But April was not to be put off like that, and finding that her legs were being violently dragged away from beneath her, swooped down on June, who would not let her go, and they both rolled over on the floor together, while May sat on her window-sill kicking her heels in great delight, and egged them on with cheers.
Then Séraphine, their French nurse, came in, and threw up her hands aghast at what she saw, — the room all littered with bran and doll’s hair, the table covered with the remains of the feast, the sofa strewn with saucepans, and the two babies rolling over and over each other on the floor.
Séraphine had been meek, and soft, and delicate when first she came to be the babies’ nurse, but that had all worn off long ago, and she had grown robust in the healthy forest air, and round and rosy on the wholesome country food, and with her roundness and rosiness had come a determination to have her own way and circumvent the babies; and they, after lording it over her during those first few blissful months, had found to their sorrowful surprise that she had unaccountably grown to be a match for them.
On this occasion also she was a match for them. First she threw up her hands and shrilly cried Mon Dieu! Then she ordered them to clear up all the mess they had made; and then, exasperated by the unwilling slowness of their movements, and still more so by the conviction that it was she who would ultimately have to do the clearing up, swept them off, after a moment’s impatient watching, into the three corners of the room, kept carefully clear for such emergencies. It was a good thing there was not a fourth baby, for there would have been no corner to put it in, because, though there was a fourth corner in this, as in most rooms, it was occupied by the stove. April pointed this out one day to her mother, who agreed that it was all very conveniently arranged.
Their mother in the next room heard Séraphine’s entrance and exclamation of dismay, and then the sudden stillness which she knew from experience meant corners. She got up and looked out the window. It had left off snowing, and the garden was covered up with the loveliest smooth, thick, white coat, and all the trees looked like Christmas trees. It made one long, somehow, to run out and make footmarks everywhere on the spotlessness.
She waited a little while, so as not to interfere with Séraphine’s ideas of justice, and then went into the playroom with an appropriately grave face, and called them out of their corners, and gave them a short lecture as mothers have to do when children are not good. She told them, when she had done, that of all things in the world she disliked having to lecture, and she would be so grateful if only they would keep out of corners and save her the trouble of it; upon which there was a sudden outburst of enthusiasm, and a confusion of arms and legs, and a great amount of kissing, and then they made a determined attack on the saucepans and scoured with such goodwill that in ten minutes everything was tidy again, and they could pull on their boots and gaiters and go out and help their mother spoil the beautiful, fascinating snow.
But they sank right in, June up to her ears, May up to her neck, and April up to her shoulders, and it was quite impossible to move. So the mother ordered the sleigh, and had them wrapped up to the eyes in furs, and fur hoods pulled over their foreheads, and took them sleighing along the wintry roads.
Where these babies lived, when you drive in winter you sit in fur bags up to your waist, and the rest of you is so covered up that nothing but your eyes can be seen. If you don’t do that you are frost-bitten, which is a very disagreeable thing to be, and may end in your nose crumbling away, and your beauty crumbling away with it. It is no use my telling you how cold the thermometer showed it to be, for children who live in London and go for walks every day in the Park or Kensington Gardens needn’t bother much about thermometers, so you wouldn’t understand. But where April and her sisters lived, you look anxiously at the thermometer hanging outside your window before you go out, so as to know how many furs to put on, or whether you can venture out at all. Sometimes it is so cold that for days you are shut up in the house, especially if you happen to be a baby. The babies’ mother very nearly decided to oil them all over, as the people do who live more or less at the North Pole, so that they should not feel the cold so much; but then she remembered that babies are sent into the world chiefly that mothers may have something to kiss all the time, and how can you kiss oiled babies? She soon found out in the sleigh that this was one of the days when people who are not oiled are better at home, and she turned back and sent April and May in again. June begged so hard to be allowed to stay that she took her a little further, giving in because June was the fattest, and fat babies are never so cold as lean ones. That is why, I suppose, everybody who lives up in those forests where the babies did, are so fat. They eat and drink a great deal all the summer, so that when the long, bitter winter comes they may be nicely protected against the cold, and needn’t buy so many furs; and though that sort of figure may not be pretty at a party, it is very convenient in a frost.
But the mother and June soon had to turn back too, for their eyelashes froze tight on to the long fur round their faces and they couldn’t open their eyes any more, which made it dreadfully dull. So they went home again, and had to grope their way in, and thaw their eyelashes at the fire; and then the mother sat down and wondered what she could do to help the babies over the long days that had to be got through before it was time to hide the Easter eggs.
The schoolmaster who came every day to teach them was snowed up too in his house, so they had no lessons to keep them busy. Séraphine couldn’t teach them, because she didn’t know anything herself, which was the best of reasons; all she could do was to sing French songs without any tune in them over and over again till the babies had learnt them, by which time the mother in the next room was almost distracted. They had cooked their dolls, they had no lessons, they couldn’t get out and run in the garden, — I don’t believe any baby in the world could keep long out of a corner under such conditions, or any mother, knowing its difficulties, be happy.
