Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  ‘Now then,’ said the Carp testily, ‘haven’t you any better manners than to come tearing a gentleman’s bed-curtains like that?’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Kenneth Fish, ‘but I know how clever you are. Do please help me.’

  ‘What do you want now?’ said the Carp, and spoke a little less crossly.

  ‘I want to get out. I want to go and be a boy again.’

  ‘But you must have said you wanted to be a fish.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it, if I did.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say what you don’t mean.’

  ‘I’ll try not to again,’ said Kenneth humbly, ‘but how can I get out?’

  ‘There’s only one way,’ said the Carp rolling his vast body over in his watery bed, ‘and a jolly unpleasant way it is. Far better stay here and be a good little fish. On the honour of a gentleman that’s the best thing you can do.’

  ‘I want to get out,’ said Kenneth again.

  ‘Well then, the only way is ... you know we always teach the young fish to look out for hooks so that they may avoid them. You must look out for a hook and take it. Let them catch you. On a hook.’

  The Carp shuddered and went on solemnly, ‘Have you strength? Have you patience? Have you high courage and determination? You will want them all. Have you all these?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ve got,’ said poor Kenneth, ‘except that I’ve got a tail and fins, and I don’t know a hook when I see it. Won’t you come with me? Oh! dear Mr. Doyen Carp, do come and show me a hook.’

  ‘It will hurt you,’ said the Carp, ‘very much indeed. You take a gentleman’s word for it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kenneth, ‘you needn’t rub it in.’

  The Carp rolled heavily out of his bed.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said, ‘I don’t admire your taste, but if you want a hook, well, the gardener’s boy is fishing in the cool of the evening. Come on.’

  He led the way with a steady stately movement.

  ‘I want to take the ring with me,’ said Kenneth, ‘but I can’t get hold of it. Do you think you could put it on my fin with your snout?’

  ‘My what!’ shouted the old Carp indignantly and stopped dead.

  ‘Your nose, I meant,’ said Kenneth. ‘Oh! please don’t be angry. It would be so kind of you if you would. Shove the ring on, I mean.’

  ‘That will hurt too,’ said the Carp, and Kenneth thought he seemed not altogether sorry that it should.

  It did hurt very much indeed. The ring was hard and heavy, and somehow Kenneth’s fin would not fold up small enough for the ring to slip over it, and the Carp’s big mouth was rather clumsy at the work. But at last it was done. And then they set out in search of a hook for Kenneth to be caught with.

  ‘I wish we could find one! I wish we could!’ Kenneth Fish kept saying.

  ‘You’re just looking for trouble,’ said the Carp. ‘Well, here you are!’

  Above them in the clear water hung a delicious-looking worm. Kenneth Boy did not like worms any better than you do, but to Kenneth Fish that worm looked most tempting and delightful.

  ‘Just wait a sec.,’ he said, ‘till I get that worm.’

  ‘You little silly,’ said the Carp, ‘that’s the hook. Take it.’

  ‘Wait a sec.,’ said Kenneth again.

  His courage was beginning to ooze out of his fin tips, and a shiver ran down him from gills to tail.

  ‘If you once begin to think about a hook you never take it,’ said the Carp.

  ‘Never?’ said Kenneth ‘Then ... oh! good-bye!’ he cried desperately, and snapped at the worm. A sharp pain ran through his head and he felt himself drawn up into the air, that stifling, choking, husky, thick stuff in which fish cannot breathe. And as he swung in the air the dreadful thought came to him, ‘Suppose I don’t turn into a boy again? Suppose I keep being a fish?’ And then he wished he hadn’t. But it was too late to wish that.

  Everything grew quite dark, only inside his head there seemed to be a light. There was a wild, rushing, buzzing noise, then something in his head seemed to break and he knew no more.

  * * * * *

  When presently he knew things again, he was lying on something hard. Was he Kenneth Fish lying on a stone at the bottom of the moat, or Kenneth Boy lying somewhere out of the water? His breathing was all right, so he wasn’t a fish out of water or a boy under it.

