Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  The uncle felt in his pocket.

  ‘I mustn’t enjoy myself,’ he said, ‘but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Here, divide this by four, and the product ought to give you some desired result. Take care of yourselves. Adieu.’

  And waving a cheery farewell with his neat umbrella, the good and high-hatted uncle passed away, leaving Cyril and Anthea to exchange eloquent glances over the shining golden sovereign that lay in Cyril’s hand.

  ‘Well!’ said Anthea.

  ‘Well!’ said Cyril.

  ‘Well!’ said the Phoenix.

  ‘Good old carpet!’ said Cyril, joyously.

  ‘It WAS clever of it — so adequate and yet so simple,’ said the Phoenix, with calm approval.

  ‘Oh, come on home and let’s mend the carpet. I am a beast. I’d forgotten the others just for a minute,’ said the conscience-stricken Anthea.

  They unrolled the carpet quickly and slyly — they did not want to attract public attention — and the moment their feet were on the carpet Anthea wished to be at home, and instantly they were.

  The kindness of their excellent uncle had made it unnecessary for them to go to such extremes as Cyril’s Etons or Anthea’s Sunday jacket for the patching of the carpet.

  Anthea set to work at once to draw the edges of the broken darn together, and Cyril hastily went out and bought a large piece of the marble-patterned American oil-cloth which careful house-wives use to cover dressers and kitchen tables. It was the strongest thing he could think of.

  Then they set to work to line the carpet throughout with the oil-cloth. The nursery felt very odd and empty without the others, and Cyril did not feel so sure as he had done about their being able to ‘tram it’ home. So he tried to help Anthea, which was very good of him, but not much use to her.

  The Phoenix watched them for a time, but it was plainly growing more and more restless. It fluffed up its splendid feathers, and stood first on one gilded claw and then on the other, and at last it said —

  ‘I can bear it no longer. This suspense! My Robert — who set my egg to hatch — in the bosom of whose Norfolk raiment I have nestled so often and so pleasantly! I think, if you’ll excuse me—’

  ‘Yes — DO,’ cried Anthea, ‘I wish we’d thought of asking you before.’

  Cyril opened the window. The Phoenix flapped its sunbright wings and vanished.

  ‘So THAT’S all right,’ said Cyril, taking up his needle and instantly pricking his hand in a new place.

  Of course I know that what you have really wanted to know about all this time is not what Anthea and Cyril did, but what happened to Jane and Robert after they fell through the carpet on to the leads of the house which was called number 705, Amersham Road.

  But I had to tell you the other first. That is one of the most annoying things about stories, you cannot tell all the different parts of them at the same time.

  Robert’s first remark when he found himself seated on the damp, cold, sooty leads was —

  ‘Here’s a go!’

  Jane’s first act was tears.

  ‘Dry up, Pussy; don’t be a little duffer,’ said her brother, kindly, ‘it’ll be all right.’

  And then he looked about, just as Cyril had known he would, for something to throw down, so as to attract the attention of the wayfarers far below in the street. He could not find anything. Curiously enough, there were no stones on the leads, not even a loose tile. The roof was of slate, and every single slate knew its place and kept it. But, as so often happens, in looking for one thing he found another. There was a trap-door leading down into the house.

  And that trap-door was not fastened.

  ‘Stop snivelling and come here, Jane,’ he cried, encouragingly. ‘Lend a hand to heave this up. If we can get into the house, we might sneak down without meeting any one, with luck. Come on.’

  They heaved up the door till it stood straight up, and, as they bent to look into the hole below, the door fell back with a hollow clang on the leads behind, and with its noise was mingled a blood-curdling scream from underneath.

  ‘Discovered!’ hissed Robert. ‘Oh, my cats alive!’

  They were indeed discovered.

  They found themselves looking down into an attic, which was also a lumber-room. It had boxes and broken chairs, old fenders and picture-frames, and rag-bags hanging from nails.

  In the middle of the floor was a box, open, half full of clothes. Other clothes lay on the floor in neat piles. In the middle of the piles of clothes sat a lady, very fat indeed, with her feet sticking out straight in front of her. And it was she who had screamed, and who, in fact, was still screaming.

