‘Rain, rain, go away,Come again another day,Little baby wants to play,’
said Anthea.
‘That’s quite wrong; and if you say it in that sort of dull way, I can quite understand the rain not taking any notice. You should open the window and shout as loud as you can—
‘Rain, rain, go away,Come again another day;Now we want the sun, and so,Pretty rain, be kind and go!
‘You should always speak politely to people when you want them to do things, and especially when it’s going away that you want them to do. And to-day you might add—
‘Shine, great sun, the lovely Phoe-Nix is here, and wants to beShone on, splendid sun, by thee!’
‘That’s poetry!’ said Cyril, decidedly.
‘It’s like it,’ said the more cautious Robert.
‘I was obliged to put in “lovely”,’ said the Phoenix, modestly, ‘to make the line long enough.’
‘There are plenty of nasty words just that length,’ said Jane; but every one else said ‘Hush!’ And then they opened the window and shouted the seven lines as loud as they could, and the Phoenix said all the words with them, except ‘lovely’, and when they came to that it looked down and coughed bashfully.
The rain hesitated a moment and then went away.
‘There’s true politeness,’ said the Phoenix, and the next moment it was perched on the window-ledge, opening and shutting its radiant wings and flapping out its golden feathers in such a flood of glorious sunshine as you sometimes have at sunset in autumn time. People said afterwards that there had not been such sunshine in December for years and years and years.
‘And now,’ said the bird, ‘we will go out into the city, and you shall take me to see one of my temples.’
‘Your temples?’
‘I gather from the carpet that I have many temples in this land.’
‘I don’t see how you CAN find anything out from it,’ said Jane: ‘it never speaks.’
‘All the same, you can pick up things from a carpet,’ said the bird; ‘I’ve seen YOU do it. And I have picked up several pieces of information in this way. That papyrus on which you showed me my picture—I understand that it bears on it the name of the street of your city in which my finest temple stands, with my image graved in stone and in metal over against its portal.’
‘You mean the fire insurance office,’ said Robert. ‘It’s not really a temple, and they don’t—’
‘Excuse me,’ said the Phoenix, coldly, ‘you are wholly misinformed. It IS a temple, and they do.’
‘Don’t let’s waste the sunshine,’ said Anthea; ‘we might argue as we go along, to save time.’
So the Phoenix consented to make itself a nest in the breast of Robert’s Norfolk jacket, and they all went out into the splendid sunshine. The best way to the temple of the Phoenix seemed to be to take the tram, and on the top of it the children talked, while the Phoenix now and then put out a wary beak, cocked a cautious eye, and contradicted what the children were saying.
It was a delicious ride, and the children felt how lucky they were to have had the money to pay for it. They went with the tram as far as it went, and when it did not go any farther they stopped too, and got off. The tram stops at the end of the Gray’s Inn Road, and it was Cyril who thought that one might well find a short cut to the Phoenix Office through the little streets and courts that lie tightly packed between Fetter Lane and Ludgate Circus. Of course, he was quite mistaken, as Robert told him at the time, and afterwards Robert did not forbear to remind his brother how he had said so. The streets there were small and stuffy and ugly, and crowded with printers’ boys and binders’ girls coming out from work; and these stared so hard at the pretty red coats and caps of the sisters that they wished they had gone some other way. And the printers and binders made very personal remarks, advising Jane to get her hair cut, and inquiring where Anthea had bought that hat. Jane and Anthea scorned to reply, and Cyril and Robert found that they were hardly a match for the rough crowd. They could think of nothing nasty enough to say. They turned a corner sharply, and then Anthea pulled Jane into an archway, and then inside a door; Cyril and Robert quickly followed, and the jeering crowd passed by without seein them.
Anthea drew a long breath.
‘How awful!’ she said. ‘I didn’t know there were such people, except in books.’
‘It was a bit thick; but it’s partly you girls’ fault, coming out in those flashy coats.’
‘We thought we ought to, when we were going out with the Phoenix,’ said Jane; and the bird said, ‘Quite right, too’—and incautiously put out his head to give her a wink of encouragement.
