The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (109 page)

He helped her by pulling her feet forcibly down and then lifting her under the arms. She felt rustling dry leaves under her boots, and stood ready to receive Jimmy, who came in head first, like one diving into an unknown sea.

“It
is
a cave,” said Kathleen.

“The young explorers,” explained Gerald, blocking up the hole of entrance with his shoulders, “dazzled at first by the darkness of the cave, could see nothing.”

“Darkness doesn’t dazzle,” said Jimmy.

“I wish we’d got a candle,” said Kathleen.

“Yes, it does,” Gerald contradicted. “They could see nothing. But their dauntless leader, whose eyes had grown used to the dark while the clumsy forms of the others were bunging up the entrance, had made a discovery.”

“Oh, what!” Both the others were used to Gerald’s way of telling a story while he acted it, but they did sometimes wish that he didn’t talk quite so long and so like a book in moments of excitement.

“He did not reveal the dread secret to his faithful followers till one and all had given him their word of honour to be calm.”

“We’ll be calm all right,” said Jimmy impatiently.

“Well, then,” said Gerald, ceasing suddenly to be a book and becoming a boy, “there’s a light over there—look behind you!”

They looked. And there was. A faint greyness on the brown walls of the cave, and a brighter greyness cut off sharply by a dark line, showed that round a turning or angle of the cave there was daylight.

“Attention!” said Gerald; at least, that was what he meant, though what he said was “’Shun!” as becomes the son of a soldier. The others mechanically obeyed.

“You will remain at attention till I give the word ‘Slow march!’ on which you will advance cautiously in open order, following your hero leader, taking care not to tread on the dead and wounded.”

“I wish you wouldn’t!” said Kathleen.

“There aren’t any,” said Jimmy, feeling for her hand in the dark; “he only means, take care not to tumble over stones and things”

Here he found her hand, and she screamed.

“It’s only me,” said Jimmy. “I thought you’d like me to hold it. But you’re just like a girl.”

Their eyes had now begun to get accustomed to the darkness, and all could see that they were in a rough stone cave that went straight on for about three or four yards and then turned sharply to the right.

“Death or victory!” remarked Gerald. “Now, then—slow march!”

He advanced carefully, picking his way among the loose earth and stones that were the floor of the cave. “A sail, a sail!” he cried, as he turned the corner.

“How splendid!” Kathleen drew a long breath as she came out into the sunshine.

“I don’t see a sail,” said Jimmy, following.

The narrow passage ended in a round arch all fringed with ferns and creepers. They passed through the arch into a deep, narrow gully whose banks were of stones, moss-covered; and in the crannies grew more ferns and long grasses. Trees growing on the top of the bank arched across, and the sunlight came through in changing patches of brightness, turning the gully to a roofed corridor of goldy-green. The path, which was of greeny-grey flagstones where heaps of leaves had drifted, sloped steeply down, and at the end of it was another round arch, quite dark inside, above which rose rocks and grass and bushes.

“It’s like the outside of a railway tunnel,” said James.

“It’s the entrance to the enchanted castle,” said Kathleen. “Let’s blow the horns.”

“Dry up!” said Gerald. “The bold Captain, reproving the silly chatter of his subordinates—”

“I like that!” said Jimmy, indignant.

“I thought you would,” resumed Gerald— “of his subordinates, bade them advance with caution and in silence, because after all there might be somebody about, and the other arch might be an ice-house or something dangerous.

“What?” asked Kathleen anxiously.

“Bears, perhaps,” said Gerald briefly.

“There aren’t any bears without bars in England, anyway,” said Jimmy. “They call bears bars in America,” he added absently.

“Quick march!” was Gerald’s only reply.

And they marched. Under the drifted damp leaves, the path was firm and stony to their shuffling feet. At the dark arch they stopped.

“There are steps down,” said Jimmy.

“It is an ice-house,” said Gerald.

“Don’t let’s,” said Kathleen.

“Our hero,” said Gerald, “who nothing could dismay, raised the faltering hopes of his abject minions by saying that he was jolly well going on, and they could do as they liked about it.”

“If you call names,” said Jimmy, “you can go on by yourself.” He added, “So there!”

“It’s part of the game, silly,” explained Gerald kindly. “You can be Captain tomorrow, so you’d better hold your jaw now and begin to think about what names you’ll call us when it’s your turn.”

Very slowly and carefully they went down the steps. A vaulted stone arched over their heads. Gerald struck a match when the last step was found to have no edge, and to be, in fact, the beginning of a passage, turning to the left.

“This,” said Jimmy, “will take us back into the road.”

“Or under it,” said Gerald. “We’ve come down eleven steps.”

They went on, following their leader, who went very slowly for fear, as he explained, of steps. The passage was very dark.

“I don’t half like it!” whispered Jimmy.

