The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (70 page)

There was a squawk—the most bird-like noise any one had ever heard from the Phoenix—and a fluttering, and a laugh in the darkness, and Ike said—

“There now, you’ve been and gone and strook my Poll parrot right in the fevvers—strook ’im something crool, you ’ave.”

Robert stamped with fury. Cyril felt himself growing pale with rage, and with the effort of screwing up his brain to make it clever enough to think of some way of being even with those boys. Anthea and Jane were as angry as the boys, but it made them want to cry. Yet it was Anthea who said—

“Do,
please
, let us have the bird.”

“Dew,
please
, get along and leave us an’ our bird alone.”

“If you don’t,” said Anthea, “I shall fetch the police.”

“You better!” said he who was named Urb. “Say, Ike, you twist the bloomin’ pigeon’s neck; he ain’t worth tuppence.”

“Oh, no,” cried Jane, “don’t hurt it. Oh, don’t; it is such a pet.”

“I won’t hurt it,” said Ike; “I’m ’shamed of you, Urb, for to think of such a thing. Arf a shiner, miss, and the bird is yours for life.”

“Half a
what
?” asked Anthea.

“Arf a shiner, quid, thick ’un—half a sov, then.”

“I haven’t got it—and, besides, it’s
our
bird,” said Anthea.

“Oh, don’t talk to him,” said Cyril and then Jane said suddenly—

“Phoenix—dear Phoenix, we can’t do anything.
You
must manage it.”

“With pleasure,” said the Phoenix—and Ike nearly dropped it in his amazement.

“I say, it do talk, suthin’ like,” said he.

“Youths,” said the Phoenix, “sons of misfortune, hear my words.”

“My eyes!” said Ike.

“Look out, Ike,” said Urb, “you’ll throttle the joker—and I see at wunst ’e was wuth ’is weight in flimsies.”00

“Hearken, O Eikonoclastes, despiser of sacred images—and thou, Urbanus, dweller in the sordid city. Forbear this adventure lest a worse thing befall.”

“Luv’ us!” said Ike, “ain’t it been taught its schoolin’ just!”

“Restore me to my young acolytes and escape unscathed. Retain me—and—”

“They must ha’ got all this up, case the Polly got pinched,” said Ike. “Lor’ lumme, the artfulness of them young uns!”

“I say, slosh ’em in the geseech and get clear off with the swag’s wot I say,” urged Herbert.

“Right O,” said Isaac.

“Forbear,” repeated the Phoenix, sternly. “Who pinched the click off of the old bloke in Aldermanbury?” it added, in a changed tone.

“Who sneaked the nose-rag out of the young gell’s ’and in Bell Court? Who—”

“Stow it,” said Ike. “You! ugh! yah!—leave go of me. Bash him off, Urb; “e’ll have my bloomin’ eyes outer my ed.”

There were howls, a scuffle, a flutter; Ike and Urb fled up the stairs, and the Phoenix swept out through the doorway. The children followed and the Phoenix settled on Robert, “like a butterfly on a rose,” as Anthea said afterwards, and wriggled into the breast of his Norfolk jacket, “like an eel into mud,” as Cyril later said.

“Why ever didn’t you burn him? You could have, couldn’t you?” asked Robert, when the hurried flight through the narrow courts had ended in the safe wideness of Farringdon Street.

“I could have, of course,” said the bird, “but I didn’t think it would be dignified to allow myself to get warm about a little thing like that. The Fates, after all, have not been illiberal to me. I have a good many friends among the London sparrows, and I have a beak and claws.”

These happenings had somewhat shaken the adventurous temper of the children, and the Phoenix had to exert its golden self to hearten them up.

Presently the children came to a great house in Lombard Street, and there, on each side of the door, was the image of the Phoenix carved in stone, and set forth on shining brass were the words—

PHOENIX FIRE OFFICE

“One moment,” said the bird. “Fire? For altars, I suppose?”

“
I
don’t know,” said Robert; he was beginning to feel shy, and that always made him rather cross.

“Oh, yes, you do,” Cyril contradicted. “When people’s houses are burnt down the Phoenix gives them new houses. Father told me; I asked him.”

“The house, then, like the Phoenix, rises from its ashes? Well have my priests dealt with the sons of men!”

“The sons of men pay, you know,” said Anthea; “but it’s only a little every year.”

“That is to maintain my priests,” said the bird, “who, in the hour of affliction, heal sorrows and rebuild houses. Lead on; inquire for the High Priest. I will not break upon them too suddenly in all my glory. Noble and honour-deserving are they who make as nought the evil deeds of the lame-footed and unpleasing Hephaestus.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I wish you wouldn’t muddle us with new names. Fire just happens. Nobody does it—not as a deed, you know,” Cyril explained. “If they did the Phoenix wouldn’t help them, because its a crime to set fire to things. Arsenic, or something they call it, because it’s as bad as poisoning people. The Phoenix wouldn’t help
them
—father told me it wouldn’t.”

