The House of Arden by E. Nesbit (first ebook reader .txt) 📕

and “Let’s chuck it,” and “I expect that old chap was just kidding us. I don’t feel a bit like I did about it,” and “Do let’s get along home.”

But Elfrida plodded on, though her head and her back both ached. I wish I could say that her perseverance was rewarded. But it wasn’t; and one must keep to facts. As it happened, it was Edred who, aimlessly running his finger along the edge of the bookshelf just for the pleasure of looking at the soft, mouse-coloured dust that clung to the finger at the end of each shelf, suddenly cried out, “What about this?” and pulled out a great white book that had on its cover a shield printed in gold with squares and little spots on it, and a gold pig standing on the top of the shield, and on the back, The History of the Ardens of Arden.

In an instant it was open on the floor between them, and they were turning its pages with quick, anxious hands. But, alas! it was as empty of spells as dull old Burgess himself.

It was only when Edred shut it with a bang and the remark that he had had jolly well enough of it that a paper fluttered out and swept away like a pigeon, settling on the fireless hearth. And it was the spell. There was no doubt of that.

Written in faint ink on a square yellowed sheet of letter-paper that had been folded once, and opened and folded again so often that the fold was worn thin and hardly held its two parts together, the writing was fine and pointed and ladylike. At the top was written: “The Spell Aunt Anne Told Me.⁠—December 24, 1793.”

And then came the spell:⁠—

“Hear, Oh badge of Arden’s house,
The spell my little age allows;
Arden speaks it without fear,
Badge of Arden’s house, draw near,
Make me brave and kind and wise,
And show me where the treasure lies.”

“To be said,” the paper went on, “at sun-setting by a Lord Arden between the completion of his ninth and tenth years. But it is all folly and not to be believed.”

“This is it, right enough,” said Edred. “Come on, let’s get out of this.” They turned to go, and as they did so something moved in the corner of the library⁠—something little, and they could not see its shape.

Neither drew free breath again till they were out of the house, and out of the garden, and out of the castle, and on the wide, thymy downs, with the blue sky above, where the skylarks sang, and there was the sweet, fresh scent of the seaweed and the bean-fields.

“Oh,” said Elfrida, then, “I am so glad it’s not at midnight you’ve got to say the spell. You’d be too frightened.”

“I shouldn’t,” said Edred, very pale and walking quickly away from the castle. “I should say it just the same if it was midnight.” And he very nearly believed what he said.

Elfrida it was who had picked up the paper that Edred had dropped when that thing moved in the corner. She still held it fast.

“I expect it was only a rat or something,” said Edred, his heart beating nineteen to the dozen, as they say in Kent and elsewhere.

“Oh, yes,” said Elfrida, whose lips were trembling a little; “I’m sure it was only a rat or something.”

When they got to the top of Arden Knoll there was no sign of sunset. There was time, therefore, to pull oneself together, to listen to the skylarks, and to smell the bean-flowers, and to wonder how one could have been such a duffer as to be scared by a “rat or something.” Also there were some bits of sandwich and crumbled cake, despised at dinnertime, but now, somehow, tasting quite different. These helped to pass the time till the sun almost seemed to rest on a brown shoulder of the downs, that looked as though it were shrugging itself up to meet the round red ball that the evening mists had made of the sun.

The children had not spoken for several minutes. Their four eyes were fixed on the sun, and as the edge of it seemed to flatten itself against the hill-shoulder Elfrida whispered, “Now!” and gave her brother the paper.

They had read the spell so often, as they sat there in the waning light, that both knew it by heart, so there was no need for Edred to read it. And that was lucky, for in that thick, pink light the faint ink hardly showed at all on the yellowy paper.

Edred stood up.

“Now!” said Elfrida, again. “Say it now.” And Edred said, quite out loud and in a pleasant sort of singsong, such as he was accustomed to use at school when reciting the stirring ballads of the late Lord Macaulay, or the moving tale of the boy on the burning deck:⁠—

“ ‘Hear, Oh badge of Arden’s house,
The spell my little age allows;
Arden speaks it without fear,
Badge of Arden’s house, draw near,
Make me brave and kind and wise,
And show me where the treasure lies.’ ”

He said it slowly and carefully, his sister eagerly listening, ready to correct him if he said a word wrong. But he did not.

“Where the treasure lies,” he ended, and the great silence of the downs seemed to rush in like a wave to fill the space which his voice had filled.

And nothing else happened at all. A flush of pink from the sun-setting spread over the downs, the grass-stems showed up thin and distinct, the skylarks had ceased to sing, but the scent of the bean-flowers and the seaweed was stronger than ever. And nothing happened till Edred cried out, “What’s that?” For close to his foot something moved, not quickly or suddenly so as to startle, but very gently, very quietly, very unmistakably⁠—something that glittered goldenly in the pink, diffused light of the sun-setting.

“Why,” said Elfrida stooping, “why, it’s⁠—”

II The Mouldiwarp

And it was⁠—it was the