Elfrida was behind the secret panel, and the panel had shut with a spring. She had come there hoping to find the jewels that had been hidden two hundred years ago by Sir Edward Talbot, when he was pretending to be the Chevalier St. George. She had not had time even to look for the jewels before the panel closed, and now that she was alone in the dusty dark, with the door shut between her and the bright, light parlour where her brother was, the jewels hardly seemed to matter at all, and what did so dreadfully and very much matter was that closed panel. Edred had tried to open it, and he had fallen off the chair. Well, there had been plenty of time for him to get up again.
"Why don't you open the door?" she called impatiently. And there was no answer. Behind that panel silence seemed a thousand times more silent that it ever had before. And it was so dark. And Edred had the matches in his pocket.
"Edred! Edred!" she called suddenly and very loud, "why don't you open the door?"
And this time he answered.
"Because I can't reach," he said.
I feel that I ought to make that the end of the chapter, and leave you to wonder till the next how Elfrida got out, and how she liked the not getting out, which certainly looked as though it were going to last longer than any one could possibly be expected to find pleasant.
But that would make the chapter too short—and there are other reasons. So I will not disguise from you that when Elfrida put her hand to her pocket and felt something there—something hard and heavy—and remembered that she had put the key of the parlour there because it was such a nice safe place, where it couldn't possibly be lost, she uttered what is known as a hollow groan.
"Aha! you see now," said Edred outside. "You see I'm not so stupid after all."
Elfrida was thinking.
"I say," she called through the panel, "it's no use my standing here. I shall try to feel my way up to the secret chamber. I wish I could remember whether there's a window there or not. If I were you I should just take a book and read till something happens. Mrs. Honeysett's sure to come back some time."
"I can't hear half you say," said Edred. "You do whiffle so."
"Take a book!" shouted his sister. "Read! Mrs. Honeysett—will—come—back—some—time."
So Edred got down a book called "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," which he thought looked interesting; but I don't advise you to try it. And Elfrida, her heart beating rather heavily, put out her hands and felt her way along the passage to the stairs.
"It's all very well," she told herself, "the secret panel is there all right, like it was when I went into the past, but suppose the stairs are gone, or weren't really ever there at all? Or suppose I walked straight into a wall or something? Or perhaps not a wall—a well," she suggested to herself with a sudden thrill of terror; and after that she felt very carefully with each foot in turn before she ventured to put it down in a fresh step.
The boards were soft to tread on, as though they had been carpeted with velvet, and so were the stairs. For there were stairs, sure enough. She went up them very slowly and carefully, reaching her hands before her. And at last her hands came against something that seemed like a door. She stroked it gently, feeling for the latch, which she presently found. The door had not been opened for such a very, long time that it was not at all inclined to open now. Elfrida had to shove with shoulder and knee, and with all the strength she had. The door gave way—out of politeness, I should think, for Elfrida's knee and shoulder and strength were all quite small—and there was the room just as she had seen it when the Chevalier St. George stood in it bowing and smiling by the light of one candle in a silver candlestick. Only now Elfrida was alone, and the light was a sort of green twilight that came from a little window over the mantelpiece, that was hung outside with a thick curtain of ivy. If Elfrida had come out of the sunlight she would have called this a green darkness. But she had been so long in the dark that this shadowy dusk seemed quite light to her. All the same she made haste, when she had shut the door, to drag a chair in front of the fireplace and to get the window open. It opened inwards, and it did not want to open at all. But it, also, was polite enough to yield to her wishes, and when it had suddenly given way she reached out and broke the ivy-leaves off one by one, making more and more daylight in the secret room. She did not let the leaves fall outside, but on the hearthstone, "for," said she, "we don't want outside people to get to know all about the Ardens' secret hiding-place. I'm glad I thought of that. I really am rather like a detective in a book."
