IT was show-day at Yalding Castle, and it seemed good to the children to
go and visit Mabel, and, as Gerald put it, to mingle unsuspected with
the crowd; to gloat over all the things which they knew and which the
crowd didn't know about the castle and the sliding panels, the magic
ring and the statues that came alive. Perhaps one of the pleasantest
things about magic happenings is the feeling which they give you of
knowing what other people not only don't know but wouldn't, so to speak,
believe if they did.
On the white road outside the gates of the castle was a dark spattering
of breaks and wagonettes and dog-carts. Three or four waiting motor-cars
puffed fatly where they stood, and bicycles sprawled in heaps along the
grassy hollow by the red brick wall. And the people who had been brought
to the castle by the breaks and wagonettes, and dog-carts and bicycles
and motors, as well as those who had walked there on their own unaided
feet, were scattered about the grounds, or being shown over those parts
of the castle which were, on this one day of the week, thrown open to
visitors.
There were more visitors than usual to-day because it had somehow been
whispered about that Lord Yalding was down, and that the holland covers
were to be taken off the state furniture, so that a rich American who
wished to rent the castle, to live in, might see the place in all its
glory.
It certainly did look very splendid. The embroidered satin, gilded
leather and tapestry of the chairs, which had been hidden by brown
holland, gave to the rooms a pleasant air of being lived in. There were
flowering plants and pots of roses here and there on tables or
window-ledges. Mabel's aunt prided herself on her tasteful touch in the
home, and had studied the arrangement of flowers in a series of articles
in _Home Drivel_ called "How to Make Home High-class on Ninepence a
Week."
The great crystal chandeliers, released from the bags that at ordinary
times shrouded them, gleamed with grey and purple splendour. The brown
linen sheets had been taken off the state beds, and the red ropes that
usually kept the low crowd in its proper place had been rolled up and
hidden away.
"It's exactly as if we were calling on the family," said the grocer's
daughter from Salisbury to her friend who was in the millinery.
"If the Yankee doesn't take it, what do you say to you and me setting up
here when we get spliced?" the draper's assistant asked his sweetheart.
And she said: "Oh, Reggie, how can you! you are _too_ funny."
All the afternoon the crowd in its smart holiday clothes, pink blouses,
and light-coloured suits, flowery hats, and scarves beyond description
passed through and through the dark hall, the magnificent drawing-rooms
and boudoirs and picture-galleries. The chattering crowd was awed into
something like quiet by the calm, stately bedchambers, where men had
been born, and died; where royal guests had lain in long-ago summer
nights, with big bow-pots of elder-flowers set on the hearth to ward off
fever and evil spells. The terrace, where in old days dames in ruffs had
sniffed the sweetbrier and southernwood of the borders below, and
ladies, bright with rouge and powder and brocade, had walked in the
swing of their hooped skirts--the terrace now echoed to the sound of
brown boots, and the tap-tap of high-heeled shoes at two and eleven
three, and high laughter and chattering voices that said nothing that
the children wanted to hear. These spoiled for them the quiet of the
enchanted castle, and outraged the peace of the garden of enchantments.
"It isn't such a lark after all," Gerald admitted, as from the window of
the stone summer-house at the end of the terrace they watched the loud
colours and heard the loud laughter. "I do hate to see all these people
in _our_ garden."
"I said that to that nice bailiff-man this morning," said Mabel, setting
herself on the stone floor, "and he said it wasn't much to let them
come once a week. He said Lord Yalding ought to let them come when they
liked--said he would if he lived there."
"That's all he knows!" said Jimmy. "Did he say anything else?"
"Lots," said Mabel. "I do like him! I told him----"
"You didn't!"
"Yes. I told him lots about our adventures. The humble bailiff is a
beautiful listener."
"We shall be locked up for beautiful lunatics if you let your jaw get
the better of you, my Mabel child."
"Not us!" said Mabel. "I told it--you know the way--every word true, and
yet so that nobody believes any of it. When I'd quite done he said I'd
got a real littery talent, and I promised to put his name on the
beginning of the first book I write when I grow up."
