[opp p215]Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her over and over.[p215]Hilda screamed.I have since heard that a great yellow light fell on the pages ofTreasure Island.Next momentTreasure Islandwent spinning across the room. Sidney caught up the fur rug that was part of the wigwam, and as Hilda, screaming horribly, and with wings not of paper but of flames, rushed down the staircase, and stumbled over the flying machine, Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her over and over on the floor.‘Lie down!’ he cried. ‘Lie down! It’s the only way.’But somehow people never will lie down when their clothes are on fire, any more than they will lie still in the water if they think they are drowning, and some one is trying to save them. It came to something very like a fight. Hilda fought and struggled. Rupert got out of his fire-guards and added himself and his tea-tray to the scrimmage. Hugh slid down to the knob of the banisters and sat there yelling. The servants came rushing in.But by that time the fire was out. And Sidney gasped out, ‘It’s all right. You aren’t burned, Hilda, are you?’Hilda was much too frightened to know whether she was burnt or not, but Eliza looked her over, and it turned out that only[p216her neck was a little scorched, and a good deal of her hair frizzled off short.Every one stood, rather breathless and pale, and every one’s face was much dirtier than customary, except Hugh’s, which he had, as usual, dirtied thoroughly quite early in the afternoon. Rupert felt perfectly awful, ashamed and proud and rather sick. ‘You’re a regular hero, Sidney,’ he said—and it was not easy to say—‘and yesterday I said you were a related muff. And I’m jolly sorry I did. Shake hands, won’t you?’Sidney hesitated.‘Too proud?’ Rupert’s feelings were hurt, and I should not wonder if he spoke rather fiercely.‘It’s—it’s a little burnt, I think,’ said Sidney, ‘don’t be angry,’ and he held out the left hand.Rupert grasped it.‘I do beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘youarea hero!’* * * * *Sidney’s hand was bad for ever so long, but we were tremendous chums after that.It was when they’d done the hand up with scraped potato and salad oil—a great, big, fat, wet plaster of it—that I said to him:‘I don’t care if you don’t like games. Let’sbe pals.’[p217]And he said, ‘I do like games, but I couldn’t care about anything with mother so ill. I know you’ll think I’m a muff, but I’m not really, only I do love her so.’And with that he began to cry, and I thumped him on the back, and told him exactly what a beast I knew I was, to comfort him.When Aunt Ellie was well again we kept Christmas on the 6th of January, which used to be Christmas Day in middle-aged times.Father came home before New Year, and he had a silver medal made, with a flame on one side, and on the other Sidney’s name, and ‘For Bravery.’If I had not been tied up in fire-guards and tea-trays perhaps I should have thought of the rug and got the medal. But I do not grudge it to Sidney. He deserved it. And he is not a muff. I see now that a person might very well be frightened at finding Indians in the hall of a strange house, especially if the person had just come from the kind of India where the Indians are quite a different sort, and much milder, with no feathers and wigwams and war-dances, but only dusky features and University Degrees.[p218]XTHE AUNT AND AMABELItis not pleasant to be a fish out of water. To be a cat in water is not what any one would desire. To be in a temper is uncomfortable. And no one can fully taste the joys of life if he is in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit. But by far the most uncomfortable thing to be in is disgrace, sometimes amusingly called Coventry by the people who are not in it.We have all been there. It is a place where the heart sinks and aches, where familiar faces are clouded and changed, where any remark that one may tremblingly make is received with stony silence or with the assurance that nobody wants to talk to such a naughty child. If you are only in disgrace, and not in solitary confinement, you will creep about a house that is like the one you have had such jolly times in, and yet as unlike it as a bad dream is to a June morning. You will long to speak to people, and be afraid to speak. You will wonder[p219whether there is anything you can do that will change things at all. You have said you are sorry, and that has changed nothing. You will wonder whether you are to stay for ever in this desolate place, outside all hope and love and fun and happiness. And though it has happened before, and has always, in the end, come to an end, you can never be quite sure that this time it is not going to last for ever.‘Itisgoing to last for ever,’ said Amabel, who was eight. ‘What shall I do? Oh whatever shall I do?’What shehaddone ought to have formed the subject of her meditations. And she had done what had seemed to her all the time, and in fact still seemed, a self-sacrificing and noble act. She was staying with an aunt—measles or a new baby, or the painters in the house, I forget which, the cause of her banishment. And the aunt, who was really a great-aunt and quite old enough to know better, had been grumbling about her head gardener to a lady who called in blue spectacles and a beady bonnet with violet flowers in it.‘He hardly lets me have a plant for the table,’ said the aunt, ‘and that border in front of the breakfast-room window—it’s just bare earth—and I expressly ordered chrysanthemums to be[p220planted there. He thinks of nothing but his greenhouse.’The beady-violet-blue-glassed lady snorted, and said she didn’t know what we were coming to, and she would have just half a cup, please, with not quite so much milk, thank you very much.Now what would you have done? Minded your own business most likely, and not got into trouble at all. Not so Amabel. Enthusiastically anxious to do something which should make the great-aunt see what a thoughtful, unselfish, little girl she really was (the aunt’s opinion of her being at present quite otherwise), she got up very early in the morning and took the cutting-out scissors from the work-room table drawer and stole, ‘like an errand of mercy,’ she told herself, to the greenhouse where she busily snipped off every single flower she could find. MacFarlane was at his breakfast. Then with the points of the cutting-out scissors she made nice deep little holes in the flower-bed where the chrysanthemums ought to have been, and struck the flowers in—chrysanthemums, geraniums, primulas, orchids, and carnations. It would be a lovely surprise for Auntie.Then the aunt came down to breakfast and saw the lovely surprise. Amabel’s world turned upside down and inside out suddenly and surprisingly, and there she was, in Coventry,[p221and not even the housemaid would speak to her. Her great-uncle, whom she passed in the hall on her way to her own room, did indeed, as he smoothed his hat, murmur, ‘Sent to Coventry, eh? Never mind, it’ll soon be over,’ and went off to the City banging the front door behind him.He meant well, but he did not understand.Amabel understood, or she thought she did, and knew in her miserable heart that she was sent to Coventry for the last time, and that this time she would stay there.‘I don’t care,’ she said quite untruly. ‘I’ll never try to be kind to any one again.’ And that wasn’t true either. She was to spend the whole day alone in the best bedroom, the one with the four-post bed and the red curtains and the large wardrobe with a looking-glass in it that you could see yourself in to the very ends of your strap-shoes.The first thing Amabel did was to look at herself in the glass. She was still sniffing and sobbing, and her eyes were swimming in tears, another one rolled down her nose as she looked—that was very interesting. Another rolled down, and that was the last, because as soon as you get interested in watching your tears they stop.Next she looked out of the window, and saw[p222the decorated flower-bed, just as she had left it, very bright and beautiful.‘Well, itdoeslook nice,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what they say.’Then she looked round the room for something to read; there was nothing. The old-fashioned best bedrooms never did have anything. Only on the large dressing-table, on the left-hand side of the oval swing-glass, was one book covered in red velvet, and on it, very twistily embroidered in yellow silk and mixed up with misleading leaves and squiggles were the letters, A.B.C.‘Perhaps it’s a picture alphabet,’ said Mabel, and was quite pleased, though of course she was much too old to care for alphabets. Only when one is very unhappy and very dull, anything is better than nothing. She opened the book.‘Why, it’s only a time-table!’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s for people when they want to go away, and Auntie puts it here in case they suddenly make up their minds to go, and feel that they can’t wait another minute. I feel like that, only it’s no good, and I expect other people do too.’She had learned how to use the dictionary, and this seemed to go the same way. She looked up the names of all the places she knew.