Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  With a groan of joy he thrust out his hand, clutched the box, the upper chair slipped from under him; and down he came toppling headlong, higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter to the floor. He groaned and moaned and moaned and groaned. There was no doubt about it, his leg was broken in three places, and a rare trouble it was for Susan to get him into bed. But she bound the broken leg up at last with three old silk handkerchiefs and a broomstick.

  And after a while, with the wooden box under his pillow, the Thief fell asleep in his great four-post bed. For a full forty-eight hours – two whole days and two whole nights – he lay there fast asleep. At the first tick of the forty-ninth he woke up, and having lit his candle at the bedside, he pushed his hand in under his pillow as he lay on his back and, with trembling fingers, drew out the box. And there within, sure enough, just twisted up in a twist of old newspaper and cotton wool, was the Egg.

  It was a small, usual-shaped egg and of the colour of a robin’s. And as the broken-legged Thief held it between finger and thumb he heard a faint, faint, faint tapping. Tap, tap, tap! And in another instant – hatched in slumber by the warmth of the Thief’s swansdown pillow – the thin shell crumbled between his fingers and there flew out, full-fledged, a teeny, tiny, leetle Bird with feathers of gold and eyes like emeralds and claws like coral. And it perched on his bedrail; it tweeted a few frail notes sharper than a needle and tinier than a clover-seed; and it looked at the Thief.

  At that moment there came the whisper of a whisper at the immense mahogany door. For the ninety-seventh time during that last forty-eight hours Susan was standing there in the doorway looking in on her master; but now her eyes under her black mop of hair were fixed on this Tiny One.

  And she said ‘O!’

  And it seemed to the Thief as he lay there shrunken to a shadow, and looking at Susan with her mouth open, that he had never seen a lovelier sight. And yet, nevertheless, the delight in her dark eyes, and on her smooth young sooty cheek as she smiled at the bird, was something no Thief – not even Ali Baba’s brother himself – could steal. And his heart seemed to break into three times as many pieces as his leg, as he said, having forgotten how many times this question had been answered by the high-born with emphatic Noes, ‘Susan, will you marry me?’

  And she said: ‘Oh, Master! It comes sudden. And I don’t like anything in the house at all, at all, at all. I hates it. And particularly them bags of beads and brass upstairs in the attics. And all them rats a-capering on their hind-legs in the cellar. And such a mort of carpets to sweep and marble to keep clean and windows to keep curtained. But if you truly love me, then I will marry you. And please may I have the little bird on the bedrail for a wedding-present.’

  Now there was an old, old curate that lived in the great Square nearby – the only human creature there, because all that property was of no value now and its rent a mere song. For what even comparatively honest man ever wants to live next door to a Thief? But the curate had other views, and he had called regularly at the Thief’s mansion month after month on their first Mondays for years and years, though in Mr Smoke’s the butler’s day he had never once been let in. But Susan knew about him all right, oh yes; and he came round with his stole and his surplice over his arm that May Day morning, and he married them then and there.

  And the Thief, having now given away everything in his house, including the glass beads and the brass, died presently after, of his broken leg. And though he was not exactly happy or good – since no man can be that for more than a moment or two together – I must say that on the day of his death there was much less of a squint than usual in his little green eyes, and he looked far less like King Henry VIII (who could have married as many duchesses as he pleased by cutting off their heads in turn) than he had ever looked before. That may have been because in his last moments there was a little gold bird singing a song like a grasshopper on the towel rail near the window to the left of his bed, while on the right sat Susan, holding his crime-stained hand and saying how sorry she was to bid him good-bye.

  And soon after the Thief had breathed his last, the tiny inmate of the Magic Egg fluttered across the bed and quite unbeknown to Susan, who had fallen asleep with grief and fatigue, at once set to building a little sort of a nest in her hair. But in spite of the fact that she, being kind-hearted, was thus prevented from combing out her hair completely every night and morning, the kind curate managed to get her a ‘place’ with an elderly maiden lady living in a charming villa near a village called Silleyton in Suffolk. And this lady (seeing how good and happy and willing a creature Susan was otherwise) did not mind her maid looking like a Zulu with that extraordinarily bunchy mop of hair. And when this old lady died, having no nephews or nieces to whom to leave her money, she left it all to Susan.