  ‘Don’t!’ cried Jane, ‘please don’t! We won’t hurt you.’

  ‘Where are the rest of your gang?’ asked the lady, stopping short in the middle of a scream.

  ‘The others have gone on, on the wishing carpet,’ said Jane truthfully.

  ‘The wishing carpet?’ said the lady.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane, before Robert could say ‘You shut up!’ ‘You must have read about it. The Phoenix is with them.’

  Then the lady got up, and picking her way carefully between the piles of clothes she got to the door and through it. She shut it behind her, and the two children could hear her calling ‘Septimus! Septimus!’ in a loud yet frightened way.

  ‘Now,’ said Robert quickly; ‘I’ll drop first.’

  He hung by his hands and dropped through the trap-door.

  ‘Now you. Hang by your hands. I’ll catch you. Oh, there’s no time for jaw. Drop, I say.’

  Jane dropped.

  Robert tried to catch her, and even before they had finished the breathless roll among the piles of clothes, which was what his catching ended in, he whispered —

  ‘We’ll hide — behind those fenders and things; they’ll think we’ve gone along the roofs. Then, when all is calm, we’ll creep down the stairs and take our chance.’

  They hastily hid. A corner of an iron bedstead stuck into Robert’s side, and Jane had only standing room for one foot — but they bore it — and when the lady came back, not with Septimus, but with another lady, they held their breath and their hearts beat thickly.

  ‘Gone!’ said the first lady; ‘poor little things — quite mad, my dear — and at large! We must lock this room and send for the police.’

  ‘Let me look out,’ said the second lady, who was, if possible, older and thinner and primmer than the first. So the two ladies dragged a box under the trap-door and put another box on the top of it, and then they both climbed up very carefully and put their two trim, tidy heads out of the trap-door to look for the ‘mad children’.

  ‘Now,’ whispered Robert, getting the bedstead leg out of his side.

  They managed to creep out from their hiding-place and out through the door before the two ladies had done looking out of the trap-door on to the empty leads.

  Robert and Jane tiptoed down the stairs — one flight, two flights. Then they looked over the banisters. Horror! a servant was coming up with a loaded scuttle.

  The children with one consent crept swiftly through the first open door.

  The room was a study, calm and gentlemanly, with rows of books, a writing table, and a pair of embroidered slippers warming themselves in the fender. The children hid behind the window-curtains. As they passed the table they saw on it a missionary-box with its bottom label torn off, open and empty.

  ‘Oh, how awful!’ whispered Jane. ‘We shall never get away alive.’

  ‘Hush!’ said Robert, not a moment too soon, for there were steps on the stairs, and next instant the two ladies came into the room. They did not see the children, but they saw the empty missionary box.

  ‘I knew it,’ said one. ‘Selina, it WAS a gang. I was certain of it from the first. The children were not mad. They were sent to distract our attention while their confederates robbed the house.’

  ‘I am afraid you are right,’ said Selina; ‘and WHERE ARE THEY NOW?’

  ‘Downsta
irs, no doubt, collecting the silver milk-jug and sugar-basin and the punch-ladle that was Uncle Joe’s, and Aunt Jerusha’s teaspoons. I shall go down.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so rash and heroic,’ said Selina. ‘Amelia, we must call the police from the window. Lock the door. I WILL — I will—’

  The words ended in a yell as Selina, rushing to the window, came face to face with the hidden children.

  ‘Oh, don’t!’ said Jane; ‘how can you be so unkind? We AREN’T burglars, and we haven’t any gang, and we didn’t open your missionary-box. We opened our own once, but we didn’t have to use the money, so our consciences made us put it back and — DON’T! Oh, I wish you wouldn’t—’

  Miss Selina had seized Jane and Miss Amelia captured Robert. The children found themselves held fast by strong, slim hands, pink at the wrists and white at the knuckles.

  ‘We’ve got YOU, at any rate,’ said Miss Amelia. ‘Selina, your captive is smaller than mine. You open the window at once and call “Murder!” as loud as you can.

