“Oh!” cried Robert, suddenly, and wholly breaking down, “I can’t bear you to go!”
The Phoenix perched on his shoulder and rubbed its beak softly against his ear.
“The sorrows of youth soon appear but as dreams,” it said. “Farewell, Robert of my heart. I have loved you well.”
The fire had burnt to a red glow. One by one the spices and sweet woods were laid on it. Some smelt nice and some—the caraway seeds and the Violettes de Parme sachet among them—smelt worse than you would think possible.
“Farewell, farewell, farewell, farewell!” said the Phoenix, in a faraway voice.
“Oh, goodbye,” said everyone, and now all were in tears.
The bright bird fluttered seven times round the room and settled in the hot heart of the fire. The sweet gums and spices and woods flared and flickered around it, but its golden feathers did not burn. It seemed to grow red-hot to the very inside heart of it—and then before the eight eyes of its friends it fell together, a heap of white ashes, and the flames of the cedar pencils and the sandalwood box met and joined above it.
“Whatever have you done with the carpet?” asked mother next day.
“We gave it to someone who wanted it very much. The name began with a P,” said Jane.
The others instantly hushed her.
“Oh, well, it wasn’t worth twopence,” said mother.
“The person who began with P said we shouldn’t lose by it,” Jane went on before she could be stopped.
“I daresay!” said mother, laughing.
But that very night a great box came, addressed to the children by all their names. Eliza never could remember the name of the carrier who brought it. It wasn’t Carter Paterson or the Parcels Delivery.
It was instantly opened. It was a big wooden box, and it had to be opened with a hammer and the kitchen poker; the long nails came squeaking out, and boards scrunched as they were wrenched off. Inside the box was soft paper, with beautiful Chinese patterns on it—blue and green and red and violet. And under the paper—well, almost everything lovely that you can think of. Everything of reasonable size, I mean; for, of course, there were no motors or flying machines or thoroughbred chargers. But there really was almost everything else. Everything that the children had always wanted—toys and games and books, and chocolate and candied cherries and paintboxes and photographic cameras, and all the presents they had always wanted to give to father and mother and the Lamb, only they had never had the money for them. At the very bottom of the box was a tiny golden feather. No one saw it but Robert, and he picked it up and hid it in the breast of his jacket, which had been so often the nesting-place of the golden bird. When he went to bed the feather was gone. It was the last he ever saw of the Phoenix.
Pinned to the lovely fur cloak that mother had always wanted was a paper, and it said—
“In return for the carpet. With gratitude.—P.”
You may guess how father and mother talked it over. They decided at last the person who had had the carpet, and whom, curiously enough, the children were quite unable to describe, must be an insane millionaire who amused himself by playing at being a rag-and-bone man. But the children knew better.
They knew that this was the fulfilment, by the powerful Psammead, of the last wish of the Phoenix, and that this glorious and delightful boxful of treasures was really the very, very, very end of the Phoenix and the Carpet.
Colophon
The Phoenix and the Carpet
was published in 1904 by
E. Nesbit.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
François Grandjean,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1997 by
Jo Churcher and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Flying Carpet,
a painting completed in 1880 by
Viktor Vasnetsov.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
March 7, 2021, 5:17 p.m.
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Uncopyright
May you do good and not evil.
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