The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (43 page)

Then from all quarters of the city the Roman soldiers came trooping, and as the last of the barbarians plunged headlong into the open book, the Romans formed into ordered lines and waited, while a man might count ten. Then, advancing between their ranks, came the spare form and thin face of the man with the laurel crown.

Twelve thousand swords flashed in air and wavered a little like reeds in the breeze, then steadied themselves, and the shout went up from twelve thousand throats:

“Ave Caesar!”

And without haste and without delay the Romans filed through the ruins to the marble-covered book, and two by two entered it and disappeared. Each as he passed the mighty conqueror saluted him with proud mute reverence.

When the last soldier was hidden in the book, Caesar looked round him, a little wistfully.

“I must speak to him; I must,” Lucy cried; “I
must
. Oh, what a darling he is!”

She ran down the steps from the gallery and straight to Caesar. He smiled when she reached him, and gently pinched her ear. Fancy going through the rest of your life hearing all the voices of the world through an ear that has been pinched by Caesar!

“Oh, thank you! thank you!” said Philip; “how splendid you are. I’ll swot up my Latin like anything next term, so as to read about you.”

“Are they all in?” Lucy asked. “I do hope nobody was hurt.”

Caesar smiled.

“A most unreasonable wish, my child, after a great battle!” he said. “But for once the unreasonable is the inevitable. Nobody was hurt. You see it was necessary to get every man back into the book just as he left it, or what would the schoolmasters have done? There remain now only my own guard who have in charge the false woman who let loose the barbarians. And here they come.”

Surrounded by a guard with drawn swords the Pretenderette advanced slowly.

“Hail, woman!” said Caesar.

“Hail, whoever you are!” said the Pretenderette very sulkily.

“I hail,” said Caesar, “your courage.”

Philip and Lucy looked at each other. Yes, the Pretenderette had courage: they had not thought of that before. All the attempts she had made against them—she alone in a strange land—yes, these needed courage.

“And I demand to know how you came here?”

“When I found he’d been at his building again,” she said, pointing a contemptuous thumb at Philip, “I was just going to pull it down, and I knocked down a brick or two with my sleeve, and not thinking what I was doing I built them up again; and then I got a bit giddy and the whole thing seemed to begin to grow—candlesticks and bricks and dominoes and everything, bigger and bigger and bigger, and I looked in. It was as big as a church by this time, and I saw that boy losing his way among the candlestick pillars, and I followed him and I listened. And I thought I could be as good a Deliverer as anybody else. And the motor veil that I was going to catch the 2.37 train in was a fine disguise.”

“You tried to injure the children,” Caesar reminded her.

“I don’t want to say anything to make you let me off,” said the Pretenderette, “but at the beginning I didn’t think any of it was real. I thought it was a dream. You can let your evil passions go in a dream and it don’t hurt any one.”

“It hurts you,” Caesar said.

“Oh! that’s no odds,” said the Pretenderette scornfully.

“You sought to injure and confound the children at every turn,” said Caesar, “even when you found that things were real.”

“I saw there was a chance of being Queen,” said the Pretenderette, “and I took it. Seems to me you’ve no occasion to talk if you’re Julius Caesar, the same as the bust in the library. You took what you could get right enough in your time, when all’s said and done.”

“I hail,” said Caesar again, “your courage.”

“You needn’t trouble,” she said, tossing her head; “my game’s up now, and I’ll speak my mind if I die for it. You don’t understand. You’ve never been a servant, to see other people get all the fat and you all the bones. What you think it’s like to know if you’d just been born in a gentleman’s mansion instead of in a model workman’s dwelling you’d have been brought up as a young lady and had the openwork silk stockings and the lace on your under-petticoats.”

“You go too deep for me,” said Caesar, with the ghost of a smile. “I now pronounce your sentence. But life has pronounced on you a sentence worse than any I can give you. Nobody loves you.”

“Oh, you old silly,” said the Pretenderette in a burst of angry tears, “don’t you see that’s just why everything’s happened?”

“You are condemned,” said Caesar calmly, “to make yourself beloved. You will be taken to Briskford, where you will teach the Great Sloth to like his work and keep him awake for eight play-hours a day. In the intervals of your toil you must try to get fond of some one. The Halma people are kind and gentle. You will not find them hard to love. And when the Great Sloth loves his work and the Halma people are so fond of you that they feel they cannot bear to lose you, your penance will be over and you can go where you will.”

“You know well enough,” said the Pretenderette, still tearful and furious, “that if that ever happened I shouldn’t want to go anywhere else.”

“Yes,” said Caesar slowly, “I know.”

