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THE MAGIC CITY
BY
E. NESBIT
AUTHOR OF
'THE WOULD-BE-GOODS,' 'THE AMULET,' ETC. ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. R. MILLAR
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1910
[Illustration: _Page 328_ _Frontispiece_
Three days later Mr. Noah arrived by elephant.]
TO
BARBARA, MAURICE,
AND
STEPHEN CHANT
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
BY
E. NESBIT
WELL HALL,
ELTHAM, KENT, 1910.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
THE BEGINNING 1
CHAPTER II
DELIVERER OR DESTROYER 30
CHAPTER III
LOST 65
CHAPTER IV
THE DRAGON-SLAYER 94
CHAPTER V
ON THE CARPET 131
CHAPTER VI
THE LIONS IN THE DESERT 160
CHAPTER VII
THE DWELLERS BY THE SEA 187
CHAPTER VIII
UPS AND DOWNS 218
CHAPTER IX
ON THE 'LIGHTNING LOOSE' 245
CHAPTER X
THE GREAT SLOTH 272
CHAPTER XI
THE NIGHT ATTACK 302
CHAPTER XII
THE END 318
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Three days later Mr. Noah arrived by elephant _Frontispiece_
'Lor', ain't it pretty!' said the parlour-maid 17
Beyond it he could see dim piles that looked like
churches and houses 27
'Here--I say, wake up, can't you?' 33
'Top floor, if you please,' said the gaoler politely 49
And behind him the clatter of hot pursuit 61
He heard quite a loud, strong, big voice say, 'That's
better' 85
The gigantic porch lowered frowningly above him 91
He walked on and on and on 97
'Silence, trespasser,' said Mr. Noah, with cold dignity 115
Then something hard and heavy knocked him over 127
Mr. Noah whispered ardently, 'Don't!' 139
So, all down the wide clear floor, Lucy danced 157
On the top of a very large and wobbly camel 169
It was heavy work turning the lions over 179
Slowly they came to the great gate of the castle 193
'If your camel's not quite fresh I can mount you both' 199
They loved looking on 211
A long procession toiled slowly up it of animals in
pairs 223
Walked straight into the arms of Helen 243
He induced them to build him a temple of solid gold 261
Plunged headlong over the edge 269
The bucket began to go up 281
Lucy threw herself across the well parapet 287
And all the while it had to go on turning that handle 299
Philip felt that it was best to stop the car among the
suburban groves of southernwood 307
They leapt in and disappeared 321
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING
Philip Haldane and his sister lived in a little red-roofed house in a
little red-roofed town. They had a little garden and a little balcony,
and a little stable with a little pony in it--and a little cart for the
pony to draw; a little canary hung in a little cage in the little
bow-window, and the neat little servant kept everything as bright and
clean as a little new pin.
Philip had no one but his sister, and she had no one but Philip. Their
parents were dead, and Helen, who was twenty years older than Philip and
was really his half-sister, was all the mother he had ever known. And he
had never envied other boys their mothers, because Helen was so kind and
clever and dear. She gave up almost all her time to him; she taught him
all the lessons he learned; she played with him, inventing the most
wonderful new games and adventures. So that every morning when Philip
woke he knew that he was waking to a new day of joyous and interesting
happenings. And this went on till Philip was ten years old, and he had
no least shadow of a doubt that it would go on for ever. The beginning
of the change came one day when he and Helen had gone for a picnic to
the wood where the waterfall was, and as they were driving back behind
the stout old pony, who was so good and quiet that Philip was allowed to
drive it. They were coming up the last lane before the turning where
their house was, and Helen said:
'To-morrow we'll weed the aster bed and have tea in the garden.'
'Jolly,' said Philip, and they turned the corner and came in sight of
their white little garden gate. And a man was coming out of it--a man
who was not one of the friends they both knew. He turned and came to
meet them. Helen put her hand on the reins--a thing which she had always
taught Philip was _never_ done--and the pony stopped. The man, who was,
as Philip put it to himself, 'tall and tweedy,' came across in front of
the pony's nose and stood close by the wheel on the side where Helen
sat. She shook hands with him, and said, 'How do you do?' in quite the
usual way. But after that they whispered. Whispered! And Philip knew
how rude it is to whisper, because Helen had often told him this. He
heard one or two words, 'at last,' and 'over now,' and 'this evening,
then.'
