Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  ‘“What do you do at home?” says he.

  ‘Now all this time I had been feeling like a bottle of ginger-beer before the cork pops out. So when he gave the word, so to speak, I upped with my heels and pretty nearly trotted across the room on the palms of my hands.

  ‘“Bravo,” said Mr Turner. “Try that on the table.”

  ‘It was a circular solid old-fashioned mahogany table, made when Queen Victoria was a girl, and I circumnavigated it on my fingers and thumbs as nimbly as a cat. But now my blood was up. To give me room, a couple of tumblers, a bottle of water, and a decanter of whisky had been pushed into the middle of the table. Balancing myself on one hand, I poured out with the other a noggin of the water – for I couldn’t quite venture on the whisky – into one of the tumblers, and singing out, “Nelson, for ever!” drank it off. Then, spluttering and half-choking, I got down from the table, and at last looked at my father.

  ‘He was so pale as to be all but green. He looked as if he was sea-sick. He said, “Has your mother ever seen you do such things as that?” I shook my head. But Mr Turner was laughing. What’s more, he hadn’t finished with me yet.

  ‘“Have you got such a thing as a stout piece of rope, William – say a dozen fathom?” he asked my father. There were few things my father was not possessor of. We went out into the garden, and as neat as ninepence Mr Turner flung a bight of the rope over one of the upper branches of a fine shady sycamore that grew so close to the house that its leaves in summer actually brushed against its windows.

  ‘“Try that, young man,” said my father’s friend, Mr Turner, when he had made it fast.

  ‘Well, whether it was due to the devil in Sandy Two or only to the workings of the magic jacket, I don’t know, but I shinned up that unknotted rope like a monkey up a palm tree. And when I reached the top, I edged along on my stomach till I was almost at the end of the bough. Then at arms’ length I began to dandle on it – up and down, up and down, like a monkey on elastic. When it had given me enough swing and impetus – what’s called momentum – I let go – and landed as pat as a pea-shooter through the open window on to the landing, the sill of which was some twelve feet from the ground.

  ‘When I came down into the garden again, my father and Mr Turner were having a close, earnest talk together, under the sycamore. My father looked at me as if I had just come back from the Andaman Islands.

  ‘I said, “Was that all right, daddy?”

  ‘But he made no answer; only patted me on the shoulder, turning his head away. And from that moment, and for ever after, we were the best of friends, my father and I; though he never had the ghost of a notion of what had caused Sandy Two – whom, mind you, he had never noticed before – to sprout like that!

  ‘But then, that’s how things go. And – to cut a long story short – by hook and by crook, by twisting and turning – chiefly my father’s – which would take too long to put down in black and white, I won free of groceries at last for good and all. And the next spring I went to sea for a trial voyage. And after that, though it was pretty hard going – well, I got into the Navy.

  ‘And now, here I am, for good and all on land again. Not much short of being an old man, but still, thank God, hale and hearty, and able and willing, I hope, to do a fellow creature a good turn at need. And this, my lad, is where you come in.

  ‘The fact of the matter is, I had watched you scrabbling away with your chalks at your pitch in Little St Ann’s a good many days before you knew it. And I came to two conclusions. First, that your pictures are proof that you can do good work. And second, that you could do much better. What I feel is you keep yourself back, do you see? It’s the old story of Sandy One and Sandy Two. You haven’t the confidence, the go, the guts (in a word), to forge clean ahead, your way.

  ‘That’s what I say. I see you setting to work in the morning like a young cockatrice, but presently you begin to waver, you become slack and dispirited. The least little mishap – a broken chalk, some oaf walking over the pictures, even a cloud floating up over the sun – shakes your nerve. At such times you don’t seem to be sure even of what you want to do, let alone how to do it. You niggle at a picture first one way, then another, and at the end give it up in despair, the zest gone, and the fancy gone, and the spirit – what I call the innards – gone too. And when any stranger speaks to you, or drops a copper in your cap, you flush up, droop, go limp and dumb, and look as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.

