The House of Arden · Chapter 11 (1/3)

XI

Developments

“Come on,” said Edred, “you measure out the hypo and put the four pie-dishes ready. I’ll get the water.”

He got it, with Mrs. Honeysett’s help⁠—two brimming pails full.

“You mustn’t come in for anything, will you, Mrs. Honeysett?” he earnestly urged. “You see, if the door’s open ever so little, all the photographs will be done for.”

“Law, love a duck!” said Mrs. Honeysett, holding her fat waist with her fat hands. “I shan’t come in; I ain’t got nothing to come in for.”

“We’ll bolt the door, all the same,” said Edred, when she was gone, “in case she was to think of something.”

He shot the great wooden bolt.

“Now it’ll be quite dark,” he said.

And, of course, it wasn’t. You know the aggravating way rooms have of pretending to be quite dark until you want them to be dark⁠—and then⁠—by no means! This room didn’t even pretend to be dark, to begin with. Its shutters had two heart-shaped holes, high up, through which the light showed quite dazzlingly. Edred had to climb up on to the window-seat and stuff up the holes very tight with crushed newspaper, to get which he had to unbolt the door.

“There,” he said, as he pulled and patted the newspaper till it really and darkly filled the heart-shaped holes, “now it will be quite dark.”

And again it wasn’t! Long, dusty rays of light came through the cracks where the hinges of the shutters were. Newspapers were no good for them. The door had to be unbolted and Mrs. Honeysett found. She was sitting in a little low chair at the back door plucking a white chicken. The sight of the little white feathers floating fluffing about brought wonderful memories to Edred. But he only said⁠—

“I say, you haven’t any old curtains, have you? Thick ones⁠—or thin, if they were red.”

Mrs. Honeysett laid the chicken down among his white feathers and went to a chest of drawers that stood in the kitchen.

“Here you are,” she said, handing out two old red velvet curtains, with which he disappeared. But he was back again quite quickly.

“You haven’t got a hammer, I suppose?” said he.

The dresser-drawer yielded a hammer, and Edred took it away, to return almost at once with⁠—

“I suppose there aren’t any tacks⁠—?”

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Honeysett, laughing, “there ain’t much sense locking that still-room door on the inside when it ain’t me that keeps all a-popping in, but you that keeps all a-popping out.”

However, she gave him the tacks⁠—rusty ones, in a damp screw of paper.

When he had hammered his fingers a good deal and the tacks a little the tacks consented to hold up the curtain, or the curtain condescended to be held up by the tacks.

“And now,” said Edred, shutting the door, “it really is⁠—”

Dark, he meant. But of course it wasn’t. There was a gap under the door so wide, as Elfrida said, that you could have almost crawled through it. That meant another appeal to Mrs. Honeysett for another curtain, and this time Mrs. Honeysett told him to go along with him for a little worrit, and threw a handful of downy soft white feathers at him. But she laughed, too, and gave him the curtain.

At last it really was dark, and then they had to unbolt the door again, because Elfrida had forgotten where she had put the matches.

You will readily understand that, after all this preparation, the children were at the last point of impatience, and everything seemed to go slowly. The lamp with the red shade burned up presently, and then the four pie-dishes were filled with water that looked pink in that strange light.

“One good thing,” said Edred, “the hypo has had time to melt.”

And now there was careful snipping, and long ribbons of black paper curled unheeded round the legs of the operators.

“I wish we were born photographers like the man who took Aunt Edith and you on the beach with the donkey,” said Edred nervously, as he began to pass the film in and out of the water in pie-dish Number One.

“Oh, be sure there are no air-bubbles!” said Elfrida; “you might let me do some of it.”

“You shall do the next one,” said Edred, almost holding his breath.

Dear reader, do you recall the agitating moment when you pass the film through the hypo⁠—and hold it up to the light⁠—and nothing happens? Do you remember the painful wonder whether you may have forgotten to set the shutter? Or whether you have got hold of an unexposed film by mistake? Your breath comes with difficulty, your fingers feel awkward, and the film is unnaturally slippery. You dip it into the hypo-bath again, and draw it through and through with the calmness of despair.

“I don’t believe it’s coming out at all,” you say.

And then comes the glorious moment when you hold it up again to the red light and murmur rapturously, “Ah! it is beginning to show!”

If you will kindly remember all the emotions of those exciting moments⁠—on an occasion, let us say, when you had not had your camera very long⁠—then multiply by seven million, add x⁠—an unknown quantity of an emotion quite different from anything you have ever felt⁠—and you will have some idea of what Edred and Elfrida felt when the first faint, grey, formless patches began to appear on the film.

