GUY FAWKES
Three days, because there had been a quarrel. But days pass quickly when
the sun shines, and it is holiday-time, and you have a big ruined castle
to explore and examine--a castle that is your own, or your brother's.
"After all," said Elfrida sensibly, "we might quite likely find the
treasure ourselves, without any magic Mouldiwarpiness at all. We'll look
thoroughly. We won't leave a stone unturned."
"We shall have to leave a good many stones unturned," said Edred,
looking at the great grey mass of the keep that towered tall and
frowning above them.
"Well, you know what I mean," said Elfrida. "Come on!" and they went.
They climbed the steep, worn stairs that wound round and round in the
darkness--stairs littered with dead leaves and mould and dropped
feathers, and the dry, deserted nests of owls and jackdaws; stairs that
ended suddenly in daylight and a steep last step, and the top of a broad
ivy-grown wall from which you could look down, down, down; past the
holes in the walls where the big beams used to be, past the old
fireplaces still black with the smoke of fires long since burnt out,
past the doors and windows of rooms whose floors fell away long ago;
down, down, to where ferns and grass and brambles grew green at the very
bottom of the tower.
Then there were arched doors that led to colonnades with strong little
pillars and narrow windows, wonderful little unexpected chambers and
corners--the best place in the whole wide world for serious and
energetic hide-and-seek.
"How glorious," said Elfrida, as they rested, scarlet and panting, after
a thrilling game of "I spy,"--"if all these broken bits were mended, so
that you couldn't see where the new bits were stuck on! And if it could
all be exactly like it was when it was brand-new."
"There wasn't the house when it was brand-new--the house like it is now,
I mean," said Edred. "I don't suppose there was any attic with chests in
when the castle was new."
"There couldn't be, not with _all_ the chests," said Elfrida; "of course
not, because some of the clothes in the chest weren't made till long
after the castle was built. I believe grown-ups can tell what a broken
thing was like when it was new. I know they can with bones--mastodons
and things. And they made out what Hercules was like out of one foot of
him that they found, I believe," she added hazily.
"I've got an idea," said Edred, "if we could get back to where the
castle was all perfect like a model and draw pictures of every part.
Then when we found the treasure we should know exactly what to build it
up like, shouldn't we?"
"Yes," said Elfrida very gently. "We certainly should. But then we
should have to know how to draw first, shouldn't we?"
"Of course we should," Edred agreed, "but that wouldn't take long if we
really tried. I never do try at school. I don't like it. But it's jolly
easy. I know that. Burslem mi. always takes the drawing prize, and you
know what a duffer _he_ is. We might begin to learn now, don't you
think?"
Elfrida sat down on a fallen stone in the middle of the castle yard, and
looked at the intricate wonderful arches and pillars, the crenulated
battlements of the towers, the splendid stoutness of the walls, and she
sighed.
"Yes," she said, "let's begin now----"
"And you'll have to lend me one of your pencils," said he, "because I
broke mine all to bits trying to get the parlour door open the day you'd
got the key in your pocket. Quite a long one it was. You'll have to lend
me a long one, Elf. I can't draw with those little endy-bits that get
inside your hand and prick you with the other end."
"I don't mind," said she, "so long as you don't put it in your mouth."
So they got large sheets of writing-paper, and brown calf-bound books
for the paper to lie flat on, and they started to draw Arden Castle. And
as Elfrida tried to draw everything she knew was there, as well as
everything she could see, her drawing soon became almost entirely
covered with black-lead.
They had no indiarubber, and if you drew anything wrong it had to stay
drawn. When you first begin to draw, you draw a good many things wrong,
don't you? I assure you that nobody would have known that the black and
grey muddle on Elfrida's paper was meant to be a picture of a castle.
Edred's was much more easily recognised, even before he printed "Arden
Castle" under it in large, uneven letters. He never once raised his eyes
from his paper, and just drew what he thought the front of the castle
looked like from the outside. Also he sucked his pencil
earnestly--Elfrida's pencil, I mean--and this made the lines of his
drawing very black.
"There!" he said at last, "it's ever so much liker than yours."
"Yes," said Elfrida, "but there's more _in_ mine."
"It doesn't matter how much there is in a picture if you can't tell what
it's meant for," said Edred, with some truth. "Now, in mine you can see
the towers, and the big gate, and the windows, and the twiddly
in-and-outness on top."
