IN BONEY'S TIMES
Edred crept back to his stool, and took his corner of the marble-backed
book of Dr. Watts with fingers that trembled. If you are inclined to
despise him, consider that it was his first real adventure. Even in
ordinary life, and in the time he naturally lived in, nothing
particularly thrilling had ever happened to happen to him until he
became Lord Arden and explored Arden Castle. And now he and Elfrida had
not only discovered a disused house and a wonderful garret with chests
in it, but had been clothed by mysterious pigeon noises in clothes
belonging to another age. But, you will say, pigeon noises can't clothe
you in anything, whatever it belongs to. Well, that was just what Edred
told himself at the time. And yet it was certain that they did. This
sort of thing it was that made the whole business so mysterious.
Further, he and his sister had managed somehow to go back a hundred
years. He knew this quite well, though he had no evidence but that one
sheet of newspaper. He felt it, as they say, in his bones. I don't know
how it was, perhaps the air felt a hundred years younger. Shepherds and
country people can tell the hour of night by the feel of the air. So
perhaps very sensitive people can tell the century by much the same
means. These, of course, would be the people to whom adventures in times
past or present would be likely to happen. We must always consider what
is likely, especially when we are reading stories about unusual things.
"I say," Edred whispered presently, "we've got back to 1807. That paper
says so."
"I know," Elfrida whispered. So she must have had more of that
like-shepherds-telling-the-time-of-night feeling than even her brother.
"I wish I could remember what was happening in history in 1807," said
Elfrida, "but we never get past Edward IV. We always have to go back to
the Saxons because of the new girls."
"But we're not in history. We're at Arden," Edred said.
"We _are_ in history. It'll be awful not even knowing who's king," said
Elfrida; and then the stiff old lady looked up over very large
spectacles with thick silver rims, and said--
"Silence!"
Presently she laid down the _Times_ and got ink and paper--no
envelopes--and began to write. She was finishing a letter, the large
sheet was almost covered on one side. When she had covered it quite, she
turned it round and began to write across it. She used a white
goose-quill pen. The inkstand was of china, with gold scrolls and cupids
and wreaths of roses painted on it. On one side was the ink-well, on the
other a thing like a china pepper-pot, and in front a tray for the pens
and sealing-wax to lie in. Both children now knew their unpleasant poem
by heart; so they watched the old lady, who was grandmother to the
children she supposed them to be. When she had finished writing she
sprinkled some dust out of the pepper-pot over the letter to dry the
ink. There was no blotting-paper to be seen. Then she folded the sheet,
and sealed it with a silver seal from the pen-tray, and wrote the
address on the outside. Then--
"Have you got your task?" she asked.
"Here it is," said Elfrida, holding up the book.
"No impudence, miss!" said the grandmother sternly. "You very well know
that I mean, have you got it by rote yet? And you know, too, that you
should say 'ma'am' whenever you address me."
"Yes, ma'am," said Elfrida; and this was taken to mean that she knew her
task.
"Then come and say it. No, no; you know better than that. Feet in the
first position, hands behind you, heads straight, and do not fidget with
your feet."
So then first Elfrida and then Edred recited the melancholy verses.
"Now," said the old lady, "you may go and play in the garden."
"Mayn't we take your letter to the post?" Elfrida asked.
"Yes; but you are not to stay in the 'George' bar, mind, not even if
Mrs. Skinner should invite you. Just hand her the letter and come out.
Shut the door softly, and do not shuffle with your feet."
"Yes, ma'am," said Elfrida; and on that they got out.
"They'll find us out--bound to," said Edred; "we don't know a single
thing about anything. I don't know where the 'George' is, or where to
get a stamp, or anything."
"We must find some one we can trust, and tell them the truth," said
Elfrida.
"There isn't any one," said Edred, "that I'd trust. You can't trust the
sort of people who stick this sort of baby flummery round a chap's
neck." He crumpled his starched frill with hot, angry fingers.
"Mine prickles all round, too," Elfrida reminded him, "and it's lower,
and you get bigger as you go down, so it prickles more of me than yours
does you."
"Let's go back to the attic and try and get back into our own time. I
expect we just got in to the wrong door, don't you? Let's go now."
"Oh, no," said Elfrida. "How dreadfully dull! Why, we shall see all
sorts of things, and be top in history for the rest of our lives. Let's
go through with it."
"Do you remember which door it was--the attic, I mean?" Edred suddenly
asked. "Was it the third on the left?"
