Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  The dwarf stood in the doorway, his eager cold bright eyes fixed on her face. ‘Well,’ he croaked. ‘Where is my money? Why am I to be kept waiting, young woman? Answer me that!’

  Griselda could only stare back at him, the empty pot in her hand. His eyebrows began to jerk up and down as if with rage, like an orang-outang’s. ‘So it’s gone, eh? My pennies are all gone, eh? So you have cheated me! Eh? Eh? Cheated me?’

  Nothing Griselda could say was of any avail. He refused to listen to her. The more she entreated him only to have patience and she would pay him all she owed him, the more sourly and angrily he stormed at her. And to see the tears rolling down her cheeks on either side of her small nose only worsened his rage.

  ‘I will give you one more day,’ he bawled at last. ‘One! I will come back tomorrow at sunset, and every single penny must be ready for me. What I do, I can undo! What I make, I can break! Hai, hai! we shall see!’ With that he stumped out into the garden and was gone.

  Griselda was so miserable and her mind was in such a whirl that she could do nothing for a while but sit, cold and vacant, staring out of the open door. Where could the pennies have gone to? Mice don’t eat pennies. Had she been walking in her sleep? Who could have stolen them? And how was she to earn as many more in only one day’s work?

  And while she sat brooding, there came a thump, thump, thump on the floor over her head. She sprang to her feet, lit a candle by the fire-flames, dabbed her eyes in the bucket of cold water that Old Moleskins had brought in from the well, and took up her grandmother’s supper.

  ‘Did you hear any noises in the house today, Grannie?’ she asked cautiously as she put the bowl of broth into her skinny old hands. At this question the old woman, who was very hungry, fell into a temper. Every single evening, she told Griselda, she had warned her that some strange animal had come rummaging into the house below when she was away working at the farm. ‘You never kept watch, you never even answered me,’ she said. ‘And now it’s too late. Today I have heard nothing.’

  It was all but dark when, having made the old woman comfortable for the night, Griselda hastened down into the kitchen again. She could not bear to wait until morning. She had made up her mind what to do. Leaving her grandmother drowsy after her broth and nodding off to sleep, she stole out of the house and shut the door gently behind her. Groping her way under the ivied walls into the open she hastened on in the quiet moonlight, climbing as swiftly as she could the steep grassy slope at the cliff’s edge. An owl called. From far below she could hear the tide softly gushing on the stones of the beach; and over the sea the sky was alive with stars.

  A light was still glimmering at an upper window when she reached the farm. She watched it a while and the shadows moving to and fro across the blind, and at last timidly lifted the knocker and knocked on the door. The farmer himself answered her knock. A candlestick in his hand, he stood there in his shirt sleeves looking out at her over his candle, astonished to find so late a visitor standing there in the starlight, muffled up in a shawl. But he spoke kindly to her. And then and there Griselda poured out her story, though she said not a word about the dwarf.

  She told the farmer that she was in great trouble; that, though she couldn’t give him any reasons, she must have eight pennies by the next evening. And if only he would lend her them and trust her, she promised him faithfully she would work for just as long as he wanted her to in exchange.

  ‘Well,’ said the farmer. ‘That’s a queer tale, that is! But why not work for four days, and I’ll give ’ee the eightpence then.’ But Griselda shook her head. She told him that this was impossible; that she could not wait, not even for one day.

  ‘See here, then,’ said the farmer, smiling to himself, though not openly, for he was curious to know what use she was going to make of the money. ‘I can’t give you any work tomorrow, nor be sure of the next day. But supposing there’s none for a whole week, if you promise to cut off that gold hair of yours and give me that then, you shall have the eight pennies now – this very moment – and no questions asked.’

