The House of Arden · Chapter 10 (1/2)

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White Wings and a Brownie

Perhaps I had better begin this chapter by telling you exactly how Edred “got even with old Parrot-nose,” as he put it. You will remember that Master Parados was the Ardens’ tutor in the time of King James I, and that it was through his eavesdropping and talebearing that Edred and Elfrida were imprisoned in the Tower of London. There was very little time in which to get even with anyone, and, of course, getting even with people is not really at all a proper thing to do. Yet Edred did it.

Edred had got Elfrida out of the Tower just as Lady Nithsdale got her lord out, and now he and she and Cousin Richard were at Arden House, in Soho, and the old nurse, who was also, astonishingly, the old witch, had said that there was no time to be lost.

“But I must be even with old Parrot-nose,” said Edred. He was feeling awfully brave and splendid inside, because of the way he had planned and carried out the Nithsdale rescue of Elfrida; and also he felt that he could not bear to go back to his own times without somehow marking his feelings about Mr. Parados.

As to how it was to be done. Cousin Richard was not to have anything to do with it, because while they would be whisked away by some white road that the Mouldiwarp would find for them when they called it to their help by spoken poetry, he would be left behind to bear the blame of everything. This Edred and Elfrida decided in a quick-whispered conference, but Cousin Dick wanted to know what they were talking about, and why he wasn’t to help in what he had wanted to do these four years.

“If we tell you,” said Elfrida, “you won’t believe us.”

“You might at least make the trial,” said Cousin Richard.

So they told him, and though they were as quick as possible, the story took some time to tell. Richard Arden listened intently. When the tale was told he said nothing.

“You don’t believe it,” said Edred; “I knew you wouldn’t. Well, it doesn’t matter. What can we do to pay out old Parrot-nose?”

“I don’t like it,” said Richard suddenly; “it’s never been like this before. It makes it seem not real. It’s only a dream really, I suppose. And I always believed so that it wasn’t.”

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying,” said Edred, “but what we’ve been saying’s true anyhow. Look here.” He darted to the dark corner of the parlour, where he had hidden the camera behind a curtain. “Look here, I bet you haven’t got anything like this. It comes from our times, ever so far on in history⁠—out of the times where we come from⁠—the times that haven’t happened yet⁠—at least now we’re here they haven’t happened yet. You don’t know what it is. It’s a machine for the sun to make pictures with.”

“Oh, stow that,” said Richard wearily. “I know now it’s all a silly dream. But it’s not worth while trying to dream that I don’t know a Kodak when I see it. That’s a Brownie!”

There was a pause, full of speechless amazement.

Then⁠—“If you’ve dreamed about our times,” said Elfrida, “you might believe in us dreaming about yours. Did you dream of anything except Brownies? Did you ever dream of fine carriages, fine boats, and⁠—”

“Don’t talk as if I were a baby,” Richard interrupted. “I know all about railways and steamboats, and the Hippodrome and the Crystal Palace. I know Kent made 615 against Derbyshire last Thursday. Now, then⁠—”

“But I say. Do tell us⁠—”

“I shan’t tell you anything more. But I’ll help you to get even with Parrot-nose. I don’t care if I am left here after you go,” said Richard. “Let’s shovel all the snow off the roof into his room, and take our chance.”

Edred and Elfrida would have liked something more subtle, but there was no time to think of anything.

“I know where there are shovels,” said Richard, “if they’ve not got mixed up in the dream.”

“I say,” said Edred slowly, “I’d like to write that down about Kent, and see if it’s right afterwards.”

There was a quill sticking out of the pewter inkstand on the table where they were used to do their lessons. But no paper.

“Here, hurry up,” said Cousin Richard, and pulled a paper out of the front of his doublet. “I’ll write it, shall I?”

He wrote, and gave the thing screwed up to Edred, who put it in the front of his doublet.

Then the three went up on to the roof, groped among the snow till they found the edge of the skylight that was the tutor’s window⁠—for learning was lodged in the attic at Arden House. They broke the thick glass with the edges of their spades, and shovelled in the thick, white snow⁠—shovelled all the harder for the shouts and angry words that presently sounded below them. Then, when Mr. Parados came angrily up on to the roof, shivering and stumbling among the snow, they slipped behind the chimney-stack, and so got back to the trapdoor before he did, and shut it and bolted it, and said “A-ha!” underneath it, and went away⁠—locking his room door as they passed, and leaving him to stand there on the roof and shout for help from the street below, or else to drop through his broken skylight into the heaped snow in his room. He was quite free, and could do whichever he chose.

They never knew which he did choose, and you will never know either.

And then Richard was sent to bed by the old witch-nurse, and went.

