The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (125 page)

And then there was a moment when nothing was said or done.

Gerald felt through the thick darkness, and the thick silence, and the thick scent of old earth shut up, and he got hold of Jimmy’s hand.

“It’s all right, Jimmy, old chap,” he said; “it’s not a dream now. It’s that beastly ring again. I had to wish us here, to get you back at all out of your dream.”

“Wish us where?” Jimmy held on to the hand in a way that in the daylight of life he would have been the first to call babyish.

“Inside the passage—behind the Flora statue,” said Gerald, adding, “it’s all right, really.”

“Oh, I dare say it’s all right,” Jimmy answered through the dark, with an irritation not strong enough to make him loosen his hold of his brother’s hand.
“But how are we going to get out?”

Then Gerald knew what it was that was waiting to make him feel more giddy than the lightning flight from Cheapside to Yalding Towers had been able to make him. But he said stoutly:

“I’ll wish us out, of course.” Though all the time he knew that the ring would not undo its given wishes.

It didn’t.

Gerald wished. He handed the ring carefully to Jimmy, through the thick darkness. And Jimmy wished.

And there they still were, in that black passage behind Flora, that had led—in the case of one Ugly-Wugly at least—to ‘a good hotel.’ And the stone door was shut. And they did not know even which way to turn to it.

“If I only had some matches!” said Gerald.

“Why didn’t you leave me in the dream?” Jimmy almost whimpered. “It was light there, and I was just going to have salmon and cucumber.”

“I,” rejoined Gerald in gloom, “was just going to have steak and fried potatoes.”

The silence, and the darkness, and the earthy scent were all they had now.

“I always wondered what it would be like,” said Jimmy in low, even tones, “to be buried alive. And now I know! Oh!” his voice suddenly rose to a shriek, “it isn’t true, it isn’t! It’s a dream—that’s what it is!”

There was a pause while you could have counted ten. Then “Yes,” said Gerald bravely, through the scent and the silence and the darkness, “it’s just a dream, Jimmy, old chap. We’ll just hold on, and call out now and then just for the lark of the thing. But it’s really only a dream, of course.”

“Of course,” said Jimmy in the silence and the darkness and the scent of old earth.

CHAPTER IX

There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs for ever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. And when once people have found one of the little weak spots in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets, and the like, almost anything may happen. Thus it is not surprising that Mabel and Kathleen, conscientiously conducting one of the dullest dolls tea-parties at which either had ever assisted, should suddenly, and both at once, have felt a strange, unreasonable, but quite irresistible desire to return instantly to the Temple of Flora—even at the cost of leaving the dolls tea-service in an unwashed state, and only half the raisins eaten. They went—as one has to go when the magic impulse drives one—against their better judgement, against their wills almost.

And the nearer they came to the Temple of Flora, in the golden hush of the afternoon, the more certain each was that they could not possibly have done otherwise.

And this explains exactly how it was that when Gerald and Jimmy, holding hands in the darkness of the passage, uttered their first concerted yell, “just for the lark of the thing,” that yell was instantly answered from outside.

A crack of light showed in that part of the passage where they had least expected the door to be. The stone door itself swung slowly open, and they were out of it, in the Temple of Flora, blinking in the good daylight, an unresisting prey to Kathleen’s embraces and the questionings of Mabel.

“And you left that Ugly-Wugly loose in London,” Mabel pointed out; “you might have wished it to be with you, too.”

“It’s all right where it is,” said Gerald. “I couldn’t think of everything. And besides, no, thank you! Now we’ll go home and seal up the ring in an envelope.”

“
I
haven’t done anything with the ring yet,” said Kathleen.

“I shouldn’t think you’d want to when you see the sort of things it does with you,” said Gerald.

“It wouldn’t do things like that if
I
was wishing with it,” Kathleen protested.

“Look here,” said Mabel, “let’s just put it back in the treasure-room and have done with it. I oughtn’t ever to have taken it away, really. It’s a sort of stealing. It’s quite as bad, really, as Eliza borrowing it to astonish her gentleman friend with.”

“I don’t mind putting it back if you like,” said Gerald, “only if any of us do think of a sensible wish you’ll let us have it out again, of course?”

“Of course, of course,” Mabel agreed.

So they trooped up to the castle, and Mabel once more worked the spring that let down the panelling and showed the jewels, and the ring was put back among the odd dull ornaments that Mabel had once said were magic.

