The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tcon-2 Read online

  “Why not now?” said Edmund. His face had become very red and his mouth and fingers were sticky. He did not look either clever or handsome, whatever the Queen might say.

  “Oh, but if I took you there now,” said she, “I shouldn’t see your brother and your sisters. I very much want to know your charming relations. You are to be the Prince and—later on—the King; that is understood. But you must have courtiers and nobles. I will make your brother a Duke and your sisters Duchesses.”

  “There’s nothing special about them,” said Edmund, “and, anyway, I could always bring them some other time.”

  “Ah, but once you were in my house,” said the Queen, “you might forget all about thern. You would be enjoying yourself so much that you wouldn’t want the bother of going to fetch them. No. You must go back to your own country now and come to me another day, with them, you understand. It is no good coming without them.”

  “But I don’t even know the way back to my own country,” pleaded Edmund. “That’s easy,” answered the Queen. “Do you see that lamp?” She pointed with her wand and Edmund turned and saw the same lamp-post under which Lucy had met the Faun. “Straight on, beyond that, is the way to the World of Men. And now look the other way”—here she pointed in the opposite direction—“and tell me if you can see two little hills rising above the trees.”

  “I think I can,” said Edmund.

  “Well, my house is between those two hills. So next time you come you have only to find the lamp-post and look for those two hills and walk through the wood till you reach my house. But remember—you must bring the others with you. I might have to be very angry with you if you came alone.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Edmund.

  “And, by the way,” said the Queen, “you needn’t tell them about me. It would be fun to keep it a secret between us two, wouldn’t it? Make it a surprise for them. Just bring them along to the two hills—a clever boy like you will easily think of some excuse for doing that—and when you come to my house you could just say “Let’s see who lives here” or something like that. I am sure that would be best. If your sister has met one of the Fauns, she may have heard strange stories about me—nasty stories that might make her afraid to come to me. Fauns will say anything, you know, and now—”

  “Please, please,” said Edmund suddenly, “please couldn’t I have just one piece of Turkish Delight to eat on the way home?”

  “No, no,” said the Queen with a laugh, “you must wait till next time.” While she spoke, she signalled to the dwarf to drive on, but as the sledge swept away out of sight, the Queen waved to Edmund, calling out, “Next time! Next time! Don’t forget. Come soon.”

  Edmund was still staring after the sledge when he heard someone calling his own name, and looking round he saw Lucy coming towards him from another part of the wood.

  “Oh, Edmund!” she cried. “So you’ve got in too! Isn’t it wonderful, and now-“

  “All right,” said Edmund, “I see you were right and it is a magic wardrobe after all. I’ll say I’m sorry if you like. But where on earth have you been all this time? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  “If I’d known you had got in I’d have waited for you,” said Lucy, who was too happy and excited to notice how snappishly Edmund spoke or how flushed and strange his face was. “I’ve been having lunch with dear Mr Tumnus, the Faun, and he’s very well and the White Witch has done nothing to him for letting me go, so he thinks she can’t have found out and perhaps everything is going to be all right after all.”

  “The White Witch?” said Edmund; “who’s she?”

  “She is a perfectly terrible person,” said Lucy. “She calls herself the Queen of Narnia though she has no right to be queen at all, and all the Fauns and Dryads and Naiads and Dwarfs and Animals—at least all the good ones—simply hate her. And she can turn people into stone and do all kinds of horrible things. And she has made a magic so that it is always winter in Narnia—always winter, but it never gets to Christmas. And she drives about on a sledge, drawn by reindeer, with her wand in her hand and a crown on her head.”

  Edmund was already feeling uncomfortable from having eaten too many sweets, and when he heard that the Lady he had made friends with was a dangerous witch he felt even more uncomfortable. But he still wanted to taste that Turkish Delight again more than he wanted anything else.

  “Who told you all that stuff about the White Witch?” he asked.

  “Mr Tumnus, the Faun,” said Lucy.

  “You can’t always believe what Fauns say,” said Edmund, trying to sound as if he knew far more about them than Lucy.

  “Who said so?” asked Lucy.

  “Everyone knows it,” said Edmund; “ask anybody you like. But it’s pretty poor sport standing here in the snow. Let’s go home.”

  “Yes, let’s,” said Lucy. “Oh, Edmund, I am glad you’ve got in too. The others will have to believe in Narnia now that both of us have been there. What fun it will be!”

  But Edmund secretly thought that it would not be as good fun for him as for her. He would have to admit that Lucy had been right, before all the others, and he felt sure the others would all be on the side of the Fauns and the animals; but he was already more than half on the side of the Witch. He did not know what he would say, or how he would keep his secret once they were all talking about Narnia.

  By this time they had walked a good way. Then suddenly they felt coats around them instead of branches and next moment they were both standing outside the wardrobe in the empty room.

  “I say,” said Lucy, “you do look awful, Edmund. Don’t you feel well?”

