by E. Nesbit
‘Parcels and umbrellas to be left here,’ said a man at the counter.
The party had no umbrellas, and the only parcel was the bag containing the Psammead, which the Queen had insisted should be brought.
‘I’M not going to be left,’ said the Psammead softly, ‘so don’t you think it.’
‘I’ll wait outside with you,’ said Anthea hastily, and went to sit on the seat near the drinking fountain.
‘Don’t sit so near that nasty fountain,’ said the creature crossly; ‘I might get splashed.’
Anthea obediently moved to another seat and waited. Indeed she waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. The Psammead dropped into an uneasy slumber. Anthea had long ceased to watch the swing-door that always let out the wrong person, and she was herself almost asleep, and still the others did not come back.
It was quite a start when Anthea suddenly realized that they had come back, and that they were not alone. Behind them was quite a crowd of men in uniform, and several gentlemen were there. Everyone seemed very angry.
‘Now go,’ said the nicest of the angry gentlemen. ‘Take the poor, demented thing home and tell your parents she ought to be properly looked after.’
‘If you can’t get her to go we must send for the police,’ said the nastiest gentleman.
‘But we don’t wish to use harsh measures,’ added the nice one, who was really very nice indeed, and seemed to be over all the others.
‘May I speak to my sister a moment first?’ asked Robert.
The nicest gentleman nodded, and the officials stood round the Queen, the others forming a sort of guard while Robert crossed over to Anthea.
‘Everything you can think of,’ he replied to Anthea’s glance of inquiry. ‘Kicked up the most frightful shine in there. Said those necklaces and earrings and things in the glass cases were all hers—would have them out of the cases. Tried to break the glass—she did break one bit! Everybody in the place has been at her. No good. I only got her out by telling her that was the place where they cut queens’ heads off.’
‘Oh, Bobs, what a whacker!’
‘You’d have told a whackinger one to get her out. Besides, it wasn’t. I meant mummy queens. How do you know they don’t cut off mummies’ heads to see how the embalming is done? What I want to say is, can’t you get her to go with you quietly?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Anthea, and went up to the Queen.
‘Do come home,’ she said; ‘the learned gentleman in our house has a much nicer necklace than anything they’ve got here. Come and see it.’
The Queen nodded.
‘You see,’ said the nastiest gentleman, ‘she does understand English.’
‘I was talking Babylonian, I think,’ said Anthea bashfully.
‘My good child,’ said the nice gentleman, ‘what you’re talking is not Babylonian, but nonsense. You just go home at once, and tell your parents exactly what has happened.’
Anthea took the Queen’s hand and gently pulled her away. The other children followed, and the black crowd of angry gentlemen stood on the steps watching them. It was when the little party of disgraced children, with the Queen who had disgraced them, had reached the middle of the courtyard that her eyes fell on the bag where the Psammead was. She stopped short.
‘I wish,’ she said, very loud and clear, ‘that all those Babylonian things would come out to me here—slowly, so that those dogs and slaves can see the working of the great Queen’s magic.’
‘Oh, you are a tiresome woman,’ said the Psammead in its bag, but it puffed itself out.
Next moment there was a crash. The glass swing doors and all their framework were smashed suddenly and completely. The crowd of angry gentlemen sprang aside when they saw what had done this.
But the nastiest of them was not quick enough, and he was roughly pushed out of the way by an enormous stone bull that was floating steadily through the door. It came and stood beside the Queen in the middle of the courtyard.
It was followed by more stone images, by great slabs of carved stone, bricks, helmets, tools, weapons, fetters, wine-jars, bowls, bottles, vases, jugs, saucers, seals, and the round long things, something like rolling pins with marks on them like the print of little bird-feet, necklaces, collars, rings, armlets, earrings—heaps and heaps and heaps of things, far more than anyone had time to count, or even to see distinctly.
All the angry gentlemen had abruptly sat down on the Museum steps except the nice one. He stood with his hands in his pockets just as though he was quite used to seeing great stone bulls and all sorts of small Babylonish objects float out into the Museum yard.
