by Edith Nesbit
‘Come,’ said the Phoenix, ‘I’m cool now.’
The four children got on to what was left of the carpet. Very careful they were not to leave a leg or a hand hanging over one of the holes. It was very hot — the theatre was a pit of fire. Every one else had got out.
Jane had to sit on Anthea’s lap.
‘Home!’ said Cyril, and instantly the cool draught from under the nursery door played upon their legs as they sat. They were all on the carpet still, and the carpet was lying in its proper place on the nursery floor, as calm and unmoved as though it had never been to the theatre or taken part in a fire in its life.
Four long breaths of deep relief were instantly breathed. The draught which they had never liked before was for the moment quite pleasant. And they were safe. And every one else was safe. The theatre had been quite empty when they left. Every one was sure of that.
They presently found themselves all talking at once. Somehow none of their adventures had given them so much to talk about. None other had seemed so real.
‘Did you notice — ?’ they said, and ‘Do you remember — ?’
When suddenly Anthea’s face turned pale under the dirt which it had collected on it during the fire.
‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘mother and father! Oh, how awful! They’ll think we’re burned to cinders. Oh, let’s go this minute and tell them we aren’t.’
‘We should only miss them,’ said the sensible Cyril.
‘Well — YOU go then,’ said Anthea, ‘or I will. Only do wash your face first. Mother will be sure to think you are burnt to a cinder if she sees you as black as that, and she’ll faint or be ill or something. Oh, I wish we’d never got to know that Phoenix.’
‘Hush!’ said Robert; ‘it’s no use being rude to the bird. I suppose it can’t help its nature. Perhaps we’d better wash too. Now I come to think of it my hands are rather—’
No one had noticed the Phoenix since it had bidden them to step on the carpet. And no one noticed that no one had noticed.
All were partially clean, and Cyril was just plunging into his great-coat to go and look for his parents — he, and not unjustly, called it looking for a needle in a bundle of hay — when the sound of father’s latchkey in the front door sent every one bounding up the stairs.
‘Are you all safe?’ cried mother’s voice; ‘are you all safe?’ and the next moment she was kneeling on the linoleum of the hall, trying to kiss four damp children at once, and laughing and crying by turns, while father stood looking on and saying he was blessed or something.
‘But how did you guess we’d come home,’ said Cyril, later, when every one was calm enough for talking.
‘Well, it was rather a rum thing. We heard the Garrick was on fire, and of course we went straight there,’ said father, briskly. ‘We couldn’t find you, of course — and we couldn’t get in — but the firemen told us every one was safely out. And then I heard a voice at my ear say, “Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane” — and something touched me on the shoulder. It was a great yellow pigeon, and it got in the way of my seeing who’d spoken. It fluttered off, and then some one said in the other ear, “They’re safe at home”; and when I turned again, to see who it was speaking, hanged if there wasn’t that confounded pigeon on my other shoulder. Dazed by the fire, I suppose. Your mother said it was the voice of—’
‘I said it was the bird that spoke,’ said mother, ‘and so it was. Or at least I thought so then. It wasn’t a pigeon. It was an orange-coloured cockatoo. I don’t care who it was that spoke. It was true and you’re safe.’
Mother began to cry again, and father said bed was a good place after the pleasures of the stage.
So every one went there.
Robert had a talk to the Phoenix that night.
‘Oh, very well,’ said the bird, when Robert had said what he felt, ‘didn’t you know that I had power over fire? Do not distress yourself. I, like my high priests in Lombard Street, can undo the work of flames. Kindly open the casement.’
It flew out.
That was why the papers said next day that the fire at the theatre had done less damage than had been anticipated. As a matter of fact it had done none, for the Phoenix spent the night in putting things straight. How the management accounted for this, and how many of the theatre officials still believe that they were mad on that night will never be known.
Next day mother saw the burnt holes in the carpet.
‘It caught where it was paraffiny,’ said Anthea.
‘I must get rid of that carpet at once,’ said mother.
But what the children said in sad whispers to each other, as they pondered over last night’s events, was —
‘We must get rid of that Phoenix.’
