Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  ‘There!’ she said. ‘April showers. Happy dreams.’ And then she went on in a quavering, put-on, mocking voice, as though to deceive herself as much as me: ‘No, no, my child:

  Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

  Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,

  Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair

  And what can quiet us in …’

  She paused again, and added in tones of an almost metallic intensity yet trembling with derision, ‘“And what may quiet us in a death so noble.” So you see I forgive you, and return you,’ she nodded up at the portrait, ‘to your flawless and ingenuous sweetheart … You love her? … Yes? … Well, if you cannot answer, don’t. But next time, my bonnie laddie,’ she glanced at my kilt and sporran, ‘fix your heart on something a little more solid and unpainted. Not of that root … Meanwhile,’ her old fingers had taken a key-ring out of her vanity bag, ‘why not a little keepsake?’

  She rose and unlocked a small Chinese cabinet that stood against the wall behind her, and held out to me in its opened case an oval miniature, surrounded with garnets. I stared at it in the cold of the moonlight; had no knowledge of its value or its skill; but there was no mistaking the face of the child there – a face that even a Leonardo might have lingered over.

  ‘This,’ she said, tapping her pointed fingernail on the glass, ‘this is where that,’ and she nodded up at the portrait again, ‘came from. And this,’ she made a wry mouth, tapped her breast and cast me an ironical little bow, ‘this is where both went to …; just for a while, you know – Me.’

  A remote gleam had come into the intense darkness of her eyes, else almost as motionless as the burnt-out ashes of a fire.

  ‘Now tell me,’ she went on, ‘if that had been servants’ gossip, if, before you set out house-breaking today, you had known what had become of your pretty lady-love up there, would you still have come, still have been here this evening?… Don’t gawk, boy; answer me!’

  I gazed at her, still hesitating between truth and cowardice, my eyes no doubt like a stricken dove’s to-and-froing over her raddled face. And then at last I faintly shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not if I had known.’ My lips were so dry that I could scarcely utter the words. ‘But wasn’t she,’ I turned my cheek a little towards the picture; ‘wasn’t she like that? Even then?’

  The silence, the cold, the curious light, the solitude between us seemed to have intensified and the whole house to be listening. Then, ‘God bless my soul,’ the old woman cackled, ‘the boy’s incorrigible! We should have met before. “There would have been a time …” There, put that bauble into your pocket before I think better of it; and go away. And next time, beware of man-traps!’

  Her derisive face had hardened again. And at that, with some idiotic wish, I suppose, at the back of my mind to be quits, or possibly to make amends, I pulled my little bunch of snowdrops out of my pocket and held them out to her. She took them, sniffed greedily their earthy smell, looked at me, turned about, put them into the cabinet, and locked its door. And before she could say another word I had obeyed her, and was gone – out into the full wintry moonlight and the virgin loveliness of the snow.

  * First published in Good Housekeeping, October 1952. It was broadcast on 13 March 1937.

  The Guardian*

  There are, I am well aware, many excellent people in this world who shun anything in the nature of the tragic in connection with children. And particularly if it carries with it what they consider to be a strain of morbidity. My own conviction, nonetheless, is that childhood is a state of extremes; alike of happiness and of unhappiness. And I speak from my own knowledge – derived from observation and experience long before this ‘psychiatry’ became a craze – when I say, not only that some of the saddest, gravest, most dreadful and most profound experiences in life may occur in our earliest years, but that, if they do, the effects of them in after-life persist.

  I am not a mother. I am what is called ‘an old maid’; but even ‘old maids’, I assume, are entitled to their convictions.

  I might first explain that I am the last of my family. In my earlier years I had three sisters. Philip was the only son – and a posthumous child – of the youngest of them – Rachel. And his mother was the only one of us to marry. What opportunities the others had to follow her example is nothing here to the point. At all events, they remained single. My sister’s choice was a tragic one; her head was at the mercy of her heart. Her husband was a man who may be described in one word: he was wicked. He was selfish, malicious and vindictive, and the moment I saw him I warned my sister against him. But in vain. He failed even to contrive to die respectably. I mention this merely because his character may have some bearing on what I have to relate. But what, I can hardly say.