  So Susan was a lady, too. And after residing quietly in the villa for some little time, the High Chamberlain of the Duchess of Anjou and Angelette, who lived nearby, presented her with a gilt-edged ticket admitting her every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, to walk in the Great Park. And though the children of the third under-gardener, when they saw her in her neat black weeds, taking the air under the pale-green beech-trees, would whisper audibly to one another, ‘Lawks, what a mop!’ – for some reason Susan was as happy as a kingfisher.

  And every foggy 5th of November she would take a first-class ticket and be off by the Great Eastern Railway, to a certain large cemetery near London, and make her way to the south-east corner of it. And there, under a weeping willow, stood a small rounded stone. Susan would lay her bunch of artificial forget-me-nots (the real not being yet abloom) beside the stone, and, with her black-edged handkerchief in her hand, she would once more, with tears in her eyes, spell out the epitaph on it:

  ‘Here lies my poor deer husband. R.I.P.’

  * First published in G.K.’s Weekly, 21 March and 4 April 1925.

  Broomsticks*

  Miss Chauncey’s cat, Sam, had been with her many years before she noticed anything unusual, anything disturbing, in his conduct. Like most cats who live under the same roof with but one or two humans, he had always been more sagacious than cats of a common household. He had learned Miss Chauncey’s ways. He acted, that is, as nearly like a small mortal dressed up in a hairy coat as one could expect a cat to act. He was what is called an ‘intelligent’ cat.

  But though Sam had learned much from Miss Chauncey, I am bound to say that Miss Chauncey had learned very little from Sam. She was a kind, indulgent mistress; she could sew, and cook, and crochet, and make a bed, and read and write and cipher a little. And when she was a girl she used to sing ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’ to the piano. Sam, of course, could do nothing of this kind.

  But then, Miss Chauncey could no more have caught and killed a mouse or a blackbird with her five naked fingers than she could have been Pope of Rome. Nor could she run up a six-foot brick wall, or leap clean from the hearthmat in her parlour on to the shelf of her chimneypiece without disturbing a single ornament, or even tinkling one crystal lustre against another. Unlike Sam, too, she could not find her way in the dark, or by her sense of smell; or keep in good health by merely nibbling grass in the garden. If, moreover, she had been carefully held up by her feet and hands two or three feet above the ground and then dropped, she would have at once fallen plump on her back; whereas when Sam was only three months old he could have managed to twist clean about in the air in twelve inches and come down on his four feet, as firm as a table.

  While then Sam had learned a good deal from Miss Chauncey, she had learned nothing from him. And even if she had been willing to be taught, and he to teach her, it is doubtful if she would have proved a promising pupil. What is more, she knew much less about Sam than he knew about his mistress – until, at least, that afternoon when she was doing her hair in the glass. And then she could hardly believe her own eyes. It was a moment that completely changed her views about Sam – and nothing after that experience was ever quite the same again …

  Sam had always been a fine upsta
nding creature, his fur jet-black and silky, his eyes a lambent gold, even in sunshine, and at night aglow like green topazes. He was now full five years of age, and had an unusually powerful miaou. Living as he did quite alone with Miss Chauncey at Post Houses, it was natural that he should become her constant companion. For Post Houses was a singularly solitary house, standing almost in the middle of Haggurdsdon Moor, just where two wandering byways cross each other like the half-closed blades of a pair of shears or scissors.

  She was well over a mile from her nearest neighbour, Mr Cullings, the carrier; and yet another mile from the straggling old village of Haggurdsdon itself. Its roads were extremely ancient. They had been sheep-tracks long before the Romans came to England and had cut their roads from shore to shore. But for many years few travellers on horse or foot, or even sheep with their shepherd had come Miss Chauncey’s way. You could have gazed from her windows for days together without seeing so much as a tinker’s barrow or a gipsy’s van.

