by Edith Nesbit
“Who’s that?” says Mademoiselle suddenly, pointing, too, which every one knows is not manners.
It is the bailiff coming back from the doctor’s with antiseptic plaster on that nasty cut that took so long a-bathing this morning. They tell her it is the bailiff at Yalding Towers, and she says, “Sky!” (Ciel!) and asks no more awkward questions about the boys. Lunch — very late — is a silent meal. After lunch Mademoiselle goes out, in a hat with many pink roses, carrying a rose-lined parasol. The girls, in dead silence, organise a dolls’ tea-party, with real tea. At the second cup Kathleen bursts into tears. Mabel, also weeping, embraces her.
“I wish,” sobs Kathleen, “oh, I do wish I knew where the boys were! It would be such a comfort.”
* * * * *
Gerald knew where the boys were, and it was no comfort to him at all. If you come to think of it, he was the only person who could know where they were, because Jimmy didn’t know that he was a boy — and indeed he wasn’t really — and the Ugly-Wugly couldn’t be expected to know anything real, such as where boys were. At the moment when the second cup of dolls’ tea — very strong, but not strong enough to drown care in — was being poured out by the trembling hand of Kathleen, Gerald was lurking — there really is no other word for it — on the staircase of Aldermanbury Buildings, Old Broad Street. On the floor below him was a door bearing the legend “Mr. U. W. Ugli, Stock and Share Broker. And at the Stock Exchange,” and on the floor above was another door, on which was the name of Gerald’s little brother, now grown suddenly rich in so magic and tragic a way. There were no explaining words under Jimmy’s name. Gerald could not guess what walk in life it was to which That (which had been Jimmy) owed its affluence. He had seen, when the door opened to admit his brother, a tangle of clerks and mahogany desks. Evidently That had a large business.
What was Gerald to do? What could he do?
It is almost impossible, especially for one so young as Gerald, to enter a large London office and explain that the elderly and respected head of it is not what he seems, but is really your little brother, who has been suddenly advanced to age and wealth by a tricky wishing ring. If you think it’s a possible thing, try it, that’s all. Nor could he knock at the door of Mr. U. W. Ugli, Stock and Share Broker (and at the Stock Exchange), and inform his clerks that their chief was really nothing but old clothes that had accidentally come alive, and by some magic, which he couldn’t attempt to explain, become real during a night spent at a really good hotel which had no existence.
The situation bristled, as you see, with difficulties. And it was so long past Gerald’s proper dinner-time that his increasing hunger was rapidly growing to seem the most important difficulty of all. It is quite possible to starve to death on the staircase of a London building if the people you are watching for only stay long enough in their offices. The truth of this came home to Gerald more and more painfully.
A boy with hair like a new front door mat came whistling up the stairs. He had a dark blue bag in his hands.
“I’ll give you a tanner for yourself if you’ll get me a tanner’s worth of buns,” said Gerald, with that prompt decision common to all great commanders.
“Show us yer tanners,” the boy rejoined with at least equal promptness. Gerald showed them. “All right; hand over.”
“Payment on delivery,” said Gerald, using words from the drapers which he had never thought to use.
The boy grinned admiringly.
“Knows ‘is wy abaht,” he said; “ain’t no flies on ‘im.”
“Not many,” Gerald owned with modest pride. “Cut along, there’s a good chap. I’ve got to wait here. I’ll take care of your bag if you like.”
“Nor yet there ain’t no flies on me neither,” remarked the boy, shouldering it. “I been up to the confidence trick for years — ever since I was your age.”
With this parting shot he went, and returned in due course bun-laden. Gerald gave the sixpence and took the buns. When the boy, a minute later, emerged from the door of Mr. U. W. Ugli, Stock and Share Broker (and at the Stock Exchange), Gerald stopped him.
“What sort of chap’s that?” he asked, pointing the question with a jerk of an explaining thumb.
“Awful big pot,” said the boy; “up to his eyes in oof. Motor and all that.”
