The morning after the morning after that, when Tom, Dick and Harry woke up at dawn on their mattress, there was a wonderful rare smell in the air. They sniffed it greedily as they looked at one another in the creeping light of daybreak. And sure enough, as soon as they were in their ragged jackets and had got down to their breakfast, the old woman who came to the house every morning to do an hour or two’s charing for Old Nollykins, came waddling up to the kitchen table with a frying-pan of bacon frizzling in its fat.
‘There, me boys,’ said Old Noll, rubbing his hands together with a cringing smile, ‘there’s a rasher of bacon for ye all, and sop in the pan to keep the cold out, after that long night-run in the moonlight.’
He creaked up his eyes at them finger on nose; but all three of them, perched up there on their wooden stools the other side of the table, only paused an instant in the first polishing up of their plates with a crust of bread to stare at him with such an innocent astonishment on their young faces that he was perfectly sure they had no notion of what he meant.
‘Aha,’ says he, ‘do ye never dream, me boys, tucked up snug under the roof in that comfortable bed of yours? D’ye never dream? – never hear a bit of a tune calling, or maybe see what’s called a nightmare? Lordee, when I was young there never went a night but had summat of a dream to it.’
‘Dream!’ said they, and looked at one another with their mouths half open. Why, if you ax me, Master,’ says Tom, ‘I dreamed last night it was all bright moonshine, and me sitting at supper with the gentry.’
‘And I,’ says Dick, ‘I dreamed I was dancing under trees and bushes all covered over with flowers. And I could hear ’em playing on harps and whistles.’
‘And me,’ says Harry, ‘I dreamed I was by a river, and a leddy came out by a green place near the water and took hold of my hand. I suppose, Master, it must have been my mammie, though I never seed her as I knows on.’
At all this the cringing smile on Old Nollykins’ face set like grease in a dish, because of the rage in his mind underneath. And he leaped up from where he sat beside the skinny little fire in the immense kitchen hearth. ‘“Gentry!” “Harps!” “Mammie!”’ he shouted, ‘you brazen, ungrateful, greedy little deevils. Be off with ye, or ye shall have such a taste of the stick as will put ye to sleep for good and all.’
And almost before they had time to snatch up their bags and their besoms, he had chased them out of the house. So there in the little alley beside the garden, sheltering as close to its wall as they could from the cold rain that was falling, they must needs stand chattering together like drenched jackdaws, waiting for the angry old man to come out and to send them about the business of the day.
But Old Nollykins’ dish of bacon fat had not been altogether wasted. He knew now that the young rapscallions only dreamed their nocturnal adventures, and were not in the least aware that they themselves in actual shadow-shape went off by night to the trysting-place of all Cheriton’s children to dance and feast and find delight. But he continued to keep watch, and would again and again spy in on his three ’prentices lying asleep together on their mattress up in the attic, in the hope of catching them in the act of stealing out. But although at times he discerned the same gentle smile upon their faces, shining nonetheless serenely for the white gutter-marks of tears on their sooty cheeks, for weeks together he failed to catch any repetition of the strains of the strange music or the faintest whisper of their dream-shapes coming and going on the wooden stairs.
Nevertheless, the more he brooded on what he had seen, the more he hated the three urchins, and the more bitterly he resented their merry ways. The one thing he could not decide in his mind was whether when next, if ever, he caught them at their midnight tricks, he should at once set about their slumbering bodies with his stick or should wait until their dream-wraiths were safely away and then try to prevent them from coming back. Then indeed they might be at his mercy.
Now there was an old crone in Cheriton who was reputed to be a witch. She lived in a stone hovel at the far end of a crooked alley that ran beside the very walls of Old Nollykins’ fine gabled house. And Old Nollykins, almost worn to a shadow, knocked one dark evening at her door. She might have been the old man’s grandmother as she sat there, hunched up in her corner beside the great iron pot simmering over the fire. He mumbled out his story about his three ‘thieving, godless little brats’, and then sat haggling over the price he should pay for her counsel. And even then he hoped to cheat her. At last he put his crown in her shrunken paw.
