by E. Nesbit
On the table between the ring-stand and the pin-cushion lay a green leather case. Mother opened it.
“Oh, how lovely!” she cried. It was a ring, a large pearl with shining many-lighted diamonds set round it. “Wherever did this come from?” mother asked, trying it on her wedding finger, which it fitted beautifully. “However did it come here?”
“I don’t know,” said each of the children truthfully.
“Father must have told Martha to put it here,” mother said. “I’ll run down and ask her.”
“Let me look at it,” said Anthea, who knew Martha would not be able to see the ring. But when Martha was asked, of course she denied putting the ring there, and so did Eliza and cook.
Mother came back to her bedroom, very much interested and pleased about the ring. But, when she opened the dressing-table drawer and found a long case containing an almost priceless diamond necklace, she was more interested still, though not so pleased. In the wardrobe, when she went to put away her “bonnet,” she found a tiara and several brooches, and the rest of the jewellery turned up in various parts of the room during the next half-hour. The children looked more and more uncomfortable, and now Jane began to sniff.
Mother looked at her gravely.
“Jane,” she said, “I am sure you know something about this. Now think before you speak, and tell me the truth.”
“We found a Fairy,” said Jane obediently.
“No nonsense, please,” said her mother sharply.
“Don’t be silly, Jane,” Cyril interrupted. Then he went on desperately. “Look here, mother, we’ve never seen the things before, but Lady Chittenden at Peasmarsh Place lost all her jewellery by wicked burglars last night. Could this possibly be it?”
All drew a deep breath. They were saved.
“But how could they have put it here? And why should they?” asked mother, not unreasonably. “Surely it would have been easier and safer to make off with it?”
“Suppose,” said Cyril, “they thought it better to wait for—for sunset—nightfall, I mean, before they went off with it. No one but us knew that you were coming back today.”
“I must send for the police at once,” said mother distractedly. “Oh, how I wish daddy were here!”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait till he does come?” asked Robert, knowing that his father would not be home before sunset.
“No, no; I can’t wait a minute with all this on my mind,” cried mother. “All this” was the heap of jewel-cases on the bed. They put them all in the wardrobe, and mother locked it. Then mother called Martha.
“Martha,” she said, “has any stranger been into my room since I’ve been away? Now, answer me truthfully.”
“No, mum,” answered Martha; “leastways, what I mean to say—”
She stopped.
“Come,” said her mistress kindly, “I see someone has. You must tell me at once. Don’t be frightened. I’m sure you haven’t done anything wrong.”
Martha burst into heavy sobs.
“I was a-goin’ to give you warning this very day, mum, to leave at the end of my month, so I was,—on account of me being going to make a respectable young man happy. A gamekeeper he is by trade, mum—and I wouldn’t deceive you—of the name of Beale. And it’s as true as I stand here, it was your coming home in such a hurry, and no warning given, out of the kindness of his heart it was, as he says, ‘Martha, my beauty,’ he says,—which I ain’t, and never was, but you know how them men will go on,—‘I can’t see you a-toiling and a-moiling and not lend a ’elping ’and; which mine is a strong arm, and it’s yours Martha, my dear,’ says he. And so he helped me a-cleanin’ of the windows—but outside, mum, the whole time, and me in; if I never say another breathing word it’s gospel truth.”
“Were you with him the whole time?” asked her mistress.
“Him outside and me in, I was,” said Martha; “except for fetching up a fresh pail and the leather that that slut of a Eliza’d hidden away behind the mangle.”
“That will do,” said the children’s mother. “I am not pleased with you, Martha, but you have spoken the truth, and that counts for something.”
When Martha had gone, the children clung round their mother.
“Oh, mummy darling,” cried Anthea, “it isn’t Beale’s fault, it isn’t really! He’s a great dear; he is, truly and honourably, and as honest as the day. Don’t let the police take him, mummy! Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t!”
It was truly awful. Here was an innocent man accused of robbery through that silly wish of Jane’s, and it was absolutely useless to tell the truth. All longed to, but they thought of the straws in the hair and the shrieks of the other frantic maniacs, and they could not do it.
“Is there a cart hereabouts?” asked the mother feverishly. “A trap of any sort? I must drive in to Rochester and tell the police at once.”
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 decided 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 matting 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 strain 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—
Onl
y 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.
