Short Stories for Children Page 4

  Griselda tried in vain to keep back her tears. She put her arms round John’s neck and hid her face in his sleeve.

  ‘Let me go!’ she said, ‘let me go, John, just a day and a night, and I’ll come back to you. They are angry with us. But they love me; and if I sit on the hillside under the boughs of the trees beside the pool and listen to their music just a little while, they will make the sun shine again and drive back the flocks, and we shall be as happy as ever. Look at poor Sly, John dear, he is hungrier even than I am.’ John heard only the mocking laughter and the tap-tapping and the rustling and crying of the fairies, and he wouldn’t let his sister go.

  And it began to be marvellously dark and still in the cottage. No stars moved across the casement, no waterdrops glittered in the candleshine. John could hear only one low, faint, unceasing stir and rustling all around him. So utterly dark and still it was that even Sly woke from his hungry dreams and gazed up into his mistress’s face and whined.

  They went to bed; but still, all night long, while John lay tossing on his mattress, the rustling never ceased. The old kitchen clock ticked on and on, but there came no hint of dawn. All was pitch-black and now all was utterly silent. There wasn’t a whisper, not a creak, not a sigh of air, not a footfall of mouse, not a flutter of moth, not a settling of dust to be heard at all. Only desolate silence. And John at last could endure his fears and suspicions no longer. He got out of bed and stared from his square casement. He could see nothing. He tried to thust it open; it would not move. He went downstairs and unbarred the door and looked out. He saw, as it were, a deep, clear, green shade, from behind which the songs of the birds rose faint as in a dream.

  And then he sighed like a grampus and sat down, and knew that the fairies had beaten him. Like Jack’s beanstalk, in one night had grown up a dense wall of peas. He pushed and pulled and hacked with his axe, and kicked with his shoes, and buffeted with his blunderbuss. But it was all in vain. He sat down once more in his chair beside the hearth and covered his face with his hands. And at last Griselda, too, awoke, and came down with her candle. And she comforted her brother, and told him if he would do what she bade she would soon make all right again. And he promised her.

  So with a scarf she bound tight his hands behind him; and with a rope she bound his feet together, so that he could neither run nor throw stones, peas or cheeses. She bound his eyes and ears and mouth with a napkin, so that he could neither see, hear, smell, nor cry out. And, that done, she pushed and pulled him like a great bundle, and at last rolled him out of sight into the chimney-corner against the wall. Then she took a small sharp pair of needlework scissors that her godmother had given her, and snipped and snipped, till at last there came a little hole in the thick green hedge of peas. And putting her mouth there she called softly through the little hole. And the fairies drew near the doorstep and nodded and nodded and listened.

  And then and there Griselda made a bargain with them for the forgiveness of John – a lock of her golden hair; seven dishes of ewes’ milk; three and thirty bunches of currants, red, white and black; a bag of thistledown; three handkerchiefs full of lambs’ wool; nine jars of honey; a peppercorn of spice. All these (except the hair) John was to bring himself to their secret places as soon as he was able. Above all, the bargain between them was that Griselda would sit one full hour each evening of summer on the hillside in the shadow and greenness that slope down from the great forest towards the valley, where the fairies’ mounds are, and where their tiny brindled cattle graze.

  Her brother lay blind and deaf and dumb as a log of wood. She promised everything.

  And then, instead of a rustling and a creeping, there came a rending and a crashing. Instead of green shade, light of amber; then white. And as the thick hedge withered and shrank, and the merry and furious dancing sun scorched and scorched and scorched, there came, above the singing of the birds, the bleatings of sheep – and behold sooty Soll and hungry Sly met square upon the doorstep; and all John’s sheep shone white as hoar-frost on his pastures; and every lamb was garlanded with pimpernel and eyebright; and the old fat ewes stood still, with saddles of moss; and their laughing riders sat and saw Griselda standing in the doorway in her beautiful yellow hair.

  As for John, tied up like a sack in the chimney-corner, down came his cheese again crash upon his head, and, not being able to say anything, he said nothing.

