Miriam Gaines - "Grandfather's Love Pie"

Alexandre Dumas - "Le Capitaine Arena"

Hugh Walpole - "The Cathedral"

Louisa de la Rame) - "A Dog of Flanders"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Magic City

E >> Edith Nesbit >> The Magic City




[Illustration: Philip felt that it was best to stop the car among the
suburban groves of southernwood.]

They said good-bye warmly to the Halma motor man, and went quietly
towards the town, Max and Brenda keeping to heel in the most
praiseworthy way, and the parrot nestling inside Philip's jacket, for it
was chilled by the long rush through the evening air.

And now the scattered houses and spacious gardens gave place to the
streets of Polistopolis, the capital of the kingdom. And the streets
were strangely deserted. The children both felt--in that quite certain
and unexplainable way--that it would be unwise of them to go to the
place where they had slept the last time they were in that city.

The whole party was very tired. Max walked with drooping tail, and
Brenda was whining softly to herself from sheer weariness and
weak-mindedness. The parrot alone was happy--or at least contented.
Because it was asleep.

At the corner of a little square planted with southernwood-trees in
tubs, Philip called a halt.

'Where shall we go?' he said; 'let us put it to the vote.'

And even as he spoke, he saw a dark form creeping along in the shadow of
the houses.

'Who goes there?' Philip cried with proper spirit, and the answer
surprised him, all the more that it was given with a kind of desperate
bravado.

'I go here; I, Plumbeus, Captain of the old Guard of Polistopolis.'

'Oh, it's you!' cried Philip; 'I _am_ glad. You can advise us. Where can
we go to sleep? Somehow or other I don't care to go to the house where
we stayed before.'

The captain made no answer. He simply caught at the hands of Lucy and
Philip, dragged them through a low arched doorway and, as soon as the
long lengths of Brenda and Max had slipped through, closed the door.

'Safe,' he said in a breathless way, which made Philip feel that safety
was the last thing one could count on at that moment.

'Now, speak low, who knows what spies may be listening? I am a plain
man. I speak as I think. You came out of the unknown. You may be the
Deliverer or the Destroyer. But I am a judge of faces--always was from
a boy--and I cannot believe that this countenance of apple-cheeked
innocence is that of a Destroyer.'

Philip was angry and Lucy was furious. So he said nothing. And she said:

'Apple-cheeked yourself!' which was very rude.

'I see that you are annoyed,' said the captain in the dark, where, of
course, he could see nothing; 'but in calling your friend apple-cheeked
I was merely offering the highest compliment in my power. The absence of
fruit in this city is, I suppose, the reason why our compliments are
like that. I believe poets say "sweet as a rose"--_we_ say "sweet as an
orange." May I be allowed unreservedly to apologise?'

'Oh, that's all right,' said Philip awkwardly.

'And to ask whether you _are_ the Deliverer?'

'I hope so,' said Philip modestly.

'Of course he is,' said the parrot, putting its head out from the front
of Philip's jacket; 'and he has done six deeds out of the seven
already.'

'It is time that deeds were done here,' said the captain. 'I'll make a
light and get you some supper. I'm in hiding here; but the walls are
thick and all the shutters are shut.'

He bolted a door and opened the slide of a dark lantern.

'Some of us have taken refuge in the old prison,' he said; 'it's never
used, you know, so her spies don't infest it as they do every other part
of the city.'

'Whose spies?'

'The Destroyer's,' said the captain, getting bread and milk out of a
cupboard; 'at least, if you're the Deliverer she must be that. But she
says she's the Deliverer.'

He lighted candles and set them on the table as Lucy asked eagerly:

'What Destroyer? Is it a horrid woman in a motor veil?'

'You've guessed it,' said the captain gloomily.

'It's that Pretenderette,' said Philip. 'Does Mr. Noah know? What has
she been doing?'

'Everything you can think of,' said the captain; 'she says she's Queen,
and that she's done the seven deeds. And Mr. Noah doesn't know, because
she's set a guard round the city, and no message can get out or in.'

'The Hippogriff?' said Lucy.

'Yes, of course I thought of that,' said the captain. 'And so did she.
She's locked it up and thrown the key into one of the municipal wells.'

'But why do the guards obey her?' Philip asked.

'They're not _our_ guards, of course,' the captain answered. 'They're
strange soldiers that she got out of a book. She got the people to pull
down the Hall of Justice by pretending there was fruit in the gigantic
books it's built with. And when the book was opened these soldiers came
marching out. The Sequani and the Aedui they call themselves. And when
you've finished supper we ought to hold a council. There are a lot of us
here. All sorts. Distinctions of rank are forgotten in times of public
peril.'