And the Mouldiwarp was summoned, and insisted that the only way back to their own times was by jumping off the roof. And, of course, Mr. Parados was on the roof, which made all the difference. And the soldiers of the guard were knocking at the front door with the butts of their pistols.

“But we can’t go on to the roof,” said Edred, and explained about Mr. Parados.

“Humph,” said the Mouldiwarp, “that’s terr’ble unfortunate, that is. Well, the top landing window will have to do, that’s all. Where’s the other child?”

“Gone to bed,” said the witch-nurse shortly.

“Te-he!” chuckled the Mouldiwarp. “Some people’s too clever by half. Think of you not having found that out, and you a witch too. Te-he!”

And all the time the soldiers were hammering away like mad at the front door.

Elfrida caught the Mouldiwarp and the nurse caught Edred’s hand, and the four raced up the stairs to the very top landing, where there was a little window at the very end. The air was keen and cold. The window opened difficultly, and when it was opened the air was much colder than before.

“Now, then, out with you⁠—ladies first,” cried the Mouldiwarp.

“You don’t really mean,” said Elfrida⁠—“you can’t mean that we’re to jump out into⁠—into nothing?”

“I mean you’re to jump out right enough,” said the Mouldiwarp. “What you’re to jump into’s any pair of shoes⁠—and it’s my lookout, anyway.”

“It’s ours a little too, isn’t it?” said Elfrida timidly, and her teeth were chattering; she always said afterwards that it was with cold.

“Then get along home your way,” said the Mouldiwarp, beginning to vanish.

“Oh, don’t! Don’t go!” Elfrida cried, and the pounding on the door downstairs got louder and louder.

“If I don’t then you must,” said the Mouldiwarp testily. But it stopped vanishing.

“Put me down,” it said. “Put me down and jump, for goodness’ sake!”

She put it down.

Suddenly the nurse caught Elfrida in her arms and kissed her many times.

“Farewell, my honey love,” she said. “All partings are not forever, else I could scarce let thee go. Now, climb up; set thy foot here on the beam, now thy knee on the sill. So⁠—jump!”

Elfrida crouched on the window-ledge, where the snow lay thick and crisp. It was very, very cold. Have you ever had to jump out of a top-floor window into the dark when it was snowing heavily? If so, you will remember how much courage it needed. Elfrida set her teeth, looking down into black nothing dotted with snowflakes. Then she looked back into a black passage, lighted only by the rushlight the nurse carried.

“Edred’ll be all right?” she asked. “You’re sure he’ll jump all right?”

“Of course I shall,” said Edred, in his new voice. “Here, let me go first, to show you I’m not a coward.”

Of course, Elfrida instantly jumped. And next moment Edred jumped too.

It was a horrible moment because, however much you trusted the Mouldiwarp, you could not in an instant forget what you had been taught all your life⁠—that if you jumped out of top-floor windows you would certainly be smashed to pieces on the stones below. To remember this and, remembering it, to jump clear, is a very brave deed. And brave deeds, sooner or later, have their reward.

The brave deed of Edred and Elfrida received its reward sooner. As Elfrida jumped she saw the snowflakes gather and thicken into a cloud beneath her. The cloud was not the sort that lets you through, either. It was solid and soft as piled eiderdown feathers; she knew this as it rose up and caught her, or as she fell on it⁠—she never knew which. Next moment Edred was beside her, and the white, downy softness was shaping itself round and under them into the form of a seat⁠—a back, arms, and place for the feet to rest.

“It’s⁠—what’s that in your hand?” Elfrida asked.

“Reins,” said Edred, with certainty. “White reins. It’s a carriage.”

It was⁠—a carriage made of white snowflakes⁠—the snowflakes that were warm and soft as feathers. There were white, soft carriage-rugs that curled round and tucked themselves in entirely of their own accord. The reins were of snowflakes, joined together by some magic weaving, and warm and soft as white velvet. And the horses!

“There aren’t any horses; they’re swans⁠—white swans!” cried Elfrida, and the voice of the Mouldiwarp, behind and above, cried softly, “All white things obey me.”

Edred knew how to drive. And now he could not resist the temptation to drive the six white swans round to the front of the house and to swoop down, passing just over the heads of the soldiers of the guard who were still earnestly pounding at the door of Arden House, and yelled to them, “Ha, ha! Sold again!” Which seemed to startle them very much. Then he wheeled the swans round and drove quickly through the air along the way which he knew quite well, without being told, to be the right way. And as the snow-carriage wheeled, both Edred and Elfrida had a strange, sudden vision of another smaller snow-carriage, drawn by two swans only, that circled above theirs and vanished in the deep dark of the sky, giving them an odd, tantalising glimpse of a face they knew and yet couldn’t remember distinctly enough to give a name to the owner of it.