  Post Houses too was perhaps the ugliest house there ever was. Its four corners stood straight up on the moor like a pile of nursery bricks. From its flat roof on a clear day the eye could see for miles and miles across the moor, Mr Cullings’s cottage being out of sight in a shallow hollow. It had belonged to Miss Chauncey’s respectable ancestors for generations. Many people in Haggurdsdon indeed called it Chauncey’s. And though in a blustering wind it was as full of noises as an organ, though it was cold as a barn in winter, and though another branch of the family had as far back as the ’seventies gone to live in the Isle of Wight, Miss Chauncey still remained faithful to the old walls. In fact she loved the ugly old place. Had she not lived in it ever since she was a little girl, with knickerbockers showing under her skirts, and pale-blue ribbon rosettes at her shoulders?

  This fact alone made Sam’s conduct the more reprehensible, for never cat had kinder mistress. Miss Chauncey herself was now about sixty years of age – fifty-five years older than Sam. She was tall and gaunt, and straight as a ramrod. On weekdays she wore black alpaca, and on Sundays a watered silk. Her large round steel spectacles straddling across her high nose gave her a look of being keen as well as cold. But truly she was neither. For even so stupid a man as Mr Cullings could take her in over the cartage charge for a parcel – just by looking tired, or sighing as he glanced at his rough-haired, knock-kneed mare. And there was the warmest of hearts under her stiff bodice.

  Post Houses being so far from the village, milk and cream were a little difficult. But Miss Chauncey could deny Sam nothing – in reason. She paid a whole sixpence a week to a little girl called Susan Ard, who brought these dainties from the nearest farm. They were dainties indeed, for though the grasses on Haggurdsdon Moor were of a dark sour green, the cows that grazed on it gave an uncommonly rich milk, and Sam flourished on it. Mr Cullings called once a week on his round, and had a standing order to bring with him a few sprats or fresh herrings, or any toothsome fish that was in season. Miss Chauncey would not even withhold her purse from whitebait, if no other cheaper wholesome fish were procurable. And Mr Cullings would eye Sam fawning about his cartwheel, or gloating up at his dish, and say, ‘’Ee be a queer animal, Mum, shure enough; ’ee be a wunnerful queer animal, ’ee be.’

  As for Miss Chauncey herself, she was a niggardly eater, though much attached to her tea. She made her own bread and cookies. On Saturday a butcher-boy drove up in a striped apron with her Sunday joint; but she was no meat-lover. Her cupboards were full of home-made jams and bottled fruits and dried herbs – everything of that kind, for Post Houses had a nice long strip of garden behind it, surrounded by a high old yellow brick wall.

  Quite early in life Sam, of course, had learned to know his meal-times – though how he ‘told’ them was known only to himself, for he never appeared even to glance at the face of the grandfather’s clock on the staircase. He was punctual, a dandy in his toilet, and a prodigious sleeper. He had learned to pull down the latch of the back door, if, in the months when an open window was not to be found, he wished to go out. Indeed, he often seemed to prefer the latch. He never slept on Miss Chauncey’s patchwork quilt unless his own had been placed over it. He was fastidious almost to a foppish degree in his habits, and he was no thief. He had a mew on one note to show when he wanted something to eat; a mew a semitone or two higher if he wanted drink (that is, cold water, for which he had a natural taste); and yet another mew – gentle and sustained – when he wished, so to speak, to converse with his mistress.

  Not, of course, that the creature talked English. He liked to sit up on one chair by the fireside, especially in the kitchen – for he was no born parlour cat – and to look up at the glinting glasses of Miss Chauncey’s spectacles, and then down a while at the fire-flames (drawing his claws in and out as he did so, and purring the while), almost as if he might be preaching a sermon, or reciting a poem.

  But this was in the happy days when all seemed well. This was in the days when Miss Chauncey’s mind was innocent of doubts and suspicions.