Then came a glimmer of daylight that grew and grew, and presently ended in another arch that looked out over a scene so like a picture out of a book about Italy that everyone’s breath was taken away, and they simply walked forward silent and staring. A short avenue of cypresses led, widening as it went, to a marble terrace that lay broad and white in the sunlight. The children, blinking, leaned their arms on the broad, flat balustrade and gazed.

Immediately below them was a lake—just like a lake in “The Beauties of Italy”—a lake with swans and an island and weeping willows; beyond it were green slopes dotted with groves of trees, and amid the trees gleamed the white limbs of statues. Against a little hill to the left was a round white building with pillars, and to the right a waterfall came tumbling down among mossy stones to splash into the lake. Steps fed from the terrace to the water, and other steps to the green lawns beside it. Away across the grassy slopes, deer were feeding, and in the distance where the groves of trees thickened into what looked almost a forest were enormous shapes of grey stone, like nothing that the children had ever seen before.

“That chap at school—” said Gerald.

“It
is
an enchanted castle,” said Kathleen.

“I don’t see any castle,” said Jimmy.

“What do you call that, then?” Gerald pointed to where, beyond a belt of lime-trees, white towers and turrets broke the blue of the sky.

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone about,” said Kathleen, “and yet it’s all so tidy. I believe it is magic”

“Magic mowing machines,” Jimmy suggested.

“If we were in a book it would be an enchanted castle—certain to be,” said Kathleen.

“It
is
an enchanted castle,” said Gerald in hollow tones.

“But there aren’t any!” Jimmy was quite positive.

“How do you know? Do you think there’s nothing in the world but what
you’ve
seen?” His scorn was crushing.

“I think magic went out when people began to have steam-engines,” Jimmy insisted, “and newspapers, and telephones, and wireless telegraphing.”

“Wireless is rather like magic when you come to think of it,” said Gerald.

“Oh,
that
sort!” Jimmy’s contempt was deep.

“Perhaps there’s given up being magic because people didn’t believe in it any more,” said Kathleen.

“Well, don’t let’s spoil the show with any silly old not believing,” said Gerald with decision. “I’m going to believe in magic as hard as I can. This is an enchanted garden, and that’s an enchanted castle, and I’m jolly well going to explore. The dauntless knight then led the way, leaving his ignorant squires to follow or not, just as they jolly well chose. He rolled off the balustrade and strode firmly down towards the lawn, his boots making, as they went, a clatter full of determination.”

The others followed. There never was such a garden—out of a picture or a fairy-tale. They passed quite close by the deer, who only raised their pretty heads to look, and did not seem startled at all. And after a long stretch of turf they passed under the heaped-up heavy masses of lime-trees and came into a rose-garden, bordered with thick, close-cut yew hedges, and lying red and pink and green and white in the sun, like a giant’s many-coloured, highly-scented pocket-handkerchief.

“I know we shall meet a gardener in a minute, and he’ll ask what we re doing here. And then what will you say?” Kathleen asked with her nose in a rose.

“I shall say we have lost our way, and it will be quite true,” said Gerald.

But they did not meet a gardener or anybody else, and the feeling of magic got thicker and thicker, till they were almost afraid of the sound of their feet in the great silent place. Beyond the rose garden was a yew hedge with an arch cut in it, and it was the beginning of a maze like the one in Hampton Court.

“Now,” said Gerald, “you mark my words. In the middle of this maze we shall find the secret enchantment. Draw your swords, my merry men all, and hark forward tallyho in the utmost silence.”

Which they did.

It was very hot in the maze, between the close yew hedges, and the way to the maze’s heart was hidden well. Again and again they found themselves at the black yew arch that opened on the rose garden, and they were all glad that they had brought large, clean pocket-handkerchiefs with them.

It was when they found themselves there for the fourth time that Jimmy suddenly cried, “Oh, I wish—” and then stopped short very suddenly. “Oh!” he added in quite a different voice, “where’s the dinner?” And then in a stricken silence they all remembered that the basket with the dinner had been left at the entrance of the cave. Their thoughts dwelt fondly on the slices of cold mutton, the six tomatoes, the bread and butter, the screwed-up paper of salt, the apple turnovers, and the little thick glass that one drank the ginger-beer out of.

“Let’s go back,” said Jimmy, “now this minute, and get our things and have our dinner.”

“Let’s have one more try at the maze. I hate giving things up,” said Gerald.

“I
am
so hungry!” said Jimmy.

“Why didn’t you say so before?” asked Gerald bitterly.

“I wasn’t before.”

“Then you can’t be now. You don’t get hungry all in a minute. What’s that?”

That was a gleam of red that lay at the foot of the yew-hedge a thin little line, that you would hardly have noticed unless you had been staring in a fixed and angry way at the roots of the hedge.

