1 cherry pie,2 custards in cups,1 cold sausage,2 pieces of cold toast,1 piece of cheese,2 lemon cheese-cakes,1 small jam tart (there was only one left),Butter, 1 pat.
'What jolly things the servants have to eat,' he said. 'I never knew. I thought that nothing but mutton and rice grew here.'
He put all the food on a silver tray and carried it out on to the terrace, which lies between the two wings at the back of the house. Then he went back for milk, but there was none to be seen so he got a white jug full of water. The spoons he couldn't find, but hefound a carving-fork and a fish-slice. Did you ever try to eat cherry pie with a fish-slice?
'Whatever's happened,' said Philip to himself, through the cherry pie, 'and whatever happens it's as well to have had your breakfast.' And he bit a generous inch off the cold sausage which he had speared with the carving-fork.
And now, sitting out in the good sunshine, and growing less and less hungry as he plied fish-slice and carving-fork, his mind went back to his dream, which began to seem more and more real. Suppose it reallyhadhappened? It might have; magic things did happen, it seemed. Look how all the people had vanished out of the house—out of the world too, perhaps.
'Suppose every one's vanished,' said Philip. 'Suppose I'm the only person left in the world who hasn't vanished. Then everything in the world would belong to me. Then I could have everything that's in all the toy shops.' And his mind for a moment dwelt fondly on this beautiful idea.
Then he went on. 'But suppose I vanished too? Perhaps if I were to vanish I could see the other people who have. I wonder how it's done.'
He held his breath and tried hard to vanish. Have you ever tried this? It is not at alleasy to do. Philip could not do it at all. He held his breath and he tried and he tried, but he only felt fatter and fatter and more and more as though in one more moment he should burst. So he let his breath go.
'No,' he said, looking at his hands; 'I'm not any more invisible than I was before. Not so much I think,' he added thoughtfully, looking at what was left of the cherry pie. 'But that dream——'
He plunged deep in the remembrance of it that was, to him, like swimming in the waters of a fairy lake.
He was hooked out of his lake suddenly by voices. It was like waking up. There, away across the green park beyond the sunk fence, were people coming.
'So every one hasn't vanished,' he said, caught up the tray and took it in. He hid it under the pantry shelf. He didn't know who the people were who were coming and you can't be too careful. Then he went out and made himself small in the shadow of a red buttress, heard their voices coming nearer and nearer. They were all talking at once, in that quick interested way that makes you certain something unusual has happened.
He could not hear exactly what they were saying, but he caught the words: 'No.'
'Of course I've asked.'
'Police.'
'Telegram.'
'Yes, of course.'
'Better make quite sure.'
Then every one began speaking all at once, and you could not hear anything that anybody said. Philip was too busy keeping behind the buttress to see who they were who were talking. He was gladsomethinghad happened.
'Now I shall have something to think about besides the nurse and my beautiful city that she has pulled down.'
But what was it that had happened? He hoped nobody was hurt—or had done anything wrong. The word police had always made him uncomfortable ever since he had seen a boy no bigger than himself pulled along the road by a very large policeman. The boy had stolen a loaf, Philip was told. Philip could never forget that boy's face; he always thought of it in church when it said 'prisoners and captives,' and still more when it said 'desolate and oppressed.'
'I do hope it's notthat,' he said.
And slowly he got himself to leave the shelter of the red-brick buttress and to follow to the house those voices and those footsteps that had gone by him.
He followed the sound of them to the kitchen. The cook was there in tears and a Windsor arm-chair. The kitchenmaid, her cap all on one side, was crying down most dirty cheeks. The coachman was there, very red in the face, and the groom, without his gaiters. The nurse was there, neat as ever she seemed at first, but Philip was delighted when a more careful inspection showed him that there was mud on her large shoes and on the bottom of her skirt, and that her dress had a large three-cornered tear in it.
'I wouldn't have had it happen for a twenty-pun note,' the coachman was saying.
'George,' said the nurse to the groom, 'you go and get a horse ready. I'll write the telegram.'
'You'd best take Peppermint,' said the coachman. 'She's the fastest.'
The groom went out, saying under his breath, 'Teach your grandmother,' which Philip thought rude and unmeaning.
Philip was standing unnoticed by the door. He felt that thrill—if it isn't pleasure it is more like it than anything else—which we all feel when something real has happened.
But whathadhappened. What?
'I wish I'd never come back,' said the nurse. 'Then nobody could pretend it wasmyfault.'
'It don't matter what they pretend,' the cook stopped crying to say. 'The thing is what's happened. Oh, my goodness. I'd rather have been turned away without a character than have had this happen.'