CHAPTER 12. THE END OF THE END
‘Egg, toast, tea, milk, tea-cup and saucer, egg-spoon, knife, butter — that’s all, I think,’ remarked Anthea, as she put the last touches to mother’s breakfast-tray, and went, very carefully up the stairs, feeling for every step with her toes, and holding on to the tray with all her fingers. She crept into mother’s room and set the tray on a chair. Then she pulled one of the blinds up very softly.
‘Is your head better, mammy dear?’ she asked, in the soft little voice that she kept expressly for mother’s headaches. ‘I’ve brought your brekkie, and I’ve put the little cloth with clover-leaves on it, the one I made you.’
‘That’s very nice,’ said mother sleepily.
Anthea knew exactly what to do for mothers with headaches who had breakfast in bed. She fetched warm water and put just enough eau de Cologne in it, and bathed mother’s face and hands with the sweet-scented water. Then mother was able to think about breakfast.
‘But what’s the matter with my girl?’ she asked, when her eyes got used to the light.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry you’re ill,’ Anthea said. ‘It’s that horrible fire and you being so frightened. Father said so. And we all feel as if it was our faults. I can’t explain, but—’
‘It wasn’t your fault a bit, you darling goosie,’ mother said. ‘How could it be?’
‘That’s just what I can’t tell you,’ said Anthea. ‘I haven’t got a futile brain like you and father, to think of ways of explaining everything.’
Mother laughed.
‘My futile brain — or did you mean fertile? — anyway, it feels very stiff and sore this morning — but I shall be quite all right by and by. And don’t be a silly little pet girl. The fire wasn’t your faults. No; I don’t want the egg, dear. I’ll go to sleep again, I think. Don’t you worry. And tell cook not to bother me about meals. You can order what you like for lunch.’
Anthea closed the door very mousily, and instantly went downstairs and ordered what she liked for lunch. She ordered a pair of turkeys, a large plum-pudding, cheese-cakes, and almonds and raisins.
Cook told her to go along, do. And she might as well not have ordered anything, for when lunch came it was just hashed mutton and semolina pudding, and cook had forgotten the sippets for the mutton hash and the semolina pudding was burnt.
When Anthea rejoined the others she found them all plunged in the gloom where she was herself. For every one knew that the days of the carpet were now numbered. Indeed, so worn was it that you could almost have numbered its threads.
So that now, after nearly a month of magic happenings, the time was at hand when life would have to go on in the dull, ordinary way and Jane, Robert, Anthea, and Cyril would be just in the same position as the other children who live in Camden Town, the children whom these four had so often pitied, and perhaps a little despised.
‘We shall be just like them,’ Cyril said.
‘Except,’ said Robert, ‘that we shall have more things to remember and be sorry we haven’t got.’
‘Mother’s going to send away the carpet as soon as she’s well enough to see about that coconut matting. Fancy us with coconut-matting — us! And we’ve walked under live coconut-trees on the island where you can’t have whooping-cough.’<
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‘Pretty island,’ said the Lamb; ‘paint-box sands and sea all shiny sparkly.’
His brothers and sisters had often wondered whether he remembered that island. Now they knew that he did.
‘Yes,’ said Cyril; ‘no more cheap return trips by carpet for us — that’s a dead cert.’
They were all talking about the carpet, but what they were all thinking about was the Phoenix.
The golden bird had been so kind, so friendly, so polite, so instructive — and now it had set fire to a theatre and made mother ill.
Nobody blamed the bird. It had acted in a perfectly natural manner. But every one saw that it must not be asked to prolong its visit. Indeed, in plain English it must be asked to go!
The four children felt like base spies and treacherous friends; and each in its mind was saying who ought not to be the one to tell the Phoenix that there could no longer be a place for it in that happy home in Camden Town. Each child was quite sure that one of them ought to speak out in a fair and manly way, but nobody wanted to be the one.
They could not talk the whole thing over as they would have liked to do, because the Phoenix itself was in the cupboard, among the blackbeetles and the odd shoes and the broken chessmen.