  * As printed in CSC (1947). First published in Lady’s Realm, May 1908, where it was called ‘The Dutch Cheese: A Story for Children’.

  Miss Jemima*

  It was a hot, still evening; the trees stood motionless; and not a bird was singing under the sky when a little old lady and a child appeared together over the crest of the hill. They paused side by side on the long, green, mounded ridge, behind which the sun was now descending. And spread out flat beneath them were the fields and farms and the wandering stream of the wide countryside. It was quite flat, and a faint thin mist was over it all, stretching out as if to the rim of the world. The stooping old lady and the child presently ventured a few further paces down the hillside, then again came to a standstill, and gazed once more, from under the umbrella that shaded them against the hot sun, on the scene spread out beneath them.

  ‘Is that the house, Grannie,’ said the child, ‘that one near the meadow with the horses in it, and the trees? And is that queer little grey building right in the middle of that green square field the church?’

  The old lady pressed her lips together, and continued to gaze through her thick glasses at the great solitary country scene. Then she drew her umbrella down with a click, placed it on the turf beside her, and sat down on it.

  ‘I don’t suppose the grass is damp, my dear, after this long hot day; but you never know,’ she said.

  ‘It’s perfectly dry, Grannie dear, and very beautiful,’ said the child, as if she could hardly spare the breath for the words. Then she too sat down. She had rather long fair hair, and a straight small nose under her round hat with its wreath of buttercups. Her name was Susan.

  ‘And is that the house, Grannie?’ she whispered once more. ‘And is that the church where you did really and truly see it?’

  The old lady never turned her eyes, but continued to overlook the scene as if she had not heard the small voice questioning; as if she were alone with her thoughts. And at that moment, one after another, a troop of gentle-stepping, half-wild horses appeared on a path round the bluff of the hill. Shyly eyeing these two strange human figures in their haunts, one and another of them lifted a narrow lovely head to snort; and a slim young bay, his mane like rough silk in the light, paused to whinny. Then one by one they trotted along the path, and presently were gone. Susan watched them out of sight, then sighed.

  ‘This is a lovely place to be in, Grannie,’ she said, and sighed again. ‘I wish I had been here too when I was little. Please do tell me again about the – you know.’

  Her voice trailed off faintly in the still golden air up there on the hill, as if she were now a little timid of repeating the question. She drew in closer beside her grannie, and pushing her small fingers between those of the bent-up, black-gloved hand in the old lady’s lap, she stooped forward after yet another pause, looked up into the still grey face with its spectacles, and said very softly, ‘How many years ago did you say?’

  There was a mild far-away expression in the slate-grey eyes into which Susan was looking, as if memory were retracing one by one the years that had gone. Never had Susan sat like this upon a green hill above so immense a world, or in so hushed an evening quiet. Her busy eyes turned once more to look first in the direction in which the trotting comely horses had vanished, then down again to the farmhouse with its barns and byres and orchard. They then rested once more on the grey stone church – which from this height looked almost as small as an old cottage – in the midst of its green field.

  ‘How many years ago, Grannie?’ repeated Susan.

  ‘More than I scarcely dare think of,’ said the old woman at last,
gently pressing her fingers. ‘Seventy-five, my dear.’

  ‘Seventy-five!’ breathed Susan. ‘But that’s not so very many, Grannie dear,’ she added quickly, pushing her head against her grannie’s black-caped shoulder. ‘And now, before it is too late, please will you tell me the story. You see, Grannie, soon we shall have to be going back to the cab, or the man will suppose we are not coming back at all. Please.’

  ‘But you know most of it already.’

  ‘Only in pieces, Grannie; and besides, to think that here we are – here, in the very place!’

  ‘Well,’ began the old voice at last, ‘I will tell it you all again, if you persist, my dear; but it’s a little more than seventy-five years ago, for – though you would not believe it of such an old person – I was born in May. My mother, your great-grandmother, was young then, and in very delicate health after my father’s death. Her doctor had said she must go on a long sea voyage. And since she was not able to take me with her, I was sent to that little farmhouse down there – Green’s Farm, as it was called – to spend the months of her absence with my Uncle James and his housekeeper, who was called Miss Jemima.’

