Текст книги "The Classic Tales. Volume VI"

Автор книги: Beatrix Potter

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

CHAPTER XVI

The Effect of Toadstool Tartlets

It was four o’clock of the afternoon when Pony Billy trotted into Codlin Croft orchard with Paddy Pig. Sandy and the farm dogs barked joyfully; the turkey cock gobbled; Charles crowed; and Jenny Ferret waved a dishcloth on the caravan steps. Even Tuppenny and Xarifa – dolefully confined in hampers – clapped their little paws in welcome. Paddy Pig took no notice of these greetings. He slid from the saddle, and sat by the camp fire in a heap.

“He looks poorly,” said Sandy, anxiously, “fetch a shawl, Jenny Ferret.”  “Ill; very ill,” said Paddy Pig. They wrapped him in the shawl and gave him tea; he was thirsty, but he had no appetite. The raw potatoes appeared to have disagreed, on top of the tartlets. As evening closed in, he shivered more and more. The company plied him with questions – how did he get across the water into Pringle Wood? “Over a plank.”  “I don’t remember any plank bridge,” said Pony Billy, “perhaps it might be a tree that had been washed down by the flood?”  “Why did you not come back the same way?”  “It was gone,” said Paddy Pig, swaying himself about. “What did you do in the wood?”  “I tumbled down. Things pulled my tail and pinched me, and peeped at me round trees,” said Paddy Pig, shuddering. “What sort of things?”  “Green things with red noses. Oh, oh, oh!” he squealed, “there is a red nose looking at me out of the teapot! Take me away, Pony Billy! I’m going to be sick!”  “He is very unwell,” said Jenny Ferret, “he should be put to bed at once.” But where? In an ordinary way, Paddy Pig and Sandy slept in dry straw underneath the caravan. But everybody knows that it is unsafe to allow a delirious pig to sleep on the cold ground. “Do you think we could squeeze him through the door into the caravan, if I pulled and you pushed?” said Sandy. Jenny Ferret shook her head, “He is too big. We might have crammed him into the go-cart; but it is not here; it was left behind, by the ford.”  “He must sleep indoors somehow,” said Sandy. “Why all this discussion?” said Charles the cock. “Let our honored visitor, Mr. Patrick Pig, sleep in the middle stall of the stable. It is empty. Maggret, our mare, stands in the stall next to the window. And there is hay, as well as straw. I, myself, scratched it out of the hay-rack. Cock-a-doodle-doo! And there is even a horse rug. A large buff, moth-eaten blanket, bound with red braid,” said Charles, swelling with importance. “The very thing! provided Maggret has no objection,” said Sandy. “Come, Paddy Pig.” The invalid rose stiffly to his feet. But he flopped down again, nearly into the fire (which would have caused another red nose for certain, had he fallen into it). It was necessary to borrow a wheelbarrow; also the stable lantern, as by this time it was dark. Fortunately, Farmer Hodgson had bedded up the mare, and fed all for the night. He was having his own supper, quite unconscious that his stable had been requisitioned as a hospital for sick pigs. He supped in the kitchen; and the windows looked another way. Mrs. Hodgson had occasion to go to the pantry for cheese and a pasty. She glanced through the small diamond panes towards the orchard and the warm glow that was Jenny Ferret’s stick fire, “’Tis a red rising moon. Will it freeze?”  “Bad for the lambs if so be,” said Farmer Hodgson, cutting the apple pasty. Paddy Pig did not improve; he became worse. His mind wandered. He talked continually about red noses; and he thought that there were green caterpillars in the manger. He was so obsessed with red-nosed peepers that he would have bolted out of the stable if his legs had been strong enough. “Someone must sit up with him,” said Jenny Ferret, “I am no use; I’m only an old body. And you, Sandy, ought to remain on guard at the camp. What is to be done?”  “I should esteem it a privilege to be permitted to act as nurse; I am accustomed to night watching,” said Cheesebox, the smithy cat. She had arrived with Mettle, hoping for a circus show; but the company were so anxious about Paddy Pig that they felt unable to give any performance. “I should esteem it a privilege to sit up with Mr. Patrick Pig. At the same time I should prefer to have a colleague to share the responsibility. Send for Mrs. Scales’ Mary Ellen. She has an invaluable prescription for sick pigs. And she understands worm-in-tail,” said Cheesebox; “had it been the time of the moon, we would have hung up rowan berries in the stall. But failing that propitious season, she has medicinal herbs of great virtue. Send for Mary Ellen!” Sandy looked doubtful; “I presume she is another cat? I am afraid she might refuse to come with me, if I went to fetch her. Could you go, Pony Billy? Are you too tired?” Pony Billy sighed the sigh of a weary horse; “Not tired; not at all; but my shoes are past bearing. And here is Mettle out for a lark; otherwise I would have gone to the smithy and had them altered. In any case I was intending to fetch the tilt-cart.”  “Go for the cart before your shoes are changed, Billy. You left it over near to Pringle Wood. I will undertake to have the hearth hot, long before you will reach the smithy.”