But he sent a man to close the big iron gates.
A journalist, who was just leaving the museum, spoke to Robert as he passed.
‘Theosophy, I suppose?’ he said. ‘Is she Mrs Besant?’
‘Yes,’ said Robert recklessly.
The journalist passed through the gates just before they were shut.
He rushed off to Fleet Street, and his paper got out a new edition within half an hour.
MRS BESANT AND THEOSOPHY
IMPERTINENT MIRACLE AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
People saw it in fat, black letters on the boards carried by the sellers of newspapers. Some few people who had nothing better to do went down to the Museum on the tops of omnibuses. But by the time they got there, there was nothing to be seen. For the Babylonian Queen had suddenly seen the closed gates, had felt the threat of them, and had said—
‘I wish we were in your house.’
And, of course, instantly they were.
The Psammead was furious.
‘Look here,’ it said, ‘they’ll come after you, and they’ll find me. There’ll be a National Cage built for me at Westminster, and I shall have to work at politics. Why wouldn’t you leave the things in their places?’
‘What a temper you have, haven’t you?’ said the Queen serenely. ‘I wish all the things were back in their places. Will that do for you?’
The Psammead swelled and shrank and spoke very angrily.
‘I can’t refuse to give your wishes,’ it said, ‘but I can Bite. And I will if this goes on. Now then.’
‘Ah, don’t,’ whispered Anthea close to its bristling ear; ‘it’s dreadful for us too. Don’t you desert us. Perhaps she’ll wish herself at home again soon.’
‘Not she,’ said the Psammead a little less crossly.
‘Take me to see your City,’ said the Queen.
The children looked at each other.
‘If we had some money we could take her about in a cab. People wouldn’t notice her so much then. But we haven’t.’
‘Sell this,’ said the Queen, taking a ring from her finger.
‘They’d only think we’d stolen it,’ said Cyril bitterly, ‘and put us in prison.’
‘All roads lead to prison with you, it seems,’ said the Queen.
‘The learned gentleman!’ said Anthea, and ran up to him with the ring in her hand.
‘Look here,’ she said, ‘will you buy this for a pound?’
‘Oh!’ he said in tones of joy and amazement, and took the ring into his hand. ‘It’s my very own,’ said Anthea; ‘it was given to me to sell.’
‘I’ll lend you a pound,’ said the learned gentleman, ‘with pleasure; and I’ll take care of the ring for you. Who did you say gave it to you?’
‘We call her,’ said Anthea carefully, ‘the Queen of Babylon.’
‘Is it a game?’ he asked hopefully.
‘It’ll be a pretty game if I don’t get the money to pay for cabs for her,’ said Anthea.
‘I sometimes think,’ he said slowly, ‘that I am becoming insane, or that—’
‘Or that I am; but I’m not, and you’re not, and s
he’s not.’
‘Does she say that she’s the Queen of Babylon?’ he uneasily asked.
‘Yes,’ said Anthea recklessly.
‘This thought-transference is more far-reaching than I imagined,’ he said. ‘I suppose I have unconsciously influenced her, too. I never thought my Babylonish studies would bear fruit like this. Horrible! There are more things in heaven and earth—’
‘Yes,’ said Anthea, ‘heaps more. And the pound is the thing I want more than anything on earth.’
He ran his fingers through his thin hair.
‘This thought-transference!’ he said. ‘It’s undoubtedly a Babylonian ring—or it seems so to me. But perhaps I have hypnotized myself. I will see a doctor the moment I have corrected the last proofs of my book.’
‘Yes, do!’ said Anthea, ‘and thank you so very much.’
She took the sovereign and ran down to the others.
And now from the window of a four-wheeled cab the Queen of Babylon beheld the wonders of London. Buckingham Palace she thought uninteresting; Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament little better. But she liked the Tower, and the River, and the ships filled her with wonder and delight.
