IT would be interesting, no doubt, to describe the feelings of Lord
Yalding as he followed Mabel and Jimmy through his ancestral halls, but
I have no means of knowing at all what he felt. Yet one must suppose
that he felt something: bewilderment, perhaps, mixed with a faint
wonder, and a desire to pinch himself to see if he were dreaming. Or he
may have pondered the rival questions, "Am I mad?" "Are they mad?"
without being at all able to decide which he ought to try to answer, let
alone deciding what, in either case, the answer ought to be. You see,
the children did seem to believe in the odd stories they told--and the
wish _had_ come true, and the ghost _had_ appeared. He must have
thought--but all this is vain; I don't _really_ know what he thought any
more than you do.
Nor can I give you any clue to the thoughts and feelings of
Mademoiselle. I only know that she was very happy, but any one would
have known that if they had seen her face. Perhaps this is as good a
moment as any to explain that when her guardian had put her in a convent
so that she should not sacrifice her fortune by marrying a poor lord,
her guardian had secured that fortune (to himself) by going off with it
to South America. Then, having no money left, Mademoiselle had to work
for it. So she went out as governess, and took the situation she did
take because it was near Lord Yalding's home. She wanted to see him,
even though she thought he had forsaken her and did not love her any
more. And now she had seen him. I daresay she thought about some of
these things as she went along through his house, her hand held in his.
But of course I can't be sure.
Jimmy's thoughts, of course, I can read like any old book. He thought,
"Now he'll _have_ to believe me." That Lord Yalding should believe him
had become, quite unreasonably, the most important thing in the world to
Jimmy. He wished that Gerald and Kathleen were there to share his
triumph, but they were helping Mabel's aunt to cover the grand furniture
up, and so were out of what followed. Not that they missed much, for
when Mabel proudly said, "Now you'll see," and the others came close
round her in the little panelled room, there was a pause, and
then--nothing happened at all!
"There's a secret spring here somewhere," said Mabel, fumbling with
fingers that had suddenly grown hot and damp.
"Where?" said Lord Yalding.
"_Here_," said Mabel impatiently, "only I can't find it."
And she couldn't. She found the spring of the secret panel under the
window all right, but that seemed to every one dull compared with the
jewels that every one had pictured and two at least had seen. But the
spring that made the oak panelling slide away and displayed jewels
plainly to any eye worth a king's ransom--this could not be found.
More, it was simply not there. There could be no doubt of that. Every
inch of the panelling was felt by careful fingers. The earnest protests
of Mabel and Jimmy died away presently in a silence made painful by the
hotness of one's ears, the discomfort of not liking to meet any one's
eyes, and the resentful feeling that the spring was not behaving in at
all a sportsmanlike way, and that, in a word, this was not cricket.
"You see!" said Lord Yalding severely. "Now you've had your joke, if you
call it a joke, and I've had enough of the whole silly business. Give me
the ring--it's mine, I suppose, since you say you found it somewhere
here--and don't let's hear another word about all this rubbish of magic
and enchantment."
"Gerald's got the ring," said Mabel miserably.
"Then go and fetch him," said Lord Yalding--"both of you."
The melancholy pair retired, and Lord Yalding spent the time of their
absence in explaining to Mademoiselle how very unimportant jewels were
compared with other things.
The four children came back together.
"We've had enough of this ring business," said Lord Yalding. "Give it to
me, and we'll say no more about it."
"I--I can't get it off," said Gerald. "It--it always did have a will of
its own."
"I'll soon get it off," said Lord Yalding. But he didn't. "We'll try
soap," he said firmly. Four out of his five hearers knew just exactly
how much use soap would be.
"They won't believe about the jewels," wailed Mabel, suddenly dissolved
in tears, "and I can't find the spring. I've felt all over--we all
have--it was just here, and----"
Her fingers felt it just as she spoke; and as she ceased to speak the
carved panels slid away, and the blue velvet shelves laden with jewels
were disclosed to the unbelieving eyes of Lord Yalding and the lady who
was to be his wife.
"Jove!" said Lord Yalding.
"_Misericorde!_" said the lady.
"But why _now_?" gasped Mabel. "Why not before?"
"I expect it's magic," said Gerald. "There's no real spring here, and it
couldn't act because the ring wasn't here. You know Phoebus told us
the ring was the heart of all the magic."
