Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  Anyhow, there was no doubt at all, that if Signor Antonio and Dr Jasper – as they were going to call themselves in the play-bills – were ever to get rich, now was the time to begin. Mr Smith had long ago been to see the Manager of the Bank in which he kept his savings, and had arranged with him to open an account in Dr Jasper’s name. Into this each week he afterwards paid Jasper’s share of their takings which mounted up by leaps and bounds.

  ‘You see,’ he had first explained to the Manager, ‘it may be some time before my young friend is able to come and pay his money in himself. But I want everything open and above-board. When he makes his debboo, which will be shortly, he will take half the fees and I shall take half. And when we have made what he thinks is enough, then he shall choose as he thinks best.’

  The Manager, Mr Johnson, who until then had seen only a few photographs of Dr Jasper, not very good likenesses either, smiled at this arrangement. But there was no doubt that it was all open and above-board, and he fell in with Mr Smith’s wishes.

  It was in the month of December that Dr Jasper made his first appearance on the stage. This was in London. There was sleet that Christmas, and a cold wind was blowing in the lamplit London streets, when Signor Antonio and Mrs Smith set off together in a four-wheeled cab bound for the Fortune, a famous theatre which had been named after the old Fortune in the days of Queen Bess, and the Merry Wives of Windsor. ‘And not much more than twenty years after it was built,’ Mr Smith told Jasper, ‘it was burned down to the very ground – in two hours.’

  ‘In two hours!’ said Jasper.

  Still, Mrs Smith, as she reclined quietly but firmly against the purple velvet of the cab, her back to the horse and her face to Jasper, and her husband beside her to keep out the draught, might herself have been one of those merry wives come to life again!

  In the bleak cold north wind, the tiny snowflakes vanishing as they fell through the dark air, and with its multitudes of people going off about their pleasure in their furs and wraps and winter clothes, London looked as bright as a peep-show.

  Jasper trembled a little, and not from cold, as he gazed out of the glass cab-window at the passers-by, while Mr and Mrs Smith talked cheerfully to keep his spirits up, and sometimes made wonderfully good fun together about some over-dressed lady or gentleman they could admire from their little inside gloom in the cab without themselves being seen. For their hearts too were beating high. But Jasper himself, in his warm dark corner, said nothing. The crowd of humans and the brightly-lit windows of the shops, reflected in his round dark eyes, the noise and cold, alarmed and frightened him. He longed to be home again; or far, far away from this strange land. The cab trundled along down the Charing Cross Road and into Trafalgar Square. Mr Smith had told the cabman to take this way round to the theatre because he wanted Jasper to see the lions.

  ‘And look, Jasper,’ said Mrs Smith, when her husband had pointed them out, ‘that there up there is the great Lord Nelson; and mighty sharp-set he must be in his cocked hat – and only one eye and one arm, pore feller – with all that sleet falling up among them stars.’

  Jasper lifted his quiet face and could but faintly detect the great silent granite figure aloft against the sky.

  ‘Sea,’ he muttered. ‘Seaman.’ But, strangely enough, Mrs Smith, who was usually quickness itself at following what he said, supposed he meant to spell the word see and not sea, and was afraid he must be very nervous indeed of what lay in front of him if he had gone back to his old childish way of speaking – See … Man … when he had first learnt English. But Jasper had other thoughts.

  The cab rolled on along the Strand, and there was still enough melting sleet in the street almost to silence its iron-tyred wheels. On and on it went, past the great railway-station in its cobbled yard, and on towards Waterloo Bridge; and in a little while drew up in a back street where an iron lamp jutting out over the pavement lit up the ‘Stage Door’.

  Mr Smith then got out of the cab. He paid the fare, and (as much for his own good luck as for the cabman’s) gave him a half-crown over. And he asked him to be waiting for them at eleven. ‘Eleven sharp,’ he said.

  Then, having handed out Mrs Smith, he mounted the three steps, pushed open the door, which clapped to after them with a bang that shook poor Jasper to the heart, and they all three entered the theatre.

  ‘Good evening, Sam,’ said Mr Smith to the stout man sitting in a box behind a little open window by the door.

