THE KEY OF THE PARLOUR
Elfrida was behind the secret panel, and the panel had shut with a
spring. She had come there hoping to find the jewels that had been
hidden two hundred years ago by Sir Edward Talbot, when he was
pretending to be the Chevalier St. George. She had not had time even to
look for the jewels before the panel closed, and now that she was alone
in the dusty dark, with the door shut between her and the bright, light
parlour where her brother was, the jewels hardly seemed to matter at
all, and what did so dreadfully and very much matter was that closed
panel. Edred had tried to open it, and he had fallen off the chair.
Well, there had been plenty of time for him to get up again.
"Why don't you open the door?" she called impatiently. And there was no
answer. Behind that panel silence seemed a thousand times more silent
than it ever had before. And it was so dark. And Edred had the matches
in his pocket.
"Edred! Edred!" she called suddenly and very loud, "why don't you open
the door?"
And this time he answered.
"Because I can't reach," he said.
I feel that I ought to make that the end of the chapter, and leave you
to wonder till the next how Elfrida got out, and how she liked the not
getting out, which certainly looked as though it were going to last
longer than any one could possibly be expected to find pleasant.
But that would make the chapter too short--and there are other reasons.
So I will not disguise from you that when Elfrida put her hand to her
pocket and felt something there--something hard and heavy--and
remembered that she had put the key of the parlour there because it was
such a nice safe place, where it couldn't possibly be lost, she uttered
what is known as a hollow groan.
"Aha! you see now," said Edred outside. "You see I'm not so stupid after
all."
Elfrida was thinking.
"I say," she called through the panel, "it's no use my standing here. I
shall try to feel my way up to the secret chamber. I wish I could
remember whether there's a window there or not. If I were you I should
just take a book and read till something happens. Mrs. Honeysett's sure
to come back some time."
"I can't hear half you say," said Edred. "You do whiffle so."
"Take a book!" shouted his sister. "Read!
Mrs.--Honeysett--will--come--back--some--time."
So Edred got down a book called "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," which he
thought looked interesting; but I don't advise you to try it. And
Elfrida, her heart beating rather heavily, put out her hands and felt
her way along the passage to the stairs.
"It's all very well," she told herself, "the secret panel is there all
right, like it was when I went into the past, but suppose the stairs are
gone, or weren't really ever there at all? Or suppose I walked straight
into a wall or something? Or perhaps not a _wall_--a _well_," she
suggested to herself with a sudden thrill of terror; and after that she
felt very carefully with each foot in turn before she ventured to put it
down in a fresh step.
The boards were soft to tread on, as though they had been carpeted with
velvet, and so were the stairs. For there _were_ stairs, sure enough.
She went up them very slowly and carefully, reaching her hands before
her. And at last her hands came against something that seemed like a
door. She stroked it gently, feeling for the latch, which she presently
found. The door had not been opened for such a very long time that it
was not at all inclined to open now. Elfrida had to shove with shoulder
and knee, and with all the strength she had. The door gave way--out of
politeness, I should think, for Elfrida's knee and shoulder and strength
were all quite small--and there was the room just as she had seen it
when the Chevalier St. George stood in it bowing and smiling by the
light of one candle in a silver candlestick. Only now Elfrida was alone,
and the light was a sort of green twilight that came from a little
window over the mantelpiece, that was hung outside with a thick curtain
of ivy. If Elfrida had come out of the sunlight she would have called
this a green darkness. But she had been so long in the dark that this
shadowy dusk seemed quite light to her. All the same she made haste,
when she had shut the door, to drag a chair in front of the fireplace
and to get the window open. It opened inwards, and it did not want to
open at all. But it, also, was polite enough to yield to her wishes, and
when it had suddenly given way she reached out and broke the ivy-leaves
off one by one, making more and more daylight in the secret room. She
did not let the leaves fall outside, but on the hearthstone, "for," said
she, "we don't want outside people to get to know all about the Ardens'
secret hiding-place. I'm glad I thought of that. I really _am_ rather
like a detective in a book."
