The Little Gentleman

by Philippa Pearce

Chapter Twelve

  A Useful Curiosity

  When Bet got back to the mole, she found him, to her relief, in a very changed mood. She had hardly settled in the grass, leaning against the log, than he began to apologize for his previous surliness. ‘I dread absences,’ he explained.

  ‘But I'll come back,’ protested Bet.

  ‘So Master Y said.’ The mole sighed. ‘He was a young man by then. He went off to fly in his machine – to fight battles in the air, you know. He never came back. I think he died in the air, like a shot bird.’

  Steadily Bet repeated, ‘I'll come back.’

  ‘And Miss X,’ said the mole, and stopped.

  ‘Miss X?’

  ‘In her absence I deserted her – so it must have seemed to her.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We had been friends for so many years,’ said the mole. ‘Miss X was growing into a middle-aged woman, still housekeeping for her old father, the vicar. She seldom left home. Occasionally a married brother in London would invite her on a long visit. Very occasionally she went.

  ‘On the last occasion –’

  The mole stopped speaking; he could not continue.

  ‘Please – please, go on,’ begged Bet.

  ‘On the last occasion,’ he said, ‘oh, I shall never forget our parting on that last morning. Neither of us guessed what lay ahead. I bade her au revoir and urged her to enjoy the busy social life of London. I made some silly joke about my not knowing her when we met again, after her remarkable London experiences.

  ‘And we never met again…’

  The mole raised his whole head and shoulders in what Bet saw was an attitude of lamentation. And to her amazement she saw two teardrops form and force their way through the dense fur of his cheeks and roll downwards She knew from Mr Franklin that moles were sightless, but not eyeless. Eyes were present, but not quite fully formed – only rudimentary. That was Mr Franklin's word: rudimentary.

  Yet from these sightless eyes were forced the tears of true grief. She watched the impossible tears roll down the fur, and fall.

  ‘Never to meet again…’ repeated the mole.

  ‘But why – how?’

  ‘Apparently over months, perhaps over several years, one of the under-gardeners – sharp lad – had heard us talking together, had spied on us. While Miss X was away, he took his chance – I all unaware of danger. He set his trap, caught me and bundled me up to sell on as a useful curiosity to a travelling showman of his acquaintance. And so I was whisked far, far away from the vicarage and from any inquiries that might ever be made about my disappearance.

  ‘I pleaded with the showman to release me – fool that I was! Of course, he was delighted to hear me speak so fluently and intelligently. He promised me all kinds of rewards if I would perform in public – and threatened me with all kinds of torture if I would not. The only reward I wanted was my liberty. This, in the end, he promised; but by now I knew better than to trust him. He spoke of having “a comfortable little waistcoat” made for me; but then I overheard him discussing it with a blacksmith. It was to be made of fine interlocking steel links – “better than any dog-collar”, they said, for, once on my body, it could never be taken off. To this would be attached a fine chain, again of steel. So I would never, never be able to escape.

  ‘My only hope was to escape before the waistcoat was finished. I pretended to be eager to serve the showman at once, to begin earning my liberty; and he was greedy for immediate money. I was to perform for the first time at one of the regular fairs he visited on the outskirts of a busy manufacturing town.

  ‘I remember that day very well. The showman had pitched our tent among all the other tents and booths and show-carts. From inside the tent I could hear all the sounds of the fair, and particularly the sound of the townspeople gathering in greater and greater numbers for the fun. Some of them were rough customers. The showman was ringing his bell and shouting for people to come in to hear the Magic Mole, as he called me. He was busy collecting entrance money, and, when he could get no more people inside the tent, all standing, he closed the flaps and told the audience that the performance would begin.

  ‘I was already there in my iron cage! – oh, yes, a cage! – with a cloth thrown over it. The cage stood on a small wooden table at the far end of the tent from the spectators. They were kept from coming too close by some kind of makeshift barrier. They were a rowdy lot. I could hear them pressing against the barrier, swearing at it; and I thought with satisfaction, That can give! I could hear them, and I could also smell them. There was one loudmouthed man at the very front – a huge man, I thought – a butcher, perhaps, for he smelt of blood as well as beer and sweat. He was drunk: that pleased me, too.