Pony Billy paced across the meadow in the starlight. The hill of oaks rose dark and black against the sky. On the ground beneath the trees a few lights were twinkling: whether they were glowworms or red-noses is uncertain, as Pony Billy did not go to look! On the outskirts of the wood, under an eller bush, he found the little cart where he had left it. He placed himself between the shafts and pulled – once, twice, again – what a weight! Yet the baggage had all been lifted out, as well as Xarifa and Tuppenny. Pony Billy tugged and pulled till he moved it with a sudden plunge, that took both the cart and himself over the bank into running water. Thousands of oak-apples washed out of the cart-kist [07] and changed into sparkling bubbles. They floated away down Wilfin Beck, dancing and glittering in the starlight. He crossed the ford, and made his way to the smithy, without any further adventure.

CHAPTER XVII

Fairy Horse-shoes

The smithy was all aglow with a roaring fire on the hearth. Sparks were flying. Hot firelight flickered on the rafters overhead. It shone upon a crowd of dogs and horses, and upon the gypsies’ donkey, Cuddy Simpson, who was dozing in a corner. His head drooped; he rested a strained fetlock wearily. Dogs barked; horses stamped; there was even the merry feedle tweedle of a fiddle, to which the collies, Meg, and Fly, and Glen warbled a treble chorus. And through all the din sounded the tap, tap, tap! of Mettle’s little hammer on the anvil, and the creaking of the bellows that another dog was blowing. The dog was Eddy Tinker, the gypsy lurcher; and the hand-hold of the bellows was made of a polished ox-horn. “Welcome, Pony Billy! but wait for Cuddy Simpson. He has cast a foreshoe, and he is lame and weary. Wait till I fit him with fairy shoes that will make him as lish as new legs. That’s why the donkeys never die! They know the road to the fairy smithy!”  “I can wait,” said Pony Billy, who was fond of Cuddy Simpson.

THE TAP, TAP, TAP OF METTLE’S LITTLE HAMMER

Creak, creak! went the bellows, keeping time to the tune of Black Nag. Louder still barked the dogs, and the horses stamped on the floor. They talked of the good old days, when roads were made for horses, “None of this tarry asphalt like a level river of glass; none of this treacherous granite where we toil and slip and stumble, dragged backward by our loads. None of these hooting lorries that force us against the wall. Shrieking, oily, smelly monsters! and everybody has one – the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker – even the fisherman and the farmer. Where are the patient horses? Where is butcher’s Ginger? and fishcart Fanny? and baker’s Tommy? Where is the hog-maned mare with the shrapnel marks? Gone, gone – all gone.

“Queeny Cross, I, poor old mare, am the last nag left in a huckster’s cart. But happen you like them, Mettle? you that work amongst iron and nails and bolts?”