When all the leaves were plucked from the window's square, and only the
brown ivy boughs left, she turned back to the room. The furniture was
all powdered heavily with dust, and what had made the floor so soft to
walk upon was the thick carpet of dust that lay there. There was the
table on which the Chevalier St. George--no, Sir Edward Talbot--had set
the tray. There were the chairs, and there, sure enough, was the corner
cupboard in which he had put the jewels. Elfrida got its door open with
I don't know what of mingled hopes and fears. It had three shelves, but
the jewels were on none of them. In fact there was nothing on any of
them. But on the inside of the door her hand, as she held it open, felt
something rough. And when she looked it was a name carved, and when she
swung the door well back so that the light fell full on it she saw that
the name was "E. Talbot." So then she knew that all she had seen in that
room before must have really happened two hundred years before, and was
not just a piece of magic Mouldiwarpiness.
She climbed up on the chair again and looked out through the little
window. She could see nothing of the Castle walls--only the distant
shoulder of the downs and the path that cut across it towards the
station. She would have liked to see a red figure or a violet one coming
along that path. But there was no figure on it at all.
What do you usually do when you are shut up in a secret room, with no
chance of getting out for hours? As for me, I always say poetry to
myself. It is one of the uses of poetry--one says it to oneself in
distressing circumstances of that kind, or when one has to wait at
railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night. You will
find poetry most useful for this purpose. So learn plenty of it, and be
sure it is the best kind, because this is most useful as well as most
agreeable.
[Illustration: "SHE SAW THAT THE NAME WAS 'E. TALBOT.'"]
Elfrida began with "Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!" but there were
parts of that which she liked best when there were other people
about--so she stopped it, and began "Horatius and the Bridge." This
lasts a long time. Then came the Favourite Cat drowned in a tub of
Gold-fish--and in the middle of that, quite suddenly, and I don't know
why, she thought of the Mouldiwarp.
"We didn't quite quarrel," she told herself. "At least not really, truly
quarrelling. I might try anyhow."
So she set to work to make a piece of poetry to call up the Mouldiwarp
with.
This was how, after a long time, the first piece came out--
"'The Mouldiwarp of Arden
By the nine gods it swore
That Elfrida of Arden
Should be shut up no more.
By the nine gods it swore it
And named a convenient time, no doubt,
And bade its messengers ride forth
East and West, South and North,
To let Elfrida out.'"
But when she said it aloud nothing happened. "I wonder," said Elfrida,
"whether it's because we quarrelled, or because it just says he let me
out and doesn't ask him to, or because I had to say _El_frida, to make
it sound right, or because it's such dreadful nonsense. I'll try again."
She tried again. This time she got--
"'Behind the secret panel's lines
The pensive _El_frida, reclines
And wishes she was at home.
At least I am at home, of course,
But things are getting worse and worse.
Dear Mole, come, come, come, come!'"
She said it aloud, and when she came to the last words there was the
white Mouldiwarp sitting on the floor at her feet and looking up at her
with eyes that blinked.
"You _are_ good to come," Elfrida said.
"Well, what do you want now?" said the Mole.
"I--I ought to tell you that I oughtn't to ask you to do anything, but I
didn't think you'd come if it really counted as a quarrel. It was only a
little one, and we were both sorry quite directly."
"You have a straightforward nature," said the Mouldiwarp. "Well, well, I
must say you've got yourself into a nice hole!"
"It would be a _very_ nice hole," said Elfrida eagerly, "if only the
panel were open. I wouldn't mind how long I stayed here then. That's
funny, isn't it?"
"Yes," said the Mole. "Well, if you hadn't quarrelled I could get you
into another time--some time when the panel was open--and you could just
walk out. You shouldn't quarrel. It makes everything different. It puts
dust into the works. It stops the wheels of the clock."
"The clock!" said Elfrida slowly. "Couldn't that work backwards?"
"I don't know what you mean," said the Mole.
"I don't know that I quite know myself," Elfrida explained; "but the
daisy-clock. You sit on the second hand and there isn't any time--and
yet there's lots where you're not sitting. If I could sit on the
daisy-clock the time wouldn't be anything before some one comes to let
me out. But I can't get to the daisy-clock, even if you'd make it for
me. So _that's_ no good."
"You are a very clever little girl," said the Mouldiwarp, "and all the
clocks in the world aren't made of daisies. Move the tables and chairs
back against the wall; we'll see what we can do for you."
While Elfrida was carrying out this order--the white Mole stood on its
hind feet and called out softly in a language she did not understand.
