Short Stories for Children Page 5

  ‘Ah, but you weren’t really alone, Granny,’ whispered Susan, ‘were you?’

  ‘That is just what I was going to tell you, my dear. Immediately in front of my face stood a few late dandelion stalks, with their beautiful clocks, grey in the still evening light. And there were a few other gently nodding flowers. As I stared across them, on the other side of the flat gravestone a face appeared. I mean it didn’t rise up. It simply came into the air. A very small face, more oval than round, its gold-coloured hair over its wild greenish eyes falling on either side its head in a curious zigzag way – like this, I mean.’ The old lady took the hem of her skirt, and three or four times folded it together, then loosened it out.

  ‘You mean, Grannie, as if it had been pleated,’ said Susan.

  ‘Yes,’ said her grannie. ‘And strange and lovely it looked in the reddish light. The face was not smiling, and she did not appear to see me. And yet I knew she knew that I was there. And though I did not think she minded my being there, I felt more frightened than I had ever been in my life. My mouth opened; I was clutching tight the grass on either side. And I saw nothing else as I stared into that face.’

  ‘That was the Fairy, Grannie,’ said Susan, stooping forward again as if to make her words more impressive. The old lady glanced fixedly at the two blue eyes bent on her from under the brim of the round straw hat.

  ‘At that moment, my dear, I did not know what it was. I was far too frightened to think. Time must have been passing, too, very quickly, for as I stared on, it was already beginning to be gloaming between us, and silent. Yes, much more silent even than this. Then, suddenly, behind me a low, sweet, yet sorrowful voice began to sing from out of the may-bushes, the notes falling like dewdrops in the air. I knew it was a nightingale. And at the very moment that the thought came to me – “That is a nightingale” – the face on the other side of the rough grey stone vanished.

  ‘For a few minutes I sat without moving – not daring to move. And then I ran, straight out of the churchyard by the way I had come as fast as my legs could carry me. I hardly know what I thought, but as soon as I saw the lights in the upper windows of the farm, I ran even faster. Up under the ilexes and round through the farmyard to the back door. It was unlatched. I slipped through, quiet as a mouse, into the kitchen, climbed into the chair, and at once devoured every scrap of that horrid bread-and-jam!

  ‘And still, my dear, I don’t believe I was really thinking, only dreadfully afraid, and yet with a kind of triumph in my heart that Miss Jemima should never know anything at all about the face in the churchyard. It was all but dark in the kitchen now, but I still sat on in my chair, even at last lifted the plate, and insolently licked up with my tongue every jammy crumb that was left.

  ‘And then the door opened, and Miss Jemima stood there in the entry with a lighted brass candlestick in her hand. She looked at me, and I at her. “Ah, I see you have thought better of it,” she said. “And high time too. You are to go straight to bed.”

  ‘If you can imagine, Susan, a cake made almost entirely of plums, and every plum a black thought of hatred, I was like that. But I said never a word. I got down from my chair, marched past her down the flagstone passage, and she followed after. When I came to my uncle’s door, I lifted my hand towards the handle. “Straight on, Miss,” said the voice behind me. “You have made him too ill and too unhappy to wish you good-night.” Straight on I went, got into bed with all my clothes on, even my dew-wet shoes, and stared at the ceiling till I fell asleep.’

  ‘You know, Grannie,’ said Susan, ‘it was very curious of you not even to undress at all. Why do you think you did that?’

  ‘My dear,’ said her grannie, ‘at that moment I had such a hard, hot heart in me, that there was not any room for a why. But you see that little jutting attic window above the trees – it was in the room beyond that and on the other side of the house that I lay. And it’s now seventy-five years ago. It may be there was even then a far-away notion in my mind of getting up in the middle of the night and running away. But whether or not, I was awakened by the sun streaming through my lattice window, for my bedroom lay full in the light of the morning.