  ‘He’s coming to,’ said a voice. The Carp’s he thought it was. But next moment he knew it to be the voice of his aunt, and he moved his hand and felt grass in it. He opened his eyes and saw above him the soft gray of the evening sky with a star or two.

  ‘Here’s the ring, Aunt,’ he said.

  * * * * *

  The cook had heard a splash and had run out just as the picnic party arrived at the front door. They had all rushed to the moat, and the uncle had pulled Kenneth out with the boat-hook. He had not been in the water more than three minutes, they said. But Kenneth knew better.

  They carried him in, very wet he was, and laid him on the breakfast-room sofa, where the aunt with hurried thoughtfulness had spread out the uncle’s mackintosh.

  ‘Get some rough towels, Jane,’ said the aunt. ‘Make haste, do.’

  ‘I got the ring,’ said Kenneth.

  ‘Never mind about the ring, dear,’ said the aunt, taking his boots off.

  ‘But you said I was a thief and a liar,’ Kenneth said feebly, ‘and it was in the moat all the time.’

  ‘Mother!’ it was Alison who shrieked. ‘You didn’t say that to him?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t,’ said the aunt impatiently. She thought she hadn’t, but then Kenneth thought she had.

  ‘It was me took the ring,’ said Alison, ‘and I dropped it. I didn’t say I hadn’t. I only said I’d rather not say. Oh Mother! poor Kenneth!’

  The aunt, without a word, carried Kenneth up to the bath-room and turned on the hot-water tap. The uncle and Ethel followed.

  ‘Why didn’t you own up, you sneak?’ said Conrad to his sister with withering scorn.

  ‘Sneak,’ echoed the stout George.

  ‘I meant to. I was only getting steam up,’ sobbed Alison. ‘I didn’t know. Mother only told us she wasn’t pleased with Ken, and so he wasn’t to go to the picnic. Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?’

  ‘Sneak!’ said her brothers in chorus, and left her to her tears of shame and remorse.

  It was Kenneth who next day begged every one to forgive and forget. And as it was his day — rather like a birthday, you know — when no one could refuse him anything, all agreed that the whole affair should be buried in oblivion. Every one was tremendously kind, the aunt more so than any one. But Alison’s eyes were still red when in the afternoon they all went fishing once more. And before Kenneth’s hook had been two minutes in the water there was a bite, a very big fish, the uncle had to be called from his study to land it.

  ‘Here’s a magnificent fellow,’ said the uncle. ‘Not an ounce less than two pounds, Ken. I’ll have it stuffed for you.’

  And he held out the fish and Kenneth found himself face to face with the Doyen Carp. There was no mistaking that mouth that opened like a kit-bag, and shut in a sneer like a rhinoceros’s. Its eye was most reproachful.

  ‘Oh! no,’ cried Kenneth, ‘you helped me back and I’ll help you back,’ and he caught the Carp from the hands of the uncle and flung it out in the moat.

  ‘Your head’s not quite right yet, my boy,’ said the uncle kindly. ‘Hadn’t you better go in and lie down a bit?’

  But Alison understood, for he had told her the whole story. He had told her that morning before breakfast while she was still in deep disgrace; to cheer her up, he said. And, most disappointingly, it made her cry more than ever.

  ‘Your poor little fins,’ she had said, ‘and having your feet tied up in your tail. And it was all my fault.’

  ‘I liked it,’ Kenneth had said with earnest politeness, ‘it was a most awful lark.’ And he quite meant what he said.

/>   THE MAGICIAN’S HEART

  We all have our weaknesses. Mine is mulberries. Yours, perhaps, motor cars. Professor Taykin’s was christenings — royal christenings. He always expected to be asked to the christening parties of all the little royal babies, and of course he never was, because he was not a lord, or a duke, or a seller of bacon and tea, or anything really high-class, but merely a wicked magician, who by economy and strict attention to customers had worked up a very good business of his own. He had not always been wicked. He was born quite good, I believe, and his old nurse, who had long since married a farmer and retired into the calm of country life, always used to say that he was the duckiest little boy in a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs. But he had changed since he was a boy, as a good many other people do — perhaps it was his trade. I dare say you’ve noticed that cobblers are usually thin, and brewers are generally fat, and magicians are almost always wicked.