Some twenty or thirty people presently gathered in that round room from
whose windows Philip and Lucy had looked out when they were first
imprisoned. There were indeed all sorts, match-servants, domino-men,
soldiers, china-men, Mr. Noah's three sons and his wife, a pirate and a
couple of sailors.

'What book,' Philip asked Lucy in an undertone, 'did she get these
soldiers out of?'

'Caesar, I think,' said Lucy. 'And I'm afraid it was my fault. I
remember telling her about the barbarians and the legions and things
after father had told me--when she was my nurse, you know. She's very
clever at thinking of horrid things to do, isn't she?'

The council talked for two hours, and nobody said anything worth
mentioning. When every one was quite tired out, every one went to bed.

It was Philip who woke in the night in the grasp of a sudden idea.

'What is it?' asked Max, rousing himself from his warm bed at Philip's
feet.

'I've thought of something,' said Philip in a low excited voice. 'I'm
going to have a night attack.'

'Shall I wake the others?' asked Max, ever ready to oblige.

Philip thought a moment. Then:

'No,' he said, 'it's rather dangerous; and besides I want to do it all
by myself. Lucy's done more than her share already. Look out, Max; I'm
going to get up and go out.'

He got up and he went out. There was a faint greyness of dawn now which
showed him the great square of the city on which he and Lucy had looked
from the prison window, a very long time ago as it seemed. He found
without difficulty the ruins of the Hall of Justice.

And among the vast blocks scattered on the ground was one that seemed of
grey marble, and bore on its back in gigantic letters of gold the words
_De Bello Gallico_.

Philip stole back to the prison and roused the captain.

'I want twenty picked men,' he said, 'without boots--and at once.'

He got them, and he led them to the ruins of the Justice Hall.

'Now,' he said, 'raise the cover of this book; only the cover, not any
of the pages.'

The men set their shoulders to the marble slab that was the book's cover
and heaved it up. And as it rose on their shoulders Philip spoke softly,
urgently.

'Caesar,' he said, 'Caesar!'

And a voice answered from under the marble slab.

'Who calls?' it said. 'Who calls upon Julius Caesar?'

And from the space below the slab, as it were from a marble tomb, a thin
figure stepped out, clothed in toga and cloak and wearing on its head a
crown of bays.

'_I_ called,' said Philip in a voice that trembled a little. 'There's no
one but you who can help. The barbarians of Gaul hold this city. I call
on great Caesar to drive them away. No one else can help us.'

Caesar stood for a moment silent in the grey twilight. Then he spoke.

'I will do it,' he said; 'you have often tried to master Caesar and
always failed. Now you shall be no more ashamed of that failure, for you
shall see Caesar's power. Bid your slaves raise the leaves of my book to
the number of fifteen.'

It was done, and Caesar turned towards the enormous open book.

'Come forth!' he said. 'Come forth, my legions!'

Then something in the book moved suddenly, and out of it, as out of an
open marble tomb, came long lines of silent armed men, ranged themselves
in ranks, and, passing Caesar, saluted. And still more came, and more
and more, each with the round shield and the shining helmet and the
javelins and the terrible short sword. And on their backs were the
packages they used to carry with them into war.

'The Barbarians of Gaul are loose in this city,' said the voice of the
great commander; 'drive them before you once more as you drove them of
old.'

'Whither, O Caesar?' asked one of the Roman generals.

'Drive them, O Titus Labienus,' said Caesar, 'back into that book
wherein I set them more than nineteen hundred years ago, and from which
they have dared to escape. Who is their leader?' he asked of Philip.

'The Pretenderette,' said Philip; 'a woman in a motor veil.'

'Caesar does not war with women,' said the man in the laurel crown; 'let
her be taken prisoner and brought before me.'

Low-voiced, the generals of Caesar's army gave their commands, and with
incredible quietness the army moved away, spreading itself out in all
directions.

'She has caged the Hippogriff,' said Philip; 'the winged horse, and we
want to send him with a message.'

'See that the beast is freed,' said Caesar, and turned to Plumbeus the
captain. 'We be soldiers together,' he said. 'Lead me to the main gate.
It is there that the fight will be fiercest.' He laid a hand on the
captain's shoulder, and at the head of the last legion, Caesar and the
captain of the soldiers marched to the main gate.




CHAPTER XII

THE END


Philip tore back to the prison, to be met at the door by Lucy.

'I hate you,' she said briefly, and Philip understood.

'I couldn't help it,' he said; 'I did want to do something by myself.'

And Lucy understood.

'And besides,' he said, 'I was coming back for you. Don't be snarky
about it, Lu. I've called up Caesar himself. And you shall see him
before he goes back into the book. Come on; if we're sharp we can hide
in the ruins of the Justice Hall and see everything. I noticed there was
a bit of the gallery left standing. Come on. I want you to think what
message to send by the Hippogriff to Mr. Noah.'

'Oh, you needn't trouble about that,' said Lucy in an off-hand manner.
'I sent the parrot off _ages_ ago.'

'And you never told me! Then I think that's quits; don't you?'

Lucy had a short struggle with herself (you know those unpleasant and
difficult struggles, I am sure!) and said:

'Right-o!'

And together they ran back to the Justice Hall.

The light was growing every moment, and there was now a sound of
movement in the city. Women came down to the public fountains to draw
water, and boys swept the paths and doorsteps. That sort of work goes on
even when barbarians are surrounding a town. And the ordinary sounds of
a town's awakening came to Lucy and Philip as they waited; crowing cocks
and barking dogs and cats mewing faintly for the morning milk. But it
was not for those sounds that Lucy and Philip were waiting.

So through those homely and familiar sounds they listened, listened,
listened; and very gradually, so that they could neither of them have
said at any moment 'Now it has begun,' yet quite beyond mistake the
sound for which they listened was presently loud in their ears. And it
was the sound of steel on steel; the sound of men shouting in the
breathless moment between sword-stroke and sword-stroke; the cry of
victory and the wail of defeat.

And, presently, the sound of feet that ran.

And now a man shot out from a side street and ran across the square
towards the Palace of Justice where Lucy and Philip were hidden in the
gallery. And now another and another all running hard and making for the
ruined hall as hunted creatures make for cover. Rough, big, blond, their
long hair flying behind them, and their tunics of beast-skins flapping
as they ran, the barbarians fled before the legions of Caesar. The great
marble-covered book that looked like a marble tomb was still open, its
cover and fifteen leaves propped up against the tall broken columns of
the gateway of the Justice Hall. Into that open book leapt the first
barbarian, leapt and vanished, and the next after him and the next, and
then, by twos and threes and sixes and sevens, they leapt in and
disappeared, amid gasping and shouting and the nearing sound of the
bucina and of the trumpets of Rome.

Then from all quarters of the city the Roman soldiers came trooping, and
as the last of the barbarians plunged headlong into the open book, the
Romans formed into ordered lines and waited, while a man might count
ten. Then, advancing between their ranks, came the spare form and thin
face of the man with the laurel crown.

[Illustration: They leapt in and disappeared.]

Twelve thousand swords flashed in air and wavered a little like reeds in
the breeze, then steadied themselves, and the shout went up from twelve
thousand throats:

'Ave Caesar!'

And without haste and without delay the Romans filed through the ruins
to the marble-covered book, and two by two entered it and disappeared.
Each as he passed the mighty conqueror saluted him with proud mute
reverence.

When the last soldier was hidden in the book, Caesar looked round him, a
little wistfully.

'I must speak to him; I must,' Lucy cried; 'I _must_. Oh, what a darling
he is!'

She ran down the steps from the gallery and straight to Caesar. He
smiled when she reached him, and gently pinched her ear. Fancy going
through the rest of your life hearing all the voices of the world
through an ear that has been pinched by Caesar!

'Oh, thank you! thank you!' said Philip; 'how splendid you are. I'll
swot up my Latin like anything next term, so as to read about you.'

'Are they all in?' Lucy asked. 'I do hope nobody was hurt.'

Caesar smiled.

'A most unreasonable wish, my child, after a great battle!' he said.
'But for once the unreasonable is the inevitable. Nobody was hurt. You
see it was necessary to get every man back into the book just as he left
it, or what would the schoolmasters have done? There remain now only my
own guard who have in charge the false woman who let loose the
barbarians. And here they come.'

Surrounded by a guard with drawn swords the Pretenderette advanced
slowly.

'Hail, woman!' said Caesar.

'Hail, whoever you are!' said the Pretenderette very sulkily.

'I hail,' said Caesar, 'your courage.'

Philip and Lucy looked at each other. Yes, the Pretenderette had
courage: they had not thought of that before. All the attempts she had
made against them--she alone in a strange land--yes, these needed
courage.

'And I demand to know how you came here?'