"You don't know his name," said Kathleen. "Let's do something with the
ring."
"Imposs!" said Gerald. "I forgot to tell you, but I met Mademoiselle
when I went back for my garters--and she's coming to meet us and walk
back with us."
"What did you say?"
"I said," said Gerald deliberately, "that it was very kind of her. And
so it was. Us not wanting her doesn't make it not kind her coming----"
"It may be kind, but it's sickening too," said Mabel, "because now I
suppose we shall have to stick here and wait for her; and I promised
we'd meet the bailiff-man. He's going to bring things in a basket and
have a picnic-tea with us."
"Where?"
"Beyond the dinosaurus. He said he'd tell me all about the
anteddy-something animals--it means before Noah's Ark; there are lots
besides the dinosaurus--in return for me telling him my agreeable
fictions. Yes, he called them that."
"When?"
"As soon as the gates shut. That's five."
"We might take Mademoiselle along," suggested Gerald.
"She'd be too proud to have tea with a bailiff, I expect; you never know
how grown-ups will take the simplest things." It was Kathleen who said
this.
"Well, I'll tell you what," said Gerald, lazily turning on the stone
bench. "You all go along, and meet your bailiff. A picnic's a picnic.
And I'll wait for Mademoiselle."
Mabel remarked joyously that this was jolly decent of Gerald, to which
he modestly replied: "Oh, rot!"
Jimmy added that Gerald rather liked sucking-up to people.
"Little boys don't understand diplomacy," said Gerald calmly;
"sucking-up is simply silly. But it's better to be good than pretty
and----"
"How do you know?" Jimmy asked.
"And," his brother went on, "you never know when a grown-up may come in
useful. Besides, they _like_ it. You must give them _some_ little
pleasures. Think how awful it must be to be old. My hat!"
"I hope _I_ shan't be an old maid," said Kathleen.
"I don't _mean_ to be," said Mabel briskly. "I'd rather marry a
travelling tinker."
"It would be rather nice," Kathleen mused, "to marry the Gipsy King and
go about in a caravan telling fortunes and hung round with baskets and
brooms."
"Oh, if I could choose," said Mabel, "of course, I'd marry a brigand,
and live in his mountain fastnesses, and be kind to his captives and
help them to escape and----"
"You'll be a real treasure to your husband," said Gerald.
"Yes," said Kathleen, "or a sailor would be nice. You'd watch for his
ship coming home and set the lamp in the dormer window to light him home
through the storm; and when he was drowned at sea you'd be most
frightfully sorry, and go every day to lay flowers on his daisied
grave."
"Yes," Mabel hastened to say, "or a soldier, and then you'd go to the
wars with short petticoats and a cocked hat and a barrel round your neck
like a St. Bernard dog. There's a picture of a soldier's wife on a song
auntie's got. It's called 'The Veevandyear.'"
"When I marry----" Kathleen quickly said.
"When _I_ marry," said Gerald, "I'll marry a dumb girl, or else get the
ring to make her so that she can't speak unless she's spoken to. Let's
have a squint."
He applied his eye to the stone lattice.
"They're moving off," he said. "Those pink and purple hats are nodding
off in the distant prospect; and the funny little man with the beard
like a goat is going a different way from every one else--the gardeners
will have to head him off. I don't see Mademoiselle, though. The rest of
you had better bunk. It doesn't do to run any risks with picnics. The
deserted hero of our tale, alone and unsupported, urged on his brave
followers to pursue the commissariat waggons, he himself remaining at
the post of danger and difficulty, because he was born to stand on
burning decks whence all but he had fled, and to lead forlorn hopes when
despaired of by the human race!"
"I think I'll marry a dumb husband," said Mabel, "and there shan't be
any heroes in my books when I write them, only a heroine. Come on,
Cathy."
Coming out of that cool, shadowy summer-house into the sunshine was like
stepping into an oven, and the stone of the terrace was burning to the
children's feet.
