A STORY TOLD BY
“UNCLE” EDWARD TO CHARLES AND ROSALIND
You asked me yesterday afternoon, when we were out for a walk, to tell
you what was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. People
are excited in such different ways, you know, and it’s quite possible
that this won’t seem exciting to you at all, but you asked me, and I’ll
do my best to tell you. I am now ever so old, as I heard Rosalind saying
to Miss Banbury when she was trying to teach you French verbs the other
morning, and when you are as old as I am, you’ll find that the things
that you remember best are the things that happened years and years ago.
For instance, I remember nothing about last Christmas, except that we
had a tree, and that Charlie was sick on Boxing Day, but if you ask me
to tell you every little thing that happened to me before I was
fourteen, I fancy that I can; mind you, I say fancy, as it is possible
that I am making the whole thing up, but what’s the real difference
between making things up and remembering things that once happened to
you, it will need a cleverer man than your uncle to tell you.
Now I come to the point. This adventure began with reading a book in a
farmhouse. I know that both of you would rather go to Shawmill Farm than
anywhere else in the world. You are always telling me so, and that month
in the summer doesn’t seem nearly to content you, and apparently you
expect me to take you off there any time at a moment’s notice on a kind
of magic carpet like the one I told you about the other day. Well, my
farm was every bit as good as yours; in fact, if you don’t mind my
saying so it was, I think, a little bit better, but everybody has their
favourite farm and the longer it is since you’ve been there the more
favourite it is. I loved mine so much partly because I think, it was my
first one, and I have never had all the good times that both of you are
so accustomed to that you don’t know they are good times at all. For one
thing, I had no brothers or sisters, and for another thing, my mother
died when I was so small that I can scarcely remember her. Then my
father wasn’t like your father; the only things he cared for were books,
and those are very good things to care about, but if you care for them
too much, you forget about people, and think that books are more
important than people, which they are not, and never can be, and don’t
you forget it.
Mind you, my father was very kind to me when he remembered me, but he
had to leave me a great deal in the hands of other people. We lived in
London in a very large house, so large that when you were in the top
part of it it was like being in another house altogether. I had lots of
room to move about in, plenty of toys, and anything I wanted so long as
the grown-ups thought it was good for me, but what I wanted most was
other children to play with, and that I never had. One day I was ill. I
had one of those terrible headaches that you get, Charlie, sometimes
from eating too much, but that I got, I think, from being by myself and
thinking too much. I don’t mean that you haven’t got to do your work
properly; it is a silly thing to be lazy, so that when you grow up
everyone thinks how stupid you are, and wonders why you never learnt
anything. But my thinking was done all by myself, and I formed a very
bad habit of talking to myself, and I think it was because I talked so
much to myself that I got the headache of which I was telling you. Well,
I was put to bed, and the doctor came to see me, and poked me in the
chest, and put a thermometer in my mouth, and looked at my tongue, and
went away and didn’t say a word, and they kept me in bed so long that I
got very tired of it and wondered if they were ever going to let me get
up again. Then at last a wonderful day arrived when I put on my clothes
again, and although my legs were very shaky and I was as weak as a
kitten I was so proud at being out of bed that I could have danced all
round the schoolroom. Then I was told that Father wanted to see me, so I
went all the way down to the library, and there he was, as he always
was, sitting at a large table covered with books, and looking at me when
I came in with a puzzled expression that people have when they have been
reading a great deal. Although he was so kind to me I was a little
afraid of my father; although he wanted to, I don’t think he knew how to
make children easy and comfortable. I went and stood beside him, and he
put his arm around me and asked me whether I was feeling quite well now,
and I said yes, which wasn’t quite true I’m afraid, and then he said how
would I like to go into the country? I hadn’t very much idea what the
country really was. I had been once to the seaside but I hadn’t enjoyed
it because I was never allowed to go about by myself, and I was rather
afraid of the country to tell you the truth, but I wasn’t going to show
anybody that I was afraid, and I said that I would like to go. Then he
gave a great sigh and I always remember that sigh because it was the
first time that I realised that he had troubles just as I had them. I’d
like to have asked him what his troubles were but I hadn’t the courage.