  ‘Now first, my boy, don’t mind what I am saying. It is for your sake. I wouldn’t be taking the trouble except only and solely in the hope and wish of doing you a small service. And remember this, I’ve been through it all before you – and may, when the end comes, again. I’ve known what it is to feel my bones melt in my body, to tremble like a jelly, my face like a plaster mask and my skull as empty as a hulk on a sandbank. In two words, I know of old what it’s like to be Sandy One. So, you see, it’s because I’m morally certain there’s a Sandy Two in you – and maybe one beyond anything I can conjecture – that I’m writing this now.

  ‘I like the cut of your jib, and the way you stick to things in spite of all dispiritment and the dumps. I had my eye on him when you marked the mug (for good, I hope) of that suety butcher’s boy the other day who spat on your Old Boney. I want to give you a hand in your own line, and see no better way of doing it than by just lending you my old Pekin jacket for a bit. Now what do you think about that?

  ‘Maybe it won’t work. Maybe its magic’s gone. Maybe I imagine as much as I remember about it. But I can say this – the last time I squeezed into it before the toughest engagement I ever came out of alive I reckon it blew up the enemy’s ship at least two hours before she’d have gone to the bottom in the usual way. Mind you, I haven’t often used it. When I was your age, an hour or two of it tired me out for half the next week. A day or two of it might take a complete month to recover from. Besides, if you look at the matter by and large, and fair and square, you can see it wouldn’t do. In the long run we have to trust to what we have in us that’s constant and natural, so to speak, and work like a nigger at that. It’s only in tight corners we need a little extra fire and frenzy. Then maybe Dame Fortune will see fit to lend a helping hand.

  ‘So all I say is, give the jacket a trial. There is almost room for two of you in it – so if you don’t want it to be noticeable, put it on under your own coat, and see how things go. And last, remember this, my boy; whatever happens, I shall still be keeping an eye on you. As my dear mother used to say, “There may be more than one way home, Sandy – but it’s trudging does it.” And here’s good luck; God bless you; and Finis.’

  It was the last page of Admiral Rumbold’s ‘yarn’. Mike turned it over, looked at the back, coughed, and drank down what was left of his cold cocoa. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked up as he did so at the round yellow face of the clock that hung on the wall at the further end of the shop. At that very moment, it seemed, it had begun to tick. The long hand stood at two minutes before the hour. The old gentleman must be expecting him now – this very minute! Had he meant him to open the parcel and put on the jacket inside it there and then? His face flushed, then paled – he couldn’t make up his mind. His head was in a whirl; his heart thumping under his ribs; he broke out hot and damp all over.

  While he was still debating what he should do, he noticed that the man who had brought him the food – with his long tallow-coloured face and pale grey eyes – was steadily though vacantly watching him. Mike got up in haste, pushed the remnants of his last door-step of beef and bacon into his pocket, hastily snatched up the Admiral’s manuscript and brown-paper parcel, and left the eating-house.

  Before actually turning the corner which would bring him in sight of his pitch, he peeped round to see if the old gentleman was anywhere to be seen. He certainly was. At this actual moment he was walking away from Mike – square compact shoulders, brown billycock hat, and firm rolling tread. When once more he returned to the pic
tures he paused, looked them over one by one, dropped something into the cap, and continued on his way. In less than a minute or so he was back again, had taken another look, and once more paid his fee.

  It appeared as if Admiral Rumbold had been so engaged ever since he had left Mike in the coffee-shop; and there could be no doubt he had by this means attracted passers-by to follow his example and look at the pictures. Many, it is true, just glanced and passed on; but a few paid their coppers. The old gentleman was now approaching the street corner where Mike was in hiding, so Mike stepped out a little shamefacedly, and met him there and then.

  ‘Aha!’ cried Admiral Rumbold. ‘So there you are! Good! And sharp to time. Did you finish it? Good! Have you got it on?’

  Mike went red, then white. He said: ‘I have read it, every page, sir, but the jacket’s still in the paper, because——’

  ‘Be dashed to “Because”!’ cried the Admiral. ‘Come a pace or two down that alley yonder. We’ll soon put that right.’