When all the leaves were plucked from the window's square, and only the brown ivy boughs left, she turned back to the room. The furniture was all powdered heavily with dust, and what had made the floor so soft to walk upon was the thick carpet of dust that lay there. There was the table on which the Chevalier St. George—no, Sir Edward Talbot—had set the tray. There were the chairs, and there, sure enough, was the corner cupboard in which he had put the jewels. Elfrida got its door open with I don't know what of mingled hopes and fears. It had three shelves, but the jewels were on none of them. In fact there was nothing on any of them. But on the inside of the door her hand, as she held it open, felt something rough. And when she looked it was a name carved, and when she swung the door well back so that the light fell full on it she saw that the name was "E. Talbot." So then she knew that all she had seen in that room before must have really happened two hundred years before, and was not just a piece of magic Mouldiwarpiness.
She climbed up on the chair again and looked out through the little window. She could see nothing of the Castle walls—only the distant shoulder of the downs and the path that cut across it towards the station. She would have liked to see a red figure or a violet one coming along that path. But there was no figure on it at all.
What do you usually do when you are shut up in a secret room, with no chance of getting out for hours? As for me, I always say poetry to myself. It is one of the uses of poetry—one says it to oneself in distressing circumstances of that kind, or when one has to wait at railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night. You will find poetry most useful for this purpose. So learn plenty of it, and be sure it is the best kind, because this is most useful as well as most agreeable.
Elfrida began with "Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!" but there were parts of that which she liked best when there were other people about—so she stopped it, and began "Horatius and the Bridge." This lasts a long time. Then came the Favourite Cat drowned in a tub of Gold-fish—and in the middle of that, quite suddenly, and I don't know why, she thought of the Mouldiwarp.
"We didn't quite quarrel," she told herself. "At least not really, truly quarrelling. I might try anyhow."
So she set to work to make a piece of poetry to call up the Mouldiwarp with.
This was how, after a long time, the first piece came out—
"'The Mouldiwarp of Arden
By the nine gods it swore
That Elfrida of Arden
Should be shut up no more.
By the nine gods it swore it
And named a convenient time, no doubt,
And bade its messengers ride forth
East and West, South and North,
To let Elfrida out.'"
But when she said it aloud nothing happened "I wonder," said Elfrida, "whether it's because we quarrelled, or because it just says he let me out and doesn't ask him to, or because I had to say Elfrida to make it sound right, or because it's such dreadful nonsense. I'll try again."
She tried again. This time she got—
"'Behind the secret panel's lines
The pensive Elfrida reclines
And wishes she was at home.
At least I am at home, of course,
But things are getting worse and worse.
Dear Mole, come, come, come, come!'"
She said it aloud, and when she came to the last words there was the white Mouldiwarp sitting on the floor at her feet and looking up at her with eyes that blinked.
"You are good to come," Elfrida said.
"Well, what do you want now?" said the Mole.
"I—I ought to tell you that I oughtn't to ask you to do anything, but I didn't think you'd come if it really counted as a quarrel. It was only a little one, and we were both sorry quite directly."
"You have a straightforward nature," said the Mouldiwarp. "Well, well, I must say you've got yourself into a nice hole!"
"It would be a very nice hole," said Elfrida eagerly, "if only the panel were open. I wouldn't mind how long I stayed here then. That's funny, isn't it?"
"Yes," said the Mole. "Well, if you hadn't quarrelled I could get you into another time—some time when the panel was open—and you could just walk out. You shouldn't quarrel. It makes everything different. It puts dust into the works. It stops the wheels of the clock."
"The clock!" said Elfrida slowly. "Couldn't that work backwards?"
"I don't know what you mean," said the Mole.
"I don't know that I quite know myself," Elfrida explained; "but the daisy-clock. You sit on the second hand and there isn't any time—and yet there's lots where you're not sitting. If I could sit on the daisy-clock the time wouldn't be anything before some one comes to let me out. But I can't get to the daisy-clock, even if you'd make it for me. So that's no good."
"You are a very clever girl," said the Mouldiwarp, "and all the clocks in the world aren't made of daisies. Move the table and chairs back against the wall; we'll see what we can do for you."
While Elfrida was carrying out this order—the white Mole stood on its hind feet and called out softly in a language she did not understand. Others understood it though, it seemed, for a white pigeon fluttered in through the window, and then another and another, till the room seemed full of circling wings and gentle cooings, and a shower of soft, white feathers fell like snow.
Then the Mole was silent, and one by one the white pigeons sailed back through the window into the blue and gold world of out-of-doors.
"Get upon a chair and keep out of the way," said the Mouldiwarp. And Elfrida did.
And then a soft wind blew through the little room—a wind like the wind that breathes softly in walled gardens and shakes down the rose-leaves on sparkling summer mornings. And the white feathers on the floor were stirred by the sweet wind, and drifted into little heaps and lines and curves till they made on the dusty floor the circle of a clock-face, with all its figures and its long hand and its short hand and its second hand. And the white Mole stood in the middle.
"All white things obey me," it said. "Come, sit down on the minute hand, and you'll be there in no time."
"Where?" asked Elfrida, getting off the chair.
"Why, at the time when they open the panel. Let me get out of the clock first. And give me the key of the parlour door. It'll save time in the end."
So Elfrida sat down on the minute hand, and instantly it began to move round—faster than you can possibly imagine. And it was very soft to sit on—like a cloud would be if the laws of nature ever permitted you to sit on clouds. And it spun round so that it seemed no time at all before she found herself sitting on the floor and heard voices, and knew that the secret panel was open.
"I see," she said wisely, "it does work backwards, doesn't it?"
But there was no one to answer her, for the Mouldiwarp was gone. And the white pigeons' feathers were in heaps on the floor. She saw them as she stood up. And there wasn't any clock-face any more.
·····
Edred soon got tired of "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," which really is not half such good fun as it sounds, even for grown-ups, and he tried several other books. But reading did not seem amusing, somehow. And the house was so much too quiet, and the clock outside ticked so much too loud—and Elfrida was shut up, and there were bars to the windows, and the door was locked. He walked about, and sat in each of the chairs in turn, but no one of them was comfortable. And his thoughts were not comfortable either. Suppose no one ever came to let them out! Supposing the years rolled on and found him still a prisoner, when he was a white-haired old man, like people in the Bastille, or in Iron Masks? His eyes filled with tears at the thought. Fortunately it did not occur to him that unless some one came pretty soon he would be unlikely to live to a great age, since people cannot live long without eating. If he had thought of this he would have been even more unhappy than he was—and he was quite unhappy enough. Then he began to wonder if "anything had happened" to Elfrida. She was dreadfully quiet inside there behind the panel. He wished he had not quarrelled with her. Everything was very miserable. He went to the window and looked out, as Elfrida had done, to see if he could see a red dress or a violet dress coming over the downs. But there was nothing. And the time got longer and longer, drawing itself out like a putty snake, when you rub it between your warm hands—and at last, what with misery, and having cried a good deal, and its being long past tea-time, he fell asleep on the window-seat.
He was roused by a hand on his shoulder and a voice calling his name.
Next moment he was in the arms of Aunt Edith, or as much in her arms as he could be with the window-bars between them.
When he told her where Elfrida was, and where the room-key was, which took some time, he began to cry again—for he did not quite see, even now, how he was to be got out.
"Now don't be a dear silly," said Aunt Edith. "If we can't get you out any other way I'll run and fetch a locksmith. But look what I found right in the middle of the path as I came up from the station."
It was a key. And tied to it was an ivory label, and on the label were written the words, "Parlour door, Arden."
"You might try it," she said.
He did try it. And it fitted. And he unlocked the parlour door and then the front door, so that Aunt Edith could come in.
And together they got the kitchen steps and found the secret spring and opened the panel, and got out the dusty Elfrida. And then Aunt Edith lighted the kitchen fire and boiled the kettle; they had tea, which every one wanted very badly indeed. And Aunt Edith had brought little cakes for tea with pink icing on them, very soft inside with apricot jam. And she had come to stay over Sunday.
She was as much excited as the children over the secret panel, and after tea (when Edred had fetched Emily from the wild-goose chase for a parcel at the station, on which she was still engaged), the aunt and the niece and the nephew explored the secret stair and the secret chamber thoroughly.