But Anthea tried.
‘It’s very horrid. I do hate thinking things about people, and not being able to say the things you’re thinking because of the way they would feel when they thought what things you were thinking, and wondered what they’d done to make you think things like that, and why you were thinking them.’
Anthea was so anxious that the Phoenix should not understand what she said that she made a speech completely baffling to all. It was not till she pointed to the cupboard in which all believed the Phoenix to be that Cyril understood.
‘Yes,’ he said, while Jane and Robert were trying to tell each other how deeply they didn’t understand what Anthea were saying; ‘but after recent eventfulnesses a new leaf has to be turned over, and, after all, mother is more important than the feelings of any of the lower forms of creation, however unnatural.’
‘How beautifully you do do it,’ said Anthea, absently beginning to build a card-house for the Lamb—’mixing up what you’re saying, I mean. We ought to practise doing it so as to be ready for mysterious occasions. We’re talking about THAT,’ she said to Jane and Robert, frowning, and nodding towards the cupboard where the Phoenix was. Then Robert and Jane understood, and each opened its mouth to speak.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Anthea quickly; ‘the game is to twist up what you want to say so that no one can understand what you’re saying except the people you want to understand it, and sometimes not them.’
‘The ancient philosophers,’ said a golden voice, ‘Well understood the art of which you speak.’
Of course it was the Phoenix, who had not been in the cupboard at all, but had been cocking a golden eye at them from the cornice during the whole conversation.
‘Pretty dickie!’ remarked the Lamb. ‘CANARY dickie!’
‘Poor misguided infant,’ said the Phoenix.
There was a painful pause; the four could not but think it likely that the Phoenix had understood their very veiled allusions, accompanied as they had been by gestures indicating the cupboard. For the Phoenix was not wanting in intelligence.
‘We were just saying—’ Cyril began, and I hope he was not going to say anything but the truth. Whatever it was he did not say it, for the Phoenix interrupted him, and all breathed more freely as it spoke.
‘I gather,’ it said, ‘that you have some tidings of a fatal nature to communicate to our degraded black brothers who run to and fro for ever yonder.’ It pointed a claw at the cupboard, where the blackbeetles lived.
‘Canary TALK,’ said the Lamb joyously; ‘go and show mammy.’
He wriggled off Anthea’s lap.
‘Mammy’s asleep,’ said Jane, hastily. ‘Come and be wild beasts in a cage under the table.’
But the Lamb caught his feet and hands, and even his head, so often and so deeply in the holes of the carpet that the cage, or table, had to be moved on to the linoleum, and the carpet lay bare to sight with all its horrid holes.
‘Ah,’ said the bird, ‘it isn’t long for this world.’
‘No,’ said Robert; ‘everything comes to an end. It’s awful.’
‘Sometimes the end is peace,’ remarked the Phoenix. ‘I imagine that unless it comes soon the end of your carpet will be pieces.’
‘Yes,’ said Cyril, respectfully kicking what was left of the carpet. The movement of its bright colours caught the eye of the Lamb, who went down on all fours instantly and began to pull at the red and blue threads.
‘Aggedydaggedygaggedy,’ murmured the Lamb; ‘daggedy ag ag ag!’
And before any one could have winked (even if they had wanted to, and it would not have been of the slightest use) the middle of the floor showed bare, an island of boards surrounded by a sea of linoleum. The magic carpet was gone, AND SO WAS THE LAMB!
There was a horrible silence. The Lamb — the baby, all alone — had been wafted away on that untrustworthy carpet, so full of holes and magic. And no one could know where he was. And no one could follow him because there was now no carpet to follow on.
Jane burst into tears, but Anthea, though pale and frantic, was dry-eyed.
‘It MUST be a dream,’ she said.
‘That’s what the clergyman said,’ remarked Robert forlornly; ‘but it wasn’t, and it isn’t.’
‘But the Lamb never wished,’ said Cyril; ‘he was only talking Bosh.’
‘The carpet understands all speech,’ said the Phoenix, ‘even Bosh. I know not this Boshland, but be assured that its tongue is not unknown to the carpet.’