“Know anything about the one on the next landing?”
“He’s bigger than what this one is. Very old firm — special cellar in the Bank of England to put his chink in — all in bins like against the wall at the corn-chandler’s. Jimminy, I wouldn’t mind ‘alf an hour in there, and the doors open and the police away at a beano. Not much! Neither. You’ll bust if you eat all them buns.”
“Have one?” Gerald responded, and held out the bag.
“They say in our office,” said the boy, paying for the bun honourably with unasked information, “as these two is all for cutting each other’s throats — oh, only in the way of business — been at it for years.”
Gerald wildly wondered what magic and how much had been needed to give history and a past to these two things of yesterday, the rich Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly. If he could get them away would all memory of them fade — in this boy’s mind, for instance, in the minds of all the people who did business with them in the City? Would the mahogany-and-clerk-furnished offices fade away? Were the clerks real? Was the mahogany? Was he himself real? Was the boy?
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked the other boy. “Are you on for a lark?”
“I ought to be getting back to the office,” said the boy.
“Get then!” said Gerald.
“Don’t you get stuffy,” said the boy. “I was just agoing to say it didn’t matter. I know how to make my nose bleed if I’m a bit late.”
Gerald congratulated him on this accomplishment, at once so useful and so graceful, and then said: —
“Look here. I’ll give you five bob — honest.”
“What for?” was the boy’s natural question.
“If you’ll help me.”
“Fire ahead.”
“I’m a private inquiry,” said Gerald.
“‘Tec? You don’t look it.”
“What’s the good of being one if you look it?” Gerald asked impatiently, beginning on another bun. “That old chap on the floor above — he’s wanted.”
“Police?” asked the boy with fine carelessness.
“No — sorrowing relations.”
“‘Return to,’” said the boy; “‘all forgotten and forgiven.’ I see.”
“And I’ve got to get him to them, somehow. Now, if you could go in and give him a message from some one who wanted to meet him on business — —”
“Hold on!” said the boy. “I know a trick worth two of that. You go in and see old Ugli. He’d give his ears to have the old boy out of the way for a day or two. They were saying so in our office only this morning.”
“Let me think,” said Gerald, laying down the last bun on his knee expressly to hold his head in his hands.
“Don’t you forget to think about my five bob,” said the boy.
Then there was a silence on the stairs, broken only by the cough of a clerk in That’s office, and the clickety-clack of a typewriter in the office of Mr. U. W. Ugli.
Then Gerald rose up and finished the bun.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll chance it. Here’s your five bob.”
He brushed the bun crumbs from his front, cleared his throat, and knocked at the door of Mr. U. W. Ugli. It opened and he entered.
The door-mat boy lingered, secure in his power to account for his long absence by means of his well-trained nose, and his waiting was rewarded. He went down a few steps, round the bend of the stairs, and heard the voice of Mr. U. W. Ugli, so well known on that staircase (and on the Stock Exchange) say in soft, cautious accents: —
“Then I’ll ask him to let me look at the ring — and I’ll drop it. You pick it up. But remember, it’s a pure accident, and you don’t know me. I can’t
have my name mixed up in a thing like this. You’re sure he’s really unhinged?”
“Quite,” said Gerald; “he’s quite mad about that ring. He’ll follow it anywhere. I know he will. And think of his sorrowing relations.”
“I do — I do,” said Mr. Ugli kindly; “that’s all I do think of, of course.”
He went up the stairs to the other office, and Gerald heard the voice of That telling his clerks that he was going out to lunch. Then the horrible Ugly-Wugly and Jimmy, hardly less horrible in the eyes of Gerald, passed down the stairs where, in the dusk of the lower landing, two boys were making themselves as undistinguishable as possible, and so out into the street, talking of stocks and shares, bears and bulls. The two boys followed.
“I say,” the door-mat-headed boy whispered admiringly, “whatever are you up to?”
