by E. Nesbit
“She will find the nest of a queen a very precious and soft thing,” said the bird, solemnly.
“There—you hear,” said Cyril. “You’re in for a precious soft thing, so mind you’re a good queen, cook. It’s more than you’d any right to expect, but long may you reign.”
Some of the cook’s copper-coloured subjects now advanced from the forest with long garlands of beautiful flowers, white and sweet-scented, and hung them respectfully round the neck of their new sovereign.
“What! all them lovely bokays for me!” exclaimed the enraptured cook. “Well, this here is something like a dream, I must say.”
She sat up very straight on the carpet, and the copper-coloured ones, themselves wreathed in garlands of the gayest flowers, madly stuck parrot feathers in their hair and began to dance. It was a dance such as you have never seen; it made the children feel almost sure that the cook was right, and that they were all in a dream. Small, strange-shaped drums were beaten, odd-sounding songs were sung, and the dance got faster and faster and odder and odder, till at last all the dancers fell on the sand tired out.
The new queen, with her white crown-cap all on one side, clapped wildly.
“Brayvo!” she cried, “brayvo! It’s better than the Albert Edward Music-hall in the Kentish Town Road. Go it again!”
But the Phoenix would not translate this request into the copper-coloured language; and when the savages had recovered their breath, they implored their queen to leave her white escort and come with them to their huts.
“The finest shall be yours, O queen,” said they.
“Well—so long!” said the cook, getting heavily on to her feet, when the Phoenix had translated this request. “No more kitchens and attics for me, thank you. I’m off to my royal palace, I am; and I only wish this here dream would keep on for ever and ever.”
She picked up the ends of the garlands that trailed round her feet, and the children had one last glimpse of her striped stockings and worn elastic-side boots before she disappeared into the shadow of the forest, surrounded by her dusky retainers, singing songs of rejoicing as they went.
“Well!” said Cyril, “I suppose she’s all right, but they don’t seem to count us for much, one way or the other.”
“Oh,” said the Phoenix, “they think you’re merely dreams. The prophecy said that the queen would arise from the waves with a white crown and surrounded by white dream-children. That’s about what they think you are!”
“And what about dinner?” said Robert, abruptly.
“There won’t be any dinner, with no cook and no pudding-basin,” Anthea reminded him; “but there’s always bread-and-butter.”
“Let’s get home,” said Cyril.
The Lamb was furiously unwishful to be dressed in his warm clothes again, but Anthea and Jane managed it, by force disguised as coaxing, and he never once whooping-coughed.
Then every one put on its own warm things and took its place on the carpet.
A sound of uncouth singing still came from beyond the trees where the copper-coloured natives were crooning songs of admiration and respect to their white-crowned queen. Then Anthea said “Home,” just as duchesses and other people do to their coachmen, and the intelligent carpet in one whirling moment laid itself down in its proper place on the nursery floor. And at that very moment Eliza opened the door and said—
“Cook’s gone! I can’t find her anywhere, and there’s no dinner ready. She hasn’t taken her box nor yet her outdoor things. She just ran out to see the time, I shouldn’t wonder—the kitchen clock never did give her satisfaction—and she’s got run over or fell down in a fit as likely as not. You’ll have to put up with the cold bacon for your dinners; and what on earth you’ve got your outdoor things on for I don’t know. And then I’ll slip out and see if they know anything about her at the police-station.”
But nobody ever knew anything about the cook any more, except the children, and, later, one other person.
Mother was so upset at losing the cook, and so anxious about her, that Anthea felt most miserable, as though she had done something very wrong indeed. She woke several times in the night, and at last decided that she would ask the Phoenix to let her tell her mother all about it. But there was no opportunity to do this next day, because the Phoenix, as usual, had gone to sleep in some out-of-the-way spot, after asking, as a special favour, not to be disturbed for twenty-four hours.
The Lamb never whooping-coughed once all that Sunday, and mother and father said what good medicine it was that the doctor had given him. But the children knew that it was the southern shore where you can’t have whooping-cough that had cured him. The Lamb babbled of coloured sand and water, but no one took any notice of that. He often talked of things that hadn’t happened.
It was on Monday morning, very early indeed, that Anthea woke and suddenly made up her mind. She crept downstairs in her night-gown (it was very chilly), sat down on the carpet, and with a beating heart wished herself on the sunny shore where you can’t have whooping-cough, and next moment there she was.
The sand was splendidly warm. She could feel it at once, even through the carpet. She folded the carpet, and put it over her shoulders like a shawl, for she was determined not to be parted from it for a single instant, no matter how hot it might be to wear.
Then trembling a little, and trying to keep up her courage by saying over and over, “It is my duty, it is my duty,” she went up the forest path.
“Well, here you are again,” said the cook, directly she saw Anthea.
“This dream does keep on!”
The cook was dressed in a white robe; she had no shoes and stockings and no cap and she was sitting under a screen of palm-leaves, for it was afternoon in the island, and blazing hot. She wore a flower wreath on her hair, and copper-coloured boys were fanning her with peacock’s feathers.