After that Helen said, 'This is my brother Philip,' and the man shook
hands with him--across Helen, another thing which Philip knew was not
manners, and said, 'I hope we shall be the best of friends.' Pip said,
'How do you do?' because that is the polite thing to say. But inside
himself he said, 'I don't want to be friends with _you_.'
Then the man took off his hat and walked away, and Philip and his sister
went home. She seemed different, somehow, and he was sent to bed a
little earlier than usual, but he could not go to sleep for a long time,
because he heard the front-door bell ring and afterwards a man's voice
and Helen's going on and on in the little drawing-room under the room
which was his bedroom. He went to sleep at last, and when he woke up in
the morning it was raining, and the sky was grey and miserable. He lost
his collar-stud, he tore one of his stockings as he pulled it on, he
pinched his finger in the door, and he dropped his tooth-mug, with water
in it too, and the mug was broken and the water went into his boots.
There are mornings, you know, when things happen like that. This was
one of them.
Then he went down to breakfast, which tasted not quite so nice as usual.
He was late, of course. The bacon fat was growing grey with waiting for
him, as Helen said, in the cheerful voice that had always said all the
things he liked best to hear. But Philip didn't smile. It did not seem
the sort of morning for smiling, and the grey rain beat against the
window.
After breakfast Helen said, 'Tea in the garden is indefinitely
postponed, and it's too wet for lessons.'
That was one of her charming ideas--that wet days should not be made
worse by lessons.
'What shall we do?' she said; 'shall we talk about the island? Shall I
make another map of it? And put in all the gardens and fountains and
swings?'
The island was a favourite play. Somewhere in the warm seas where palm
trees are, and rainbow-coloured sands, the island was said to be--their
own island, beautified by their fancy with everything they liked and
wanted, and Philip was never tired of talking about it. There were times
when he almost believed that the island was real. He was king of the
island and Helen was queen, and no one else was to be allowed on it.
Only these two.
But this morning even the thought of the island failed to charm. Philip
straggled away to the window and looked out dismally at the soaked lawn
and the dripping laburnum trees, and the row of raindrops hanging fat
and full on the iron gate.
'What is it, Pippin?' Helen asked. 'Don't tell me you're going to have
horrid measles, or red-hot scarlet fever, or noisy whooping-cough.'
She came across and laid her hand on his forehead.
'Why, you're quite hot, boy of my heart. Tell sister, what is it?'
'_You_ tell _me_,' said Philip slowly.
'Tell you what, Pip?'
'You think you ought to bear it alone, like in books, and be noble and
all that. But you _must_ tell me; you promised you'd never have any
secrets from me, Helen, you know you did.'
Helen put her arm round him and said nothing. And from her silence Pip
drew the most desperate and harrowing conclusions. The silence lasted.
The rain gurgled in the water-pipe and dripped on the ivy. The canary in
the green cage that hung in the window put its head on one side and
tweaked a seed husk out into Philip's face, then twittered defiantly.
But his sister said nothing.
'Don't,' said Philip suddenly, 'don't break it to me; tell me straight
out.'
'Tell you what?' she said again.
'What is it?' he said. '_I_ know how these unforetold misfortunes
happen. Some one always comes--and then it's broken to the family.'
'_What_ is?' she asked.
'The misfortune,' said Philip breathlessly. 'Oh, Helen, I'm not a baby.
Do tell me! Have we lost our money in a burst bank? Or is the landlord
going to put bailiffs into our furniture? Or are we going to be falsely
accused about forgery, or being burglars?'
All the books Philip had ever read worked together in his mind to
produce these melancholy suggestions. Helen laughed, and instantly felt
a stiffening withdrawal of her brother from her arm.
'No, no, my Pippin, dear,' she made haste to say. 'Nothing horrid like
that has happened.'