"Yes," said Elfrida, "but . . . well, let's do something else. I don't
believe we should either of us learn to draw well enough to rebuild
Arden by; not before we've found the treasure, I mean. Perhaps we might
meet a real artist, like the one we saw drawing the castle yesterday--in
the past I mean--and get him to draw it for us, and bring the picture
back with us, and----"
"Oh," cried Edred, jumping up and dropping his masterpiece, and the
calf-bound volume and the pencil. "_I_ know. The Brownie!"
"The Brownie?"
"Yes--take it with us. Then we could photograph the castle all perfect."
"But we can't take it with us."
"Can't we?" said Edred; "that's all _you_ know. Now I'll tell you
something. That first time--a bit of plaster was in my shoe when we
changed, and it was in my shoe when we got there, and I took it out when
we were learning about 'dog's delight.' And I flipped it out of the
window. And when we got back, and I'd changed and everything, there was
that bit of plaster in my own shoe. If we can take plaster we can take
photographs--cameras, I mean." This close and intelligent reasoning
commanded Elfrida's respect, and she wished she had thought of it
herself. But then she had not had any plaster in her shoe. So she said--
"You're getting quite clever, aren't you?"
"Aha," said Edred, "you'd like to have thought of that yourself,
wouldn't you? I can be clever sometimes, same as you can."
It is very annoying to have our thoughts read. Elfrida said swiftly,
"Not often you can't," and then stopped short. For a moment the children
stood looking at each other with a very peculiar expression. Then a sigh
of relief broke from each.
"Fielded!" said Edred.
"Just in time!" said Elfrida. "It wasn't a quarrel; nobody could say it
was a quarrel. Come on, let's go and look at the cottages, like the
witch told us to."
They went. They made a tour of inspection that day and the next and the
next. And they saw a great many things that a grown-up inspector would
never have seen. Poor people are very friendly and kind to you when you
are a child. They will let you come into their houses and talk to you
and show you things in a way that they would never condescend to do with
your grown-up relations. This is, of course, if you are a really nice
child, and treat them in a respectful and friendly way. Edred and
Elfrida very soon knew more about the insides of the cottages round
Arden than any grown-up could have learned in a year. They knew what
wages the master of the house got, what there was for dinner, and what,
oftener, there wasn't, how many children were still living, and how many
had failed to live. They knew exactly where the rain came through the
rotten thatch in bad weather, and where the boards didn't fit and so let
the draughts in, and how some of the doors wouldn't shut, some wouldn't
open, and how the bedroom windows were, as often as not, not made to
open at all.
And when they weren't visiting the cottages or exploring the castle they
found a joyous way of passing the time in the reading aloud of the
history of Arden. They took it in turns to read aloud. Elfrida looked
carefully for some mention of Sir Edward Talbot and his pretending to be
the Chevalier St. George. There was none, but a Sir Edward Talbot had
been accused, with the Lord Arden of the time, of plotting against His
Most Christian Majesty King James I.
"I wonder if he was like my Edward Talbot?" said Elfrida. "I would like
to see him again. I wish I'd told him about us having been born so many
years after he died. But it would have been difficult to explain,
wouldn't it? Let's look in Green's History Book and see what they looked
like when it was His Most Christian Majesty King James the First."
Perhaps it was this which decided the children, when the three days were
over, to put on the clothes which most resembled the ones in the
pictures of James I.'s time in Green's History.
Edred had full breeches, puffed out like balloons, and a steeple-crowned
hat, and a sort of tunic of crimson velvet, and a big starched ruff
round his little neck more uncomfortable even than your Eton collar is
after you've been wearing flannels for days and days. And Elfrida had
long, tight stays with a large, flat-shaped piece of wood down the
front, and very full, long skirts over a very abrupt hoop.
When the three days were over the door of the attic, which, as usual
after a quarrel, had been quite invisible and impossible to find, had
become as plain as the nose on the face of the plainest person you know,
and the children had walked in, and looked in the chests till they found
what they wanted.
And now they put on ruffs and all the rest of it to the accompaniment,
or, as it always seemed, with the help, of soft pigeon noises.
