The Story of the Amulet by E. Nesbit (best free novels .txt) 📗

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