The Little Gentleman

by Philippa Pearce

  ‘You must know,’ said the mole, ‘that during my travels there were others, besides Miss X and Master Y, to whom I made myself known. Each one, I soon discovered, would have betrayed me, usually to make a raree-show of me – to exhibit me publicly for money. Such people were despicable. I fled them. Even your Mr Franklin would have made me his prisoner –’

  ‘No! No!’ Bet interrupted anxiously. ‘I was going to tell you: he's given up the idea of a vivarium. He really has. Really.’

  The mole tipped his head heavenward in a way that suggested some degree of disbelief. But all he said was, ‘He has a vivarium mind.’

  Bet felt that they should be fair to Mr Franklin. She said, ‘He only wants to know, to understand. That's all.’

  ‘All!’ said the mole.

  A silence settled between them.

  Bet was thinking of what Mr Franklin, knowledge-hungry, had said of Miss X. ‘On the entire mole-phenomenon,’ he had declared, ‘Miss X could be – almost certainly is – a mine of information. I must speak with her.’

  Bet sighed.

  ‘Difficult,’ the mole agreed. (He seemed to have no problem with following a train of thought inside Bet's own head.) ‘Perhaps best to tell him the truth about Miss X – the whole truth about everything. It will, I fear, be a great shock. So be careful how you go about it. At first, inform him indirectly. Encourage him to infer the true state of affairs for himself.’

  Bet thought for a moment. Then, ‘I could tell him what you once told me about the fire in the church porch.’

  ‘A useful start,’ said the mole. ‘Surely that should give him some inkling.’

  ‘And then there's Miss X and her white cockatoo. The naming of the cockatoo.’

  ‘Aha!’ said the mole. ‘Clever – very clever! And conclusive. Excellent.’

  Now that they had made a plan, they could relax, reclining in the sunshine and talking of this and that. There were many easy, drifting pauses. Bet was thinking back to the earlier part of their conversation, when the mole had spoken of trusting Miss X and Master Y and now herself. She wondered if she dared… Why not? So she nerved herself to ask her question. Abruptly she said, ‘And I can trust you too, please, can't I?’

  The mole was surprised. ‘Of course. Trust, at its best, is mutual.’

  Bet was now silent, but only because she was struggling with the words to say more.

  The mole encouraged her. ‘Trust me, then. Tell me.’

  ‘It's my mother,’ said Bet. ‘When I was born, she ran away and left me with my granny and my grandpa. I've never seen her since. No one has. And now my gran has had a letter from her.’

  ‘A letter?’

  ‘She says she's married now, with a proper husband, and they have a baby, a little boy. They want me to go and live with them, so that we can be one family together.’

  ‘Family life,’ the mole said thoughtfully. ‘I know of family life only from Miss X and Master Y, and their situations were quite unlike what you have just described.’

  Bet said, ‘They live somewhere called Disham. It's a town quite a way off. I'm supposed to be going there with my gran, just for the day. To meet my mother. We're going quite soon. Saturday week. But I'm not sure I want to go. I'm not sure I want to meet my mother. I'm not sure I want to live with a strange family. And I'm not sure I want to leave my gran. Oh, I'm not sure about anything!’

  ‘Come!’ said the mole. ‘Calm yourself, child. One step at a time, as Miss X used to tell me.’ He thought. ‘Yes, and I think Miss X would have said that you must meet your mother, before you can possibly know what you really feel about her. Isn't that so?’

  ‘But I keep wondering what she may be like. I keep wondering and I keep thinking…’

  ‘Miss X always told me that bridges should not be crossed before one came to them. As for wondering and worrying about the future, she said that one should occupy one's mind with the present, and do one's duty.’

  ‘Duty?’ Bet puzzled over the word. ‘You mean, tell Mr Franklin the truth about everything?’

  ‘Well, that is what we agreed; and I think Miss X would have thought it proper.’

  Again Bet pondered. Then, ‘Yes, I'll do that. Thank you.’

  So once more they returned to their former pleasant, idle style of conversation.

