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THE HAPPY ADVENTURERS
[Illustration: YOU CALLED ME, SO I CAME]
The Happy Adventurers
BY
LYDIA MILLER MIDDLETON
To Alastair and Margaret
"I tell this tale, which is strictly true, Just by way of convincing
you How very little, since things were made, Things have altered in the
building trade."--Kipling.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. HOW IT BEGAN II. THE BUILDERS, OR THE LITTLE HOUSE III. THE
FORTUNE-MAKERS, OR THE CHERRY-GARDEN IV. THE TREASURE-HUNTERS, OR THE
DUKE'S NOSE V. THE GOLD-DIGGERS, OR THE MIRACLE VI. THE
GRAPE-GATHERERS, OR WHO WAS MR. SMITH? VII. THE AERONAUTS, OR THE
FATEFUL STONE VIII. HOW IT ENDED
ILLUSTRATIONS
"YOU CALLED ME, SO I CAME"
"I WISH I COULD MAKE SOMETHING THAT WOULD REACH FROM HERE TO MY BROTHER"
GRIZZEL THREW IN A SMALL HANDFUL OF TEA
DICK STARTED VIOLENTLY
THEY STOOD AND WATCHED THE "KANGAROO" FOR SOME TIME
THERE THEY WERE-OH, HOW MOLLY LONGED TO KEEP THEM!
THE HAPPY ADVENTURERS
CHAPTER I
How it Began
"Dear, dear!" said Grannie, "woes cluster, as my mother used to say."
"Let us hope that this is the last woe, and that now the luck will
turn," said Aunt Mary.
Mollie did not say anything. She had smiled the Guides' smile valiantly
through the worst of her misfortunes, but now she was so tired that she
felt nothing short of a hammer and two tacks could fasten that smile on
to her face any longer. So she closed her eyes and lay back on the
cushions, feeling that Fate had done its worst and that no more blows
were possible in the immediate future.
Grannie fetched an eiderdown and tucked it cosily round the patient,
who looked pale and chilly even on this fine warm day in June, while
Aunt Mary tidied away the remains of lotions and bandages left by the
doctor.
"The best thing now will be a little sleep," said Grannie, looking down
with kind old eyes at her granddaughter, "a little quiet sleep and then
a nice tea, with the first strawberries from the garden. I saw quite a
number of red ones this morning, and Susan shall give us some cream."
Mollie opened her eyes again and tried to look pleased, but even the
thought of strawberries and cream could not make her feel really happy
in her heart; for one thing, she still felt rather sick.
"That will be lovely," she said, as gratefully as she could, "and now I
think I _will_ try to go to sleep, and perhaps forget things for a
little while--" and, in spite of all her efforts, a few tears insisted
upon rolling down her cheeks as she thought of home, and Mother's
disappointment, and the dull time that lay before her.
Mollie Gordon's home was in London, in the somewhat dull district of
North Kensington, where her father, Dr. Gordon, had a large but not
particularly lucrative practice, and her mother cheerfully made the
best of things from Monday morning till Sunday night. There were five
children: Mollie and her twin brother Dick; Jean, Billy, and Bob. They
lived in a large, ugly house, one of a long row of ugly houses in a
dull gardenless street, where the sidewalks were paved, and the plane
trees which bordered the road were stunted and dusty. In the near
neighbourhood ran a railway line, a car line, and four bus routes, so
that noise and dust were familiar elements in the Gordons' lives--so
familiar, indeed, that they passed unnoticed.
A month ago Mollie had been in the full swing of mid-term. Every moment
of her life had been taken up with lessons, games, and Guiding; the
days had been too short for all she wanted to get into them, and, if
she had been allowed, she would certainly have followed the poet's
advice to "steal a few hours from the night", but, fortunately for
herself, she had a sensible mother whose views did not coincide with
the poet's.
And then in the midst of all her busyness, just when she thought
herself quite indispensable to the school play, the hockey team, and
her Patrol, she fell ill with measles. She was not very ill, so far as
measles went, but her eyes remained obstinately weak, and so it was
decided that she should be sent down to the country to stay with
Grannie, do no lessons at all, and spend as much time as possible in
the open air. Luckily, or unluckily, according to the point of view,
none of the other children had caught the disease, so that Mollie went
alone to Chauncery, as Grannie's house in Sussex was called.
Chauncery was an old-fashioned house standing in a beautiful garden
surrounded by fields and woods. If Mollie could have had a companion of
her own age, she would have been perfectly happy there, in spite of
frustrated ambitions and the trial of not being allowed to read; but
the very word "measles" frightened away the neighbours, so that no one
came to keep her company, and she sometimes felt very lonely.
Nevertheless, she had accommodated herself to circumstances, and,
between playing golf with Aunt Mary, driving the fat pony, and learning
to milk the pretty Guernsey cows, she managed to "put in a very decent
time", as she expressed it. Till this third misfortune befell her.
"First measles, then eyes, and now a sprained ankle," she sighed to
Aunt Mary on the morning after her accident; "what _can_ I do to pass
the time? It's all very well for Baden-Powell to talk, but I can't sing
and laugh all day for a week; it would drive you crazy if I did. I have
smiled till my mouth aches. What shall I do next?"
