Chương Chương 8 · The Queen In London
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THE QUEEN IN LONDON
“Now tell us what happened to you,” said Cyril to Jane, when he and the
others had told her all about the Queen’s talk and the banquet, and the
variety entertainment, carefully stopping short before the beginning of
the dungeon part of the story.
“It wasn’t much good going,” said Jane, “if you didn’t even try to get
the Amulet.”
“We found out it was no go,” said Cyril; “it’s not to be got in
Babylon. It was lost before that. We’ll go to some other jolly friendly
place, where everyone is kind and pleasant, and look for it there. Now
tell us about your part.”
“Oh,” said Jane, “the Queen’s man with the smooth face—what was his
name?”
“Ritti-Marduk,” said Cyril.
“Yes,” said Jane, “Ritti-Marduk, he came for me just after the Psammead
had bitten the guard-of-the-gate’s wife’s little boy, and he took me to
the Palace. And we had supper with the new little Queen from Egypt. She
is a dear—not much older than you. She told me heaps about Egypt. And
we played ball after supper. And then the Babylon Queen sent for me. I
like her too. And she talked to the Psammead and I went to sleep. And
then you woke me up. That’s all.”
The Psammead, roused from its sound sleep, told the same story.
“But,” it added, “what possessed you to tell that Queen that I could
give wishes? I sometimes think you were born without even the most
rudimentary imitation of brains.”
The children did not know the meaning of rudimentary, but it sounded a
rude, insulting word.
“I don’t see that we did any harm,” said Cyril sulkily.
“Oh, no,” said the Psammead with withering irony, “not at all! Of
course not! Quite the contrary! Exactly so! Only she happened to wish
that she might soon find herself in your country. And soon may mean any
moment.”
“Then it’s your fault,” said Robert, “because you might just as well
have made ‘soon’ mean some moment next year or next century.”
“That’s where you, as so often happens, make the mistake,” rejoined the
Sand-fairy. “_I_ couldn’t mean anything but what _she_ meant by ‘soon’.
It wasn’t my wish. And what she meant was the next time the King
happens to go out lion hunting. So she’ll have a whole day, and perhaps
two, to do as she wishes with. She doesn’t know about time only being a
mode of thought.”
“Well,” said Cyril, with a sigh of resignation, “we must do what we can
to give her a good time. She was jolly decent to us. I say, suppose we
were to go to St James’s Park after dinner and feed those ducks that we
never did feed. After all that Babylon and all those years ago, I feel
as if I should like to see something _real_, and _now_. You’ll come,
Psammead?”
“Where’s my priceless woven basket of sacred rushes?” asked the
Psammead morosely. “I can’t go out with nothing on. And I won’t, what’s
more.”
And then everybody remembered with pain that the bass bag had, in the
hurry of departure from Babylon, not been remembered.
“But it’s not so extra precious,” said Robert hastily. “You can get
them given to you for nothing if you buy fish in Farringdon Market.”
“Oh,” said the Psammead very crossly indeed, “so you presume on my
sublime indifference to the things of this disgusting modern world, to
fob me off with a travelling equipage that costs you nothing. Very
well, I shall go to sand. Please don’t wake me.”
And it went then and there to sand, which, as you know, meant to bed.
The boys went to St James’s Park to feed the ducks, but they went
alone.
Anthea and Jane sat sewing all the afternoon. They cut off half a yard
from each of their best green Liberty sashes. A towel cut in two formed
a lining; and they sat and sewed and sewed and sewed. What they were
making was a bag for the Psammead. Each worked at a half of the bag.
Jane’s half had four-leaved shamrocks embroidered on it. They were the
only things she could do (because she had been taught how at school,
and, fortunately, some of the silk she had been taught with was left
over). And even so, Anthea had to draw the pattern for her. Anthea’s
side of the bag had letters on it—worked hastily but affectionately in
chain stitch. They were something like this:
[Illustration]
She would have put “travelling carriage”, but she made the letters too
big, so there was no room. The bag was made _into_ a bag with old
Nurse’s sewing machine, and the strings of it were Anthea’s and Jane’s
best red hair ribbons.
At tea-time, when the boys had come home with a most unfavourable
report of the St James’s Park ducks, Anthea ventured to awaken the
Psammead, and to show it its new travelling bag.
“Humph,” it said, sniffing a little contemptuously, yet at the same
time affectionately, “it’s not so dusty.”
The Psammead seemed to pick up very easily the kind of things that
people said nowadays. For a creature that had in its time associated
with Megatheriums and Pterodactyls, its quickness was really wonderful.
“It’s more worthy of me,” it said, “than the kind of bag that’s given
away with a pound of plaice. When do you propose to take me out in it?”
“I should like a rest from taking you or us anywhere,” said Cyril. But
Jane said—
“I want to go to Egypt. I did like that Egyptian Princess that came to
marry the King in Babylon. She told me about the larks they have in
Egypt. And the cats. Do let’s go there. And I told her what the bird
things on the Amulet were like. And she said it was Egyptian writing.”
The others exchanged looks of silent rejoicing at the thought of their
cleverness in having concealed from Jane the terrors they had suffered
in the dungeon below the Euphrates.
“Egypt’s so nice too,” Jane went on, “because of Doctor Brewer’s
Scripture History. I would like to go there when Joseph was dreaming
those curious dreams, or when Moses was doing wonderful things with
snakes and sticks.”
“I don’t care about snakes,” said Anthea shuddering.
“Well, we needn’t be in at that part, but Babylon was lovely! We had
cream and sweet, sticky stuff. And I expect Egypt’s the same.”
There was a good deal of discussion, but it all ended in everybody’s
agreeing to Jane’s idea. And next morning directly after breakfast
(which was kippers and very nice) the Psammead was invited to get into
his travelling carriage.
The moment after it had done so, with stiff, furry reluctance, like
that of a cat when you want to nurse it, and its ideas are not the same
as yours, old Nurse came in.
“Well, chickies,” she said, “are you feeling very dull?”
“Oh, no, Nurse dear,” said Anthea; “we’re having a lovely time. We’re
just going off to see some old ancient relics.”
“Ah,” said old Nurse, “the Royal Academy, I suppose? Don’t go wasting
your money too reckless, that’s all.”
She cleared away the kipper bones and the tea-things, and when she had
swept up the crumbs and removed the cloth, the Amulet was held up and
the order given—just as Duchesses (and other people) give it to their
coachmen.
“To Egypt, please!” said Anthea, when Cyril had uttered the wonderful
Name of Power.
“When Moses was there,” added Jane.
And there, in the dingy Fitzroy Street dining-room, the Amulet grew
big, and it was an arch, and through it they saw a blue, blue sky and a
running river.
“No, stop!” said Cyril, and pulled down Jane’s hand with the Amulet in
it.
“What silly cuckoos we all are,” he said. “Of course we can’t go. We
daren’t leave home for a single minute now, for fear that minute should
be _the_ minute.”
“What minute be _what_ minute?” asked Jane impatiently, trying to get
her hand away from Cyril.
“The minute when the Queen of Babylon comes,” said Cyril. And then
everyone saw it.
For some days life flowed in a very slow, dusty, uneventful stream. The
children could never go out all at once, because they never knew when
the King of Babylon would go out lion hunting and leave his Queen free
to pay them that surprise visit to which she was, without doubt,
eagerly looking forward.
So they took it in turns, two and two, to go out and to stay in.
The stay-at-homes would have been much duller than they were but for
the new interest taken in them by the learned gentleman.
He called Anthea in one day to show her a beautiful necklace of purple
and gold beads.
“I saw one like that,” she said, “in—”
“In the British Museum, perhaps?”
“I like to call the place where I saw it Babylon,” said Anthea
cautiously.