Waken a sleeper, she told him, before his dream-shape can get back into his mortal frame, it’s as like as not to be sudden death. But keep the wandering dream-shape out without rousing his sleeping body, then he may for ever more be your slave, and will never grow any older. And what may keep a human’s dream-shape out – or animal’s either – she said, is a love-knot of iron the wrong way up or a rusty horseshoe upside down, or a twisted wreath of elder and ash fastened up with an iron nail over the keyhole – and every window shut. Brick walls and stone and wood are nothing to such wanderers. But they can’t abide iron. And what she said was partly true and partly false; and it was in part false because the foolish old man had refused to pay the crone her full price.
He knew well, and so did she, that there was only a wooden latch to his door, because he had been too much of a skinflint to pay for one of the new iron locks to be fixed on. He had no fear of thieves, because he had so hidden his money that no thief on earth would be able to find it, not if he searched for a week. So he asked the old woman again, to make doubly sure, how long a natural human creature would live and work if his dream-shape never came back. ‘Why, that,’ she cheepered, leering up at him out of her wizened old face, ‘that depends how young they be; what’s the blood, and what’s the heart. Take ’em in the first bloom,’ she said, ‘and so they keeps.’ She had long ago seen what the old man was after, and had no more love for him than for his three noisy whooping chimney-sweeps.
Very unwillingly he dropped another piece of money into her skinny palm and went back to his house, not knowing that the old woman, to avenge herself on his skinflint ways, had told him only half the story. That evening his three ’prentices had a rare game of hide-and-seek together in the many-roomed old rat-holed house; for their master had gone out. The moment they heard his shuffling footsteps in the porch they scampered off to bed, and were to all appearance fast asleep before he could look in on them.
He had brought back with him a bundle of switches of elder and ash, a tenpenny nail, a great key, and a cracked horseshoe. And, strange to say, the iron key which he had bought from a dealer in broken metal had once been the key of the Mill of rich old Jeremy the First at Stratford-on-Avon! He pondered half that night on what the old woman had said, and ‘surely’, said he to himself, ‘their blood’s fresh enough, my old stick keeps them out of mischief, and what is better for a green young body than a long day’s work and not too much to eat, and an airy lodging for the night?’ The cunning old creature supposed indeed, that if only by this sorcery and hugger-mugger he could keep their wandering dream-shapes from their bodies for good and all, his three young ’prentices would never age, never weary, but stay lusty and nimble perhaps for a century. Ay, he would use them as long as he wanted them, and sell them before he died. He’d teach them to play truant at night, when honest folk were snoring in their beds. For the first time for weeks his mingy supper off a crust and a ham-bone and a mug of water had tasted like manna come down from the skies.
The very next day chanced to be St Nicholas’s Day. And those were the times of old English winters. Already a fine scattering of snow was on the ground, like tiny white lumps of sago, and the rivers and ponds were frozen hard as iron. Better still, there was all but a fine full moon that night, and the puddles in Cheriton High Street shone like Chinese crystal in the beams slanting down on them from between the eaves of the houses.
For five long hours of dark, after his seven o’clock supper, Old No
llykins managed to keep himself awake. Then, a little before midnight, having assured himself that his three ’prentices were sound asleep in their bed, he groped downstairs again, gently lifted the latch and looked out. There was never such a shining scene before. The snow on the roofs and gables and carved stonework of the houses gleamed white and smooth as the finest millers’ meal. There was not a soul, not even a cat, to be seen in the long stretch of the lampless street. And the stars in the grey-blue sky gleamed like dewdrops on a thorn.
Sure enough, as soon as ever the last stroke of midnight had sounded from St Andrew’s tower, there came faintly wreathing its way out of the distance the same shrill penetrating strains of the ancient tune. Lord bless me, if Old Nollykins had had but one sole drop of the blood of his own youth left in his veins he could not have resisted dancing his old bones out of his body down his steps and into the crudded High Street at the sound of it:
Girls and boys, come out to play!