"I know now what a cat on hot bricks feels like," said Jimmy.
The antediluvian animals are set in a beech-wood on a slope at least
half a mile across the park from the castle. The grandfather of the
present Lord Yalding had them set there in the middle of last century,
in the great days of the late Prince Consort, the Exhibition of 1851,
Sir Joseph Paxton, and the Crystal Palace. Their stone flanks, their
wide, ungainly wings, their lozenged crocodile-like backs show grey
through the trees a long way off.
Most people think that noon is the hottest time of the day. They are
wrong. A cloudless sky gets hotter and hotter all the afternoon, and
reaches its very hottest at five. I am sure you must all have noticed
this when you are going out to tea anywhere in your best clothes,
especially if your clothes are starched and you happen to have a rather
long and shadeless walk.
Kathleen, Mabel, and Jimmy got hotter and hotter, and went more and more
slowly. They had almost reached that stage of resentment and discomfort
when one "wishes one hadn't come" before they saw, below the edge of the
beech-wood, the white waved handkerchief of the bailiff.
That banner, eloquent of tea, shade, and being able to sit down, put new
heart into them. They mended their pace, and a final desperate run
landed them among the drifted coppery leaves and bare grey and green
roots of the beech-wood.
"Oh, glory!" said Jimmy, throwing himself down. "How do you do?"
The bailiff looked very nice, the girls thought. He was not wearing his
velveteens, but a grey flannel suit that an Earl need not have scorned;
and his straw hat would have done no discredit to a Duke; and a Prince
could not have worn a prettier green tie. He welcomed the children
warmly. And there were two baskets dumped heavy and promising among the
beech-leaves.
He was a man of tact. The hot, instructive tour of the stone
antediluvians, which had loomed with ever-lessening charm before the
children, was not even mentioned.
"You must be desert-dry," he said, "and you'll be hungry, too, when
you've done being thirsty. I put on the kettle as soon as I discerned
the form of my fair romancer in the extreme offing."
The kettle introduced itself with puffings and bubblings from the hollow
between two grey roots where it sat on a spirit-lamp.
"Take off your shoes and stockings, won't you?" said the bailiff in
matter-of-course tones, just as old ladies ask each other to take off
their bonnets; "there's a little baby canal just over the ridge."
The joys of dipping one's feet in cool running water after a hot walk
have yet to be described. I could write pages about them. There was a
mill-stream when I was young with little fishes in it, and dropped
leaves that spun round, and willows and alders that leaned over it and
kept it cool, and--but this is not the story of _my_ life.
[Illustration: THE JOYS OF DIPPING ONE'S FEET IN COOL RUNNING WATER.]
When they came back, on rested, damp, pink feet, tea was made and poured
out, delicious tea, with as much milk as ever you wanted, out of a beer
bottle with a screw top, and cakes, and gingerbread, and plums, and a
big melon with a lump of ice in its heart--a tea for the gods!
This thought must have come to Jimmy, for he said suddenly, removing his
face from inside a wide-bitten crescent of melon-rind:--
"Your feast's as good as the feast of the Immortals, almost."
"Explain your recondite allusion," said the grey-flanneled host; and
Jimmy, understanding him to say, "What do you mean?" replied with the
whole tale of that wonderful night when the statues came alive, and a
banquet of unearthly splendour and deliciousness was plucked by marble
hands from the trees of the lake island.
When he had done the bailiff said:--
"Did you get all this out of a book?"
"No," said Jimmy, "it happened."
"You are an imaginative set of young dreamers, aren't you?" the bailiff
asked, handing the plums to Kathleen, who smiled, friendly but
embarrassed. Why couldn't Jimmy have held his tongue?
"No, we're not," said that indiscreet one obstinately; "everything I've
told you _did_ happen, and so did the things Mabel told you."
The bailiff looked a little uncomfortable. "All right, old chap," he
said. And there was a short, uneasy silence.
"Look here," said Jimmy, who seemed for once to have got the bit between
his teeth, "do you believe me or not?"
