'"Take that," cried he, aiming an apple at the old man's head.'—Page 307.'"Take that," cried he, aiming an apple at the old man's head.'—Page 307.
So he said: 'Well?'
And the old man said: 'Not at all! However, since you had the sense not to fall off wrong way, I suppose you're the boy I want. Now, look here, you throw me down those ten big apples, one by one, so that I can catch them, and I'll let you go out by the Apple Door that no one but me has the key of.'
'Why don't you pick them yourself?' Diggory asked.
'I'm too old; you know very well that old men don't climb trees. Come, is it a bargain?'
'I don't know,' said the boy; 'there are lots of apples you can reach without climbing. Why do you want these so particularly?'
As he spoke, he picked one of the apples and threw it up and caught it. I say up, but it was down instead, because of the apple-tree being so very much enchanted.
'Oh,don't!' the old man squeaked like a rat in a trap—'don'tdrop it! Throw it down to me, you nasty slack-baked, smock-frocked son of a speckled toad!'
Diggory's blood boiled at hearing his father called a toad.
'Take that!' cried he, aiming the apple at the old man's head.' I wish I could get out of this tree.'
The apple hit the old man's head and bounced on to the grass, and the moment that apple touched the ground Diggory found that hecouldget out of the tree if he liked, for he felt that he was now the proper way up once more, and so was the tree.
'So,' he said, 'these are wish-apples, are they?'
'No, no, no, no!' shrieked the old man so earnestly that Diggory knew he was lying. 'I've just disenchanted you, that's all. You see, most people fall up out of the tree and you didn't, so I thought I'd let you go, because I'm a nice kind old man, I am, and I wouldn't so much as hurt a fly. They aren't wish-apples, indeed they aren't.'
'Really,' said Diggory. 'I wish you'd speak the truth.'
With that he picked the second apple and threw it. And the old man began to speak the truth as hard as ever he could speak. It was like a child saying a lesson it has just learned, and is afraid of forgetting before it can get it said.
'I am a wicked magician. I have turned hundreds of people's heads in that tree so that they fall into the sky, and when they fall back again, as they have to do when the tide turns, I make them into apple-trees. I don't know why I do, but I like to. I suppose it's because I'm wicked. I never did anything useful with my magic, but I can hurt. And there's only one way out of this, and I don't mean to show it you.'
'It's a pity you're so wicked,' said Diggory. 'I wish you were good.'
He threw down another apple, and instantly the magician became so good that he could do nothing but sit down and cry to think how wicked he had been. He was now perfectly useless. But Diggory was no longer afraid of him, so he gathered the ten apples that were left and put them inside his shirt, and came down the tree.
The old man couldn't tell him how to get out, and he couldn't disenchant the fruit-trees or anything. So Diggory had to spend three wish-apples. First he spent one on making the old man happy. This was done as it is in Miss Edgeworth's stories—by giving him a thatched cottage and a garden, and a devoted grand-daughter to look after him. The next apple showed Diggory the Apple Door,which he had not been able to find, and he went out by it. You, of course, can find it on the map, but he had no map, and, besides, it is spelt differently. Before he went out of the orchard he threw down another apple, and wished the apple-trees to be disenchanted. And they were. And then the red-walled orchard was full of Kings and Princesses, and swineherds and goosegirls, and statesmen and stevedores, and every kind of person you can or can't think of.
Diggory left them to find their own ways home—some of them lived ever so long before, and ever so far away—and he himself went out by the Apple Door, and found his good white horse, who had been eating grass very happily all the time he had been in the company of the magician, and that had been two days and a night.
So Invicta was not hungry, but Diggory was; and, in fact, he was so hungry that he had to use a wish-apple to get his supper, and that was very, very wasteful of him, and he often regretted it in after years. It is true that he wished for the best supper in the world, and had it; but it was only bread-and-milk! If he had wished for the nicest supper it would have been different, no doubt.
Diggory rode on anxiously, arranging whatwishes he should have with the rest of the apples, but in the dusk he missed his way and was nearly drowned in a rain-flooded ford, and poor white Invicta was quite carried away.
Then Diggory took off his shirt to wring the water out, and as he took it off he said: 'I wish I had my good white horse again.'
And as he said it all the apples but one tumbled out of his shirt on to the ground, and he heard soft neighings and stampings and hustlings and rustlings all round him in the dark, and when the moon rose he saw that he had had his wish—he had his good white horse back again. But as he had dropped eight apples, he had his good white horse back eight times, and as eight times one is eight, he had now eight good white horses, all called Invicta.
'Well, eight horses are better than nothing!' he said; and when he had tethered the horses he went to sleep, for he felt strangely feeble and tired.