  ‘Good evening,’ he replied; but his watery grey eyes were fixed not on Mr Smith but on Jasper. With a turn of his small head and a touch of his fingers, he had shown his friend that he wished to be put down. So, one after the other – Mr Smith, Jasper, Mrs Smith – the three of them ascended the flight of stone steps into the dressing-room that had been set apart for them by the Manager of the theatre. And here Mr Smith helped Jasper to spell out the description of himself that had been printed in large capital letters on the play-bill, a copy of which was pinned to the wall, THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE LEARNED AND FAMOUS DR JASPER, he read out slowly, Jasper sagely nodding his head at every word, THAT MINUTE MARVEL OF MONKEYLAND, AND MASTER MIMIC OF MAN!

  ‘There,’ said Mrs Smith, ‘that’s you, Jasper! What do you think of that?’ But Jasper made no answer. At this moment, trembling a little, he was gazing at the picture of himself underneath the print. It had taken him straight home again – since the artist, though no doubt he had done his best, had made him look very much like a small gorilla!

  When with deft fat hands Mrs Smith had put the finishing touches to his toilet, and her husband was ready, they all three went down the stone steps again and made their way to the wings of the stage. There, in shadow and in silence, they waited. Soon it would be Jasper’s turn. In this nook of the painted scenery – all flowers and trees and butterflies – the framework of which went up into the blaze of lights above, Jasper peered about him. It was the night after Christmas, and the theatre, from the floor up to its very roof, was packed with human beings of all ages, but particularly human children.

  By standing on tiptoe and peering through a tiny hole in the canvas Jasper could see row above row of strange faces mounting higher and higher, their eyes fixed on the five Exceptionally Elegant Ethiopian Elephants Engaged at Enormous Expense which were now seated around their trainer on the stage. At sight of all these faces a sigh shook him from head to foot. And he turned away his head – and peered out to see the elephants themselves.

  Four of these mighty animals, garlanded with mistletoe, were caparisoned in bright green and silver. The fifth, and the smallest, was dressed up as a clown, his face whitewashed, and one eye surrounded with a diamond in red. They sat on their tubs. They wreathed their proboscises. They greeted their trainer in a chorus that drowned even the blare of the band. They walked on their hind legs; they passed the bottle; they turned the handle of their hurdy-gurdies; and the two senior elephants danced a cumbrous polka, while the two junior sat fanning themselves, and the youngest with a painted poker beat time.

  Then, one by one, these sage and monstrous beasts, their tiny eyes alight with excitement, stumpy tails a-swing, trailed off the stage to their own quarters. The curtain descended. It was Jasper’s turn.

  And soon all was made ready for him. A table, with books upon it, an empty inkstand, some foolscap and a dinner bell; two gilt chairs covered in bright blue satin beside it, and a sofa – this was the only furniture, apart from an umbrella stand, a palm in a pot, and a red and green Axminster rug.

  The music stopped. The curtain slowly rose again. And there, in the middle of the stage, was Signor Antonio, dressed up like a lackey in a black tail-coat, and as if engaged in putting the room in order in preparation for the coming home of his master. And while he tidied the books and gave a last flick of his feather-brush over the fleckless satin chairs and the palm in the pot, he kept talking to himself, though loud enough for everybody to hear. He was explaining who he was – the faithful servant of the great Dr Themistocles Marmoset
Jasper, the kindest and wisest master manservant ever had, and the most famous medico in Europe. – ‘In Europe, did I say?’ he cried to himself, slapping his leg with his brush. ‘Nay, in the WORLD!’

  ‘Now, Jasper,’ whispered Mrs Smith, stooping over her small friend’s head. ‘World, Jasper: that’s your word, that’s your cue! On you go, and bless you, Jasper! And if, poor mite,’ she breathed to herself, ‘you’re half as nervous of the business as I am, in spite of my size, well … Now, Jasper!’

  Jasper looked up at her; he let go her hand. Out of the shadows he went, and into the light.

  In his striped trousers, french-grey waistcoat, long black morning-coat, with his gold watch chain and starched collar, high hat in hand, he minced gently forward. His patent-leather shoes were a little too long for him, but he managed them with ease.

  At sight of his master, Jennings at once stepped forward. Dr Jasper gave him his hat, his cane, and his canary-coloured gloves. ‘Thank you, sir. Very good, sir,’ said Jennings. He hung the hat on a peg, and stood the cane in the stand.

