‘I say,’ said Edred, with the big bunch of keys in his hand, – ‘if I am Lord Arden!’
‘You are! you are!’ said Elfrida. ‘I am perfectly certain you are. And I suppose I’m Lady Arden. How perfectly ripping! We can shut up those lodging-children now, anyhow. What’s up?’
Edred was frowning and pulling the velvet covering of moss off the big stone on which he had absently sat down.
‘Do you think it’s burglarish,’ he said slowly, ‘to go into your own house without leave?’
‘Not if it is your own house. Of course not,’ said Elfrida.
‘But suppose it isn’t? They might put you in prison for it.’
‘You could tell the policeman you thought it was yours. I say, Edred, let’s!’
‘It’s not vulgar curiosity, like auntie says; it’s the spell I want,’ said the boy.
‘As if I didn’t know that,’ said the girl contemptuously. ‘But where’s the house?’
She might well ask, for there was no house to be seen – only the great grey walls of the castle, with their fine fringe of flowers and grass showing feathery against the pale blue of the June sky. Here and there, though, there were grey wooden doors set in the grey of the stone.
‘It must be one of those,’ Edred said. ‘We’ll try all the keys and all the doors till we find it.’
So they tried all the keys and all the doors. One door led to a loft where apples were stored. Another to a cellar, where brooms and spades and picks leaned against the damp wall, and there were baskets and piles of sacks. A third opened into a tower that seemed to be used as a pigeon-cote. It was the very last door they tried that led into the long garden between two high walls, where already the weeds had grown high among the forget-me-nots and pansies. And at the end of this garden was a narrow house with a red roof, wedged tightly in between two high grey walls that belonged to the castle.
All the blinds were down; the garden was chill and quiet, and smelt of damp earth and dead leaves.
‘Oh, Edred, do you think we ought?’ Elfrida said, shivering.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Edred; ‘and you’re not being good, whatever you may think. You’re only being frightened.’
Elfrida naturally replied, ‘I’m not. Come on.’
But it was very slowly, and with a feeling of being on tiptoe and holding their breaths, that they went up to those blinded windows that looked like sightless eyes.
The front door was locked, and none of the keys would fit it.
‘I don’t care,’ said Edred. ‘If I am Lord Arden I’ve got a right to get in, and if I’m not I don’t care about anything, so here goes.’
Elfrida almost screamed, half with horror and half with admiration of his daring, when he climbed up to a little window by means of an elder-tree that grew close to it, tried to open the window, and when he found it fast deliberately pushed his elbow through the glass.
‘Thus,’ he said rather unsteadily, ‘the heir of Arden Castle re-enters his estates.’
He got the window open and disappeared through it. Elfrida stood clasping and unclasping her hands, and in her mind trying to get rid of the idea of a very large and sudden policeman appearing in the garden door and saying, in that deep voice so much admired in our village constables, ‘Where’s your brother?’
No policeman came, fortunately, and presently a blind went up, a French window opened, and there was Edred beckoning her with the air of a conspirator.
It needed an effort to obey his signal, but she did it. He closed the French window, drew down the blind again, and—
‘Oh, don’t let’s,’ said Elfrida.
‘Nonsense,’ said Edred; ‘there’s nothing to be frightened of. It’s just like our rooms at home.’
It was. They went all over the house, and it certainly was. Some of the upper rooms were very bare, but all the furniture was of the same kind as Aunt Edith’s, and there were the same kind of pictures. Only the library was different. It was a very large room, and there were no pictures at all. Nothing but books and books and books, bound in yellowy leather. Books from ceiling to floor, shelves of books between the windows and over the mantelpiece – hundreds and thousands of books. Even Edred’s spirits sank. ‘It’s no go. It will take us years to look in them all,’ he said.
‘We may as well look at some of them,’ said Elfrida, always less daring, but more persevering than her brother. She sat down on the worn carpet. and began to read the names on the backs of the books nearest to her. ‘Burton’s Atomy of Melon something,’ she read, and ‘Locke on Understanding,’ and many other dull and wearying titles. But none of the books seemed at all likely to contain a spell for finding treasure. ‘Burgess on the Precious Metals’ beguiled her for a moment, but she saw at once that there was no room in its closely-printed, brown-spotted pages for anything so interesting as a spell. Time passed by. The sunlight that came through the blinds had quite changed its place on the carpet, and still Elfrida persevered. Edred grew more and more restless.
‘It’s no use,’ he kept saying, and ‘Let’s chuck it,’ and ‘I expect that old chap was just kidding us. I don’t feel a bit like I did about it,’ and ‘Do let’s get along home.’
But Elfrida plodded on, though her head and her back both ached. I wish I could say that her perseverance was rewarded. But it wasn’t; and one must keep to facts. As it happened, it was Edred who, aimlessly running his finger along the edge of the bookshelf just for the pleasure of looking at the soft, mouse-coloured dust that clung to the finger at the end of each shelf, suddenly cried out, ‘What about this?’ and pulled out a great white book that had on its cover a shield printed in gold with squares and little spots on it, and a gold pig standing on the top of the shield, and on the back, ‘The History of the Ardens of Arden.’
In an instant it was open on the floor between them, and they were turning its pages with quick, anxious hands. But, alas! it was as empty of spells as dull old Burgess himself.
It was only when Edred shut it with a bang and the remark that he had had jolly well enough of it that a paper fluttered out and swept away like a pigeon, settling on the fireless hearth. And it was the spell. There was no doubt of that.
Written in faint ink on a square yellowed sheet of letter-paper that had been folded once, and opened and folded again so often that the fold was worn thin and hardly held its two parts together, the writing was fine and pointed and ladylike. At the top was written: ‘The Spell Aunt Anne Told Me. – December 24, 1793.’
And then came the spell:
‘Hear, Oh badge of Arden’s house,
The spell my little age allows;
Arden speaks it without fear,
Badge of Arden’s house, draw near,
Make me brave and kind and wise,
And show me where the treasure lies.’
‘To be said,’ the paper went on, ‘at sun-setting by a Lord Arden between the completion of his ninth and tenth years. But it is all folly and not to be believed.’
‘This is it, right enough,’ said Edred. ‘Come on, let’s get out of this.’ They turned to go, and as they did so something moved in the corner of the library – something little, and they could not see its shape.
Neither drew free breath again till they were out of the house, and out of the garden, and out of the castle, and on the wide, thymy downs, with the blue sky above, where the skylarks