THE OTHER BOOK
They found the second book. It was not so heavy as the other, but in
it, too, there were only three or four pages of ladies in crinolines
and gentlemen in whiskers and chokers, leaning against marble pillars
with velvet curtains loosely draped in the background.
‘Be careful,’ Charlotte urged; ‘be quite ready to fly before you start
it.’
But when they pressed the little catch and sprang towards the door
ready to ‘fly,’ no silvery sound met the ear. In an awe-struck silence
they went slowly back to the table.
And now, looking more closely, they saw that the catch was not made
to press down but to slide along. Charlotte pushed it. A lid flew up,
and there was a space that had perhaps once held a musical box, but
now held a reel of silk, an old velvet needle-book with a view of the
Isle of Wight painted on it outside, and inside, needles red with many
a year’s rust; a box of beads with a glass top, a bone silk-winder, a
netting needle, and a sheet of paper with some finely pencilled writing
on it.
‘Bother!’ said Charles; ‘let’s start the other.’
But Charlotte was looking at the beads and Caroline was looking at the
writing.
‘What jolly little different beads, not a bit like now,’ said
Charlotte; and Caroline said:
‘It’s a list of books, that’s all. I say,’ she added in quite another
voice, ‘that Thessalonian book is underlined, _hard_, I wonder why?’
She unfolded the paper and turned it over. ‘There’s another underlined,
Pope’s Ill Something,’ she said.
‘_Iliad_,’ said Charles, looking over her shoulder. ‘I always know
Latin words the minute I see them, even if I don’t know what they mean.
Let’s start the other musical box.’
‘No,’ said Caroline quickly, ‘let’s find Pope’s What’s-its-name.
There’s only those two underlined. It’s a clue, that’s what it is. Come
on and don’t make a row. I feel we’re on the brink of—the very brink.
Punctuality and despatch.’
‘All the books in the dining-room’s names are in a book at the end
of the bottom shelf,’ said Charles. ‘I know, because I thought it was
_the_ book; the cover’s something like the one in the picture.’
It was easy to find Pope’s _Iliad_ in the Catalogue. ‘1 vol. Top shelf.
Case 6. Number 39,’ it said. Then there was a rush for Case 6 and a
dragging of chairs to the spot. Caroline being the tallest, reached the
volume and got it down.
‘The cover feels loose in my hand,’ she said. ‘Oh, I do believe it is!’
It was. From the loose boards whose back pretended that they were
covering Mr. Alexander Pope’s translation of the Greek epic, another
and quite different book came forth. A thin brown book, the second
book of the picture! Charlotte climbed on a chair expressly to compare
the two. There was no doubt of it. The two were the same. Inside was
yellowy paper with a queer sort of waviness about it, and large print
of that curious old-fashioned kind where the s’s are all like f’s,
except at the ends of words.
‘We can read this,’ said Charles hopefully. ‘I mean even _you_ can.
It’s not Latin this time. Let’s take it to uncle and tell him we’ve
found it. _Won’t_ he be delighted with us?’
‘We promised not to bother for a week,’ Charlotte reminded him. ‘Let’s
keep it for a week, and then we’ll give him the two together. He won’t
be able to believe his eyes. It _is_ an eyesore, isn’t it?’
‘I think what you mean’s a sight for sore eyes,’ Caroline suggested.
‘Let’s have a look. Is it spells?’
‘It looks like all about being ill,’ said Charlotte doubtfully; ‘but
it’s very hard with these s’s pretending to be f’s, and the spelling is
rum, isn’t it?’
‘All spelling’s rum, I think,’ said Charles; ‘especially ie’s and ei’s.’
‘I.E., except after C,’ said Charlotte absently, ‘It says, “Government
and Virtues. It is under the Moon!”’
‘What is?’
‘_I_ don’t know. It goes on: “It is a good wound-e herb-e and the juice
taken in wine helpeth the jaundice, and is ſovereign for the plague, if
ſo be the ſufferer be not too far gone in it.”’
‘What does? What is?’
‘“The flowers,”’ Charlotte read on, ‘“be large and yellow in forme and
in others paler and ſmaller. The ſtalk is two feet high and divideth
himſelf into many ſpreading branches.’”
‘What does?’