—Brighton[p223where she had once spent a month, Rugby where her brother was at school, and Home, which was Amberley—and she saw the times when the trains left for these places, and wished she could go by those trains.And once more she looked round the best bedroom which was her prison, and thought of the Bastille, and wished she had a toad to tame, like the poor Viscount, or a flower to watch growing, like Picciola, and she was very sorry for herself, and very angry with her aunt, and very grieved at the conduct of her parents—she had expected better things from them—and now they had left her in this dreadful place where no one loved her, and no one understood her.There seemed to be no place for toads or flowers in the best room, it was carpeted all over even in its least noticeable corners. It had everything a best room ought to have—and everything was of dark shining mahogany. The toilet-table had a set of red and gold glass things—a tray, candlesticks, a ring-stand, many little pots with lids, and two bottles with stoppers. When the stoppers were taken out they smelt very strange, something like very old scent, and something like cold cream also very old, and something like going to the dentist’s.I do not know whether the scent of those[p224bottles had anything to do with what happened. It certainly was a very extraordinary scent. Quite different from any perfume that I smell nowadays, but I remember that when I was a little girl I smelt it quite often. But then there are no best rooms now such as there used to be. The best rooms now are gay with chintz and mirrors, and there are always flowers and books, and little tables to put your teacup on, and sofas, and armchairs. And they smell of varnish and new furniture.When Amabel had sniffed at both bottles and looked in all the pots, which were quite clean and empty except for a pearl button and two pins in one of them, she took up the A.B.C. again to look for Whitby, where her godmother lived. And it was then that she saw the extraordinary name ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’ This was odd—but the name of the station from which it started was still more extraordinary, for it was not Euston or Cannon Street or Marylebone.The name of the station was ‘Bigwardrobeinspareroom.’ And below this name, really quite unusual for a station, Amabel read in small letters:‘Single fares strictly forbidden. Return tickets No Class Nuppence. Trains leaveBigwardrobeinspareroomall the time.’[p225]And under that in still smaller letters—‘You had better go now.’What would you have done? Rubbed your eyes and thought you were dreaming? Well, if you had, nothing more would have happened. Nothing ever does when you behave like that. Amabel was wiser. She went straight to the Big Wardrobe and turned its glass handle.‘I expect it’s only shelves and people’s best hats,’ she said. But she only said it. People often say what they don’t mean, so that if things turn out as they don’t expect, they can say ‘I told you so,’ but this is most dishonest to one’s self, and being dishonest to one’s self is almost worse than being dishonest to other people. Amabel would never have done it if she had been herself. But she was out of herself with anger and unhappiness.Of course it wasn’t hats. It was, most amazingly, a crystal cave, very oddly shaped like a railway station. It seemed to be lighted by stars, which is, of course, unusual in a booking office, and over the station clock was a full moon. The clock had no figures, onlyNowin shining letters all round it, twelve times, and theNowstouched, so the clock was bound to be always right. How different from the clock you go to school by![p226]A porter in white satin hurried forward to take Amabel’s luggage. Her luggage was the A.B.C. which she still held in her hand.‘Lots of time, Miss,’ he said, grinning in a most friendly way, ‘Iamglad you’re going. Youwillenjoy yourself! What a nice little girl you are!’This was cheering. Amabel smiled.At the pigeon-hole that tickets come out of, another person, also in white satin, was ready with a mother-of-pearl ticket, round, like a card counter.‘Here you are, Miss,’ he said with the kindest smile, ‘price nothing, and refreshments free all the way. It’s a pleasure,’ he added, ‘to issue a ticket to a nice little lady like you.’ The train was entirely of crystal, too, and the cushions were of white satin. There were little buttons such as you have for electric bells, and on them ‘Whatyouwantoeat,’ ‘Whatyouwantodrink,’ ‘Whatyouwantoread,’ in silver letters.Amabel pressed all the buttons at once, and instantly felt obliged to blink. The blink over, she saw on the cushion by her side a silver tray with vanilla ice, boiled chicken and white sauce, almonds (blanched), peppermint creams, and mashed potatoes, and a long glass of lemonade—beside the tray was a book. It was[p227Mrs. Ewing’sBad-tempered Family, and it was bound in white vellum.There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read—unless it be reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over.And just as the last thrill of the last spoonful of ice died away, and the last full stop of theBad-tempered Familymet Amabel’s eye, the train stopped, and hundreds of railway officials in white velvet shouted, ‘Whereyouwantogoto!Get out!’A velvety porter, who was somehow like a silkworm as well as like a wedding handkerchief sachet, opened the door.‘Now!’ he said, ‘come on out, Miss Amabel, unless you want to go toWhereyoudon’twantogoto.’She hurried out, on to an ivory platform.‘Not on the ivory, if you please,’ said the porter, ‘the white Axminster carpet—it’s laid down expressly for you.’Amabel walked along it and saw ahead of her a crowd, all in white.‘What’s all that?’ she asked the friendly porter.‘It’s the Mayor, dear Miss Amabel,’ he said,‘with your address.’[p228]‘My address is The Old Cottage, Amberley,’ she said, ‘at least it used to be’—and found herself face to face with the Mayor. He was very like Uncle George, but he bowed low to her, which was not Uncle George’s habit, and said:‘Welcome, dear little Amabel. Please accept this admiring address from the Mayor and burgesses and apprentices and all the rest of it, of Whereyouwantogoto.’The address was in silver letters, on white silk, and it said:‘Welcome, dear Amabel. We know you meant to please your aunt. It was very clever of you to think of putting the greenhouse flowers in the bare flower-bed. You couldn’t be expected to know that you ought to ask leave before you touch other people’s things.’‘Oh, but,’ said Amabel quite confused. ‘I did….’But the band struck up, and drowned her words. The instruments of the band were all of silver, and the bandsmen’s clothes of white leather. The tune they played was ‘Cheero!’Then Amabel found that she was taking part in a procession, hand in hand with the Mayor, and the band playing like mad all the time. The Mayor was dressed entirely in cloth[p229of silver, and as they went along he kept saying, close to her ear.‘You have our sympathy, you have our sympathy,’ till she felt quite giddy.There was a flower show—all the flowers were white. There was a concert—all the tunes were old ones. There was a play calledPut yourself in her place. And there was a banquet, with Amabel in the place of honour.They drank her health in white wine whey, and then through the Crystal Hall of a thousand gleaming pillars, where thousands of guests, all in white, were met to do honour to Amabel, the shout went up—‘Speech, speech!’I cannot explain to you what had been going on in Amabel’s mind. Perhaps you know. Whatever it was it began like a very tiny butterfly in a box, that could not keep quiet, but fluttered, and fluttered, and fluttered. And when the Mayor rose and said:‘Dear Amabel, you whom we all love and understand; dear Amabel, you who were so unjustly punished for trying to give pleasure to an unresponsive aunt; poor, ill-used, ill-treated, innocent Amabel; blameless, suffering Amabel, we await your words,’ that fluttering, tiresome butterfly-thing inside her seemed suddenly to swell to the size and strength of a fluttering albatross, and Amabel got up from her seat of[p230honour on the throne of ivory and silver and pearl, and said, choking a little, and extremely red about the ears—‘Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to make a speech, I just want to say, “Thank you,” and to say—to say—to say….’She stopped, and all the white crowd cheered.‘To say,’ she went on as the cheers died down, ‘that I wasn’t blameless, and innocent, and all those nice things. I ought to have thought. And theywereAuntie’s flowers. But I did want to please her. It’s all so mixed. Oh, I wish Auntie was here!’And instantly Auntiewasthere, very tall and quite nice-looking, in a white velvet dress and an ermine cloak.‘Speech,’ cried the crowd. ‘Speech from Auntie!’Auntie stood on the step of the throne beside Amabel, and said:‘I think, perhaps, I was hasty. And I think Amabel meant to please me. But all the flowers that were meant for the winter … well—I was annoyed. I’m sorry.’‘Oh, Auntie, so am I—so am I,’ cried Amabel, and the two began to hug each other on the ivory step, while the crowd cheered like mad, and the band struck up that well-known air, ‘If you only understood!’[p231]‘Oh, Auntie,’ said Amabel among hugs, ‘This is such a lovely place, come and see everything, we may, mayn’t we?’ she asked the Mayor.‘The place is yours,’ he said, ‘and now you can see many things that you couldn’t see before. We are The People who Understand. And now you are one of Us. And your aunt is another.’I must not tell you all that they saw because these things are secrets only known to The People who Understand, and perhaps you do not yet belong to that happy nation. And if you do, you will know without my telling you.And when it grew late, and the stars were drawn down, somehow, to hang among the trees, Amabel fell asleep in her aunt’s arms beside a white foaming fountain on a marble terrace, where white peacocks came to drink.* * * * *She awoke on the big bed in the spare room, but her aunt’s arms were still round her.‘Amabel,’ she was saying, ‘Amabel!’‘Oh, Auntie,’ said Amabel sleepily, ‘I am so sorry. Itwasstupid of me. And I did mean to please you.’‘Itwasstupid of you,’ said the aunt, ‘but I am sure you meant to please me. Come down[p232to supper.’ And Amabel has a confused recollection of her aunt’s saying that she was sorry, adding, ‘Poor little Amabel.’If the aunt really did say it, it was fine of her. And Amabel is quite sure that she did say it.* * * * *Amabel and her great-aunt are now the best of friends. But neither of them has ever spoken to the other of the beautiful city called ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’ Amabel is too shy to be the first to mention it, and no doubt the aunt has her own reasons for not broaching the subject.But of course they both know that they have been there together, and it is easy to get on with people when you and they alike belong to thePeoplewhounderstand.* * * * *If you look in the A.B.C. that your people have you will not find ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’ It is only in the red velvet bound copy that Amabel found in her aunt’s best bedroom.[p233]XIKENNETH AND THE CARPKenneth’scousins had often stayed with him, but he had never till now stayed with them. And you know how different everything is when you are in your own house. You are certain exactly what games the grown-ups dislike and what games they will not notice; also what sort of mischief is looked over and what sort is not. And, being accustomed to your own sort of grown-ups, you can always be pretty sure when you are likely to catch it. Whereas strange houses are, in this matter of catching it, full of the most unpleasing surprises.You know all this. But Kenneth did not. And still less did he know what were the sort of things which, in his cousins’ house, led to disapproval, punishment, scoldings; in short, to catching it. So that that business of cousin Ethel’s jewel-case, which is where this story ought to begin, was really not Kenneth’s fault[p234at all. Though for a time…. But I am getting on too fast.Kenneth’s cousins were four,—Conrad, Alison, George, and Ethel. The three first were natural sort of cousins somewhere near his own age, but Ethel was hardly like a cousin at all, more like an aunt. Because she was grown-up. She wore long dresses and all her hair on the top of her head, a mass of combs and hairpins; in fact she had just had her twenty-first birthday with iced cakes and a party and lots of presents, most of them jewelry. And that brings me again to that affair of the jewel-case, or would bring me if I were not determined to tell things in their proper order, which is the first duty of a story-teller.Kenneth’s home was in Kent, a wooden house among cherry orchards, and the nearest river five miles away. That was why he looked forward in such a very extra and excited way to his visit to his cousins. Their house was very old, red brick with ivy all over it. It had a secret staircase, only the secret was not kept any longer, and the housemaids carried pails and brooms up and down the staircase. And the house was surrounded by a real deep moat, with clear water in it, and long weeds and water-lilies and fish—the gold and the silver and the everyday kinds.[opp p235]Early next morning he tried to catch fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin.[p235]The first evening of Kenneth’s visit passed uneventfully. His bedroom window looked over the moat, and early next morning he tried to catch fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin kindly lent to him by the parlourmaid. He did not catch any fish, partly because he baited the hairpin with brown windsor soap, and it washed off.‘Besides, fish hate soap,’ Conrad told him, ‘and that hook of yours would do for a whale perhaps. Only we don’t stock our moat with whales. But I’ll ask father to lend you his rod, it’s a spiffing one, much jollier than ours. And I won’t tell the kids because they’d never let it down on you. Fishing with a hairpin!’‘Thank you very much,’ saidKenneth, feeling that his cousin was a man and a brother. The kids were only two or three years younger than he was, but that is a great deal when you are the elder; and besides, one of the kids was a girl.‘Alison’s a bit of a sneak,’ Conrad used to say when anger overcome politeness and brotherly feeling. Afterwards, when the anger was gone and the other things left, he would say, ‘You see she went to a beastly school for a bit, at Brighton, for her health. And father says they must have bullied her. All girls are not like it, I believe.’[p236]But her sneakish qualities, if they really existed, were generally hidden, and she was very clever at thinking of new games, and very kind if you got into a row over anything.George was eight and stout. He was not a sneak, but concealment was foreign to his nature, so he never could keep a secret unless he forgot it. Which fortunately happened quite often.The uncle very amiably lent Kenneth his fishing-rod, and provided real bait in the most thoughtful and generous manner. And the four children fished all the morning and all the afternoon. Conrad caught two roach and an eel. George caught nothing, and nothing was what the other two caught. But it was glorious sport. And the next day there was to be a picnic. Life to Kenneth seemed full of new and delicious excitement.In the evening the aunt and the uncle went out to dinner, and Ethel, in her grown-up way, went with them, very grand in a blue silk dress and turquoises. So the children were left to themselves.You know the empty hush which settles down on a house when the grown-ups have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage[p237wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the kitchen came the voices of the servants, laughing and talking.‘It’s two hours at least to bedtime,’ said Alison. ‘What shall we do?’ Alison always began by saying ‘What shall we do?’ and always ended by deciding what should be done. ‘You all say what you think,’ she went on, ‘and then we’ll vote about it. You first, Ken, because you’re the visitor.’‘Fishing,’ said Kenneth, because it was the only thing he could think of.‘Make toffee,’ said Conrad.‘Build a great big house with all the bricks,’ said George.‘We can’t make toffee,’ Alison explained gently but firmly, ‘because you know what the pan was like last time, and cook said, “never again, not much.” And it’s no good building houses, Georgie, when you could be out of doors. And fishing’s simply rotten when we’ve been at it all day. I’ve thought of something.’So of course all the others said, ‘What?’‘We’ll have a pageant, a river pageant, on[p238the moat. We’ll all dress up and hang Chinese lanterns in the trees. I’ll be the Sunflower lady that the Troubadour came all across the sea, because he loved her so, for, and one of you can be the Troubadour, and the others can be sailors or anything you like.’‘I shall be the Troubadour,’ said Conrad with decision.‘I think you ought to let Kenneth because he’s the visitor,’ said George, who would have liked to be it immensely himself, or anyhow did not see why Conrad should be a troubadour ifhecouldn’t.Conrad said what manners required, which was:‘Oh! all right, I don’t care about being the beastly Troubadour.’‘You might be the Princess’s brother,’ Alison suggested.‘Not me,’ said Conrad scornfully, ‘I’ll be the captain of the ship.’‘In a turban the brother would be, with the Benares cloak, and the Persian dagger out of the cabinet in the drawing-room,’ Alison went on unmoved.‘I’ll be that,’ said George.‘No, you won’t, I shall, so there,’ said Conrad. ‘You can be the captain of the ship.’(But in the end both boys were captains,[p239because that meant being on the boat, whereas being the Princess’s brother, however turbanned, only meant standing on the bank. And there is no rule to prevent captains wearing turbans and Persian daggers, except in the Navy where, of course, it is not done.)So then they all tore up to the attic where the dressing-up trunk was, and pulled out all the dressing-up things on to the floor. And all the time they were dressing, Alison was telling the others what they were to say and do. The Princess wore a white satin skirt and a red flannel blouse and a veil formed of several motor scarves of various colours. Also a wreath of pink roses off one of Ethel’s old hats, and a pair of pink satin slippers with sparkly buckles.Kenneth wore a blue silk dressing-jacket and a yellow sash, a lace collar, and a towel turban. And the others divided between them an eastern dressing-gown, once the property of their grandfather, a black spangled scarf, very holey, a pair of red and white football stockings, a Chinese coat, and two old muslin curtains, which, rolled up, made turbans of enormous size and fierceness.On the landing outside cousin Ethel’s open door Alison paused and said, ‘I say!’‘Oh! come on,’ said Conrad, ‘we haven’t[p240fixed the Chinese lanterns yet, and it’s getting dark.’‘You go on,’ said Alison, ‘I’ve just thought of something.’The children were allowed to play in the boat so long as they didn’t loose it from its moorings. The painter was extremely long, and quite the effect of coming home from a long voyage was produced when the three boys pushed the boat out as far as it would go among the boughs of the beech-tree which overhung the water, and then reappeared in the circle of red and yellow light thrown by the Chinese lanterns.‘What ho! ashore there!’ shouted the captain.‘What ho!’ said a voice from the shore which, Alison explained, was disguised.‘We be three poor mariners,’ said Conrad by a happy effort of memory, ‘just newly come to shore. We seek news of the Princess of Tripoli.’‘She’s in her palace,’ said the disguised voice, ‘wait a minute, and I’ll tell her you’re here. But what do you want her for? (“A poor minstrel of France”) go on, Con.’