“They’ve got the cap put away,” she said. “They seem to think a lot of it. Never saw one before, I expect.”
“Are you happy?” asked Anthea, panting; the sight of the cook as queen quite took her breath away.
“I believe you, my dear,” said the cook, heartily. “Nothing to do unless you want to. But I’m getting rested now. Tomorrow I’m going to start cleaning out my hut, if the dream keeps on, and I shall teach them cooking; they burns everything to a cinder now unless they eats it raw.”
“But can you talk to them?”
“Lor’ love a duck, yes!” the happy cook-queen replied; “it’s quite easy to pick up. I always thought I should be quick at foreign languages. I’ve taught them to understand ‘dinner,’ and ‘I want a drink,’ and ‘You leave me be,’ already.”
“Then you don’t want anything?” Anthea asked earnestly and anxiously.
“Not me, miss; except if you’d only go away. I’m afraid of me waking up with that bell a-going if you keep on stopping here a-talking to me. Long as this here dream keeps up I’m as happy as a queen.”
“Goodbye, then,” said Anthea, gaily, for her conscience was clear now.
She hurried into the wood, threw herself on the ground, and said “Home”—and there she was, rolled in the carpet on the nursery floor.
“She’s all right, anyhow,” said Anthea, and went back to bed. “I’m glad somebody’s pleased. But mother will never believe me when I tell her.”
The story is indeed a little difficult to believe. Still, you might try.
CHAPTER 4
TWO BAZAARS
Mother was really a great dear. She was pretty and she was loving, and most frightfully good when you were ill, and always kind, and almost always just. That is, she was just when she understood things. But of course she did not always understand things. No one understands everything, and mothers are not angels, though a good many of them come pretty near it. The children knew that mother always wan
ted to do what was best for them, even if she was not clever enough to know exactly what was the best. That was why all of them, but much more particularly Anthea, felt rather uncomfortable at keeping the great secret from her of the wishing carpet and the Phoenix. And Anthea, whose inside mind was made so that she was able to be much more uncomfortable than the others, had decided that she must tell her mother the truth, however little likely it was that her mother would believe it.
“Then I shall have done what’s right,” said she to the Phoenix; “and if she doesn’t believe me it won’t be my fault—will it?”
“Not in the least,” said the golden bird. “And she won’t, so you’re quite safe.”
Anthea chose a time when she was doing her home-lessons—they were Algebra and Latin, German, English, and Euclid—and she asked her mother whether she might come and do them in the drawing-room—“so as to be quiet,” she said to her mother; and to herself she said, “And that’s not the real reason. I hope I shan’t grow up a liar.”
Mother said, “Of course, dearie,” and Anthea started swimming through a sea of x’s and y’s and z’s. Mother was sitting at the mahogany bureau writing letters.
“Mother dear,” said Anthea.
“Yes, love-a-duck,” said mother.
“About cook,” said Anthea. “I know where she is.”
“Do you, dear?” said mother. “Well, I wouldn’t take her back after the way she has behaved.”
“It’s not her fault,” said Anthea. “May I tell you about it from the beginning?”
Mother laid down her pen, and her nice face had a resigned expression. As you know, a resigned expression always makes you want not to tell anybody anything.
“It’s like this,” said Anthea, in a hurry: “that egg, you know, that came in the carpet; we put it in the fire and it hatched into the Phoenix, and the carpet was a wishing carpet—and—”
“A very nice game, darling,” said mother, taking up her pen. “Now do be quiet. I’ve got a lot of letters to write. I’m going to Bournemouth tomorrow with the Lamb—and there’s that bazaar.”
Anthea went back to x y z, and mother’s pen scratched busily.
“But, mother,” said Anthea, when mother put down the pen to lick an envelope, “the carpet takes us wherever we like—and—”
“I wish it would take you where you could get a few nice Eastern things for my bazaar,” said mother. “I promised them, and I’ve no time to go to Liberty’s now.”
“It shall,” said Anthea, “but, mother—”
“Well, dear,” said mother, a little impatiently, for she had taken up her pen again.
“The carpet took us to a place where you couldn’t have whooping-cough, and the Lamb hasn’t whooped since, and we took cook because she was so tiresome, and then she would stay and be queen of the savages. They thought her cap was a crown, and—”
“Darling one,” said mother, “you know I love to hear the things you make up—but I am most awfully busy.”
“But it’s true,” said Anthea, desperately.
“You shouldn’t say that, my sweet,” said mother, gently. And then Anthea knew it was hopeless.
“Are you going away for long?” asked Anthea.
“I’ve got a cold,” said mother, “and daddy’s anxious about it, and the Lamb’s cough.”
“He hasn’t coughed since Saturday,” the Lamb’s eldest sister interrupted.
“I wish I could think so,” mother replied. “And daddy’s got to go to Scotland. I do hope you’ll be good children.”
“We will, we will,” said Anthea, fervently. “When’s the bazaar?”
“On Saturday,” said mother, “at the schools. Oh, don’t talk any more, there’s a treasure! My head’s going round, and I’ve forgotten how to spell whooping-cough.”