“A pretty fancy,” said the learned gentleman, “and quite correct too,
because, as a matter of fact, these beads did come from Babylon.”
The other three were all out that day. The boys had been going to the
Zoo, and Jane had said so plaintively, “I’m sure I am fonder of
rhinoceroses than either of you are,” that Anthea had told her to run
along then. And she had run, catching the boys before that part of the
road where Fitzroy Street suddenly becomes Fitzroy Square.
“I think Babylon is most frightfully interesting,” said Anthea. “I do
have such interesting dreams about it—at least, not dreams exactly, but
quite as wonderful.”
“Do sit down and tell me,” said he. So she sat down and told. And he
asked her a lot of questions, and she answered them as well as she
could.
“Wonderful—wonderful!” he said at last. “One’s heard of
thought-transference, but I never thought _I_ had any power of that
sort. Yet it must be that, and very bad for _you_, I should think.
Doesn’t your head ache very much?”
He suddenly put a cold, thin hand on her forehead.
“No thank you, not at all,” said she.
“I assure you it is not done intentionally,” he went on. “Of course I
know a good deal about Babylon, and I unconsciously communicate it to
you; you’ve heard of thought-reading, but some of the things you say, I
don’t understand; they never enter my head, and yet they’re so
astoundingly probable.”
“It’s all right,” said Anthea reassuringly. “_I_ understand. And don’t
worry. It’s all quite simple really.”
It was not quite so simple when Anthea, having heard the others come
in, went down, and before she had had time to ask how they had liked
the Zoo, heard a noise outside, compared to which the wild beasts’
noises were gentle as singing birds.
“Good gracious!” cried Anthea, “what’s that?”
The loud hum of many voices came through the open window. Words could
be distinguished.
“’Ere’s a guy!”
“This ain’t November. That ain’t no guy. It’s a ballet lady, that’s
what it is.”
“Not it—it’s a bloomin’ looney, I tell you.”
Then came a clear voice that they knew.
“Retire, slaves!” it said.
“What’s she a saying of?” cried a dozen voices.
“Some blamed foreign lingo,” one voice replied.
The children rushed to the door. A crowd was on the road and pavement.
In the middle of the crowd, plainly to be seen from the top of the
steps, were the beautiful face and bright veil of the Babylonian Queen.
“Jimminy!” cried Robert, and ran down the steps, “here she is!”
“Here!” he cried, “look out—let the lady pass. She’s a friend of ours,
coming to see us.”
“Nice friend for a respectable house,” snorted a fat woman with marrows
on a handcart.
All the same the crowd made way a little. The Queen met Robert on the
pavement, and Cyril joined them, the Psammead bag still on his arm.
“Here,” he whispered; “here’s the Psammead; you can get wishes.”
“_I_ wish you’d come in a different dress, if you _had_ to come,” said
Robert; “but it’s no use my wishing anything.”
“No,” said the Queen. “I wish I was dressed—no, I don’t—I wish _they_
were dressed properly, then they wouldn’t be so silly.”
The Psammead blew itself out till the bag was a very tight fit for it;
and suddenly every man, woman, and child in that crowd felt that it had
not enough clothes on. For, of course, the Queen’s idea of proper dress
was the dress that had been proper for the working-classes 3,000 years
ago in Babylon—and there was not much of it.
“Lawky me!” said the marrow-selling woman, “whatever could a-took me to
come out this figure?” and she wheeled her cart away very quickly
indeed.
“Someone’s made a pretty guy of you—talk of guys,” said a man who sold
bootlaces.
“Well, don’t you talk,” said the man next to him. “Look at your own
silly legs; and where’s your boots?”
“I never come out like this, I’ll take my sacred,” said the
bootlace-seller. “I wasn’t quite myself last night, I’ll own, but not
to dress up like a circus.”
The crowd was all talking at once, and getting rather angry. But no one
seemed to think of blaming the Queen.
