Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  She stroked hard with her fingers the hand that was in her own, and as she gazed at her mother’s face in this increasing anxiety, she knew that the smile on it was just like a pretty blind over a window, and that her mother’s self within was almost as much perturbed over this visit as she was herself.

  ‘It’s getting nearer, darling, at any rate, isn’t it?’ her mother whispered. ‘So it will sooner be over.’ Whereupon the fat old farmer in the further corner of the carriage emitted yet another grunt. He was fast asleep. ‘I think,’ her mother continued softly, ‘I should first enquire of the maid if she is quite well – your godmother, I mean, my dear. Say, ‘Do you think Miss Cheyney is well enough to see me?’ She will know what you ought to do. I am not even certain whether the poor old lady can speak: though her handwriting is simply marvellous.’

  ‘But, Mummie darling, how are we to know that there will be a maid? Didn’t they, in godmother’s time, always have “retainers”? Supposing there are rows of them in the hall! And when ought I to get up to say good-bye? If she is deaf and blind and dumb I really don’t know what I shall do!’

  A dozen questions at least like this had been asked but not answered during the last few days, and although Alice’s cheek, with that light hair, was naturally pale, her mother watched it grow paler yet as the uncomfortable old-fashioned railway-carriage they sat in jogged steadily on its way.

  ‘Whenever I am in any difficulty, sweetheart,’ she whispered close up to her daughter’s ear, ‘I always say a little prayer.’

  ‘Yes, yes, dear dearest,’ said Alice, gazing at the fat old farmer, fast asleep. ‘But if only I weren’t going quite alone! I don’t think, you know, she can be a very good godmother: she never said a word in her letter about my Confirmation. She’s at least old enough to know better.’ Once more the ghost of a smile stole softly over her face. But she clasped her mother’s fingers even a little tighter, and the hedges and meadows continued to sidle by.

  They said good-bye to one another actually inside the cab, so as to be out of sight of the Inn and the cabman.

  ‘I expect, my sweet,’ breathed Alice’s mother, in the midst of this long embrace, ‘we shall both soon be smiling away like two turtledoves at the thought of all our worry. We can’t tell what kind of things she may not be thinking of, can we? And don’t forget, I shall be waiting for you in the Red Lion – there’s the sign, my dear, as you see. And if there is time, perhaps we will have a little supper there all to ourselves – a little soup, if they have it; or at any rate, an egg. I don’t suppose you will have a very substantial tea. Not in the circumstances. But still, your godmother wouldn’t have asked you to visit her if she had not really wanted to see you. We mustn’t forget that, darling.’

  Alice craned her head out of the window till her mother was out of sight behind the hedge. And the fly rolled gently on and on and on along the dusty lanes in the direction of The Grange. On and on and on. Surely, thought Alice at last, we must have gone miles and miles. At this she sprang up and thrust her head out of the window, and called up to the cabman, ‘The Grange, you know, please.’

  ‘That’s it, Miss, The Grange,’ he shouted back, with a flourish of his whip. ‘Not as how I can take you into the Park, Miss. It ain’t allowed.’

  ‘Mercy me,’ sighed Alice as she sank back on the fusty blue cushions. ‘Supposing there are miles of avenue, and the front door’s at the back!’

  It was a pleasant sunny afternoon. The trim hedgerows were all in their earliest green; and the flowers of spring – primroses, violets, jack-in-the-hedge, stitchwort – in palest blossom starred the banks. It was only half-past three by Alice’s little silver watch. She would be in good time, then. In a few minutes, indeed, the fly drew up beside immense rusty wrought-iron gates on the four posts of which stood heavy birds in stone, with lowered heads, brooding with outstretched wings.

  ‘And you will be sure to come back for me at six?’ Alice implored the cabman, though she tried to keep her voice natural and formal. ‘Not a minute later than six, please. And then wait here until I come.’

  The cabman ducked his head and touched his hat; drew his old horse round in the shafts, and off he went. Alice was alone.

  With one last longing look at the strange though friendly country lane – and there was not a house in sight – Alice pushed open the little gate at the side of the two large ones. It emitted a faint, mocking squeal as it turned slowly upon its hinges. Beyond it rose a hedge of yew at least twenty feet high, and in a nook there stood a small square lodge, its windows shuttered, a scurry of dead leaves in its ancient porch. Alice came to a standstill. This was a difficulty neither she nor her mother had foreseen. Ought she to knock or to go straight on? The house looked as blind as a bat. She stepped back, and glanced up at the chimneys. Not the faintest plume of smoke was visible against the dark foliage of the ilex behind the house. Some unseen bird flew into the shadows with a cry of alarm.