The moon doth shine as bright as day;
Leave your supper, and leave your sleep,
And come with your playfellows into the street! …
But, instead, he shuffled like a rat hastily back into the house again; pushed himself in close under the staircase; and waited – leaving the door ajar.
Ho, ho, what’s that? Faint flitting lights were now showing in the street, and a sound as of little unhuman cries, and in a minute or two the music loudened so that an old glass case on a table near by containing the model of a brig which had belonged to Old Nollykins’ wicked great-uncle who had died in Tobago, fairly rang to the marvellous stirrings on the air. And down helter-skelter from their bed, just as they had slipped in under its sacking – in their breeches and rags of day-shirts, bare-foot, came whiffling from stair to stair the ghosts of his three small ’prentices. Old Nollykins hardly had time enough to see the wonderful smile on them, to catch the gleam of the grinning white teeth shining beneath their parted lips, before they were out and away.
Shivering all over, as if with the palsy, the old man hastened up the staircase, and in a minute or two the vacant house resounded with the strokes of his hammer as he drove in the tenpenny nail into the keyhole above the attic door, and hung up key and horseshoe by their strings. This done, he lowered his hammer and listened. Not the faintest whisper, sigh or squeak came from within. But in dread of what he might see he dared not open the door.
Instead, curiosity overcame him. Wrapping a cloak round his skinny shoulders he hurried out into the street. Sure enough, here, there, everywhere in the snow and hoar-frost were footprints – traces at any rate distinct enough for his envious eyes, though they were hardly more than those of the skirring of a hungry bird’s wing on the surface of the snow. And fondly supposing in his simplicity that he had now safely cheated his ’prentices, that for ever more their poor young empty bodies would be at his beck and call, Old Noll determined to follow away out of the town and into the water-meadows the dream-shapes of the children now all of them out of sight. On and on he went till his breath was whistling in his lungs and he could scarcely drag one foot after the other.
And he came at last to where, in a loop of the Itchen, its waters shining like glass in the moon, there was a circle of pollard and stunted willows. And there, in the lush and frosty grasses was a wonderful company assembled, and unearthly music ascending, it seemed, from out of the bowels of a mound near by, called Caesar’s Camp. And he heard a multitude of voices and singing from within. And all about the meadow wandered in joy the sleep-shapes not only of the children from Cheriton, but from the farms and cottages and gipsy camps for miles around. Sheep were there too, their yellow eyes gleaming in the moon as he trod past them. But none paid any heed to the children or to the ‘strangers’ who had called them out of their dreams.
Strange indeed were these strangers: of middle height, with garments like spider-web, their straight hair of the colour of straw falling gently on either side their narrow cheeks, so that it looked at first glimpse as if they were grey-beards. And as they trod on their narrow feet, the frozen grasses scarcely stirring beneath them, they turned their faces from side to side, looking at the children. And then a fairness that knows no change showed in their features, and their eyes were of a faint flame like that of sea-water on nights of thunder when the tide gently lays its incoming ripples on some wide flat sandy strand of the sea.
And at sight of them Old Nollykins began to be mortally afraid. Not a sign was there of Tom, Dick or Harry. They must have gone into the sonorous mound – maybe were feasting there, if dream-shapes feast. The twangling and trumpeting and incessant music made his head spin round. He peered about for a hiding-place, and at length made his way to one of the old gnarled willows beside the icy stream. There he might have remained safe and sound till morning, if the frost, as he dragged himself up a little way into the lower branches of the tree, had not risen into his nostrils and made him sneeze. There indeed he might have remained safe and sound if he had merely sneezed, for an old man’s sneeze is not much unlike an old sheep’s wheezy winter cough. But such was this poor old man’s alarm and terror at the company he had stumbled into that he cried, ‘God bless us!’ after his sneeze – just as his mother had taught him to do.
That was the end of wicked Old Nollykins; as it was his first step on the long road of repentance. For the next thing he remembered was opening his eyes in the half-light of stealing dawn and finding himself perched up in the boughs of a leafless willow-tree, a thin mist swathing the low-lying water-meadows, the sheep gently browsing in the grasses, leaving green marks in the frosty grass as they munched onwards. And such an ache and ague was in Old Noll’s bones as he had never, since he was swaddled, felt before. It was as if every frosty switch of every un-polled willow in that gaunt fairy circle by the Itchen had been belabouring him of its own free will the whole night long. His heart and courage were gone. Sighing and groaning, he lowered himself into the meadow, and by the help of a fallen branch for staff made his way at last back into the town.