In the morning he woke with pains in every limb. He thought it was a cold from the wetting in the ford, but it was really rheumatism. And he could not get rid of it. He tied seven horses together and led them, riding on the eighth.
'Eight horses are a pretty good fortune for a woodcutter's son,' he said to himself, 'and, anyway, I'm too tired to go looking for any better one.'
So he rode home.
He knew the roads well enough, and yet they seemed different; they were much better roads to ride over, for one thing, and the hedges and trees were odd somehow. And the big wood near his father's house seemed very small as he looked down on it from the hill. But when he got to the village he thought he must have gone mad, for in the day and two nights and a day that he had been away the village had grown big and ugly and yellow-bricky, and there were eight shops and six public-houses besides the Bill and Billet, and many more people than there used to be, all in ugly, untidy clothes, and the Round Mound windmill wasgone! The people came crowding round him.
'What's become of the mill?' he asked, trembling all over.
The boys and girls and men and women stared, and a very old man stepped out of the crowd.
'It were pulled down,' he said, 'when I were a boy.'
'And the woodcutter's cottage?'
'That were burnt down a matter of fifty year ago. Was you a native of these parts, old man?'
There was a large plate-glass shop-window just opposite the crowd that surrounded Diggory. A dark blind was pulled down inside, because it was Wednesday and early-closing day. This made a fine mirror, and Diggory happened to look in it, and there he saw himself—an old, old white-haired man on a white horse. He had a white beard, too, but it was quite short, because it had only had since bedtime last night to grow in.
He almost tumbled off his horse. The landlord of the Ship led him in to sit by the fire in the bar parlour, and the eight horses were put up in the stable.
The old man who had told him about the mill came and sat by him, and poor old Diggory asked questions till he grew tired of hearing the answer, which was always the same: 'Dead, dead, dead!'
Then he sat silent, and the people in the bar talked about his horses, and a young man said:
'I wish I'd got e'er a one on 'em. I'd do a tidy bit in fish, an' set up for myself—so I would.'
'Young man,' said Diggory, 'you may take one of them; its name is Invicta.'
The young man could hardly believe his fortunate ears. Diggory felt his heart warm to think that he had made someone else so happy. He felt actually younger. And next morning he made up his mind to give away all the horses but one. That one he would sell, and its price would keep him for the rest of his life: he hoped that would not be long, for he did not care to go on living now that he had seen the tombstones in the churchyard with the names of his father and brothers and little Joyce of the mill.
He led his horses away next day. He did not want to give them all away in one village, because that would have lessened the value of his gift to the young man who was going into fish, and, besides, it would have been awkward to have so many horses of the same name in one village.
He gave away a horse at each village he passed through, and with every horse he gave away he felt happier and lighter. And when he had given away the fourth his rheumatism went, and when he had given away the seventh his beard was gone.
'Now,' he said to himself, 'I will ride home and end my days in my own village, and be buried with my own people.'
So he turned his horse's head towards home,and he felt so gay and light-limbed he could hardly believe that he was really an old, old man. And he rode on.
And at the end of the village he stopped and rubbed his eyes, for there stood the Round Mound windmill, and on the slope was Joyce, looking prettier than ever in a russet petticoat and a white neckerchief and a pink print gown with little red rosebuds on it.
'Oh, Diggory, Diggory,' she cried, 'you've come back, then! You'll take me with you now, won't you?'
'Have you got a looking-glass, my dear?' said he. 'Then run in and fetch it.'
She ran. He took it and looked in it. And he saw the same young brown face and the same bright brown hair that he had always known forhim, and he was not old any more. And there was Joyce holding up a face as sweet as a bunch of flowers.
'Will you take me?' said she.
He stooped down and kissed the face that was so sweet.
'I'll take you,' said he.
And as they went along to his home he told her all the story.
'Well, but,' she said, 'you've got one wish-apple left.'
'Why, so I have,' said he; 'if I hadn't forgotten it!'
'We'll make that into the fortune you went out to find. Do, do let me look at it!'
He pulled out the apple, and she took it in her hand as she sat behind him on the big white horse.
'Yes, our fortune's made,' he said; 'but I do wish I knew why I turned old like that.'
Just then Invicta stumbled, and Joyce caught at her lover to save herself from falling, and as she caught at him the apple slipped from her hand and the last wish was granted. For as it bounced on the road Diggory did know why he had grown old like that. He knew that the magician had arranged long before that every wish-apple that was used outside the orchard should add ten years to the wisher's age. So that the eight horses had made him a hundred years old, and the spell could only be undone by the wisher's giving away what he'd wished for. So that it was Diggory's generosity in giving away the horses that had taken him back to the proper age for being happy in. I don't want to be moral, and I'm very sorry—but it really was that.