‘A poor minstrel of France,’ said Conrad, ‘(all right! I remember,) who has heard of the Princess’s beauty has come to lay, tolay——’‘His heart,’ said Alison.[opp p241]A radiant vision stepped into the circle of light.[p241]‘All right, I know. His heart at her something or other feet.’‘Pretty feet,’ said Alison. ‘I go to tell the Princess.’Next moment from the shadows on the bank a radiant vision stepped into the circle of light, crying—‘Oh! Rudel, is it indeed thou? Thou art come at last. O welcome to the arms of the Princess!’‘What do I do now?’ whispered Rudel (who was Kenneth) in the boat, and at the same moment Conrad and George said, as with one voice—‘My hat! Alison, won’t you catch it!’For at the end of the Princess’s speech she had thrown back her veils and revealed a blaze of splendour. She wore several necklaces, one of seed pearls, one of topazes, and one of Australian shells, besides a string of amber and one of coral. And the front of the red flannel blouse was studded with brooches, in one at least of which diamonds gleamed. Each arm had one or two bracelets and on her clenched hands glittered as many rings as any Princess could wish to wear.So her brothers had some excuse for saying, ‘You’ll catch it.’‘No, I sha’n’t. It’s my look out, anyhow.[p242Do shut up,’ said the Princess, stamping her foot. ‘Now then, Ken, go ahead. Ken, you say, “Oh Lady, I faint with rapture!”’‘I faint with rapture,’ said Kenneth stolidly. ‘Now I land, don’t I?’He landed and stared at the jewelled hand the Princess held out.‘At last, at last,’ she said, ‘but you ought to say that, Ken. I say, I think I’d better be an eloping Princess, and then I can come in the boat. Rudel dies really, but that’s so dull. Lead me to your ship, oh noble stranger! for you have won the Princess, and with you I will live and die. Give me your hand, can’t you, silly, and do mind my train.’So Kenneth led her to the boat, and with some difficulty, for the satin train got between her feet, she managed to flounder into the punt.‘Now you stand and bow,’ she said. ‘Fair Rudel, with this ring I thee wed,’ she pressed a large amethyst ring into his hand, ‘remember that the Princess of Tripoli is yours for ever. Now let’s singInteger Vitaebecause it’s Latin.’So they sat in the boat and sang. And presently the servants came out to listen and admire, and at the sound of the servants’ approach the Princess veiled her shining splendour.‘It’s prettier than wot the Coventry pageant[p243was, so it is,’ said the cook, ‘but it’s long past your bed times. So come on out of that there dangerous boat, there’s dears.’So then the children went to bed. And when the house was quiet again, Alison slipped down and put back Ethel’s jewelry, fitting the things into their cases and boxes as correctly as she could. ‘Ethel won’t notice,’ she thought, but of course Ethel did.So that next day each child was asked separately by Ethel’s mother who had been playing with Ethel’s jewelry. And Conrad and George said they would rather not say. This was a form they always used in that family when that sort of question was asked, and it meant, ‘It wasn’t me, and I don’t want to sneak.’And when it came to Alison’s turn, she found to her surprise and horror that instead of saying, ‘I played with them,’ she had said, ‘I would rather not say.’Of course the mother thought that it was Kenneth who had had the jewels to play with. So when it came to his turn he was not asked the same question as the others, but his aunt said:‘Kenneth, you are a very naughty little boy to take your cousin Ethel’s jewelry to play with.’‘I didn’t,’ said Kenneth.[p244]‘Hush! hush!’ said the aunt, ‘do not make your fault worse by untruthfulness. And what have you done with the amethyst ring?’Kenneth was just going to say that he had given it back to Alison, when he saw that this would be sneakish. So he said, getting hot to the ears, ‘You don’t suppose I’ve stolen your beastly ring, do you, Auntie?’‘Don’t you dare to speak to me like that,’ the aunt very naturally replied. ‘No, Kenneth, I do not think you would steal, but the ring is missing and it must be found.’Kenneth was furious and frightened. He stood looking down and kicking the leg of the chair.‘You had better look for it. You will have plenty of time, because I shall not allow you to go to the picnic with the others. The mere taking of the jewelry was wrong, but if you had owned your fault and asked Ethel’s pardon, I should have overlooked it. But you have told me an untruth and you have lost the ring. You are a very wicked child, and it will make your dear mother very unhappy when she hears of it. That her boy should be a liar. It is worse than being a thief!’At this Kenneth’s fortitude gave way, and he lost his head. ‘Oh, don’t,’ he said, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. Oh! don’t tell mother I’m[p245a thief and a liar. Oh! Aunt Effie, please,pleasedon’t.’ And with that he began to cry.Any doubts Aunt Effie might have had were settled by this outbreak. It was now quite plain to her that Kenneth had really intended to keep the ring.‘You will remain in your room till the picnic party has started,’ the aunt went on, ‘and then you must find the ring. Remember I expect it to be found when I return. And I hope you will be in a better frame of mind and really sorry for having been so wicked.’‘Mayn’t I see Alison?’ was all he found to say.And the answer was, ‘Certainly not. I cannot allow you to associate with your cousins. You are not fit to be with honest, truthful children.’So they all went to the picnic, and Kenneth was left alone. When they had gone he crept down and wandered furtively through the empty rooms, ashamed to face the servants, and feeling almost as wicked as though he had really done something wrong. He thought about it all, over and over again, and the more he thought the more certain he was that hehadhanded back the ring to Alison last night when the voices of the servants were first heard from the dark lawn.[p246]But what was the use of saying so? No one would believe him, and it would be sneaking anyhow. Besides, perhaps hehadn’thanded it back to her. Or rather, perhaps he had handed it and she hadn’t taken it. Perhaps it had slipped into the boat. He would go and see.But he did not find it in the boat, though he turned up the carpet and even took up the boards to look. And then an extremely miserable little boy began to search for an amethyst ring in all sorts of impossible places, indoors and out. You know the hopeless way in which you look for things that you know perfectly well you will never find, the borrowed penknife that you dropped in the woods, for instance, or the week’s pocket-money which slipped through that hole in your pocket as you went to the village to spend it.The servants gave him his meals and told him to cheer up. But cheering up and Kenneth were, for the time, strangers. People in books never can eat when they are in trouble, but I have noticed myself that if the trouble has gone on for some hours, eating is really rather a comfort. You don’t enjoy eating so much as usual, perhaps, but at any rate it is something to do, and takes the edge off your sorrow for a short time. And cook was sorry for Kenneth[p247and sent him up a very nice dinner and a very nice tea. Roast chicken and gooseberry pie the dinner was, and for tea there was cake with almond icing on it.The sun was very low when he went back wearily to have one more look in the boat for that detestable amethyst ring. Of course it was not there. And the picnic party would be home soon. And he really did not know what his aunt would do to him.‘Shut me up in a dark cupboard, perhaps,’ he thought gloomily, ‘or put me to bed all day to-morrow. Or give me lines to write out, thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, of them.’The boat, set in motion by his stepping into it, swung out to the full length of its rope. The sun was shining almost level across the water. It was a very still evening, and the reflections of the trees and of the house were as distinct as the house and the trees themselves. And the water was unusually clear. He could see the fish swimming about, and the sand and pebbles at the bottom of the moat. How clear and quiet it looked down there, and what fun the fishes seemed to be having.‘I wish I was a fish,’ said Kenneth. ‘Nobody punishesthemfor taking rings theydidn’ttake.’[p248]And then suddenly he saw the ring itself, lying calm, and quiet, and round, and shining, on the smooth sand at the bottom of the moat.He reached for the boat-hook and leaned over the edge of the boat trying to get up the ring on the boat-hook’s point. Then there was a splash.‘Good gracious! I wonder what that is?’ said cook in the kitchen, and dropped the saucepan with the welsh rabbit in it which she had just made for kitchen supper.Kenneth had leaned out too far over the edge of the boat, the boat had suddenly decided to go the other way, and Kenneth had fallen into the water.The first thing he felt was delicious coolness, the second that his clothes had gone, and the next thing he noticed was that he was swimming quite easily and comfortably under water, and that he had no trouble with his breathing, such as people who tell you not to fall into water seem to expect you to have. Also he could see quite well, which he had never been able to do under water before.‘I can’t think,’ he said to himself, ‘why people make so much fuss about your falling into the water. I sha’n’t be in a hurry to get out. I’ll swim right round the moat while I’m about it.’
[opp p215]Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her over and over.
[opp p215]Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her over and over.
[p215]Hilda screamed.
I have since heard that a great yellow light fell on the pages ofTreasure Island.
