Months went by, and the Rabbit grew soft and tender like new skin from touch, and the boy loved him all the more for it. And the Rabbit loved him back. He loved the boy until his freckles faded and his head ached and his breath came in hard, sharp gulps like a dog’s.
One day the boy caught a fever, and dark red patches bloomed high on his cheek, and he wept in his sleep, and his little body grew so hot it burned the Rabbit when the boy clutched him close. Strange people streamed in and out of the nursery, and a light began to burn all through the night, and through it all the little Velveteen Rabbit lay there, hidden under the bedclothes. The Rabbit found it a long and weary time, and worried that someone would spot him and take him away. But he knew how to be patient. He thought of the stupid Skin Horse, who had waited years to become Real. He thought very hard about what it would be like if the boy should get well again, and how they would go out in the garden and play splendid games in the raspberry thicket. All sorts of delightful things he planned, and while the boy lay half asleep he crept up close to the pillow and whispered them into his ear. The boy’s skin grew white and thin as moth’s wings. His joints seized up, thick and angry, and he cried out when his nanny moved his legs to change the sheets. The boy’s teeth trembled and his eyes darkened and his brain had a fire inside of it. The boy hurt. And the Rabbit got Realer and Realer by the minute.
The boy no longer whispered his stupid secrets to the Rabbit, because his tongue had swollen up into every corner of his mouth. The boy scarcely moved. The boy gazed at the Rabbit and loved him, and the Rabbit loved him back very hard, until at last the boy stopped moving at all.
It was a bright, bold morning and the windows had been thrown wide open to let the breeze in. They had carried the boy out of the room, wrapped like a new toy. The little Rabbit lay tangled up among the bedclothes, with just his head peeping out, listening as they talked about arrangements and doctor’s orders. The entire nursery was to be disinfected, and all the toys that the boy had ever played with were to be burned.
The Rabbit was very happy, to think of them all burned, although he was sorry to miss the disinfecting. He rather thought he would enjoy being disinfected, perhaps even as much as being Real.
Just then the nanny caught sight of him and popped him directly into the sack with old picture books and stiff-kneed toy soldiers and a lot of other rubbish, and carried them out to the end of the garden, where they were to be turned into a bonfire. The boy was not turned into a bonfire; the boy was wrapped up neatly and buried facedown in the dirt and, as he was no longer Real, the Rabbit promptly forgot him.
While the boy lay clench-fisted in the dirt, dreaming of whatever it is that not-Real things do, the little Rabbit lay among the old nursery clutter in the far corner of the garden, and he wriggled his head this way, and he wriggled his head that way, and bit by bit he was able to get his head through the opening and look out. Everything around him was going to be burned, all the boats, and the tin soldiers, and the little wheeled dogs on drawstrings, and the Rabbit only wished he could stay to see it.
But there were slick new pink muscles curling under his skin, and lungs unfolding at the end of his throat. He had a forest to visit, and two particular rabbits to see. He shook out his left leg, and that was Real. He shook out his right leg, and that was Real, too. He felt his warm heart beating inside his chest, as strong and as fast as a boy’s.
SIX
The Merry Spinster
A rich executive had three children; she had other things besides, but for the purposes of this story, we will not concern ourselves with the rest of her inventory. Being a woman of sense and careful husbandry, she kept them well, always with an eye on the return of her investments. The two younger children were fine-looking; the eldest had weak eyes. When she was little she was called “the little Beauty” in jest, but she did not seem to notice the insult and answered to the name. Now she would answer to nothing else. She had no sense of when she was being praised or slighted. Instead, she read books, which did her no good whatever. She was twenty-eight and mostly useless.
Her two younger siblings had an instinctive sense of their own value and knew how to enjoy themselves. They went out of the house almost every day to school, to make modest purchases out of their discretionary accounts, to visit friends, to attend parties, concerts, civic engagements, and so forth, and they made themselves happy. They also read books, but only when they wished to and not because they were without alternatives; they answered to their given names. They did not mind Beauty’s being mostly useless. They liked her anyway.
All at once, the executive lost most of her assets—her cash and cash equivalents, her securities and marketable investments—along with most of her inventory. She lost almost everything except for a vacation home she used as a rental property some distance from the city, and so turned out the tenants, who had not thoroughly reviewed their lease before signing, in an owner-move-in eviction.
Beauty was, perhaps surprisingly, more galled at the loss of the family fortune than her younger siblings, who had inarguably made more and better use of it. They, for their part, were concerned primarily with the happiness that money had bought them, and people who are determined to be happy can be happy anywhere. But Beauty had always found that the scarcer she made herself, the less life troubled her, so she began to get up at four in the morning to clean out the front rooms and get breakfast ready for the family. No one remarked on it, and so gradually she ceased to think of it as work and began to think of it as part of her nature. After she had done her work, she read, and continued to profit as little by it as she ever had. She still answered only to Beauty; in fact, she insisted upon it long after her siblings had found it necessary to continue making the same joke at her expense.
