THE HIGHWAYMAN AND THE ----
They both meant what they said. And yet, of course, it is nonsense to
promise that you will never do anything again, because, of course, you
must do _something_, if it's only simple subtraction or eating poached
eggs and sausages. You will, of course, understand that what they meant
was that they would never again do anything to cause Mrs. Honeysett a
moment's uneasiness, and in order to make this possible the first thing
to do was, of course, to find out how to set the clock back. Slowly
munching sausage, and feeling, as she always did when she ate slowly,
that she was doing something very virtuous and ought to have a prize or
a medal for it, Elfrida asked her mind to be kind enough to get some
poetry ready by the time she had finished breakfast. And sure enough,
her mind, in its own secret backyard, as it were, did get something
ready. And while this was happening Elfrida, in what corresponded to her
mind's front garden, was wishing that she had been born a poet.
"Like the one who did the piece about the favourite gold-fish drowned in
a tub of cats," she said pensively.
"Yes, or even Shakespeare," said Edred; "only he's so long always."
"I wonder," said the girl, "where the clock is that we've got to set
back?"
"Oh, Mouldiwarp'll tell us," said the boy.
But Mouldiwarp didn't.
When breakfast was over they went out into the grassy space round which
the ruined walls of the castle rose up so grey and stately, with the
wallflowers and toad-flax growing out of them, and sat down among the
round-faced, white-frilled daisies and told each other what they had
thought, or what they thought they had thought, while they were back in
those times when people were afraid of Boney.
And the castle's sward was very green, and the daisies were very white,
and the sun shone on everything very grand and golden.
And as they sat there it came over Elfrida suddenly how good a place it
was and how lucky they were to be there at home at Arden, rather than in
the house with the pale, smooth brass door-knocker that stood in the
street with the red pavement, and the lodgers who kept all on ringing
their bells--so that she said, quite without knowing she was going to
say anything--
"Arden, Arden, Arden,
Lawn and castle and garden;
Daisies and grass and wallflowers gold--
Mouldiwarp, come out of the mould."
"That's more like poetry, that is," said the Mouldiwarp, sitting on the
green grass between the children; "more lik'n anything I've heard ye say
yet--so 'tis. An' now den, what is it for you dis fine day an' all?"
It seemed in such a good temper that Elfrida asked a question that had
long tried to get itself asked.
"Why," was the question, and it was spoken to the white mole,--"why do
you talk like the country people do?"
"Sussex barn an' bred," said the mole, "but I know other talk. Sussex
talks what they call 'racy of the soil'--means 'smells of the earth'
where I live. I can talk all sorts, though. I used to spit French once
on a time, young Fitz-le-seigneur."
"You must know lots and lots," said Edred.
"I do," said the mole.
"How old are you?" Edred asked, in spite of Elfrida's warning "Hush!
it's rude."
"'S old as my tongue an' a little older'n me teeth," said the mole,
showing them.
"Ah, don't be cross," said Elfrida, "and such a beautiful day, too, and
just when we wanted you to show us how to put back the clock and all."
"That's a deed, that is," said the mole, "but you've not quarrelled this
three days, so you can go where you please and do what you will. Only
you're in the way here if you want to stop the clock. Get up into the
gate tower and look out, and when you see the great clock face, come
down at once and sit on the second hand. That'll stop it, if anything
will."
Looking out through the breezy arch among the swinging ends of ivy and
the rustle and whir of pigeon wings, the children saw a very curious
sight.
The green and white of grass and daisies began to swim, as it were,
before their eyes. The lawn within the castle walls was all uneven
because the grass had not been laid there by careful gardeners, with
spirit-levels and rollers, who wanted to make a lawn, but by Nature
herself, who wanted just to cover up bits of broken crockery and stone,
and old birds' nests, and all sorts of odd rubbish. And now it began to
stretch itself, as though it were a live carpet, and to straighten and
tighten itself till it lay perfectly flat.
And the grass seemed to be getting greener in places. And in other
places there were patches of white thicker and purer than before.
"Look! look!" cried Edred; "look! the daisies are walking about!"
They were. Stiffly and steadily, like well-drilled little soldiers, the
daisies were forming into twos, into fours, into companies. Looking down
from the window of the gate tower it was like watching thousands of
little white beads sort themselves out from among green ones.