'And I'd ratheranything,' said the nurse. 'Oh, my goodness me. I wish I'd never been born.'
And then and there, before the astonished eyes of Philip, she began to behave as any nice person might—she began to cry.
'It wouldn't have happened,' said the cook, 'if the master hadn't been away. He's a Justice of the Peace, he is, and a terror to gipsies. It wouldn't never have happened if——'
Philip could not bear it any longer.
'Whatwouldn't have happened if?' he asked, startling everybody to a quick jump of surprise.
The nurse stopped crying and turned to look at him.
'Oh,you!' she said slowly. 'I forgotyou. You want your breakfast, I suppose, no matter what's happened?'
'No, I don't,' said Philip, with extreme truth. 'I want to know whathashappened?'
'Miss Lucy's lost,' said the cook heavily, 'that's what's happened. So now you know. You run along and play, like a good little boy,and don't make extry trouble for us in the trouble we're in.'
'Lost?' repeated Philip.
'Yes, lost. I expect you're glad,' said the nurse, 'the way you treated her. You hold your tongue and don't let me so much as hear you breathe the next twenty-four hours. I'll go and write that telegram.'
Philip thought it best not to let any one hear him breathe. By this means he heard the telegram when nurse read it aloud to the cook.
'Peter Graham, Esq.,Hotel Wagram,Brussels.Miss Lucy lost. Please come home immediately.Philkins.
Miss Lucy lost. Please come home immediately.
Philkins.
That's all right, isn't it?'
'I don't see why you sign it Philkins. You're only the nurse—I'm the head of the house when the family's away, and my name's Bobson,' the cook said.
There was a sound of torn paper.
'There—the paper's tore. I'd just as soon your name went to it,' said the nurse. 'I don't want to be the one to tell such news.'
'Oh, my good gracious, what a thing to happen,' sighed the cook. 'Poor little darling!'
Then somebody wrote the telegram again,and the nurse took it out to the stable-yard, where Peppermint was already saddled.
'I thought,' said Philip, bold in the nurse's absence, 'I thought Lucy was with her aunt.'
'She came back yesterday,' said the cook. 'Yes, after you'd gone to bed. And this morning that nurse went into the night nursery and she wasn't there. Her bed all empty and cold, and her clothes gone. Though how the gipsies could have got in without waking that nurse is a mystery to me and ever will be. She must sleep like a pig.'
'Or the seven sleepers,' said the coachman.
'But what would gipsies want herfor?' Philip asked.
'What do they ever want anybody for?' retorted the cook. 'Look at the heirs that's been stolen. I don't suppose there's a titled family in England but what's had its heir stolen, one time and another.'
'I suppose you've looked all over the house,' said Philip.
'I suppose we ain't deaf and dumb and blind and silly,' said the cook. 'Here's that nurse. You be off, Mr. Philip, without you want a flea in your ear.'
And Philip, at the word,wasoff. He went into the long drawing-room, and shut the door. Then he got the ivory chessmen out of theBuhl cabinet, and set them out on thatdelightfulchess-table whose chequers are of mother-of-pearl and ivory, and tried to play a game, right hand against left. But right hand, who was white, and so moved first, always won. He gave up after awhile, and put the chessmen away in their proper places. Then he got out the big book of photographs of pictures, but they did not seem interesting, so he tried the ivory spellicans. But his hand shook, and you know spellicans is a game you can't play when your hand shakes. And all the time, behind the chess and the pictures and the spellicans, he was trying not to think about his dream, about how he had climbed that ladder stair, which was really the yard-stick, and gone into the cities that he had built on the tables. Somehow he did not want to remember it. The very idea of remembering made him feel guilty and wretched.
He went and looked out of the window, and as he stood there his wish not to remember the dream made his boots restless, and in their shuffling his right boot kicked against something hard that lay in the folds of the blue brocade curtain.
He looked down, stooped, and picked up little Mr. Noah. The nurse must have dropt it there when she cleared away the city.
And as he looked upon those wooden features it suddenly became impossible not to think of the dream. He let the remembrance of it come, and it came in a flood. And with it the remembrance of what he had done. He had promised to be Lucy's noble friend, and they had run together to escape from the galloping soldiers. And he had run faster than she. And at the top of the ladder—the ladder of safety—he had not waited for her.
'Any old hero would have waited for her, and let her go first,' he told himself. 'Any gentleman would—even anyman—let alone a hero. And I just bunked down the ladder and forgot her. Ilefther there.'