Lucy would have liked to kiss the Pretenderette and say she was sorry, but you can’t do that when it is all other people’s fault and
they
aren’t sorry. And besides, before all these people, it would have looked like showing off. You know, I am sure, exactly how Lucy felt.

The Pretenderette was led away. And now Caesar stood facing the children, his hands held out in farewell. The growing light of early morning transfigured his face, and to Philip it suddenly seemed to be most remarkably like the face of That Man, Mr. Peter Graham, whom Helen had married. He was just telling himself not to be a duffer when Lucy cried out in a loud cracked-sounding voice, “Daddy, oh, Daddy!” and sprang forward.

And at that moment the sun rose above the city wall, and its rays gleamed redly on the helmet and the breastplate and the shield and the sword of Caesar. The light struck at the children’s eyes like a blow. Dazzled, they closed their eyes and when they opened them, blinking and confused, Caesar was gone and the marble book was closed—for ever.

* * * *

Three days later Mr. Noah arrived by elephant, and the meeting between him and the children is, as they say, better imagined than described. Especially as there is not much time left now for describing anything. Mr. Noah explained that the freeing of Polistopolis from the Pretenderette and the barbarians counted as the seventh deed and that Philip had now attained the rank of King, the deed of the Great Sloth having given him the title of Prince of Pine-apples. His expression of gratitude and admiration were of the warmest, and Philip felt that it was rather ungrateful of him to say, as he couldn’t help saying:

“Now I’ve done all the deeds, mayn’t I go back to Helen?”

“All in good time,” said Mr. Noah; “I will at once set about the arrangements for your coronation.”

The coronation was an occasion of unexampled splendour. There was a banquet (of course) and fireworks, and all the guns fired salutes and the soldiers presented arms, and the ladies presented bouquets. And at the end Mr. Noah, with a few well-chosen words which brought tears to all eyes, placed the gold crown of Polistarchia upon the brow of Philip, where its diamonds and rubies shone dazzlingly.

There was an extra crown for Lucy, made of silver and pearls and pale silvery moonstones.

You have no idea how the Polistarchians shouted.

“And now,” said Mr. Noah when it was all over, “I regret to inform you that we must part. Polistarchia is a Republic, and of course in a republic kings and queens are not permitted to exist. Partings are painful things. And you had better go at once.”

He was plainly very much upset.

“This is very sudden,” said Philip.

And Lucy said, “I do think it’s silly. How shall we get home? All in a hurry, like this?”

“How did you get here?”

“By building a house and getting into it.”

“Then build your own house. Oh, we have models of all the houses you were ever in. The pieces are all numbered. You only have to put them together.”

He led them to a large room behind the hall of Public Amusements and took down from a shelf a stout box labelled “The Grange.” On another box Philip saw “Laburnum Cottage.”

Mr. Noah, kneeling on his yellow mat, tumbled the contents of the box out on the floor, and Philip and Lucy set to work to build a house with the exquisitely finished little blocks and stones and beams and windows and chimneys.

“I cannot bear to see you go,” said Mr. Noah. “Good-bye, good-bye. Remember me sometimes!”

“We shall never forget you,” said the children, jumping up hugging him.

“Good-bye!” said the parrot who had followed them in.

“Good-bye, good-bye!” said everybody.

“I wish the
Lightning Loose
was not lost,” Philip even at this parting moment remembered to say.

“She isn’t,” said Mr. Noah. “She flew back to the island directly you left her. Sails are called wings, are they not? White wings that never grow weary, you know. Relieved of your weight, the faithful yacht flew home like any pigeon.”

“Hooray!” said Philip. “I couldn’t bear to think of her rotting away in a cavern.”

“I wish Max and Brenda had come to say good-bye,” said Lucy.

“It is not needed,” said Mr. Noah mysteriously. And then everybody said good-bye again, and Mr. Noah rolled up his yellow mat, put it under his arm again, and went—for ever.

The children built the Grange, and when the beautiful little model of that house was there before them, perfect, they stood still a moment, looking at it.

“I wish we could be two people each,” said Lucy, “and one of each of us go home and one of each of us stay here. Oh!” she cried suddenly, and snatched at Philip’s arm. For a slight strange giddiness had suddenly caught her. Philip too swayed a little uncertainly and stood a moment with his hand to his head. The children gazed about them bewildered and still a little giddy. The room was gone, the model of the Grange was gone. Over their heads was blue sky, under their feet was green grass, and in front stood the Grange itself, with its front door wide open and on the steps Helen and Mr. Peter Graham.

That telegram had brought them home.

