The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (61 page)

All the children sobbed, “There’s a cart at the farm, but, oh, don’t go!—don’t go!—oh, don’t go!—wait till daddy comes home!”

Mother took not the faintest notice. When she had set her mind on a thing she always went straight through
with it; she was rather like Anthea in this respect.

“Look here, Cyril,” she said, sticking on her hat with long sharp violet-headed pins, “I leave you in charge. Stay in the dressing-room. You can pretend to be swimming boats in the bath, or something. Say I gave you leave. But stay there, with the door on the landing open; I’ve locked the other. And don’t let anyone go into my room. Remember, no one knows the jewels are there except me, and all of you, and the wicked thieves who put them there. Robert, you stay in the garden and watch the windows. If anyone tries to get in you must run and tell the two farm men that I’ll send up to wait in the kitchen. I’ll tell them there are dangerous characters about—that’s true enough. Now remember, I trust you both. But I don’t think they’ll try it till after dark, so you’re quite safe. Good-bye, darlings.”

And she locked her bedroom door and went off with the key in her pocket.

The children could not help admiring the dashing and decid
ed way in which she had acted. They thought how useful she would have been in organising escape from some of the tight places in which they had found themselves of late in consequence of their ill-timed wishes.

“She’s a born general,” said Cyril,—“but
I
don’t know what’s going to happen to us. Even if the girls were to hunt for that old Sammyadd and find it, and get it to take the jewels away again, mother would only think we hadn’t looked out properly and let the burglars sneak in and get them—or else the police will think
we’ve
got them—or else that she’s been fooling them. Oh, it’s a pretty decent average ghastly mess this time, and no mistake!”

He savagely made a paper boat and began to float it in the bath, as he had been told to do.

Robert went into the garden and sat down on the worn yellow grass, with his miserable head between his helpless hands.

Anthea and Jane whispered together in the passage downstairs, where the cocoanut matt
ing was—with the hole in it that you always caught your foot in if you were not careful. Martha’s voice could be heard in the kitchen,—grumbling loud and long.

“It’s simply quite too dreadfully awful,” said Anthea. “How do you know all the diamonds are there, too? If they aren’t, the police will think mother and father have got them, and that they’ve only given up some of them for a kind of desperate blind. And they’ll be put in prison, and we shall be branded outcasts, the children of felons. And it won’t be at all nice for father and mother either,” she added, by a candid after-thought.

“But what can we
do
?” asked Jane.

“Nothing—at least we might look for the Psammead again. It’s a very,
very
hot day. He may have come out to warm that whisker of his.”

“He won’t give us any more beastly wishes today,” said Jane flatly. “He gets crosser and crosser every time we see him. I believe he hates having to give wishes.”

Anthea had been shaking her head gloomily
—now she stopped shaking it so suddenly that it really looked as though she were pricking up her ears.

“What is it?” asked Jane. “Oh, have you thought of something?”

“Our one chance,” cried Anthea dramatically; “the last lone-lorn forlorn hope. Come on.”

At a brisk trot she led the way to the sand-pit. Oh, joy!—there was the Psammead, basking in a golden sandy hollow and preening its whiskers happily in the glowing afternoon sun. The moment it saw them it whisked round and began to burrow—it evidently preferred its own company to theirs. But Anthea was too quick for it. She caught it by its furry shoulders gently but firmly, and held it.

“Here—none of that!” said the Psammead. “Leave go of me, will you?”

But Anthea held him fast.

“Dear kind darling Sammyadd,” she said breathlessly.

“Oh yes—it’s all very well,” it said; “you want another wish, I expect. But I can’t keep on slaving from
morning till night giving people their wishes. I must have
some
time to myself.”

“Do you hate giving wishes?” asked Anthea gently, and her voice trembled with excitement.

“Of course I do,” it said. “Leave go of me or I’ll bite!—I really will—I mean it. Oh, well, if you choose to risk it.”

Anthea risked it and held on.

“Look here,” she said, “don’t bite me—listen to reason. If you’ll only do what we want today, we’ll never ask you for another wish as long as we live.”

The Psammead was much moved.

“I’d do anything,” it said in a tearful voice. “I’d almost burst myself to give you one wish after another, as long as I held out, if you’d only never, never ask me to do it after today. If you knew how I hate to blow myself out with other people’s wishes, and how frightened I am always that I shall strai
n a muscle or something. And then to wake up every morning and know you’ve
got
to do it. You don’t know what it is—you don’t know what it is, you don’t!” Its voice cracked with emotion, and the last “don’t” was a squeak.

