The House of Arden · Chapter 8 (2/3)

“Yes, of course⁠ ⁠… but⁠ ⁠… look here! You remember the water-shoot at Earl’s Court, and you were so frightened.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were; and I didn’t half like it myself. I wished we hadn’t, rather. And when it started, and we knew we’d got to go on with it. Oh, horrible! And when it was over we wanted to go again, and we did, and it’s been so jolly to remember. This is like that. See?”

“I don’t,” said Edred, “understand a single word you say. This isn’t a bit like the water-shoot or anything. Now, is it?”

Elfrida frowned. Afterwards she was glad that she had done no more than frown. It is dangerous, as you know, to quarrel in a boat, but far more dangerous to quarrel in a century that is not your own. She frowned and opened her mouth. And just as her mouth opened the door of the room followed its example, and a short, dark, cross-looking woman in a brown skirt and strange cap came hurrying in.

“So it’s here you’ve hidden yourselves!” she cried. “And I looking high and low to change your dress.”

“What for?” said Edred, for it was his arm which she had quite ungently caught.

“For what?” she said, as she dragged him out of the room. “Why, to attend my lord your father and your lady mother at the masque at Whitehall. Had you forgot already? And thou so desirous to attend them in thy new white velvet broidered with the orange-tawny, and thy lady mother’s diamond buckles, and the silken cloak, and the shoe-roses, and the cobweb-lawn starched ruff, and the little sword and all.”

The woman had dragged Edred out of the room and by the stairs by this time. Elfrida, following, decided that her speech was the harshest part of her.

“If she was really horrid,” thought the girl, “she wouldn’t try to cheer him up with velvet and swords and diamond buckles.

“Can’t I go?” she said aloud.

The woman turned and slapped her⁠—not hard, but smartly. “I told thee how it would be if thou wouldst not hold that dunning tongue. No; thou can’t go. Little ladies stay at home and sew their samplers. Thou’ll go to Court soon enough, I warrant.”

So Elfrida sat and watched while Edred was partially washed⁠—the soap got in his eyes just as it gets in yours nowadays⁠—and dressed in the beautiful white page’s dress, white velvet, diamond buckles, little sword, and all.

“You are splendid,” she said. “Oh, I do wish I was a boy!” she added, for perhaps the two thousand and thirty-second time in her short life.

“It’s not that thou’ll be wishing when thy time comes to go to Court,” said the woman. “There, my little lord, give thy old nurse a kiss and stand very cautious and perfect, not to soil thy fine feathers. And when thou hearest thy mother’s robes on the stairs go out and make thy bow like thy tutor taught thee.”

It was not Edred’s tutor who had taught him to bow. But when a rustling of silks sounded on the stairs he was able to go out and make a very creditable obeisance to the stately magnificence that swept down towards him. Elfrida thought it best to curtsey beside her brother. Aunt Edith had taught them to dance the minuet, and somehow the bow and curtsey which belong to that dance seemed the right thing now. And the lady on the stairs smiled, well pleased. She was a wonderfully dressed lady. Her bodice was of yellow satin, richly embroidered; her petticoat of gold tissue with stripes; her robe of red velvet, lined with yellow muslin with stripes of pure gold. She had a point lace apron and a collar of white satin under a delicately worked ruff. And she was a blaze of beautiful jewels.

“Thou’rt a fine page, indeed, my dear son,” said the lady. “Stand aside and take my train as I pass. And thou, dear daughter, so soon as thou’rt of an age for it, thou shalt have a train and a page to carry it for thee.”

She swept on, and the children followed. Lord Arden was in the hall, hardly less splendid than his wife, and they all went off in a coach that was very grand, if rather clumsy. Its shape reminded Elfrida of the coach which the fairy-godmother made for Cinderella out of the pumpkin, and she herself, as she peeped through the crowd of liveried servants to see it start, felt as much like Cinderella as anyone need wish to feel, and perhaps a little more. But she consoled herself by encouraging a secret feeling she had that something was bound to happen; and sure enough something did. And that is what I am going to tell you about. I own that I should like to tell you also what happened to Edred, but his part of the adventure was not really an adventure at all⁠—though it was a thing that he will never forget as long as he remembers any magic happenings.

“We went to the King’s house,” he told Elfrida later. “Whitehall is the name. I should like to call my house Whitehall⁠—if it wasn’t called Arden Castle, you know. And there were thousands of servants, I should think, all much finer than you could dream of, and lords and ladies, and lots of things to eat, and bear-baiting and cockfighting in the garden.”

“Cruel!” said Elfrida. “I hope you didn’t look.”