  ‘There was another, faint smell that came from the far side of the table away from the spectators. It rose from the ground in the narrow space between the table and the tent wall: the smell of crushed grass and the sweet smell of damp soil. That smell meant that there was no wooden flooring between me and the earth. That was of the greatest consequence.

  ‘Meanwhile, the showman had opened the door of the cage and I had crept out. As we had agreed, I turned to face the audience and at the same time sat back on my hindquarters, like a dog begging.’ The mole shuddered.

  ‘The showman asked me with much mock politeness to start the entertainment by singing “God Save the Queen”.

  ‘I did not respond. I did not utter a word. I did not part my lips or move a muscle of my body.

  ‘The showman said quickly, mock-apologetic, “Oh dearie dearie me! The little gentleman's shy!”

  ‘The crowd roared with stupid laughter, but I also heard the butcher shout, “Get on with it – we want our money's worth!”

  ‘The showman was rattled I could smell the sweat on him, the fright. He didn't know what I was up to. He began to ask the questions we had rehearsed together – question and answer. But now I gave no answers to his questions. In desperation, he pretended that I was speaking in a voice too tiny to be heard by anyone but him. But the people at the front of the crowd could see that my mouth remained tight shut, and the bully butcher began shouting, “It's a fraud – a swindle!”

  ‘The showman started to poke me and pinch me to make me speak, and the crowd, led by the butcher, began to roar in outrage. They cared nothing for the poor mole, but they wanted their revenge on this cheating showman. They shouted and jostled against the flimsy barrier until it creaked and jolted and suddenly – crack! – it was down, and the drunken butcher and the whole lot of them were lunging forward on to the showman at his table.

  ‘The showman was in fear for his life – I never knew what happened to him. Me – I had instantly flipped over the edge of the table furthest from the oncoming crowd – over and down to the lovely earth and then I was tunnelling like fury almost vertically down – down – while above me I heard the crashing and smashing of the table and the cries of the angry, struggling mob.

  ‘And I left it all behind me, as I took myself deep into the earth –

  ‘Deep —

  ‘Safe –

  ‘Free…’

  After that last word, the mole let out a long sighing breath of relief; and Bet, carried by imagination into his story, seemed actually to smell the lovely earth around him and above him, always his protection and his freedom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Holy Mole

  There was a long silence by the log after the end of the mole's story of hair's-breadth escape. Bet thought that he was perhaps tasting again the success of the trick he had used against the showman. Then he began slowly to swing his heavy head from side to side, as if to cast from it all such self-congratulation. Gloom now enwrapped him.

  Bet said, ‘But you didn't mean to desert Miss X. You would have gone back to her if you could, but you didn't know the way. None of it was your fault.’

  ‘True,’ said the mole. He seemed no happier for the thought.

  Now was the moment, Bet knew, for Mr Franklin
's question. She began, ‘And then you decided you must go to Hampton Court.’

  ‘I didn't suddenly decide that. I'd always known I must go. Even in Scotland, I'd known.’

  ‘But why?’

  The mole did not answer.

  ‘Was it because you had been born there?’

  The mole gave a snort like Mr Franklin's, but mole-sized. ‘Moonshine!’ he said.

  ‘Then why?’

  She had to be answered. ‘Well,’ said the mole, ‘Hampton Court was the one place in the whole wide world that I knew how to get to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Homing instinct. So Master Y once explained to me. Birds have it, particularly homing pigeons. In this respect, apparently, I resemble a homing pigeon.’ He paused, seeming not much to care for the comparison, then continued, ‘So I knew, without thinking, that I must tunnel my way out of Scotland into England, making always roughly south towards London and Hampton Court. Sometimes there were diversions, of course; also delays – those several delightful decades with Miss X, just over the Border; and then, further south, a good few years with Master Y in what he told me was the Vale of York (such fertile soil – most excellent earthworms!). And now here, further south still, with you. Even a homing pigeon would have to grant that I am still making in the right direction.’