Then he kissed me and told me to go upstairs again and upstairs I went.
I was excited all day at this thought of the country, but I didn’t like
to ask anybody any questions because I might be thought foolish and I
tell you both here and now always ask questions if you want to ask them;
never mind how foolish people will think you; that’s the only way to
learn anything.
[Illustration:
I was put to bed.
]
[Illustration:
You know what it is like waking up on the first morning at your farm.
]
Next morning I was wrapped up so warmly that I looked like a little
polar bear. I came downstairs again; my father was in the hall and
kissed me; then I was put into a carriage with my governess who was
called Miss Somerset, whom, between you and me and the bedpost, I didn’t
like at all. She was always telling me not to do things, but never
suggesting things that I might do or, at any rate, never suggesting
interesting things. However, I was so terribly excited that I didn’t
mind about Miss Somerset or anyone else. We came to the station and got
into the train, and I am afraid I can’t remember anything about the
journey. I think I must have slept most of the time because I seem to
remember that when the train started it was in the morning, and the sun
was shining, and a minute later it was quite dark outside the windows
and there was a light in the carriage. Directly after that, Miss
Somerset said, “Here we are,” and that she had a terrible headache. I
remember about her headache, because I asked her whether it was the same
as mine, and she told me not to ask silly questions, but I didn’t care
what she said because now we were out on the platform and the wind was
blowing so strongly that it nearly took me off my feet. There had been a
wind at the sea but this was different; there was something exciting
about it. I remember last year when we were on the hill above the farm,
Rosalind saying what an exciting wind it was. This was just the same
sort of wind, friendly, as though it had come to the station to meet you
and wanted to carry you off with it to some fine place that it knew of.
All Miss Somerset said was, “Bother the wind.” She hurried me into a cab
that was waiting outside the station. We drove for a long time in the
dark, and although I couldn’t see anything I had a feeling that it was
different from any other place that I had ever been to. There was a kind
of smell about it that was quite new to me, and it was all so quiet
after London that I felt as though it were waiting to get me away from
Miss Somerset, and then tell me something very important. We got out of
the cab at last, and then I was so sleepy that I fell right into
somebody’s arms and was taken up to bed without noticing anything at
all.
You know what it is like waking up on the first morning at your farm,
how first you smell the difference of the house, the scent of the bacon
that you’re going to eat in half-an-hour’s time is coming up the wrong
staircase; through the window which if you’re wise, you’ve had open all
night, there are all sorts of new smells; the air smells differently and
it’s as though you’d had your bed planted in the very middle of a field
all night, so close do you seem to the scent of the soil, and then,
almost at once, smells are connected with noises. The first thing you
were conscious of waking in London was the toot of a cab or the rattle
of a tram, and now it’s a dog and a horse, and above all, a cock
strutting about conceitedly on the top of a wall just under your window.
Then, although you’ve scarcely raised your head from the pillow, the
sounds and the smells together carry your imagination—the most useful
part of you by a long run—across the fields, out of the gate up the hill
behind the farm to the Downs, and your feet are already dancing on that
turf that is so alive that you can almost feel it moving under you.
That’s what happens on your farm, how much more was it the case on mine?
Remember, I had never been away from a town before, and when I rather
timidly looked out of my window and saw first a yard with chickens and a
large black dog, a pond blue in the morning sun at the end of it and
ducks paddling there, and then beyond it fields greener than I had
believed it possible for grass to be, and beyond them a mysterious dark
wood that seemed to be begging me to step into it, you can imagine
whether I was excited or not. But I tell you the honest truth, I don’t,
on looking back, think that this was ideally the place for a boy’s first
farm; only you see, I couldn’t criticise it, because I had never been to
another one. Now, you would, both of you, be very severe critics of
farms, because you happen to have for yours one of the brightest and
most beautiful that ever was made, and yet I said just now that my farm
was better than yours, and I said that because you are both a little
spoilt about things. When I was small children didn’t have any of the
fun and excitement that you both have every minute of the day. People
weren’t always thinking about the best way to amuse children, how to
keep them happy and give them fun, and so, when any fun did come our
way, it meant a terrible lot to us, but I can see now on looking back
that this was an odd farm to send a small boy all by himself to. There
was, of course, Miss Somerset, but I hardly count her, because she was
unwell, all the month we were there, sitting up in her room most of the
time with that terrible headache of hers. I believe that really she had
determined to hate the country before ever she got to it, being one of
those people who get more happiness out of being miserable than out of
being happy, and the result of this was that I was left a great deal to
myself.
