Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  Besides, Jean Elspeth was more useful in that great barracks of a place than ten superior parlour-maids would have been. She was much more like a steam-engine than a maiden lady. And, like a steam-engine, she refused to be angry; she refused to sulk; and she usually refused to answer back. When nowadays, however, she did answer back, her tongue had a sting to it at least as sharp (though never so venomous) as that of the busy bee.

  And last, but no less, there was the outside of the house. As soon as ever Mr McPhizz and his under-gardeners had departed with their shears and knives and edging-irons and mowing machines, wildness had begun to creep into the garden. Wind and bird carried in seeds from the wilderness, and after but two summers, the trim barbered lawns sprang up into a marvellous meadow of daisies and buttercups, plantains, dandelions, and fools’ parsley, and then dock, thistle, groundsel and feathery grasses. Ivy, hop, briony, convolvulus roved across the terrace; Hosts of the Tiny blossomed between the stones. Moss, too, in mats and cushions of a green livelier than the emerald, or even than a one-night-old beech-leaf. Rain-stains now softly coloured the white walls, as if a stranger had come in the night and begun to paint pictures there. And the roses, in their now hidden beds, rushed back as fast as ever they could to bloom like their wild-briar sisters again.

  And not only green things growing. Jean Elspeth would tiptoe out to see complete little immense families of rabbits nibbling their breakfast or supper of dandelion leaves on the very flagstones under the windows. Squirrels nutted; moles burrowed; hedgehogs came beetle-hunting; mice of every tiny size scampered and twinkled and danced and made merry.

  As for the birds – birds numberless! And of so many kinds and colours and notes that she had to sit up half the night looking out their names in the huge birdbook her father had given her on her eleventh Christmas. This was the one treasure she had saved from the pantechnicon men. She had wrapped it up in two copies of the Scotsman, and hidden it in the chimney. She felt a little guilty over it at times, but nonetheless determined that the Four Lawyers should never hear of that.

  It was strange, exceedingly strange, to be so happy; and Jean Elspeth sometimes could hardly contain herself, she was so much ashamed of it in the presence of her sisters. Still, she now drew the line, as they say, at Lucy.

  And that was the strangest and oddest thing of all. After the dreadful shock of the Four Lawyers’ letter, after the torment and anxiety and horror, the pantechnicons and the trades-people, poor Tabitha and Euphemia – however brave their faces and stiff their backs – had drooped within like flowers in autumn nipped by frost. In their pride, too, they had renounced even the friends who would have been faithful to them in their trouble.

  They shut themselves up in themselves more than ever, like birds in cages. They scarcely ever even looked from the windows. It was only on Sundays they went out of doors. Euphemia, too, had sometimes to keep to her bed. And Jean Elspeth would cry to herself, ‘Oh, my dear! oh, my dear!’ at the sight of Tabitha trailing about the house with a large duster and so little to dust. To see her sipping at her water-porridge as if she were not in the least hungry, as if it was the daintiest dish in Christendom, was like having a knife stuck in one’s very breast.

  Yet, such was Tabitha’s ‘strength of mind’ and hardihood, Jean Elspeth never dared to comfort her, to cheer her up, to wave her spoon by so much as a quarter of an inch in her direction.

  In these circumstances it had seemed to Jean Elspeth it would be utterly unfair to share Lucy’s company, even in her hidden mind. It would be like stealing a march, as they say. It would be cheating. At any rate, it might hurt their feelings. They would see, more stark than ever before, how desolate they were. They would look up and realize by the very light in her eyes that her old playmate had not deserted her. No. She would wait. There was plenty of time. She would keep her wishes down. And the little secret door of her mind should be left, not, as it once was, wide open, but just ajar.

  How, she could not exactly say. And yet, in spite of all this, Lucy herself, just as if she were a real live ghost, seemed to be everywhere. If in her scrubbing Jean Elspeth happened to glance up suddenly out of the window – whether mere fancy or not – that fair gentle face might be stealthily smiling in. If some moonlight night she leaned for a few precious sweet cold moments over her bedroom sill, as likely as not her phantom would be seen wandering, shadowless, among the tall whispering weeds and grasses of the lawn.

