The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (106 page)

‘Then tell him now. He is very learned. Perhaps he can tell us what to do.’

Rekh-mara hesitated, then told—and, oddly enough, none of the children ever could remember afterwards what it was that he did tell. Perhaps he used some magic to prevent their remembering.

When he had done the learned gentleman was silent, leaning his elbow on the table and his head on his hand.

‘Dear Jimmy,’ said Anthea gently, ‘don’t worry about it. We are sure to find it today, somehow.’

‘Yes,’ said Rekh-mara, ‘and perhaps, with it, Death.’

‘It’s to bring us our hearts’ desire,’ said Robert.

‘Who knows,’ said the Priest, ‘what things undreamed-of and infinitely desirable lie beyond the dark gates?’

‘Oh,
don’t
,’ said Jane, almost whimpering.

The learned gentleman raised his head suddenly.

‘Why not,’ he suggested, ‘go back into the Past? At a moment when the Amulet is unwatched. Wish to be with it, and that it shall be under your hand.’

It was the simplest thing in the world! And yet none of them had ever thought of it.

‘Come,’ cried Rekh-mara, leaping up. ‘Come
now
!’

‘May—may I come?’ the learned gentleman timidly asked. ‘It’s only a dream, you know.’

‘Come, and welcome, oh brother,’ Rekh-mara was beginning, but Cyril and Robert with one voice cried, ‘
No
.’

‘You weren’t with us in Atlantis,’ Robert added, ‘or you’d know better than to let him come.’

‘Dear Jimmy,’ said Anthea, ‘please don’t ask to come. We’ll go and be back again before you have time to know that we’re gone.’

‘And he, too?’

‘We must keep together,’ said Rekh-mara, ‘since there is but one perfect Amulet to which I and these children have equal claims.’

Jane held up the Amulet—Rekh-mara went first—and they all passed through the great arch into which the Amulet grew at the Name of Power.

The learned gentleman saw through the arch a darkness lighted by smoky gleams. He rubbed his eyes. And he only rubbed them for ten seconds.

The children and the Priest were in a small, dark chamber. A square doorway of massive stone let in gleams of shifting light, and the sound of many voices chanting a slow, strange hymn. They stood listening. Now and then the chant quickened and the light grew brighter, as though fuel had been thrown on a fire.

‘Where are we?’ whispered Anthea.

‘And when?’ whispered Robert.

‘This is some shrine near the beginnings of belief,’ said the Egyptian shivering. ‘Take the Amulet and come away. It is cold here in the morning of the world.’

And then Jane felt that her hand was on a slab or table of stone, and, under her hand, something that felt like the charm that had so long hung round her neck, only it was thicker. Twice as thick.

‘It’s
here
!’ she said, ‘I’ve got it!’ And she hardly knew the sound of her own voice.

‘Come away,’ repeated Rekh-mara.

‘I wish we could see more of this Temple,’ said Robert resistingly.

‘Come away,’ the Priest urged, ‘there is death all about, and strong magic. Listen.’

The chanting voices seemed to have grown louder and fiercer, and light stronger.

‘They are coming!’ cried Rekh-mara. ‘Quick, quick, the Amulet!’

Jane held it up.

‘What a long time you’ve been rubbing your eyes!’ said Anthea; ‘don’t you see we’ve got back?’ The learned gentleman merely stared at her.

‘Miss Anthea—Miss Jane!’ It was Nurse’s voice, very much higher and squeaky and more exalted than usual.

‘Oh, bother!’ said everyone. Cyril adding, ‘You just go on with the dream for a sec, Mr Jimmy, we’ll be back directly. Nurse’ll come up if we don’t.
She
wouldn’t think Rekh-mara was a dream.’

Then they went down. Nurse was in the hall, an orange envelope in one hand, and a pink paper in the other.

‘Your Pa and Ma’s come home. “Reach London 11.15. Prepare rooms as directed in letter,” and signed in their two names.’

‘Oh, hooray! hooray! hooray!’ shouted the boys and Jane. But Anthea could not shout, she was nearer crying.

‘Oh,’ she said almost in a whisper, ‘then it
was
true. And we
have
got our hearts’ desire.’

‘But I don’t understand about the letter,’ Nurse was saying. ‘I haven’t
had
no letter.’

‘
Oh
!’ said Jane in a queer voice, ‘I wonder whether it was one of those…they came that night—you know, when we were playing “devil in the dark”—and I put them in the hat-stand drawer, behind the clothes-brushes and’—she pulled out the drawer as she spoke—‘and here they are!’

There was a letter for Nurse and one for the children. The letters told how Father had done being a war-correspondent and was coming home; and how Mother and The Lamb were going to meet him in Italy and all come home together; and how The Lamb and Mother were quite well; and how a telegram would be sent to tell the day and the hour of their home-coming.

