The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (25 page)

His eyes, growing accustomed to the dimness, showed him that he was under a heavy domed roof supported on large square pillars—to the right and left stood dark doors, shut fast.

“I will explore these doors by daylight,” he said. He did not feel exactly frightened. But he did not feel exactly brave either. But he wished and intended to be brave, so he said, “I will explore these doors. At least I think I will,” he added, for one must not only be brave but truthful.

And then suddenly he felt very sleepy. He leaned against the wall, and presently it seemed that sitting down would be less trouble, and then that lying down would be more truly comfortable. A bell from very, very far away sounded the hour, twelve. Philip counted up to nine, but he missed the tenth bell-beat, and the eleventh and the twelfth as well, because he was fast asleep cuddled up warmly in the thick quilted dressing-gown that Helen had made him last winter. He dreamed that everything was as it used to be before That Man came and changed everything and took Helen away. He was in his own little bed in his own little room in their own little house, and Helen had come to call him. He could see the sunlight through his closed eyelids—he was keeping them closed just for the fun of hearing her try to wake him, and presently he would tell her he had been awake all the time, and they would laugh together about it. And then he awoke, and he was not in his soft bed at home but on the hard floor of a big, strange gate-house, and it was not Helen who was shaking him and saying, “Here—I say, wake up, can’t you,” but a tall man in a red coat; and the light that dazzled his eyes was not from the sun at all, but from a horn lantern which the man was holding close to his face.

“What’s the matter?” said Philip sleepily.

“That’s the question,” said the man in red. “Come along to the guard-room and give an account of yourself, you young shaver.”

He took Philip’s ear gently but firmly between a very hard finger and thumb.

“Leave go,” said Philip, “I’m not going to run away.” And he stood up feeling very brave.

The man shifted his hold from ear to shoulder and led Philip through one of those doors which he had thought of exploring by daylight. It was not daylight yet, and the room, large and bare, with an arch at each end and narrow little windows at the sides, was lighted by horn lanterns and tall tapers in pewter candlesticks. It seemed to Philip that the room was full of soldiers.

Their captain, with a good deal of gold about him and a very smart black moustache, got up from a bench.

“Look what I’ve caught, sir,” said the man who owned the hand on Philip’s shoulder.

“Humph,” said the captain, “so it’s really happened at last.”

“What has?” said Philip.

“Why, you have,” said the captain. “Don’t be frightened, little man.”

“I’m not frightened,” said Philip, and added politely, “I should be so much obliged if you’d tell me what you mean.” He added something which he had heard people say when they asked the way to the market or the public gardens, “I’m quite a stranger here,” he said.

A jolly roar of laughter went up from the red-coats.

“It isn’t manners to laugh at strangers,” said Philip.

“Mind your own manners,” said the captain sharply; “in this country little boys speak when they’re spoken to. Stranger, eh? Well, we knew that, you know!”

Philip, though he felt snubbed, yet felt grand too. Here he was in the middle of an adventure with grown-up soldiers. He threw out his chest and tried to look manly.

The captain sat down in a chair at the end of a long table, drew a black book to him—a black book covered with dust—and began to rub a rusty pen-nib on his sword, which was not rusty.

“Come now,” he said, opening the book, “tell me how you came here. And mind you speak the truth.”

“I
always
speak the truth,” said Philip proudly.

All the soldiers rose and saluted him with looks of deep surprise and respect.

“Well, nearly always,” said Philip, hot to the ears, and the soldiers clattered stiffly down again on to the benches, laughing once more. Philip had imagined there to be more discipline in the army.

“How did you come here?” said the captain.

“Up the great bridge staircase,” said Philip.

The captain wrote busily in the book.

“What did you come for?”

“I didn’t know what else to do. There was nothing but illimitable prairie—and so I came up.”

“You are a very bold boy,” said the captain.

“Thank you,” said Philip. “I do
want
to be.”

“What was your purpose in coming?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose—I just happened to come.”

The captain wrote that down too. And then he and Philip and the soldiers looked at each other in silence.

“Well?” said the boy.

“Well?” said the captain.

“I do wish,” said the boy, “you’d tell me what you meant by my really happening after all. And then I wish you’d tell me the way home.”

“Where do you want to get to?” asked the captain.

“The
address
,” said Philip, “is The Grange, Ravelsham, Sussex.”

“Don’t know it,” said the captain briefly, “and anyhow you can’t go back there now. Didn’t you read the notice at the top of the ladder? Trespassers will be prosecuted. You’ve got to be prosecuted before you can go back anywhere.”

“I’d rather be persecuted than go down that ladder again,” he said. “I suppose it won’t be very bad—being persecuted, I mean?”

His idea of persecution was derived from books. He thought it to be something vaguely unpleasant from which one escaped in disguise—adventurous and always successful.

“That’s for the judges to decide,” said the captain, “it’s a serious thing trespassing in our city. This guard is put here expressly to prevent it.”

“Do you have many trespassers?” Philip asked. The captain seemed kind, and Philip had a great-uncle who was a judge, so the word judges made him think of tips and good advice, rather than of justice and punishment.

“Many trespassers indeed!” the captain almost snorted his answer. “That’s just it. There’s never been one before. You’re the first. For years and years and years there’s been a guard here, because when the town was first built the astrologers foretold that some day there would be a trespasser who would do untold mischief. So it’s our privilege—we’re the Polistopolitan guards—to keep watch over the only way by which a trespasser could come in.”

“May I sit down?” said Philip suddenly, and the soldiers made room for him on the bench.

“My father and my grandfather and all my ancestors were in the guards,” said the captain proudly. “It’s a very great honour.”

“I wonder,” said Philip, “why you don’t cut off the end of your ladder—the top end I mean; then nobody could come up.”

“That would never do,” said the captain, “because, you see, there’s another prophecy. The great deliverer is to come that way.”

“Couldn’t I,” suggested Philip shyly, “couldn’t I be the deliverer instead of the trespasser? I’d much rather, you know.”

“I daresay you would,” said the captain; “but people can’t be deliverers just because they’d much rather, you know.”

“And isn’t any one to come up the ladder bridge except just those two?”

“We don’t know; that’s just it. You know what prophecies are.”

“I’m afraid I don’t—exactly.”

“So vague and mixed up, I mean. The one I’m telling you about goes something like this.

Who comes up the ladder stair?

Beware, beware,

Steely eyes and copper hair

Strife and grief and pain to bear

All come up the ladder stair.

You see we can’t tell whether that means one person or a lot of people with steely eyes and copper hair.”

“My hair’s just plain boy-colour,” said Philip; “my sister says so, and my eyes are blue, I believe.”

“I can’t see in this light;” the captain leaned his elbows on the table and looked earnestly in the boy’s eyes. “No, I can’t see. The other prophecy goes:

From down and down and very far down

The king shall come to take his own;

He shall deliver the Magic town,

And all that he made shall be his own.

Beware, take care. Beware, prepare,

The king shall come by the ladder stair.

“How jolly,” said Philip; “I love poetry. Do you know any more?”

“There are heaps of prophecies of course,” said the captain; “the astrologers must do something to earn their pay. There’s rather a nice one:

Every night when the bright stars blink

The guards shall turn out, and have a drink

As the clock strikes two.

And every night when no stars are seen

The guards shall drink in their own canteen

When the clock strikes two.

Tonight there aren’t any stars, so we have the drinks served here. It’s less trouble than going across the square to the canteen, and the principle’s the same. Principle is the great thing with a prophecy, my boy.”

“Yes,” said Philip. And then the far-away bell beat again. One, two. And outside was a light patter of feet.

A soldier rose—saluted his officer and threw open the door. There was a moment’s pause; Philip expected some one to come in with a tray and glasses, as they did at his great-uncle’s when gentlemen were suddenly thirsty at times that were not meal-times.

But instead, after a moment’s pause, a dozen greyhounds stepped daintily in on their padded cat-like feet; and round the neck of each dog was slung a roundish thing that looked like one of the little barrels which St. Bernard dogs wear round their necks in the pictures. And when these were loosened and laid on the table Philip was charmed to see that the roundish things were not barrels but cocoa-nuts.

The soldiers reached down some pewter pots from a high shelf—pierced the cocoa-nuts with their bayonets and poured out the cocoa-nut milk. They all had drinks, so the prophecy came true, and what is more they gave Philip a drink as well. It was delicious, and there was as much of it as he wanted. I have never had as much cocoa-nut milk as I wanted. Have you?

Then the hollow cocoa-nuts were tied on to the dogs’ necks again and out they went, slim and beautiful, two by two, wagging their slender tails, in the most amiable and orderly way.

