The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (81 page)

So that now, after nearly a month of magic happenings, the time was at hand when life would have to go on in the dull, ordinary way and Jane, Robert, Anthea, and Cyril would be just in the same position as the other children who live in Camden Town, the children whom these four had so often pitied, and perhaps a little despised.

“We shall be just like them,” Cyril said.

“Except,” said Robert, “that we shall have more things to remember and be sorry we haven’t got.”

“Mother’s going to send away the carpet as soon as she’s well enough to see about that coconut matting. Fancy us with coconut-matting—us! And we’ve walked under live coconut-trees on the island where you can’t have whooping-cough.”

“Pretty island,” said the Lamb; “paint-box sands and sea all shiny sparkly.”

His brothers and sisters had often wondered whether he remembered that island. Now they knew that he did.

“Yes,” said Cyril; “no more cheap return trips by carpet for us—that’s a dead cert.”

They were all talking about the carpet, but what they were all thinking about was the Phoenix.

The golden bird had been so kind, so friendly, so polite, so instructive—and now it had set fire to a theatre and made mother ill.

Nobody blamed the bird. It had acted in a perfectly natural manner. But every one saw that it must not be asked to prolong its visit. Indeed, in plain English it must be asked to go!

The four children felt like base spies and treacherous friends; and each in its mind was saying who ought not to be the one to tell the Phoenix that there could no longer be a place for it in that happy home in Camden Town. Each child was quite sure that one of them ought to speak out in a fair and manly way, but nobody wanted to be the one.

They could not talk the whole thing over as they would have liked to do, because the Phoenix itself was in the cupboard, among the blackbeetles and the odd shoes and the broken chessmen.

But Anthea tried.

“It’s very horrid. I do hate thinking things about people, and not being able to say the things you’re thinking because of the way they would feel when they thought what things you were thinking, and wondered what they’d done to make you think things like that, and why you were thinking them.”

Anthea was so anxious that the Phoenix should not understand what she said that she made a speech completely baffling to all. It was not till she pointed to the cupboard in which all believed the Phoenix to be that Cyril understood.

“Yes,” he said, while Jane and Robert were trying to tell each other how deeply they didn’t understand what Anthea were saying; “but after recent eventfulnesses a new leaf has to be turned over, and, after all, mother is more important than the feelings of any of the lower forms of creation, however unnatural.”

“How beautifully you
do
do it,” said Anthea, absently beginning to build a card-house for the Lamb—“mixing up what you’re saying, I mean. We ought to practise doing it so as to be ready for mysterious occasions. We’re talking about
that
,” she said to Jane and Robert, frowning, and nodding towards the cupboard where the Phoenix was. Then Robert and Jane understood, and each opened its mouth to speak.

“Wait a minute,” said Anthea quickly; “the game is to twist up what you want to say so that no one can understand what you’re saying except the people you want to understand it, and sometimes not them.”

“The ancient philosophers,” said a golden voice, “Well understood the art of which you speak.”

Of course it was the Phoenix, who had not been in the cupboard at all, but had been cocking a golden eye at them from the cornice during the whole conversation.

“Pretty dickie!” remarked the Lamb. “
Canary
dickie!”

“Poor misguided infant,” said the Phoenix.

There was a painful pause; the four could not but think it likely that the Phoenix had understood their very veiled allusions, accompanied as they had been by gestures indicating the cupboard. For the Phoenix was not wanting in intelligence.

“We were just saying—” Cyril began, and I hope he was not going to say anything but the truth. Whatever it was he did not say it, for the Phoenix interrupted him, and all breathed more freely as it spoke.

“I gather,” it said, “that you have some tidings of a fatal nature to communicate to our degraded black brothers who run to and fro for ever yonder.” It pointed a claw at the cupboard, where the blackbeetles lived.

“Canary
talk
,” said the Lamb joyously; “go and show mammy.”

He wriggled off Anthea’s lap.

“Mammy’s asleep,” said Jane, hastily. “Come and be wild beasts in a cage under the table.”

But the Lamb caught his feet and hands, and even his head, so often and so deeply in the holes of the carpet that the cage, or table, had to be moved on to the linoleum, and the carpet lay bare to sight with all its horrid holes.

“Ah,” said the bird, “it isn’t long for this world.”

“No,” said Robert; “everything comes to an end. It’s awful.”

“Sometimes the end is peace,” remarked the Phoenix. “I imagine that unless it comes soon the end of your carpet will be pieces.”