"Don't be silly, Jimmy!" Kathleen whispered.
"Because, if you don't I'll _make_ you believe."
"Don't!" said Mabel and Kathleen together.
"Do you or don't you?" Jimmy insisted, lying on his front with his chin
on his hands, his elbows on a moss-cushion, and his bare legs kicking
among the beech-leaves.
"I think you tell adventures awfully well," said the bailiff cautiously.
"Very well," said Jimmy, abruptly sitting up, "you don't believe me.
Nonsense, Cathy! he's a gentleman, even if he is a bailiff."
"Thank you!" said the bailiff with eyes that twinkled.
"You won't tell, will you?" Jimmy urged.
"Tell what?"
"_Anything._"
"Certainly not. I am, as you say, the soul of honour."
"Then--Cathy, give me the ring."
"Oh, _no_!" said the girls together.
Kathleen did not mean to give up the ring; Mabel did not mean that she
should; Jimmy certainly used no force. Yet presently he held it in his
hand. It was his hour. There are times like that for all of us, when
what we say shall be done _is_ done.
"Now," said Jimmy, "this is the ring Mabel told you about. I say it is a
wishing-ring. And if you will put it on your hand and wish, whatever you
wish will happen."
"Must I wish out loud?"
"Yes--I think so."
"Don't wish for anything silly," said Kathleen, making the best of the
situation, "like its being fine on Tuesday or its being your favourite
pudding for dinner to-morrow. Wish for something you really want."
"I will," said the bailiff. "I'll wish for the only thing I really want.
I wish my--I wish my friend were here."
The three who knew the power of the ring looked round to see the
bailiff's friend appear; a surprised man that friend would be, they
thought, and perhaps a frightened one. They had all risen, and stood
ready to soothe and reassure the new-comer. But no startled gentleman
appeared in the wood, only, coming quietly through the dappled sun and
shadow under the beech-trees, Mademoiselle and Gerald, Mademoiselle in a
white gown, looking quite nice and like a picture, Gerald hot and
polite.
"Good-afternoon," said that dauntless leader of forlorn hopes. "I
persuaded Mademoiselle----"
That sentence was never finished, for the bailiff and the French
governess were looking at each other with the eyes of tired travellers
who find, quite without expecting it, the desired end of a very long
journey. And the children saw that even if they spoke it would not make
any difference.
"_You!_" said the bailiff.
"Mais ... c'est donc vous," said Mademoiselle, in a funny choky voice.
[Illustration: THEY STOOD STILL AND LOOKED AT EACH OTHER.]
And they stood still and looked at each other, "like stuck pigs," as
Jimmy said later, for quite a long time.
"Is _she_ your friend?" Jimmy asked.
"Yes--oh yes," said this bailiff. "You are my friend, are you not?"
"But yes," Mademoiselle said softly. "I am your friend."
"There! you see," said Jimmy, "the ring _does_ do what I said."
"We won't quarrel about that," said the bailiff. "You can say it's the
ring. For me--it's a coincidence--the happiest, the dearest----"
"Then you----?" said the French governess.
"Of course," said the bailiff. "Jimmy, give your brother some tea.
Mademoiselle, come and walk in the woods: there are a thousand things to
say."
"Eat then, my Gerald," said Mademoiselle, now grown young, and
astonishingly like a fairy princess. "I return all at the hour, and we
re-enter together. It is that we must speak each other. It is long time
that we have not seen us, me and Lord Yalding!"
"So he was Lord Yalding all the time," said Jimmy, breaking a stupefied
silence as the white gown and the grey flannels disappeared among the
beech-trunks. "Landscape painter sort of dodge--silly, I call it. And
fancy her being a friend of his, and his wishing she was here! Different
from us, eh? Good old ring!"
"His friend!" said Mabel with strong scorn: "don't you see she's his
lover? Don't you see she's the lady that was bricked up in the convent,
because he was so poor, and he couldn't find her. And now the ring's
made them live happy ever after. I _am_ glad! Aren't you, Cathy?"