  Then the mole seemed to lose interest in what he himself was saying. In spite of the heat of the sun, he began to shiver. Bet could feel the shaking of his body through the skin of the palm of her hand, where he still lay.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He could answer only with difficulty, in gasps of speech. ‘This is unnatural – to me – as mole. I am unused to this – to this prolonged exposure – to sun – to outer air. If you will excuse me – cannot stay…’

  Backwards, he was already shuffling off her hand and into the welcoming darkness of the tunnel mouth behind him.

  She called after him, ‘Goodbye!’

  From the depth of darkness his voice came back to her suddenly strong and cheerful again: ‘Au revoir! And good luck!’

  Chapter Eight

  Shock

  Next day in the cottage, Bet faced Mr Franklin across the kitchen table. As she and the mole had agreed, she was talking freely about Miss X.

  ‘And the mole could give you Miss X's address?’ Mr Franklin asked eagerly.

  ‘No, but he said her father was a vicar, and –’

  ‘A vicar! Where?’

  ‘I don't know. Somewhere in England. It doesn't matter.’

  ‘Of course, it matters, Bet! For tracing her whereabouts.’

  Bet had hurriedly to begin the little speech that she had prepared. ‘Miss X had younger brothers who went to university. One of them brought her The Origin of Species – you know, the book Charles Darwin wrote.’

  ‘Of course, I know. But what has that to do with anything?’

  ‘Miss X began reading it to the mole. The vicar – her father – never knew about the mole; but he found the book.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He burnt it the next Sunday morning. In the church porch.’

  Mr Franklin was flabbergasted. ‘What an extraordinary thing to do in this day and age!’

  ‘Yes.’ Bet was pleased at the effect her words had had. Surely now Mr Franklin must have some inkling. If only, from what she had told him, he would begin to infer…

  Then Bet made her mistake. ‘Now I'll tell you about the cockatoo that Miss X was given as a little girl. The mole said she was always very fond of birds and animals –’

  ‘Was fond? You're now speaking of Miss X in the past?’

  ‘Yes, well –’

  ‘Then has Miss X died?’

  ‘Yes, but really –’

  ‘Miss X has died! I've just missed my first-hand witness!’

  ‘It's not like that at all!’ cried Bet. ‘You've not just missed her. That's why I must tell you about the cockatoo –’

  ‘I don't want to hear about parrots.’

  ‘Please,’ said Bet. ‘You'll see. The cockatoo makes all the difference.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Oh, go on, then!’ Mr Franklin was too crushed by disappointment to care.

  ‘Miss X was a little girl when she was given this beautiful white cockatoo on the very day that the Queen got married. So she decided to call it after the Queen.’

  Mr Franklin made an effort to respond: ‘Elizabeth… Pretty Betty instead of Pretty Polly, I suppose. Or Bessy. Or Bess.’ Suddenly he thought he saw an unexpected vanity in all this. ‘Or Bet, perhaps?’ He was teasing her, but there was an unkind edge to the teasing.

  ‘None of those names,’ said Bet. ‘She called it Vicky.’

  ‘Vicky?’ Mr Franklin was bewildered. ‘Why Vicky? That's short for Victoria.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Victoria,’ said Mr Franklin. ‘Queen Victoria?’

  ‘Go on,’ Bet said encouragingly.

  ‘But Queen Victori
a died, an old lady, over 100 years ago.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you mean the mole is 100 years old?’

  ‘Oh, older than that,’ said Bet. ‘The mole knew Miss X when the Darwin book came out, first ever; and he was there before that, when the white cockatoo called Vicky was still alive. So, the mole says, add another fifty years, give or take a few.’

  ‘That makes 150 years,’ Mr Franklin whispered.

  ‘And before that,’ said Bet, ‘the mole had to tunnel all the way down from Scotland into England: add, say, another 100 years.’

  ‘From Scotland into England,’ Mr Franklin repeated. By now he was in a daze. ‘Add another 100… That makes 250 years…’

  ‘And before that he had to spend nearly fifty years, he said, just hanging around in Scotland, waiting.’

  ‘Another fifty… That makes 300 years…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bet. ‘He's a good 300 years old. Just roughly, of course.’

  Mr Franklin gripped the edge of the kitchen table in front of him and very slowly got to his feet. He leaned forward towards Bet, as if in menace.

  He said, ‘A talking mole 300 years old… I do not believe it.’