He carried Joyce home to his father's house. They were much too pleased with each other to bother about the wasted wish-apples.
'You're soon back, my son,' said the woodcutter, laughing.
'Yes,' said Diggory.
'Have you found your fortune?'
'Yes,' said Diggory; 'here she is!'
And he presented Joyce. The woodcutter laughed more than ever, for the miller's daughter was a bit of an heiress.
'Well, well!' he said.
So they were married, and they had a little farm, and the white horse was put to the plough, and to the cart, and the harrow, and the waggon; and he worked hard, and they worked hard, so that they all throve and were very happy as long as ever they lived.
Said Joyce one day to Diggory, 'How was it you wanted to take me with you directly you came back, and when you were going away you didn't.'
'I've often wondered about that myself,' he said; 'I think it must have been the bread-and-milk. You see, it was one of the wish-apple things, just like the horses were, only they wereoutside things, so they made me old outside; but the bread-and milk——'
'Was an inside thing, of course—quite inside.'
'Yes, so it made me old inside of my mind, just old enough to have the sense to see thatyouwere all the fortune I wanted, and more than I deserved.'
'I didn't have to be so very old to know what fortuneIwanted,' said Joyce, 'but, then, I was a girl. Boys are always much stupider than girls, aren't they?'
The only person in this story you are likely to have heard of is, of course, Invicta, and he is better known as the White Horse of Kent.
You can see pictures of him all over his county: on brewers circulars and all sorts of documents, and carved in stone on buildings, and even on the disagreeable, insulting fronts of traction-engines. Traction-engines pretend to despise horses, but they carry the image of the White Horse on their hearts. And his name is generally put underneath his picture, so that there shall be no mistake.
The children called him Sir Christopher Cockleshell.—'Sir,' in token of respect for his gray hairs and noble-looking face; Christopher, because he had once carried Mabel across the road on a very muddy day, when thunder showers and the parish water-carts had both been particularly busy; and Cockleshell, because of the house he lived in.
It was a most wonderful house—like the gateway of an old castle. It had a big arch in the middle and a window over the arch, and there were windows, too, in the towers on each side of the arch. All along the top were in-and-out battlements. It had been covered with white plaster once, but flakes of this had fallen away and showed the pinky bricks underneath. But the oddest thing about the house was the trimming that ran all round the bottom story about the height of a tall man. This trimming was of oyster-shells, and cockle-shells, and mussel-shells,and whelk-shells, and scallop-shells, all stuck on the wall of the house in patterns. It was a very wonderful house indeed, and the children always tried to go past it on their way to everywhere.
The children themselves lived in a large, square, ordinary brown-brick house among other ordinary brown-brick houses. Their house had a long garden with tall old trees in it, and so had the other houses. Looking out of the boxroom window was like looking down on the top of a green forest, Phyllis always thought. Only now, of course, the trees were not green any more, because it was nearly Christmas.
'I wish Sir Christopher had a garden to his house,' Phyllis said one day to the new housemaid.
'There used to be a pleasure-gardens there, I've heard father tell,' said the new housemaid. 'Quite a big gardens, it was. The gent as owned it was as rich as rich, kep' his carriage and butlers and all. But when his son come into the property he sold the gardens for building on, and only kep' the gate-house—the Grotto they calls it. An' there 'e's lived ever since in quite a poor way. Nasty old miser, that's what he is!'
'He may be a miser,' said Phyllis, 'but he's not nasty. He carried Mabel as kind as could be.'
'Have you ever spoke to him since?' demanded the housemaid.
'No,' said Phyllis; 'he always smiles at us, but he's always in a hurry.'
'That's it,' said the housemaid; ''e's afraid to let anyone inside of his house, fear they should get to see all the sacks of money he's got there. And he pokes about and picks things outer the gutters, so he won't get to know anyone. My young brother he knocked at the door once to arst for a drink of water—thought he'd get a squint at the inside of the house while the old chap was gone to draw it. But he shuts the door in Elf's face, and only opens it a crack to hand him the mug through.'
'It was kind of him to give your brother the water,' said Phyllis.
'Elf didun want the water,' said Alf's sister; ''e'd just 'ad a lemonade at the paper shop.'
Phyllis had often wanted to do something kind for Sir Christopher, but she could not think of anything that wasn't just as likely to annoy him as to please him. If she had known when his birthday was, she would have put a birthday card under his door; but no one can be pleased at having a card with 'Bright be thy natal morn'on it when really the natal morn is quite a different date. She would have taken him flowers at the time when dahlias and sunflowers grew at the end of the garden, but perhaps he would not like the bother of putting them in water; and, if he was really poor, and not a miser, as Jane said, he might not have a vase or jug to put them in.