And at the same instant a dirty hand reached through the grim balustrade of the staircase beside them and clutched the Phoenix, and a hoarse voice said—
‘I say, Urb, blowed if this ain’t our Poll parrot what we lost. Thank you very much, lidy, for bringin’ ‘im home to roost.’
The four turned swiftly. Two large and ragged boys were crouched amid the dark shadows of the stairs. They were much larger than Robert and Cyril, and one of them had snatched the Phoenix away and was holding it high above their heads.
‘Give me that bird,’ said Cyril, sternly: ‘it’s ours.’
‘Good arternoon, and thankin’ you,’ the boy went on, with maddening mockery. ‘Sorry I can’t give yer tuppence for yer trouble—but I’ve ‘ad to spend my fortune advertising for my vallyable bird in all the newspapers. You can call for the reward next year.’
‘Look out, Ike,’ said his friend, a little anxiously; ‘it ‘ave a beak on it.’
‘It’s other parties as’ll have the Beak on to ‘em presently,’ said Ike, darkly, ‘if they come a-trying to lay claims on my Poll parrot. You just shut up, Urb. Now then, you four little gells, get out er this.’
‘Little girls!’ cried Robert. ‘I’ll little girl you!’
He sprang up three stairs and hit out.
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?’
‘Idon’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 OFFICETHE PHOENIX AT ITS TEMPLEMEETING TO WELCOME ITDELIGHT 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.
‘I will not take up your time,’ the speaker went on, ‘by recapitulating the advantages to be derived from a proper use of our system of fire insurance. I know, and you know, gentlemen, that our aim has ever been to be worthy of that eminent bird whose name we bear, and who now adorns our mantelpiece with his presence. Three cheers, gentlemen, for the winged Head of the House!’
The cheers rose, deafening. When they had died away the Phoenix was asked to say a few words.
It expressed in graceful phrases the pleasure it felt in finding itself at last in its own temple.
‘And,’ it went on, ‘You must not think me wanting in appreciation of your very hearty and cordial reception when I ask that an ode may be recited or a choric song sung. It is what I have always been accustomed to.’
The four children, dumb witnesses of this wonderful scene, glanced a little nervously across the foam of white faces above the sea of black coats. It seemed to them that the Phoenix was really asking a little too much.
‘Time presses,’ said the Phoenix, ‘and the original ode of invocation is long, as well as being Greek; and, besides, it’s no use invoking me when here I am; but is there not a song in your own tongue for a great day such as this?’
Absently the manager began to sing, and one by one the rest joined—
‘Absolute security!No liability!All kinds of propertyinsured against fire.Terms most favourable,Expenses reasonable,Moderate rates for annualInsurance.’
‘That one is NOT my favourite,’ interrupted the Phoenix, ‘and I think you’ve forgotten part of it.’
The manager hastily began another—
‘O Golden Phoenix, fairest bird,The whole great world has often heardOf all the splendid things we do,Great Phoenix, just to honour you.’
‘That’s better,’ said the bird. And every one sang—
‘Class one, for private dwelling-house,For household goods and shops allows;Provided these are built of brickOr stone, and tiled and slated thick.’
‘Try another verse,’ said the Phoenix, ‘further on.’
And again arose the voices of all the clerks and employees and managers and secretaries and cooks—
‘In Scotland our insurance yieldsThe price of burnt-up stacks in fields.’
‘Skip that verse,’ said the Phoenix.
‘Thatched dwellings and their whole contentsWe deal with—also with their rents;Oh, glorious Phoenix, look and seeThat these are dealt with in class three.‘The glories of your temple throngToo thick to go in any song;And we attend, O good and wise,To “days of grace” and merchandise.‘When people’s homes are burned awayThey never have a cent to payIf they have done as all should do,O Phoenix, and have honoured you.‘So let us raise our voice and singThe praises of the Phoenix King.In classes one and two and three,Oh, trust to him, for kind is he!’
‘I’m sure YOU’RE very kind,’ said the Phoenix; ‘and now we must be going. An thank you very much for a very pleasant time. May you all prosper as you deserve to do, for I am sure a nicer, pleasanter-spoken lot of temple attendants I have never met, and never wish to meet. I wish you all good-day!’