Mother and the Lamb went away, and father went away, and there was a new cook who looked so like a frightened rabbit that no one had the heart to do anything to frighten her any more than seemed natural to her.
The Phoenix begged to be excused. It said it wanted a week’s rest, and asked that it might not be disturbed. And it hid its golden gleaming self, and nobody could find it.
So that when Wednesday afternoon brought an unexpected holiday, and every one decided to go somewhere on the carpet, the journey had to be undertaken without the Phoenix. They were debarred from any carpet excursions in the evening by a sudden promise to mother, exacted in the agitation of parting, that they would not be out after six at night, except on Saturday, when they were to go to the bazaar, and were pledged to put on their best clothes, to wash themselves to the uttermost, and to clean their nails—not with scissors, which are scratchy and bad, but with flat-sharpened ends of wooden matches, which do no harm to any one’s nails.
“Let’s go and see the Lamb,” said Jane.
But every one was agreed that if they appeared suddenly in Bournemouth it would frighten mother out of her wits, if not into a fit. So they sat on the carpet, and thought and thought and thought till they almost began to squint.
“Look here,” said Cyril, “I know. Please carpet, take us somewhere where we can see the Lamb and mother and no one can see us.”
“Except the Lamb,” said Jane, quickly.
And the next moment they found themselves recovering from the upside-down movement—and there they were sitting on the carpet, and the carpet was laid out over another thick soft carpet of brown pine-needles. There were green pine-trees overhead, and a swift clear little stream was running as fast as ever it could between steep banks—and there, sitting on the pine-needle carpet, was mother, without her hat; and the sun was shining brightly, although it was November—and there was the Lamb, as jolly as jolly and not whooping at all.
“The carpet’s deceived us,” said Robert, gloomily; “mother will see us directly she turns her head.”
But the faithful carpet had not deceived them.
Mother turned her dear head and looked straight at them, and did not see them!
“We’re invisible,” Cyril whispered: “what awful larks!”
But to the girls it was not larks at all. It was horrible to have mother looking straight at them, and her face keeping the same, just as though they weren’t there.
“I don’t like it,” said Jane. “Mother never looked at us like that before. Just as if she didn’t love us—as if we were somebody else’s children, and not very nice ones either—as if she didn’t care whether she saw us or not.”
“It is horrid,” said Anthea, almost in tears.
But at this moment the Lamb saw them, and plunged towards the carpet, shrieking, “Panty, own Panty—an’ Pussy, an’ Squiggle—an’ Bobs, oh, oh!”
Anthea caught him and kissed him, so did Jane; they could not help it—he looked such a darling, with his blue three-cornered hat all on one side, and his precious face all dirty—quite in the old familiar way.
“I love you, Panty; I love you—and you, and you, and you,” cried the Lamb.
It was a delicious moment. Even the boys thumped their baby brother joyously on the back.
Then Anthea glanced at mother—and mother’s face was a pale sea-green colour, and she was staring at the Lamb as if she thought he had gone mad. And, indeed, that was exactly what she did think.
“My Lamb, my precious! Come to mother,” she cried, and jumped up and ran to the baby.
She was so quick that the invisible children had to leap back, or she would have felt them; and to feel what you can’t see is the worst sort of ghost-feeling. Mother picked up the Lamb and hurried away from the pinewood.
“Let’s go home,” said Jane, after a miserable silence. “It feels just exactly as if mother didn’t love us.”
But they couldn’t bear to go home till they had seen mother meet another lady,
and knew that she was safe. You cannot leave your mother to go green in the face in a distant pinewood, far from all human aid, and then go home on your wishing carpet as though nothing had happened.
When mother seemed safe the children returned to the carpet, and said “Home”—and home they went.
“I don’t care about being invisible myself,” said Cyril, “at least, not with my own family. It would be different if you were a prince, or a bandit, or a burglar.”
And now the thoughts of all four dwelt fondly on the dear greenish face of mother.
“I wish she hadn’t gone away,” said Jane; “the house is simply beastly without her.”
“I think we ought to do what she said,” Anthea put in. “I saw something in a book the other day about the wishes of the departed being sacred.”
“That means when they’ve departed farther off,” said Cyril. “India’s coral or Greenland’s icy, don’t you know; not Bournemouth. Besides, we don’t know what her wishes are.”
“She said”—Anthea was very much inclined to cry—“she said, ‘Get Indian things for my bazaar;’ but I know she thought we couldn’t, and it was only play.”
“Let’s get them all the same,” said Robert. “We’ll go the first thing on Saturday morning.”
And on Saturday morning, the first thing, they went.
There was no finding the Phoenix, so they sat on the beautiful wishing carpet, and said—
“We want Indian things for mother’s bazaar. Will you please take us where people will give us heaps of Indian things?”
The docile carpet swirled their senses away, and restored them on the outskirts of a gleaming white Indian town. They knew it was Indian at once, by the shape of the domes and roofs; and besides, a man went by on an elephant, and two English soldiers went along the road, talking like in Mr Kipling’s books—so after that no one could have any doubt as to where they were. They rolled up the carpet and Robert carried it, and they walked bodily into the town.