Anthea bounded down the steps and pulled her up; the others followed,
and the door was shut.
“Blowed if I can make it out!” they heard. “I’m off home, I am.”
And the crowd, coming slowly to the same mind, dispersed, followed by
another crowd of persons who were not dressed in what the Queen thought
was the proper way.
“We shall have the police here directly,” said Anthea in the tones of
despair. “Oh, why did you come dressed like that?”
The Queen leaned against the arm of the horse-hair sofa.
“How else can a queen dress I should like to know?” she questioned.
“Our Queen wears things like other people,” said Cyril.
“Well, I don’t. And I must say,” she remarked in an injured tone, “that
you don’t seem very glad to see me now I _have_ come. But perhaps it’s
the surprise that makes you behave like this. Yet you ought to be used
to surprises. The way you vanished! I shall never forget it. The best
magic I’ve ever seen. How did you do it?”
“Oh, never mind about that now,” said Robert. “You see you’ve gone and
upset all those people, and I expect they’ll fetch the police. And we
don’t want to see you collared and put in prison.”
“You can’t put queens in prison,” she said loftily.
“Oh, can’t you?” said Cyril. “We cut off a king’s head here once.”
“In this miserable room? How frightfully interesting.”
“No, no, not in this room; in history.”
“Oh, in _that_,” said the Queen disparagingly. “I thought you’d done it
with your own hands.”
The girls shuddered.
“What a hideous city yours is,” the Queen went on pleasantly, “and what
horrid, ignorant people. Do you know they actually can’t understand a
single word I say.”
“Can you understand them?” asked Jane.
“Of course not; they speak some vulgar, Northern dialect. I can
understand _you_ quite well.”
I really am not going to explain _again_ how it was that the children
could understand other languages than their own so thoroughly, and talk
them, too, so that it felt and sounded (to them) just as though they
were talking English.
“Well,” said Cyril bluntly, “now you’ve seen just how horrid it is,
don’t you think you might as well go home again?”
“Why, I’ve seen simply nothing yet,” said the Queen, arranging her
starry veil. “I wished to be at your door, and I was. Now I must go and
see your King and Queen.”
“Nobody’s allowed to,” said Anthea in haste; “but look here, we’ll take
you and show you anything you’d like to see—anything you _can_ see,”
she added kindly, because she remembered how nice the Queen had been to
them in Babylon, even if she had been a little deceitful in the matter
of Jane and Psammead.
“There’s the Museum,” said Cyril hopefully; “there are lots of things
from your country there. If only we could disguise you a little.”
“I know,” said Anthea suddenly. “Mother’s old theatre cloak, and there
are a lot of her old hats in the big box.”
The blue silk, lace-trimmed cloak did indeed hide some of the Queen’s
startling splendours, but the hat fitted very badly. It had pink roses
in it; and there was something about the coat or the hat or the Queen,
that made her look somehow not very respectable.
“Oh, never mind,” said Anthea, when Cyril whispered this. “The thing is
to get her out before Nurse has finished her forty winks. I should
think she’s about got to the thirty-ninth wink by now.”
“Come on then,” said Robert. “You know how dangerous it is. Let’s make
haste into the Museum. If any of those people you made guys of do fetch
the police, they won’t think of looking for you there.”
The blue silk coat and the pink-rosed hat attracted almost as much
attention as the royal costume had done; and the children were
uncommonly glad to get out of the noisy streets into the grey quiet of
the Museum.
“Parcels and umbrellas to be left here,” said a man at the counter.
The party had no umbrellas, and the only parcel was the bag containing
the Psammead, which the Queen had insisted should be brought.
“_I’m_ not going to be left,” said the Psammead softly, “so don’t you
think it.”
“I’ll wait outside with you,” said Anthea hastily, and went to sit on
the seat near the drinking fountain.
“Don’t sit so near that nasty fountain,” said the creature crossly; “I
might get splashed.”