  Philip was born three months after his father’s death. In spite of the grief and affliction which my poor sister had endured during the brief period of her married life, there appeared to be nothing amiss with him. Nature goes her own way. He was a quiet and tractable child, although he was subject to occasional outbreaks of passion and naughtiness. He was what is called a winning little boy, and I loved him very dearly. He was small for his age and slenderly built. In his earlier years his hair, and he had a long and narrow head, was of a pale gold – straw-coloured in fact; but it darkened later to a pretty lightish brown, and was very fine. Hairdressers frequently remarked on this. He had a small nose, and deep-set but clear grey eyes of a colour seldom seen in company with that coloured hair. He looked delicate, but was in fact not so.

  This appearance – and he was by nature a sensitive and solitary child – suggested effeminacy. But since in his case it implied only fineness and delicacy of mind as well as of body, it was nothing but a tribute to him. I consider it a poor compliment to a woman, at any rate, to be regarded as mannish and masculine. Let us all keep to what we are and as much of it as possible. On this account, however, I counselled his mother to send him to no school until he was in his ninth year. She herself was inclined to be indulgent. Still, I am a great believer in the influence of a good home-life on a young child. Affection is by no means always a flawless mentor; but I know no better. And as my sister, still a young woman, had been left badly off, I had the pleasure and privilege of paying for Philip’s education.

  I selected an excellent young governess with a character. She taught him, five mornings a week, and with ease, the usual elements; and I especially advised her to keep as far as possible to the practical side of things. His own nature and temperament would supply him with the romantic. And that I regarded with misgiving. Later, he was sent to what an old friend of mine assured me was a school – a preparatory school – where even a sensitive and difficult child might have at least every opportunity of doing well and of being happy.

  His first reports – and I had myself insisted on being taken over the whole school, scullery to attics, and on having a few words alone with the matron – were completely promising. Indeed, in his third term, Philip won a prize for good conduct – a prize that in these days, I regret to hear, is disparaged, even sneered at. Not that rewards of this kind are necessarily an enduring advantage – even to the clever. Much depends, naturally, on what is meant by goodness.

  Now, in my view, it is a mistake to screen and protect even a young child too closely. Mind; I say, too closely. I am no believer in cosseting. A child has to face life. For this he has been given his own defences and resources. Needless to add, I am not defending carelessness or stupidity. I remember seeing at a children’s party a little girl in a flimsy muslin frock and pale blue ribbons – a pretty little creature, too – who exhibited every symptom of approaching measles. Shivery, languid, feverish, running at the eyes and nose – the usual thing: and I kept her by me and I warned her nurse. But it was too late. Thirteen children at that one small party eventually fell victims to this stupidity. As with risks to physical health, so with mental ailments and weaknesses.

  Night fears and simil
ar bogies may be introduced into a young and innocent mind by a silly nurse-maid or by too harsh a discipline, or perhaps by an obscure inheritance. They may also be natural weeds. When I was a girl, even I myself was not entirely immune from them. I dreaded company, for example; was shy of speaking my own mind, and of showing affection. I used both to despise and to envy the delicate – the demonstrative; and even on a summer’s day was always least happy in the twilight. Least at home. The dark, on the other hand, had no terrors for me. As events proved, such fears not only affected Philip a good deal more than they affect most children, but with a peculiar difference. Indeed, I have never since encountered a similar case.

  Towards the end of December in that year he came as usual to spend his Christmas holidays with me. This was an arrangement with which my sister willingly complied. But I had only suggested it; I never made demands. His trunk was taken up to his bedroom, and we sat down to tea, at which my cook, who had been many years in my service, provided for him a lightly-boiled egg – and I have never encountered even an old man who did not regard a boiled egg with his tea as a delicacy! As he sat facing me at the tea-table and in the full light of the lamp, I noticed at once that he looked more than usually pale. His face was even a little drawn and haggard. And ‘haggard’ is hardly a word one would willingly use in relation to a child. But it is the right word. Moreover, his clear but wearied eyes were encircled with bluish, tell-tale shadows. That meant bad nights!