Next momentTreasure Islandwent spinning across the room. Sidney caught up the fur rug that was part of the wigwam, and as Hilda, screaming horribly, and with wings not of paper but of flames, rushed down the staircase, and stumbled over the flying machine, Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her over and over on the floor.
‘Lie down!’ he cried. ‘Lie down! It’s the only way.’
But somehow people never will lie down when their clothes are on fire, any more than they will lie still in the water if they think they are drowning, and some one is trying to save them. It came to something very like a fight. Hilda fought and struggled. Rupert got out of his fire-guards and added himself and his tea-tray to the scrimmage. Hugh slid down to the knob of the banisters and sat there yelling. The servants came rushing in.
But by that time the fire was out. And Sidney gasped out, ‘It’s all right. You aren’t burned, Hilda, are you?’
Hilda was much too frightened to know whether she was burnt or not, but Eliza looked her over, and it turned out that only[p216her neck was a little scorched, and a good deal of her hair frizzled off short.
Every one stood, rather breathless and pale, and every one’s face was much dirtier than customary, except Hugh’s, which he had, as usual, dirtied thoroughly quite early in the afternoon. Rupert felt perfectly awful, ashamed and proud and rather sick. ‘You’re a regular hero, Sidney,’ he said—and it was not easy to say—‘and yesterday I said you were a related muff. And I’m jolly sorry I did. Shake hands, won’t you?’
Sidney hesitated.
‘Too proud?’ Rupert’s feelings were hurt, and I should not wonder if he spoke rather fiercely.
‘It’s—it’s a little burnt, I think,’ said Sidney, ‘don’t be angry,’ and he held out the left hand.
Rupert grasped it.
‘I do beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘youarea hero!’
* * * * *
Sidney’s hand was bad for ever so long, but we were tremendous chums after that.
It was when they’d done the hand up with scraped potato and salad oil—a great, big, fat, wet plaster of it—that I said to him:
‘I don’t care if you don’t like games. Let’sbe pals.’
[p217]And he said, ‘I do like games, but I couldn’t care about anything with mother so ill. I know you’ll think I’m a muff, but I’m not really, only I do love her so.’
And with that he began to cry, and I thumped him on the back, and told him exactly what a beast I knew I was, to comfort him.
When Aunt Ellie was well again we kept Christmas on the 6th of January, which used to be Christmas Day in middle-aged times.
Father came home before New Year, and he had a silver medal made, with a flame on one side, and on the other Sidney’s name, and ‘For Bravery.’
If I had not been tied up in fire-guards and tea-trays perhaps I should have thought of the rug and got the medal. But I do not grudge it to Sidney. He deserved it. And he is not a muff. I see now that a person might very well be frightened at finding Indians in the hall of a strange house, especially if the person had just come from the kind of India where the Indians are quite a different sort, and much milder, with no feathers and wigwams and war-dances, but only dusky features and University Degrees.
Itis not pleasant to be a fish out of water. To be a cat in water is not what any one would desire. To be in a temper is uncomfortable. And no one can fully taste the joys of life if he is in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit. But by far the most uncomfortable thing to be in is disgrace, sometimes amusingly called Coventry by the people who are not in it.
We have all been there. It is a place where the heart sinks and aches, where familiar faces are clouded and changed, where any remark that one may tremblingly make is received with stony silence or with the assurance that nobody wants to talk to such a naughty child. If you are only in disgrace, and not in solitary confinement, you will creep about a house that is like the one you have had such jolly times in, and yet as unlike it as a bad dream is to a June morning. You will long to speak to people, and be afraid to speak. You will wonder[p219whether there is anything you can do that will change things at all. You have said you are sorry, and that has changed nothing. You will wonder whether you are to stay for ever in this desolate place, outside all hope and love and fun and happiness. And though it has happened before, and has always, in the end, come to an end, you can never be quite sure that this time it is not going to last for ever.
‘Itisgoing to last for ever,’ said Amabel, who was eight. ‘What shall I do? Oh whatever shall I do?’
What shehaddone ought to have formed the subject of her meditations. And she had done what had seemed to her all the time, and in fact still seemed, a self-sacrificing and noble act. She was staying with an aunt—measles or a new baby, or the painters in the house, I forget which, the cause of her banishment. And the aunt, who was really a great-aunt and quite old enough to know better, had been grumbling about her head gardener to a lady who called in blue spectacles and a beady bonnet with violet flowers in it.
‘He hardly lets me have a plant for the table,’ said the aunt, ‘and that border in front of the breakfast-room window—it’s just bare earth—and I expressly ordered chrysanthemums to be[p220planted there. He thinks of nothing but his greenhouse.’
The beady-violet-blue-glassed lady snorted, and said she didn’t know what we were coming to, and she would have just half a cup, please, with not quite so much milk, thank you very much.
Now what would you have done? Minded your own business most likely, and not got into trouble at all. Not so Amabel. Enthusiastically anxious to do something which should make the great-aunt see what a thoughtful, unselfish, little girl she really was (the aunt’s opinion of her being at present quite otherwise), she got up very early in the morning and took the cutting-out scissors from the work-room table drawer and stole, ‘like an errand of mercy,’ she told herself, to the greenhouse where she busily snipped off every single flower she could find. MacFarlane was at his breakfast. Then with the points of the cutting-out scissors she made nice deep little holes in the flower-bed where the chrysanthemums ought to have been, and struck the flowers in—chrysanthemums, geraniums, primulas, orchids, and carnations. It would be a lovely surprise for Auntie.
Then the aunt came down to breakfast and saw the lovely surprise. Amabel’s world turned upside down and inside out suddenly and surprisingly, and there she was, in Coventry,[p221and not even the housemaid would speak to her. Her great-uncle, whom she passed in the hall on her way to her own room, did indeed, as he smoothed his hat, murmur, ‘Sent to Coventry, eh? Never mind, it’ll soon be over,’ and went off to the City banging the front door behind him.
He meant well, but he did not understand.
Amabel understood, or she thought she did, and knew in her miserable heart that she was sent to Coventry for the last time, and that this time she would stay there.
‘I don’t care,’ she said quite untruly. ‘I’ll never try to be kind to any one again.’ And that wasn’t true either. She was to spend the whole day alone in the best bedroom, the one with the four-post bed and the red curtains and the large wardrobe with a looking-glass in it that you could see yourself in to the very ends of your strap-shoes.
The first thing Amabel did was to look at herself in the glass. She was still sniffing and sobbing, and her eyes were swimming in tears, another one rolled down her nose as she looked—that was very interesting. Another rolled down, and that was the last, because as soon as you get interested in watching your tears they stop.
Next she looked out of the window, and saw[p222the decorated flower-bed, just as she had left it, very bright and beautiful.
‘Well, itdoeslook nice,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what they say.’
Then she looked round the room for something to read; there was nothing. The old-fashioned best bedrooms never did have anything. Only on the large dressing-table, on the left-hand side of the oval swing-glass, was one book covered in red velvet, and on it, very twistily embroidered in yellow silk and mixed up with misleading leaves and squiggles were the letters, A.B.C.
‘Perhaps it’s a picture alphabet,’ said Mabel, and was quite pleased, though of course she was much too old to care for alphabets. Only when one is very unhappy and very dull, anything is better than nothing. She opened the book.
‘Why, it’s only a time-table!’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s for people when they want to go away, and Auntie puts it here in case they suddenly make up their minds to go, and feel that they can’t wait another minute. I feel like that, only it’s no good, and I expect other people do too.’
She had learned how to use the dictionary, and this seemed to go the same way. She looked up the names of all the places she knew.—Brighton[p223where she had once spent a month, Rugby where her brother was at school, and Home, which was Amberley—and she saw the times when the trains left for these places, and wished she could go by those trains.
And once more she looked round the best bedroom which was her prison, and thought of the Bastille, and wished she had a toad to tame, like the poor Viscount, or a flower to watch growing, like Picciola, and she was very sorry for herself, and very angry with her aunt, and very grieved at the conduct of her parents—she had expected better things from them—and now they had left her in this dreadful place where no one loved her, and no one understood her.
There seemed to be no place for toads or flowers in the best room, it was carpeted all over even in its least noticeable corners. It had everything a best room ought to have—and everything was of dark shining mahogany. The toilet-table had a set of red and gold glass things—a tray, candlesticks, a ring-stand, many little pots with lids, and two bottles with stoppers. When the stoppers were taken out they smelt very strange, something like very old scent, and something like cold cream also very old, and something like going to the dentist’s.