Remorse stirred his boots more ungently than before.
'But it was only a dream,' he said. And then remorse said, as he had felt all along that it would if he only gave it a chance:
'But suppose it wasn't a dream—suppose it was real. Suppose youdidleave her there, my noble friend, and that's why she's lost.'
Suddenly Philip felt very small, very forlorn, very much alone in the world. But Helen would come back. That telegram would bring her.
Yes. And he would have to tell her that perhaps it was his fault.
It was in vain that Philip told himself that Helen would never believe about the city. He felt that she would. Why shouldn't she? She knew about the fairy tales and the Arabian Nights. And she would know that these thingsdidhappen.
'Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?' he said, quite loud. And there was no one but himself to give the answer.
'If I could only get back into the city,' he said. 'But that hateful nurse has pulled it all down and locked up the nursery. So I can't even build it again. Oh, whatshallI do?'
And with that he began to cry. For now he felt quite sure that the dream wasn't a dream—that he reallyhadgot into the magic city, had promised to stand by Lucy, and had been false to his promise and to her.
He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and also—rather painfully—with Mr. Noah, whom he still held. 'What shall I do?' he sobbed.
And a very very teeny tiny voice said:
'Put me down.'
'Eh?' said Philip.
'Put me down,'said the voice again. It was such a teeny tiny voice that he could only just hear it. It was unlikely, of course, that the voice could have been Mr. Noah's; but then whose else could it be? On the bare chancethat itmighthave been Mr. Noah who spoke—more unlikely things had happened before, as you know—Philip set the little wooden figure down on the chess-table. It stood there, wooden as ever.
'Putwhodown?' Philip asked. And then, before his eyes, the little wooden figure grew alive, stooped to pick up the yellow disc of wood on which Noah's Ark people stand, rolled it up like a mat, put it under his arm and began to walk towards the side of the table where Philip stood.
He knelt down to bring his ears nearer the little live moving thing.
'Whatdid you say?' he asked, for he fancied that Mr. Noah had again spoken.
'I said, what's the matter?'said the little voice.
'It's Lucy. She's lost and it's my fault. And I can only just hear you. It hurts my ears hearing you,' complained Philip.
'There's an ear-trumpet in a box on the middle of the cabinet,'he could just hear the teeny tiny voice say;'it belonged to a great-aunt. Get it out and listen through it.'
Philip got it out. It was an odd curly thing, and at first he could not be sure which end he ought to put to his ear. But he tried both ends, and on the second trial he heard quite a loud, strong, big voice say:
'That's better.'
'Then it wasn't a dream last night,' said Philip.
'Of course it wasn't,' said Mr. Noah.
'Then where is Lucy?'
'In the city, of course. Where you left her.'
'But shecan'tbe,' said Philip desperately. 'The city's all pulled down and gone for ever.'
'The city you built in this room is pulled down,' said Mr. Noah, 'but the city you went to wasn't in this room. Now I put it to you—how could it be?'
'But itwas,' said Philip, 'or else how could I have got into it.'
'It's a little difficult, I own,' said Mr. Noah. 'But, you see, you built those cities in two worlds. It's pulled down inthisworld. But in the other world it's going on.'
'I don't understand,' said Philip.
'I thought you wouldn't,' said Mr. Noah; 'but it's true, for all that. Everything people make in that world goes on for ever.'
'But how was it that I got in?'
'Because you belong to both worlds. And you built the cities. So they were yours.'
'But Lucy got in.'
'She built up a corner of your city that the nurse had knocked down.'
He heard quite a loud, strong, big voice say, 'That's better.'He heard quite a loud, strong, big voice say, 'That's better.'
'Butyou,' said Philip, more and more bewildered. 'You're here. So you can't be there.'
'But Iamthere,' said Mr. Noah.
'But you're here. And you're alive here. What made you come alive?'
'Your tears,' said Mr. Noah. 'Tears are very strong magic. No, don't begin to cry again. What's the matter?'
'I want to get back into the city.'
'It's dangerous.'
'I don't care.'
'You were glad enough to get away,' said Mr. Noah.
'I know: that's the worst of it,' said Philip. 'Oh, isn't there any way to get back? If I climbed in at the nursery windows and got the bricks and built it all up and——'
'Quite unnecessary, I assure you. There are a thousand doors to that city.'
'I wish I could findone,' said Philip; 'but, I say, I thought time was all different there. How is it Lucy is lost all this time if time doesn't count?'
'It does count, now,' said Mr. Noah; 'you made it count when you ran away and left Lucy. That set the clocks of the city to the time of this world.'