Others understood it though, it seemed, for a white pigeon fluttered in
through the window, and then another and another, till the room seemed
full of circling wings and gentle cooings, and a shower of soft, white
feathers fell like snow.
Then the Mole was silent, and one by one the white pigeons sailed back
through the window into the blue and gold world of out-of-doors.
"Get up on a chair and keep out of the way," said the Mouldiwarp. And
Elfrida did.
[Illustration: "THE ROOM SEEMED FULL OF CIRCLING WINGS."]
And then a soft wind blew through the little room--a wind like the wind
that breathes softly in walled gardens and shakes down the rose-leaves
on sparkling summer mornings. And the white feathers on the floor were
stirred by the sweet wind, and drifted into little heaps and lines and
curves till they made on the dusty floor the circle of a clock-face,
with all its figures and its long hand and its short hand and its second
hand. And the white Mole stood in the middle.
"All white things obey me," it said. "Come, sit down on the minute hand,
and you'll be there in no time."
"Where?" asked Elfrida, getting off the chair.
"Why, at the time when they open the panel. Let me get out of the clock
first. And give me the key of the parlour door. It'll save time in the
end."
So Elfrida sat down on the minute hand, and instantly it began to move
round--faster than you can possibly imagine. And it was very soft to sit
on--like a cloud would be if the laws of nature ever permitted you to
sit on clouds. And it spun round so that it seemed no time at all before
she found herself sitting on the floor and heard voices, and knew that
the secret panel was open.
"I see," she said wisely, "it does work backwards, doesn't it?"
But there was no one to answer her, for the Mouldiwarp was gone. And the
white pigeons' feathers were in heaps on the floor. She saw them, as she
stood up. And there wasn't any clock-face any more.
· · · · ·
Edred soon got tired of "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," which really is
not half such good fun as it sounds, even for grown-ups, and he tried
several other books. But reading did not seem amusing, somehow. And the
house was so much too quiet, and the clock outside ticked so much too
loud--and Elfrida was shut up, and there were bars to the windows, and
the door was locked. He walked about, and sat in each of the chairs in
turn, but no one of them was comfortable. And his thoughts were not
comfortable either. Suppose no one ever came to let them out! Supposing
the years rolled on and found him still a prisoner, when he was a
white-haired old man, like people in the Bastille, or in Iron Masks? His
eyes filled with tears at the thought. Fortunately it did not occur to
him that unless some one came pretty soon he would be unlikely to live
to a great age, since people cannot live long without eating. If he had
thought of this he would have been even more unhappy than he was--and he
was quite unhappy enough. Then he began to wonder if "anything had
happened" to Elfrida. She was dreadfully quiet inside there behind the
panel. He wished he had not quarrelled with her. Everything was very
miserable. He went to the window and looked out, as Elfrida had done, to
see if he could see a red dress or a violet dress coming over the downs.
But there was nothing. And the time got longer and longer, drawing
itself out like a putty snake, when you rub it between your warm
hands--and at last, what with misery, and having cried a good deal, and
its being long past tea-time, he fell asleep on the window-seat.
He was roused by a hand on his shoulder and a voice calling his name.
Next moment he was in the arms of Aunt Edith, or as much in her arms as
he could be with the window-bars between them.
When he had told her where Elfrida was, and where the room-key was,
which took some time, he began to cry again--for he did not quite see,
even now, how he was to be got out.
"Now don't be a dear silly," said Aunt Edith. "If we can't get you out
any other way I'll run and fetch a locksmith. But look what I found
right in the middle of the path as I came up from the station."
It was a key. And tied to it was an ivory label, and on the label were
written the words, "Parlour door, Arden."
"You might try it," she said.
He did try it. And it fitted. And he unlocked the parlour door and then
the front door, so that Aunt Edith could come in.
And together they got the kitchen steps and found the secret spring and
opened the panel, and got out the dusty Elfrida. And then Aunt Edith
lighted the kitchen fire and boiled the kettle; they had tea, which
every one wanted very badly indeed. And Aunt Edith had brought little
cakes for tea with pink icing on them, very soft inside with apricot
jam. And she had come to stay over Sunday.
She was as much excited as the children over the secret panel, and after
tea (when Edred had fetched Emily back from the wild-goose chase for a
parcel at the station, on which she was still engaged), the aunt and the
niece and the nephew explored the secret stair and the secret chamber
thoroughly.
