Harding's Luck Part 26

What followed was a mist of horrible things. When the mist cleared d.i.c.kie found himself alone in the house with Mr. Parados, the nurse, and the servants, for the Earl and Countess of Arden, Edred, and Elfrida were lodged in the Tower of London on a charge of high treason.

For this was, it seemed, the Fifth of November, the day on which the Gunpowder Plot should have been carried out; and Elfrida it was, and not Mr. Tresham, Lord Monteagle's cousin, who had given away the whole business.

But how had Elfrida known? Could it be that she had dreams like his, and in those dreams visited later times when all this was matter of history?

d.i.c.kie's brain felt fat--swollen--as though it would burst, and he was glad to go to bed--even in that cupboardy place with the panels. But he begged the nurse to leave the panel open.

And when he woke next day it was all true. His aunt and uncle and his two cousins were in the Tower and gloom hung over Arden House in Soho like a black thunder-cloud over a mountain. And the days went on, and lessons with Mr. Parados were a sort of Inquisition torture to d.i.c.kie.

For the tutor never let a day pa.s.s without trying to find out whether d.i.c.kie had shared in any way that guilty knowledge of Elfrida's which had, so Mr. Parados insisted, overthrown the fell plot of the Papists and preserved to a loyal people His Most Gracious Majesty James the First.

And then one day, quite as though it were the most natural thing in the world, his cousin Edred and Lady Arden his aunt were set free from the Tower and came home. The King had suddenly decided that they at least had had nothing to do with the plot. Lady Arden cried all the time, and, as d.i.c.kie owned to himself, "there was enough to make her." But Edred was full of half thought-out plans and schemes for being revenged on old Parrot-nose. And at last he really did arrange a scheme for getting Elfrida out of the Tower--a perfectly workable scheme. And what is more, it worked. If you want to know how it was done, ask some grown-up to tell you how Lady Nithsdale got her husband out of the Tower when he was a prisoner there, and in danger of having his head cut off, and you will readily understand the kind of scheme it was. A necessary part of it was the dressing up of Elfrida in boy's clothes, and her coming out of the Tower, pretending to be Edred, who, with Richard, had come in to visit Lord Arden. Then the guard at the Tower gateway was changed, and another Edred came out, and they all got into a coach, and there was Elfrida under the coach seat among the straw and other people's feet, and they all hugged each other in the dark coach as it jolted through the snowy streets to Arden House in Soho.

d.i.c.kie, feeling very small and bewildered among all these dangerous happenings, found himself suddenly caught by the arm. The nurse's hand it was.

"Now," she said, "Master Richard will go take off his fine suit, and----" He did not hear the end, for he was pushed out of the room.

Very discontentedly he found his way to his panelled bed-closet, and took off the smart velvet and fur which he had worn in his visit to the Tower, and put on his every-day things. You may be sure he made every possible haste to get back to his cousins. He wanted to talk over the whole wonderful adventure with them. He found them whispering in a corner.

"What is it?" he asked.

"We're going to be even with old Parrot-nose," said Edred, "but you mustn't be in it, because we're going away, and you've got to stay here, and whatever we decide to do you'll get the blame of it."

"I don't see," said Richard, "why I shouldn't have a hand in what I've wanted to do these four years." He had not known that he had known the tutor for four years, but as he said the words he felt that they were true.

"There is a reason," said Edred. "You go to bed, Richard."

"Not me," said d.i.c.kie of Deptford firmly.

"If we tell you," said Elfrida, explaining affectionately, "you won't believe us."

"You might at least," said Richard Arden, catching desperately at the grand manner that seemed to suit these times of ruff and sword and cloak and conspiracy--"you might at least make the trial."

"Very well, I will," said Elfrida abruptly. "No, Edred, he has a right to hear. He's one of us. He won't give us away. Will you, d.i.c.kie dear?"

"You know I won't," d.i.c.kie a.s.sured her.

"Well, then," said Elfrida slowly, "we are.... You listen hard and believe with both hands and with all your might, or you won't be able to believe at all. We are not what we seem, Edred and I. We don't really belong here at all. I don't know what's become of the _real_ Elfrida and Edred who belong to this time. Haven't we seemed odd to you at all?

Different, I mean, from the Edred and Elfrida you've been used to?"

The remembrance of the stopped-clock feeling came strongly on d.i.c.kie and he nodded.

"Well, that's because we're _not_ them. We don't belong here. We belong three hundred years later in history. Only we've got a charm--because in our time Edred is Lord Arden, and there's a white mole who helps us, and we can go anywhere in history we like."

"Not quite," said Edred.

"No; but there are chests of different clothes, and whatever clothes we put on we come to that time in history. I know it sounds like silly untruths," she added rather sadly, "and I knew you wouldn't believe it, but it _is_ true. And now we're going back to our times--Queen Alexandra, you know, and King Edward the Seventh and electric light and motors and 1908. Don't try to believe it if it hurts you, d.i.c.kie dear. I know it's most awfully rum--but it's the real true truth."

Richard said nothing. Had never thought it possible but that he was the only one to whom things like this happened.