  Phantoms and ghosts are usually very far from welcome company. Lucy was nothing but gentleness and grace. The least little glimpse of her was like hearing a wild bird singing – blackbird or black-cap, not in the least like the solitary hoot-owl whose long, bubbling, grievous notes seem to darken the darkness. Having this ghost, then, for company, however much she tried not to heed it, all that Jean Elspeth had to do in order just to play fair – and she did it with all her might – was not to look for Lucy, and not to show that she saw her, when there she was, plain to be seen, before her very eyes. And when at last she realized her plan was succeeding, that Lucy was gone from her, her very heart seemed to come into her mouth.

  And so the years went by. And the sisters became older and older, and Stoneyhouse older and older too. Walls, fences, stables, coach-house, hen-house, and the square lodge crept on steadily to rack and ruin. Tabitha kept more and more to herself, and the sisters scarcely spoke at meal-times.

  Then at last Euphemia fell really ill; and everything else for a while went completely out of Jean Elspeth’s life and remembrance. She hadn’t a moment even to lean from her window or to read in her bed. It was unfortunate, of course, that Euphemia’s bedroom was three stair-flights up. Jean Elspeth’s legs grew very tired of climbing those long ladders, and Tabitha could do little else but sit at the window and knit – knit the wool of worn-out shawls and stockings into new ones. So she would stay for hours together, never raising her eyes to glance over the pair of horn-rimmed spectacles that had belonged to her grandfather, and now straddled her own lean nose. Dr Menzies, too, was an old man now, and could visit them very seldom.

  Jean Elspeth herself seldom even went to bed. She sat on a chair in Euphemia’s room and snatched morsels of sleep, as a hungry dog snatches at bits of meat on a butcher’s tray. It was on such a night as this, nodding there in her chair, that, after having seemed to fall into a long narrow nightmare hole of utter cold and darkness, and to have stayed there for centuries without light or sound, she was suddenly roused by Euphemia’s voice.

  It was not Euphemia’s usual voice, and the words were following one another much more rapidly than usual, like sheep and lambs running through a gate. Daybreak was at the window. And in this first chill eastern light Euphemia was sitting up in bed – a thing she had been unable to do for weeks. And she was asking Jean Elspeth to tell her who the child was that was now standing at the end of her bed.

  Euphemia described her, too – ‘A fair child with straight hair. And she is carrying a bundle of gorse, with its prickles, and flowers wide open. I can smell the almond smell. And she keeps on looking and smiling first at me, and then at you. Don’t you see, Elspeth? Tell her, please, to go away. Tell her I don’t want to be happy like that. She is making me afraid. Tell her to go away at once, please.’

  Jean Elspeth sat shivering, colder than a snail in its winter shell. The awful thing was to know that this visitor must be Lucy, and yet not to be able to see her – not a vestige, nothing but the iron bed and the bedpost, and Euphemia sitting there, just gazing. How, then, could she tell Lucy to go away?

  She scurried across the room, and took Euphemia’s cold hands in hers. ‘You are dreaming, Euphemia. I see nothing. And if it is a pleasant dream, why drive it away?’

  ‘No,’ said Euphemia, in the same strange, low, clear voice. ‘It is not a dream. You are deceiving me, Elspeth. She has come only to mock at me. Send her away!’

  And Jean Elspeth, gazing into her sister’s wide light eyes, that now seemed deeper than the deepest well that ever was on eart
h, was compelled to answer her.

  ‘Please, please, Euphemia, do not think of it any more. There is nothing to fear – nothing at all. Why, it sounds like Lucy – that old silly story; do you remember? But I have not seen her myself for ever so long. I couldn’t while you are ill.’

  The lids closed gently down over the wide eyes, but Euphemia still held tight to Jean Elspeth’s work-roughened hand. ‘Never mind, then,’ she whispered, ‘if that is all. I had no wish to take her away from you, Elspeth. Keep close to me. One thing, we are happier now, you and I.’

  ‘Oh, Euphemia, do you mean that?’ said Jean Elspeth, peering closer.

