The House of Arden quotes

It was a pretty house, and it would have been a pleasant house but for one thing—the lodgers. For I cannot conceal from you any longer that Edred Arden lived with his aunt, and that his aunt let lodgings.

Letting lodgings is one of the most unpleasant of all possible ways of earning your living, and I advise you to try every other honest way of earning your living before you take to that.

Because people who go to the seaside and take lodgings seem, somehow, much harder to please than the people who go to hotels. They want ever so much more waiting on; they want so many meals, and at such odd times.

His back was towards them.

Now it is very difficult to address a back politely.

So you will not be surprised to learn that Edred said, “Hi!” and Elfrida said, “Halloa! I say!”

“Let’s call each other Lord and Lady Arden all the time, and pretend that we’re no relation,” said Elfrida. And really that helped tremendously.

It is wonderful how much more polite you can be to outsiders than you can to your relations, who are, when all’s said and done, the people you really love.

As the time went on they grew more and more careful. It was like building a house of cards. As hour after hour of blameless politeness was added to the score, they grew almost breathlessly anxious.

And last week was really a hundred years on in the future. And yet it was last week too—from where they were.

Time is a very confusing thing, as the children remarked to each other more than once.

They found the “George” halfway up Arden village, a stately, great house shaped like an E, with many windows and a great porch with a balcony over it.

And then the children remembered that this was the time before railways and telegrams and telephones.

It is always difficult to remember exactly where one is when one happens to get into a century that is not one’s own.

Edred would have liked to stay all day watching the busyness of everyone and the beautifulness of the horses, but Elfrida dragged him away.

And they were all looking out to sea.

The sea was like the inside of an oyster-shell, barred with ridges of cold silver, the sky above was grey as a gull’s wing, and between sea and sky a ship was driving straight on to the rocks a hundred feet below.

“ ’Tis a French ship, by her rig,” someone said.

… children ran towards the house they knew that every man in that crowd would now be ready to risk his life to save from the sea those Frenchies whom they had sat up all night to kill with swords and scythes and bills and meat-choppers.

Men are queer creatures!

To get out of it—back to the safe quiet of a life without shipwrecks and witches—that was all Elfrida wanted.

“Shall I order supper for you at Arden?” he shouted back mockingly, and rode on across country, with Elfrida, breathlessly frightened and consciously brave, leaning back against his shoulder.

It is a very wonderful feeling, riding on a great strong, dark horse, through a deepening night in a strange country, held fast by an arm you can trust, and with the muscles of a horse’s great shoulder rippling against your legs as they hang helplessly down.

Elfrida ceased to think of Mouldiwarps or try to be a poet.

“They’ve come for him! All is lost! We are betrayed! What shall we do?”

“Eat,” said Elfrida⁠—“eat for your life.”

She pushed Bet into a chair and thrust a plate before her, put a chunk of meat-pie on her plate and another on her own.

The gentlemen exchanged glances and crowded round her.

Elfrida shrugged the shoulders of her mind⁠—if a mind has shoulders⁠—and told herself that it didn’t matter.

History knew best, no doubt, and whatever seemed to be happening now was only history.

“Why don’t you open the door?” she called impatiently. And there was no answer. Behind that panel silence seemed a thousand times more silent than it ever had before.

And it was so dark. And Edred had the matches in his pocket.

“Edred! Edred!” she called suddenly and very loud, “why don’t you open the door?”

What do you usually do when you are shut up in a secret room, with no chance of getting out for hours?

As for me, I always say poetry to myself.

It is one of the uses of poetry—one says it to oneself in distressing circumstances of that kind, or when one has to wait at railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night. You will find poetry most useful for this purpose.

He wished he had not quarrelled with her. Everything was very miserable. He went to the window and looked out, as Elfrida had done, to see if he could see a red dress or a violet dress coming over the downs. But there was nothing.

And the time got longer and longer, drawing itself out like a putty snake, when you rub it between your warm hands

—and at last, what with misery, and having cried a good deal, and its being long past teatime, he fell asleep on the window-seat.

“Aha,” said Edred, “you’d like to have thought of that yourself, wouldn’t you? I can be clever sometimes, same as you can.”

