The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories

by E. Nesbit

  Lucy and Mr. Noah waited in the dark for the voice of the oracle, and at last it spoke. Lucy heard no words, only the most beautiful voice in the world speaking softly, and so sweetly and finely and bravely that at once she felt herself brave enough to dare any danger, and strong enough to do any deed that might be needed to get Philip out of the clutches of the base Pretenderette. All the tiredness of her long journey faded away, and but for the thought that Philip needed her, she would have been content to listen for ever to that golden voice. Everything else in the world faded away and grew to seem worthless and unmeaning. Only the soft golden voice remained and the grey hard voice that said, “You’ve got to look after Philip, you know!” And the two voices together made a harmony more beautiful than you will find in any of Beethoven’s sonatas. Because Lucy knew that she should follow the grey voice, and remember the golden voice as long as she lived.

  But something was tiresomely pulling at her sleeve, dragging her away from the wonderful golden voice. Mr. Noah was pulling her sleeve and saying, “Come away,” and they turned their backs on the little light and the music and the enchanting perfumes, and instantly the voice stopped and they were walking between dusky pillars towards a far grey speck of sunlight.

  It was not till they were once more under the bare sky that Lucy said:

  “What did it say?”

  “You must have heard,” said Mr. Noah.

  “I only heard the voice and what it meant. I didn’t understand the words. But the voice was like dreams and everything beautiful I’ve ever thought of.”

  “I thought it a wonderfully straight-forward business-like oracle,” said Mr. Noah briskly; “and the voice was quite distinct and I remember every word it said.”

  (Which just shows how differently the same thing may strike two people.)

  “What did it say?” Lucy asked, trotting along beside him, still clutching Philip’s bundle, which through all these days she had never let go.

  And Mr. Noah gravely recited the following lines. I agree with him that, for an oracle, they were extremely straightforward.

  “You had better embark

  Once again in the Ark,

  And sailing from dry land

  Make straight for the Island.”

  “Did it really say that?” Lucy asked.

  “Of course it did,” said Mr. Noah; “that’s a special instruction to me, but I daresay you heard something quite different. The oracle doesn’t say the same thing to every one, of course. Didn’t you get any special instruction?”

  “Only to try to be brave and good,” said Lucy shyly.

  “Well, then,” said Mr. Noah, “you carry out your instructions and I’ll carry out mine.”

  “But what’s the use of going to the island if you can’t land when you get there?” Lucy insisted. “You know only two people can land there, and we’re not them, are we?”

  “Oh, if you begin asking what’s the use, we shan’t get anywhere,” said Mr. Noah. “And more than half the things you say are questions.”

  * * * *

  I’m sorry this chapter is cut up into bits with lines of stars, but stars are difficult to avoid when you have to tell about a lot of different things happening all at once. That is why it is much better always to keep your party together if you can. And I have allowed mine to get separated so that Philip, the parrot and the rest of the company are going through three sets of adventures all at the same time. This is most trying for me, and fully accounts for the stars. Which I hope you’ll excuse. However.

  We now come back by way of the stars to Philip wrong way up in the clutches of the Pretenderette. She had breathed the magic word in the Hippogriff’s ear, but she had not added any special order. So the Hippogriff was entirely its own master as far as the choice of where it was to go was concerned. It tossed its white mane after circling three times between air and sky, made straight for the Island-where-you-mayn’t-go. The Pretendertte didn’t know that it was the Island-where-you-mayn’t-go, and as they got nearer and she could see plainly its rainbow-coloured sands, its palms and its waterfalls, its cool green thickets and many tinted flowers and glowing fruits, it seemed to her that she might do worse than land there and rest for a little while. For even the most disagreeable people get tired sometimes, and the Pretenderette had had a hard day of it. So she made no attempt to check the Hippogriff or alter its course. And when the Hippogriff was hovering but a few inches from the grass of the most beautiful of the island glades, she jerked Philip roughly off her knee and he fell all in a heap on the ground. With great presence of mind our hero—if he isn’t a hero by now he never will be—picked himself up and bolted into the bushes. No rabbit could have bolted more instantly and fleetly.

  “I’ll teach you,” said the furious Pretenderette, preparing to alight. She looked down to find a soft place to jump on. And then she saw that every blade of grass was a tiny spear of steel, and every spear was pointed at her. She made the Hippogriff take her to another glade—more little steel spears. To the rainbow sands—but on looking at them she saw that they were quivering quicksands. Wherever green grass had grown the spears now grew; and wherever the sand was it was a terrible trap of quicksand. She tried to dismount in a little pool, but fortunately for her she noticed in time that what shone in it so silvery was not water but white-hot molten metal.

  “What a nasty place,” said the Pretenderette; “I don’t know that I could have chosen a nastier place to leave that naughty child in. He’ll know who’s master by the time I send to fetch him back to prison. Here, you, get back to Polistopolis as fast as you can. See? Please, I mean,” she added, and then she spoke the magic word.