"What a wonderful lot of pigeons' feathers!" said Aunt Edith; "they must
have been piling up here for years and years."
"It was lucky, you finding that key," said Edred. "I wonder who dropped
it. Where's the other one, Elf?"
"I don't know," said Elfrida truthfully, "it isn't in my pocket now."
And though Edred and Aunt Edith searched every corner of the secret
hiding-place they never found that key.
Elfrida alone knows that she gave it to the Mouldiwarp. And as Mrs.
Honeysett declared that there had never been a parlour key with a label
on it in _her_ time it certainly does seem as though the Mole must have
put the key he got from Elfrida on the path for Aunt Edith to find,
after carefully labelling it to prevent mistakes. How the Mole got the
label is another question, but I really think that finding a label for a
key is quite a simple thing to do--I have done it myself. Whereas making
a clock-face of white pigeon feathers is very difficult indeed--and a
thing that I have never been able to do. And as for making that
clock-face the means of persuading time to go fast or slow, just as one
wishes--well, I don't suppose even _you_ could do that.
Elfrida found it rather a relief to go back to the ordinary world, where
magic moles did not upset the clock--a world made pleasant by nice aunts
and the old delightful games that delight ordinary people. Games such as
"Hunt the thimble," "What is my thought like," and "Proverbs." The three
had a delightful weekend, and Aunt Edith told them all about the lodgers
and the seaside house, which already seemed very long ago and far away.
On Sunday evening, as they walked home from Arden Church, where they had
tried to attend to the service, and not to look _too_ much at the tombs
and monuments of dead-and-gone Ardens that lined the chancel, the three
sat down on Arden Knoll, and Aunt Edith explained things a little to
them. She told them much more than they could understand about wills,
and trustees, and incomes, but they were honoured by her confidence, and
pleased by the fact that she seemed to think they _could_ understand
such grown-up kind of things. And the thing that remained on their minds
after the talk, like a ship cast up by a high tide, was this: that Arden
Castle was theirs, and that there was very little money to "keep it up"
with. So that every one must be very careful, and no one must be at all
extravagant. And Aunt Edith was going back to the world of lawyers, and
wills, and trustees, early on Monday morning, and they must be very good
children, and not bother Mrs. Honeysett, and never, never lock
themselves in and hide the key in safe places.
All this remained, as the lasting result of the pleasant talk on the
downs in the softly lessening light.
And another thing remained, which Edred put into words as the two
children walked back from the station, where they had seen Aunt Edith
into the train and waved their goodbyes to her.
"It is very important indeed," he said, "for us to find the treasure.
Then we could 'keep up' the Castle without any bother. We must have it
_built_ up again first, of course, and then we'll _keep_ it up. And we
won't have any old clocks and not keeping together, this time. We'll
both of us go and find the attic the minute our quarrel's three days
old, and we'll ask the Mouldiwarp to send us to a time when we can
really _see_ the treasure with our own eyes. I do think that's a good
idea, don't you?" he asked, with modest pride.
"Very," Elfrida said. "And I say, Edred, I don't mean to quarrel any
more if I can help it. It is such waste of time," she added in her best
grown-up manner, "and it does delay everything so. Delays are dangerous.
It says so in the 'proverb' game. Suppose there really was a chance of
_getting_ the treasure and we had to wait three days because of
quarrelling. But I'll tell you one thing I found out: you can get the
Mole to come and help you, even if you have quarrelled a little. Because
_I_ did." And she told him how.
"But, I expect," she added. "It would only come if I were in the most
awful trouble and all human aid despaired of."
"Well, we're not that now," said Edred, knocking the head off a poppy
with his stick, "and I'm jolly glad we're not."
"I wonder," said Elfrida, "who lives in that cottage where the witch
was. I know exactly where it is. I expect it's been pulled down, though.
Let's go round that way. It'll be something to do."
So they went round that way, and the way was quite easy to find. But
when they got to the place where the tumbledown cottage had been in
Boney's time, there was only a little slate-roofed house with a blue
bill pasted up on its yellow-brick face saying that somebody's A1
ginger-beer and up-to-date minerals were sold there. The house was dull
to look at, and they did not happen to have any spare money for
ginger-beer, so they turned round to go home and suddenly found
themselves face to face with a woman. She wore a red-and-black plaid
blouse and a bought ready-made black skirt, and on her head was a man's
peaked cap such as women in the country wear now instead of the pretty
sun bonnets that they used to wear when I was a little girl.
