الفصل الفصل 12 · THE END OF THE END

. THE END OF THE END

‘Egg, toast, tea, milk, tea-cup and saucer, egg-spoon, knife,

butter--that’s all, I think,’ remarked Anthea, as she put the last

touches to mother’s breakfast-tray, and went, very carefully up the

stairs, feeling for every step with her toes, and holding on to the tray

with all her fingers. She crept into mother’s room and set the tray on a

chair. Then she pulled one of the blinds up very softly.

‘Is your head better, mammy dear?’ she asked, in the soft little voice

that she kept expressly for mother’s headaches. ‘I’ve brought your

brekkie, and I’ve put the little cloth with clover-leaves on it, the one

I made you.’

‘That’s very nice,’ said mother sleepily.

Anthea knew exactly what to do for mothers with headaches who had

breakfast in bed. She fetched warm water and put just enough eau de

Cologne in it, and bathed mother’s face and hands with the sweet-scented

water. Then mother was able to think about breakfast.

‘But what’s the matter with my girl?’ she asked, when her eyes got used

to the light.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry you’re ill,’ Anthea said. ‘It’s that horrible fire and

you being so frightened. Father said so. And we all feel as if it was

our faults. I can’t explain, but--’

‘It wasn’t your fault a bit, you darling goosie,’ mother said. ‘How

could it be?’

‘That’s just what I can’t tell you,’ said Anthea. ‘I haven’t got

a futile brain like you and father, to think of ways of explaining

everything.’

Mother laughed.

‘My futile brain--or did you mean fertile?--anyway, it feels very stiff

and sore this morning--but I shall be quite all right by and by. And

don’t be a silly little pet girl. The fire wasn’t your faults. No; I

don’t want the egg, dear. I’ll go to sleep again, I think. Don’t you

worry. And tell cook not to bother me about meals. You can order what

you like for lunch.’

Anthea closed the door very mousily, and instantly went downstairs and

ordered what she liked for lunch. She ordered a pair of turkeys, a large

plum-pudding, cheese-cakes, and almonds and raisins.

Cook told her to go along, do. And she might as well not have ordered

anything, for when lunch came it was just hashed mutton and semolina

pudding, and cook had forgotten the sippets for the mutton hash and the

semolina pudding was burnt.

When Anthea rejoined the others she found them all plunged in the gloom

where she was herself. For every one knew that the days of the carpet

were now numbered. Indeed, so worn was it that you could almost have

numbered its threads.

So that now, after nearly a month of magic happenings, the time was at

hand when life would have to go on in the dull, ordinary way and Jane,

Robert, Anthea, and Cyril would be just in the same position as the

other children who live in Camden Town, the children whom these four had

so often pitied, and perhaps a little despised.

‘We shall be just like them,’ Cyril said.

‘Except,’ said Robert, ‘that we shall have more things to remember and

be sorry we haven’t got.’

‘Mother’s going to send away the carpet as soon as she’s well enough to

see about that coconut matting. Fancy us with coconut-matting--us! And

we’ve walked under live coconut-trees on the island where you can’t have

whooping-cough.’

‘Pretty island,’ said the Lamb; ‘paint-box sands and sea all shiny

sparkly.’

His brothers and sisters had often wondered whether he remembered that

island. Now they knew that he did.

‘Yes,’ said Cyril; ‘no more cheap return trips by carpet for us--that’s

a dead cert.’

They were all talking about the carpet, but what they were all thinking

about was the Phoenix.

The golden bird had been so kind, so friendly, so polite, so

instructive--and now it had set fire to a theatre and made mother ill.

Nobody blamed the bird. It had acted in a perfectly natural manner. But

every one saw that it must not be asked to prolong its visit. Indeed, in

plain English it must be asked to go!

The four children felt like base spies and treacherous friends; and each

in its mind was saying who ought not to be the one to tell the Phoenix

that there could no longer be a place for it in that happy home in

Camden Town. Each child was quite sure that one of them ought to speak

out in a fair and manly way, but nobody wanted to be the one.

They could not talk the whole thing over as they would have liked to do,

because the Phoenix itself was in the cupboard, among the blackbeetles

and the odd shoes and the broken chessmen.

But Anthea tried.