  “I’m all right,” said Edmund, but this was not true. He was feeling very sick.

  “Come on then,” said Lucy, “let’s find the others. What a lot we shall have to tell them! And what wonderful adventures we shall have now that we’re all in it together.”

  CHAPTER FIVE.

  BACK ON THIS SIDE OF THE DOOR

  BECAUSE the game of hide-and-seek was still going on, it took Edmund and Lucy some time to find the others. But when at last they were all together (which happened in the long room, where the suit of armour was) Lucy burst out:

  “Peter! Susan! It’s all true. Edmund has seen it too. There is a country you can get to through the wardrobe. Edmund and I both got in. We met one another in there, in the wood. Go on, Edmund; tell them all about it.”

  “What’s all this about, Ed?” said Peter.

  And now we come to one of the nastiest things in this story. Up to that moment Edmund had been feeling sick, and sulky, and annoyed with Lucy for being right, but he hadn’t made up his mind what to do. When Peter suddenly asked him the question he decided all at once to do the meanest and most spiteful thing he could think of. He decided to let Lucy down.

  “Tell us, Ed,” said Susan.

  And Edmund gave a very superior look as if he were far older than Lucy (there was really only a year’s difference) and then a little snigger and said, “Oh, yes, Lucy and I have been playing—pretending that all her story about a country in the wardrobe is true. just for fun, of course. There’s nothing there really.”

  Poor Lucy gave Edmund one look and rushed out of the room.

  Edmund, who was becoming a nastier person every minute, thought that he had scored a great success, and went on at once to say, “There she goes again. What’s the matter with her? That’s the worst of young kids, they always—”

  “Look here,” said Peter, turning on him savagely, “shut up! You’ve been perfectly beastly to Lu ever since she started this nonsense about the wardrobe, and now you go playing games with her about it and setting her off again. I believe you did it simply out of spite.”

  “But it’s all nonsense,” said Edmund, very taken aback.

  “Of course it’s all nonsense,” said Peter, “that’s just the point. Lu was perfectly all right when we left home, but since we’ve been down here she seems to be either going queer in the head or else tu
rning into a most frightful liar. But whichever it is, what good do you think you’ll do by jeering and nagging at her one day and encouraging her the next?”

  “I thought—I thought,” said Edmund; but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You didn’t think anything at all,” said Peter; “it’s just spite. You’ve always liked being beastly to anyone smaller than yourself; we’ve seen that at school before now.”

  “Do stop it,” said Susan; “it won’t make things any better having a row between you two. Let’s go and find Lucy.”

  It was not surprising that when they found Lucy, a good deal later, everyone could see that she had been crying. Nothing they could say to her made any difference. She stuck to her story and said:

  “I don’t care what you think, and I don’t care what you say. You can tell the Professor or you can write to Mother or you can do anything you like. I know I’ve met a Faun in there and—I wish I’d stayed there and you are all beasts, beasts.”

  It was an unpleasant evening. Lucy was miserable and Edmund was beginning to feel that his plan wasn’t working as well as he had expected. The two older ones were really beginning to think that Lucy was out of her mind. They stood in the passage talking about it in whispers long after she had gone to bed.

  The result was the next morning they decided that they really would go and tell the whole thing to the Professor. “He’ll write to Father if he thinks there is really something wrong with Lu,” said Peter; “it’s getting beyond us.” So they went and knocked at the study door, and the Professor said “Come in,” and got up and found chairs for them and said he was quite at their disposal. Then he sat listening to them with the tips of his fingers pressed together and never interrupting, till they had finished the whole story. After that he said nothing for quite a long time. Then he cleared his throat and said the last thing either of them expected:

  “How do you know,” he asked, “that your sister’s story is not true?”

  “Oh, but—” began Susan, and then stopped. Anyone could see from the old man’s face that he was perfectly serious. Then Susan pulled herself together and said, “But Edmund said they had only been pretending.”

  “That is a point,” said the Professor, “which certainly deserves consideration; very careful consideration. For instance—if you will excuse me for asking the question—does your experience lead you to regard your brother or your sister as the more reliable? I mean, which is the more truthful?”

  “That’s just the funny thing about it, sir,” said Peter. “Up till now, I’d have said Lucy every time.”

  “And what do you think, my dear?” said the Professor, turning to Susan.

  “Well,” said Susan, “in general, I’d say the same as Peter, but this couldn’t be true—all this about the wood and the Faun.”

  “That is more than I know,” said the Professor, “and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.”

  “We were afraid it mightn’t even be lying,” said Susan; “we thought there might be something wrong with Lucy.”

  “Madness, you mean?” said the Professor quite coolly. “Oh, you can make your minds easy about that. One has only to look at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad.”

  “But then,” said Susan, and stopped. She had never dreamed that a grown-up would talk like the Professor and didn’t know what to think.

  “Logic!” said the Professor half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”

  Susan looked at him very hard and was quite sure from the expression on his face that he was no making fun of them.