It fluttered to the wrist of Robert and drew the four children from the room. The whole of the office staff followed down the wide stairs and filed into their accustomed places, and the two most important officials stood on the steps bowing till Robert had buttoned the golden bird in his Norfolk bosom, and it and he and the three other children were lost in the crowd.
The two most important gentlemen looked at each other earnestly and strangely for a moment, and then retreated to those sacred inner rooms, where they toil without ceasing for the good of the House.
And the moment they were all in their places—managers, secretaries, clerks, and porters—they all started, and each looked cautiously round to see if any one was looking at him. For each thought that he had fallen asleep for a few minutes, and had dreamed a very odd dream about the Phoenix and the board-room. And, of course, no one mentioned it to any one else, because going to sleep at your office is a thing you simply MUST NOT do.
The extraordinary confusion of the board-room, with the remains of the incense in the plates, would have shown them at once that the visit of the Phoenix had been no dream, but a radiant reality, but no one went into the board-room again that day; and next day, before the office was opened, it was all cleaned and put nice and tidy by a lady whose business asking questions was not part of. That is why Cyril read the papers in vain on the next day and the day after that; because no sensible person thinks his dreams worth putting in the paper, and no one will ever own that he has been asleep in the daytime.
The Phoenix was very pleased, but it decided to write an ode for itself. It thought the ones it had heard at its temple had been too hastily composed. Its own ode began—
‘For beauty and for modest worthThe Phoenix has not its equal on earth.’
And when the children went to bed that night it was still trying to cut down the last line to the proper length without taking out any of what it wanted to say.
That is what makes poetry so difficult.
‘We shan’t be able to go anywhere on the carpet for a whole week, though,’ said Robert.
‘And I’m glad of it,’ said Jane, unexpectedly.
‘Glad?’ said Cyril; ‘GLAD?’
It was breakfast-time, and mother’s letter, telling them how they were all going for Christmas to their aunt’s at Lyndhurst, and how father and mother would meet them there, having been read by every one, lay on the table, drinking hot bacon-fat with one corner and eating marmalade with the other.
‘Yes, glad,’ said Jane. ‘I don’t want any more things to happen just now. I feel like you do when you’ve been to three parties in a week—like we did at granny’s once—and extras in between, toys and chocs and things like that. I want everything to be just real, and no fancy things happening at all.’ ‘I don’t like being obliged to keep things from mother,’ said Anthea. ‘I don’t know why, but it makes me feel selfish and mean.’
‘If we could only get the mater to believe it, we might take her to the jolliest places,’ said Cyril, thoughtfully. ‘As it is, we’ve just got to be selfish and mean—if it is that—but I don’t feel it is.’
‘I KNOW it isn’t, but I FEEL it is,’ said Anthea, ‘and that’s just as bad.’
‘It’s worse,’ said Robert; ‘if you knew it and didn’t feel it, it wouldn’t matter so much.’
‘That’s being a hardened criminal, father says,’ put in Cyril, and he picked up mother’s letter and wiped its corners with his handkerchief, to whose colour a trifle of bacon-fat and marmalade made but little difference.
‘We’re going to-morrow, anyhow,’ said Robert. ‘Don’t,’ he added, with a good-boy expression on his face—‘don’t let’s be ungrateful for our blessings; don’t let’s waste the day in saying how horrid it is to keep secrets from mother, when we all know Anthea tried all she knew to give her the secret, and she wouldn’t take it. Let’s get on the carpet and have a jolly good wish. You’ll have time enough to repent of things all next week.’
‘Yes,’ said Cyril, ‘let’s. It’s not really wrong.’
‘Well, look here,’ said Anthea. ‘You know there’s something about Christmas that makes you want to be good—however little you wish it at other times. Couldn’t we wish the carpet to take us somewhere where we should have the chance to do some good and kind action? It would be an adventure just the same,’ she pleaded.
‘I don’t mind,’ said Cyril. ‘We shan’t know where we’re going, and that’ll be exciting. No one knows what’ll happen. We’d best put on our outers in case—’
‘We might rescue a traveller buried in the snow, like St Bernard dogs, with barrels round our necks,’ said Jane, beginning to be interested.