'I don't understand,' said Philip; 'but itdoesn't matter. Show me the door and I'll go back and find Lucy.'
'Build something and go through it,' said Mr. Noah. 'That's all. Your tears are dry on me now. Good-bye.' And he laid down his yellow mat, stepped on to it and was just a little wooden figure again.
Philip dropped the ear-trumpet and looked at Mr. Noah.
'Idon'tunderstand,' he said. But this at least he understood. That Helen would come back when she got that telegram, and that before she came he must go into the other world and find the lost Lucy.
The gigantic porch lowered frowningly above him.The gigantic porch lowered frowningly above him.
'But oh,' he said, 'suppose Idon'tfind her. I wish I hadn't built those cities so big! And time will go on. And, perhaps, when Helen comes back she'll findmelosttoo—as well as Lucy.'
But he dried his eyes and told himself that this was not how heroes behaved. He must build again. Whichever way you looked at it there was no time to be lost. And besides the nurse might occur at any moment.
He looked round for building materials. There was the chess-table. It had long narrow legs set round it, rather like arches. Something might be done with it, with books and candlesticks and Japanese vases.
Somethingwasdone. Philip built with earnest care, but also with considerable speed. If the nurse should come in before he had made a door and got through it—come in and find him building again—she was quite capable of putting him to bed, where, of course, building is impossible. In a very little time there was a building. But how to get in. He was, alas, the wrong size. He stood helpless, and once more tears pricked and swelled behind his eyelids. One tear fell on his hand.
'Tears are a strong magic,' Mr. Noah had said. And at the thought the tears stopped. Still therewasa tear, the one on his hand. He rubbed it on the pillar of the porch.
And instantly a queer tight thin feeling swept through him. He felt giddy and shut his eyes. His boots, ever sympathetic, shuffled on the carpet. Or was it the carpet? It was very thick and—— He opened his eyes. His feet were once more on the long grass of the illimitable prairie. And in front of him towered the gigantic porch of a vast building and a domino path leading up to it.
'Oh, I am so glad,' cried Philip among the grass. 'I couldn't have borne it if she'd been lost for ever, and all my fault.'
The gigantic porch lowered frowningly above him. What would he find on the other side of it?
'I don't care. I've simply got to go,' he said, and stepped out bravely. 'If I can'tbea hero I'll try to behave like one.'
And with that he stepped out, stumbling a little in the thick grass, and the dark shadow of the porch received him.
. . . . . .
'Bother the child,' said the nurse, coming into the drawing-room a little later; 'if he hasn't been at his precious building game again! I shall have to give him a lesson over this—I can see that. And I will too—a lesson he won't forget in a hurry.'
She went through the house, looking for the too bold builder that she might give him that lesson. Then she went through the garden, still on the same errand.
Half an hour later she burst into the servants' hall and threw herself into a chair.
'I don't care what happens now,' she said. 'The house is bewitched, I think. I shall go the very minute I've had my dinner.'
'What's up now?' the cook came to the door to say.
'Up?' said the nurse. 'Oh, nothing'sup. What should there be? Everything's all rightand beautiful, and just as it should be, of course.'
'Miss Lucy's not found yet, of course, but that's all, isn't it?'
'All? And enough too, I should have thought,' said the nurse. 'But as it happens it'snotall. The boy's lost now. Oh, I'm not joking. He's lost I tell you, the same as the other one—and I'm off out of this by the two thirty-seven train, and I don't care who knows it.'
'Lor!' said the cook.
. . . . . .
Before starting for the two thirty-seven train the nurse went back to the drawing-room to destroy Philip's new building, to restore to their proper places its books, candlesticks, vases, and chessmen.
There we will leave her.
When Philip walked up the domino path and under the vast arch into the darkness beyond, his heart felt strong with high resolve. His legs, however, felt weak; strangely weak, especially about the knees. The doorway was so enormous, that which lay beyond was so dark, and he himself so very very small. As he passed under the little gateway which he had built of three dominoes with the little silver knight in armour on the top, he noticed that he was only as high as a domino, and you know how very little that is.
Philip went along the domino path. He had to walk carefully, for to him the spots on the dominoes were quite deep hollows. But as they were black they were easy to see. He had made three arches, one beyond another, of two pairs of silver candlesticks with silver inkstands on the top of them. The third pair ofsilver candlesticks had a book on the top of them because there were no more inkstands. And when he had passed through the three silver arches, he stopped.
Beyond lay a sort of velvety darkness with white gleams in it. And as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw that he was in a great hall of silver pillars, gigantic silver candlesticks they seemed to be, and they went in long vistas this way and that way and every way, like the hop-poles in a hop-field, so that whichever way you turned, a long pillared corridor lay in front of you.
Philip had no idea which way he ought to go. It seemed most unlikely that he would find Lucy in a dark hall with silver pillars.
'All the same,' he said, 'it's not so dark as it was, by long chalks.'
It was not. The silver pillars had begun to give out a faint soft glow like the silver phosphorescence that lies in sea pools in summer time.
'It's lucky too,' he said, 'because of the holes in the floor.'
The holes were the spots on the dominoes with which the pillared hall was paved.
'I wonder what part of the city where Lucy is I shall come out at?' Philip asked himself. But he need not have troubled. He did notcome out at all. He walked on and on and on and on and on. He thought he was walking straight, but really he was turning first this way and then that, and then the other way among the avenues of silver pillars which all looked just alike.
He was getting very tired, and he had been walking a long time, before he came to anything that was not silver pillars and velvet black under invisible roofs, and floor paved with dominoes laid very close together.
'Oh, I am glad!' he said at last, when he saw the pavement narrow to a single line of dominoes just like the path he had come in by. There was an arch too, like the arch by which he had come in. And then he perceived in a shock of miserable surprise that it was, in fact, the same arch and the same domino path. He had come back, after all that walking, to the point from which he had started. It was most mortifying. So silly! Philip sat down on the edge of the domino path to rest and think.
'Suppose I just walk out and don't believe in magic any more?' he said to himself. 'Helen says magic can only happen to people who believe in magic. So if I just walked out and didn't believe as hard as ever I could, I should be my own right size again, and Lucy would be back, and there wouldn'tbeany magic.'
He walked on and on and on.He walked on and on and on.
'Yes, but,' said that voice that always would come and join in whenever Philip was talking to himself, 'suppose Lucydoesbelieve it? Then it'll all go on for her, whateveryoubelieve, and shewon'tbe back. Besides, you know you'vegotto believe it, because it's true.'
'Oh, bother!' said Philip; 'I'm tired. I don't want to go on.'
'You shouldn't have deserted Lucy,' said the tiresome voice, 'then you wouldn't have had to go back to look for her.'
'But I can't find my way. How can I find my way?'
'You know well enough. Fix your eyes on a far-off pillar and walk straight to it, and when you're nearly there fix your eyes a little farther. You're bound to come out somewhere.'
'But I'm tired and it's so lonely,' said Philip.
'Lucy's lonely too,' said the voice.
'Drop it!' said Philip. And he got up and began to walk again. Also he took the advice of that worrying voice and fixed his eyes on a distant pillar.
'But why should I bother?' he said; 'this is a sort of dream.'
'Even if itwerea dream,' said the voice, 'there are adventures in it. So you may as well be adventurous.'
'Oh, all right,' said Philip, and on he went.
And by walking very carefully and fixing his eyes a long way off, he did at last come right through the hall of silver pillars, and saw beyond the faint glow of the pillars the blue light of day. It shone very brightly through a very little door, and when Philip came to that door he went through it without hesitation. And there he was in a big field. It was rather like the illimitable prairie, only there were great patches of different-coloured flowers. Also there was a path across it, and he followed the path.
'Because,' he said, 'I'm more likely to meet Lucy. Girls always keep to paths. They never explore.'
Which just shows how little he knew about girls.
He looked back after a while, to see what the hall of pillars looked like from outside, but it was already dim in the mists of distance.
But ahead of him he saw a great rough building, rather like Stonehenge.
'I wish I'd come into the other city where the people are, and the soldiers, and the greyhounds, and the cocoa-nuts,' he told himself. 'There's nobody here at all, not even Lucy.'
The loneliness of the place grew more andmore unpleasing to Philip. But he went on. It seemed more reasonable than to go back.
'I ought to be very hungry,' he said; 'I must have been walking for hours.' But he wasn't hungry. It may have been the magic, or it may have been the odd breakfast he had had. I don't know. He spoke aloud because it was so quiet in that strange open country with no one in it but himself. And no sound but the clump, clump of his boots on the path. And it seemed to him that everything grew quieter and quieter till he could almost hear himself think. Loneliness, real loneliness is a dreadful thing. I hope you will never feel it. Philip looked to right and left, and before him, and on all the wide plain nothing moved. There were the grass and flowers, but no wind stirred them. And there was no sign that any living person had ever trodden that path—except that therewasa path to tread, and that the path led to the Stonehenge building, and even that seemed to be only a ruin.