‘Do you mean, then,’ said Anthea, in white terror, ‘that when he was saying “Agglety dag,” or whatever it was, that he meant something by it?’
‘All speech has meaning,’ said the Phoenix.
‘There I think you’re wrong,’ said Cyril; ‘even people who talk English sometimes say things that don’t mean anything in particular.’
‘Oh, never mind that now,’ moaned Anthea; ‘you think “Aggety dag” meant something to him and the carpet?’
‘Beyond doubt it held the same meaning to the carpet as to the luckless infant,’ the Phoenix said calmly.
‘And WHAT did it mean? Oh WHAT?’
‘Unfortunately,’ the bird rejoined, ‘I never studied Bosh.’
Jane sobbed noisily, but the others were calm with what is sometimes called the calmness of despair. The Lamb was gone — the Lamb, their own precious baby brother — who had never in his happy little life been for a moment out of the sight of eyes that loved him — he was gone. He had gone alone into the great world with no other companion and protector than a carpet with holes in it. The children had never really understood before what an enormously big place the world is. And the Lamb might be anywhere in it!
‘And it’s no use going to look for him.’ Cyril, in flat and wretched tones, only said what the others were thinking.
‘Do you wish him to return?’ the Phoenix asked; it seemed to speak with some surprise.
‘Of course we do!’ cried everybody.
‘Isn’t he more trouble than he’s worth?’ asked the bird doubtfully.
‘No, no. Oh, we do want him back! We do!’
‘Then,’ said the wearer of gold plumage, ‘if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just pop out and see what I can do.’
Cyril flung open the window, and the Phoenix popped out.
‘Oh, if only mother goes on sleeping! Oh, suppose she wakes up and wants the Lamb! Oh, suppose the servants come! Stop crying, Jane. It’s no earthly good. No, I’m not crying myself — at least I wasn’t till you said so, and I shouldn’t anyway if — if there was any mortal thing we could do. Oh, oh, oh!’
Cyril and Robert were boys, and boys never cry, of course. Still, the position was a terrible one, and I do not wonder that they made faces in their effo
rts to behave in a really manly way.
And at this awful moment mother’s bell rang.
A breathless stillness held the children. Then Anthea dried her eyes. She looked round her and caught up the poker. She held it out to Cyril.
‘Hit my hand hard,’ she said; ‘I must show mother some reason for my eyes being like they are. Harder,’ she cried as Cyril gently tapped her with the iron handle. And Cyril, agitated and trembling, nerved himself to hit harder, and hit very much harder than he intended.
Anthea screamed.
‘Oh, Panther, I didn’t mean to hurt, really,’ cried Cyril, clattering the poker back into the fender.
‘It’s — all — right,’ said Anthea breathlessly, clasping the hurt hand with the one that wasn’t hurt; ‘it’s — getting — red.’
It was — a round red and blue bump was rising on the back of it. ‘Now, Robert,’ she said, trying to breathe more evenly, ‘you go out — oh, I don’t know where — on to the dustbin — anywhere — and I shall tell mother you and the Lamb are out.’
Anthea was now ready to deceive her mother for as long as ever she could. Deceit is very wrong, we know, but it seemed to Anthea that it was her plain duty to keep her mother from being frightened about the Lamb as long as possible. And the Phoenix might help.
‘It always has helped,’ Robert said; ‘it got us out of the tower, and even when it made the fire in the theatre it got us out all right. I’m certain it will manage somehow.’
Mother’s bell rang again.
‘Oh, Eliza’s never answered it,’ cried Anthea; ‘she never does. Oh, I must go.’
And she went.
Her heart beat bumpingly as she climbed the stairs. Mother would be certain to notice her eyes — well, her hand would account for that. But the Lamb —
‘No, I must NOT think of the Lamb, she said to herself, and bit her tongue till her eyes watered again, so as to give herself something else to think of. Her arms and legs and back, and even her tear-reddened face, felt stiff with her resolution not to let mother be worried if she could help it.
She opened the door softly.