Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  Francis tried again. This time the ring encircled a match-box, “flat on.”

  “Hard luck,” said the lady again.

  “What’s the matter now?” the children asked, baffled.

  “Hoop has to be red side up,” said she. So she scored. Now they went to the other side and had another penn’orth of hoops from the other too clean young woman. And the same thing happened. Only on the second winning she said:

  “Hard luck. Hoops have to be blue side up.

  It was Bernard’s blood that was up. He determined to clear the board.

  “Blue side up, is it,” he said sternly, and took another penn’orth. This time he — brought down a tin pin-tray and a little box which, I hope, contained something. The girl hesitated and then handed over the prizes. “Another penn’orth of hoops,” said Bernard, warming to the work.

  “Hard luck,” said she. “We don’t give more than two penn’orth to any one party.”

  The prizes were not the kind of things you care to keep, even as trophies of victory — especially when you have before you the business of rescuing a Mermaid. The children gave their prizes to a small female bystander and went to the shooting gallery. That, at least, could have no nonsense about it. If you aimed at a bottle and hit it it would break. No sordid self-seeking custodian could rob you of the pleasant tinkling of the broken bottle. And even with a poor weapon it is not impossible to aim at a bottle and hit it. This is true — but at the shooting gallery the trouble was not to hit the bottles. There were so many of them and they were so near. The children got thirteen tinkling smashes for their fourteen shots. The bottles were hung fifteen feet away instead of thirty.

  Why? Space is not valuable at the fair — can it be that the people of Sussex are such poor shots that thirty feet is to them a prohibitive distance?

  They did not throw for coconuts, nor did they ride on the little horses or pull themselves to dizzy heights in the swings. There was no heart left in them for such adventures — and besides everyone in the fair, saving themselves and the small female bystander and the hoop girls, was dirtier than you would believe possible. I suppose Beachfield has a water-supply. But you would have doubted it if you had been at the fair. They heard no laughter, no gay talk, no hearty give-and-take of holiday jests. A dull heavy silence brooded over the place, and you could hear that silence under the shallow insincere gaiety of the steam roundabout.

  Laughter and song, music and good-fellowship, dancing and innocent revelry, there were none of these at Beacbfield Fair. For music there was the steam roundabout’s echoes of the sordid musical comedy of the year before the year before last — laughter there was not — nor revelry — only the dirty guardians of the machines for getting your pennies stood gloomily huddled, and a few groups of dejected girls and little boys shivered in the cold wind that had come up with the sunset. In that wind, too, danced the dust, the straw, the newspaper and the chocolate wrappers. The only dancing there was. The big tent that held the circus was at the top of the ground, and the people who were busy among the ropes and pegs and between the bright vans resting on their shafts seemed gayer and cleaner than the people who kept the little arrangements for people not to win prizes at. And now the circus at last was opened; the flap of the tent was pinned back, and a gipsy-looking woman, with oily black ringlets and eyes like bright black beads, came out at the side to take the money of those who wished to see the circus. People were now strolling towards it in twos and threes, and of these our four were the very first, and the gipsy woman took four warm sixpences from their four hands.

  “Walk in, walk in, my little dears, and see the white elephant,” said a stout, black-moustached man in evening dress — greenish it was and shiny about the seams. He flourished a long whip as he spoke, and the children stopped, although they had paid their sixpences, to hear what they were to see when they did walk in. “The white elephant — tail, trunk, and tusks all complete, sixpence only. See the Back Try A or Camels, or Ships of the Arabs — heavy drinker when he gets the chance — total abstainer while crossing the desert. Walk up, walk up. See the Trained Wolves and Wolverines in their great National Dance with the flags of all countries. Walk up, walk up, walk up. See the Educated Seals and the Unique Lotus of the Heast in her famous bare-backed act, riding three horses at once, the wonder and envy of royalty. Walk up and see the very table Mermaid caught on your own coast only yesterday as ever was.”