While they were dressing Elfrida held the Brownie camera tightly, in one
hand or the other. This made dressing rather slow and difficult, but the
children had agreed that if it were not done the Brownie would be, as
Edred put it, "liable to vanish," as everything else belonging to their
own time always did--except their clothes. I can't explain to you just
now how it was that their clothes _didn't_ vanish. It would take too
long. But it was all part of the magic of white feathers which are, as
you know, the clothes of white pigeons.
And now a very odd thing happened. As Edred put on his second
shoe--which was the last touch to their united toilets--the walls seemed
to tremble and shake and go crooked, like a house of cards at the very
instant before it topples down. The floor slanted to that degree that
standing on it was so difficult as to be at last impossible. The rafters
all seemed to get crooked and mixed, like a box of matches when you
spill them on the floor. The tiled roof that showed blue daylight
through seemed to spin like a top, and you could not tell at all which
way up you were. All this happened with dreadful suddenness, but almost
as soon as it had begun it stopped with a jerk like that of a clockwork
engine that has gone wrong. And the attic was gone--and the chests, and
the blue-chinked tiles of the roof, and the walls and the rafters. And
the room had shrunk to less than half its old size. And it was higher,
and it was not an attic any more, but a round room with narrow windows,
and just such a fireplace, with a stone hood, as the ones the children
had seen when they looked down from the tops of the towers. You must
have often heard of events that take people's breath away. This sudden
change did really take away the breaths of Edred and Elfrida, so that
for a few moments they could only stare at each other "like Guy Fawkes
masks," as Elfrida later said.
"_I_ see," said Edred, when breath enough for speech had returned to
him. "This is the place where the attic was after the tower fell to
pieces."
"But there isn't any attic really," said Elfrida. "You know we can't
find it if we quarrelled, and Mrs. Honeysett doesn't ever find it. It
isn't anywhere."
[Illustration: "THE WALLS SEEMED TO TREMBLE AND SHAKE AND GO CROOKED."]
"Yes, it is," said Edred. "We couldn't find it if it wasn't."
"Well," said Elfrida gloomily, "I only hope we _may_ find it, that's
all. I suppose we may as well go out. It's no use sticking in this
horrid little room." Her hand was on the door, but even as she fumbled
with the latch, which was of iron and of a shape to which she was wholly
unaccustomed, something else happened, even more disconcerting than the
turn-over-change in which the attic and the chests had disappeared. It
is very difficult to describe. Perhaps you happen to dislike travelling
in trains with your back to the engine? If you do dislike it, you
dislike it very much indeed. It makes your head ache, and gives you a
queer feeling at the back of your neck, and makes you turn so pale that
the grown-up people with whom you are travelling will ask you what is
the matter, and sometimes heartlessly insist that the buns you had at
the junction, or the chocolate creams pressed into your hand at the
parting hour by Uncle Fred or Aunt Imogen, are the cause of your
sufferings. The worst feeling of all is that terrible sensation, as
though your heart and lungs and the front part of your waistcoat were
being drawn slowly but surely through your backbone, and taken a very
long way off.
The sensations which now held Edred and Elfrida were exactly like those
which--if you don't like travelling backwards--you know only too
well--and the sensations were so acute that both children shut their
eyes. The whirling feeling, and the withdrawing-waistcoat feeling, and
the headache, and the back-of-the-neck feeling stopped as suddenly as
they had begun, and the two children opened their eyes in a room which
Edred at least had never seen before. To Elfrida it seemed strange yet
familiar. The shape of the room, the position of doors and windows, the
mantelpiece with its curious carvings--these she knew. And some of the
furniture, too. Yet the room seemed bare--barer than it should have
been. But why should it look bare--barer than it should have
been--unless she knew how much less bare it once was? Unless, in fact,
she had seen it before?
"Oh, I know," she cried, standing in her stiff skirts and heavy shoes in
the middle of the room. "I know. This is Lord Arden's town house. This
is where I was with Cousin Betty. Only there aren't such nice chairs and
things, and it was full of people then."
Edred remained silent, his mouth half open and his eyes half shut in a
sort of trance of astonishment. This was very different from the last
adventure in which he had taken part. For then he had only gone to the
house in Arden Castle as it was in Boney's time, and he had gone to it
by the simple means of walking down a staircase with which he was
already familiar. But now he had been transported in a most violent and
unpleasing manner, not only from his own times to times much earlier,
but also from Arden Castle, which he knew, to Arden House, which he did
not know. So he was silent, and when he did speak it was with discontent
verging on disgust.