  ‘Well,’ Bet said reasonably, ‘you've believed the talking part of it. The mole says you'll just have to accept the rest.’

  ‘Accept! How can I accept something so outrageous without any verification, any explanation whatsoever?’

  ‘Oh, but there is an explanation!’ Bet said. ‘The mole said you wouldn't like it, and you'd say there wasn't any such thing, and, of course, there isn't any such thing now, but there was then, 300 years ago, and it really worked then, and –’

  ‘WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?’

  In a very small voice, because she was frightened, Bet said, ‘Witchcraft.’

  Mr Franklin said, ‘I thought you said, “Witchcraft”.’

  ‘I did,’ said Bet.

  Mr Franklin fell forward over the kitchen table in a dead faint.

  ‘Granny!’ Bet shouted; and Mrs Allum came.

  Chapter Nine

  The Little Gentleman

  ‘I was born,’ said the mole, ‘in or about the year 1700, at Hampton Court, outside London, in the reign of King William III. That is really the only thing in my early life of which I can be absolutely certain.’

  Bet sighed. This was, she knew, the one thing that Mr Franklin would absolutely refuse to believe. A mole 300 years old – and the only explanation offered: witchcraft!

  Bet and the mole were talking, as usual, by the log. Most of the talk was by the mole: he was now frankly revealing to Bet all – or nearly all – that he knew of his own history. There was much which he had previously only hinted at, or told in part. Some of it, of course, Bet had already guessed.

  Meanwhile, Mr Franklin, with Moon as his only companion, had shut himself indoors: he had a large bruise on his forehead where his head had hit the kitchen table when he fainted. He was still deeply upset in his mind about what he had been told. As a result, he had no wish to talk with the mole again; he would not even pick up his binoculars to spy on him. Nowadays, if anyone checked on the meadow, it would have to be Mrs Allum as she went about her housework.

  ‘Witchcraft,’ said the mole, ‘of the most repulsive kind touched my life at only two points in time. The first was when my life-span was extended – not for my benefit, note – into a future of no fixed duration.’

  ‘Everlasting life,’ breathed Bet.

  The mole snarled at the phrase.

  He went on. ‘On the second occasion, much later, I was by witchcraft given speech and the power of understanding, and with that power came memory. Of the time before that time, I have no real – no steady – memory. I partly rely on hearsay – the hearsay of a royal death and of a confusion of conspiracy and battle, and I – an innocent mole – caught in the midst of it all!

  ‘I once asked Miss X to disentangle my very early history for me. Obligingly, she tried, but left me still perplexed. What she knew best, from the poems of Tennyson, were the legends of Sir Lancelot and the other knights of King Arthur's Round Table, and their ladies. And they all belonged – if, indeed, they ever existed – to a time long, long before I was born.’

  ‘Couldn't Master Y help?’ asked Bet.

  ‘An agreeable boy,’ said the mole, ‘but interested only in the present, his present – and his future. He wanted to grow up and learn to fly, and so indeed he did. Not, you understand, like a bird, but in some kind of machine.’

  ‘And Mr Franklin?’ asked Bet. Then, hurriedly, ‘Sorry. Of course, he couldn't possibly have…’

  ‘No,’ said the mole.

  Timidly Bet asked, ‘What about me?’

  ‘Do you know any early-eighteenth-century British history?’

  ‘No, but perhaps I could find out something, from books at school.’

  ‘I should be grateful,’ the mole said simply. He added, ‘A clue. What Miss X told me left my mind in a fog of claimants and usurpers, daughters and cousins, plots and spies, and I don't know what else. But there seemed to be someone at the bottom of it all called Jacob, or possibly Jacobus.’

  Jacob, or Jacobus,’ said Bet. ‘I'll remember.’

  *

  The next Book Day, at school, Bet presented herself with the book that she wanted to borrow: Volume III of The Encyclopedia of Homeland Histories. She was feeling triumphant.

  On the point of checking the book out to her, Miss Macduff paused and frowned. ‘This is a reference book, Bet. You forget. You're not allowed to borrow reference books, such as encyclopedias, to take home with you. Can't you read and make notes in school for whatever project you've been given?’