“I like them?” snarled Mettle, banging the hammer on the anvil, “Ilike those snorting juggernauts? I hate them as much as you do, old Queen. They run over us dogs; they lame our cattle; they kill our sheep.” (Ragman and Roy growled low.) “Think of the noble horses in the grand old days of the road! Who needed a starting handle? Who required to wind up a thoroughbred? Breed – give me breed!” barked Mettle,“Will-Tom’s team in the Coniston coach for me! Now it’s rattle, rumble, rattle, rattle, shriek, shriek, shriek! Gone are the pleasant jog-trot days of peace. They have ruined the smithies and stolen the roads. Shame upon the Big Folks!” said Mettle, banging on the anvil, “even Mistress Heelis – her that was so fond of ponies – serve her right to lose her clog!”  “Where did she lose it, Mettle?”  “Nay, that is a mystery! It seemed to have clog danced right away and back. It came home by Hawkshead and it had been to Graythwaite. As to the how—” (here Mettle interrupted his story to throw a shovelful of small coal onto the hearth) – “as to the how she came to lose it, it was this a-way. She had been on a long, long journey in one of these here rattletraps; and when she got home and unpacked her luggage, she left her clogs upon the shelf.”  “What shelf was that, Mettle?”  “What the Big Folk that ride in motors call a ‘footboard,’ quite appropriate for clogs. When the car went forth next morning there sat the pair of clogs, still upon the footboard. They looked proud.”  “One thing surprises me,” interrupted white collie Fan, “does Mistress Heelis really ever take her clogs off? I thought she went to bed in them?”  “They were off that day, sure,” said Mettle, leaning on the bellows handle, “I saw them pass the smithy. They grinned at me; their buckles winked. But when the car came home in the afternoon, there was only one clog on the footboard, sitting by itself. The other one had fallen off.”  “Which foot’s clog was it, Mettle?”  “Her best foot that she puts foremost. She was sad. She inquired all over for her right-foot clog; and she put a notice – LOST, A CLOG – in the window of the village shop. The clog came home again after a while. My word! it had seen some fun. Now it happened this a-way,” continued Mettle, turning the donkey shoe with the tongs, and blowing white flame through the small coal, “it happened this way. The car took the bumpy road through the woods by Eesbridge. The clogs joggled on the footboard; joggled and giggled and nudged each other with their elbows; until – bump, bump, bump! over a rise of the road, they came in sight of Joshy Campbell’s tin-can-dinner-box and his big green gingham umbrella.

THE UMBRELLA MADE A BOW

“Joshy was an old man with a reddish gray beard, who tidied the sides of the roads. Always took out with him his tin-can-dinner-box, and his great big bunchy umbrella. I never saw him use his umbrella; he carried it always rolled up, to keep it out of the rain. All day, while Joshy worked, the umbrella sat by the dyke, bolt upright and serious, with a long, curved, hooky nose. And snuggled up beside it sat the dumpy tin-can-dinner-box. When the clogs saw the umbrella they bounced up with a shout – who-op! The left-foot clog bounced back upon the board and continued to joy-ride; but the right-foot clog bounced right off. It bounced onto the road and ran back – back, back, back! back to old Joshy Campbell’s umbrella. The umbrella made a bow and stepped out of the ditch; the dinner-box made a bob; the clog made a gambol; and away down the road they all ran, hoppitty hop! without ever a stop, stoppitty stop! or the slightest consideration for old Joshy Campbell. They ran and they ran, and they hopped and they hopped. For a mile or two they ran, and it was night before they stopped.” Mettle drew the coal over the donkey shoe with a little col-rake, and plied the bellows.

“Where did they hop to, and stop at, Mettle?”  “They hopped as far as the middle of the great wood. It was darkish; but they could see to follow the woodland track. For a long, long way they followed it, winding amongst the bushes; until at length before them in the distance they saw a pool of light. It was silvery, like moonlight; only it was always streaming upwards; up from the ground, not downwards from the sky above. The shining space was level, like the floor of a great pitstead; it shone like a moonlit mere.