'I'll go as far as that anyhow,' said Philip; 'perhaps there'll be a signboard there or something.'
There was something. Something most unexpected. Philip reached the building; it was really very like Stonehenge, only the pillars were taller and closer together and there wasone high solid towering wall; turned the corner of a massive upright and ran almost into the arms, and quite on to the feet of a man in a white apron and a square paper cap, who sat on a fallen column, eating bread and cheese with a clasp-knife.
'I beg your pardon!' Philip gasped.
'Granted, I'm sure,' said the man; 'but it's a dangerous thing to do, Master Philip, running sheer on to chaps' clasp-knives.'
He set Philip on his feet, and waved the knife, which had been so often sharpened that the blade was half worn away.
'Set you down and get your breath,' he said kindly.
'Why, it'syou!' said Philip.
'Course it is. Who should I be if I wasn't me? That's poetry.'
'But how did you get here?'
'Ah!' said the man going on with his bread and cheese, while he talked quite in the friendliest way, 'that's telling.'
'Well, tell then,' said Philip impatiently. But he sat down.
'Well, you say it's me. Who be it? Give it a name.'
'You're old Perrin,' said Pip; 'I mean, of course, I beg your pardon, you're Mr. Perrin, the carpenter.'
'And what does carpenters do?'
'Carp, I suppose,' said Philip. 'That means they make things, doesn't it?'
'That's it,' said the man encouragingly; 'what sort of things now might old Perrin have made for you?'
'You made my wheelbarrow, I know,' said Philip, 'and my bricks.'
'Ah!' said Mr. Perrin, 'now you've got it. I made your bricks, seasoned oak, and true to the thousandth of an inch, they was. And that's how I got here. So now you know.'
'But what are you doing here?' said Philip, wriggling restlessly on the fallen column.
'Waiting for you. Them as knows sent me out to meet you, and give you a hint of what's expected of you.'
'Well. Whatis?' said Philip. 'I mean I think it's very kind of you. Whatisexpected?'
'Plenty of time,' said the carpenter, 'plenty. Nothing ain't expected of you till towards sundown.'
'I do think it was most awfully kind of you,' said Philip, who had now thought this over.
'You was kind to old Perrin once,' said that person.
'Was I?' said Philip, much surprised.
'Yes; when my little girl was ailing youbrought her a lot of pears off your own tree. Not one of 'em you didn't 'ave yourself that year, Miss Helen told me. And you brought back our kitten—the sandy and white one with black spots—when it strayed. So I was quite willing to come and meet you when so told. And knowing something of young gentlemen's peckers, owing to being in business once next door to a boys' school, I made so bold as to bring you a snack.'
He reached a hand down behind the fallen pillar on which they sat and brought up a basket.
'Here,' he said. And Philip, raising the lid, was delighted to find that he was hungry. It was a pleasant basketful. Meat pasties, red hairy gooseberries, a stone bottle of ginger-beer, a blue mug with Philip on it in gold letters, a slice of soda cake and two farthing sugar-sticks.
'I'm sure I've seen that basket before,' said the boy as he ate.
'Like enough. It's the one you brought them pears down in.'
'Now look here,' said Philip, through his seventh bite of pasty, 'youmusttell me how you got here. And tell me where you've got to. You've simply no idea how muddling it all is to me. Do tell meeverything. Whereare we, I mean, and why? And what I've got to do. And why? And when? Tell me every single thing.' And he took the eighth bite.
'You really don't know, sir?'
'No,' said Philip, contemplating the ninth or last bite but one. It was a large pasty.
'Well then. Here goes. But I was always a poor speaker, and so considered even by friends at cricket dinners and what not.'
'But I don't want you to speak,' said Philip; 'just tell me.'
'Well, then. How did I get here? I got here through having made them bricks what you built this tumble-down old ancient place with.'
'Ibuilt?'
'Yes, with them bricks I made you. I understand as this was the first building you ever put up. That's why it's first on the road to where you want to get to!'
Philip looked round at the Stonehenge building and saw that it was indeed built of enormous oak bricks.
'Of course,' he said, 'only I've grown smaller.'
'Or they've grown bigger,' said Mr. Perrin; 'it's the same thing. You see it's like this. All the cities and things you ever built is in thiscountry. I don't know how it's managed, no more'n what you do. But so it is. And as you made 'em, you've the right to come to them—if you can get there. And you have got there. It isn't every one has the luck, I'm told. Well, then, you made the cities, but you made 'em out of what other folks had made, things like bricks and chessmen and books and candlesticks and dominoes and brass basins and every sort of kind of thing. An' all the people who helped to make all them things you used to build with, they're all here too. D'you see?Making'sthe thing. If it was no more than the lad that turned the handle of the grindstone to sharp the knife that carved a bit of a cabinet or what not, or a child that picked a teazle to finish a bit of the cloth that's glued on to the bottom of a chessman—they're all here. They're what's called the population of your cities.'