  ‘Miss Jemima!’ cried the little girl, stooping over suddenly with a burst of laughter. ‘It is a queer name, you know, Grannie.’

  ‘It is,’ said the old lady. ‘And it belonged to one to whom it was my duty to show affection, but who never cared much for the little girl she had in her charge. And when people don’t care for you, it is sometimes a little difficult, Susan, to care for them. At least I found it so. I don’t mean that Miss Jemima was unkind to me, only that when she was kind, she seemed to be kind on purpose. And when I had a slice of plum cake, her face always seemed to tell me it was plum cake, and that I deserved only plain. My Uncle James knew that his housekeeper did not think me a pleasant little girl. I was a shrimp in size, with straight black hair which she made me tie tightly back with a piece of velvet ribbon. I had small dark eyes and very skimpy legs. And though he himself was kind, and fond of me, he showed his affection only when we were alone together, and not when she was present. He was ill, too, then, though I did not know how ill. And he lay all day in a long chair with a check rug over his legs, and Miss Jemima had charge not only of me, but of the farm.

  ‘All the milking, and the ploughing, and the chickens, and the pigs, Grannie?’ asked Susan.

  The old lady shut her eyes an instant, pressed her lips together and said, ‘All.’

  ‘The consequence was,’ she went on, ‘I was rather a solitary child. Whenever I could, I used to hide myself away in some corner of the house – and a beautiful house it is. It’s a pity, my dear, I am so old and you so young and this hill so steep. Otherwise we could go down and – well, never mind. That row of small lattice windows which you can see belong to a narrow corridor; and the rooms out of it, rambling one into the other, were walled in just as the builders fancied, when they made the house three hundred years or more ago. And that was in the reign of Edward VI.’

  ‘Like the Bluecoat boys,’ said Susan, ‘though I can’t say I like the yellow stockings, Grannie, not that mustard yellow, you know.’

  ‘Like the Bluecoat boys,’ repeated her grandmother. ‘Well, as I say, the house was a nest of hiding-places; and as a child I was small – smaller even than you, Susan. I would sit with my book; or kneel up on a chair and watch from a window, lean out too sometimes – as if by so doing I might be able to see my mother in India. And whenever the weather was fine, and sometimes when it was not, I would creep out of the house and run away down that shaggy lane to the little wood down there. There is a brook in it (though you can’t see that) which brawls continuously all day long and all the night too. And sometimes I would climb up this very hill. And sometimes I would creep across the field to that little church.

  ‘It was there I most easily forgot myself and even my little scrapes and troubles – with the leaves and the birds, and the blue sky and the clouds overhead; or watching a snail, or picking kingcups and cowslips, or staring into the stream at the fish. You see I was rather a doleful little creature: first because I was usually alone; next because my Uncle James was ill and so could not be happy; and last because I was made to feel more homesick than ever by the cold glances and cold tongue of Miss Jemima.’

  ‘Miss Jemima!’ echoed Susan, burying her face in her amusement an instant in her hands.

  ‘Miss Jemima,’ repeated the old voice solemnly. ‘But I was not only dismal and doleful. Far worse: I made little attempt to be anything else, and began to be fretful too. There was no company of my own age, for, as you see, the village is a mile or two off – over there where the sun is lighting the trees up. And I was not allowed to play with the village children. The only company I had was a fat little boy of two, belonging to one of the farm-hands. And he was so backward a baby that even at that age he could scarcely say as many words.’

  ‘I began to talk at one,’ said Susan.

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ said her grannie, ‘and you are likely, it seems, to go on talking the clock round.’

  ‘Grannie, dear,’ said Susan, ‘I simply love this story – until – you know.’