"Rather!" said Kathleen; "it's as good as marrying a sailor or a
bandit."
"It's the ring did it," said Jimmy. "If the American takes the house
he'll pay lots of rent, and they can live on that."
"I wonder if they'll be married to-morrow!" said Mabel.
"Wouldn't it be fun if we were bridesmaids," said Cathy.
"May I trouble you for the melon," said Gerald. "Thanks! Why didn't we
know he was Lord Yalding? Apes and moles that we were!"
"_I've_ known since last night," said Mabel calmly; "only I promised not
to tell. I _can_ keep a secret, can't I?"
"Too jolly well," said Kathleen, a little aggrieved.
"He was disguised as a bailiff," said Jimmy; "that's why we didn't
know."
"Disguised as a fiddle-stick-end," said Gerald. "Ha, ha! I see something
old Sherlock Holmes never saw, nor that idiot Watson, either. If you
want a really impenetrable disguise, you ought to disguise yourself as
what you really are. I'll remember that."
"It's like Mabel, telling things so that you can't believe them," said
Cathy.
"I think Mademoiselle's jolly lucky," said Mabel.
"She's not so bad. He might have done worse," said Gerald. "Plums,
please!"
* * * * *
There was quite plainly magic at work. Mademoiselle next morning was a
changed governess. Her cheeks were pink, her lips were red, her eyes
were larger and brighter, and she had done her hair in an entirely new
way, rather frivolous and very becoming.
"Mamselle's coming out!" Eliza remarked.
Immediately after breakfast Lord Yalding called with a wagonette that
wore a smart blue cloth coat, and was drawn by two horses whose coats
were brown and shining and fitted them even better than the blue cloth
coat fitted the wagonette, and the whole party drove in state and
splendour to Yalding Towers.
Arrived there, the children clamoured for permission to explore the
castle thoroughly, a thing that had never yet been possible. Lord
Yalding, a little absent in manner, but yet quite cordial, consented.
Mabel showed the others all the secret doors and unlikely passages and
stairs that she had discovered. It was a glorious morning. Lord Yalding
and Mademoiselle went through the house, it is true, but in a rather
half-hearted way. Quite soon they were tired, and went out through the
French windows of the drawing-room and through the rose garden, to sit
on the curved stone seat in the middle of the maze, where once, at the
beginning of things, Gerald, Kathleen, and Jimmy had found the sleeping
Princess who wore pink silk and diamonds.
The children felt that their going left to the castle a more spacious
freedom, and explored with more than Arctic enthusiasm. It was as they
emerged from the little rickety secret staircase that led from the
powdering-room of the state suite to the gallery of the hall that they
came suddenly face to face with the odd little man who had a beard like
a goat and had taken the wrong turning yesterday.
"This part of the castle is private," said Mabel, with great presence of
mind, and shut the door behind her.
"I am aware of it," said the goat-faced stranger, "but I have the
permission of the Earl of Yalding to examine the house _at_ my leisure."
"Oh!" said Mabel. "I beg your pardon. We all do. We didn't know."
"You are relatives of his lordship, I should surmise?" asked the
goat-faced.
"Not exactly," said Gerald. "Friends."
The gentleman was thin and very neatly dressed; he had small, merry eyes
and a face that was brown and dry-looking.
"You are playing some game, I should suppose?"
"No, sir," said Gerald, "only exploring."
"May a stranger propose himself as a member of your Exploring
Expedition?" asked the gentleman, smiling a tight but kind smile.
The children looked at each other.
"You see," said Gerald, "it's rather difficult to explain--but--you see
what I mean, don't you?"
"He means," said Jimmy, "that we can't take you into an exploring party
without we know what you want to go for."
"Are you a photographer?" asked Mabel, "or is it some newspaper's sent
you to write about the Towers?"
"I understand your position," said the gentleman. "I am not a
photographer, nor am I engaged by any journal. I am a man of independent
means, travelling in this country with the intention of renting a
residence. My name is Jefferson D. Conway."