“My priests do well,” said the Phoenix. “Lead on.”

“I don’t know what to say,” said Cyril; and the Others said the same.

“Ask for the High Priest,” said the Phoenix. “Say that you have a secret to unfold that concerns my worship, and he will lead you to the innermost sanctuary.”

So the children went in, all four of them, though they didn’t like it, and stood in a large and beautiful hall adorned with Doulton tiles, like a large and beautiful bath with no water in it, and stately pillars supporting the roof. An unpleasing representation of the Phoenix in brown pottery disfigured one wall. There were counters and desks of mahogany and brass, and clerks bent over the desks and walked behind the counters. There was a great clock over an inner doorway.

“Inquire for the High Priest,” whispered the Phoenix.

An attentive clerk in decent black, who controlled his mouth but not his eyebrows, now came towards them. He leaned forward on the counter, and the children thought he was going to say, “What can I have the pleasure of showing you?” like in a draper’s; instead of which the young man said—

“And what do
you
want?”

“We want to see the High Priest.”

“Get along with you,” said the young man.

An elder man, also decent in black coat, advanced.

“Perhaps it’s Mr Blank” (not for worlds would I give the name). “He’s a Masonic High Priest, you know.”

A porter was sent away to look for Mr Asterisk (I cannot give his name), and the children were left there to look on and be looked on by all the gentlemen at the mahogany desks. Anthea and Jane thought that they looked kind. The boys thought they stared, and that it was like their cheek.

The porter returned with the news that Mr Dot Dash Dot (I dare not reveal his name) was out, but that Mr—

Here a really delightful gentleman appeared. He had a beard and a kind and merry eye, and each one of the four knew at once that this was a man who had kiddies of his own and could understand what you were talking about. Yet it was a difficult thing to explain.

“What is it?” he asked. “Mr”—he named the name which I will never reveal—“is out. Can I do anything?”

“Inner sanctuary,” murmured the Phoenix.

“I beg your pardon,” said the nice gentleman, who thought it was Robert who had spoken.

“We have something to tell you,” said Cyril, “but”—he glanced at the porter, who was lingering much nearer than he need have done—“this is a very public place.”

The nice gentleman laughed.

“Come upstairs then,” he said, and led the way up a wide and beautiful staircase. Anthea says the stairs were of white marble, but I am not sure. On the corner-post of the stairs, at the top, was a beautiful image of the Phoenix in dark metal, and on the wall at each side was a flat sort of image of it.

The nice gentleman led them into a room where the chairs, and even the tables, were covered with reddish leather. He looked at the children inquiringly.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said; “tell me exactly what you want.”

“May I shut the door?” asked Cyril.

The gentleman looked surprised, but he shut the door.

“Now,” said Cyril, firmly, “I know you’ll be awfully surprised, and you’ll think it’s not true and we are lunatics; but we aren’t, and it is. Robert’s got something inside his Norfolk—that’s Robert, he’s my young brother. Now don’t be upset and have a fit or anything sir. Of course, I know when you called your shop the ‘Phoenix’ you never thought there was one; but there is—and Robert’s got it buttoned up against his chest!”

“If it’s an old curio in the form of a Phoenix, I dare say the Board—” said the nice gentleman, as Robert began to fumble with his buttons.

“It’s old enough,” said Anthea, “going by what it says, but—”

“My goodness gracious!” said the gentleman, as the Phoenix, with one last wriggle that melted into a flutter, got out of its nest in the breast of Robert and stood up on the leather-covered table.

“What an extraordinarily fine bird!” he went on. “I don’t think I ever saw one just like it.”

“I should think not,” said the Phoenix, with pardonable pride. And the gentleman jumped.

“Oh, it’s been taught to speak! Some sort of parrot, perhaps?”

“I am,” said the bird, simply, “the Head of your House, and I have come to my temple to receive your homage. I am no parrot”—its beak curved scornfully—“I am the one and only Phoenix, and I demand the homage of my High Priest.”

“In the absence of our manager,” the gentleman began, exactly as though he were addressing a valued customer—“in the absence of our manager, I might perhaps be able—What am I saying?” He turned pale, and passed his hand across his brow. “My dears,” he said, “the weather is unusually warm for the time of year, and I don’t feel quite myself. Do you know, for a moment I really thought that that remarkable bird of yours had spoken and said it was the Phoenix, and, what’s more, that I’d believed it.”

“So it did, sir,” said Cyril, “and so did you.”