"I don't know. But we can easily find it when we want it."
"I'd like to know _now_," said Edred obstinately. "You never know when
you _are_ going to want things. Mrs. Honeysett says you ought always to
be able to lay your hand on anything you want the moment you _do_ want
it. I should like to be quite certain about being able to lay our hands
on our own clothes. Suppose some one goes and tidies them up. You know
what people are."
"All right," said Elfrida, "we'll go and tidy them up ourselves. It
won't take a minute."
It would certainly not have taken five--if things had been as the
children expected. They raced up the stairs to the corridor where the
prints were.
"It's not the first door, I'm certain," said Edred, so they opened the
second. But it was not that either. So then they tried all the doors in
turn, even opening, at last, the first one of all. And it was not that,
even. _It was not any of them._
"We've come to the wrong corridor," said the boy.
"It's the only one," said the girl. And it was. For though they hunted
all over the house, upstairs and downstairs, and tried every door, the
door of the attic they could not find again. And what is more, when they
came to count up, there were fifty-seven doors without it.
"Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven," said Elfrida, and ended in a
sob,--"the door's gone! We shall have to stay here for ever and ever.
Oh, I want auntie--I do, I do!"
She sat down abruptly on a small green mat in front of the last door,
which happened to be that of the kitchen.
Edred says he did not cry too. And if what he says is true, Elfrida's
crying must have been louder than was usual with her; for the kitchen
door opened, and the two children were caught up in two fat arms and
hurried into a pleasant kitchen, where bright brass and copper pots hung
on the walls, and between a large fire and a large meat screen a leg of
mutton turned round and round with nobody to help it.
"Hold your noise," said the owner of the fat arms, who now proved to be
a very stout woman in a chocolate-coloured print gown sprigged with blue
roses. She had a large linen apron and a cap with flappy frills, and
between the frills just such another good, kind, jolly face as Mrs.
Honeysett's own. "Here, stop your mouths," she said, "or your granny'll
be after you--to say nothing of Boney. Stop your crying, do, and see
what cookie's got for you."
She opened a tin canister and picked out two lumps of brown stuff that
looked like sand--about the size and shape of prunes they were.
"What's that?" Edred asked.
"Drabbit me," said the cook, "what a child it is! Not know sugar when he
sees it! Well, well, Master Edred, what next, I should like to know?"
The children took the lumps and sucked them. They were of sugar, sure
enough, but the sugar had a strong, coarse taste behind its sweetness,
and if the children had really not been quite extra polite and kind they
would have followed the promptings of Nature and---- But, of course,
they knew that this would be both disgusting and ungrateful. So they got
the sugar down somehow, while cook beamed at them with a wide, kind
smile between her cap-frills, and two hands, as big as little beefsteak
puddings, on her hips.
"Now, no more crybabying," she said; "run along and play."
"We've got to take granny's letter to post," said Edred, "and we
don't----"
"Cook," said Elfrida, on a sudden impulse, "can you keep a secret?"
"Can't I?" said the cook. "Haven't I kept the secret of how furmety's
made, and Bakewell pies and all? There's no furmety to hold a candle to
mine in this country, as well you know."
"We don't know _anything_," said Elfrida; "that's just it. And we
daren't let granny know how much we don't know. Something's happened to
us, so that we can't remember anything that happened more than an hour
ago."
"Bless me," said the cook, "don't you remember old cookie giving you the
baked apple-dumplings when you were sent to bed without your suppers a
week come Thursday?"
"No," said Elfrida; "but I'm sure you did. Only what are we to do?"
"You're not deceiving poor cookie, are you now, like you did about the
French soldiers being hid in the windmill, upsetting all the village
like you did?"
"No; it's true--it's dreadfully true. You'll have to help us. We don't
remember _anything_, either of us."
The cook sat down heavily in a polished arm-chair with a patchwork
cushion.
"She's overlooked you. There's not a doubt about it. You're bewitched.
Oh, my pretty little dears, that ever I should see the day----"
The cook's fat, jolly face twisted and puckered in a way with which each
child was familiar in the face of the other.
"Don't cry," they said both together; and Elfrida added, "Who's
overlooked what?"
"Old Betty Lovell has--that I'll be bound! She's bewitched you both,
sure as eggs is eggs. I knew there'd be some sort of a to-do when my
lord had her put in the stocks for stealing sticks in the wood. We've
got to get her to take it off, my dears, that's what we've got to do,
for sure; without you could find a white Mouldiwarp, and that's not
likely."
