The Magic City Part 8

He stood still to think this. It was not a pleasant thought.

Suddenly he straightened his little back, and threw back his head.

'They shan't see I'm frightened anyway,' he told himself. And then he remembered the larder.

'I haven't had any breakfast,' he explained aloud, so as to be plainly heard by any invisible people who might be about. 'I ought to have my breakfast. If n.o.body gives it to me I shall take my breakfast.'

He waited for an answer. But none came. It was very quiet in the stable-yard. Only the rattle of a halter ring against a manger, the sound of a hoof on stable stones, the cooing of pigeons and the rustle of straw in the loose-box broke the silence.

'Very well,' said Philip. 'I don't know what _you_ think I ought to have for breakfast, so I shall take what _I_ think.'

He drew a long breath, trying to draw courage in with it, threw back his shoulders more soldierly than ever, and marched in through the back door and straight to the larder. Then he took what he thought he ought to have for breakfast. This is what he thought:

1 cherry pie, 2 custards in cups, 1 cold sausage, 2 pieces of cold toast, 1 piece of cheese, 2 lemon cheese-cakes, 1 small jam tart (there was only one left), b.u.t.ter, 1 pat.

'What jolly things the servants have to eat,' he said. 'I never knew. I thought that nothing but mutton and rice grew here.'

He put all the food on a silver tray and carried it out on to the terrace, which lies between the two wings at the back of the house. Then he went back for milk, but there was none to be seen so he got a white jug full of water. The spoons he couldn't find, but he found a carving-fork and a fish-slice. Did you ever try to eat cherry pie with a fish-slice?

'Whatever's happened,' said Philip to himself, through the cherry pie, 'and whatever happens it's as well to have had your breakfast.' And he bit a generous inch off the cold sausage which he had speared with the carving-fork.

And now, sitting out in the good suns.h.i.+ne, and growing less and less hungry as he plied fish-slice and carving-fork, his mind went back to his dream, which began to seem more and more real. Suppose it really _had_ happened? It might have; magic things did happen, it seemed. Look how all the people had vanished out of the house--out of the world too, perhaps.

'Suppose every one's vanished,' said Philip. 'Suppose I'm the only person left in the world who hasn't vanished. Then everything in the world would belong to me. Then I could have everything that's in all the toy shops.' And his mind for a moment dwelt fondly on this beautiful idea.

Then he went on. 'But suppose I vanished too? Perhaps if I were to vanish I could see the other people who have. I wonder how it's done.'

He held his breath and tried hard to vanish. Have you ever tried this?

It is not at all easy to do. Philip could not do it at all. He held his breath and he tried and he tried, but he only felt fatter and fatter and more and more as though in one more moment he should burst. So he let his breath go.

'No,' he said, looking at his hands; 'I'm not any more invisible than I was before. Not so much I think,' he added thoughtfully, looking at what was left of the cherry pie. 'But that dream----'

He plunged deep in the remembrance of it that was, to him, like swimming in the waters of a fairy lake.

He was hooked out of his lake suddenly by voices. It was like waking up.

There, away across the green park beyond the sunk fence, were people coming.

'So every one hasn't vanished,' he said, caught up the tray and took it in. He hid it under the pantry shelf. He didn't know who the people were who were coming and you can't be too careful. Then he went out and made himself small in the shadow of a red b.u.t.tress, heard their voices coming nearer and nearer. They were all talking at once, in that quick interested way that makes you certain something unusual has happened.

He could not hear exactly what they were saying, but he caught the words: 'No.'

'Of course I've asked.'

'Police.'

'Telegram.'

'Yes, of course.'

'Better make quite sure.'

Then every one began speaking all at once, and you could not hear anything that anybody said. Philip was too busy keeping behind the b.u.t.tress to see who they were who were talking. He was glad _something_ had happened.

'Now I shall have something to think about besides the nurse and my beautiful city that she has pulled down.'

But what was it that had happened? He hoped n.o.body was hurt--or had done anything wrong. The word police had always made him uncomfortable ever since he had seen a boy no bigger than himself pulled along the road by a very large policeman. The boy had stolen a loaf, Philip was told.

Philip could never forget that boy's face; he always thought of it in church when it said 'prisoners and captives,' and still more when it said 'desolate and oppressed.'

'I do hope it's not _that_,' he said.

And slowly he got himself to leave the shelter of the red-brick b.u.t.tress and to follow to the house those voices and those footsteps that had gone by him.

He followed the sound of them to the kitchen. The cook was there in tears and a Windsor arm-chair. The kitchenmaid, her cap all on one side, was crying down most dirty cheeks. The coachman was there, very red in the face, and the groom, without his gaiters. The nurse was there, neat as ever she seemed at first, but Philip was delighted when a more careful inspection showed him that there was mud on her large shoes and on the bottom of her skirt, and that her dress had a large three-cornered tear in it.

'I wouldn't have had it happen for a twenty-pun note,' the coachman was saying.

'George,' said the nurse to the groom, 'you go and get a horse ready.

I'll write the telegram.'

'You'd best take Peppermint,' said the coachman. 'She's the fastest.'

The groom went out, saying under his breath, 'Teach your grandmother,'

which Philip thought rude and unmeaning.

Philip was standing unnoticed by the door. He felt that thrill--if it isn't pleasure it is more like it than anything else--which we all feel when something real has happened.

But what _had_ happened. What?

'I wish I'd never come back,' said the nurse. 'Then n.o.body could pretend it was _my_ fault.'

'It don't matter what they pretend,' the cook stopped crying to say.

'The thing is what's happened. Oh, my goodness. I'd rather have been turned away without a character than have had this happen.'

'And I'd rather _any_thing,' said the nurse. 'Oh, my goodness me. I wish I'd never been born.'

And then and there, before the astonished eyes of Philip, she began to behave as any nice person might--she began to cry.

'It wouldn't have happened,' said the cook, 'if the master hadn't been away. He's a Justice of the Peace, he is, and a terror to gipsies. It wouldn't never have happened if----'

Philip could not bear it any longer.

'_What_ wouldn't have happened if?' he asked, startling everybody to a quick jump of surprise.

The nurse stopped crying and turned to look at him.

'Oh, _you_!' she said slowly. 'I forgot _you_. You want your breakfast, I suppose, no matter what's happened?'

'No, I don't,' said Philip, with extreme truth. 'I want to know what _has_ happened?'