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

“You shall do the next one,” said Edred, almost holding his breath.

Dear reader, do you recall the agitating moment when you pass the film through the hypo⁠—and hold it up to the light⁠—and nothing happens? Do you remember the painful wonder whether you may have forgotten to set the shutter? Or whether you have got hold of an unexposed film by mistake? Your breath comes with difficulty, your fingers feel awkward, and the film is unnaturally slippery. You dip it into the hypo-bath again, and draw it through and through with the calmness of despair.

“I don’t believe it’s coming out at all,” you say.

And then comes the glorious moment when you hold it up again to the red light and murmur rapturously, “Ah! it is beginning to show!”

If you will kindly remember all the emotions of those exciting moments⁠—on an occasion, let us say, when you had not had your camera very long⁠—then multiply by seven million, add x⁠—an unknown quantity of an emotion quite different from anything you have ever felt⁠—and you will have some idea of what Edred and Elfrida felt when the first faint, grey, formless patches began to appear on the film.

But you might multiply till you had used up the multiplication table, and add x’s as long as you could afford them, and yet never imagine the rapture with which the two children saw the perfect development of the six little perfect pictures. For they were perfect. They were perfect pictures of Arden Castle at a time when it, too, was perfect. No broken arches, no crumbling wall, but every part neat and clear-cut as they had seen it when they went into the past that was three hundred years ago.

They were equally fortunate with the second film. It, too, had its six faultless pictures of Arden Castle three hundred years ago. And the last film developed just as finely. Only, just before the moment which was the right moment for taking the film out of the hypo-bath and beginning to wash it, a tiny white feather fell out of Edred’s hair into the dish. It was so tiny that in that dim light he did not notice it. And it did not stick to the film or do any of those things which you might have feared if you had seen the little, white thing flutter down. It may have been the feather’s doing; I don’t know. I just tell you the thing as it happened.

Of course, you know that films have to be pinned up to dry.

Well, the first film was pinned on the right-hand panel of the door and the second film was pinned on the left-hand panel of the door. And when it came to the third, the one that had had the little white feather dropped near it, there was nothing wooden left to pin it to⁠—for the walls were of stone⁠—nothing wooden except the shutters. And it was pinned across these.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Edred, “because we needn’t open the shutters till it’s dry.”

And with that he stuck in four pins at its four corners, and turned to blow out the lamp and unbolt the door. He meant to do this, but the door, as a matter of fact, wasn’t bolted at all, because Edred had forgotten to do it when he came back with the dusters, so he couldn’t have unbolted it anyway.

But he could blow out the red-sided lamp; and he did.

And then the wonderful thing happened. Of course the room ought to have been quite dark. I’m sure enough trouble had been taken to make it so. But it wasn’t. The window, the window where the shutters were⁠—the shutters that the film was pinned on⁠—the film on which the little white feather had fallen⁠—the little white feather that had settled on Edred’s hair when Mrs. Honeysett was plucking that chicken at the back door⁠—that window now showed as a broad oblong of light. And in that broad oblong was a sort of shining, a faint sparkling movement, like the movement of the light on the sheet of a cinematograph before the pictures begin to show.

“Oh!” said Elfrida, catching at Edred’s hand. What she did catch was his hair. She felt her way down his arm, and so caught what she had meant to catch, and held it fast.

“It’s more magic,” said Edred ungratefully. “I do wish⁠—”

“Oh, hush!” said Elfrida; “look⁠—oh, look!”

The light⁠—broad, oblong⁠—suddenly changed from mere light to figures, to movement. It was a living picture⁠—rather like a cinematograph, but much more like something else. The something else that it was more like was life.

It seemed as though the window had been opened⁠—as though they could see through it into the world of light and sunshine and blue sky⁠—the world where things happen.

There was the castle, and there were people going across the drawbridge⁠—men with sacks on their backs. And a man with a silver chain round his neck and a tall stick in his hand, was standing under the great gateway telling them where to take the sacks. And a cart drove up, with casks, and they were rolled across the drawbridge and under the tall arch of the gate-tower. The men were dressed. Then something blinked, and the scene changed. It was indoors now⁠—a long room with many pictures on one side of it and many windows on the other; a lady, in a large white collar and beautiful long curls, very like Aunt Edith, was laying fine dresses in a chest. A gentleman, also with long hair, and with a good deal of lace about his collar and cuffs, was putting jugs and plates of gold and silver into another chest; and servants kept bringing more golden grand things, and more and more.

Edred and Elfrida did not say a word. They couldn’t. What they were looking at was far too thrilling. But in each heart the same words were uttered⁠—

“That’s the treasure!” And each mind held the same thought.

“If it only goes