  ‘Well,’ Euphemia replied; and it was as if there were now two voices speaking: the old Euphemia’s and this low, even, dreamlike voice. ‘I mean it. There is plenty of air now – a different place. And I hope your friend will come as often as she pleases. There’s room for us all.’

  And with that word ‘room’, and the grim smile that accompanied it, all the old Euphemia seemed to have come back again, though a moment after she dropped back upon her pillow and appeared to be asleep.

  Seeing her thus quiet once more, Jean Elspeth very, very cautiously turned her head. The first rays of the sun were on the window. Not the faintest scent of almond was borne to her nostrils on the air. There was no sign at all of any company. A crooked frown had settled on her forehead. She was cold through and through, and her body ached; but she tried to smile, and almost imperceptibly lifted a finger just as if it held a teaspoon and she was waving it in her own old secret childish way to her father’s portrait on the wall.

  Now and again after that Jean Elspeth watched the same absent far-away look steal over Euphemia’s face, and the same fixed smile, dour and grim, and yet happy – like still deep water under waves. It was almost as if Euphemia were amused at having stolen Lucy away.

  ‘You see, my dear,’ she said suddenly one morning, as if after a long talk, ‘it only proves that we all go the same way home.’

  ‘Euphemia, please don’t say that,’ whispered Jean Elspeth.

  ‘But why not?’ said Euphemia. ‘So it is. And she almost laughing out loud at me. The hussy! …’

  None of their old friends knew when Euphemia died, so it was only Dr Menzies and his sister who came to Stoneyhouse for the funeral. And though Jean Elspeth would now have been contented to do all the work in the house and to take care of Tabitha and her knitting into the bargain, they persuaded her at last that this would be impossible. And so, one blazing hot morning, having given a little parting gift to Tom Piper and wept a moment or two on Mrs O’Phrump’s ample shoulder, Jean Elspeth climbed with Tabitha into a cab, and that evening found herself hundreds of miles away from Stoneyhouse, in the two upper rooms set apart for the two ladies by Sally McGullie, who had married a fisherman and was now Mrs John Jones.

  Jean Elspeth could not have imagined a life so different. It was as if she had simply been pulled up by the roots. Whenever Tabitha could spare her – and that was seldom now – she would sit at her window looking on the square stone harbour and the sea, or in a glass shelter on its narrow front. But now that time stretched vacantly before her, and she was at liberty if she pleased to ‘pretend’ whenever she wished, and to fall into day-dreams one after another just as they might happen to come, it was life’s queer way that she could scarcely picture Lucy now, even with her inward eye, and never with her naked one.

  It was, too, just the way of this odd world that she should pine and long for Stoneyhouse beyond words to tell. She felt sometimes she must die – suffocate – of homesickness, and would frown at the grey moving sea, as if that alone were the enemy who was keeping her away from it. Not only this, but she saved up in a tin money-box every bawbee which she could spare of the little money the Four Lawyers had managed to save from the caoutchouc. And all for one distant purpose.

  And at length, years and years afterwards, she told Mrs Jones that she could bear herself no longer, that – like the cat in the fairy tale – she must pay a visit, and must go alone …

  It was on an autumn afternoon, about five o’clock, and long shadows were creeping across the grasses of the forsaken garden when Jean Elspeth came into sight of Stoneyhouse again, and found herself standing some little distance from the gaunt walls beside a shallow pool of water that now lay in a hollow of the garden. Her father had delighted in water; and, putting to use a tiny stream that coursed near by, had made a jetting fountain and a fishpond. The fountain having long ceased to flow and the pond having become choked with water-weeds, the stream had pushed its way out across the hollows, and had made itself this last dark resting-place. You might almost have thought it was trying to copy Jean Elspeth’s life in Sallie Jones’s seaside cottage. On the other hand, the windows of the great house did not stare so fiercely now; they were blurred and empty like the eyes of a man walking in his sleep. One of the chimney-stacks had toppled down, and creepers had rambled all over the wide expanse of the walls.

  Jean Elspeth, bent-up old woman that she now was, in her dingy black bonnet and a beaded mantle that had belonged to Euphemia, stood there drinking the great still scene in, as a dry sponge drinks in salt water.

