Short Stories for Children Page 10

  This unmannerly conduct could be ignored no longer. Poor Miss Chauncey raised herself in her sheets, pulled her nightcap a little closer down over her ears, and, thrusting out her hand towards the chair beside the bed, struck a match and relit her candle. It was with a real effort that she then slowly turned her head and faced her night-companion. His hair was bristling about his body as if he had had an electric shock. His whiskers stood out at stiff angles with his jaws. He looked at least twice his usual size, and his eyes blazed in his head, as averting his face from her regard he gave vent to a low sustained Miariou-rou-rou-rou!

  ‘I say you shall not,’ cried Miss Chauncey at the creature. At the sound of her words, he turned slowly and confronted her. And it seemed that until that moment Miss Chauncey had never actually seen Sam’s countenance as in actual fact it really was. It was not so much the grinning tigerish look it wore, but the morose assurance in it not only of what he wanted but that he meant to get it.

  All thought of sleep was now out of the question. Miss Chauncey could be obstinate too. The creature seemed to shed an influence on the very air which she could hardly resist. She rose from her bed and thrusting on her slippers made her way to the window. Once more a peculiar inward cry broke out from the bedrail. She raised the blind and the light of the moon from over the moor swept in upon her little apartment. And when she turned to remonstrate with her pet at his ingratitude, and at all this unseemliness and the deceit of his ways, there was something so menacing and stubborn and ferocious in his aspect that Miss Chauncey hesitated no more.

  ‘Well, mark me!’ she cried in a trembling voice, ‘go out of the door you shan’t. But if you enjoy soot, soot it shall be.’

  With that she thrust back the register with the poker and drew down the bundle of ticking with the tongs. Before the fit of coughing caused by the smotheration that followed had ceased, the lithe black shape had sprung from the bedrail, and with a scramble was into the hearth, over the firebars, up the chimney, and away.

  Trembling from head to foot, Miss Chauncey sat down on a cane rocking-chair that stood handy to reflect what next she must be doing. Wh-ssh! Wh-ssh! Again at the window came that mysterious rushing sound; but now, the flurrying murmur as of a rocket shooting up with its fiery train of sparks thinning into space, rather than the sound of its descending stick. And then in the hush that followed, there sounded yet again, like a yell of triumph from the foot of the garden, a caterwauling piercing and sonorous enough to arouse every sleeping cock in the Haggurdsdon hen-roosts, and for miles around. Out of the distance their chanticleering broke shrill on the night air; to be followed a moment afterwards by the tardy clang of midnight from the church steeple. Then once more, silence; utter quiet. Miss Chauncey returned to her bed, but that night slept no more.

  Her mind overflowed with unhappy thoughts. Her faith in Sam was gone. Far worse, she had lost faith even in her affection for him. To have wasted that! All the sprats, all the whitebait in the wide, wide seas were as nothing by comparison. That Sam had wearied of her company was at last beyond question. It shamed her to think how much this meant to her – a mere animal! But she knew what was gone; knew how dull and spiritless the day’s round would seem – the rising, the housework, the meals, her toilet in the afternoon, her evening slippers, book or knitting, a dish of tea, her candle, prayers, bed. On and on. In what wild company was her cat, Sam, now? At her own refusal to answer this horrid question, it was as if she had heard the hollow clanging slam of an immense iron door.

  Next morning – still ruminating on these strange events, grieved to the heart at this dreadful rift between herself and one who had been her trusted companion for so many years; ashamed too that Sam should have had his way with her when she had determined not to allow him to go out during the night – next morning Miss Chauncey, as if merely to take a little exercise, once again ventured down to the foot of her garden. A faint, blurred mark (such as she had seen on the previous evening) in the black mould of what might be a footprint is nothing very much. But now – in the neglected patch beyond the bushes of whitethorn and bramble – there could be no doubt in the world – appeared many strange marks. And surely no cats’ paw-prints these! Of what use, indeed, to a cat could a crutch or a staff be? A staff or a crutch which – to judge from the impression it had left in the mould – must have been at least as thick as a broomstick.