"Oh!" said Mabel; "then you're the American millionaire."
"I do not like the description, young lady," said Mr. Jefferson D.
Conway. "I am an American citizen, and I am not without means. This is a
fine property--a very fine property. If it were for sale----"
"It isn't, it can't be," Mabel hastened to explain. "The lawyers have
put it in a tale, so Lord Yalding can't sell it. But you could take it
to live in, and pay Lord Yalding a good millionairish rent, and then he
could marry the French governess----"
"Shish!" said Kathleen and Mr. Jefferson D. Conway together, and he
added:--
"Lead the way, please; and I should suggest that the exploration be
complete and exhaustive."
Thus encouraged, Mabel led the millionaire through all the castle. He
seemed pleased, yet disappointed too.
"It is a fine mansion," he said at last when they had come back to the
point from which they had started; "but I should suppose, in a house
this size, there would mostly be a secret stairway, or a priests' hiding
place, or a ghost?"
"There are," said Mabel briefly, "but I thought Americans didn't believe
in anything but machinery and newspapers." She touched the spring of the
panel behind her, and displayed the little tottery staircase to the
American. The sight of it worked a wonderful transformation in him. He
became eager, alert, very keen.
"Say!" he cried, over and over again, standing in the door that led from
the powdering-room to the state bed-chamber. "But this is great--great!"
The hopes of every one ran high. It seemed almost certain that the
castle would be let for a millionairish rent and Lord Yalding be made
affluent to the point of marriage.
"If there were a ghost located in this ancestral pile, I'd close with
the Earl of Yalding to-day, now, on the nail," Mr. Jefferson D. Conway
went on.
"If you were to stay till to-morrow, and sleep in this room, I expect
you'd see the ghost," said Mabel.
"There _is_ a ghost located here then?" he said joyously.
[Illustration: HE BECAME EAGER, ALERT, VERY KEEN.]
"They say," Mabel answered, "that old Sir Rupert, who lost his head in
Henry the Eighth's time, walks of a night here, with his head under his
arm. But we've not seen that. What we have seen is the lady in a pink
dress with diamonds in her hair. She carries a lighted taper," Mabel
hastily added. The others, now suddenly aware of Mabel's plan, hastened
to assure the American in accents of earnest truth that they had all
seen the lady with the pink gown.
He looked at them with half-closed eyes that twinkled.
"Well," he said, "I calculate to ask the Earl of Yalding to permit me to
pass a night in his ancestral best bed-chamber. And if I hear so much as
a phantom footstep, or hear so much as a ghostly sigh, I'll take the
place."
"I _am_ glad!" said Cathy.
"You appear to be very certain of your ghost," said the American, still
fixing them with little eyes that shone. "Let me tell you, young
gentlemen, that I carry a gun, and when I see a ghost, I shoot."
He pulled a pistol out of his hip-pocket, and looked at it lovingly.
"And I am a fair average shot," he went on, walking across the shiny
floor of the state bed-chamber to the open window. "See that big red
rose, like a tea-saucer?"
They saw.
The next moment a loud report broke the stillness, and the red petals of
the shattered rose strewed balustrade and terrace.
The American looked from one child to another. Every face was perfectly
white.
"Jefferson D. Conway made his little pile by strict attention to
business, and keeping his eyes skinned," he added. "Thank you for all
your kindness."
* * * * *
"Suppose you'd done it, and he'd shot you!" said Jimmy cheerfully. "That
_would_ have been an adventure, wouldn't it?"
"I'm going to do it still," said Mabel, pale and defiant. "Let's find
Lord Yalding and get the ring back."
Lord Yalding had had an interview with Mabel's aunt, and lunch for six
was laid in the great dark hall, among the armour and the oak
furniture--a beautiful lunch served on silver dishes. Mademoiselle,
becoming every moment younger and more like a Princess, was moved to
tears when Gerald rose, lemonade-glass in hand, and proposed the health
of "Lord and Lady Yalding."