‘It’s very horrid. I do hate thinking things about people, and not being

able to say the things you’re thinking because of the way they would

feel when they thought what things you were thinking, and wondered

what they’d done to make you think things like that, and why you were

thinking them.’

Anthea was so anxious that the Phoenix should not understand what she

said that she made a speech completely baffling to all. It was not till

she pointed to the cupboard in which all believed the Phoenix to be that

Cyril understood.

‘Yes,’ he said, while Jane and Robert were trying to tell each other how

deeply they didn’t understand what Anthea were saying; ‘but after recent

eventfulnesses a new leaf has to be turned over, and, after all,

mother is more important than the feelings of any of the lower forms of

creation, however unnatural.’

‘How beautifully you do do it,’ said Anthea, absently beginning to build

a card-house for the Lamb--‘mixing up what you’re saying, I mean. We

ought to practise doing it so as to be ready for mysterious occasions.

We’re talking about THAT,’ she said to Jane and Robert, frowning, and

nodding towards the cupboard where the Phoenix was. Then Robert and Jane

understood, and each opened its mouth to speak.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Anthea quickly; ‘the game is to twist up what you

want to say so that no one can understand what you’re saying except the

people you want to understand it, and sometimes not them.’

‘The ancient philosophers,’ said a golden voice, ‘Well understood the

art of which you speak.’

Of course it was the Phoenix, who had not been in the cupboard at all,

but had been cocking a golden eye at them from the cornice during the

whole conversation.

‘Pretty dickie!’ remarked the Lamb. ‘CANARY dickie!’

‘Poor misguided infant,’ said the Phoenix.

There was a painful pause; the four could not but think it likely that

the Phoenix had understood their very veiled allusions, accompanied as

they had been by gestures indicating the cupboard. For the Phoenix was

not wanting in intelligence.

‘We were just saying--’ Cyril began, and I hope he was not going to

say anything but the truth. Whatever it was he did not say it, for the

Phoenix interrupted him, and all breathed more freely as it spoke.

‘I gather,’ it said, ‘that you have some tidings of a fatal nature to

communicate to our degraded black brothers who run to and fro for ever

yonder.’ It pointed a claw at the cupboard, where the blackbeetles

lived.

‘Canary TALK,’ said the Lamb joyously; ‘go and show mammy.’

He wriggled off Anthea’s lap.

‘Mammy’s asleep,’ said Jane, hastily. ‘Come and be wild beasts in a cage

under the table.’

But the Lamb caught his feet and hands, and even his head, so often and

so deeply in the holes of the carpet that the cage, or table, had to be

moved on to the linoleum, and the carpet lay bare to sight with all its

horrid holes.

‘Ah,’ said the bird, ‘it isn’t long for this world.’

‘No,’ said Robert; ‘everything comes to an end. It’s awful.’

‘Sometimes the end is peace,’ remarked the Phoenix. ‘I imagine that

unless it comes soon the end of your carpet will be pieces.’

‘Yes,’ said Cyril, respectfully kicking what was left of the carpet. The

movement of its bright colours caught the eye of the Lamb, who went down

on all fours instantly and began to pull at the red and blue threads.

‘Aggedydaggedygaggedy,’ murmured the Lamb; ‘daggedy ag ag ag!’

And before any one could have winked (even if they had wanted to, and it

would not have been of the slightest use) the middle of the floor showed

bare, an island of boards surrounded by a sea of linoleum. The magic

carpet was gone, AND SO WAS THE LAMB!

There was a horrible silence. The Lamb--the baby, all alone--had been

wafted away on that untrustworthy carpet, so full of holes and magic.

And no one could know where he was. And no one could follow him because

there was now no carpet to follow on.

Jane burst into tears, but Anthea, though pale and frantic, was

dry-eyed.

‘It MUST be a dream,’ she said.

‘That’s what the clergyman said,’ remarked Robert forlornly; ‘but it

wasn’t, and it isn’t.’

‘But the Lamb never wished,’ said Cyril; ‘he was only talking Bosh.’

‘The carpet understands all speech,’ said the Phoenix, ‘even Bosh. I

know not this Boshland, but be assured that its tongue is not unknown to

the carpet.’