* * * *

You will wonder how Lucy explained where she had been when she was lost. She never did explain. There are some things, as you know, that cannot be explained. But the curious thing is that no one ever asked for an explanation. The grown-ups must have thought they knew all about it, which, of course, was very far from being the truth.

When the four people on the doorstep of the Grange had finished saying how glad they were to see each other—that day on the steps when Philip and Lucy came back from Polistarchia, Helen and Mr. Peter Graham came back from Belgium—Helen said:

“And we’ve brought you each the loveliest present. Fetch them, Peter, there’s a dear.”

Mr. Peter Graham went to the stable-yard and came back followed by two long tan dachshunds, who rushed up to the children frisking and fawning in a way they well knew.

“Why Max! why Brenda!” cried Philip. “Oh, Helen! are they for us?”

“Yes, dear, of course they are,” said Helen; “but how did you know their names?”

That was one of the things which Philip could not tell, then.

But he told Helen the whole story later, and she said it was wonderful, and how clever of him to make all that up, and that when he was a man he would be able to be an author and to write books.

“And do you know,” she said, “I
did
dream about the island—quite a long dream, only when I woke up I could only remember that I’d been there and seen you. But no doubt I dreamed about Mr. Noah and all the rest of it as well, only I forgot it.”

* * * *

And Max and Brenda of course loved every one. Their characters were quite unchanged. Only the children had forgotten the language of animals, so that conversation between them and the dogs was for ever impossible. But Max and Brenda understand every word you say—any one can see that.

* * * *

You want to know what became of the redheaded, steely-eyed nurse, the Pretenderette, who made so much mischief and trouble? Well, I suppose she is still living with the Halma folk, teaching the Great Sloth to like his work and learning to be fond of people—which is the only way to be happy. At any rate no one that I know of has ever seen her again anywhere else.

FIVE CHILDREN AND IT

DEDICATION

TO JOHN BLAND

My Lamb, you are so very small,

You have not learned to read at all;

Yet never a printed book withstands

The urgence of your dimpled hands.

So, though this book is for yourself,

Let mother keep it on the shelf

Till you can read. O days that pass,

That day will come too soon, alas!

NOTE

Parts of this story have appeared in the
Strand Magazine
under the title of “The Psammead.”

CHAPTER I

BEAUTIFUL AS THE DAY

The house was three miles from the station, but, before the dusty hired hack had rattled along for five minutes, the children began to put their heads out of the carriage window and say, “Aren’t we nearly there?” And every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they all said, “Oh,
is
this it?” But it never was, till they reached the very top of the hill, just past the chalk-quarry and before you come to the gravel-pit. And then there was a white house with a green garden and an orchard beyond, and mother said, “Here we are!”

“How white the house is,” said Robert.

“And look at the roses,” said Anthea.

“And the plums,” said Jane.

“It is rather decent,” Cyril admitted.

The Baby said, “Wanty go walky;” and the hack stopped with a last rattle and jolt.

Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scramble to get out of the carriage that very minute, but no one seemed to mind. Mother, curiously enough, was in no hurry to get out; and even when she had come down slowly and by the step, and with no jump at all, she seemed to wish to see the boxes carried in, and even to pay the driver, instead of joining in that first glorious rush round the garden and orchard and the thorny, thistly, briery, brambly wilderness beyond the broken gate and the dry fountain at the side of the house. But the children were wiser, for once. It was not really a pretty house at all; it was quite ordinary, and mother thought it was rather inconvenient, and was quite annoyed at there being no shelves, to speak of, and hardly a cupboard in the place. Father used to say that the iron-work on the roof and coping was like an architect’s nightmare. But the house was deep in the country, with no other house in sight, and the children had been in London for two years, without so much as once going to the seaside even for a day by an excursion train, and so the White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set down in an Earthly Paradise. For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not rich.

Of course there are the shops and theatres, and entertainments and things, but if your people are rather poor you don’t get taken to the theatres, and you can’t buy things out of the shops; and London has none of those nice things that children may play with without hurting the things or themselves—such as trees and sand and woods and waters. And nearly everything in London is the wrong sort of shape—all straight lines and flat streets, instead of being all sorts of odd shapes, like things are in the country. Trees are all different, as you know, and I am sure some tiresome person must have told you that there are no two blades of grass exactly alike. But in streets, where the blades of grass don’t grow, everything is like everything else. This is why many children who live in the towns are so extremely naughty. They do not know what is the matter with them, and no more do their fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, and nurses; but I know. And so do you, now. Children in the country are naughty sometimes, too, but that is for quite different reasons.