Anthea set it down gently on the sand.

“It’s all over now,” she said soothingly. “We promise faithfully never to ask for another wish after today.”

“Well, go ahead,” said the Psammead; “let’s get it over.”

“How many can you do?”

“I don’t know—as long as I can hold out.”

“Well, first, I wish Lady Chittenden may find she’s never lost her jewels.”

The Psammead blew itself out, collapsed, and said, “Done.”

“I wish,” said Anthea more slowly, “mother mayn’t get to the police.”

“Done,” said the creature after the proper interval.

“I wish,” said Jane suddenly, “mother could forget all about the diamonds.”

“Done,” said the Psammead; but its voice was weaker.

“Would you like to rest a little?” asked Anthea considerately.

“Yes, please,” said the Psammead; “and, before we go any further, will you wish something for me?”

“Can’t you do wishes for yourself?”

“Of course not,” it said; “we were always expected to give each other our wishes—not that we had any to speak of in the good old Megatherium days. Just wish, will you, that you may never be able, any of you, to tell anyone a word about
Me
.”

“Why?” asked Jane.

“Why, don’t you see, if you told grown-ups I should have no peace of my life. They’d get hold of me, and they wouldn’t wish silly things like you do, but real earnest things; and the scientific people would hit on some way of making things last after sunset, as likely as not; and they’d ask for a graduated income-tax, and old-age pensions, and manhood suffrage, and free secondary education, and dull things like that; and get them, and keep them, and the whole world would be turned topsy-turvy. Do wish it! Quick!”

Anthea repeated the Psammead’s wish, and it blew itself out to a larger size than they had yet seen it attain.

“And now,” it said as it collapsed, “can I do anything more for you?”

“Just one thing; and I think that clears everything up, doesn’t it, Jane? I wish Martha to forget about the diamond ring, and mother to forget about the keeper cleaning the windows.”

“It’s like the ‘Brass Bottle,’” said Jane.

“Yes, I’m glad we read that or I should never have thought of it.”

“Now,” said the Psammead faintly, “I’m almost worn out. Is there anything else?”

“No; only thank you kindly for all you’ve done for us, and I hope you’ll have a good long sleep, and I hope we shall see you again some day.”

“Is that a wish?” it said in a weak voice.

“Yes, please,” said the two girls together.

Then for the last time in this story they saw the Psammead blow itself out and collapse suddenly. It nodded to them, blinked its long snail’s eyes, burrowed, and disappeared, scratching fiercely to the last, and the sand closed over it.

* * * *

“I hope we’ve done right?” said Jane.

“I’m sure we have,” said Anthea. “Come on home and tell the boys.”

Anthea found Cyril glooming over his paper boats, and told him. Jane told Robert. The two tales were only just ended when mother walked in, hot and dusty. She explained that as she was being driven into Rochester to buy the girls’ autumn school-dresses the axle had broken, and but for the narrowness of the lane and the high soft hedges she would have been thrown out. As it was, she was not hurt, but she had had to walk home. “And oh, my dearest dear chicks,” she said, “I am simply dying for a cup of tea! Do run and see if the water boils!”

“So you see it’s all right,” Jane whispered. “She doesn’t remember.”

“No more does Martha,” said Anthea, who had been to ask after the state of the kettle.

As the servants sat at their tea, Beale the gamekeeper dropped in. He brought the welcome news that Lady Chittenden’s diamonds had not been lost at all. Lord Chittenden had taken them to be re-set and cleaned, and the maid who knew about it had gone for a holiday. So that was all right.

“I wonder if we ever shall see the Psammead again,” said Jane wistfully as they walked in the garden, while mother was putting the Lamb to bed.

“I’m sure we shall,” said Cyril, “if you really wished it.”

“We’ve promised never to ask it for another wish,” said Anthea.

“I never want to,” said Robert earnestly.

They did see it again, of course, but not in this story. And it was not in a sand-pit either, but in a very, very, very different place. It was in a—

But I must say no more.

