IN THESSALONIANS
Now you may say it was Chance, or you may say it was Fate; or you may
say it was Destiny, or Fortune; in fact, you may say exactly what you
choose. But the fact remains unaltered by your remarks.
When Mrs. Wilmington placed a fat brown volume of sermons on the shelf
and said, ‘There, that’s the last,’ she, quite without meaning it, said
what was not true. For when tea was over the children found that the
fat sermon-book had _not_ been the last. The last was _Shadoxhurst on
Thessalonians_, a dull, large book, and Mrs. Wilmington had not put it
back in its place because she had not seen it. It was, in fact, lying
on the floor, hidden by the table-cloth. If Charles had not happened to
want his handkerchief, and gone down to look for it on the floor—its
usual situation when it was needed—they would not have seen the book
either.
Charles picked up _Thessalonians_, and the cover ‘came off in his
hand,’ as the handles of cups do in the hands of washing-up maids.
What was inside the cover fell on the floor with a thump, and Caroline
picked _that_ up.
‘_Shadoxhurst on Thessalonians_,’ Charles read from the cover.
‘This isn’t,’ said Caroline, looking at what had been inside. ‘It’s—I
say! Suppose it was the book—’
She looked up at the picture.
It was certainly _like_ the painted book.
‘Only it hasn’t any brass clasps,’ said Caroline; ‘but look—it _used_
to have clasps. You can see the marks where they used to go.’
You could.
‘Glory!’ cried Charlotte. ‘Fancy finding it the very first day! Let’s
take it to Uncle Charles.’
‘Perhaps it isn’t it,’ suggested Charlotte. ‘Then he’d be furious
perhaps.’
‘We’ll soon see.’ Charles reached out a hand. ‘Let’s have a squint. It
ought to be all magic and Abracadabra and crossed triangles like in
_Ingoldsby Legends_.’
‘I’ll have first look any way,’ said Caroline. ‘I found it.’
‘I found it,’ said Charles. ‘You only picked it up.’
‘You only dropped it. Oh, _bother_——’ she had opened the book, and now
let her hands fall, still holding it.
‘Bother what?’ asked the others.
‘It isn’t English. It’s French or Latin or something. Isn’t that _just_
like things! Here, you can look.’
Charles took the book. ‘It’s Latin,’ he said. ‘I could read it if
I knew a little more Latin. I can read some of it as it is. I know
_quam_, or _apud_, and _rara_. Let’s take it to the Uncle.’
‘Oh _no_,’ said Caroline. ‘Let’s find out what it is, first.’
It was not easy to find out. The title-page was missing, and _quam_,
_apud_, and _rara_, though quite all right in their way, gave but
little clue to what the book was about.
‘I wish we’d some one we could ask,’ said Charles. ‘I don’t suppose the
Wilmington knows any Latin. I don’t suppose she knows even _apud_ and
_quam_ and _rara_. If we had the Murdstone chap handy he could tell us,
I suppose.’
‘I’m glad we haven’t,’ Charlotte said. ‘I don’t suppose he’d tell us.
And he’d take it away. I say. I suppose there’s a church somewhere
near. And a clergyman. _He’d_ know.’
‘Of course he would,’ Caroline said with returning brightness. ‘Let’s
go and ask him.’
Half an hour later the children, coming down a deep banked lane, saw
before them the grey tower of the church, with elm-trees round it,
standing among old gravestones and long grass.
A white faced house stood on the other side of the churchyard.
‘I suppose the clergyman lives there,’ said Caroline. ‘Please,’
she said to a pleasant-looking hook-nosed man who was mending the
churchyard wall, and whistling ‘Blow away the morning dew’ as he
slapped on the mortar and trimmed off the edges with a diamond-shaped
trowel, ‘please, does the clergyman live in that house?’
‘He does,’ said the man with the trowel. ‘Do you want him?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Caroline.
‘Well, here he is,’ said the man with the trowel. ‘What can I do for
you?’
‘Do you mean to say that you’re _It_?—the clergyman, I mean,—I beg your
pardon,’ said Caroline; and the man with the trowel said, ‘At your
service.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Caroline again, very red as to her ears. ‘I
thought you were a working man.’
‘So I am, thank God,’ said the man with the trowel. ‘You see we haven’t
much money to spare. The parish is so poor. So we do any little
repairs ourselves. Did you ever set a stone? It’s awfully jolly. The
mortar goes on so nicely, and squeezes out pleasantly. Like to try?’ he
asked Charles.
Of course they all liked to try. And it was not till each had laid a
stone and patted it into place, and scraped off the mortar, and got
thoroughly dusty and dirty and comfortable, that any one remembered why
they had come.