"I don't like it," he began. "Let's go back. I don't like it. And we
didn't take the photograph. And I don't like it. And my clothes are
horrid. I feel something between a balloon and a Bluecoat boy. And
you've no idea how silly you look--like Mrs. Noah out of the Ark, only
tubby. And I don't know who we're supposed to be. And I don't suppose
this is Arden House. And if it is, you don't know _when_. Suppose it's
Inquisition times, and they put us on the stake? Let's go back; I don't
like it," he ended.
"Now you just listen," said Elfrida, knitting her brows under the queer
cap she wore. "I know inside me what I mean, but _you_ won't unless you
jolly well attend."
"Fire ahead."
"Well, then, even if it was Inquisition times it would be all right--for
us."
"How do you know?"
"I don't know how I know, but I know I _do_ know," said Elfrida firmly.
"You see, _I've_ been here before. It's not real, you see."
"It _is_," said Edred, kicking the leg of the table.
"Yes, of course . . . but . . . look here! You remember the water-shoot
at Earl's Court, and you were so frightened."
"I wasn't."
"Yes, you were; and I didn't half like it myself. I wished we hadn't,
rather. And when it started, and we knew we'd _got_ to go on with it.
Oh, horrible! And when it was over we wanted to go again, and we did,
and it's been so jolly to remember. This is like that. See?"
"I don't," said Edred, "understand a single word you say. This isn't a
bit like the water-shoot or anything. Now, is it?"
Elfrida frowned. Afterwards she was glad that she had done no more than
frown. It is dangerous, as you know, to quarrel in a boat, but far more
dangerous to quarrel in a century that is not your own. She frowned and
opened her mouth. And just as her mouth opened the door of the room
followed its example, and a short, dark, cross-looking woman in a brown
skirt and strange cap came hurrying in.
"So it's here you've hidden yourselves!" she cried. "And I looking high
and low to change your dress."
"What for?" said Edred, for it was his arm which she had quite ungently
caught.
"For what?" she said, as she dragged him out of the room. "Why, to
attend my lord your father and your lady mother at the masque at
Whitehall. Had you forgot already? And thou so desirous to attend them
in thy new white velvet broidered with the orange-tawny, and thy lady
mother's diamond buckles, and the silken cloak, and the shoe-roses, and
the cobweb-lawn starched ruff, and the little sword and all."
The woman had dragged Edred out of the room and by the stairs by this
time. Elfrida, following, decided that her speech was the harshest part
of her.
"If she was really horrid," thought the girl, "she wouldn't try to cheer
him up with velvet and swords and diamond buckles.
"Can't _I_ go?" she said aloud.
The woman turned and slapped her--not hard, but smartly. "I told thee
how it would be if thou wouldst not hold that dunning tongue. No; thou
can't go. Little ladies stay at home and sew their samplers. Thou'll go
to Court soon enough, I warrant."
So Elfrida sat and watched while Edred was partially washed--the soap
got in his eyes just as it gets in yours nowadays--and dressed in the
beautiful white page's dress, white velvet, diamond buckles, little
sword, and all.
"You are splendid," she said. "Oh, I do wish I was a boy!" she added,
for perhaps the two thousand and thirty-second time in her short life.
"It's not that thou'll be wishing when _thy_ time comes to go to Court,"
said the woman. "There, my little lord, give thy old nurse a kiss and
stand very cautious and perfect, not to soil thy fine feathers. And when
thou hearest thy mother's robes on the stairs go out and make thy bow
like thy tutor taught thee."
[Illustration: "'THOU'RT A FINE PAGE, INDEED, MY DEAR SON,' SAID THE
LADY. 'STAND ASIDE AND TAKE MY TRAIN.'"]
It was not Edred's tutor who had taught him to bow. But when a rustling
of silks sounded on the stairs he was able to go out and make a very
creditable obeisance to the stately magnificence that swept down towards
him. Elfrida thought it best to curtsey beside her brother. Aunt Edith
had taught them to dance the minuet, and somehow the bow and curtsey
which belong to that dance seemed the right thing now. And the lady on
the stairs smiled, well pleased. She was a wonderfully dressed lady. Her
bodice was of yellow satin, richly embroidered; her petticoat of gold
tissue with stripes; her robe of red velvet, lined with yellow muslin
with stripes of pure gold. She had a point lace apron and a collar of
white satin under a delicately worked ruff. And she was a blaze of
beautiful jewels.
