The Phoenix and the Carpet, E. Nesbit [best summer reads .TXT] 📗

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.’