Harding's luck

He pressed his thumb on the latch and opened the door very softly. Something moved inside and a chain rattled. Edred's heart gave a soft, uncomfortable jump. But it was only True, standing up to receive company. He saw the whiteness of the dog and made for it, felt for the chain, unhooked it from the staple in the wall, and went out again, closing the door after him, and followed very willingly by True. Again he looked suspiciously at the shadow of the great sweetbrier, but the dog showed no uneasiness, so Edred knew that there was nothing to be afraid of. True, in fact, was the greatest comfort to him. He told Elfrida afterwards that it was all True's doing; he could never, he was sure, have gone on without that good companion.

True followed at the slack chain's end till they got to the milestone, and then suddenly he darted ahead and took the lead, the chain stretched taut, and the boy had all his work cut out to keep up with the dog. Up the hill they went on to the downs, and in and out among the furze bushes. The night was no longer dark to Edred. His eyes had got used to the gentle starlight, and he followed the dog among the gorse and brambles without stumbling and without hurting himself against the million sharp spears and thorns.

Suddenly True paused, sniffed, sneezed, blew through his nose and began to dig.

"Come on, come on, good dog," said Edred, "come on, True," for his fancy pictured Dickie a prisoner in some lonely cottage, and he longed to get to it and set him free and get safe back home with him. So he pulled at the chain. But True only shook himself and went on digging. The spot he had chosen was under a clump of furze bigger than any they had passed. The sharp furze-spikes pricked his nose and paws, but True was not the dog to be stopped by little things like that. He only stopped every now and then to sneeze and blow, and then went on digging.

Edred remembered the knife he had brought. It was the big pruning-knife out of the drawer in the hall. He pulled it out. He would cut away some of the furze branches. Perhaps Dickie was lying bound, hidden in the middle of the furze bush.

"Dickie," he said softly, "Dickie."

But no one answered. Only True sneezed and snuffed and blew and went on digging.

So then Edred took hold of a branch of furze to cut it, and it was loose and came away in his hand without any cutting. He tried another. That too was loose. He took off his jacket and threw it over his hands to protect them, and seizing an armful of furze pulled, and fell back, a great bundle of the prickly stuff on top of him. True was pulling like mad at the chain. Edred scrambled up; the furze he had pulled away disclosed a hole, and True was disappearing down it. Edred saw, as the dog dragged him close to the hole, that it was a large one, though only part of it had been uncovered. He stooped to peer in, his foot slipped on the edge, and he fell right into it, the dog dragging all the time.

"Stop, True; lie down, sir!" he said, and the dog paused, though the chain was still strained tight.

Then Edred was glad of his bedroom candle. He pulled it out and lighted it and blinked, perceiving almost at once that he was in the beginning of an underground passage. He looked up; he could see above him the stars plain through a net of furze bushes. He stood up and True went on. Next moment he knew that he was in the old smugglers' cave that he and Elfrida had so often tried to find.

The dog and the boy went on, along a passage, down steps cut in the rock, through a rough, heavy door, and so into the smugglers' cave itself, an enormous cavern as big as a church. Out of an opening at the upper end a stream of water fell, and ran along the cave clear between shores of smooth sand.

And, lying on the sand near the stream, was something dark.

True gave a bound that jerked the chain out of Edred's hand, and leaped upon the dark thing, licking it, whining, and uttering little dog moans of pure love and joy. For the dark something was Dickie, fast asleep. He was bound with cords, his poor lame foot tied tight to the other one. His arms were bound too. And now he was awake.

"Down, True!" he said. "Hush! Ssh!"

"Where are they – the man and woman?" Edred whispered.

"Oh, Edred! You! You perfect brick!" Dickie whispered back. "They're in the further cave. I heard them snoring before I went to sleep."

"Lie still," said Edred; "I've got a knife. I'll cut the cords."

He cut them, and Dickie tried to stand up. But his limbs were too stiff. Edred rubbed his legs, while Dickie stretched his fingers to get the pins and needles out of his arms.