"What _are_ they going to do?" Edred asked, but naturally Elfrida was
not able to answer.
The daisies marched very steadily, like little people who knew their
business very well. They massed themselves together in regiments, in
armies. On certain parts of the smooth grass certain companies of them
stopped and stayed.
"They're making a sort of pattern," said Edred. "Look! there's a big
ring all round--a sort of pattern."
"I should think they were!" cried Elfrida. "Look! look! It's the clock."
It was. On the pure green face of the lawn was an enormous circle marked
by a thick line of closely packed white daisies. Within it were the
figures that are on the face of a clock--all twelve of them. The hands
were of white daisies, too, both the minute hand and the hand that marks
the hours, and between the VI and the centre was a smaller circle, also
white and of daisies--round which they could see a second hand move--a
white second hand formed of daisies wheeling with a precision that would
have made the haughtiest general in the land shed tears of pure
admiration.
With one accord the two children blundered down the dark, dusty,
cobwebby, twisty stairs of the gate tower and rushed across the lawn. In
the very centre of the clock-face sat the Mouldiwarp, looking conscious
and a little conceited.
"How _did_ you do it?" Elfrida gasped.
"The daisies did it. Poor little things! They can't invent at all. But
they do carry out other people's ideas quite nicely. All the white
things have to obey me, of course," it added carelessly.
[Illustration: "THEY SAT DOWN ON THE CLOSE, WHITE LINE OF DAISIES."]
"And this is The Clock?"
The Mouldiwarp giggled. "My child, what presumption! The clock is much
too big for you to see ever--all at once. The sun's the centre of it.
This is just a pretending clock. It'll do for what we want, of course,
or I wouldn't have had it made for you. Sit down on the second hand--oh
no, it won't hurt the daisies. Count a hundred--yes, that's right."
They sat down on the close, white line of daisies and began to count
earnestly.
"And now," the Mouldiwarp said, when the hundred was counted, "it's just
the same time as it was when you began! So now you understand."
They said they did, and I am sure I hope _you_ do.
"But if we sit here," said Elfrida, "how can we ever be anywhere else?"
"You can't," said the Mouldiwarp. "So one of you will have to stay and
the other to go."
"You go, Elfie," said Edred. "I'll stay till you come back."
"That's very dear of you," said Elfrida, "but I'd rather we went
together. Can't you manage it?" she asked the mole.
"I _could_, of course," it said; "but . . . he's afraid to go without
you," it said suddenly.
"He isn't, and he's two years younger than me, anyway," Elfrida said
hotly.
"Well, go without him," said the mole. "You understand perfectly, don't
you, that when he has stopped the clock your going is the same as your
not going, and your being here is the same as not being, and---- What I
mean," it added, hastily returning to Sussex talk, "you needn't be so
turble put out. He won't know you've gone nor yet 'e won't believe
you've come back. Be off with 'e, my gell."
Elfrida hesitated. Then, "Oh, Edred," she said, "I _have_ had such a
time! Did it seem very long? I know it was horrid of me, but it was so
interesting I _couldn't_ come back before."
"Nonsense," said Edred. "Well, go if you like; I don't mind."
"I've _been_, I tell you," said Elfrida, dragging him off the second
hand of the daisy clock, whose soldiers instantly resumed their wheeling
march.
"So now you see," said the mole. "Tell you what--next time you wanter
stop de clock we'll just wheel de barrer on to it. Now you go along and
play. You've had enough Arden magic for this 'ere Fursday, so you 'ave,
bless yer hearts an' all."
And they went.
That was how Edred perceived the adventure of "The Highwayman and the
----." But I will not anticipate. The way the adventure seemed to
Elfrida was rather different.
After the mole said "my gell" she hesitated, and then went slowly
towards the castle where the red roof of the house showed between the
old, ivy-grown grey buttresses. She looked back, to see Edred and the
Mouldiwarp close together on the face of the wonderful green and white
clock. They were very still. She made her mind up--ran indoors and up
the stairs and straight to The Door--she found it at once--shut the
door, and opened the second chest to the right.
