Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  ‘I never breathed so much as a single syllable, though if you were to ask me why, I couldn’t say. It’s just like small boys, I suppose; and small girls too, eh? They are dumplings, but keep the apple to themselves.’

  ‘I think I’d have told just you, Uncle Tim,’ said Letitia. ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘Two whole days went by before I ventured near the field again, though I doubt if an hour passed without my thinking of it. The birds in my memory seemed now to be stranger, wilder and lovelier creatures than I had ever realized. I even set free the two I had in small wooden cages – a linnet and a chaffinch – and for a while thought no more of traps and snaring. I loafed about wondering if all that I had seen might not have been mere fancy.

  ‘And then on the third evening, I was so ashamed of myself that I determined to go down to the edge of the woods again and keep watch. This time I made my way to the upper corner of the field by the larch plantation, all in its fresh young green. It was there, as I supposed, I had seen the fairy vanish. The pheasants were crowing in their coverts, and the last birds were at evensong. I crept in between some elder bushes, and having made myself comfortable took out a little red and brass pocket telescope which my father had given me. Through this I hoped to be able to see clearly everything that might happen near Old Joe. It would bring him as close as if I could touch him with my hand. But when I came to put the telescope to my eye I found that one of the lenses was broken.

  ‘It was a little later in the evening than on my first visit, and though the skies were still burning, the sun had set. But my legs were all pins and needles, and my eyes nearly gone black with staring on and on, before I saw anything out of the common.

  ‘And then, Letitia, all of a sudden I knew not only that the fairy was there again but also that again she was aware she was being watched. Yes, and though I had seen not the least stir or motion in Old Joe, she had already stolen out of her hiding-place and was steadily and openly gazing across the first faint green flush of the sprouting wheat in my direction. I held my breath and tried in vain to keep myself from shivering.

  ‘For a moment or two she hesitated, then turned as before, and sped away, but now towards the very thorn tree from which I had first spied out on her. I was bitterly disappointed, angry and – well, I suppose it would be a queer boy who had nothing of the old hunter in him. It was clear she was pitting her wits against mine. And just as, though I was devoted to the wild birds, I would sometimes shake my fist at them and almost howl with rage when I saw one steal my bait without falling into the trap I had set, so I felt now.

  ‘But I was stiff and aching, and it was too late to attempt to try and intercept her now. You wait! thought I to myself, next time we’ll see who’s craftiest. So I shut up my telescope, brushed the dead leaves from my clothes, stayed till life came back into my leg, and then rather sulkily went home.

  ‘That night was still and warm though April was not over yet. And while I was undressing a full moon began to rise. In spite of the candlelight I could see it shining through my bedroom blind. I blew out my candle, drew up the blind and looked out of the window, and the world looked as if it were enchanted – like an old serpent that has sloughed its skin. It seemed the moon shed silence as well as light. And though I was there in my old friend Mrs Lumb’s familiar house – wood and brick and stone – it was as if no human being had ever looked out of her window like this before. And – even better, Letitia. The same feeling came over me when I had first caught sight of that Old Joe, there. Just as the fairy had been aware of me watching her in the fields, so I was sure now that she was concealing herself not very far from the house and – watching my window.’

  ‘It does seem odd, Uncle Tim,’ said Letitia. ‘Isn’t that curious! I know exactly what you mean. It’s just as if there were things in the air, telling people, isn’t it! And did – did you go out?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Letitia, no. I didn’t. I didn’t dare to, though it was not because I was afraid. No; I stood watching at the window until presently a bird began to sing, out of the warm hollow darkness away from the moon. It may have been a nightingale, as there was a hurst or thicket of common land not far from the house which was the resort of nightingales in the summer. Still, it was very early in the year. The song I heard was fully as sweet and musical as theirs, and yet it seemed less the song of a bird than – well, than even the song of a nightingale seems. A strange happiness and mournfulness came over me, listening to it. And even when I got to bed it was a long time before the echo of it had faded out in memory, and I fell asleep.

  ‘Can it have been, do you think, that the fairy was beseeching me not to come to her haunts any more? I can’t tell. But in my stupidity I persisted in persecuting her, just as I had persisted in persecuting the birds. I was too stupid, you see, to realize that my company in her field might be as disquieting to her as it would be for us if, when we had a few nice solid friends to tea, she came too.’

  ‘Oh, Uncle Tim, if only she would! Then we wouldn’t ask a single soul to tea for months and months and months. Would we?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Bolsover. ‘But it’s no good denying it, she wouldn’t. They don’t. We ourselves may wish, even pine, to see them; but I don’t think, Letitia, they pine to see us. And I am quite sure she didn’t want a clod-hopping, bird-trapping boy spying about in her field. Old Joe was not only roof and house, but company enough; and her own solitude.

  ‘Nonetheless, my dear, I met her face to face. And this is how it happened. It was the day before I had to go home again, and two or three other visits to the field had been entirely in vain. I could tell by now almost at a glance at Old Joe whether she was here or not. Just as you could tell at a glance at me if I were here or not. I don’t mean merely my body and bones – eyes, nose, boots and so on; but the me which is really and truly – well, just me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Letitia.

  ‘Well, she never was. And this particular evening I was in as black and sullen a temper as a small boy can be. I was full of aches and pains owing no doubt to my being so stupid as to lie on the ground under the bushes after rain. Night after night too, I had lain awake for hours. It seemed that the fairy had forsaken the field. It seemed that all my cunning and curiosity and hope and longing had been in vain. I scowled at Old Joe as if he were to blame. Just vanity and stupidity.

  ‘Besides, my old friend Mrs Lumb had discovered somehow that I was creeping late into the house while she was at dinner; and though she never scolded me, it was quite easy to know when she was displeased at anything. And she could smile at you with her nice red apple-dumpling cheeks and black eyes, and be pretty tart of tongue at the same time.’

  ‘There’s a mistress at school,’ cried Letitia, ‘called Miss Jennings that’s just like that; though she’s not very fat. At least, not yet. And then? … You saw her, Uncle Tim?’

  ‘Yes, I saw her – face to face. I was making my way back through the copse at the upper corner of the field where two hedges met at the end of a narrow green lane. And as I came stumping along I suddenly went cold all over, and I firmly believe my cap had pushed itself up a little on the top of my head, owing to the hair underneath it trying to stand on end.

  ‘I can’t even tell you what she was wearing, but as I recall her at this moment it was as if she were veiled about with a haze like that of a full moon – like bluebells at a little distance in a dingle of a wood. That may or may not be, but I quite clearly saw her face, for I was staring steadily into her eyes. They too were blue, like the blue of flames in a wood fire, especially when there is salt in it, or the wood has come from some old ship, with copper in it. Her hair was hanging on either side her head in a long strand from brow to chin, and down the narrow shoulder. All else in the world I had completely forgotten. I was alone, an ugly small awkward human animal looking, as if into a dream, into those strange unearthly eyes.

  ‘There was not the smallest movement between us; not the least stir in her face that she
knew me or recognized me or reproached me or feared me. But as I looked – how can I possibly describe it? – there did come a faint far-away change in her eyes. It was as though while you might be looking out to sea some summer’s evening from a high window or from the edge of a cliff, a flight of distant sea-birds should appear out of the blue and vanish into it again. We poor mortals can smile with our eyes only – and that’s a much better smile than with the lips only. But not like that. This was her way of smiling at me. Just as the angels on the ladder might have had their way of smiling at Jacob – with his sleeping head on the stone. And I doubt if they smile often. It told me in my heart of hearts that she was not unfriendly to me; and yet that she was entreating me to come no more and trespass near her lair. What she was doing in this world, how much alone she was, and where and with whom she was when not in my parts, near Mrs Lumb’s, I can’t say. All she was telling me was that she meant me no harm but begged me not to spy on her or watch her any more. After all, what right had I to do so – quite apart from manners? And then she was gone.’

  ‘Oh, gone!’ said Letitia, and stooped her head suddenly.

  ‘You see, it was easy to take hiding in the evening shadow of the woods, and the field hedges were dense. Yes, she was gone, my dear, and I have never seen her since, nor anything resembling her … But there, as I have said already,’ added old Mr Bolsover, ‘you can’t call that a story.’ He was blinking at his small niece like an owl caught out in the morning sun. Letitia remained silent for a few moments.

  ‘But I do call it a story, Uncle Tim,’ she said at last. ‘And oh, how I wish … Still, it’s no good saying that. But then what about Old Joe, that Old Joe there, Uncle Tim?’

  ‘Ah, Old Joe! Him, the old rascal! The fact of the matter is I never forgot that evening. Years and years afterwards – and I must have been a young man by then – say twenty or so – I stayed a night or two with my old friend Mrs Lumb again. She, alas, was older too; and so no doubt was her cook. But that was the only difference. The first walk I took alone was to the field under the woods, and about the time of sunset. Would you believe it, there was Old Joe in his usual place, though the barley crop he was watching over that particular summer was now well above his knees. And whether it was because I myself was changed, or whether the fairy had long since forsaken her hiding-place, or whether really and truly he was merely her way of getting into and out of our world, who can say?

  ‘However that may be, Old Joe looked’ – Mr Bolsover lowered his voice – ‘well precisely, Letitia, between you and me, as he looks now: a little vacant-like, empty, accustomed to being alone. He had brand-new clothes on then, too, standing up there in his barley, and an immeasurably old wide-brimmed hat, just the kind of hat that might once have belonged to old Mr Hiawatha Longfellow – the kind of hat, I mean, that nobody but a poet would wear, and not unless he had a long white beard to match. And what do you think I did?’

  ‘You didn’t go and steal him, Uncle Tim?’ whispered Letitia.

  ‘No, Letitia. What I can’t help thinking was much worse, I went and bought him,’ said Uncle Tim; ‘though “bought” is not the word I should say out loud. I went straight off to the old farmer – old Farmer Jones – still as stout as he used to be, but with his whiskers all gone grey, and asked him how much he would take for his hodmadod in the barley field, just as a curiosity. I told him I had known Old Joe as a boy, that there was an old friendship between us. There sat the old farmer in his great wheel-back chair in his kitchen – as fat as a porpoise, with his large mulberry-red face and eyes like bits of agate. He sat there merely staring at me for a time, as if he thought I was a lunatic.

  ‘“Well, that’s a good ’un,” he said at last. And what do you think he charged?’

  Letitia pondered, her eyes fixed on the grass at her feet, though they were blinking so fast she couldn’t have been thinking very clearly. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘five pounds would be a good deal, wouldn’t it, Uncle Tim? Even for Old Joe? Though of course,’ she added, as if old Mr Bolsover had suddenly gone much further off, ‘even then it would be ’strordinarily cheap.’

  ‘No. Guess again, my dear. Nothing like five pounds! Nothing like tuppence, even. “Give me a pipe of that plug baccy of yours,” said the old farmer, “and he’s yours for ever.”’

  ‘So mine he was. And I’m glad it wasn’t money.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Letitia. ‘Baccy doesn’t hurt your feelings, Uncle Tim, I suppose; does it? And … and you never saw the – the fairy again?’

  ‘In a way of speaking,’ old Mr Bolsover replied, ‘I have never, Letitia, really seen anything else. It’s a question of what one means exactly by “seeing”, I suppose. Words are no use. It can’t be done, can it?’

  Letitia shook her head violently. ‘No, Uncle Tim, it can’t be done,’ she said, and fell silent again.

  The low wide-windowed house, with its jasmine and clematis, crouched in the light and heat of the sun, as if it had been listening all this while. Tiny butterflies, like pale scraps of the blue sky, were circling and flitting over the flowers. The bells from their belfry in the stone tower of the village church, muffled by the leafy woods between, sounded sweet and solemn in the summer air. It was so still the great world might have stopped spinning.

  And there, half in shadow of his grey-green willows, black in his old clothes, shocking hat over one eyebrow and one lank arm aloft, stood the scarecrow; and never stirred. Nor did he seem to be wishing for company. Hiding-place he may have been once (as might a bee long ago have taken possession of old Mr Bolsover’s bonnet), but whatever visitor had come, had gone. Letitia turned her head at last to look up into the old man’s face.