‘Or we might arrive just in time to witness a will being signed—more tea, please,’ said Robert, ‘and we should see the old man hide it away in the secret cupboard; and then, after long years, when the rightful heir was in despair, we should lead him to the hidden panel and—’
‘Yes,’ interrupted Anthea; ‘or we might be taken to some freezing garret in a German town, where a poor little pale, sick child—’
‘We haven’t any German money,’ interrupted Cyril, ‘so THAT’S no go. What I should like would be getting into the middle of a war and getting hold of secret intelligence and taking it to the general, and he would make me a lieutenant or a scout, or a hussar.’
When breakfast was cleared away, Anthea swept the carpet, and the children sat down on it, together with the Phoenix, who had been especially invited, as a Christmas treat, to come with them and witness the good and kind action they were about to do.
Four children and one bird were ready, and the wish was wished.
Every one closed its eyes, so as to feel the topsy-turvy swirl of the carpet’s movement as little as possible.
When the eyes were opened again the children found themselves on the carpet, and the carpet was in its proper place on the floor of their own nursery at Camden Town.
‘I say,’ said Cyril, ‘here’s a go!’
‘Do you think it’s worn out? The wishing part of it, I mean?’ Robert anxiously asked the Phoenix.
‘It’s not that,’ said the Phoenix; ‘but—well—what did you wish—?’
‘Oh! I see what it means,’ said Robert, with deep disgust; ‘it’s like the end of a fairy story in a Sunday magazine. How perfectly beastly!’
‘You mean it means we can do kind and good actions where we are? I see. I suppose it wants us to carry coals for the cook or make clothes for the bare heathens. Well, I simply won’t. And the last day and everything. Look here!’ Cyril spoke loudly and firmly. ‘We want to go somewhere really interesting, where we have a chance of doing something good and kind; we don’t want to do it here, but somewhere else. See? Now, then.’
The obedient carpet started instantly, and the four children and one bird fell in a heap together, and as they fell were plunged in perfect darkness.
‘Are you all there?’ said Anthea, breathlessly, through the black dark. Every one owned that it was there.
‘Where are we? Oh! how shivery and wet it is! Ugh!—oh!—I’ve put my hand in a puddle!’
‘Has any one got any matches?’ said Anthea, hopelessly. She felt sure that no one would have any.
It was then that Robert, with a radiant smile of triumph that was quite wasted in the darkness, where, of course, no one could see anything, drew out of his pocket a box of matches, struck a match and lighted a candle—two candles. And every one, with its mouth open, blinked at the sudden light.
‘Well done Bobs,’ said his sisters, and even Cyril’s natural brotherly feelings could not check his admiration of Robert’s foresight.
‘I’ve always carried them about ever since the lone tower day,’ said Robert, with modest pride. ‘I knew we should want them some day. I kept the secret well, didn’t I?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Cyril, with fine scorn. ‘I found them the Sunday after, when I was feeling in your Norfolks for the knife you borrowed off me. But I thought you’d only sneaked them for Chinese lanterns, or reading in bed by.’
‘Bobs,’ said Anthea, suddenly, ‘do you know where we are? This is the underground passage, and look there—there’s the money and the money-bags, and everything.’
By this time the ten eyes had got used to the light of the candles, and no one could help seeing that Anthea spoke the truth.
‘It seems an odd place to do good and kind acts in, though,’ said Jane. ‘There’s no one to do them to.’
‘Don’t you be too sure,’ said Cyril; ‘just round the next turning we might find a prisoner who has languished here for years and years, and we could take him out on our carpet and restore him to his sorrowing friends.’
‘Of course we could,’ said Robert, standing up and holding the candle above his head to see further off; ‘or we might find the bones of a poor prisoner and take them to his friends to be buried properly—that’s always a kind action in books, though I never could see what bones matter.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ said Jane.
‘I know exactly where we shall find the bones, too,’ Robert went on. ‘You see that dark arch just along the passage? Well, just inside there—’
‘If you don’t stop going on like that,’ said Jane, firmly, ‘I shall scream, and then I’ll faint—so now then!’