And now it was Christmas-time. Guy was home for the holidays, and that was splendid. But, on the other hand, mother and father had had to go to granny, who was ill. So there would be no real Christmas in the brown house.
'But I'll tell you what,' said Phyllis; 'there's the Christmas-tree for the poor children at the schools. Suppose we were to make some things for that, and buy some, and go down and help decorate? Mother said we might.'
Guy was rather clever with his fingers, and as we all like doing what we can do really well, he did not make such a fuss over making things as some boys do. He could make doll's furniture out of pins and wool, and armchairs out of the breast-bones of geese; only there are so seldom enough breast-bones of geese to make a complete set of furniture.
There was nearly a week to make things in,and long before its end the schoolroom began to look like a bazaar. There were little boxes of sweets covered with silver paper, and scrapbooks made of postcards covered with red calico, and some little dolls that the girls dressed, as well as all the things that Guy made.
'How ravishingly beautiful!' said Mabel, when the shiny, shimmery, real Christmas-tree things bought at the shop were spread out with the others.
The day before Christmas Eve the children were very happy indeed, although they had had to be made thoroughly tidy before Jane would allow them to go down to the school; and being thoroughly tidy, as you know, often means a lot of soap in your eyes, and having your nails cleaned by someone who does not know as well as you do where the nail leaves off and the real you begins.
They went to the side-door of the school, and left the baskets and bundles of pretty things in the porch and went in.
The big tree was there, but it was just plain fir-tree so far, nothing Christmassy about it, except that it was planted in a tub.
'How do you do?' said Guy politely to the stout lady in a bonnet with black beads and a violet feather; 'I'm so glad we're in time.'
'What for?' said the stout lady. 'The tree's not till to-morrow. Run away, little boy.'
'Oh, Mrs. Philkins,' said Phyllis, 'he's not a little boy, he's Guy; don't you remember him?'
'I remember him in petticoats,' said Mrs. Philkins: 'he's grown. Good-afternoon.'
'Mother said,' said Guy, keeping his temper beautifully, 'that we might come and help.'
'Very kind of your mother to arrange it like that. ButIhappen to be in charge of the tree, and I don't want any outside assistance.'
The children turned away without a word. When they got outside Guy said:
'I hate Mrs. Philkins!'
'We oughtn't to hate anybody,' said Mabel.
'She isn't anybody—at least, not anybody in particular,' said Phyllis; 'I heard father say so.'
'She wouldn't have been such a pig to us if she'd known what we'd brought for the tree,' said Phyllis.
'I'm glad she didn't know. I wish we hadn't done the things at all,' said Guy; 'it's always the way if you try to do good to others.'
'Itisn't,' said the others indignantly; 'you know it isn't.'
'That's right!' said Guy aggravatingly, 'let's begin to quarrel about it—us—that would justplease her. Let's drop the whole lot into the canal, and say no more about it.'
'Ohno!' cried both the girls together, clutching the precious parcels they carried.
'But what's the good?' said Guy; 'we don't know anyone who's got a Christmas-tree to give them to.'
Phyllis stopped short on the pavement, struck motionless by an idea.
'I know,' she said: 'we'll have a tree of our very own.'
'What's the good if there's no one to see it?'
'We'll ask someone to see it.'
'Who?'
'Sir Christopher!'
The daring and romance of this idea charmed even Guy. But he thought it would be better not to ask Sir Christopher to come to their house: 'Servants are so odd,' he said; 'they might be rude to him, or something. No; we'll get it ready, and we'll wheel it round after dark, and ask him to let us light it in his yard. Then he won't think we're trying to pry into his house.'
Half an hour later Guy staggered in, bearing a fir-tree.
'Only ninepence,' he said; 'it's a bit lop-sided,but we can tie ivy on or something to make that right. I'm glad that old cat wouldn't let us help. It's much jollier like this.'
The tree was planted in a pot that a dead azalea had lived in; and Mrs. Philkins was quite forgotten in the joy of trimming their own tree. Besides the things they had made there were the lovely things they had bought—stars and flags, and a sugar bird-cage with a yellow bird in it, and a glass boat with glass sails, and a blue china bird with a tail of spun glass.
Guy went out and borrowed a wheelbarrow from the gardener who cut their grass when it was cut, and when the tree was trimmed he and Phyllis carried it downstairs. The top branch with the star on it got banged against the banisters, and the side branch got into Guy's eye, and Phyllis's thumb got jammed between the pot and the banister rail. But what are trifles like these in an adventure like this?
They got the tree out of the front-door without being seen by the servants—a real triumph. They stood the pot in the barrow, and started to wheel it out of the front-gate. But directly they lifted the handles of the barrow the floor of it naturally ceased to be straight, and the flower-pot toppledover and cracked itself slightly against the side of the barrow, while the boughs of the tree, with their gay decorations, took the opportunity to entangle themselves in the bad-tempered leaves of the holly that stood there, and were disengaged with difficulty.
