Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (29 page)

“But what can we do?” asked Jane.

“Nothing—at least we might look for the Psammead again. It’s a very, very hot day. He may have come out to warm that whisker of his.”

“He won’t give us any more beastly wishes today,” said Jane flatly. “He gets crosser and crosser every time we see him. I believe he hates having to give wishes.”

Anthea had been shaking her head gloomily—now she stopped shaking it so suddenly that it really looked as though she were pricking up her ears.

“What is it?” asked Jane. “Oh, have you thought of something?”

“Our one chance,” cried Anthea dramatically; “the last lone-lorn forlorn hope. Come on.”

At a brisk trot she led the way to the sand-pit. Oh, joy!—there was the Psammead, basking in a golden sandy hollow and preening its whiskers happily in the glowing afternoon sun. The moment it saw them it whisked round and began to burrow—it evidently preferred its own company to theirs. But Anthea was too quick for it. She caught it by its furry shoulders gently but firmly, and held it.

“Here—none of that!” said the Psammead. “Leave go of me, will you?”

But Anthea held him fast.

“Dear kind darling Sammyadd,” she said breathlessly.

“Oh yes—it’s all very well,” it said; “you want another wish, I expect. But I can’t keep on slaving from morning till night giving people their wishes. I must have some time to myself.”

“Do you hate giving wishes?” asked Anthea gently, and her voice trembled with excitement.

“Of course I do,” it said. “Leave go of me or I’ll bite!—I really will—I mean it. Oh, well, if you choose to risk it.”

Anthea risked it and held on.

“Look here,” she said, “don’t bite me—listen to reason. If you’ll only do what we want today, we’ll never ask you for another wish as long as we live.”

The Psammead was much moved.

“I’d do anything,” it said in a tearful voice. “I’d almost burst myself to give you one wish after another, as long as I held out, if you’d only never, never ask me to do it after today. If you knew how I hate to blow myself out with other people’s wishes, and how frightened I am always that I shall strain a muscle or something. And then to wake up every morning and know you’ve got to do it. You don’t know what it is—you don’t know what it is, you don‘t!” Its voice cracked with emotion, and the last “don’t” was a squeak.

Anthea set it down gently on the sand.

“It’s all over now,” she said soothingly. “We promise faithfully never to ask for another wish after today.”

“Well, go ahead,” said the Psammead; “let’s get it over.”

“How many can you do?”

“I don’t know—as long as I can hold out.”

“Well, first, I wish Lady Chittenden may find she’s never lost her jewels.”

The Psammead blew itself out, collapsed, and said, “Done.”

“I wish,” said Anthea more slowly, “mother mayn’t get to the police.”

“Done,” said the creature after the proper interval.

“I wish,” said Jane suddenly, “mother could forget all about the diamonds.”

“Done,” said the Psammead; but its voice was weaker.

“Wouldn’t you like to rest a little?” asked Anthea considerately..

“Yes, please,” said the Psammead; “and, before we go further, will you wish something for me?”

“Can’t you do wishes for yourself?”

“Of course not,” it said; “we were always expected to give each other our wishes—not that we had any to speak of in the good old Megatherium days. Just wish, will you, that you may never be able, any of you, to tell anyone a word about Me.”

“Why?” asked Jane.

“Why, don’t you see, if you told grown-ups I should have no peace of my life. They’d get hold of me, and they wouldn’t wish silly things like you do, but real earnest things; and the scientific people would hit on some way of making things last after sunset, as likely as not; and they’d ask for a graduated income-tax, and old-age-pensions and manhood suffrage, and free secondary education, and dull things like that; and get them, and keep them, and the whole world would be turned topsy-turvy Do wish it! Quick!”

Anthea repeated the Psammead’s wish, and it blew itself out to a larger size than they had yet seen it attain.

“And now,” it said as it collapsed, “can I do anything more for you?”

“Just one thing; and I think that clears everything up, doesn’t it, Jane? I wish Martha to forget about the diamond ring, and mother to forget about the keeper cleaning the windows.”

“It’s like the ‘Brass Bottle,’ ” said Jane.
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“Yes, I’m glad we read that or I should never have thought of it.”

“Now,” said the Psammead faintly, “I’m almost worn out. Is there anything else?”

“No; only thank you kindly for all you’ve done for us, and I hope you’ll have a good long sleep, and I hope we shall see you again some day.”

“Is that a wish?” it said in a weak voice.

“Yes, please,” said the two girls together.

Then for the last time in this story they saw the Psammead blow itself out and collapse suddenly. It nodded to them, blinked its long snail’s eyes, burrowed, and disappeared, scratching fiercely to the last, and the sand closed over it.

“I hope we’ve done right?” said Jane.

“I’m sure we have,” said Anthea. “Come on home and tell the boys.”

Anthea found Cyril glooming over his paper boats, and told him. Jane told Robert. The two tales were only just ended when mother walked in, hot and dusty. She explained that as she was being driven into Rochester to buy the girls’ autumn school-dresses the axle had broken, and but for the narrowness of the lane and the high soft hedges she would have been thrown out. As it was, she was not hurt, but she had had to walk home. “And oh, my dearest dear chicks,” she said, “I am simply dying for a cup of tea! Do run and see if the kettle boils!”

“So you see it’s all right,” Jane whispered. “She doesn’t remember.”

“No more does Martha,” said Anthea, who had been to ask after the state of the kettle.