You know how you all love the Tuttles at your farm, and I tell you in
confidence that I think that they are very nearly the nicest family in
England. The man who ran my farm was called Mr. Andrew. He was a big,
black, silent man. I daresay that he meant to be friendly, but I don’t
think that he had much more idea about the way in which little boys are
made comfortable than my father had, and then I discovered afterwards
that his wife had died some five years before I arrived, and that made
him melancholy. His sister, Miss Andrew, looked after the domestic part
of the farm, and was as silent as her brother, so you can fancy that I
hadn’t very much company, but I didn’t mind. I was thoroughly used to
being by myself, and what I liked to do was to imagine myself somebody
else and run it on for weeks and weeks, with fresh adventures every day.
Rosalind told me the other day that she would like to write stories when
she grew up just like me, but I was writing stories in my head almost
from the moment I was born, I think. Perhaps Rosalind is doing the same,
but if she is, she keeps it very dark. I hadn’t been about the place for
more than a day or two before I had decided that I was a prince in
disguise, and owned all the country around me.
This country was called Cumberland, and the great feature about
Cumberland is that it is made up for the most part of mountains and
lakes. Now, you’ll find that the very clever people who have travelled
all over the world will tell you that the Cumberland mountains are
nothing at all, that they are so small compared with other mountains,
that they are only little hills, and that once you’ve been to
Switzerland you’ll never look at the English mountains again. Don’t you
believe them. I am very delighted for everybody to have their own
opinion, but I also have travelled all over the world, and I tell you
that there is something about the Cumberland Hills that no other hills
have got, and that they always look a great deal bigger than they are. I
think that’s because they are all in such beautiful proportion, and seem
just as big as the Swiss mountains when you are in the middle of them.
However that may be when you’re grown up, they of course seem gigantic
to a boy who has never seen any others. As a matter of fact, from my
farm you could only see one mountain and that was a long way off, but
that was quite enough for me; I filled it at once with every kind of
treasure because I was prince of the whole country and could do as I
liked with it, and at once put a secret door at the bottom of it, just
where there was a little wood that looked from my window like a
tooth-brush, and from this door there was a passage that led all the way
through the mountain and had on every side of it large rooms filled with
every kind of treasure, heaps and heaps of rubies, and piles of
diamonds, and ropes and ropes of pearls. There was, of course, an enemy
prince in the neighbouring country who wanted to take this mountain, and
he would send spies and try to discover the way through the door, and
one day even went there himself, but my right-hand man, Black Jack, was
waiting for him and in spite of all his troubles succeeded in
imprisoning him in a cave all by himself on the side of the mountain.
That was a very great day for me when I heard that he had been captured.
[Illustration:
She said in Farmer Somebody’s barn.
]
I was allowed to go a great deal about by myself, very much more I fancy
than my father would have approved had he known it but Miss Somerset,
because of her headaches and because the weather was never what she
thought it ought to be, and because there was so much mud about that she
was afraid of getting her feet wet, kept more and more in her room, and
deputed her job of looking after me to the maid-of-all-work in the
house, who was a girl from the village near by, and was called Nellie.
Nellie was a good girl, and a kindly, but she had so much work to do,
poor thing, that she couldn’t do more than give me a look every once and
again, to see that I was all right. I was very quiet and never gave
anyone any trouble, and seemed to amuse myself very easily. Very soon
they all ceased to bother about me. So the days went by, and very
wonderful days they were to me. Then came the adventure of which I am
going to tell you.