  More disquieted and alarmed than ever over this fresh mystery, Miss Chauncey glanced up and back towards the chimney pots of the house clearly and sharply fretted against the morning light of the eastern skies. And she realized what perils even so sure-footed a creature as Sam had faced when he skirred up out of the chimney in his wild effort to emerge into the night. Having thus astonishingly reached the rim of the chimney – the wild burning stars above and the wilderness of the moor spread out far beneath and around him – he must have leaped from the top of the low pot to a narrow brick ledge not three inches wide. Thence on to the peak of the roof and thence down a steep, slippery slope of slates to a leaden gutter.

  And how then? The thick tod of ivy, matting the walls of the house, reached hardly more than halfway up. Could Sam actually have plunged from gutter to tod? The very thought of such a peril drew Miss Chauncey’s steps towards the house again, in the sharpest anxiety to assure herself that he was still in the land of the living.

  And lo and behold, when she was but halfway on her journey, she heard a succession of frenzied yelps and catcalls in the air from over the Moor. Hastily placing a flowerpot by the wall, she stood on tiptoe and peered over. And even now, at this very moment, in full flight across the nearer slope of the Moor, she descried her Sam, not now in chase of a foolishly trustful visitor, but hotly pursued by what appeared to be the complete rabblement of Haggurdsdon’s cats. Sore spent though he showed himself to be, Sam was keeping his distance. Only a few lank tabby cats, and what appeared to be a grey-ginger Manx (unless he was an ordinary cat with his tail chopped off) were close behind.

  ‘Sam! Sam!’ Miss Chauncey cried, and yet again, ‘Sam!’ but in her excitement and anxiety her foot slipped on the flowerpot and in an instant the feline chase had fallen out of sight. Gathering herself together again, she clutched a long besom or garden broom that was leaning against the wall, and rushed down to the point at which she judged Sam would make his entrance into the garden. She was not mistaken, nor an instant too soon. With a bound he was up and over, and in three seconds the rabble had followed, in vehement pursuit.

  What came after Miss Chauncey could never very clearly recall. She could but remember plying her besom with might and main amid this rabble and mellay of animals, while Sam, no longer a fugitive, turned on his enemies and fought them man to man. Nonetheless, it was by no means an easy victory. And had not the over-fatted cur from the butcher’s in Haggurdsdon – which had long since started in pursuit of this congregation of his enemies – had he not at last managed to overtake them, the contest might very well have had a tragic ending. But at sound of his baying, and at sight of teeth fiercely snapping at them as he vainly attempted to surmount the wall, Sam’s enemies turned and fled in all directions. And faint and panting, Miss Chauncey was able to fling down her besom and to lean for a brief respite against the trunk of a tree.

  At last she opened her eyes again. ‘Well, Sam,’ she managed to mutter at last, ‘we got the best of them, then?’

  But to her amazement she found herself uttering these friendly words into a complete vacancy. The creature was nowhere to be seen. His cream disappeared during the day, however, and by an occasional rasping sound Miss Chauncey knew that he once more lay hidden in his dingy resort behind the kindling-wood box. There she did not disturb him.

  Not until tea-time of the following day did Sam reappear. And then – after attending to his hurts – it was merely to sit with face towards the fire, sluggish and sullen and dumb as a dog. It was not Miss Chauncey’s ‘place’ to make advances, she thought. She took no notice of the beast except to rub in a l
ittle hog’s-fat on the raw places of his wounds. She was rejoiced to find, however, that he kept steadily to Post Houses for the next few days, though her dismay was reawakened at hearing on the third night a more dismal wailing and wauling than ever from the sloe-bushes, even though Sam himself sat motionless beside the fire. His ears twitched; his fur bristled; he sneezed or spat but otherwise remained motionless.

  When Mr Cullings called again, Sam at once hid himself in the coal cellar, but gradually his manners towards Miss Chauncey began to recover their usual suavity. And within a fortnight after the full moon, the two of them had almost returned to their old friendly companionship. He was healed, sleek, confident and punctual. No intruder of his species had appeared from Haggurdsdon. The night noises had ceased. Post Houses to all appearance – apart from its strange ugliness – was as peaceful and calm as any other solitary domicile in the United Kingdom.