“They take the cocoa-nuts to the town kitchen,” said the captain, “to be made into cocoa-nut ice for the army breakfast; waste not want not, you know. We don’t waste anything here, my boy.” Philip had quite got over his snubbing. He now felt that the captain was talking with him as man to man. Helen had gone away and left him; well, he was learning to do without Helen. And he had got away from the Grange, and Lucy, and that nurse. He was a man among men. And then, just as he was feeling most manly and important, and quite equal to facing any number of judges, there came a little tap at the door of the guard-room, and a very little voice said:

“Oh, do please let me come in.”

Then the door opened slowly.

“Well, come in, whoever you are,” said the captain. And the person who came in was—Lucy. Lucy, whom Philip thought he had got rid of—Lucy, who stood for the new hateful life to which Helen had left him. Lucy, in her serge skirt and jersey, with her little sleek fair pig-tails, and that anxious “I-wish-we-could-be-friends” smile of hers. Philip was furious. It was too bad.

“And who is this?” the captain was saying kindly.

“It’s me—it’s Lucy,” she said. “I came up with
him
.”

She pointed to Philip. “No manners,” thought Philip in bitterness.

“No, you didn’t,” he said shortly.

“I did—I was close behind you when you were climbing the ladder bridge. And I’ve been waiting alone ever since, when you were asleep and all. I
knew
he’d be cross when he knew I’d come,” she explained to the soldiers.

“I’m
not
cross,” said Philip very crossly indeed, but the captain signed to him to be silent. Then Lucy was questioned and her answers written in the book, and when that was done the captain said:

“So this little girl is a friend of yours?”

“No, she isn’t,” said Philip violently; “she’s not my friend, and she never will be. I’ve seen her, that’s all, and I don’t want to see her again.”

“You
are
unkind,” said Lucy.

And then there was a grave silence, most unpleasant to Philip. The soldiers, he perceived, now looked coldly at him. It was all Lucy’s fault. What did she want to come shoving in for, spoiling everything? Any one but a girl would have known that a guard-room wasn’t the right place for a girl. He frowned and said nothing. Lucy had smuggled up against the captain’s knee, and he was stroking her hair.

“Poor little woman,” he said. “You must go to sleep now, so as to be rested before you go to the Hall of Justice in the morning.”

They made Lucy a bed of soldiers’ cloaks laid on a bench; and bearskins are the best of pillows. Philip had a soldier’s cloak and a bench, and a bearskin too—but what was the good? Everything was spoiled. If Lucy had not come the guard-room as a sleeping-place would have been almost as good as the tented field. But she
had
come, and the guard-room was no better now than any old night-nursery. And how had she known? How had she come? How had she made her way to that illimitable prairie where he had found the mysterious beginning of the ladder bridge? He went to sleep a bunched-up lump of prickly discontent and suppressed fury.

When he woke it was bright daylight, and a soldier was saying, “Wake up, Trespassers. Breakfast—”

“How jolly,” thought Philip, “to be having military breakfast.” Then he remembered Lucy, and hated her being there, and felt once more that she had spoiled everything.

I should not, myself, care for a breakfast of cocoa-nut ice, peppermint creams, apples, bread and butter and sweet milk. But the soldiers seemed to enjoy it. And it would have exactly suited Philip if he had not seen that Lucy was enjoying it too.

“I do hate greedy girls,” he told himself, for he was now in that state of black rage when you hate everything the person you are angry with does or says or is.

And now it was time to start for the Hall of Justice. The guard formed outside, and Philip noticed that each soldier stood on a sort of green mat. When the order to march was given, each soldier quickly and expertly rolled up his green mat and put it under his arm. And whenever they stopped, because of the crowd, each soldier unrolled his green mat, and stood on it till it was time to go on again. And they had to stop several times, for the crowd was very thick in the great squares and in the narrow streets of the city. It was a wonderful crowd. There were men and women and children in every sort of dress. Italian, Spanish, Russian; French peasants in blue blouses and wooden shoes, workmen in the dress English working people wore a hundred years ago. Norwegians, Swedes, Swiss, Turks, Greeks, Indians, Arabians, Chinese, Japanese, besides Red Indians in dresses of skins, and Scots in kilts and sporrans. Philip did not know what nation most of the dresses belonged to—to him it was a brilliant patchwork of gold and gay colours. It reminded him of the fancy-dress party he had once been to with Helen, when he wore a Pierrot’s dress and felt very silly in it. He noticed that not a single boy in all that crowd was dressed as he was—in what he thought was the only correct dress for boys. Lucy walked beside him. Once, just after they started, she said, “Aren’t you frightened, Philip?” and he would not answer, though he longed to say, “Of course not. It’s only girls who are afraid.” But he thought it would be more disagreeable to say nothing, so he said it.