“Yes,” said Cyril, respectfully kicking what was left of the carpet. The movement of its bright colours caught the eye of the Lamb, who went down on all fours instantly and began to pull at the red and blue threads.

“Aggedydaggedygaggedy,” murmured the Lamb; “daggedy ag ag ag!”

And before any one could have winked (even if they had wanted to, and it would not have been of the slightest use) the middle of the floor showed bare, an island of boards surrounded by a sea of linoleum. The magic carpet was gone,
and so was the lamb
!

There was a horrible silence. The Lamb—the baby, all alone—had been wafted away on that untrustworthy carpet, so full of holes and magic. And no one could know where he was. And no one could follow him because there was now no carpet to follow on.

Jane burst into tears, but Anthea, though pale and frantic, was dry-eyed.

“It
must
be a dream,” she said.

“That’s what the clergyman said,” remarked Robert forlornly; “but it wasn’t, and it isn’t.”

“But the Lamb never wished,” said Cyril; “he was only talking Bosh.”

“The carpet understands all speech,” said the Phoenix, “even Bosh. I know not this Boshland, but be assured that its tongue is not unknown to the carpet.”

“Do you mean, then,” said Anthea, in white terror, “that when he was saying ‘Agglety dag,’ or whatever it was, that he meant something by it?”

“All speech has meaning,” said the Phoenix.

“There I think you’re wrong,” said Cyril; “even people who talk English sometimes say things that don’t mean anything in particular.”

“Oh, never mind that now,” moaned Anthea; “you think ‘Aggety dag’ meant something to him and the carpet?”

“Beyond doubt it held the same meaning to the carpet as to the luckless infant,” the Phoenix said calmly.

“And
what
did it mean? Oh
what
?”

“Unfortunately,” the bird rejoined, “I never studied Bosh.”

Jane sobbed noisily, but the others were calm with what is sometimes called the calmness of despair. The Lamb was gone—the Lamb, their own precious baby brother—who had never in his happy little life been for a moment out of the sight of eyes that loved him—he was gone. He had gone alone into the great world with no other companion and protector than a carpet with holes in it. The children had never really understood before what an enormously big place the world is. And the Lamb might be anywhere in it!

“And it’s no use going to look for him.” Cyril, in flat and wretched tones, only said what the others were thinking.

“Do you wish him to return?” the Phoenix asked; it seemed to speak with some surprise.

“Of course we do!” cried everybody.

“Isn’t he more trouble than he’s worth?” asked the bird doubtfully.

“No, no. Oh, we do want him back! We do!”

“Then,” said the wearer of gold plumage, “if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just pop out and see what I can do.”

Cyril flung open the window, and the Phoenix popped out.

“Oh, if only mother goes on sleeping! Oh, suppose she wakes up and wants the Lamb! Oh, suppose the servants come! Stop crying, Jane. It’s no earthly good. No, I’m not crying myself—at least I wasn’t till you said so, and I shouldn’t anyway if—if there was any mortal thing we could do. Oh, oh, oh!”

Cyril and Robert were boys, and boys never cry, of course. Still, the position was a terrible one, and I do not wonder that they made faces in their efforts to behave in a really manly way.

And at this awful moment mother’s bell rang.

A breathless stillness held the children. Then Anthea dried her eyes. She looked round her and caught up the poker. She held it out to Cyril.

“Hit my hand hard,” she said; “I must show mother some reason for my eyes being like they are. Harder,” she cried as Cyril gently tapped her with the iron handle. And Cyril, agitated and trembling, nerved himself to hit harder, and hit very much harder than he intended.

Anthea screamed.

“Oh, Panther, I didn’t mean to hurt, really,” cried Cyril, clattering the poker back into the fender.

“It’s—all—right,” said Anthea breathlessly, clasping the hurt hand with the one that wasn’t hurt; “it’s—getting—red.”

It was—a round red and blue bump was rising on the back of it. “Now, Robert,” she said, trying to breathe more evenly, “you go out—oh, I don’t know where—on to the dustbin—anywhere—and I shall tell mother you and the Lamb are out.”

Anthea was now ready to deceive her mother for as long as ever she could. Deceit is very wrong, we know, but it seemed to Anthea that it was her plain duty to keep her mother from being frightened about the Lamb as long as possible. And the Phoenix might help.

“It always has helped,” Robert said; “it got us out of the tower, and even when it made the fire in the theatre it got us out all right. I’m certain it will manage somehow.”

Mother’s bell rang again.