“A little I did,” said Edred. “Boys have to be brave to bear sights of blood and horror, you know, in case of them growing up to be soldiers. But I liked the masque best. The Queen acted in it. There wasn’t any talking, you know, only dressing up and dancing. It was something like the pantomime, but not so sparkly. And there was a sea with waves that moved all silvery, and panelled scenes, and dolphins and fishy things, and a great shell that opened, and the Queen and the ladies came out and danced, and I had a lot to eat, such rummy things, and then I fell asleep, and when I woke up the King himself was looking at me and saying I had a bonny face. Bonny means pretty. You’d think a King would know better, wouldn’t you?”

This was all that Edred could find to tell. I could have told more, but one can’t tell everything, and there is Elfrida’s adventure to be told about.

When the coach had disappeared in the mist and the mud⁠—for the weather was anything but summer weather⁠—Elfrida went upstairs again to the room where she had left the old nurse. She did not know where else to go.

“Sit thee down,” said the nurse, “and sew on thy sampler.”

There was the sampler, very fine indeed, in a large polished wood frame.

“I wish I needn’t,” said Elfrida, looking anxiously at the fine silks.

“Tut, tut,” said the nurse, “how’ll thee grow to be a lady if thou doesn’t mind thy needle?”

“I’d much rather talk to you,” said Elfrida coaxingly.

“Thou canst chatter as well as sew,” the nurse said, “as well I know to my cost. Would that thy needle flew so fast as thy tongue! Sit thee down, and if the little tree be done by dinnertime thou shalt have leave to see thy Cousin Richard.”

“I suppose,” thought Elfrida, taking up the needle, “that I am fond of my Cousin Richard.”

The sewing was difficult, and hurt her eyes, but she persevered. Presently someone called the nurse, and Elfrida was left alone. Then she stopped persevering. “Whatever is the good,” she asked herself, “of working at a sampler that you haven’t time to finish, and that would be worn out, anyhow, years and years before you were born? The Elfrida who’s doing that sampler is the same age as me, and born the same day,” she reflected. And then she wondered what the date was, and what was the year. She was still wondering, and sticking the needle idly in and out of one hole, without letting it take the silk with it, when there was a sort of clatter on the stairs, the door burst open, and in came a jolly boy of about her own age.

“Thy task done?” he cried. “Mine too. Old Parrot-nose kept me hard at it, but I thought of thee, and for once I did all his biddings. So now we are free. Come, play ball in the garden.” This, Elfrida concluded, must be Cousin Dick, and she decided at once that she was fond of him.

There was a big and beautiful garden behind the house. The children played ball there, and they ran in the box alleys, and played hide-and-seek among the cut trees and stone seats, and statues and fountains.

Old Parrot-nose, who was Cousin Richard’s tutor, and was dressed in black, and looked as though he had been eating lemons and vinegar, sat on a seat and watched them, or walked up and down the flagged terrace with his thumb in a dull-looking book.

When they stopped their game to rest on a stone step, leaning against a stone seat, old Parrot-nose walked very softly up behind the seat, and stood there where they could not see him and listened. Listening is very dishonourable, as we all know, but in those days tutors did not always think it necessary to behave honourably to their pupils.

I always have thought, and I always shall think, that it was the eavesdropping of that tiresome old tutor, Mr. Parados⁠—or Parrot-nose⁠—which caused all the mischief. But Elfrida has always believed, and always will believe, that the disaster was caused by her knowing too much history. That is why she is so careful to make sure that no misfortune shall ever happen on that account, any way. That is one of the reasons why she never takes a history prize at school. “You never know,” she says. And, in fact, when it comes to a question in an historical examination, she never does know.

This was how it happened. Elfrida, now that she was no longer running about in the garden, remembered the question that she had been asking herself over the embroidery frame, and it now seemed sensible to ask the question of someone who could answer it. So she said⁠—

“I say, Cousin Richard, what day is it?”

Elfrida understood him to say that it was the fifth of November.

“Is it really?” she said. “Then it’s Guy Fawkes day. Do you have fireworks?” And in pure lightness of heart began to hum⁠—

“Please to remember

The Fifth of November

The gunpowder treason and plot.

I see no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.”

“ ’Tis not a merry song, cousin,” said Cousin Richard, “nor a safe one. ’Tis best not to sing of treason.”

“But it didn’t come off, you know, and he’s always burnt in the end,” said Elfrida.

“Are there more verses?” Cousin Dick asked.

“No.”

“I wonder what treason the ballad deals with?” said the boy.

“Don’t you know?” It was then that Elfrida made the mistake of showing off her historical knowledge. “I know. And I know some of the names of the conspirators, too, and who they wanted to kill, and everything.”

“Tell me,” said Cousin Richard idly.