Edred had stuck the candle in the sand. It made a ring of light round them. That was why they did not see a dark figure that came quietly creeping across the sand towards them. It was quite close to them before Edred looked up.

"Oh!" he gasped, and Dickie, looking up, whispered, "It's all up —run. Never mind me. I shall get away all right."

"No," said Edred, and then with a joyous leap of the heart perceived that the dark figure was Elfrida in her father's ulster.

("I hadn't time to put on my stockings," she explained later. "You'd have known me a mile off by my white legs if I hadn't covered them up with this.")

"Elfrida!" said both boys at once.

"Well, you didn't think I was going to be out of it," she said. "I've been behind you all the way, Edred. Don't tell me anything. I won't ask any questions, only come along out of it. Lean on me."

They got him up to the passage, one on each side, and by that time Dickie could use his legs and his crutch. They got home and roused Lord Arden, and told him Dickie was found and all about it, and he roused the house, and he and Beale and half-a-dozen men from the village went up to the cave and found that wicked man and woman in a stupid sleep, and tied their hands and marched them to the town and to the police-station.

When the man was searched the letter was found on him which the man – it was that redheaded man you have heard of – had taken from Talbot Court.

"I wish you joy of your good fortune, my boy," said Lord Arden when he had read the letter. "Of course we must look into things, but I feel no doubt at all that you are Lord Arden!"

"I don't want to be," said Dickie, and that was true. Yet at the same time he did want to be. The thought of being Richard, Lord Arden, he who had been just little lame Dickie of Deptford, of owning this glorious castle, of being the master of an old name and an old place, this thought sang in his heart a very beautiful tune. Yet what he said was true. There is so often room in our hearts for two tunes at a time. "I don't want to be. You ought to be, sir. You've been so kind to me," he said.

"My dear boy," said the father of Edred and Elfrida, "I did very well without the title and the castle, and if they're yours I shall do very well without them again. You shall have your rights, my dear boy, and I shan't be hurt by it. Don't you think that."

Dickie thought several things and shook the other's hand very hard.

The tale of Dickie's rescue from the cave was the talk of the countryside. True was praised much, but Edred more. Why had no one else thought of putting the dog on the scent? Edred said that it was mostly True's doing. And the people praised his modesty. And nobody, except perhaps Elfrida, ever understood what it had cost Edred to go that night through the dark and rescue his cousin.

Edred's father and Mrs. Honeysett agreed that Edred had done it in the delirium of a fever, brought on by his anxiety about his friend and playmate. People do, you know, do odd things in fevers that they would never do at other times.

The redheaded man and the woman were tried at the assizes and punished. If you ask me how they knew about the caves which none of the country people seemed to know of, I can only answer that I don't know. Only I know that every one you know knows lots of things that you don't know they know.

When they all went a week later to explore the caves, they found a curious arrangement of brickwork and cement and clay, shutting up a hole through which the stream had evidently once flowed out into the open air. It now flowed away into darkness. Lord Arden pointed out how its course had been diverted and made to run down underground to the sea.

"We might let it come back to the moat," said Edred. "It used to run that way. It says so in the 'History of Arden.'"

"We must decide that later," said his father, who had a long blue lawyer's letter in his pocket.

CHAPTER XI

LORD ARDEN

There was a lot of talk and a lot of letter-writing before any one seemed to be able to be sure who was Lord Arden. If the father of Edred and Elfrida had wanted to dispute about it no doubt there would have been enough work to keep the lawyers busy for years, and seas of ink would have been spilled and thunders of eloquence spent on the question. But as the present Lord Arden was an honest man and only too anxious that Dickie should have everything that belonged to him, even the lawyers had to cut their work short.

When Edred saw how his father tried his best to find out the truth about Dickie's birth, and how willing he was to give up what he had thought was his own, if it should prove to be not his, do you think he was not glad to know that he had done his duty, and rescued his cousin, and had not, by any meanness or any indecision, brought dishonor on the name of Arden? As for Elfrida, when she knew the whole story of that night of rescue, she admired her brother so much that it made him almost uncomfortable. However, she now looked up to him in all things and consulted him about everything, and, after all, this is very pleasant from your sister, especially when every one has been rather in the habit of suggesting that she is better than you are, as well as cleverer.

