Harding's Luck/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
KIDNAPPED
And now New Cross seemed to go backwards and very far away, its dirty streets, its sordid shifts, its crowds of anxious, unhappy people, who never had quite enough of anything, and Dick's home was in a pleasant cottage from whose windows you could see great green rolling downs, and the smooth silver and blue of the sea, and from whose door you stepped, not on to filthy pavements, but on to a neat brick path, leading between beds glowing with flowers.
Also, he was near Arden, the goal of seven months' effort. Now he would see Edred and Elfrida again, and help them to find the hidden treasure, as he had once helped them to find their father.
This joyful thought put the crown on his happiness.
But he presently perceived that though he was so close to Arden Castle he did not seem to be much nearer to the Arden children. It is not an easy thing to walk into the courtyard of a ruined castle and ring the bell of a strange house and ask for people whom you have only met in dreams, or as good as dreams. And I don't know how Dickie would have managed if Destiny had not kindly come to his help, and arranged that, turning a corner in the lane which leads to the village, he should come face to face with Edred and Elfrida Arden. And they looked exactly like the Edred and Elfrida whom he had played with and quarrelled with in the dream. He halted, leaning on his crutch, for them to come up and speak to him. They came on, looking hard at him—the severe might have called it staring—looked, came up to him, and passed by without a word! But he saw them talking eagerly to each other.
Dickie was left in the lane looking after them. It was a miserable moment. But quite quickly he roused himself. They were talking to each other eagerly, and once Elfrida half looked round. Perhaps it was his shabby clothes that made them not so sure whether he was the Dickie they had known. If they did not know him it should not be his fault. He balanced himself on one foot, beat with his crutch on the ground, and shouted, "Hi!" and "Hullo!" as loud as he could. The other children turned, hesitated, and came back.
"What is it?" the little girl called out; "have you hurt yourself?" And she came up to him and looked at him with kind eyes.
"No," said Dickie; "but I wanted to ask you something."
The other two looked at him and at each other, and the boy said "Righto."
"You're from the Castle, aren't you?" he said. "I was wondering whether you'd let me go down and have a look at it?"
"Of course," said the girl. "Come on."
"Wait a minute," said Dickie, nerving himself to the test. If they didn't remember him they'd think he was mad, and never show him the Castle. Never mind! Now for it!
"Did you ever have a tutor called Mr. Parados?" he asked. And again the others looked at him and at each other. "Parrot-nose for short," Dickie hastened to add; "and did you ever shovel snow on to his head and then ride away in a carriage drawn by swans?"
"It is you!" cried Elfrida, and hugged him. "Edred, it is Dickie! We were saying, could it be you? Oh! Dickie darling, how did you hurt your foot?"
Dickie flushed. "My foot's always been like that," he said, "in Nowadays time. When we met in the magic times I was like everybody else, wasn't I?"
Elfrida hugged him again, and said no more about the foot. Instead, she said, "Oh, how ripping it is to really and truly find you here! We thought you couldn't be real because we wrote a letter to you at the address it said on that bill you gave us. And the letter came back with 'not known' outside."
"What address was it?" Dickie asked.
"Laurie Grove, New Cross," Edred told him.
"Oh, that was just an address Mr. Beale made up to look grand with," said Dickie. "I remember his telling me about it. He's the man I live with; I call him father because he's been kind to me. But my own daddy's dead."
"Let's go up on the downs," said Elfrida, "and sit down, and you tell us all about every thing from the very beginning."
So they went up and sat among the furze bushes, and Dickie told them all his story—just as much of it as I have told to you. And it took a long time. And then they reminded each other how they had met in the magic or dream world, and how Dickie had helped them to save their father—which he did do, only I have not had time to tell you about it; but it is all written in "The House of Arden."
"But our magic is all over now," said Edred sadly. "We had to give up ever having any more magic, so as to get father back. And now we shall never find the treasure or be able to buy back the old lands and restore the Castle and bring the water back to the moat, and build nice, dry, warm, cosy cottages for the tenants. But we've got father."
"Well, but look here," said Dickie. "We got my magic all right, and old nurse said I could work it for you, and that's really what I've come for, so that we can look for the treasure together."
"That's awfully jolly of you," said Elfrida.
"What is your magic?" Edred asked; and Dickie pulled out Tinkler and the white seal and the moon-seeds, and laid them on the turf and explained.
And in the middle of the explanation a shadow fell on the children and the Tinkler and the moon-seeds and the seal, and there was a big, handsome gentleman looking down at them and saying—
"Introduce your friend, Edred."