‘But how badly you keep your slaves. How wretched and poor and neglected they seem,’ she said, as the cab rattled along the Mile End Road.
‘They aren’t slaves; they’re working-people,’ said Jane.
‘Of course they’re working. That’s what slaves are. Don’t you tell me. Do you suppose I don’t know a slave’s face when I see it?
Why don’t their masters see that they’re better fed and better clothed? Tell me in three words.’
No one answered. The wage-system of modern England is a little difficult to explain in three words even if you understand it—which the children didn’t.
‘You’ll have a revolt of your slaves if you’re not careful,’ said the Queen.
‘Oh, no,’ said Cyril; ‘you see they have votes—that makes them safe not to revolt. It makes all the difference. Father told me so.’
‘What is this vote?’ asked the Queen. ‘Is it a charm? What do they do with it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the harassed Cyril; ‘it’s just a vote, that’s all! They don’t do anything particular with it.’
‘I see,’ said the Queen; ‘a sort of plaything. Well, I wish that all these slaves may have in their hands this moment their fill of their favourite meat and drink.’
Instantly all the people in the Mile End Road, and in all the other streets where poor people live, found their hands full of things to eat and drink. From the cab window could be seen persons carrying every kind of food, and bottles and cans as well. Roast meat, fowls, red lobsters, great yellowy crabs, fried fish, boiled pork, beef-steak puddings, baked onions, mutton pies; most of the young people had oranges and sweets and cake. It made an enormous change in the look of the Mile End Road—brightened it up, so to speak, and brightened up, more than you can possibly imagine, the faces of the people.
‘Makes a difference, doesn’t it?’ said the Queen.
‘That’s the best wish you’ve had yet,’ said Jane with cordial approval.
just by the Bank the cabman stopped.
‘I ain’t agoin’ to drive you no further,’ he said. ‘Out you gets.’
They got out rather unwillingly.
‘I wants my tea,’ he said; and they saw that on the box of the cab was a mound of cabbage, with pork chops and apple sauce, a duck, and a spotted currant pudding. Also a large can.
‘You pay me my fare,’ he said threateningly, and looked down at the mound, muttering again about his tea.
‘We’ll take another cab,’ said Cyril with dignity. ‘Give me change for a sovereign, if you please.’
But the cabman, as it turned out, was not at all a nice character. He took the sovereign, whipped up his horse, and disappeared in the stream of cabs and omnibuses and wagons, without giving them any change at all.
Already a little crowd was collecting round the party.
‘Come on,’ said Robert, leading the wrong way.
The crowd round them thickened. They were in a narrow street where many gentlemen in black coats and without hats were standing about on the pavement talking very loudly.
‘How ugly their clothes are,’ said the Queen of Babylon. ‘They’d be rather fine men, some of them, if they were dressed decently, especially the ones with the beautiful long, curved noses. I wish they were dressed like the Babylonians of my court.’
And of course, it was so.
The moment the almost fainting Psammead had blown itself out every man in Throgmorton Street appeared abruptly in Babylonian full dress.
All were carefully powdered, their hair and beards were scented and curled, their garments richly embroidered. They wore rings and armlets, flat gold collars and swords, and impossible-looking head-dresses.
A stupefied silence fell on them.
‘I say,’ a youth who had always been fair-haired broke that silence, ‘it’s only fancy of course—something wrong with my eyes—but you chaps do look so rum.’
‘Rum,’ said his friend. ‘Look at you. You in a sash! My hat! And your hair’s gone black and you’ve got a beard. It’s my belief we’ve been poisoned. You do look a jackape.’
‘Old Levinstein don’t look so bad. But how was it done—that’s what I want to know. How was it done? Is it conjuring, or what?’
‘I think it is chust a ver’ bad tream,’ said old Levinstein to his clerk; ‘all along Bishopsgate I haf seen the gommon people have their hants full of food—goot food. Oh yes, without doubt a very bad tream!’
‘Then I’m dreaming too, Sir,’ said the clerk, looking down at his legs with an expression of loathing. ‘I see my feet in beastly sandals as plain as plain.’