‘Do you mean, then,’ said Anthea, in white terror, ‘that when he was

saying “Agglety dag,” or whatever it was, that he meant something by

it?’

‘All speech has meaning,’ said the Phoenix.

‘There I think you’re wrong,’ said Cyril; ‘even people who talk English

sometimes say things that don’t mean anything in particular.’

‘Oh, never mind that now,’ moaned Anthea; ‘you think “Aggety dag” meant

something to him and the carpet?’

‘Beyond doubt it held the same meaning to the carpet as to the luckless

infant,’ the Phoenix said calmly.

‘And WHAT did it mean? Oh WHAT?’

‘Unfortunately,’ the bird rejoined, ‘I never studied Bosh.’

Jane sobbed noisily, but the others were calm with what is sometimes

called the calmness of despair. The Lamb was gone--the Lamb, their own

precious baby brother--who had never in his happy little life been for a

moment out of the sight of eyes that loved him--he was gone. He had gone

alone into the great world with no other companion and protector than a

carpet with holes in it. The children had never really understood

before what an enormously big place the world is. And the Lamb might be

anywhere in it!

‘And it’s no use going to look for him.’ Cyril, in flat and wretched

tones, only said what the others were thinking.

‘Do you wish him to return?’ the Phoenix asked; it seemed to speak with

some surprise.

‘Of course we do!’ cried everybody.

‘Isn’t he more trouble than he’s worth?’ asked the bird doubtfully.

‘No, no. Oh, we do want him back! We do!’

‘Then,’ said the wearer of gold plumage, ‘if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just

pop out and see what I can do.’

Cyril flung open the window, and the Phoenix popped out.

‘Oh, if only mother goes on sleeping! Oh, suppose she wakes up and wants

the Lamb! Oh, suppose the servants come! Stop crying, Jane. It’s no

earthly good. No, I’m not crying myself--at least I wasn’t till you said

so, and I shouldn’t anyway if--if there was any mortal thing we could

do. Oh, oh, oh!’

Cyril and Robert were boys, and boys never cry, of course. Still, the

position was a terrible one, and I do not wonder that they made faces in

their efforts to behave in a really manly way.

And at this awful moment mother’s bell rang.

A breathless stillness held the children. Then Anthea dried her eyes.

She looked round her and caught up the poker. She held it out to Cyril.

‘Hit my hand hard,’ she said; ‘I must show mother some reason for my

eyes being like they are. Harder,’ she cried as Cyril gently tapped her

with the iron handle. And Cyril, agitated and trembling, nerved himself

to hit harder, and hit very much harder than he intended.

Anthea screamed.

‘Oh, Panther, I didn’t mean to hurt, really,’ cried Cyril, clattering

the poker back into the fender.

‘It’s--all--right,’ said Anthea breathlessly, clasping the hurt hand

with the one that wasn’t hurt; ‘it’s--getting--red.’

It was--a round red and blue bump was rising on the back of it. ‘Now,

Robert,’ she said, trying to breathe more evenly, ‘you go out--oh, I

don’t know where--on to the dustbin--anywhere--and I shall tell mother

you and the Lamb are out.’

Anthea was now ready to deceive her mother for as long as ever she

could. Deceit is very wrong, we know, but it seemed to Anthea that it

was her plain duty to keep her mother from being frightened about the

Lamb as long as possible. And the Phoenix might help.

‘It always has helped,’ Robert said; ‘it got us out of the tower, and

even when it made the fire in the theatre it got us out all right. I’m

certain it will manage somehow.’

Mother’s bell rang again.

‘Oh, Eliza’s never answered it,’ cried Anthea; ‘she never does. Oh, I

must go.’

And she went.

Her heart beat bumpingly as she climbed the stairs. Mother would be

certain to notice her eyes--well, her hand would account for that. But

the Lamb--

‘No, I must NOT think of the Lamb, she said to herself, and bit her

tongue till her eyes watered again, so as to give herself something

else to think of. Her arms and legs and back, and even her tear-reddened

face, felt stiff with her resolution not to let mother be worried if she

could help it.

She opened the door softly.

‘Yes, mother?’ she said.