‘Mercy me!’ said old Nurse. ‘I declare if it’s not too bad of You, Miss Jane. I shall have a nice to-do getting things straight for your Pa and Ma.’

‘Oh, never mind, Nurse,’ said Jane, hugging her; ‘isn’t it just too lovely for anything!’

‘We’ll come and help you,’ said Cyril. ‘There’s just something upstairs we’ve got to settle up, and then we’ll all come and help you.’

‘Get along with you,’ said old Nurse, but she laughed jollily. ‘Nice help
you’d
be. I know you. And it’s ten o’clock now.’

There was, in fact, something upstairs that they had to settle. Quite a considerable something, too. And it took much longer than they expected.

A hasty rush into the boys’ room secured the Psammead, very sandy and very cross.

‘It doesn’t matter how cross and sandy it is though,’ said Anthea, ‘it ought to be there at the final council.’

‘It’ll give the learned gentleman fits, I expect,’ said Robert, ‘when he sees it.’

But it didn’t.

‘The dream is growing more and more wonderful,’ he exclaimed, when the Psammead had been explained to him by Rekh-mara. ‘I have dreamed this beast before.’

‘Now,’ said Robert, ‘Jane has got the half Amulet and I’ve got the whole. Show up, Jane.’

Jane untied the string and laid her half Amulet on the table, littered with dusty papers, and the clay cylinders marked all over with little marks like the little prints of birds’ little feet. Robert laid down the whole Amulet, and Anthea gently restrained the eager hand of the learned gentleman as it reached out yearningly towards the ‘perfect specimen.’

And then, just as before on the Marcella quilt, so now on the dusty litter of papers and curiosities, the half Amulet quivered and shook, and then, as steel is drawn to a magnet, it was drawn across the dusty manuscripts, nearer and nearer to the perfect Amulet, warm from the pocket of Robert. And then, as one drop of water mingles with another when the panes of the window are wrinkled with rain, as one bead of mercury is drawn into another bead, the half Amulet, that was the children’s and was also Rekh-mara’s,—slipped into the whole Amulet, and, behold! there was only one—the perfect and ultimate Charm.

‘And
that’s
all right,’ said the Psammead, breaking a breathless silence.

‘Yes,’ said Anthea, ‘and we’ve got our hearts’ desire. Father and Mother and The Lamb are coming home today.’

‘But what about me?’ said Rekh-mara.

‘What
is
your heart’s desire?’ Anthea asked.

‘Great and deep learning,’ said the Priest, without a moment’s hesitation. ‘A learning greater and deeper than that of any man of my land and my time. But learning too great is useless. If I go back to my own land and my own age, who will believe my tales of what I have seen in the future? Let me stay here, be the great knower of all that has been, in that our time, so living to me, so old to you, about which your learned men speculate unceasingly, and often,
he
tells me, vainly.’

‘If I were you,’ said the Psammead, ‘I should ask the Amulet about that. It’s a dangerous thing, trying to live in a time that’s not your own. You can’t breathe an air that’s thousands of centuries ahead of your lungs without feeling the effects of it, sooner or later. Prepare the mystic circle and consult the Amulet.’

‘Oh,
what
a dream!’ cried the learned gentleman. ‘Dear children, if you love me—and I think you do, in dreams and out of them—prepare the mystic circle and consult the Amulet!’

They did. As once before, when the sun had shone in August splendour, they crouched in a circle on the floor. Now the air outside was thick and yellow with the fog that by some strange decree always attends the Cattle Show week. And in the street costers were shouting. ‘Ur Hekau Setcheh,’ Jane said the Name of Power. And instantly the light went out, and all the sounds went out too, so that there was a silence and a darkness, both deeper than any darkness or silence that you have ever even dreamed of imagining. It was like being deaf or blind, only darker and quieter even than that.

Then out of that vast darkness and silence came a light and a voice. The light was too faint to see anything by, and the voice was too small for you to hear what it said. But the light and the voice grew. And the light was the light that no man may look on and live, and the voice was the sweetest and most terrible voice in the world. The children cast down their eyes. And so did everyone.

‘I speak,’ said the voice. ‘What is it that you would hear?’

There was a pause. Everyone was afraid to speak.

‘What are we to do about Rekh-mara?’ said Robert suddenly and abruptly. ‘Shall he go back through the Amulet to his own time, or—’

‘No one can pass through the Amulet now,’ said the beautiful, terrible voice, ‘to any land or any time. Only when it was imperfect could such things be. But men may pass through the perfect charm to the perfect union, which is not of time or space.’

‘Would you be so very kind,’ said Anthea tremulously, ‘as to speak so that we can understand you? The Psammead said something about Rekh-mara not being able to live here, and if he can’t get back—’ She stopped, her heart was beating desperately in her throat, as it seemed.

