The Phoenix and the Carpet - Эдит Несбит

E. Nesbit

The Phoenix and the Carpet

CHAPTER 1. THE EGG

It began with the day when it was almost the Fifth of November, and a doubt arose in some breastRoberts, I fancyas to the quality of the fireworks laid in for the Guy Fawkes celebration.

They were jolly cheap, said whoever it was, and I think it was Robert, and suppose they didnt go off on the night? Those Prosser kids would have something to snigger about then.

The ones I got are all right, Jane said; I know they are, because the man at the shop said they were worth thribble the money

Im sure thribble isnt grammar, Anthea said.

Of course it isnt, said Cyril; one word cant be grammar all by itself, so you neednt be so jolly clever.

Anthea was rummaging in the corner-drawers of her mind for a very disagreeable answer, when she remembered what a wet day it was, and how the boys had been disappointed of that ride to London and back on the top of the tram, which their mother had promised them as a reward for not having once forgotten, for six whole days, to wipe their boots on the mat when they came home from school.

So Anthea only said, Dont be so jolly clever yourself, Squirrel. And the fireworks look all right, and youll have the eightpence that your tram fares didnt cost to-day, to buy something more with. You ought to get a perfectly lovely Catharine wheel for eightpence.

I daresay, said Cyril, coldly; but its not YOUR eightpence anyhow

But look here, said Robert, really now, about the fireworks. We dont want to be disgraced before those kids next door. They think because they wear red plush on Sundays no one else is any good.

I wouldnt wear plush if it was ever sounless it was black to be beheaded in, if I was Mary Queen of Scots, said Anthea, with scorn.

Robert stuck steadily to his point. One great point about Robert is the steadiness with which he can stick.

I think we ought to test them, he said.

You young duffer, said Cyril, fireworks are like postage-stamps. You can only use them once.

What do you suppose it means by Carters tested seeds in the advertisement?

There was a blank silence. Then Cyril touched his forehead with his finger and shook his head.

A little wrong here, he said. I was always afraid of that with poor Robert. All that cleverness, you know, and being top in algebra so oftenits bound to tell

Dry up, said Robert, fiercely. Dont you see? You cant TEST seeds if you do them ALL. You just take a few here and there, and if those grow you can feel pretty sure the others will bewhat do you call it?Father told meup to sample. Dont you think we ought to sample the fire-works? Just shut our eyes and each draw one out, and then try them.

But its raining cats and dogs, said Jane.

And Queen Anne is dead, rejoined Robert. No one was in a very good temper. We neednt go out to do them; we can just move back the table, and let them off on the old tea-tray we play toboggans with. I dont know what YOU think, but I think its time we did something, and that would be really useful; because then we shouldnt just HOPE the fireworks would make those Prossers sit upwe should KNOW.

It WOULD be something to do, Cyril owned with languid approval.

So the table was moved back. And then the hole in the carpet, that had been near the window till the carpet was turned round, showed most awfully. But Anthea stole out on tip-toe, and got the tray when cook wasnt looking, and brought it in and put it over the hole.

Then all the fireworks were put on the table, and each of the four children shut its eyes very tight and put out its hand and grasped something. Robert took a cracker, Cyril and Anthea had Roman candles; but Janes fat paw closed on the gem of the whole collection, the Jack-in-the-box that had cost two shillings, and one at least of the partyI will not say which, because it was sorry afterwardsdeclared that Jane had done it on purpose. Nobody was pleased. For the worst of it was that these four children, with a very proper dislike of anything even faintly bordering on the sneakish, had a law, unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians, that one had to stand by the results of a toss-up, or a drawing of lots, or any other appeal to chance, however much one might happen to dislike the way things were turning out.

I didnt mean to, said Jane, near tears. I dont care, Ill draw another

You know jolly well you cant, said Cyril, bitterly. Its settled. Its Medium and Persian. Youve done it, and youll have to stand by itand us too, worse luck. Never mind. YOULL have your pocket-money before the Fifth. Anyway, well have the Jack-in-the-box LAST, and get the most out of it we can.