‘Dearest,’ said mother, ‘the Lamb--’

Anthea tried to be brave. She tried to say that the Lamb and Robert were

out. Perhaps she tried too hard. Anyway, when she opened her mouth no

words came. So she stood with it open. It seemed easier to keep from

crying with one’s mouth in that unusual position.

‘The Lamb,’ mother went on; ‘he was very good at first, but he’s pulled

the toilet-cover off the dressing-table with all the brushes and

pots and things, and now he’s so quiet I’m sure he’s in some dreadful

mischief. And I can’t see him from here, and if I’d got out of bed to

see I’m sure I should have fainted.’

‘Do you mean he’s HERE?’ said Anthea.

‘Of course he’s here,’ said mother, a little impatiently. ‘Where did you

think he was?’

Anthea went round the foot of the big mahogany bed. There was a pause.

‘He’s not here NOW,’ she said.

That he had been there was plain, from the toilet-cover on the floor,

the scattered pots and bottles, the wandering brushes and combs, all

involved in the tangle of ribbons and laces which an open drawer had

yielded to the baby’s inquisitive fingers.

‘He must have crept out, then,’ said mother; ‘do keep him with you,

there’s a darling. If I don’t get some sleep I shall be a wreck when

father comes home.’

Anthea closed the door softly. Then she tore downstairs and burst into

the nursery, crying--

‘He must have wished he was with mother. He’s been there all the time.

“Aggety dag--“’

The unusual word was frozen on her lip, as people say in books.

For there, on the floor, lay the carpet, and on the carpet, surrounded

by his brothers and by Jane, sat the Lamb. He had covered his face and

clothes with vaseline and violet powder, but he was easily recognizable

in spite of this disguise.

‘You are right,’ said the Phoenix, who was also present; ‘it is evident

that, as you say, “Aggety dag” is Bosh for “I want to be where my mother

is,” and so the faithful carpet understood it.’

‘But how,’ said Anthea, catching up the Lamb and hugging him--‘how did

he get back here?’

‘Oh,’ said the Phoenix, ‘I flew to the Psammead and wished that your

infant brother were restored to your midst, and immediately it was so.’

‘Oh, I am glad, I am glad!’ cried Anthea, still hugging the baby. ‘Oh,

you darling! Shut up, Jane! I don’t care HOW much he comes off on

me! Cyril! You and Robert roll that carpet up and put it in the

beetle-cupboard. He might say “Aggety dag” again, and it might mean

something quite different next time. Now, my Lamb, Panther’ll clean you

a little. Come on.’

‘I hope the beetles won’t go wishing,’ said Cyril, as they rolled up the

carpet.

Two days later mother was well enough to go out, and that evening the

coconut matting came home. The children had talked and talked, and

thought and thought, but they had not found any polite way of telling

the Phoenix that they did not want it to stay any longer.

The days had been days spent by the children in embarrassment, and by

the Phoenix in sleep.

And, now the matting was laid down, the Phoenix awoke and fluttered down

on to it.

It shook its crested head.

‘I like not this carpet,’ it said; ‘it is harsh and unyielding, and it

hurts my golden feet.’

‘We’ve jolly well got to get used to its hurting OUR golden feet,’ said

Cyril.

‘This, then,’ said the bird, ‘supersedes the Wishing Carpet.’

‘Yes,’ said Robert, ‘if you mean that it’s instead of it.’

‘And the magic web?’ inquired the Phoenix, with sudden eagerness.

‘It’s the rag-and-bottle man’s day to-morrow,’ said Anthea, in a low

voice; ‘he will take it away.’

The Phoenix fluttered up to its favourite perch on the chair-back.

‘Hear me!’ it cried, ‘oh youthful children of men, and restrain your

tears of misery and despair, for what must be must be, and I would not

remember you, thousands of years hence, as base ingrates and crawling

worms compact of low selfishness.’

‘I should hope not, indeed,’ said Cyril.

‘Weep not,’ the bird went on; ‘I really do beg that you won’t weep.

I will not seek to break the news to you gently. Let the blow fall at

once. The time has come when I must leave you.’

All four children breathed forth a long sigh of relief.

‘We needn’t have bothered so about how to break the news to it,’

whispered Cyril.

‘Ah, sigh not so,’ said the bird, gently. ‘All meetings end in partings.