'When I found he'd been at his building again,' she said, pointing a
contemptuous thumb at Philip, 'I was just going to pull it down, and I
knocked down a brick or two with my sleeve, and not thinking what I was
doing I built them up again; and then I got a bit giddy and the whole
thing seemed to begin to grow--candlesticks and bricks and dominoes and
everything, bigger and bigger and bigger, and I looked in. It was as big
as a church by this time, and I saw that boy losing his way among the
candlestick pillars, and I followed him and I listened. And I thought I
could be as good a Deliverer as anybody else. And the motor veil that I
was going to catch the 2.37 train in was a fine disguise.'

'You tried to injure the children,' Caesar reminded her.

'I don't want to say anything to make you let me off,' said the
Pretenderette, 'but at the beginning I didn't think any of it was real.
I thought it was a dream. You can let your evil passions go in a dream
and it don't hurt any one.'

'It hurts you,' Caesar said.

'Oh! that's no odds,' said the Pretenderette scornfully.

'You sought to injure and confound the children at every turn,' said
Caesar, 'even when you found that things were real.'

'I saw there was a chance of being Queen,' said the Pretenderette, 'and
I took it. Seems to me you've no occasion to talk if you're Julius
Caesar, the same as the bust in the library. You took what you could get
right enough in your time, when all's said and done.'

'I hail,' said Caesar again, 'your courage.'

'You needn't trouble,' she said, tossing her head; 'my game's up now,
and I'll speak my mind if I die for it. You don't understand. You've
never been a servant, to see other people get all the fat and you all
the bones. What you think it's like to know if you'd just been born in a
gentleman's mansion instead of in a model workman's dwelling you'd have
been brought up as a young lady and had the openwork silk stockings and
the lace on your under-petticoats.'

'You go too deep for me,' said Caesar, with the ghost of a smile. 'I now
pronounce your sentence. But life has pronounced on you a sentence worse
than any I can give you. Nobody loves you.'

'Oh, you old silly,' said the Pretenderette in a burst of angry tears,
'don't you see that's just why everything's happened?'

'You are condemned,' said Caesar calmly, 'to make yourself beloved. You
will be taken to Briskford, where you will teach the Great Sloth to like
his work and keep him awake for eight play-hours a day. In the intervals
of your toil you must try to get fond of some one. The Halma people are
kind and gentle. You will not find them hard to love. And when the Great
Sloth loves his work and the Halma people are so fond of you that they
feel they cannot bear to lose you, your penance will be over and you can
go where you will.'

'You know well enough,' said the Pretenderette, still tearful and
furious, 'that if that ever happened I shouldn't want to go anywhere
else.'

'Yes,' said Caesar slowly, 'I know.'

Lucy would have liked to kiss the Pretenderette and say she was sorry,
but you can't do that when it is all other people's fault and _they_
aren't sorry. And besides, before all these people, it would have looked
like showing off. You know, I am sure, exactly how Lucy felt.

The Pretenderette was led away. And now Caesar stood facing the
children, his hands held out in farewell. The growing light of early
morning transfigured his face, and to Philip it suddenly seemed to be
most remarkably like the face of That Man, Mr. Peter Graham, whom Helen
had married. He was just telling himself not to be a duffer when Lucy
cried out in a loud cracked-sounding voice, 'Daddy, oh, Daddy!' and
sprang forward.

And at that moment the sun rose above the city wall, and its rays
gleamed redly on the helmet and the breastplate and the shield and the
sword of Caesar. The light struck at the children's eyes like a blow.
Dazzled, they closed their eyes and when they opened them, blinking and
confused, Caesar was gone and the marble book was closed--for ever.

. . . . . . .

Three days later Mr. Noah arrived by elephant, and the meeting between
him and the children is, as they say, better imagined than described.
Especially as there is not much time left now for describing anything.
Mr. Noah explained that the freeing of Polistopolis from the
Pretenderette and the barbarians counted as the seventh deed and that
Philip had now attained the rank of King, the deed of the Great Sloth
having given him the title of Prince of Pine-apples. His expression of
gratitude and admiration were of the warmest, and Philip felt that it
was rather ungrateful of him to say, as he couldn't help saying:

'Now I've done all the deeds, mayn't I go back to Helen?'

'All in good time,' said Mr. Noah; 'I will at once set about the
arrangements for your coronation.'

The coronation was an occasion of unexampled splendour. There was a
banquet (of course) and fireworks, and all the guns fired salutes and
the soldiers presented arms, and the ladies presented bouquets. And at
the end Mr. Noah, with a few well-chosen words which brought tears to
all eyes, placed the gold crown of Polistarchia upon the brow of Philip,
where its diamonds and rubies shone dazzlingly.