It was early yet even for the milkmaids, though cocks were crowing from their frosty perches, and the red of the coming sun inflamed the eastern skies. He groped into his house and shut the door. With many rests on the way from stair to stair he hoisted himself up, though every movement seemed to wrench him joint from joint, until at last he reached the attic door. He pressed his long ear against the panel and listened a moment. Not a sound. Then stealthily pushing it open inch by inch, he thrust forward his shuddering head and looked in.
The ruddy light in the East was steadily increasing, and had even pierced through the grimy panes of the dormer window as though to light up the slumbers of his small chimney-sweeps. It was a Sunday morning and their fair skins and lamb’s-wool heads showed no trace of the week’s soot. But while at other times on spying in at them it looked to Old Nollykins as if their smiling faces were made of wax, now they might be of alabaster. For each one of the three – Tom, Dick, and Harry – was lying on his back, their chapped, soot-roughened hands with the torn and broken nails resting on either side of their bodies. No smile now touched their features, but only a solemn quietude as of images eternally at rest. And such was the aspect of the three children that even Old Nollykins dared not attempt to waken them because he knew in his heart that no earthly rod would ever now bestir them out of this sound slumber. Not at least until their spirits had won home again. And the soured old crone was not likely to aid him in that.
He cursed the old woman, battering on her crazy door, but she paid him no heed. And at last, when the Cheriton Church bells began ringing the people to morning service, there was nothing for it, if there was any hope of saving his neck, but to go off to the Mayor’s man, dragging himself along the street on a couple of sticks, to tell him that his ’prentices were dead.
Dead they were not, however. The Mayor’s man fetched a doctor, and the doctor, after putting a sort of wooden trumpet to their chests, asseverated that there was a stirring under the ca
ge of their ribs. They were fallen into a trance, he said. What is called a catalepsy. It was a dreamlike seizure that would presently pass away. But though the old midwife the doctor called in heated up salt, for salt-bags, and hour by hour put a hot brick fresh from the fire to each ’prentice’s stone-cold feet, by not a flutter of an eyelid nor the faintest of sighs did any one of the three prove that he was alive or could heed.
There they lay, on their straw pallet, motionless as mummies, still and serene, lovely as any mother might wish, with their solemn Sunday-morning soap-polished cheeks and noses and foreheads and chins, and as irresponsive as cherubs made of stone.
And the Mayor of the Town, after listening to all Old Nollykins could say, fined him Five Bags of Guineas for allowing his three ’prentices to fall into a catalepsy for want of decent food and nourishment. And what with the pain of his joints and the anguish of having strangers tramping all over his house, and of pleading with the Mayor, and of seeing his money fetched out from its hiding-places and counted out on the table, the miserable old man was so much dazed and confused that he never thought to take down the wreath of ash and elder and the horseshoe and the key. That is why, when a week or two had gone by and no sign had shown how long this trance would continue, the Mayor and Councillors decided that as Tom, Dick and Harry could be of no further use to the town as chimney-sweeps, they might perhaps earn an honest penny for it as the ‘Marvels of the Age’. So the Mayor’s man with a flowing white muslin band round his black hat, and his two mutes – carrying bouquets of lilies in their hands – came with his handcart and fetched the three bodies away. A roomy glass case had been made for them of solid Warwickshire oak, with a fine chased lock and key. And by the time the Waits had begun to sing their Christmas carols in the snow, the three children had been installed in this case on the upper floor of the Cheriton Museum, and there lay slumbering on and on, quiet as Snow-White in the dwarfs’ coffin, the gentle daylight falling fairly on their quiet faces – though during the long summer days a dark blind was customarily drawn over the glass whenever the sun shone in too fiercely at the window.
Short Stories for Children Page 19
