Susan Wittig Albert

by The Tale of Applebeck Orchard (v5)

  “You’re a brave lady,” Mr. Heelis said, and gave her a glance that made her color. He chuckled. “I suspect that Captain Woodcock would be glad to have you go along when he talks to Harmsworth.”

  “I’m sure the captain is perfectly capable of handling Mr. Harmsworth all by himself. I’d only get in the way.” Uncomfortable with the personal direction of the conversation, Beatrix changed the subject again. “Have you seen Caroline Longford recently?”

  Now sixteen, Caroline was the granddaughter of Lady Longford, of Tidmarsh Manor. The girl’s father and mother were dead and she had come from New Zealand to live with her grandmother some five years before. The previous winter, Beatrix had persuaded Lady Longford to allow Caroline to take piano lessons with Mrs. King, a well-known London teacher who had settled in Hawkshead. This had not been easy, for her ladyship was one of the most parsimonious people Beatrix had ever met, and piano lessons were costly.

  “As a matter of fact, I saw Caroline just last week,” Will said. “I called to speak with Lady Longford about Caroline’s inheritance.”

  “Inheritance?”

  “The legal knots have finally been untied and the money left to her in her parents’ estate has become available. It’s a tidy sum, I’m glad to say, and prudently invested. Caroline has enough money to do what she’d like.”

  “Indeed,” Beatrix said thoughtfully.

  “Unfortunately, Lady Longford has not seen fit to tell her about the money,” Will went on with a frown. He lifted the reins and his horse moved forward. “I pointed out that Caroline will be able to assume responsibility for its management in something less than two years. And at sixteen, she certainly ought to be giving some thought to her future.”

  “I fully agree,” Beatrix said, thinking that it was just like Lady Longford to insist on keeping the information to herself. As long as Caroline believed she was penniless, her ladyship could control her more easily. I daresay that this is not a nice thing for Beatrix to think, but in some ways her ladyship is not a nice person. You might recall that she once tried to install her own candidate as the head teacher at Sawrey School, and was only just prevented from doing so by the determined intervention of the school’s overseers—Mr. Heelis, Captain Woodcock, and the vicar—with a little help from our Beatrix. (If you have not read this story, it is told in The Tale of Holly How.)

  “I am glad to say that Caroline is quite extraordinarily talented,” Will added, as they crossed the stone bridge over Wilfin Beck. “She played her own piano composition for me—a nocturne, I believe she said.”

  “Her own composition,” Beatrix murmured. “How very nice. You liked it?”

  “I did, indeed. I’m no music critic, of course, but I found it quite lovely. She is gifted.”

  Beatrix was silent for a moment, thinking of the letter that Caroline had written to her just a few days before, enclosed with a note from her governess, Miss Burns. “Speaking of conundrums,” she said, “I have the idea that Caroline is facing an important one.”

  “Oh?” Will asked curiously. “And what is that?”

  Beatrix was about to answer, but at that moment, Will had to pull up sharply on the reins to keep from hitting a black cat that dashed across the road in front of them and scrambled down the grassy bank on the other side, very near the bridge. The gig tipped up on one wheel and nearly went over. Beatrix grabbed at the arm of the seat with one hand and her hat with the other.

  “My goodness gracious,” she exclaimed breathlessly, and turned to look.

  “Steady on!” Handling the reins expertly, Will clucked to his horse. “You’re all right, Miss Potter?”

  “Just a little surprised, that’s all.”

  Will lifted the reins and they were off again. “A black cat. I hope you’re not superstitious.”

  “It was Max,” Beatrix replied, settling her hat firmly on her head. “Max the Manx. You probably don’t remember, but he stayed in the Hill Top barn for a time, to help us get rid of a horrible infestation of rats. I don’t know where he lives now, but I’m surprised to see him so far from the village. Most of the cats stay close to home.”

  “You amaze me, Miss Potter,” Will said lightly. “You’re not only informed about what’s going on in the village, but you know the habits of the village cats as well.” He shook his head. “Is there anything that escapes you?”