“You are determined to drudge,” her brother, Sylvia, said one evening as she insisted on washing his coffee cup for him by hand. The family was all sitting in the same room they had eaten dinner in, and by this time, they had almost grown used to the practice. “We have a dishwasher,” he went on, “and I know you know how to use it as well as anybody.”
“Let her alone,” Catherine said without looking up from the newspaper. “Beauty is determined not to thrive, and if you take the coffee cups from her, she might murder us all in our beds, just to have something to tidy up.”
“I like to do it,” Beauty said. “To clean the cups, I mean, not the bit about murdering you in your beds.”
“What a tedious line that’s becoming,” their mother said. “I wish you would come up with something new to lie about, dearest. But you can take my coffee cup too, just the same, if it’s important to you.”
They continued more or less in the same vein for a year, when their mother, who had been cutting down on expenses by working remotely and hazarding her freelance earnings in speculation, learned that several of her recent investments had paid off handsomely and that the family could expect to reacquaint itself with money. Beauty’s younger siblings nearly lost their minds with excitement as their mother prepared to visit her offices in the city once again.
“You will spit in the faces of all our old friends who turned their backs on us when we became poor, I hope, or else I will do something shocking and disgrace you,” Sylvia said.
“We were never poor; we have a dishwasher,” their mother remarked mildly. “And no one turned their backs on us. You’ve had five weekend guests in the last two months alone.”
“I know,” Sylvia said. “But I’ve always wanted to be able to spit in someone’s face for turning their back on me for losing my fortune, and this may be as close as we’re ever going to get.”
“If it means that much to you, I can try to lose this money, too,” their mother said.
“No,” he said, after a moment’s consideration, “although I appreciate your supporting my dreams. I’d rather you bring me back something extravagant and unnecessary and terribly expensive.”
“All right.”
“Disgustingly extravagant.
Vulgar.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Filthy.”
“Sylvia,” their mother said.
“Filthy,” he said again firmly, and waggled his eyebrows until she smiled at him.
“I would be satisfied with a Packard,” Catherine said, putting down the newspaper. “Or even a Citroën.”
“Only one?” Sylvia joked, still waggling.
“Do not store up for yourself treasure on earth, Sylvia,” Catherine said primly, “where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break in and steal. I’ll take one now, and save the other for my birthday.”
“What will you have, Bea?” their mother asked, having long ceased to humor her eldest child’s perverse insistence on the name Beauty. “You should be rewarded for neither waggling your eyebrows like an imp nor for creasing the newspaper before I get the chance to read it, unlike certain of my other children.”
“Where are these accursed offspring?” Sylvia said. “I’ll teach them how to behave themselves.”
“Sylvia, would you kindly decommission your eyebrows?” his mother said.
“Since you have the goodness to think of me,” Beauty said, “be so kind as to bring me a rose.” This was in fact a greater inconvenience disguised as a simple request; in trying not to think of herself, as she so often did, she burdened everybody.
* * *
Their mother left for the city. There was money to be set aside for taxes, and debts to be honored, and plenty of disputes with the other partners about what was to be done with the remainder, and after several discussions that she sorely wished could have come to blows, she returned home only a little richer than she had left. There were a few hours remaining in her journey when she found herself lost on a rarely trafficked road and out of gas. She had to leave the car parked on the shoulder and walk in search of a house with a telephone. It was raining madly, and the wind blew so fiercely that she could not keep her steps in a straight line. Night fell, and she heard the soft fall of footsteps behind her and felt the hot breath of something beside her.
Eventually, she saw a light through a line of trees and made for it, finding herself at the entrance to a great house. It was flooded from top to bottom with lights in every room, but the doorway was dark, with no lamp over it. The gate to the house opened easily enough, but no one came to the door at her knock. She found it unlocked and ventured inside, where she was met with a large hall, a well-established fire in the hearth, a fully dressed table, and not another living soul. She hallooed cheerfully and received no reply, then wandered a bit down the hall in case there was a phone she could use without disturbing anyone, but found nothing. She waited a considerable time, and still nobody came.
She had forgotten to be wary of hospitality with no host and drew near the fire to warm herself, planning just how she would explain herself should the owner of the house find her thus. For, she thought, I can hardly be expected to go back to the car at this hour, and decided she would be very charming when she was found, to make up for her bad manners.
Since she had already begun to be rude, she thought to herself sometime later, by entering the house and sitting by the fire uninvited, there was no great harm in eating from the dinner laid out on the table. She took a piece of chicken and ate it, and only afterward did she wonder at her own presumption. Then she thought she might like to have a glass of wine, and did not wonder at herself any longer; nothing about her situation seemed especially unusual after that. After a few more glasses, it occurred to her that she might like to explore the grounds. So, taking both the bottle and her courage with her, she went out of the hall, crossed through several grand rooms, all beautifully appointed, until she came to an enclosed courtyard and a garden within it. Passing under a cluster of hothouse roses, she was reminded of Beauty’s request and twisted off a branch that held several blossoms; immediately she heard an unwelcome noise behind her and turned.