"You change your clothes and the times change too--
Change, that is what you've got to do;
Cooroo, cooroo, cooroo, cooroo,"
said the pigeons or the silence or Elfrida.
"I wonder," she said, slipping on a quilted green satin petticoat with
pink rosebuds embroidered on it, "whether Shakespeare began being a poet
like that--just little odd lines coming into his head without him
meaning them to." And her mind as she put on a pink-and-white brocaded
dress, was busy with such words as "Our great poet, Miss Elfrida Arden,"
or "Miss Arden, the female Milton of nowadays."
She tied a white, soft little cap with pink ribbons under her chin and
ran to open the door. She was not a bit afraid. It was like going into a
dream. Nothing would be real there. Yet as she ran through the attic
door and the lace of her sleeve caught on a big rusty nail and tore with
a harsh hissing noise, she felt very sorry. In a thing that was only a
dream that lace felt very real, and was very beautiful.
[Illustration: "'COME, SEE HOW THE NEW SCARF BECOMES THY BET. IS IT NOT
VASTLY MODISH?'"]
But she had only half the first half of a thought to give to the
lace--for the door opened, not on the quiet corridor with the old prints
at Arden Castle, but on a quite strange panelled room, full of a most
extraordinary disorder of stuffs--feathers, dresses, cloaks,
bonnet-boxes, parcels, rolls, packets, lace, scarves, hats, gloves, and
finery of all sorts. There were a good many people there:
serving-maids--she knew they were serving-maids--a gentleman in
knee-breeches showing some fine china on a lacquered tray, and in the
middle a very pretty, languishing-looking young lady with whom Elfrida
at once fell deeply in love. All the women wore enormous crinolines--or
hoops.
"What! Hid in the closet all the while, cousin?" said the young lady.
"Oh, but it's the slyest chit! Come, see how the new scarf becomes thy
Bet. Is it not vastly modish?"
"Yes," said Elfrida, not knowing in the least what to say.
Everything gave a sort of tremble and twist, like the glass, bits in a
kaleidoscope give just before they settle into a pattern. Then, as with
the bits of glass, everything _was_ settled, and Elfrida, instead of
feeling that she was looking at a picture, felt that she was alive, with
live people.
Some extraordinary accident had fixed in Elfrida's mind the fact that
Queen Anne began to reign in 1702. I don't know how it was. These
accidents do sometimes occur. And she knew that in Queen Anne's day
ladies wore hoops. Also, since they had gone back a hundred years to
Boney's time, perhaps this second venture had taken her back two hundred
years. If so----
"Please," she said, very quickly, "is this 1707, and is Queen Anne
dead?"
"Heaven forbid," said every one in the room; and Bet added, "La, child,
don't delay us with your prattle. The coach will be here at ten, and we
must lie at Tonbridge to-night."
So Elfrida, all eyes and ears, squeezed into a corner between a band-box
and a roll of thick, pink-flowered silk and looked and listened.
Bet, she gathered, was her cousin--an Arden, too. She and Bet and the
maids, and an escort of she couldn't quite make out how many men, were
to go down to Arden together. The many men were because of the Arden
jewels, that had been reset in the newest mode, and the collar of pearls
and other presents Uncle Arden had given to Bet; and the highwaymen,
who, she learned, were growing so bold that they would attack a coach in
St. Paul's Churchyard in broad daylight. Bet, it seemed, had undertaken
commissions for all her girl friends near Arden, and had put off most of
them till the last moment. She had carefully spent her own pin-money
during her stay in town, and was now hastily spending theirs. The room
was crowded with tradesmen and women actually pushing each other to get
near the lady who had money to spend. One woman with a basket of china
was offering it in exchange for old clothes or shoes, just as old women
do now at back doors. And Cousin Bet's maid had a very good bargain, she
considered, in a china teapot and two dishes, in exchange for a worn,
blue lutestring dress and a hooped petticoat of violet quilted satin.
Then there was a hasty meal of cakes and hot chocolate, and, Elfrida
being wrapped up in long-skirted coat and scarves almost beyond bearing,
it was announced that the coach was at the door. It was a very tight fit
when at last they were all packed into the carriage, for though the
carriage was large there was a great deal to fill it up, what with
Cousin Bet and her great hoops, and the maids, and the band-boxes and
packages of different sizes and shapes, and the horrid little pet dog
that yapped and yahed, and tried to bite every one, from the footmen to
Elfrida. The streets were narrow and very dirty, and smelt very nasty in
the hot June sun.
And it was very hot and stuffy inside the carriage, and more bumpety
than you would think possible--more bumpety even than a wagon going
across a furrowed corn-field. Elfrida felt rather headachy, as you do
when you go out in a small boat and every one says it is not at all
rough. By the time the carriage got to Lewisham Elfrida's bones were
quite sore, and she felt as though she had been beaten. There were no
springs to the carriage, and it reminded her of a bathing-machine more
than anything else--you know the way it bumps on the shingly part of the
shore when they are drawing you up at the beach, and you tumble about
and can't go on dressing, and all your things slide off the seats. The
maids were cross and looked it. Cousin Bet had danced till nigh
midnight, and been up with the lark, so she said. And, having said it,
went to sleep in a corner of the carriage looking crosser than the
maids. Elfrida began to feel that empty, uninterested sensation which
makes you wish you hadn't come. The carriage plunged and rattled on
through the green country, the wheels bounding in and out of the most
dreadful ruts. More than once the wheel got into a rut so deep that it
took all the men to heave it out again. Cousin Bet woke up to say that
it was vastly annoying, and instantly went to sleep again.
Elfrida, being the smallest person in the carriage except Amour, the
dog, was constantly being thrown into somebody's lap--to the annoyance
of both parties. It was very much the most uncomfortable ride she had
ever had. She thought of the smooth, swift rush of the train--even the
carrier's cart was luxury compared to this. "The roads aren't like roads
at all," she told herself, "they're like ploughed fields with celery
trenches in them"--she had a friend a market gardener, so she knew.
Long before the carriage drew up in front of the "Bull" at Tonbridge,
Elfrida felt that if she only had a piece of poetry ready she would say
it, and ask the Mouldiwarp to take her back to her own times, where, at
any rate, carriages had springs and roads _were_ roads. And when the
carriage did stop she was so stiff she could hardly stand.
"Come along in," said a stout, pleasant-faced lady in a frilled cap;
"come in, my poppet. There's a fine supper, though it's me says it, and
a bed that you won't beat in Kent for soft and clean, you may lay to
that."
There was a great bustle of shouting ostlers and stablemen; the horses
were taken out before the travellers were free of the carriage. Supper
was laid in a big, low, upper room, with shining furniture and windows
at both ends, one set looking on the road where the sign of the "Bull"
creaked and swung, and the other looking on a very neat green garden,
with clipped box hedges and yew arbours. Getting all the luggage into
the house seemed likely to be a long business. Elfrida saw that she
would not be missed, and she slipped down the twisty-cornery back-stairs
and through the back kitchen into the green garden. It was pleasant to
stretch one's legs, and not to be cramped and buffeted and shaken. But
she walked down the grass-path rather demurely, for she was very stiff
indeed.
And it was there, in a yew arbour, that she came suddenly on the
grandest and handsomest gentleman that she had ever seen. He wore a
white wig, very full at the sides and covered with powder, and a
full-skirted coat of dark-blue silk, and under it a long waistcoat with
the loveliest roses and forget-me-nots tied in bunches with gold
ribbons, embroidered on silk. He had lace ruffles and a jewelled brooch,
and the jolliest blue eyes in the world. He looked at Elfrida very
kindly with his jolly eyes.
"A lady of quality, I'll be bound," he said, "and travelling with her
suite."
"I'm Miss Arden of Arden," said Elfrida.
"Your servant, madam," said he, springing to his feet and waving his hat
in a very flourishing sort of bow.
Elfrida's little curtsey was not at all the right kind of curtsey, but
it had to do.
"And what can I do to please Miss Arden of Arden?" he asked. "Would she
like a ride on my black mare?"
"Oh, _no_, thank you," said Elfrida, so earnestly that he laughed as he
said--
"Sure I should not have thought fear lived with those eyes."
"I'm not afraid," said Elfrida contemptuously; "only I've been riding in
a horrible carriage all day, and I feel as though I never wanted to ride
on anything any more."
He laughed again.
"Well, well," he said, "come and sit by me and tell me all the town
news."