  Well, his weakness (for christenings) grew stronger and stronger because it was never indulged, and at last he ‘took the bull into his own hands,’ as the Irish footman at the palace said, and went to a christening without being asked. It was a very grand party given by the King of the Fortunate Islands, and the little prince was christened Fortunatus. No one took any notice of Professor Taykin. They were too polite to turn him out, but they made him wish he’d never come. He felt quite an outsider, as indeed he was, and this made him furious. So that when all the bright, light, laughing, fairy godmothers were crowding round the blue satin cradle, and giving gifts of beauty and strength and goodness to the baby, the Magician suddenly did a very difficult charm (in his head, like you do mental arithmetic), and said:

  ‘Young Forty may be all that, but I say he shall be the stupidest prince in the world,’ and on that he vanished in a puff of red smoke with a smell like the Fifth of November in a back garden on Streatham Hill, and as he left no address the King of the Fortunate Islands couldn’t prosecute him for high treason.

  Taykin was very glad to think that he had made such a lot of people unhappy — the whole Court was in tears when he left, including the baby — and he looked in the papers for another royal christening, so that he could go to that and make a lot more people miserable. And there was one fixed for the very next Wednesday. The Magician went to that, too, disguised as a wealthy.

  This time the baby was a girl. Taykin kept close to the pink velvet cradle, and when all the nice qualities in the world had been given to the Princess he suddenly said, ‘Little Aura may be all that, but I say she shall be the ugliest princess in all the world.’

  And instantly she was. It was terrible. And she had been such a beautiful baby too. Every one had been saying that she was the most beautiful baby they had ever seen. This sort of thing is often said at christenings.

  Having uglified the unfortunate little Princess the Magician did the spell (in his mind, just as you do your spelling) to make himself vanish, but to his horror there was no red smoke and no smell of fireworks, and there he was, still, where he now very much wished not to be. Because one of the fairies there had seen, just one second too late to save the Princess, what he was up to, and had made a strong little charm in a great hurry to prevent his vanishing. This Fairy was a White Witch, and of course you know that White Magic is much stronger than Black Magic, as well as more suited for drawing-room performances. So there the Magician stood, ‘looking like a thunder-struck pig,’ as some one unkindly said, and the dear White Witch bent down and kissed the baby princess.

  ‘There!’ she said, ‘you can keep that kiss till you want it. When the time comes you’ll know what to do with it. The Magician can’t vanish, Sire. You’d better arrest him.’

  ‘Arrest that person,’ said the King, pointing to Taykin. ‘I suppose your charms are of a permanent nature, madam.’

  ‘Quite,’ said the Fairy, ‘at least they never go till there’s no longer any use for them.’

  So the Magician was shut up in an enormously high tower, and allowed to play with magic; but none of his spells could act outside the tower so he was never able to pass the extra double guard that watched outside night and day. The King would have liked to have the Magician executed but the White Witch warned him that this would never do.

  ‘Don’t you see,’ she said, ‘he’s the only person who can make the Princess beautiful again. And he’ll do it some day. But don’t you go asking him to do it. He’ll never do anything to oblige you. He’s that sort of man.’

  So the years rolled on. The Magician stayed in the tower and did magic and was very bored, — for it is dull to take white rabbits out of your hat, and your hat out of nothing when there’s no one to see you.

  Prince Fortunatus was such a stupid little boy that he got lost quite early in the story, and went about the country saying his name was James, which it wasn’t. A baker’s wife found him and adopted him, and sold the diamond buttons of his little overcoat, for three hundred pounds, and as she was a very honest woman she put two hundred away for James to have when he grew up.

  The years rolled on. Aura continued to be hideous, and she was very unhappy, till on her twentieth birthday her married cousin Belinda came to see her. Now Belinda had been made ugly in her cradle too, so she could sympathise as no one else could.

  ‘But I got out of it all right, and so will you,’ said Belinda. ‘I’m sure the first thing to do is to find a magician.’

  ‘Father banished them all twenty years ago,’ said Aura behind her veil, ‘all but the one who uglified me.’