  But alas and alas. With the very first peeping of the crescent moon, Sam’s mood and habits began to change again. He mouched about with a sly and furtive eye. And when he fawned on his mistress, purring and clawing, the whole look of him was a picture of deceit. If Miss Chauncey chanced to enter the room wherein he sat, he would at once leap down from the window at which he had been perched as if in the attempt to prove that he had not been looking out of it. And once, towards evening, though she was no spy, she could not but pause at the parlour door. She had peeped through its crack as it stood ajar. And there on the hard sharp back of an old prie-dieu chair that had belonged to her pious great-aunt Miranda, sat Sam on his hind quarters. And without the least doubt in the world he was vigorously signalling to some observer outside with his forepaws. Miss Chauncey turned away sick at heart.

  From that hour on Sam more and more steadily ignored and flouted his mistress, was openly insolent, shockingly audacious. Mr Cullings gave her small help indeed. ‘If I had a cat, m’m, what had manners like that, after all your kindness, fresh fish and all every week, and cream, as I understand, not skim, I’d – I’d give him away.’

  ‘To whom?’ said poor Miss Chauncey.

  ‘Well,’ said the carrier, ‘I don’t know as how I’d much mind to who. Beggars can’t be choosers, m’m.’

  ‘He seems to have no friends in the village,’ said Miss Chauncey, in as light a tone as she could manage.

  ‘When they’re as black as that, with them saucer eyes, you can never tell,’ said Mr Cullings. ‘There’s that old trollimog what lives in Hogges Bottom. She’ve got a cat that might be your Sam’s twin.’

  ‘Indeed no, he has the mange,’ said Miss Chauncey, loyal to the end. The carrier shrugged his shoulders, climbed into his cart, and bowled away off over the Moor. And Miss Chauncey, returning to the house, laid the platter of silvery sprats on the table, sat down, and burst into tears.

  It was, then, in most ways a fortunate thing that the very next morning – five complete days, that is, before the next full-moon-tide – she received a letter from her sister-in-law in Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight, entreating her to pay them a long visit.

  ‘My dear Emma. You must sometimes be feeling very lonely [it ran] shut up in that grate house so far from any neighbours. We often think of you, and particularly these last few days. It’s very nice to have that Sam of yours for company, but after all, as George says, a pet’s only a pet. And we do all think it’s high time you took a little holiday with us. I am looking out of my window at this very moment. The sea is as calm as a mill-pond, a sollem beautiful blue. The fishing boats are coming in with their brown sails. This is the best time of the year with us, because the tripper season is drawing to a close and there are fewer of those horrid visitors to be seen, and no crowds. George says you must come. He joins with me in his love as would Maria if she weren’t out shoping, and will meet you at the station in the trap. And we shall all be looking forward to seeing you in a few days. Emmie is now free of her cough – only hooping when the memory takes her, and never sick. Yours affec., (Mrs) Gertrude Chauncey.’

  At this kindness, and with all her anxieties, Miss Chauncey all but broke down. When the butcher drove up in his cart an hour or two afterwards, he took a telegram for her back to the village, and on the Monday her box was packed, and all that remained was to put Sam in his basket in preparation for the journey. But I am bound to say it took more than the persuasions of his old protectress to accomplish this. Indeed Mr Cullings had actually to hold the creature down with gloved hands and none too gently, while Miss Chauncey pressed down the lid and pushed the skewer in to hold it close. ‘What’s done’s durned done,’ said the carrier, as he rubbed a pinch of earth into his scratches. ‘And what I says is, better done for ever. Mark my words, m’m!’

  Miss Chauncey took a shilling out of her large leather purse; but made no reply.

  Indeed, all this trouble proved at last in vain. Thirty miles distant from Haggurdsdon, at Blackmoor Junction, Miss Chauncey had to change trains. Her box and Sam’s basket were placed together on the station platform beside half a dozen empty milk-cans and some fowls in a crate, and Miss Chauncey went to make inquiries of the station-master in order to make sure of her platform.

  It was the furious panic-stricken cackling of these fowls that brought her hastily back to her belongings, only to find that by hook or by crook Sam had managed to push the skewer of the basket out of its cane loops. The wicker lid gaped open – the basket was empty. Indeed one poor gasping hen, its life fluttering away from its helpless body, was proof enough not only of Sam’s prowess but of his pitiless ferocity.

  A few days afterwards, as Miss Chauncey sat in the very room to which her sister-in-law had referred in her invitation, looking over the placid surface of the English Channel, the sun gently shining in the sky, there came a letter from Mr Cullings. It was in pencil and written upon the back of a baker’s bag.

  ‘Dear madam i take the libberty of riteing you in reference to the Animall as how i helped put in is bawskit which has cum back returned empty agenn by rail me having okashun to cart sum hop powles from Haggurdsden late at nite ov Sunday. I seez him squattin at the parlour windy grimasin out at me fit to curdle your blood in your vanes and lights at the upper windies and a yowling and screetching as i never hopes to hear agen in a Christian lokalety. And that ole wumman from Hogges Botom sitting in the porch mi own vew being that there is no good in the place and the Animall be bewhitched. Mister flint the boutcher agrees with me as how now only last mesures is of any use and as i have said afore i am willing to take over the house the rent if so be being low and moddrit considering of the bad name it as in these parts around haggurdsden. I remain dear madam waitin your orders and oblige yours truely William Cullings.’

  To look at Miss Chauncey you might have supposed she was a strong-minded woman. You might have supposed that this uncivil reference to the bad name her family house had won for itself would have mortified her beyond words. Whether or not, she neither showed this letter to her sister-in-law nor for many days together did she attempt to answer it. Sitting on the esplanade, and looking out to sea, she brooded on and on in the warm, salt, yet balmy air. It was a distressing problem. But ‘No, he must go his own way,’ she sighed to herself at last; ‘I have done my best for him.’

  What is more, Miss Chauncey never returned to Post Houses. She sold it at last, house and garden, and for a pitiful sum, to the carrier, Mr Cullings. By that time Sam had vanished, had never been seen again. He had gone his way.

  Not that Miss Chauncey was faithless to his memory. Whenever the faint swish of a seagull’s wing whispered through the air above her head; or the crackling of an ascending rocket for the amusement of visitors broke the silence of the nearer heavens over the sea; whenever even she became conscious of the rustling frou-frou of her Sunday watered-silk gown as she sallied out to church from the neat little villa she now rented on the Shanklin Esplanade – she never noticed such things without being instantly transported in imagination to her old bedroom at Post Houses, and seeing again that strange d
eluded animal, once her Sam, squatting there on her bed, and as it were knitting with his forepaws the while he stood erect upon his hind.

  * As printed in CSC (1947). First published in London Mercury and Yale Review, October 1925.

  Lucy*

  Once upon a time there were three sisters, the Misses MacKnackery – or, better still, the Miss MacKnackeries. They lived in a large, white, square house called Stoneyhouse; and their names were Euphemia, Tabitha, and Jean Elspeth. They were known over Scotland for miles and miles, from the Tay to the Grampians – from the Tay to the Grumpy Ones, as a cousin who did not like Euphemia and Tabitha used to say.

  Stoneyhouse had been built by the Miss MacKnackeries’s grandfather, Mr Angus MacKnackery, who, from being a poor boy with scarcely a bawbee in his breeches pocket, had risen up to be a wealthy manufacturer of the best Scotch burlap, which is a kind of sacking. He made twine, too, for tying up parcels. He would have made almost anything to make money. But at last, when he was sixty-six, he felt he would like to be a gentleman living in the country with a large garden to walk about in, flowers in beds, cucumbers in frames, pigs in sties, and one or two cows for milk, cream, and butter.

  So he sold his huge, smoky works and warehouse, and all the twine and burlap, hemp, jute, and whalebone still in it, for £80,000. With this £80,000 he built Stoneyhouse, purchased some fine furniture and some carriages and horses, and invested what was over.

  Jean Elspeth, when she was learning sums, and when she had come to Interest – having sometimes heard her father and mother speak of her grandfather and of his fortune, and how he had invested it – just to please her governess, Miss Gimp, thought she would make a sum of it. So she wrote down in her rather straggly figures in an exercise book: