Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  Well, the mother had found out how to amuse her babies. Till Easter, with its fresh supply of presents, should come, she would teach them the English nursery rhymes, and make up tunes so that they might sing them. At least it would be something new to them, for they had been brought up on German chorales, varied latterly by Séraphine’s tra-la-la’s. Their mother had sung little German songs to them as babies, dear little songs about Sternleins, and Engeleins, and Kindleins, and they knew all those by heart; but they had not yet heard of the deeds of “Jack and Jill, and the fate that overtook Miss Muffet (clearly a warning to all who make a practice of sitting on tuffets), and the base behaviour of the gentleman in Where are you going to, my pretty maid; or of the Contrary Marys extraordinary garden, or the glorious bribe of cushions and cream offered Curly Locks, or of that wonderful pie that burst into song the moment the astonished king cut it. The mother, encouraged by the reception given to Polly Flinders, determined to try and turn these into music too, so that the babies might have something to sing that should neither be as filling as the chorales nor as frothy as the tra-la-la’s; and she set to work on Mary, Mary, the very next morning, while the babies were clearing out their cupboards ready for the Easter toys.

  It was not any easier to do than the first had been; indeed, the agonies seemed worse than ever, for a strange antipathy to a person who could fill her garden with things like shells and bells and people laid hold of the mother’s soul, and grew and grew the more she thought of it. But it did get finished and written out at last, and here it is: —

  Then, after lunch, she gave the babies some pictures to cut out of the books they were already in, and some paste to paste them into other books with; and though it would seem simpler to leave them in the books they were in at first, the babies didn’t think so, and cut out and pasted with such energy that they were very soon covered with paste all over, and might have been used ay as scrap-books themselves; and when she had seen them fairly started she went away and shut herself up alone with Miss Muffet, and wrestled with her till she too had been forced into notes.

  This is Miss Muffet:

  Then, just as the babies were getting rather tired of pasting, the servant came into the playroom with three letters on a salver, and presented them solemnly to each baby in turn. They were astonished, for they didn’t get many letters, and wondered so long who they could be from that they nearly forgot to open them and see; and when they did, there was a lovely little pink letter inside, written in a large round hand that they could easily read, inviting them to tea in the library at four o’clock. The letters were written in German, and it is no good my telling you all the nice things that were in them, for I daresay you don’t know a word of German.

  At four o’clock, then, the three babies, with the paste all nicely scraped off them, appeared in the library, and there were the three footstools in front of the fire, and the mother’s low chair at one end, and the tea table drawn up close beside it; and to-day, as it was a party, there was a jug of chocolate for the babies instead of tea, and a plate piled up with dough nuts freshly baked, with a decently big spoonful of jam in their middles instead of the little speck that lurks, looking so silly, in the stale dough nuts you buy in shops, and that tastes so much sillier than it looks; and everything was so pleasant and cosy that the babies beamed all over their faces as they settled themselves down before the fire and smoothed their pinafores over their knees.

  ‘Well, mummy?’ said April, when they had drunk as much chocolate as they could conveniently hold, and the dough nut sugar had been rubbed off their cheeks, — for she knew there must be something else going to happen, or they wouldn’t have been invited like that.

  ‘Well, babies?’ said the mother, smiling at the three expectant faces.

  ‘What does we do next, mummy?’

  ‘Next? Why, I’ve got two more tunes for you.’ And she pulled Mary and Miss Muffet out of her pocket.

  ‘Oh that is nice!’ cried May, jumping up and down on her stool.

  ‘You’s one pwecious mummy,’ said June, with strong approval.

  April gave her mother a look, as much as to say ‘Didn’t I know mummies could do everything?’ But she had no idea of what it had been like, making those tunes in cold blood and broad daylight.

  MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY.

  Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

  How does your garden grow?

  With silver bells and cockle shells,

  And pretty maids all of a row.

  ‘Well, my blessed babies,’ began the mother, ‘there was once a girl called Mary, who had a garden full of roses, and lilies, and buttercups, and daisies, and all the other flowers we have here in the summer; but she was so queer that instead of taking care of them and loving them, she dug them all up and threw them away.’