'Then what is it?' he asked, with a growing impatience that felt like a
wolf gnawing inside him.
'I didn't want to tell you all in a hurry like this,' she said
anxiously; 'but don't you worry, my boy of boys. It's something that
makes me very happy. I hope it will you, too.'
He swung round in the circling of her arm and looked at her with sudden
ecstasy.
'Oh, Helen, dear--I know! Some one has left you a hundred thousand
pounds a year--some one you once opened a railway-carriage door for--and
now I can have a pony of my very own to ride. Can't I?'
'Yes,' said Helen slowly, 'you can have a pony; but nobody's left me
anything. Look here, my Pippin,' she added, very quickly, 'don't ask any
more questions. I'll tell you. When I was quite little like you I had a
dear friend I used to play with all day long, and when we grew up we
were friends still. He lived quite near us. And then he married some one
else. And then the some one died. And now he wants me to marry him. And
he's got lots of horses and a beautiful house and park,' she added.
'And where shall I be?' he asked.
'With me, of course, wherever I am.'
'It won't be just us two any more, though,' said Philip, 'and you said
it should be, for ever and ever.'
'But I didn't know then, Pip, dear. He's been wanting me so long----'
'Don't _I_ want you?' said Pip to himself.
'And he's got a little girl that you'll like so to play with,' she went
on. 'Her name's Lucy, and she's just a year younger than you. And
you'll be the greatest friends with her. And you'll both have ponies to
ride, and----'
'I hate her,' cried Philip, very loud, 'and I hate him, and I hate their
beastly ponies. And I hate _you_!' And with these dreadful words he
flung off her arm and rushed out of the room, banging the door after
him--on purpose.
Well, she found him in the boot-cupboard, among the gaiters and goloshes
and cricket-stumps and old rackets, and they kissed and cried and hugged
each other, and he said he was sorry he had been naughty. But in his
heart that was the only thing he was sorry for. He was sorry that he had
made Helen unhappy. He still hated 'that man,' and most of all he hated
Lucy.
He had to be polite to that man. His sister was very fond of that man,
and this made Philip hate him still more, while at the same time it made
him careful not to show how he hated him. Also it made him feel that
hating that man was not quite fair to his sister, whom he loved. But
there were no feelings of that kind to come in the way of the
detestation he felt for Lucy. Helen had told him that Lucy had fair hair
and wore it in two plaits; and he pictured her to himself as a fat,
stumpy little girl, exactly like the little girl in the story of 'The
Sugar Bread' in the old oblong 'Shock-Headed Peter' book that had
belonged to Helen when she was little.
Helen was quite happy. She divided her love between the boy she loved
and the man she was going to marry, and she believed that they were both
as happy as she was. The man, whose name was Peter Graham, was happy
enough; the boy, who was Philip, was amused--for she kept him so--but
under the amusement he was miserable.
And the wedding-day came and went. And Philip travelled on a very hot
afternoon by strange trains and a strange carriage to a strange house,
where he was welcomed by a strange nurse and--Lucy.
'You won't mind going to stay at Peter's beautiful house without me,
will you, dear?' Helen had asked. 'Every one will be kind to you, and
you'll have Lucy to play with.'
And Philip said he didn't mind. What else could he say, without being
naughty and making Helen cry again?
Lucy was not a bit like the Sugar-Bread child. She had fair hair, it is
true, and it was plaited in two braids, but they were very long and
straight; she herself was long and lean and had a freckled face and
bright, jolly eyes.
'I'm so glad you've come,' she said, meeting him on the steps of the
most beautiful house he had ever seen; 'we can play all sort of things
now that you can't play when you're only one. I'm an only child,' she
added, with a sort of melancholy pride. Then she laughed. '"Only" rhymes
with "lonely," doesn't it?' she said.
'I don't know,' said Philip, with deliberate falseness, for he knew
quite well.
He said no more.
Lucy tried two or three other beginnings of conversation, but Philip
contradicted everything she said.
