Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  The tourists were very kind and interested, and the tea merchant insisted on giving Quentin something out of a flask, which was so nasty that Quentin only pretended to drink, out of politeness. His mother had a carriage waiting, and they escaped to it while the tourists were saying, ‘How romantic!’ and asking each other whatever in the world had happened.

  * * * * *

  ‘But how did you come to be there, darling?’ said his mother with warm hands comfortingly round him. ‘I’ve been looking for you all night. I went to say good-bye to you yesterday — Oh, Quentin — and I found you’d run away. How could you?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Quentin, ‘if it worried you, I’m sorry. Very, very. I was going to telegraph to-day.’

  ‘But where have you been? What have you been doing all night?’ she asked, caressing him.

  ‘Is it only one night?’ said Quentin. ‘I don’t know exactly what’s happened. It was accidental magic, I think, mother. I’m glad I thought of the right word to get back, though.’ And then he told her all about it. She held him very tightly and let him talk.

  Perhaps she thought that a little boy to whom accidental magic happened all in a minute, like that, was not exactly the right little boy for that excellent school in Salisbury. Anyhow she took him to Egypt with her to meet his father, and, on the way, they happened to see a doctor in London who said: ‘Nerves’ which is a poor name for accidental magic, and Quentin does not believe it means the same thing at all.

  Quentin’s father is well now, and he has left the army, and father and mother and Quentin live in a jolly, little, old house in Salisbury, and Quentin is a ‘day boy’ at that very same school. He and Smithson minor are the greatest of friends. But he has never told Smithson minor about the accidental magic. He has learned now, and learned very thoroughly, that it is not always wise to tell all you know. If he had not owned that he knew that it was the Stonehenge altar stone!

  * * * * *

  You may think that the accidental magic was all a dream, and that Quentin dreamed it because his mother had told him so much about Atlantis. But then, how do you account for his dreaming so much that his mother had never told him? You think that that part wasn’t true, well, it may have been true for anything I know. And I am sure you don’t know more about it than I do.

  THE PRINCESS AND THE HEDGE-PIG

  ‘But I don’t see what we’re to do’ said the Queen for the twentieth time.

  ‘Whatever we do will end in misfortune,’ said the King gloomily; ‘you’ll see it will.’

  They were sitting in the honeysuckle arbour talking things over, while the nurse walked up and down the terrace with the new baby in her arms.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said the poor Queen; ‘I’ve not the slightest doubt I shall.’

  Misfortune comes in many ways, and you can’t always know beforehand that a certain way is the way misfortune will come by: but there are things misfortune comes after as surely as night comes after day. For instance, if you let all the water boil away, the kettle will have a hole burnt in it. If you leave the bath taps running and the waste-pipe closed, the stairs of your house will, sooner or later, resemble Niagara. If you leave your purse at home, you won’t have it with you when you want to pay your tram-fare. And if you throw lighted wax matches at your muslin curtains, your parent will most likely have to pay five pounds to the fire engines for coming round and blowing the fire out with a wet hose. Also if you are a king and do not invite the wicked fairy to your christening parties, she will come all the same. And if you do ask the wicked fairy, she will come, and in either case it will be the worse for the new princess. So what is a poor monarch to do? Of course there is one way out of the difficulty, and that is not to have a christening party at all. But this offends all the good fairies, and then where are you?

  All these reflections had presented themselves to the minds of King Ozymandias and his Queen, and neither of them could deny that they were in a most awkward situation. They were ‘talking it over’ for the hundredth time on the palace terrace where the pomegranates and oleanders grew in green tubs and the marble balustrade is overgrown with roses, red and white and pink and yellow. On the lower terrace the royal nurse was walking up and down with the baby princess that all the fuss was about. The Queen’s eyes followed the baby admiringly.

  ‘The darling!’ she said. ‘Oh, Ozymandias, don’t you sometimes wish we’d been poor people?’

  ‘Never!’ said the King decidedly.

  ‘Well, I do,’ said the Queen; ‘then we could have had just you and me and your sister at the christening, and no fear of — oh! I’ve thought of something.’