"Oh, Dickie, this is my father," cried Edred, scrambling up. And Dickie added very quickly, "My name's Dick Harding." It took longer for Dickie to get up because of the crutch, and Lord Arden reached his hand down to help him. He must have been a little surprised when the crippled child in the shabby clothes stood up, and instead of touching his forehead, as poor children are taught to do, held out his hand and said—
"How do you do, Lord Arden?"
"I am very well, I thank you," said Lord Arden. "And where did you spring from? You are not a native of these parts, I think?"
"No, but my adopted father is," said Dickie, "and I came from London with him, to see his father, who is old Mr. Beale, and we are staying at his cottage."
Lord Arden sat down beside them on the turf and asked Dickie a good many questions about where he was born, and who he had lived with, and what he had seen and done and been.
Dickie answered honestly and straightforwardly. Only of course he did not tell about the magic, or say that in that magic world he and Lord Arden's children were friends and cousins. And all the time they were talking Lord Arden's eyes were fixed on his face, except when they wandered to Tinkler and the white seal. Once he picked these up, and looked at the crest on them.
"Where did you get these?" he asked.
Dickie told. And then Lord Arden handed the seal and Tinkler to him and went on with his questions.
At last Elfrida put her arms round her father's neck and whispered, "I know it's not manners, but Dickie won't mind," she said before the whispering began.
"Yes, certainly," said Lord Arden when the whispering was over; "it's tea-time. Dickie, you'll come home to tea with us, won't you?"
"I must tell Mr. Beale," said Dickie; "he'll be anxious if I don't."
"Shall I hurt you if I put you on my back?" Lord Arden asked, and next minute he was carrying Dickie down the slope towards Arden Castle, while Edred went back to Beale's cottage to say where Dickie was. When Edred got back to Arden Castle tea was ready in the parlour, and Dickie was resting in a comfortable chair.
"Isn't old Beale a funny old man?" said Edred. "He said Arden Castle was the right place for Dickie, with a face like that. What could he have meant? What are you doing that for?" he added in injured tones, for Elfrida had kicked his hand under the table.
Before tea was over there was a sound of horses' hoofs and carriage wheels in the court yard. And the maid-servant opened the parlour door and said, "Lady Talbot." Though he remembered well enough how kind she had been to him, Dickie wished he could creep under the table. It was too hard; she must recognise him. And now Edred and Elfrida, and Lord Arden, who was so kind and jolly, they would all know that he had once been a burglar, and that she had wanted to adopt him, and that he had been ungrateful and had run away. He trembled all over. It was too hard.
Lady Talbot shook hands with the others, and then turned to him. "And who is your little friend?" she asked Edred, and in the same breath cried out—"Why, it's my little runaway!"
Dickie only said; "I wasn't ungrateful, I wasn't—I had to go." But his eyes implored.
And Lady Talbot—Dickie will always love her for that—understood. Not a word about burglars did she say, only—
"I wanted to adopt Dickie once, Lord Arden, but he would not stay."
"I had to get back to father," said Dickie.
"Well, at any rate it's pleasant to see each other again," she said. "I always hoped we should some day. No sugar, thank you, Elfrida"—and then sat down and had tea and was as jolly as possible. The only thing which made Dickie at all uncomfortable was when she turned suddenly to the master of the house and said, "Doesn't he remind you of any one, Lord Arden?"
And Lord Arden said, "Perhaps he does," with that sort of look that people have when they mean "Not before the children! I'd rather talk about it afterwards if you don't mind."
Then the three were sent out to play, and Dickie was shown the Castle ruins, while Lord Arden and Lady Talbot walked up and down on the daisied grass, and talked for a long time. Dickie knew they were talking about him, but he did not mind. He had that feeling you some times have about grown-up people, that they really do understand, and are to be trusted.
"You'll be too fine presently to speak to the likes of us, you nipper," said Beale, when a smart little pony cart had brought Dickie back to the cottage. "You an' your grand friends. Lord Arden indeed"
"They was as jolly as jolly," said Dickie; "nobody weren't never kinder to me nor what Lord Arden was an' Lady Talbot too—without it was you, farver."
"Ah," said Beale to the old man, "'e knows how to get round his old father, don't 'e?"
"What does he want to talk that way for?" the old man asked. "'E can talk like a little gentleman all right 'cause we 'eard 'im."
"Oh, that's the way we talks up London way," said Dickie. "I learnt to talk fine out o' books."
Mr. Beale said nothing, but that night he actually read for nearly ten minutes in a bound volume of the Wesleyan Magazine. And he was asleep over the same entertaining work when Lord Arden came the next afternoon.