  Like others of his kind, too, Sam had delighted in his youth to lie in the window and idly watch the birds in the apple trees – tits, thrushes, blackbirds, bullfinches – or to crouch over a mousehole, for hours together. Such were his house amusements (he never ate his mice), while Miss Chauncey with cap and broom, duster and dish-clout, went about her work. But he also had a way of examining things in which cats are not generally interested. He as good as told Miss Chauncey one afternoon that moths were at work in her parlour carpet. For he walked to and fro and back and forth with his tail up, until she attended to him. And he certainly warned her, with a yelp like an Amazonian monkey, when a red-hot coal had set her kitchen mat on fire.

  He would lie or sit with his whiskers to the north before noonday, and due south afterwards. In general his manners were perfection. But occasionally, when she called him, his face would appear to knot itself into a frown – at any rate to assume a low sullen look, as if he expostulated: ‘Why must you be interrupting me, Madam, when I was attending to something else?’ And now and then, Miss Chauncey fancied, he would deliberately secrete himself or steal out of (and into) Post Houses unbeknown.

  Miss Chauncey too would sometimes find him trotting from room to room as if on a visit of inspection. On his second birthday he had carried in an immense mouse and laid it beside the shiny toecap of her boot as she sat knitting by the fire. She smiled and nodded merrily at him, as usual, but on this occasion he looked at her intently, and then deliberately shook his head. After that he never paid the smallest attention to mouse or mousehole or mousery, and Miss Chauncey was obliged to purchase a cheese-bait trap, else she would have been overrun.

  Almost any domestic cat may do things of this nature, and all this of course was solely on Sam’s domestic side. For he shared house with Miss Chauncey and, like any two beings that live together, he was bound to keep up certain appearances. He met her halfway, as the saying goes. When, however, he was ‘on his own’, he was no longer Miss Chauncey’s Sam, he was no longer merely the cat at Post Houses, but just himself. He went back, that is, to his own free independent life; to his own private habits.

  Then the moor on which he roved was his own country, and the ‘humans’ and their houses on it were no more to him in his wild privy existence than mole-hills or badgers’ earths or rabbit warrens are to ourselves. Of this side of his life his mistress knew practically nothing. She did not consider it. She supposed that Sam behaved like other cats, though it was evident that at times he went far afield, for he now and again brought home a young Cochin China pullet, and the nearest Cochin China fowls were at the vicarage, a good four miles off. Sometimes of an evening, too, when Miss Chauncey was taking a little walk herself, she would see him – a swiftly moving black speck – far along the road, hastening home. And there was more purpose expressed in his gait and appearance than ever Mr Cullings or even the vicar showed!

  It was pleasant to observe, too, when he came within miaouing distance, how his manner
changed. He turned at once from being a Cat into being a Domestic Cat. He was instantaneously no longer the Feline Adventurer, the Nocturnal Marauder and Haunter of Haggurdsdon Moor (though Miss Chauncey would not have so expressed it), but simply his mistress’s spoiled pet, Sam. She loved him dearly. But, as again with human beings who are accustomed to live together, she did not think very much about him. It could not but be a shock then that late evening, when without the slightest warning Miss Chauncey discovered that Sam was deliberately deceiving her.

  She was brushing her thin brown front hair before her looking-glass. At this moment it hung down over her face like a fine loose veil. And as she always mused of other things when she was brushing her hair, she was somewhat absent-minded the while. On raising her eyes from her reverie behind this screen of hair, she perceived not only that Sam’s reflection was in sight in the looking-glass, but also that something a little mysterious was happening. Sam was sitting up as if to beg. There was nothing in that. It had been a customary feat of his since he was a few months old. Still, for what might he be begging, no one by?

  Now the window to the right of the chintz-valanced dressing-table was open at the top. Outside, it was beginning to grow dark. All Haggurdsdon Moor lay hushed and still in the evening’s thickening gloom. And apart from begging when there was nothing to beg for, Sam seemed, so to speak, to be gesticulating with his paws. He appeared, that is, to be making signs, just as if there were someone or something looking in at the window at him from out of the air – which was quite impossible. And there was a look upon his face that certainly Miss Chauncey had never seen before.