  The King’s patient expression showed that he did not think it likely that she would have thought of anything useful; but at the first five words his expression changed. You would have said that he pricked up his ears, if kings had ears that could be pricked up. What she said was —

  ‘Let’s have a secret christening.’

  ‘How?’ asked the King.

  The Queen was gazing in the direction of the baby with what is called a ‘far away look’ in her eyes.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said slowly. ‘I see it all — yes — we’ll have the party in the cellars — you know they’re splendid.’

  ‘My great-grandfather had them built by Lancashire men, yes,’ interrupted the King.

  ‘We’ll send out the invitations to look like bills. The baker’s boy can take them. He’s a very nice boy. He made baby laugh yesterday when I was explaining to him about the Standard Bread. We’ll just put “1 loaf 3. A remittance at your earliest convenience will oblige.” That’ll mean that 1 person is invited for 3 o’clock, and on the back we’ll write where and why in invisible ink. Lemon juice, you know. And the baker’s boy shall be told to ask to see the people — just as they do when they really mean earliest convenience — and then he shall just whisper: “Deadly secret. Lemon juice. Hold it to the fire,” and come away. Oh, dearest, do say you approve!’

  The King laid down his pipe, set his crown straight, and kissed the Queen with great and serious earnestness.

  ‘You are a wonder,’ he said. ‘It is the very thing. But the baker’s boy is very small. Can we trust him?’

  ‘He is nine,’ said the Queen, ‘and I have sometimes thought that he must be a prince in disguise. He is so very intelligent.’

  The Queen’s plan was carried out. The cellars, which were really extraordinarily fine, were secretly decorated by the King’s confidential man and the Queen’s confidential maid and a few of their confidential friends whom they knew they could really trust. You would never have thought they were cellars when the decorations were finished. The walls were hung with white satin and white velvet, with wreaths of white roses, and the stone floors were covered with freshly cut turf with white daisies, brisk and neat, growing in it.

  The invitations were duly delivered by the baker’s boy. On them was written in plain blue ink,

  ‘The Royal Bakeries 1 loaf 3d. An early remittance will oblige.’

  And when the people held the letter to the fire, as they were whisperingly instructed to do by the baker’s boy, they read in a faint brown writing: —

  ‘King Ozymandias and Queen Eliza invite you to the christening of their daughter Princess Ozyliza at three on Wednesday in the Palace cellars.

  ‘P.S. — We are obliged to be very secret and careful because of wicked fairies, so please come disguised as a tradesman with a bill, calling for the last time before it leaves your hands.’

  You will understand by this that the King and Queen were not as well off as they could wish; so that tradesmen calling at the palace with that sort of message was the last thing likely to excite remark. But as most of the King’s subjects were not very well off either, this was merely a bond between the King and his people. They could sympathise with each other, and understand each other’s troubles in a way impossible to most kings and most nations.

  You can imagine the excitement in the families of
the people who were invited to the christening party, and the interest they felt in their costumes. The Lord Chief Justice disguised himself as a shoemaker; he still had his old blue brief-bag by him, and a brief-bag and a boot-bag are very much alike. The Commander-in-Chief dressed as a dog’s meat man and wheeled a barrow. The Prime Minister appeared as a tailor; this required no change of dress and only a slight change of expression. And the other courtiers all disguised themselves perfectly. So did the good fairies, who had, of course, been invited first of all. Benevola, Queen of the Good Fairies, disguised herself as a moonbeam, which can go into any palace and no questions asked. Serena, the next in command, dressed as a butterfly, and all the other fairies had disguises equally pretty and tasteful.

  The Queen looked most kind and beautiful, the King very handsome and manly, and all the guests agreed that the new princess was the most beautiful baby they had ever seen in all their born days.

  Everybody brought the most charming christening presents concealed beneath their disguises. The fairies gave the usual gifts, beauty, grace, intelligence, charm, and so on.