"Shut it up and take the ring away and see."
They did, and Gerald was (as usual, he himself pointed out) proved to be
right. When the ring was away there was no spring; when the ring was in
the room there (as Mabel urged) was the spring all right enough.
"So you see," said Mabel to Lord Yalding.
"I see that the spring's very artfully concealed," said that dense peer.
"I think it was very clever indeed of you to find it. And if those
jewels are real----"
"Of course they're real," said Mabel indignantly.
"Well, anyway," said Lord Yalding, "thank you all very much. I think
it's clearing up. I'll send the wagonette home with you after lunch. And
if you don't mind, I'll have the ring."
Half an hour of soap and water produced no effect whatever, except to
make the finger of Gerald very red and very sore. Then Lord Yalding said
something very impatient indeed, and then Gerald suddenly became angry
and said: "Well, I'm sure I wish it would come off," and of course
instantly, "slick as butter," as he later pointed out, off it came.
"Thank you," said Lord Yalding.
"And I believe now he thinks I kept it on on purpose," said Gerald
afterwards when, at ease on the leads at home, they talked the whole
thing out over a tin of preserved pineapple and a bottle of gingerbeer
apiece. "There's no pleasing some people. He wasn't in such a fiery
hurry to order that wagonette after he found that Mademoiselle meant to
go when we did. But I liked him better when he was a humble bailiff.
Take him for all in all, he does not look as if we should like him
again."
"He doesn't know what's the matter with him," said Kathleen, leaning
back against the tiled roof; "it's really the magic--it's like sickening
with measles. Don't you remember how cross Mabel was at first about the
invisibleness?"
"Rather!" said Jimmy.
"It's partly that," said Gerald, trying to be fair, "and partly it's the
being in love. It always makes people like idiots--a chap at school told
me. His sister was like that--quite rotten, you know. And she used to be
quite a decent sort before she was engaged."
At tea and at supper Mademoiselle was radiant--as attractive as a lady
on a Christmas card, as merry as a marmoset, and as kind as you would
always be yourself if you could take the trouble. At breakfast, an equal
radiance, kindness, attraction, merriment. Then Lord Yalding came to see
her. The meeting took place in the drawing-room: the children with deep
discreetness remained shut in the schoolroom till Gerald, going up to
his room for a pencil, surprised Eliza with her ear glued to the
drawing-room key-hole.
After that Gerald sat on the top stair with a book. He could not hear
any of the conversation in the drawing-room, but he could command a view
of the door, and in this way be certain that no one else heard any of
it. Thus it was that when the drawing-room door opened Gerald was in a
position to see Lord Yalding come out. "Our young hero," as he said
later, "coughed with infinite tact to show that he was there," but Lord
Yalding did not seem to notice. He walked in a blind sort of way to the
hat-stand, fumbled clumsily with the umbrellas and mackintoshes, found
his straw hat and looked at it gloomily, crammed it on his head and went
out, banging the door behind him in the most reckless way.
He left the drawing-room door open, and Gerald, though he had purposely
put himself in a position where one could hear nothing from the
drawing-room when the door was shut, could hear something quite plainly
now that the door was open. That something, he noticed with deep
distress and disgust, was the sound of sobs and sniffs. Mademoiselle
was quite certainly crying.
"Jimminy!" he remarked to himself, "they haven't lost much time. Fancy
their beginning to quarrel _already_! I hope I'll never have to be
anybody's lover."
But this was no time to brood on the terrors of his own future. Eliza
might at any time occur. She would not for a moment hesitate to go
through that open door, and push herself into the very secret sacred
heart of Mademoiselle's grief. It seemed to Gerald better that he should
be the one to do this. So he went softly down the worn green Dutch
carpet of the stairs and into the drawing-room, shutting the door softly
and securely behind him.
= = = = =
"It is all over," Mademoiselle was saying, her face buried in the beady
arum-lilies on a red ground worked for a cushion cover by a former
pupil: "he will not marry me!"
Do not ask me how Gerald had gained the lady's confidence. He had, as I
think I said almost at the beginning, very pretty ways with grown-ups,
when he chose. Anyway, he was holding her hand, almost as affectionately
as if she had been his mother with a headache, and saying "Don't!" and
"Don't cry!" and "It'll be all right, you see if it isn't" in the most
comforting way you can imagine, varying the treatment with gentle thumps
on the back and entreaties to her to tell him all about it.