‘Nobody can continue to live in a land and in a time not appointed,’ said the voice of glorious sweetness. ‘But a soul may live, if in that other time and land there be found a soul so akin to it as to offer it refuge, in the body of that land and time, that thus they two may be one soul in one body.’

The children exchanged discouraged glances. But the eyes of Rekh-mara and the learned gentleman met, and were kind to each other, and promised each other many things, secret and sacred and very beautiful.

Anthea saw the look. ‘Oh, but,’ she said, without at all meaning to say it, ‘dear Jimmy’s soul isn’t at all like Rekh-mara’s. I’m certain it isn’t. I don’t want to be rude, but it
isn’t
, you know. Dear Jimmy’s soul is as good as gold, and—’

‘Nothing that is not good can pass beneath the double arch of my perfect Amulet,’ said the voice. ‘If both are willing, say the word of Power, and let the two souls become one for ever and ever more.’

‘Shall I?’ asked Jane.

‘Yes.’

‘Yes.’

The voices were those of the Egyptian Priest and the learned gentleman, and the voices were eager, alive, thrilled with hope and the desire of great things.

So Jane took the Amulet from Robert and held it up between the two men, and said, for the last time, the word of Power.

‘Ur Hekau Setcheh.’

The perfect Amulet grew into a double arch; the two arches leaned to each other making a great A.

‘A stands for Amen,’ whispered Jane; ‘what he was a priest of.’

‘Hush!’ breathed Anthea.

The great double arch glowed in and through the green light that had been there since the Name of Power had first been spoken—it glowed with a light more bright yet more soft than the other light—a glory and splendour and sweetness unspeakable. ‘Come!’ cried Rekh-mara, holding out his hands.

‘Come!’ cried the learned gentleman, and he also held out his hands.

Each moved forward under the glowing, glorious arch of the perfect Amulet.

Then Rekh-mara quavered and shook, and as steel is drawn to a magnet he was drawn, under the arch of magic, nearer and nearer to the learned gentleman. And, as one drop of water mingles with another, when the window-glass is rain-wrinkled, as one quick-silver bead is drawn to another quick-silver bead, Rekh-mara, Divine Father of the Temple of Amen-Ra, was drawn into, slipped into, disappeared into, and was one with Jimmy, the good, the beloved, the learned gentleman.

And suddenly it was good daylight and the December sun shone. The fog has passed away like a dream.

The Amulet was there—little and complete in Jane’s hand, and there were the other children and the Psammead, and the learned gentleman. But Rekh-mara—or the body of Rekh-mara—was not there any more. As for his soul…

‘Oh, the horrid thing!’ cried Robert, and put his foot on a centipede as long as your finger, that crawled and wriggled and squirmed at the learned gentleman’s feet.

‘
That
,’ said the Psammead, ‘
Was
the evil in the soul of Rekh-mara.’

There was a deep silence.

‘Then Rekh-mara’s
him
now?’ said Jane at last.

‘All that was good in Rekh-mara,’ said the Psammead.

‘
He
ought to have his heart’s desire, too,’ said Anthea, in a sort of stubborn gentleness.

‘
His
heart’s desire,’ said the Psammead, ‘is the perfect Amulet you hold in your hand. Yes—and has been ever since he first saw the broken half of it.’

‘We’ve got ours,’ said Anthea softly.

‘Yes,’ said the Psammead—its voice was crosser than they had ever heard it—‘your parents are coming home. And what’s to become of
me
? I shall be found out, and made a show of, and degraded in every possible way. I
know
they’ll make me go into Parliament—hateful place—all mud and no sand. That beautiful Baalbec temple in the desert! Plenty of good sand there, and no politics! I wish I were there, safe in the Past—that I do.’

‘I wish you were,’ said the learned gentleman absently, yet polite as ever.

The Psammead swelled itself up, turned its long snail’s eyes in one last lingering look at Anthea—a loving look, she always said, and thought—and—vanished.

‘Well,’ said Anthea, after a silence, ‘I suppose it’s happy. The only thing it ever did really care for was
sand
.’

‘My dear children,’ said the learned gentleman, ‘I must have fallen asleep. I’ve had the most extraordinary dream.’

‘I hope it was a nice one,’ said Cyril with courtesy.

‘Yes.… I feel a new man after it. Absolutely a new man.’

There was a ring at the front-door bell. The opening of a door. Voices.

‘It’s
them
!’ cried Robert, and a thrill ran through four hearts.

‘Here!’ cried Anthea, snatching the Amulet from Jane and pressing it into the hand of the learned gentleman. ‘Here—it’s yours—your very own—a present from us, because you’re Rekh-mara as well as… I mean, because you’re such a dear.’