'I'm afraid he's very very stupid,' she said to her nurse, an extremely
trained nurse, who firmly agreed with her. And when her aunt came to see
her next day, Lucy said that the little new boy was stupid, and
disagreeable as well as stupid, and Philip confirmed this opinion of his
behaviour to such a degree that the aunt, who was young and
affectionate, had Lucy's clothes packed at once and carried her off for
a few days' visit.
So Philip and the nurse were left at the Grange. There was nobody else
in the house but servants. And now Philip began to know what loneliness
meant. The letters and the picture post-cards which his sister sent
every day from the odd towns on the continent of Europe, which she
visited on her honeymoon, did not cheer the boy. They merely
exasperated him, reminding him of the time when she was all his own, and
was too near to him to need to send him post-cards and letters.
The extremely trained nurse, who wore a grey uniform and white cap and
apron, disapproved of Philip to the depths of her well-disciplined
nature. 'Cantankerous little pig,' she called him to herself.
To the housekeeper she said, 'He is an unusually difficult and
disagreeable child. I should imagine that his education has been much
neglected. He wants a tight hand.'
She did not use a tight hand to him, however. She treated him with an
indifference more annoying than tyranny. He had immense liberty of a
desolate, empty sort. The great house was his to go to and fro in. But
he was not allowed to touch anything in it. The garden was his--to
wander through, but he must not pluck flowers or fruit. He had no
lessons, it is true; but, then, he had no games either. There was a
nursery, but he was not imprisoned in it--was not even encouraged to
spend his time there. He was sent out for walks, and alone, for the park
was large and safe. And the nursery was the room of all that great house
that attracted him most, for it was full of toys of the most fascinating
kind. A rocking-horse as big as a pony, the finest dolls' house you
ever saw, boxes of tea-things, boxes of bricks--both the wooden and the
terra-cotta sorts--puzzle maps, dominoes, chessmen, draughts, every kind
of toy or game that you have ever had or ever wished to have.
And Pip was not allowed to play with any of them.
'You mustn't touch anything, if you please,' the nurse said, with that
icy politeness which goes with a uniform. 'The toys are Miss Lucy's. No;
I couldn't be responsible for giving you permission to play with them.
No; I couldn't think of troubling Miss Lucy by writing to ask her if you
may play with them. No; I couldn't take upon myself to give you Miss
Lucy's address.'
For Philip's boredom and his desire had humbled him even to the asking
for this.
For two whole days he lived at the Grange, hating it and every one in
it; for the servants took their cue from the nurse, and the child felt
that in the whole house he had not a friend. Somehow he had got the idea
firmly in his head that this was a time when Helen was not to be
bothered about anything; so he wrote to her that he was quite well,
thank you, and the park was very pretty and Lucy had lots of nice toys.
He felt very brave and noble, and like a martyr. And he set his teeth
to bear it all. It was like spending a few days at the dentist's.
And then suddenly everything changed. The nurse got a telegram. A
brother who had been thought to be drowned at sea had abruptly come
home. She must go to see him. 'If it costs me the situation,' she said
to the housekeeper, who answered:
'Oh, well--go, then. I'll be responsible for the boy--sulky little
brat.'
And the nurse went. In a happy bustle she packed her boxes and went. At
the last moment Philip, on the doorstep watching her climb into the
dog-cart, suddenly sprang forward.
'Oh, Nurse!' he cried, blundering against the almost moving wheel, and
it was the first time he had called her by any name. 'Nurse, do--do say
I may take Lucy's toys to play with; it _is_ so lonely here. I may,
mayn't I? I may take them?'
Perhaps the nurse's heart was softened by her own happiness and the
thought of the brother who was not drowned. Perhaps she was only in such
a hurry that she did not know what she was saying. At any rate, when
Philip said for the third time, 'May I take them?' she hastily
answered:
'Bless the child! Take anything you like. Mind the wheel, for goodness'
sake. Good-bye, everybody!' waved her hand to the servants assembled at
the top of the wide steps, and was whirled off to joyous reunion with
the undrowned brother.
