The Magic City

E >> Edith Nesbit >> The Magic City

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And the city grew, till it covered the table. Philip, unwearied, set
about to make another city on another table. This had for chief feature
a great water-tower, with a fountain round its base; and now he stopped
at nothing. He unhooked the crystal drops from the great chandeliers to
make his fountains. This city was grander than the first. It had a grand
tower made of a waste-paper basket and an astrologer's tower that was a
photograph-enlarging machine.

The cities were really very beautiful. I wish I could describe them
thoroughly to you. But it would take pages and pages. Besides all the
things I have told of alone there were towers and turrets and grand
staircases, pagodas and pavilions, canals made bright and water-like by
strips of silver paper, and a lake with a boat on it. Philip put into
his buildings all the things out of the doll's house that seemed
suitable. The wooden things-to-eat and dishes. The leaden tea-cups and
goblets. He peopled the place with dominoes and pawns. The handsome
chessmen were used for minarets. He made forts and garrisoned them with
lead soldiers.

He worked hard and he worked cleverly, and as the cities grew in beauty
and interestingness he loved them more and more. He was happy now. There
was no time to be unhappy in.

'I will keep it as it is till Helen comes. How she will _love_ it!' he
said.

The two cities were connected by a bridge which was a yard-stick he had
found in the servants' sewing-room and taken without hindrance, for by
this time all the servants were his friends. Susan had been the
first--that was all.

He had just laid his bridge in place, and put Mr. and Mrs. Noah in the
chief square to represent the inhabitants, and was standing rapt in
admiration of his work, when a hard hand on each of his shoulders made
him start and scream.

It was the nurse. She had come back a day sooner than any one expected
her. The brother had brought home a wife, and she and the nurse had not
liked each other; so she was very cross, and she took Philip by the
shoulders and shook him, a thing which had never happened to him before.

'You naughty, wicked boy!' she said, still shaking.

'But I haven't hurt anything--I'll put everything back,' he said,
trembling and very pale.

'You'll not touch any of it again,' said the nurse. 'I'll see to that. I
shall put everything away myself in the morning. Taking what doesn't
belong to you!'

'But you said I might take anything I liked,' said Philip, 'so if it's
wrong it's your fault.'

'You untruthful child!' cried the nurse, and hit him over the knuckles.
Now, no one had ever hit Philip before. He grew paler than ever, but he
did not cry, though his hands hurt rather badly. For she had snatched up
the yard-stick to hit him with, and it was hard and cornery.

'You are a coward,' said Philip, 'and it is you who are untruthful and
not me.'

'Hold your tongue,' said the nurse, and whirled him off to bed.

'You'll get no supper, so there!' she said, angrily tucking him up.

'I don't want any,' said Philip, 'and I have to forgive you before the
sun goes down.'

'Forgive, indeed!' said she, flouncing out.

'When you get sorry you'll know I've forgiven you,' Philip called after
her, which, of course, made her angrier than ever.

Whether Philip cried when he was alone is not our business. Susan, who
had watched the shaking and the hitting without daring to interfere,
crept up later with milk and sponge-cakes. She found him asleep, and she
says his eyelashes were wet.

When he awoke he thought at first that it was morning, the room was so
light. But presently he saw that it was not yellow sunlight but white
moonshine which made the beautiful brightness.

He wondered at first why he felt so unhappy, then he remembered how
Helen had gone away and how hateful the nurse had been. And now she
would pull down the city and Helen would never see it. And he would
never be able to build such a beautiful one again. In the morning it
would be gone, and he would not be able even to remember how it was
built.

The moonlight was very bright.

'I wonder how my city looks by moonlight?' he said.

And then, all in a thrilling instant, he made up his mind to go down and
see for himself how it did look.

He slipped on his dressing-gown, opened his door softly, and crept along
the corridor and down the broad staircase, then along the gallery and
into the drawing-room. It was very dark, but he felt his way to a window
and undid the shutter, and there lay his city, flooded with moonlight,
just as he had imagined it.

He gazed on it for a moment in ecstasy and then turned to shut the door.
As he did so he felt a slight strange giddiness and stood a moment with
his hand to his head. He turned and went again towards the city, and
when he was close to it he gave a little cry, hastily stifled, for fear
some one should hear him and come down and send him to bed. He stood and
gazed about him bewildered and, once more, rather giddy. For the city
had, in a quick blink of light, followed by darkness, disappeared. So
had the drawing-room. So had the chair that stood close to the table. He
could see mountainous shapes raising enormous heights in the distance,
and the moonlight shone on the tops of them. But he himself seemed to be
in a vast, flat plain. There was the softness of long grass round his
feet, but there were no trees, no houses, no hedges or fences to break
the expanse of grass. It seemed darker in some parts than others. That
was all. It reminded him of the illimitable prairie of which he had read
in books of adventure.

'I suppose I'm dreaming,' said Philip, 'though I don't see how I can
have gone to sleep just while I was turning the door handle.
However----'

He stood still expecting that something would happen. In dreams
something always does happen, if it's only that the dream comes to an
end. But nothing happened now--Philip just stood there quite quietly and
felt the warm soft grass round his ankles.