“How innocent it looks!” said Gerald. “You wouldn’t think there was any magic about it. It’s just like an old silly ring. I wonder if what Mabel said about the other things is true! Suppose we try.”

“
Don’t
!” said Kathleen. “
I
think magic things are spiteful. They just enjoy getting you into tight places.”

“I’d like to try,” said Mabel, “only—well, everything’s been rather upsetting, and I’ve forgotten what I said anything was.”

So had the others. Perhaps that was why, when Gerald said that a bronze buckle laid on the foot would have the effect of seven-league boots, it didn’t; when Jimmy, a little of the City man he had been clinging to him still, said that the steel collar would ensure your always having money in your pockets, his own remained empty; and when Mabel and Kathleen invented qualities of the most delightful nature for various rings and chains and brooches, nothing at all happened.

“It’s only the ring that’s magic,” said Mabel at last; “and, I say!” she added, in quite a different voice.

“What?”

“Suppose even the ring isn’t!”

“But we know it is.”

“I don’t,” said Mabel. “I believe it’s not today at all. I believe it’s the other day—we’ve just dreamed all these things. It’s the day I made up that nonsense about the ring.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Gerald; “you were in your Princess-clothes then.

“What Princess-clothes?” said Mabel, opening her dark eyes very wide.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Gerald wearily.

“I’m not silly,” said Mabel; “and I think it’s time you went. I’m sure Jimmy wants his tea.”

“Of course I do,” said Jimmy. “But you had got the Princess-clothes that day. Come along; let’s shut up the shutters and leave the ring in its long home.”

“What ring?” said Mabel.

“Don’t take any notice of her,” said Gerald. “She’s only trying to be funny.”

“No, I’m not,” said Mabel; “but I’m inspired like a Python or a Sibylline lady. What ring?”

“The wishing-ring,” said Kathleen; “the invisibility ring.”

“Don’t you see
now
,” said Mabel, her eyes wider than ever, “the ring’s what you
say
it is? That’s how it came to make us invisible—I just said it. Oh, we can’t leave it here, if that’s what it is. It isn’t stealing, really, when it’s as valuable as that, you see. Say what it is.”

“It’s a wishing-ring,” said Jimmy.

“We’ve had that before—and you had your silly wish,” said Mabel, more and more excited. “I say it isn’t a wishing-ring. I say it’s a ring that makes the wearer four yards high.”

She had caught up the ring as she spoke, and even as she spoke the ring showed high above the children’s heads on the finger of an impossible Mabel, who was, indeed, twelve feet high.

“Now you’ve done it!” said Gerald and he was right. It was in vain that Mabel asserted that the ring was a wishing-ring. It quite clearly wasn’t; it was what she had said it was.

“And you can’t tell at all how long the effect will last,” said Gerald. “Look at the invisibleness.” This is difficult to do, but the others understood him.

“It may last for days,” said Kathleen. “Oh, Mabel, it
was
silly of you!”

“That’s right, rub it in,” said Mabel bitterly; “you should have believed me when I said it was what I said it was. Then I shouldn’t have had to show you, and I shouldn’t be this silly size. What am I to do now, I should like to know?”

“We must conceal you till you get your right size again—that’s all,” said Gerald practically.

“Yes—but
where
?” said Mabel, stamping a foot twenty-four inches long.

“In one of the empty rooms. You wouldn’t be afraid?”

“Of course not,” said Mabel. “Oh, I do wish we’d just put the ring back and left it.”

“Well, it wasn’t us that didn’t,” said Jimmy, with more truth than grammar.

“I shall put it back now,” said Mabel, tugging at it.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Gerald thoughtfully. “You don’t want to stay that length, do you? And unless the ring’s on your finger when the time’s up, I dare say it wouldn’t act.”

The exalted Mabel sullenly touched the spring. The panels slowly slid into place, and all the bright jewels were hidden. Once more the room was merely eight-sided, panelled, sunlit, and unfurnished.

“Now,” said Mabel, “where am I to hide? It’s a good thing auntie gave me leave to stay the night with you. As it is, one of you will have to stay the night with me. I’m not going to be left alone, the silly height I am.”