Then the pot refused to stand up, and at last it had to be laid down in the barrow, with its shiny treasures dangling over the front-wheel.
Then, the barrow was extremely heavy even without the tree in it; and the children did not go the nearest way to the Grotto, because they did not want to meet people, so they were thoroughly tired and extremely hot by the time they approached Sir Christopher Cockleshell's castle.
There was a bit of waste land close to it, where someone had once begun to build a house and had then thought better of it. A bit of this house's wall was standing on each side of the space where its front-door would have been if it had ever come to the point of having one. They wheeled the barrow in, and the light of a street lamp that obligingly shone through the door-space made it possible for them to disentangle the little strings that had got twisted round each other, to disengage the gilt fish from the sugar bird-cage, and to takethe glass bird out of the goose-bone armchair in which it was trying to sit. Also they set up all the candles—six dozen of them. This is done with tin-tacks, as no doubt you know.
'Now,' said Guy, 'one of us must go and ask if he'll let us light it in his yard, and one of us must wait here with the tree.'
'What about me?' said Mabel.
'You can do which you like,' said Guy.
'I want to do both,' said Mabel; 'I want to stay with the pretty tree,andI want to go and ask him if he wants us.'
Mabel was still too small to understand thoroughly how hard it is, even for a grown-up person, to be in two places at once.
It ended in Guy's staying with the tree.
'In case of attacks by boys,' he said.
'Then I shall go with Phyllis,' said Mabel.
Both girls felt their hearts go quite pitter-pattery when at last they stood on the doorstep of the castle.
'Why don't you knock?' Mabel asked.
'I don't like to,' said Phyllis.
Mabel instantly knocked very loudly with a wooden ninepin-ball that she happened to have in her pocket.
'Oh, Iwishyou hadn't!' said Phyllis; 'I wanted to think what to say first, and now there's no time.'
There certainly was not. The door opened a cautious inch, and a voice said:
'Who's there?'
'It's us,' said Phyllis, 'please. We don't want to pry into your beautiful house like Jane's brother Alf when he asked you for the drink of water, only we've made up a Christmas-tree, and may we stand it in your yard and light it—the candles, I mean?'
The door opened a little further, and a face looked out—the face, of course, of Sir Christopher. All the house that showed through the crack of the door didn't, as Mabel said afterwards, show at all, because it was pitch-dark.
'I don't quite understand,' said Sir Christopher gently. Phyllis was a little surprised to find that the voice was what she called a gentleman's voice.
'We—you were so kind carrying Mab across the road that water-carty day when it thundered——'
'Oh, it's you, is it?' he said.
'Yes, it's us; and they wouldn't let us help with the school tree, and so we made one of our ownand then we wanted someone to see it. And we thought of you, because you don't seem to have many friends, and we thought—— But we'll take it home again if you don't care about it.'
She stopped, just on the right side of tears.
'There's a glass bird with a spun-lovely tail,' said Mabel persuasively, 'and sweets and fishes, and a crocodile that goes waggle-waddle when you wind him up.'
'My dears,' said Sir Christopher, and cleared his throat. 'My dears,' he began again, and again he stopped.
'We'll go away if—if you'd rather,' said Phyllis, and sniffed miserably.
'No, no!' he said; 'no, no—I was only thinking. I never thought—would you like to bring the tree into the house? It's just the sort of thing my little girl always liked.'
'Oh yes,' said Phyllis; 'we'll go and fetch it now.'
He closed the door gently. The children flew back to Guy and the tree.
'Oh, Guy! we've to take the tree inside the house! And he's got a little girl—at least, he says so. Come on, quick. We'd better carry it. The barrow's so heavy, and it does interfere so!'
They carried the pot between them. It was very heavy, and they had to put it down and rest several times. But at last they dumped it down in the dark on the front-door step of the castle, and breathed deep breaths of fatigue, relief, and excitement.
The door opened, and opened wide, and this time light streamed from within.
'Welcome!' said Sir Christopher. 'Come in. Let me help to lift it. What a beautiful tree!'
'It is rather decent, isn't it?' said Guy dispassionately.
Sir Christopher raised the pot, carried it in, and the door was shut. The children found themselves in a small square hall. A winding staircase of iron corkscrewed upwards in one corner. The hall was lighted only by two candles.
The old gentleman led the way through a door on the right into a round room with white walls.
'We're inside the tower now,' said Guy.
'Yes,' said their host, 'this is part of the tower.'
He hastily lighted a big lamp, and then a deep 'Oh!' broke from the children. For the walls were not white, they were all of mother-of-pearl, and here and there all over the walls round pearls shone with a starry, milky radiance.