So the cracker and the Roman candles were lighted, and they were all that could be expected for the money; but when it came to the Jack-in-the-box it simply sat in the tray and laughed at them, as Cyril said. They tried to light it with paper and they tried to light it with matches; they tried to light it with Vesuvian fusees from the pocket of fathers second-best overcoat that was hanging in the hall. And then Anthea slipped away to the cupboard under the stairs where the brooms and dustpans were kept, and the rosiny fire-lighters that smell so nice and like the woods where pine-trees grow, and the old newspapers and the bees-wax and turpentine, and the horrid an stiff dark rags that are used for cleaning brass and furniture, and the paraffin for the lamps. She came back with a little pot that had once cost sevenpence-halfpenny when it was full of red-currant jelly; but the jelly had been all eaten long ago, and now Anthea had filled the jar with paraffin. She came in, and she threw the paraffin over the tray just at the moment when Cyril was trying with the twenty-third match to light the Jack-in-the-box. The Jack-in-the-box did not catch fire any more than usual, but the paraffin acted quite differently, and in an instant a hot flash of flame leapt up and burnt off Cyrils eyelashes, and scorched the faces of all four before they could spring back. They backed, in four instantaneous bounds, as far as they could, which was to the wall, and the pillar of fire reached from floor to ceiling.

My hat, said Cyril, with emotion, Youve done it this time, Anthea.

The flame was spreading out under the ceiling like the rose of fire in Mr Rider Haggards exciting story about Allan Quatermain. Robert and Cyril saw that no time was to be lost. They turned up the edges of the carpet, and kicked them over the tray. This cut off the column of fire, and it disappeared and there was nothing left but smoke and a dreadful smell of lamps that have been turned too low.

All hands now rushed to the rescue, and the paraffin fire was only a bundle of trampled carpet, when suddenly a sharp crack beneath their feet made the amateur firemen start back. Another crackthe carpet moved as if it had had a cat wrapped in it; the Jack-in-the-box had at last allowed itself to be lighted, and it was going off with desperate violence inside the carpet.

Robert, with the air of one doing the only possible thing, rushed to the window and opened it. Anthea screamed, Jane burst into tears, and Cyril turned the table wrong way up on top of the carpet heap. But the firework went on, banging and bursting and spluttering even underneath the table.

Next moment mother rushed in, attracted by the howls of Anthea, and in a few moments the firework desisted and there was a dead silence, and the children stood looking at each others black faces, and, out of the corners of their eyes, at mothers white one.

The fact that the nursery carpet was ruined occasioned but little surprise, nor was any one really astonished that bed should prove the immediate end of the adventure. It has been said that all roads lead to Rome; this may be true, but at any rate, in early youth I am quite sure that many roads lead to BED, and stop thereor YOU do.

The rest of the fireworks were confiscated, and mother was not pleased when father let them off himself in the back garden, though he said, Well, how else can you get rid of them, my dear?

You see, father had forgotten that the children were in disgrace, and that their bedroom windows looked out on to the back garden. So that they all saw the fireworks most beautifully, and admired the skill with which father handled them.

Next day all was forgotten and forgiven; only the nursery had to be deeply cleaned (like spring-cleaning), and the ceiling had to be whitewashed.

And mother went out; and just at tea-time next day a man came with a rolled-up carpet, and father paid him, and mother said

If the carpet isnt in good condition, you know, I shall expect you to change it. And the man replied

There aint a thread gone in it nowhere, mum. Its a bargain, if ever there was one, and Im moren arf sorry I let it go at the price; but we cant resist the lydies, can we, sir? and he winked at father and went away.

Then the carpet was put down in the nursery, and sure enough there wasnt a hole in it anywhere.

As the last fold was unrolled something hard and loud-sounding bumped out of it and trundled along the nursery floor. All the children scrambled for it, and Cyril got it. He took it to the gas. It was shaped like an egg, very yellow and shiny, half-transparent, and it had an odd sort of light in it that changed as you held it in different ways. It was as though it was an egg with a yolk of pale fire that just showed through the stone.