I do not know whether the scent of those[p224bottles had anything to do with what happened. It certainly was a very extraordinary scent. Quite different from any perfume that I smell nowadays, but I remember that when I was a little girl I smelt it quite often. But then there are no best rooms now such as there used to be. The best rooms now are gay with chintz and mirrors, and there are always flowers and books, and little tables to put your teacup on, and sofas, and armchairs. And they smell of varnish and new furniture.
When Amabel had sniffed at both bottles and looked in all the pots, which were quite clean and empty except for a pearl button and two pins in one of them, she took up the A.B.C. again to look for Whitby, where her godmother lived. And it was then that she saw the extraordinary name ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’ This was odd—but the name of the station from which it started was still more extraordinary, for it was not Euston or Cannon Street or Marylebone.
The name of the station was ‘Bigwardrobeinspareroom.’ And below this name, really quite unusual for a station, Amabel read in small letters:
‘Single fares strictly forbidden. Return tickets No Class Nuppence. Trains leaveBigwardrobeinspareroomall the time.’
[p225]And under that in still smaller letters—
‘You had better go now.’
What would you have done? Rubbed your eyes and thought you were dreaming? Well, if you had, nothing more would have happened. Nothing ever does when you behave like that. Amabel was wiser. She went straight to the Big Wardrobe and turned its glass handle.
‘I expect it’s only shelves and people’s best hats,’ she said. But she only said it. People often say what they don’t mean, so that if things turn out as they don’t expect, they can say ‘I told you so,’ but this is most dishonest to one’s self, and being dishonest to one’s self is almost worse than being dishonest to other people. Amabel would never have done it if she had been herself. But she was out of herself with anger and unhappiness.
Of course it wasn’t hats. It was, most amazingly, a crystal cave, very oddly shaped like a railway station. It seemed to be lighted by stars, which is, of course, unusual in a booking office, and over the station clock was a full moon. The clock had no figures, onlyNowin shining letters all round it, twelve times, and theNowstouched, so the clock was bound to be always right. How different from the clock you go to school by!
[p226]A porter in white satin hurried forward to take Amabel’s luggage. Her luggage was the A.B.C. which she still held in her hand.
‘Lots of time, Miss,’ he said, grinning in a most friendly way, ‘Iamglad you’re going. Youwillenjoy yourself! What a nice little girl you are!’
This was cheering. Amabel smiled.
At the pigeon-hole that tickets come out of, another person, also in white satin, was ready with a mother-of-pearl ticket, round, like a card counter.
‘Here you are, Miss,’ he said with the kindest smile, ‘price nothing, and refreshments free all the way. It’s a pleasure,’ he added, ‘to issue a ticket to a nice little lady like you.’ The train was entirely of crystal, too, and the cushions were of white satin. There were little buttons such as you have for electric bells, and on them ‘Whatyouwantoeat,’ ‘Whatyouwantodrink,’ ‘Whatyouwantoread,’ in silver letters.
Amabel pressed all the buttons at once, and instantly felt obliged to blink. The blink over, she saw on the cushion by her side a silver tray with vanilla ice, boiled chicken and white sauce, almonds (blanched), peppermint creams, and mashed potatoes, and a long glass of lemonade—beside the tray was a book. It was[p227Mrs. Ewing’sBad-tempered Family, and it was bound in white vellum.
There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read—unless it be reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over.
And just as the last thrill of the last spoonful of ice died away, and the last full stop of theBad-tempered Familymet Amabel’s eye, the train stopped, and hundreds of railway officials in white velvet shouted, ‘Whereyouwantogoto!Get out!’
A velvety porter, who was somehow like a silkworm as well as like a wedding handkerchief sachet, opened the door.
‘Now!’ he said, ‘come on out, Miss Amabel, unless you want to go toWhereyoudon’twantogoto.’
She hurried out, on to an ivory platform.
‘Not on the ivory, if you please,’ said the porter, ‘the white Axminster carpet—it’s laid down expressly for you.’
Amabel walked along it and saw ahead of her a crowd, all in white.
‘What’s all that?’ she asked the friendly porter.
‘It’s the Mayor, dear Miss Amabel,’ he said,‘with your address.’
[p228]‘My address is The Old Cottage, Amberley,’ she said, ‘at least it used to be’—and found herself face to face with the Mayor. He was very like Uncle George, but he bowed low to her, which was not Uncle George’s habit, and said:
‘Welcome, dear little Amabel. Please accept this admiring address from the Mayor and burgesses and apprentices and all the rest of it, of Whereyouwantogoto.’
The address was in silver letters, on white silk, and it said:
‘Welcome, dear Amabel. We know you meant to please your aunt. It was very clever of you to think of putting the greenhouse flowers in the bare flower-bed. You couldn’t be expected to know that you ought to ask leave before you touch other people’s things.’
‘Oh, but,’ said Amabel quite confused. ‘I did….’
But the band struck up, and drowned her words. The instruments of the band were all of silver, and the bandsmen’s clothes of white leather. The tune they played was ‘Cheero!’
Then Amabel found that she was taking part in a procession, hand in hand with the Mayor, and the band playing like mad all the time. The Mayor was dressed entirely in cloth[p229of silver, and as they went along he kept saying, close to her ear.
‘You have our sympathy, you have our sympathy,’ till she felt quite giddy.
There was a flower show—all the flowers were white. There was a concert—all the tunes were old ones. There was a play calledPut yourself in her place. And there was a banquet, with Amabel in the place of honour.
They drank her health in white wine whey, and then through the Crystal Hall of a thousand gleaming pillars, where thousands of guests, all in white, were met to do honour to Amabel, the shout went up—‘Speech, speech!’
I cannot explain to you what had been going on in Amabel’s mind. Perhaps you know. Whatever it was it began like a very tiny butterfly in a box, that could not keep quiet, but fluttered, and fluttered, and fluttered. And when the Mayor rose and said:
‘Dear Amabel, you whom we all love and understand; dear Amabel, you who were so unjustly punished for trying to give pleasure to an unresponsive aunt; poor, ill-used, ill-treated, innocent Amabel; blameless, suffering Amabel, we await your words,’ that fluttering, tiresome butterfly-thing inside her seemed suddenly to swell to the size and strength of a fluttering albatross, and Amabel got up from her seat of[p230honour on the throne of ivory and silver and pearl, and said, choking a little, and extremely red about the ears—
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to make a speech, I just want to say, “Thank you,” and to say—to say—to say….’
She stopped, and all the white crowd cheered.
‘To say,’ she went on as the cheers died down, ‘that I wasn’t blameless, and innocent, and all those nice things. I ought to have thought. And theywereAuntie’s flowers. But I did want to please her. It’s all so mixed. Oh, I wish Auntie was here!’
And instantly Auntiewasthere, very tall and quite nice-looking, in a white velvet dress and an ermine cloak.
‘Speech,’ cried the crowd. ‘Speech from Auntie!’
Auntie stood on the step of the throne beside Amabel, and said:
‘I think, perhaps, I was hasty. And I think Amabel meant to please me. But all the flowers that were meant for the winter … well—I was annoyed. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, Auntie, so am I—so am I,’ cried Amabel, and the two began to hug each other on the ivory step, while the crowd cheered like mad, and the band struck up that well-known air, ‘If you only understood!’
[p231]‘Oh, Auntie,’ said Amabel among hugs, ‘This is such a lovely place, come and see everything, we may, mayn’t we?’ she asked the Mayor.
‘The place is yours,’ he said, ‘and now you can see many things that you couldn’t see before. We are The People who Understand. And now you are one of Us. And your aunt is another.’
I must not tell you all that they saw because these things are secrets only known to The People who Understand, and perhaps you do not yet belong to that happy nation. And if you do, you will know without my telling you.
And when it grew late, and the stars were drawn down, somehow, to hang among the trees, Amabel fell asleep in her aunt’s arms beside a white foaming fountain on a marble terrace, where white peacocks came to drink.
* * * * *
She awoke on the big bed in the spare room, but her aunt’s arms were still round her.
‘Amabel,’ she was saying, ‘Amabel!’
‘Oh, Auntie,’ said Amabel sleepily, ‘I am so sorry. Itwasstupid of me. And I did mean to please you.’
‘Itwasstupid of you,’ said the aunt, ‘but I am sure you meant to please me. Come down[p232to supper.’ And Amabel has a confused recollection of her aunt’s saying that she was sorry, adding, ‘Poor little Amabel.’