"A white Mouldiwarp?" said both the children, and again they spoke
together like a chorus and looked at each other like conspirators.
"You know the rhyme--oh! but if you've forgotten everything you've
forgotten that too."
"Say it, won't you?" said Edred.
"Let's see, how do it go?--
"White Mouldiwarp a spell can make,
White Mouldiwarp a spell can break;
When all be well, let Mouldiwarp be,
When all goes ill, then turn to he."
"Well, all's not gone ill yet," said Elfrida, wriggling her neck in its
prickly muslin tucker. "Let's go and see the witch."
"You'd best take her something--a screw of sugar she'd like, and a pinch
of tea."
"Why, she'd not say 'Thank you' for it," said Edred, looking at the tiny
packets.
"I expect you've forgotten," said cook gently, "that tea's ten shillings
a pound and sugar's gone up to three-and-six since the war."
"What war?"
"The French war. You haven't forgotten we're at war with Boney and the
French, and the bonfire we had up at the church when the news came of
the drubbing we gave them at Trafalgar, and poor dear Lord Nelson and
all? And your grandfather reading out about it to them from the 'George'
balcony, and all the people waiting to cheer, and him not able to get it
out for choking pride and because of Lord Nelson--God bless him!--and
the people couldn't get their cheers out neither, for the same cause,
and every one blowing their noses and shaking each other's hands like as
if it was a mad funeral?"
"How splendid!" said Elfrida. "But we don't remember it."
"Nor you don't remember how you killed all the white butterflies last
year because you said they were Frenchies in their white coats? And the
birching you got, for cruelty to dumb animals, his lordship said. You
howled for an hour together after it, so you did."
"I'm glad we've forgotten _that_, anyhow," said Edred.
"Gracious!" said the cook. "Half after eleven, and my eggs not so much
as broke for my pudding. Off you go with your letter. Don't you tell any
one else about you forgetting. And then you come home along by Dering's
Spinney--and go see old Betty. Speak pretty to her and give her the tea
and sugar, and keep your feet crossed under your chair if she asks you
to sit down. And I'll give you an old knife-blade apiece to put in your
pockets; she can't do nothing if you've got steel on you. And get her to
take it off--the ill-wishing, I mean. And don't let her know you've got
steel; they don't like to think you've been beforehand with them."
So the children went down across the fields to the "George," and the
bean-flowers smelt as sweet, and the skylarks sang as clearly, and the
sun and the sky were just as golden and blue as they had been last week.
And last week was really a hundred years on in the future. And yet it
was last week too--from where they were. Time is a very confusing thing,
as the children remarked to each other more than once.
They found the "George" half-way up Arden village, a stately, great
house shaped like an E, with many windows and a great porch with a
balcony over it. They gave their letter to a lady in a round cap who sat
sewing in a pleasant room where there were many bottles and kegs, and
rows of bright pewter ale-pots, and little fat mugs to measure other
things with, and pewter plates on a brown dresser. There were
greyhounds, too, all sprawling, legs and shoulders and tails entangled
together like a bunch of dead eels, before the widest hearth the
children had ever seen. They hurried away the moment they had given the
letter. A coach, top-heavy with luggage, had drawn up in front of the
porch, and as they went out they saw the ostlers leading away the six
smoking horses. Edred felt that he _must_ see the stables, so they
followed, and the stables were as big as the house, and there were
horses going in and horses going out, and hay and straw, and ostlers
with buckets and ostlers with harness, and stalls and loose-boxes beyond
counting, and bustle and hurry beyond words.
"How ever many horses have you got?" said Elfrida, addressing a man who
had not joined in the kindly chorus of "Hulloa, little 'uns!" that
greeted the children. So she judged him to be a new-comer. As he was.
"Two-and-fifty," said the man.
"What for?" Elfrida asked.
"Why, for the coaches, and the post-shays, and the King's messengers,
for sure," the man answered. "How else'd us all get about the country,
and get to hear the newses, if it wasn't for the stable the 'George'
keeps?"
And then the children remembered that this was the time before railways
and telegrams and telephones.
It is always difficult to remember exactly where one is when one happens
to get into a century that is not one's own.
Edred would have liked to stay all day watching the busyness of every
one and the beautifulness of the horses, but Elfrida dragged him away.
They had to find the witch, she reminded him; and in a dreadful
tumble-down cottage, with big holes in its roof of rotten thatch, they
did find her.