'I see. They've got small, like I have,' said Philip.
'Or the cities has got big,' said the carpenter; 'it comes to the same thing. I wish you wouldn't interrupt, Master Philip. You put me out.'
'I won't again,' said Philip. 'Only do tell me just one thing. How can you be here and at Amblehurst too?'
'We come here,' said the carpenter slowly, 'when we're asleep.'
'Oh!' said Philip, deeply disappointed; 'it's just a dream then?'
'Not it. We come here when we're too sound asleep to dream. You go through the dreams and come out on the other side where everything's real. That'shere.'
'Go on,' said Philip.
'I dunno where I was. You do put me out so.'
'Pop you something or other,' said Philip.
'Population. Yes. Well, all those people as made the things you made the cities of, they live in the cities and they've made the insides to the houses.'
'What do they do?'
'Oh, they just live here. And they buy and sell and plant gardens and work and play like everybody does in other cities. And when they go to sleep they go slap through their dreams and into the other world, and work and play there, see? That's how it goes on. There's a lot more, but that's enough for one time. You get on with your gooseberries.'
'But they aren't all real people, are they? There's Mr. Noah?'
'Ah, those is aristocracy, the ones you put in when you built the cities. They're our oldfamilies. Very much respected. They're all very high up in the world. Came over with the Conker, as the saying is. There's the Noah family. They're the oldest of all, of course. And the dolls you've put in different times and the tin soldiers, and of course all the Noah's ark animals is alive except when you used them for building, and then they're statues.'
'But I don't see,' said Philip, 'I really don't see how all these cities that I built at different times can still be here, all together and all going on at once, when I know they've all been pulled down.'
'Well, I'm no scholard. But I did hear Mr. Noah say once in a lecture—he'sa speaker, if you like—I heard him say it was like when you take a person's photo. The person is so many inches thick through and so many feet high and he's round and he's solid. But in the photo he'sflat. Because everything's flat in photos. But all the same it's him right enough. You get him into the photo. Then all you've got to do is to get 'im out again into where everything's thick and tall and round and solid. And it's quite easy, I believe, once you know the trick.'
'Stop,' said Philip suddenly. 'I think my head's going to burst.'
'Ah!' said the carpenter kindly. 'I felt like that at first. Lie down and try to sleep it off a bit. Eddication does go to your head something crool. I've often noticed it.'
And indeed Philip was quite glad to lie down among the long grass and be covered up with the carpenter's coat. He fell asleep at once.
An hour later he woke again, looked at the wrinkled-apple face of Mr. Perrin and began to remember.
'I'm gladyou'rehere anyhow,' he said to the carpenter; 'it was horribly lonely. You don't know.'
'That's why I was sent to meet you,' said Mr. Perrin simply.
'But how did you know?'
'Mr. Noah sent for me early this morning. Bless you, he knows all about everything. Says he, "You go and meet 'im and tell 'im all you can. If he wants to be a Deliverer, let 'im," says Mr. Noah.'
'But how do you begin being a Deliverer?' Philip asked, sitting up and feeling suddenly very grand and manly, and very glad that Lucy was not there to interfere.
'There's lots of different ways,' said Mr. Perrin. 'Your particular way's simple. You just got to kill the dragon.'
'Alivedragon?'
'Live!' said Mr. Perrin. 'Why he's all over the place and as green as grass he is. Lively as a kitten. He's got a broken spear sticking out of his side, so some one must have had a try at baggin' him, some time or another.'
'Don't you think,' said Philip, a little overcome by this vivid picture, 'that perhaps I'd better look for Lucy first, and be a Deliverer afterwards?'
'If you'reafraid,' said Mr. Perrin.
'I'm not,' said Philip doubtfully.
'You see,' said the carpenter, 'what you've got to consider is: are you going to be the hero of this 'ere adventure or ain't you? You can't 'ave it both ways. An' if you are, you may's well make up your mind, cause killing a dragon ain't the end of it, not by no means.'
'Do you mean there are more dragons?'
