The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (76 page)

“Darn!” said the Phoenix, “darn! From those young lips these strange expressions—”

“Mend, then,” said Anthea, “with a needle and wool.”

The Phoenix opened and shut its wings thoughtfully.

“Your stockings,” it said, “are much less important than they now appear to you. But the carpet—look at the bare worn patches, look at the great rent at yonder corner. The carpet has been your faithful friend—your willing servant. How have you requited its devoted service?”

“Dear Phoenix,” Anthea urged, “don’t talk in that horrid lecturing tone. You make me feel as if I’d done something wrong. And really it is a wishing carpet, and we haven’t done anything else to it—only wishes.”

“Only wishes,” repeated the Phoenix, ruffling its neck feathers angrily, “and what sort of wishes? Wishing people to be in a good temper, for instance. What carpet did you ever hear of that had such a wish asked of it? But this noble fabric, on which you trample so recklessly” (every one removed its boots from the carpet and stood on the linoleum), “this carpet never flinched. It did what you asked, but the wear and tear must have been awful. And then last night—I don’t blame you about the cats and the rats, for those were its own choice; but what carpet could stand a heavy cow hanging on to it at one corner?”

“I should think the cats and rats were worse,” said Robert, “look at all their claws.”

“Yes,” said the bird, “eleven thousand nine hundred and forty of them—I daresay you noticed? I should be surprised if these had not left their mark.”

“Good gracious,” said Jane, sitting down suddenly on the floor, and patting the edge of the carpet softly; “do you mean it’s
wearing out
?”

“Its life with you has not been a luxurious one,” said the Phoenix.

“French mud twice. Sand of sunny shores twice. Soaking in southern seas once. India once. Goodness knows where in Persia once. Musk-rat-land once. And once, wherever the cow came from. Hold your carpet up to the light, and with cautious tenderness, if
you
please.”

With cautious tenderness the boys held the carpet up to the light; the girls looked, and a shiver of regret ran through them as they saw how those eleven thousand nine hundred and forty claws had run through the carpet. It was full of little holes: there were some large ones, and more than one thin place. At one corner a strip of it was torn, and hung forlornly.

“We must mend it,” said Anthea; “never mind about my stockings. I can sew them up in lumps with sewing cotton if there’s no time to do them properly. I know it’s awful and no girl would who respected herself, and all that; but the poor dear carpet’s more important than my silly stockings. Let’s go out now this very minute.”

So out they all went, and bought wool to mend the carpet; but there is no shop in Camden Town where you can buy wishing-wool, no, nor in Kentish Town either. However, ordinary Scotch heather-mixture fingering seemed good enough, and this they bought, and all that day Jane and Anthea darned and darned and darned. The boys went out for a walk in the afternoon, and the gentle Phoenix paced up and down the table—for exercise, as it said—and talked to the industrious girls about their carpet.

“It is not an ordinary, ignorant, innocent carpet from Kidderminster,” it said, “it is a carpet with a past—a Persian past. Do you know that in happier years, when that carpet was the property of caliphs, viziers, kings, and sultans, it never lay on a floor?”

“I thought the floor was the proper home of a carpet,” Jane interrupted.

“Not of a
magic
carpet,” said the Phoenix; “why, if it had been allowed to lie about on floors there wouldn’t be much of it left now. No, indeed! It has lived in chests of cedarwood, inlaid with pearl and ivory, wrapped in priceless tissues of cloth of gold, embroidered with gems of fabulous value. It has reposed in the sandal-wood caskets of princesses, and in the rose-attar-scented treasure-houses of kings. Never, never, had any one degraded it by walking on it—except in the way of business, when wishes were required, and then they always took their shoes off. And
you
—”

“Oh,
don’t
!” said Jane, very near tears. “You know you’d never have been hatched at all if it hadn’t been for mother wanting a carpet for us to walk on.”

“You needn’t have walked so much or so hard!” said the bird, “but come, dry that crystal tear, and I will relate to you the story of the Princess Zulieka, the Prince of Asia, and the magic carpet.”

“Relate away,” said Anthea—“I mean, please do.”

