Chapter one, 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 goodnight 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.
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 10 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,
not 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 armor.
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 onto 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 bluebottle
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 worthwhile 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 mothballs 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 were
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 toward 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 toward 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 upward 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 hooves.
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 woolen 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.