Then the swans spread their white, mighty wings to the air, and strained with their long, strong necks against their collars, and the snow equipage streamed out of London like a slender white scarf driven along in the wind. And London was left behind, and the snowstorm, and soon the dark blue of the sky was over them, jewelled with the quiet silver of watchful stars, and the deeper dark of the Kentish county lay below, jewelled with the quiet gold from the windows of farms already half-asleep, and the air that rushed past their faces as they went was no longer cold, but soft as June air is, and Elfrida always declared afterwards that she could smell white lilies all the way.

So across the darkened counties they went, and the ride was more wonderful than any ride they had ever had before or would ever have again.

All too soon the swans hung, poised on long, level wings, outside the window of a tower in Arden Castle⁠—a tower they did not know.

But though they did not know the tower, it was quite plain that they were meant to get in at the window of it.

“Dear swans,” said Elfrida, who had been thinking as she sat clutching her Brownie, “can’t we stay in your carriage till it’s light? We do so want to take a photograph of the castle.”

The swans shook their white, flat, snakelike heads, just as though they understood. And there was the open window, evidently waiting to welcome the children.

So they got out⁠—very much against their wills. And there they were in the dark room of the tower, and it was very cold.

But before they had time to begin to understand how cold it was, and how uncomfortable they were likely to be for the rest of the night, six swan’s heads appeared at the window and said something.

“Oh,” said Elfrida, “I do wish we’d learned Swanish instead of French at school!”

But it did not matter. The next moment the swans’ heads ducked and reappeared, holding in their beaks the soft, fluffy, white rugs that had kept the children so warm in the snow-carriage. The swans pushed the rugs through the window with their strong, white wings, and made some more remarks in swan language.

“Oh, thank you!” said the children. “Goodbye, goodbye.”

Then there was the rush of wide-going wings, and the children, tired out, cuddled on the floor, wrapped in the soft rugs.

The happiest kind of dreams were tucked up in that coverlet, and it seemed hardly any time at all before the children woke to find the winter sunshine looking in at them through the narrow windows of the tower.

Elfrida jumped up and threw off the silver-white, downy-soft coverlet. It instantly tore itself into five pieces of different shapes and sizes, and these screwed themselves up, and drew themselves in, and blew themselves out, and turned before her very eyes into a silver basin of warm water, a piece of lily-scented soap, a towel, a silver comb, and an ivory toothbrush.

“Well!” said Elfrida. When she had finished her simple toilet, the basin, soap, towel, toothbrush, and comb ran together like globules of quicksilver, made a curious tousled lump of themselves, and straightened out into the fluffy coverlet again.

“Well!” said Elfrida, again. Then she woke Edred, and his coverlet played the same clever and pretty trick for him.

And when the children started to go down with the Brownie and take the photographs of the castle, the shining coverlets jumped up into two white furry coats, such as the very affluent might wear when they went a-motoring⁠—if the very affluent ever thought of anything so pretty. And one of the coats came politely to the side of each child, holding out its arms as if it were saying⁠—

“Do, please, oblige me by putting me on.”

Which, of course, both the children did.

They crept down the corkscrew stairs, and through a heavy door that opened under the arch of the great gateway. The great gate was open, and on the step of the door opposite to the one by which they had come out a soldier sat. He held his helmet between his knees, and was scouring it with sand and whistling as he scoured. He touched his forehead with his sandy hand, but did not get up.

“You’re early afield,” he said, and went on rubbing the sand on the helmet.

“It’s such a pretty day,” said Elfrida. “May we go out?”

“And welcome,” said the man simply; “but go not beyond the twelve acre, for fear of rough folk and Egyptians. And go not far. But breakfast will have a strong voice to call you back.”

They went out, and instead of stepping straight on to the turf of the downs, their stout shoes struck echoing notes from the wooden planks of a bridge.

“It’s a drawbridge,” said Edred, in tones of awe; “and there’s a moat, look⁠—and it’s covered with cat-ice at the edges.”

There was, and it was. And at the moat’s far edge, their feet fast in the cat-ice, were reeds and sedge⁠—brown and yellow and dried, that rustled and whispered as a wild duck flew out of them.

“How lovely!” said Elfrida. “I do wish Arden had a moat now.”

“If we found out where the water comes from,” said Edred practically, “we might get the moat back when we’d found the treasure.”

So when they had crossed the moat, and felt the frozen dew crackle under their feet as they trod the grass, they set out, before photographing the castle, to find out where the moat water came from.