  ‘What an awful Mawy,’ observed June, who never could say r’s.

  ‘Then, where all the pretty things had been she put silver bells, and cockle shells, and in the borders along the sides of the paths where other people have hollyhocks, she put rows of pretty maids.

  ‘Pretty Mädchens?’

  ‘And bells what you rings?’

  ‘And shells how there is at the bain-de-mer?’ The babies always spoke of the seaside as the bain-de-mer, and pronounced it as though it had only two syllables, with a very big accent on the first one, so: BAINdmer. ‘And then people used to come and look at her over the hedge, and laugh, and ask her how her garden grew, for of course the bells and shells wouldn’t grow, and the pretty maids grew so slowly that you couldn’t see any difference in one summer at all. And the neighbours called her Mary quite contrary, because she would do things differently to everybody else, but she didn’t mind a bit; and when they came and jeered, and called out “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” she would answer back quite good-naturedly “With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all of a row.” And here’s the tune she sang it to, and when I’ve told you about Miss Muffet we’ll go and sing them both.’

  ‘But mummy,’ interrupted May, ‘was that pretty, in Mary’s garden?’

  ‘I think our sort of garden is much prettier,’ said the mother. ‘And I! And I! And I!’ cried the three babies with conviction.

  ‘Except for the pretty maids.’

  ‘Yes, except for the pretty Mädchens.’

  ‘They must have looked little dears, all in a row.’

  ‘Oh they must have looked little very dears,’ said April; ‘they must have looked like May,’ she added, turning to May, who gave a sort of pleased purr. April was always ready to fall upon May and fight things out if needs be, but that did not prevent her thinking her, in times of peace, an exceedingly beautiful person. The mother sometimes saw her go up to May the day after her head had been washed, when her face was almost lost in a shower of curls, and stroke her hair very gently, and say softly ‘Too pretty, too pretty is your hair!’ Or she would take up her hand, and look at it and pat it, and say ‘Such dear tiny hands you got!’ And as these flattering interludes would as often as not take place in the breathing spaces of a boxing match they didn’t matter much, and certainly had no effect on May, who never cared whether she were thought pretty or not.

  Then the mother began to tell them about Miss Muffet, and of course the first question the babies asked was ‘What is a tuffet?’ To which, equally of course, the mother replied ‘A thing you sit on.’

  ‘But you sits on such a many things,’ objected the astute June, ‘and they still isn’t tuffets.’

  ‘I think it must have been a three-legged stool,’ said the mother, who had gone the length of examining the pages of Nuttall’s Pronouncing and Defining Dictionary in search of enlightenment, and had found that tuffets were left severely alone.

  ‘I thinks it must have been one sofa,’ said June.

  ‘A sofa?’

  ‘Yes, else two people can’t sit together on anything other than one sofa.’

  ‘But there weren’t two pe
ople.’

  ‘Yes, the spider did sit beside her.’

  ‘But a spider isn’t a people,’ said April, looking puzzled.

  ‘Yes she is,’ said June.

  ‘No she isn’t,’ said April, and then added, as though this truth had just dawned on her, ‘she’s an animal, and animals aren’t people, they’ve got too many legs.’

  ‘Oh that doesn’t matter,’ said June, airily.

  ‘Oh yes it does,’ said April; ‘and there never isn’t one people only, but always two—’ and then she stopped, and looked worried.

  ‘But if one of those peoples did go away? Then?’ asked June; at which April looked more worried than ever.

  Now this mother wasn’t much good at explaining grammar, and was sure that even if she tried, the babies would only be more puzzled than before, so she proposed that instead of arguing they should come to the piano and learn the tunes she had written.

  LITTLE MISS MUFFET.

  Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet,

  Eating her curds and whey;

  When down came a spider,

  And sat down beside her,

  And frighten’d Miss Muffet away.