"Thou'rt a fine page, indeed, my dear son," said the lady. "Stand aside
and take my train as I pass. And thou, dear daughter, so soon as thou'rt
of an age for it, thou shalt have a train and a page to carry it for
thee."
She swept on, and the children followed. Lord Arden was in the hall,
hardly less splendid than his wife, and they all went off in a coach
that was very grand, if rather clumsy. Its shape reminded Elfrida of the
coach which the fairy-godmother made for Cinderella out of the pumpkin,
and she herself, as she peeped through the crowd of liveried servants to
see it start, felt as much like Cinderella as any one need wish to feel,
and perhaps a little more. But she consoled herself by encouraging a
secret feeling she had that something was bound to happen; and sure
enough something did. And that is what I am going to tell you about. I
own that I should like to tell you also what happened to Edred, but his
part of the adventure was not really an adventure at all--though it was
a thing that he will never forget as long as he remembers any magic
happenings.
"We went to the King's house," he told Elfrida later. "Whitehall is the
name. I should like to call my house Whitehall--if it wasn't called
Arden Castle, you know. And there were thousands of servants, I should
think, all much finer than you could dream of, and lords and ladies, and
lots of things to eat, and bear-baiting and cock-fighting in the
garden."
"Cruel!" said Elfrida. "I hope you didn't look."
"A little I did," said Edred. "Boys have to be brave to bear sights of
blood and horror, you know, in case of them growing up to be soldiers.
But I liked the masque best. The Queen acted in it. There wasn't any
talking, you know, only dressing up and dancing. It was something like
the pantomime, but not so sparkly. And there was a sea with waves that
moved all silvery, and panelled scenes, and dolphins and fishy things,
and a great shell that opened, and the Queen and the ladies came out and
danced, and I had a lot to eat, such rummy things, and then I fell
asleep, and when I woke up the King himself was looking at me and saying
I had a bonny face. Bonny means pretty. You'd think a King would know
better, wouldn't you?"
This was all that Edred could find to tell. I could have told more, but
one can't tell everything, and there is Elfrida's adventure to be told
about.
When the coach had disappeared in the mist and the mud--for the weather
was anything but summer weather--Elfrida went upstairs again to the room
where she had left the old nurse. She did not know where else to go.
"Sit thee down," said the nurse, "and sew on thy sampler."
There was the sampler, very fine indeed, in a large polished wood frame.
"I wish I needn't," said Elfrida, looking anxiously at the fine silks.
"Tut, tut," said the nurse, "how'll thee grow to be a lady if thou
doesn't mind thy needle?"
"I'd much rather talk to you," said Elfrida coaxingly.
"Thou canst chatter as well as sew," the nurse said, "as well I know to
my cost. Would that thy needle flew so fast as thy tongue! Sit thee
down, and if the little tree be done by dinner-time thou shalt have
leave to see thy Cousin Richard."
"I suppose," thought Elfrida, taking up the needle, "that I am fond of
my Cousin Richard."
The sewing was difficult, and hurt her eyes, but she persevered.
Presently some one called the nurse, and Elfrida was left alone. Then
she stopped persevering. "Whatever _is_ the good," she asked herself,
"of working at a sampler that you haven't time to finish, and that would
be worn out, anyhow, years and years before you were born? The Elfrida
who's doing that sampler is the same age as me, and born the same day,"
she reflected. And then she wondered what the date was, and what was the
year. She was still wondering, and sticking the needle idly in and out
of one hole, without letting it take the silk with it, when there was a
sort of clatter on the stairs, the door burst open, and in came a jolly
boy of about her own age.
"Thy task done?" he cried. "Mine too. Old Parrot-nose kept me hard at
it, but I thought of thee, and for once I did all his biddings. So now
we are free. Come, play ball in the garden." This, Elfrida concluded,
must be Cousin Dick, and she decided at once that she _was_ fond of him.
There was a big and beautiful garden behind the house. The children
played ball there, and they ran in the box alleys, and played
hide-and-seek among the cut trees and stone seats, and statues and
fountains.