  Everything seemed to be going better than well. But of course you know it wasn’t. The Lord High Admiral had not been able to get a cook’s dress large enough completely to cover his uniform; a bit of an epaulette had peeped out, and the wicked fairy, Malevola, had spotted it as he went past her to the palace back door, near which she had been sitting disguised as a dog without a collar hiding from the police, and enjoying what she took to be the trouble the royal household were having with their tradesmen.

  Malevola almost jumped out of her dog-skin when she saw the glitter of that epaulette.

  ‘Hullo?’ she said, and sniffed quite like a dog. ‘I must look into this,’ said she, and disguising herself as a toad, she crept unseen into the pipe by which the copper emptied itself into the palace moat — for of course there was a copper in one of the palace cellars as there always is in cellars in the North Country.

  Now this copper had been a great trial to the decorators. If there is anything you don’t like about your house, you can either try to conceal it or ‘make a feature of it.’ And as concealment of the copper was impossible, it was decided to ‘make it a feature’ by covering it with green moss and planting a tree in it, a little apple tree all in bloom. It had been very much admired.

  Malevola, hastily altering her disguise to that of a mole, dug her way through the earth that the copper was full of, got to the top and put out a sharp nose just as Benevola was saying in that soft voice which Malevola always thought so affected, —

  ‘The Princess shall love and be loved all her life long.’

  ‘So she shall,’ said the wicked fairy, assuming her own shape amid the screams of the audience. ‘Be quiet, you silly cuckoo,’ she said to the Lord Chamberlain, whose screams were specially piercing, ‘or I’ll give you a christening present too.’

  Instantly there was a dreadful silence. Only Queen Eliza, who had caught up the baby at Malevola’s first word, said feebly, —

  ‘Oh, don’t, dear Malevola.’

  And the King said, ‘It isn’t exactly a party, don’t you know. Quite informal. Just a few friends dropped in, eh, what?’

  ‘So I perceive,’ said Malevola, laughing that dreadful laugh of hers which makes other people feel as though they would never be able to laugh any more. ‘Well, I’ve dropped in too. Let’s have a look at the child.’

  The poor Queen dared not refuse. She tottered forward with the baby in her arms.

  ‘Humph!’ said Malevola, ‘your precious daughter will have beauty and grace and all the rest of the tuppenny halfpenny rubbish those niminy-piminy minxes have given her. But she will be turned out of her kingdom. She will have to face her enemies without a single human being to stand by her, and she shall never come to her own again until she finds — —’ Malevola hesitated. She could not think of anything sufficiently unlikely—’until she finds,’ she repeated ——

  ‘A thousand spears to follow her to battle,’ said a new voice, ‘a thousand spears devoted to her and to her alone.’

  A very young fairy fluttered down from the little apple tree where she had been hiding among the pink and white blossom.

  ‘I am very young, I know,’ she said apologetically, ‘and I’ve only just finished my last course of Fairy History. So I know that if a fairy stops more than half a second in a curse she can’t go on, and some one else may finish it for her. That is so, Your Majesty, isn’t it?’ she said, appealing to Benevola. And the Queen of the Fairies said Yes, that was the law, only it was such an old one most people had forgotten it.

  ‘You think yourself very clever,’ said Malevola, ‘but as a matter of fact you’re simply silly. That’s the very thing I’ve provided against. She can’t have any one to stand by her in battle, so she’ll lose her kingdom and every one will be killed, and I shall come to the funeral. It will be enormous,’ she added rubbing her hands at the joyous thought.

  ‘If you’ve quite finished,’ said the King politely, ‘and if you’re sure you won’t take any refreshment, may I wish you a very good afternoon?’ He held the door open himself, and Malevola went out chuckling. The whole of the party then burst into tears.

  ‘Never mind,’ said the King at last, wiping his eyes with the tails of his ermine. ‘It’s a long way off and perhaps it won’t happen after all.’

  * * * * *

  But of course it did.