Anthea obediently moved to another seat and waited. Indeed she waited,
and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. The Psammead dropped
into an uneasy slumber. Anthea had long ceased to watch the swing-door
that always let out the wrong person, and she was herself almost
asleep, and still the others did not come back.
It was quite a start when Anthea suddenly realized that they _had_ come
back, and that they were not alone. Behind them was quite a crowd of
men in uniform, and several gentlemen were there. Everyone seemed very
angry.
“Now go,” said the nicest of the angry gentlemen. “Take the poor,
demented thing home and tell your parents she ought to be properly
looked after.”
“If you can’t get her to go we must send for the police,” said the
nastiest gentleman.
“But we don’t wish to use harsh measures,” added the nice one, who was
really very nice indeed, and seemed to be over all the others.
“May I speak to my sister a moment first?” asked Robert.
The nicest gentleman nodded, and the officials stood round the Queen,
the others forming a sort of guard while Robert crossed over to Anthea.
“Everything you can think of,” he replied to Anthea’s glance of
inquiry. “Kicked up the most frightful shine in there. Said those
necklaces and earrings and things in the glass cases were all
hers—would have them out of the cases. Tried to break the glass—she did
break one bit! Everybody in the place has been at her. No good. I only
got her out by telling her that was the place where they cut queens’
heads off.”
“Oh, Bobs, what a whacker!”
“You’d have told a whackinger one to get her out. Besides, it wasn’t. I
meant _mummy_ queens. How do you know they don’t cut off mummies’ heads
to see how the embalming is done? What I want to say is, can’t you get
her to go with you quietly?”
“I’ll try,” said Anthea, and went up to the Queen.
“Do come home,” she said; “the learned gentleman in our house has a
much nicer necklace than anything they’ve got here. Come and see it.”
The Queen nodded.
“You see,” said the nastiest gentleman, “she does understand English.”
“I was talking Babylonian, I think,” said Anthea bashfully.
“My good child,” said the nice gentleman, “what you’re talking is not
Babylonian, but nonsense. You just go home _at once_, and tell your
parents exactly what has happened.”
Anthea took the Queen’s hand and gently pulled her away. The other
children followed, and the black crowd of angry gentlemen stood on the
steps watching them. It was when the little party of disgraced
children, with the Queen who had disgraced them, had reached the middle
of the courtyard that her eyes fell on the bag where the Psammead was.
She stopped short.
“I wish,” she said, very loud and clear, “that all those Babylonian
things would come out to me here—slowly, so that those dogs and slaves
can see the working of the great Queen’s magic.”
“Oh, you _are_ a tiresome woman,” said the Psammead in its bag, but it
puffed itself out.
Next moment there was a crash. The glass swing doors and all their
framework were smashed suddenly and completely. The crowd of angry
gentlemen sprang aside when they saw what had done this. But the
nastiest of them was not quick enough, and he was roughly pushed out of
the way by an enormous stone bull that was floating steadily through
the door. It came and stood beside the Queen in the middle of the
courtyard.
It was followed by more stone images, by great slabs of carved stone,
bricks, helmets, tools, weapons, fetters, wine-jars, bowls, bottles,
vases, jugs, saucers, seals, and the round long things, something like
rolling pins with marks on them like the print of little bird-feet,
necklaces, collars, rings, armlets, earrings—heaps and heaps and heaps
of things, far more than anyone had time to count, or even to see
distinctly.
All the angry gentlemen had abruptly sat down on the Museum steps
except the nice one. He stood with his hands in his pockets just as
though he was quite used to seeing great stone bulls and all sorts of
small Babylonish objects float out into the Museum yard. But he sent a
man to close the big iron gates.
A journalist, who was just leaving the museum, spoke to Robert as he
passed.
“Theosophy, I suppose?” he said. “Is she Mrs Besant?”
“_Yes_,” said Robert recklessly.