“Oh, Eliza’s never answered it,” cried Anthea; “she never does. Oh, I must go.”

And she went.

Her heart beat bumpingly as she climbed the stairs. Mother would be certain to notice her eyes—well, her hand would account for that. But the Lamb—

“No, I must
not
think of the Lamb,” she said to herself, and bit her tongue till her eyes watered again, so as to give herself something else to think of. Her arms and legs and back, and even her tear-reddened face, felt stiff with her resolution not to let mother be worried if she could help it.

She opened the door softly.

“Yes, mother?” she said.

“Dearest,” said mother, “the Lamb—”

Anthea tried to be brave. She tried to say that the Lamb and Robert were out. Perhaps she tried too hard. Anyway, when she opened her mouth no words came. So she stood with it open. It seemed easier to keep from crying with one’s mouth in that unusual position.

“The Lamb,” mother went on; “he was very good at first, but he’s pulled the toilet-cover off the dressing-table with all the brushes and pots and things, and now he’s so quiet I’m sure he’s in some dreadful mischief. And I can’t see him from here, and if I’d got out of bed to see I’m sure I should have fainted.”

“Do you mean he’s
here
?” said Anthea.

“Of course he’s here,” said mother, a little impatiently. “Where did you think he was?”

Anthea went round the foot of the big mahogany bed. There was a pause.

“He’s not here
now
,” she said.

That he had been there was plain, from the toilet-cover on the floor, the scattered pots and bottles, the wandering brushes and combs, all involved in the tangle of ribbons and laces which an open drawer had yielded to the baby’s inquisitive fingers.

“He must have crept out, then,” said mother; “do keep him with you, there’s a darling. If I don’t get some sleep I shall be a wreck when father comes home.”

Anthea closed the door softly. Then she tore downstairs and burst into the nursery, crying—

“He must have wished he was with mother. He’s been there all the time. ‘Aggety dag—’”

The unusual word was frozen on her lip, as people say in books.

For there, on the floor, lay the carpet, and on the carpet, surrounded by his brothers and by Jane, sat the Lamb. He had covered his face and clothes with vaseline and violet powder, but he was easily recognizable in spite of this disguise.

“You are right,” said the Phoenix, who was also present; “it is evident that, as you say, ‘Aggety dag’ is Bosh for ‘I want to be where my mother is,’ and so the faithful carpet understood it.”

“But how,” said Anthea, catching up the Lamb and hugging him—“how did he get back here?”

“Oh,” said the Phoenix, “I flew to the Psammead and wished that your infant brother were restored to your midst, and immediately it was so.”

“Oh, I am glad, I am glad!” cried Anthea, still hugging the baby. “Oh, you darling! Shut up, Jane! I don’t care
how
much he comes off on me! Cyril! You and Robert roll that carpet up and put it in the beetle-cupboard. He might say ‘Aggety dag’ again, and it might mean something quite different next time. Now, my Lamb, Panther’ll clean you a little. Come on.”

“I hope the beetles won’t go wishing,” said Cyril, as they rolled up the carpet.

Two days later mother was well enough to go out, and that evening the coconut matting came home. The children had talked and talked, and thought and thought, but they had not found any polite way of telling the Phoenix that they did not want it to stay any longer.

The days had been days spent by the children in embarrassment, and by the Phoenix in sleep.

And, now the matting was laid down, the Phoenix awoke and fluttered down on to it.

It shook its crested head.

“I like not this carpet,” it said; “it is harsh and unyielding, and it hurts my golden feet.”

“We’ve jolly well got to get used to its hurting
our
golden feet,” said Cyril.

“This, then,” said the bird, “supersedes the Wishing Carpet.”

“Yes,” said Robert, “if you mean that it’s instead of it.”

“And the magic web?” inquired the Phoenix, with sudden eagerness.

“It’s the rag-and-bottle man’s day tomorrow,” said Anthea, in a low voice; “he will take it away.”

The Phoenix fluttered up to its favourite perch on the chair-back.

“Hear me!” it cried, “oh youthful children of men, and restrain your tears of misery and despair, for what must be must be, and I would not remember you, thousands of years hence, as base ingrates and crawling worms compact of low selfishness.”

“I should hope not, indeed,” said Cyril.

“Weep not,” the bird went on; “I really do beg that you won’t weep.

I will not seek to break the news to you gently. Let the blow fall at once. The time has come when I must leave you.”

All four children breathed forth a long sigh of relief.

“We needn’t have bothered so about how to break the news to it,” whispered Cyril.