‘Rugged wort. It’s all about plants, I think, and what they’re good
for.’
‘How glorious!’ Caroline cried and clapped her hands. ‘Now we’ve got
all three. The spells, and the medicine, and the _Language Of_. And
what one won’t do, the other will. Hist! not a word!’ She had only just
time to throw the book into a chair and sit down on it as the door
opened, and Harriet entered with the tea-tray.
The Uncle did not come in to tea. Only Mrs. Wilmington looked in for a
moment to say that Rupert’s cold was worse, and that they had better
not see him again that day.
‘And please don’t be up and down stairs all the time in your heavy
boots,’ she added.
‘Our feet don’t seem to please her to-day, somehow, whatever we put
them in,’ said Charlotte. ‘I wish we could give her something to make
her like us. We might just as well be black-beetles.’
‘What we’ve got to do,’ said Caroline, pouring out milk, ‘is to get
Rupert better. I felt all the time in the drawing-room how hateful it
is for him to be out of things like this. If we could work something
out of the three books, I’m sure he would get all right in no time. A
threefold spell; that’s what we want.’
‘Well, we can’t have it then,’ said Charlotte. ‘I should think _two_
books would be ample. It’s only a cold he’s got. It might want the
three if it was plague or wounds or jauntry—jaundice, or whatever it
is.’
They spread out the book on the table as soon as tea was cleared away,
and put their heads together over the yellow pages. But it was some
time before they could find anything that seemed as though it could
possibly do Rupert any good.
‘What a beastly lot of herbs there are in the world,’ Charlotte
remarked. And Charles reminded her that they called any old flower an
herb in books.
‘What I can’t understand,’ he added, ‘is how people can possibly have
so many disgusting things the matter with them—palsy and leprosy and
quinsy, and all the other things as well.’
‘I don’t suppose people have them now,’ said Caroline consolingly.
‘Aunt Emmeline says Hygiene has got on so nicely, people don’t have
nearly such awful things the matter with them as they used. Look at
the Black Death in fourteen hundred something. You never hear of black
deaths now.’
‘I wonder whether funerals are black because of that,’ said Charles. ‘I
think there’s something in Latin about Black Death knocking the back
of the horseman with an even foot.’
‘I always did think Latin was nonsense,’ said Charlotte.
Their eyes were quite tired of the yellow paper and the long s’s before
the great idea occurred to them. It was Caroline who had it.
‘Let’s look up Roses,’ she said. ‘I’m sure the rose is Rupert’s lucky
flower. Perhaps if we made a conserve, or a decoction, or a tincture or
something——’
‘We promised not to give any one anything for their insides. I’ve just
remembered,’ said Charles. ‘How rotten!’
‘Never mind—let’s look! We’ll make it a spell as well. Out of the
_Language Of_. I expect it’ll work all right. Find Rose.’
They found Rose—pages and pages of it. The author of the _Herbal_ had
plenty to say. As he himself put it: ‘If I ſhould ſet down here all
uſes of the roſe my booke would be already too long.’
But after diligent search they found out that the rose is under the
dominion of Venus.
‘That’s all right,’ said Charles. ‘She had a little boy of her own. So
she’d know.’
Also, that the decoction of roses ‘is proper to cool the heat of
fevers.’
‘Only we don’t know what fever Rupert’s got,’ Charles said. ‘It might
be the scarlet kind or the swine kind, if humans have that.’
They also found that the rose was ‘a conſiderable reſtorative. The
bitterneſs of the roſes when they be freſh is of good uſe to cure
choler and watery humours.’
‘I suppose watery humours means when you’re in the humour to cry; he
isn’t that,’ said Charlotte.
Farther down the page they found: ‘The moiſt conſerve of roſes mixed
with mithridate and taken together is good for thoſe that are troubled
with diſtillations of rheum from the brain to the eyes and the noſe.’
‘That’s it!’ cried Caroline. ‘I knew the rose would do the trick! I
know a cold in the head is rheum. That’s French. I daresay it’s Latin
too,’ she added hastily. ‘But I never knew before that colds come from
your brain. I expect that’s what makes you feel so duffing when you’ve
got a cold.’