If the aunt really did say it, it was fine of her. And Amabel is quite sure that she did say it.
* * * * *
Amabel and her great-aunt are now the best of friends. But neither of them has ever spoken to the other of the beautiful city called ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’ Amabel is too shy to be the first to mention it, and no doubt the aunt has her own reasons for not broaching the subject.
But of course they both know that they have been there together, and it is easy to get on with people when you and they alike belong to thePeoplewhounderstand.
* * * * *
If you look in the A.B.C. that your people have you will not find ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’ It is only in the red velvet bound copy that Amabel found in her aunt’s best bedroom.
Kenneth’scousins had often stayed with him, but he had never till now stayed with them. And you know how different everything is when you are in your own house. You are certain exactly what games the grown-ups dislike and what games they will not notice; also what sort of mischief is looked over and what sort is not. And, being accustomed to your own sort of grown-ups, you can always be pretty sure when you are likely to catch it. Whereas strange houses are, in this matter of catching it, full of the most unpleasing surprises.
You know all this. But Kenneth did not. And still less did he know what were the sort of things which, in his cousins’ house, led to disapproval, punishment, scoldings; in short, to catching it. So that that business of cousin Ethel’s jewel-case, which is where this story ought to begin, was really not Kenneth’s fault[p234at all. Though for a time…. But I am getting on too fast.
Kenneth’s cousins were four,—Conrad, Alison, George, and Ethel. The three first were natural sort of cousins somewhere near his own age, but Ethel was hardly like a cousin at all, more like an aunt. Because she was grown-up. She wore long dresses and all her hair on the top of her head, a mass of combs and hairpins; in fact she had just had her twenty-first birthday with iced cakes and a party and lots of presents, most of them jewelry. And that brings me again to that affair of the jewel-case, or would bring me if I were not determined to tell things in their proper order, which is the first duty of a story-teller.
Kenneth’s home was in Kent, a wooden house among cherry orchards, and the nearest river five miles away. That was why he looked forward in such a very extra and excited way to his visit to his cousins. Their house was very old, red brick with ivy all over it. It had a secret staircase, only the secret was not kept any longer, and the housemaids carried pails and brooms up and down the staircase. And the house was surrounded by a real deep moat, with clear water in it, and long weeds and water-lilies and fish—the gold and the silver and the everyday kinds.
[opp p235]Early next morning he tried to catch fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin.
[opp p235]Early next morning he tried to catch fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin.
[p235]The first evening of Kenneth’s visit passed uneventfully. His bedroom window looked over the moat, and early next morning he tried to catch fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin kindly lent to him by the parlourmaid. He did not catch any fish, partly because he baited the hairpin with brown windsor soap, and it washed off.
‘Besides, fish hate soap,’ Conrad told him, ‘and that hook of yours would do for a whale perhaps. Only we don’t stock our moat with whales. But I’ll ask father to lend you his rod, it’s a spiffing one, much jollier than ours. And I won’t tell the kids because they’d never let it down on you. Fishing with a hairpin!’
‘Thank you very much,’ saidKenneth, feeling that his cousin was a man and a brother. The kids were only two or three years younger than he was, but that is a great deal when you are the elder; and besides, one of the kids was a girl.
‘Alison’s a bit of a sneak,’ Conrad used to say when anger overcome politeness and brotherly feeling. Afterwards, when the anger was gone and the other things left, he would say, ‘You see she went to a beastly school for a bit, at Brighton, for her health. And father says they must have bullied her. All girls are not like it, I believe.’
[p236]But her sneakish qualities, if they really existed, were generally hidden, and she was very clever at thinking of new games, and very kind if you got into a row over anything.
George was eight and stout. He was not a sneak, but concealment was foreign to his nature, so he never could keep a secret unless he forgot it. Which fortunately happened quite often.
The uncle very amiably lent Kenneth his fishing-rod, and provided real bait in the most thoughtful and generous manner. And the four children fished all the morning and all the afternoon. Conrad caught two roach and an eel. George caught nothing, and nothing was what the other two caught. But it was glorious sport. And the next day there was to be a picnic. Life to Kenneth seemed full of new and delicious excitement.
In the evening the aunt and the uncle went out to dinner, and Ethel, in her grown-up way, went with them, very grand in a blue silk dress and turquoises. So the children were left to themselves.
You know the empty hush which settles down on a house when the grown-ups have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage[p237wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the kitchen came the voices of the servants, laughing and talking.
‘It’s two hours at least to bedtime,’ said Alison. ‘What shall we do?’ Alison always began by saying ‘What shall we do?’ and always ended by deciding what should be done. ‘You all say what you think,’ she went on, ‘and then we’ll vote about it. You first, Ken, because you’re the visitor.’
‘Fishing,’ said Kenneth, because it was the only thing he could think of.
‘Make toffee,’ said Conrad.
‘Build a great big house with all the bricks,’ said George.
‘We can’t make toffee,’ Alison explained gently but firmly, ‘because you know what the pan was like last time, and cook said, “never again, not much.” And it’s no good building houses, Georgie, when you could be out of doors. And fishing’s simply rotten when we’ve been at it all day. I’ve thought of something.’
So of course all the others said, ‘What?’
‘We’ll have a pageant, a river pageant, on[p238the moat. We’ll all dress up and hang Chinese lanterns in the trees. I’ll be the Sunflower lady that the Troubadour came all across the sea, because he loved her so, for, and one of you can be the Troubadour, and the others can be sailors or anything you like.’
‘I shall be the Troubadour,’ said Conrad with decision.
‘I think you ought to let Kenneth because he’s the visitor,’ said George, who would have liked to be it immensely himself, or anyhow did not see why Conrad should be a troubadour ifhecouldn’t.
Conrad said what manners required, which was:
‘Oh! all right, I don’t care about being the beastly Troubadour.’
‘You might be the Princess’s brother,’ Alison suggested.
‘Not me,’ said Conrad scornfully, ‘I’ll be the captain of the ship.’
‘In a turban the brother would be, with the Benares cloak, and the Persian dagger out of the cabinet in the drawing-room,’ Alison went on unmoved.
‘I’ll be that,’ said George.
‘No, you won’t, I shall, so there,’ said Conrad. ‘You can be the captain of the ship.’
(But in the end both boys were captains,[p239because that meant being on the boat, whereas being the Princess’s brother, however turbanned, only meant standing on the bank. And there is no rule to prevent captains wearing turbans and Persian daggers, except in the Navy where, of course, it is not done.)
So then they all tore up to the attic where the dressing-up trunk was, and pulled out all the dressing-up things on to the floor. And all the time they were dressing, Alison was telling the others what they were to say and do. The Princess wore a white satin skirt and a red flannel blouse and a veil formed of several motor scarves of various colours. Also a wreath of pink roses off one of Ethel’s old hats, and a pair of pink satin slippers with sparkly buckles.
Kenneth wore a blue silk dressing-jacket and a yellow sash, a lace collar, and a towel turban. And the others divided between them an eastern dressing-gown, once the property of their grandfather, a black spangled scarf, very holey, a pair of red and white football stockings, a Chinese coat, and two old muslin curtains, which, rolled up, made turbans of enormous size and fierceness.
On the landing outside cousin Ethel’s open door Alison paused and said, ‘I say!’
‘Oh! come on,’ said Conrad, ‘we haven’t[p240fixed the Chinese lanterns yet, and it’s getting dark.’
‘You go on,’ said Alison, ‘I’ve just thought of something.’
The children were allowed to play in the boat so long as they didn’t loose it from its moorings. The painter was extremely long, and quite the effect of coming home from a long voyage was produced when the three boys pushed the boat out as far as it would go among the boughs of the beech-tree which overhung the water, and then reappeared in the circle of red and yellow light thrown by the Chinese lanterns.
‘What ho! ashore there!’ shouted the captain.
‘What ho!’ said a voice from the shore which, Alison explained, was disguised.
‘We be three poor mariners,’ said Conrad by a happy effort of memory, ‘just newly come to shore. We seek news of the Princess of Tripoli.’
‘She’s in her palace,’ said the disguised voice, ‘wait a minute, and I’ll tell her you’re here. But what do you want her for? (“A poor minstrel of France”) go on, Con.’
‘A poor minstrel of France,’ said Conrad, ‘(all right! I remember,) who has heard of the Princess’s beauty has come to lay, tolay——’
‘His heart,’ said Alison.