  Surely the lodge was empty. Nonetheless it might be good manners to make sure, so she stepped into the porch and knocked – but knocked in vain. After pausing a minute or two, and scanning once more the lifeless windows, in a silence broken only by the distant laughing of a woodpecker, Alice determined to go on.

  So thick and close were the tufted mosses in the gravel of the narrow avenue that her footsteps made no sound. So deep was the shade cast by the immense trees that grew on either side she could have fancied evening was already come, though it was yet early afternoon. Mammoth beeches lifted their vast boughs into the air; the dark hollows in their ancient boles capacious enough for the dwelling-house of a complete family of humans. In the distance Alice could see between their branches gigantic cedars, and others still further, beneath which grazed what she supposed was a herd of deer, though it was impossible to be quite certain from so far.

  The few wild creatures which had long ago detected her in these haunts were strangely tame. They did not trouble to run away; but turned aside and watched her as she passed, the birds hopping a little further out of her reach while yet continuing on their errands. In sheer curiosity indeed Alice made an attempt to get as near as she possibly could to a large buck rabbit that sat nibbling under the broken rail of the fence. With such success that he actually allowed her to scratch his furry head and stroke his long lopping ears.

  ‘Well,’ thought she with a sigh as she straightened herself, ‘there can’t be very much to be afraid of in great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother’s house if the rabbits are as tame as all that. Au revoir,’ she whispered to the creature; ‘I hope to see you again very very soon.’ And on she went.

  Now and then a hunchbacked thorn-tree came into view, and now and then a holly. Alice had heard long ago that hollies are wise enough not to grow prickles where no animal can damage their leaves by browsing on them. These hollies seemed to have no prickles at all, and the hawthorns, in spite of their bright green coats, speckled with tight buds, were almost as twisted out of shape as if mischievous little boys had tied knots in them when they were saplings. But how sweet was the tranquil air. So sweet indeed that this quiet avenue with its towering branches and the child-like blue of the skies overhead pacified her mind, and she had almost forgotten her godmother when, suddenly, at a break between the trees there came into view a coach.

  Not exactly a coach, perhaps, but a large painted carriage of a faded vermilion and yellow, drawn by two cream-coloured horses – a coachman on the box in a mulberry livery, and a footman beside him. What was really strange, this conveyance was being noiselessly driven round a circular track so overgrown with moss and weeds that it was hardly discernible against the green of the grass. Alice could not but watch it come nearer and nearer – as she stood drawn up close to the furrowed bark of an oak that branched overhead. This must be her godmother’s carriage. She must be taking her daily drive in concealment from the wide wide world. But no: it had drawn near; and now, with a glimpse of the faded red morocco within, it had passed; it was
empty. Only the backs of coachman and footman now showed above its sun-bleached panels – their powdered hair, their cockaded hats.

  All Alice’s misgivings winged back into her mind at sight of this unusual spectacle. She tiptoed out of her hiding-place, and hastened on. Her one wish now was to reach her journey’s end. Presently after, indeed, the house itself appeared in sight. The shorn flowerless sward gently sloped towards its dark low walls and grey chimneys. To the right of it lay a pool as flat as a huge looking-glass in the frame of its trees. Behind it rose a smooth green hill.

  Alice paused again behind yet another of the huge grey boles to scan it more closely before she herself could be spied out from any of its many windows. It looked as if it had stood there for ever. It looked as if its massive stones had of their own weight been sinking imperceptibly, century after century, into the ground. Not a blossoming shrub, not a flower near by – except only a powder of daisies and a few yellow dandelions.

  Only green turf and trees, and the ancient avenue on which she stood, sweeping gently towards its low-porched entrance. ‘Well,’ she sighed to herself, ‘I’m thankful I don’t live there, that’s all – not even if I were a thousand-and-one!’ She drew herself up, glanced at her shoes, gave a little push to her ribboned straw hat, and, with as much dignity as she could manage, proceeded straight onwards.