"So they've pulled the old cottage down," she said. "This new house'll
be fine and dry inside, I lay. The rain comes in through the roof of the
old one so's you might a'most as well be laying in the open medder."
The children listened politely, and both were wondering where they had
seen this woman before, for her face was strangely familiar to them, and
yet they didn't seem really to know her either.
"Most of the cottages 'bout here is just as bad as they always was," she
went on. "When Arden has the handling of the treasure he'll see to it
that poor folks lie warm and dry, won't he now?"
And then all in a minute the children both knew, and she knew that they
knew.
"Why," said Edred, "you're the----"
"Yes," she said, "I'm the witch come from old ancient times. If you can
go back I can go forth, because then and now's the same if I know how to
make a clock."
"Can you make clocks?" said Elfrida. "I thought it was only----"
"So it be," said the witch. "I can't make 'em, but I know them as can.
And I've come 'ere to find you, 'cause you brought me the tea and sugar.
I've got the wise eye, I have. I can see back and forth. I looked
forrard and I saw ye, and I looked back and I saw what you're seeking,
and I know where the treasure is and----"
"But where did you get those clothes?" Edred asked; and it was a
question he was afterwards to have reason to regret.
"Oh, clothes is easy come by," said the witch. "If it was only clothes I
could be a crowned queen this very minute."
The children had a fleeting impression of seeing against the criss-cross
fence of the potato patch a lady in crimson and ermine with a gold
crown. They blinked, startled, and saw that there was no crimson and
gold, only the dull clothes of the witch against the background of
potato patch.
"And how did you get here?" Edred asked.
"That speckled hen of mine's a-settin' on the clock-face now," she said.
"I quieted her with a chalk-line drawn from her beak's end straight out
into the world of wonders. If she rouses up, then I'm back there, and I
can't never come back here, my dears, nor more than once, I can't. So
let's make haste down to the Castle, and I'll show you where my great
granny see them put the treasure when she was a little gell."
The three hurried down the steep-banked lane.
"Many's the time," the witch went on, "my granny pointed it out to me.
It's just alongside where----"
And then the witch was not there any more. Edred and Elfrida were alone
in the lane. The speckled hen must have recovered from her "quieting,"
and got off the clock.
"She's gone right enough," said Edred, "and now we'll never know. And
just when she was going to tell us where it was. I do think it's too
jolly stupid for anything."
[Illustration: "A LADY IN CRIMSON AND ERMINE WITH A GOLD CROWN."]
"It's _you_ that's too jolly stupid for anything," said Elfrida hotly.
"What did you want to go asking her about her silly clothes for? It was
_that_ did it. She'd have told us where it was before now if you hadn't
taken her time up with clothes. As if _clothes_ mattered! I do wish to
goodness you'd _sometimes_ try to behave as if you'd got some sense."
"Go it!" said Edred bitterly. "As if everything wasn't tiresome enough.
Now there's another three days to wait, because of your nagging. Oh,
it's just exactly like a girl, so it is!"
"I'm--I'm sorry," said Elfrida, awestricken. "Let's do something good to
make up. I'll give you that note-book of mine with the lead-pointed
mother-of-pearl pencil, and we'll go round to all the cottages and find
out which are leaky, so as to be ready to patch them up when we've got
the treasure."
"I don't _want_ to be good," said Edred bitterly. "_I_ haven't
quarrelled and put everything back, but I'm going to now," he said, with
determination. "I don't see why everything should be smashed up and me
not said any of the things I want to say."
"Oh, _don't!_" cried Elfrida; "it's bad enough to quarrel when you don't
want to, but to _set out_ to quarrel! Don't!"
Edred didn't. He kicked the dust up with his boots, and the two went
back to the Castle in gloomy silence.
At the gate Edred paused. "I'll make it up now if you like," he said.
"I've only just thought of it--but perhaps it's three days from the
_end_ of the quarrel."
"I see," said Elfrida; "so the longer we keep it up----"
"Yes," said Edred; "so let's call it Pax and not waste any _more_ time."