The children had explored the gardens and the outhouses thoroughly before they were caught and cleaned for tea, and they saw quite well that they were certain to be happy at the White House. They thought so from the first moment, but when they found the back of the house covered with jasmine, all in white flower, and smelling like a bottle of the most expensive perfume that is ever given for a birthday present; and when they had seen the lawn, all green and smooth, and quite different from the brown grass in the gardens at Camden Town; and when they found the stable with a loft over it and some old hay still left, they were almost certain; and when Robert had found the broken swing and tumbled out of it and got a bump on his head the size of an egg, and Cyril had nipped his finger in the door of a hutch that seemed made to keep rabbits in, if you ever had any, they had no longer any doubts whatever.

The best part of it all was that there were no rules about not going to places and not doing things. In London almost everything is labelled “You mustn’t touch,” and though the label is invisible it’s just as bad, because you know it’s there, or if you don’t you very soon get told.

The White House was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind it—and the chalk-quarry on one side and the gravel-pit on the other. Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queer-shaped white buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and other houses; and when the big chimneys were smoking and the sun was setting, the valley looked as if it was filled with golden mist, and the limekilns and hop-drying houses glimmered and glittered till they were like an enchanted city out of the
Arabian Nights
.

Now that I have begun to tell you about the place, I feel that I could go on and make this into a most interesting story about all the ordinary things that the children did,—just the kind of things you do yourself, you know, and you would believe every word of it; and when I told about the children’s being tiresome, as you are sometimes, your aunts would perhaps write in the margin of the story with a pencil, “How true!” or “How like life!” and you would see it and would very likely be annoyed. So I will only tell you the really astonishing things that happened, and you may leave the book about quite safely, for no aunts and uncles either are likely to write “How true!” on the edge of the story. Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at
night like a good sun as it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy. At least they called it that, because that was what it called itself; and of course it knew best, but it was not at all like any fairy you ever saw or heard of or read about.

It was at the gravel-pits. Father had to go away suddenly on business, and mother had gone away to stay with Granny, who was not very well. They both went in a great hurry, and when they were gone the house seemed dreadfully quiet and empty, and the children wandered from one room to another and looked at the bits of paper and string on the floors left over from the packing, and not yet cleared up, and wished they had something to do. It was Cyril who said—

“I say, let’s take our spades and dig in the gravel-pits. We can pretend it’s seaside.”

“Father says it was once,” Anthea said; “he says there are shells there thousands of years old.”

So they went. Of course they had been to the edge of the gravel-pit and looked over, but they had not gone down into it for fear father should say they mustn’t play there, and it was the same with the chalk-quarry. The gravel-pit is not really dangerous if you don’t try to climb down the edges, but go the slow safe way round by the road, as if you were a cart.

Each of the children carried its own spade, and took it in turns to carry the Lamb. He was the baby, and they called him that because “Baa” was the first thing he ever said. They called Anthea “Panther,” which seems silly when you read it, but when you say it, it sounds a little like her name.

The gravel-pit is very large and wide, with grass growing round the edges at the top, and dry stringy wildflowers, purple and yellow. It is like a giant’s washbowl. And there are mounds of gravel, and holes in the sides o
f the bowl where gravel has been taken out, and high up in the steep sides there are the little holes that are the little front doors of the little bank-martins’ little houses.

The children built a castle, of course, but castle-building is rather poor fun when you have no hope of the swishing tide ever coming in to fill up the moat and wash away the drawbridge, and, at the happy last, to wet everybody up to the waist at least.

Cyril wanted to dig out a cave to play smugglers in, but the others thought it might bury them alive, so it ended in all spades going to work to dig a hole through the castle to Australia. These children, you see, believed that the world was round, and that on the other side the little Australian boys and girls were really walking wrong way up, like flies on the ceiling, with their heads hanging down into the air.

The children dug and they dug and they dug, and their hands got sandy and hot and red, and their faces got damp and shiny. The Lamb had tried to eat the sand, and had cried
so hard when he found that it was not, as he had supposed, brown sugar, that he was now tired out, and was lying asleep in a warm fat bunch in the middle of the half-finished castle. This left his brothers and sisters free to work really hard, and the hole that was to come out in Australia soon grew so deep that Jane, who was called Pussy for short, begged the others to stop.

“Suppose the bottom of the hole gave way suddenly,” said she, “and you tumbled out among the little Australians, all the sand would get in their eyes.”

“Yes,” said Robert; “and they would hate us, and throw stones at us, and not let us see the kangaroos, or opossums, or bluegums, or Emu Brand birds, or anything.”

Cyril and Anthea knew that Australia was not quite so near as all that, but they agreed to stop using the spades and to go on with their hands. This was quite easy, because the sand at the bottom of the hole was very soft and fine and dry, like sea-sand. And there were little shells in it.