"You don't believe it," said Edred complacently. "I knew you wouldn't."

d.i.c.kie felt a swimming sensation. It _was_ impossible that this wonderful change should happen to any one besides himself. This just meant that the whole thing was a dream. And he said nothing.

"Never mind," said Elfrida in comforting tones; "don't try to believe it. I know you can't. Forget it. Or pretend we were just kidding you."

"Well, it doesn't matter," Edred said. "What can we do to pay out old Parrot-nose?"

Then Richard found a voice and words.

"I don't like it," he said. "It's never been like this before. It makes it seem not real. It's only a dream, really, I suppose. And I'd got to believe that it was really real."

"I don't understand a word you're saying," said Edred; and, darting to a corner, produced a photographic camera, of the kind called "Brownie."

"Look here," he said, "you've never seen anything like _this_ before.

This comes from the times we belong to."

Richard knew it well. A boy at school had had one. And he had borrowed it once. And the a.s.sistant master had had a larger one of the same kind.

It was horrible to him, this intrusion of the scientific attainments of the ugly times in which he was born into the beautiful times that he had grown to love.

"Oh, stow it!" he said. "I know now it's all a silly dream. But it's not worth while to pretend I don't know a Kodak when I see it. That's a Brownie."

"If you've dreamed about our time," said Elfrida.... "Did you ever dream of fire carriages and fire-boats, and----"

Richard explained that he was not a baby, that he knew all about railways and steamboats and the triumphs of civilization. And added that Kent made 615 against Derbyshire last Thursday. Edred and Elfrida began to ask questions. d.i.c.kie was much too full of his own questionings to answer theirs.

"I shan't tell you anything more," he said. "But I'll help you to get even with old Parrot-nose." And suggested shovelling the snow off the roof into the room of that dismal tyrant through the skylight conveniently lighting it.

But Edred wanted that written down--about Kent and Derbyshire--so that they might see, when they got back to their own times, whether it was true. And d.i.c.kie found he had a bit of paper in his doublet on which to write it. It was a bill--he had had it in his hand when he made the magic moon-seed pattern, and it had unaccountably come with him. It was a bill for three ship's guns and compa.s.ses and six flags, which Mr.

Beale had bought for him in London for the fitting out of a little ship he had made to order for the small son of the amiable p.a.w.nbroker. He scribbled on the back of this bill, gave it to Edred, and then they all went out on the roof and shovelled snow in on to Mr. Parados, and when he came out on the roof very soon and angry, they slipped round the chimney-stacks and through the trap-door, and left him up on the roof in the snow, and shut the trap-door and hasped it.

And then the nurse caught them and Richard was sent to bed. But he did not go. There was no sleep in that house that night. Sleepiness filled it like a thick fog. d.i.c.kie put out his rushlight and stayed quiet for a little while, but presently it was impossible to stay quiet another moment, so very softly and carefully he crept out and hid behind a tall press at the end of the pa.s.sage. He felt that strange things were happening in the house and that he must know what they were. Presently there were voices below, voices coming up the stairs--the nurse's voice, his cousins', and another voice. Where had he heard that other voice?

The stopped-clock feeling was thick about him as he realized that this was one of the voices he had heard on that night of the first magic--the voice that had said, "He is more yours than mine."

The light the nurse carried gleamed and disappeared up the second flight of stairs. d.i.c.kie followed. He had to follow. He could not be left out of this, the most mysterious of all the happenings that had so wonderfully come to him.

He saw, when he reached the upper landing, that the others were by the window, and that the window was open. A keen wind rushed through it, and by the blown candle's light he could see snowflakes whirled into the house through the window's dark, star-studded square. There was whispering going on. He heard her words, "Here. So! Jump."

And then a little figure--Edred it must be; no, Elfrida--climbed up on to the window-ledge. And jumped out. Out of the third-floor window undoubtedly jumped. Another followed it--that was Edred.

"It _is_ a dream," said d.i.c.kie to himself, "but if they've been made to jump out, to punish them for getting even with old Parrot-nose or anything, I'll jump too."

He rushed past the nurse, past her voice and the other voice that was talking with hers, made one bound to the window, set his knee on it, stood up and jumped; and he heard, as his knee touched the icy window-sill, the strange voice say, "Another," and then he was in the air falling, falling.

"I shall wake when I reach the ground," d.i.c.kie told himself, "and then I shall know it's all only a dream, a silly dream."

But he never reached the ground. He had not fallen a couple of yards before he was caught by something soft as heaped feathers or drifted snow; it moved and shifted under him, took shape; it was a chair--no, a carriage. And there were reins in his hand--white reins. And a horse?

No--a swan with wide, white wings. He grasped the reins and guided the strange steed to a low swoop that should bring him near the flare of torches in the street, outside the great front door. And as the swan laid its long neck low in downward flight he saw his cousins in a carriage like his own rise into the sky and sail away towards the south.

Quite without meaning to do it he pulled on the reins; the swan rose. He pulled again and the carriage stopped at the landing window.

Hands dragged him in. The old nurse's hands. The swan glided away between snow and stars, and on the landing inside the open window the nurse held him fast in her arms.