The Enchanted Castle, E. Nesbit [books to read fiction .txt] 📗

seemed to have “explained everything” quite fully; for when Gerald and Jimmy in marble whiteness arrived, each clinging to one of the god’s winged feet, and so borne through the air, they were certainly quite at ease. They made their best bows to the goddesses and took their places as unembarrassed as though they had had Olympian suppers every night of their lives. Hebe had woven wreaths of roses ready for them, and as Kathleen watched them eating and drinking, perfectly at home in their marble, she was very glad that amid the welling springs of immortal peach-juice she had not forgotten her brothers.

“And now,” said Hera, when the boys had been supplied with everything they could possibly desire, and more than they could eat⁠—“now for the story.”

“Yes,” said Mabel intensely; and Kathleen said, “Oh yes; now for the story. How splendid!”

“The story,” said Phoebus unexpectedly, “will be told by our guests.”

“Oh no!” said Kathleen, shrinking.

“The lads, maybe, are bolder,” said Zeus the king, taking off his rose-wreath, which was a little tight, and rubbing his compressed ears.

“I really can’t,” said Gerald; “besides, I don’t know any stories.”

“Nor yet me,” said Jimmy.

“It’s the story of how we got the ring that they want,” said Mabel in a hurry. “I’ll tell it if you like, Once upon a time there was a little girl called Mabel,” she added yet more hastily, and went on with the tale⁠—all the tale of the enchanted castle, or almost all, that you have read in these pages. The marble Olympians listened enchanted⁠—almost as enchanted as the castle itself, and the soft moonlit moments fell past like pearls dropping into a deep pool.

“And so,” Mabel ended abruptly, “Kathleen wished for the boys and the Lord Hermes fetched them and here we all are.”

A burst of interested comment and question blossomed out round the end of the story, suddenly broken off short by Mabel.

“But,” said she, brushing it aside, as it grew thinner, “now we want you to tell us.”

“To tell you⁠—?”

“How you come to be alive, and how you know about the ring⁠—and everything you do know.”

“Everything I know?” Phoebus laughed⁠—it was to him that she had spoken⁠—and not his lips only but all the white lips curled in laughter. “The span of your life, my earth-child, would not contain the words I should speak, to tell you all I know.”

“Well, about the ring anyhow, and how you come alive,” said Gerald; “you see, it’s very puzzling to us.”

“Tell them, Phoebus,” said the dearest lady in the world; “don’t tease the children.”

So Phoebus, leaning back against a heap of leopard-skins that Dionysus had lavishly plucked from a spruce fir, told.

“All statues,” he said, “can come alive when the moon shines, if they so choose. But statues that are placed in ugly cities do not choose. Why should they weary themselves with the contemplation of the hideous?”

“Quite so,” said Gerald politely, to fill the pause.

“In your beautiful temples,” the Sun-god went on, “the images of your priests and of your warriors who lie cross-legged on their tombs come alive and walk in their marble about their temples, and through the woods and fields. But only on one night in all the year can any see them. You have beheld us because you held the ring, and are of one brotherhood with us in your marble, but on that one night all may behold us.”

“And when is that?” Gerald asked, again polite, in a pause.

“At the festival of the harvest,” said Phoebes. “On that night as the moon rises it strikes one beam of perfect light on to the altar in certain temples. One of these temples is in Hellas, buried under the fall of a mountain which Zeus, being angry, hurled down upon it. One is in this land; it is in this great garden.”

“Then,” said Gerald, much interested, “if we were to come up to that temple on that night, we could see you, even without being statues or having the ring?”

“Even so,” said Phoebus. “More, any question asked by a mortal we are on that night bound to answer.”

“And the night is⁠—when?”

“Ah!” said Phoebus, and laughed. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

Then the great marble King of the Gods yawned, stroked his long beard, and said: “Enough of stories, Phoebus. Tune your lyre.”

“But the ring,” said Mabel in a whisper, as the Sun-god tuned the white strings of a sort of marble harp that lay at his feet⁠—“about how you know all about the ring?”

“Presently,” the Sun-god whispered back. “Zeus must be obeyed; but ask me again before dawn, and I will tell you all I know of it.” Mabel drew back, and leaned against the comfortable knees of one Demeter⁠—Kathleen and Psyche sat holding hands. Gerald and Jimmy lay at full length, chins on elbows, gazing at the Sun-god; and even as he held the lyre, before ever his fingers began to sweep the strings, the spirit of music hung in the air, enchanting, enslaving, silencing all thought but the thought of itself, all desire but the desire to listen to it.

Then Phoebus struck the strings and softly plucked melody from them, and all the beautiful dreams of all the world came fluttering close with wings like doves’ wings; and all the lovely thoughts that sometimes hover near, but not so near that you can catch them, now came home as to their nests in the hearts of those who listened. And those who listened forgot time and space, and how to be sad, and how to be naughty, and it seemed that the whole world lay like a magic apple in the hand of each listener, and that the whole world was good and beautiful.

And then, suddenly, the spell was shattered. Phoebus struck a broken chord, followed by an instant of silence; then he sprang up, crying, “The dawn! the dawn! To your pedestals, O gods!”

In an instant the whole crowd of beautiful marble people had leaped to its feet, had rushed through the