  Beatrix suspected that he was teasing her. She wasn’t sure how to respond, and in any case, the conversation was becoming dangerously personal again. She changed the subject once more.

  “Speaking of Castle Farm, that reminds me. You and I must have a look at that barn roof, Mr. Heelis. I’m afraid it will need rather a lot of mending. P’rhaps it might be better to replace it entirely.”

  “I’m glad you brought that up,” Will said. “There are several problems with that barn, and quite a few other things that want doing.”

  So while they drove along the road to the village and Hill Top Farm, they spoke very seriously of barns and fences and drains and sheep, and of all the things that had yet to be done at Castle Farm—so deep in conversation that they scarcely noticed the pedestrians they passed along the way. There was Joseph Skead, the sexton at St. Peter’s, his scythe over his shoulder, on his way to the church to cut the grass. There was Agnes Llewellyn, on her way to have a cup of tea and a bite with her cousin Hazel Thompson, the vicar’s cook-housekeeper. There was Bertha Stubbs, coming back from the butcher in Far Sawrey, where she had purchased a soup bone and a shoulder of mutton.

  But the pedestrians noticed them. And when they got home, they were happy to tell their friends and families that they had seen the village’s most famous spinster and the district’s most eligible bachelor riding along together, chatting as agreeably and amiably as the very best of friends.

  “An’ not just friends, neither,” Bertha exclaimed to Miss Margaret Nash, her next-door neighbor at Lakeside Cottages. She gave a gusty romantic sigh. “Billin’ an’ cooin’ just like a pair o’ turkle-doves. I reckon we can look for a wed-din’ sometime soon. An’ I ain’t jumpin’ to any contusions, neither.” When the soup bone was in the pot, with carrots and potatoes and onions, Bertha popped over to Buckle Yeat to tell Betty Leach what she had seen. Betty told her husband, Tom, when he came home for tea, and Tom told Lester Barrow when he went to the pub that night for his usual half-pint.

  “Thick as thieves, they was, t’ two o’ them,” Joseph told his wife, Lucy, the postmistress, when he got home from St. Peter’s. Lucy related this to Mathilda Crook, who had come to mail a package of knitted baby bonnets to her cousin in Brighton. Mathilda dropped in at the smithy on her way home to tell her husband, George, who was shoeing Mr. Dixon’s big black draft-horse, Petunia. Mr. Dixon took the news home with him to relate to his wife over dinner, where it overtook the closure of Applebeck Footpath as the topic of conversation. And Agnes, of course, told her cousin Hazel.

  Oh, dear. Of course, Joseph and Bertha and Agnes ought to have kept their observations to themselves, but that is too much to expect of them, I imagine. They live in a village where there is not much in the way of entertainment except for gossip, tittle-tattle, and tale-telling. As far as they are concerned, there is no such thing as personal privacy, even when it comes to matters of the heart—or perhaps especially when it comes to matters of the heart.

  Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis may not like this. Indeed, I am quite sure that they would not like it at all, if they knew. But try as they might, there is nothing they can do to change things. It’s a conundrum, I should think.

  Meanwhile, back at the bridge . . .

  4

  In Which We Meet an Artistic Ferret and Learn More about a Manx

  It’s a good thing Max didn’t have a tail, for he would certainly have lost it under the wheels of Mr. Heelis’ gig.

  But he didn’t, so he managed to escape any further damage, except to his pride. He skidded on his rump down the embankment next to the old stone bridge, then followed Rascal and the
two other cats as they made their way amongst the willows along Wilfin Beck (the word wilfin means “willow,” and a beck is a stream) to a great clump of trees hanging over a steep bank at the bottom of the rocky hill about twenty yards south of the bridge.

  Wilfin Beck was in full spate, on this day, and in a very great hurry and deliriously happy about it, and why not? For the stream was on its way down from the fells to Lake Windermere, and when it had got all the way through this great lake and out the other end, it would be the River Leven. It would scull under Newby Bridge, slide past the pretty village of Greenodd into broad, shallow Morecambe Bay, and—at last, at last, at last!—glide into the Irish Sea and lose itself in all the great mysteries of the deep. In anticipation of this marvelous journey, the beck was chortling and chuckling between its fern-fringed banks, telling itself stories about the glorious adventure to come, and calling out happily to the water-ouzels fishing from mossy stones, and to the dippers and wagtails, none of them minding at all that they were getting their feet wet.