“It really—Allow me.”

A bell was rung. The porter appeared.

“Mackenzie,” said the gentleman, “you see that golden bird?”

“Yes, sir.”

The other breathed a sigh of relief.

“It
is
real, then?”

“Yes, sir, of course, sir. You take it in your hand, sir,” said the porter, sympathetically, and reached out his hand to the Phoenix, who shrank back on toes curved with agitated indignation.

“Forbear!” it cried; “how dare you seek to lay hands on me?”

The porter saluted.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “I thought you was a bird.”

“I
am
a bird—
the
bird—the Phoenix.”

“Of course you are, sir,” said the porter. “I see that the first minute, directly I got my breath, sir.”

“That will do,” said the gentleman. “Ask Mr Wilson and Mr Sterry to step up here for a moment, please.”

Mr Sterry and Mr Wilson were in their turn overcome by amazement—quickly followed by conviction. To the surprise of the children every one in the office took the Phoenix at its word, and after the first shock of surprise it seemed to be perfectly natural to every one that the Phoenix should be alive, and that, passing through London, it should call at its temple.

“We ought to have some sort of ceremony,” said the nicest gentleman, anxiously. “There isn’t time to summon the directors and shareholders—we might do that tomorrow, perhaps. Yes, the board-room would be best. I shouldn’t like it to feel we hadn’t done everything in our power to show our appreciation of its condescension in looking in on us in this friendly way.”

The children could hardly believe their ears, for they had never thought that any one but themselves would believe in the Phoenix. And yet every one did; all the men in the office were brought in by twos and threes, and the moment the Phoenix opened its beak it convinced the cleverest of them, as well as those who were not so clever. Cyril wondered how the story would look in the papers next day. He seemed to see the posters in the streets:

PHOENIX FIRE OFFICE

THE PHOENIX AT ITS TEMPLE

MEETING TO WELCOME IT

DELIGHT OF THE MANAGER AND EVERYBODY.

“Excuse our leaving you a moment,” said the nice gentleman, and he went away with the others; and through the half-closed door the children could hear the sound of many boots on stairs, the hum of excited voices explaining, suggesting, arguing, the thumpy drag of heavy furniture being moved about.

The Phoenix strutted up and down the leather-covered table, looking over its shoulder at its pretty back.

“You see what a convincing manner I have,” it said proudly.

And now a new gentleman came in and said, bowing low—

“Everything is prepared—we have done our best at so short a notice; the meeting—the ceremony—will be in the board-room. Will the Honourable Phoenix walk—it is only a few steps—or would it like to be—would it like some sort of conveyance?”

“My Robert will bear me to the board-room, if that be the unlovely name of my temple’s inmost court,” replied the bird.

So they all followed the gentleman. There was a big table in the board-room, but it had been pushed right up under the long windows at one side, and chairs were arranged in rows across the room—like those you have at schools when there is a magic lantern on “Our Eastern Empire,” or on “The Way We Do in the Navy.” The doors were of carved wood, very beautiful, with a carved Phoenix above. Anthea noticed that the chairs in the front rows were of the kind that her mother so loved to ask the price of in old furniture shops, and never could buy, because the price was always nearly twenty pounds each. On the mantelpiece were some heavy bronze candlesticks and a clock, and on the top of the clock was another image of the Phoenix.

“Remove that effigy,” said the Phoenix to the gentlemen who were there, and it was hastily taken down. Then the Phoenix fluttered to the middle of the mantelpiece and stood there, looking more golden than ever. Then every one in the house and the office came in—from the cashier to the women who cooked the clerks’ dinners in the beautiful kitchen at the top of the house. And every one bowed to the Phoenix and then sat down in a chair.

“Gentlemen,” said the nicest gentleman, “we have met here today—”

The Phoenix was turning its golden beak from side to side.

“I don’t notice any incense,” it said, with an injured sniff. A hurried consultation ended in plates being fetched from the kitchen. Brown sugar, sealing-wax, and tobacco were placed on these, and something from a square bottle was poured over it all. Then a match was applied. It was the only incense that was handy in the Phoenix office, and it certainly burned very briskly and smoked a great deal.

“We have met here today,” said the gentleman again, “on an occasion unparalleled in the annals of this office. Our respected Phoenix—”

“Head of the House,” said the Phoenix, in a hollow voice.

“I was coming to that. Our respected Phoenix, the Head of this ancient House, has at length done us the honour to come among us. I think I may say, gentlemen, that we are not insensible to this honour, and that we welcome with no uncertain voice one whom we have so long desired to see in our midst.”

Several of the younger clerks thought of saying “Hear, hear,” but they feared it might seem disrespectful to the bird.