“And on that shining floor were dancers – strange dancers they were! Hundreds of filmy glittering dancers, dancing to silvery music; thousands of tinkling, echoing murmurs from silver twigs and withered leaves. And still from the dance floor a white light streamed, and showed the dancing shoes that danced thereon – alone.

“They tell me that in France there is a palace – a fairy palace; and in that court, long mournful and deserted, there is a Hall of Lost Footsteps, the Salle des Pas Perdus, where ghosts dance at night. But this dance amongst the oak-woods was a dance of joyous memories. If no feet were in the footgear, the shoes but danced more lightly. And what shoes were not there? Shoes of fact and fable! Queen amongst the dancers was a tiny glass slipper – footing it, footing it – in minuet and stately gavotte. She danced with a cavalier boot; a high boot with brown leather top. Step it, step it, high boot! Step it, little glass slipper! The chimes will call you at midnight; ‘Cinderella’s carriage stops the way! Room for the Marquis, the Grand Marquis of Carabas! Make way for Puss-in-Boots!’ These two danced one-and-one; but beside them danced a pair – Goody-two-shoes’ little red slippers. How they did jet it, jet it, jet it in and out! And round about them danced other shoes, other shoes dancing in hundreds. Broad shoes of slashed cloth; and long-toed shoes with bells, that danced the milkmaid’s morris; buckled shoes, and high-heeled shoes; jack-boots, and buskins, and shoes of spanish leather, and pumps and satin sandals that jigged in and out together.

“And round about them – clump, clump, clump! – danced Mistress Heelis’ clog, clog dancing like a good one, with Joshy Campbell’s dinner-box and the tall green gingham umbrella!

“Only those two were different; all the other dancers were shoes; and the main of them were horseshoes – shoes of all the brave horses that ever were shod, in the good old days of the road. There were little shoes of galloways, and light shoes of thoroughbreds, and great shoes of Clydesdales; and the biggest were the wagoners! On they came galloping, Ha halloo! Ha halloo! (Brill, the foxhound, lifted up her voice – Ha halloo, ha halloo!) – galloping, galloping, Black Nag come galloping! Hark to the timber wagons thundering down the drift road!” shouted Mettle, banging on the anvil, “hark the ringing music of the horseshoes – here’s—

“‘Tap, tap, tappitty! trot, trot, trod!

Sing Dolly’s little shoes, on the hard high road!

Sing Quaker Daisey’s sober pace,

Sing high-stepping Peter, for stately grace.

Phoebe and Blossom, sing softly and low, dear dead horses of long ago;

Jerry and Snowdrop; black Jet and brown

Tom and Cassandra, the pride of the town;

Bobby and Billy gray, Gypsy and Nell;

More bonny ponies than I can tell;

Prince and Lady, Mabel and Pet;

Rare old Diamond, and Lofty and Bet.’

“Now for the wagoners! Hark to the trampling of the wagoners!” shouted Mettle, banging on the anvil – “here’s—

“‘Dick, Duke, Sally, and Captain true,

Wisest of horses that ever wore shoe,

Shaking the road from the ditch to the crown,

When the thundering, lumbering larch comes down.’

“Ah, good old days! ah, brave old horses! Sing loud, sing louder, good dogs!” barked Mettle, “sing, Pony Billy; sing up old Queenie, thou last of the nags! Sing the right words, dogs, none of that twaddle! Now sing all together; Keep time to the bellows—

“‘D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?

D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day?

D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far away,

With his hounds and his horn in the morning.

“’Twas the sound of his horn call’d me from my bed.

And the cry of his hounds has me oft times led;

For Peel’s view halloa would ’waken the dead,

Or a fox from his lair in the morning.’”

Louder and merrier rose the hunting chorus, floating round the rafters with the eddying smoke from the forge. Till the Big Folk, that slept up above in Anvil Cottage, turned on their feather beds and dreamed that they were fox hunting.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Woods by Moonlight

The moon had risen by the time that Pony Billy – properly shod – trotted away from the village smithy to fetch Mary Ellen. The empty tilt-cart rattled at his heels; jumping forward into the harness like a live thing downhill; trundling gaily along the level. The pebbles on the road sparkled in the dazzling moonlight. Pony Billy blew puffs of white breath from his nostrils, and he stepped high – tap-tap-tappitty! prancing to the tune of the smithy song.

