Harding's Luck Part 32

And Lord Arden said, "Perhaps he does," with that sort of look that people have when they mean: "Not before the children! I'd rather talk about it afterwards if you don't mind."

Then the three were sent out to play, and d.i.c.kie was shown the castle ruins, while Lord Arden and Lady Talbot walked up and down on the daisied gra.s.s, and talked for a long time. d.i.c.kie knew they were talking about him, but he did not mind. He had that feeling you sometimes have about grown-up people, that they really do understand, and are to be trusted.

"You'll be too fine presently to speak to the likes of us, you nipper,"

said Beale, when a smart little pony cart had brought d.i.c.kie back to the cottage. "You an' your grand friends. Lord Arden indeed----"

"They was as jolly as jolly," said d.i.c.kie; "n.o.body weren't never kinder to me nor what Lord Arden was an' Lady Talbot too--without it was you, farver."

"Ah," said Beale to the old man, "'e knows how to get round his old father, don't 'e?"

"What does he want to talk that way for?" the old man asked. "'E can talk like a little gentleman all right 'cause we 'eard 'im."

"Oh, that's the way we talks up London way," said d.i.c.kie. "I learned to talk fine out o' books."

Mr. Beale said nothing, but that night he actually read for nearly ten minutes in a bound volume of the _Wesleyan Magazine_. And he was asleep over the same entertaining work when Lord Arden came the next afternoon.

You will be able to guess what he came about. And d.i.c.kie had a sort of feeling that perhaps Lord Arden might have seen by his face, as old Beale had, that he was an Arden. So neither he nor you will be much surprised. The person to be really surprised was Mr. Beale.

"You might a-knocked me down with a pickaxe," said Beale later, "so help me three men and a boy you might. It's a rum go. My lord 'e says there's some woman been writing letters to 'im this long time saying she'd got 'old of 'is long-lost nephew or cousin or something, and a-wanting to get money out of him--though what for, goodness knows. An' 'e says you're a Arden by rights, you nipper you, an' 'e wants to take you and bring you up along of his kids--so there's an end of you and me, d.i.c.kie, old boy. I didn't understand more than 'arf of wot 'e was saying. But I tumbled to that much. It's all up with you and me and Amelia and the dogs and the little 'ome. You're a-goin' to be a gentleman, you are--an'

I'll have to take to the road by meself and be a poor beast of a cadger again. That's what it'll come to, I know."

"Don't you put yourself about," said d.i.c.kie calmly. "I ain't a-goin' to leave yer. Didn't Lady Talbot ask me to be her boy--and didn't I cut straight back to you? I'll play along o' them kids if Lord Arden'll let me. But I ain't a-goin' to leave you, not yet I ain't. So don't you go snivelling afore any one's 'urt yer, farver. See?"

But that was before Lord Arden had his second talk with Mr. Beale. After that it was--

"Look 'ere, you nipper, I ain't a-goin' to stand in your light. You're goin' up in the world, says you. Well, you ain't the only one. Lord Arden's bought father's cottage an' 'e's goin' to build on to it, and I'm to 'ave all the dawgs down 'ere, and sell 'em through the papers like. And you'll come an' 'ave a look at us sometimes."

"And what about Amelia?" said d.i.c.kie, "and the little ones?"

"Well, I did think," said Beale, rubbing his nose thoughtfully, "of asking 'Melia to come down 'ere along o' the dawgs. Seems a pity to separate 'em somehow. It was Lord Arden put it into my 'ed. 'You oughter be married you ought,' 'e says to me pleasant like, man to man; 'ain't there any young woman I could give a trifle to, to set you and her up in housekeeping?' So then I casts about, and I thinks of 'Melia. As well 'er as anybody, and she's used to the dawgs. And the trifle's an hundred pounds. That's all. _That's all!_ So I'm sending to her by this post, and it's an awful toss up getting married, but 'Melia ain't like a stranger, and it couldn't ever be the same with us two and nipper after all this set out. What you say?"

I don't know what d.i.c.kie said; what he felt was something like this:--

"I _have_ tried to stick to Beale, and help him along, and I did come back from the other old long-ago world to help him, and I have been sticking to things I didn't like so as to help him and get him settled.

He was my bit of work, and now some one else comes along and takes my work out of my hands, and finishes it. And here's Beale provided for and settled. And I meant to provide for him myself. And I don't like it!"

That was what he felt at first. But afterwards he had to own that it was "a jolly lucky thing for Beale." And for himself too. He found that to be at Arden Castle with Edred and Elfrida all day, at play and at lessons, was almost as good as being with them in the beautiful old dream-life. All the things that he had hated in this modern life, when he was d.i.c.kie of Deptford, ceased to trouble him now that he was Richard Arden. For the difference between being rich and poor is as great as the difference between being warm and cold.

After that first day a sort of shyness came over the three children, and they spoke no more of the strange adventures they had had together, but just played at all the ordinary every-day games, till they almost forgot that there was any magic, had ever been any. The fact was, the life they were leading was so happy in itself that they needed no magic to make them contented. It was not till after the wedding of 'Melia and Mr.