  But Max was not thinking about the beck’s splendid journey, for his near miss on the road had made him fall behind, and he was in a breathless hurry to catch up without losing his footing and tumbling into the water. I am sorry to say that, for Max, there was nothing very new about being last, or even being forgotten. When he went off with the other village cats, he always brought up the rear, the last in line, and—to tell the honest truth—felt rather sorry for himself.

  This was because Max was different, you see. He had no tail, none at all, not even a short, stumpy stub. All the other cats had beautiful tails—long, luxurious tails that they flicked and flipped and flourished like flags in the breeze. But Max had only a little dimple where his tail ought to have been, which meant that he was much shorter, back to front, than other cats—so short, in fact, that he seemed quite round, an impression that was reinforced by the roundness of his face and cheeks and eyes and his round rump and rounded, muscular thighs. What’s more, his hind legs were longer than his forelegs, so that his rear was higher than his head and his spine was a continuous arch, front to back. He was quite a muscular cat and agile, and he could run even faster than the other cats, certainly faster than Tabitha (who was quite old) or Crumpet (who was not as young as she thought she was). But he ran with an odd little hop, like a rabbit, and his fur had a rabbit’s softness.

  Now, you have lived in the world and have seen a great many strange and unusual things, so I imagine that you have had the advantage of seeing at least one Manx cat, and that you are able to keep an open mind about such things as missing tails. But the Sawrey cats were a parochial lot who had never been more than a mile from the hayloft or cellar or shed in which they were born. They considered Max—lacking a tail, short back to front, and very round—to be an aberration, a regrettable freak of nature. I am sorry to report that they snickered at him behind his back, made fun of him to his face, and left him out of all their group activities. This was very unkind of them, to be sure, but that is the way some cats are, and there is just no getting around it.

  I daresay that Max would have felt much better about himself if there had been at least one other cat like him. But since he was the only Manx in the village—in the whole of the Land Between the Lakes, for that matter—he stood out like a very sore thumb. He was intelligent and sensitive and felt the pain of his exclusion more deeply than he could ever have admitted, so that the more he was left out of things, the more he kept to himself, not wanting to endure the humiliation of being left out again. Perhaps you can remember how it felt when you were the last one to be chosen for a game or a dance or a competition, and how you would rather stay home from school than go through the experience again. Well, that is exactly how Max felt, and this dismal cycle had made him very melancholy. He had spent most of his life looking at the dark side of things, until this had become such a habit that he could not change it. Max was a very gloomy cat, indeed.

  Now, having at last caught up with the others, Max sat down on his haunches and tried to steady his breath as Rascal knocked at a small wooden door fitted into the curve of the east-facing bank and half-hidden by an overhanging blackberry bush. It had black iron hinges and a large brass door handle, so it was most definitely a door. But there was no welcome mat, no doorplate engraved with the resident’s name, no door knocker, not even a bellpull and a bell to notify the animal indoors that someone was waiting on the doorstep. Clearly, the ferret did not encourage callers, which made Max think (nervously) that it might be smarter to go away and not come back.

  “Knock again,” advised Crumpet. Her voice squeaked.

  “And do it louder,” urged Tabitha, trying to disguise the tremble in her tone.

  “He’s probably having a nap,” Rascal said, and knocked again, more loudly.

  “P’rhaps we oughtn’t to disturb him,” Max muttered uneasily. He had heard somewhere that ferrets were nocturnal creatures and liked to spend their mornings in bed with the window shades drawn and the covers pulled over their heads.