  Selina obeyed; but when she had opened the window, instead of calling ‘Murder!’ she called ‘Septimus!’ because at that very moment she saw her nephew coming in at the gate.

  In another minute he had let himself in with his latch-key and had mounted the stairs. As he came into the room Jane and Robert each uttered a shriek of joy so loud and so sudden that the ladies leaped with surprise, and nearly let them go.

  ‘It’s our own clergyman,’ cried Jane.

  ‘Don’t you remember us?’ asked Robert. ‘You married our burglar for us — don’t you remember?’

  ‘I KNEW it was a gang,’ said Amelia. ‘Septimus, these abandoned children are members of a desperate burgling gang who are robbing the house. They have already forced the missionary-box and purloined its contents.’

  The Reverend Septimus passed his hand wearily over his brow.

  ‘I feel a little faint,’ he said, ‘running upstairs so quickly.’

  ‘We never touched the beastly box,’ said Robert.

  ‘Then your confederates did,’ said Miss Selina.

  ‘No, no,’ said the curate, hastily. ‘I opened the box myself. This morning I found I had not enough small change for the Mothers’ Independent Unity Measles and Croup Insurance payments. I suppose this is NOT a dream, is it?’

  ‘Dream? No, indeed. Search the house. I insist upon it.’

  The curate, still pale and trembling, searched the house, which, of course, was blamelessly free of burglars.

  When he came back he sank wearily into his chair.

  ‘Aren’t you going to let us go?’ asked Robert, with furious indignation, for there is something in being held by a strong lady that sets the blood of a boy boiling in his veins with anger and despair. ‘We’ve never done anything to you. It’s all the carpet. It dropped us on the leads. WE couldn’t help it. You know how it carried you over to the island, and you had to marry the burglar to the cook.’

  ‘Oh, my head!’ said the curate.

  ‘Never mind your head just now,’ said Robert; ‘try to be honest and honourable, and do your duty in that state of life!’

  ‘This is a judgement on me for something, I suppose,’ said the Reverend Septimus, wearily, ‘but I really cannot at the moment remember what.’

  ‘Send for the police,’ said Miss Selina.

  ‘Send for a doctor,’ said the curate.

  ‘Do you think they ARE mad, then,’ said Miss Amelia.

  ‘I think I am,’ said the curate.

  Jane had been crying ever since her capture. Now she said—’You aren’t now, but perhaps you will be, if — And it would serve you jolly well right, too.’

  ‘Aunt Selina,’ said the curate, ‘and Aunt Amelia, believe me, this is only an insane dream. You will realize it soon. It has happened to me before. But do not let us be unjust, even in a dream. Do not hold the children; they have done no harm. As I said before, it was I who opened the box.’

  The strong, bony hands unwillingly loosened their grasp. Robert shook himself and stood in sulky resentment. But Jane ran to the curate and embraced him so suddenly that he had not time to defend himself.

  ‘You’re a dear,’ she said. ‘It IS like a dream just at first, but you get used to it. Now DO let us go. There’s a good, kind, honourable clergyman.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the Reverend Septimus; ‘it’s a difficult problem. It is such a very unusual dream. Perhaps it’s only a sort of other life — quite real enough for you to be mad in. And if you’re mad, there might be a dream-asylum where you’d be kindly treated, and in time restored, cured, to your sorrowing relatives. It is very hard to see your duty plainly, even in ordinary life, and these dream-circumstances are so complicated—’

  ‘If it’s a dream,’ said Robert, ‘you will wake up directly, and then you’d be sorry if you’d sent us into a dream-asylum, because you might never get into the same dream again and let us out, and so we might stay there for ever, and then what about our sorrowing relatives who aren’t in the dreams at all?’

  But all the curate could now say was, ‘Oh, my head!’

  And Jane and Robert felt quite ill with helplessness and hopelessness. A really conscientious curate is a very difficult thing to manage.

  And then, just as the hopelessness and the helplessness were getting to be almost more than they could bear, the two children suddenly felt that extraordinary shrinking feeling that you always have when you are just going to vanish. And the next moment they had vanished, and the Reverend Septimus was left alone with his aunts.