Beale that d.i.c.kie remembered that to find the Arden Treasure for his cousins had been one of his reasons for coming back to this, the Nowadays world.

I wish I had time to tell you about the wedding. I could write a whole book about it. How Amelia came down from London and was married in Arden Church. How she wore a white dress and a large hat with a wreath of orange blossoms, a filmy veil, and real kid gloves--all gifts of Miss Edith Arden, Lord Arden's sister. How Lord Arden presented an enormous wedding cake and a glorious wedding breakfast, and gave away the bride, and made a speech saying he owed a great debt to Mr. Beale for his kindness to his nephew Richard Arden, and how surprised every one was to hear d.i.c.kie's new name. How all the dogs wore white favors and had each a crumb of wedding cake; and how when the wedding feast was over and the guests gone, the bride tucked up her white dress under a big ap.r.o.n and set about arranging in the new rooms the "sticks" of furniture which d.i.c.kie and Beale had brought together from the little home in Deptford, and which had come in a van by road all the way to Arden.

The Ardens had gone back to the Castle, and d.i.c.kie with them, and old Beale was smoking in his usual chair by his front door--so there was no one to hear Beale's compliment to his bride. He came behind her and put his arm round her as she was dusting the mantelpiece. "Go on with you,"

said the new Mrs. Beale; "any one 'ud think we was courting."

"So we be," said Beale, and kissed 'Melia for the first time. "We got all our courtin' to do now. See? I might a-picked an' choosed," he added reflectively, "but there--I dare say I might a-done worse."

'Melia blushed with pleasure at the compliment, and went on with the dusting.

It was as the Ardens walked home over the short turf that Lord Arden said to his sister, "I wish all the cottages about here were like Beale's. It didn't cost so very much. If I could only buy back the rest of the land, I'd show some people what a model village is like. Only I can't buy it back. He wants far more than we can think of managing."

And d.i.c.kie heard what he said. That was why, when next he was alone with his cousins, he began--

"Look here--you aren't allowed to use your magic any more, to go and look for the treasure. But _I_ am. And I vote we go and look for it. And then your father can buy back the old lands, and build the new cottages and mend up Arden Castle, and make it like it used to be."

"Oh, let's," said Elfrida, with enthusiasm. But Edred unexpectedly answered, "I don't know." The three children were sitting in the window of the gate-tower looking down on the green turf of the Castle yard.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Elfrida asked briskly.

"I _mean_ I don't know," said Edred stolidly; "we're all right as we are, _I_ think. I used to think I liked magic and things. But if you come to think of it something horrid happened to us every single time we went into the past with our magic. We were always being chased or put in prison or bothered somehow or other. The only really nice thing was when we saw the treasure being hidden, because that looked like a picture and we hadn't to do anything. And we don't know where the treasure is, anyhow. And I don't like adventures nearly so much as I used to think I did. We're all right and jolly as we are. What I say is, 'Don't let's.'"

This cold water damped the spirit of the others only for a few minutes.

"You know," Elfrida explained to d.i.c.kie, "our magic took us to look for treasure in the past. And once a film of a photograph that we'd stuck up behaved like a cinematograph, and then we saw the treasure being hidden away."

"Then let's just go where that was--mark the spot, come home and then dig it up."

"It wasn't buried," Elfrida explained; "it was put into a sort of cellar, with doors, and we've looked all over what's left of the Castle, and there isn't so much as a teeny silver ring to be found."

"I see," said d.i.c.kie. "But suppose I just worked the magic and wished to be where the treasure is?"

"I won't," cried Edred, and in his extreme dislike to the idea he kicked with his boots quite violently against the stones of the tower; "not much I won't. I expect the treasure's bricked up. We should look nice bricked up in a vault like a wicked nun, and perhaps forgotten the way to get out. Not much."

"You needn't make such a fuss about it," said Elfrida, "n.o.body's going to get bricked up in vaults." And d.i.c.kie added, "You're quite right, old chap. I didn't think about that."

"We must do _something_," Elfrida said impatiently.

"How would it be," d.i.c.kie spoke slowly, "if I tried to see the Mouldierwarp? He is stronger than the Mouldiwarp. He might advise us.

Suppose we work the magic and just ask to see him?"

"I don't want to go away from here," said Edred firmly.

"You needn't. I'll lay out the moon-seeds and things on the floor here--you'll see."

So d.i.c.kie made the crossed triangles of moon-seeds and he and his cousins stood in it and d.i.c.kie said, "Please can we see the Mouldierwarp?" just as you say, "Please can I see Mr. So-and-so?" when you have knocked at the door of Mr. So-and-so's house and some one has opened the door.

Immediately everything became dark, but before the children had time to wish that it was light again a disc of light appeared on the curtain of darkness, and there was the Mouldierwarp, just as d.i.c.kie had seen him once before.

He bowed in a courtly manner, and said--

"What can I do for you to-day, Richard Lord Arden?"

"He's not Lord Arden," said Edred. "_I_ used to be. But even _I'm_ not Lord Arden now. My father is."

"Indeed?" said the Mouldierwarp with an air of polite interest. "You interest me greatly. But my question remains unanswered."