  Now, it wasn’t that Max was afraid of this ferret, if that’s what you’re thinking. He was as brave as the next cat, especially where mice were concerned and even rats. Hadn’t he been hired to help clear out that plague of rodents that infested Hill Top Farm? Hadn’t he performed commendably? Even Miss Potter had said so, and seemed very sorry when Mrs. Jennings, the farmer’s wife, said that cats with no tails made her queasy, and that Max should find another place. No, he wasn’t afraid, just cautious. Ferrets were fiercer than rats, he had always heard. Ferrets were—

  The door opened on the chain, just wide enough for Max to see a gray-furred creature, a little smaller than himself, glaring out at them. Max had never before seen a ferret, and was taken aback both by his size (Max had imagined he would be much larger) and by the black mask the fellow was wearing, through which shone two beady black eyes, glittering like polished ebony. Beneath the mask was a quivery pink nose in a forest of stout whiskers. Above the mask was a pair of perky ears.

  The ferret opened his mouth, showing sharply pointed teeth, like needles. “What the devil is going on out here?” he squeaked, in a high, thin voice. “What do you think you’re doing, banging on my door and waking me up in the middle of the morning? How is a civilized animal supposed to get any sleep?”

  “Terribly sorry, Fritz, old fellow,” Rascal said apologetically. “I—”

  “Who’s that?” the ferret demanded. He shielded his eyes with his paw against the sunlight that slanted down through the willow trees along the beck. “Rascal, is that you? Who else is out there?”

  “Yes, it’s me, Fritz,” Rascal said, in a humble tone. “I’m really sorry to bother you at this hour. I’ve brought Crumpet and Max the Manx and Tabitha Twitchit to see you. Tabitha is president of the Village Cat Council and we’ve—”

  “We’ve come to ask you a question of some importance,” Tabitha said, shoving in front of Rascal.

  “It’s about the footpath,” Crumpet said, crowding past Tabitha.

  “Don’t push,” snapped the ferret. “It’s not civil.”

  “P’rhaps we’d better go away and come back some other time,” Max said in a low voice. “If we’re disturbing you, that is.”

  “Of course you’re disturbing me,” the ferret growled, showing his teeth again. He began to close the door, but Crumpet put her paw into it.

  “The footpath’s closed,” she said.

  “Of course it’s closed,” the ferret growled. “Mr. Harmsworth threw a barricade across it.”

  “We’re hoping you can tell us why,” Rascal put in, over Crumpet’s shoulder. “You keep a close eye on what goes on in the neighborhood. We thought you might know—”

  “And what if I do?”

  “Why, we’ll use the information to get the path opened up again,” Crumpet said.

  “Three cats and a dog will open the path? Don’t make me laugh.” The ferret eyed them suspiciously. “Why in thunder are there so many of you? Do
es it take a whole gang to wake up a fellow and ask him silly questions about a footpath?”

  “I’m dreadfully sorry,” Max said, feeling now that this really was an ill-advised errand. No matter the ferret’s size, his teeth were undeniably sharp. “We’ll come back another time, when it’s more convenient.” He tugged at Tabitha’s tail. “Let’s go,” he whispered urgently. “Now!”

  The ferret peered around the others and gave Max a penetrating look. “Who’re you? And where’d you leave your tail?”

  “I’m Max. I’m a Manx. Manx don’t have tails.”

  “Ah,” said the ferret thoughtfully. “I have always wanted to meet a Manx.” He made a clucking noise. “Well, since the lot of you are already here, and I’m already awake, I suppose I’ll have to hear what this is all about.” He turned with an undulating, snake-like motion and Max saw that he was very long—longer than a cat, counting his long tail—and very lean and lithe, like a weasel. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder. “But one at a time, mind. Single file, no shoving. Last one in, close the door. We don’t need any more callers.” And with that, he slithered down the burrow.

  This was very like a tunnel, so narrow and twisting that the animals could only go single file, ducking their heads, dropping their tails, and sucking in their breaths to squeeze themselves smaller. Rascal led the way, since he was used to creeping into burrows (he was, after all, a fox terrier), and also because he was acquainted with their host. Tabitha and Crumpet came after, and, as usual, Max brought up the rear, closing the door behind him and throwing them into inky darkness. If he could only manage to turn around, Max thought, he would, and let the others go on without him. But the burrow was so narrow that turning was impossible. There was nowhere to go but forward and down. And then up again, and then down and up and around and around until Max was no longer sure which direction they were going.