"You poor chicken!" Aunt Mary exclaimed, with the most comforting
sympathy. "You have had a run of bad luck and no mistake! We must
invent something. You can't read and you can't sew--how about knitting?
Suppose we knit a scarf in school colours for Dick, or a jumper for
yourself to wear when you are better? I could get wool in the village.
That would do to begin with, till I think of something better."
Mollie agreed that it certainly would be better than doing nothing,
though hardly an exciting occupation for an active girl of thirteen. So
the scarf was set agoing, whilst Grannie read aloud, and the first half
of the first day was got through pretty well. But after lunch the day
darkened and rain began to fall in heavy slate-coloured streaks,
pouring down the window-panes and streaming across the greenhouse roof,
changing the bright daylight into a dismal twilight, and blotting out
all view of the garden. It was depressing weather even for people who
were quite well, and poor Mollie might be forgiven for finding it hard
to keep up her spirits. She was tired of knitting, tired of being read
aloud to, and tired of writing letters to her family.
"How would you like to see some photographs of your father when he was
little?" suggested Grannie at last. "He was the most beautiful infant I
ever saw." She opened a cupboard door as she spoke, and presently came
back to Mollie's side with an arm-load of photograph-albums, the kind
of albums to be found in country houses, filled with carte-de-visite
photographs of old-fashioned people, all standing, apparently, in the
same studio, and each resting one hand on the same marble pillar. The
ladies wore spreading crinoline skirts, and had hair brushed in smooth
bands on either side of their high foreheads; the men wore baggy
trousers and beards; family groups were large, and those boys and girls
taken separately looked altogether too good for this world.
Mollie smiled at the picture of her father, a fat, solemn baby in his
mother's arms. She thought, but did not say, that he was a remarkably
plain child, and congratulated herself that she took after her mother
in appearance; though, of course, Father, as she knew him, was not in
the least like that infant. At the rest of the photographs she looked
politely, but it was hard work to keep from yawning, and at last her
mouth suddenly opened of itself and gave a great gape.
"That's right," said Grannie, "now I'll tuck you up and lower the
blinds, and you'll have a nice little nap till tea-time."
Mollie closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep would not come.
She missed her morning walk and the fresh air of out-of-doors, so she
gave it up, opened her eyes again, and lay wakefully thinking of home
and Mother, Dick and Jean, and school. The big clock on the mantelpiece
seemed to go very, very slowly, its tick loud and deliberate, as though
it would say: "Don't think you are going to get off one single
minute--sixty minutes to the hour you have to live through, and there
are still two hours till tea-time." The rain splashed against the
window, the wind moaned through the tree-tops, and the room got
steadily darker.
"Oh dear!" Mollie whispered to herself, "what _can_ I do to make the
time pass?"
She sat up and looked round, and her eyes fell upon the last of the
photograph-albums--the one she had yawned over. She picked it up,
propped it on her knees, and, lying back against the cushions, turned
the pages over. These were all children, prim children with tidy hair
and solemn faces. Mollie stopped at the picture of a girl dressed in a
wide-skirted, sprigged-muslin frock. Her hair fell in plump curls from
beneath a broad-brimmed hat with long ribbons floating over one
shoulder. Her legs were very conspicuous in white stockings and funny
boots with tassels dangling on their fronts.
"I expect this is how Ellen Montgomery looked in _The Wide, Wide
World_," Mollie said to herself. "She would be rather pretty if she
were properly dressed; she looks about my age. I wonder what sort of
time she had--horribly dull, probably. No hockey, no Guiding, no
fox-trots--I expect she danced the polka, and recited 'Lives of great
men all remind us', and got pi-jawed ten times a day. I can't imagine
how children endured life in those days. Thank goodness I wasn't born
till 1907! She does look rather nice, though--and oh! I wish you could
talk, my dear! I _am_ dull."
Just then Aunt Mary began to play the piano in the next room. She
played soft, old-fashioned tunes, so that her niece might be soothed to
sleep. Mollie did not recognize the tunes but she liked them; they
seemed to sympathize with her as she continued to look at the prim
little girl in the photograph.
"Perhaps she played those very tunes; she looks as if she practised for
one hour a day _regularly_."
As Mollie lay there, the sweet old music sounding in her ears and her
eyes steadily fixed on the face of that other child of long ago, it
seemed to her that the child smiled at her.
"I am getting sleepy," she said to herself, and shut her eyes. But she
did not feel sleepy and soon opened them again. This time there was no
mistake about it--the child in the photograph _was_ smiling, first with
her solemn eyes, and then with her prim little mouth. Mollie was so
startled that she let the album slip from her lap, and it fell down
between the sofa and the wall. She turned round, and, after groping in
the narrow space for a minute, she succeeded in getting hold of the
album again and pulled it up. As she raised her head and sat up, she
saw, standing beside her sofa, as large as life, the prim little
girl--wide skirts, white stockings, tasselled boots, and all.
As Mollie stared "with all her eyes" as people say, the little girl
smiled at her again, and she noticed that, although the child's dress
was so very old-fashioned, her smile was quite a To-day smile, so to
speak.