“How particularly uncivil,” said the man—was it a man?—to her. “I have saved you from an exceedingly uncomfortable and dangerous night by the side of the road by opening my home to you, and not only have you drunk enough wine for several guests, but I find you stealing my property. I ought to shoot you for your trespass.”
She had enough of a flair for the dramatic that she could not help but drop the bottle. “There’s no excuse for it,” she said.
“Be careful that you don’t embarrass yourself.”
“Would it insult you very much if I tried to apologize?”
“I am afraid that it would.”
“Would an explanation prove equally offensive?”
“It would depend on the explanation, madam.”
Now she felt herself on slightly surer footing, since he seemed inclined to allow her to be charming at him. She opened her eyes quite wide and tilted her head in as becoming a manner as she dared, remembering that she was past forty. “It was for my daughter,” she said, hoping to sound more like an eccentric rich woman than a desperate and moderately impoverished one. “She had a particular inclination for a rose.”
“You are holding several roses,” he said.
“You are looking at an indulgent mother,” she said, “my good man.”
“I am neither of those things,” the man-who-was-not-a-man replied, “but you might call me Mr. Beale, and don’t bother with any more cute speeches. But you say you have a daughter who is fond of roses, and you look like a woman who is amenable to conducting a bit of business. I will overlook the trespass and I will not shoot you”—her knees relaxed considerably at that, much to her embarrassment—“on the condition that she should come here willingly in your place and stay here with me.”
“How awful,” she said without thinking.
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s not speak any further about it, but go about your business. You’ll find a bedroom down the hall to your right that will suit you, and in the morning you’ll find a car at the front of the driveway ready to take you home.”
She began to wish she had not dropped the bottle.
“The Packard,” he added before he disappeared. “I didn’t have time to locate a Citroën. You have a red wine stain around your mouth.”
She was reluctant to offer any of her children, even Beauty, to something so monstrous and polite but she was even more reluctant to be shot, and mothers have given their children to monsters before. The thought caused her great grief, but it was not great enough for her to do anything else; in the morning, feeling not a little guilty from her long and untroubled sleep, she drove the Packard home without looking behind her. It handled like a dream.
Once home, the children crowded around her, and she immediately burst into tears.
“Stop crying, Mother. I don’t mind that it’s only the ’twenty-seven model,” Catherine said. “A Packard’s a Packard.”
“Here are your roses,” she told Beauty as she wiped her nose. “I’m afraid they cost a bit more than I thought they would.” Then she told them about what happened after her car broke down, about the great house flooded with light, and the dinner table with no guests, and what the owner of the house had said to her when he found her in his garden.
“But that’s ridiculous,” Sylvia said. “For starters, Beauty isn’t worth a single flower, let alone a whole branch’s worth. I’ll go live with the Beast, and send Beauty a postcard, if I ever get out of bed.”
“He might outrage your virtue,” Catherine said.
“I should hope so,” Sylvia said.
“Better not risk the youngest, and the fairest hope of our family purity besides; I’ll go, and I won’t send anyone a postcard.”
“I don’t mind,” Beauty said. “If I’ve been sent for, then I’ll go.”
“You idiot,” Sylvia said, but there was no real rancor in his voice. “Can’t you tell when you’re being protected?”
“Not especially,” Beauty said, which was true.
Their mother, who really loved Beauty very much despite herself, burst into tear
s again.
* * *
“What could he want with her?” Catherine whispered from her bed after she had turned out the lights.
“You don’t have to whisper,” Sylvia said. “It’s not a secret, and Beauty has her own room. She’s probably asleep already. I’ll bet she sleeps the whole night through, even.”
“It just feels like something one ought to whisper about,” Catherine whispered.
“Do I have to whisper, too?”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“Well, he’s demanding, and solitary, and wealthy as the Devil, if he can afford to set a table for an imaginary dinner party every night just in case a disoriented motorist stumbles in off the street. And Beauty is ugly and doesn’t know how to talk to anyone. So I can only assume it’s some sort of elaborate sexual parlor game.”
“Be serious, Sylvia.”
“Uglier women than Beauty have married, you know.”
“Sylvia.”
“Not that he’s strictly asked her to marry him. But as good as.”
“Sylvia.”
“Well, they have. And she is. So it’s true.”
“If it’s true, then it doesn’t need to be said, does it?”
* * *
Some time passed, and nothing happened, and Beauty’s mother, who did not enjoy feeling afraid, began to think that perhaps nothing would come of it after all.
Then: “A man in a mustache is at the door to see Beauty,” Sylvia said one afternoon. “He looks as though he were going to speak German at me.”
“I don’t speak any German,” the man said, bristling.
“Well, you look as if you do,” Sylvia said, “and that’s hardly my fault, is it? Not that it’s yours either,” he added kindly.
“What man—mustachioed or clean-shaven—would come all the way to our front door just to see one of my children, who are barely fit for public consumption?” their mother shouted from her study. “Send him back, wherever he came from.”
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