THE PHOENIX AND THE CARPET

DEDICATION

TO

My Dear Godson

HUBERT GRIFFITH

and his sister

MARGARET

TO HUBERT

Dear Hubert, if I ever found

A wishing-carpet lying round,

I’d stand upon it, and I’d say:

“Take me to Hubert, right away!”

And then we’d travel very far

To where the magic countries are

That you and I will never see,

And choose the loveliest gifts for you, from me.

But oh! alack! and well-a-day!

No wishing-carpets come my way.

I never found a Phoenix yet,

And Psammeads are so hard to get!

So I give you nothing fine—

Only this book your book and mine,

And hers, whose name by yours is set;

Your book, my book, the book of Margaret!

—E. NESBIT

DYMCHURCH

September, 1904

CHAPTER 1

THE EGG

It began with the day when it was almost the Fifth of November, and a doubt arose in some breast—Robert’s, I fancy—as to the quality of the fireworks laid in for the Guy Fawkes celebration.

“They were jolly cheap,” said whoever it was, and I think it was Robert, “and suppose they didn’t go off on the night? Those Prosser kids would have something to snigger about then.”

“The ones
I
got are all right,” Jane said; “I know they are, because the man at the shop said they were worth thribble the money—”

“I’m sure thribble isn’t grammar,” Anthea said.

“Of course it isn’t,” said Cyril; “one word can’t be grammar all by itself, so you needn’t be so jolly clever.”

Anthea was rummaging in the corner-drawers of her mind for a very disagreeable answer, when she remembered what a wet day it was, and how the boys had been disappointed of that ride to London and back on the top of the tram, which their mother had promised them as a reward for not having once forgotten, for six whole days, to wipe their boots on the mat when they came home from school.

So Anthea only said, “Don’t be so jolly clever yourself, Squirrel. And the fireworks look all right, and you’ll have the eightpence that your tram fares didn’t cost today, to buy something more with. You ought to get a perfectly lovely Catharine wheel for eightpence.”

“I daresay,” said Cyril, coldly; “but it’s not
your
eightpence anyhow—”

“But look here,” said Robert, “really now, about the fireworks. We don’t want to be disgraced before those kids next door. They think because they wear red plush on Sundays no one else is any good.”

“I wouldn’t wear plush if it was ever so—unless it was black to be beheaded in, if I was Mary Queen of Scots,” said Anthea, with scorn.

Robert stuck steadily to his point. One great point about Robert is the steadiness with which he can stick.

“I think we ought to test them,” he said.

“You young duffer,” said Cyril, “fireworks are like postage-stamps. You can only use them once.”

“What do you suppose it means by ‘Carter’s tested seeds’ in the advertisement?”

There was a blank silence. Then Cyril touched his forehead with his finger and shook his head.

“A little wrong here,” he said. “I was always afraid of that with poor Robert. All that cleverness, you know, and being top in algebra so often—it’s bound to tell—”

“Dry up,” said Robert, fiercely. “Don’t you see? You can’t
test
seeds if you do them
all
. You just take a few here and there, and if those grow you can feel pretty sure the others will be—what do you call it?—Father told me—“up to sample.” Don’t you think we ought to sample the fire-works? Just shut our eyes and each draw one out, and then try them.”

“But it’s raining cats and dogs,” said Jane.

“And Queen Anne is dead,” rejoined Robert. No one was in a very good temper. “We needn’t go out to do them; we can just move back the table, and let them off on the old tea-tray we play toboggans with. I don’t know what
you
think, but
I
think it’s time we did something, and that would be really useful; because then we shouldn’t just
hope
the fireworks would make those Prossers sit up—we should
know
.”

“It
would
be something to do,” Cyril owned with languid approval.

So the table was moved back. And then the hole in the carpet, that had been near the window till the carpet was turned round, showed most awfully. But Anthea stole out on tip-toe, and got the tray when cook wasn’t looking, and brought it in and put it over the hole.

Then all the fireworks were put on the table, and each of the four children shut its eyes very tight and put out its hand and grasped something. Robert took a cracker, Cyril and Anthea had Roman candles; but Jane’s fat paw closed on the gem of the whole collection, the Jack-in-the-box that had cost two shillings, and one at least of the party—I will not say which, because it was sorry afterwards—declared that Jane had done it on purpose. Nobody was pleased. For the worst of it was that these four children, with a very proper dislike of anything even faintly bordering on the sneakish, had a law, unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians, that one had to stand by the results of a toss-up, or a drawing of lots, or any other appeal to chance, however much one might happen to dislike the way things were turning out.