The journalist passed through the gates just before they were shut. He
rushed off to Fleet Street, and his paper got out a new edition within
half an hour.
MRS BESANT AND THEOSOPHY
IMPERTINENT MIRACLE AT THE
BRITISH MUSEUM.
People saw it in fat, black letters on the boards carried by the
sellers of newspapers. Some few people who had nothing better to do
went down to the Museum on the tops of omnibuses. But by the time they
got there there was nothing to be seen. For the Babylonian Queen had
suddenly seen the closed gates, had felt the threat of them, and had
said—
“I wish we were in your house.”
And, of course, instantly they were.
The Psammead was furious.
“Look here,” it said, “they’ll come after you, and they’ll find _me_.
There’ll be a National Cage built for me at Westminster, and I shall
have to work at politics. Why wouldn’t you leave the things in their
places?”
“What a temper you have, haven’t you?” said the Queen serenely. “I wish
all the things were back in their places. Will _that_ do for you?”
The Psammead swelled and shrank and spoke very angrily.
“I can’t refuse to give your wishes,” it said, “but I can Bite. And I
will if this goes on. Now then.”
“Ah, don’t,” whispered Anthea close to its bristling ear; “it’s
dreadful for us too. Don’t _you_ desert us. Perhaps she’ll wish herself
at home again soon.”
“Not she,” said the Psammead a little less crossly.
“Take me to see your City,” said the Queen.
The children looked at each other.
“If we had some money we could take her about in a cab. People wouldn’t
notice her so much then. But we haven’t.”
“Sell this,” said the Queen, taking a ring from her finger.
“They’d only think we’d stolen it,” said Cyril bitterly, “and put us in
prison.”
“All roads lead to prison with you, it seems,” said the Queen.
“The learned gentleman!” said Anthea, and ran up to him with the ring
in her hand.
“Look here,” she said, “will you buy this for a pound?”
“Oh!” he said in tones of joy and amazement, and took the ring into his
hand.
“It’s my very own,” said Anthea; “it was given to me to sell.”
“I’ll lend you a pound,” said the learned gentleman, “with pleasure;
and I’ll take care of the ring for you. Who did you say gave it to
you?”
“We call her,” said Anthea carefully, “the Queen of Babylon.”
“Is it a game?” he asked hopefully.
“It’ll be a pretty game if I don’t get the money to pay for cabs for
her,” said Anthea.
“I sometimes think,” he said slowly, “that I am becoming insane, or
that—”
“Or that I am; but I’m not, and you’re not, and she’s not.”
“Does she _say_ that she’s the Queen of Babylon?” he uneasily asked.
“Yes,” said Anthea recklessly.
“This thought-transference is more far-reaching than I imagined,” he
said. “I suppose I have unconsciously influenced _her_, too. I never
thought my Babylonish studies would bear fruit like this. Horrible!
There are more things in heaven and earth—”
“Yes,” said Anthea, “heaps more. And the pound is the thing _I_ want
more than anything on earth.”
He ran his fingers through his thin hair.
“This thought-transference!” he said. “It’s undoubtedly a Babylonian
ring—or it seems so to me. But perhaps I have hypnotized myself. I will
see a doctor the moment I have corrected the last proofs of my book.”
“Yes, do!” said Anthea, “and thank you so very much.”
She took the sovereign and ran down to the others.
And now from the window of a four-wheeled cab the Queen of Babylon
beheld the wonders of London. Buckingham Palace she thought
uninteresting; Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament little
better. But she liked the Tower, and the River, and the ships filled
her with wonder and delight.
“But how badly you keep your slaves. How wretched and poor and
neglected they seem,” she said, as the cab rattled along the Mile End
Road.
“They aren’t slaves; they’re working-people,” said Jane.
“Of course they’re working. That’s what slaves are. Don’t you tell me.
Do you suppose I don’t know a slave’s face when I see it? Why don’t
their masters see that they’re better fed and better clothed? Tell me
in three words.”