“Fancy it having been wet sea here once, all sloppy and shiny,” said Jane, “with fishes and conger-eels and coral and mermaids.”

“And masts of ships and wrecked Spanish treasure. I wish we could find a gold doubloon, or something,” Cyril said.

“How did the sea get carried away?” Robert asked.

“Not in a pail, silly,” said his brother.

“Father says the earth got too hot underneath, as you do in bed sometimes, so it just hunched up its shoulders, and the sea had to slip off, like the blankets do us, and the shoulder was left sticking out, and turned into dry land. Let’s go and look for shells; I think that little cave looks likely, and I see something sticking out there like a bit of wrecked ship’s anchor, and it’s beastly hot in the Australian hole.”

The others agreed, but Anthea went on digging. She always liked to finish a thing when she had once begun it. She felt it would be a disgrace to leave that hole without getting through to Australia.

The cave was disappointing, because there were no shells, and the wrecked ship’s anchor turned out to be only the broken end of a pick-axe handle, and the cave party were just making up their minds that sand makes you thirstier when it is not by the seaside, and someone had suggested that they all go home for lemonade, when Anthea suddenly screamed—

“Cyril! Come here! Oh, come quick—It’s alive! It’ll get away! Quick!”

They all hurried back.

“It’s a rat, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Robert. “Father says they infest old places—and this must be pretty old if the sea was here thousands of years ago—”

“Perhaps it is a snake,” said Jane, shuddering.

“Let’s look,” said Cyril, jumping into the hole. “I’m not afraid of snakes. I like them. If it is a snake I’ll tame it, and it will follow me everywhere, and I’ll let it sleep round my neck at night.”

“No, you won’t,” said Robert firmly. He shar
ed Cyril’s bedroom. “But you may if it’s a rat.”

“Oh, don’t be silly!” said Anthea; “it’s not a rat, it’s
much
bigger. And it’s not a snake. It’s got feet; I saw them; and fur! No—not the spade. You’ll hurt it! Dig with your hands.”

“And let
it
hurt
me
instead! That’s so likely, isn’t it?” said Cyril, seizing a spade.

“Oh, don’t!” said Anthea. “Squirrel,
don’t
. I—it sounds silly, but it said something. It really and truly did—”

“What?”

“It said, ‘You let me alone.’”

But Cyril merely observed that his sister must have gone off her head, and he and Robert dug with spades while Anthea sat on the edge of the hole, jumping up and down with hotness and anxiety. They dug carefully, and presently everyone could see that there really was something moving in the bottom of the Australian hole.

Then Anthea cried out, “
I’m
not afraid. Let me dig,” and fell on her knees and began to scrat
ch like a dog does when he has suddenly remembered where it was that he buried his bone.

“Oh, I felt fur,” she cried, half laughing and half crying. “I did indeed! I did!” when suddenly a dry husky voice in the sand made them all jump back, and their hearts jumped nearly as fast as they did.

“Let me alone,” it said. And now everyone heard the voice and looked at the others to see if they had heard it too.

“But we want to see you,” said Robert bravely.

“I wish you’d come out,” said Anthea, also taking courage.

“Oh, well—if that’s your wish,” the voice said, and the sand stirred and spun and scattered, and something brown and furry and fat came rolling out into the hole, and the sand fell off it, and it sat there yawning and rubbing the ends of its eyes with its hands.

“I believe I must have dropped asleep,” it said, stretching itself.

The children stood round the hole in a ring, looking a
t the creature they had found. It was worth looking at. Its eyes were on long horns like a snail’s eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat’s ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider’s and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey’s.

“What on earth is it?” Jane said. “Shall we take it home?”

The thing turned its long eyes to look at her, and said—

“Does she always talk nonsense, or is it only the rubbish on her head that makes her silly?”

It looked scornfully at Jane’s hat as it spoke.

“She doesn’t mean to be silly,” Anthea said gently; “we none of us do, whatever you may think! Don’t be frightened; we don’t want to hurt you, you know.”

“Hurt
me
!” it said. “
Me
frightened? Upon my word! Why, you talk as if I were nobody in particular.” All its fur stood out like a cat’s when it is going to fight.

“Well,” said Anthea, still kindly, “perhaps if we knew
who you are in particular we could think of something to say that wouldn’t make you angry. Everything we’ve said so far seems to have done so. Who are you? And don’t get angry! Because really we don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” it said. “Well, I knew the world had changed—but—well, really—Do you mean to tell me seriously you don’t know a Psammead when you see one?”

“A Sammyadd? That’s Greek to me.”