  The Doctor lifted his head a little as he came to the low table, and reaching up, laid his hand upon a book. ‘It’s a fine ssunny morning, Jennings,’ he said. ‘Who iss my firsst pay-sshent today?’

  So dead a silence hung in the theatre at first sound of these small treble words and their soft-hissed esses one could not only have heard a pin drop, but could have declared whether it had fallen on its head or its point! Then a little girl, in a seat high up in the dress circle, began to whimper a little. But she was soon hushed, and Jennings was explaining to his master that his first patient was the Right Honourable the Countess of Crumpet; ‘and a very nice lady too, sir, as I have been told; closely related to Lord Muffin, sir, of Teacake Castle.’

  Thereupon his master drew his watch from his pocket, and said: ‘It iss five minut’ss after ten, Jennings, I fear her ladysshipp iss late.’

  ‘I will see, sir,’ said Jennings; ‘she may be in the ante-room.’ And he retired.

  ‘It’s all right, Ma; it’s all right,’ he whispered to Mrs Smith, as, swift and quiet as a shadow, he went whisking by. ‘Don’t worry. He’s safe.’

  Meanwhile, and while he was gone, Jasper, having taken a chair at the gilded table, drew the long goose-quill pen from out of the dry inkpot, and bending his small head till his flat nose almost touched the paper, pretended to write on it.

  ‘That will be three guine’ss,’ he sighed to himself almost like a miser as he scrawled with the pen. ‘Three more guine’ss!’ But though he said these words as if to himself, they were loud enough, like Mr Smith’s, for everybody in the theatre to hear; and yet they were said so solemnly that nobody laughed.

  At this moment Signor Antonio came on to the stage again, from behind the wings. But while he had been gone he had dressed himself up in a bonnet, a flounced purple skirt and bustle, with a long train, and he carried a green striped parasol. He was now of course the Countess of Crumpet. Dr Jasper bowed to the Countess, and they both sat down. And Dr Jasper said to the Countess, ‘It iss a fine morning. Would your ladysship, pleess, kindly put out the tongue?’

  Then he stood up on his chair to look at her tongue, and said, ‘Ah! excussing me, your lady-sship, a ssorry tongue, a dreadful tongue.’ And still nobody laughed. But when the Countess, with a simper, thrust out a great man’s hand in a white cotton glove from under her Paisley shawl for Dr Jasper to feel her pulse – then everybody laughed; and after that – except when Dr Jasper was all alone on the stage – they hardly stopped to take breath.

  And so the play went on, Jasper saying his part as if it were as simple and easy a thing to do as it is for other apes and monkeys to crack nuts and skin bananas. But though he seemed to all who watched from high and low in the theatre to be as the Manager had said he was – the Master Mimic of Man – this was not really true. This was only the human way of looking at him.

  All the time he was really and truly himself, and only himself – thinking his own thoughts, gazing out of his bright, darting, round, dark-deepened, and now almost amber-coloured eyes over the glare of the footlights at the people beyond, and at Signor Antonio in his shawl and gloves and bonnet and bustle. And though he smiled as he chattered, and even grinned with laughter when owing to a mistake made on purpose the Countess sat down on the floor instead of on her chair, he looked gravity itself underneath, if one could have seen him close.

  It was cold to him in London – this wintry weather; and though he liked Mr and Mrs Smith, who had been very kind to him, and though he knew quite well in his own way of thinking what a pot of money meant, he had not liked the large, fat, black-moustached face of the Manager of the theatre, and had consented to shake hands with him only out of politeness. He took everything in good part. And yet, he pined still for a long-lost friend, and to return again to his own people.

  And when the curtain fell at the end of his performance his face shrunk up as if into a mask, and his eyes suddenly shut, at sound of the roar of voices that had broken out beyond it. Up went the curtain again – himself and Signor Antonio in the middle of the stage: and yet again and yet again – Dr Jasper alone now; and again and again, now hand in hand with the Manager on one side of him and Mr Smith on the other. It seemed as if the audience would shout themselves to a whisper and clap their hands off!