  ‘You are not looking very well, Philip,’ I said. ‘You don’t seem to be hungry after that long journey. What time do you go to bed? Do you have any supper? Are your lessons at school worrying you? Have you perhaps got into hot water with one of your masters?… No, I don’t think that!’ As far as I can remember, these were the harmless and unprying questions I put to him. Like most children, he made no attempt to answer them. I didn’t expect him to; I intended to glean.

  ‘Thank you, Auntie Caroline,’ he assured me twice over, in his usual rather prim manner, for he was a demure little boy, and I object to artificial baby talk. ‘Thank you, Auntie Caroline,’ he said, ‘I feel very well. And I came out third or fourth in everything but French and Arithmetic. I was all but top in English.’ And then, after a pause, while I continued to smile at him, he added that at times he had not been sleeping very well. ‘I – often lie awake at night. And it goes on, you see, Auntie Caroline, sometimes into the day.’ Strange: I failed even to ask him what precisely he meant by that ‘it’.

  ‘Well, Philip,’ I said, ‘that I think we can easily remedy,’ although I had also failed to understand all the child may have meant by the words, goes on. ‘You must have plenty of fresh air in your bedroom, and a sufficiency of blankets: a glass of hot milk with a little water, and a biscuit for supper; and in case you happen to wake up, Pattie (my excellent parlour-maid) shall see that there is a night-light in your soap basin. Do you have a light in your bedroom at home?’

  ‘Yes, Auntie,’ he said, ‘but not at school. And it’s not a night-light. It’s just a bead of gas. It’s blue; and sometimes when I have woken up in the middle of the night, I thought it was an eye looking at me out of the dark. But, of course, it wasn’t an eye. It was only a bead of gas.’

  ‘Well, it shall be a night-light,’ said I. ‘No one could mistake that for an eye, Philip?’

  The next day at luncheon I thought he looked a little better. This, to be precise, was two days before Christmas. It was our first day ‘Holidays Feast’, as we used to call it; and luncheon consisted of roast chicken and vegetables, followed by a nice baked custard and some stewed prunes. In those days the small tart French prunes were still obtainable. Philip was exceedingly fond of bread sauce, and if it is not too richly flavoured, that is wholesome enough too. He steadily improved in looks during these holidays, and enjoyed his usual pantomime and one or two little Christmas parties. Nonetheless, I noticed that whatever his spirits might be during the day, he became far less talkative at the approach of evening.

  A little girl, the daughter of a neighbour whose name it is needless to mention, would sometimes come with her nurse to play with him. She was one of those apple-cheeked, nice-mannered, sensible little girls who in these times seem so rare. During the early afternoon the two children would be perfectly happy together; but towards nightfall, when the day began to droop, Philip’s spirits would perceptibly languish. He would then only pretend to play, and at tea it was Rosie and I who talked; though I am sure that in her childish fashion she did her best to persuade him to come out of his shell and to smile again. But a child of seven who refuses to eat a slice of plum cake when he is neither ill nor homesick must be troubled in mind or already sick; I knew that and kept my eyes open; and presently the trouble came out.

  When Rosie was gone, Philip took a picture book – a Christmas present – and sat down on a stool by the fire, while I resumed my knitting. A cautious glance or two at him soon revealed the fact that he had ceased to read, although his eyes remained fixed upon his book. With a sigh he would begin again: and yet again his attention would wander. That night I twice visited his bedroom. He lay quietly asleep, his night-light burning on the wash-stand. In the small hours I fancied I heard a cry. I listened, nothing followed; and I left my bedroom door ajar. Next morning, after breakfast, he trod by accident on my cat’s tail. It proved to be a fortunate accident – at least, for Philip. Animal and child, they were on excellent terms with one another, but at the sudden exasperated squeal from the startled animal he was peculiarly affected, began to tremble, and suddenly burst into tears. Now that I regarded at once as an unmistakable symptom of nervous trouble. I waited until the table had been cleared, then I called him to me and said, ‘Philip, you must have had bad dreams last night. Pattie had not forgotten your night-light, I hope?’ This, I am afraid, was a prevarication.