Philip drew a deep breath of satisfaction, went straight up to the
nursery, took out all the toys, and examined every single one of them.
It took him all the afternoon.
The next day he looked at all the things again and longed to make
something with them. He was accustomed to the joy that comes of making
things. He and Helen had built many a city for the dream island out of
his own two boxes of bricks and certain other things in the house--her
Japanese cabinet, the dominoes and chessmen, cardboard boxes, books, the
lids of kettles and teapots. But they had never had enough bricks. Lucy
had enough bricks for anything.
He began to build a city on the nursery table. But to build with bricks
alone is poor work when you have been used to building with all sorts of
other things.
'It looks like a factory,' said Philip discontentedly. He swept the
building down and replaced the bricks in their different boxes.
'There must be something downstairs that would come in useful,' he told
himself, 'and she did say, "Take what you like."'
By armfuls, two and three at a time, he carried down the boxes of bricks
and the boxes of blocks, the draughts, the chessmen, and the box of
dominoes. He took them into the long drawing-room where the crystal
chandeliers were, and the chairs covered in brown holland--and the many
long, light windows, and the cabinets and tables covered with the most
interesting things.
He cleared a big writing-table of such useless and unimportant objects
as blotting-pad, silver inkstand, and red-backed books, and there was a
clear space for his city.
He began to build.
A bronze Egyptian god on a black and gold cabinet seemed to be looking
at him from across the room.
'All right,' said Philip. 'I'll build you a temple. You wait a bit.'
The bronze god waited and the temple grew, and two silver candlesticks,
topped by chessmen, served admirably as pillars for the portico. He made
a journey to the nursery to fetch the Noah's Ark animals--the pair of
elephants, each standing on a brick, flanked the entrance. It looked
splendid, like an Assyrian temple in the pictures Helen had shown him.
But the bricks, wherever he built with them alone, looked mean, and like
factories or workhouses. Bricks alone always do.
Philip explored again. He found the library. He made several journeys.
He brought up twenty-seven volumes bound in white vellum with marbled
boards, a set of Shakespeare, ten volumes in green morocco. These made
pillars and cloisters, dark, mysterious, and attractive. More Noah's Ark
animals added an Egyptian-looking finish to the building.
'Lor', ain't it pretty!' said the parlour-maid, who came to call him to
tea. 'You are clever with your fingers, Master Philip, I will say that
for you. But you'll catch it, taking all them things.'
'That grey nurse said I might,' said Philip, 'and it doesn't hurt things
building with them. My sister and I always did it at home,' he added,
looking confidingly at the parlour-maid. She had praised his building.
And it was the first time he had mentioned his sister to any one in that
house.
'Well, it's as good as a peep-show,' said the parlour-maid; 'it's just
like them picture post-cards my brother in India sends me. All them
pillars and domes and things--and the animals too. I don't know how you
fare to think of such things, that I don't.'
[Illustration: 'Lor', ain't it pretty!' said the parlour-maid.]
Praise is sweet. He slipped his hand into that of the parlour-maid as
they went down the wide stairs to the hall, where tea awaited him--a
very little tray on a very big, dark table.
'He's not half a bad child,' said Susan at her tea in the servants'
quarters. 'That nurse frightened him out of his little wits with her
prim ways, you may depend. He's civil enough if you speak him civil.'
'But Miss Lucy didn't frighten him, I suppose,' said the cook; 'and look
how he behaved to her.'
'Well, he's quiet enough, anyhow. You don't hear a breath of him from
morning till night,' said the upper housemaid; 'seems silly-like to me.'
'You slip in and look what he's been building, that's all,' Susan told
them. 'You won't call him silly then. India an' pagodas ain't in it.'
They did slip in, all of them, when Philip had gone to bed. The building
had progressed, though it was not finished.
'I shan't touch a thing,' said Susan. 'Let him have it to play with
to-morrow. We'll clear it all away before that nurse comes back with her
caps and her collars and her stuck-up cheek.'