“The Princess Zulieka, fairest of royal ladies,” began the bird, “had in her cradle been the subject of several enchantments. Her grandmother had been in her day—”

But what in her day Zulieka’s grandmother had been was destined never to be revealed, for Cyril and Robert suddenly burst into the room, and on each brow were the traces of deep emotion. On Cyril’s pale brow stood beads of agitation and perspiration, and on the scarlet brow of Robert was a large black smear.

“What ails ye both?” asked the Phoenix, and it added tartly that story-telling was quite impossible if people would come interrupting like that.

“Oh, do shut up, for any sake!” said Cyril, sinking into a chair.

Robert smoothed the ruffled golden feathers, adding kindly—

“Squirrel doesn’t mean to be a beast. It’s only that the
most awful
thing has happened, and stories don’t seem to matter so much. Don’t be cross. You won’t be when you’ve heard what’s happened.”

“Well, what
has
happened?” said the bird, still rather crossly; and Anthea and Jane paused with long needles poised in air, and long needlefuls of Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool drooping from them.

“The most awful thing you can possibly think of,” said Cyril. “That nice chap—our own burglar—the police have got him, on suspicion of stolen cats. That’s what his brother’s missis told me.”

“Oh, begin at the beginning!” cried Anthea impatiently.

“Well, then, we went out, and down by where the undertaker’s is, with the china flowers in the window—you know. There was a crowd, and of course we went to have a squint. And it was two bobbies and our burglar between them, and he was being dragged along; and he said, ‘I tell you them cats was
give
me. I got ’em in exchange for me milking a cow in a basement parlour up Camden Town way.’

“And the people laughed. Beasts! And then one of the policemen said perhaps he could give the name and address of the cow, and he said, no, he couldn’t; but he could take them there if they’d only leave go of his coat collar, and give him a chance to get his breath. And the policeman said he could tell all that to the magistrate in the morning. He didn’t see us, and so we came away.”

“Oh, Cyril, how
could
you?” said Anthea.

“Don’t be a pudding-head,” Cyril advised. “A fat lot of good it would have done if we’d let him see us. No one would have believed a word we said. They’d have thought we were kidding. We did better than let him see us. We asked a boy where he lived and he told us, and we went there, and it’s a little greengrocer’s shop, and we bought some Brazil nuts. Here they are.” The girls waved away the Brazil nuts with loathing and contempt.

“Well, we had to buy
something
, and while we were making up our minds what to buy we heard his brother’s missis talking. She said when he came home with all them miaoulers she thought there was more in it than met the eye. But he
would
go out this morning with the two likeliest of them, one under each arm. She said he sent her out to buy blue ribbon to put round their beastly necks, and she said if he got three months’ hard it was her dying word that he’d got the blue ribbon to thank for it; that, and his own silly thieving ways, taking cats that anybody would know he couldn’t have come by in the way of business, instead of things that wouldn’t have been missed, which Lord knows there are plenty such, and—”

“Oh,
stop
!” cried Jane. And indeed it was time, for Cyril seemed like a clock that had been wound up, and could not help going on. “Where is he now?”

“At the police-station,” said Robert, for Cyril was out of breath. “The boy told us they’d put him in the cells, and would bring him up before the Beak in the morning. I thought it was a jolly lark last night—getting him to take the cats—but now—”

“The end of a lark,” said the Phoenix, “is the Beak.”

“Let’s go to him,” cried both the girls jumping up. “Let’s go and tell the truth. They
must
believe us.”

“They
can’t
,” said Cyril. “Just think! If any one came to you with such a tale, you couldn’t believe it, however much you tried. We should only mix things up worse for him.”

“There must be something we could do,” said Jane, sniffing very much—“my own dear pet burglar! I can’t bear it. And he was so nice, the way he talked about his father, and how he was going to be so extra honest. Dear Phoenix, you
must
be able to help us. You’re so good and kind and pretty and clever. Do, do tell us what to do.”

The Phoenix rubbed its beak thoughtfully with its claw.

“You might rescue him,” it said, “and conceal him here, till the law-supporters had forgotten about him.”