Then, as his eyes became used to the darkness of the plain, he saw some
way off a very steep bridge leading up to a dark height on whose summit
the moon shone whitely. He walked towards it, and as he approached he
saw that it was less like a bridge than a sort of ladder, and that it
rose to a giddy height above him. It seemed to rest on a rock far up
against dark sky, and the inside of the rock seemed hollowed out in one
vast dark cave.

[Illustration: Beyond it he could see dim piles that looked like
churches and houses.]

And now he was close to the foot of the ladder. It had no rungs, but
narrow ledges made hold for feet and hands. Philip remembered Jack and
the Beanstalk, and looked up longingly; but the ladder was a very very
long one. On the other hand, it was the only thing that seemed to lead
anywhere, and he had had enough of standing lonely in the grassy
prairie, where he seemed to have been for a very long time indeed. So he
put his hands and feet to the ladder and began to go up. It was a very
long climb. There were three hundred and eight steps, for he counted
them. And the steps were only on one side of the ladder, so he had to
be extremely careful. On he went, up and on, on and up, till his feet
ached and his hands felt as though they would drop off for tiredness. He
could not look up far, and he dared not look down at all. There was
nothing for it but to climb and climb and climb, and at last he saw the
ground on which the ladder rested--a terrace hewn in regular lines, and,
as it seemed, hewn from the solid rock. His head was level with the
ground, now his hands, now his feet. He leaped sideways from the ladder
and threw himself face down on the ground, which was cold and smooth
like marble. There he lay, drawing deep breaths of weariness and relief.

There was a great silence all about, which rested and soothed, and
presently he rose and looked around him. He was close to an archway with
very thick pillars, and he went towards it and peeped cautiously in. It
seemed to be a great gate leading to an open space, and beyond it he
could see dim piles that looked like churches and houses. But all was
deserted; the moonlight and he had the place, whatever it was, to
themselves.

'I suppose every one's in bed,' said Philip, and stood there trembling a
little, but very curious and interested, in the black shadow of the
strange arch.

CHAPTER II

DELIVERER OR DESTROYER

Philip stood in the shadow of the dark arch and looked out. He saw
before him a great square surrounded by tall irregular buildings. In the
middle was a fountain whose waters, silver in the moonlight, rose and
fell with gentle plashing sound. A tall tree, close to the archway, cast
the shadow of its trunk across the path--a broad black bar. He listened,
listened, listened, but there was nothing to listen to, except the deep
night silence and the changing soft sound the fountain made.

His eyes, growing accustomed to the dimness, showed him that he was
under a heavy domed roof supported on large square pillars--to the right
and left stood dark doors, shut fast.

'I will explore these doors by daylight,' he said. He did not feel
exactly frightened. But he did not feel exactly brave either. But he
wished and intended to be brave, so he said, 'I will explore these
doors. At least I think I will,' he added, for one must not only be
brave but truthful.

And then suddenly he felt very sleepy. He leaned against the wall, and
presently it seemed that sitting down would be less trouble, and then
that lying down would be more truly comfortable. A bell from very very
far away sounded the hour, twelve. Philip counted up to nine, but he
missed the tenth bell-beat, and the eleventh and the twelfth as well,
because he was fast asleep cuddled up warmly in the thick quilted
dressing-gown that Helen had made him last winter. He dreamed that
everything was as it used to be before That Man came and changed
everything and took Helen away. He was in his own little bed in his own
little room in their own little house, and Helen had come to call him.
He could see the sunlight through his closed eyelids--he was keeping
them closed just for the fun of hearing her try to wake him, and
presently he would tell her he had been awake all the time, and they
would laugh together about it. And then he awoke, and he was not in his
soft bed at home but on the hard floor of a big, strange gate-house, and
it was not Helen who was shaking him and saying, 'Here--I say, wake up,
can't you,' but a tall man in a red coat; and the light that dazzled his
eyes was not from the sun at all, but from a horn lantern which the man
was holding close to his face.

'What's the matter?' said Philip sleepily.

'That's the question,' said the man in red. 'Come along to the
guard-room and give an account of yourself, you young shaver.'

He took Philip's ear gently but firmly between a very hard finger and
thumb.

'Leave go,' said Philip, 'I'm not going to run away.' And he stood up
feeling very brave.

The man shifted his hold from ear to shoulder and led Philip through one
of those doors which he had thought of exploring by daylight. It was not
daylight yet, and the room, large and bare, with an arch at each end and
narrow little windows at the sides, was lighted by horn lanterns and
tall tapers in pewter candlesticks. It seemed to Philip that the room
was full of soldiers.

Their captain, with a good deal of gold about him and a very smart black
moustache, got up from a bench.

'Look what I've caught, sir,' said the man who owned the hand on
Philip's shoulder.

'Humph,' said the captain, 'so it's really happened at last.'

[Illustration: 'Here--I say, wake up, can't you?']

'What has?' said Philip.

'Why, you have,' said the captain. 'Don't be frightened, little man.'