'How radishing!' said Mabel in a whisper. 'I always said he wasn't a miser. He's a magician.'
'What a lovely, lovely room!' sighed Phyllis.
'What's it made of?' asked Guy downrightly.
'Oyster-shells,' said Sir Christopher, 'and pearl beads.'
And it was.
'Oh!' said Mabel gaily, 'then that's what you go prowling about in dirty gutters for?'
'Don't be rude, Mab dear!' whispered Phyllis.
But the old gentleman did not seem to mind. He just said, 'Yes, that's it,' in an absent sort of way. He seemed to be thinking about something else. Then he said, 'The Christmas-tree.'
The children had forgotten all about the Christmas-tree.
When its seventy-two candles were lighted the pearly room shone and glimmered like a fairy palace in a dream.
'It's many a year since my little girl had such a Christmas-tree,' he said. 'I don't know how to thank you.'
'Seeing your pearly halls is worth all the time and money,' said Mabel heartily.
And Phyllis added in polite haste:
'And you being pleased.'
'Would you like to see the black marble hall?' asked Sir Christopher.
And, of course, they said, 'Yes, awfully.'
So he led them into the room on the other side of the hall, and lighted a lamp. And the room was like a room of black marble, carved into little round knobs.
'How lovely!' said Phyllis.
'It's not lovely like the other,' said Mabel; 'but it's more serious, like when the organ plays in church.'
'Why,' said Guy suddenly, 'it's winkle-shells!'
And it was. Hundreds and thousands of winkle-shells sorted into sizes and stuck on the walls in patterns, and then, it seemed, polished or varnished.
'Come,' said Sir Christopher, 'I'll show you the red-room.'
As they turned to go a tall, white figure by the door seemed to come suddenly into the lamplight. It was covered with a sheet.
'Oh!' said all three, starting back, 'what's that?'
'That's my little girl,' he said.
'Is she trying to frighten us? Is she playing ghosts?' asked Guy.
'No,' he said; 'she never plays at ghosts. Itisn't her really. That's only my fun. It's a statue really.'
'Aren't statues very dear?' asked Guy.
'Very,' said Sir Christopher—'very, very dear.'
He led the way up the winding iron stair and showed them the red-room. Its walls were covered with bits of red lobster-shells, overlapping like a fish's scales or the plates of armour.
'How resplendid!' said Mabel; 'I believe you're a mighty magician.'
'No,' he said; 'at least—no, not exactly. There's only one more room.'
The other room was a bedroom, quite dull and plain, with whitewashed walls and painted deal furniture.
'I like the pearly halls best,' said Mabel: 'they're more eloquent;' and they all went down to the room where the seventy-two candles of the Christmas-tree were burning steadily and brightly, though there was no one to see them.
'Won't you call your little girl?' said Phyllis. 'The candles won't last so very long; they're the cheap kind.'
Sir Christopher twisted his fingers together.
'It's no use calling her,'he said. 'Would you mind—do you mind leaving the tree for to-night?You could fetch it to-morrow. And you won't tell anyone about the inside of my house, will you? They'd only laugh at it.'
'I don't see how they could,' said Mabel indignantly; 'it's the beautifullest, gorgerest house that ever was.'
'But we won't tell anyone,' said Guy. 'And we'll come again to-morrow—about the same time.'
Sir Christopher said, 'Yes, please.'
And they all shook hands with him and came away, leaving the Christmas-tree, with all its seventy-two candles, still making the pearly room a dream of fairy beauty.
They ran all the way home, because it was rather late, and they did not want the servants to fetch them from the parish schoolroom, where they had not spent the evening. It would have been very difficult to explain exactly where and how theyhadspent it, and the fact that they had promised not to say anything about it would have added considerably to the difficulty.
When they had been let in, and had taken off their hats and jackets and got their breaths, they looked at each other.
'Well?' said Phyllis.
'Yes,' said Mabel; 'what an inciting adventure!What a dear he is! I do hope we shall see his little girl to-morrow.'
'Yes,' said Guy slowly, 'but I don't think we shall.'
'Why ever not?'
'Because I don't believe he's got any little girl. We went into all the rooms, and the hall and landing. There wasn't any other room for the little girl to be in.'
'Perhaps it was really her under the sheet, trying to be ghosts,' said Phyllis.
'It was too high up,' said Mabel.
'She might have been standing on a stool,' said Phyllis.
'Well,' said Guy, with a satisfied look; 'it's a very thrilling mystery.'
It was. And it gave them something to think of for the next few days. For that evening when they went to fetch the Christmas-tree, they found the door of Sir Christopher's castle tight shut, and their Christmas-tree was standing alone on the doorstep in the dark.