No one answered. The wage-system of modern England is a little
difficult to explain in three words even if you understand it—which the
children didn’t.
“You’ll have a revolt of your slaves if you’re not careful,” said the
Queen.
“Oh, no,” said Cyril; “you see they have votes—that makes them safe not
to revolt. It makes all the difference. Father told me so.”
“What is this vote?” asked the Queen. “Is it a charm? What do they do
with it?”
“I don’t know,” said the harassed Cyril; “it’s just a vote, that’s all!
They don’t do anything particular with it.”
“I see,” said the Queen; “a sort of plaything. Well, I wish that all
these slaves may have in their hands this moment their fill of their
favourite meat and drink.”
Instantly all the people in the Mile End Road, and in all the other
streets where poor people live, found their hands full of things to eat
and drink. From the cab window could be seen persons carrying every
kind of food, and bottles and cans as well. Roast meat, fowls, red
lobsters, great yellowy crabs, fried fish, boiled pork, beef-steak
puddings, baked onions, mutton pies; most of the young people had
oranges and sweets and cake. It made an enormous change in the look of
the Mile End Road—brightened it up, so to speak, and brightened up,
more than you can possibly imagine, the faces of the people.
“Makes a difference, doesn’t it?” said the Queen.
“That’s the best wish you’ve had yet,” said Jane with cordial approval.
Just by the Bank the cabman stopped.
“I ain’t agoin’ to drive you no further,” he said. “Out you gets.”
They got out rather unwillingly.
“I wants my tea,” he said; and they saw that on the box of the cab was
a mound of cabbage, with pork chops and apple sauce, a duck, and a
spotted currant pudding. Also a large can.
“You pay me my fare,” he said threateningly, and looked down at the
mound, muttering again about his tea.
“We’ll take another cab,” said Cyril with dignity. “Give me change for
a sovereign, if you please.”
But the cabman, as it turned out, was not at all a nice character. He
took the sovereign, whipped up his horse, and disappeared in the stream
of cabs and omnibuses and wagons, without giving them any change at
all.
Already a little crowd was collecting round the party.
“Come on,” said Robert, leading the wrong way.
The crowd round them thickened. They were in a narrow street where many
gentlemen in black coats and without hats were standing about on the
pavement talking very loudly.
“How ugly their clothes are,” said the Queen of Babylon. “They’d be
rather fine men, some of them, if they were dressed decently,
especially the ones with the beautiful long, curved noses. I wish they
were dressed like the Babylonians of my court.”
And of course, it was so.
The moment the almost fainting Psammead had blown itself out every man
in Throgmorton Street appeared abruptly in Babylonian full dress.
All were carefully powdered, their hair and beards were scented and
curled, their garments richly embroidered. They wore rings and armlets,
flat gold collars and swords, and impossible-looking head-dresses.
A stupefied silence fell on them.
“I say,” a youth who had always been fair-haired broke that silence,
“it’s only fancy of course—something wrong with my eyes—but you chaps
do look so rum.”
“Rum,” said his friend. “Look at _you_. You in a sash! My hat! And your
hair’s gone black and you’ve got a beard. It’s my belief we’ve been
poisoned. You do look a jackape.”
“Old Levinstein don’t look so bad. But how was it _done_—that’s what I
want to know. How _was_ it done? Is it conjuring, or what?”
“I think it is chust a ver’ bad tream,” said old Levinstein to his
clerk; “all along Bishopsgate I haf seen the gommon people have their
hants full of food—_goot_ food. Oh yes, without doubt a very bad
tream!”
“Then I’m dreaming too, sir,” said the clerk, looking down at his legs
with an expression of loathing. “I see my feet in beastly sandals as
plain as plain.”
“All that goot food wasted,” said old Mr Levinstein. A bad tream—a bad
tream.”
