THE MAGIC CITY (Illustrated Edition). Эдит Несбит
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'but people can't be deliverers just because they'd much rather, you know.'
'And isn't any one to come up the ladder bridge except just those two?'
'We don't know; that's just it. You know what prophecies are.'
'I'm afraid I don't—exactly.'
'So vague and mixed up, I mean. The one I'm telling you about goes something like this.
Who comes up the ladder stair?
Beware, beware,
Steely eyes and copper hair
Strife and grief and pain to bear
All come up the ladder stair.
You see we can't tell whether that means one person or a lot of people with steely eyes and copper hair.'
'My hair's just plain boy-colour,' said Philip; 'my sister says so, and my eyes are blue, I believe.'
'I can't see in this light;' the captain leaned his elbows on the table and looked earnestly in the boy's eyes. 'No, I can't see. The other prophecy goes:
From down and down and very far down
The king shall come to take his own;
He shall deliver the Magic town,
And all that he made shall be his own.
Beware, take care. Beware, prepare,
The king shall come by the ladder stair.
'How jolly,' said Philip; 'I love poetry. Do you know any more?'
'There are heaps of prophecies of course,' said the captain; 'the astrologers must do something to earn their pay. There's rather a nice one:
Every night when the bright stars blink
The guards shall turn out, and have a drink
As the clock strikes two.
And every night when no stars are seen
The guards shall drink in their own canteen
When the clock strikes two.
To-night there aren't any stars, so we have the drinks served here. It's less trouble than going across the square to the canteen, and the principle's the same. Principle is the great thing with a prophecy, my boy.'
'Yes,' said Philip. And then the far-away bell beat again. One, two. And outside was a light patter of feet.
A soldier rose—saluted his officer and threw open the door. There was a moment's pause; Philip expected some one to come in with a tray and glasses, as they did at his great-uncle's when gentlemen were suddenly thirsty at times that were not meal-times.
But instead, after a moment's pause, a dozen greyhounds stepped daintily in on their padded cat-like feet; and round the neck of each dog was slung a roundish thing that looked like one of the little barrels which St. Bernard dogs wear round their necks in the pictures. And when these were loosened and laid on the table Philip was charmed to see that the roundish things were not barrels but cocoa-nuts.
The soldiers reached down some pewter pots from a high shelf—pierced the cocoa-nuts with their bayonets and poured out the cocoa-nut milk. They all had drinks, so the prophecy came true, and what is more they gave Philip a drink as well. It was delicious, and there was as much of it as he wanted. I have never had as much cocoa-nut milk as I wanted. Have you?
Then the hollow cocoa-nuts were tied on to the dogs' necks again and out they went, slim and beautiful, two by two, wagging their slender tails, in the most amiable and orderly way.
'They take the cocoa-nuts to the town kitchen,' said the captain, 'to be made into cocoa-nut ice for the army breakfast; waste not want not, you know. We don't waste anything here, my boy.' Philip had quite got over his snubbing. He now felt that the captain was talking with him as man to man. Helen had gone away and left him; well, he was learning to do without Helen. And he had got away from the Grange, and Lucy, and that nurse. He was a man among men. And then, just as he was feeling most manly and important, and quite equal to facing any number of judges, there came a little tap at the door of the guard-room, and a very little voice said:
'Oh, do please let me come in.'
Then the door opened slowly.
'Well, come in, whoever you are,' said the captain. And the person who came in was—Lucy. Lucy, whom Philip thought he had got rid of—Lucy, who stood for the new hateful life to which Helen had left him. Lucy, in her serge skirt and jersey, with her little sleek fair pig-tails, and that anxious 'I-wish-we-could-be-friends' smile of hers. Philip was furious. It was too bad.
'And who is this?' the captain was saying kindly.
'It's me—it's Lucy,' she said. 'I came up with him.'
She pointed to Philip. 'No manners,' thought Philip in bitterness.
'No, you didn't,' he said shortly.
'I did—I was close behind you when you were climbing the ladder bridge. And I've been waiting alone ever since, when you were asleep and all. I knew he'd be cross when he knew I'd come,' she explained to the soldiers.
'I'm not cross,' said Philip very crossly indeed, but the captain signed to him to be silent. Then Lucy was questioned and her answers written in the book, and when that was done the captain said:
'So this little girl is a friend of yours?'
'No, she isn't,' said Philip violently; 'she's not my friend, and she never will be. I've seen her, that's all, and I don't want to see her again.'
'You are unkind,' said Lucy.
And then there was a grave silence, most unpleasant to Philip. The soldiers, he perceived, now looked coldly at him. It was all Lucy's fault. What did she want to come shoving in for, spoiling everything? Any one but a girl would have known that a guard-room wasn't the right place for a girl. He frowned and said nothing. Lucy had smuggled up against the captain's knee, and he was stroking her hair.
'Poor little woman,' he said. 'You must go to sleep now, so as to be rested before you go to the Hall of Justice in the morning.'
They made Lucy a bed of soldiers' cloaks laid on a bench; and bearskins are the best of pillows. Philip had a soldier's cloak and a bench, and a bearskin too—but what was the good? Everything was spoiled. If Lucy had not come the guard-room as a sleeping-place would have been almost as good as the tented field. But she had come, and the guard-room was no better now than any old night-nursery. And how had she known? How had she come? How had she made her way to that illimitable prairie where he had found the mysterious beginning of the ladder bridge? He went to sleep a bunched-up lump of prickly discontent and suppressed fury.
When he woke it was bright daylight, and a soldier was saying, 'Wake up, Trespassers. Breakfast——'
'How jolly,' thought Philip, 'to be having military breakfast.' Then he remembered Lucy, and hated her being there, and felt once more that she had spoiled everything.
I should not, myself, care for a breakfast of cocoa-nut ice, peppermint creams, apples, bread and butter and sweet milk. But the soldiers seemed to enjoy it. And it would have exactly suited Philip if he had not seen that Lucy was enjoying it too.
'I do hate greedy girls,' he told himself, for he was now in that state of black rage when you hate everything the person you are angry with does or says or is.
And now it was time to start for the Hall of Justice. The guard formed outside, and Philip noticed that each soldier stood on a sort of green mat. When the order to march was given, each soldier quickly and expertly rolled up his green mat and put it under his arm. And whenever they stopped, because of the crowd, each soldier unrolled his green mat, and stood on it till it was time to go on again. And they had to stop several times, for the crowd was very thick in the great squares and in the narrow streets of the city. It was a wonderful crowd. There were men and women and children in every sort of dress. Italian, Spanish, Russian; French peasants in blue blouses and wooden shoes, workmen