‘AndIwill, too,’ said Anthea.
Robert was not pleased at being checked in his flight of fancy.
‘You girls will never be great writers,’ he said bitterly. ‘They just love to think of things in dungeons, and chains, and knobbly bare human bones, and—’
Jane had opened her mouth to scream, but before she could decide how you began when you wanted to faint, the golden voice of the Phoenix spoke through the gloom.
‘Peace!’ it said; ‘there are no bones here except the small but useful sets that you have inside you. And you did not invite me to come out with you to hear you talk about bones, but to see you do some good and kind action.’
‘We can’t do it here,’ said Robert, sulkily.
‘No,’ rejoined the bird. ‘The only thing we can do here, it seems, is to try to frighten our little sisters.’
‘He didn’t, really, and I’m not so VERY little,’ said Jane, rather ungratefully.
Robert was silent. It was Cyril who suggested that perhaps they had better take the money and go.
‘That wouldn’t be a kind act, except to ourselves; and it wouldn’t be good, whatever way you look at it,’ said Anthea, ‘to take money that’s not ours.’
‘We might take it and spend it all on benefits to the poor and aged,’ said Cyril.
‘That wouldn’t make it right to steal,’ said Anthea, stoutly.
‘I don’t know,’ said Cyril. They were all standing up now. ‘Stealing is taking things that belong to some one else, and there’s no one else.’
‘It can’t be stealing if—’
‘That’s right,’ said Robert, with ironical approval; ‘stand here all day arguing while the candles burn out. You’ll like it awfully when it’s all dark again—and bony.’
‘Let’s get out, then,’ said Anthea. ‘We can argue as we go.’ So they rolled up the carpet and went. But when they had crept along to the place where the passage led into the topless tower they found the way blocked by a great stone, which they could not move.
‘There!’ said Robert. ‘I hope you’re satisfied!’
‘Everything has two ends,’ said the Phoenix, softly; ‘even a quarrel or a secret passage.’
So they turned round and went back, and Robert was made to go first with one of the candles, because he was the one who had begun to talk about bones. And Cyril carried the carpet.
‘I wish you hadn’t put bones into our heads,’ said Jane, as they went along.
‘I didn’t; you always had them. More bones than brains,’ said Robert.
The passage was long, and there were arches and steps and turnings and dark alcoves that the girls did not much like passing. The passage ended in a flight of steps. Robert went up them.
Suddenly he staggered heavily back on to the following feet of Jane, and everybody screamed, ‘Oh! what is it?’
‘I’ve only bashed my head in,’ said Robert, when he had groaned for some time; ‘that’s all. Don’t mention it; I like it. The stairs just go right slap into the ceiling, and it’s a stone ceiling. You can’t do good and kind actions underneath a paving-stone.’
‘Stairs aren’t made to lead just to paving-stones as a general rule,’ said the Phoenix. ‘Put your shoulder to the wheel.’
‘There isn’t any wheel,’ said the injured Robert, still rubbing his head.
But Cyril had pushed past him to the top stair, and was already shoving his hardest against the stone above. Of course, it did not give in the least.
‘If it’s a trap-door—’ said Cyril. And he stopped shoving and began to feel about with his hands.
‘Yes, there is a bolt. I can’t move it.’
By a happy chance Cyril had in his pocket the oil-can of his father’s bicycle; he put the carpet down at the foot of the stairs, and he lay on his back, with his head on the top step and his feet straggling down among his young relations, and he oiled the bolt till the drops of rust and oil fell down on his face. One even went into his mouth—open, as he panted with the exertion of keeping up this unnatural position. Then he tried again, but still the bolt would not move. So now he tied his handkerchief—the one with the bacon-fat and marmalade on it—to the bolt, and Robert’s handkerchief to that, in a reef knot, which cannot come undone however much you pull, and, indeed, gets tighter and tighter the more you pull it. This must not be confused with a granny knot, which comes undone if you look at it. And then he and Robert pulled, and the girls put their arms round their brothers and pulled too, and suddenly the bolt gave way with a rusty scrunch, and they all rolled together to the bottom of the stairs—all but the Phoenix, which had taken to its wings when the pulling began.