'Not dragons,' said the carpenter soothingly; 'not dragons exactly. But there. I don't want to lower your heart. If you kills the dragon, then afterwards there's six more hard things you've got to do. And then they make you king. Take it or leave it. Only, if you take it we'd best be starting. And anyhow we may as well get a move on us, because at sundown the dragon comes out to drink and exercise of himself. You can hear him rattlingall night among these 'ere ruins; miles off you can 'ear 'im of a still night.'
'Suppose I don't want to be a Deliverer,' said Philip slowly.
'Then you'll be a Destroyer,' said the carpenter; 'there's only these two situations vacant here at present. Come, Master Philip, sir, don't talk as if you wasn't going to be a man and do your duty for England, Home and Beauty, like it says in the song. Let's be starting, shall us?'
'You think I ought to be the Deliverer?'
'Ought stands for nothing,' said Mr. Perrin. 'I think you're a going tobethe Deliverer; that's what I think. Come on!'
As they rose to go, Philip had a brief fleeting vision of a very smart lady in a motor veil, disappearing round the corner of a pillar.
'Are there many motors about here?' he asked, not wishing to talk any more about dragons just then.
'Not a single one,' said Mr. Perrin unexpectedly. 'Nor yet phonographs, nor railways, nor factory chimneys, nor none of them loud ugly things. Nor yet advertisements, nor newspapers, nor barbed wire.'
After that the two walked silently away from the ruin. Philip was trying to feel as brave and confident as a Deliverer should. Hereminded himself of St. George. And he remembered that the heroneverfails to kill the dragon. But he still felt a little uneasy. It takes some time to accustom yourself to being a hero. But he could not help looking over his shoulder every now and then to see if the dragon was coming. So far it wasn't.
'Well,' said Mr. Perrin as they drew near a square tower with a long flight of steps leading up to it, 'what do you say?'
'I wasn't saying anything,' said Philip.
'I mean are you going to be the Deliverer?'
Then something in Philip's heart seemed to swell, and a choking feeling came into his throat, and he felt more frightened than he had ever felt before, as he said, looking as brave as he could:
'Yes. I am.'
Perrin clapped his hands.
And instantly from the doors of the tower and from behind it came dozens of people, and down the long steps, alone, came Mr. Noah, moving with careful dignity and carrying his yellow mat neatly rolled under his arm. All the people clapped their hands, till Mr. Noah, standing on the third step, raised his hands to command silence.
'Friends,' he said, 'and fellow-citizens of Polistopolis, you see before you one who saysthat he is the Deliverer. He was yesterday arrested and tried as a trespasser, and condemned to imprisonment. He escaped and you all assumed that he was the Destroyer in disguise. But now he has returned and of his own free will he chooses to attempt the accomplishment of the seven great deeds. And the first of these is the killing of the great green dragon.'
The people, who were a mixed crowd of all nations, cheered loudly.
'So now,' said Mr. Noah, 'we will make him our knight.'
'Kneel,' said Mr. Noah, 'in token of fealty to the Kingdom of Cities.'
Philip knelt.
'You shall now speak after me,' said Mr. Noah solemnly. 'Say what I say,' he whispered, and Philip said it.
This was it. 'I, Philip, claim to be the Deliverer of this great nation, and I pledge myself to carry out the seven great deeds that shall prove my claim to the Deliverership and the throne. I pledge my honour to be the champion of this city, and the enemy of its Destroyer.'
When Philip had said this, Mr. Noah drew forth a bright silver-hilted sword and held it over him.
'You must be knighted,' he said; 'those among my audience who have read any history will be aware that no mere commoner can expect to conquer a dragon. We must give our would-be Deliverer every chance. So I will make him a knight.' He tapped Philip lightly on the shoulder and said, 'Rise up, Sir Philip!'
This was really grand, and Philip felt new courage as Mr. Noah handed him the silver sword, and all the people cheered.
But as the cheers died down, a thin and disagreeable voice suddenly said:
'ButIclaim to be the Deliverer too.'
It was like a thunderbolt. Every one stopped cheering and stood with mouth open and head turned towards the person who had spoken. And the person who had spoken was the smartly dressed lady in the motor veil, whom Philip had seen among the ruins.
'A trespasser! a trespasser!' cried the crowd; 'to prison with it!' and angry, threatening voices began to arise.
'I'm no more a trespasser than he is,' said the voice, 'and if I say I am the Deliverer, you can't stop me. I can kill dragons or do anythinghecan do.'
'Silence, trespasser,' said Mr. Noah, with cold dignity. 'You should have spoken earlier.At present Sir Philip occupies the position of candidate to the post of King-Deliverer. There is no other position open to you except that of Destroyer.'