If a doubt was still left in any breast, it was set at rest when they
learned that ‘Red roſes procure reſt and ſleep,’ and that ‘a ſtrong
tincture of the roſe maketh a pleaſant julep, calmeth delirium, and
helpeth the action of the bark.’
‘Rest’s what he wants; the Wil-cat said so,’ Caroline shut the book
with a bang, ‘and if roses help the action of the bark, that’s the very
thing. She said the cough wanted easing.’
‘Does bark mean cough?’ Charles asked doubtfully.
‘You may depend it did in those old times,’ Caroline assured him. ‘Aunt
Emmeline told me lots of the words they call slang now, were book-words
once. “Swank” wasn’t slang in Shakespeare’s time, she said. And it’s
stopped raining. Let’s get the roses, and we can think about how we’ll
give them afterwards. Perhaps if he just smelt them.’
‘There was an old Roman Johnny,’ said Charles instructively; ‘he asked
all his friends to a party, and let down tons of rose leaves on them
till they died. Couldn’t we do that to Rupert? Not till he died, of
course, but till he got better.’
‘We might cover him with rose leaves,’ said Caroline, delighted with
the romantic idea, ‘like babes in the wood. Let’s get pillow-cases
full—I know where the linen-room is—and hide them till every one’s in
bed. And then put them over him. We ought to put something out of the
_Language Of_ as well. Iceland moss means health, I believe. Only there
isn’t any.’
A hasty search in the _Language of Flowers_ informed them that
nemophila meant ‘success everywhere’; and as nothing more suitable
could be found, it was decided to mix a few nemophila flowers with the
rose leaves.
‘There was a secret Society once called The Rosicurians. Aunt Emmeline
told me,’ said Caroline. ’_We_ shall be that if the roses cure Rupert.
I like being long-ago things, don’t you?’
The garden was very wet indeed. Even in mackintoshes it was difficult
to avoid getting wet through. Every tree dripped on the children’s
heads, and the water from the soaked rose leaves ran up their sleeves
and down their necks. There were so many fully-blown roses that it was
easy enough to fill the three frilled linen pillow-cases, though of
course it isn’t the sort of thing that is done all in a minute.
It was nearly bedtime when the three dripping children, each carrying a
dripping sack of rose leaves, stood outside the arbour which led to the
secret passage. They had gone out that way.
‘I know we were told not to,’ Charlotte had said, ’but it was only
the Wil-cat who told us, and it was only because the Uncle doesn’t
like other people to use the passage. And of course we’ll tell him
afterwards, and he’ll say it was all right. When we’ve cured Rupert
every one will say how clever.’
Yet now at the last they hesitated.
‘I do wish I could remember,’ said Caroline frowning, ’whether we _did_
promise not to go through the passage or whether it was only that we
were _told_ not to. It really does make _all_ the difference, doesn’t
it?’
(It often happens that grown-up people think children are disobedient
because really and truly the children _can’t_ remember whether they
promised or not, and naturally they give themselves the benefit of the
doubt. Sometimes the grown-ups do not, in their turn, give the children
this benefit.)
Neither Charles nor Charlotte could remember having promised.
‘Then here goes!’ said Caroline, pushing open the door. The candle they
had put there in readiness gave them enough light to fasten the bolts
by, and also to find the recess in the vault of the passage which they
had decided to use to hide the rose leaves in.
They listened at the other door, got safely into the passage and up
to their rooms. Caroline pulled off her wet things, put on her bath
slippers, and crept down with her bath towel to rub away the water they
had dripped on the floor by the door of the room where the secret
staircase was. They feared so wet a patch might prove a clue to Mrs.
Wilmington. But Mrs. Wilmington was with Rupert, putting cold bandages
on a very hot head, and before she left him for the night, the stones
were dry.
Perhaps you would not like to go down a secret staircase in the middle
of the night and into an underground passage, even to fetch rose
leaves to cure a sick friend? But the three C.’s were not afraid of
the darkness. Their mother had always accustomed them to go about in
the dark. It was a sort of game to them, to feel their way about the
house without a light, and to fetch sweets which their mother would put
ready for them. She used to tell them exactly where to find the little
packets, and so the dark was always mixed up in their minds with sweets
and expectation and pleasant things. And they only had to go down the
house stairs in the dark. Directly they got to the secret stair of
course they lighted the candle.