To Dickie Lord Arden said, "Of course, if anything should happen to show that I am really Lord Arden, you won't desert us, Dickie. You shall go to school with Edred and be brought up like my very own son."

And, like Lord Arden's very own son, Dickie lived at the house in Arden Castle, and grew to love it more and more. He no longer wanted to get away from these present times to those old days when James the First was King. The times you are born in are always more home-like than any other times can be. When Dickie lived miserably at Deptford he always longed to go to those old times, as a man who is unhappy at home may wish to travel to other countries. But a man who is happy in his home does not want to leave it. And at Arden Dickie was happy. The training he had had in the old-world life enabled him to take his place and to be unembarrassed with the Ardens and their friends as he was with the Beales and theirs. "A little shy," the Ardens' friends told each other, "but what fine manners! And to think he was only a tramp! Lord Arden has certainly done wonders with him!"

So Lord Arden got the credit of all that Dickie had learned from his tutors in James the First's time.

It is not in the nature of any child to brood continually on the past or the future. The child lives in the present. And Dickie lived at Arden and loved it, and enjoyed himself; and Lord Arden bought him a pony, so that his lame foot was hardly any drag at all. The other children had a donkey-cart, and the three made all sorts of interesting expeditions.

Once they went over to Talbot Court, and saw the secret place where Edward Talbot had hidden his confession about having stolen the Arden baby, three generations before. Also they saw the portrait of the Lady Talbot who had been a Miss Arden. In rose-colored brocade she was, with a green silk petticoat and her powdered hair dressed high over a great cushion, but her eyes and her mouth were the eyes of Dickie of Deptford.

Lady Talbot was very charming to the children, played hide-and-seek with them, and gave them a delightful and varied tea in the yew arbor.

"I'm glad you wouldn't let me adopt you, Richard," she said, when Elfrida and Edred had been sent to her garden to get a basket of peaches to take home with them, "because just when I had become entirely attached to you, you would have found out your real relations, and where would your poor foster-mother have been then?"

"If I could have stayed with you I would," said Dickie seriously. "I did like you most awfully, even then. You are very like the Lady Arden whose husband was shut up in the Tower for the Gunpowder Plot."

"So they tell me," said Lady Talbot, "but how do you know it?"

"I don't know," said Dickie confused, "but you are like her."

"You must have seen a portrait of her. There's one in the National Portrait Gallery. She was a Delamere, and my name was Delamere, too, before I was married. She was one of the same family, you see, dear."

Dickie put his arms round her waist as she sat beside him, and laid his head on her shoulder.

"I wish you'd really been my mother," he said, and his thoughts were back in the other days with the mother who wore a ruff and hoop. Lady Talbot hugged him tenderly.

"My dear little Dickie," she said, "you don't wish it as much as I do."

"There are all sorts of things a chap can't be sure of – things you mustn't tell any one. Secrets, you know – honorable secrets. But if it was your own mother it would be different. But if you haven't got a mother you have to decide everything for yourself."

"Won't you let me help you?" she asked.

Dickie, his head on her shoulder, was for one wild moment tempted to tell her everything – the whole story, from beginning to end. But he knew that she could not understand it – or even believe it. No grown-up person could. A chap's own mother might have, perhaps – but perhaps not, too.

"I can't tell you," he said at last, "only I don't think I want to be Lord Arden. At least, I do, frightfully. It's so splendid, all the things the Ardens did – in history, you know. But I don't want to turn people out – and you know Edred came and saved me from those people. It feels hateful when I think perhaps they'll have to turn out just because I happened to turn up. Sometimes I feel as if I simply couldn't bear it."

"You dear child!" she said; "of course you feel that. But don't let your mind dwell on it. Don't think about it. You're only a little boy. Be happy and jolly, and don't worry about grown-up things. Leave grown-up things to the grown-ups."

