Читать книгу The Fairy Latchkey - Magdalene Horsfall - Страница 3

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There was nothing at all remarkable about her, excepting her name, which was Philomène Isolde, and the fact that a knot of green ribbon had been sewn upon her christening dress; but the dress had long since lain folded in a drawer, and her father as often as not called her “Little Miss Muffet,” because she was very fond of curds and whey, and very much afraid of spiders. When he did call her “Philomène,” it meant that he was too busy to have her in the room with him. Unlike most people, she was satisfied with her own name, indeed she was proud of it; for Daddy had told her that Philomène meant “beloved,” and as for Isolde, that was Godmother’s own name. “And Isolde,” said Godmother, “was a real Princess.”

“I wish I were a real Princess,” said Philomène, and waited for Nurse to add, “If wishes were horses, Miss, beggars might ride,” which she forthwith did.

Philomène was not a pretty child, but neither was she exactly plain, for she had small hands and feet, and a trim little figure, hazel eyes and plenty of soft mouse-coloured hair. And if there was nothing unusual about her appearance, there was certainly nothing unusual about her home, for she lived in a commonplace suburb of London, in a commonplace villa called Sideview. The house undoubtedly had two sides, but scarcely any view, unless the strip of back-garden counted as such. The drawing-room and dining-room opened out of a narrow hall, and both had about them the chill and mustiness of disuse, for since the death of Philomène’s mother the drawing-room had seen no more parties, and her father, who was a hard-working doctor, as often as not snatched his hurried meals in the study, rather than in the dining-room. Philomène’s own bedroom and schoolroom, on the upper landing, were large airy rooms for the size of the house.

At the foot of her bed stood a screen, upon which Froggy went a-wooing, and Little Red Ridinghood carried her covered basket through the wood, and on the wall opposite hung a picture of a young shepherdess, clasping her crook, and kneeling in the shade of a spreading oak-tree. As there was no flock in sight, Philomène at first supposed her to be Bo-peep before her sheep came home, but Godmother had told her that it was Joan, the Maid of Orleans, who died for love of France and of the truth; and from that time forward, on winter evenings when the salamanders began their torch-light revels on the hearth, Philomène would lie in bed and watch the ruddy reflection brighten and broaden among the branches of the oak, wrapping the frail young figure in a winding-sheet of flame, and placing the hard-won wreath of martyrdom upon her hair.

Over the mantelpiece in the schoolroom next door, hung another picture, one which had belonged to Philomène’s mother. There was a road white with dust in the foreground, disappearing amidst a clump of trees, above which floated a wreath of blue smoke. Down to the road there sloped a bank of grass, and here sat a woman with a child in her lap, while a bird on the wing paused to peck from an ear of corn which the baby held in his hand. Beside the two an old man with kind eyes and work-worn hands was unsaddling a small grey donkey, and a little further down the road stood a ruined shrine with a broken idol. Philomène liked the donkey with its long ears and sad eyes, and felt grateful to the old man for allowing it to nibble the grass at will.

It was in the schoolroom that Philomène kept her toys. There was the dolls’ house and the dolls’ kitchen, and the musical box, and the paint-box with its palettes and saucers and brushes. Last, but by no means least, came the book-shelf. It held all Mrs Ewing’s stories, and all Mrs Molesworth’s, Grimm, and Hans Andersen, and many more besides. Philomène used to act all the stories out of these books, but it is dull work to be both players and audience yourself, and it needs an imagination bordering on genius to ride alone upon a bed, and persuade your heart of hearts that it is Pegasus, the wonderful winged horse.

“And nothing ever happens to me,” mused Philomène, “as it happens to people in books. I do not live in a chateau with a terrace and a raven, like Jeanne in ‘The Tapestry-Room,’ and when I play with the reels in Nurse’s work-box they do not behave in the least like Louisa’s reels in ‘Tell Me a Story.’ I suppose it is because I am just ordinary.”

It was a depressing thought, but facts could not be shelved. Philomène’s cuckoo clock certainly acted very differently from Griselda’s. So far from inviting her to climb up by the two long dangling chains, and take a seat opposite to him on a red velvet arm-chair, this disobliging bird uttered his “cuckoos” in a hasty, perfunctory manner, and then shut to the door of his house with a snap, as who should say, “That’s over till next time.”

