The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit [free ebook reader for iphone txt] 📗

said the Priest, “what things undreamed-of and infinitely desirable lie beyond the dark gates?”

“Oh, don’t,” said Jane, almost whimpering.

The learned gentleman raised his head suddenly.

“Why not,” he suggested, “go back into the Past? At a moment when the Amulet is unwatched. Wish to be with it, and that it shall be under your hand.”

It was the simplest thing in the world! And yet none of them had ever thought of it.

“Come,” cried Rekh-marā, leaping up. “Come now!”

“May⁠—may I come?” the learned gentleman timidly asked. “It’s only a dream, you know.”

“Come, and welcome, oh brother,” Rekh-marā was beginning, but Cyril and Robert with one voice cried, “No.’

“You weren’t with us in Atlantis,” Robert added, “or you’d know better than to let him come.”

“Dear Jimmy,” said Anthea, “please don’t ask to come. We’ll go and be back again before you have time to know that we’re gone.”

“And he, too?”

“We must keep together,” said Rekh-marā, “since there is but one perfect Amulet to which I and these children have equal claims.”

Jane held up the Amulet⁠—Rekh-marā went first⁠—and they all passed through the great arch into which the Amulet grew at the Name of Power.

The learned gentleman saw through the arch a darkness lighted by smoky gleams. He rubbed his eyes. And he only rubbed them for ten seconds.

The children and the Priest were in a small, dark chamber. A square doorway of massive stone let in gleams of shifting light, and the sound of many voices chanting a slow, strange hymn. They stood listening. Now and then the chant quickened and the light grew brighter, as though fuel had been thrown on a fire.

“Where are we?” whispered Anthea.

“And when?” whispered Robert.

“This is some shrine near the beginnings of belief,” said the Egyptian shivering. “Take the Amulet and come away. It is cold here in the morning of the world.”

And then Jane felt that her hand was on a slab or table of stone, and, under her hand, something that felt like the charm that had so long hung round her neck, only it was thicker. Twice as thick.

“It’s here!” she said, “I’ve got it!” And she hardly knew the sound of her own voice.

“Come away,” repeated Rekh-marā.

“I wish we could see more of this Temple,” said Robert resistingly.

“Come away,” the Priest urged, “there is death all about, and strong magic. Listen.”

The chanting voices seemed to have grown louder and fiercer, and light stronger.

“They are coming!” cried Rekh-marā. “Quick, quick, the Amulet!”

Jane held it up.

“What a long time you’ve been rubbing your eyes!” said Anthea; “don’t you see we’ve got back?” The learned gentleman merely stared at her.

“Miss Anthea⁠—Miss Jane!” It was Nurse’s voice, very much higher and squeaky and more exalted than usual.

“Oh, bother!” said everyone. Cyril adding, “You just go on with the dream for a sec, Mr. Jimmy, we’ll be back directly. Nurse’ll come up if we don’t. She wouldn’t think Rekh-marā was a dream.”

Then they went down. Nurse was in the hall, an orange envelope in one hand, and a pink paper in the other.

“Your Pa and Ma’s come home. ‘Reach London 11:15. Prepare rooms as directed in letter,’ and signed in their two names.”

“Oh, hooray! hooray! hooray!” shouted the boys and Jane. But Anthea could not shout, she was nearer crying.

“Oh,” she said almost in a whisper, “then it was true. And we have got our hearts’ desire.”

“But I don’t understand about the letter,” Nurse was saying. “I haven’t had no letter.”

“Oh!” said Jane in a queer voice, “I wonder whether it was one of those⁠ ⁠… they came that night⁠—you know, when we were playing ‘devil in the dark’⁠—and I put them in the hatstand drawer, behind the clothes-brushes and”⁠—she pulled out the drawer as she spoke⁠—“and here they are!”

There was a letter for Nurse and one for the children. The letters told how Father had done being a war-correspondent and was coming home; and how Mother and The Lamb were going to meet him in Italy and all come home together; and how The Lamb and Mother were quite well; and how a telegram would be sent to tell the day and the hour of their homecoming.

“Mercy me!” said old Nurse. “I declare if it’s not too bad of you, Miss Jane. I shall have a nice to-do getting things straight for your Pa and Ma.”

“Oh, never mind, Nurse,” said Jane, hugging her; “isn’t it just too lovely for anything!”

“We’ll come and help you,” said Cyril. “There’s just something upstairs we’ve got to settle up, and then we’ll all come and help you.”

“Get along with you,” said old Nurse, but she laughed jollily. “Nice help you’d be. I know you. And it’s ten o’clock now.”

There was, in fact, something upstairs that they had to settle. Quite a considerable something, too. And it took much longer than they expected.

A hasty rush into the boys’ room secured the Psammead, very sandy and very cross.

“It doesn’t matter how cross and sandy it is though,” said Anthea, “it ought to be there at the final council.”

“It’ll give the learned gentleman fits, I expect,” said Robert, “when he sees it.”

But it didn’t.

“The dream is growing more and more wonderful,” he exclaimed, when the Psammead had been explained to him by Rekh-marā. “I have dreamed this beast before.”

“Now,” said Robert, “Jane has got the half Amulet and I’ve got the whole. Show up, Jane.”

Jane untied the string and laid her half Amulet on the table, littered with dusty papers, and the clay cylinders marked all over with little marks like the little prints of birds’ little feet.

Robert laid down the whole Amulet, and Anthea gently restrained the eager hand of the learned gentleman as it reached out yearningly towards the “perfect specimen.”

And then, just as before on the Marcella quilt, so now on the dusty litter of papers and curiosities, the half Amulet quivered and shook, and then, as steel is drawn to a magnet, it was drawn across the dusty manuscripts, nearer and nearer to the perfect Amulet, warm from the pocket of Robert.