  When at last the curtain came down and stayed down, he walked off a little dizzily and unsteadily, and clutched at Mrs Smith’s skirt. ‘Bless me, you poor poor mite!’ was all she could say to him, for there were tears in her eyes, part of rejoicing and part for pity, and she fondled his cold fingers as if he had been a child. But small though he was, even as monkeys of his kind go, he had been a gigantic success, and the Manager’s face was one wide, dark, greasy smile when once more he shook hands with him, bowed to the ground, though it was not much more than in mockery, and said good-night.

  So the money – Jasper’s share – poured into the bank until he was by far the richest monkey in the world, even though he was also the only monkey in the world that knew it. Mr and Mrs Smith in all their dealings with him were as honest as the day, and they of course were soon rich too.

  Now one day John Bumps came home again from sailing round the world, as he had sailed many times before, though never without pleasure. And even though he lived so far away from London as Portsmouth is, he had not been two days with his family before in large print in his newspaper he saw the name of Dr Jasper, and read of what he had done.

  ‘Jasper,’ he repeated to himself, ‘why that’s queer, now, that is! Jasper!’ He read it again, and slapped his leg. ‘The same name, right enough,’ he said to himself. ‘And, Solomon Davy, surely there can’t be two Jaspers, not like this! And if there are not two Jaspers, then this Jasper must be my Jasper!’

  And there and then, he’d made up his mind, for he still had a good deal of money in his pocket after his voyage, that he would take Mrs Bumps and Topsy and Emmanuel and Kate right up to London so that they could go to the Fortune, and see this Jasper with their own eyes. Even if he were not his old friend of the Mlango-Nlangoes and only a coincidence, it would be a Treat. And Mr Bumps always gave his family a Treat when he came home from sea. He said nothing whatever to the children meanwhile about his friend Jasper in case it should prove a disappointment, though he told Mrs Bumps. The following Saturday morning, having locked up the house, they all set out together in their best clothes, and caught an early train.

  Emmanuel and Kate had never been to London before. They sat, each of them in a corner, staring out of the carriage window so intently at the fields and meadows and villages and churches and hills and farms gliding by that they both of them had only just finished the buns Mrs Bumps had bought for them to eat on the journey when the train steamed into the great glass-roofed cavern of a station called Waterloo – after (as Mr Bumps explained) the great Duke of Wellington, the Iron Duke, Old Nosey.

  They had the whole day before them, and Mr Bumps, when he gave t
hem a Treat, never wasted a minute. He at once led them all off into an omnibus and they went, first to Westminster Abbey, then to see the soldiers on their horses in Whitehall, then to St Paul’s Cathedral. And there Mr Bumps showed them through the brass grating where the body of Lord Nelson reposed in his tomb made of the cannon he had captured from the French. ‘He was a great sailor, was Lord Nelson,’ said Mr Bumps.

  ‘Do you mean a sailor just like you, Daddy?’ piped out Topsy.

  ‘Ssh! Topsy!’ whispered Mrs Bumps. ‘You mustn’t call out like that. It’s a church.’

  In St Paul’s churchyard, on a seat in the open – for the sun was shining, though it was rather cold – they ate the lunch which Mrs Bumps had packed into her wicker basket. Then, after seeing where the two little Princes had slept for the last time in the Tower of London, they had tea in a tea-shop. The three children had a boiled egg each, but Mr and Mrs Bumps preferred theirs poached. After that they had some Bath buns and plenty of cake. Then they all went out again; and after letting them look for a little while into the shop windows in Cheapside, and especially a toy-shop bowered in with a great plane tree like an immense umbrella, Mr Bumps – as if he had suddenly made up his mind – packed them all into a hackney cab and off they went to the Fortune.

  Though Mr Bumps was now first-mate of The Old Lion, he was not yet a rich man, so he could not afford to take tickets for the seats downstairs, except in what is called the Pit. And he did not take tickets for the Pit because Mrs Bumps said she always liked to look down when she went to a theatre. They were extremely early and by good luck there were five seats available in the Upper Circle, and these in the very middle of the front row. Very pleased they were to be able to sit quietly in these stuffed easy seats and to rest and watch the people, after walking about such a long time in London. Indeed, they had hardly settled themselves in, when little Kate, who was only five and tired out, fell fast asleep in her chair.