Nobody was hurt much, because the rolled-up carpet broke their fall; and now, indeed, the shoulders of the boys were used to some purpose, for the stone allowed them to heave it up. They felt it give; dust fell freely on them.
‘Now, then,’ cried Robert, forgetting his head and his temper, ‘push all together. One, two, three!’
The stone was heaved up. It swung up on a creaking, unwilling hinge, and showed a growing oblong of dazzling daylight; and it fell back with a bang against something that kept it upright. Every one climbed out, but there was not room for every one to stand comfortably in the little paved house where they found themselves, so when the Phoenix had fluttered up from the darkness they let the stone down, and it closed like a trap-door, as indeed it was.
You can have no idea how dusty and dirty the children were. Fortunately there was no one to see them but each other. The place they were in was a little shrine, built on the side of a road that went winding up through yellow-green fields to the topless tower. Below them were fields and orchards, all bare boughs and brown furrows, and little houses and gardens. The shrine was a kind of tiny chapel with no front wall—just a place for people to stop and rest in and wish to be good. So the Phoenix told them. There was an image that had once been brightly coloured, but the rain and snow had beaten in through the open front of the shrine, and the poor image was dull and weather-stained. Under it was written: ‘St Jean de Luz. Priez pour nous.’ It was a sad little place, very neglected and lonely, and yet it was nice, Anthea thought, that poor travellers should come to this little rest-house in the hurry and worry of their journeyings and be quiet for a few minutes, and think about being good. The thought of St Jean de Luz—who had, no doubt, in his time, been very good and kind—made Anthea want more than ever to do something kind and good.
‘Tell us,’ she said to the Phoenix, ‘what is the good and kind action the carpet brought us here to do?’
‘I think it would be kind to find the owners of the treasure and tell them about it,’ said Cyril.
‘And give it them ALL?’ said Jane.
‘Yes. But whose is it?’
‘I should go to the first house and ask the name of the owner of the castle,’ said the golden bird, and really the idea seemed a good one.
They dusted each other as well as they could and went down the road. A little way on they found a tiny spring, bubbling out of the hillside and falling into a rough stone basin surrounded by draggled hart’s-tongue ferns, now hardly green at all. Here the children washed their hands and faces and dried them on their pocket-handkerchiefs, which always, on these occasions, seem unnaturally small. Cyril’s and Robert’s handkerchiefs, indeed, rather undid the effects of the wash. But in spite of this the party certainly looked cleaner than before.
The first house they came to was a little white house with green shutters and a slate roof. It stood in a prim little garden, and down each side of the neat path were large stone vases for flowers to grow in; but all the flowers were dead now.
Along one side of the house was a sort of wide veranda, built of poles and trellis-work, and a vine crawled all over it. It was wider than our English verandas, and Anthea thought it must look lovely when the green leaves and the grapes were there; but now there were only dry, reddish-brown stalks and stems, with a few withered leaves caught in them.
The children walked up to the front door. It was green and narrow. A chain with a handle hung beside it, and joined itself quite openly to a rusty bell that hung under the porch. Cyril had pulled the bell and its noisy clang was dying away before the terrible thought came to all. Cyril spoke it.
‘My hat!’ he breathed. ‘We don’t know any French!’
At this moment the door opened. A very tall, lean lady, with pale ringlets like whitey-brown paper or oak shavings, stood before them. She had an ugly grey dress and a black silk apron. Her eyes were small and grey and not pretty, and the rims were red, as though she had been crying.
She addressed the party in something that sounded like a foreign language, and ended with something which they were sure was a question. Of course, no one could answer it.
‘What does she say?’ Robert asked, looking down into the hollow of his jacket, where the Phoenix was nestling. But before the Phoenix could answer, the whitey-brown lady’s face was lighted up by a most charming smile.
‘You—you ar-r-re fr-r-rom the England!’ she cried. ‘I love so much the England. Mais entrez—entrez donc tous! Enter, then—enter all. One essuyes his feet on the carpet.’ She pointed to the mat.