  They set to work with even more ardour than the day before, for had they not been feasting on unaccustomed chocolate and dough nuts? And the dough nuts, judging from the reckless enthusiasm with which the two tunes were attacked and learn’t, had got into their heads, which is not the usual place for dough nuts, and shows how beautifully light they must have been. Then they tried to act Miss Muffet, and quarrelled over the preliminaries just as grown up people do, each one wanting the best part for herself.

  ‘I’se Miss Muffet!’ shouted June, defiance in her eye.

  ‘No, I!’ cried May.

  ‘No, I shall be Muffet,’ said April, very quietly and firmly.

  ‘Oh then I’se the spider,’ said June.

  ‘Yes, and I is Muffet,’ said April quickly.

  ‘But I? What is I, then?’ asked May, aggrieved.

  ‘Oh, you can be the — the curds and whey,’ said June, always ready with brilliant suggestions.

  ‘No, the tuffet,’ said April.

  May absolutely refused to be the curds and whey, and didn’t at all like the idea of being a tuffet, a thing for others to sit on, a mute and inglorious three-legged stool, with nothing to say and nothing to do; but she generally did as she was told, and after some grumbling was persuaded to go on all fours, whereupon April took her seat with great dignity on her back, and holding a cup with chocolate dregs to represent the curds and whey, lifted up her voice and gave tongue to the opening lines of the immortal ditty. Then there was a wild yell such as never yet had been heard to issue from any spider, and June flung herself on to the only vacant bit of tuffet she could see, and as it was May’s head and as she was a very fat and heavy spider, the tuffet collapsed under the shock, flattening itself out straight, and they all fell, shrieking loudly, into a heap. There was such a tangle of arms and legs that the mother found it difficult to sort them out, and set each baby on the feet that belonged to it again; and besides, she was laughing, and you know what your thumbs feel like when you laugh, and how weak they get, and how they won’t pull. ‘Miss Muffet’s too hard to act,’ she said, comforting them, ‘because of that tiresome tuffet. Try Mary, Mary. One can be Mary, and the other two the row of pretty maids. Two are just enough for a row.’

  ‘And if one went away from that row — then?’ inquired June. But her mother sat down to the piano, and refused to argue.

  This succeeded better. The pretty maids sang the first half, and April, dancing up and down her garden path in front of them, answered their questions with cheerful shrillness. They sang it over and over again. The mother had to play it so often that she got to dislike it with all her heart, and still they went on, the pretty maids beating time with their feet, and the busy Mary flying up and down faster and faster and more and more breathlessly, her hair streaming out behind, and her face aflame. At last the mother felt as though she were being mesmerized, and hardly noticed what they were doing, till a strange spluttering noise made her look up, and there stood the pretty maids gasping, with their eyes and noses and mouths full of chocolate which April was diligently pouring out of the jug on to their heads, muttering as she did so, ‘Doch, doch, Du musst begossen werden,’— ‘Yes, yes, thou must be watered,’

  Now this was a dreadful thing to do, and could only be excused by the state of wild excitement into which she had worked herself over the part of Mary. The mother was so astonished that for a moment she sat looking on without saying a word. The pretty maids, though they choked, quite entered into the spirit of the thing, and felt that as they were growing in a garden it was only right they should be watered. And besides, the chocolate was very nice still, in spite of its being cold, and trickled agreeably down into the mouths they were careful to hold as wide open as they would go. But they wouldn’t go wide enough, and most of it trickled down over their pinafores to the edge of their dresses, and then dropped off in thick drops on to their mother’s favourite carpet, making dark and horrid pools at their feet.

  Oh, it was a dreadful ending to a party! And the worst of it was they were so excited that they never gave a thought to the dreadfulness of it, which made it very difficult for their mother to rebuke them. ‘Oh,’ she said, pointing to the two pools on the carpet, ‘Oh,’ and when she had said that she stopped, and didn’t seem able to go on. I don’t know whether she was trying not to cry at the spoilt carpet, or trying not to laugh at the spoilt babies, who looked pitiable objects now with their heads all over chocolate, while April stood staring at them in consternation, the empty jug in her hand.