  ‘I could think of but one thing – my disgrace of the night before, and what I had seen in the churchyard. It was a dream, I thought to myself, shutting my eyes, yet knowing all the time that I did not believe what I was saying. Even when I was told at breakfast that my uncle was no better, I thought little of him, and gobbled down my porridge, with the one wish to be out of the house before I could be forbidden to go. But the only sign of Miss Jemima was my dirty jam-stained plate of the night before, upon which she had put my hunch of breakfast bread. Yet although I was so anxious to get out, for some reason I chose very carefully what I should wear, and changed the piece of ribbon in my hat from blue to green. A rare minx I was.’

  ‘You were, Grannie,’ said Susan, clasping her knees. ‘And then you went out to the churchyard again?’

  ‘Yes. But all seemed as usual there; except only that a tiny bunch of coral-coloured berries lay on a flat leaf, on the very tombstone where I had hid. Now though I was a minx, my dear, I was also fairly sharp for my age, and after the first gulp of surprise, as I stood there among the nodding buttercups, the sun already having stolen over the grey roof and shining upon the hot tombstones, I noticed a beady dewdrop resting on the leaf, and the leaf of as fresh a green as lettuce in a salad. Looking at this dewdrop I realized at once that the leaf could not have been there very long. Indeed, in a few minutes the sun had drunk up that one round drop of water, for it was some little time before I ventured to touch the berries.

  ‘Then I knew in my heart I was not alone there, and that the green dish had been put there on purpose, just before I had come. The berries were strange yet beautiful to look at, too; of a coral colour edging into rose; I could not guess from what tree they had come. And I don’t think it was because I had long ago been warned not to taste any wild fruit – except blackberries! – but because I was uneasy in conscience already, that I did not nibble one then and there.

  ‘It was very quiet in that green place, and on and on I watched, as still as a cat over a mouse’s hole, though I myself really and truly was the mouse. And then, all of a sudden, flinging back my green dangling hat-ribbon, I remember, over my shoulder, I said half aloud, in an affected little voice, “Well, it’s very kind of you, I am sure,” stretched my hand across, plucked one of the berries, and put it into my mouth.

  ‘Hardly had its juice tartened my tongue when a strange thing happened. It was as if a grasshopper was actually sitting in my hair, the noise of that laughter was so close. Besides this, a kind of heat began to creep into my cheek, and it seemed all the colours around me grew so bright that they dazzled my eyes. I closed them. I must have sat there for a while quite unconscious of time, for when I opened them again, the shadow had gone perceptibly back from the stone, and it was getting towards the middle of the morning.

  ‘But there was still that dazzle in my eyes, and everything I looked at – the flowers and the birds, even the moss and lichen on the old stones – seemed as if they were showing me secrets about themselves that I had not known before. It seemed that I could share the very being of the butterfly that was hovering near; and could almost hear not only what the birds were singing but what they were saying.’

  ‘Just like the fairy tales, Grannie.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the little old woman, ‘but the difference is that I was not happy about it. The flush was still in my cheek, and I could hear my heart beating under my frock, and I was all of an excitement. But I knew in my inmost self that I ought not to feel like that at all; that I had crept into danger through my wicked temper; that these little unknown coral fruits on the tombstone had been put there for a trap. It was a bait, Susan; and I was the silly fish.’

  ‘Oh, Grannie, a “silly fish”!’ said Susan. ‘I can see you might feel wicked,’ she added, with a sage little nod, ‘but I don’t exactly see why.’
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br />   ‘That is just when it’s most dangerous, my child,’ said her grandmother, sharply closing her mouth, very much indeed like a fish. ‘But I must get on with my story, or we shall never get home.

  ‘I sat on, keeping my eyes as far as I could fixed on the invisible place in the air where I had seen the face appear, but nothing came, and gradually the scene lost its radiance, and the birds were chirping as usual again, and the buttercups were the same as ever. No, not the same as ever, because, although it was a burning, sunny day, it seemed now that everything was darker and gloomier than usual on so bright a morning, and I skulked away home, feeling not only a little cold, but dejected and ashamed.