This particular mother didn’t believe it either, and sat and wondered what she could do. She sat and wondered in front of the big fireplace, with her feet nearly in the fire. It had begun to snow again harder than ever, and she knew there was no chance of the babies getting out for two or three days. It grew dark, and when the tea was brought in, and fresh peat had been thrown on the fire, and the room was all full of firelight, she called the babies and invited them to come and have tea with her, and sit comfortably on a row of footstools in front of the fire, instead of solemnly round the schoolroom table with Séraphine’s stern eye petrifying them from behind the teapot.
They loved having tea with their mother, although there was no jam on the bread and butter as there was in the schoolroom. They liked their mother without jam better a thousand times than Séraphine with jam, — even if it had been the best jam in the world, which, of course, as every baby knows, is apricot if it isn’t strawberry. They flew to fetch footstools, and sat on them munching their bread and butter in the pleasant firelight, warming their toes at the blaze like their mother, and getting hotter, and happier, and more buttery every minute. Then their mother poured them each out a cup of her own tea in her own pretty cups, with saucers and spoons all proper, instead of the mortifying mugs they had in the schoolroom; and the tea was so hot and sweet and delicious that it made them feel as though their insides were being wrapped round in hot flannel petticoats with sugar on them, which is the loveliest feeling in the world.
LITTLE POLLY FLINDERS.
Little Polly Flinders Sat on the cinders,
Warming her little toes;
Her mother came and caught her,
And whipp’d her little daughter,
For spoiling her nice new clothes.
‘Now we’re sitting like Polly Flinders,’ said the mother.
‘What’s Flinders?’ asked April.
‘Is Flinders one girl?’ asked June, scooping up the sugar at the bottom of her cup.
May said nothing, but put out her tongue as far as it would go, an
d then whisked it right round her mouth several times running with considerable skill. There was some butter on her nose, and some on her chin, and though she had a handkerchief, and a pocket to keep it in, and every convenience for cleaning herself, she preferred taking her tongue, and so not wasting either time or butter.
‘Didn’t I ever tell you about Polly Flinders?’ asked the mother, who had watched May’s tongue, fascinated, till the last bit of butter had been safely captured. Didn’t you ever hear how she Sat in the cinders Warming her little toes?
Her mummy came and caught her And whipped her little daughter For spoiling her nice new clothes.’
The babies looked at each other in astonishment.
‘Oh, what a mummy!’ cried April.
‘Poor Flinders!’ cried May.
‘Did the mummy whip that Flinders with the hand, or with one stick?’ asked June, deeply interested.
‘I should think with her hand,’ said the mother. You see, she had spoilt all the nice clothes her mummy had made her for Christmas, and it was very annoying.’
‘Yes, but to whip gleich,’’ exclaimed May indignantly.
‘I never did see one mummy like that before,’ said April, shaking her head with grave disapproval.
Their mother was silent. She had known the story of Polly Flinders all her life, but had not noticed anything particularly blameworthy in the conduct of Mrs. Flinders. Indeed, as a child she had thought Mrs. Flinders had only done what was quite natural, and no more than the aggravating Polly deserved. It took her, therefore, some moments to readjust her views; but the babies were so frankly horrified that she was sure her views needed readjusting.
‘It was a pretty pale blue dress,’ she murmured, trying to justify Mrs. Flinders.
‘But her foots was cold!’ cried May.
‘With ever so many tucks in it, all put in by the mummy.’
‘But Flinders’ foots was cold!’ shouted the three babies, fixing their mother with six round reproachful eyes.
‘And a beautiful new sash, with fringes on its ends — oh, babies, such a sash!’
‘But Flinders’ FOOTS was cold!’ literally roared the babies, astounded and perplexed beyond measure at their mother’s support of the wrong side. They knew very well the agonies of cold toes, and it was beyond their comprehension how their mother could for a moment think more of the dress, spoilt by an accident, than of the toes.
Then the mother left off defending Mrs. Flinders, and laughed, and getting up went behind the row of agitated babies and kissed each head one after the other, which was a sign that she gave in and agreed with them. ‘She needn’t have whipped her,’ she said soothingly, ‘a corner would have done quite as well, and she did deserve that, for she was evidently a careless Polly.’
‘And if there didn’t was no corner?’ suggested June with a boldness of fancy that took everybody’s breath away and produced a sudden silence.
Nobody spoke after that for several seconds. April and May sat thinking it out. June felt she must have said something clever, and swelled with pride. ‘There is always corners,’ said April at last, turning on her, ‘und Du bist das grösste Schaf das es giebt,’ she added in nervous German, not having a sufficiently withering bit of English ready. And if you, my dear little boys and girls who read this, don’t know what that means, I can only pity your exceeding ignorance.
Then April, having settled June, who sat looking like an airball just after it has been pricked, turned to her mother, ‘Is that a song, mummy, about Flinders?’ she asked, clasping her hands round her knees and propping her chin on them.
‘Yes, it’s a song — a nursery rhyme I learnt when I was little.’
‘But has it got music?’
