In the end, the two sisters were more or less satisfied as to the factual particulars of Grenadine's evening. Then, at their sister's request, they set about to impart an unabridged description of all the wonderful things they had experienced at the ball. Following that, they insisted that Grenadine tell them everything again, leaving out absolutely nothing about Merchanty Swift: How did he act? Was he haughty? Did he talk? What did he say? What did you say, then? When you played at Anagrams, who won? Was he clever at it? Did he take sugar in his tea? How much? Biscuits?
After all that, Almandine said, "Pooh! Your evening was better than ours by twice. I'm jealous."
"And well might you be, dear," said their mother, yawning. "I believe your sister found Mr. Swift's company much to be enjoyed. He's very charming." On her way to bed she turned back to say, "And not a little taken with your sister, I think."
"Mother," Grenadine protested quietly, blushing. But she smiled.
When the girls themselves had finally fallen into beds of exhaustion from both the evening and the talking of it, and when candles were out and goodnights said and the room very quiet, Incarnadine's small tired voice rose out of the darkness, "Did he let you win at Anagrams?"
"I believe not," Grenadine said.
And at about that moment, Farnaby Pockets came home to his mother.
"Mother!" he said, breathless and urgent as he came through the door. "Mother!"
"Farnaby!" his mother exclaimed and ran to him.
"Mr. Pickerel!" Farnaby said with a strange wildness in his eyes. "Mr. Pickerel!"
"What about Mr. Pickerel? What's happened, Farnaby?"
CHAPTER 18
What Farnaby Saw by the Rockery
There was a time when some of the field mice used to eat from The Dish of a kindly old creature who had never regarded field mice as anything more than a nuisance. The Dog was totally above malice though not totally above being occasionally cross. Quite often cross, now I think of it. But in fairness, he was, as I say, old. And I should tell you that many of the mice felt that it was not right to be eating The Dog's food. Discussions were sometimes held over dinner in this matter and the issue even appeared as an agenda item at the Tottensea Burrows Town Meeting.
"It wasn't meant for us," one side said, respectfully. "It was meant for The Dog."
"Well, actually, if one thinks about it," said the other side courteously, "the bird seed wasn't meant for us either, being for the birds, you see."
"Yes, I do see what you mean, in a way," said the one side carefully, so as not to appear argumentative, "but to take an alternate view, the bird seed was meant for wild creatures, wasn't it? In that sense, one might come to think that we had some claim, being wild creatures ourselves, after all."
"I take your point," said the other side politely, "but being a 'wild creature,' as you say, hardly makes one a bird, if you see what I'm getting at."
"Yes," said the one side, "Still, in all, there's nothing on the feeder that says 'For birds only' is there? And beyond that, we only eat the seed that falls to the ground, if you follow my reasoning."
"I do follow that," said the other side, by way of concession. "But what of the vegetable garden then? That certainly was not meant for us."
And here, I'm afraid, there was a long silence betokening, perhaps, something of a bad conscience among some proportion of the field mice. There were things put forward in reply to this point but they weren't real arguments. They were things rather more along the line of: "But we've always eaten from the vegetable garden," or "Do they really mind us eating from the vegetable garden?" or even, "We eat so little, actually, when one thinks about it."
"We're not saying that we shouldn't eat from the vegetable garden," said the other side, being very generous in victory and not at all wanting to embarrass or nonplus one's opponent. "We're only saying that eating from the Dog's Dish is not any different, in principle, from eating from the vegetable garden."
At length, thinking perhaps that feelings were running a bit high from this spirited discussion and that time was needed for the matter to find it's proper level in the scheme of things, Peebles Carryforth The Mayor chose not to call a vote and the meeting proceeded to the next item on the agenda. The issue of whether it was quite right to eat from The Dish, therefore, remained an ethical gray area until it was abruptly resolved for the mice in a way no one expected. For, receiving no clear guidance from the Town Meeting not to eat from The Dish, many mice continued to eat from The Dish—and that quite often. Finally though, as might have been feared, one of them ate from The Dish and was not properly cautious about it.
