The Wonderful Garden or The Three Cs

She began to move the old silk handkerchief – Mrs. Wilmington considered the drawing-room too sacred for anything but silk – across the marble of a big console table, when she saw that something lay on it which was not usually there. It was a square thing like a letter, fastened with a sort of plaited ribbon of green and white silk and sealed; and on the end of the ribbon, which hung down about three inches, was another large green seal.

‘Look here, Char, how funny!’ said Caroline. ‘It looks awfully old. Written on vellum or something, and the seal’s uncle’s coat of arms.’

‘Let’s take it to uncle,’ Charlotte suggested. ‘Why, what’s up?’

Caroline was holding the letter out to her in a hand that shook.

‘Look!’ she said, and her voice shook too. ‘Look! the thing’s got our names on it.’

It had. On the square parchment face were the three names written in a strange yet readable handwriting, in ink that was faded as with the slow fading of many many years.

To

Caroline,

Charlotte, and

Charles

‘You open it, Caro,’ said Charlotte; and Charles, who had come across from his favourite mandarin, said, ‘Yes, Caro; you open it.’

It seemed a pity to break the green seals, and they were glad that the plaited silk slipped off easily when the letter was folded a little. But the second green seal had to be broken. The parchment, crackling in Caroline’s uncertain hands, was unfolded, and within was writing – lines in that same strange but clear hand, that same dim, faded ink.

At eight of the clock, lean on this marble table and gaze in the mirror and you shall see and speak with me. But look only in the mirror, uttering no word, and wear the pink verbena stuck behind your ears and the roses on your hearts. – Your kinswoman,

    Eleanour.

‘Then I didn’t spoil it,’ Charles spoke first; ‘not even for myself. Because it’s addressed to me the same as to you.’

‘Yes,’ said Caroline; ‘you’d better be between us two, though, Charles, and you must not look round.’

‘As if I should think of doing such a thing,’ said Charles indignantly.

At five minutes to eight that evening the three C.’s stood in front of the console table with pink verbena behind their ears and red roses over their hearts. Mrs. Wilmington had ‘done’ the vases in the dining-room that very morning, and curiously enough, roses and pink verbena were the flowers she had chosen.

‘It must be a strong magic to have made her do that,’ said Charlotte; ‘secrecy and family reunion.’

The room was not dark, of course, at that time in the evening, but then it was not quite light either.

The three C.’s, Charles occupying a guarded position in the middle, stood quite still and waited.

And presently, quite surely and certainly, with no nonsense about it, they saw in the looking-glass the door open that led to the Uncle’s secret staircase. And through it, in trailing velvet, came a lady – the lady of the picture. Her ruff, her coif, her darkly flashing jewels, her softly flashing eyes, – the children knew them well. Had they not seen them every day for weeks, framed in the old carved frame in the dining-room.

I am sorry to say that Charles at once tried to look round, but his sisters’ arms round his neck restrained him.

The lady glided to a spot from which she could look straight into the mirror and into the children’s eyes.

‘I am here,’ she said, in what Charlotte said afterwards was a starry voice. ‘Do not move or speak. I have come to you because you have believed in the old and beautiful things. You sought for my books and found them; also you have tried to use the magic spells to help the poor and needy, and to reconcile them who are at strife. Therefore you see what you desired to see, and when the flowering time is here, you shall have your heart’s desire. Do not speak or move lest you break the spell. I will sing to you. And when the last note dies away, close your eyes and count very slowly twenty-seven – the number of the years on earth of your kinswoman Eleanour.’

The beautiful presence moved along the room to the harp, that too was in the field of vision bounded by the tarnished gold of the mirror’s frame. She seated herself on a chair of faded needlework and drew the golden harp towards her. Then she sang softly in the starry voice that was hers in speaking. The song was in a language that none of them knew (Charles said afterwards that it was Latin), but it was not like any Latin the girls had ever heard. And the music was starry too. And the meaning of the song seemed to be love and parting and hope and noble dreams and the desire of great and good things; a song that made one very happy and yet made one feel as though one must cry. Softer and softer the voice grew, softer and softer the gentle, resonant tones of the harp. The song ended.

‘Now,’ said the lady, ‘farewell!’

The children closed their eyes, Caroline put her hand over Charles’s to ‘make sure,’ and so moved was he by the singing and the beautiful mystery of the whole adventure, that he hardly wriggled at all. There was a soft rustling sound behind them. Very slowly they all counted from one to twenty-seven. Caroline’s hand was clasping Charlotte’s, and at the end of the count a long pressure, returned, told each that the other had finished her counting.

They opened their eyes, turned round. The drawing-room was empty. It seemed impossible. Yet it was true.

‘It’s all over,’ said Charles.

‘But we’ve seen Her,’ said Caroline.

‘We’ve heard Her,’ said Charlotte.

‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘I intend to be perfectly good every minute, as long as I live. I wish Rupert had been here. He would never have done anything wrong again either, like he did when – ’

‘It’s very wrong,’ Charlotte interrupted, ‘to remember things other people have done wrong. Come on, let’s go back to the dining-room. It’s lonely here without Her.’

They went back to the dining-room and sat talking the great mystery over, almost in whispers, till it was time to go to bed.

‘And to-morrow we’re to go out,’ were Charlotte’s last words. ‘And the F. of H.D. ought to be flowering. It’s just seven weeks since we sowed it.’

‘Of course it is,’ said Caroline; ‘don’t talk as if you were the only one who remembered it. I say, if you had to say what your heart’s desire would be, what would it?’

‘To see Her again,’ said Charlotte, ‘and hear her starry voice.’

Next morning there was a discussion about the curtain the moment the three entered the dining-room. Ought they, or ought they not to remove the curtain. The girls were for leaving it, and putting up fresh garlands every day as long as they stayed in the Manor House. But Charles, who had faithfully put fresh flowers, not always garlanded, it is true, but always flowers, every day during the measle interval, had had enough of it, and said so.

‘And she’s had enough of it too,’ he said; ‘it was to make her come and she came. She won’t come again if you go on garlanding for ever.’

The Uncle, for a wonder, breakfasted with them. Charles appealed to him.

‘We saw her; she did come, her real self,’ he said; ‘yesterday. So the charm’s worked, and we oughtn’t to go on garlanding, ought we?’

‘You really saw her?’ the Uncle asked. And was told many things.

‘Then,’ he said, when he had listened to it all, ‘I think we might draw back the curtain. The magic has been wrought, and now all should be restored to its old state.’

‘I told you so,’ said Charles.

‘Shall I take down the curtain?’ said the Uncle. And the three C.’s said ‘Yes!’

He pulled at the green folds, and the curtain and drooping soft flowers of yesterday fell in a mingled heap on the floor. And from the frame, now disclosed, the lady’s lips almost smiled on them as her beautiful eyes gazed down on them with a new meaning.

‘But she’ll never speak to us again,’ said Caroline, almost in tears.

‘Or sing to us,’ said Charlotte, not very steadily.

‘Or tell us to count twenty-seven slowly,’ said Charles, sniffing a very little.