  ‘As I went in through the gate between those two stone pillars you can just see by the round green tree down there, I looked up at the windows. And a dreadful pang seized me to see that their curtains were all drawn over the glass. And though I didn’t know then what that meant, I knew it meant something sorrowful and tragic. Besides, they seemed like shut eyes, refusing to look at me. And when I went in, Miss Jemima told me that my uncle was dead. She told me, too, that he had asked to see me an hour or two before he died. “He said, ‘Where is my little Susan?’ And where you have been,” added Miss Jemima, “is known only to your wicked wilful self.” I stared at her, and seemed to shrink until she appeared to be twice as large as usual. I could not speak, because my tongue would not move. And then I rushed past her and up the stairs into a corner between two cupboards, where I used sometimes to hide, and I don’t know what I did or thought there; I simply sat on and on, with my hands clenched in my lap, everything I looked at all blurred, and my lips trying to say a prayer that would not come.

  ‘From that day on I became a more and more wretched and miserable little girl, and, as I think now, a wickeder one. It all came of three things. First, because I hated Miss Jemima, and that is just like leaving a steel knife in vinegar, it so frets and wastes the heart. Next, because of the thought of my poor uncle speaking of me so gently and kindly when he was at death’s door; and my remorse that I could never now ask him to forgive me. And last, because I longed to see again that magical face in the churchyard, and yet knew that it was forbidden.’

  ‘But, Grannie dear, you know,’ said Susan, ‘I never can see why you should have thought that then.’

  ‘No,’ replied the old lady. ‘But the point was, you see, that I did think it, and I knew in my heart that it would lead to no good. Miss Jemima made me go next day into the room where my uncle lay in his coffin. But try as she might to persuade and compel me, she could not make me open my eyes and look at him. For that disobedience she sent me to my bedroom for the rest of the day.

  ‘When all was still, I crept out across the corridor into another room, and looked out over the trees towards the little church. And I said to myself, as if I were speaking to someone who would hear, “I am coming to you soon, and nobody, nobody here shall ever see me again.”

  ‘Think of it; a little girl not yet nine, angry with the whole world, and hardly giving a thought to the mother who was longing to see her, and – though I didn’t know it then – was very soon to be in England again.

  ‘Well, then came the funeral. I was dressed – I can see myself now, as I stood looking into the looking-glass – in a black frock trimmed with crape, with a tucker of white frilling round the neck, and an edging of it at the sleeves; my peaked white face and coal-black eyes.

  ‘It was, as you see, but a very little distance to my poor uncle’s last resting-place, and in those days they used a long handcart on wheels, which the men pushed in front of us, with its flowers. And Miss Jemima and I followed after it across the field. I listened to the prayers as closely as I could. But at last my attention began to wander, and, kneeling there beside Miss Jemima in the church, my hands pressed close to my eyes, for an instant I glanced out and up between my fingers.

  ‘The great eastern window, though you cannot see it from here, is of centuries-old stained glass, crimson, blue, green. But in one corner, just above the narrow ledge of masonry outside, it had been broken many, many years ago by the falling of a branch of a tree, and had been mended with clear white glass. And there, looking steadily in and straight across and down at me, was the face and form of the being I had seen beside the tombstone.

  ‘I cannot tell you, Susan, how beautiful that face looked then. Those rich colours of the saints and martyrs surrounding that gold hair – living gold – and the face as pale and beautiful – far more beautiful than anything else I had ever seen in my life before. But even then I saw, too, that into the morning church a cold and shadowy darkness had come, and the stone faces on either side the window, with their set stare, looked actually to be alive. I peeped out between my fingers, hearing not a single word of what the old clergyman was saying, wondering when anyone else would see what I saw, and knowing that the coldly smiling lips were breathing across at me, “Come away, come away!”

  ‘My bones were all cramped, and at last I managed to twist my head a little and glance up at Miss Jemima. The broad face beneath her veil had its eyes shut, and the lips were muttering. She had noticed nothing amiss. And when I looked again, the face at the window had vanished.