  Griselda stood quite still in the doorway, her face pale and grave in the light of the farmer’s candle. It seemed that every separate hair she had was stirring upon her head. This all came, she thought, of admiring herself in the duck-pond; and not being more careful with her money; and doing what the dwarf told her to do and not what she thought best. But as it seemed that at any moment the farmer might run in and fetch a pair of shears to cut off her hair there and then, she made her promise; and he himself went back laughing to his wife, and told her what had happened. ‘She turned as white as a sheet,’ he said. ‘And what I’d dearly like to know is what’s worriting the poor dear. She’s as gentle as the day is long, and her word’s as good as her bond. Well, well! But I’ll see to it. And we’ll have just one lock of that hair, my dear, if only for a keepsake.’

  ‘It looks to me,’ said the farmer’s wife, ‘that’ll be for our Simon to say.’

  When Griselda reached home again – and a sad and solitary walk it had been through the dewy fields above the sea – she went to an old wooden coffer in which she kept her few ‘treasures’. Many of them were remembrances of her mother. And she took out a net for the hair that her mother herself had worn when she was a girl of about the same age as Griselda. Then she sat down in front of a little bare square of looking-glass, braided her hair as close as she could to her head, and drew the net tightly over it. Then she put her purse with the nine pennies in it under her pillow, said her prayers, and got into bed.

  For hours she lay listening to the breakers on the shore, solemnly drumming the night away, and watched her own particular star as moment by moment it sparkled on from diamond pane to pane across her lattice window. But when at last she fell asleep, her dreams were scarcely less sorrowful than her waking.

  She stayed at home the next day in case the dwarf should come early, but not until sunset did she hear the furtive clatter of his shoes as usual on the stones. She took out her purse to pay him his pennies. He asked her where they had come from. ‘And why,’ said he, ‘have you braided your hair so close and caged it up in a net? Are you frightened the birds will be after it?’

  Griselda laughed at this in spite of herself. And she told him that she had promised her hair to a friend, and that she had wound it up tight to her head in order to remind herself that it was not her own any longer, and to keep it safe. At this Old Moleskins himself burst out laughing under the green-berried gooseberry bush – for Griselda had taken him out into the garden lest her grandmother should hear them talking.

  ‘A pretty bargain that was!’ he said. ‘But I know one even better!’ And he promised Griselda that if she would let him snip off but one small lock of her hair he would transport her into the grottoes of the Urchin People under the sea. ‘And there,’ he said, ‘if you will work for us for only one hour a day for seven days, you shall have seven times the weight of all your hair in fine solid gold. If, after that, I mean,’ and he eyed her craftily, ‘you will promise to come back and stay with us always. And then you shall have a basket of fruit from our secret orchards.’

  Griselda looked at the dwarf, and then at the small green ripening gooseberries on the bush, and then stared a while in silence at the daisies on the ground. Then she told the dwarf she could not give him a lock of her hair because that was all promised. Instead, she would work for him every day for nine days, free. It was the least she could do, she thought, in return for what he had done for her.

  ‘Well then,’ said Moleskins, ‘if it can’t be hair it must be an eyelash. Else you will never see the grottoes. An eyelash for your journey-money!’

  To this she agreed, and knelt down beside the gooseberry bush, shutting her eyes tight so that he might more easily pluck out one of the lashes that fringed their lids. She felt his stumpy earthy fingers brush across them, and nothing beside.

  But when she opened them, and looked out of her body, a change had come upon the scene around her
– garden, cottage, castle walls and ruined turrets, cliffs, sea and caves – all had vanished. No evening ray of sun shone here, not the faintest sea-breeze stirred the air. It was a place utterly still, and lay bathed in a half-light pale and green, rilling in from she knew not where. And around her, and above her head, faint colours shimmered in the quarried quartz of the grottoes. And the only sound to be heard was a distant sighing, as of the tide.

  There were many trees here, too, in the orchards of the Urchin People, their slim stems rooted in sands as fine and white as hoar-frost. And their branches were laden with fruits of as many colours as there are precious stones. And there was a charm of birds singing, though Griselda could see none. The very air seemed thin and fine in this dim and sea-green light: the only other sound to be heard was a faint babbling of water among the rocks, water which lost itself in the sands of the orchard.