But you might multiply till you had used up the multiplication table, and add x’s as long as you could afford them, and yet never imagine the rapture with which the two children saw the perfect development of the six little perfect pictures. For they were perfect. They were perfect pictures of Arden Castle at a time when it, too, was perfect. No broken arches, no crumbling wall, but every part neat and clear-cut as they had seen it when they went into the past that was three hundred years ago.

They were equally fortunate with the second film. It, too, had its six faultless pictures of Arden Castle three hundred years ago. And the last film developed just as finely. Only, just before the moment which was the right moment for taking the film out of the hypo-bath and beginning to wash it, a tiny white feather fell out of Edred’s hair into the dish. It was so tiny that in that dim light he did not notice it. And it did not stick to the film or do any of those things which you might have feared if you had seen the little, white thing flutter down. It may have been the feather’s doing; I don’t know. I just tell you the thing as it happened.

Of course, you know that films have to be pinned up to dry.

Well, the first film was pinned on the right-hand panel of the door and the second film was pinned on the left-hand panel of the door. And when it came to the third, the one that had had the little white feather dropped near it, there was nothing wooden left to pin it to⁠—for the walls were of stone⁠—nothing wooden except the shutters. And it was pinned across these.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Edred, “because we needn’t open the shutters till it’s dry.”

And with that he stuck in four pins at its four corners, and turned to blow out the lamp and unbolt the door. He meant to do this, but the door, as a matter of fact, wasn’t bolted at all, because Edred had forgotten to do it when he came back with the dusters, so he couldn’t have unbolted it anyway.

But he could blow out the red-sided lamp; and he did.

And then the wonderful thing happened. Of course the room ought to have been quite dark. I’m sure enough trouble had been taken to make it so. But it wasn’t. The window, the window where the shutters were⁠—the shutters that the film was pinned on⁠—the film on which the little white feather had fallen⁠—the little white feather that had settled on Edred’s hair when Mrs. Honeysett was plucking that chicken at the back door⁠—that window now showed as a broad oblong of light. And in that broad oblong was a sort of shining, a faint sparkling movement, like the movement of the light on the sheet of a cinematograph before the pictures begin to show.

“Oh!” said Elfrida, catching at Edred’s hand. What she did catch was his hair. She felt her way down his arm, and so caught what she had meant to catch, and held it fast.

“It’s more magic,” said Edred ungratefully. “I do wish⁠—”

“Oh, hush!” said Elfrida; “look⁠—oh, look!”

The light⁠—broad, oblong⁠—suddenly changed from mere light to figures, to movement. It was a living picture⁠—rather like a cinematograph, but much more like something else. The something else that it was more like was life.

It seemed as though the window had been opened⁠—as though they could see through it into the world of light and sunshine and blue sky⁠—the world where things happen.

There was the castle, and there were people going across the drawbridge⁠—men with sacks on their backs. And a man with a silver chain round his neck and a tall stick in his hand, was standing under the great gateway telling them where to take the sacks. And a cart drove up, with casks, and they were rolled across the drawbridge and under the tall arch of the gate-tower. The men were dressed. Then something blinked, and the scene changed. It was indoors now⁠—a long room with many pictures on one side of it and many windows on the other; a lady, in a large white collar and beautiful long curls, very like Aunt Edith, was laying fine dresses in a chest. A gentleman, also with long hair, and with a good deal of lace about his collar and cuffs, was putting jugs and plates of gold and silver into another chest; and servants kept bringing more golden grand things, and more and more.

Edred and Elfrida did not say a word. They couldn’t. What they were looking at was far too thrilling. But in each heart the same words were uttered⁠—

“That’s the treasure!” And each mind held the same thought.

“If it only goes on till the treasure’s hidden, we shall see where they put it, and then we can go and find it.”

I think myself that the white Mouldiwarp was anxious to help a little. I believe it had arranged the whole of this exhibition so that the children might get an idea of the whereabouts of the treasure, and so cease to call on it at all hours of the day and night with the sort of poetry which even a mole must see not to be so very good. However this may be, it was a wonderful show. One seemed to see things better somehow like that, through the window that looked into the past, than one did who was really in the past taking an active part in what was going on.

There appeared, at any rate, to be no doubt that this really was the treasure, and still less that it was a treasure both plentiful and picturesque. Quickly and more quickly the beautiful rich things were being packed into the chests. More and more pale looked the lady; more and more anxious the gentleman.