“That would be ages and ages,” said Cyril, “and we couldn’t conceal him here. Father might come home at any moment, and if he found the burglar here
he
wouldn’t believe the true truth any more than the police would. That’s the worst of the truth. Nobody ever believes it. Couldn’t we take him somewhere else?”

Jane clapped her hands.

“The sunny southern shore!” she cried, “where the cook is being queen. He and she would be company for each other!”

And really the idea did not seem bad, if only he would consent to go.

So, all talking at once, the children arranged to wait till evening, and then to seek the dear burglar in his lonely cell.

Meantime Jane and Anthea darned away as hard as they could, to make the carpet as strong as possible. For all felt how terrible it would be if the precious burglar, while being carried to the sunny southern shore, were to tumble through a hole in the carpet, and be lost for ever in the sunny southern sea.

The servants were tired after Mrs Wigson’s party, so every one went to bed early, and when the Phoenix reported that both servants were snoring in a heartfelt and candid manner, the children got up—they had never undressed; just putting their nightgowns on over their things had been enough to deceive Eliza when she came to turn out the gas. So they were ready for anything, and they stood on the carpet and said—

“I wish we were in our burglar’s lonely cell.” and instantly they were.

I think every one had expected the cell to be the “deepest dungeon below the castle moat.” I am sure no one had doubted that the burglar, chained by heavy fetters to a ring in the damp stone wall, would be tossing uneasily on a bed of straw, with a pitcher of water and a mouldering crust, untasted, beside him. Robert, remembering the underground passage and the treasure, had brought a candle and matches, but these were not needed.

The cell was a little white-washed room about twelve feet long and six feet wide. On one side of it was a sort of shelf sloping a little towards the wall. On this were two rugs, striped blue and yellow, and a water-proof pillow. Rolled in the rugs, and with his head on the pillow, lay the burglar, fast asleep. (He had had his tea, though this the children did not know—it had come from the coffee-shop round the corner, in very thick crockery.) The scene was plainly revealed by the light of a gas-lamp in the passage outside, which shone into the cell through a pane of thick glass over the door.

“I shall gag him,” said Cyril, “and Robert will hold him down. Anthea and Jane and the Phoenix can whisper soft nothings to him while he gradually awakes.”

This plan did not have the success it deserved, because the burglar, curiously enough, was much stronger, even in his sleep, than Robert and Cyril, and at the first touch of their hands he leapt up and shouted out something very loud indeed.

Instantly steps were heard outside. Anthea threw her arms round the burglar and whispered—

“It’s us—the ones that gave you the cats. We’ve come to save you, only don’t let on we’re here. Can’t we hide somewhere?”

Heavy boots sounded on the flagged passage outside, and a firm voice shouted—

“Here—you—stop that row, will you?”

“All right, governor,” replied the burglar, still with Anthea’s arms round him; “I was only a-talking in my sleep. No offence.”

It was an awful moment. Would the boots and the voice come in. Yes! No! The voice said—

“Well, stow it, will you?”

And the boots went heavily away, along the passage and up some sounding stone stairs.

“Now then,” whispered Anthea.

“How the blue Moses did you get in?” asked the burglar, in a hoarse whisper of amazement.

“On the carpet,” said Jane, truly.

“Stow that,” said the burglar. “One on you I could ’a’ swallowed, but four—
and
a yellow fowl.”

“Look here,” said Cyril, sternly, “you wouldn’t have believed any one if they’d told you beforehand about your finding a cow and all those cats in our nursery.”

“That I wouldn’t,” said the burglar, with whispered fervour, “so help me Bob, I wouldn’t.”

“Well, then,” Cyril went on, ignoring this appeal to his brother, “just try to believe what we tell you and act accordingly. It can’t do you any
harm
, you know,” he went on in hoarse whispered earnestness. “You can’t be very much worse off than you are now, you know. But if you’ll just trust to us we’ll get you out of this right enough. No one saw us come in. The question is, where would you like to go?”

“I’d like to go to Boolong,” was the instant reply of the burglar. “I’ve always wanted to go on that there trip, but I’ve never ’ad the ready at the right time of the year.”

“Boolong is a town like London,” said Cyril, well meaning, but inaccurate, “how could you get a living there?”