In the schoolroom window hung a cage with a canary in it; he was of a bright yellow, all but his head, which was green, and Philomène had christened him Master Mustardseed, after one of the fairy pages in “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Now this canary had something of a history. To begin with, he had had a predecessor, a canary that had been yellow all over, and so tame that he would perch upon Philomène’s needle when she sewed, or upon her book when she read. Then one day the old maidservant, Lilian Augusta, had left the schoolroom window open and the cage-door ajar, and the canary flew out, never to return, and there was lamentation at Sideview. But a few days later a strange thing happened. Through the open window, into the empty cage, flew another canary, this time with a little head as green and velvety as moss; Master Mustardseed, in short, who had remained with his new mistress ever since.

Besides her canary, Philomène had another pet, a white cat called Queen Mab, with paws as soft as pussy-willow and a footfall as light as any snowflake. Now this was how Queen Mab had first come to Sideview:—It was Christmas Eve, and Philomène stood at the dining-room window, listening to the waits, who were singing a Christmas carol:

“He lies ’mid the beasts of the stall,

Who is Maker and Lord of us all.

The winter wind blows cold and dreary;

See, he weeps, the world is weary,

Lord, have pity and mercy on me.

Come, come, come to the manger,

Kneel ye now to the newborn King;

Sing, sing, chorus of angels,

Stars of the morning, o’er Bethlehem sing!”

After that they moved on to the next house, and began the second verse.

“He leaves all his glory behind,

To be born and to die for mankind;

’Midst grateful beasts his cradle chooses,

Thankless man his love refuses.

Lord, have pity and mercy on me.”

It was bitterly cold. Philomène closed the window, and as she did so a mew caught her attention. In another moment she had the hall-door open, and a gust of icy air met her, as though the very wind were trying to force its way into the house for shelter. Upon the doorstep sat a white kitten, draggled and shivering. Philomène picked it up at once, shut the door, and ran upstairs to the schoolroom, all in a flutter of pity and excitement. Nurse looked up from her sewing, and stared at her aghast.

“Well, Miss Philomène,” she exclaimed at length, “I wonder what you will be up to next? Put that dirty little cat down this minute.”

Philomène obeyed. “I wanted it to have some of the milk that was left over from supper,” she protested timidly.

“And so it may,” retorted Nurse, whose bark was worse than her bite, “so long as you don’t go on holding it against your dress.”

So Philomène took a saucer, and busied herself with the kitten on the hearth-rug. This was a bearskin, and had figured many a time in solitary games of Beauty and the Beast, for it had served as the hero’s costume till he finally became a prince and discarded it, when Philomène, whose housewifely little soul disliked waste, had made the princess suggest that it should be lined with red flannel, and turned into a useful rug for the throne-room. The kitten lapped up the milk eagerly, and settled itself comfortably in front of the fire.

“And now you had better put it back where it came from, Miss,” said Nurse.

“The saucer?” inquired Philomène blankly.

“No, child, the cat.”

“But it came from the doorstep!” exclaimed Philomène, and seeing no relenting in Nurse’s face, she burst into tears. At this moment her father came into the room.

“What? Tears, little maid?” he called out in surprise.

“Oh, Daddy, it’s so cold outside, and it hasn’t done anybody any harm, and it won’t have any Christmas, and perhaps it’s one of the ‘grateful beasts’ in the carol,” sobbed Philomène.

“It certainly seemed grateful enough for the milk,” said Nurse, who had not listened to the waits, and was of a literal turn of mind, “but I don’t much fancy a stray cat in the kitchen all the same.”

The doctor sat down in the red-cushioned rocking-chair, and took his child on his knee. He was a tall, well-made man with dark hair, keen eyes, and a somewhat abrupt manner, but he was never anything but gentle with his little daughter, and Philomène’s sobs subsided as he stroked her hair and patted her cheek.

“Look here, little Miss Muffet,” he said, “I will tell you what we will do. We will ask Nurse to let us keep the pussy over-night, and later on we will advertise in the newspaper, just as we did for Master Mustardseed, and if it doesn’t seem to belong to anyone or to come from anywhere in particular, you shall have it for your own, and Nurse won’t mind it if it catches the mice in the scullery, will she?”

Philomène’s face cleared, and she looked beseechingly at Nurse. “You are master in this house, sir,” admitted Nurse, “and it seems useless to fight against this love of dumb things. Cats especially do seem to run in families.”

So the white kitten stayed, and grew into a white cat, glossy and well-liking, that followed Philomène about the house “like a dog,” said the people who had never taken the trouble to befriend a cat.