  Philip was peeping through the bushes close by, and he heard that magic word (I dare not tell you what it is) and he saw for the first time the face of the Pretenderette. And he trembled and shivered in his bushy lurking-place. For the Pretenderette was the only really unpleasant person Philip had ever met in the world. It was Lucy’s nurse, the nurse with the grey dress and the big fat feet, who had been so cross to him and had pulled down his city.

  “How on earth,” Philip wondered to himself, “did she get here? And how on earth shall I get away from her?” He had not seen the spears and the quicksands and the molten metal, and he was waiting unhappily for her to alight, and for a game of hide and seek to begin, which he was not at all anxious to play.

  Even as he wondered, the Hippogriff spread wings and flew away. And Philip was left alone on the island. But what did that matter? It was much better to be alone than with that Pretenderette. And for Philip there were no white-hot metal and spears and snares of quicksand, only dewy grass and sweet flowers and trees and safety and delight.

  “If only Lucy were here,” he said.

  When he was quite sure that the Pretenderette was really gone, he came out and explored the island. It had on it every kind of flower and fruit that you can think of, all growing together. There were gold oranges and white orange flowers, pink apple-blossom and red apples, cherries and cherry-blossom, strawberry flowers and strawberries, all growing together, wild and sweet.

  At the back of his mind Philip remembered that he had, at some time or other, heard of an island where fruit and blossoms grew together at the same time, but that was all he could remember. He passed through the lovely orchards and came to a lake. It was frozen. And he remembered that, in the island he had heard of, there was a lake ready for skating even when the flowers and fruit were on the trees. Then he came to a little summer-house built all of porcupine quills like Helen’s pen-box.

  And then he knew. All these wonders were on the island that he and Helen had invented long ago—the island that she used to draw maps of.

  “It’s our very own island,” he said, and a glorious feeling of being at home glowed through him, warm and delightful. “We said no one else might come here!
That’s why the Pretenderette couldn’t land. And why they call it the Island-where-you-mayn’t-go. I’ll find the bun tree and have something to eat, and then I’ll go to the boat-house and get out the Lightning Loose and go back for Lucy. I do wish I could bring her here. But of course I can’t without asking Helen.”

  The Lightning Loose was the magic yacht Helen had invented for the island.

  He soon found a bush whose fruit was buns, and a jam-tart tree grew near it. You have no idea how nice jam tarts can taste till you have gathered them yourself, fresh and sticky, from the tree. They are as sticky as horse-chestnut buds, and much nicer to eat.

  As he went towards the boat-house he grew happier and happier, recognising, one after the other, all the places he and Helen had planned and marked on the map. He passed by the marble and gold house with King’s Palace painted on the door. He longed to explore it: but the thought of Lucy drove him on. As he went down a narrow leafy woodland path towards the boat-house, he passed the door of the dear little thatched cottage (labelled Queen’s Palace) which was the house Helen had insisted that she liked best for her very own.

  “How pretty it is; I wish Helen was here,” he said; “she helped to make it. I should never have thought of it without her. She ought to be here,” he said. With that he felt very lonely, all of a sudden, and very sad. And as he went on, wondering whether in all this magic world there might not somehow be some magic strong enough to bring Helen there to see the island that was their very own, and to give her consent to his bringing Lucy to it, he turned a corner in the woodland path, and walked straight into the arms of—Helen.

  CHAPTER IX

  ON THE “LIGHTNING LOOSE”

  “But how did you get here?” said Philip in Helen’s arms on the island.

  “I just walked out at the other side of a dream,” she said; “how could I not come, when the door was open and you wanted me so?”

  And Philip just said, “Oh, Helen!” He could not find any other words, but Helen understood. She always did.

  “Come,” she said, “shall we go to your Palace or mine? I want my supper, and we’ll have our own little blue-and-white tea-set. Yes, I know you’ve had your supper, but it’ll be fun getting mine, and perhaps you’ll be hungry again before we’ve got it.”

  They went to the thatched cottage that was Helen’s palace, because Philip had had almost as much of large buildings as he wanted for a little while. The cottage had a wide chimney and an open hearth; and they sat on the hearth and made toast, and Philip almost forgot that he had ever had any adventures and that the toast was being made on a hearth whose blue wood-smoke curled up among the enchanting tree-tops of a magic island.

  And before they went to bed he had told her all about everything.

  “Oh, I am so glad you came!” he said over and over again; “it is so easy to tell you here, with all the magic going on. I don’t think I ever could have told you at the Grange with the servants all about, and the—I mean Mr. Graham, and all the things as not magic as they could possibly be. Oh, Helen! where is Mr. Graham; won’t he hate your coming away from him?”

  “He’s gone through a dream door too,” she said, “to see Lucy. Only he doesn’t know he’s really gone. He’ll think it’s a dream, and he’ll tell me about it when we both wake up.”

