Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  Once more she remained silent a moment, clutching the handkerchief she held between her fingers. ‘What I desire you to tell me,’ she said at last, leaning stealthily forward in her great chair, ‘what I am anxious that you should tell me is, How long do you wish to live?’

  For a few moments Alice sat cold and motionless. It was as if an icy breath straight from the North Pole had swept across the room, congealing with its horror the very air. Her eyes wandered vacantly from picture to picture, from ancient object to ancient object – aged, mute and lifeless – to rest at last on a flowering weed that reared its head beyond one of the diamond-shaped panes of glass in the window.

  ‘I have never thought of that, great-grandmamma,’ her dry lips whispered. ‘I don’t think I know.’

  ‘Well, I am not expecting an old head on young shoulders,’ retorted the old lady. ‘Perhaps if King Charles had realized that – so learned, so generous, so faithful a monarch – I doubt if that vulgar creature Oliver Cromwell would ever have succeeded in having his off.’

  The acorn chin drew down into its laces like a snail into its shell. Until this moment Alice might have been conversing with an exquisite image, or an automaton – the glittering eyes, the crooked fingers, the voice from afar. But now it seemed a new life was stirring in it. The tiny yet piercing tones sank almost to a whisper, the head stirred furtively from side to side as if to be sure no eavesdropper were within earshot.

  ‘Now listen close to me, my child: I have a secret. A secret which I wish to share only with you. You would suppose, wouldn’t you, that this being the three-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of my natal day’ – and at this the dreadful realization suddenly swept over Alice that she had quite forgotten to wish her godmother ‘Many happy returns’ – ‘you might suppose that you are about to meet a gay and numerous company here – young and happy creatures like yourself. But no: not so. Even your dear mother is, of course, only my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter-in-law. She was a Miss Wilmot, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, Woodcot, great-grandmamma,’ said Alice softly.

  ‘Well, Woodcot,’ said the old lady; ‘it is no matter. It is you, my child, whom I have made, to be precise, my chosen. In mere men I take no interest. Not only that, but you must now be of the age I was when the portrait you see on yonder wall was painted. It is the work of a pupil of Hans Holbein’s. Hans Holbein himself, I believe, was dead at the time. Dear me, child, I remember sitting for that portrait in this very room – as if it were yesterday. It was much admired by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, you may remember, came to so unhappy an end. That was, I recollect, in my early seventies. My father and his father were boys together in Devonshire.’

  Alice blinked a little – she could not turn her eyes away from her godmother’s – that mammet-like face, those minute motionless hands.

  ‘Now glance at that picture, please!’ the old lady bade her, pointing a tiny crooked-up forefinger towards the further wall. ‘Do you see any resemblance?’

  Alice looked long and steadily at the portrait. But she had neither the courage nor vanity to deny that the fair smiling features were at least a little like her own. ‘To whom, great-grandmamma?’ Alice whispered.

  ‘“To whom?” Well, well, well!’ came the reply, the words sounding like the chiming of a distant silver bell. ‘I see it. I see it … But never mind that now. Did you perhaps look at this house as you made your way up the avenue?’

  ‘Oh yes, great-grandmamma – though I couldn’t, of course, look close, you know,’ Alice managed to say.

  ‘Did you enjoy its appearance?’

  ‘I don’t think I thought of that,’ said Alice. ‘The trees and park were very lovely. I have never seen such – mature trees, great-grandmamma. And yet all their leaves were budding and some were fully out. Isn’t it wonderful for trees so – so long in the world to – why, to come out at all?’

  ‘I was referring to the house,’ said the old lady. ‘Springs nowadays are not what they used to be. They have vanished from the England I once knew. I remember once an April when angels were seen on the hilltops above London. But that is no matter for us now: not now. The house?’

  Once again Alice’s gaze wandered – to come to rest again on the green, nodding weed at the window.

  ‘It is a very very quiet house,’ she said.

  The childlike tones died between the thick stone walls; and a profound silence followed them, like that of water in a well. Meanwhile, as Alice fully realized, her godmother had been fixedly searching her face with her remote but intent eyes. It was as if Time itself were only a child and that of this aged face he had made his little secret gazebo.

  ‘Now please listen to me very carefully,’ she continued at last. ‘Such a countenance as yours – one bearing the least resemblance to that portrait over there, must be the possessor of a fair share of wits. I am old enough, my child, not to be charged, I hope, with the folly of vanity. In my girlhood I enjoyed a due share of admiration. And I have a proposal to make to you which will need all the sagacity you are capable of. Don’t be alarmed. I have every faith in you. But first, I want you to go into the next room, where you will find a meal prepared. Young people nowadays, I hear, need continuous nourishment. What wonder! Since they have forgotten all the manners of a lady as I know them, and are never still for a moment together. What wonder! With all these dreadful machines I hear of, the discontent, the ignorance and folly, the noise and unrest and confusion. In my young days the poor were the poor and the humble the humble, my child; and knew their place. In my young days I would sit contented for hours at a time over a simple piece of embroidery. And if I needed it, my mother never deigned to spare the rod. But there, I didn’t invite you to visit an old woman merely to listen to a sermon. When you have refreshed yourself you are to take a little walk through the house. Go wherever you please; look well about you; no one will disturb you. And in an hour’s time come back to me here again. Nowadays I take a little sleep in the afternoon. I shall be ready for you then …’

  Alice, with a relief beyond words, rose from her chair. She curtsied again towards the small, motionless figure in the distance, and retired through the dark oak door.

  The room in which she at once found herself was small, hexagonal, and panelled with the blackest of old oak. A copper candelabrum hung from the dark moulded ceiling, and beyond the leaded panes she could see the gigantic trees in the park. To her dismay the footman who had accompanied the butler into the room when her godmother had first made her appearance, was stationed behind the chair at the table. Never had Alice supposed that it was proper for men-servants, except perhaps gardeners, to wear long grey beards. But there he was, with his dim sidling eyes. And she must needs turn her back on him to seat herself at the table. She nibbled the fruit and bread, the rich cake and the sweetmeats which he presented in their heavy silver dishes, and she sipped her sweet drink. But it was a hasty and nervous meal, and she tasted nothing of what she had eaten.

  As soon as it was over, the servant opened the door for her, and she began her voyage of discovery through the great, deserted house. It was as if her very ghost were her only company. Never had solitude so oppressed her, never before had she been so intensely aware of being wide awake and yet dreaming. The long corridors, the low and crooked lintelled doors, the dark uneven floors, their Persian mats, their tapestries and hangings, only the lovelier in that their colours had been dimmed by so many suns, the angled flights of stairs, the solemn air that brooded between the walls, the multitude of pictures, the huge beds, the endless succession of superannuated coffers, daybeds, cabinets – all this in but a few minutes had tired and fatigued Alice far more even than the long journey from the home of her childhood that morning. Upstairs and downstairs, on she wandered for all the world like the goosey-goosey-gander of the old nursery rhyme.

  And when at last with a sigh she glanced at the bright little silver watch which had been her mother’s birthday gift, its slender hands told her
that she had still a full quarter-of-an-hour before she need return to her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother’s room.

  That into which she had now admitted herself seemed to be a small library. Its walls were ranged from ceiling to floor with old leather and lambskin folios and quartos and squat duodecimos, while between them hung portraits and the loveliest miniatures and medallions of scores upon scores of persons who she guessed must be her ancestors and ancestresses of goodness knows how many monarchs ago.

  One or two of the pictures, indeed, as the crabbed inscriptions showed, had been gifts to the family from those monarchs themselves. In their various costumes, wigs, turbans and furbelows they looked as if they must have been the guests at an immense fancy-dress ball.

  What tho Felicitie befal?

  Time makyth shadowes of us all.

  In this room a low recess filled the shallow bow window and on this lay a strip of tapestry. The leaded pane of the window was open. The sun was already westering, its beams slanting in on the gilt and ebony and ivory of the frames suspended from their nails. Alice knelt down at the window; and her mind slipped into a daydream, and her gaze wandered far away over the golden budding tops of the enormous oaks, the flat dark outstretched motionless palms of the cedars – perhaps descendants of those which Sir Philip Sidney had brought home to his beloved England from the east.

  The thoughts that had all day been skittering in her mind like midges over a pool gradually fell still, and she sank deeper and deeper into the hush that lay over the ancient house. It was as if its walls were those of an enormous diving-bell sunken beyond measure in an unfathomable ocean of Time. So tranquil was the sweet April air beyond the window that she could actually detect the sound of the browsing of the herd of fallow deer that had now closely approached the lawns of the house itself.

  And as, lost in this reverie, she sat entranced, she became conscious that a small living animal – the like of which she had never seen before – had crept up within a pace or two of her on the window-sill, and was now steadily regarding her with its clear bead-brown eyes. In size it was rather larger than a mole, its dark thick fur was soft as a beaver’s, and it had a short, furry, and tufted tail. Its ears were cocked on its head, its silvery whiskers turned downwards above its jaws, and Alice could see its tiny ivory claws as it sat there erect on its haunches like a tame cat or a dog begging for a titbit of meat. Alice, alas, had nothing to offer her visitor, not even a cherry-stone, not even a crumb.

  ‘Well, you pretty thing,’ she whispered, ‘what is it?’

  The creature’s whiskers moved ever so slightly, its eyes fixed more intently than ever on the face of this strange visitor. Very very delicately Alice thrust out her finger, and to her astonishment found herself gently caressing the furry nose. ‘It was as if I was in Wonderland, myself,’ she explained long afterwards to her mother. Perfectly mute and still, the owner of it seemed to enjoy this little courtesy. And when she had withdrawn her finger, it looked at her more closely and searchingly than ever, as if bidding her take heed. It then tapped repeatedly with its ivory-clawed paw on the oak casement, glanced searchingly at her yet again, then shook its furry head vehemently three times, paused, turned swiftly about and pattered away into hiding behind a huge carved Moorish cabinet before Alice could so much as bid it adieu.

  Quiet little events in this life, even though we cannot understand what exactly they mean, are apt to seem to mean a great deal. So with this small animal and Alice. It was as if – though she was not aware of it – she had been brooding over a problem in Algebra or a proposition in Euclid, and it had ventured out of its living-place to tell her the answer. How fantastic a notion? – when Alice knew neither the problem nor what its solution was.

  She glanced at her watch once more; her fair cheeks pinking all over at realizing that she was now ten minutes late for her assignation with her godmother. She must be gone. Nonetheless, she had time to look her farewell at the huge dreaming park before she set out on her return journey.

  Before at last finding her way, however, she irretrievably lost it. For the house was a silent maze of deceptive passages and corridors. Every fresh attempt only increased her confusion, and then suddenly she found herself looking into a room utterly different from any she had yet seen. Its low walls were of stone, its dusty windows shuttered; it contained nothing but a chair. And in that chair sat what appeared to be the life-size image of the smiling lovely creature she had seen in the portrait – eyes shut, cheeks a faint rose, hair still shimmering with gold, the hands laid idly in her lap, the fingers of one of them clutching what seemed to be the dried-up fragments of a bunch of roses. What there was to alarm her in this harmless image she could not tell; but she gazed awhile at it in horror, closed-to the door and ran off as if pursued by a nightmare, down one corridor and up another, to find herself at last by good fortune once more in the room where she had had her meal. It seemed, as she stood there, her hand upon her breast, as if she would never again recover her breath. She was no longer nervous; no longer merely timid: she was afraid. ‘If only, if only I had never come to this house!’ was her one terrified thought.

  She discovered with relief on re-entering Miss Cheyney’s presence that her godmother was still asleep. Alice could see awhile without being seen.