  A hoarse bell responded, after a whole second’s pause, to the gentle tug she had given the iron pull that hung in the porch. It cried ‘Ay, ay!’ and fell silent. And Alice continued to look at the immense iron knocker which she hadn’t the courage to use.

  Without a sound the door opened at last, and there, as she had feared, stood, not a friendly parlour-maid with a neat laundered cap, but an old man in a black tail-coat who looked at her out of his pale grey eyes as if she were a stuffed bird in a glass case. Either he had been shrinking for some little time, or he must surely have put on somebody else’s clothes, they hung so loosely on his shoulders.

  ‘I am Miss Alice Cheyney – Miss Alice Cheyney,’ she said. ‘I think my great-great … Miss Cheyney is expecting me – that is, of course, if she is quite well.’ These few words had used up the whole of one breath, and her godmother’s old butler continued to gaze at her, while they sank into his mind.

  ‘Will you please to walk in,’ he said at last. ‘Miss Cheyney bade me express the wish that you will make yourself at home. She hopes to be with you immediately.’ Whereupon he led the way, and Alice followed him – across a wide hall, lit with low, greenish, stone-mullioned windows. On either side stood suits of burnished armour, with lifted visors. But where the glittering eyes of their long-gone owners once had gleamed, nothing now showed but a little narrow darkness. After a hasty glance or two to either side, Alice kept her eyes fixed on the humped back of the little old butler. Up three polished stairs, under a hanging tapestry, he led her on, and at length, at the end of a long gallery, ushered her into what she supposed was her godmother’s sitting-room. There, with a bow, he left her. Alice breathed one long deep sigh, and then, having unbuttoned and buttoned up again one of her grey silk gloves, she sat down on the edge of a chair near the door.

  It was a long, low-pitched, but not very wide room, with a coffered ceiling and panelled walls, and never before had Alice seen such furniture. In spite of the dreadful shyness that seemed to fill her to the very brim, at thought of her mother’s little pink-and-muslin drawing-room compared with this, she almost burst out laughing.

  Make herself at home! Why, any one of those chests would hide her away for ever, like the poor lovely lost one in The Mistletoe Bough. As for the hanging portraits in their great faded frames, though she guessed at once they must be by ‘old masters’, and therefore eyed them as solemnly as she could, she had never supposed human beings could look so odd and so unfriendly. It was not so much their clothes: their stomachers, their slashed doublets and wide velvet caps; but their faces. Ladies with high bald foreheads and tapering fingers and thumb-rings, and men sour and dour and glowering.

  ‘Oho! Miss Nobody!’ they seemed to be saying. ‘And pray, what are you doing here?’

  The one single exception was the drawing of a girl of about her own age. A dainty cap with flaps all but concealed her yellow hair; a necklet dangled at her breast; the primrose-coloured bodice sloped sharply to the waist. So delicate were the lines of this drawing and so faint the tinted chalk, they hardly stained the paper. Yet the eyes that gazed out across the low room at Alice seemed to be alight with life. A smile half-mocking, half-serious lingered in their depths. See, I am lovely, it seemed to be hinting, and yet how soon to be gone! And even though Alice had never before seen a face so enchanting, she could not but confess it bore a remote resemblance to herself. Why this should have a little restored her confidence she could not tell. Nonetheless, she deliberately smiled back at the drawing as if to say, ‘Well, my dear, I shall have you on my side, whatever happens.’

  The lagging minutes ticked solemnly by. Not a sound to be heard in the great house; not a footfall. But at last a door at the further end of the room softly opened, and in the greenish light of the deep mullioned window appeared what Alice knew was She.

  She was leaning smally on the arm of the butler who had admitted Alice to the house. Quiet as shadows they entered the room; then paused for a moment, while yet another man-servant arranged a chair for his mistress. Meanwhile the old lady was peering steadily in search of her visitor. She must once have been as tall as Alice herself, but now time had shrunken her up into the stature of a child, and though her small head was set firmly on the narrow shoulders, these stooped like the wings of the morose stone birds upon her gates.

  ‘Ah, is that you, my dear?’ cried a voice; but so minute was the sound of these words that Alice went suddenly hot all over lest she had merely imagined them.

  ‘I say, is that you, my dear?’ repeated the voice. There was no mistaking now. Alice ventured a pace forward into the light, her knees trembling beneath her, and the old lady groped out a hand – its shrunken fingers closed one upon another like the cold claws of a bird.