And now you see them in their quilted red dressing-gowns carrying up
the wet sacks of rose leaves. They felt their way to Rupert’s room. In
it a night-light was burning dimly. They lighted the dressing-table
candles.
‘Hullo!’ said Rupert; ’who’s that?’
‘It’s only us,’ whispered Caroline. ‘Is the fever very hot?’
‘It is now,’ said Rupert; ‘it was cold just now. I wish I could go to
sleep. I can’t though. I feel all hot and then all cold. It is beastly.’
‘We’ve brought you something nice and cool,’ said Charlotte. ‘You get
out of bed and you’ll see.’
Rupert, his eyes very shining, and his cheeks a bright scarlet, tumbled
out of bed in a very long night-shirt and rolled into the arm-chair by
the bed head. Caroline threw a blanket over him.
‘I _must_,’ she said, when he protested; ‘they always do when you’re
ill and they’re making your bed.’
The children turned back the bedclothes and emptied three sacks of
dripping rose leaves on to the bed.
‘Now,’ said Charles, shivering a little himself, ‘get in. I should
think that’s enough to cool the hottest fever.’
Rupert rolled into bed. He was really very feverish—if he had not been,
he would never have rolled into that couch of wet red rose leaves.
‘Oh, how ripping,’ he said; ‘it’s lovely; so cold, so cold. You are
bricks to bring them. And how sweet they are. No! don’t cover me up.
That’s what Mrs. Wilmington does. Let me get cool.’
‘They always cover you up,’ said Caroline severely. ‘Lie still, or the
spell won’t work.’
‘Oh, is it a spell?’ said Rupert. ‘I thought it was rose leaves. Sacks
of them, sacks and sacks and sacks and sacks and sacks. Each sack had
a cat, each cat had a kit, you know. I say, if I talk nonsense, it’s
because I want to. You’re not to think I don’t know it’s nonsense.’
‘You’re not to talk at all, even if you could talk sense,’ said
Charlotte, tucking the bedclothes very tightly round his neck. ‘Lie
still and say, “I am much better. I am quite well.” I have an aunt
called Emmeline, and she never has a doctor, and she always says that.’
‘I am much better. I am quite well,’ said Rupert obediently. ‘I am much
better. I am quite well. I am much better. I am a bell. I shall ring
presently for Mrs. Wilmington. I have a clapper inside my head. I am
much better. I am a bell.’ And so on, for a very long time.
‘This is the delirium it talked about,’ said Caroline in a satisfied
tone, and held the blankets down more firmly.
Presently Rupert began to shiver, and Charlotte fetched the eiderdowns
from the beds of the three, while the others held the blankets tightly
round Rupert, who now no longer seemed to know at all what he was
saying, nor who he was saying it to. He talked about India, and seemed
to fancy that Charles was his ayah and Caroline his syce. Charlotte he
mistook for the Murdstone man, which was very painful for her. But they
held the blankets tightly round him, even when he said it was too hot
out there in the sun and begged to have the punkahs set going.
[Illustration: Rupert rolled into bed.]
Then quite suddenly he went to sleep; they waited a little, and
when they were quite sure that he was asleep, they took up the fur
hearth-rug and put that on his bed for fear he should take cold, and
then, very cold indeed themselves, but quite certain that their spell
had cured Rupert, they crept back to their own beds—rather chilly
places without their eiderdowns.
‘I _know_ the spell will work,’ were Caroline’s last words. ‘You’ll
see, Rupert will be all right in the morning.’
* * * * *
At five o’clock Mrs. Wilmington crept into Rupert’s room to see if he
needed anything. The floor was strewn with wet, cold, crushed rose
leaves, and on it lay two wet sheets. Rupert, rolled in a tangle of
blankets, eiderdowns, and hearth-rug, was sleeping as a healthy baby
sleeps. She laid her hand very gently on his forehead. It was cool and
soft.
* * * * *
By breakfast-time Rupert was much better. The fever had gone.
‘So you see the spell _did_ work,’ said Caroline. ‘Rupert is much
better. I sometimes think we are much cleverer than grown-up people
think we are. Rupert is _much_ better.’
But all the three C.’s had dreadful colds in their heads.