  So they went off together into the shelter of an alley near by, above which the green leaves of a plane tree showed over the glass-bottled wall; and Mike, having taken off his own old loose long coat, slipped into the Chinese jacket as easily as an eel, and then back into his own again on top of it. Admiral Rumbold, having crushed up the brown paper into a ball, tied the string round it, and lightly flung it over the wall. ‘Good luck to it!’ said he.

  ‘Now,’ he added, and looked at Mike – then paused. The boy stood motionless, as though he were frozen, yet he was trembling. His lips were moving. He seemed to be trying to say something for which he could not find the words. When at last he lifted his face and looked up, the old Admiral was astonished at the black-blue of his eyes in his pale face. It was the dark dazzling blue of deep seas. The Admiral could not for the life of him remember where he had seen eyes resembling them. They were unlike the eyes of boy or man or child or woman, and yet somewhere he had seen their like. Mike was smiling.

  ‘The green crocodiles, sir,’ he said, fingering one of the buttons. ‘Most of them are not much bigger than ha’ pennies, but you can feel all the horny parts, and even the eyes stickin’ out of their heads.’

  ‘Ay, ay,’ said the Admiral. ‘That’s Chinese work. That’s how they work – at least in times gone by. But how do you feel, how do you feel, my lad?’

  Mike gazed up an instant at his old friend; then his glance roved on and upward towards the pale-green pentagonal plane leaves above his head and the patch of blue and sunny sky beyond. A smart north-west breeze was blowing, and a mountainous cloud was moving up into the heights of noonday.

  ‘I’d like,’ he answered huskily, ‘to get back to the pitchers, sir.’

  ‘Ay, ay!’ cried the Admiral. And again, ‘Ay, ay! Back we go.’ So the two of them set off together.

  And though to all outward appearance the old gentleman, whose face was all but as red as a pimento, was as cool as a cucumber when he came stumping along beside his young acquaintance, his excitement was intense. It was Mike who had now taken the lead. The Admiral was merely following in his wake. The boy seemed utterly changed, made over again. There was a look to him even as he walked that was as lively as a peal of bells. It was as if his bright and burning sun had suddenly shone out between clouds as cold as granite, lighting up the heavens. What was to happen next?

  First, Mike took up his cap, and with not even a glance at what was inside it, emptied its contents into his coat pocket. He then paced slowly on from one picture to the next, until he had scrutinized the complete seven. From the pocket with the remains of the ‘door-step’ in it he then drew out his capacious strip of rag and hurried off to a dribbling water standard with a leopard’s head on the spout about twenty-five yards away. There he wetted his rag through and through. He came back to his pictures, and in a few moments had completely rubbed every one of them out. No more than the faintest blur of pink and yellow was left to show that the paving-stones had ever lost their usual grey and in three minutes that was dowsed out too.

  When he had finished this destruction, and the warm morning air had dried the stones again, he knelt down and set to work. He seemed to have forgotten the old Admiral, the Chinese jacket, everything that had happened that morning. He seemed to be wholly unaware of the passers-by, the dappling sunbeams, the clatter and stir of the street, and even who and where and what he was. Skinny and engrossed, he squatted on his hams there, huddled up under the wall, and worked.

  Admiral Rumbold, as he watched him, became almost alarmed at the rapidity with which things were taking shape on the blank paving-stones. As if by magic and before his very eyes there had loomed into view a full-rigged ship, swimming buoyant as a swan on the blue of its waters, its masts tapering up into the heavens, its sails bellying like drifts of snow; while from its portholes pushed the metal mouths of such dogs as he himself had often heard bark, and seldom to no purpose.

  It was not so much the resemblance of this picture to a real ship on a real sea under a real sky that drew out of his mouth a grunted, ‘Begad, begad!’ but something in the look of the thing, some spirit living and lovely and everlasting behind it all, to which he could not have given name, but which reminded him of the eyes that had looked up at him a few minutes before under the plane leaves in the alley after their first intense glance at the crocodile buttons. Yes, and reminded him too of an evening long ago when he had made the circuit of his mother’s mahogany dining-table on little more of his anatomy than his thumbs.

