The adventure which I am about to relate was a very long time ago, and it was n.o.body"s fault. The part of it that was most like a real crime was caused by H. O. not being at that date old enough to know better--and this was n.o.body"s fault--though we took care that but a brief half-hour elapsed between the discovery of his acts and his _being_ old enough to know better, and knowing it, too (better, I mean), quite thoroughly. We were residing at the residence of an old nurse of father"s while Dora was engaged in the unagreeable pastime of having something catching at home. If she had been with us most likely none of this would have happened. For she has an almost unerring nose for right and wrong. Or perhaps what the author means is that she never does the kind of thing that grown-ups don"t like your doing. Father"s old nurse was very jolly to us, and did not bother too much, except about wet feet and being late for meals, and not airing your shirt before you put it on. But it is part of the nature of the nicest grown-ups to bother about these little things, and we must not be hard on them for it, for no one can help their natures.
The part where old nurse"s house was was where London begins to leave off being London, but before it can make up its mind not to be it. There are fields and bits of lanes and hedges, but the rows of ugly little houses go creeping along like yellow caterpillars, eating up the green fields. There are brickfields here and there, and cabbage fields, and places where rhubarb is grown. And it is much more interesting than real town, because there is more room to do things in, and not so many people to say "Don"t!" when you do.
Nurse"s house was the kind that is always a house, no matter how much you pretend it is a baron"s castle or an enchanted palace. And to play at its being a robber"s cave or any part of a pirate ship is simply silly, and no satisfaction to anyone. There were no books except sermons and the Wesleyan Magazine. And there was a green cut-paper fuzziness on the frame of the looking-gla.s.s in the parlour. There was a garden--at least, there was enough ground for one, but nothing grew there except nettles and brick-bats and one elder-tree, and a poor old oak-tree that had seen better days. There was a hole in the fence, very convenient for going through in a hurry.
One morning there had been what old nurse called a "set out" because Noel was writing some of his world-without-end poetry, and he had got as far as
"How beautiful the sun and moon And all the stars appear!
They really are a long way off, Although they look very near."
"I do not think that they are worlds, But apples on a tree; The angels pick them whenever they like, But it is not so with me.
I wish I was a little angel-child To gather stars for my tea,"
before d.i.c.ky found out that he was writing it on the blank leaf at the end of the Latin prize d.i.c.ky got at the Preparatory School.
Noel--for mysterious reasons unknown to Fame--is Alice"s favourite brother, and of course she stood up for him, and said he didn"t mean it.
And things were said on both sides, and the rest of us agreed with d.i.c.ky that Noel was old enough to know better. It ended in Alice and Noel going out for a walk by themselves as soon as Noel had had the crying washed off his hands and face.
The rest of us spent the shining hours in getting a board and nailing it up in the oak-tree for a look-out station, in case of Saracens arriving with an army to attack London. The oak is always hard to climb, and this was a peculiarly hard day, because the next-door people had tied a clothes-line to the oak, and hung their wet washing out on the line.
The sun was setting (in the west as usual) before Alice and Noel returned. They came across the wide fields from the direction of a pinewood that we had never explored yet, though always meaning to.
"There!" said d.i.c.ky, "they"ve been and gone to the pinewood all by themselves."
But the hatchet d.i.c.ky was still cherishing in his breast was buried at once under the first words spoken by the returning party of explorers.
"Oh, Oswald," said Alice, "oh, d.i.c.ky, we"ve found a treasure!"
d.i.c.ky hammered the last nail into the Saracen watch-tower.
"Not a real money one?" he said, dropping the hammer--which was a careless thing to do, and the author told him so at the time.
"No, not a money one, but it"s real all the same. Let"s have a council, and I"ll tell you."
It was then that d.i.c.ky showed that if he dropped hammers it was not because he could not bury hatchets. He said, "Righto! There"s room for us all up here. Catch hold, Noel. Oswald, give him a shove up. Alice and he can sit in the Saracens" watch-tower, and I"ll keep hold of H. O. if you"ll hand him up."
Alice was full of the politest compliments about the architecture of the Saracens" watch-tower, and Noel said:
"I say, d.i.c.ky, I"m awfully sorry about your prize."
"It"s all right," said d.i.c.ky; "I rubbed it out with bread."
Noel opened his mouth. He looks like a very young bird when he does this.
"Then my beautiful poem"s turned into dirty bread-crumbs," he said slowly.
"Never mind," said Alice; "I remember nearly every word of it: we"ll write it out again after tea."
"I thought you"d be so pleased," Noel went on, "because it makes a book more valuable to have an author"s writing in it. Albert"s uncle told me so."
"But it has to be the same author that wrote the book," Alice explained, "and it was Caesar wrote that book. And you aren"t Caesar _yet_, you know."
"Nor don"t want to be," said Noel.
Oswald now thought that politeness was satisfied on both sides, so he said:
"What price treasures?"
And then Alice told. But it had to be in whispers, because the next-door people, who always did things at times when not convenient to us, were now taking in their washing off the line. I heard them remark that it was a "good drying day."
"Well," Alice mysteriously observed, "it was like this. (Do you think the Saracens" watch-tower is really safe for two? It seems to go down awfully much in the middle.)"
"Sit nearer the ends, then," said Oswald. "Well?"
"We thought we would go to the pinewoods because of reading in Bret Harte that the resinous balsam of the pine is healing to the wounded spirit."
"I should have thought if anybody"s spirit was wounded..." said d.i.c.ky in tones of heatening indignantness.
"Yes, I know. But you"d got the oak, and I expect oaks are just as good, if not better, especially for English people, because of Oakapple Day--and----Where was I?"
We told her.
"So we went, and it is a very nice wood--quite tulgy, you know. We expected to see a Banders.n.a.t.c.h every minute, didn"t we, Noel? It"s not very big, though, and on the other side there"s an enchanted desert--rather bare, with patches of gra.s.s and brambles. And in the very middle of it we found the treasure."
"Let"s have a squint at the treasure," said d.i.c.ky. "Did you fetch it along?"
Noel and Alice sn.i.g.g.e.red.
"Not exactly," said Alice; "the treasure is a _house_."
"It"s an enchanted house," said Noel, "and it"s a deserted house, and the garden is like in "The Sensitive Plant" after the lady has given up attending."
"Did you go in?" we asked.
"No," said Alice; "we came back for you. And we asked an old man, and he _did_ say it was in Chancery, so no one can live in it."
H. O. asked what was enchancery.
"I"m certain the old man meant enchanted," said Noel, "only I expect that"s the old-fashioned word for it. Enchanceried is a very nice word.
And it means it"s an enchanted house, just like I said."
Nurse now came out to remark, "Tea, my dears," so we left the Saracens"
tower and went in to that meal.
Noel began to make a poem called "The Enchanceried House," but we got him to stop till there was more for him to write about. There soon was more, and more than enough, as it turned out.
The setting sun had set, but it had left a redness in the sky (like one of those distant fires that you go after, and they are always miles from where you are) which shone through the pinetrees. The house looked black and mysterious against the strawberry-ice-coloured horizon.