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

which it did quite suddenly, Edred caught his breath and shouted, “To my daddy!” at the top of his voice. And the hands began to move again so quickly that neither of the children had time to see where they had stopped. They just saw that they were in a room, and that the Mouldiwarp, who seemed suddenly to have grown to the size of an enormous Polar bear, leaned over the edge of the clock and caught at something with a paw a foot long. And then someone called out something that they couldn’t hear, and almost at once the clock stopped, and they saw something climb off the clock. And the clock was in the cave again. And there was Cousin Richard in quite different clothes from those he had worn at King Henry the Eighth’s maying. They were the kind of clothes Edred had worn in Boney’s time, and the cave was just as it had been then, with kegs and bales, and the stream running through it.

“You must come with us,” said the Mouldiwarp, slowly resuming its ordinary size. “Don’t you see? If these children let their father see them, they’ll have to explain the whole magic, and when once magic’s explained all the magic’s gone, like the scent out of scent when you leave the cork out of the bottle. But you can see him and help⁠—if he wants help⁠—without having to explain anything.”

“All right,” said Richard, and muttered something about “the Head of the House.” “Only,” he added, “I dropped my magic here.” He stooped to the sand and picked up a little stick with silver bells hung round it, like the one that Folly carries at a carnival. “It’s got the Arden arms and crest on it,” he said, pointing, and by the light of the pearl and ivory clock the children could see the shield and the chequers and the Mouldiwarp above. “Now I’m ready. Cousins, I take back everything I said. You see, my father’s dead⁠ ⁠… and if I’d only had half your chance.⁠ ⁠… That was what I thought. See? So give us your hand.”

The hands were given.

“But oh,” said Elfrida, “this is different from all the rest; that was a game, and this is⁠—this is⁠—”

“This is real, my sock-lamb,” said the Mouldiwarp, with unusual kindness. “Now your Cousin Richard will help you, and when you get your father back, as I make no doubts but what you will, then your Cousin Dick he’ll go back to his own time and generation, and be seen no more, and your father won’t never guess that you was there so close to him as you will be.”

“I don’t believe we shall,” said Elfrida, nodding stubbornly, and for the first time in this story she did not believe.

“Oh, well,” said the Mouldiwarp bitterly, “of course if you don’t believe you’ll find him, you’ll not find him. That’s plain as a currant loaf.”

“But I believe we shall find him,” said Edred, “and Elfrida’s only a girl. It might be only a dream, of course,” he added thoughtfully. “Don’t you think I don’t know that. But if it’s a dream, I’m going to stay in it. I’m not going back to Arden without my father.”

“Do you understand,” said the Mouldiwarp, “that if I take you into any other time or place in your own century, it’s the full stop? There isn’t any more.”

“It means there’s no chance of our getting into the past again, to look for treasure or anything?”

“Oh, chance!” said the Mouldiwarp. “I mean no magic clock’ll not never be made for you no more, that’s what I mean. And if you find your father you’ll not be Lord Arden any more, either!”

I hope it will not shock you very much when I tell you that at that thought a distinct pang shot through Edred’s breast. He really felt it, in his flesh-and-blood breast, like a sharp knife. It was dreadful of him to think of such a thing, when there was a chance of his getting his daddy in exchange for just a title. It was dreadful; but I am a truthful writer, and I must own the truth. In one moment he felt the most dreadful things⁠—that it was all nonsense, and perhaps daddy wasn’t there, and it was no good looking for him any way, and he wanted to go on being Lord Arden, and hadn’t they better go home.

The thoughts came quite without his meaning them to, and Edred pushed them from him with both hands, so to speak, hating himself because they had come to him. And he will hate himself for those thoughts, though he did not mean or wish to have them, as long as he lives, every time he remembers them. That is the worst of thoughts, they live forever.

“I don’t want to be Lord Arden,” was what he instantly said⁠—“I want my father.” And what he said was true, in spite of those thoughts that he didn’t mean to have and can never forget.

“Shall I come along of you?” said the Mouldiwarp, and everyone said “Yes,” very earnestly. A friendly Mouldiwarp is a very useful thing to have at hand when you are going you don’t know where.

“Now, you won’t make any mistake,” the mole went on. “This is the windup and the end-all. So it is. No more chestses in atticses. No more fine clotheses out of ’em neither. An’ no more white clocks.”

“All right,” said Edred impatiently, “we understand. Now let’s go.”

“You wait a bit,” said the Mouldiwarp aggravatingly. “You’ve got to settle what you’ll be, and what way your father’d better come out. I think through the chink of the chalk.”

“Any way you like,” said Elfrida. “And Mouldiwarp, dear, shan’t we ever see you again?”

“Oh, I don’t say that,” it said. “You’ll see me at dinner every day.”

“At dinner?”

“I’m on all the spoons and forks, anyhow,” it said, and sniggered more aggravatingly than ever.

“Mouldie!” cried Edred suddenly, “I’ve got it. You disguise