floor, wrapped in the soft rugs.

The happiest kind of dreams were tucked up in that coverlet, and it seemed hardly any time at all before the children woke to find the winter sunshine looking in at them through the narrow windows of the tower.

Elfrida jumped up and threw off the silver-white, downy-soft coverlet. It instantly tore itself into five pieces of different shapes and sizes, and these screwed themselves up, and drew themselves in, and blew themselves out, and turned before her very eyes into a silver basin of warm water, a piece of lily-scented soap, a towel, a silver comb, and an ivory toothbrush.

“Well!” said Elfrida. When she had finished her simple toilet, the basin, soap, towel, toothbrush, and comb ran together like globules of quicksilver, made a curious tousled lump of themselves, and straightened out into the fluffy coverlet again.

“Well!” said Elfrida, again. Then she woke Edred, and his coverlet played the same clever and pretty trick for him.

And when the children started to go down with the Brownie and take the photographs of the castle, the shining coverlets jumped up into two white furry coats, such as the very affluent might wear when they went a-motoring⁠—if the very affluent ever thought of anything so pretty. And one of the coats came politely to the side of each child, holding out its arms as if it were saying⁠—

“Do, please, oblige me by putting me on.”

Which, of course, both the children did.

They crept down the corkscrew stairs, and through a heavy door that opened under the arch of the great gateway. The great gate was open, and on the step of the door opposite to the one by which they had come out a soldier sat. He held his helmet between his knees, and was scouring it with sand and whistling as he scoured. He touched his forehead with his sandy hand, but did not get up.

“You’re early afield,” he said, and went on rubbing the sand on the helmet.

“It’s such a pretty day,” said Elfrida. “May we go out?”

“And welcome,” said the man simply; “but go not beyond the twelve acre, for fear of rough folk and Egyptians. And go not far. But breakfast will have a strong voice to call you back.”

They went out, and instead of stepping straight on to the turf of the downs, their stout shoes struck echoing notes from the wooden planks of a bridge.

“It’s a