[opp p241]A radiant vision stepped into the circle of light.
[opp p241]A radiant vision stepped into the circle of light.
[p241]‘All right, I know. His heart at her something or other feet.’
‘Pretty feet,’ said Alison. ‘I go to tell the Princess.’
Next moment from the shadows on the bank a radiant vision stepped into the circle of light, crying—
‘Oh! Rudel, is it indeed thou? Thou art come at last. O welcome to the arms of the Princess!’
‘What do I do now?’ whispered Rudel (who was Kenneth) in the boat, and at the same moment Conrad and George said, as with one voice—
‘My hat! Alison, won’t you catch it!’
For at the end of the Princess’s speech she had thrown back her veils and revealed a blaze of splendour. She wore several necklaces, one of seed pearls, one of topazes, and one of Australian shells, besides a string of amber and one of coral. And the front of the red flannel blouse was studded with brooches, in one at least of which diamonds gleamed. Each arm had one or two bracelets and on her clenched hands glittered as many rings as any Princess could wish to wear.
So her brothers had some excuse for saying, ‘You’ll catch it.’
‘No, I sha’n’t. It’s my look out, anyhow.[p242Do shut up,’ said the Princess, stamping her foot. ‘Now then, Ken, go ahead. Ken, you say, “Oh Lady, I faint with rapture!”’
‘I faint with rapture,’ said Kenneth stolidly. ‘Now I land, don’t I?’
He landed and stared at the jewelled hand the Princess held out.
‘At last, at last,’ she said, ‘but you ought to say that, Ken. I say, I think I’d better be an eloping Princess, and then I can come in the boat. Rudel dies really, but that’s so dull. Lead me to your ship, oh noble stranger! for you have won the Princess, and with you I will live and die. Give me your hand, can’t you, silly, and do mind my train.’
So Kenneth led her to the boat, and with some difficulty, for the satin train got between her feet, she managed to flounder into the punt.
‘Now you stand and bow,’ she said. ‘Fair Rudel, with this ring I thee wed,’ she pressed a large amethyst ring into his hand, ‘remember that the Princess of Tripoli is yours for ever. Now let’s singInteger Vitaebecause it’s Latin.’
So they sat in the boat and sang. And presently the servants came out to listen and admire, and at the sound of the servants’ approach the Princess veiled her shining splendour.
‘It’s prettier than wot the Coventry pageant[p243was, so it is,’ said the cook, ‘but it’s long past your bed times. So come on out of that there dangerous boat, there’s dears.’
So then the children went to bed. And when the house was quiet again, Alison slipped down and put back Ethel’s jewelry, fitting the things into their cases and boxes as correctly as she could. ‘Ethel won’t notice,’ she thought, but of course Ethel did.
So that next day each child was asked separately by Ethel’s mother who had been playing with Ethel’s jewelry. And Conrad and George said they would rather not say. This was a form they always used in that family when that sort of question was asked, and it meant, ‘It wasn’t me, and I don’t want to sneak.’
And when it came to Alison’s turn, she found to her surprise and horror that instead of saying, ‘I played with them,’ she had said, ‘I would rather not say.’
Of course the mother thought that it was Kenneth who had had the jewels to play with. So when it came to his turn he was not asked the same question as the others, but his aunt said:
‘Kenneth, you are a very naughty little boy to take your cousin Ethel’s jewelry to play with.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Kenneth.
[p244]‘Hush! hush!’ said the aunt, ‘do not make your fault worse by untruthfulness. And what have you done with the amethyst ring?’
Kenneth was just going to say that he had given it back to Alison, when he saw that this would be sneakish. So he said, getting hot to the ears, ‘You don’t suppose I’ve stolen your beastly ring, do you, Auntie?’
‘Don’t you dare to speak to me like that,’ the aunt very naturally replied. ‘No, Kenneth, I do not think you would steal, but the ring is missing and it must be found.’
Kenneth was furious and frightened. He stood looking down and kicking the leg of the chair.
‘You had better look for it. You will have plenty of time, because I shall not allow you to go to the picnic with the others. The mere taking of the jewelry was wrong, but if you had owned your fault and asked Ethel’s pardon, I should have overlooked it. But you have told me an untruth and you have lost the ring. You are a very wicked child, and it will make your dear mother very unhappy when she hears of it. That her boy should be a liar. It is worse than being a thief!’
At this Kenneth’s fortitude gave way, and he lost his head. ‘Oh, don’t,’ he said, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. Oh! don’t tell mother I’m[p245a thief and a liar. Oh! Aunt Effie, please,pleasedon’t.’ And with that he began to cry.
Any doubts Aunt Effie might have had were settled by this outbreak. It was now quite plain to her that Kenneth had really intended to keep the ring.
‘You will remain in your room till the picnic party has started,’ the aunt went on, ‘and then you must find the ring. Remember I expect it to be found when I return. And I hope you will be in a better frame of mind and really sorry for having been so wicked.’
‘Mayn’t I see Alison?’ was all he found to say.
And the answer was, ‘Certainly not. I cannot allow you to associate with your cousins. You are not fit to be with honest, truthful children.’
So they all went to the picnic, and Kenneth was left alone. When they had gone he crept down and wandered furtively through the empty rooms, ashamed to face the servants, and feeling almost as wicked as though he had really done something wrong. He thought about it all, over and over again, and the more he thought the more certain he was that hehadhanded back the ring to Alison last night when the voices of the servants were first heard from the dark lawn.
[p246]But what was the use of saying so? No one would believe him, and it would be sneaking anyhow. Besides, perhaps hehadn’thanded it back to her. Or rather, perhaps he had handed it and she hadn’t taken it. Perhaps it had slipped into the boat. He would go and see.
But he did not find it in the boat, though he turned up the carpet and even took up the boards to look. And then an extremely miserable little boy began to search for an amethyst ring in all sorts of impossible places, indoors and out. You know the hopeless way in which you look for things that you know perfectly well you will never find, the borrowed penknife that you dropped in the woods, for instance, or the week’s pocket-money which slipped through that hole in your pocket as you went to the village to spend it.
The servants gave him his meals and told him to cheer up. But cheering up and Kenneth were, for the time, strangers. People in books never can eat when they are in trouble, but I have noticed myself that if the trouble has gone on for some hours, eating is really rather a comfort. You don’t enjoy eating so much as usual, perhaps, but at any rate it is something to do, and takes the edge off your sorrow for a short time. And cook was sorry for Kenneth[p247and sent him up a very nice dinner and a very nice tea. Roast chicken and gooseberry pie the dinner was, and for tea there was cake with almond icing on it.
The sun was very low when he went back wearily to have one more look in the boat for that detestable amethyst ring. Of course it was not there. And the picnic party would be home soon. And he really did not know what his aunt would do to him.
‘Shut me up in a dark cupboard, perhaps,’ he thought gloomily, ‘or put me to bed all day to-morrow. Or give me lines to write out, thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, of them.’
The boat, set in motion by his stepping into it, swung out to the full length of its rope. The sun was shining almost level across the water. It was a very still evening, and the reflections of the trees and of the house were as distinct as the house and the trees themselves. And the water was unusually clear. He could see the fish swimming about, and the sand and pebbles at the bottom of the moat. How clear and quiet it looked down there, and what fun the fishes seemed to be having.
‘I wish I was a fish,’ said Kenneth. ‘Nobody punishesthemfor taking rings theydidn’ttake.’
[p248]And then suddenly he saw the ring itself, lying calm, and quiet, and round, and shining, on the smooth sand at the bottom of the moat.
He reached for the boat-hook and leaned over the edge of the boat trying to get up the ring on the boat-hook’s point. Then there was a splash.
‘Good gracious! I wonder what that is?’ said cook in the kitchen, and dropped the saucepan with the welsh rabbit in it which she had just made for kitchen supper.
Kenneth had leaned out too far over the edge of the boat, the boat had suddenly decided to go the other way, and Kenneth had fallen into the water.
The first thing he felt was delicious coolness, the second that his clothes had gone, and the next thing he noticed was that he was swimming quite easily and comfortably under water, and that he had no trouble with his breathing, such as people who tell you not to fall into water seem to expect you to have. Also he could see quite well, which he had never been able to do under water before.
‘I can’t think,’ he said to himself, ‘why people make so much fuss about your falling into the water. I sha’n’t be in a hurry to get out. I’ll swim right round the moat while I’m about it.’