When Lord Yalding had returned thanks in a speech full of agreeable
jokes the moment seemed to Gerald propitious, and he said:--
"The ring, you know--you don't believe in it, but we do. May we have it
back?"
And got it.
Then, after a hasty council, held in the panelled jewel-room, Mabel
said: "This is a wishing-ring, and I wish all the American's weapons of
all sorts were here."
Instantly the room was full--six feet up the wall--of a tangle and mass
of weapons, swords, spears, arrows, tomahawks, fowling pieces,
blunderbusses, pistols, revolvers, scimitars, kreeses--every kind of
weapon you can think of--and the four children wedged in among all these
weapons of death hardly dared to breathe.
"He collects arms, I expect," said Gerald, "and the arrows are poisoned,
I shouldn't wonder. Wish them back where they came from, Mabel, for
goodness' sake, and try again."
Mabel wished the weapons away, and at once the four children stood safe
in a bare panelled room. But--
"No," Mabel said, "I can't stand it. We'll work the ghost another way. I
wish the American may think he sees a ghost when he goes to bed. Sir
Rupert with his head under his arm will do."
"Is it to-night he sleeps there?"
"I don't know. I wish he may see Sir Rupert every night--that'll make it
all serene."
"It's rather dull," said Gerald; "we shan't know whether he's seen Sir
Rupert or not."
"We shall know in the morning, when he takes the house."
This being settled, Mabel's aunt was found to be desirous of Mabel's
company, so the others went home.
It was when they were at supper that Lord Yalding suddenly appeared, and
said:--
"Mr. Jefferson Conway wants you boys to spend the night with him in the
state chamber. I've had beds put up. You don't mind, do you? He seems
to think you've got some idea of playing ghost-tricks on him."
It was difficult to refuse, so difficult that it proved impossible.
Ten o'clock found the boys each in a narrow white bed that looked quite
absurdly small in that high, dark chamber, and in face of that tall
gaunt four-poster hung with tapestry and ornamented with
funereal-looking plumes.
"I hope to goodness there isn't a _real_ ghost," Jimmy whispered.
"Not likely," Gerald whispered back.
"But I don't want to see Sir Rupert's ghost with its head under its
arm," Jimmy insisted.
"You won't. The most you'll see'll be the millionaire seeing it. Mabel
said he was to see it, not us. Very likely you'll sleep all night and
not see anything. Shut your eyes and count up to a million and don't be
a goat!"
But he was reckoning without Mabel and the ring. As soon as Mabel had
learned from her drab-haired aunt that this was indeed the night when
Mr. Jefferson D. Conway would sleep at the castle she had hastened to
add a wish, "that Sir Rupert and his head may appear to-night in the
state bedroom."
Jimmy shut his eyes and began to count a million. Before he had counted
it he fell asleep. So did his brother.
They were awakened by the loud echoing bang of a pistol shot. Each
thought of the shot that had been fired that morning, and opened eyes
that expected to see a sunshiny terrace and red-rose petals strewn upon
warm white stone.
Instead, there was the dark, lofty state chamber, lighted but little by
six tall candles; there was the American in shirt and trousers, a
smoking pistol in his hand; and there, advancing from the door of the
powdering-room, a figure in doublet and hose, a ruff round its neck--and
no head! The head, sure enough, was there; but it was under the right
arm, held close in the slashed-velvet sleeve of the doublet. The face
looking from under the arm wore a pleasant smile. Both boys, I am sorry
to say, screamed. The American fired again. The bullet passed through
Sir Rupert, who advanced without appearing to notice it.
Then, suddenly, the lights went out. The next thing the boys knew it was
morning. A grey daylight shone blankly through the tall windows--and
wild rain was beating upon the glass, and the American was gone.
"Where are we?" said Jimmy, sitting up with tangled hair and looking
round him. "Oh, I remember. Ugh! it was horrid. I'm about fed up with
that ring, so I don't mind telling you."
[Illustration: THE AMERICAN FIRED AGAIN.]