You will be able to guess what he came about. And Dickie had a sort of feeling that perhaps Lord Arden might have seen by his face, as old Beale had, that he was an Arden. So neither he nor you will be much surprised. The person to be really surprised was Mr. Beale.
"You might a-knocked me down with a pickaxe," said Beale later, "so help me three men and a boy you might. It's a rum go. My lord 'e says there's some woman been writing letters to 'im this long time saying she'd got 'old of 'is long-lost nephew or cousin or something, and a-wanting to get money out of him—though what for, goodness knows. An' 'e says you're a Arden by rights, you nipper you, an' 'e wants to take you and bring you up along of his kids—so there's an end of you and me, Dickie, old boy. I didn't understand more than 'arf of wot 'e was saying. But I tumbled to that much. It's all up with you and me and Amelia and the dogs and the little 'ome. You're a-goin' to be a gentleman, you are—an' I'll have to take to the road by meself and be a poor beast of a cadger again. That's what it'll come to, I know."
"Don't you put yourself about," said Dickie calmly. "I ain't a-goin' to leave yer. Didn't Lady Talbot ask me to be her boy and didn't I cut straight back to you? I'll play along o' them kids if Lord Arden'll let me. But I ain't a-goin' to leave you, not yet I ain't. So don't you go snivelling afore any one's 'urt yer, farver. See?"
But that was before Lord Arden had his second talk with Mr. Beale. After that it was—
"Look 'ere, you nipper, I ain't a-goin' to stand in your light. You're goin' up in the world, says you. Well, you ain't the only one. Lord Arden's bought father's cottage an' e's goin' to build on to it, and I'm to 'ave all the dawgs down 'ere, and sell 'em through the papers like. And you'll come an' 'ave a look at us sometimes."
"And what about Amelia?" said Dickie, "and the little ones?"
"Well, I did think," said Beale, rubbing his nose thoughtfully, "of asking 'Melia to come down 'ere along o' the dawgs. Seems a pity to separate 'em somehow. It was Lord Arden put it into my 'ed. 'You oughter be married you ought,' 'e says to me pleasant like, man to man; 'ain't there any young woman I could give a trifle to, to set you and her up in housekeeping?' So then I casts about, and I thinks of 'Melia. As well 'er as anybody, and she's used to the dawgs. And the trifle's an hundred pounds. That's all. That's all! So I'm sending to her by this post, and it's an awful toss up getting married, but 'Melia ain't like a stranger, and it couldn't ever be the same with us two and nipper after all this set out. What you say?"
I don't know what Dickie said; what he felt was something like this:—
"I have tried to stick to Beale, and help him along, and I did come back from the other old long-ago world to help him, and I have been sticking to things I didn't like so as to help him and get him settled. He was my bit of work, and now some one else comes along and takes my work out of my hands, and finishes it. And here's Beale provided for and settled. And I meant to provide for him myself. And I don't like it!"
That was what he felt at first. But afterwards he had to own that it was "a jolly lucky thing for Beale." And for himself too. He found that to be at Arden Castle with Edred and Elfrida all day, at play and at lessons, was almost as good as being with them in the beautiful old dream-life. All the things that he had hated in this modern life, when he was Dicky of Deptford, ceased to trouble him now that he was Richard Arden. For the difference between being rich and poor is as great as the difference between being warm and cold.
After that first day a sort of shyness came over the three children, and they spoke no more of the strange adventures they had had together, but just played at all the ordinary everyday games, till they almost forgot that there was any magic, had ever been any. The fact was, the life they were leading was so happy in itself that they needed no magic to make them contented. It was not till after the wedding of 'Melia and Mr. Beale that Dickie remembered that to find the Arden Treasure for his cousins had been one of his reasons for coming back to this the Nowadays world.
I wish I had time to tell you about the wedding. I could write a whole book about it. How Amelia came down from London and was married in Arden Church. How she wore a white dress and a large hat with a wreath of orange blossoms, a filmy veil, and real kid gloves—all gifts of Miss Edith Arden, Lord Arden's sister. How Lord Arden presented an enormous wedding cake and a glorious wedding breakfast, and gave away the bride, and made a speech saying he owed a great debt to Mr. Beale for his kindness to his nephew Richard Arden, and how surprised every one was to hear Dickie's new name. How all the dogs wore white favours and had each a crumb of wedding cake; and how when the wedding feast was over and the guests gone, the bride tucked up her white dress under a big apron and set about arranging in the new rooms the "sticks" of furniture which Dickie and Beale had brought together from the little home in Deptford, and which had come in a van by road all the way to Arden.