Elfrida smiled to think what news she _could_ tell him, and then frowned
in the effort to think of any news that wouldn't seem nonsense.
She told him all that she knew of Cousin Bet and the journey. He was
quite politely interested. She told of Cousin Bet's purchases--the
collar of pearls and the gold pomander studded with corals, the little
gold watch, and the family jewels that had been reset.
"And you have all to-night to rest in from that cruel coach?" he said.
"Yes," said Elfrida, "we don't go on again till after breakfast
to-morrow. It's very dull--and oh, so slow! Don't you think you'd like
to have a carriage drawn by a fiery iron horse that went sixty miles an
hour?"
"You have an ingenious wit," said the beautiful gentleman, "such as I
should admire in my wife. Will you marry me when you shall be grown a
great girl?"
"No," said Elfrida; "you'd be too old--even if you were to be able to
stop alive till I was grown up, you'd be much too old."
"How old do you suppose I shall be when you're seventeen?"
"I should have to do sums," said Elfrida, who was rather good at these
exercises. She broke a twig from a currant bush and scratched in the
dust.
"I don't know," she said, raising a flushed face, and trampling out her
"sum" with little shoes that had red heels, "but I _think_ you'll be two
hundred and thirty."
On that he laughed more than ever and vowed she was the lady for him.
"Your ciphering would double my income ten times over," he said.
He was very kind indeed--would have her taste his wine, which she didn't
like, and the little cakes on the red and blue plate, which she did.
"And what's _your_ name?" she asked.
"My name," said he, "is a secret. Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes," said Elfrida.
"So can I," said he.
And then a flouncing, angry maid came suddenly sweeping down between the
box hedges and dragged Elfrida away before she could curtsey properly
and say, "Thank you for being so kind."
"Farewell," said the beautiful gentleman, "doubt not but we shall meet
again. And next time 'tis I shall carry thee off and shut thee in a
tower for two hundred years till thou art seventeen and hast learned to
cipher."
Elfrida was slapped by the maid, which nearly choked her with fury, and
set down to supper in the big upstairs room. The maid indignantly told
where she had found Elfrida "talking with a strange gentleman," and when
Cousin Betty had heard all about it Elfrida told her tale.
"And he was a great dear," she said.
"A----?"
"A very beautiful gentleman. I wish you'd been there, Cousin Betty.
_You'd_ have liked him too."
Then Cousin Bet also slapped her. And Elfrida wished more than ever that
she had some poetry ready for the Mouldiwarp.
The next day's journey was as bumpety as the first, and Elfrida got very
tired of the whole business. "Oh, I wish something would happen!" she
said.
It was a very much longer day too, and the dusk had fallen while still
they were on the road. The sun had set red behind black trees, and brown
twilight was thickening all about, when at a cross-roads, a man in a
cloak and mask on a big black horse suddenly leaped from a hedge,
stooped from his saddle, opened the carriage door, caught Elfrida with
one hand by the gathers of her full travelling coat (he must have been
frightfully strong, and so must the gathers), set her very neatly and
quite comfortably on the saddle before him, and said--
"Hand up your valuables, please--or I shoot the horses. And keep your
barkers low, for if you aim at me you shoot the child. And if you shoot
my horse, the child and I fall together."
But even as he spoke through his black mask, he wheeled the horse so
that his body was a shield between her and the pistols of the
serving-men.
"What do you want?" Cousin Bet's voice was quite squeaky. "We have no
valuables; we are plain country people, travelling home to our farm."
"I want the collar of pearls," said he, "and the pomander, and the
little gold watch, and the jewels that have been reset."
Then Elfrida knew who he was.
"Oh," she cried, "you _are_ mean!"
"Trade's trade," said he, but he held her quite gently and kindly. "Now,
my fair madam----"
[Illustration: "IF YOU AIM AT ME YOU SHOOT THE CHILD."]
The men were hesitating, fingering their pistols. The horses, frightened
by the sudden check, were dancing and prancing all across the road: the
maidservants were shouting that it was true; he had the child, and
better lose a few jewels than all their lives, and Cousin Bet was
sobbing and wailing inside the dark coach.