“I didn’t mean to,” said Jane, near tears. “I don’t care, I’ll draw another—”

“You know jolly well you can’t,” said Cyril, bitterly. “It’s settled. It’s Medium and Persian. You’ve done it, and you’ll have to stand by it—and us too, worse luck. Never mind.
You’ll
have your pocket-money before the Fifth. Anyway, we’ll have the Jack-in-the-box
last
, and get the most out of it we can.”

So the cracker and the Roman candles were lighted, and they were all that could be expected for the money; but when it came to the Jack-in-the-box it simply sat in the tray and laughed at them, as Cyril said. They tried to light it with paper and they tried to light it with matches; they tried to light it with Vesuvian fusees from the pocket of father’s second-best overcoat that was hanging in the hall. And then Anthea slipped away to the cupboard under the stairs where the brooms and dustpans were kept, and the rosiny fire-lighters that smell so nice and like the woods where pine-trees grow, and the old newspapers and the bees-wax and turpentine, and the horrid an stiff dark rags that are used for cleaning brass and furniture, and the paraffin for the lamps. She came back with a little pot that had once cost sevenpence-halfpenny when it was full of red-currant jelly; but the jelly had been all eaten long ago, and now Anthea had filled the jar with paraffin. She came in, and she threw the paraffin over the tray just at the moment when Cyril was trying with the twenty-third match to light the Jack-in-the-box. The Jack-in-the-box did not catch fire any more than usual, but the paraffin acted quite differently, and in an instant a hot flash of flame leapt up and burnt off Cyril’s eyelashes, and scorched the faces of all four before they could spring back. They backed, in four instantaneous bounds, as far as they could, which was to the wall, and the pillar of fire reached from floor to ceiling.

“My hat,” said Cyril, with emotion, “You’ve done it this time, Anthea.”

The flame was spreading out under the ceiling like the rose of fire in Mr Rider Haggard’s exciting story about Allan Quatermain. Robert and Cyril saw that no time was to be lost. They turned up the edges of the carpet, and kicked them over the tray. This cut off the column of fire, and it disappeared and there was nothing left but smoke and a dreadful smell of lamps that have been turned too low.

All hands now rushed to the rescue, and the paraffin fire was only a bundle of trampled carpet, when suddenly a sharp crack beneath their feet made the amateur firemen start back. Another crack—the carpet moved as if it had had a cat wrapped in it; the Jack-in-the-box had at last allowed itself to be lighted, and it was going off with desperate violence inside the carpet.

Robert, with the air of one doing the only possible thing, rushed to the window and opened it. Anthea screamed, Jane burst into tears, and Cyril turned the table wrong way up on top of the carpet heap. But the firework went on, banging and bursting and spluttering even underneath the table.

Next moment mother rushed in, attracted by the howls of Anthea, and in a few moments the firework desisted and there was a dead silence, and the children stood looking at each other’s black faces, and, out of the corners of their eyes, at mother’s white one.

The fact that the nursery carpet was ruined occasioned but little surprise, nor was any one really astonished that bed should prove the immediate end of the adventure. It has been said that all roads lead to Rome; this may be true, but at any rate, in early youth I am quite sure that many roads lead to
bed
, and stop there—or
you
do.

The rest of the fireworks were confiscated, and mother was not pleased when father let them off himself in the back garden, though he said, “Well, how else can you get rid of them, my dear?”

You see, father had forgotten that the children were in disgrace, and that their bedroom windows looked out on to the back garden. So that they all saw the fireworks most beautifully, and admired the skill with which father handled them.

Next day all was forgotten and forgiven; only the nursery had to be deeply cleaned (like spring-cleaning), and the ceiling had to be whitewashed.

And mother went out; and just at tea-time next day a man came with a rolled-up carpet, and father paid him, and mother said—

“If the carpet isn’t in good condition, you know, I shall expect you to change it.” And the man replied—

“There ain’t a thread gone in it nowhere, mum. It’s a bargain, if ever there was one, and I’m more’n ’arf sorry I let it go at the price; but we can’t resist the lydies, can we, sir?” and he winked at father and went away.

Then the carpet was put down in the nursery, and sure enough there wasn’t a hole in it anywhere.

