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The Phoenix and the Carpet

E >> E. Nesbit >> The Phoenix and the Carpet



The Phoenix and the Carpet

E. Nesbit



TO

My Dear Godson
HUBERT GRIFFITH
and his sister
MARGARET


TO HUBERT

Dear Hubert, if I ever found
A wishing-carpet lying round,
I'd stand upon it, and I'd say:
'Take me to Hubert, right away!'
And then we'd travel very far
To where the magic countries are
That you and I will never see,
And choose the loveliest gifts for you, from me.

But oh! alack! and well-a-day!
No wishing-carpets come my way.
I never found a Phoenix yet,
And Psammeads are so hard to get!
So I give you nothing fine--
Only this book your book and mine,
And hers, whose name by yours is set;
Your book, my book, the book of Margaret!

E. NESBIT
DYMCHURCH
September, 1904


CONTENTS

1 The Egg
2 The Topless Tower
3 The Queen Cook
4 Two Bazaars
5 The Temple
6 Doing Good
7 Mews from Persia
8 The Cats, the Cow, and the Burglar
9 The Burglar's Bride
10 The Hole in the Carpet
11 The Beginning of the End
12 The End of the End




CHAPTER 1
THE EGG


It began with the day when it was almost the Fifth of November, and
a doubt arose in some breast--Robert's, I fancy--as 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 didn't 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--'

'I'm sure thribble isn't grammar,' Anthea said.

'Of course it isn't,' said Cyril; 'one word can't be grammar all by
itself, so you needn't 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, 'Don't be so jolly clever yourself, Squirrel.
And the fireworks look all right, and you'll have the eightpence
that your tram fares didn't 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 it's not YOUR eightpence
anyhow--'

'But look here,' said Robert, 'really now, about the fireworks. We
don't 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 wouldn't wear plush if it was ever so--unless 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 "Carter's 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 often--it's bound to tell--'

'Dry up,' said Robert, fiercely. 'Don't you see? You can't 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 be--what do
you call it?--Father told me--"up to sample". Don't you think we
ought to sample the fire-works? Just shut our eyes and each draw
one out, and then try them.'

'But it's raining cats and dogs,' said Jane.

'And Queen Anne is dead,' rejoined Robert. No one was in a very
good temper. 'We needn't 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 don't know what YOU think, but _I_ think it's time we did
something, and that would be really useful; because then we
shouldn't just HOPE the fireworks would make those Prossers sit
up--we 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 wasn't 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 Jane's 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
party--I will not say which, because it was sorry afterwards--declared
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 didn't mean to,' said Jane, near tears. 'I don't care, I'll
draw another--'

'You know jolly well you can't,' said Cyril, bitterly. 'It's
settled. It's Medium and Persian. You've done it, and you'll have
to stand by it--and us too, worse luck. Never mind. YOU'LL have
your pocket-money before the Fifth. Anyway, we'll 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 father's 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 Cyril's 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, 'You've done it this time,
Anthea.'

The flame was spreading out under the ceiling like the rose of fire
in Mr Rider Haggard's 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 crack--the
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 other's black
faces, and, out of the corners of their eyes, at mother's 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
there--or 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 isn't in good condition, you know, I shall expect
you to change it.' And the man replied--

'There ain't a thread gone in it nowhere, mum. It's a bargain, if
ever there was one, and I'm more'n 'arf sorry I let it go at the
price; but we can't 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
wasn't 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, mayn't 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 don't' he cried loudly; 'I ain't a-goin' to take back no
carpets, so don't you make no bloomin' errer. A bargain's a
bargain, and the carpet's puffik throughout.'

'We don't 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 ain't nothing in nothing as
I sell. It's all as clean as a whistle.'

'I never said it wasn't CLEAN,' said Cyril, 'but--'

'Oh, if it's MOTHS,' said the man, 'that's easy cured with borax.
But I expect it was only an odd one. I tell you the carpet's good
through and through. It hadn't got no moths when it left my
'ands--not so much as an hegg.'

'But that's 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 I'll 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 couldn't have done anything else. Mother has her own opinion.

But father said they might keep the egg.

'The man certainly didn't know the egg was there when he brought
the carpet,' said he, 'any more than your mother did, and we've 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 agent's 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 father's answer, when
they asked him.

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

'I'm beastly bored,' said Robert.

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

'What's the good of TALKING?' said Cyril. 'What I want is for
something to happen. It's awfully stuffy for a chap not to be
allowed out in the evenings. There's simply nothing to do when
you've got through your homers.'

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

'We've got the pleasure of memory,' said she. 'Just think of last
holidays.'