‘We only wanted to ask—’
‘I shall say you all that what you wish,’ said the lady. ‘Enter only!’
So they all went in, wiping their feet on a very clean mat, and putting the carpet in a safe corner of the veranda.
‘The most beautiful days of my life,’ said the lady, as she shut the door, ‘did pass themselves in England. And since long time I have not heard an English voice to repeal me the past.’
This warm welcome embarrassed every one, but most the boys, for the floor of the hall was of such very clean red and white tiles, and the floor of the sitting-room so very shiny—like a black looking-glass—that each felt as though he had on far more boots than usual, and far noisier.
There was a wood fire, very small and very bright, on the hearth—neat little logs laid on brass fire-dogs. Some portraits of powdered ladies and gentlemen hung in oval frames on the pale walls. There were silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and there were chairs and a table, very slim and polite, with slender legs. The room was extremely bare, but with a bright foreign bareness that was very cheerful, in an odd way of its own. At the end of the polished table a very un-English little boy sat on a footstool in a high-backed, uncomfortable-looking chair. He wore black velvet, and the kind of collar—all frills and lacey—that Robert would rather have died than wear; but then the little French boy was much younger than Robert.
‘Oh, how pretty!’ said every one. But no one meant the little French boy, with the velvety short knickerbockers and the velvety short hair.
What every one admired was a little, little Christmas-tree, very green, and standing in a very red little flower-pot, and hung round with very bright little things made of tinsel and coloured paper. There were tiny candles on the tree, but they were not lighted yet.
‘But yes—is it not that it is genteel?’ said the lady. ‘Sit down you then, and let us see.’
The children sat down in a row on the stiff chairs against the wall, and the lady lighted a long, slim red taper at the wood flame, and then she drew the curtains and lit the little candles, and when they were all lighted the little French boy suddenly shouted, ‘Bravo, ma tante! Oh, que c’est gentil,’ and the English children shouted ‘Hooray!’
Then there was a struggle in the breast of Robert, and out fluttered the Phoenix—spread his gold wings, flew to the top of the Christmas-tree, and perched there.
‘Ah! catch it, then,’ cried the lady; ‘it will itself burn—your genteel parrakeet!’
‘It won’t,’ said Robert, ‘thank you.’
And the little French boy clapped his clean and tidy hands; but the lady was so anxious that the Phoenix fluttered down and walked up and down on the shiny walnut-wood table.
‘Is it that it talks?’ asked the lady.
And the Phoenix replied in excellent French. It said, ‘Parfaitement, madame!’
‘Oh, the pretty parrakeet,’ said the lady. ‘Can it say still of other things?’
And the Phoenix replied, this time in English, ‘Why are you sad so near Christmas-time?’
The children looked at it with one gasp of horror and surprise, for the youngest of them knew that it is far from manners to notice that strangers have been crying, and much worse to ask them the reason of their tears. And, of course, the lady began to cry again, very much indeed, after calling the Phoenix a bird without a heart; and she could not find her handkerchief, so Anthea offered hers, which was still very damp and no use at all. She also hugged the lady, and this seemed to be of more use than the handkerchief, so that presently the lady stopped crying, and found her own handkerchief and dried her eyes, and called Anthea a cherished angel.
‘I am sorry we came just when you were so sad,’ said Anthea, ‘but we really only wanted to ask you whose that castle is on the hill.’
‘Oh, my little angel,’ said the poor lady, sniffing, ‘to-day and for hundreds of years the castle is to us, to our family. To-morrow it must that I sell it to some strangers—and my little Henri, who ignores all, he will not have never the lands paternal. But what will you? His father, my brother—Mr the Marquis—has spent much of money, and it the must, despite the sentiments of familial respect, that I admit that my sainted father he also—’
‘How would you feel if you found a lot of money—hundreds and thousands of gold pieces?’ asked Cyril.
The lady smiled sadly.