He amused himself with step-dancing over the shadows of the hedgerow trees; black shadows flung across the silver road from hedge-bank to hedge. Down below in the reed beds a wild duck was quacking. A roe-deer barked far off in Gallop Wood. White mist covered the Dub; the woods lay twinkling in the moonlight.

Up hill and down hill, Pony Billy trotted on and on; and the woods stretched mile after mile. The tall, straight tree-trunks gleamed in white ranks; trees in hundreds of thousands. Pony Billy glanced skeerily [45] right and left. Almost he seemed to hear phantom galloping horseshoes, as his own shoes pattered on the road. Almost he seemed to see again the fairy dancers of Mettle’s story by the forge.

Shadows of a shadow! Was that the shadow of a little hooded figure, flitting across a forest ride? and a dark prowling shadow that followed her? Was the trotting shadow on the road beside him the shadow of himself? Or was it the shadow of another pony? A little bay pony in a pony trap, with an old woman and a bob-tailed dog, caught in a snowstorm in the woods?

But this white road was not white with snow; and they were real overtaking footsteps that caused Pony Billy to spring forward with a start of panic. Three roe-deer cantered by. Their little black hoofs scarcely touched the ground, so lightly they bounded along. They made playful grunting noises, and dared Pony Billy to catch them; he arched his neck and trotted his best, while he “hinnied” in answer to the deer. They bore him merry company for longer than a mile; sometimes gambolling alongside; sometimes cantering on before.

ONCE THEY SAW TWO STRANGE DWARFY FIGURES.

On and on they travelled; through many miles of woods. Past the black firs; past the sele bushes [42] in the swamp; past the grove of yew trees on the crags; past the big beech trees; uphill and down. Sometimes a rabbit darted across their path. And once they saw two strange dwarfy figures crossing the road in front of them – stumpy, waddling figures, broad as they were long; running, running. The second trundled a handbarrow; the foremost pulled it with a rope – there go the Oakmen! Are those pissamoor [35] hills in the glade? or are they tiny charcoal settings on the pit-steads? [36] The gambolling roe-deer kick up their heels. They know the weight of Oakman Huddikin’s sledge in winter! But this is spring. The dwarfy red-capped figures, running like two little fat badgers, disappeared in the moonlight behind the Great Oak.

At length the woods grew thinner. There began to be moonlit clearings; small parrocks [33] where the Big Folk last summer had hung white streamers on sticks, to scare the red stags from the potato drills. The friendly roe-deer turned aside and left him, leaping a roadside fence, with a flicker of white scuts.

Pony Billy by himself reached a lonely farm-steading; he was pleasantly warm after his long brisk trot. He turned up a narrow yard between manure heaps and a high stone building, that showed a white-washed front to the moon. He passed the doors of byres. Sleepy cows mooed softly; their warm sweet breath smelled through the door-slats. A ring-widdie [39] clinked, as a cow turned her head to listen to the wheels.

Pony Billy passed several more doors. Old Tiny, the sow, was snoring peacefully behind one of them. He drew the cart round the end of the shippon [44] into a cobble-paved yard, where the wheels rumbled over the stones. He went up to the back door of the house. There was no light upstairs; the window panes twinkled in the moonlight. A faint red glow showed through the kitchen window and under the back door.

SHE SAT BEFORE THE HOT WOOD ASH AND PURRED.

Mary Ellen, the farm cat, sat within; purring gently, and staring at the hot white ashes on the open hearth; wood ash that burns low, but never dies for years. She sat on a dun-coloured deer-skin, spread on the kitchen flags. Pots and pans, buckets, firewood, coppy stools,[10] cumbered the floor; and a great brown cream mug was set to warm before the hearth against the morrow’s churning. The half-stone weight belonging to the butter scales was on the board that covered the mug; Mary Ellen had not been sampling the cream. She sat before the hot wood ash and purred. Crickets were chirping. All else was asleep in the silent house.