The Ardens had gone back to the Castle, and Dickie with them, and old Beale was smoking in his usual chair by his front door—so there was no one to hear Beale's compliment to his bride. He came behind her and put his arm round her as she was dusting the mantel piece. "Go on with you," said the new Mrs. Beale; "any one 'ud think we was courting."
"So we be," said Beale, and kissed 'Melia for the first time. "We got all our courtin' to do now. See? I might a-picked an' choosed," he added reflectively, "but there—I daresay I might a-done worse."
'Melia blushed with pleasure at the compliment, and went on with the dusting.
*****
It was as the Ardens walked home over the short turf that Lord Arden said to his sister, "I wish all the cottages about here were like Beale's. It didn't cost so very much. If I could only buy back the rest of the land, I'd show some people what a model village is like. Only I can't buy it back. He wants far more than we can think of managing."
And Dickie heard what he said. That was why, when next he was alone with his cousins, he began—
"Look here you aren't allowed to use your magic any more, to go and look for the treasure. But I am. And I vote we go and look for it. And then your father can buy back the old lands, and build the new cottages and mend up Arden Castle, and make it like it used to be."
"Oh, let's," said Elfrida, with enthusiasm. But Edred unexpectedly answered, "I don't know." The three children were sitting in the window of the gate-tower looking down on the green turf of the Castle yard.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Elfrida asked briskly.
"I mean I don't know," said Edred stolidly; "we're all right as we are, I think. I used to think I liked magic and things. But if you come to think of it something horrid happened to us every single time we went into the past with our magic. We were always being chased or put in prison or bothered somehow or other. The only really nice thing was when we saw the treasure being hidden, because that looked like a picture and we hadn't to do anything. And we don't know where the treasure is, anyhow. And I don't like adventures nearly so much as I used to think I did. We're all right and jolly as we are. What I say is, 'Don't let's.'"
This cold water damped the spirit of the others only for a few minutes.
"You know," Elfrida explained to Dickie, "our magic took us to look for treasure in the past. And once a film of a photograph that we'd stuck up behaved like a cinematograph, and then we saw the treasure being hidden away."
"Then let's just go where that was—mark the spot, come home and then dig it up."
"It wasn't buried," Elfrida explained; "it was put into a sort of cellar, with doors, and we've looked all over what's left of the Castle, and there isn't so much as a teeny silver ring to be found."
"I see," said Dickie. "But suppose I just worked the magic and wished to be where the treasure is?"
"I won't," cried Edred, and in his extreme dislike to the idea he kicked with his boots quite violently against the stones of the tower; "not much I won't. I expect the treasure's bricked up. We should look nice bricked up in a vault like a wicked nun, and perhaps forgotten the way to get out. Not much."
"You needn't make such a fuss about it," said Elfrida, "nobody's going to get bricked up in vaults." And Dickie added, "You're quite right, old chap. I didn't think about that."
"We must do something," Elfrida said impatiently.
"How would it be," Dickie spoke slowly, "if I tried to see the Mouldierwarp? He is stronger than the Mouldiwarp. He might advise us. Suppose we work the magic and just ask to see him?"
"I don't want to go away from here," said Edred firmly.
"You needn't. I'll lay out the moon-seeds and things on the floor here—you'll see."
So Dickie made the crossed triangles of moon-seeds and he and his cousins stood in it and Dickie said, "Please can we see the Mouldierwarp?" just as you say, "Please can I see Mr. So-and so?" when you have knocked at the door of Mr. So-and-so's house and some one has opened the door.
Immediately everything became dark, but before the children had time to wish that it was light again a disc of light appeared on the curtain of darkness, and there was the Mouldierwarp, just as Dickie had seen him once before.
He bowed in a courtly manner, and said—
"What can I do for you to-day, Richard Lord Arden?"
"He's not Lord Arden," said Edred. "I used to be. But even I'm not Lord Arden now. My father is."
"Indeed?" said the Mouldierwarp with an air of polite interest. "You interest me greatly. But my question remains unanswered."
"I want," said Dickie, "to find the lost treasure of Arden, so that the old Castle can be built up again, and the old lands bought back, and the old cottages made pretty and good to live in. Will you please advise me?"
The Mouldierwarp in the magic-lantern picture seemed to scratch his nose thoughtfully with his fore paw.
