The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit [me reader .TXT] 📗
- Author: E. Nesbit
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No one answered. The wage-system of modern England is a little difficult to explain in three words even if you understand it—which the children didn’t.
“You’ll have a revolt of your slaves if you’re not careful,” said the Queen.
“Oh, no,” said Cyril; “you see they have votes—that makes them safe not to revolt. It makes all the difference. Father told me so.”
“What is this vote?” asked the Queen. “Is it a charm? What do they do with it?”
“I don’t know,” said the harassed Cyril; “it’s just a vote, that’s all! They don’t do anything particular with it.”
“I see,” said the Queen; “a sort of plaything. Well, I wish that all these slaves may have in their hands this moment their fill of their favourite meat and drink.”
Instantly all the people in the Mile End Road, and in all the other streets where poor people live, found their hands full of things to eat and drink. From the cab window could be seen persons carrying every kind of food, and bottles and cans as well. Roast meat, fowls, red lobsters, great yellowy crabs, fried fish, boiled pork, beef-steak puddings, baked onions, mutton pies; most of the young people had oranges and sweets and cake. It made an enormous change in the look of the Mile End Road—brightened it up, so to speak, and brightened up, more than you can possibly imagine, the faces of the people.
“Makes a difference, doesn’t it?” said the Queen.
“That’s the best wish you’ve had yet,” said Jane with cordial approval.
Just by the Bank the cabman stopped.
“I ain’t agoin’ to drive you no further,” he said. “Out you gets.”
They got out rather unwillingly.
“I wants my tea,” he said; and they saw that on the box of the cab was a mound of cabbage, with pork chops and apple sauce, a duck, and a spotted currant pudding. Also a large can.
“You pay me my fare,” he said threateningly, and looked down at the mound, muttering again about his tea.
“We’ll take another cab,” said Cyril with dignity. “Give me change for a sovereign, if you please.”
But the cabman, as it turned out, was not at all a nice character. He took the sovereign, whipped up his horse, and disappeared in the stream of cabs and omnibuses and wagons, without giving them any change at all.
Already a little crowd was collecting round the party.
“Come on,” said Robert, leading the wrong way.
The crowd round them thickened. They were in a narrow street where many gentlemen in black coats and without hats were standing about on the pavement talking very loudly.
“How ugly their clothes are,” said the Queen of Babylon. “They’d be rather fine men, some of them, if they were dressed decently, especially the ones with the beautiful long, curved noses. I wish they were dressed like the Babylonians of my court.”
And of course, it was so.
The moment the almost fainting Psammead had blown itself out every man in Throgmorton Street appeared abruptly in Babylonian full dress.
All were carefully powdered, their hair and beards were scented and curled, their garments richly embroidered. They wore rings and armlets, flat gold collars and swords, and impossible-looking head-dresses.
A stupefied silence fell on them.
“I say,” a youth who had always been fair-haired broke that silence, “it’s only fancy of course—something wrong with my eyes—but you chaps do look so rum.”
“Rum,” said his friend. “Look at you. You in a sash! My hat! And your hair’s gone black and you’ve got a beard. It’s my belief we’ve been poisoned. You do look a jackape.”
“Old Levinstein don’t look so bad. But how was it done—that’s what I want to know. How was it done? Is it conjuring, or what?”
“I think it is chust a ver’ bad tream,” said old Levinstein to his clerk; “all along Bishopsgate I haf seen the gommon people have their hants full of food—goot food. Oh yes, without doubt a very bad tream!”
“Then I’m dreaming too, sir,” said the clerk, looking down at his legs with an expression of loathing. “I see my feet in beastly sandals as plain as plain.”
“All that goot food wasted,” said old Mr Levinstein. A bad tream—a bad tream.”
The Members of the Stock Exchange are said to be at all times a noisy lot. But the noise they made now to express their disgust at the costumes of ancient Babylon was far louder than their ordinary row. One had to shout before one could hear oneself speak.
“I only wish,” said the clerk who thought it was conjuring—he was quite close to the children and they trembled, because they knew that whatever he wished would come true. “I only wish we knew who’d done it.”
And, of course, instantly they did know, and they pressed round the Queen.
“Scandalous! Shameful! Ought to be put down by law. Give her in charge. Fetch the police,” two or three voices shouted at once.
The Queen recoiled.
“What is it?” she asked. “They sound like caged lions—lions by the thousand. What is it that they say?”
“They say ‘Police!’,” said Cyril briefly. “I knew they would sooner or later. And I don’t blame them, mind you.”
“I wish my guards were here!” cried the Queen. The exhausted Psammead was panting and trembling, but the Queen’s guards in red and green garments, and brass and iron gear, choked Throgmorton Street, and bared weapons flashed round the Queen.
“I’m mad,” said a Mr Rosenbaum; “dat’s what it is—mad!”
“It’s a judgement on you, Rosy,” said his partner. “I always said you were too hard in that matter of Flowerdew. It’s a judgement, and I’m in it too.”
The members of the Stock Exchange had edged carefully away from the gleaming blades, the mailed figures, the hard, cruel Eastern faces. But Throgmorton Street is narrow, and the crowd was too thick for them to get away as quickly as they wished.
“Kill them,” cried the Queen. “Kill the dogs!”
The guards obeyed.
“It is all a dream,” cried Mr Levinstein, cowering in a doorway behind his clerk.
