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Charles Dickens - "Some Christmas Stories"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot"

Elia W. Peattie - "A Mountain Woman"

William Morris - "A Dream of John Ball"

The Phoenix and the Carpet

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




Anthea was now ready to deceive her mother for as long as ever she
could. Deceit is very wrong, we know, but it seemed to Anthea that
it was her plain duty to keep her mother from being frightened
about the Lamb as long as possible. And the Phoenix might help.

'It always has helped,' Robert said; 'it got us out of the tower,
and even when it made the fire in the theatre it got us out all
right. I'm certain it will manage somehow.'

Mother's bell rang again.

'Oh, Eliza's never answered it,' cried Anthea; 'she never does.
Oh, I must go.'

And she went.

Her heart beat bumpingly as she climbed the stairs. Mother would
be certain to notice her eyes--well, her hand would account for
that. But the Lamb--

'No, I must NOT think of the Lamb, she said to herself, and bit her
tongue till her eyes watered again, so as to give herself something
else to think of. Her arms and legs and back, and even her
tear-reddened face, felt stiff with her resolution not to let
mother be worried if she could help it.

She opened the door softly.

'Yes, mother?' she said.

'Dearest,' said mother, 'the Lamb--'

Anthea tried to be brave. She tried to say that the Lamb and
Robert were out. Perhaps she tried too hard. Anyway, when she
opened her mouth no words came. So she stood with it open. It
seemed easier to keep from crying with one's mouth in that unusual
position.

'The Lamb,' mother went on; 'he was very good at first, but he's
pulled the toilet-cover off the dressing-table with all the brushes
and pots and things, and now he's so quiet I'm sure he's in some
dreadful mischief. And I can't see him from here, and if I'd got
out of bed to see I'm sure I should have fainted.'

'Do you mean he's HERE?' said Anthea.

'Of course he's here,' said mother, a little impatiently. 'Where
did you think he was?'

Anthea went round the foot of the big mahogany bed. There was a
pause.

'He's not here NOW,' she said.

That he had been there was plain, from the toilet-cover on the
floor, the scattered pots and bottles, the wandering brushes and
combs, all involved in the tangle of ribbons and laces which an
open drawer had yielded to the baby's inquisitive fingers.

'He must have crept out, then,' said mother; 'do keep him with you,
there's a darling. If I don't get some sleep I shall be a wreck
when father comes home.'

Anthea closed the door softly. Then she tore downstairs and burst
into the nursery, crying--

'He must have wished he was with mother. He's been there all the
time. "Aggety dag--"'

The unusual word was frozen on her lip, as people say in books.

For there, on the floor, lay the carpet, and on the carpet,
surrounded by his brothers and by Jane, sat the Lamb. He had
covered his face and clothes with vaseline and violet powder, but
he was easily recognizable in spite of this disguise.

'You are right,' said the Phoenix, who was also present; 'it is
evident that, as you say, "Aggety dag" is Bosh for "I want to be
where my mother is," and so the faithful carpet understood it.'

'But how,' said Anthea, catching up the Lamb and hugging him--'how
did he get back here?'

'Oh,' said the Phoenix, 'I flew to the Psammead and wished that
your infant brother were restored to your midst, and immediately it
was so.'

'Oh, I am glad, I am glad!' cried Anthea, still hugging the baby.
'Oh, you darling! Shut up, Jane! I don't care HOW much he comes
off on me! Cyril! You and Robert roll that carpet up and put it
in the beetle-cupboard. He might say "Aggety dag" again, and it
might mean something quite different next time. Now, my Lamb,
Panther'll clean you a little. Come on.'

'I hope the beetles won't go wishing,' said Cyril, as they rolled
up the carpet.


Two days later mother was well enough to go out, and that evening
the coconut matting came home. The children had talked and talked,
and thought and thought, but they had not found any polite way of
telling the Phoenix that they did not want it to stay any longer.

The days had been days spent by the children in embarrassment, and
by the Phoenix in sleep.

And, now the matting was laid down, the Phoenix awoke and fluttered
down on to it.

It shook its crested head.

'I like not this carpet,' it said; 'it is harsh and unyielding, and
it hurts my golden feet.'

'We've jolly well got to get used to its hurting OUR golden feet,'
said Cyril.

'This, then,' said the bird, 'supersedes the Wishing Carpet.'

'Yes,' said Robert, 'if you mean that it's instead of it.'

'And the magic web?' inquired the Phoenix, with sudden eagerness.

