The Magic City

'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.'

'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 assure 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 Japanese 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 pricked 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 grass 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 grass. '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?

'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 grass, 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.'

'Miss Lucy's not found yet, of course, but that's all, isn't it?'

'All? And enough too, I should have thought,' said the nurse. 'But as it happens it's not all. The boy's lost now. Oh, I'm not joking. He's lost I tell you, the same as the other one—and I'm off out of this by the two thirty-seven train, and I don't care who knows it.'

'Lor!' said the cook.

Before starting for the two thirty-seven train the nurse went back to the drawing-room to destroy Philip's new building, to restore to their proper places its books, candlesticks, vases, and chessmen.

There we will leave her.

CHAPTER IV

THE DRAGON-SLAYER

When Philip walked up the domino path and under the vast arch into the darkness beyond, his heart felt strong with high resolve. His legs, however, felt weak; strangely weak, especially about the knees. The doorway was so enormous, that which lay beyond was so dark, and he himself so very very small. As he passed under the little gateway which he had built of three dominoes with the little silver knight in armour on the top, he noticed that he was only as high as a domino, and you know how very little that is.

Philip went along the domino path. He had to walk carefully, for to him the spots on the dominoes were quite deep hollows. But as they were black they were easy to see. He had made three arches, one beyond another, of two pairs of silver candlesticks with silver inkstands on the top of them. The third pair of silver candlesticks had a book on the top of them because there were no more inkstands. And when he had passed through the three silver arches, he stopped.