"You see," Dickie told her, "somehow I've always had to worry about grown-up things. What with Beale, and one thing and another."

"That was the man you ran away from me to go to?"

"Yes," said Dickie gravely; "you see, I was responsible for Beale."

"And now? Don't you feel responsible any more?"

"No," said Dickie, in businesslike tones; "you see, I've settled Beale in life. You can't be responsible for married people. They're responsible for each other. So now I've got only my own affairs to think of. And the Ardens. I don't know what to do."

"Do? why, there's nothing to do except to enjoy yourself and learn your lessons and be happy," she told him. "Don't worry your little head. Just enjoy yourself, and forget that you ever had any responsibilities."

"I'll try," he told her, and then the others came back with their peaches, and there was nothing more to be said but "Thank you very much" and good-bye.

Exploring the old smugglers' caves was exciting and delightful, as exploring caves always is. It turned out that more than one old man in the village had heard from his father about the caves and the smuggling that had gone on in those parts in old ancient days. But they had not thought it their place to talk about such things, and I suspect that in their hearts they did not more than half believe them. Old Beale said —

"Why didn't you ask me? I could a-told you where they was. Only I shouldn't a done fear you'd break your precious necks."

Of course the children were desperately anxious to open up the brickwork and let the stream come out into the light of day; only their father thought it would be too expensive. But Edred and Elfrida worried and bothered in a perfectly gentle and polite way till at last a very jolly gentleman in spectacles, who came down to spend a couple of days, took their part. From the moment he owned himself an engineer Edred and Elfrida gave him no peace, and he seemed quite pleased to be taken to see the caves. He pointed out that the removal of the simple dam would send the water back into the old channel. It would be perfectly simple to have the brickwork knocked out, and to let the stream find its way back, if it could, to its old channel, and thence down the arched way which Edred and Elfrida told him they were certain was under a mound below the Castle.

"You know a lot about it, don't you?" he said good-humoredly.

"Yes," said Edred simply.

Then they all went down to the mound, and the engineer then poked and prodded it and said he should not wonder if they were not so far out. And then Beale and another man came with spades, and presently there was the arch, as good as ever, and they exclaimed and admired and went back to the caves.

It was a grand moment when the bricks had been taken out and daylight poured into the cave, and nothing remained but to break down the dam and let the water run out of the darkness into the sunshine. You can imagine with what mixed feelings the children wondered whether they would rather stay in the cave and see the dam demolished, or stay outside and see the stream rush out. In the end the boys stayed within, and it was only Elfrida and her father who saw the stream emerge. They sat on a hillock among the thin harebells and wild thyme and sweet lavender-colored gipsy roses, with their eyes fixed on the opening in the hillside, and waited and waited and waited for a very long time.

"Won't you mind frightfully, daddy," Elfrida asked during this long waiting, "if it turns out that you're not Lord Arden?"

He paused a moment before he decided to answer her without reserve.

"Yes," he said, "I shall mind, frightfully. And that's just why we must do everything we possibly can to prove that Dickie is the rightful heir, so that whether he has the title or I have it you and I may never have to reproach ourselves for having left a single stone unturned to give him his rights – whatever they are."

"And you, yours, daddy."

"And me, mine. Anyhow, if he is Lord Arden I shall probably be appointed his guardian, and we shall all live together here just the same. Only I shall go back to being plain Arden."

"I believe Dickie is Lord Arden," Elfrida began, and I am not at all sure that she would not have gone on to give her reasons, including the whole story which the Mouldiestwarp had told to Dickie; but at that moment there was a roaring, rushing sound from inside the cave, and a flash of shiny silver gleamed across that dark gap in the hillside. There was a burst of imprisoned splendor. The stream leaped out and flowed right and left over the dry grass, till it lapped in tiny waves against their hillock – "like sand castles," as Elfrida observed. It spread out in a lake, wider and wider; but presently gathered itself together and began to creep down the hill, winding in and out among the hillocks in an ever-deepening stream.

"Come on, childie, let's make for the moat. We shall get there first, if we run our hardest," Elfrida's father said. And he ran, with his little daughter's hand in his.

They got there first. The stream, knowing its own mind better and better as it recognized its old road, reached the Castle, and by dinner-time all the grass round the Castle was under water. By tea-time the water in the moat was a foot or more deep, and when they got up next morning the Castle was surrounded by a splendid moat fifty feet wide, and a stream ran from it, in a zigzag way it is true, but still it ran, to the lower arch under the mound, and disappeared there, to run underground into the sea. They enjoyed the moat for one whole day, and then the stream was dammed again and condemned to run underground till next spring, by which time the walls of the Castle would have been examined and concrete laid to their base, lest the water should creep through and sap the foundations.

"It's going to be a very costly business, it seems," Elfrida heard her father say to the engineer, "and I don't know that I ought to do it. But I can't resist the temptation. I shall have to economize in other directions, that's all."

When Elfrida had heard this she went to Dickie and Edred, who were fishing in the cave, and told them what she had heard.

"And we must have another try for the treasure," she said. "Whoever has the Castle will want to restore it; they've got those pictures of it as it used to be. And then there are all the cottages to rebuild. Dear Dickie, you're so clever, do think of some way to find the treasure."

So Dickie thought.

And presently he said —

"You once saw the treasure being carried to the secret room – in a picture, didn't you?"

They told him yes.

"Then why didn't you go back to that time and see it really?"

"We hadn't the clothes. Everything in our magic depended on clothes."

"Mine doesn't. Shall we go?"

"There were lots of soldiers in the picture," said Edred, "and fighting."

"I'm not afraid of soldiers," said Elfrida very quickly, "and you're not afraid of anything, Edred – you know you aren't."

"You can't be or you couldn't have come after me right into the cave in the middle of the night. Come on. Stand close together and I'll spread out the moon-seeds."

So Dickie said, and they stood, and he spread the moon-seeds out, and he wished to be with the party of men who were hiding the treasure. But before he spread out the seeds he took certain other things in his left hand and held them closely. And instantly they were.

They were standing very close together, all three of them, in a niche in a narrow, dark passage, and men went by them carrying heavy chests, and great sacks of leather, and bundles tied up in straw and in handkerchiefs. The men had long hair and the kind of clothes you know were worn when Charles the First was King. And the children wore the dresses of that time and the boys had little swords at their sides. When the last bundle had been carried, the last chest set down with a dump on the stone floor of some room beyond, the children heard a door shut and a key turned, and then the men came back all together along the passage, and the children followed them. Presently torchlight gave way to daylight as they came out into the open air. But they had to come on hands and knees, for the path sloped steeply up and the opening was very low. The chests must have been pushed or pulled through. They could never have been carried.

The children turned and looked at the opening. It was in the courtyard wall, the courtyard that was now a smooth grass lawn and not the rough, daisied grass plot dotted with heaps of broken stone and masonry that they were used to see. And as they looked two men picked up a great stone and staggered forward with it and laid it on the stone floor of the secret passage just where it ended at the edge of the grass. Then another stone and another. The stones fitted into their places like bits of a Chinese puzzle. There was mortar or cement at their edges, and when the last stone was replaced no one could tell those stones from the other stones that formed the wall. Only the grass in front of them was trampled and broken.

"Fetch food and break it about," said the man who seemed to be in command, "that it may look as though the men had eaten here. And trample the grass at other places. I give the Roundhead dogs another hour to break down our last defense. Children, go to your mother. This is no place for you."

They knew the way. They had seen it in the picture. Edred and Elfrida turned to go. But Dickie whispered, "Don't wait for me. I've something yet to do."

And when the soldiers had gone to get food and strew it about, as they had been told to do, Dickie crept up to the stones that had been removed, from which he had never taken his eyes, knelt down and scratched on one of the stones with one of the big nails he had brought in his hand. It blunted over and he took another, hiding in the chapel doorway when the men came back with the food.

"Every man to his post and God save us all!" cried the captain when the food was spread. They clattered off – they were in their armor now – and Dickie knelt down again and went on scratching with the nail.