"It can be done," he said, "but it will be hard. It is almost impossible to find the treasure without waking the Mouldiestwarp, who sits on the green-and-white chequered field of Ardens' shield of arms. And he can only be awakened by some noble deed. Yet noble deeds may chance at any time. And if you go to seek treasure of one kind you may find treasure of another. I have spoken."
It began to fade away, but Elfrida cried, "Oh, don't go. You're just like the Greek oracles. Won't you tell us something plain and straight forward?"
"I will," said the Mouldierwarp, rather shortly.
"Great Arden's Lord no treasure shall regain
Till Arden's Lord is lost and found again."
"And father was lost and found again," said Edred, "so that's all right."
"Set forth to seek it with courageous face.
And seek it in the most unlikely place."
And with that it vanished altogether, and the darkness with it; and there were the three children and Tinkler and the white seal and the moon-seeds and the sunshine on the floor of the room in the tower.
"That's useful," said Edred scornfully. "As if it wasn't just as difficult to know the unlikely places as the likely ones."
"I'll tell you what," said Dickie. And then the dinner bell rang, and they had to go without Dickie's telling them what, and to eat roast mutton and plum-pie, and behave as though they were just ordinary children to whom no magic had ever happened. There was little chance of more talk that day.
Edred and Elfrida were to be taken to Cliffville immediately after dinner to be measured for new shoes, and Dickie was to go up to spend the afternoon with Beale and 'Melia and the dogs. Still, in the few moments when they were all dressed and waiting for the dog-cart to come round, Dickie found a chance to whisper to Elfrida—
"Let's all think of unlikely places as hard as ever we can. And to-morrow we'll decide on the unlikeliest and go there. Edred needn't be in it if he doesn't want to. You're keen, aren't you?"
"Rather!" was all there was time for Elfrida to say.
The welcome that awaited Dickie at Beale's cottage from Beale, Amelia, and, not least, the dogs, was enough to drive all thoughts of unlikely places out of anybody's head. And besides, there were always so many interesting things to do at the cottage. He helped to wash True, cleaned the knives, and rinsed lettuce for tea; helped to dry the tea-things, and to fold the washing when Mrs. Beale brought it in out of the yard in dry, sweet armfuls of white folds.
It was dusk when he bade them good-night, embracing each dog in turn, and set out to walk the little way to the cross-roads, where the dog cart returning from Cliffville would pick him up. But the dog-cart was a little late, because the pony had dropped a shoe and had had to be taken to the blacksmith's.
So when Dickie had waited a little while he began to think, as one always does when people don't keep their appointments, that perhaps he had mistaken the time, or that the clock at the cottage was slow. And when he had waited a little longer, it seemed simply silly to be waiting at all. So he picked up his crutch and got up from the milestone where he had been sitting and set off to walk down to the Castle.
As he went he thought many things, and one of the things he thought was that the memories of King James's time had grown dim and distant—he looked down on Arden Castle and loved it, and felt that he asked no better than to live there all his life with his cousins and their father, and that, after all, the magic of a dream-life was not needed, when life itself was so good and happy.
And just as he was thinking this a twig cracked sharply in the hedge. Then a dozen twigs rustled and broke, and something like a great black bird seemed to fly out at him and fold him in its wings.
It was not a bird—he knew that the next moment—but a big, dark cloak, that some one had thrown over his head and shoulders, and through it strong hands were holding him.
"Hold yer noise!" said a voice; "if you so much as squeak it'll be the worse for you."
"Help!" shouted Dickie instantly.
He was thrown on to the ground. Hands fumbled, his face was cleared of the cloak, and a handkerchief with a round pebble in it was stuffed into his mouth so that he could not speak. Then he was dragged behind a hedge and held there, while two voices whispered above him. The cloak was over his head again now, and he could see nothing, but he could hear. He heard one of the voices say, "Hush! they're coming." And then he heard the sound of hoofs and wheels, and Lord Arden's jolly voice saying, "He must have walked on; we shall catch him up all right." Then the sound of wheels and hoofs died away, and hard hands pulled him to his feet and thrust the crutch under his arm.
"Step out!" said one of the voices, "and step out sharp—see?—or I'll l'arn you! There's a carriage awaiting for you."
He stepped out; there was nothing else to be done. They had taken the cloak from his eyes now, and he saw presently that they were nearing a coster's barrow.
They laid him in the barrow, covered him with the cloak, and put vegetable marrows and cabbages on that. They only left him a little room to breathe.
"Now lie still for your life!" said the second voice. "If you stir a inch I'll lick you till you can't stand! And now you know."
So he lay still, rigid with misery and despair. For neither of these voices was strange to him. He knew them both only two well.