“You’ll see,” said Gerald recklessly. “Come on!”
“You tell me. I must be getting back.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me. That old gentleman’s not really old at all — he’s my young brother suddenly turned into what you see. The other’s not real at all. He’s only just old clothes and nothing inside.”
“He looks it, I must say,” the boy admitted; “but I say — you do stick it on, don’t you?”
“Well, my brother was turned like that by a magic ring.”
“There ain’t no such thing as magic,” said the boy. “I learnt that at school.”
“All right,” said Gerald. “Goodbye.”
“Oh, go ahead!” said the boy; “you do stick it on, though.”
“Well, that magic ring. If I can get hold of it I shall just wish we were all in a certain place. And we shall be. And then I can deal with both of them.”
“Deal?”
“Yes, the ring won’t unwish anything you’ve wished. That undoes itself with time, like a spring uncoiling. But it’ll give you a brand-new wish — I’m almost certain of it. Anyhow, I’m going to chance it.”
“You are a rotter, aren’t you?” said the boy respectfully.
“You wait and see,” Gerald repeated.
“I say, you aren’t going into this swell place! you can’t?”
The boy paused, appalled at the majesty of Pym’s.
“Yes, I am — they can’t turn us out as long as we behave. You come along, too. I’ll stand lunch.”
I don’t know why Gerald clung so to this boy. He wasn’t a very nice boy. Perhaps it was because he was the only person Gerald knew in London, to speak to — except That-which-had-been-Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly; and he did not want to talk to either of them.
What happened next happened so quickly that, as Gerald said later, it was “just like magic.” The restaurant was crowded — busy men were hastily bolting the food hurriedly brought by busy waitresses. There was a clink of forks and plates, the gurgle of beer from bottles, the hum of talk, and the smell of many good things to eat.
“Two chops, please,” Gerald had just said, playing with a plainly shown handful of money, so as to leave no doubt of his honourable intentions. Then at the next table he heard the words, “Ah, yes, curious old family heirloom,” the ring was drawn off the finger of That, and Mr. U. W. Ugli, murmuring something about a unique curio, reached his impossible hand out for it. The door-mat-headed boy was watching breathlessly.
“There’s a ring right enough,” he owned. And then the ring slipped from the hand of Mr. U. W. Ugli and skidded along the floor. Gerald pounced on it like a greyhound on a hare. He thrust the dull circlet on his finger and cried out aloud in that crowded place: —
“I wish Jimmy and I were inside that door behind the statue of Flora.”
It was the only safe place he could think of.
The lights and sounds and scents of the restaurant died away as a wax-drop dies in fire — a rain-drop in water. I don’t know, and Gerald never knew, what happened in that restaurant. There was nothing about it in the papers, though Gerald looked anxiously for “Extraordinary Disappearance of well-known City Man.” What the door-mat-headed boy did or thought I don’t know either. No more does Gerald. But he would like to know, whereas I don’t care tuppence. The world went on all right, anyhow, whatever he thought or did. The lights and the sounds and the scents of Pym’s died out. In place of the light there was darkness; in place of the sounds there was silence; and in place of the scent of beef, pork, mutton, fish, veal, cabbage, onions, carrots, beer, and tobacco there was the musty, damp scent of a place underground that has been long shut up.
HE CRIED OUT ALOUD IN THAT CROWDED PLACE: “I WISH JIMMY AND I WERE INSIDE THAT DOOR BEHIND THE STATUE OF FLORA.”
Gerald felt sick and giddy, and there was something at the back of his mind that he knew would make him feel sicker and giddier as soon as he should have the sense to remember what it was. Meantime it was important to think of proper words to soothe the City man that had once been Jimmy — to keep him quiet till Time, like a spring uncoiling, should bring the reversal of the spell — make all things as they were and as they ought to be. But he fought in vain for words. There were none. Nor were they needed. For through the deep darkness came a voice — and it was not the voice of that City man who had been Jimmy, but the voice of that very Jimmy who was Gerald’s little brother, and who had wished that unlucky wish for riches that could only be answered by changing all that was Jimmy, young and poor, to all that Jimmy, rich and old, would have been. Another voice said: “Jerry, Jerry! Are you awake? — I’ve had such a rum dream.”
