The Tale of Hawthorn House

by Susan Wittig Albert

  The valiant band of explorers crawled out from under the lilac bushes and went along the path to the barn, where they said hello to Kep and Mustard, the two Hill Top dogs, and lay down on their stomachs to have a look at Jemima, who was sitting on a clutch of eggs under the feedbox. In fact, as Libby pointed out, the duck had been sitting there for quite some time, far longer than the twenty-eight days usually required to hatch a duckling.

  “I wonder what’s taking so long,” Jamie said worriedly.

  “Do you suppose the eggs have spoilt?” Libby asked.

  Jemima gave several soft quacks, and Mouse smiled. “She promises they’ll hatch soon,” she said, and stroked Jemima’s snowy white feathers with a soft finger.

  “Before we go back to school, I hope,” grumbled Jamie, and at the mention of school, the three of them groaned.

  After a few minutes, Deirdre said, “We’d better get home before the rain starts.” The second time she said it, the children clambered reluctantly to their feet, brushed the straw off their clothes, and followed Deirdre out of the barn. They had gone only a little way on the path toward home when there was a clap of thunder so loud it made all of them jump, and a gust of wind so fierce it nearly bowled them over.

  “My goodness,” gasped Deirdre, as Mouse grabbed for one hand and Libby for the other, while Jamie tried to pretend he wasn’t at all frightened, only just taken aback for a moment.

  They had barely got their breaths when they looked up and saw an odd-looking person standing directly in front of them, a basket over her arm. The old woman was no taller than Libby, who was the tallest of the Suttons, and dressed in layers of pinafores, one on top of another, with knitted shawls and woolen scarves wrapped all around.

  “Who . . . who are you?” Deirdre managed at last. She had the distinct impression that the lady had been blown there by the wind, which of course was entirely impossible.

  “I am Mrs. Overthewall,” the lady said cheerily. “Who else would I be? And you are Deirdre, of course.” Raising one finger, she pointed to each child in turn. “And Libby, Jamie, and Mouse, adventurers all. I congratulate you on scaling that last mountain, cannibals notwithstanding.”

  They stood with their mouths open. No one said a word.

  “A magpie will get your tongues,” said Mrs. Overthewall, and all four of them snapped their mouths shut.

  “You startled us,” Deirdre said. “We . . . we didn’t see you.”

  “Of course you didn’t. People don’t. They’re not supposedto.” She gave Deirdre a benevolent look. “I have something for you.” And with that, she thrust the basket into Deirdre’s hands. It was so unexpectedly heavy that Deirdre nearly dropped it.

  “What is it?” Libby asked uncertainly, bending over to look. They all heard a small cry, and she jumped back, startled. “Why, it’s a baby!” she exclaimed.

  “I knew you’d like it,” said Mrs. Overthewall smugly. “It’s a nice baby. It never cries.” She pulled her scanty gray brows together. “Well, almost never. Only when it wants its nappy changed. Her nappy,” she corrected. “She’s a girl. Her name is—” She scowled and began looking through her shawls. “Where did I put that? Where— Ah, here it is.” She took out a scrap of paper. “Her name is Flora,” she announced, and dropped the paper into the basket.

  Deirdre pulled the cloth back. It was—yes, it was unmistakably a baby! She looked up, her eyes wide. “But what are we to do with it?”

  Mrs. Overthewall was adjusting her shawls. “Do with it?” she repeated in surprise. “Why, raise it, of course. And love it, and kiss it when it wants kissing. What else do you do with babies?”

  “But we already have several babies at home,” Jamie said with great firmness. “We don’t need any more babies.”

  “It’s true,” Libby said, in an apologetic tone. “Our house is full. I overheard Mama saying to Papa just the other day that we have more than enough children.”

  “Not that Mr. or Mrs. Sutton could bear to give up any they already have,” Deirdre added, with a comforting glance at Mouse, who had put her thumb in her mouth and was trying not to cry. “The Suttons are very, very, very fond of all of their children.”