'I'm not frightened,' said Philip, and added politely, 'I should be so
much obliged if you'd tell me what you mean.' He added something which
he had heard people say when they asked the way to the market or the
public gardens, 'I'm quite a stranger here,' he said.

A jolly roar of laughter went up from the red-coats.

'It isn't manners to laugh at strangers,' said Philip.

'Mind your own manners,' said the captain sharply; 'in this country
little boys speak when they're spoken to. Stranger, eh? Well, we knew
that, you know!'

Philip, though he felt snubbed, yet felt grand too. Here he was in the
middle of an adventure with grown-up soldiers. He threw out his chest
and tried to look manly.

The captain sat down in a chair at the end of a long table, drew a black
book to him--a black book covered with dust--and began to rub a rusty
pen-nib on his sword, which was not rusty.

'Come now,' he said, opening the book, 'tell me how you came here. And
mind you speak the truth.'

'I _always_ speak the truth,' said Philip proudly.

All the soldiers rose and saluted him with looks of deep surprise and
respect.

'Well, nearly always,' said Philip, hot to the ears, and the soldiers
clattered stiffly down again on to the benches, laughing once more.
Philip had imagined there to be more discipline in the army.

'How did you come here?' said the captain.

'Up the great bridge staircase,' said Philip.

The captain wrote busily in the book.

'What did you come for?'

'I didn't know what else to do. There was nothing but illimitable
prairie--and so I came up.'

'You are a very bold boy,' said the captain.

'Thank you,' said Philip. 'I do _want_ to be.'

'What was your purpose in coming?'

'I didn't do it on purpose--I just happened to come.'

The captain wrote that down too. And then he and Philip and the soldiers
looked at each other in silence.

'Well?' said the boy.

'Well?' said the captain.

'I do wish,' said the boy, 'you'd tell me what you meant by my really
happening after all. And then I wish you'd tell me the way home.'

'Where do you want to get to?' asked the captain.

'The _address_,' said Philip, 'is The Grange, Ravelsham, Sussex.'

'Don't know it,' said the captain briefly, 'and anyhow you can't go back
there now. Didn't you read the notice at the top of the ladder?
Trespassers will be prosecuted. You've got to be prosecuted before
you can go back anywhere.'

'I'd rather be persecuted than go down that ladder again,' he said.
'I suppose it won't be very bad--being persecuted, I mean?'

His idea of persecution was derived from books. He thought it
to be something vaguely unpleasant from which one escaped in
disguise--adventurous and always successful.

'That's for the judges to decide,' said the captain, 'it's a serious
thing trespassing in our city. This guard is put here expressly to
prevent it.'

'Do you have many trespassers?' Philip asked. The captain seemed kind,
and Philip had a great-uncle who was a judge, so the word judges made
him think of tips and good advice, rather than of justice and
punishment.

'Many trespassers indeed!' the captain almost snorted his answer.
'That's just it. There's never been one before. You're the first. For
years and years and years there's been a guard here, because when the
town was first built the astrologers foretold that some day there would
be a trespasser who would do untold mischief. So it's our
privilege--we're the Polistopolitan guards--to keep watch over the only
way by which a trespasser could come in.'

'May I sit down?' said Philip suddenly, and the soldiers made room for
him on the bench.

'My father and my grandfather and all my ancestors were in the guards,'
said the captain proudly. 'It's a very great honour.'

'I wonder,' said Philip, 'why you don't cut off the end of your
ladder--the top end I mean; then nobody could come up.'

'That would never do,' said the captain, 'because, you see, there's
another prophecy. The great deliverer is to come that way.'

'Couldn't I,' suggested Philip shyly, 'couldn't I be the deliverer
instead of the trespasser? I'd much rather, you know.'

'I daresay you would,' said the captain; '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 in
the dress English working people wore a hundred years ago. Norwegians,
Swedes, Swiss, Turks, Greeks, Indians, Arabians, Chinese, Japanese,
besides Red Indians in dresses of skins, and Scots in kilts and
sporrans. Philip did not know what nation most of the dresses belonged
to--to him it was a brilliant patchwork of gold and gay colours. It
reminded him of the fancy-dress party he had once been to with Helen,
when he wore a Pierrot's dress and felt very silly in it. He noticed
that not a single boy in all that crowd was dressed as he was--in what
he thought was the only correct dress for boys. Lucy walked beside him.
Once, just after they started, she said, 'Aren't you frightened,
Philip?' and he would not answer, though he longed to say, 'Of course
not. It's only girls who are afraid.' But he thought it would be more
disagreeable to say nothing, so he said it.

When they got to the Hall of Justice, she caught hold of his hand, and
said:

'Oh!' very loud and sudden, 'doesn't it remind you of anything?' she
asked.

Philip pulled his hand away and said 'No' before he remembered that he
had decided not to speak to her. And the 'No' was quite untrue, for the
building did remind him of something, though he couldn't have told you
what.

The prisoners and their guard passed through a great arch between
magnificent silver pillars, and along a vast corridor, lined with
soldiers who all saluted.

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