  “But how could it be true, sir?” said Peter.

  “Why do you say that?” asked the Professor.

  “Well, for one thing,” said Peter, “if it was true why doesn’t everyone find this country every time they go to the wardrobe? I mean, there was nothing there when we looked; even Lucy didn’t pretend the was.”

  “What has that to do with it?” said the Professor.

  “Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time.”

  “Are they?” said the Professor; and Peter did’nt know quite what to say.

  “But there was no time,” said Susan. “Lucy had no time to have gone anywhere, even if there was such a place. She came running after us the very moment we were out of the room. It was less than minute, and she pretended to have been away for hours.”

  “That is the very thing that makes her story so likely to be true,” said the Professor. “If there really a door in this house that leads to some other world (and I should warn you that this is a very strange house, and even I know very little about it)—if, I say, she had got into another world, I should not be at a surprised to find that the other world had a separate time of its own; so that however long you stay there it would never take up any of our time. On the other hand, I don’t think many girls of her age would invent that idea for themselves. If she had been pretending, she would have hidden for a reasonable time before coming out and telling her story.”

  “But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter, “that there could be other worlds—all over the place, just round the corner—like that?”

  “Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, “I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.”

  “But what are we to do?” said Susan. She felt that the conversation was beginning to get off the point.

  “My dear young lady,” said the Professor, suddenly looking up with a very sharp expression at both of them, “there is one plan which no one has yet suggested and which is well worth trying.”

  “What’s that?” said Susan.

  “We might all try minding our own business,” said he. And that was the end of that conversation.

  After this things were a good deal better for Lucy. Peter saw to it that Edmund stopped jeering at her, and neither she nor anyone else felt inclined to talk about the wardrobe at all. It had become a rather alarming subject. And so for a time it looked as if all the adventures were coming to an end; but that was not to be.

  This house of the Professor’s—which even he knew so little about—was so old and famous that people from all over England used to come and ask permission to see over it. It was the sort of house that is mentioned in guide books and even in histories; and well it might be, for all manner of stories were told about it, some of them even stranger than the one I am telling you now. And when parties of sightseers arrived and asked to see the house, the Professor always gave them permission, and Mrs Macready, the housekeeper, showed them round, telling them about the pictures and the armour, and the rare books in the library. Mrs Macready was not fond of children, and did not like to be interrupted when she was telling visitors all the things she knew. She had said to Susan and Peter almost on the first morning (along with a good many other instructions), “And please remember you’re to keep out of the way whenever I’m taking a party over the house.”

  “Just as if any of us would want to waste half the morning trailing round with a crowd of strange grown-ups!” said Edmund, and the other three thought the same. That was how the adventures began for the second time.

  A few mornings later Peter and Edmund were looking at the suit of armour and wondering if they could take it to bits when the two girls rushed into the room and said, “Look out! Here comes the Macready and a whole gang with her.”

  “Sharp’s the word,” said Peter, and all four made off through the door at the far end of the room. But when they had got out into the Green Room and beyond it, into the Library, they suddenly heard voices ahead of
them, and realized that Mrs Macready must be bringing her party of sightseers up the back stairs—instead of up the front stairs as they had expected. And after that—whether it was that they lost their heads, or that Mrs Macready was trying to catch them, or that some magic in the house had come to life and was chasing them into Narnia they seemed to find themselves being followed everywhere, until at last Susan said, “Oh bother those trippers! Here—let’s get into the Wardrobe Room till they’ve passed. No one will follow us in there.” But the moment they were inside they heard the voices in the passage—and then someone fumbling at the door—and then they saw the handle turning.

  “Quick!” said Peter, “there’s nowhere else,” and flung open the wardrobe. All four of them bundled inside it and sat there, panting, in the dark. Peter held the door closed but did not shut it; for, of course, he remembered, as every sensible person does, that you should never never shut yourself up in a wardrobe.

  CHAPTER SIX.

  INTO THE FOREST

  “I wish the Macready would hurry up and take all these people away,” said Susan presently, “I’m getting horribly cramped.”

  “And what a filthy smell of camphor!” said Edmund.

  “I expect the pockets of these coats are full of it,” said Susan, “to keep away the moths.”

  “There’s something sticking into my back,” said Peter.

  “And isn’t it cold?” said Susan.

  “Now that you mention it, it is cold,” said Peter, “and hang it all, it’s wet too. What’s the matter with this place? I’m sitting on something wet. It’s getting wetter every minute.” He struggled to his feet.

  “Let’s get out,” said Edmund, “they’ve gone.”

  “O-o-oh!” said Susan suddenly, and everyone asked her what was the matter.

  “I’m sitting against a tree,” said Susan, “and look! It’s getting light—over there.”

  “By Jove, you’re right,” said Peter, “and look there—and there. It’s trees all round. And this wet stuff is snow. Why, I do believe we’ve got into Lucy’s wood after all.”