I MAY keep it, maynt I, mother? Cyril asked.

And of course mother said no; they must take it back to the man who had brought the carpet, because she had only paid for a carpet, and not for a stone egg with a fiery yolk to it.

So she told them where the shop was, and it was in the Kentish Town Road, not far from the hotel that is called the Bull and Gate. It was a poky little shop, and the man was arranging furniture outside on the pavement very cunningly, so that the more broken parts should show as little as possible. And directly he saw the children he knew them again, and he began at once, without giving them a chance to speak.

No you dont he cried loudly; I aint a-goin to take back no carpets, so dont you make no bloomin errer. A bargains a bargain, and the carpets puffik throughout.

We dont want you to take it back, said Cyril; but we found something in it.

It must have got into it up at your place, then, said the man, with indignant promptness, for there aint nothing in nothing as I sell. Its all as clean as a whistle.

I never said it wasnt CLEAN, said Cyril, but

Oh, if its MOTHS, said the man, thats easy cured with borax. But I expect it was only an odd one. I tell you the carpets good through and through. It hadnt got no moths when it left my andsnot so much as an hegg.

But thats just it, interrupted Jane; there WAS so much as an egg.

The man made a sort of rush at the children and stamped his foot.

Clear out, I say! he shouted, or Ill call for the police. A nice thing for customers to ear you a-coming ere a-charging me with finding things in goods what I sells. Ere, be off, afore I sends you off with a flea in your ears. Hi! constable

The children fled, and they think, and their father thinks, that they couldnt have done anything else. Mother has her own opinion.

But father said they might keep the egg.

The man certainly didnt know the egg was there when he brought the carpet, said he, any more than your mother did, and weve as much right to it as he had.

So the egg was put on the mantelpiece, where it quite brightened up the dingy nursery. The nursery was dingy, because it was a basement room, and its windows looked out on a stone area with a rockery made of clinkers facing the windows. Nothing grew in the rockery except London pride and snails.

The room had been described in the house agents list as a convenient breakfast-room in basement, and in the daytime it was rather dark. This did not matter so much in the evenings when the gas was alight, but then it was in the evening that the blackbeetles got so sociable, and used to come out of the low cupboards on each side of the fireplace where their homes were, and try to make friends with the children. At least, I suppose that was what they wanted, but the children never would.

On the Fifth of November father and mother went to the theatre, and the children were not happy, because the Prossers next door had lots of fireworks and they had none.

They were not even allowed to have a bonfire in the garden.

No more playing with fire, thank you, was fathers answer, when they asked him.

When the baby had been put to bed the children sat sadly round the fire in the nursery.

Im beastly bored, said Robert.

Lets talk about the Psammead, said Anthea, who generally tried to give the conversation a cheerful turn.

Whats the good of TALKING? said Cyril. What I want is for something to happen. Its awfully stuffy for a chap not to be allowed out in the evenings. Theres simply nothing to do when youve got through your homers.

Jane finished the last of her home-lessons and shut the book with a bang.

Weve got the pleasure of memory, said she. Just think of last holidays.

Last holidays, indeed, offered something to think offor they had been spent in the country at a white house between a sand-pit and a gravel-pit, and things had happened. The children had found a Psammead, or sand-fairy, and it had let them have anything they wished forjust exactly anything, with no bother about its not being really for their good, or anything like that. And if you want to know what kind of things they wished for, and how their wishes turned out you can read it all in a book called Five Children and It (It was the Psammead). If youve not read it, perhaps I ought to tell you that the fifth child was the baby brother, who was called the Lamb, because the first thing he ever said was Baa! and that the other children were not particularly handsome, nor were they extra clever, nor extraordinarily good. But they were not bad sorts on the whole; in fact, they were rather like you.

I dont want to think about the pleasures of memory, said Cyril; I want some more things to happen.