  “Thank you,” said Francis, “I think we will.” And the four went through the opened canvas into the pleasant yellow dusty twilight which was the inside of a squarish sort of tent, with an opening at the end, and through that opening you could see the sawdust-covered ring of the circus and benches all round it, and two men just finishing covering the front benches with red cotton strips.

  “Where’s the Mermaid?” Mavis asked a little boy in tights and a spangled cap.

  “In there,” he said, pointing to a little canvas door at the side of the squarish tent. “I don’t advise you to touch her, though. Spiteful, she is. Lashes out with her tails — plashed old Mother Lee all over water she did, — an’ dangerous too: our Bill ‘e got ‘is bone set out in his wrist a-trying to hold on to her. An’ it’s thruppence extry to see her close.”

  There are times, as we all know, when threepence extra is a baffling obstacle — a cruel barrier to desire, but this was not, fortunately, such a moment. The children had plenty of money, because Mother had given them two half-crowns between them to spend as they liked.

  “Even then,” said Bernard, in allusion to the threepence extra, “we shall have two bob left.”

  So Mavis, who was treasurer, paid over the extra threepences to a girl with hair as fair and lank as hemp, and a face as brown and round as a tea-cake, who sat on a kitchen chair by the Mermaid door. Then one by one they went in through the narrow opening, and at last there they were alone in the little canvas room with a tank in it that held — well, there was a large label, evidently written in a hurry, for the letters were badly made and arranged quite crookedly, and this label declared:

  REAL LIVE MERMAID.

  SAID TO BE FABULUS, BUT NOW TRUE.

  CAUGHT HERE.

  PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.

  DANGEROUS.

  The little Spangled Boy had followed them in and pointed to the last word.

  “What I tell you?” he asked proudly.

  The children looked at each other. Nothing could be done with this witness at hand. At least....

  “Perhaps if it’s going to be magic,” Mavis whispered to Francis, “outsiders wouldn’t notice. They don’t sometimes — I believe. Suppose you just said a bit of ‘Sabrina’ to start the magic.”

  “Wouldn’t be safe,” Francis returned in the same low tones. “Suppose he wasn’t an outsider, and did notice.”

  So there they stood helpless. What the label was hung on was a large zinc tank — the kind that they have at the tops of houses for the water-supply — you must have seen one yourself often when the pipes burst in frosty weather, and your father goes up into the roof of the house with a candle and pail, and the water drips through the ceilings and the plumber is sent for, and comes when it suits him. The tank was full of water and at the bottom of it could be seen a mass of something dark that looked as if it were partly browny-green fish and partly greeny-brown seaweed.

  “Sabrina fair,” Francis suddenly whispered, “send him away.”

  And immediately a voice from outside called “Rube-Reuben-drat the boy, where’s he got to?” — and the little spangled intruder had to go.

  “There, now,” said Mavis, “if that isn’t magic!”

  Perhaps it was, but still the dark fish-and-seaweed heap in the tank had not stirred. “Say it all through,” said Mavis.

  “Yes, do,” said Bernard, “then we shall know for certain whether it’s a seal or not.”

  So once again —

  “‘Sabrina fair,

  Listen where thou art sitting.

  Under the
glassy green, translucent wave...’”

  He got no further. There was a heaving and stirring of the seaweed and fish tail, something gleamed white, through the brown something white parted the seaweed, two white hands parted it, and a face came to the surface of the rather dirty water and — there was no doubt about it — spoke.

  “‘Translucent wave, indeed!’” was what the face said. “I wonder you’re not ashamed to speak the invocation over a miserable cistern like this. What do you want?”

  Brown hair and seaweed still veiled most of the face, but all the children, who, after their first start back had pressed close to the tank again, could see that the face looked exceedingly cross.

  “We want,” said Francis in a voice that would tremble though he told himself again and again that be was not a baby and wasn’t going to behave like one—”we want to help you.”

  “Help me? You?” She raised herself a little more in the tank and looked contemptuously at them. “Why, don’t you know that I am mistress of all water magic? I can raise a storm that will sweep away this horrible place and my detestable captors and you with them, and carry me on the back of a great wave down to the depths of the sea.”