She was exactly like the pictures of witches in story books, only she
had not a broomstick or a high-pointed hat. She had instead a dirty cap
that had once been white, and a rusty gown that had once been black, and
a streaky shawl that might once, perhaps, have been scarlet. But nobody
could be sure of that now. There was a black cat sitting on a very dirty
wooden settle, and the old woman herself sat on a rickety three-legged
stool, her wrinkled face bent over a speckled hen which she was nursing
in her lap and holding gently in her yellow, wrinkled hands.
As soon as Edred caught sight of her through the crooked doorway, he
stopped. "I'm not going in," he said, "what's the good? We know jolly
well she _hasn't_ bewitched us. And if we go cheeking her she _may_, and
then we shall be in a nice hole."
"There's the tea and sugar," said Elfrida.
"You just give it her and come away. I'll wait for you by the stile."
So Elfrida went into the cottage alone, and said "Good morning" in
rather a frightened way.
"I've brought you some tea and sugar," she said, and stood waiting for
the "Thank you," without which it would not be polite to say "Good
morning" and to go away.
The "Thank you" never came. Instead, the witch stopped stroking the hen,
and said--
"What for? I've not done you no 'arm."
"No," said Elfrida. "I'm sure you wouldn't."
"Then what have you brought it for?"
"For--oh, just for you," said Elfrida. "I thought you'd like it. It's
just a--a love-gift, you know."
This was Aunt Edith's way of calling a present that didn't come just
because it was your birthday or Christmas, or you had had a tooth out.
"A love-gift?" said the old woman slowly. "After all this long time?"
[Illustration: "'I'VE BROUGHT YOU SOME TEA AND SUGAR,' SHE SAID."]
Elfrida did not understand. How should she? It's almost impossible for
even the most grown up and clever of us to know how women used to be
treated--and not so very long ago either--if they were once suspected of
being witches. It generally began by the old woman's being cleverer than
her neighbours, having more wit to find out what was the matter with
sick people, and more still to cure them. Then her extra cleverness
would help her to foretell storms and gales and frosts, and to find
water by the divining rod--a very mysterious business. And when once you
can find out where water is by just carrying a forked hazel twig between
your hands and walking across a meadow, you can most likely find out a
good many other things that your stupid neighbours would never dream of.
And in those long-ago days--which really aren't so very long ago--your
being so much cleverer than your neighbours would be quite enough. You
would soon be known as the "wise woman"--and from "wise woman" to witch
was a very short step indeed.
So Elfrida, not understanding, said, "Yes; is your fowl ill?"
"'Twill mend," said the old woman,--"'twill mend. The healing of my
hands has gone into it." She rose, set the hen on the hearth, where it
fluttered, squawked, and settled among grey ashes, very much annoying
the black cat, and laid her hands suddenly on Elfrida's shoulders.
"And now the healing of my hands is for you," she said. "You have
brought me a love-gift. Never a gift have I had these fifty years but
was a gift of fear or a payment for help--to buy me to take off a spell
or put a spell on. But you have brought me a love-gift, and I tell you
you shall have your heart's desire. You shall have love around and about
you all your life long. That which is lost shall be found. That which
came not shall come again. In this world's goods you shall be blessed,
and blessed in the goods of the heart also. I know--I see--and for you I
see everything good and fair. Your future shall be clean and sweet as
your kind heart."
She took her hands away. Elfrida, very much impressed by these
flattering remarks which she felt she did not deserve, stood still, not
knowing what to say or do; she rather wanted to cry.
"I only brought it because cook told me," she said.
"Cook didn't give you the kind heart that makes you want to cry for me
now," said the witch.
The old woman sank down in a crouching heap, and her voice changed to
one of sing-song.
"I know," she said,--"I know many things. All alone the livelong day and
the death-long night, I have learned to see. As cats see through the
dark, I see through the days that have been and shall be. I know that
you are not here, that you are not now. You will return whence you came,
and this time that is not yours shall bear no trace of you. And my
blessing shall be with you in your own time and your own place, because
you brought a love-gift to the poor old wise woman of Arden."
"Is there anything I can do for you?" Elfrida asked, very sorry indeed,
for the old woman's voice was very pitiful.
"Kiss me," said the old woman,--"kiss me with your little child's mouth,
that has come back a hundred years to do it."
Elfrida did not wish to kiss the wrinkled, grey face, but her heart
wished her to be kind, and she obeyed her heart.