I must leave you. I have sought to prepare you for this. Ah, do not give

way!’

‘Must you really go--so soon?’ murmured Anthea. It was what she had

often heard her mother say to calling ladies in the afternoon.

‘I must, really; thank you so much, dear,’ replied the bird, just as

though it had been one of the ladies.

‘I am weary,’ it went on. ‘I desire to rest--after all the happenings

of this last moon I do desire really to rest, and I ask of you one last

boon.’

‘Any little thing we can do,’ said Robert.

Now that it had really come to parting with the Phoenix, whose favourite

he had always been, Robert did feel almost as miserable as the Phoenix

thought they all did.

‘I ask but the relic designed for the rag-and-bottle man. Give me what

is left of the carpet and let me go.’

‘Dare we?’ said Anthea. ‘Would mother mind?’

‘I have dared greatly for your sakes,’ remarked the bird.

‘Well, then, we will,’ said Robert.

The Phoenix fluffed out its feathers joyously.

‘Nor shall you regret it, children of golden hearts,’ it said.

‘Quick--spread the carpet and leave me alone; but first pile high the

fire. Then, while I am immersed in the sacred preliminary rites, do ye

prepare sweet-smelling woods and spices for the last act of parting.’

The children spread out what was left of the carpet. And, after all,

though this was just what they would have wished to have happened, all

hearts were sad. Then they put half a scuttle of coal on the fire and

went out, closing the door on the Phoenix--left, at last, alone with the

carpet.

‘One of us must keep watch,’ said Robert, excitedly, as soon as they

were all out of the room, ‘and the others can go and buy sweet woods and

spices. Get the very best that money can buy, and plenty of them.

Don’t let’s stand to a threepence or so. I want it to have a jolly good

send-off. It’s the only thing that’ll make us feel less horrid inside.’

It was felt that Robert, as the pet of the Phoenix, ought to have the

last melancholy pleasure of choosing the materials for its funeral pyre.

‘I’ll keep watch if you like,’ said Cyril. ‘I don’t mind. And, besides,

it’s raining hard, and my boots let in the wet. You might call and see

if my other ones are “really reliable” again yet.’

So they left Cyril, standing like a Roman sentinel outside the door

inside which the Phoenix was getting ready for the great change, and

they all went out to buy the precious things for the last sad rites.

‘Robert is right,’ Anthea said; ‘this is no time for being careful about

our money. Let’s go to the stationer’s first, and buy a whole packet of

lead-pencils. They’re cheaper if you buy them by the packet.’

This was a thing that they had always wanted to do, but it needed the

great excitement of a funeral pyre and a parting from a beloved Phoenix

to screw them up to the extravagance.

The people at the stationer’s said that the pencils were real

cedar-wood, so I hope they were, for stationers should always speak

the truth. At any rate they cost one-and-fourpence. Also they spent

sevenpence three-farthings on a little sandal-wood box inlaid with

ivory.

‘Because,’ said Anthea, ‘I know sandalwood smells sweet, and when it’s

burned it smells very sweet indeed.’

‘Ivory doesn’t smell at all,’ said Robert, ‘but I expect when you burn

it it smells most awful vile, like bones.’

At the grocer’s they bought all the spices they could remember the names

of--shell-like mace, cloves like blunt nails, peppercorns, the long

and the round kind; ginger, the dry sort, of course; and the beautiful

bloom-covered shells of fragrant cinnamon. Allspice too, and caraway

seeds (caraway seeds that smelt most deadly when the time came for

burning them).

Camphor and oil of lavender were bought at the chemist’s, and also a

little scent sachet labelled ‘Violettes de Parme’.

They took the things home and found Cyril still on guard. When they had

knocked and the golden voice of the Phoenix had said ‘Come in,’ they

went in.

There lay the carpet--or what was left of it--and on it lay an egg,

exactly like the one out of which the Phoenix had been hatched.

The Phoenix was walking round and round the egg, clucking with joy and

pride.

‘I’ve laid it, you see,’ it said, ‘and as fine an egg as ever I laid in

all my born days.’

Every one said yes, it was indeed a beauty.