Though The Woman had remarked to The Man that The Dog had been eating rather awfully well lately, neither of them, for the longest time, saw an actual mouse. But late one afternoon, when the sun had almost, but not quite, finished going down for the day, little Harrington Doubletooth ascended to The Dish. And when he sat for some moments, very unwisely, eating The Dog's rations in that remaining bit of daylight—small as it was—The Woman SAW him!
"Shoo!" The Woman said from the window. "SHOO!" she said again, very loud, and then she made an alarming thunderclap with her hands. Poor little unthinking Harrington Doubletooth ran right down the nearest hole, covered his ears, closed his eyes and resolved never again to eat from any dog dish any where in the world whether in daylight or darkness of night for as long as he did live! But at that point it hardly mattered what he resolved to do or not to do. For inside The Cottage The Woman was talking to The Man at that very moment—and about Harrington Doubletooth, too! And after that discussion, EVENTS were set in motion.
It was a few days after Harrington Doubletooth's mistake that Farnaby Pockets had seen Mr. Pickerel come out of The Brambles and had seen the jeweled dagger hanging from his patent leather belt. He determined to have a look at it, Farnaby did. But by the time he had shinned down the rhododendron, Mr. Pickerel was right out of sight. So he went after him, overtaking him just beyond the rockery. And exactly when Farnaby was about to hail him, a great yellow something fell upon Mr. Pickerel.
Mr. Langston Pickerel, terror of some of the smaller sea lanes of the world and one-time leader of certain unsavory characters whom hardly anyone enjoyed spending time with; Mr. Langston Pickerel, swordsanimal extraordinaire who, being much on his dignity, was not to be trifled with by other small creatures; Mr. Langston Pickerel, genteel and chivalrous courtier of many fair damsels in a number of exotic venues and flawless quoter of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Walter de la Mare and a few others I'd never heard of; Mr. Langston Pickerel, petite lion of strange fashions, connoisseur, raconteur, animal about town and a whole host of other things, was, among them, NOT a match for a Large Yellowish And Stripy Cat. Not even close.
"Formidable!" Pickerel had time to say, in French, on looking up and seeing The Cat in mid-air above him. And that was all. His rapier, we are told, never cleared the sheath.
Farnaby Pockets saw it happen—a frightening spasm of violence right in front of him. Furious and rough it was and all of it well within The Cat's control. And when The Cat's teeth sank into the back of its victim's neck, poor Mr. Pickerel shuddered and went slack. The Cat dropped him onto the ground and stood up over him in triumph. Bristling and awful The Cat was, Farnaby thought—and strangely motionless but for the rolling arabesques along its great yellow tail.
Farnaby dove into the rockery. He pressed himself deep into crannies of the rocks and stayed there, trembling, for a very long time. After darkness had come and the trembling had passed a little, Farnaby began to think what he was going to do. He devised a route in his mind. From the rockery he would make straight for the porpoise fountain, he decided. Yes. There would be safety under the porpoise fountain. And the stone-flagged terrace was close by that. There were tunnels under the flags. Beyond the terrace were the garden urns—four of them—with very short exposure between them....
Good as the plan seemed, it was very late before he got up nerve to actually stick his nose out of the rocker
y. It was later still when that nerve was enough to send him dashing out across open ground toward the porpoise fountain. There was a pounding in his ears and he thought his heart might burst, but he made it. He waited under the fountain, panting and thinking of his next move. Then out he went and ran for the flags.
So he found his wit and his courage that strange midsummer's night and with only those to bear him up in his peril, young Farnaby Pockets, in such a way, took himself safely home by degrees.
CHAPTER 19
The Turning of the Wheel
Opportune Baggs was a light sleeper. Octavia Baggs was well home from the Cotillion Ball and asleep beside him when he woke up disappointed with the Mousewriter. The flourishes were not right to his way of thinking, nor the curlicues either, for that matter. Rather too stiff, both of them. He lay in the darkness thinking and thinking. Abruptly he went bolt upright in the bed and knew what he wanted to do about it. Up and into his slippers. Robed over his nightshirt, he lit a candle and took it to the workshop.