  The mole was pleased with himself. He thought he had dealt with Bet's awkward question: Why?

  Bet, however, had been thinking carefully. She said, ‘If you know the way to a place, that doesn't mean that you have to go there.’

  ‘No,’ admitted the mole.

  ‘So that's a silly reason, too.’

  ‘Well, yes,' said the mole.

  ‘So – Why?’

  The mole, saying nothing, drew himself together and began to inch his body backwards into his tunnel.

  In a panic, Bet cried, ‘Don't go! Please, don't go! I'm sorry I bothered you with questions. Oh, please, stay!’

  He stayed. He said gruffly, ‘A friend has a right to ask questions. But to answer may be too complicated, too hard.’

  Silence followed this speech. Bet listened carefully to it. Finally she said, ‘It's because of the witchcraft, isn't it?’

  The mole's body shook with the force of his reply. ‘Yes! By now – oh, what I want most in this world is to get that accursed witchcraft out of my blood and my bones and my brain and my fur and my feet – oh, to be rid of it utterly! To be as I was before that single drop of witch's brew first touched my tongue in Scotland, and before, all unknowing, I swallowed that whole abominable little bag of tricks on Culloden Moor! To be myself again, pure mole, as I was at Hampton Court before the King's horse stumbled at the molehill. My only hope is to get back to Hampton Court to meet myself there – to be myself again, as I was then!’

  Bet said quietly and sadly, ‘300 years ago…’

  But the mole paid no attention – if he heard. He ranted on. ‘As I was then, pure mole – all of me mole – nothing taken from me by witchcraft – nothing added by witchcraft –’

  Something echoed in Bet's mind from stories of courtroom trials and witnesses sworn to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’.

  Aloud she said, ‘Mole, wholly mole, and nothing but mole.’

  The mole was startled. ‘Holy mole? Myself with halo?’

  Bet was surprised, too. ‘You've made a pun.’

  ‘A pun?’

  ‘A kind of joke.’ She ventured to laugh.

  He was not interested, but he was not offended either; and for a moment he had been diverted from the passionate outpouring of his rage and regret and his clutched-at hopes. He was calmer. He could listen to reason.

  Bet said, ‘That first single drop from the witch's cauldron brought you back to life – gave you the power to live, perhaps forever, perhaps in captivity forever. That was bad, and that was sad.’

  ‘Alas!’ said the mole. ‘Alas, alas!’

  ‘But the bag of tricks gave you powers of different kinds that you could really use.’

  ‘Did it?’ He still desponded, but was glad to have the tangle of his past experiences sorted out for him.

  ‘Didn't you escape on Culloden Moor and from the showman's tent by tunnelling deeper and faster – and sheer down – than you could ever have done if you had been an ordinary mole? You said so yourself, I think.’

  ‘Did I?’ said the mole, a little cheered. ‘Yes, I think that's true.’

  ‘And then,’ said Bet, ‘the bag of tricks gave you the power of language, the power to talk – no, before that it gave you the power to want to talk, to imagine being able to talk. So that, when you met Miss X, you were ready to try talking to her, and you did talk to her. So you made friends with Miss X, and then, later, with Master Y.’

  ‘And now with you,’ said the mole. ‘For which I am grateful. And yet –’ He was afraid of appearing ungrateful after all, or rude. He said, ‘A capacity for human friendship is not part of being a mole true, pure mole.’

  ‘But it is not a bad thing,’ said Bet.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said the mole. ‘But it is not a mole thing.’

  Bet did not argue. She said, ‘That's what witchcraft added. Did it take anything away?’

  ‘Have you forgotten?’ He had crept out of his hole again, so that now his entire body was visible to Bet. ‘You see me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bet, puzzled.

  ‘But you have forgotten. You think you see the whole of me from the tip of my nose to – to –’

  ‘Oh!’ cried Bet. ‘Your poor tail! It's not there! It was cut off and thrown into the witch's cauldron. Oh, I'm so sorry!’

