The Greatest Fantasy Tales of Edith Nesbit (Illustrated Edition). Ðдит ÐеÑбит
like a black looking-glass – that each felt as though he had on far more boots than usual, and far noisier.
There was a wood fire, very small and very bright, on the hearth – neat little logs laid on brass fire-dogs. Some portraits of powdered ladies and gentlemen hung in oval frames on the pale walls. There were silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and there were chairs and a table, very slim and polite, with slender legs. The room was extremely bare, but with a bright foreign bareness that was very cheerful, in an odd way of its own.
At the end of the polished table a very un-English little boy sat on a footstool in a high-backed, uncomfortable-looking chair. He wore black velvet, and the kind of collar – all frills and lacey – that Robert would rather have died than wear; but then the little French boy was much younger than Robert.
‘Oh, how pretty!’ said everyone. But no one meant the little French boy, with the velvety short knickerbockers and the velvety short hair.
What everyone admired was a little, little Christmas-tree, very green, and standing in a very red little flower-pot, and hung round with very bright little things made of tinsel and coloured paper. There were tiny candles on the tree, but they were not lighted yet.
‘But yes – is it not that it is genteel?’ said the lady. ‘Sit down you then, and let us see.’
The children sat down in a row on the stiff chairs against the wall, and the lady lighted a long, slim red taper at the wood flame, and then she drew the curtains and lit the little candles, and when they were all lighted the little French boy suddenly shouted, ‘Bravo, ma tante! Oh, que c’est gentil,’ and the English children shouted ‘Hooray!’
Then there was a struggle in the breast of Robert, and out fluttered the Phoenix – spread his gold wings, flew to the top of the Christmas-tree, and perched there.
‘Ah! catch it, then,’ cried the lady; ‘it will itself burn – your genteel parrakeet!’
‘It won’t,’ said Robert, ‘thank you.’
And the little French boy clapped his clean and tidy hands; but the lady was so anxious that the Phoenix fluttered down and walked up and down on the shiny walnut-wood table.
‘Is it that it talks?’ asked the lady.
And the Phoenix replied in excellent French. It said, ‘Parfaitement, madame!’
‘Oh, the pretty parrakeet,’ said the lady. ‘Can it say still of other things?’
And the Phoenix replied, this time in English, ‘Why are you sad so near Christmas-time?’
The children looked at it with one gasp of horror and surprise, for the youngest of them knew that it is far from manners to notice that strangers have been crying, and much worse to ask them the reason of their tears. And, of course, the lady began to cry again, very much indeed, after calling the Phoenix a bird without a heart; and she could not find her handkerchief, so Anthea offered hers, which was still very damp and no use at all. She also hugged the lady, and this seemed to be of more use than the handkerchief, so that presently the lady stopped crying, and found her own handkerchief and dried her eyes, and called Anthea a cherished angel.
‘I am sorry we came just when you were so sad,’ said Anthea, ‘but we really only wanted to ask you whose that castle is on the hill.’
‘Oh, my little angel,’ said the poor lady, sniffing, ‘today and for hundreds of years the castle is to us, to our family. Tomorrow it must that I sell it – to some strangers – and my little Henri, who ignores all, he will not have never the lands paternal. But what will you? His father, my brother – Mr the Marquis – has spent much of money, and it the must, despite the sentiments of familial respect, that I admit that my sainted father he also—’
‘How would you feel if you found a lot of money – hundreds and thousands of gold pieces?’ asked Cyril.
The lady smiled sadly.
‘Ah! one has already recounted to you the legend?’ she said. ‘It is true that one says that it is long time; oh! but long time, one of our ancestors has hid a treasure – of gold, and of gold, and of gold – enough to enrich my little Henri for the life. But all that, my children, it is but the accounts of fays—’
‘She means fairy stories,’ whispered the Phoenix to Robert. ‘Tell her what you have found.’
So Robert told, while Anthea and Jane hugged the lady for fear she should faint for joy, like people in books, and they hugged her with the earnest, joyous hugs of unselfish delight.
‘It’s no use explaining how we got in,’ said Robert, when he had told of the finding of the treasure, ‘because you would find it a little difficult to understand, and much more difficult to believe. But we can show you where the gold is and help you to fetch it away.’
The lady looked doubtfully at Robert as she absently returned the hugs of the girls.
‘No, he’s not making it up,’ said Anthea; ‘it’s true, true, TRUE! – and we are so glad.’
‘You would not be capable to torment an old woman?’ she said; ‘and it is not possible that it be a dream?’
‘It really is true,’ said Cyril; ‘and I congratulate you very much.’
His tone of studied politeness seemed to convince more than the raptures of the others.
‘If I do not dream,’ she said, ‘Henri come to Manon – and you – you shall come all with me to Mr the Curate. Is it not?’
Manon was a wrinkled old woman with a red and yellow handkerchief twisted round her head. She took Henri, who was already sleepy with the excitement of his Christmas-tree and his visitors, and when the lady had put on a stiff black cape and a wonderful black silk bonnet and a pair of black wooden clogs over her black cashmere house-boots, the whole party went down the road to a little white house – very like the one they had left – where an old priest, with a good face, welcomed them with a politeness so great that it hid his astonishment.
The lady, with her French waving hands and her shrugging French shoulders and her trembling French speech, told the story. And now the priest, who knew no English, shrugged his shoulders and waved his hands and spoke also in French.
‘He thinks,’ whispered the Phoenix, ‘that her troubles have turned her brain. What a pity you know no French!’
‘I do know a lot of French,’ whispered Robert, indignantly; ‘but it’s all about the pencil of the gardener’s son and the penknife of the baker’s niece – nothing that anyone ever wants to say.’
‘If I speak,’ the bird whispered, ‘he’ll think he’s mad, too.’
‘Tell me what to say.’
‘Say “C’est vrai, monsieur. Venez donc voir,”’ said the Phoenix; and then Robert earned the undying respect of everybody by suddenly saying, very loudly and distinctly:
‘Say vray, mossoo; venny dong vwaw.’
The priest was disappointed when he found that Robert’s French began and ended with these useful words; but, at any rate, he saw that if the lady was mad she was not the only one, and he put on a big beavery hat, and got a candle and matches and a spade, and they all went up the hill to the wayside shrine of St John of Luz.
‘Now,’ said Robert, ‘I will go first and show you where it is.’
So they prised the stone up with a corner of the spade, and Robert did go first, and they all followed and found the golden treasure exactly as they had left it. And everyone was flushed with the joy of performing such a wonderfully kind action.
Then the lady and the priest clasped hands and wept for joy, as French people do, and knelt down and touched the money, and talked very