There was an extra crown for Lucy, made of silver and pearls and pale
silvery moonstones.

You have no idea how the Polistarchians shouted.

'And now,' said Mr. Noah when it was all over, 'I regret to inform you
that we must part. Polistarchia is a Republic, and of course in a
republic kings and queens are not permitted to exist. Partings are
painful things. And you had better go at once.'

He was plainly very much upset.

'This is very sudden,' said Philip.

And Lucy said, 'I do think it's silly. How shall we get home? All in a
hurry, like this?'

'How did you get here?'

'By building a house and getting into it.'

'Then build your own house. Oh, we have models of all the houses you
were ever in. The pieces are all numbered. You only have to put them
together.'

He led them to a large room behind the hall of Public Amusements and
took down from a shelf a stout box labelled 'The Grange.' On another box
Philip saw 'Laburnum Cottage.'

Mr. Noah, kneeling on his yellow mat, tumbled the contents of the box
out on the floor, and Philip and Lucy set to work to build a house with
the exquisitely finished little blocks and stones and beams and windows
and chimneys.

'I cannot bear to see you go,' said Mr. Noah. 'Good-bye, good-bye.
Remember me sometimes!'

'We shall never forget you,' said the children, jumping up hugging him.

'Good-bye!' said the parrot who had followed them in.

'Good-bye, good-bye!' said everybody.

'I wish the _Lightning Loose_ was not lost,' Philip even at this parting
moment remembered to say.

'She isn't,' said Mr. Noah. 'She flew back to the island directly you
left her. Sails are called wings, are they not? White wings that never
grow weary, you know. Relieved of your weight, the faithful yacht flew
home like any pigeon.'

'Hooray!' said Philip. 'I couldn't bear to think of her rotting away in
a cavern.'

'I wish Max and Brenda had come to say good-bye,' said Lucy.

'It is not needed,' said Mr. Noah mysteriously. And then everybody said
good-bye again, and Mr. Noah rolled up his yellow mat, put it under his
arm again, and went--for ever.

The children built the Grange, and when the beautiful little model of
that house was there before them, perfect, they stood still a moment,
looking at it.

'I wish we could be two people each,' said Lucy, 'and one of each of us
go home and one of each of us stay here. Oh!' she cried suddenly, and
snatched at Philip's arm. For a slight strange giddiness had suddenly
caught her. Philip too swayed a little uncertainly and stood a moment
with his hand to his head. The children gazed about them bewildered and
still a little giddy. The room was gone, the model of the Grange was
gone. Over their heads was blue sky, under their feet was green grass,
and in front stood the Grange itself, with its front door wide open and
on the steps Helen and Mr. Peter Graham.

That telegram had brought them home.

. . . . . . .

You will wonder how Lucy explained where she had been when she was lost.
She never did explain. There are some things, as you know, that cannot
be explained. But the curious thing is that no one ever asked for an
explanation. The grown-ups must have thought they knew all about it,
which, of course, was very far from being the truth.

When the four people on the doorstep of the Grange had finished saying
how glad they were to see each other--that day on the steps when Philip
and Lucy came back from Polistarchia, Helen and Mr. Peter Graham came
back from Belgium--Helen said:

'And we've brought you each the loveliest present. Fetch them, Peter,
there's a dear.'

Mr. Peter Graham went to the stable-yard and came back followed by two
long tan dachshunds, who rushed up to the children frisking and fawning
in a way they well knew.

'Why Max! why Brenda!' cried Philip. 'Oh, Helen! are they for us?'

'Yes, dear, of course they are,' said Helen; 'but how did you know their
names?'

That was one of the things which Philip could not tell, then.

But he told Helen the whole story later, and she said it was wonderful,
and how clever of him to make all that up, and that when he was a man he
would be able to be an author and to write books.

'And do you know,' she said, 'I _did_ dream about the island--quite a
long dream, only when I woke up I could only remember that I'd been
there and seen you. But no doubt I dreamed about Mr. Noah and all the
rest of it as well, only I forgot it.'

. . . . . . .

And Max and Brenda of course loved every one. Their characters were
quite unchanged. Only the children had forgotten the language of
animals, so that conversation between them and the dogs was for ever
impossible. But Max and Brenda understand every word you say--any one
can see that.

. . . . . . .

You want to know what became of the redheaded, steely-eyed nurse, the
Pretenderette, who made so much mischief and trouble? Well, I suppose
she is still living with the Halma folk, teaching the Great Sloth to
like his work and learning to be fond of people--which is the only way
to be happy. At any rate no one that I know of has ever seen her again
anywhere else.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.