  “I know they are,” said Mrs. Overthewall, beaming. “That’s exactly why I thought of you. You’re the perfect family for this baby, precisely because there are so many of you. You can all pitch in to help.” She paused. “This baby needs you. It has no family, you see.”

  Mouse took her thumb out of her mouth. “But doesn’t its mother want it?” she cried, suddenly struck with pity for a baby without a family.

  Mrs. Overthewall was stern. “Its mother,” she said, “is too busy to be bothered with babies.”

  “Too busy?” Deirdre asked incredulously.

  “We have no room for another baby,” Jamie growled. “All the beds are full. And there are no chairs for a baby to sit in.”

  Libby sighed. “In fact, there’s hardly room to step without knocking a baby over.”

  “That’s right,” Jamie said. He scowled. “No more babies!”

  At this, there seemed nothing more to say. Regretfully, Deirdre handed back the basket. “You are most kind to think of us, Mrs. Overthewall,” she said in a formal tone. “And I am sure that Flora is a perfectly delightful baby. But the children are right. We can’t accept her.”

  “Oh, dear,” cried the lady, sounding quite aggrieved. “You’re sure you won’t reconsider?”

  “Quite sure,” the children chorused.

  “But what am I to do with it?”

  “You could give it back,” Libby suggested.

  “I can’t,” Mrs. Overthewall replied crossly. “There’s no one to give it back to. Everyone’s gone.” (Of course, you already know this, since you heard Mrs. Overthewall tell Emily to catch the early train to London.)

  “But where did it come from?” Deirdre asked, thinking how very odd it was that the baby’s mother had gone away and left it behind. But then the whole thing was odd, top to bottom.

  “Never mind,” said Mrs. Overthewall. “The question is, where is it to go, if you won’t have it?”

  Libby ventured, “Perhaps Miss Potter would like to have it. She draws pictures and writes stories for children.”

  “Miss Potter doesn’t have any babies,” Mouse said, around her thumb. “I’m sure she’s very lonely.”

  “She would take good care of it,” Jamie said helpfully. “She likes animals.”

  Mrs. Overthewall brightened. “Out of the mouths of babes,” she exclaimed. “Why, Miss Potter, of course! Why didn’t I think of her?” She flung her scarves around her neck and took the basket. “There you are, then. That’s settled, and quite agreeably, too, I’d say. Now go along and climb mountains or crawl through jungles or whatever else you’ve a mind to. Cheerio!”

  With that, there was another clap of thunder, a gust of wind, and a sheet of blinding rain. When it cleared, the path was empty. Mrs. Overthewall was gone.

  Libby frowned. “Did we . . . did we make that up?”

  “I don’t think so,” Deirdre said doubtfully. “Did we?”

  “She was a fairy,” Mouse asserted with confidence, around her thumb.

  “Mouse is right,” Jamie said. “Fairies sometimes bring babies.”

  “Storks bring babies,” Libby said, for that was the tale her mother always told them when the arrival of another little Sutton was imminent. “She wasn’t a stork.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jamie said firmly. “We are not having any more babies.” He shook his fist at the sky and roared, “Do you hear that? NO MORE BABIES!”

  The wind flurried the bush beside the path. Deirdre took Mouse’s hand. “See the four valiant explorers,” she said, “struggling through the hurricane to reach their base camp in time for tea.”

  “Miss Potter will like the baby,” Mouse predicted comfortably, and they went home.

  4

  Miss Potter Is Astonished

  The village had not been pleased
when Miss Potter of London purchased Hill Top Farm. The women (those who hadn’t met her when she came on holiday with her parents) thought she would be much too grand for their little village. The men were offended by the idea that an off-comer—a spinster, without a brain in her head about farming—had bought the nicest farm in the district straight out from under their noses. They snickered when they learned that she had paid more than it was worth (“Took for a reet fool, she was,” as George Crook put it). They even laid wagers on her success.