  The dwarf had brought out some little rush baskets, and told Griselda what she must do. ‘Gather up the fallen fruit,’ he said, ‘but pick none from the branches, and sort it out each according to its kind and colour, one colour into each of the baskets. But be sure not to climb into the trees or shake them. And when your hour is finished I will come again.’

  Griselda at once set to work. Though the branches overhead were thick with fruit, there were as yet not many that had fallen, and it seemed at first it would take her but a few moments to sort them out into their baskets. But the thin air and twilight of the grotto made her drowsy, and as she stooped again and yet again to pick up the fruit, her eyelids drooped so heavily that at any moment she feared she would fall asleep. And if once she fell asleep what might not happen then? Would she ever win back to earth again? Was this all nothing but a dream? She refreshed her eyes in the trickle of snow-cold water rilling down from the rocks; and now she fancied she heard a faint metallic noise as of knocking and hammering and small voices in the distance. But even when all the fallen fruits had been sorted out into her baskets, emerald-green, orange, amethyst, crystal and blue, her work was not done. For the moment she sat down to rest, yet another of the fruits would plump down softly as an apple into deep grass upon the sand beneath it, and she had to hasten away to put it into its basket.

  When the dwarf came back he looked about him to see that no fruits had been left lying in the sand. He squinnied here, he squinnied there, and even turned over the fruits in the baskets to see that they had been sorted right. ‘Well, Griselda,’ he said at last, and it was the first time he had used her name, ‘what’s well done is done for good. And here’s the penny for your wages.’

  There was a stealthy gleam in his eyes as he softly fumbled with his fingers in the old moleskin pouch that hung at his side, and fetched out his penny. Griselda held out her hand, and he put the penny into its palm, still watching her. She looked at it – and looked again. It was an old, thick, battered penny, and the king’s image on it had been worn very faint. It had a slightly crooked edge, too, and there was a hole in it. There could be no doubt of it – this was the penny the farmer had given her, ‘for luck’. Until now Griselda had not realized that she had for a moment suspected it might be Old Moleskins himself who had stolen his pennies out of the pewter pot. Now she was sure of it. She continued to stare at the penny, yet said nothing. After all, she was thinking to herself, the money in the pot belonged to him. He had a right to it. You cannot steal what is yours already! But then, a lie is almost as bad as stealing. Perhaps he hadn’t meant it to be a lie. Perhaps he merely wanted to see what she might say and do. That would still be a lie but not such a wicked lie. Perhaps since he wasn’t quite human he couldn’t in any case tell quite a lie. Perhaps it was only a dwarf lie, though his kindness to her had certainly not been only dwarf kindness! She smiled to herself at this; lifted up her face again, and seeing the dwarf still watching her, smiled at him also. And she thanked him.

  At this he burst out laughing, till the roof and walls of the grotto echoed with the cackle of it, and at least half a dozen of the grotto fruits dropped from their twigs and thumped softly down into the sand. ‘Aha,’ he cried, ‘what did I tell you? Weep no more, Griselda. That is one penny, and here are the others.’ He took them out of his pouch, and counted them into her hand, and the eight pennies too that she had given him but a little while before; and as he did so, he sang out in a high quavering voice like a child’s:

  ‘Never whatever the humans say

  Have the Urchin Folk worked for any man’s pay.

  Ah, Griselda,’ he said, ‘if we could keep you, you would scarcely ever have to work at all. No churning and weeding, no sewing and scrubbing, no cooking or polishing, sighing or sobbing; you should be for ever happy and for ever young. And you wouldn’t have to scissor off a single snippet of your silk-soft hair!’

  Griselda looked at him in the still green light and faintly shook her head. But she made a bargain with him nonetheless that every year she would work in the grottoes for the Urchin People – if he would come to fetch her – for one whole summer’s day. So this was the bargain between them.

  And he took out of his breeches’ pocket a thick gold piece, about the size of an English crown-piece, and put it into her hand. On the one side of it the image of a mermaid was stamped, on the other a little fruit tree growing out of a mound of sand and knobbed with tiny fruits. ‘That’s for a keepsake,’ he said. And he himself took one of each kind of the orchard fruits out of their baskets and put them into another. ‘And since “no pay” is no pay,’ he went on, ‘stoop, Griselda, and I’ll give you your eyelash back again.’

