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Tatcho for had paraffin rubbed into them with a piece of flannel. Then the flannel was burned. It made a gay flame, which delighted the Phoenix and the Lamb.
‘How often,’ said Mother, opening the door – ‘how often am I to tell you that you are not to play with paraffin? What have you been doing?’
‘We have burnt a paraffiny rag,’ Anthea answered.
It was no use telling Mother what they had done to the carpet. She did not know it was a magic carpet, and no one wants to be laughed at for trying to mend an ordinary carpet with lamp-oil.
‘Well, don’t do it again,’ said Mother. ‘And now, away with melancholy! Father has sent a telegram. Look!’ She held it out, and the children, holding it by its yielding corners, read:
‘Box for kiddies at Garrick. Stalls for us, Haymarket. Meet Charing Cross, 6.30.’
‘That means,’ said Mother, ‘that you’re going to see “The Water Babies” all by your happy selves, and Father and I will take you and fetch you. Give me the Lamb, dear, and you and Jane put clean lace in your red evening frocks, and I shouldn’t wonder if you found they wanted ironing. This paraffin smell is ghastly. Run and get out your frocks.’
The frocks did want ironing – wanted it rather badly, as it happened; for, being of tomato-coloured Liberty silk, they had been found very useful for tableaux vivants when a red dress was required for Cardinal Richelieu. They were very nice tableaux, these, and I wish I could tell you about them; but one cannot tell everything in a story. You would have been specially interested in hearing about the tableau of the Princes in the Tower, when one of the pillows burst, and the youthful Princes were so covered with feathers that the picture might very well have been called ‘Michaelmas Eve; or, Plucking the Geese’.
Ironing the dresses and sewing the lace in occupied some time, and no one was dull, because there was the theatre to look forward to, and also the possible growth of hairs on the carpet, for which everyone kept looking anxiously. By four o’clock Jane was almost sure that several hairs were beginning to grow.
The Phoenix perched on the fender, and its conversation, as usual, was entertaining and instructive – like school prizes are said to be. But it seemed a little absent-minded, and even a little sad.
‘Don’t you feel well, Phoenix, dear?’ asked Anthea, stooping to take an iron off the fire.
‘I am not sick,’ replied the golden bird, with a gloomy shake of the head; ‘but I am getting old.’
‘Why, you’ve hardly been hatched any time at all.’
‘Time,’ remarked the Phoenix, ‘is measured by heartbeats. I’m sure the palpitations I’ve had since I’ve known you are enough to blanch the feathers of any bird.’
‘But I thought you lived 500 years,’ said Robert, ‘and you’ve hardly begun this set of years. Think of all the time that’s before you.’
‘Time,’ said the Phoenix, ‘is, as you are probably aware, merely a convenient fiction. There is no such thing as time. I have lived in these two months at a pace which generously counterbalances 500 years of life in the desert. I am old, I am weary. I feel as if I ought to lay my egg, and lay me down to my fiery sleep. But unless I’m careful I shall be hatched again instantly, and that is a misfortune which I really do not think I could endure. But do not let me intrude these desperate personal reflections on your youthful happiness. What is the show at the theatre tonight? Wrestlers? Gladiators? A combat of cameleopards and unicorns?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Cyril; ‘it’s called “The Water Babies”, and if it’s like the book there isn’t any gladiating in it. There are chimney-sweeps and professors, and a lobster and an otter and a salmon, and children living in the water.’
‘It sounds chilly.’ The Phoenix shivered, and went to sit on the tongs.
‘I don’t suppose there will be real water,’ said Jane. ‘And theatres are very warm and pretty, with a lot of gold and lamps. Wouldn’t you like to come with us?’
‘I was just going to say that,’ said Robert, in injured tones, ‘only I know how rude it is to interrupt. Do come, Phoenix, old chap; it will cheer you up. It’ll make you laugh like any thing. Mr Bourchier always makes ripping plays. You ought to have seen “Shock-headed Peter” last year.’
‘Your words are strange,’ said the Phoenix, ‘but I will come with you. The revels of this Bourchier, of whom you speak, may help me to forget the weight of my years.’
So that evening the Phoenix snugged inside the waistcoat of Robert’s Etons – a very tight fit it seemed both to Robert and to the Phoenix – and was taken to the play.
Robert had to pretend to be cold at the glittering, many-mirrored restaurant where they all had dinner, with Father in evening dress, with a very shiny white shirt-front, and Mother looking lovely in her grey evening dress, that changes into pink and green when she moves. Robert pretended that he was too cold to take off his great-coat, and so sat sweltering through what would otherwise have been a most thrilling meal. He felt that he was a blot on the smart beauty of the family, and he hoped the Phoenix knew what he was suffering for its sake. Of course, we are all pleased to suffer for the sake of others, but we like them to know it – unless we are the very best and noblest kind of people, and Robert was just ordinary.
Father was full of jokes and fun, and everyone laughed all the time, even with their mouths full, which is not manners. Robert thought Father would not have been quite so funny about his keeping his over-coat on if Father had known all the truth. And there Robert was probably right.
When dinner was finished to the last grape and the last paddle in the finger glasses – for it was a really truly grown-up dinner – the children were taken to the theatre, guided to a box close to the stage, and left.
Father’s parting words were: ‘Now, don’t you stir out of this box, whatever you do. I shall be back before the end of the play. Be good and you will be happy. Is this zone torrid enough for the abandonment of great-coats, Bobs? No? Well, then, I should say you were sickening for something – mumps or measles or thrush or teething. Goodbye.’
He went, and Robert was at last able to remove his coat, mop his perspiring brow, and release the crushed and dishevelled Phoenix. Robert had to arrange his damp hair at the looking-glass at the back of the box, and the Phoenix had to preen its disordered feathers for some time before either of them was fit to be seen.
They were very, very early. When the lights went up fully, the Phoenix, balancing itself on the gilded back of a chair, swayed in ecstasy.
‘How fair a scene is this!’ it murmured; ‘how far fairer than my temple! Or have I guessed aright? Have you brought me hither to lift up my heart with emotions of joyous surprise? Tell me, my Robert, is it not that this, this is my true temple, and the other was but a humble shrine frequented by outcasts?’
‘I don’t know about outcasts,’ said Robert, ‘but you can call this your temple if you like. Hush! the music is beginning.’
I am not going to tell you about the play. As I said before, one can’t tell everything, and no doubt you saw ‘The Water Babies’ yourselves. If you did not it was a shame, or, rather, a pity.
What I must tell you is that, though Cyril and Jane and Robert and Anthea enjoyed it as much as any children possibly could, the pleasure of the Phoenix was far, far greater than theirs.
‘This is indeed my temple,’ it said again and again. ‘What radiant rites! And all to do honour to me!’
The songs in the play it took to be hymns in its honour. The choruses were choric songs in its praise. The electric lights, it said, were magic torches lighted for its sake, and it was so charmed with the footlights that the children could hardly persuade it to sit still. But when the limelight was shown it could contain its approval no longer. It flapped its golden wings, and cried in a voice that could be heard all over the theatre: ‘Well done,