‘All that goot food wasted,’ said old Mr Levinstein. A bad tream—a bad tream.’
The Members of the Stock Exchange are said to be at all times a noisy lot. But the noise they made now to express their disgust at the costumes of ancient Babylon was far louder than their ordinary row. One had to shout before one could hear oneself speak.
‘I only wish,’ said the clerk who thought it was conjuring—he was quite close to the children and they trembled, because they knew that whatever he wished would come true. ‘I only wish we knew who’d done it.’
And, of course, instantly they did know, and they pressed round the Queen.
‘Scandalous! Shameful! Ought to be put down by law. Give her in charge. Fetch the police,’ two or three voices shouted at once.
The Queen recoiled.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘They sound like caged lions—lions by the thousand. What is it that they say?’
‘They say “Police!,”’ said Cyril briefly. ‘I knew they would sooner or later. And I don’t blame them, mind you.’
‘I wish my guards were here!’ cried the Queen. The exhausted Psammead was panting and trembling, but the Queen’s guards in red and green garments, and brass and iron gear, choked Throgmorton Street, and bared weapons flashed round the Queen.
‘I’m mad,’ said a Mr Rosenbaum; ‘dat’s what it is—mad!’
‘It’s a judgement on you, Rosy,’ said his partner. ‘I always said you were too hard in that matter of Flowerdew. It’s a judgement, and I’m in it too.’
The members of the Stock Exchange had edged carefully away from the gleaming blades, the mailed figures, the hard, cruel Eastern faces.
But Throgmorton Street is narrow, and the crowd was too thick for them to get away as quickly as they wished.
‘Kill them,’ cried the Queen. ‘Kill the dogs!’
The guards obeyed.
‘It is all a dream,’ cried Mr Levinstein, cowering in a doorway behind his clerk.
‘It isn’t,’ said the clerk. ‘It isn’t. Oh, my good gracious! those foreign brutes are killing everybody. Henry Hirsh is down now, and Prentice is cut in two—oh, Lord! and Huth, and there goes Lionel Cohen with his head off, and Guy Nickalls has lost his head now. A dream? I wish to goodness it was all a dream.’
And, of course, instantly it was! The entire Stock Exchange rubbed its eyes and went back to close, to over, and either side of seven-eights, and Trunks, and Kaffirs, and Steel Common, and Contangoes, and Backwardations, Double Options, and all the interesting subjects concerning which they talk in the Street without ceasing.
No one said a word about it to anyone else. I think I have explained before that business men do not like it to be known that they have been dreaming in business hours. Especially mad dreams including such dreadful things as hungry people getting dinners, and the destruction of the Stock Exchange.
The children were in the dining-room at 300, Fitzroy Street, pale and trembling. The Psammead crawled out of the embroidered bag, and lay flat on the table, its leg stretched out, looking more like a dead hare than anything else.
‘Thank Goodness that’s over,’ said Anthea, drawing a deep breath.
‘She won’t come back, will she?’ asked Jane tremulously.
‘No,’ said Cyril. ‘She’s thousands of years ago. But we spent a whole precious pound on her. It’ll take all our pocket-money for ages to pay that back.’
‘Not if it was all a dream,’ said Robert.
‘The wish said all a dream, you know, Panther; you cut up and ask if he lent you anything.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Anthea politely, following the sound of her knock into the presence of the learned gentleman, ‘I’m so sorry to trouble you, but did you lend me a pound today?’
‘No,’ said he, looking kindly at her through his spectacles. ‘But it’s extraordinary that you should ask me, for I dozed for a few moments this afternoon, a thing I very rarely do, and I dreamed quite distinctly that you brought me a ring that you said belonged to the Queen of Babylon, and that I lent you a sovereign and that you left one of the Queen’s rings here. The ring was a magnificent specimen.’ He sighed. ‘I wish it hadn’t been a dream,’ he said smiling. He was really learning to smile quite nicely.