  “Won’t last t’ year out,” Mr. Llewellyn predicted. “I’ll put a half-crown on’t.”

  “Not six months,” said Mr. Barrow complacently.

  “Gone by Christmas,” said Clyde Clinder. “And then t’ place’ll be up fer sale agin. Me brother-in-law says he’ll buy it off her, but not fer what she paid.”

  The villagers’ attitudes changed somewhat when Miss Potter not only lasted, but began making very needful improvements to the neglected farm buildings. What’s more, she used local labor, bought local materials, and insisted that things be done in traditional ways, just as any of them would have done. And upon acquaintance, she proved, as Bertha Stubbs said approvingly, “as common as any t’ rest of us, and more so.” Still, many in the village continued to doubt that a woman who dressed fictional frogs in mackintoshes and galoshes would know how to deal with real cows and pigs and sheep, and that someone who could go about as she liked in London society would be content with theirs.

  But Beatrix was not troubled by the villagers’ opinions, for the farm fulfilled her heart’s dearest wish. She had paid for it from the royalties from her dozen books: among them Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, and Jemima Puddle-Duck, recently published. She still felt a private, wondering amazement that the little books should have earned enough to enable her to buy a farm. To buy her very own farm, among the fields and fells of her beloved Lake District! It still seemed unbelievable, impossible. She couldn’t help thinking that some sort of good fairy had been waiting in the wings, magic wand in hand, to give her exactly what she wanted.

  The house was a seventeenth-century, two-story North Country farmhouse, plain and so simple that it might be called severe. The farm had thirty-four acres when she bought it, although she had since purchased several more fields. And to accommodate the Jenningses, the family who took care of things when she was in London, she had added on several rooms and other improvements, including a detached kitchen at the edge of the garden and the water that was to be laid on this week.

  She had made a great many changes to her own part of the house, too, but mostly with an eye to restoring its original simple beauty. The exterior was plastered with a pebbly mortar painted with the traditional gray limewash. The steep roofs were covered with local blue slate. The chimneys wore the familiar peaked slate caps, like schoolboys lined up in a row. And the porch was constructed of four very large blue slate slabs: one for each side and two more for the peaked roof.

  She had restored the interior as well, upstairs and down. In the main living area—the “hall,” as North Country folk called it—she had pulled down a rough partition and opened the room to its original generous size. She papered the walls in an airy green print, installed an antique oak cupboard for her collection of dishes, and put down a sea-grass rug and a smaller, shaggy blue one in front of the cast-iron range. With red curtains at the window and a pot of red geraniums on the table, the room was comfortable and homey. And all the other rooms suited her, too: the downstairs parlor with its marble fireplace and richly paneled walls; her very own bedroom upstairs, with its window overlooking the garden; and the treasure room she had created for her collection of favorite things. Indeed, Beatrix’s artist’s eye told her that the house was perfect in every way, and her heart told her that this was home. It was a great pity that she could not get away from London more often.

  But you must not think that Beatrix allowed herself to feel sad about something she could not change. If that had been the case, she must have been very melancholy indeed, for the same fairy godmother who had given her the farm had not given her everything she wanted. Not by any means! She had thought that happiness might be within her reach, but her fiancé, Norman Warne, had died suddenly, unexpectedly, and very tragically in 1905, just a month after their engagement and only a few months before she took possession of Hill Top.

  Even her engagement was not the happy, uncomplicated event it should have been, for her parents had strenuously disapproved. Her mother and father, both of whom became more difficult as they grew older, took great pride in the knowledge that their daughter should never have to marry a man who worked for his living. And although Norman was certainly respected and respectable enough—he was Beatrix’s editor, in his family’s publishing house—he didn’t belong to their social class. He wasn’t “good enough,” in their terms, for their daughter, who ought not to marry “beneath her.” They refused their permission, quite selfishly, we would say now, although perhaps they didn’t think it was selfish, at least not consciously. They were behaving as many parents in their position behaved. They were keeping their beloved daughter from making an appalling mistake.