Old Parrot-nose, who was Cousin Richard's tutor, and was dressed in
black, and looked as though he had been eating lemons and vinegar, sat
on a seat and watched them, or walked up and down the flagged terrace
with his thumb in a dull-looking book.
When they stopped their game to rest on a stone step, leaning against a
stone seat, old Parrot-nose walked very softly up behind the seat, and
stood there where they could not see him and listened. Listening is very
dishonourable, as we all know, but in those days tutors did not always
think it necessary to behave honourably to their pupils.
I always have thought, and I always shall think, that it was the
eavesdropping of that tiresome old tutor, Mr. Parados--or
Parrot-nose--which caused all the mischief. But Elfrida has always
believed, and always will believe, that the disaster was caused by her
knowing too much history. That is why she is so careful to make sure
that no misfortune shall ever happen on _that_ account, any way. That is
one of the reasons why she never takes a history prize at school. "You
never know," she says. And, in fact, when it comes to a question in an
historical examination, she never _does_ know.
This was how it happened. Elfrida, now that she was no longer running
about in the garden, remembered the question that she had been asking
herself over the embroidery frame, and it now seemed sensible to ask the
question of some one who could answer it. So she said--
"I say, Cousin Richard, what day is it?"
Elfrida understood him to say that it was the fifth of November.
"Is it really?" she said. "Then it's Guy Fawkes day. Do you have
fireworks?" And in pure lightness of heart began to hum--
"Please to remember
The Fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot."
"'Tis not a merry song, cousin," said Cousin Richard, "nor a safe one.
'Tis best not to sing of treason."
"But it didn't come off, you know, and he's always burnt in the end,"
said Elfrida.
"Are there more verses?" Cousin Dick asked.
"No."
"I wonder what treason the ballad deals with?" said the boy.
"Don't you know?" It was then that Elfrida made the mistake of showing
off her historical knowledge. "_I_ know. And I know some of the names of
the conspirators, too, and who they wanted to kill, and everything."
"Tell me," said Cousin Richard idly.
"The King hadn't been fair to the Catholics, you know," said Elfrida,
full of importance, "so a lot of them decided to kill him and the Houses
of Parliament. They made a plot--there were a whole lot of them in it.
They said Lord Arden was, but he wasn't, and some of them were to
pretend to be hunting, and to seize the Princess Elizabeth and proclaim
her Queen, and the rest were to blow the Houses of Parliament up when
the King went to open them."
"I never heard this tale from my tutor," said Cousin Richard laughing.
"Proceed, cousin."
"Well, Mr. Piercy took a house next the Parliament House, and they dug a
secret passage to the vaults under the Parliament Houses; and they put
three dozen casks of gunpowder there and covered them with faggots. And
they would have been all blown up, only Mr. Tresham wrote to his
relation, Lord Monteagle, that they were going to blow up the King
and----"
"What King?" said Cousin Richard.
"King James the First," said Elfrida. "Why--what----" for Cousin Richard
had sprung to his feet, and old Parrot-nose had Elfrida by the wrist.
He sat down on the seat and drew her gently till she stood in front of
him--gently, but it was like the hand of iron in the velvet glove (of
which, no doubt, you have often read).
"Now, Mistress Arden," he said softly, "tell me over again this romance
that you tell your cousin."
Elfrida told it.
"And where did you hear this pretty story?" he asked.
[Illustration: "OLD PARROT-NOSE HAD ELFRIDA BY THE WRIST."]
"Where are we now?" gasped Elfrida, who was beginning to understand.
"Here in the garden--where else?" said Cousin Richard, who seemed to
understand nothing of the matter.
"Here--in my custody," said the tutor, who thought he understood
everything. "Now tell me all--every name, every particular--or it will
be the worse for thee and thy father."
"Come, sir," said Cousin Richard, "you frighten my cousin. It is but a
tale she told. She is always merry, and full of many inventions."
"It is a tale she shall tell again before those of higher power than I,"
said the tutor, in a thoroughly disagreeable way, and his hand tightened
on Elfrida's wrist.
"But--but--it's _history_," cried Elfrida, in despair. "It's in all the
books."
"Which books?" he asked keenly.
"I don't know--all of them," she sullenly answered; sullenly, because
she now really did understand just the sort of adventure in which her
unusual knowledge of history, and, to do her justice, her almost equally
unusual desire to show off, had landed her.