‘Music?’ the mother racked her brains to try and remember the music belonging to Polly Flinders, and found none. She had a vague idea her nurse used to hum the words to her, but no definite tune would come into her mind. ‘I never heard any music to it,’ she said at last.
‘Herr Schenk’s songs all have music,’ said April — Herr Schenk was the schoolmaster — and so have Séraphine’s.’
‘Oh yes,’ said May, Séraphine’s have lovely music, and if Séraphine’s have lovely music, mummy’s songs must have much lovelier.’
The mother thought Séraphine’s tunes were not so very lovely, and she knew them all only too well, for how often had she been obliged to go into another room out of earshot while they were being drummed into the babies’ heads? As for Herr Schenk’s songs, he taught the babies hymns — very slow German hymns called chorales; and as there was no piano in the schoolroom, and he sang right down in his boots, and they sang right up in the air, and they all sang out of tune, the effect was so doleful and weird that the mother in the next room often wondered how it was she didn’t lift up her voice too, and weep. Her dog simply couldn’t bear it at all, and howled so miserably when the chorales began that he had to be turned out every day at lesson-time.
‘Make music for Flinders, mummy,’ said April.
‘Make music?’ echoed the mother, taken aback.
‘Yes, make one tune, and then the babies can sing it.’
‘But I can’t.’
‘But if Herr Schenk and Séraphine can?’
‘But those aren’t their own tunes.’
‘Oh, but mummies can make everything,’ said April, looking up at her mother with the sweetest smile of absolute confidence. April’s smile was so pretty that it made you think her much prettier than she was really. The mother used to feel sure that if angels ever smiled they must do it just like that.
‘But I can’t make tunes,’ repeated the mother, beginning to feel uncomfortable, and wishing she had left the Flinders family alone.
‘Oh!’ cried all the babies together, and laughed aloud. They were not to be taken in like that, so their mummy needn’t think so. Was there ever anything that mummies could not do? And their mummy? They looked at each other and shrieked with laughter, the idea was so very ridiculous.
‘Do you know how I feel, babies?’ said the mother quickly. ‘Just like a game of Oranges and Lemons. I am sure it would do me a great deal of good. Shall we play?’
But this had no effect. ‘No, no,’ they cried, jumping up and crowding round her, ‘we only wants Flinders! Make music, mummy!’
And then they began to call her their sweet, pwecious mummy, their little dear mummykins, and all the nice names they could think of; and as they all tried to kiss her at once, she had to say she would try, if only to save herself from suffocation.
Here was a thing — Polly Flinders, apparently so harmless, turning on her and rending her!
‘You will have to go away, then, while I try,’ she said, feeling very wretched, though with a faint hope that they would prefer to stay and play games, and let her off making a tune rather than be banished. But they made for the schoolroom door with the greatest alacrity. And then you calls us when it is ready,’ they cried cheerfully, as they disappeared.
I don’t suppose any of you children who read this story have ever written a tune, for if you have you are what is known as prodigies, which are an unpleasant variety of children, happily, for the peace of parents, exceedingly rare. But you leave off being a prodigy after a certain age, and this mother was much too old to be one, and had never shown the least symptoms of being one at any time; and when she was left alone to write the tune, and knew it had somehow got to be done, she felt as uncomfortable as you would if you were shut up in a room alone with a piano and told to compose music. But what will not mothers do for their children? You ask your mother to write tunes for you, and see if she will not do it at once! This mother went over to the piano and sat down, and first of all wished she had never heard of Polly Flinders and her toes. Then she wished that, having heard of them, she had kept the knowledge of them from her children. And then she began to agonise over a tune. You know there are some people who can loftily write down tunes ten miles away from the nearest piano; but this mother wasn�
��t one of that sort, and she sat and agonised, with the soft pedal on so that the babies should not hear the bones of Polly’s musical skeleton rattling before the skin had been produced. Then, as she had no music-paper, she got a pencil and a sheet of note-paper and wrote the tune down, the agonies at this stage becoming acute. And then she stared at it gloomily, trying to persuade herself that there was at least a sort of rude honesty about it, and hoped the babies would be pleased.
‘Come in, babies!’ she called faintly.
This is the tune: —
LITTLE POLLY FLINDERS.
‘and she needn’t have been in any doubt as to the babies liking it, for they loved it. They rushed in when she called them, tumbling over each other in their hurry, and crowded round the mother who was still sitting very much depressed at the piano, holding the notes to which the reluctant Flinders had been reduced in her hand, and scrutinizing them with profound disfavour. But when she had played and sung the tune to the babies, and it had been received with acclamations of delight, oh, what a load it was off her mind! I don’t know who was most pleased, the mother or the babies. They insisted on being taught it at once, and in a very few minutes were dancing about the room singing it so vigorously that what with the dancing and the singing the whole house seemed to shake to the strains of Polly Flinders. Indeed, when they reached the part where Polly’s mother catches her on that high note, their voices rose to the occasion with such a shriek of good-will that a row of stout china pots, which had always up to then stood with great dignity and composure on the mantelpiece, got such a fright and trembled so that they nearly tumbled off.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 291