'It's the rag-and-bottle man's day to-morrow,' said Anthea, in a
low voice; 'he will take it away.'

The Phoenix fluttered up to its favourite perch on the chair-back.

'Hear me!' it cried, 'oh youthful children of men, and restrain
your tears of misery and despair, for what must be must be, and I
would not remember you, thousands of years hence, as base ingrates
and crawling worms compact of low selfishness.'

'I should hope not, indeed,' said Cyril.

'Weep not,' the bird went on; 'I really do beg that you won't weep.

I will not seek to break the news to you gently. Let the blow fall
at once. The time has come when I must leave you.'

All four children breathed forth a long sigh of relief.

'We needn't have bothered so about how to break the news to it,'
whispered Cyril.

'Ah, sigh not so,' said the bird, gently. 'All meetings end in
partings. I must leave you. I have sought to prepare you for
this. Ah, do not give way!'

'Must you really go--so soon?' murmured Anthea. It was what she
had often heard her mother say to calling ladies in the afternoon.

'I must, really; thank you so much, dear,' replied the bird, just
as though it had been one of the ladies.

'I am weary,' it went on. 'I desire to rest--after all the
happenings of this last moon I do desire really to rest, and I ask
of you one last boon.'

'Any little thing we can do,' said Robert.

Now that it had really come to parting with the Phoenix, whose
favourite he had always been, Robert did feel almost as miserable
as the Phoenix thought they all did.

'I ask but the relic designed for the rag-and-bottle man. Give me
what is left of the carpet and let me go.'

'Dare we?' said Anthea. 'Would mother mind?'

'I have dared greatly for your sakes,' remarked the bird.

'Well, then, we will,' said Robert.

The Phoenix fluffed out its feathers joyously.

'Nor shall you regret it, children of golden hearts,' it said.
'Quick--spread the carpet and leave me alone; but first pile high
the fire. Then, while I am immersed in the sacred preliminary
rites, do ye prepare sweet-smelling woods and spices for the last
act of parting.'

The children spread out what was left of the carpet. And, after
all, though this was just what they would have wished to have
happened, all hearts were sad. Then they put half a scuttle of
coal on the fire and went out, closing the door on the
Phoenix--left, at last, alone with the carpet.

'One of us must keep watch,' said Robert, excitedly, as soon as
they were all out of the room, 'and the others can go and buy sweet
woods and spices. Get the very best that money can buy, and plenty
of them. Don't let's stand to a threepence or so. I want it to
have a jolly good send-off. It's the only thing that'll make us
feel less horrid inside.'

It was felt that Robert, as the pet of the Phoenix, ought to have
the last melancholy pleasure of choosing the materials for its
funeral pyre.

'I'll keep watch if you like,' said Cyril. 'I don't mind. And,
besides, it's raining hard, and my boots let in the wet. You might
call and see if my other ones are "really reliable" again yet.'

So they left Cyril, standing like a Roman sentinel outside the door
inside which the Phoenix was getting ready for the great change,
and they all went out to buy the precious things for the last sad
rites.

'Robert is right,' Anthea said; 'this is no time for being careful
about our money. Let's go to the stationer's first, and buy a
whole packet of lead-pencils. They're cheaper if you buy them by
the packet.'

This was a thing that they had always wanted to do, but it needed
the great excitement of a funeral pyre and a parting from a beloved
Phoenix to screw them up to the extravagance.

The people at the stationer's said that the pencils were real
cedar-wood, so I hope they were, for stationers should always speak
the truth. At any rate they cost one-and-fourpence. Also they
spent sevenpence three-farthings on a little sandal-wood box inlaid
with ivory.

'Because,' said Anthea, 'I know sandalwood smells sweet, and when
it's burned it smells very sweet indeed.'

'Ivory doesn't smell at all,' said Robert, 'but I expect when you
burn it it smells most awful vile, like bones.'

At the grocer's they bought all the spices they could remember the
names of--shell-like mace, cloves like blunt nails, peppercorns,
the long and the round kind; ginger, the dry sort, of course; and
the beautiful bloom-covered shells of fragrant cinnamon. Allspice
too, and caraway seeds (caraway seeds that smelt most deadly when
the time came for burning them).

Camphor and oil of lavender were bought at the chemist's, and also
a little scent sachet labelled 'Violettes de Parme'.

They took the things home and found Cyril still on guard. When
they had knocked and the golden voice of the Phoenix had said 'Come
in,' they went in.