This wasn't mere curiosity, as you might think. The entreaties were
prompted by Gerald's growing certainty that whatever was the matter was
somehow the fault of that ring. And in this Gerald was ("once more," as
he told himself) right.
The tale, as told by Mademoiselle, was certainly an unusual one. Lord
Yalding, last night after dinner, had walked in the park "to think
of----"
"Yes, I know," said Gerald; "and he had the ring on. And he saw----"
"He saw the monuments become alive," sobbed Mademoiselle: "his brain was
troubled by the ridiculous accounts of fairies that you tell him. He
sees Apollon and Aphrodite alive on their marble. He remembers him of
your story. He wish himself a statue. Then he becomes mad--imagines to
himself that your story of the island is true, plunges in the lake,
swims among the beasts of the Ark of Noe, feeds with gods on an island.
At dawn the madness become less. He think the Pantheon vanish. But him,
no--he thinks himself statue, hiding from gardeners in his garden till
nine less a quarter. Then he thinks to wish himself no more a statue and
perceives that he is flesh and blood. A bad dream, but he has lost the
head with the tales you tell. He say it is no dream but he is
fool--mad--how you say? And a mad man must not marry. There is no hope.
I am at despair! And the life is vain!"
"There _is_," said Gerald earnestly. "I assure you there is--hope, I
mean. And life's as right as rain really. And there's nothing to despair
about. He's _not_ mad, and it's _not_ a dream. It's magic. It really and
truly is."
"The magic exists not," Mademoiselle moaned; "it is that he is mad. It
is the joy to re-see me after so many days. Oh, la-la-la-la-la!"
"Did he talk to the gods?" Gerald asked gently.
"It is there the most mad of all his ideas. He say that Mercure give him
rendezvous at some temple to-morrow when the moon raise herself."
"Right," cried Gerald, "righto! Dear nice, kind, pretty Mademoiselle
Rapunzel, don't be a silly little duffer"--he lost himself for a moment
among the consoling endearments he was accustomed to offer to Kathleen
in moments of grief and emotion, but hastily added: "I mean, do not be a
lady who weeps causelessly. To-morrow he will go to that temple. I will
go. Thou shalt go--he will go. We will go--you will go--let 'em all go!
And, you see, it's going to be absolutely all right. He'll see he isn't
mad, and you'll understand all about everything. Take my handkerchief,
its quite a clean one as it happens; I haven't even unfolded it. Oh! do
stop crying, there's a dear, darling, long-lost lover."
This flood of eloquence was not without effect. She took his
handkerchief, sobbed, half smiled, dabbed at her eyes, and said: "Oh,
naughty! Is it some trick you play him, like the ghost?"
"I can't explain," said Gerald, "but I give you my word of honour--you
know what an Englishman's word of honour is, don't you? even if you
_are_ French--that everything is going to be exactly what you wish. I've
never told you a lie. Believe me!"
"It is curious," said she, drying her eyes, "but I do." And once again,
so suddenly that he could not have resisted, she kissed him. I think,
however, that in this her hour of sorrow he would have thought it mean
to resist.
"It pleases her and it doesn't hurt me--much," would have been his
thought.
* * * * *
And now it is near moonrise. The French governess, half-doubting, half
hoping, but wholly longing to be near Lord Yalding even if he be as mad
as a March hare, and the four children--they have collected Mabel by an
urgent letter-card posted the day before--are going over the dewy grass.
The moon has not yet risen, but her light is in the sky mixed with the
pink and purple of the sunset. The west is heavy with ink-clouds and
rich colour, but the east, where the moon rises, is clear as a
rock-pool.
They go across the lawn and through the beech-wood and come at last,
through a tangle of underwood and bramble, to a little level tableland
that rises out of the flat hill-top--one tableland out of another. Here
is the ring of vast rugged stones, one pierced with a curious round
hole, worn smooth at its edges. In the middle of the circle is a great
flat stone, alone, desolate, full of meaning--a stone that is covered
thick with the memory of old faiths and creeds long since forgotten.
Something dark moves in the circle. The French girl breaks from the
children, goes to it, clings to its arm. It is Lord Yalding, and he is
telling her to go.
"Never of the life!" she cries. "If you are mad I am mad too, for I
believe the tale these children tell. And I am here to be with thee and
see with thee--whatever the rising moon shall show us."