  “Then why on earth don’t you?” Bernard asked.

  “Well, I was thinking about it,” she said, a little awkwardly, “when you interrupted with your spells. Well, you’ve called and I’ve answered — now tell me what I can do for you.”

  “We’ve told you,” said Mavis gently enough, though she was frightfully disappointed that the Mermaid after having in the handsomest manner turned out to be a Mermaid, should be such a very short-tempered one. And when they had talked about her all day and paid the threepence each extra to see her close, and put on their best white dresses too. “We’ve told you — we want to help you. Another Sabrina in the sea told us to. She didn’t tell us anything about you being a magic-mistress. She just said `they die in captivity.’”

  “Well, thank you for coming,” said the Mermaid. “If she really said that it must be one of two things — either the sun is in the House of Liber — which is impossible at this time of the year — or else the rope I was caught with must be made of llama’s hair; and that’s impossible in these latitudes. Do you know anything about the rope they caught me with?”

  “No,” said Bernard and Kathleen. But the others said, “it was a lariat.”

  “Ah,” said the Mermaid, “my worst fears are confirmed — But who could have expected a lariat on these shores? But that must have been it. Now I know why, though I have been on the point of working the magic of the Great Storm at least five hundred times since my capture, some unseen influence has always held me back.”

  “You mean,” said Bernard, “you feel that it wouldn’t work, so you didn’t try.”

  A rattling, ripping sound outside, beginning softly, waxed louder and louder so as almost to drown their voices. It was the drum, and it announced the beginning of the circus. The Spangled Child put his head in and said, “Hurry up or you’ll miss my Infant Prodigious Act on the Horse with the Tambourines,” and took his head out again.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mavis, “and we haven’t arranged a single thing about rescuing you.

  “No more you have,” said the Mermaid carelessly.

  “Look here,” said Francis, “you do want to be rescued, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” replied the Mermaid impatiently, “now I know about the llama rope. But I can’t walk even if they’d let me, and you couldn’t carry me. Couldn’t you come at dead of night with a chariot — I could lift myself into it with your aid — then you could drive swiftly hence, and driving into the sea I could drop from the chariot and escape while you swam ashore.”

  “I don’t believe we could — any of it,” said Bernard, “let alone swimming ashore with horses and chariots. Why, Pharaoh himself couldn’t do that, you know.” And even Mavis and Francis added helplessly, “I don’t see how we’re to get a chariot,” and “Do think of some other way.”

  “I shall await you,” said the lady in the tank with perfect calmness, “at dead of night.”

  With that she twisted the seaweed closely round her head and shoulders and sank slowly to the bottom of the tank. And the children were left staring blankly at each other, while in the circus tent music sounded and the soft heavy pad-pad of hoofs on sawdust.

  “What shall we do?” Francis broke the silence.

  “Go and see the circus, of course,” said Bernard.

  “Of course we can talk about the chariot afterwards,” Mavis admitted.

  “There’ll be lots of time to talk between now and dead of night,” said Kathleen. “Come on, Bear.”

  And they went.

  There is nothing like a circus for making you forget your anxieties. It is impossible to dwell on your troubles and difficulties when performing dogs are displaying their accomplishments, and wolves dancing their celebrated dance with the flags of all nations, and the engaging lady who jumps through the paper hoops and comes down miraculously on the flat back of the white horse, cannot but drive dull care away, especially from the minds of the young. So that for an hour and a half — it really was a good circus, and I can’t think how it happened to be at Beachfield Fair at all — a solid slab of breathless enjoyment was wedged in between the interview with the Mermaid and the difficult task of procuring for her the chariot she wanted. But when it was all over and they were part of a hot, tightly packed crowd pouring out of the dusty tent into the sunshine, their responsibilities came upon them with renewed force.

  “Wasn’t the clown ripping?” said Bernard, as they got free of the crowd.