So next day Philip went on with his building. He put everything you can
think of into it: the dominoes, and the domino-box; bricks and books;
cotton-reels that he begged from Susan, and a collar-box and some
cake-tins contributed by the cook. He made steps of the dominoes and a
terrace of the domino-box. He got bits of southernwood out of the garden
and stuck them in cotton-reels, which made beautiful pots, and they
looked like bay trees in tubs. Brass finger-bowls served for domes, and
the lids of brass kettles and coffee-pots from the oak dresser in the
hall made minarets of dazzling splendour. Chessmen were useful for
minarets, too.
'I must have paved paths and a fountain,' said Philip thoughtfully. The
paths were paved with mother-of-pearl card counters, and the fountain
was a silver and glass ash-tray, with a needlecase of filigree silver
rising up from the middle of it; and the falling water was made quite
nicely out of narrow bits of the silver paper off the chocolate Helen
had given him at parting. Palm trees were easily made--Helen had shown
him how to do that--with bits of larch fastened to elder stems with
plasticine. There was plenty of plasticine among Lucy's toys; there was
plenty of everything.
And the city grew, till it covered the table. Philip, unwearied, set
about to make another city on another table. This had for chief feature
a great water-tower, with a fountain round its base; and now he stopped
at nothing. He unhooked the crystal drops from the great chandeliers to
make his fountains. This city was grander than the first. It had a grand
tower made of a waste-paper basket and an astrologer's tower that was a
photograph-enlarging machine.
The cities were really very beautiful. I wish I could describe them
thoroughly to you. But it would take pages and pages. Besides all the
things I have told of alone there were towers and turrets and grand
staircases, pagodas and pavilions, canals made bright and water-like by
strips of silver paper, and a lake with a boat on it. Philip put into
his buildings all the things out of the doll's house that seemed
suitable. The wooden things-to-eat and dishes. The leaden tea-cups and
goblets. He peopled the place with dominoes and pawns. The handsome
chessmen were used for minarets. He made forts and garrisoned them with
lead soldiers.
He worked hard and he worked cleverly, and as the cities grew in beauty
and interestingness he loved them more and more. He was happy now. There
was no time to be unhappy in.
'I will keep it as it is till Helen comes. How she will _love_ it!' he
said.
The two cities were connected by a bridge which was a yard-stick he had
found in the servants' sewing-room and taken without hindrance, for by
this time all the servants were his friends. Susan had been the
first--that was all.
He had just laid his bridge in place, and put Mr. and Mrs. Noah in the
chief square to represent the inhabitants, and was standing rapt in
admiration of his work, when a hard hand on each of his shoulders made
him start and scream.
It was the nurse. She had come back a day sooner than any one expected
her. The brother had brought home a wife, and she and the nurse had not
liked each other; so she was very cross, and she took Philip by the
shoulders and shook him, a thing which had never happened to him before.
'You naughty, wicked boy!' she said, still shaking.
'But I haven't hurt anything--I'll put everything back,' he said,
trembling and very pale.
'You'll not touch any of it again,' said the nurse. 'I'll see to that. I
shall put everything away myself in the morning. Taking what doesn't
belong to you!'
'But you said I might take anything I liked,' said Philip, 'so if it's
wrong it's your fault.'
'You untruthful child!' cried the nurse, and hit him over the knuckles.
Now, no one had ever hit Philip before. He grew paler than ever, but he
did not cry, though his hands hurt rather badly. For she had snatched up
the yard-stick to hit him with, and it was hard and cornery.
'You are a coward,' said Philip, 'and it is you who are untruthful and
not me.'
'Hold your tongue,' said the nurse, and whirled him off to bed.
'You'll get no supper, so there!' she said, angrily tucking him up.
'I don't want any,' said Philip, 'and I have to forgive you before the
sun goes down.'
'Forgive, indeed!' said she, flouncing out.
'When you get sorry you'll know I've forgiven you,' Philip called after
her, which, of course, made her angrier than ever.
Whether Philip cried when he was alone is not our business. Susan, who
had watched the shaking and the hitting without daring to interfere,
crept up later with milk and sponge-cakes. She found him asleep, and she
says his eyelashes were wet.