After vainly knocking several times, they put the tree into the wheelbarrow and got it home, only upsetting it three times by the way.
When they got it into the light of their schoolroom they saw that there was a piece of paper on it—a note.
'My dears,' it said, 'here is your beautiful tree. Thank you very much. If you knew how much pleasure it had given me you would be glad. Why not give the tree to some poor child? Good-bye. God bless you!'
There were some letters tangled together at the bottom of the page.
'His initials, I suppose,' said Guy. But nobody could read them.
'Anyway, it means he doesn't want to see us any more,' said Phyllis. 'Oh, I do wish we knew something more about him.'
But they took his advice, and the tree went to the gardener's little boy, who was ill. It made him almost forget his illness for days and days.
When father came home they asked him who lived in the Grotto. He told them.
'He has lived there for years,' he said. 'I have heard that when he came into his property he found that his property was almost all debts. So he sold the tea-gardens for building on, and has lived there in the Grotto on next to nothing, and all these years he's been paying off his father'screditors. I should think they're about paid off by now.'
'Has he a little girl?' asked Phyllis.
'Yes—I believe so,' said father absently.
'It's very odd,' Mabel was beginning, but the others silenced her.
After this the children were more interested than ever in Sir Christopher. They used to paint illuminated texts, and make picture-frames of paper rosettes, and buy toys, and leave them on his doorstep in the dark, 'For the little girl,' and as the spring came on, bunches of flowers.
It was one evening when Phyllis came to the castle with a big bunch of plumy purple lilac. She was earlier than usual, and it was not quite dark, and—wonder of wonders—the door of the castle was open. Still more wonderful, Sir Christopher stood on the doorstep.
'I was watching for you,' he said. 'I had a sort of feeling you'd come to-night. Will you come in?'
He led her into the black marble room and stood looking wistfully at her.
'Would you like to see my little girl?' he said suddenly.
'Yes,' said Phyllis.
'I didn't think you'd understand,' he said, 'when you came at Christmas. But you've been so kind and faithful all these months. I think you will understand. Look!'
He pulled the sheet from the statue, and Phyllis looked on the white likeness of a little girl of her own age, dressed in a long gown like a nightgown.
'It is very beautiful,' she said.
'Yes,' he said. 'Have you ever heard any tales about me?' he asked.
'Yes,' said Phyllis, and told him.
'It's not true,' he said. My father had no debts. But I married someone he didn't like; and then I got ill, and couldn't work. My father was very hard. He wouldn't help us. My wife died, and then my father died, and all his great wealth came to me. Too late! too late! The letter that told me I was rich came to me when I was sitting beside my dead child. The money camethen—the money that would have saved her. The first money I spent out of it all was spent on that statue. It was done as she lay dead.'
Phyllis looked at the statue, and felt—she didn't know why—very frightened. Then she looked at him, and she was not frightened any more. She ran to him and put her arms round him.
'Oh, poor, poor, dear Sir Christopher!' she said.
'That's how she looked when she was dead,' he said; 'would you like to see my ladybird as she was when she was alive and well, and I was a strong man able to work for her?'
'Yes—oh yes,' said Phyllis.
He led the way into the pearly room, and drew back a green curtain that hung there. Phyllis caught her breath sharply, and tears pricked her eyes. Not because the picture was a sad one—ah, no! not that!
As the curtain was withdrawn the figure of a child seemed to spring towards them from the canvas—a happy, laughing child, her arms full of roses, her face full of health and beauty and the joy of life; a child whose glad, unclouded eyes met Phyllis's in a free, joyous look.
'Oh no!' cried Phyllis; 'she can't be dead—shecan't!'
The old man took her in his arms, for she was crying bitterly.
'Thank you—thank you, dear,' he said, soothing her. 'Now I know that you are the right person to help me.'
'I? Helpyou?'
Phyllis's tears began to dry at the beautiful thought, but she still sobbed.
'Don't cry,' he said, and gently drew the green curtain over the lovely laughing face. 'Don't cry. I want to tell you of many things. When that money came—I've told you when—as soon as I could see or think again, I saw what I ought to do. Ever since I've not spent a penny of that money on myself—on anything but the plainest food, the plainest clothes. If I've made the house beautiful for her picture to live in, it's been with my own work. All the rest of the money has gone to help little girls whose fathers can't work for them—little girls that can be saved, as my little girl could have been saved. That's the work I want you to carry on for me when you grow up. Will you promise?'
'Yes,' said Phyllis; 'only I'm very stupid.'
'I will have you taught. You shall learn how to do my work. Ask your father to come and see me. And now, good-bye. Perhaps I shan't see you again. Will you always remember that your Christmas-tree came to me like a light in a dark night to show me that there was someone still who cared to be kind.... Good-bye.'