  “I liked the riding-habit lady best, and the horse that went like that, best,” said Kathleen, trying with small pale hands and brown shod legs to give an example of a horse’s conduct during an exhibition of the haute ecole.

  “Didn’t you think the elephant—” Mavis was beginning, when Francis interrupted her.

  “About that chariot,” he said, and after that they talked of nothing else. And whatever they said it always came to this in the end, that they hadn’t got a chariot, and couldn’t get a chariot, and that anyhow they didn’t suppose there was a chariot to be got, at anyrate in Beachfield.

  “It wouldn’t be any good, I suppose,” was Kathleen’s last and most helpful suggestion “be the slightest good saying ‘Sabrina fair’ to a pumpkin?”

  “We haven’t got even a pumpkin,” Bernard reminded her, “let alone the rats and mice and lizards that Cinderella had. No, that’s no good. But I’ll tell you what.” He stopped short. They were near home now — it was late afternoon, in the road where the talkative yellowhammer lived. “What about a wheelbarrow?”

  “Not big enough,” said Francis.

  “There’s an extra big one in the mill,” said Bernard. “Now, look here. I’m not any good at magic. But Uncle Tom said I was a born general. If I tell you exactly what to do, will you two do it, and let Cathay and me off going?”

  “Going to sneak out of it?” Francis asked bitterly.

  “It isn’t. It’s not my game at all, and I don’t want to play. And if I do, the whole thing will be muffed — you know it will. I’m so unlucky. You’d never get out at dead of night without me dropping a boot on the stairs or sneezing — you know you wouldn’t.”

  Bernard took a sort of melancholy pride in being the kind of boy who always gets caught. If you are that sort of boy, perhaps that’s the best way to take it. And Francis could not deny that there was something in what he said. He went on: “Then Kathleen’s my special sister and I’m not going to have her dragged into a row. (“I want to,” Kathleen put in ungratefully.) So will you and Mavis do it on your own or not?”

  After some discussion, in which Kathleen was tactfully dealt with, it was agreed that they would. Then Bernard unfolded his plan of campaign.

  “Directly we get home,” he said, “we’ll begin larking about with that old wheelbarrow — giving each other rides, and so o
n, and when it’s time to go in we’ll leave it at the far end of the field behind the old sheep but near the gate. Then it’ll be handy for you at dead of night. You must take towels or something and tie round the wheel so that it doesn’t make a row. You can sleep with my toy alarm under your pillow and it won’t wake anyone but you. You get out through the dining-room window and in the same way. I’ll lend you my new knife, with three blades and a corkscrew, if you’ll take care of it, to cut the canvas, and go by the back lane that comes out behind where the circus is, but if you took my advice you wouldn’t go at all. She’s not a nice Mermaid at all. I’d rather have had a seal, any day. Hullo, there’s Daddy and Mother. Come on.”

  They came on.

  The programme sketched by Bernard was carried out without a hitch. Everything went well, only Francis and Mavis were both astonished to find themselves much more frightened than they had expected to be. Any really great adventure like the rescuing of a Mermaid does always look so very much more serious when you carry it out, at night, than it did when you were planning it in the daytime. Also, though they knew they were not doing anything wrong, they had an uncomfortable feeling that Mother and Daddy might not agree with them on that point. And, of course, they could not ask leave to go and rescue a Mermaid, with a chariot, at dead of night. It is not the sort of thing you can ask leave to do, somehow. And the more you explained your reasons the less grown-up people would think you fitted to conduct such an expedition.

  Francis lay down fully dressed, under his nightshirt. And Mavis under hers wore her short blue skirt and jersey. The alarm, true to its trust, went off into an ear-splitting whizz and bang under the pillow of Francis, but no one else heard it. He crept cautiously into Mavis’s room and wakened her, and as they crept down in stockinged feet not a board creaked. The French window opened without noise, the wheelbarrow was where they had left it, and they had fortunately brought quite enough string to bind wads of towels and stockings to the tyre of its wheel. Also they had not forgotten the knife.