"Ah!" said the wise woman, "now I see. Oh, never have I had such a
vision. None of them all has ever been like this. I see great globes of
light like the sun in the streets of the city, where now are only little
oil-lamps and guttering lanterns. I see iron roads, with fiery dragons
drawing the coaches, and rich and poor riding up and down on them. Men
shall speak in England and their voice be heard in France--more, the
voices of men dead shall be kept alive in boxes and speak at the will of
those who still live. The handlooms shall cease in the cottages, and the
weavers shall work in palaces with a thousand windows lighted as bright
as day. The sun shall stoop to make men's portraits more like than any
painter can make them. There shall be ships that shall run under the
seas like conger-eels, and ships that shall ride over the clouds like
great birds. And bread that is now a shilling and ninepence shall be
fivepence, and the corn and the beef shall come from overseas to feed
us. And every child shall be taught who can learn, and----"
"Peace, prater," cried a stern voice in the doorway. Elfrida turned.
There stood the grandfather, Lord Arden, very straight and tall and
grey, leaning on his gold-headed cane, and beside him Edred, looking
very small and found-out.
The old witch did not seem to see them; her eyes, that rolled and
blinked, saw nothing. But she must have heard, for--
"Loss to Arden," she said; "loss and woe to Arden. The hangings of your
house shall be given to the spider, and the mice shall eat your carved
furnishings. Your gold shall be less and less, and your house go down
and down till there is not a field that is yours about your house."
Lord Arden shrugged his shoulders.
"Likely tales," he said, "to frighten babes with. Tell me rather, if you
would have me believe, what shall hap to-morrow."
"To-morrow," said the wise woman, "the French shall land in Lymchurch
Bay."
Lord Arden laughed.
"And I give you a sign--three signs," said the woman faintly; for it is
tiring work seeing into the future, even when you are enlightened with a
kiss from some one who has been there. "You shall see the white
Mouldiwarp, that is the badge of Arden, on your threshold as you enter."
"That shall be one sign," said the old man mockingly.
"And the second," she said, "shall be again the badge of your house, in
your own chair in your own parlour."
"That seems likely," said Lord Arden, sneering.
"And the third," said she, "shall be the badge of your house in the arms
of this child."
She turned her back, and picked the hen out of the ashes.
Lord Arden led Edred and Elfrida away, one in each hand, and as he went
he was very severe on disobedient children who went straying after
wicked witches, and they could not defend themselves without blaming the
cook, which, of course, they would not do.
"Bread and water for dinner," he said, "to teach you better ways."
"Oh, grandfather," said Elfrida, catching at his hand, "don't be so
unkind! Just think about when _you_ were little. I'm sure you liked
looking at witches, didn't you, now?"
Lord Arden stared angrily at her, and then he chuckled. "It's a bold
girl, so it is," he said. "I own I remember well seeing a witch ducked
no further off than Newchurch, and playing truant from my tutor to see
it, too."
"There now, you see," said Elfrida coaxingly, "we don't mean to be
naughty; we're just like what you were. You won't make it bread and
water, will you? Especially if bread's so dear."
Lord Arden chuckled again.
"Why, the little white mouse has found a tongue, and never was I spoken
to so bold since the days I wore petticoats myself," he said. "Well,
well; we'll say no more about it this time."
And Edred, who had privately considered that Elfrida was behaving like
an utter idiot, thought better of it.
[Illustration: "THE MOULDIWARP MADE A LITTLE RUN AND A LITTLE JUMP, AND
ELFRIDA CAUGHT IT."]
So they turned across the summer fields to Arden Castle. There seemed to
be more of the castle than when the children had first seen it, and it
was tidier, much. And on the doorstep sat a white mole.
"There now!" said Elfrida. The mole vanished like a streak of white
paint that is rubbed out.
"Pooh!" said Lord Arden. "There's plenty white moles in the world."
But when he saw the white mole sitting up in his own carved arm-chair in
the parlour, he owned that it was very unusual.
Elfrida stooped and held out her arms. She was extremely glad to see the
mole. Because ever since she and her brother had come into this strange
time she had felt that it would be the greatest possible comfort to have
the mole at hand--the mole, who understood everything, to keep and
advise; and, above all, to get them safely back into the century they
belonged to.
And the Mouldiwarp made a little run and a little jump, and Elfrida
caught it and held it against her waist with both her hands.
"Stay with me," whispered Elfrida to the mole.
"By George!" said Lord Arden to the universe.
"So now you see," said Edred to Lord Arden.