  ‘It's not exactly a project,’ said Bet. ‘It's something I wanted to read aloud to someone who's blind. He can't read for himself.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Miss Macduff. ‘Who is this person?’

  In a panic, Bet said, ‘He's very old –’

  ‘Your grandfather?’

  ‘No, but he is a relative.’ She was remembering the mole's ‘freely and equally, as mammal to mammal’.

  ‘And your grandmother knows all about your reading aloud to this elderly blind relative?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ cried Bet, delighted to be sure of what she was saying.

  ‘Still, you can't borrow a reference book,’ said Miss Macduff. She saw Bet's disappointment. ‘I tell you what: if you show me the page or pages –’

  ‘Only one page,’ said Bet. ‘Here.’

  ‘I'll make a photocopy for you. It's the entry on “Jacobites”? Right.’ Suddenly Miss Macduff was smiling at Bet. ‘The Jacobites are part of the history of Scotland, you know. Perhaps your old gentleman is Scottish?’

  ‘No,’ said Bet. ‘He lived a long time in Scotland, but I think he didn't enjoy it there. He was born in England.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Miss Macduff.

  The next day Bet sat by the log reading from the photocopy to an attentive mole:

  ‘JACOBITES. So called from the Latin Jacobus, for the English name James. The JACOBITES remained loyal to King James II when he was forced to abandon the throne and go into exile during the Revolution of 1688.’

  ‘Only a little before my time,’ said the mole, ‘and no doubt relevant. Continue, please.’

  So Bet read on:

  ‘The JACOBITES plotted in England and in Scotland (where they were strongest) to get James II back on the throne, or – after his death – his only son, as King James III. Meantime, however, James II had been succeeded on the throne by his daughter Mary and her husband, a Dutch cousin called William.’

  ‘I told you it was complicated,’ said the mole.

  ‘When Queen Mary died, her husband reigned alone, as King William III.’

  ‘Aha!’ said the mole.

  ‘The King was elderly and already ill when, in February 1702, he went riding in the park at Hampton Court –’

  ‘This is it!’ cried the mole, in the greatest excitement. ‘Go on, g
o on!’

  ‘His horse stumbled on a molehill, and the King fell, hurting himself badly. A few weeks later, he died. The JACOBITES were overjoyed at the news. Ever afterwards they would drink secretly a health to “the little gentleman in black velvet”, that is to say, to the mole whose molehill had led indirectly to the King's death.’

  ‘And is that all about the molehill and the mole?’ asked the mole.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bet. ‘But there's quite a bit more about how the Jacobites still didn't get their way after the death of King William, because he was succeeded by another half-sister, Queen Anne. And after her it was King George I, a distant cousin from Germany, and then his son, another George, but the Jacobites went on hoping and hoping and plotting and plotting –’

  The mole interrupted her: ‘But there's no more about the mole in Hampton Court Park? It seems to me there should be more. I am sure of it…’

  ‘No,’ said Bet. ‘There's no more.’

  ‘Nothing about a Jacobite spy in the royal household who was secretly to take the news of King William's death to Scotland, and resolved to take that mole too, as living talisman and trophy?’

  ‘No,’ said Bet.

  ‘Nothing about how a mole in the park was trapped and caged and carried on horseback, post-haste, hundreds of miles north into Scotland?’

  ‘No,’ said Bet. Then, horrified, ‘That mole was you? Oh, how cruel!’

  ‘By the time we reached Scotland, I was as good as dead,’ said the mole. ‘But the Jacobites would not give up their idea of a living trophy, a mascot, as Master Y would have said. They must see what Scottish witchcraft could do for a dying mole.’ As he continued with his account, sketchy as it was, his voice began to shake. ‘They took me to high, open, lonely ground; a wind prowled there like a hungry beast. The nearness of death sharpened all my senses. There was a fire – I could feel the heat of it. On the fire stood some kind of cooking pot, for I could smell cooking – oh, but of a vile kind! Then old, old bony fingers seized me: my poor tail was cut off at its root and flung into that dreadful cooking pot – I heard the little plop! as it went in. Later, they forced a drop of that same vile witch's brew down my throat. Thus they brought me back to life, and made sure I would not – could not – die. They put me back into my cage to live on, no hope of death…’