The Greatest Works of E. Nesbit (220+ Titles in One Illustrated Edition). Эдит Несбит
all dark again – and bony.’
‘Let’s get out, then,’ said Anthea. ‘We can argue as we go.’ So they rolled up the carpet and went. But when they had crept along to the place where the passage led into the topless tower they found the way blocked by a great stone, which they could not move.
‘There!’ said Robert. ‘I hope you’re satisfied!’
‘Everything has two ends,’ said the Phoenix, softly; ‘even a quarrel or a secret passage.’
So they turned round and went back, and Robert was made to go first with one of the candles, because he was the one who had begun to talk about bones. And Cyril carried the carpet.
‘I wish you hadn’t put bones into our heads,’ said Jane, as they went along.
‘I didn’t; you always had them. More bones than brains,’ said Robert.
The passage was long, and there were arches and steps and turnings and dark alcoves that the girls did not much like passing. The passage ended in a flight of steps. Robert went up them.
Suddenly he staggered heavily back on to the following feet of Jane, and everybody screamed, ‘Oh! what is it?’
‘I’ve only bashed my head in,’ said Robert, when he had groaned for some time; ‘that’s all. Don’t mention it; I like it. The stairs just go right slap into the ceiling, and it’s a stone ceiling. You can’t do good and kind actions underneath a paving-stone.’
‘Stairs aren’t made to lead just to paving-stones as a general rule,’ said the Phoenix. ‘Put your shoulder to the wheel.’
‘There isn’t any wheel,’ said the injured Robert, still rubbing his head.
But Cyril had pushed past him to the top stair, and was already shoving his hardest against the stone above. Of course, it did not give in the least.
‘If it’s a trap-door—’ said Cyril. And he stopped shoving and began to feel about with his hands. ‘Yes, there is a bolt. I can’t move it.’
By a happy chance Cyril had in his pocket the oil-can of his father’s bicycle; he put the carpet down at the foot of the stairs, and he lay on his back, with his head on the top step and his feet straggling down among his young relations, and he oiled the bolt till the drops of rust and oil fell down on his face. One even went into his mouth – open, as he panted with the exertion of keeping up this unnatural position. Then he tried again, but still the bolt would not move. So now he tied his handkerchief – the one with the bacon-fat and marmalade on it – to the bolt, and Robert’s handkerchief to that, in a reef knot, which cannot come undone however much you pull, and, indeed, gets tighter and tighter the more you pull it. This must not be confused with a granny knot, which comes undone if you look at it. And then he and Robert pulled, and the girls put their arms round their brothers and pulled too, and suddenly the bolt gave way with a rusty scrunch, and they all rolled together to the bottom of the stairs – all but the Phoenix, which had taken to its wings when the pulling began.
Nobody was hurt much, because the rolled-up carpet broke their fall; and now, indeed, the shoulders of the boys were used to some purpose, for the stone allowed them to heave it up. They felt it give; dust fell freely on them.
‘Now, then,’ cried Robert, forgetting his head and his temper, ‘push all together. One, two, three!’
The stone was heaved up. It swung up on a creaking, unwilling hinge, and showed a growing oblong of dazzling daylight; and it fell back with a bang against something that kept it upright. Everyone climbed out, but there was not room for everyone to stand comfortably in the little paved house where they found themselves, so when the Phoenix had fluttered up from the darkness they let the stone down, and it closed like a trap-door, as indeed it was.
You can have no idea how dusty and dirty the children were. Fortunately there was no one to see them but each other. The place they were in was a little shrine, built on the side of a road that went winding up through yellow-green fields to the topless tower. Below them were fields and orchards, all bare boughs and brown furrows, and little houses and gardens. The shrine was a kind of tiny chapel with no front wall – just a place for people to stop and rest in and wish to be good. So the Phoenix told them. There was an image that had once been brightly coloured, but the rain and snow had beaten in through the open front of the shrine, and the poor image was dull and weather-stained. Under it was written: ‘St Jean de Luz. Priez pour nous.’ It was a sad little place, very neglected and lonely, and yet it was nice, Anthea thought, that poor travellers should come to this little rest-house in the hurry and worry of their journeyings and be quiet for a few minutes, and think about being good. The thought of St Jean de Luz – who had, no doubt, in his time, been very good and kind – made Anthea want more than ever to do something kind and good.
‘Tell us,’ she said to the Phoenix, ‘what is the good and kind action the carpet brought us here to do?’
‘I think it would be kind to find the owners of the treasure and tell them about it,’ said Cyril.
‘And give it them all?’ said Jane.
‘Yes. But whose is it?’
‘I should go to the first house and ask the name of the owner of the castle,’ said the golden bird, and really the idea seemed a good one.
They dusted each other as well as they could and went down the road. A little way on they found a tiny spring, bubbling out of the hillside and falling into a rough stone basin surrounded by draggled hart’s-tongue ferns, now hardly green at all. Here the children washed their hands and faces and dried them on their pocket-handkerchiefs, which always, on these occasions, seem unnaturally small. Cyril’s and Robert’s handkerchiefs, indeed, rather undid the effects of the wash. But in spite of this the party certainly looked cleaner than before.
The first house they came to was a little white house with green shutters and a slate roof. It stood in a prim little garden, and down each side of the neat path were large stone vases for flowers to grow in; but all the flowers were dead now.
Along one side of the house was a sort of wide veranda, built of poles and trellis-work, and a vine crawled all over it. It was wider than our English verandas, and Anthea thought it must look lovely when the green leaves and the grapes were there; but now there were only dry, reddish-brown stalks and stems, with a few withered leaves caught in them.
The children walked up to the front door. It was green and narrow. A chain with a handle hung beside it, and joined itself quite openly to a rusty bell that hung under the porch. Cyril had pulled the bell and its noisy clang was dying away before the terrible thought came to all. Cyril spoke it.
‘My hat!’ he breathed. ‘We don’t know any French!’
At this moment the door opened. A very tall, lean lady, with pale ringlets like whitey-brown paper or oak shavings, stood before them. She had an ugly grey dress and a black silk apron. Her eyes were small and grey and not pretty, and the rims were red, as though she had been crying.
She addressed the party in something that sounded like a foreign language, and ended with something which they were sure was a question. Of course, no one could answer it.
‘What does she say?’ Robert asked, looking down into the hollow of his jacket, where the Phoenix was nestling. But before the Phoenix could answer, the whitey-brown lady’s face was lighted up by a most charming smile.
‘You – you ar-r-re fr-r-rom the England!’ she cried. ‘I love so much the England. Mais entrez – entrez donc tous! Enter, then – enter all. One essuyes his feet on the carpet.’
She pointed to the mat.
‘We only wanted to ask—’
‘I shall say you all that what you wish,’ said the lady. ‘Enter only!’
So they all went in, wiping their feet on