  ‘Well, of all the places strictly forbidden me to play in,’ continued the old lady, ‘that peaceful little churchyard came first. My “aunt”, as I say, thought me a fantastic silly-notioned little girl, and she didn’t approve of my picking flowers that grow among tombstones. Indeed, I am not now quite sure myself if such flowers belong to the living at all. Still, once or twice in the summer the old sexton – Mr Fletcher he was called, and a very grumpy old man he was – used to come with his scythe and mow the lush grasses down. And you could scarcely breathe for the sweet smell of them. It seemed a waste to see them lying in swathes, butterflies hovering above them, fading in the sun. There never were such buttercups and dandelion-clocks and meadow-sweet as grew beneath those old grey walls. I was happy there; and coming and going, I would say a prayer for my mother. But you will please understand, Susan, that I was being disobedient; that I had no business to be there at all at any time. And perhaps if I had never gone, I should never have known that there was somebody else in the churchyard.’

  ‘Ah! somebody else,’ sighed Susan, sitting straight up, her eyes far away.

  ‘It was one evening, rather like this one, but with a mackerel sky. The day before I had been stood in the corner for wearing an orange ribbon in my hair; and then sent to bed for talking to the grandfather’s clock. I did it on purpose. And now – this evening, I was being scolded because I would not eat blackberry jam with my bread for tea. I was told it was because I had been spoilt, and was a little town child who did not know that God had made the wild fruits for human use, and who thought that the only things fit to eat grew in gardens.

  ‘Really and truly I disliked the blackberry jam because of the pips, and I had a hollow tooth. But I told my “aunt” that my mother didn’t like blackberry jam either, which made her still more angry.

  ‘“Do you really think, James,” she said to my uncle, “we should allow the child to grow up a dainty little minx like that? Now, see here, Miss, you will just stay there until you have eaten up the whole of that slice on your plate.”

  ‘“Well, then, Miss Jemima,” I said pertly, “I shall stay here till I am eighty.”

  ‘“Hold your tongue,” she cried out at me, her eyes blazing.

  ‘“I can’t bear the horrid ——” I began again, and at that she gave me such a slap on my cheek that I overbalanced, and fell out of my chair. She lifted me up from the floor with a shake, set me in my chair again, and pushed it against the table till the edge was cutting into my legs. “And now,” she said, “sit there till you are eighty!”

  ‘A look I had never seen before came into my uncle’s face; his hands were trembling. Without another word to me, Miss Jemima helped him rise from his chair, and I was left alone.

  ‘Never before had I been beaten like that. And I was at least as much frightened as I was hurt. I liste
ned to the tall clock ticking, “Wick-ed child, stubborn child”, and my tears splashed slowly down on the odious slice of bread-and-jam on my plate. Then all of a sudden I clenched and shook my ridiculous little fist at the door by which she had gone out, wriggled back my chair, jumped out of it, rushed out of the house, and never stopped to breathe or to look back, until I found myself sitting huddled up under the biggest tomb in the churchyard; crying there, if not my heart out, at least a good deal of my sour little temper.’

  ‘Poor Grannie!’ said Susan, squeezing her hand.

  ‘There was not much “poor” about that,’ was the reply. ‘A pretty sight I must have looked, with my smeared face, green-stained frock and hair dangling. At last my silly sobbing ceased. The sky was flaming with the sunset. It was in June, and the air was cool and mild and sweet. But instead of being penitent and realizing what a bad and foolish child I was, I began to be coldly rebellious. I stared at the rosy clouds and vowed to myself I’d give Miss Jemima a fright. I’d rather die than go back to the house that night. And when the thought of my mother came into my mind, I shut it out, saying to myself that she could not have cared how much I loved her, to leave me like this. And yet only a fortnight before a long letter had come to me from India!

  ‘Well, there I sat. A snail came out of his day’s hiding-place; little moths were flitting among the grasses; the afternoon’s butterflies had all gone to rest. Far away I heard a hooting – and then a step. Cautiously peering up above my tombstone, I saw Maggie, one of the girls that helped on the farm. Her face was burning hot, and she was staring about her round the corner of the little church tower with her saucer-blue eyes. She called to me, but couldn’t see me, and at that my mouth opened and I let out, as they say, a shrill yelping squeal. It alarmed even me a little to hear it. She screeched; her steel-tipped boot slipped on the flagstones; in an instant she was gone. And once more I was alone.’