  Now one of her mother’s brothers – one of Alice’s uncles, that is – was an old bachelor who delighted in birthday gifts. Alice had therefore been richer in dolls than most children: wooden, wax, china, Dutch, French, Russian, and even one from the Andaman Islands. But no single one of them had shown a face so utterly still and placid as that now leaning gently aside in its lace and silver cap and mantle. There was no expression whatever on its features. No faintest smile; no shadow of a frown. And yet, the tiny wrinkles all over it, crooking down even from the brows over the eyelids, gave it the appearance of an exquisitely figured map.

  And Alice was still surveying it as closely as some old treasure-hunter might the chart of his secret island, when the minute eyes re-opened and her godmother was instantly awake and intent.

  ‘Ah,’ whispered she, ‘I have myself been on a long journey, but I heard you calling. What happens, I wonder,’ and the tones sank lower, ‘what happens when one has ventured on too far to hear any such rumours? Answer me that, eh? But no matter. There is a more important question first. Tell me now, if you please, what you think of my house.’

  Alice moistened her lips. ‘That, great-grandmamma,’ she managed to reply at last, ‘that would take ages. It is marvellous: but oh, so very still.’

  ‘What should there be to disturb it?’ asked the old lady.

  Alice shook her head.

  ‘Tell me,’ and her voice tinkled across the air with a peculiar little tang, ‘would you like this house for your own?’

  ‘This house – for my own?’ breathed the young girl.

  ‘Ay, for your own, and for always – humanly speaking.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Alice.

  The little head leaned sidelong like an inquisitive bird’s.

  ‘Naturally, my child. You cannot until I have gone a little further. The gift I am now offering you is one that few human beings in this world conceive to be possible. It is not merely this house, my child, with all that it contains – much as that may be. It is life. My father, you must understand, was a traveller; and in days when danger was a man’s constant companion. In this very room on his return from a many years’ journey, he told me as a girl of a dismal mountainous region of snow and ice and precipices that lies there – west of China, I believe. It was from thence that he brought back his secret. It was one that for grievous and tragical reasons he could not follow himself. And I, my child, was his only choice. You will realize there may come a day when the wish to live on may have somewhat dimmed in my mind. I confess to feeling a little weariness at times. But before I go, it is my privilege – my obligation – to confer the secret on another. Look at me!’ The voice ros
e a little; it was as though a wren had uttered its shrill song in the low resounding room. ‘I am offering this inestimable benefit to you.’

  Alice sat straight as a dart in her chair, not venturing to turn her eyes aside even for a moment.

  ‘The secret, great-grandmamma?’

  ‘Aye,’ continued the old woman, closing her eyes, ‘you heard me aright. I will presently whisper it into your ear. Imagine, my child, the wonder of infinite time! Imagine a life in such surroundings as these, far from all the follies and vexations of the world – and one fear – the most terrible of all fears – gone, or at any rate so remote as to be of no consequence. Imagine that, I say.’

  For an instant Alice’s gaze wavered. Her eyes glanced swiftly towards the window where shone the swiftly changing colours of the sunset; where sang the wild birds, and spring was fleeting on its way.

  ‘Take your own time: and do not be afraid of me. I shall make few conditions. Only that you must vow silence, to breathe not one syllable of what I shall tell you – not even to your own mother. All else will be easy – comparatively easy. All else. You will come here and live with me. Rooms are prepared for you – books, music, horses to ride, servants to wait on you, all that you need. And in due season this house, this accumulation of things precious and old and beautiful, this wide park stretching for many more miles than you can see from my topmost windows, will be yours alone. You may pine for a while for old friends. It is an unhappy thing to say good-bye, as I have heard. But all fades, all goes. And in time you will not wish for company. Servants as aged as mine are not difficult to find; they are discreet, and have need to remain faithful. We shall have many a quiet talk together. I have much to tell you. I long, my dear child, to share memories with you that I have never breathed to a living soul. There are wings to this house into which you cannot have penetrated, simply because they are shut off by bolts and bars. They contain much to see: much to linger over; much to wonder at. Yes, and my dear child, in you I should live on – our two minds … two lives. Tell me now, what do you think of my proposal? And remember this: Not even Solomon in all his glory could have conferred on you what I now offer.’