"What a wonderful lot of pigeons' feathers!" said Aunt Edith; "they must have been piling up here for years and years."
"It was lucky, you finding that key," said Edred. "I wonder who dropped it. Where's the other one, Elf?"
"I don't know," said Elfrida truthfully, "it isn't in my pocket now."
And though Edred and Aunt Edith searched every corner of the secret hiding-place they never found that key.
Elfrida alone knows that she gave it to the Mouldiwarp. And as Mrs. Honeysett declared that there had never been a parlour key with a label on it in her time it certainly does seem as though the Mole must have put the key he got from Elfrida on the path for Aunt Edith to find, after carefully labelling it to prevent mistakes. How the Mole got the label is another question, but I really think that finding a label for a key is quite a simple thing to do—I have done it myself. Whereas making a clock-face of white pigeon feathers is very difficult indeed—and a thing that I have never been able to do. And as for making that clock-face the means of persuading time to go fast or slow, just as one wishes—well, I don't suppose even you could do that.
Elfrida found it rather a relief to go back to the ordinary world, where magic moles did not upset the clock—a world made pleasant by nice aunts and the old delightful games that delight ordinary people. Games such as "Hunt the thimble," "What is my thought like," and "Proverbs." The three had a delightful weekend, and Aunt Edith told them all about the lodgers and the seaside house, which already seemed very long ago and far away. On Sunday evening, as they walked home from Arden Church, where they had tried to attend to the service, and not to look too much at the tombs and monuments of dead-and-gone Ardens that lined the chancel, the three sat down on Arden Knoll, and Aunt Edith explained things a little to them. She told them much more than they could understand about wills, and trustees, and incomes, but they were honoured by her confidence, and pleased by the fact that she seemed to think they could understand such grown-up kind of things. And the thing that remained on their minds after the talk, like a ship cast up by a high tide, was this: that Arden Castle was theirs, and that there was very little money to "keep it up" with. So that every one must be very careful, and no one must be at all extravagant. And Aunt Edith was going back to the world of lawyers, and wills, and trustees, early on Monday morning, and they must be very good children, and not bother Mrs. Honeysett, and never, never lock themselves in and hide the key in safe places.
All this remained, as the lasting result of the pleasant talk on the downs in the softly lessening light.
And another thing remained, which Edred put into words as the two children walked back from the station, where they had seen Aunt Edith into the train and waved their goodbyes to her.
"It is very important indeed," he said, "for us to find the treasure. Then we could 'keep up' the Castle without any bother. We must have it built up again first, of course, and then we'll keep it up. And we won't have any old clocks and not keeping together, this time. We'll both of us go and find the attic the minute our quarrel's three days old, and we'll ask the Mouldiwarp to send us to a time when we can really see the treasure with our own eyes. I do think that's a good idea, don't you?" he asked, with modest pride.
"Very," Elfrida said. "And I say, Edred, I don't mean to quarrel any more if I can help it. It is such a waste of time," she added in her best grown-up manner, "and does delay everything so. Delays are dangerous. It says so in the 'proverb' game. Suppose there really was a chance of getting the treasure and we had to wait three days because of quarrelling. But I'll tell you one thing I found out: you can get the Mole to come and help you, even if you have quarrelled a little. Because I did." And she told him how.
"But, I expect," she added, "it would only come if I were in the most awful trouble and all human aid despaired of."
"Well, we're not that now," said Edred, knocking the head off a poppy with his stick, "and I'm jolly glad we're not."
"I wonder," said Elfrida, "who lives in that cottage where the witch was. I know exactly where it is. I expect it's been pulled down, though. Let's go round that way. It'll be something to do."
