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LUCY LOOKS INTO A WARDROBE:
ONCE there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.
This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away
from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house
of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the
nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no
wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs Macready
and three servants. (Their names were Ivy, Margaret and Betty, but they do not
come into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair
which grew over most of his face as well as on his head, and they liked him
almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the
front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little
afraid of him, and Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to
keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.
As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the
first night, the boys came into the girls' room and they all talked it over.
"We've fallen on our feet and no mistake," said Peter. "This is going to be
perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like."
"I think he's an old dear," said Susan.
"Oh, come off it!" said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired,
which always made him bad-tempered. "Don't go on talking like that."
"Like what?" said Susan; "and anyway, it's time you were in bed."
"Trying to talk like Mother," said Edmund. "And who are you to say when I'm to
go to bed? Go to bed yourself."
"Hadn't we all better go to bed?" said Lucy. "There's sure to be a row if we're
heard talking here."
"No there won't," said Peter. "I tell you this is the sort of house where no
one's going to mind what we do. Anyway, they won't hear us. It's about ten
minutes' walk from here down to that dining-room, and any amount of stairs and
passages in between."
"What's that noise?" said Lucy suddenly. It was a far larger house than she had
ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and rows of doors
leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy.
"It's only a bird, silly," said Edmund.
"It's an owl," said Peter. "This is going to be a wonderful place for birds. I
shall go to bed now. I say, let's go and explore tomorrow. You might find
anything in a place like this. Did you see those mountains as we came along? And
the woods? There might be eagles. There might be stags. There'll be hawks."
"Badgers!" said Lucy.
"Foxes!" said Edmund.
"Rabbits!" said Susan.
But when next morning came there was a steady rain falling, so thick that when
you looked out of the window you could see neither the mountains nor the woods
nor even the stream in the garden.
"Of course it would be raining!" said Edmund. They had just finished their
breakfast with the Professor and were upstairs in the room he had set apart for
them - a long, low room with two windows looking out in one direction and two in
another.
"Do stop grumbling, Ed," said Susan. "Ten to one it'll clear up in an hour or
so. And in the meantime we're pretty well off. There's a wireless and lots of
books."
"Not for me"said Peter; "I'm going to explore in the house."
Everyone agreed to this and that was how the adventures began. It was the sort
of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of
unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms,
as everyone had expected that they would; but soon they came to a very long room
full of pictures and there they found a suit of armour; and after that was a
room all hung with green, with a harp in one corner; and then came three steps
down and five steps up, and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that
led out on to a balcony, and then a whole series of rooms that led into each
other and were lined with books - most of them very old books and some bigger
than a Bible in a church. And shortly after that they looked into a room that
was quite empty except for one big wardrobe; the sort that has a looking-glass
in the door. There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead blue-bottle
on the window-sill.
"Nothing there!" said Peter, and they all trooped out again - all except Lucy.
She stayed behind because she thought it would be worth while trying the door of
the wardrobe, even though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her
surprise it opened quite easily, and two moth-balls dropped out.
Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up - mostly long fur
coats. There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She
immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her
face against them, leaving the door open, of course, because she knew that it is
very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe. Soon she went further in and
found that there was a second row of coats hanging up behind the first one. It
was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of
her so as not to bump her face into the back of the wardrobe. She took a step
further in - then two or three steps always expecting to feel woodwork against
the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it.
"This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!" thought Lucy, going still further in
and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she
noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. "I wonder is that
more mothballs?" she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But
instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt
something soft and powdery and extremely cold. "This is very queer," she said,
and went on a step or two further.
Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no
longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. "Why, it is just
like branches of trees!" exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light
ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have
been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment
later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with
snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.
Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as
well. She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree trunks;
she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of
the empty room from which she had set out. (She had, of course, left the door
open, for she knew that it is a very silly thing to shut oneself into a
wardrobe.) It seemed to be still daylight there. "I can always get back if
anything goes wrong," thought Lucy. She began to walk forward, crunch-crunch
over the snow and through the wood towards the other light. In about ten minutes
she reached it and found it was a lamp-post. As she stood looking at it,
wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of a wood and wondering what
to do next, she heard a pitter patter of feet coming towards her. And soon after
that a very strange person stepped out from among the trees into the light of
the lamp-post.
He was only a little taller than Lucy herself and he carried over his head an
umbrella, white with snow. From the waist upwards he was like a man, but his
legs were shaped like a goat's (the hair on them was glossy black) and instead
of feet he had goat's hoofs. He also had a tail, but Lucy did not notice this at
first because it was neatly caught up over the arm that held the umbrella so as
to keep it from trailing in the snow. He had a red woollen muffler round his
neck and his skin was rather reddish too. He had a strange, but pleasant little
face, with a short pointed beard and curly hair, and out of the hair there stuck
two horns, one on each side of his forehead. One of his hands, as I have said,
held the umbrella: in the other arm he carried several brown-paper parcels. What
with the parcels and the snow it looked just as if he had been doing his
Christmas shopping. He was a Faun. And when he saw Lucy he gave such a start of
surprise that he dropped all his parcels.
"Goodness gracious me!" exclaimed the Faun.