As the servants sat at their tea, Beale the gamekeeper dropped in. He brought the welcome news that Lady Chittenden’s diamonds had not been lost at all. Lord Chittenden had taken them to be re-set and cleaned, and the maid who knew about it had gone for a holiday. So that was all right.

“I wonder if we ever shall see the Psammead again,” said Jane wistfully as they walked in the garden, while mother was putting the Lamb to bed.

“I’m sure we shall,” said Cyril, “if you really wished it.”

“We’ve promised never to ask it for another wish,” said Anthea.

“I never want to,” said Robert earnestly.

They did see it again, of course, but not in this story. And it was not in a sand-pit either, but in a very, very, very different place. It was in a—But I must say no more.

 

 

EXPLICIT

 

The hall in which the children found themselves

T
here were three of them—Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathleen. Of course, Jerry’s name was Gerald, and not Jeremiah, whatever you may think; and Jimmy’s name was James; and Kathleen was never called by her name at all, but Cathy, or Catty, or Puss Cat, when her brothers were pleased with her, and Scratch Cat when they were not pleased. And they were at school in a little town in the West of England—the boys at one school, of course, and the girl at another, because the sensible habit of having boys and girls at the same school is not yet as common as I hope it will be some day. They used to see each other on Saturdays and Sundays at the house of a kind maiden lady; but it was one of those houses where it is impossible to play. You know the kind of house, don’t you? There is a sort of a something about that kind of house that makes you hardly able even to talk to each other when you are left alone, and playing seems unnatural and affected. So they looked forward to the holidays, when they should all go home and be together all day long, in a house where playing was natural and conversation possible, and where the Hamp-shire forests and fields were full of interesting things to do and see. Their Cousin Betty was to be there too, and there were plans. Betty’s school broke up before theirs, and so she got to the Hampshire
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home first, and the moment she got there she began to have measles, so that my three couldn’t go home at all. You may imagine their feelings. The thought of seven weeks at Miss Hervey’s was not to be borne, and all three wrote home and said so. This astonished their parents very much, because they had always thought it was so nice for the children to have dear Miss Hervey’s to go to. However, they were “jolly decent about it,” as Jerry said, and after a lot of letters and telegrams, it was arranged that the boys should go and stay at Kathleen’s school, where there were now no girls left and no mistresses except the French one.

“It’ll be better than being at Miss Hervey’s,” said Kathleen, when the boys came round to ask Mademoiselle when it would be convenient for them to come; “and, besides, our school’s not half so ugly as yours. We do have tablecloths on the tables and curtains at the windows, and yours is all deal boards, and desks, and inkiness.”

When they had gone to pack their boxes Kathleen made all the rooms as pretty as she could with flowers in jam jars—marigolds chiefly, because there was nothing much else in the back garden. There were geraniums in the front garden, and calceolarias and lobelias ; of course, the children were not allowed to pick these.

“We ought to have some sort of play to keep us going through the holidays,” said Kathleen, when tea was over, and she had unpacked and arranged the boys’ clothes in the painted chests of drawers, feeling very grown-up and careful as she neatly laid the different sorts of clothes in tidy little heaps in the drawers. “Suppose we write a book.”

“You couldn’t,” said Jimmy

“I didn’t mean me, of course,” said Kathleen, a little injured; “I meant us.”

“Too much fag,”
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said Gerald briefly.

“If we wrote a book,” Kathleen persisted, “about what the insides of schools really are like, people would read it and say how clever we were”.

“More likely expel us,” said Gerald. “No; we’ll have an out-of-doors game—bandits, or something like that. It wouldn’t be bad if we could get a cave and keep stores in it, and have our meals there.”

“There aren’t any caves,” said Jimmy, who was fond of contradicting everyone. “And, besides, your precious Mam’selle won’t let us go out alone, as likely as not.”

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” said Gerald. “I’ll go and talk to her like a father.”

“Like that?” Kathleen pointed the thumb of scorn at him, and he looked in the glass.

“To brush his hair and his clothes and to wash his face and hands was to our hero but the work of a moment,” said Gerald, and went to suit the action to the word.

It was a very sleek boy, brown and thin and interesting-looking, that knocked at the door of the parlour where Mademoiselle sat reading a yellow-covered book and wishing vain wishes. Gerald could always make himself look interesting at a moment’s notice, a very useful accomplishment in dealing with strange grown-ups. It was done by opening his grey eyes rather wide, allowing the corners of his mouth to droop, and assuming a gentle, pleading expression, resembling that of the late little Lord Fauntleroy—who must, by the way, be quite old now, and an awful prig.
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“Entrez!” said Mademoiselle, in shrill French accents. So he entered.

“Eh bien?”
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she said rather impatiently.

“I hope I am not disturbing you,” said Gerald, in whose mouth, it seemed, butter would not have melted.

“But no,” she said, somewhat softened. “What is it that you desire?”

“I thought I ought to come and say how do you do,” said Gerald, “because of you being the lady of the house.”

He held out the newly-washed hand, still damp and red. She took it.

“You are a very polite little boy,” she said.

“Not at all,” said Gerald, more polite than ever. “I am so sorry for you. It must be dreadful to have us to look after in the holidays.”

“But not at all,” said Mademoiselle in her turn. “I am sure you will be very good childrens.”

Gerald’s look assured her that he and the others would be as near angels as children could be without ceasing to be human.