The Enchanted Castle | Page 5

added absently.
"Quick march!" was Gerald's only reply.
And they marched. Under the drifted damp leaves the path was firm
and stony to their shuffling feet. At the dark arch they stopped.
"There are steps down," said Jimmy.
"It is an ice-house," said Gerald.
"Don't let's," said Kathleen.
"Our hero," said Gerald, "who nothing could dismay, raised the
faltering hopes of his abject minions by saying that he was jolly well
going on, and they could do as they liked about it."
"If you call names," said Jimmy, "you can go on by yourself. He added,
"So there!"
"It's part of the game, silly," explained Gerald kindly. "You can be
Captain tomorrow, so you'd better hold your jaw now, and begin to
think about what names you'll call us when it's your turn."
Very slowly and carefully they went down the steps. A vaulted stone

arched over their heads. Gerald struck a match when the last step was
found to have no edge, and to be, in fact, the beginning of a passage,
turning to the left.
"This," said Jimmy, "will take us back into the road."
"Or under it," said Gerald. "We've come down eleven steps."
They went on, following their leader, who went very slowly for fear, as
he explained, of steps. The passage was very dark.
"I don't half like it!" whispered Jimmy.
Then came a glimmer of daylight that grew and grew, and presently
ended in another arch that looked out over a scene so like a picture out
of a book about Italy that everyone's breath was taken away, and they
simply walked forward silent and staring. A short avenue of cypresses
led, widening as it went, to a marble terrace that lay broad and white in
the sunlight. The children, blinking, leaned their arms on the broad, flat
balustrade and gazed. Immediately below them was a lake just like a
lake in "The Beauties of Italy" a lake with swans and an island and
weeping willows; beyond it were green slopes dotted with groves of
trees, and amid the trees gleamed the white limbs of statues. Against a
little hill to the left was a round white building with pillars, and to the
right a waterfall came tumbling down among mossy stones to splash
into the lake. Steps fed from the terrace to the water, and other steps to
the green lawns beside it. Away across the grassy slopes deer were
feeding, and in the distance where the groves of trees thickened into
what looked almost a forest were enormous shapes of grey stone, like
nothing that the children had ever seen before.
"That chap at school ," said Gerald.
"It is an enchanted castle," said Kathleen.
"I don't see any castle," said Jimmy.
"What do you call that, then?" Gerald pointed to where, beyond a belt

of lime-trees, white towers and turrets broke the blue of the sky.
"There doesn't seem to be anyone about," said Kathleen, "and yet it's all
so tidy. I believe it is magic"
"Magic mowing machines," Jimmy suggested.
"If we were in a book it would be an enchanted castle certain to be,"
said Kathleen.
"It is an enchanted castle," said Gerald in hollow tones.
"But there aren't any" Jimmy was quite positive.
"How do you know? Do you think there's nothing in the world but what
you've seen?" His scorn was crushing.
"I think magic went out when people began to have steam-engines,"
Jimmy insisted, "and newspapers, and telephones and wireless
telegraphing."
"Wireless is rather like magic when you come to think of it," said
Gerald.
"Oh, that sort!" Jimmy's contempt was deep.
"Perhaps there's given up being magic because people didn't believe in
it any more," said Kathleen.
"Well, don't let's spoil the show with any silly old not believing," said
Gerald with decision. "I'm going to believe in magic as hard as I can.
This is an enchanted garden, and that's an enchanted castle, and I'm
jolly well going to explore."
The dauntless knight then led the way, leaving his ignorant squires to
follow or not, just as they jolly well chose. He rolled off the balustrade
and strode firmly down towards the lawn, his boots making, as they
went, a clatter full of determination. The others followed. There never
was such a garden out of a picture or a fairy-tale. They passed quite

close by the deer, who only raised their pretty heads to look, and did
not seem startled at all. And after a long stretch of turf they passed
under the heaped-up heavy masses of lime-trees and came into a
rose-garden, bordered with thick, close-cut yew hedges, and lying red
and pink and green and white in the sun, like a giant's many-coloured,
highly-scented pocket-handkerchief.
"I know we shall meet a gardener in a minute,