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Mollie, "who are you?"
"I am a Time-traveller," the child answered, speaking in a peculiarly
soft voice. "You called me, so I came."
"What on earth is a Time-traveller?" asked Mollie, rather surprised to
find that she did not feel in the least alarmed at this sudden
apparition.
"A person who travels in Time," the child replied. "I am one, and you
are one, but everybody isn't one. I can't explain, so you'd better not
waste time asking questions if you want to travel. I can't wait here
long."
"But--" said Mollie, looking bewildered, as well she might. "Travel
where? Of course I'd love to come, but how can I with a crocked-up
ankle; and what would Grannie say?"
"Those things don't matter to Time-travellers," said the other child.
"We travel about in Time. You haven't got to think about what is
happening here and now--that will be all right. But you have to make a
vow before you begin Time-travelling. Do you know what a vow is?"
"Of course I do," Mollie replied; "I'm a Girl Guide."
"I don't know what a Girl Guide is," said the other girl, wrinkling up
her pretty forehead, "but a Time-traveller has to vow on her faith and
honour never to say one single word about her adventures to any
grown-up, either here or there. You must not ask them questions that
will make them wonder things, however much you want to, because they
don't understand, and would be almost sure to interfere. Will you vow?"
"Yes, I will, but you must give me one moment to think. Where shall I
travel to and how long shall I stay?"
"You come along with me to my Time; I don't know how long you will
stay. A year of our Time might be a minute of yours, or a minute of
ours might be a year of yours, but you will be all right. Have you ever
seen a dissolving view?"
"That's a magic lantern, isn't it? Yes, Dick once had one. I think they
are rather dull."
"Oh no, not if they are properly done. Hugh--" she stopped and then
began again. "You will step into a dissolving view of our Time. It just
begins and ends anyhow, and you go out of it again."
"But it's so _queer_," Mollie said doubtfully. "I never _heard_ of such
a thing. I must be dreaming."
The other child shook her head. "No, you're not," she said patiently.
She looked around the room as though in search of inspiration, and her
eyes fell upon a volume of Shakespeare which Aunt Mary had been
reading: "Do you learn Shakespeare at your school?" she asked.
"Rather," Mollie answered, in a slightly superior voice; "I have acted
in six plays."
"Ah--then you remember what Hamlet says: 'There are more things in
Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'."
"We haven't done _Hamlet_ yet," Mollie answered, in a less superior
tone, "I don't think I quite understand what that means."
"Neither do I," said the child. "That's it, you see. Papa says--" she
stopped short again, and then went on. "It's nearly time for me to
go--and I can never come back if you don't come this time," moving away
a few steps as she spoke.
"Oh, don't go--don't go," Mollie cried. "I do want to come; it won't do
anyone any harm, will it?"
The child smiled very sweetly: "Not the least in the world. But
remember the vow. On your faith and honour."
"I vow, I vow--on my word of honour as a Guide. I can't say more than
that."
"Give me your hand, then. Listen to the music, and shut your eyes till
I tell you to open them."
Mollie closed her eyes. She had a queer swimmy feeling, as if she were
in a high swing and were just swooping down to the lowest point. All
the time Aunt Mary's tunes went on, but they seemed to go farther and
farther away.
"Open," said a soft voice.
* * * * *
The darkened room had vanished, and the ticking clock; Aunt Mary's
tunes and the rain splashing on the window-panes; the sofa too, and the
prim child. And Mollie herself!
* * * * *
She was standing in a sunny road, with one foot on a white painted
wooden gate, upon which she had evidently been swinging. The gate
opened into a large garden, and before her lay a broad path planted on
either side with tall, pointed cypress trees, their thin shadows lying
across the walk like black bars. Between the trees ran narrow
flower-beds, and beyond these stretched a wide, open space, so solidly
spread with yellow dandelions that it looked as though the golden floor
of heaven had come to rest upon earth. The path, with its sentinel
trees, led straight as a rod to a distant house, long and low,
surrounded by a vine-covered veranda. There were strange, sweet smells
in the air, which felt soft and warm. The sky was brilliantly blue, and
on the fence across the road a gorgeous parrot sat preening its
feathers in the sunshine.
Mollie looked about her with curious eyes, wondering where she was. Not
in England, of that she was sure--there was a different feel in the
air, colours were brighter, scents were stronger, and that radiant
parrot would never perch itself so tranquilly upon an English fence.
Then she saw, coming down the path, a girl of about her own age,
dressed in a brown-holland overall trimmed with red braid, high to the
throat, and belted round the waist. She wore no hat, and her hair fell
over her shoulders in plump brown curls. By her side paced a large dog,
a rough-haired black-and-white collie with sagacious brown eyes. He
leapt forward with a short bark, but the girl laid a restraining hand
on his back:
"Down, Laddie, down," she said, "don't you know a friend when you see
one? Come in, Mollie."
And suddenly Mollie knew where she was. This was Adelaide, in
Australia; that was the child in the photograph, whose name, she knew,
was Prudence Campbell; and they were living in the year 1878.