  Griselda knelt down in the sand, and once more the earthy fingers brushed over her eyelids. The next instant all was dark; and a thin chill wind was stirring on her cheek. She opened her eyes to find herself alone again under the night-sky, and – as though she had been overtaken by the strangeness of a dream – kneeling on the dew-damped mould of her familiar garden under the stars. But for proof that what had happened was no dream, the gold piece stamped with the images of the mermaid and the leafy tree was still clasped in her hand, and in the other was the basket of fruits.

  As for the eyelash, since Griselda had never counted how many she had before Old Moleskins plucked one out, she could never tell for certain if it had been put back. But when she told Simon, the farmer’s son, that there might be one missing – and she could tell him no more because of her promise to the dwarf – he counted them over again and again. And though he failed to make the total come to the same number twice, he assured Griselda that there couldn’t possibly ever have been room for another. And Griselda gave him the green one of the grotto fruits she had brought him for a present from out of the dwarf’s basket. This too was for a keepsake. ‘It’s as hard as a stone,’ he said. ‘Do we eat it, Griselda?’ But hard though it was, there must have been a curious magic in it, for as they sat there together under the willow tree by the duck-pond, it was as if they had been transported not into the grottoes of the Urchin People under the sea, but clean back into the Garden of Eden.

  As for Griselda’s hair, there it shone as thick as ever on her head. And as for the farmer, he refused every single penny of the eightpence.

  ‘It’s a queer thing to me, mother,’ he was saying to his wife at this very moment, as they sat together on either side of the kitchen fire – just as they were accustomed to sit even in the height of summertime – ‘it’s a queer thing to me that this very farm of ours once belonged to that young woman’s great-great-grandfather!’ He took a long whiff of his pipe. ‘And what I says is that them who once had, when they gets again, should know how to keep.’

  ‘Ay, George,’ said she, and she said no more.

  * As printed in CSC (1947). First published as ‘Wages’ in Number Five Joy Street, Oxford 1927.

  The Magic Jacket*

  When, that May Day morning, Admiral Rumbold stepped out of his four-wheeled cab at the corner of Pall Mall, he was carrying a small brown-paper parcel. Why he had not told his cabman who – hunched up on his box
– looked older even than his horse, to take him on to exactly where he wanted to go, he hardly knew. He paid the old man his fare; and he added an extra sixpence.

  ‘Thank’ee,’ he said with a curt nod, then turned to continue on his way. Admiral Rumbold was not exactly a stout man, but in his navy-blue clothes, his neat boots, and brown billycock hat, he looked rather tightly packed. His broad face shone almost as red as a tomato above his white linen collar and blue-and-white spotted silk sailor’s knot. He clasped his neat little brown-paper parcel closely under his elbow, and at a good round pace proceeded along Pall Mall.

  He glanced neither to right nor left of him, but kept his sea-bleached blue eyes fixed steadily ahead. Nor did he show the least sign of recognition when he caught sight of an old friend brandishing a silver-headed cane in his direction from under the hood of a hansom-cab. On this particular morning – and the houses and shops looked sparklingly gay in the spring sunshine – Admiral Rumbold wished to be alone. He marched straight on, his eyes fixed, his mouth tight-shut, almost as if he were walking in his sleep.

  He turned sharply up St James’s Street, past the saddler’s with the jockey caps and jackets behind the glass, past the little bow-windowed snuff-and-tobacco shop, and so into King Street. From King Street he turned off into Duke Street, and then on into Great St Ann’s. After the bustle and traffic now behind him, the quiet sunshine and shadow of Little St Ann’s beyond it was like port after stormy seas.

  Now a few paces past the hatter’s shop that stood at the corner of Little St Ann’s lay a wide smooth stretch of flat paving-stones under a high old brick wall. It was here that a screever or pavement artist had made his pitch; and here in the sunshine Admiral Rumbold came to a halt and looked about him.