It was, of course, summer time when all this happened, and there came a
day called midsummer’s eve. That is the day when, as soon as the sun
sets, all the fairies are supposed to come out and dance in rings on the
grass, and run up and down the house, and play jokes on everybody and
have a wonderful time. I knew about the fairies, because Nellie had told
me, and I waited with great excitement determined that, however sleepy I
might be, I would keep awake and watch all the fun. I wasn’t frightened
in the least, because I had known all about the fairies ever since I
could remember, and many of them were my very good friends. I was
tremendously pleased that at last I should have a chance of meeting some
of them. That was a very beautiful day, and when the evening came
everything was bathed in golden light, and the colours of the fields,
and the wood, and the distant mountain were as clear as though they had
been painted on glass. Mr. Andrew and his sister went out early in the
evening to somebody’s house and I was left alone with Miss Somerset and
Nellie. There was a midsummer night’s dance in the village which Nellie,
poor dear, was very anxious to go to, and she confided to me that it was
a great shame that everybody else should have such great fun and that
she shouldn’t be able to share in it.
I was very sorry for Nellie; she had been so kind to me that I was very
anxious to help her. I asked her how far away it was that they were
dancing, she said in Farmer Somebody’s barn at the bottom of the hill,
and then I suggested that she should go down for an hour, that I would
be quite all right. To tell the truth, I was in the very middle of a
story called “Redgauntlet” that was written by one of the greatest men
who ever lived. The same man wrote “Ivanhoe,” that you told me was very
long, Charlie, the other day when I wanted to read it to you. I don’t
want to shove books down your throats, but if you try to read
“Redgauntlet,” and find that too long for you, I am in despair of both
of you. Well, in any case I was in the very middle of this book and
Nellie, who was not herself fond of reading—indeed, I doubt whether she
could read at all—had never learnt the great gift of “letting reading
dogs lie.” She would interrupt me every second, with an exclamation, or
a wonder, or a surprise, so I was rather glad to get rid of her, and saw
myself having a whole glorious hour perched on a very high chair by the
window, and although I was reading so intensely that I never would lift
my eyes from the page, at the same time I would be conscious of the
light gradually fading from the sky, and green fields turning to silk,
and of the birds slowly wheeling home. I loved all these things because,
you see, I had always lived in streets. I think that it was really
during that month that I grew to love space so deeply; I liked to be
able to look on and on and on, and to feel that I had only to order my
snow-white charger to be brought to the door, and so go flying off
through the dusk to my mountain fastnesses. Then the kitchen behind me
was very wonderful, so large, that at this hour before the light had
faded, before the candles were lit you could not see into its farthest
corners, and all the plates in rows on the old dresser were like
friendly faces smiling. It must have been nearly nine o’clock by now,
and I was supposed to go to bed at nine, so that Nellie’s obvious
suggestion was, that I should go to bed, and then she should creep off
for a little time. Mr. Andrew and his sister would not return till after
ten, and Miss Somerset was fast asleep with her headache tucked quietly
under her arm. But I begged Nellie to let me stay for a little while; I
promised most faithfully to go up to bed exactly when the kitchen clock
struck half-past nine. She had by that time so complete a faith in my
keeping my word, and was so sure that I could come to no harm, that
after one longing look through the open window at the lovely summer
evening (we could hear very faintly coming up the hill strains of the
rustic band) she nodded her head and said she would go. She slipped on
her coat and hat, gave me a kiss and was off.
[Illustration: A person sits reading while looking toward a window,
where a man appears to be standing and gazing inward from the outside.]