Last holidays, indeed, offered something to think of--for 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 for--just 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 you've 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 don't want to think about the pleasures of memory,' said Cyril;
'I want some more things to happen.'

'We're very much luckier than any one else, as it is,' said Jane.
'Why, no one else ever found a Psammead. We ought to be grateful.'

'Why shouldn't we GO ON being, though?' Cyril asked--'lucky, I
mean, not grateful. Why's it all got to stop?'

'Perhaps something will happen,' said Anthea, comfortably. 'Do you
know, sometimes I think we are the sort of people that things DO
happen to.'

'It's like that in history,' said Jane: 'some kings are full of
interesting things, and others--nothing ever happens to them,
except their being born and crowned and buried, and sometimes not
that.'

'I think Panther's right,' said Cyril: 'I think we are the sort of
people things do happen to. I have a sort of feeling things would
happen right enough if we could only give them a shove. It just
wants something to start it. That's all.'

'I wish they taught magic at school,' Jane sighed. 'I believe if
we could do a little magic it might make something happen.'

'I wonder how you begin?' Robert looked round the room, but he got
no ideas from the faded green curtains, or the drab Venetian
blinds, or the worn brown oil-cloth on the floor. Even the new
carpet suggested nothing, though its pattern was a very wonderful
one, and always seemed as though it were just going to make you
think of something.

'I could begin right enough,' said Anthea; 'I've read lots about
it. But I believe it's wrong in the Bible.'

'It's only wrong in the Bible because people wanted to hurt other
people. I don't see how things can be wrong unless they hurt
somebody, and we don't want to hurt anybody; and what's more, we
jolly well couldn't if we tried. Let's get the Ingoldsby Legends.
There's a thing about Abra-cadabra there,' said Cyril, yawning.
'We may as well play at magic. Let's be Knights Templars. They
were awfully gone on magic. They used to work spells or something
with a goat and a goose. Father says so.'

'Well, that's all right,' said Robert, unkindly; 'you can play the
goat right enough, and Jane knows how to be a goose.'

'I'll get Ingoldsby,' said Anthea, hastily. 'You turn up the
hearthrug.'

So they traced strange figures on the linoleum, where the hearthrug
had kept it clean. They traced them with chalk that Robert had
nicked from the top of the mathematical master's desk at school.
You know, of course, that it is stealing to take a new stick of
chalk, but it is not wrong to take a broken piece, so long as you
only take one. (I do not know the reason of this rule, nor who
made it.) And they chanted all the gloomiest songs they could think
of. And, of course, nothing happened. So then Anthea said, 'I'm
sure a magic fire ought to be made of sweet-smelling wood, and have
magic gums and essences and things in it.'

'I don't know any sweet-smelling wood, except cedar,' said Robert;
'but I've got some ends of cedar-wood lead pencil.'

So they burned the ends of lead pencil. And still nothing
happened.

'Let's burn some of the eucalyptus oil we have for our colds,' said
Anthea.

And they did. It certainly smelt very strong. And they burned
lumps of camphor out of the big chest. It was very bright, and
made a horrid black smoke, which looked very magical. But still
nothing happened. Then they got some clean tea-cloths from the
dresser drawer in the kitchen, and waved them over the magic
chalk-tracings, and sang 'The Hymn of the Moravian Nuns at
Bethlehem', which is very impressive. And still nothing happened.
So they waved more and more wildly, and Robert's tea-cloth caught
the golden egg and whisked it off the mantelpiece, and it fell into
the fender and rolled under the grate.

'Oh, crikey!' said more than one voice.

And every one instantly fell down flat on its front to look under
the grate, and there lay the egg, glowing in a nest of hot ashes.

'It's not smashed, anyhow,' said Robert, and he put his hand under
the grate and picked up the egg. But the egg was much hotter than
any one would have believed it could possibly get in such a short
time, and Robert had to drop it with a cry of 'Bother!' It fell on
the top bar of the grate, and bounced right into the glowing
red-hot heart of the fire.

'The tongs!' cried Anthea. But, alas, no one could remember where
they were. Every one had forgotten that the tongs had last been
used to fish up the doll's teapot from the bottom of the water-
butt, where the Lamb had dropped it. So the nursery tongs were
resting between the water-butt and the dustbin, and cook refused to
lend the kitchen ones.

'Never mind,' said Robert, 'we'll get it out with the poker and the
shovel.'

'Oh, stop,' cried Anthea. 'Look at it! Look! look! look! I do
believe something IS going to happen!'