There lay the carpet--or what was left of it--and on it lay an egg,
exactly like the one out of which the Phoenix had been hatched.

The Phoenix was walking round and round the egg, clucking with joy
and pride.

'I've laid it, you see,' it said, 'and as fine an egg as ever I
laid in all my born days.'

Every one said yes, it was indeed a beauty.

The things which the children had bought were now taken out of
their papers and arranged on the table, and when the Phoenix had
been persuaded to leave its egg for a moment and look at the
materials for its last fire it was quite overcome.

'Never, never have I had a finer pyre than this will be. You shall
not regret it,' it said, wiping away a golden tear. 'Write
quickly: "Go and tell the Psammead to fulfil the last wish of the
Phoenix, and return instantly".'

But Robert wished to be polite and he wrote--

'Please go and ask the Psammead to be so kind as to fulfil the
Phoenix's last wish, and come straight back, if you please.'
The paper was pinned to the carpet, which vanished and returned in
the flash of an eye.

Then another paper was written ordering the carpet to take the egg
somewhere where it wouldn't be hatched for another two thousand
years. The Phoenix tore itself away from its cherished egg, which
it watched with yearning tenderness till, the paper being pinned
on, the carpet hastily rolled itself up round the egg, and both
vanished for ever from the nursery of the house in Camden Town.

'Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!' said everybody.

'Bear up,' said the bird; 'do you think _I_ don't suffer, being
parted from my precious new-laid egg like this? Come, conquer your
emotions and build my fire.'

'OH!' cried Robert, suddenly, and wholly breaking down, 'I can't
BEAR you to go!'

The Phoenix perched on his shoulder and rubbed its beak softly
against his ear.

'The sorrows of youth soon appear but as dreams,' it said.
'Farewell, Robert of my heart. I have loved you well.'

The fire had burnt to a red glow. One by one the spices and sweet
woods were laid on it. Some smelt nice and some--the caraway seeds
and the Violettes de Parme sachet among them--smelt worse than you
would think possible.

'Farewell, farewell, farewell, farewell!' said the Phoenix, in a
far-away voice.

'Oh, GOOD-BYE,' said every one, and now all were in tears.

The bright bird fluttered seven times round the room and settled in
the hot heart of the fire. The sweet gums and spices and woods
flared and flickered around it, but its golden feathers did not
burn. It seemed to grow red-hot to the very inside heart of
it--and then before the eight eyes of its friends it fell together,
a heap of white ashes, and the flames of the cedar pencils and the
sandal-wood box met and joined above it.


'Whatever have you done with the carpet?' asked mother next day.

'We gave it to some one who wanted it very much. The name began
with a P,' said Jane.

The others instantly hushed her.

'Oh, well, it wasn't worth twopence,' said mother.

'The person who began with P said we shouldn't lose by it,' Jane
went on before she could be stopped.

'I daresay!' said mother, laughing.

But that very night a great box came, addressed to the children by
all their names. Eliza never could remember the name of the
carrier who brought it. It wasn't Carter Paterson or the Parcels
Delivery.

It was instantly opened. It was a big wooden box, and it had to be
opened with a hammer and the kitchen poker; the long nails came
squeaking out, and boards scrunched as they were wrenched off.
Inside the box was soft paper, with beautiful Chinese patterns on
it--blue and green and red and violet. And under the paper--well,
almost everything lovely that you can think of. Everything of
reasonable size, I mean; for, of course, there were no motors or
flying machines or thoroughbred chargers. But there really was
almost everything else. Everything that the children had always
wanted--toys and games and books, and chocolate and candied
cherries and paint-boxes and photographic cameras, and all the
presents they had always wanted to give to father and mother and
the Lamb, only they had never had the money for them. At the very
bottom of the box was a tiny golden feather. No one saw it but
Robert, and he picked it up and hid it in the breast of his jacket,
which had been so often the nesting-place of the golden bird. When
he went to bed the feather was gone. It was the last he ever saw
of the Phoenix.

Pinned to the lovely fur cloak that mother had always wanted was a
paper, and it said--

'In return for the carpet. With gratitude.--P.'

You may guess how father and mother talked it over. They decided
at last the person who had had the carpet, and whom, curiously
enough, the children were quite unable to describe, must be an
insane millionaire who amused himself by playing at being a
rag-and-bone man. But the children knew better.

They knew that this was the fulfilment, by the powerful Psammead,
of the last wish of the Phoenix, and that this glorious and
delightful boxful of treasures was really the very, very, very end
of the Phoenix and the Carpet.

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