When he awoke he thought at first that it was morning, the room was so
light. But presently he saw that it was not yellow sunlight but white
moonshine which made the beautiful brightness.
He wondered at first why he felt so unhappy, then he remembered how
Helen had gone away and how hateful the nurse had been. And now she
would pull down the city and Helen would never see it. And he would
never be able to build such a beautiful one again. In the morning it
would be gone, and he would not be able even to remember how it was
built.
The moonlight was very bright.
'I wonder how my city looks by moonlight?' he said.
And then, all in a thrilling instant, he made up his mind to go down and
see for himself how it did look.
He slipped on his dressing-gown, opened his door softly, and crept along
the corridor and down the broad staircase, then along the gallery and
into the drawing-room. It was very dark, but he felt his way to a window
and undid the shutter, and there lay his city, flooded with moonlight,
just as he had imagined it.
He gazed on it for a moment in ecstasy and then turned to shut the door.
As he did so he felt a slight strange giddiness and stood a moment with
his hand to his head. He turned and went again towards the city, and
when he was close to it he gave a little cry, hastily stifled, for fear
some one should hear him and come down and send him to bed. He stood and
gazed about him bewildered and, once more, rather giddy. For the city
had, in a quick blink of light, followed by darkness, disappeared. So
had the drawing-room. So had the chair that stood close to the table. He
could see mountainous shapes raising enormous heights in the distance,
and the moonlight shone on the tops of them. But he himself seemed to be
in a vast, flat plain. There was the softness of long grass round his
feet, but there were no trees, no houses, no hedges or fences to break
the expanse of grass. It seemed darker in some parts than others. That
was all. It reminded him of the illimitable prairie of which he had read
in books of adventure.
'I suppose I'm dreaming,' said Philip, 'though I don't see how I can
have gone to sleep just while I was turning the door handle.
However----'
He stood still expecting that something would happen. In dreams
something always does happen, if it's only that the dream comes to an
end. But nothing happened now--Philip just stood there quite quietly and
felt the warm soft grass round his ankles.
Then, as his eyes became used to the darkness of the plain, he saw some
way off a very steep bridge leading up to a dark height on whose summit
the moon shone whitely. He walked towards it, and as he approached he
saw that it was less like a bridge than a sort of ladder, and that it
rose to a giddy height above him. It seemed to rest on a rock far up
against dark sky, and the inside of the rock seemed hollowed out in one
vast dark cave.
[Illustration: Beyond it he could see dim piles that looked like
churches and houses.]
And now he was close to the foot of the ladder. It had no rungs, but
narrow ledges made hold for feet and hands. Philip remembered Jack and
the Beanstalk, and looked up longingly; but the ladder was a very very
long one. On the other hand, it was the only thing that seemed to lead
anywhere, and he had had enough of standing lonely in the grassy
prairie, where he seemed to have been for a very long time indeed. So he
put his hands and feet to the ladder and began to go up. It was a very
long climb. There were three hundred and eight steps, for he counted
them. And the steps were only on one side of the ladder, so he had to
be extremely careful. On he went, up and on, on and up, till his feet
ached and his hands felt as though they would drop off for tiredness. He
could not look up far, and he dared not look down at all. There was
nothing for it but to climb and climb and climb, and at last he saw the
ground on which the ladder rested--a terrace hewn in regular lines, and,
as it seemed, hewn from the solid rock. His head was level with the
ground, now his hands, now his feet. He leaped sideways from the ladder
and threw himself face down on the ground, which was cold and smooth
like marble. There he lay, drawing deep breaths of weariness and relief.
There was a great silence all about, which rested and soothed, and
presently he rose and looked around him. He was close to an archway with
very thick pillars, and he went towards it and peeped cautiously in. It
seemed to be a great gate leading to an open space, and beyond it he
could see dim piles that looked like churches and houses. But all was
deserted; the moonlight and he had the place, whatever it was, to
themselves.
'I suppose every one's in bed,' said Philip, and stood there trembling a
little, but very curious and interested, in the black shadow of the
strange arch.