It is a gloomy thing the girls learnt at the High School, and we always use it when we want a priestly chant.
Alice stopped short by the hat-stand, and held up her hands as well as she could for the tablecloth, and said —
‘Now, great altar of the golden idol, yield me the divining-rod that I may use it for the good of the suffering people.’
The umbrella-stand was the altar of the golden idol, and it yielded her the old school umbrella. She carried it between her palms.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I shall sing the magic chant. You mustn’t say anything, but just follow wherever I go — like follow my leader, you know — and when there is gold underneath the magic rod will twist in the hand of the priestess like a live thing that seeks to be free. Then you will dig, and the golden treasure will be revealed. H. O., if you make that clatter with your boots they’ll come and tell us not to. Now come on all of you.’
So she went upstairs and down and into every room. We followed her on tiptoe, and Alice sang as she went. What she sang is not out of a book — Noel made it up while she was dressing up for the priestess.
Ashen rod cold
That here I hold,
Teach me where to find the gold.
When we came to where Eliza was, she said, ‘Get along with you’; but Dora said it was only a game, and we wouldn’t touch anything, and our boots were quite clean, and Eliza might as well let us. So she did.
It was all right for the priestess, but it was a little dull for the rest of us, because she wouldn’t let us sing, too; so we said we’d had enough of it, and if she couldn’t find the gold we’d leave off and play something else. The priestess said, ‘All right, wait a minute,’ and went on singing. Then we all followed her back into the nursery, where the carpet was up and the boards smelt of soft soap. Then she said, ‘It moves, it moves! Once more the choral hymn!’ So we sang ‘Heroes’ again, and in the middle the umbrella dropped from her hands.
‘The magic rod has spoken,’ said Alice; ‘dig here, and that with courage and despatch.’ We didn’t quite see how to dig, but we all began to scratch on the floor with our hands, but the priestess said, ‘Don’t be so silly! It’s the place where they come to do the gas. The board’s loose. Dig an you value your lives, for ere sundown the dragon who guards this spoil will return in his fiery fury and make you his unresisting prey.’
So we dug — that is, we got the loose board up. And Alice threw up her arms and cried —
‘See the rich treasure — the gold in thick layers, with silver and diamonds stuck in it!’
‘Like currants in cake,’ said H. O.
‘It’s a lovely treasure,’ said Dicky yawning. ‘Let’s come back and carry it away another day.’
But Alice was kneeling by the hole.
‘Let me feast my eyes on the golden splendour,’ she said, ‘hidden these long centuries from the human eye. Behold how the magic rod has led us to treasures more — Oswald, don’t push so! — more bright than ever monarch — I say, there is something down there, really. I saw it shine!’
We thought she was kidding, but when she began to try to get into the hole, which was much too small, we saw she meant it, so I said, ‘Let’s have a squint,’ and I looked, but I couldn’t see anything, even when I lay down on my stomach. The others lay down on their stomachs too and tried to see, all but Noel, who stood and looked at us and said we were the great serpents come down to drink at the magic pool. He wanted to be the knight and slay the great serpents with his good sword — he even drew the umbrella ready — but Alice said, ‘All right, we will in a minute. But now — I’m sure I saw it; do get a match, Noel, there’s a dear.’
‘What did you see?’ asked Noel, beginning to go for the matches very slowly.
‘Something bright, away in the corner under the board against the beam.’
‘Perhaps it was a rat’s eye,’ Noel said, ‘or a snake’s,’ and we did not put our heads quite so close to the hole till he came back with the matches.
Then I struck a match, and Alice cried, ‘There it is!’ And there it was, and it was a half-sovereign, partly dusty and partly bright. We think perhaps a mouse, disturbed by the carpets being taken up, may have brushed the dust of years from part of the half-sovereign with his tail. We can’t imagine how it came there, only Dora thinks she remembers once when H. O. was very little Mother gave him some money to hold, and he dropped it, and it rolled all over the floor. So we think perhaps this was part of it. We were very glad. H. O. wanted to go out at once and buy a mask he had seen for fourpence. It had been a shilling mask, but now it was going very cheap because Guy Fawkes’ Day was over, and it was a little cracked at the top. But Dora said, ‘I don’t know that it’s our money. Let’s wait and ask Father.’
But H. O. did not care about waiting, and I felt for him. Dora is rather like grown-ups in that way; she does not seem to understand that when you want a thing you do want it, and that you don’t wish to wait, even a minute.
So we went and asked Albert-next-door’s uncle. He was pegging away at one of the rotten novels he has to write to make his living, but he said we weren’t interrupting him at all.
‘My hero’s folly has involved him in a difficulty,’ he said. ‘It is his own fault. I will leave him to meditate on the incredible fatuity — the hare-brained recklessness — which have brought him to this pass. It will be a lesson to him. I, meantime, will give myself unreservedly to the pleasures of your conversation.’
That’s one thing I like Albert’s uncle for. He always talks like a book, and yet you can always understand what he means. I think he is more like us, inside of his mind, than most grown-up people are. He can pretend beautifully. I never met anyone else so good at it, except our robber, and we began it, with him. But it was Albert’s uncle who first taught us how to make people talk like books when you’re playing things, and he made us learn to tell a story straight from the beginning, not starting in the middle like most people do.
So now Oswald remembered what he had been told, as he generally does, and began at the beginning, but when he came to where Alice said she was the priestess, Albert’s uncle said —
‘Let the priestess herself set forth the tale in fitting speech.’
So Alice said, ‘O high priest of the great idol, the humblest of thy slaves took the school umbrella for a divining-rod, and sang the song of inver — what’s-it’s-name?’
‘Invocation perhaps?’ said Albert’s uncle. ‘Yes; and then I went about and about and the others got tired, so the divining-rod fell on a certain spot, and I said, “Dig”, and we dug — it was where the loose board is for the gas men — and then there really and truly was a half-sovereign lying under the boards, and here it is.’
Albert’s uncle took it and looked at it.
‘The great high priest will bite it to see if it’s good,’ he said, and he did. ‘I congratulate you,’ he went on; ‘you are indeed among those favoured by the Immortals. First you find half-crowns in the garden, and now this. The high priest advises you to tell your Father, and ask if you may keep it. My hero has become penitent, but impatient. I must pull him out of this scrape. Ye have my leave to depart.’
Of course we know from Kipling that that means, ‘You’d better bunk, and be sharp about it,’ so we came away. I