It is very annoying to have our thoughts read.

Elfrida said swiftly, “Not often you can’t,” and then stopped short. For a moment the children stood looking at each other with a very peculiar expression. Then a sigh of relief broke from each.

Elfrida frowned. Afterwards she was glad that she had done no more than frown.

It is dangerous, as you know, to quarrel in a boat, but far more dangerous to quarrel in a century that is not your own.

She frowned and opened her mouth. And just as her mouth opened the door of the room followed its example, and a short, dark, cross-looking woman in a brown skirt and strange cap came hurrying in.

When they stopped their game to rest on a stone step, leaning against a stone seat, old Parrot-nose walked very softly up behind the seat, and stood there where they could not see him and listened.

Listening is very dishonourable, as we all know, but in those days tutors did not always think it necessary to behave honourably to their pupils.

I always have thought, and I always shall think, that it was the eavesdropping of that tiresome old tutor, Mr. Parados—or Parrot-nose—which caused all the mischief.

By tomorrow night all will be well, and we shall lie down in peace.”

But when tomorrow night came it had, as all nights have, the day’s work behind it.

Lord Arden and his lady and the little children lay, not in Arden House in Soho, not in Arden Castle on the downs by the sea, but in the Tower of London, charged with high treason and awaiting their trial.

He wanted to find Elfrida and get back to Arden. Everyone was very kind to him, but he had to be very much quieter than he was used to being, and to say Sir and Madam, and not to speak till he was spoken to.

You have no idea how tiresome it is not to speak till you are spoken to, with the world full, as it is, of a thousand interesting things that you want to ask questions about.

One day—for they were there quite a number of days—Edred met someone who seemed to like answering questions, and this made more difference than perhaps you would think.

“But I must be even with old Parrot-nose,” said Edred.

He was feeling awfully brave and splendid inside, because of the way he had planned and carried out the Nithsdale rescue of Elfrida

; and also he felt that he could not bear to go back to his own times without somehow marking his feelings about Mr. Parados.

“If we stay here we shall only be dragged into some new adventure,” she urged, “I know we shall.

I never in my life knew such a place as history for adventures to happen in.

And I’m tired, besides. Oh, Edred, do come along!”

danger! danger! You’d better get off while you can—while you can.” A quite violent ruffling of the fur round the neck of her coat said, as plain as it could speak, “Don’t stop to jaw. Go now—now—now!”

When you say a lady is a “true daughter of Eve” you mean that she is inquisitive.

Elfrida was enough Eve’s daughter to scurry to the window and look out.

The light—broad, oblong—suddenly changed from mere light to figures, to movement. It was a living picture—rather like a cinematograph, but much more like something else.

The something else that it was more like was life.

It seemed as though the window had been opened—as though they could see through it into the world of light and sunshine and blue sky—the world where things happen.

The children looked at each other in something quite like despair.

“I feel,” said the boy, “like a baffled burglar.”

“I feel,” said the girl, “as if I was just going to understand something. Oh, wait a minute; it’s coming.

“Take hands,” cried the Mouldiwarp.

“Always hold hands when there is magic about.”

“Both hands,” said the Mouldiwarp; and each child reached out a hand, that was caught and held. Round and round, incredibly swifter and swifter, went the cloud funnel, and the voice of the mole at their feet sounded faint and far away.

“Don’t!” he said. “I have not to think. And I’ve heard that history’s all lies. Perhaps they’ll always be happy like they are now.

The only way to enjoy the past is not to think of the future⁠—the past’s future, I mean⁠—

and I’ve got something else to say to you presently,” he added rather sternly.

“Bless your silly little hearts,” said the Mouldiwarp, “she won’t drown. She’ll just get home by the back door, that’s all.

There’s a door at the bottom of every pond, if you can only find it.

”

And he will hate himself for those thoughts, though he did not mean or wish to have them, as long as he lives, every time he remembers them.

That is the worst of thoughts, they live forever.

“I don’t want to be Lord Arden,” was what he instantly said—“I want my father.” And what he said was true, in spite of those thoughts that he didn’t mean to have and can never forget.