The solution might be in the flourisher adjustment wheel, he thought, and nothing more than that. So he turned it—turned the flourisher adjustment wheel right round from Flexible More Or Less, clean past Rather Flexible and all the way to Ever So Flexible. "There," he said to himself. And he tried it.
He rejoiced. The curlicues were now exactly as he wanted them. And the flourishes! Easy, flowing and graceful—the flourishes warmed his heart. "Now," he said to himself. "Now for a real sentence. Real words." But it wasn't to be. Not on that night, at least. Many nights would come and go before he would make another curlicue, even—let alone a real sentence made of words. For someone was knocking on his front door, insistently, and over and over. He would go to answer it. And after he answered it nothing would ever be the same for Opportune Baggs again. Or for any other Baggs. Or for any mouse in Tottensea.
It was a long and winding way up from the workshop to the Baggses' front door. "Who on earth would knock and knock and just keep on knocking at this hour?" he asked himself. Though merely perplexed at first, in the end he was almost peeved about so much unabated knocking. He pulled the door open roughly, as if to say, "What!"
Merchanty Swift was standing on his doorstep and with a darker look on him than Opportune Baggs had ever seen on that normally bright countenance. "Tottensea Hall in half an hour," Swift said. "We have a cat, it seems."
This and happenings like it would take place all over Tottensea Burrows, because a little earlier, a brave Mrs. Pockets, with her mouseling, had gone through that dangerous night to wake The Mayor and tell him what Farnaby saw. "Come in, please," The Mayor had said to them in a voice still thick with sleep. "I was afraid of this. Give me a moment, if you will," and he went off to dress himself. He returned to them, resolute and full of grim energy. "I must be gone for a little while. Will you wait?" They agreed to it and he went off to wake The General.
Clementine Nickelpenny was normally a very good sleeper. But she had been unaccountably awake that night and, as she lay there, her mind casting about, she thought about Millicent's Surprised Heart and how very happy it was at the end with Major Willowbrook. And she thought about the only military mouse she knew and how much she wished he would pay more attention to a few practical civilian things. "Things like love for goodness' sake!" she said, and said it actually out loud. And because it was out loud, she turned as red-faced there, alone in her bed, as a mouse ever gets. And perhaps thinking the dark of night insufficient by itself to hide such a high coloring, she pulled the covers over her head, as well.
There was a knocking. It startled her. And as she was well awake, she went immediately and opened the door. There, on the front stoop, standing right in front of her, was General Random Chewings! Talk about your surprised hearts.
The General had his mouth all formed up to say something to Merchanty Swift about The Cat. He was somehow completely unprepared to see Clementine Nickelpenny before him there—and looking so beautiful, at that, in her uncommonly rosy complexion. For a long moment, cat or no cat, he just stood there.
"General Chewings!" Mrs. Nickelpenny said, finally, out of her own surprise.
"Yes. Well," The General recovered and cleared his throat awkwardly. "I must talk to Swift, you see. There's a cat, isn't there?"
"Oh my word!" she said with real alarm. "Come in, please, General. I'll wake him at once."
Swift appeared quickly, buckling his belt as he came. He and The General spoke briefly in the hallway, went out the door together and off to their respective missions—Chewings to the Fieldpeas, Swift to the Baggses. Fieldpeas and Baggses would go on to warn others. And so, as if the River Stith, itself, shot its banks and poured remorseless down every nook and hole of Tottensea, news of The Cat rushed through their tunnels and brought the field mice up—turned them out of their pleasant homes as surely as any torrent would of black waters in the night.
Tottensea Hall, late scene of such merriment and happiness, became that night a place of anguish. The garlands hung from its chandeliers still, but hung limp, as if weeping at the passing of something, as if the room itself knew that it never would again share the joys of these harmless little creatures huddling now against its walls. Not in flowing gowns they were, now, or dignified tunics, but in whatever clothes they threw on in the night. Not laughing and happy and dancing they were, but hollow-eyed and afraid.
The Mayor stood at the front of the hall with Farnaby and Mrs. Pockets beside him, waiting for Tottensea. When he thought they had all gathered—or when he dared not wait a moment longer—he asked Farnaby if he would tell what he had seen. But as the young mouse was much too shy and nervous to do anything of the sort, The Mayor, himself, told the story of Langston Pickerel's demise as best he could and asked Farnaby if he had got it right.