  ‘I knew it was a dream,’ he cried, wildly. ‘I’ve had something like it before. Did you dream it too, Aunt Selina, and you, Aunt Amelia? I dreamed that you did, you know.’

  Aunt Selina looked at him and then at Aunt Amelia. Then she said boldly —

  ‘What do you mean? WE haven’t been dreaming anything. You must have dropped off in your chair.’

  The curate heaved a sigh of relief.

  ‘Oh, if it’s only I,’ he said; ‘if we’d all dreamed it I could never have believed it, never!’

  Afterwards Aunt Selina said to the other aunt —

  ‘Yes, I know it was an untruth, and I shall doubtless be punished for it in due course. But I could see the poor dear fellow’s brain giving way before my very eyes. He couldn’t have stood the strain of three dreams. It WAS odd, wasn’t it? All three of us dreaming the same thing at the same moment. We must never tell dear Seppy. But I shall send an account of it to the Psychical Society, with stars instead of names, you know.’

  And she did. And you can read all about it in one of the society’s fat Blue-books.

  Of course, you understand what had happened? The intelligent Phoenix had simply gone straight off to the Psammead, and had wished Robert and Jane at home. And, of course, they were at home at once. Cyril and Anthea had not half finished mending the carpet.

  When the joyful emotions of reunion had calmed down a little, they all went out and spent what was left of Uncle Reginald’s sovereign in presents for mother. They bought her a pink silk handkerchief, a pair of blue and white vases, a bottle of scent, a packet of Christmas candles, and a cake of soap shaped and coloured like a tomato, and one that was so like an orange that almost any one you had given it to would have tried to peel it — if they liked oranges, of course. Also they bought a cake with icing on, and the rest of the money they spent on flowers to put in the vases.

  When they had arranged all the things on a table, with the candles stuck up on a plate ready to light the moment mother’s cab was heard, they washed themselves thoroughly and put on tidier clothes.

  Then Robert said, ‘Good old Psammead,’ and the others said so too.

  ‘But, really, it’s just as much good old Phoenix,’ said Robert. ‘Suppose it hadn’t thought of getting the wish!’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Phoenix, ‘it is perhaps fortunate for you that I am such a competent bird.’

  ‘There’s mother’s cab,’ cried Anthea,
and the Phoenix hid and they lighted the candles, and next moment mother was home again.

  She liked her presents very much, and found their story of Uncle Reginald and the sovereign easy and even pleasant to believe.

  ‘Good old carpet,’ were Cyril’s last sleepy words.

  ‘What there is of it,’ said the Phoenix, from the cornice-pole.

  CHAPTER 11. THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  ‘Well, I MUST say,’ mother said, looking at the wishing carpet as it lay, all darned and mended and backed with shiny American cloth, on the floor of the nursery—’I MUST say I’ve never in my life bought such a bad bargain as that carpet.’

  A soft ‘Oh!’ of contradiction sprang to the lips of Cyril, Robert, Jane, and Anthea. Mother looked at them quickly, and said —

  ‘Well, of course, I see you’ve mended it very nicely, and that was sweet of you, dears.’

  ‘The boys helped too,’ said the dears, honourably.

  ‘But, still — twenty-two and ninepence! It ought to have lasted for years. It’s simply dreadful now. Well, never mind, darlings, you’ve done your best. I think we’ll have coconut matting next time. A carpet doesn’t have an easy life of it in this room, does it?’

  ‘It’s not our fault, mother, is it, that our boots are the really reliable kind?’ Robert asked the question more in sorrow than in anger.

  ‘No, dear, we can’t help our boots,’ said mother, cheerfully, ‘but we might change them when we come in, perhaps. It’s just an idea of mine. I wouldn’t dream of scolding on the very first morning after I’ve come home. Oh, my Lamb, how could you?’

  This conversation was at breakfast, and the Lamb had been beautifully good until every one was looking at the carpet, and then it was for him but the work of a moment to turn a glass dish of syrupy blackberry jam upside down on his young head. It was the work of a good many minutes and several persons to get the jam off him again, and this interesting work took people’s minds off the carpet, and nothing more was said just then about its badness as a bargain and about what mother hoped for from coconut matting.