The children, holding hands by the flat stone, more moved by the magic
in the girl's voice than by any magic of enchanted rings, listen, trying
not to listen.
"Are you not afraid?" Lord Yalding is saying.
"Afraid? With you?" she laughs. He put his arm round her. The children
hear her sigh.
"Are you afraid," he says, "my darling?"
Gerald goes across the wide turf ring expressly to say:--
"You can't be afraid if you are wearing the ring. And I'm sorry, but we
can hear every word you say."
She laughs again. "It makes nothing," she says; "you know already if we
love each other."
Then he puts the ring on her finger, and they stand together. The white
of his flannel coat sleeve marks no line on the white of her dress; they
stand as though cut out of one block of marble.
Then a faint greyness touches the top of that round hole, creeps up the
side. Then the hole is a disc of light--a moonbeam strikes straight
through it across the grey green of the circle that the stones mark, and
as the moon rises the moonbeam slants downward. The children have drawn
back till they stand close to the lovers. The moonbeam slants more and
more; now it touches the far end of the stone, now it draws nearer and
nearer to the middle of it, now at last it touches the very heart and
centre of that central stone. And then it is as though a spring were
touched, a fountain of light released. Everything changes. Or, rather,
everything is revealed. There are no more secrets. The plan of the world
seems plain, like an easy sum that one writes in big figures on a
child's slate. One wonders how one can ever have wondered about
anything. Space is not; every place that one has seen or dreamed of is
here. Time is not; into this instant is crowded all that one has ever
done or dreamed of doing. It is a moment, and it is eternity. It is the
centre of the universe and it is the universe itself. The eternal light
rests on and illuminates the eternal heart of things.
* * * * *
None of the six human beings who saw that moon-rising were ever able to
think about it as having anything to do with time. Only for one instant
could that moonray have rested full on the centre of that stone. And yet
there was time for many happenings.
From that height one could see far out over the quiet park and sleeping
gardens, and through the grey green of them shapes moved, approaching.
The great beasts came first, strange forms that were when the world was
new--gigantic lizards with wings--dragons they lived as in men's
memories--mammoths, strange vast birds, they crawled up the hill and
ranged themselves outside the circle. Then, not from the garden but
from very far away, came the stone gods of Egypt and Assyria--bull-bodied,
bird-winged, hawk-headed, cat-headed, all in stone, and all alive and
alert; strange, grotesque figures from the towers of cathedrals--figures
of angels with folded wings, figures of beasts with wings wide spread;
sphinxes; uncouth idols from Southern palm-fringed islands; and, last of
all, the beautiful marble shapes of the gods and goddesses who had held
their festival on the lake-island, and bidden Lord Yalding and the
children to this meeting.
Not a word was spoken. Each stone shape came gladly and quietly into the
circle of light and understanding, as children, tired with a long
ramble, creep quietly through the open door into the firelit welcome of
home.
The children had thought to ask many questions. And it had been promised
that the questions should be answered. Yet now no one spoke a word,
because all had come into the circle of the real magic where all things
are understood without speech.
Afterwards none of them could ever remember at all what had happened.
But they never forgot that they had been somewhere where everything was
easy and beautiful. And people who can remember even that much are never
quite the same again. And when they came to talk of it next day they
found that to each some little part of that night's great enlightenment
was left.
All the stone creatures drew closer round the stone--the light where the
moonbeam struck it seemed to break away in spray such as water makes
when it falls from a height. All the crowd was bathed in whiteness. A
deep hush lay over the vast assembly.
Then a wave of intention swept over the mighty crowd. All the faces,
bird, beast, Greek statue, Babylonian monster, human child and human
lover, turned upward, the radiant light illumined them and one word
broke from all.
"The light!" they cried, and the sound of their voice was like the sound
of a great wave; "the light! the light----"
And then the light was not any more, and, soft as floating thistle-down,
sleep was laid on the eyes of all but the immortals.
* * * * *
The grass was chill and dewy and the clouds had veiled the moon. The
lovers and the children were standing together, all clinging close, not
for fear, but for love.
"I want," said the French girl softly, "to go to the cave on the
island."
Very quietly through the gentle brooding night they went down to the
boat-house, loosed the clanking chain, and dipped oars among the drowned
stars and lilies. They came to the island, and found the steps.