  By this time a few other wayfarers had begun to collect and to watch the young street artist at his work. It did not seem to matter that he had forgotten to put back his cap in its customary place, that in fact it was on his head, for, oddly enough, when these idlers turned away, though every single one of them seemed to marvel at the quickness and skill of the boy, yet they all seemed anxious to be gone, and nobody gave him a ha’penny.

  Admiral Rumbold could stand the strain no longer. He firmly placed a half-crown beside the little heap of coloured chalks, coughed loudly, paused an instant, and then, seeing that Mike had not noticed him, stole off and left him to his work.

  The worst of the Admiral’s anxieties were over. There could be no doubt in the world that the magic jacket had lost not one whit of its powers since first he had slipped into it himself all but sixty years ago. The only thing that troubled him was that not a single farthing had been bestowed on the young artist in the last quarter of an hour. Nevertheless, he thought he knew why.

  ‘They’re scared!’ he muttered to himself. ‘They don’t know what to make of it. They see it’s a marvel and a miracle – and beyond ’em. They don’t like the smell of it. They think it’s dangerous. They just watch and wonder and sneak away. Well, my dear Rumbold, why not? Have patience. Never mind that. Wait and see!’

  He loaded himself up with coppers the next morning, and returned very early to the narrow terrace behind Great St Ann’s. The night before had been rainless; only the lightest of dews had fallen. It had been windless, too, and there was a moon; so that the row of pictures which Mike had left unfinished on the pavement must have faintly bloomed under her beams that whole night long, and now were as fresh as they were at the first making of them. Admiral Rumbold had sallied out at this unusual hour to steal a glance at them alone; but Mike had been up before him.

  There he was – on his knees once more – deaf and blind it seemed to everything in the world outside him, and intent only on his pictures. His old friend didn’t interrupt him, but left him to himself, and went off to get some breakfast at his club. When he returned the boy had vanished for the time being. Five pictures out of the customary seven were now complete.

  The Admiral stared and stared at them, part in astonishment, part in inexpressible delight, and part in the utmost dismay. Two of them – the ship, The Old Victery and the new Hornted – were more vivid and astonishing things than (with French chalks and paving-stones) he had thought even possible. The rest he felt uneasily we
re beyond his comprehension. He could hardly make head or tail of them.

  One was called Peepul at Sunset. It reminded him of Shadrach, Meshech, and Abed-nego walking in the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Another was called The Blind Man; it showed a chair, a table with a bowl of flowers, and a dish of fruit on it. There was an open window, too. It seemed to shimmer and glow and blaze like precious stones. But to the Admiral’s eye the chair was all clumped and crooked, and the flowers looked queer – half human. He had never in all his born days seen a picture of a chair like that. Besides, there was not even a sign of a human being, let alone a blind man, to be seen! He stirred, coughed softly. He sighed; and glanced into the ragged cap. It was now a quarter to ten; the cap contained a French penny, a British ha’penny, and a threepenny bit with a hole in it. The Admiral lugged out of his pocket a handful of coppers, and added them to what was there. Off and on throughout the day he kept an eye on the young street artist. Of two things he was at last certain: first, that Mike was still wearing the jacket; and next, that he had made (apart from his own donations) practically no profit. For you cannot pick up coloured chalks in the gutter, or patch the knees of your old breeches with the empty air! The boy could hardly have taken an independent sixpence.

  Admiral Rumbold began to be a little anxious as he thought this dark fact over, but decided not to interfere. Next day he knocked fairly early at the door of a lodging-house nearly opposite Mike’s pitch.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, as soon as it was opened. ‘I’d like, if you please, to have the window again. Is it free?’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ said the woman who had answered his knock. ‘I’m glad you enjoy the view, sir. It’s a pity there’s so much wall.’