It was a thread of cotton. Gerald picked it up. One end of it was tied to a thimble with holes in it, and the other—

“There
is
no other end,” said Gerald, with firm triumph. “It’s a clue, that’s what it is. What price cold mutton now? I’ve always felt something magic would happen some day, and now it has.”

“I expect the gardener put it there,” said Jimmy.

“With a Princess’s silver thimble on it? Look! There’s a crown on the thimble.”

There was.

“Come,” said Gerald in low, urgent tones, “if you are adventurers be adventurers; and anyhow, I expect someone has gone along the road and bagged the mutton hours ago.”

He walked forward, winding the red thread round his fingers as he went. And it was a clue, and it led them right into the middle of the maze. And in the very middle of the maze they came upon the wonder.

The red clue led them up two stone steps to a round grass plot. There was a sun-dial in the middle, and all round against the yew hedge a low, wide marble seat. The red clue ran straight across the grass and by the sun-dial, and ended in a small brown hand with jewelled rings on every finger. The hand was, naturally, attached to an arm, and that had many bracelets on it, sparkling with red and blue and green stones. The arm wore a sleeve of pink and gold brocaded silk, faded a little here and there but still extremely imposing, and the sleeve was part of a dress, which was worn by a lady who lay on the stone seat asleep in the sun. The rosy gold dress fell open over an embroidered petticoat of a soft green colour. There was old yellow lace the colour of scalded cream, and a thin white veil spangled with silver stars covered the face.

“It’s the enchanted Princess,” said Gerald, now really impressed. “I told you so.”

“It’s the Sleeping Beauty,” said Kathleen. “It is—look how old-fashioned her clothes are, like the pictures of Marie Antoinette’s ladies in the history book. She has slept for a hundred years. Oh, Gerald, you’re the eldest; you must be the Prince, and we never knew it.”

“She isn’t really a Princess,” said Jimmy. But the others laughed at him, partly because his saying things like that was enough to spoil any game, and partly because they really were not at all sure that it was not a Princess who lay there as still as the sunshine. Every stage of the adventure—the cave, the wonderful gardens, the maze, the clue, had deepened the feeling of magic, till now Kathleen and Gerald were almost completely bewitched.

“Lift the veil up, Jerry,” said Kathleen in a whisper, “if she isn’t beautiful we shall know she can’t be the Princess.

“Lift it yourself,” said Gerald.

“I expect you’re forbidden to touch the figures,” said Jimmy.

“It’s not wax, silly,” said his brother.

“No,” said his sister, “wax wouldn’t be much good in this sun. And, besides, you can see her breathing. It’s the Princess right enough.” She very gently lifted the edge of the veil and turned it back. The Princess’s face was small and white between long plaits of black hair. Her nose was straight and her brows finely traced. There were a few freckles on cheekbones and nose.

“No wonder,” whispered Kathleen, “sleeping all these years in all this sun!” Her mouth was not a rosebud. But all the same—

“Isn’t she lovely!” Kathleen murmured.

“Not so dusty,” Gerald was understood to reply.

“Now, Jerry,” said Kathleen firmly, “you’re the eldest.”

“Of course I am,” said Gerald uneasily.

“Well, you’ve got to wake the Princess.”

“She’s not a Princess,” said Jimmy, with his hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers; “she’s only a little girl dressed up.”

“But she’s in long dresses,” urged Kathleen.

“Yes, but look what a little way down her frock her feet come. She wouldn’t be any taller than Jerry if she was to stand up.”

“Now then,” urged Kathleen. “Jerry, don’t be silly. You’ve got to do it.”

“Do what?” asked Gerald, kicking his left boot with his right.

“Why, kiss her awake, of course.”

“Not me!” was Gerald’s unhesitating rejoinder.

“Well, someone’s got to.”

“She’d go for me as likely as not the minute she woke up,” said Gerald anxiously.

“I’d do it like a shot,” said Kathleen, “but I don’t suppose it ’ud make any difference, me kissing her.”

She did it; and it didn’t. The Princess still lay in deep slumber.

“Then you must, Jimmy. I dare say you’ll do. Jump back quickly before she can hit you.”

“She won’t hit him, he’s such a little chap,” said Gerald.

“Little yourself!” said Jimmy. “I don’t mind kissing her. I’m not a coward, like Some People. Only if I do, I’m going to be the dauntless leader for the rest of the day.”

“No, look here—hold on!” cried Gerald, “perhaps I’d better—” But, in the meantime, Jimmy had planted a loud, cheerful-sounding kiss on the Princess’s pale cheek, and now the three stood breathless, awaiting the result.

And the result was that the Princess opened large, dark eyes, stretched out her arms, yawned a little, covering her mouth with a small brown hand, and said, quite plainly and distinctly, and without any room at all for mistake:—