The lady was taking from her waiting-woman little boxes and bundles with which the woman’s apron was filled, and the chest before which she was kneeling was nearly full when the door at the end of the gallery opened suddenly, and Elfrida and Edred, in the dark in the still-room, were confronted with the spectacle of themselves coming down the long picture-gallery towards that group of chests and treasure, and hurried human people. They saw themselves in blue silk and lace and black velvet, and they saw on their own faces fear and love, and the wonder what was to happen next. They saw themselves embraced by the grownups, who were quite plainly father and mother⁠—they saw themselves speak, and the grownups reply.

“I’d give all my pocket-money for a year to hear what they’re saying,” Edred told himself.

“That daddy’s just like my daddy,” Elfrida was telling herself; “and just like the daddy in the Tower that was so like my own daddy.”

Then the children in the picture kneeled down, and the daddy in the picture laid his hands on their heads, and the children out of the picture bent their own heads there in the dark still-room, for they knew what was happening in the picture. Elfrida even half held out her arms; but it was no good.

Again the scene changed. A chest was being carried by four men, who strained and staggered under its weight. They were carrying it along a vaulted passage by ropes that passed under the chest and over their shoulders. Every now and then they set it down and stretched, and wiped their faces. And the picture kept on changing so that the children seemed to be going with the men down a flight of stairs into a spacious hall full of men, all talking, and very busy with armour and big boots, and then across the courtyard, full of more men, very busy too, polishing axes and things that looked like spears, cleaning muskets and fitting new flints to pistols and sharpening swords on a big grindstone. Edred would have loved to stay and watch them do these things, but they and their work were gone quite quickly, and the chest and the men who carried it were going under an archway. Here one of the men wanted to rest again, but the others said it was not worth while⁠—they were almost there. It was quite plain that they said this, though no sound could be heard.

“Now we shall really know,” said Edred to himself. Elfrida squeezed his hand. That was just what she was thinking, too.

The men stopped at a door, knocked, knocked again, and yet once more. And, curiously enough, the children in the still-room could hear the sound of the knocking quite plainly, though they had heard nothing else.

The men looked at each other across the chest that they had set down. Then one man set his shoulder to the door. There was a scrunching sound and the picture disappeared⁠—went out; and there were the shutters with the film pinned across them, and behind them the door, open, and Mrs. Honeysett telling them that dinner⁠—which was roast rabbit and a boiled hand of pork⁠—would be cold if they didn’t make haste and come along.

“Oh, Mrs. Honeysett,” said Elfrida, with deep feeling, “you are too bad⁠—you really are!”

“I hope I’ve not spoiled the photos,” said Mrs. Honeysett; “but I did knock three times, and you was that quiet I was afraid something had happened to you⁠—poisoned yourselves without thinking, or something of that.”

“It’s too bad,” said Edred bitterly; “it’s much too bad. I don’t want any dinner; I don’t want anything. Everything’s spoiled.”

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Honeysett patiently, “I might ha’ gone on knocking longer, only I thought the door was bolted⁠—you did so keep on a-bolting of it at the beginning, didn’t you? So I just got hold of the handle to try, and it come open in my hand. Come along, lovey; don’t bear malice now. I didn’t go for to do it. An’ I’ll get you some more of whatever it is that’s spoiled, and you can take some more photos tomorrow.”

“You might have known we were all right,” said Edred, still furious; but both thought it only fair to say, “It wasn’t the photographs that were spoiled”⁠—and they said it at the same moment.

“Then what was it?” said Mrs. Honeysett. “And do come along, for goodness’ sake, and eat your dinner while it’s hot.”

“It was⁠—it was a different sort of picture,” said Elfrida, with a gulp, “and it was a pity.”

“Never mind, love,” said Mrs. Honeysett, who was as kind as a grandmother, and I can’t say more than that; “there’s a lovely surprise coming by and by for good little gells and boys, and the rabbit’ll be stone cold if you don’t make haste⁠—leastways, it would have been if I hadn’t thought to pop it in the oven when I came to call you, knowing full well what your hands would be like after all that messing about with poison in dishes; and if I was your aunt I’d forbid it downright. And now come along and wash your hands, and don’t let’s have any more nonsense about it. Do you hear?”

I daresay you notice that Mrs. Honeysett was quite cross at the end of this speech and quite coaxing and kind at the beginning. She had just talked herself into being cross. It’s quite easy. I daresay you have often done it.