How I loved it when she was gone! If I sat at the right of my window, I
could see the rounded top of my mountain quite black against a sky that
was now very pale like an evening primrose. I remember the look of that
sky so well because, when I look back, everything that was to happen in
a minute seemed to be bathed in that light. If it had happened half an
hour later I would have been frightened, because it would have been so
dark, and it couldn’t have happened half an hour earlier, because Nellie
would have been there. It all occurred at just the right moment, as
things so often do in life. Well, I sat there reading, and everything
grew quieter and quieter, so that I could hear the stream running over
the pebbles at the bottom of the field, with a little tinkly sound of
the fiddle coming up from the barn and even, I fancied, Miss Somerset’s
snores from upstairs. But for some reason or another I couldn’t read; my
own imaginations were stronger than the book, splendid though the book
was. I was using my magic powers, I was holding my hand up to order the
evening to stay still just as it was, as evening stayed still, you will
remember in “The Sleeping Beauty.” There, they would all be for one
thousand years, Nellie half way down the hill towards the dance, Miss
Somerset snoring, the cows lying in the byre, the sheep in their pen,
and two birds transfixed for ever in that primrose sky. I was feeling
very powerful and very grand when in a moment the spell was broken, and
a man appeared on the grass just outside the window, so close to me that
if I had put out my hand I would have touched him.
[Illustration:
They stood me in the middle of the floor.
]
The strange thing was that I wasn’t frightened at all, although his
appearance would have frightened many a grown-up person. He seemed very
large in that evening light, he had been running and was breathing hard,
his clothes were ragged and torn, and he had no hat on his head. He
didn’t say a word, but climbed over the window into the kitchen in a
second of time. He didn’t seem surprised to see me, but bent down very
close to me (he was a very tall man indeed) so that his face was right
up against mine, put his hand on my shoulder with such a grip that he
almost lifted me off my chair, and said “Don’t speak a word, or you’ll
be the worse for it!” The odd thing was, that I liked his face, it was
odd because he can’t have been beautiful to look at; his cheeks were
rough and hairy, and his eyes were fierce, but it doesn’t matter,
everyone is either a friend or not a friend from the first moment you
see them and I hadn’t any doubt at all about him. “Of course, I won’t
tell anybody,” I said getting off my chair, and I remember that I was so
little frightened that I put the book down carefully on the window-sill
so that it should come to no harm. He was, I think, astonished at my
taking it so quietly, but he was too desperately alarmed to think of
anything but his own danger. He stood lost and bewildered in the
kitchen, looking about him as though he couldn’t pull himself together
and make up his mind. Now, looking back, I should imagine that he wasn’t
very old, quite a young fellow, but he seemed to me, of course,
extraordinarily big and strong. His clothes had been torn partly off his
back, and his shoulder was bare and bleeding, and I remember that he
kept trying to pull up his rent coat over the shoulder, as though he
would like to appear more decent and respectable. I expect it was only a
nervous movement, and he didn’t know what he was doing. He realised, I
suppose, that he must take me into his confidence, and that whatever
happened he must reassure me, so he sat down in the big wooden
arm-chair, and drew me towards him, and stood me between his knees. I
remember as though it had happened only yesterday, that his trousers
were torn, and his knees bare like his shoulder. He spoke to me then,
very quietly (wonderfully quietly for a man pressed as he was) he told
me that he was a stranger, this he impressed upon me over and over
again. What kind of a stranger he was, he didn’t tell me, but I realised
that his voice wasn’t like the voice of my father and my friends, and
that although I could understand everything he said there was a curious
twist once and again, that was like nothing I had ever heard before; but
the point was that he was a stranger, and that he meant nobody any harm,
but that they laughed at him, and that he stood as long as he could, and
then they laughed at his country; that he could not stand, and so he had
hit somebody. After that there had been a fight, and that he didn’t know
what had happened, but he was terrible when his anger was roused, and
that after all he was a stranger, that they were pursuing him now, all
of them, with sticks and forks, and that if they caught him they would
shut him up, and that he wasn’t going to be shut up, that he meant
nobody any harm, and if they tried to shut him up he would kill them, so
they had better look out, and that after all he was a stranger; that was
what was the matter, and that if he hadn’t been a stranger they would
never have touched him.