‘Oh, this?’ said the clergyman—for so I must call him, though anything
less clergyman-like than he looked in his mortar-stained flannels and
blue blazer you can’t imagine. ‘It looks interesting. Latin,’ he said,
opening it carefully, for his hands were very dirty.
‘Yes,’ said Charles with modest pride. ‘I told them it was. I saw
_rara_ and _quam_ and _apud_.’
‘Quite so,’ said the clergyman; ‘_rara_, _quam_, and _apud_. Words of
Power.’
‘Oh, do _you_ know about Words of Power?’
‘Rather! Do you?’
‘Rather!’ they said. And if anything had been needed to cement this new
friendship well, there it was.
‘Look here,’ said the clergyman. ‘If you’ll just wait while I wash my
hands I’ll walk up with you. And I’ll look through the book and
report to you to-morrow.’
[Illustration: Of course they all liked to try.]
‘But what’s it about?’
‘About?’ said he, turning the leaves delicately with the least mortared
of his fingers. ‘Oh, it’s about spells and charms and things.’
‘How perfectly too lovely,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, do read us _one_—just
only _one_.’
‘Right O,’ was the response of this unusual clergyman, and he read:
‘“The seed of the fern if pulverised”—pounded—smashed, you know,—“and
laid upon the eyes at the twelfth hour”—midnight, you know—at least I
think that’s it—“last before the feast of St. John”—that’s to-morrow by
the way—“shall give to the eyes thus doctored”—treated—dealt with, you
know,—“the power to see that which is not to be seen.” It means you’ll
see invisible things. I say I _must_ wash. I feel the dirt soaking into
my bones. Will you wait?’
The children looked at each other. Then Charlotte said:
‘Look here. Don’t think we don’t like you. We do—awfully. But if you
walk up with us will you feel bound to tell uncle about the book?
Because it’s a secret. He’s looking for a book, and we think perhaps
this is it. But we don’t want to tell him till we’re quite sure.’
‘I found it inside Somebody-or-other-quite-dull on Thessalonians, you
know,’ said Charles, ‘and I saw it was Latin because of _quam_ and——’
‘My dear sir—and ladies,’ said the agreeable clergyman, ‘I am the
soul of honour. I would perish at the stake before I would reveal a
centimetre of your least secret. Trust me to the death.’
And off he went.
‘What a different clergyman,’ said Charles; ‘he is just like anybody
else—only nicer.’
‘He said thank God,’ Caroline reminded him; ‘he said it like being in
church too, not like cabmen and people in the street.’
‘He said “Thank God he was a working man,”’ said Charlotte. ‘I wonder
what he meant.’
‘I shall ask him some day,’ said Caroline, ‘when we know him better.’
But any one who had met the party as they went talking and laughing up
the hill would have thought they had known each other for long enough,
and could hardly know each other any better than they did.
* * * * *
Charles was dreaming of mortaring the Murdstone man securely into a
first-class railway carriage, and tapping him on the head with a brass
trowel which was also a candlestick, when he was awakened by a pinch
given gently. At the same moment a hand was laid on his mouth, and a
whisper said:
‘Hist!—not a word.’
‘Shut up,’ said Charles, recognising at once the voice of his sister
Charlotte. ‘I’m asleep. Don’t be a duffer. Go to bed.’
‘No, but,’ said Charlotte in the dark, ‘Caroline and I have been
talking about the fern-seed. And we’re going to try it—putting it on
our eyes, I mean. To see whether we can see invisible things.’
‘Silly,’ said Charles briefly.
‘All right. Only don’t say we didn’t ask you to join in.’
‘There isn’t any fern-seed,’ objected Charles.
‘Yes, there is. Mrs. Wilmington’s got some in the room they call the
housekeeper’s room. Under a bell-glass. Stupid little ferns; but I
expect the seed’s all right. Caro saw them when she went in to ask the
Wilmington if we might get up at seven instead of half-past because
of everything being so new and lovely. She meant because of the
charm-book, of course. And she saw the ferns then.’
‘Are you _really_ going to?’ asked Charles, warm in bed.
‘_Yes_,’ said Charlotte in a take-it-or-leave-it tone.
‘Oh, very well,’ said Charles; ‘only don’t forget I told you it was
silly rot. And of course nothing will happen. I was right about the
Latin, you know.’
‘Here’s your dressing-gown,’ said Charlotte, who had been feeling for
it in the mahogany wardrobe. ‘You can scrabble for your shoes with your
feet; I suppose they’re beside the bed. Hurry up.’