Height was the right word; Mabel had said “four yards high”—and she
was
four yards high. But she was hardly any thicker than when her height was four feet seven, and the effect was, as Gerald remarked, “wonderfully worm-like.” Her clothes had, of course, grown with her, and she looked like a little girl reflected in one of those long bent mirrors at Rosherville Gardens, that make stout people look so happily slender, and slender people so sadly scraggy. She sat down suddenly on the floor, and it was like a four-fold foot-rule folding itself up.

“It’s no use sitting there, girl,” said Gerald.

“I’m not sitting here,” retorted Mabel; “I only got down so as to be able to get through the door. It’ll have to be hands and knees through most places for me now, I suppose.”

“Aren’t you hungry?” Jimmy asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” said Mabel desolately; “it’s—it’s such a long way off!”

“Well, I’ll scout,” said Gerald; “if the coast’s clear—”

“Look here,” said Mabel, “I think I’d rather be out of doors till it gets dark.”

“You
can’t
. Someone’s certain to see you.”

“Not if I go through the yew-hedge,” said Mabel. “There’s a yew-hedge with a passage along its inside like the box-hedge in
The Luck of the Vails
.

“In
what
?”

“
The Luck of the Vails
. It’s a ripping book. It was that book first set me on to hunt for hidden doors in panels and things. If I crept along that on my front, like a serpent it comes out amongst the rhododendrons, close by the dinosaurus we could camp there.

“There’s tea,” said Gerald, who had had no dinner.

“That’s just what there isn’t,” said Jimmy, who had had none either.

“Oh, you
won’t
desert me!” said Mabel. “Look here—I’ll write to auntie. She’ll give you the things for a picnic, if she’s there and awake. If she isn’t, one of the maids will.”

So she wrote on a leaf of Gerald’s invaluable pocketbook:

DEAREST AUNTIE

Please may we have some things for a picnic? Gerald will bring them. I would come myself, but I am a little tired. I think I have been growing rather fast.

Your loving niece,

MABEL.

P.S. Lots, please, because some of us are very hungry.

It was found difficult, but possible, for Mabel to creep along the tunnel in the yew-hedge. Possible, but slow, so that the three had hardly had time to settle themselves among the rhododendrons and to wonder bitterly what on earth Gerald was up to, to be such a time gone, when he returned, panting under the weight of a covered basket. He dumped it down on the fine grass carpet, groaned, and added, “But it’s worth it. Where’s our Mabel?”

The long, pale face of Mabel peered out from rhododendron leaves, very near the ground.

“I look just like anybody else like this, don’t I?” she asked anxiously; “all the rest of me’s miles away, under different bushes.”

“We’ve covered up the bits between the bushes with bracken and leaves,” said Kathleen, avoiding the question; “don’t wriggle, Mabel, or you’ll waggle them off.”

Jimmy was eagerly unpacking the basket. It was a generous tea. A long loaf, butter in a cabbage-leaf, a bottle of milk, a bottle of water, cake, and large, smooth, yellow gooseberries in a box that had once held an extra-sized bottle of somebody’s matchless something for the hair and moustache. Mabel cautiously advanced her incredible arms from the rhododendron and leaned on one of her spindly elbows, Gerald cut bread and butter, while Kathleen obligingly ran round, at Mabel’s request, to see that the green coverings had not dropped from any of the remoter parts of Mabel’s person. Then there was a happy, hungry silence, broken only by those brief, impassioned suggestions natural to such an occasion:

“More cake, please.”

“Milk ahoy, there.”

“Chuck us the goosegogs.”

Everyone grew calmer—more contented with their lot. A pleasant feeling, half tiredness and half restfulness, crept to the extremities of the party. Even the unfortunate Mabel was conscious of it in her remote feet, that lay crossed under the third rhododendron to the north-north-west of the tea-party. Gerald did but voice the feelings of the others when he said, not without regret:

“Well, I’m a new man, but I couldn’t eat so much as another goosegog if you paid me.”

“
I
could,” said Mabel; “yes, I know they’re all gone, and I’ve had my share. But I
could
. It’s me being so long, I suppose.”

A delicious after-food peace filled the summer air. At a little distance the green-lichened grey of the vast stone dinosaurus showed through the shrubs. He, too, seemed peaceful and happy. Gerald caught his stone eye through a gap in the foliage. His glance seemed somehow sympathetic.

“I dare say he liked a good meal in his day,” said Gerald, stretching luxuriously.

“Who did?”