  The King did what he could to prepare his daughter for the fight in which she was to stand alone against her enemies. He had her taught fencing and riding and shooting, both with the cross bow and the long bow, as well as with pistols, rifles, and artillery. She learned to dive and to swim, to run and to jump, to box and to wrestle, so that she grew up as strong and healthy as any young man, and could, indeed, have got the best of a fight with any prince of her own age. But the few princes who called at the palace did not come to fight the Princess, and when they heard that the Princess had no dowry except the gifts of the fairies, and also what Malevola’s gift had been, they all said they had just looked in as they were passing and that they must be going now, thank you. And went.

  And then the dreadful thing happened. The tradesmen, who had for years been calling for the last time before, etc., really decided to place the matter in other hands. They called in a neighbouring king who marched his army into Ozymandias’s country, conquered the army — the soldiers’ wages hadn’t been paid for years — turned out the King and Queen, paid the tradesmen’s bills, had most of the palace walls papered with the receipts, and set up housekeeping there himself.

  Now when this happened the Princess was away on a visit to her aunt, the Empress of Oricalchia, half the world away, and there is no regular post between the two countries, so that when she came home, travelling with a train of fifty-four camels, which is rather slow work, and arrived at her own kingdom, she expected to find all the flags flying and the bells ringing and the streets decked in roses to welcome her home.

  Instead of which nothing of the kind. The streets were all as dull as dull, the shops were closed because it was early-closing day, and she did not see a single person she knew.

  She left the fifty-four camels laden with the presents her aunt had given her outside the gates, and rode alone on her own pet camel to the palace, wondering whether perhaps her father had not received the letter she had sent on ahead by carrier pigeon the day before.

  And when she got to the palace and got off her camel and went in, there was a strange king on her father’s throne and a strange queen sat in her mother’s place at his side.

  ‘Where’s my father?’ said the Princess, bold as brass, standing on the steps of the throne. ‘And what are you doing there?’

  ‘I might ask you that,’ said the King. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘I am the Princess Ozyliza,’ said she.

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard of you,’ said the King. ‘You’ve been expected for some time. Your father’s been evicted, s
o now you know. No, I can’t give you his address.’

  Just then some one came and whispered to the Queen that fifty-four camels laden with silks and velvets and monkeys and parakeets and the richest treasures of Oricalchia were outside the city gate. She put two and two together, and whispered to the King, who nodded and said:

  ‘I wish to make a new law.’

  Every one fell flat on his face. The law is so much respected in that country.

  ‘No one called Ozyliza is allowed to own property in this kingdom,’ said the King. ‘Turn out that stranger.’

  So the Princess was turned out of her father’s palace, and went out and cried in the palace gardens where she had been so happy when she was little.

  And the baker’s boy, who was now the baker’s young man, came by with the standard bread and saw some one crying among the oleanders, and went to say, ‘Cheer up!’ to whoever it was. And it was the Princess. He knew her at once.

  ‘Oh, Princess,’ he said, ‘cheer up! Nothing is ever so bad as it seems.’

  ‘Oh, Baker’s Boy,’ said she, for she knew him too, ‘how can I cheer up? I am turned out of my kingdom. I haven’t got my father’s address, and I have to face my enemies without a single human being to stand by me.’

  ‘That’s not true, at any rate,’ said the baker’s boy, whose name was Erinaceus, ‘you’ve got me. If you’ll let me be your squire, I’ll follow you round the world and help you to fight your enemies.’

  ‘You won’t be let,’ said the Princess sadly, ‘but I thank you very much all the same.’

  She dried her eyes and stood up.

  ‘I must go,’ she said, ‘and I’ve nowhere to go to.’

  Now as soon as the Princess had been turned out of the palace, the Queen said, ‘You’d much better have beheaded her for treason.’ And the King said, ‘I’ll tell the archers to pick her off as she leaves the grounds.’

  So when she stood up, out there among the oleanders, some one on the terrace cried, ‘There she is!’ and instantly a flight of winged arrows crossed the garden. At the cry Erinaceus flung himself in front of her, clasping her in his arms and turning his back to the arrows. The Royal Archers were a thousand strong and all excellent shots. Erinaceus felt a thousand arrows sticking into his back.