  But Beatrix thought it very selfish. She loved Norman and she insisted on accepting his ring, which of course provoked a huge family row. Still, she owed a duty to her parents, so it was agreed that she and Norman would keep their engagement a secret and postpone their marriage to some indefinite future time. The prospect of postponement was painful, because every year that passed would make it less likely that they would have children. And Norman, boyish, ebullient Norman, was born to be a father. Coming from a large and happy family, he delighted in his nieces and nephews, loving nothing better than to build dollhouses for them and play games with them and read stories to them— her stories, of course. When Beatrix saw him with little Winifred and Eveline and Fred, she knew how much he wanted children and how much she wanted that for him.

  Three years had gone by since Norman’s death—an infinity of time, it seemed. The day of his death seemed a terrible sword, cutting her off from her past and from her future, leaving her, alone and lonely, in some interminable present. What would have happened had he lived? The question had no answer, but when she forced herself to think of it truthfully, she had to admit that they might not have been happy. Norman would have urged their marriage, and her mother and father would have resisted. She would have been dreadfully torn, longing to marry Norman and leave her parents, yet feeling she could do neither. There would have been one awful argument after another, until she was thoroughly miserable and Norman had repented of his devil’s bargain.

  She hated to think it, but perhaps things had turned out for the best. Anyway, this was the way it had turned out, and nothing she thought or did could change it. She would never have a husband. She would never have a child. But she had a farm, and she would make the best of it.

  By the time Beatrix reached her front door, the storm clouds over the lake had turned a deep, greenish mauve and the air seemed to have a weight and texture of its own. The trees were waiting anxiously, leaning toward one another and whispering in leafy apprehension as they looked over their shoulders toward the darkening fells and braced themselves against the coming storm. The birds had gone quiet, and all that could be heard was the distant rattle of the whirligig at the fête and the happy shouts of the children running their egg race. But the rain still held off, only a few large drops splattering here and there on the dusty path.

  Beatrix went inside and shut the windows, feeling quietly happy. Upstairs in her bedroom, she changed her clothes, deciding that she would skip tonight’s dance. She would rather spend the evening alone, reading and knitting—and anyway, she had plenty to keep her busy. Her brother Bertram was coming up from Ulverston in a day or two, and she would take him to all her favorite places. He had visited the village, of course—the Potters had spent several holidays in a large house on the road to Kendal. He had even visited Hill Top. But he h
ad not been here since it became her farm, and she was looking forward to showing him all she had done.

  Beatrix was tidying her hair when she heard a strange sound over her head, as if a hundred straw brooms were brushing across the slate roof. Stepping to the window, she saw the trees twisting and tossing and leaves and dry grass flying in wild flurries. In the barnyard, the three red hens— Mrs. Bonnet, Mrs. Shawl, and Mrs. Boots—briskly shooed their chicks to the shelter of the barn, while four white Puddle-ducks lifted their heads and opened their beaks, glad for a drink. Downstairs, the heavy oaken door banged sharply against the wall. She must have left it unlatched, and she hurried downstairs to close it before the rain could blow in.

  But just outside the door, on the porch, sat a large woven basket, covered with a hand-woven blue-and-white-checked cloth.

  How kind, Beatrix remarked to herself, thinking that someone had left her some squashes or an eggplant—a natural assumption, since this sort of thing happened often. Several of the villagers felt that Miss Potter (who had no husband to take care of her) wanted looking after. They liked to share their garden bounty, especially when there was a surfeit of squashes.

  Now, you have been reading this story, so you know what the basket contains (at least I hope you do!) and who put it there, and why. But Beatrix was not present when Mrs. Overthewall encountered Deirdre and the three young Suttons, and she lacks your advantage. She put the basket on the table and lifted the blue-checked cover, expecting to uncover an eggplant or some zucchini or cauliflower, or more happily, a loaf of fresh bread and a pot of raspberry jam—a large pot, judging from the basket’s weight.