So they went round that way, and the way was quite easy to find. But when they got to the place where the tumbledown cottage had been in Boney's time, there was only a little slate-roofed house with a blue bill pasted up on its yellow-brick face saying that somebody's A1 ginger-beer and up-to-date minerals were sold there. The house was dull to look at, and they did not happen to have any spare money for ginger-beer, so they turned round to go home and suddenly found themselves face to face with a woman. She wore a red-and-black plaid blouse and a bought ready-made black skirt, and on her head was a man's peaked cap such as women in the country wear now instead of the pretty sunbonnets that they used to wear when I was a little girl.
"So they've pulled the old cottage down," she said. "This new house'll be fine and dry inside, I lay. The rain comes in through the roof of the old one so's you might a'most as well be laying in the open medder."
The children listened politely, and both were wondering where they had seen this woman before, for her face was strangely familiar to them, and yet they didn't seem really to know her either.
"Most of the cottages 'bout here is just as bad as they always was," she went on. "When Arden has the handling of the treasure he'll see to it that poor folks lie warm and dry, won't he now?"
And then all in a minute the children both knew, and she knew that they knew.
"Why," said Edred, "you're the—"
"Yes," she said, "I'm the witch come from old ancient times. If you can go back I can go forth, because then and now's the same if I know how to make a clock."
"Can you make clocks?" said Elfrida. "I thought it was only—"
"So it be," said the witch. "I can't make 'em, but I know them as can. And I've come 'ere to find you, 'cause you brought me the tea and sugar. I've got the wise eye, I have. I can see back and forth. I looked forrard and I saw ye, and I looked back and I saw what you're seeking, and I know where the treasure is and—"
"But where did you get those clothes?" Edred asked; and it was a question he was afterwards to have reason to regret.
"Oh, clothes is easy come by," said the witch. "If it was only clothes I could be a crowned queen this very minute."
The children had a fleeting impression of seeing against the criss-cross fence of the potato patch a lady in crimson and ermine with a gold crown. They blinked, startled, and saw that there was no crimson and gold, only the dull clothes of the witch against the background of potato patch.
"And how did you get here?" Edred asked.
"That speckled hen of mine's a-settin' on the clock-face now," she said. "I quieted her with a chalk-line drawn from her beak's end straight out into the world of wonders. If she rouses up, then I'm back there, and I can't never come back here, my dears, not more than once, I can't. So let's make haste down to the Castle, and I'll show you where my great granny see them put the treasure when she was a little gell."
The three hurried down the steep-banked lane.
"Many's the time," the witch went on, "my granny pointed it out to me. It's just alongside where—"
And then the witch was not there any more. Edred and Elfrida were alone in the lane. The speckled hen must have recovered from her "quieting," and got off the clock.
"She's gone right enough," said Edred, "and now we'll never know. And just when she was going to tell us where it was. I do think it's too jolly stupid for anything."
"It's you that's too jolly stupid for anything," said Elfrida hotly. "What did you want to go asking her about her silly clothes for? It was that did it. She'd have told us where it was before now if you hadn't taken her time up with clothes. As if clothes mattered! I do wish to goodness you'd sometimes try to behave as if you'd got some sense."
"Go it!" said Edred bitterly. "As if everything wasn't tiresome enough. Now there's another three days to wait, because of your nagging. Oh, it's just exactly like a girl, so it is!"
"I'm—I'm sorry," said Elfrida, awestricken. "Let's do something good to make up. I'll give you that notebook of mine with the lead-pointed mother-of-pearl pencil, and we'll go round to all the cottages and find out which are leaky, so as to be ready to patch them up when we've got the treasure."
"I don't want to be good," said Edred bitterly. "I haven't quarrelled and put everything back, but I'm going to now," he said, with determination. "I don't see why everything should be smashed up and me not said any of the things I want to say."
"Oh, don't!" cried Elfrida; "it's bad enough to quarrel when you don't want to, but to set out to quarrel! Don't!"
Edred didn't. He kicked the dust up with his boots, and the two went back to the Castle in gloomy silence.
At the gate Edred paused. "I'll make it up now if you like," he said. "I've only just thought of it—but perhaps it's three days from the end of the quarrel."
"I see," said Elfrida; "so the longer we keep it up—"
"Yes," said Edred; "so let's call it Pax and not waste any more time."