  After you have been very excited and happy there is always a horrible time that comes when you feel so flat, and dull, and stale, that you are more like ginger-beer without the ginger and the froth than anything else. That is how the babies felt when they were having the chocolate washed off their faces and heads, and were being put, with all the fizz gone out of them, into premature beds. It was very difficult to get the chocolate out of their hair, and Séraphine expressed her disapproval by scrubbing with such pitiless vigour that they felt quite dazed. And then it was bewildering besides having their heads washed on any night but Saturday. It seemed to upset things so, and they were used to regular ways, — head-washing on Saturday nights, clean clothes on Sunday morning, a smell of soap-suds pervading the passages on Monday — that is what had always happened ever since the world, with people in it wanting washing, began. Eve, explained April to June in subdued murmurs while they were undressing, used to wash her long yellow hair on Saturdays too, dipping it up and down in the waters of Paradise; and as soap wasn’t among the things that grew on the trees there, she used bananas instead, which were after all much more like soap than like bananas; and June asked whether she ate what was left over of the soap, when she had finished her washing, and April said people didn’t eat soap, and June said people did eat bananas, and they talked it over in whispers, trying vainly to settle it, as they went shivering to bed.

  The next morning, when the mother got up, she went to her bedroom window and tried to look out; but the snow was heaped up outside on the sills half way to the top. She was very sorry for the babies, who had been shut up now for more than a week. They seemed depressed, too, at breakfast time, and May had a cold, and kept on sneezing into her bread and milk. The first time she did it, and the second time too, the others said, Gesundheit, which is what people say in Germany when you sneeze; but when she went on doing it and didn’t seem inclined to stop, they were irritated, and left off saying Gesundheit and said pfui instead, which is what people say in Germany when they are disgusted.

  May didn’t like having pfui said to her, and sniffed in a very injured manner; and Séraphine had got out of bed the wrong side, and was shrouded in impenetrable gloom and mystery; and there was a strong north wind blowing which got in at all the cracks and made it harder than ever to keep warm; so
that things were looking rather bad all round.

  Long before it had been time to get up, April and June had talked over in their beds whether their mother would invite them to tea and tunes again after the chocolate incident or not. June thought she would, because June’s experience of mothers was that they were a long-suffering race, and slow to anger; but April had been the chief sinner, and was full of doubts. They would not have mentioned it for the world at breakfast, but looked out of the corners of their eyes very often at their mother while they were eating their bread and milk — so often, indeed, that once or twice the spoonfuls went astray, and emptied themselves on to their bibs instead of into their mouths, giving May an opportunity of calling out Schmutzfinck, which she did at once in a very loud voice, greatly to her relief and satisfaction, revenging herself in this way for the pfnis that had been hurled at her. Schmutzfinck is not a polite thing to call any one, and means that the person who says it thinks you exceedingly dirty and generally objectionable; but it is wonderful what relief it gave May to say it, — she quite brightened up, and left off sniffing.

  The mother was reading letters, and didn’t seem to notice what anybody was doing, and Séraphine, whose duty it was to see that the bibs didn’t get more than their fair share of breakfast, never bothered about either bibs or babies, but sat staring into space with a wild misgiving eye. There are some days, you know, when the best of people get out of bed the wrong side, and can’t get right again the whole day, and set other people wrong too, and it was perfectly clear from Séraphine’s face that that was what she had done that morning. Corners would await the babies that day at every turn if they were much with Séraphine, however carefully they might climb the narrow path of being good; so the mother carried April and June off with her into the store room after breakfast, and while she was ordering the dinner they gambolled innocently among the sausages, and played at hide and seek between the barrels of pickled cabbage, and visited their old kitten, now grown into a big and churlish cat, but beloved still for old sake’s sake and for its unforgettable sweetness on the first day they ever saw it, when it arrived at lesson-time in Herr Schenk’s pocket, its front paws resting on the edge of the pocket, and its face resting on its paws, and its blue eyes, grown so green and fierce, gazing dreamily round. It was a Tom-cat, but the babies called it Rose.