  “When did you go to sleep?” said Philip.

  “At Brussels. That telegram hasn’t come yet.”

  “I don’t understand about time,” said Philip firmly, “and I never shall. I say, Helen, I was just looking for the Lightning Loose, to go off in her on a voyage of discovery and find Lucy.”

  “I don’t think you need,” she said; “I met a parrot on the island just before I met you and it was saying poetry to itself.”

  “It would be,” said Philip, “if it was alive. I’m glad it is alive, though. What was it saying?”

  “It was something like this,” she said, putting a log of wood on the fire:

  “Philip and Helen

  Have the island to dwell in,

  Hooray.

  They said of the island,

  “It’s your land and my land!”

  Hooray. Hooray. Hooray.

  “And till the ark

  Comes out of the dark

  There those two may stay

  For a happy while, and

  Enjoy their island

  Until the Giving Day.

  Hooray.

  “And then they will hear the giving voice,

  They will hear and obey,

  And when people come

  Who need a home,

  They’ll give the island away.

  Hooray.

  “The island with flower

  And fruit and bower,

  Forest and river and bay,

  Their very own island

  They’ll sigh and smile and

  They’ll give their island away.”

  “What nonsense!” said Philip, “I never will.”

  “All right, my Pipkin,” said Helen cheerfully; “I only told you just to show that you’re expected to stay here. ‘Philip and Helen have the island to dwell in.’ And now, what about bed?”

  They spent a whole week on the island. It was exactly all that they could wish an island to be; because, of course, they had made it themselves, and of course they knew exactly what they wanted. I can’t describe that week. I only know that Philip will never forget it. Just think of all the things you could do on a magic island if you were there with your dearest dear, and you’ll know how Philip spent his time.

  He enjoyed every minute of every hour of every day, and, best thing of all, that week made him understand, as nothing else could have done, that Helen still belonged to him, and that her marriage to Mr. Graham had not made her any the less Philip’s very own Helen.

  And then came a day when Philip, swinging in a magnolia tree, looked out to sea and cried out, “A sail! a sail! Oh, Helen, here’s the ark! Now it’s all over. Let’s have Lucy to stay with us, and send the other people away,” he added, sliding down the tree-trunk with his face very serious.

  “But we can’t, dear,” Helen reminded him. “The island’s ours, you know; and as long as it’s ours no one else can land on it. We made it like that, you know.”

  “Then they can’t land?”

  “No,” said Helen.

  “Can’t we change the rule and let them land?”

  “No,” said Helen.

  “Oh, it is a pity,” Philip said; “because the island is the place for islanders, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Helen, “and there’s no fear of the sea here; you remember we made it like that when we made the island?”

  “Yes,” said Philip. “Oh, Helen, I don’t want to.”

  “Then don’t,” said Helen.

  “Ah, but I do want to, too.”

  “Then do,” said she.

  “But don’t you see, when you want to and don’t want to at the same time, what are you to do? There are so many things to think of.”

  “When it’s like that, there’s one thing you mustn’t think of,” she said.

  “What?” Philip asked.

  “Yourself,” she said softly.

  There was a silence, and then Philip suddenly hugged his sister and she hugged him.

  “I’ll give it to them,” he said; “it’s no use. I know I ought to. I shall only be uncomfortable if I don’t.”

  Helen laughed. “My boy of boys!” she said. And then she looked sad. “Boy of my heart,” she said, “you know it’s not only giving up our island. If we give it away I must go. It’s the only place that there’s a door into out of my dreams.”

  “I can’t let you go,” he said.

  “But you’ve got your d
eeds to do,” she said, “and I can’t help you in those. Lucy can help you, but I can’t. You like Lucy now, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I don’t mind her,” said Philip; “but it’s you I want, Helen.”

  “Don’t think about that,” she urged. “Think what the islanders want. Think what it’ll be to them to have the island, to live here always, safe from the fear!”

  “There are three more deeds,” said Philip dismally; “I don’t think I shall ever want any more adventures as long as I live.”

  “You’ll always want them,” she said, laughing at him gently, “always. And now let’s do the thing handsomely and give them a splendid welcome. Give me a kiss and then we’ll gather heaps of roses.”

  So they kissed each other. But Philip was very unhappy indeed, though he felt that he was being rather noble and that Helen thought so too, which was naturally a great comfort.

  There had been a good deal more of this talk than I have set down. Philip and Helen had hardly had time to hang garlands of pink roses along the quayside where the Lightning Loose, that perfect yacht, lay at anchor, before the blunt prow of the ark bumped heavily against the quayside—and the two, dropping the rest of the roses, waved and smiled to the group on the ark’s terrace.

  The first person to speak was Mr. Perrin, who shouted, “Here we are again!” like a clown.

  Then Lucy said, “We know we can’t land, but the oracle said come and we came.” She leaned over the bulwark to whisper, “Who’s that perfect duck you’ve got with you?”

  Philip answered aloud: