Harding’s Luck E. Nesbit (epub read online books .txt) 📖

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 grownups.”

“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 goodbye.

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