"Yes sir. It was just like that," Farnaby said, in a very small voice. "Only quicker."
The roomful of mice trembled as one.
The discussion was urgent and compelling. What were they to do? Some spoke with feeling of the life they had built in the burrows, of their fondness for the old places and the old ways, and of their fear of the new and the unknown. Must they really leave their homes? Would another place be any safer? What was OUT THERE, away from The Cottage? they wondered aloud. What things worse than cats, perhaps?
"Nothing is worse than cats!" answered others of them.
"But cats do not swoop onto you from the sky! Nor tunnel after you in your dens!"
"But can we live here, exactly where the cat will spend all his days?"
Merchanty Swift came to the front. "Dear ones," he said, "we are in terrible distress here and I am loath to add to the burden of that distress—but so I must. There are two in our midst who may speak with awful authority on this matter of cats. I beg them to speak now and I beg you to listen.
Haltingly, and with shaking in their voices, Mrs. Nickelpenny and Mrs. Pockets, each in turn, rose and told a terrifying tale. As the mice listened to the fate of Sweetcream Tunnels, fear rose from their midst like smoke then encompassed them like flames. Tottensea was trapped in terror and indecision. What must they do? What?
It was just here then that the humble leadership of Peebles Carryforth The Mayor came into play. He was respected and regarded. But he was a quiet mouse, only willing to help when he was wanted. As the debate had gone on, some mice had begun to look at him. What did he think? He was, after all, their leader. Then others had looked at him. And when they heard about Sweetcream Tunnels they all looked at him. They hungered for his thoughts, for his sense, for decision! It was only then that he thought it his duty to speak.
There are times when strength falls away, when speed and cleverness, even, will not suffice. There are times when nothing will do but wisdom. This was that time and he, Peebles Carryforth The Mayor, must give them that wisdom.
"My friends," he said quietly and earnestly, "The Cat is a terrible enemy, it is true, with much skill and cunning to hunt us down—whether by ones or by twos. But
it is not, after all, The Cat that we are faced with. It is something much worse." The mice looked at one another, puzzled and not comforted.
"What we are faced with," continued The Mayor, "is THE WRATH OF THE OWNERS. It is The Man and The Woman who brought The Cat here. But if The Cat fails in his terrible purpose, that will not be the end of this matter. No indeed! You may count upon it that there will be other measures—traps and poisons probably."
The mice drew sharp breaths at such a thought.
"The Man, The Woman—this place that we are living in belongs to them," The Mayor said dispassionately. "Be very sure that they will have their way here. It is we, dear friends, who are out of place. We are field mice, after all. And it is to the fields that we must return. The fields! The hedgerows! They are the fixed regions of our intended ways. We must search them out: the spaces we are to inhabit, the foods meant for us there, and the natural covers and protections provided for us. My friends, the appointed place of our lives is abroad before us! Let us make this peril into great benefit. May it drive us to our rightful station. In all urgency I say to you that we must go out."
He looked around at them all. And then he said it again, almost in a whisper: "We must go out."
There was no further debate. After the vote, the decision being what it was, they all wept together for a little. But events were overtaking them and they must get hold of themselves. There was hardly time for weeping. And none at all for consoling! "That must come later, dear," they said to one another, bravely as they could. "We must pluck up now and pack our things!" And off they went. But...all pluck aside, the tears would come, wouldn't they?
CHAPTER 20
Tottensea, Bag and Baggage
When Mrs. Pockets and Farnaby thought about their boarding house and all the things they owned, they realized that they couldn't take the furniture as it was much too heavy to carry and they couldn't carry all the kitchen utensils as there were too many of them. So, Mrs. Proserpine Pockets said, firmly and with hardly a tear, they must take only a few of their most precious possessions, and not too many of those either. For they would certainly have to carry some things for poor old Miss Middlechippers—if, indeed, they did not have to carry poor old Miss Middlechippers, herself!
The Linnet's Tale (A Mouse Story for Grownups) (The Tottensea Series) Page 10