The Magic City. Эдит Несбит
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,