  ‘It was a burning hot day – so hot that the flowers beside the grave were already withering before Miss Jemima took me home. We reached the stone porch together, and in its cold shadow she paused, staring down on me through her veil. “You will be staying on here for a while, because I don’t know what else to do with you,” she said to me. “But you will understand that this is my house now. I am telling your mother how bad a child you are making yourself, and perhaps she will ask me to send you away to a school where they will know how to deal with stubborn and ungrateful beings like yourself. But she will be sorry, I think, to hear that it was your wickedness that brought that poor kind body to its grave over there. And now, miss, as the best part of the day is over, you shall have your bread-and-butter and milk in your bedroom, and think over what I have said.”

  ‘I think, Grannie,’ cried Susan, suddenly bending herself over her knees, ‘that that Miss Jemima was the most dreadful person I have ever heard of.’

  ‘Well, my dear,’ said her grandmother, ‘I have lived a good many years, and believe it is wiser to try and explain to oneself people as well as things. Do you suppose she would have been as harsh to me if I hadn’t hated her? And now she lies there too, and I never had her forgiveness either.’

  Susan turned her head away and looked out over the countryside to the north, to where the roving horses had vanished, and where evening was already beginning gradually to settle itself towards night.

  ‘And did you think over what Miss Jemima had said, Grannie?’ she asked in a low voice.

  ‘The first thing I did was to throw the bread-and-butter out of the window, and while I watched the birds wrangling over it and gobbling it up, I thought of nothing at all. It was cooler in the shade on that side of the house. My head ached after the hot sorrowful walk to the church and back. I came away from the window, took off my black frock, and sat there on the edge of my bed, I remember, in my petticoat, not knowing what to do next. And then, Susan, I made up my mind that I could not bear to be in Miss Jemima’s house for a day longer than I needed.

  ‘I was just clever enough to realize that if I wanted to run away I must take care not to be brought back. I grew hot all over, remembering what she had said to me, never thinking how weak and silly I was not to be able to endure patiently what could only be a few more days or weeks before another letter came from my mother. Then I tore a leaf from a book that was in my room – a Prayer Book – and scrawled a few words to my mother, saying how miserable and wicked I had been, and how I longed to see her again. It’s a curious thing, Susan, but I was pitying myself while I wrote those words, and thinking how grieved my mother would be when she read them, and how well Miss Jemima would deserve whatever my mother said to her. But I didn’t utter a word in the letter about where I was going.’<
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  ‘You didn’t really know where you were going, Grannie,’ whispered Susan, edging a little nearer. ‘Did you? Not then, I mean?’

  ‘No, but I had a faint notion whom I was going to; for somehow, from old fairy tales I had got to believe that human children could be taken away to quite a different world from this – a country of enchantment. And I remembered having read, too, about two children that had come back from there, and had forgotten their own English.’

  ‘I know two poems about it,’ said Susan. ‘One about “True Thomas” – “Thomas the Rhymer”, you know, Grannie, who stayed with the Queen of Elfland for seven whole years, and another about … I do wonder——But please, please, go on.’

  ‘Well, I hid my little letter in a cranny in the wainscot, after sewing a piece of cotton to it so that I might pull it out again when I wanted it. The next morning, I got up early, and slipping on my clothes, tiptoed out of the house before breakfast, and made my way to the church. I thought deceitfully that Miss Jemima would be sure to find out that I had gone, and that if for a morning or two she discovered me quietly sitting in the churchyard she would not suppose at another time, perhaps, that I was not safely there again. Plots, Susan, are tangled things, and are likely to entangle the maker of them too.

  ‘The old man who took care of the church, Mr Fletcher, to save himself the trouble of carrying the key of the door, used to hide it under a large stone beneath the belfry tower. I had watched him put it there. It was a fresh sparkling day, I remember, with one or two thin silver clouds high in the sky – angels, I used to call them – and I forgot for the moment in the brightness of it all my troubles, as I frisked along past the dewy hedges.

  ‘My first thought was to make quite, quite sure about the strange being in the churchyard, my next to plan a way of escape. I gathered a bunch of daisies, and having come to the belfry door, I somehow managed to open it with the key which I fetched out from beneath its stone, and crept into the still, empty coolness. I had come to the conclusion, too, Susan, young though I was, that if the elf or fairy or whatever she might be actually came into the church to me, it would be a proof there was no harm in her company, though I knew in my heart that I was in some mysterious danger.