For the egg was now red-hot, and inside it something was moving.
Next moment there was a soft cracking sound; the egg burst in two,
and out of it came a flame-coloured bird. It rested a moment among
the flames, and as it rested there the four children could see it
growing bigger and bigger under their eyes.

Every mouth was a-gape, every eye a-goggle.

The bird rose in its nest of fire, stretched its wings, and flew
out into the room. It flew round and round, and round again, and
where it passed the air was warm. Then it perched on the fender.
The children looked at each other. Then Cyril put out a hand
towards the bird. It put its head on one side and looked up at
him, as you may have seen a parrot do when it is just going to
speak, so that the children were hardly astonished at all when it
said, 'Be careful; I am not nearly cool yet.'

They were not astonished, but they were very, very much interested.

They looked at the bird, and it was certainly worth looking at.
Its feathers were like gold. It was about as large as a bantam,
only its beak was not at all bantam-shaped. 'I believe I know what
it is,' said Robert. 'I've seen a picture.'

He hurried away. A hasty dash and scramble among the papers on
father's study table yielded, as the sum-books say, 'the desired
result'. But when he came back into the room holding out a paper,
and crying, 'I say, look here,' the others all said 'Hush!' and he
hushed obediently and instantly, for the bird was speaking.

'Which of you,' it was saying, 'put the egg into the fire?'

'He did,' said three voices, and three fingers pointed at Robert.

The bird bowed; at least it was more like that than anything else.

'I am your grateful debtor,' it said with a high-bred air.

The children were all choking with wonder and curiosity--all except
Robert. He held the paper in his hand, and he KNEW. He said so.
He said--

'_I_ know who you are.'

And he opened and displayed a printed paper, at the head of which
was a little picture of a bird sitting in a nest of flames.

'You are the Phoenix,' said Robert; and the bird was quite pleased.

'My fame has lived then for two thousand years,' it said. 'Allow
me to look at my portrait.' It looked at the page which Robert,
kneeling down, spread out in the fender, and said--

'It's not a flattering likeness ... And what are these
characters?' it asked, pointing to the printed part.

'Oh, that's all dullish; it's not much about YOU, you know,' said
Cyril, with unconscious politeness; 'but you're in lots of books.'

'With portraits?' asked the Phoenix.

'Well, no,' said Cyril; 'in fact, I don't think I ever saw any
portrait of you but that one, but I can read you something about
yourself, if you like.'

The Phoenix nodded, and Cyril went off and fetched Volume X of the
old Encyclopedia, and on page 246 he found the following:--

'Phoenix - in ornithology, a fabulous bird of antiquity.'

'Antiquity is quite correct,' said the Phoenix, 'but
fabulous--well, do I look it?'

Every one shook its head. Cyril went on--


'The ancients speak of this bird as single, or the only one of its
kind.'

'That's right enough,' said the Phoenix.

'They describe it as about the size of an eagle.'

'Eagles are of different sizes,' said the Phoenix; 'it's not at all
a good description.'

All the children were kneeling on the hearthrug, to be as near the
Phoenix as possible.

'You'll boil your brains,' it said. 'Look out, I'm nearly cool
now;' and with a whirr of golden wings it fluttered from the fender
to the table. It was so nearly cool that there was only a very
faint smell of burning when it had settled itself on the
table-cloth.

'It's only a very little scorched,' said the Phoenix,
apologetically; 'it will come out in the wash. Please go on
reading.'

The children gathered round the table.

'The size of an eagle,' Cyril went on, 'its head finely crested
with a beautiful plumage, its neck covered with feathers of a gold
colour, and the rest of its body purple; only the tail white, and
the eyes sparkling like stars. They say that it lives about five
hundred years in the wilderness, and when advanced in age it builds
itself a pile of sweet wood and aromatic gums, fires it with the
wafting of its wings, and thus burns itself; and that from its
ashes arises a worm, which in time grows up to be a Phoenix. Hence
the Phoenicians gave--'

'Never mind what they gave,' said the Phoenix, ruffling its golden
feathers. 'They never gave much, anyway; they always were people
who gave nothing for nothing. That book ought to be destroyed.
It's most inaccurate. The rest of my body was never purple, and as
for my--tail--well, I simply ask you, IS it white?'

It turned round and gravely presented its golden tail to the
children.

'No. it's not,' said everybody.

'No, and it never was,' said the Phoenix. 'And that about the worm
is just a vulgar insult. The Phoenix has an egg, like all
respectable birds. It makes a pile--that part's all right--and it
lays its egg, and it burns itself; and it goes to sleep and wakes
up in its egg, and comes out and goes on living again, and so on
for ever and ever. I can't tell you how weary I got of it--such a
restless existence; no repose.'

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