  ‘What I believe myself, Uncle Tim,’ she began again, in a voice so low it was almost as if she were talking to herself, ‘what I believe myself, and I am sure you won’t mind my saying so – I believe it was almost as if you must have fallen in love with that fairy. Was that it, Uncle Tim, do you think?’

  ‘Ah!’ replied old Mr Bolsover, and sat there blinking in the sunlight. Then, ‘Goodness me!’ he muttered almost as if to himself, ‘I can smell that apple charlotte now, even above the pinks! … I’ll tell you what, Letitia. It’s high time we stirred our stumps. We’ll go over and ask Old Joe! …’

  * As printed in CSC (1947), where it was given this title. It was first published as ‘Old Joe’ in Number Three Joy Street, Oxford 1925. In LF (1933) it was called ‘Hodmadod’ and in The Scarecrow and Other Stories (1945) ‘The Scarecrow or Hodmadod’.

  The Old Lion*

  There was once a sailor of the name of John Bumps. He had bright blue eyes and wore gold rings in his ears. Although, when this story begins, Mr Bumps was still quite young, he had three children – Topsy, Emmanuel and Kate – who lived with their mother in a nice little house with square windows in Portsmouth, and he had often been round the world. He had sailed into most of its ports in all kinds of weather; and there was scarcely an island of great beauty or marvel that he couldn’t tick off on his tarry fingers.

  Now one day, a little the right side of the rainy season, he came again to the west coast of Africa. His ship, The Old Lion – and he was her second-mate – had been sailing south down that great coast, past the Canaries and the Green Islands, past the Ivory and the Gold and the Slave Coasts to Banana and the noble Congo; and not long after that Mr Bumps went ashore. He was paddled up the river Quanza, dark and green, past Dondo, to visit an old friend. And there in a village of the black men, for two green-and-red bead necklaces and a jack-knife, he bought a monkey.

  Mr Bumps had now and then bought other monkeys, and he knew this was a high price for one in that part of the country. But his friend, the Chief of the Mlango-Nlango tribe, who was exceedingly fat, and wore two blankets besides his beads and ivories, assured Mr Bumps that this was no ordinary monkey.

  The Chief’s round black face, with its two rows of flashing teeth, broke into an immense smile as he told Mr Bumps this. ‘Ee no skittle-ska
ttle monk-ee, no,’ he said, for he had often traded with the English. ‘Ee …,’ but instead of finishing the sentence, he shut his eyes and put one black hand on the top of his head, though what exactly he meant Mr Bumps could not tell. At first glimpse of the monkey, however, Mr Bumps had known at once that whatever pleasant things the Chief might say of it they would be true. Besides, the Chief was an old friend of his, and wouldn’t tell him lies.

  On the other hand, since the hairy little fellow stood an inch or so under the common stature of monkeys of its kind, it was of no great size, and there was nothing else remarkable that showed – not then. As Mr Bumps held it on his arm, in its long-skirted crimson coat, which one of the Chief’s wives had made out of the royal cloth, it sat far less heavy indeed than would his younger daughter, Kate. And she herself was very small for her age.

  But it had a neat, pretty head, wonderfully slender hands and long thumbs, and as it turned its solemn hazel eyes on Mr Bumps, he suddenly felt acutely homesick. He had been more than once more than half round the world without feeling that. ‘It’s no good longing,’ he would say, ‘when you’ve got to wait.’

  And then something which Mr Bumps had not expected at all happened. It was this. His eyes, as has been said already, were of a particularly bright blue, and as the blue of his blue eyes met the gazing hazel of the monkey’s, the creature stirred on his arm, opened its mouth, and made a remark. Mr Bumps had never paid much attention to foreign tongues, and he did not understand what it said. Nevertheless, he knew what it meant. He knew for certain that the tiny liquid syllables which had issued from the small mouth were a message from friend to friend.

  He bade a cheerful good-bye to the Chief, kissed his hand to the black lady who had brought the monkey into his hut, and went off again down to the river. He took aboard The Old Lion a good store of nuts, bananas, and other fruit; and as that evening he looked back at the coast, shining in the last of the sun – and The Old Lion was now some miles out to sea – he turned to his monkey and said, ‘How do you like the sound of the name of Jasper, sonny?’