  ‘Then I should go to him,’ said beautiful Belinda. ‘Dress up as a beggar maid, and give him fifty pounds to do it. Not more, or he may suspect that you’re not a beggar maid. It will be great fun. I’d go with you only I promised Bellamant faithfully that I’d be home to lunch.’ And off she went in her mother-of-pearl coach, leaving Aura to look through the bound volumes of The Perfect Lady in the palace library, to find out the proper costume for a beggar maid.

  Now that very morning the Magician’s old nurse had packed up a ham, and some eggs, and some honey, and some apples, and a sweet bunch of old-fashioned flowers, and borrowed the baker’s boy to hold the horse for her, and started off to see the Magician. It was forty years since she’d seen him, but she loved him still, and now she thought she could do him a good turn. She asked in the town for his address, and learned that he lived in the Black Tower.

  ‘But you’d best be careful,’ the townsfolk said, ‘he’s a spiteful chap.’

  ‘Bless you,’ said the old nurse, ‘he won’t hurt me as nursed him when he was a babe, in a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs ever you see.’

  So she got to the tower, and the guards let her through. Taykin was almost pleased to see her — remember he had had no visitors for twenty years — and he was quite pleased to see the ham and the honey.

  ‘But where did I put them heggs?’ said the nurse, ‘and the apples — I must have left them at home after all.’

  She had. But the Magician just waved his hand in the air, and there was a basket of apples that hadn’t been there before. The eggs he took out of her bonnet, the folds of her shawl, and even from his own mouth, just like a conjurer does. Only of course he was a real Magician.

  ‘Lor!’ said she, ‘it’s like magic.’

  ‘It is magic,’ said he. ‘That’s my trade. It’s quite a pleasure to have an audience again. I’ve lived here alone for twenty years. It’s very lonely, especially of an evening.’

  ‘Can’t you get out?’ said the nurse.

  ‘No. King’s orders must be respected, but it’s a dog’s life.’ He sniffed, made himself a magic handkerchief out of empty air, and wiped his eyes.

  ‘Take an apprentice, my dear,’ said the nurse.

  ‘And teach him my magic? Not me.’

  ‘Suppose you got one so stupid he couldn’t learn?’

  ‘That would be all right — but it’s no use advertising for a stupid person — you’d get no answers.’

  �
�You needn’t advertise,’ said the nurse; and she went out and brought in James, who was really the Prince of the Fortunate Islands, and also the baker’s boy she had brought with her to hold the horse’s head.

  ‘Now, James,’ she said, ‘you’d like to be apprenticed, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the poor stupid boy.

  ‘Then give the gentleman your money, James.’

  James did.

  ‘My last doubts vanish,’ said the Magician, ‘he is stupid. Nurse, let us celebrate the occasion with a little drop of something. Not before the boy because of setting an example. James, wash up. Not here, silly; in the back kitchen.’

  So James washed up, and as he was very clumsy he happened to break a little bottle of essence of dreams that was on the shelf, and instantly there floated up from the washing-up water the vision of a princess more beautiful than the day — so beautiful that even James could not help seeing how beautiful she was, and holding out his arms to her as she came floating through the air above the kitchen sink. But when he held out his arms she vanished. He sighed and washed up harder than ever.

  ‘I wish I wasn’t so stupid,’ he said, and then there was a knock at the door. James wiped his hands and opened. Some one stood there in very picturesque rags and tatters. ‘Please,’ said some one, who was of course the Princess, ‘is Professor Taykin at home?’

  ‘Walk in, please,’ said James.

  ‘My snakes alive!’ said Taykin, ‘what a day we’re having. Three visitors in one morning. How kind of you to call. Won’t you take a chair?’

  ‘I hoped,’ said the veiled Princess, ‘that you’d give me something else to take.’

  ‘A glass of wine,’ said Taykin. ‘You’ll take a glass of wine?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said the beggar maid who was the Princess.

  ‘Then take ... take your veil off,’ said the nurse, ‘or you won’t feel the benefit of it when you go out.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Aura, ‘it wouldn’t be safe.’

  ‘Too beautiful, eh?’ said the Magician. ‘Still — you’re quite safe here.’