Father, when he heard the story, almost thoughtthat Phyllis was dreaming. But he went to the Grotto, and when he came back his face was very sad.
'It is a very great honour for you, Phyllis,' he said gravely. 'Are you sure that you understand how much hard work it will mean?'
'I don't mind hard work,' said Phyllis, 'if only I can do what he wants.'
So Phyllis is learning many things and preparing for the great work that has so wonderfully come to her. I think she will do it well, because she is not at all stupid really, and she has the gift of being sorry for sad people, and happy with happy ones. I think Sir Christopher chose well.
Some distant relations of Sir Christopher's have tried to make out that he was mad, and so couldn't do what he liked with his money. But when they took the matter to the judges to decide, hundreds and hundreds of people he had been good to and helped broke the promise of secrecy that he had always asked of them. And all England rang with the tale of his goodness, and of all the kind and clever things he had done for poor children all those long years, for the sake of his own little child. And the judges decided he was quite right to use his money in that way, andnot mad at all. So the tiresome relations got nothing but lawyers' bills for their pains.
Phyllis only saw Sir Christopher once again. He sent for her when he was dying. They had moved his bed into the pearly room, and he lay facing the green curtain.
'If it seems too hard when the time comes,' he said, 'you need not do the work. Your father knows how to arrange that.'
'You needn't be afraid,' said Phyllis; 'it's the most splendid chance anyone ever had.'
'Kiss me, dear,' he said, 'and then draw back the curtain.'
But before Phyllis's hand had touched the green curtain he sat up in the bed and held out his arms towards the picture.
'Why, ladybird!' he cried, his face all alight with love and joy. 'Why, my little girl!'
Of course, there was a grand party when Princess Pandora came of age. The palace was hung with garlands of white roses, all the carpets were taken up, and the floor of every room was covered close with green turf with daisies in it, for in that country the cruel practice of rooting daisies out of lawns with a spud was a crime.
The Queen-mother had died when Pandora was a little baby, so now the Princess had to be hostess, and to receive all the guests, and speak to each one a little, and see that everyone had enough to eat and the right sort of person to talk to.
She did it all very nicely indeed, for she was a properly brought up Princess and had been to a school for the daughters of monarchs only, where, every Wednesday evening, she and her school-fellows were taught 'deportment, manners, and how to behave at Court.'
All the guests went away very pleased with herand with themselves, which is how people ought always to feel after a party.
When they had all gone she went and curled up at the feet of her father, who had sunk back on his throne exhausted by his hospitable exertions. The two were quite alone, except for a particularly fine house-fly who had settled on the back of the throne, just above the carved Royal arms. Of course, neither the King nor the Princess noticed such a little thing as a fly.
'Well, daddy dear,' said the Princess, 'did it go off all right? Did I behave prettily?'
'Ah!' said the King, 'you're a born Princess, my pet. Pretty face, pretty manners, good heart, good head. You're your dear mother over again. And that reminds me——'
'Yes?' said the Princess.
'When your mother died,' said the King—and he sighed, though it was twenty-one years to a day since he had lost his Queen-love—'I promised her to lock up her apartments, and only to give the keys of them to you when you should be twenty-one. And now youare, so here are the keys, my precious. You've always wanted to explore the rooms in the south wing. Well, now you can.'
'How lovely!' cried the Princess, jumping up; 'won't you come too, daddy?'
'I'd rather not, dear,' said the King, so sadly that Pandora at once said:
'Well, then,Iwon't either. I'll stay with you.'
But the King said 'No,' and she had better take a housemaid or two with brooms and dusters. 'The dust grows thick in twenty-one years,' said he.
But the Princess didn't want any of the palace housemaids to help her to explore her mother's rooms. She went alone, holding up her cloth-of-silver train because of the dust.
And the rooms that she unlocked with the six gold keys with pearls in their handles were very dusty indeed. The windows were yellow with dust, so the Princess threw them all open. And then, even through the dust, she could see how beautiful the rooms were—far more beautiful even than her own—and everyone had always said that hers were the most beautiful rooms in the seven kingdoms. She dusted the tops of a few of the tables and cabinets with her lace handkerchief, so that she could just see how everything was inlaid with ivory and jade and ebony and precious stones.
Six of the keys—the pearly ones—opened sixbeautiful rooms, but the seventh had rubies in its handle, and it was a little, little key, not at all like a door-key; so Pandora looked about for a little keyhole that the key would fit, and at last she found a cabinet of ebony inlaid with gold and red tortoiseshell, and the little seventh key just fitted through the opening of the gold lock-plate and into the keyhole. Pandora turned the key and opened the cabinet. Inside the cabinet were seven little drawers with gold handles set with rubies, like the key.