"I brought candles," said Gerald, "in case."
So, lighted by Gerald's candles, they went down into the Hall of Psyche!
and there glowed the light spread from her statue, and all was as the
children had seen it before.
It is the Hall of Granted Wishes.
"The ring," said Lord Yalding.
"The ring," said his lover, "is the magic ring given long ago to a
mortal, and it is what you say it is. It was given to your ancestor by a
lady of my house that he might build her a garden and a house like her
own palace and garden in her own land. So that this place is built
partly by his love and partly by that magic. She never lived to see it;
that was the price of the magic."
It must have been English that she spoke, for otherwise how could the
children have understood her? Yet the words were not like Mademoiselle's
way of speaking.
"Except from children," her voice went on, "the ring exacts a payment.
You paid for me, when I came by your wish, by this terror of madness
that you have since known. Only one wish is free."
"And that wish is----?"
"The last," she said. "Shall I wish?"
"Yes--wish," they said, all of them.
"I wish, then," said Lord Yalding's lover, "that all the magic this ring
has wrought may be undone, and that the ring itself may be no more and
no less than a charm to bind thee and me together for evermore."
She ceased. And as she ceased the enchanted light died away, the windows
of granted wishes went out, like magic-lantern pictures. Gerald's candle
faintly lighted a rudely arched cave, and where Psyche's statue had been
was a stone with something carved on it.
Gerald held the light low.
"It is her grave," the girl said.
= = = = =
Next day no one could remember anything at all exactly. But a good many
things were changed. There was no ring but the plain gold ring that
Mademoiselle found clasped in her hand when she woke in her own bed in
the morning. More than half the jewels in the panelled room were gone,
and those that remained had no panelling to cover them; they just lay
bare on the velvet-covered shelves. There was no passage at the back of
the Temple of Flora. Quite a lot of the secret passages and hidden rooms
had disappeared. And there were not nearly so many statues in the garden
as everyone had supposed. And large pieces of the castle were missing
and had to be replaced at great expense. From which we may conclude that
Lord Yalding's ancestor had used the ring a good deal to help him in his
building.
However, the jewels that were left were quite enough to pay for
everything.
The suddenness with which all the ring-magic was undone was such a shock
to everyone concerned that they now almost doubt that any magic ever
happened.
But it is certain that Lord Yalding married the French governess and
that a plain gold ring was used in the ceremony, and this, if you come
to think of it, could be no other than the magic ring, turned, by that
last wish, into a charm to keep him and his wife together for ever.
Also, if all this story is nonsense and a make-up--if Gerald and Jimmy
and Kathleen and Mabel have merely imposed on my trusting nature by a
pack of unlikely inventions, how do you account for the paragraph which
appeared in the evening papers the day after the magic of the
moon-rising?
"MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF A WELL-KNOWN
CITY MAN,"
it said, and then went on to say how a gentleman, well known and much
respected in financial circles, had vanished, leaving no trace.
"Mr. U. W. Ugli," the papers continued, "had
remained late, working at his office as was his
occasional habit. The office door was found
locked, and on its being broken open the clothes
of the unfortunate gentleman were found in a heap
on the floor, together with an umbrella, a walking
stick, a golf club, and, curiously enough, a
feather brush, such as housemaids use for dusting.
Of his body, however, there was no trace. The
police are stated to have a clue."
If they have, they have kept it to themselves. But I do not think they
can have a clue, because, of course, that respected gentleman was the
Ugly-Wugly who became real when, in search of a really good hotel, he
got into the Hall of Granted Wishes. And if none of this story ever
happened, how is it that those four children are such friends with Lord
and Lady Yalding, and stay at The Towers almost every holidays?
It is all very well for all of them to pretend that the whole of this
story is my own invention: facts are facts, and you can't explain them
away.
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Varied hyphenation was retained, for example: hearthrug and hearth-rug.
This book used two different styles of break in the text. Breaks that
were shown by extra blank space between paragraphs are indicated by
= = = = =
Breaks that were shown by a line of stars are indicated by
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 9, "24" changed to "25" for actual location of illustration.
Page 113, "unforgetable" changed to "unforgettable" (real and so
unforgettable)
Page 122, "choose" changed to "chose" (he chose the latter)
Page 226, "girl" changed to "girls" (and before the girls)
Page 296, "as" changed to "us" (tell us about that)