“The King hadn’t been fair to the Catholics, you know,” said Elfrida, full of importance, “so a lot of them decided to kill him and the Houses of Parliament. They made a plot⁠—there were a whole lot of them in it. They said Lord Arden was, but he wasn’t, and some of them were to pretend to be hunting, and to seize the Princess Elizabeth and proclaim her Queen, and the rest were to blow the Houses of Parliament up when the King went to open them.”

“I never heard this tale from my tutor,” said Cousin Richard laughing. “Proceed, cousin.”

“Well, Mr. Piercy took a house next the Parliament House, and they dug a secret passage to the vaults under the Parliament Houses; and they put three dozen casks of gunpowder there and covered them with faggots. And they would have been all blown up, only Mr. Tresham wrote to his relation, Lord Monteagle, that they were going to blow up the King and⁠—”

“What King?” said Cousin Richard.

“King James the First,” said Elfrida. “Why⁠—what⁠—” for Cousin Richard had sprung to his feet, and old Parrot-nose had Elfrida by the wrist.

He sat down on the seat and drew her gently till she stood in front of him⁠—gently, but it was like the hand of iron in the velvet glove (of which, no doubt, you have often read).

“Now, Mistress Arden,” he said softly, “tell me over again this romance that you tell your cousin.”

Elfrida told it.

“And where did you hear this pretty story?” he asked.

“Where are we now?” gasped Elfrida, who was beginning to understand.

“Here in the garden⁠—where else?” said Cousin Richard, who seemed to understand nothing of the matter.

“Here⁠—in my custody,” said the tutor, who thought he understood everything. “Now tell me all⁠—every name, every particular⁠—or it will be the worse for thee and thy father.”

“Come, sir,” said Cousin Richard, “you frighten my cousin. It is but a tale she told. She is always merry, and full of many inventions.”

“It is a tale she shall tell again before those of higher power than I,” said the tutor, in a thoroughly disagreeable way, and his hand tightened on Elfrida’s wrist.

“But⁠—but⁠—it’s history,” cried Elfrida, in despair. “It’s in all the books.”

“Which books?” he asked keenly.

“I don’t know⁠—all of them,” she sullenly answered; sullenly, because she now really did understand just the sort of adventure in which her unusual knowledge of history, and, to do her justice, her almost equally unusual desire to show off, had landed her.

“Now,” said the hateful tutor, for such Elfrida felt him to be, “tell me the names of the conspirators.”

“It can’t do any harm,” Elfrida told herself. “This is James the First’s time, and I’m in it. But it’s three hundred years ago all the same, and it all has happened, and it can’t make any difference what I say, so I’d better tell all the names I know.”

The hateful tutor shook her.

“Yes, all right,” she said; and to herself she added, “It’s only a sort of dream; I may as well tell.” Yet when she opened her mouth to tell all the names she could remember of the conspirators of the poor old Gunpowder Plot that didn’t come off, all those years ago, she found herself not telling those names at all. Instead, she found herself saying⁠—

“I’m not going to tell. I don’t care what you do to me. I’m sorry I said anything about it. It’s all nonsense⁠—I mean, it’s only history, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself, listening behind doors⁠—I mean, out of doors behind stone seats, when people are talking nonsense to their own cousins.”

Elfrida does not remember very exactly what happened after this. She was furiously angry, and when you are furiously angry things get mixed and tangled up in a sort of dreadful red mist. She only remembers that the tutor was very horrid, and twisted her wrists to make her tell, and she screamed and tried to kick him; that Cousin Richard, who did not scream, did, on the other hand, succeed in kicking the tutor; that she was dragged indoors and shut up in a room without a window, so that it was quite dark.

“If only I’d got Edred here,” she said to herself, with tears of rage and mortification, “I’d try to make some poetry and get the Mouldiwarp to come and fetch us away. But it’s no use till he comes home.”

When he did come home⁠—after the bear-baiting and the cockfighting and the banquet and the masque⁠—Lord and Lady Arden came with him, of course. And they found their house occupied by an armed guard, and in the dark little room a pale child exhausted with weeping, who assured them again and again that it was all nonsense, it was only history, and she hadn’t meant to tell⁠—indeed she hadn’t. Lady Arden took her in her arms and held her close and tenderly, in spite of the grand red velvet and the jewels.

“Thou’st done no harm,” said Lord Arden; “a pack of silly tales. Tomorrow I’ll see my Lord Salisbury and prick this silly bubble. Go thou to bed, sweetheart,” he said to his wife, “and let the little maid lie with thee⁠—she is all a-tremble with tears and terrors. Tomorrow, my Lord Secretary shall teach these popinjays their place, and Arden House shall be empty of them, and we shall laugh at this fine piece of work that a solemn marplot has made out of a name or two and a young child’s fancies. By tomorrow night all will be well, and we shall lie down in peace.”