Charles got up, grumbling gently. It was not to be expected that he
would feel the same about this wild fern-seed idea as his sisters, who
had thought and talked of nothing else for more than three hours, and
had had to pinch each other to keep awake. Still, he got up, and they
all went down to Mrs. Wilmington’s room, which was warm and seemed
full of antimacassars, china ornaments, and cheerfully-bound copies of
the poets—the kind that are given for birthday presents and prizes,
beautiful outside, and inside very small print on thin paper that lets
the printing on the other side show through. Charlotte found this out
as they waited, by the light of their one candle, for it to be twelve
o’clock.
Caroline was plucking fronds of fern, carefully, so that the lack of
them should not disfigure the plants.
‘It’s all duffing,’ said Charles. ‘Don’t forget I said so. And how are
you going to pound the beastly stuff? You’ll wake the Wilmington and
the Uncle and the whole lot if you pound.’
‘I thought,’ said Caroline, hesitating with the fern-fronds in her
hand, and her little short pig-tail sticking out like a saucepan
handle, as Charles put it later, ‘I thought—it sounds rather nasty, but
it isn’t really, you know, if you remember it’s all _you_—I thought we
might _chew_ them. Each do our own, you know, and put them on our eyes
like a poultice. I know you hated it when Aunt Emmeline chewed the lily
leaves and put them on your thumb when you burnt it,’ she told Charles,
‘but then _her_ chewing is quite different from you doing it.’
‘_I_ don’t care,’ said Charles; ‘it’s only a bit more of your nonsense.
Give us the beastly seeds.’
‘They won’t come off the leaves,’ said Caroline. ‘We shall have to chew
the lot.’
‘In for a penny, in for a sheep,’ said Charlotte cheerfully. ‘I mean we
may as well be hanged for a pound as a lamb. I mean——’
‘_I_ know what you mean,’ Caroline interrupted. ‘Here you are. It’s
just on twelve. Chew for all you’re worth, and when the Wilmington’s
clock begins to strike put it on your eyes. And when it’s struck six
of them take it off. Yes. I’ve thought about it all. I’m sure that’s
right. Now, then, chew.’
‘I hope it’s not poison,’ said Charles; ‘you’ll remember I told you——’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ve often licked ferns, and I’m
not dead. I say—I daresay nothing will happen—but think how silly we
should feel if we hadn’t tried it. And this is the only night. He said
so.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Charles. ‘At any rate, if we do it you can’t be
always saying we ought to have.’
‘Chew,’ said Charlotte; and the clock began to strike.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six,’ said Mrs. Wilmington’s highly
ornamented pink china clock; and each child thrust a little bunch of
fern fronds into its mouth.
‘Seven,’ said the clock.
‘Now,’ said Caroline.
And each child.... But you picture the scene.
‘Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, purr,’ said the clock, and said no
more.
‘I don’t like to take it off,’ said Charlotte, her hands to her eyes.
‘Suppose we _did_ see something.’
‘We shan’t,’ said Charles.
‘You must,’ said Caroline.
‘Oh, well,’ said Charlotte, and took away the little poultice of chewed
fern from each eye.
‘There’s nothing,’ she said.
‘I knew there wouldn’t be,’ said Charles. ‘Perhaps another time you’ll
know I’m right.’
‘Never mind,’ said Caroline. ‘We did it. So we can’t keep bothering
about what might have happened if we had. Let’s go to bed. It was
decent of you to try, Charles, when you didn’t want to so much—Oh!’
‘What?’ said the others.
‘Poisoned,’ said Charles gloomily. ‘I knew it wasn’t safe. I expect you
chewed harder than we did, and—Oh!’
Charlotte had already said her ‘Oh.’ And now all three children were
staring straight before them at the window. And there, where a moment
ago was just black bare outside night, was a face—a white face with
wide dark eyes.
‘It’s true,’ gasped Caroline, ‘it is true—the fern-seed does——’
‘It’s not true,’ said Charles stoutly, his eyes on the face.
‘Oh, but it is,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, what’s going to happen now?’
And each child felt that the fern-seed had done what no one had, in
the deep heart, believed that it would do, and that their eyes now
gazed—seeing—upon the unseen.
‘I wish we hadn’t,’ said Charles. ‘I told you not to.’
The lips of the face outside moved, as though it were speaking.
‘No,’ cried Charlotte. ‘I don’t _want_ it to be true.’
A hand was raised—a hand outside the window. Would it knock at the
window? The fern-seed only made you see the unseen, not hear the
unheard. If the hand knocked at the window—and plainly it was going to
knock,—if the hand knocked, would they hear it?
The hand knocked.
[Illustration: A hand was raised.]