"Now," said the hateful tutor, for such Elfrida felt him to be, "tell me
the names of the conspirators."
"It _can't_ do any harm," Elfrida told herself. "This is James the
First's time, and I'm in it. But it's three hundred years ago all the
same, and it all _has_ happened, and it can't make any difference what I
say, so I'd better tell all the names I know."
The hateful tutor shook her.
"Yes, all right," she said; and to herself she added, "It's only a sort
of dream; I may as well tell." Yet when she opened her mouth to tell all
the names she could remember of the conspirators of the poor old
Gunpowder Plot that didn't come off, all those years ago, she found
herself not telling those names at all. Instead, she found herself
saying--
"I'm not going to tell. I don't care what you do to me. I'm sorry I said
anything about it. It's all nonsense--I mean, it's only history, and you
ought to be ashamed of yourself, listening behind doors--I mean, _out_
of doors behind stone seats, when people are talking nonsense to their
own cousins."
Elfrida does not remember very exactly what happened after this. She was
furiously angry, and when you are furiously angry things get mixed and
tangled up in a sort of dreadful red mist. She only remembers that the
tutor was very horrid, and twisted her wrists to make her tell, and she
screamed and tried to kick him; that Cousin Richard, who did not scream,
did, on the other hand, succeed in kicking the tutor; that she was
dragged indoors and shut up in a room without a window, so that it was
quite dark.
"If only I'd got Edred here," she said to herself, with tears of rage
and mortification, "I'd try to make some poetry and get the Mouldiwarp
to come and fetch us away. But it's no use till he comes home."
When he did come home--after the bear-baiting and the cock-fighting and
the banquet and the masque--Lord and Lady Arden came with him, of
course. And they found their house occupied by an armed guard, and in
the dark little room a pale child exhausted with weeping, who assured
them again and again that it was all nonsense, it was only history, and
she hadn't meant to tell--indeed she hadn't. Lady Arden took her in her
arms and held her close and tenderly, in spite of the grand red velvet
and the jewels.
"Thou'st done no harm," said Lord Arden; "a pack of silly tales.
To-morrow I'll see my Lord Salisbury and prick this silly bubble. Go
thou to bed, sweetheart," he said to his wife, "and let the little maid
lie with thee--she is all a-tremble with tears and terrors. To-morrow,
my Lord Secretary shall teach these popinjays their place, and Arden
House shall be empty of them, and we shall laugh at this fine piece of
work that a solemn marplot has made out of a name or two and a young
child's fancies. By to-morrow night all will be well, and we shall lie
down in peace."
But when to-morrow night came it had, as all nights have, the day's work
behind it. Lord Arden and his lady and the little children lay, not in
Arden House in Soho, not in Arden Castle on the downs by the sea, but in
the Tower of London, charged with high treason and awaiting their trial.
[Illustration: "THEY FOUND THEIR HOUSE OCCUPIED BY AN ARMED GUARD."]
For my Lord Salisbury had gone to those vaults under the Houses of
Parliament, and had found that bold soldier of fortune, Guy Fawkes, with
his dark eyes, his dark lantern, and his dark intent; and the names of
those in the conspiracy had been given up, and King James was saved, and
the Parliaments--but the Catholic gentlemen whom he had deceived, and
who had turned against him and his deceits, were face to face with the
rack and the scaffold.
And I can't explain it at all--because, of course, Elfrida knew as well
as I do that it all happened three hundred years ago--or, if you prefer
to put it that way, that it had never happened, and that anyway, it was
Mr. Tresham's letter to Lord Monteagle, and not Elfrida's singing of
that silly rhyme, that had brought the Ardens and all these other
gentlemen to the Tower and to the shadow of death. And yet she felt that
it was _she_ who had betrayed them. She felt also that if she had
betrayed a base plot, she ought to be glad, and she was not glad. She
felt--and called herself--a sneak. She had taken advantage of having
been born so much later than all these people, and of having been rather
good at history to give away the lives of all these nobles and
gentlemen. That they were traitors to King and Parliament made no manner
of difference. It was she, as she felt but too bitterly, who was the
traitor. And in the thick-walled room in the Tower, where the name of
Raleigh was still fresh in its carving, Elfrida lay awake, long after
Lady Arden and Edred were sleeping peacefully, and hated herself,
calling herself a Traitor, a Coward, and an Utter Duffer.