"Nonsense!" said Gerald. "I enjoyed it. I wasn't a bit frightened, were
you?"
"No," said Jimmy, "of course I wasn't."
* * * * *
"We've done the trick," said Gerald later when they learned that the
American had breakfasted early with Lord Yalding and taken the first
train to London; "he's gone to get rid of his other house, and take
this one. The old ring's beginning to do really useful things."
* * * * *
"Perhaps you'll believe in the ring now," said Jimmy to Lord Yalding,
whom he met later on in the picture-gallery; "it's all our doing that
Mr. Jefferson saw the ghost. He told us he'd take the house if he saw a
ghost, so of course we took care he did see one."
"Oh, you did, did you?" said Lord Yalding in rather an odd voice. "I'm
very much obliged, I'm sure."
"Don't mention it," said Jimmy kindly. "I thought you'd be pleased and
him too."
"Perhaps you'll be interested to learn," said Lord Yalding, putting his
hands in his pockets and staring down at Jimmy, "that Mr. Jefferson D.
Conway was so pleased with your ghost that he got me out of bed at six
o'clock this morning to talk about it."
"Oh, ripping!" said Jimmy. "What did he say?"
"He said, as far as I can remember," said Lord Yalding, still in the
same strange voice--"he said: 'My lord, your ancestral pile is A1. It
is, in fact, The Limit. Its luxury is palatial, its grounds are nothing
short of Edenesque. No expense has been spared, I should surmise. Your
ancestors were whole-hoggers. They have done the thing as it should be
done--every detail attended to. I like your tapestry, and I like your
oak, and I like your secret stairs. But I think your ancestors should
have left well enough alone, and stopped at that.' So I said they had,
as far as I knew, and he shook his head and said:--
"'No, sir. Your ancestors take the air of a night with their heads under
their arms. A ghost that sighed or glided or rustled I could have stood,
and thanked you for it, and considered it in the rent. But a ghost that
bullets go through while it stands grinning with a bare neck and its
head loose under its own arm and little boys screaming and fainting in
their beds--no! What I say is, If this is a British hereditary
high-toned family ghost, excuse Me!' And he went off by the early
train."
"I say," the stricken Jimmy remarked, "I _am_ sorry, and I don't think
we did faint, really I don't--but we thought it would be just what you
wanted. And perhaps some one else will take the house."
"I don't know any one else rich enough," said Lord Yalding. "Mr. Conway
came the day before he said he would, or you'd never have got hold of
him. And I don't know how you did it, and I don't want to know. It was a
rather silly trick."
There was a gloomy pause. The rain beat against the long windows.
"I say"--Jimmy looked up at Lord Yalding with the light of a new idea in
his round face. "I say, if you're hard up, why don't you sell your
jewels?"
"I haven't any jewels, you meddlesome young duffer," said Lord Yalding
quite crossly; and taking his hands out of his pockets, he began to
walk away.
"I mean the ones in the panelled room with the stars in the ceiling,"
Jimmy insisted, following him.
"There aren't any," said Lord Yalding shortly; "and if this is some more
ring-nonsense I advise you to be careful, young man. I've had about as
much as I care for."
"It's _not_ ring-nonsense," said Jimmy: "there are shelves and shelves
of beautiful family jewels. You can sell them and----"
"Oh, _no_!" cried Mademoiselle, appearing like an oleograph of a duchess
in the door of the picture-gallery; "don't sell the family jewels----"
"There aren't any, my lady," said Lord Yalding, going towards her. "I
thought you were never coming."
"Oh, aren't there!" said Mabel, who had followed Mademoiselle. "You just
come and see."
"Let us see what they will to show us," cried Mademoiselle, for Lord
Yalding did not move; "it should at least be amusing."
"It is," said Jimmy.
So they went, Mabel and Jimmy leading, while Mademoiselle and Lord
Yalding followed, hand in hand.
"It's much safer to walk hand in hand," said Lord Yalding; "with these
children at large one never knows what may happen next."