  I see him now, in the holland overall which he always wore at meal-times and was then outgrowing, standing in front of me, his hand in mine, on the fur rug by the brass fender. A portrait of his maternal grandfather, whom he clearly resembled and who was not only a hard-working clergyman but a scholar, hung over the chimneypiece above his head. The light of the window – and it was a healthy, frosty, wintry morning – shone full upon his face.

  ‘No, Auntie,’ he replied, ‘I had the light.’ But as he stood looking up at me I noticed that his eyes had begun to move away, as if involuntarily, towards the right, and that it was with an effort that he turned them towards me again; and then it was too late for him to suppress a faint expression of alarm on his pale, delicate features. What does this mean? thought I.

  ‘Is anything frightening you now?’ I inquired. Colour crept into his cheek, and a sob shook him. He nodded.

  ‘In this very room?’ said I, and searched with my glance the corner of it towards which he had turned. Nothing whatever was there that could account for his apprehension; no more unusual object, at any rate, than a bust of Cicero on its pedestal by the book-case – a precious possession of my dear father’s. But with a child, one never knows.

  ‘What’s troubling you now?’ I said. ‘Tell me, Philip.’ And I spoke in a quiet easy voice, gently fondling his small fingers.

  ‘It’s what, Aunt Caroline,’ he replied. ‘I see.’

  ‘See where?’ I pressed him. ‘Look at the bright, sparkling garden – at the trees and the hoar-frost on their branches, thick almost as snow. Darkness, you know, Philip, can only remove that out of view. They themselves remain the same – no enemies there. Just as we two remain the same – light or no light. Is there perhaps anything troubling your mind? Look at Puss, now. He knows as well as I do that what happened just now was nothing but an accident.’

  ‘It’s not in the room,’ he told me. ‘It’s – it’s inside. It’s when I look right over – and turn my eyes this way, Auntie Caroline.’ They hardly wavered. ‘It began a long time ago; but – it’s only sometimes.’

  ‘What is only sometimes?’ I said. ‘At night, too?’

  By dint
of careful questioning, I discovered at length that what troubled him was no more, as I thought at the time, than a mere fancy. He told me that when he turned his eyes as far as their orbits admitted in a certain direction – and after recent experiments of this kind he had ventured to do this very seldom – he perceived a shape, a figure there. A something dark, small and stunted, I gathered, with humped shoulders and bent head, and steadily scrutinizing him. I was dismayed. Mere fancy or not, it was no wonder that a child so sensitive should be disturbed by so strange an unpleasant an experience as this, even if it were a pure illusion.

  ‘Now tell me, Philip,’ I coaxed him. ‘Here we are, alone; just you and me. Aren’t you perhaps imagining what you see? If we try, we can at once see your mother. In our minds, I mean. Can’t we? But that too would be imaginary. And next moment she is gone. There can be nothing. Look again.’

  ‘Oh, Auntie!’ he exclaimed, throwing his arms round my neck and bursting into tears again; ‘it’s like that horrid, horrid Satan.’

  This, I confess, alarmed me, but I showed nothing of it.

  ‘And who has been talking to you of Satan?’ said I.

  ‘Nobody, nobody,’ he cried passionately. ‘I saw it in a book.’

  ‘Ah!’ said I. ‘Only in a book! Just a picture. That’s where it comes from, then.’

  ‘Yes, Auntie,’ he sobbed, ‘now. But what I am telling you of was before that, before I saw it in a book.’

  I was intensely anxious to comfort the child, and assured him yet again that all this could be only fancy, that no more than a mere dream may haunt one’s memory even in the full light of the day, that God protects the young, that the innocent have nothing to fear. And I took care to say no more than I believed. ‘Now, be brave. Just try,’ I said, ‘try once again.’