  And after hesitating for some little time, she decided to venture nearer. She pushed her way through the matted wilderness of the garden, crossed the terrace, and presently peered in through one of the dingy dining-room windows. Half a shutter had by chance been left unhasped. When her eyes were grown accustomed to the gloom within, she discovered that the opposite wall was now quite empty. The portrait of her grandfather must have slowly ravelled through its cord. It had fallen face upwards on to the boards beneath.

  It saddened her to see this. She had left the picture hanging there simply because she felt sure that Euphemia would so have wished it to hang. But though she wearied herself out seeking to find entry into the house, in order, at least, to lean her grandfather up again against the wall, it was in vain. The doors were rustily bolted; the lower windows tight-shut. And it was beginning to be twilight when she found herself once more beside the cold stagnant pool.

  All this while she had been utterly alone. It had been a dreadful and sorrowful sight to see the great house thus decaying, and all this neglect. Yet she was not unhappy, for it seemed with its trees and greenery in this solitude to be uncomplaining and at rest. And so, too, was she. It was as if her whole life had just vanished and flitted away like a dream, leaving merely her body standing there in the evening light under the boughs of the great green chestnut-tree overhead.

  And then by chance, in that deep hush, her eyes wandered to the surface of the water at her feet, and there fixed themselves, her whole mind in a sudden confusion. For by some curious freak of the cheating dusk, she saw gazing back at her from under a squat old crape bonnet, with Euphemia’s cast-off beaded mantle on the shoulders beneath it, a face not in the least like that of the little old woman inside them, but a face, fair and smiling, as of one eternally young and happy and blessed – Lucy’s. She gazed and gazed, in the darkening evening. A peace beyond understanding comforted her spirit. It was by far the oddest thing that had ever happened to Jean Elspeth in all the eighty years of her odd long life on earth.

  * As printed in CSC (1947). First published in Number Two Joy Street, Oxford 1924.

  A Nose

  When little Sam Such was christened, a host of aunts, uncles, cousins, second-cousins, and cousins once, twice and many times removed, came to the christening feast. There was hot veal-and-ham pie and cold roast leg-of-pork; there was lobster, cherry-tart, trifle, custard, and Devonshire cream, with bottled ale for the gentlemen to drink and lemonade for the ladies. And when the company had at last finished eating and drinking, little Sam in his long clothes, with the wrinkles on his forehead, the silky down on the back of his head, his tiny ears and his pouting mouth, was brought in by an exceedingly large nurse; and everyone present stood up, clinked glasses, and drank his health.

  Sam’s father was a prosperous cl
othier and haberdasher. He was Such & Such: it was written up over his fine shop in the best gilt lettering. He had two assistants, Mr Hopper and George, who at the christening feast each took it in turn to mind the shop while the other looked in on the company. There were two wide plate-glass windows to the shop front in the High Street – one for the dummies in suits, boys and gents, and one for shirts, gloves, hose, ties, and chest-protectors. There, too, hung an elegantly gilded square of cardboard close against the glass with the invitation: ‘Why go to So and So’s when you can get ALL you will ever want from Such & Such!’

  Sam’s mother was a shy little woman with a small face and large brown eyes. She was so shy that she had never even had the courage to serve in the shop and say ‘A nice bright morning, Sir,’ or ‘That will be 2s. 11¾d., madam.’ Once even rather than serve a gentleman who wanted a blue poplin tie with white spots, she had hidden under the counter. She had four sisters, however, who were entirely different from herself in looks, figure, voices, nerves, and everything else. They were tall and thin and high-spirited, with large features and drooping chins, and whatever dresses they wore they always resembled flags flying in the wind. They were like war-horses, and laughed Ha Ha.

  They brought little Sam, their first and only nephew, the handsomest of christening gifts – a pink coral comforter with silver bells; a silver knife and fork in a maroon leather case; a whistle also of hall-marked silver; and an embossed silver mug, with a beautiful inscription exquisitely engraved with all the proper flourishes on the bottom of it:

  Welcome Sam, to earth you came,

  Ring Heaven’s bell, we wish you well.

  Many years and long to thrive

  May Providence to Samuel give. Aunt Sarah.