‘Ah! one has already recounted to you the legend?’ she said. ‘It is true that one says that it is long time; oh! but long time, one of our ancestors has hid a treasure—of gold, and of gold, and of gold—enough to enrich my little Henri for the life. But all that, my children, it is but the accounts of fays—’
‘She means fairy stories,’ whispered the Phoenix to Robert. ‘Tell her what you have found.’
So Robert told, while Anthea and Jane hugged the lady for fear she should faint for joy, like people in books, and they hugged her with the earnest, joyous hugs of unselfish delight.
‘It’s no use explaining how we got in,’ said Robert, when he had told of the finding of the treasure, ‘because you would find it a little difficult to understand, and much more difficult to believe. But we can show you where the gold is and help you to fetch it away.’
The lady looked doubtfully at Robert as she absently returned the hugs of the girls.
‘No, he’s not making it up,’ said Anthea; ‘it’s true, TRUE, TRUE!—and we are so glad.’
‘You would not be capable to torment an old woman?’ she said; ‘and it is not possible that it be a dream.’
‘It really IS true,’ said Cyril; ‘and I congratulate you very much.’
His tone of studied politeness seemed to convince more than the raptures of the others.
‘If I do not dream,’ she said, ‘Henri come to Manon—and you—you shall come all with me to Mr the Curate. Is it not?’
Manon was a wrinkled old woman with a red and yellow handkerchief twisted round her head. She took Henri, who was already sleepy with the excitement of his Christmas-tree and his visitors, and when the lady had put on a stiff black cape and a wonderful black silk bonnet and a pair of black wooden clogs over her black cashmere house-boots, the whole party went down the road to a little white house—very like the one they had left—where an old priest, with a good face, welcomed them with a politeness so great that it hid his astonishment.
The lady, with her French waving hands and her shrugging French shoulders and her trembling French speech, told the story. And now the priest, who knew no English, shrugged HIS shoulders and waved HIS hands and spoke also in French.
‘He thinks,’ whispered the Phoenix, ‘that her troubles have turned her brain. What a pity you know no French!’
‘I do know a lot of French,’ whispered Robert, indignantly; ‘but it’s all about the pencil of the gardener’s son and the penknife of the baker’s niece—nothing that anyone ever wants to say.’
‘IfIspeak,’ the bird whispered, ‘he’ll think HE’S mad, too.’
‘Tell me what to say.’
‘Say “C’est vrai, monsieur. Venez donc voir,”’ said the Phoenix; and then Robert earned the undying respect of everybody by suddenly saying, very loudly and distinctly—
‘Say vray, mossoo; venny dong vwaw.’
The priest was disappointed when he found that Robert’s French began and ended with these useful words; but, at any rate, he saw that if the lady was mad she was not the only one, and he put on a big beavery hat, and got a candle and matches and a spade, and they all went up the hill to the wayside shrine of St John of Luz.
‘Now,’ said Robert, ‘I will go first and show you where it is.’
So they prised the stone up with a corner of the spade, and Robert did go first, and they all followed and found the golden treasure exactly as they had left it. And every one was flushed with the joy of performing such a wonderfully kind action.
Then the lady and the priest clasped hands and wept for joy, as French people do, and knelt down and touched the money, and talked very fast and both together, and the lady embraced all the children three times each, and called them ‘little garden angels,’ and then she and the priest shook each other by both hands again, and talked, and talked, and talked, faster and more Frenchy than you would have believed possible. And the children were struck dumb with joy and pleasure.
‘Get away NOW,’ said the Phoenix softly, breaking in on the radiant dream.
So the children crept away, and out through the little shrine, and the lady and the priest were so tearfully, talkatively happy that they never noticed that the guardian angels had gone.
The ‘garden angels’ ran down the hill to the lady’s little house, where they had left the carpet on the veranda, and they spread it out and said ‘Home,’ and no one saw them disappear, except little Henri, who had flattened his nose into a white button against the window-glass, and when he tried to tell his aunt she thought he had been dreaming. So that was all right.
‘It is much the best thing we’ve done,’ said Anthea, when they talked it over at tea-time. ‘In the future we’ll only do kind actions with the carpet.’
‘Ahem!’ said the Phoenix.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Anthea.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said the bird. ‘I was only thinking!’