As the last fold was unrolled something hard and loud-sounding bumped out of it and trundled along the nursery floor. All the children scrambled for it, and Cyril got it. He took it to the gas. It was shaped like an egg, very yellow and shiny, half-transparent, and it had an odd sort of light in it that changed as you held it in different ways. It was as though it was an egg with a yolk of pale fire that just showed through the stone.

“I
may
keep it, mayn’t I, mother?” Cyril asked.

And of course mother said no; they must take it back to the man who had brought the carpet, because she had only paid for a carpet, and not for a stone egg with a fiery yolk to it.

So she told them where the shop was, and it was in the Kentish Town Road, not far from the hotel that is called the Bull and Gate. It was a poky little shop, and the man was arranging furniture outside on the pavement very cunningly, so that the more broken parts should show as little as possible. And directly he saw the children he knew them again, and he began at once, without giving them a chance to speak.

“No you don’t,” he cried loudly; “I ain’t a-goin’ to take back no carpets, so don’t you make no bloomin’ errer. A bargain’s a bargain, and the carpet’s puffik throughout.”

“We don’t want you to take it back,” said Cyril; “but we found something in it.”

“It must have got into it up at your place, then,” said the man, with indignant promptness, “for there ain’t nothing in nothing as I sell. It’s all as clean as a whistle.”

“I never said it wasn’t
clean
,” said Cyril, “but—”

“Oh, if it’s
moths
,” said the man, “that’s easy cured with borax. But I expect it was only an odd one. I tell you the carpet’s good through and through. It hadn’t got no moths when it left my ’ands—not so much as an hegg.”

“But that’s just it,” interrupted Jane; “there
was
so much as an egg.”

The man made a sort of rush at the children and stamped his foot.

“Clear out, I say!” he shouted, “or I’ll call for the police. A nice thing for customers to ’ear you a-coming ’ere a-charging me with finding things in goods what I sells. ’Ere, be off, afore I sends you off with a flea in your ears. Hi! constable—”

The children fled, and they think, and their father thinks, that they couldn’t have done anything else. Mother has her own opinion.

But father said they might keep the egg.

“The man certainly didn’t know the egg was there when he brought the carpet,” said he, “any more than your mother did, and we’ve as much right to it as he had.”

So the egg was put on the mantelpiece, where it quite brightened up the dingy nursery. The nursery was dingy, because it was a basement room, and its windows looked out on a stone area with a rockery made of clinkers facing the windows. Nothing grew in the rockery except London pride and snails.

The room had been described in the house agent’s list as a “convenient breakfast-room in basement,” and in the daytime it was rather dark. This did not matter so much in the evenings when the gas was alight, but then it was in the evening that the blackbeetles got so sociable, and used to come out of the low cupboards on each side of the fireplace where their homes were, and try to make friends with the children. At least, I suppose that was what they wanted, but the children never would.

On the Fifth of November father and mother went to the theatre, and the children were not happy, because the Prossers next door had lots of fireworks and they had none.

They were not even allowed to have a bonfire in the garden.

“No more playing with fire, thank you,” was father’s answer, when they asked him.

When the baby had been put to bed the children sat sadly round the fire in the nursery.

“I’m beastly bored,” said Robert.

“Let’s talk about the Psammead,” said Anthea, who generally tried to give the conversation a cheerful turn.

“What’s the good of
talking
?” said Cyril. “What I want is for something to happen. It’s awfully stuffy for a chap not to be allowed out in the evenings. There’s simply nothing to do when you’ve got through your homers.”

Jane finished the last of her home-lessons and shut the book with a bang.

“We’ve got the pleasure of memory,” said she. “Just think of last holidays.”

Last holidays, indeed, offered something to think of—for they had been spent in the country at a white house between a sand-pit and a gravel-pit, and things had happened. The children had found a Psammead, or sand-fairy, and it had let them have anything they wished for—just exactly anything, with no bother about its not being really for their good, or anything like that. And if you want to know what kind of things they wished for, and how their wishes turned out you can read it all in a book called Five Children and It (It was the Psammead). If you’ve not read it, perhaps I ought to tell you that the fifth child was the baby brother, who was called the Lamb, because the first thing he ever said was “Baa!” and that the other children were not particularly handsome, nor were they extra clever, nor extraordinarily good. But they were not bad sorts on the whole; in fact, they were rather like you.