  The mole said, ‘A mole's life is in the digging of tunnels and in the going to and fro along the tunnels he has made; and he makes those tunnels exactly to fit the size and shape of his body. The brushing of my body against the sides and the roof of a tunnel gave to my whole being a delicious sensation that was more than mere pleasure, more even than happiness. That was when I had a tail. The tail was short and thin and held aloft to touch sides and roofs of tunnels and so complete the circuit of content within my body. I lost that completion when I lost my tail. Without it I can never be wholly mole.’

  Bet said slowly, ‘Yes, I see. I think I see.’ She had glimpsed, as far as she – a human being – was able to, what it felt like to be another kind of being altogether: a mole. She saw, even if only a little way, into mole nature, and that insight allowed her to feel for this mole – to feel with him his anxiety, his longing to be wholly and only and utterly himself: mole.

  Her shadowy and confused thinking was broken into by the mole. With glum briskness he was saying, ‘Well, I suppose that what cannot be cured must be endured. According to Miss X.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ cried Bet. ‘There must be a way. Give me time. I can think of something. In fact, already –’

  There she broke off, and for the time being would say no more.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Experiment

  ‘Listen carefully,’ Bet said, resuming the conversation with the mole exactly where she had left it.

  ‘I'm listening.’

  ‘You have witchcraft in you. You want to get rid of it – to get rid of every little bit of it, don't you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the mole.

  ‘But you can see no way of getting rid of it.’

  ‘True, alas!’ said the mole.

  ‘But the witchcraft itself is power. It's in you, so it belongs to you. It's yours. You can use it.’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course, you can. It's only a matter of finding out how exactly to use it. You must experiment – try out. And then practise. In the end, you'll get so good at using it that, at last –’ Bet paused for emphasis – ‘you can use the witchcraft in you to get rid of the witchcraft in you. Just like that.’

  ‘“Use the witchcraft… to get rid of the witchcraft,”’ repeated the mole. ‘But experiment? How would I experiment – try out, as you s
ay?’

  ‘Easy,’ said Bet. ‘For instance, you could begin with me. You once said that if I'd been small enough, you'd have shown me your tunnels underground.’

  The mole did not see the direction the conversation was taking. He said gravely, ‘Had you been of a suitable size, I would have been honoured to escort you underground.’

  ‘Then try shrinking me – now!’

  Startled, the mole wailed, ‘Don't rush me!’ But that was exactly what Bet wanted to do. Otherwise, she thought, if he were given time, the mole would think up a dozen excuses never to meddle with the witchcraft in him.

  She repeated, coaxing this time, ‘Please, shrink me.’ As she spoke, with the tip of one finger she touched the mole, as Miss X had touched him long ago into friendship.

  The mole wavered, but could not resist such an appeal. With Bet's finger still resting lightly on him, he said, ‘For you, I'll try. I'll try – now!’ His whole body stiffened with the gathering of his will to match Bet's will. She gave a little gasp, a whisper: ‘I think – oh, I think something's beginning to happen!’

  And at that very moment from across the pasture came Mrs Allum's voice: ‘Bet, can you hear me? It's time to be off. Bet! Bet!’

  Bet was saying to the mole, ‘It worked – it worked! I feel smaller – you'd begun to shrink me! Oh, it worked!’ She had jumped to her feet with excitement – and also in response to her grandmother's calling. She must go.

  ‘You can't go!’ cried the mole. ‘I must undo what I've done. You can't go home shrunk.’

  ‘No time!’ said Bet. ‘And shrunk such a tiny bit, no one will notice. We'll sort things out when we next meet.’

  And she was dancing away across the meadow in the highest spirits, to where Mrs Allum was waiting for her.

  Mrs Allum stared at her granddaughter. ‘You look peaky,’ she said. ‘I don't know what your mum will think when she next sees you. I hope you've caught nothing off that dratted mole. Do you feel poorly?’

  ‘No,’ said Bet. ‘I'm all right. I feel specially all right.’

  Mrs Allum appealed to Mr Franklin, who had just come from his study with a book in his hand. Mr Franklin, peering uncertainly, thought that Bet looked much as usual.