All the time that he was talking to me, he was looking into my eyes, and
I was looking in his. He had his hands on my shoulders, and his bare
knees pressed against my body, but he wasn’t hurting me, and his eyes
asked me to help him, and my eyes answered that I would without my
speaking a word. Indeed I think I would have gone with him anywhere; it
is odd when I look back, but I believe that this man with the rough hair
and the torn clothes, in his terrible state of fear and haste was the
first person in all the world who had talked to me in that kind of way.
Perhaps what drew us together, although I was too young to understand
it, was the fact that I was a stranger in my own way too, a stranger to
Miss Somerset and a stranger to my father and to many another who didn’t
understand me nor what they called my funny ways. He took me on to his
knee and held me close against him, as though I were the only safeguard
he had in all the world, but I didn’t say a word but just waited for him
to tell me what to do.
However, I hadn’t long to hesitate. We hadn’t been there for more than
five minutes I suppose, when we heard the sound of voices. In another
moment he was on his feet, gazing desperately about him. It had become
suddenly dark, and all the voices seemed to swirl up on the grass plot
outside the window. We stood in the shadow of the kitchen, and as though
I had been a hundred years old, moving by instinct, I suppose, I had
shown him a large empty cupboard in the farthest corner of the kitchen,
and he was in it and the door closed, and it was as though he had never
been.
[Illustration: A man stands in a doorway, looking down toward a person
standing in front of him, with a small framed picture of a cow on the
wall.]
I had the sense then (and I don’t know now where I got it from) to go
quietly to the window and pick up my book. They all came rushing into
the kitchen; the kitchen was filled with them. Mr. Andrew was there, and
his sister, but they were mostly men all shouting and crying out and
waving their sticks. At first they didn’t see me and then Mr. Andrew
suddenly called out “Why, there’s the child.” I wasn’t frightened even
then (this was all so much less than so many of my own imagined
adventures) but they stood me in the middle of the floor, held up their
lanterns to look at me, and began asking all kinds of questions. The
point was that the fugitive, if he had come into the house, must have
been heard by me. Had I heard anybody? I shook my head. Where had I been
all the time? I had been sitting there by the window reading my book.
Had I been there all the time? Yes, I had been there all the time. There
was no entrance to the house, save through the kitchen or the front door
just beside the window. In any case, he couldn’t be in the kitchen, he
might be upstairs, so all of them rushed up to see. I could hear them
hunting about upstairs, they even, I fancy, broke into Miss Somerset’s
bedroom, then down they came again and, after a little more discussion,
rushed out and up the road.
Mr. Andrew went with them. Nellie had, fortunately for her, joined the
crowd with a number of the dancers, and now she and Miss Andrew were
left alone with me. They were both of them tremendously excited; what
exactly the stranger had done, I could not understand, but it was
something very terrible. Forgetting me for a moment, they went upstairs
to reassure Miss Somerset, and to see whether any damage had been done.
In a moment I was at the cupboard door, and the stranger and I were
alone in the room again, as though all those people had never been. He
was quieter now he had been given time to breathe, he seemed to have
made up his mind what he would do. I am ashamed to say that I robbed
Miss Andrew, because I gave him half a loaf of bread and a piece of cold
bacon, and all the time I never spoke to him and he didn’t say anything
to me but just before he went, he caught me up in his arms, held me very
tight, kissed me and, as he put me down, said in his funny broken voice
some words in a foreign language that I didn’t understand at all, of
course, but that meant that he approved of me. Then he was over the
window-sill, on the grass, away under the stars, vanished. I hope he
reached my mountain and that Black Jack looked after him until all
pursuit was over. I don’t know; I never heard of him again, but I have a
kind of idea that if I met him anywhere, even now, after all these
years, I should recognise him. I hope, wherever he is, he is a stranger
no longer. Many things that other people would call exciting, have
happened to me since then, but to myself, that will always be the most
exciting of all, and it is an adventure to tell you the truth, that
isn’t yet ended.
[Illustration: A colorful, stylized illustration of a knight in full
armor riding a white horse in front of a castle.]