Count a hundred – yes, that’s right.’
They sat down on the close, white line of daisies and began to count earnestly.
‘And now,’ the Mouldiwarp said, when the hundred was counted, ‘it’s just the same time as it was when you began! So now you understand.’
They said they did, and I am sure I hope you do.
‘But if we sit here,’ said Elfrida, ‘how can we ever be anywhere else?’
‘You can’t,’ said the Mouldiwarp. ‘So one of you will have to stay and the other to go.’
‘You go, Elfie,’ said Edred. ‘I’ll stay till you come back.’
‘That’s very dear of you,’ said Elfrida, ‘but I’d rather we went together. Can’t you manage it?’ she asked the mole.
‘I could, of course,’ it said; ‘but … he’s afraid to go without you,’ it said suddenly.
‘He isn’t, and he’s two years younger than me, anyway,’ Elfrida said hotly.
‘Well, go without him,’ said the mole. ‘You understand perfectly, don’t you, that when he has stopped the clock your going is the same as your not going, and your being here is the same as not being, and – What I mean,’ it added, hastily returning to Sussex talk, ‘you needn’t be so turble put out. He won’t know you’ve gone nor yet ’e won’t believe you’ve come back. Be off with ’e, my gell.’
Elfrida hesitated. Then, ‘Oh, Edred,’ she said, ‘I have had such a time! Did it seem very long? I know it was horrid of me, but it was so interesting I couldn’t come back before.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Edred. ‘Well, go if you like; I don’t mind.’
‘I’ve been, I tell you,’ said Elfrida, dragging him off the second hand of the daisy clock, whose soldiers instantly resumed their wheeling march.
‘So now you see,’ said the mole. ‘Tell you what – next time you wanter stop de clock we’ll just wheel de barrer on to it. Now you go along and play. You’ve had enough Arden magic for this ’ere Fursday, so you ’ave, bless yer hearts an’ all.’
And they went.
That was how Edred perceived the adventure of ‘The Highwayman and the —.’ But I will not anticipate. The way the adventure seemed to Elfrida was rather different.
After the mole said ‘my gell’ she hesitated, and then went slowly towards the castle where the red roof of the house showed between the old, ivy-grown grey buttresses. She looked back, to see Edred and the Mouldiwarp close together on the face of the wonderful green and white clock. They were very still. She made her mind up – ran indoors and up the stairs and straight to The Door – she found it at once – shut the door, and opened the second chest to the right.
‘You change your clothes and the times change too—
Change, that is what you’ve got to do;
Cooroo, cooroo, cooroo, cooroo,’
said the pigeons or the silence or Elfrida.
‘I wonder,’ she said, slipping on a quilted green satin petticoat with pink rosebuds embroidered on it, ‘whether Shakespeare began being a poet like that – just little odd lines coming into his head without him meaning them to.’ And her mind as she put on a pink-and-white brocaded dress, was busy with such words as ‘Our great poet, Miss Elfrida Arden,’ or ‘Miss Arden, the female Milton of nowadays.’
She tied a white, soft little cap with pink ribbons under her chin and ran to open the door. She was not a bit afraid. It was like going into a dream. Nothing would be real there. Yet as she ran through the attic door and the lace of her sleeve caught on a big rusty nail and tore with a harsh hissing noise, she felt very sorry. In a thing that was only a dream that lace felt very real, and was very beautiful.
But she had only half the first half of a thought to give to the lace – for the door opened, not on the quiet corridor with the old prints at Arden Castle, but on a quite strange panelled room, full of a most extraordinary disorder of stuffs – feathers, dresses, cloaks, bonnet-boxes, parcels, rolls, packets, lace, scarves, hats, gloves, and finery of all sorts. There were a good many people there: serving-maids – she knew they were serving-maids – a gentleman in knee-breeches showing some fine china on a lacquered tray, and in the middle a very pretty, languishing-looking young lady with whom Elfrida at once fell deeply in love. All the women wore enormous crinolines – or hoops.
‘What! Hid in the closet all the while, cousin?’ said the young lady. ‘Oh, but it’s the slyest chit! Come, see how the new scarf becomes thy Bet. Is it not vastly modish?’
‘Yes,’ said Elfrida, not knowing in the least what to say.
Everything gave a sort of tremble and twist, like the glass bits in a kaleidoscope give just before they settle into a pattern. Then, as with the bits of glass, everything was settled, and Elfrida, instead of feeling that she was looking at a picture, felt that she was alive, with live people.
Some extraordinary accident had fixed in Elfrida’s mind the fact that Queen Anne began to reign in 1702. I don’t know how it was. These accidents do sometimes occur. And she knew that in Queen Anne’s day ladies wore hoops. Also, since they had gone back a hundred years to Boney’s time, perhaps this second venture had taken her back two hundred years. If so—
‘Please,’ she said, very quickly, ‘is this 1707 and is Queen Anne dead?’
‘Heaven forbid,’ said everyone in the room; and Bet added, ‘La, child, don’t delay us with your prattle. The coach will be here at ten, and we must lie at Tonbridge tonight.’
So Elfrida, all eyes and ears, squeezed into a corner between a band-box and a roll of thick, pink-flowered silk and looked and listened.
Bet, she gathered, was her cousin – an Arden, too, She and Bet and the maids, and an escort of she couldn’t quite make out how many men, were to go down to Arden together. The many men were because of the Arden jewels, that had been reset in the newest mode, and the collar of pearls and other presents Uncle Arden had given to Bet; and the highwaymen, who, she learned, were growing so bold that they would attack a coach in St. Paul’s Churchyard in broad daylight. Bet, it seemed, had undertaken commissions for all her girl friends near Arden, and had put off most of them till the last moment; She had carefully spent her own pin-money during her stay in town, and was now hastily spending theirs. The room was crowded with tradesmen and women actually pushing each other to get near the lady who had money to spend. One woman with a basket of china was offering it in exchange for old clothes or shoes, just as old women do now at back doors. And Cousin Bet’s maid had a very good bargain, she considered, in a china teapot and two dishes, in exchange for a worn, blue lutestring dress and a hooped petticoat of violet quilted satin. Then there was a hasty meal of cakes and hot chocolate, and, Elfrida being wrapped up in long-skirted coat and scarves almost beyond bearing, it was announced that the coach was at the door. It was a very tight fit when at last they were all packed into the carriage, for though the carriage was large there was a great deal to