“It isn’t,” said the clerk. “It isn’t. Oh, my good gracious! those foreign brutes are killing everybody. Henry Hirsh is down now, and Prentice is cut in two—oh, Lord! and Huth, and there goes Lionel Cohen with his head off, and Guy Nickalls has lost his head now. A dream? I wish to goodness it was all a dream.”
And, of course, instantly it was! The entire Stock Exchange rubbed its eyes and went back to close, to over, and either side of seven-eights, and Trunks, and Kaffirs, and Steel Common, and Contangoes, and Backwardations, Double Options, and all the interesting subjects concerning which they talk in the Street without ceasing.
No one said a word about it to anyone else. I think I have explained before that business men do not like it to be known that they have been dreaming in business hours. Especially mad dreams including such dreadful things as hungry people getting dinners, and the destruction of the Stock Exchange.
The children were in the dining-room at 300, Fitzroy Street, pale and trembling. The Psammead crawled out of the embroidered bag, and lay flat on the table, its leg stretched out, looking more like a dead hare than anything else.
“Thank Goodness that’s over,” said Anthea, drawing a deep breath.
“She won’t come back, will she?” asked Jane tremulously.
“No,” said Cyril. “She’s thousands of years ago. But we spent a whole precious pound on her. It’ll take all our pocket-money for ages to pay that back.”
“Not if it was all a dream,” said Robert. “The wish said all a dream, you know, Panther; you cut up and ask if he lent you anything.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Anthea politely, following the sound of her knock into the presence of the learned gentleman, “I’m so sorry to trouble you, but did you lend me a pound today?”
“No,” said he, looking kindly at her through his spectacles. “But it’s extraordinary that you should ask me, for I dozed for a few moments this afternoon, a thing I very rarely do, and I dreamed quite distinctly that you brought me a ring that you said belonged to the Queen of Babylon, and that I lent you a sovereign and that you left one of the Queen’s rings here. The ring was a magnificent specimen.” He sighed. “I wish it hadn’t been a dream,” he said smiling. He was really learning to smile quite nicely.
Anthea could not be too thankful that the Psammead was not there to grant his wish.
ATLANTIS
You will understand that the adventure of the Babylonian queen in London was the only one that had occupied any time at all. But the children’s time was very fully taken up by talking over all the wonderful things seen and done in the Past, where, by the power of the Amulet, they seemed to spend hours and hours, only to find when they got back to London that the whole thing had been briefer than a lightning flash.
They talked of the Past at their meals, in their walks, in the dining-room, in the first-floor drawing-room, but most of all on the stairs. It was an old house; it had once been a fashionable one, and was a fine one still. The banister rails of the stairs were excellent for sliding down, and in the corners of the landings were big alcoves that had once held graceful statues, and now quite often held the graceful forms of Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane.
One day Cyril and Robert in tight white underclothing had spent a pleasant hour in reproducing the attitudes of statues seen either in the British Museum, or in Father’s big photograph book. But the show ended abruptly because Robert wanted to be the Venus of Milo, and for this purpose pulled at the sheet which served for drapery at the very moment when Cyril, looking really quite like the Discobolos—with a gold and white saucer for the disc—was standing on one foot, and under that one foot was the sheet.
Of course the Discobolos and his disc and the would-be Venus came down together, and everyone was a good deal hurt, especially the saucer, which would never be the same again, however neatly one might join its uneven bits with Seccotine or the white of an egg.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” said Cyril, holding his head where a large lump was rising.
“Quite, thanks,” said Robert bitterly. His thumb had caught in the banisters and bent itself back almost to breaking point.
“I am so sorry, poor, dear Squirrel,” said Anthea; “and you were looking so lovely. I’ll get a wet rag. Bobs, go and hold your hand under the hot-water tap. It’s what ballet girls do with their legs when they hurt them. I saw it in a book.”
“What book?” said Robert disagreeably. But he went.
When he came back Cyril’s head had been bandaged by his sisters, and he had been brought to the state of mind where he was able reluctantly to admit that he supposed Robert hadn’t done it on purpose.
Robert replying with equal suavity, Anthea hastened to lead the talk away from the accident.
“I suppose you don’t feel like going anywhere through the Amulet,” she said.
“Egypt!” said Jane promptly. “I want to see the pussy cats.”
“Not me—too hot,” said Cyril. “It’s about as much as I can stand here—let alone Egypt.” It was indeed, hot, even on the second landing, which was the coolest place in the house. “Let’s go to the North Pole.”
“I don’t suppose the Amulet was ever there—and we might get our fingers frost-bitten so that we could never hold it up to get home again. No thanks,” said Robert.
“I say,” said Jane, “let’s get the Psammead and ask its advice. It will like us asking, even if we don’t take it.”
The Psammead was brought up in its green silk embroidered bag, but before it could be asked anything the door of the learned gentleman’s room opened and the voice of the visitor who had been lunching with him was heard on the stairs. He seemed to be speaking with the door handle in his hand.
“You see a doctor, old boy,” he said; “all that about thought-transference is just simply twaddle. You’ve been over-working. Take a holiday. Go to Dieppe.”
“I’d rather go to Babylon,” said the learned gentleman.
“I wish you’d go to Atlantis some time, while we’re about it, so as to give me some tips for my Nineteenth Century article when you come home.”
“I wish I could,” said the voice of the learned gentleman.
“Goodbye. Take care of yourself.”
The door was banged, and the visitor came smiling down the stairs—a stout, prosperous, big man. The children had to get up to let him pass.
“Hullo, Kiddies,” he said, glancing at the bandages on the head of Cyril and the hand
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