And then there was a moment when nothing was said or done.
Gerald felt through the thick darkness, and the thick silence, and the thick scent of old earth shut up, and he got hold of Jimmy’s hand.
“It’s all right, Jimmy, old chap,” he said; “it’s not a dream now. It’s that beastly ring again. I had to wish us here, to get you back at all out of your dream.”
“Wish us where?” Jimmy held on to the hand in a way that in the daylight of life he would have been the first to call babyish.
“Inside the passage — behind the Flora statue,” said Gerald, adding, “it’s all right, really.”
“Oh, I daresay it’s all right,” Jimmy answered through the dark, with an irritation not strong enough to make him loosen his hold of his brother’s hand. “But how are we going to get out?”
Then Gerald knew what it was that was waiting to make him feel more giddy than the lightning flight from Cheapside to Yalding Towers had been able to make him. But he said stoutly:
“I’ll wish us out, of course.” Though all the time he knew that the ring would not undo its given wishes.
It didn’t.
Gerald wished. He handed the ring carefully to Jimmy, through the thick darkness. And Jimmy wished.
And there they still were, in that black passage behind Flora, that had led — in the case of one Ugly-Wugly at least — to “a good hotel.” And the stone door was shut. And they did not know even which way to turn to it.
“If I only had some matches!” said Gerald.
“Why didn’t you leave me in the dream?” Jimmy almost whimpered. “It was light there, and I was just going to have salmon and cucumber.”
“I,” rejoined Gerald in gloom, “was just going to have steak and fried potatoes.”
The silence, and the darkness, and the earthy scent were all they had now.
“I always wondered what it would be like,” said Jimmy in low, even tones, “to be buried alive. And now I know! Oh!” his voice suddenly rose to a shriek, “it isn’t true, it isn’t! It’s a dream — that’s what it is!”
There was a pause while you could have counted ten. Then —
“Yes,” said Gerald bravely, through the scent and the silence and the darkness, “it’s just a dream, Jimmy, old chap. We’ll just hold on, and call out now and then just for the lark of the thing. But it’s really only a dream, of course.”
“Of course,” said Jimmy in the silence and the darkness and the scent of old earth
.
CHAPTER IX
There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs for ever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. And when once people have found one of the little weak spots in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets, and the like, almost anything may happen. Thus it is not surprising that Mabel and Kathleen, conscientiously conducting one of the dullest dolls’ tea-parties at which either had ever assisted, should suddenly, and both at once, have felt a strange, unreasonable, but quite irresistible desire to return instantly to the Temple of Flora — even at the cost of leaving the dolls’ tea-service in an unwashed state, and only half the raisins eaten. They went — as one has to go when the magic impulse drives one — against their better judgment, against their wills almost.
And the nearer they came to the Temple of Flora, in the golden hush of the afternoon, the more certain each was that they could not possibly have done otherwise.
And this explains exactly how it was that when Gerald and Jimmy, holding hands in the darkness of the passage, uttered their first concerted yell, “just for the lark of the thing,” that yell was instantly answered from outside.
A crack of light showed in that part of the passage where they had least expected the door to be. The stone door itself swung slowly open, and they were out of it, in the Temple of Flora, blinking in the good daylight, an unresisting prey to Kathleen’s embraces and the questionings of Mabel.
“And you left that Ugly-Wugly loose in London,” Mabel pointed out; “you might have wished it to be with you, too.”
“It’s all right where it is,” said Gerald. “I couldn’t think of everything. And besides, no, thank you! Now we’ll go home and seal up the ring in an envelope.”
“I haven’t done anything with the ring yet,” said Kathleen.