Well, the jewels were handed out--that was how it ended--handed out
slowly and grudgingly, and the hand that reached for them through the
dusk was very white, Cousin Bet said afterwards.
Elfrida, held by the highwayman's arm, kept very still. Suddenly he
stooped and whispered in her ear.
"Are you afraid that I shall do you any harm?"
"No," whispered Elfrida. And to this day she does not know why she was
not afraid.
"Then----" said he. "Oh, the brave little lady----"
And on that suddenly set spurs to his horse, leapt the low hedge, and
reined up sharply.
"Go on home, my brave fellows," he shouted, "and keep your mouths shut
on this night's work. I shall be at Arden before you----"
"The child!" shrieked the maids; "oh, the child!" and even Cousin Bet
interrupted her hysterics, now quite strong and overwhelming, to say,
"The child----"
"Shall I order supper for you at Arden?" he shouted back mockingly, and
rode on across country, with Elfrida, breathlessly frightened and
consciously brave, leaning back against his shoulder. It is a very
wonderful feeling, riding on a great strong, dark horse, through a
deepening night in a strange country, held fast by an arm you can trust,
and with the muscles of a horse's great shoulder rippling against your
legs as they hang helplessly down. Elfrida ceased to think of
Mouldiwarps or try to be a poet.
And quite soon they were at the top of Arden Hill, and the lights of the
castle gleamed and blinked below them.
"Now, sweetheart," said the highwayman, "I shall set you down in sight
of the door and wait till the door opens. You can tell them all that has
chanced, save this that I tell you now. You will see me again. They will
not know me, but you will. Keep a still tongue till to-morrow, and I
swear Miss Arden shall have all her jewels again, and you shall have a
gold locket to put your true love's hair in when you're seventeen and
I'm two hundred and thirty. And leave the parlour window open. And when
I tap, come to it. Is it a bargain?"
"Then you're not really a highwayman?"
"What should you say," he asked, "if I told you that I was the third
James, the rightful King of England, come to claim my own?"
"Oh!" said Elfrida, and he set her down, and she walked to the door of
the castle and thumped on it with her fists.
Her tale had been told to the servants, and again to Cousin Bet and the
maids, and the chorus of lament and astonishment was settling down to a
desire to have something to eat; anyhow, the servants had gone to the
kitchen to hurry the supper. Cousin Bet and Elfrida were alone in the
parlour, where Elfrida had dutifully set the window ajar.
The laurel that was trained all up that side of the house stirred in the
breeze and tapped at the window. Elfrida crossed to the window-seat. No,
it was only the laurel. But next moment a hand tapped--a hand with rings
on it, and a white square showed in the window--a letter.
"For Miss Betty Arden," said a whispering voice.
Elfrida carried the letter to where her cousin sat, and laid it on her
flowered silk lap.
"For me, child? Where did you get it?"
"Read it," said Elfrida, "it's from a gentleman."
"Lud!" said Cousin Bet. "What a day!--a highwayman and the jewels lost,
and now a love-letter."
She opened it, read it--read it again and let her hand flutter out with
it in a helpless sort of way towards Elfrida, who, very brisk and
businesslike, took it and read it. It was clearly and beautifully
written.
"The Chevalier St. George," it said, "visiting his kingdom in secret on
pressing affairs of State, asks housing and hiding beneath the roof of
the loyal Ardens."
"Now, don't scream," said Elfrida sharply; "who's the Chevalier St.
George?"
"Our King," said Betty in a whisper--"our King over the water--King
James the Third. Oh, why isn't my uncle at home? They'll kill the King
if they find him. What shall I do? What shall I do?"
"Do?" said Elfrida. "Why don't be so silly. That's what you've got to
do. Why, it's a glorious chance. Think how every one will say how brave
you were. Is he Bonnie Prince Charlie? Will he be King some day?"
"No, not Charles--James; uncle wants him to be King."
"Then let's help him," said Elfrida, "and perhaps it'll be your doing
that he is King." Her history had never got beyond Edward the Fourth on
account of having to go back to 1066 on account of new girls, and she
had only heard of Prince Charlie in ballads and story books. "And when
he's King he'll make you dowager-duchess of somewhere and give you his
portrait set in diamonds. Now don't scream. He's outside. I'll call him
in. Where can we hide him?"