  For an instant Alice hesitated. The dreadful moment was come. Then she advanced, made the old lady a curtsy, and lifted the icy fingers to her lips.

  ‘All I can say is,’ she confided to her mother when they met again, ‘all I can say is, Mamma, if it had been the Pope, I suppose I should have kissed his toe. And really, I would have very much rather.’

  Nonetheless, Alice’s godmother had evidently taken no offence at this gesture. Indeed what Alice thought might be a smile crinkled, as it were, across the exquisite web of wrinkles on her face. On her acorn-shaped head rose a high lace and silver cap resembling the gown she wore; and silk mittens concealed her wrists. She was so small that Alice had to bend almost double over her fingers. And when she was seated in her chair it was as if a large doll sat there – but a marvellous doll that had voice, thought, senses and motion beyond any human artificer’s wildest fancy. The eyes in this dry wizened-up countenance – of a much fainter blue than the palest forget-me-not – steadily continued to look at Alice, the while the butler and footman with head inclined stood watching their mistress. Then, as if at a secret signal, they both bowed and retired.

  ‘Be seated, my dear,’ the tinkling voice began when they had withdrawn. And there fell a horrifying pause. Alice gazed at the old lady, and like half-transparent glass the aged eyes remained fixed on herself, the bird-like hands crossed daintily over the square lace handkerchief held in the narrow lap. Alice grew hotter and hotter. ‘What a very beautiful old house this is, great-grandmamma,’ she suddenly blurted out. ‘And those wonderful trees!’

  No flicker of expression showed that Miss Cheyney had heard what she had said. And yet Alice could not help thinking that she had heard, and that for some reason she had disapproved of her remark.

  ‘Now come,’ piped the tiny voice, ‘now come; tell me what you have been doing this long time. And how is your mother? I think I faintly remember s
eeing her, my dear, soon after she married your father, Mr James Beaton.’

  ‘Mr Beaton, I think, was my great-grandfather, great-grandmamma,’ Alice breathed softly. ‘My father’s name, you know, was John – John Cheyney.’

  ‘Ah well, your great-grandfather, to be sure,’ said the old lady. ‘I never pay much attention to dates. And has anything been happening lately?’

  ‘Happening, great-grandmamma?’ echoed Alice.

  ‘Beyond?’ said the old lady. ‘In the world?’

  Poor Alice; she knew well the experience of nibbling a pen over impossible questions in history examinations, but this was far worse than any she had ever encountered.

  ‘There, you see!’ continued her godmother. ‘I hear of the wonderful things they are doing, and yet when I ask a simple question like that no one has anything to say. Have you travelled on one of these steam railway trains yet? Locomotives?’

  ‘I came that way this afternoon, great-grandmamma.’

  ‘Ah, I thought you looked a little flushed. The smoke must be most disagreeable.’

  Alice smiled. ‘No, thank you,’ she said kindly.

  ‘And how is Queen Victoria?’ said the old lady. ‘She is still alive?’

  ‘Oh yes, great-grandmamma. And that is just, of course, what has been happening. It’s her Diamond Jubilee this year – sixty years – you know.’

  ‘H’m,’ said the old lady. ‘Sixty. George III reigned sixty-three. But they all go in time. I remember my dear father coming up to my nursery after the funeral of poor young Edward VI. He was one of the Court pages, you know – that is, when Henry VIII was King. Such a handsome lad – there is his portrait … somewhere.’

  For a moment Alice’s mind was a whirlpool of vague memories – memories of what she had read in her history-books.

  But Miss Cheyney’s bead-like notes had hardly paused. ‘You must understand that I have not asked you to come this long way by one of those horrid new-fangled steam-engines just to gossip about my childhood. Kings and Queens come and go like the rest of things. And though I have seen many changes, it seems to me the world is pretty much the same as ever. Nor can I believe that the newspaper is a beneficial novelty. When I was a girl we managed well enough without, and even in Mr Addison’s day one small sheet twice a week was enough. But there, complaint is useless. And you cannot exactly be held responsible for all that. There were changes in my girlhood, too – great changes. The world was not so crowded then. There was nobility and beauty. Yes.’ Her eyes wandered, to rest a moment on the portrait of the young woman in the primrose gown. ‘The truth is, my dear,’ she continued, ‘I have to tell you something, and I wish you to listen.’