Mary Ellen listened to the sounds of wheels and horseshoes, which came right up to the porch. Pony Billy’s soft nose snuffled about the latch. He struck a light knock on the door with a forward swing of his forefoot. Mary Ellen arose from the hearth. She went towards the door, and looked through a crack between the door and the door-jamb.

“Good-evening, good Pony; good-evening to you, Sir! I would bid you come in by, only the door is locked. Snecks I can lift; but the key is upstairs.” Pony Billy explained his errand through the crack.

“Dear, dearie me! poor, poor young pig!” purred Mary Ellen, “and me shut up here, accidental-like, with the cream! Dearie, dearie me, now! to think of that! Asleep in the clothes-swill, I was, when the door got locked. Yes! indeed, I do understand pig powders and herbs and clisters and cataplasms and nutritions and triapharmacons etcy teera, etcy teera!” purred Mary Ellen, “but pray, how am I to be got out, without the door key?” Pony Billy pawed the cobblestones with an impatient hoof.

“Let me see, good Mr. Pony, do you think that you could push away that block of wood that is set against a broken pane in the pantry window? Yes? Now I will put on my shawly shawl; so,” purred Mary Ellen, “so! I am stout, and the hole is small. Dearie, dearie me! what a squeeze! I am afraid of broken glass. But there is nothing like trying!” purred Mary Ellen, safely outside upon the pantry window-sill. “Now I can jump down into your cart, if you will back, under the windy pindy.”  “First rate! Are you ready, M’mam?” said Pony Billy, backing against the wall with a bump.

“Oh, dearie me! I have clean forgotten the herbs; I must climb in again! Bunches and bunches of herbs!” purred Mary Ellen, pausing on the window-sill, above the cart. “My Mistress Scales grows a plant of rue on purpose for poor sick piggy-wiggies. Herb of Grace!” purred Mary Ellen,“what says old Gerard in the big calfskin book? ‘St. Anthony’s fire is quenched therewith; it killeth the shingles. Twelve pennyweight of rue is a counter-poison to the poison of wolfs-bane; and mushrooms; and TOADSTOOLS; and the bite of serpents; and the sting of scorpions, and hornets, and bees, and wasps; in-so-much that if the weasel is to fight the serpent, she armeth herself by eating rue.’ Toadstools! it says so in the big book! the very thing!” purred Mary Ellen, squeezing inside, and disappearing into the pantry. “Bunches and bunches of herbs,” she purred, struggling out again through the broken window; “bunches and bunches hanging from the kitchen ceiling! And a pot of goose-grease on the jam board; and a gun. And onions. And a lambing crook. And a fishing rod. And a brass meat-jack that winds up.”

“Am I to take all these things, M’mam?” inquired Pony Billy. “Bless me no! only the herbs,” purred Mary Ellen, seating herself in the cart. But no sooner had Pony Billy turned it in the yard, preparing to start homewards, “Oh, dearie, dearie me! I’ve forgot my fur-lined boots! No, not through the window this time. I keep my wardrobe in the stick-house. And I would like an armful of brackens in the cart-kist, to keep my footsies warm, please Mr. Pony Billy.”  “We shall get away sometime!”thought Pony William.

Once set off, Mary Ellen sat quietly enough; never moving anything excepting her head, which she turned sharply from side to side, at the slightest rustle in the woods, hoping to see rabbits. The roe-deer did not show themselves again. The journey back to Codlin Croft Farm was uneventful. Mary Ellen was set down safely at the stable door. Cheesebox welcomed her effusively.

After assuring himself that Paddy Pig was still alive and kicking, Pony Billy dragged the tilt-cart into the orchard, and tipped it up beside the caravan. Himself he went up to the haystack for a well-earned bite of supper. Afterwards he lay down on the west side of the stack; and slept there, sheltered from the wind.