The Members of the Stock Exchange are said to be at all times a noisy
lot. But the noise they made now to express their disgust at the
costumes of ancient Babylon was far louder than their ordinary row. One
had to shout before one could hear oneself speak.
“I only wish,” said the clerk who thought it was conjuring—he was quite
close to the children and they trembled, because they knew that
whatever he wished would come true. “I only wish we knew who’d done
it.”
And, of course, instantly they did know, and they pressed round the
Queen.
“Scandalous! Shameful! Ought to be put down by law. Give her in charge.
Fetch the police,” two or three voices shouted at once.
The Queen recoiled.
“What is it?” she asked. “They sound like caged lions—lions by the
thousand. What is it that they say?”
“They say ‘Police!’,” said Cyril briefly. “I knew they would sooner or
later. And I don’t blame them, mind you.”
“I wish my guards were here!” cried the Queen. The exhausted Psammead
was panting and trembling, but the Queen’s guards in red and green
garments, and brass and iron gear, choked Throgmorton Street, and bared
weapons flashed round the Queen.
“I’m mad,” said a Mr Rosenbaum; “dat’s what it is—mad!”
“It’s a judgement on you, Rosy,” said his partner. “I always said you
were too hard in that matter of Flowerdew. It’s a judgement, and I’m in
it too.”
The members of the Stock Exchange had edged carefully away from the
gleaming blades, the mailed figures, the hard, cruel Eastern faces. But
Throgmorton Street is narrow, and the crowd was too thick for them to
get away as quickly as they wished.
“Kill them,” cried the Queen. “Kill the dogs!”
The guards obeyed.
“It _is_ all a dream,” cried Mr Levinstein, cowering in a doorway
behind his clerk.
“It isn’t,” said the clerk. “It isn’t. Oh, my good gracious! those
foreign brutes are killing everybody. Henry Hirsh is down now, and
Prentice is cut in two—oh, Lord! and Huth, and there goes Lionel Cohen
with his head off, and Guy Nickalls has lost his head now. A dream? I
wish to goodness it was all a dream.”
And, of course, instantly it was! The entire Stock Exchange rubbed its
eyes and went back to close, to over, and either side of seven-eights,
and Trunks, and Kaffirs, and Steel Common, and Contangoes, and
Backwardations, Double Options, and all the interesting subjects
concerning which they talk in the Street without ceasing.
No one said a word about it to anyone else. I think I have explained
before that business men do not like it to be known that they have been
dreaming in business hours. Especially mad dreams including such
dreadful things as hungry people getting dinners, and the destruction
of the Stock Exchange.
The children were in the dining-room at 300, Fitzroy Street, pale and
trembling. The Psammead crawled out of the embroidered bag, and lay
flat on the table, its leg stretched out, looking more like a dead hare
than anything else.
“Thank Goodness that’s over,” said Anthea, drawing a deep breath.
“She won’t come back, will she?” asked Jane tremulously.
“No,” said Cyril. “She’s thousands of years ago. But we spent a whole
precious pound on her. It’ll take all our pocket-money for ages to pay
that back.”
“Not if it was _all_ a dream,” said Robert. “The wish said _all_ a
dream, you know, Panther; you cut up and ask if he lent you anything.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Anthea politely, following the sound of her
knock into the presence of the learned gentleman, “I’m _so_ sorry to
trouble you, but _did_ you lend me a pound today?”
“No,” said he, looking kindly at her through his spectacles. “But it’s
extraordinary that you should ask me, for I dozed for a few moments
this afternoon, a thing I very rarely do, and I dreamed quite
distinctly that you brought me a ring that you said belonged to the
Queen of Babylon, and that I lent you a sovereign and that you left one
of the Queen’s rings here. The ring was a magnificent specimen.” He
sighed. “I wish it hadn’t been a dream,” he said smiling. He was really
learning to smile quite nicely.
Anthea could not be too thankful that the Psammead was not there to
grant his wish.