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

“Hold your silly tongues,” said the Mouldiwarp crossly. “You was told not to go gossiping. Here! scratch a way out with them white paws of yours.”

It set the example, scratching at the enormous cliff with those strong, blunt, curved front feet of it. And the cats scratched too, with their white, padded gloves that had tiger claws to them. And the rock yielded⁠—there was a white crack⁠—wider, wider. And the swaying, swirling torches came nearer and nearer across the plain.

“In with you!” cried the Mouldiwarp; “in with you!”

“Jim!” said Lord Arden. “I’ll not go without Jim!”

“He’s halfway there already,” said the Mouldiwarp, pushing Lord Arden with its great white shoulder. “Come, I say, come!” It pushed them all into the crack of the rock, and the cliff closed firm and fast behind them, an unanswerable “No” set up in the face of their pursuers.

“This way out,” said the Mouldiwarp, pointing its dusty claw to where ahead light showed.

“Why,” said Edred, “it’s the smugglers’ cave⁠—and there’s the clock!”

Next moment there it wasn’t, for Richard had leapt on it, and he and it had vanished together, the Mouldiwarp clinging to the hour hand at the last moment.

The white cats, which were Edred and Elfrida, drew back from the whirl of the hands that was the first step towards vanishment. They saw their father and Uncle Jim go up the steps that led to the rude wooden door whose key was like a church key⁠—the door that led to the opening among the furze that they had never been able to find again.

When the vanishing of the clock allowed them to follow, and they regained the sunny outer air where the skylarks were singing as usual, they were just in time to see two figures going towards the castle and very near it.

They turned to look at each other.

“Why,” said Edred, “you’re not a cat any more!”

“No more are you, if it comes to that,” said Elfrida. “Oh, Edred, they’re going in at the big gate! Do you think it’s really real⁠—or have we just dreamed it⁠—this time? It was much more dreamish than any of the other things.”

“I feel,” said Edred, sitting down abruptly, “as if I’d been a cat all my life, and been swung round by my tail every day of my life. I think I’ll sit here till I’m quite sure whether I’m a white cat or Edred Arden.”

“I know which I am,” said Elfrida; but she, too, was not sorry to sit down.

“That’s easy. You aren’t either of them,” said Edred.

When, half an hour later, they slowly went down to the castle, still doubtful whether anything magic had ever really happened, or whether all the magic things that had seemed to happen had really been only a sort of double, or twin, dream. They were met at the door by Aunt Edith, pale as the pearl and ivory of the white clock, and with eyes that shone like the dewdrops on the wild flowers that Elfrida had given to the Queen.

“Oh, kiddies!” she cried. “Oh, dear, darling kiddies!”

And she went down on her knees so that she should be nearer their own height and could embrace them on more equal terms.

“Something lovely’s happened,” she said; “something so beautiful that you won’t be able to believe it.”

They kissed her heartily, partly out of affection, and partly to conceal their want of surprise.

“Darlings, it’s the loveliest thing that could possibly happen. What do you think?”

“Daddy’s come home,” said Elfrida, feeling dreadfully deceitful.

“Yes,” said Aunt Edith. “How clever of you, my pet! And Uncle Jim. They’ve been kept prisoners in South America, and an English boy with a performing bear helped them to escape.”

No mention of cats. The children felt hurt.

“And they had the most dreadful time⁠—months and months and months⁠—coming across the interior⁠—no water, and Indians and all sorts of adventures; and daddy had fever, and would insist that the bear was the Mouldiwarp⁠—our crest, you know⁠—come to life, and talking just like you or me, and that there were white cats that had your voices, and called him daddy. But he’s all right now, only very weak. That’s why I’m telling you all this. You must be very quiet and gentle. Oh, my dears, it’s too good to be true, too good to be true!”

Now, was it the father of Edred and Elfrida who had brain fever and fancied things? Or did they, blameless of fever, and not too guilty of brains, imagine it all? Uncle Jim can tell you exactly how it all happened. There is no magic in his story. Father⁠—I mean Lord Arden⁠—does not talk of what he dreamed when he had brain fever. And Edred and Elfrida do not talk of what happened when they hadn’t. At least they do, but only to me.

It is all very wonderful and mysterious, as all life is apt to be if you go a little below the crust, and are not content just to read newspapers and go by the Tube Railway, and buy your clothes ready-made, and think nothing can be true unless it is uninteresting.

“I’ve found the most wonderful photographs of pictures of Arden Castle,” said Aunt Edith, later on. “We can restore the castle perfectly from them. I do wish I knew where the original pictures were.”

“I’m afraid we can’t restore the castle,” said Lord Arden laughing; “our little fortune’s enough to keep us going quite comfortably⁠—but it won’t rebuild Norman masonry.”

“I do wish we could have found the buried treasure,” said Edred.

“We’ve got treasure enough,” said Aunt Edith, looking at Uncle Jim.

As for what Elfrida thinks⁠—well, I wish you could have seen her face when she went into the parlour that evening after Aunt Edith had knelt down to meet them on equal terms, and tell them of the treasure of love and joy that had come home to Arden.

There was Lord Arden, looking exactly like the Lord Arden she had known in the Gunpowder Plot days, and