The things which the children had bought were now taken out of their

papers and arranged on the table, and when the Phoenix had been

persuaded to leave its egg for a moment and look at the materials for

its last fire it was quite overcome.

‘Never, never have I had a finer pyre than this will be. You shall not

regret it,’ it said, wiping away a golden tear. ‘Write quickly: “Go and

tell the Psammead to fulfil the last wish of the Phoenix, and return

instantly”.’

But Robert wished to be polite and he wrote--

‘Please go and ask the Psammead to be so kind as to fulfil the Phoenix’s

last wish, and come straight back, if you please.’ The paper was pinned

to the carpet, which vanished and returned in the flash of an eye.

Then another paper was written ordering the carpet to take the egg

somewhere where it wouldn’t be hatched for another two thousand years.

The Phoenix tore itself away from its cherished egg, which it watched

with yearning tenderness till, the paper being pinned on, the carpet

hastily rolled itself up round the egg, and both vanished for ever from

the nursery of the house in Camden Town.

‘Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!’ said everybody.

‘Bear up,’ said the bird; ‘do you think _I_ don’t suffer, being parted

from my precious new-laid egg like this? Come, conquer your emotions and

build my fire.’

‘OH!’ cried Robert, suddenly, and wholly breaking down, ‘I can’t BEAR

you to go!’

The Phoenix perched on his shoulder and rubbed its beak softly against

his ear.

‘The sorrows of youth soon appear but as dreams,’ it said. ‘Farewell,

Robert of my heart. I have loved you well.’

The fire had burnt to a red glow. One by one the spices and sweet woods

were laid on it. Some smelt nice and some--the caraway seeds and the

Violettes de Parme sachet among them--smelt worse than you would think

possible.

‘Farewell, farewell, farewell, farewell!’ said the Phoenix, in a

far-away voice.

‘Oh, GOOD-BYE,’ said every one, and now all were in tears.

The bright bird fluttered seven times round the room and settled in the

hot heart of the fire. The sweet gums and spices and woods flared and

flickered around it, but its golden feathers did not burn. It seemed to

grow red-hot to the very inside heart of it--and then before the eight

eyes of its friends it fell together, a heap of white ashes, and the

flames of the cedar pencils and the sandal-wood box met and joined above

it.

‘Whatever have you done with the carpet?’ asked mother next day.

‘We gave it to some one who wanted it very much. The name began with a

P,’ said Jane.

The others instantly hushed her.

‘Oh, well, it wasn’t worth twopence,’ said mother.

‘The person who began with P said we shouldn’t lose by it,’ Jane went on

before she could be stopped.

‘I daresay!’ said mother, laughing.

But that very night a great box came, addressed to the children by all

their names. Eliza never could remember the name of the carrier who

brought it. It wasn’t Carter Paterson or the Parcels Delivery.

It was instantly opened. It was a big wooden box, and it had to

be opened with a hammer and the kitchen poker; the long nails came

squeaking out, and boards scrunched as they were wrenched off. Inside

the box was soft paper, with beautiful Chinese patterns on it--blue and

green and red and violet. And under the paper--well, almost everything

lovely that you can think of. Everything of reasonable size, I mean;

for, of course, there were no motors or flying machines or thoroughbred

chargers. But there really was almost everything else. Everything that

the children had always wanted--toys and games and books, and chocolate

and candied cherries and paint-boxes and photographic cameras, and all

the presents they had always wanted to give to father and mother and the

Lamb, only they had never had the money for them. At the very bottom

of the box was a tiny golden feather. No one saw it but Robert, and he

picked it up and hid it in the breast of his jacket, which had been

so often the nesting-place of the golden bird. When he went to bed the

feather was gone. It was the last he ever saw of the Phoenix.

Pinned to the lovely fur cloak that mother had always wanted was a

paper, and it said--

‘In return for the carpet. With gratitude.--P.’

You may guess how father and mother talked it over. They decided at

last the person who had had the carpet, and whom, curiously enough, the

children were quite unable to describe, must be an insane millionaire

who amused himself by playing at being a rag-and-bone man. But the

children knew better.

They knew that this was the fulfilment, by the powerful Psammead, of the

last wish of the Phoenix, and that this glorious and delightful boxful

of treasures was really the very, very, very end of the Phoenix and the

Carpet.