The Magic City Part 10

'Then it wasn't a dream last night,' said Philip.

'Of course it wasn't,' said Mr. Noah.

'Then where is Lucy?'

'In the city, of course. Where you left her.'

'But she _can't_ be,' said Philip desperately. 'The city's all pulled down and gone for ever.'

'The city you built in this room is pulled down,' said Mr. Noah, 'but the city you went to wasn't in this room. Now I put it to you--how could it be?'

'But it _was_,' said Philip, 'or else how could I have got into it.'

'It's a little difficult, I own,' said Mr. Noah. 'But, you see, you built those cities in two worlds. It's pulled down in _this_ world. But in the other world it's going on.'

'I don't understand,' said Philip.

'I thought you wouldn't,' said Mr. Noah; 'but it's true, for all that.

Everything people make in that world goes on for ever.'

'But how was it that I got in?'

'Because you belong to both worlds. And you built the cities. So they were yours.'

'But Lucy got in.'

'She built up a corner of your city that the nurse had knocked down.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: He heard quite a loud, strong, big voice say, 'That's better.']

'But _you_,' said Philip, more and more bewildered. 'You're here. So you can't be there.'

'But I _am_ there,' said Mr. Noah.

'But you're here. And you're alive here. What made you come alive?'

'Your tears,' said Mr. Noah. 'Tears are very strong magic. No, don't begin to cry again. What's the matter?'

'I want to get back into the city.'

'It's dangerous.'

'I don't care.'

'You were glad enough to get away,' said Mr. Noah.

'I know: that's the worst of it,' said Philip. 'Oh, isn't there any way to get back? If I climbed in at the nursery windows and got the bricks and built it all up and----'

'Quite unnecessary, I a.s.sure you. There are a thousand doors to that city.'

'I wish I could find _one_,' said Philip; 'but, I say, I thought time was all different there. How is it Lucy is lost all this time if time doesn't count?'

'It does count, now,' said Mr. Noah; 'you made it count when you ran away and left Lucy. That set the clocks of the city to the time of this world.'

'I don't understand,' said Philip; 'but it doesn't matter. Show me the door and I'll go back and find Lucy.'

'Build something and go through it,' said Mr. Noah. 'That's all. Your tears are dry on me now. Good-bye.' And he laid down his yellow mat, stepped on to it and was just a little wooden figure again.

Philip dropped the ear-trumpet and looked at Mr. Noah.

'I _don't_ understand,' he said. But this at least he understood. That Helen would come back when she got that telegram, and that before she came he must go into the other world and find the lost Lucy.

'But oh,' he said, 'suppose I _don't_ find her. I wish I hadn't built those cities so big! And time will go on. And, perhaps, when Helen comes back she'll find _me_ lost _too_--as well as Lucy.'

But he dried his eyes and told himself that this was not how heroes behaved. He must build again. Whichever way you looked at it there was no time to be lost. And besides the nurse might occur at any moment.

He looked round for building materials. There was the chess-table. It had long narrow legs set round it, rather like arches. Something might be done with it, with books and candlesticks and j.a.panese vases.

Something _was_ done. Philip built with earnest care, but also with considerable speed. If the nurse should come in before he had made a door and got through it--come in and find him building again--she was quite capable of putting him to bed, where, of course, building is impossible. In a very little time there was a building. But how to get in. He was, alas, the wrong size. He stood helpless, and once more tears p.r.i.c.ked and swelled behind his eyelids. One tear fell on his hand.

'Tears are a strong magic,' Mr. Noah had said. And at the thought the tears stopped. Still there _was_ a tear, the one on his hand. He rubbed it on the pillar of the porch.

And instantly a queer tight thin feeling swept through him. He felt giddy and shut his eyes. His boots, ever sympathetic, shuffled on the carpet. Or was it the carpet? It was very thick and---- He opened his eyes. His feet were once more on the long gra.s.s of the illimitable prairie. And in front of him towered the gigantic porch of a vast building and a domino path leading up to it.

'Oh, I am so glad,' cried Philip among the gra.s.s. 'I couldn't have borne it if she'd been lost for ever, and all my fault.'

The gigantic porch lowered frowningly above him. What would he find on the other side of it?

[Ill.u.s.tration: The gigantic porch lowered frowningly above him.]

'I don't care. I've simply got to go,' he said, and stepped out bravely.

'If I can't _be_ a hero I'll try to behave like one.'

And with that he stepped out, stumbling a little in the thick gra.s.s, and the dark shadow of the porch received him.

'Bother the child,' said the nurse, coming into the drawing-room a little later; 'if he hasn't been at his precious building game again! I shall have to give him a lesson over this--I can see that. And I will too--a lesson he won't forget in a hurry.'

She went through the house, looking for the too bold builder that she might give him that lesson. Then she went through the garden, still on the same errand.

Half an hour later she burst into the servants' hall and threw herself into a chair.

'I don't care what happens now,' she said. 'The house is bewitched, I think. I shall go the very minute I've had my dinner.'

'What's up now?' the cook came to the door to say.

'Up?' said the nurse. 'Oh, nothing's _up_. What should there be?

Everything's all right and beautiful, and just as it should be, of course.'