Through all the din sounded the tap, tap, tap! of Mettle’s little hammer on the anvil.
‘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 colrake, 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 pit-stead; 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.
The umbrella made a bow and stepped out of the ditch.
‘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 gray?
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 18
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 hedgebank 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 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 th
e black firs; past the sele bushes 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 hills in the glade? or are they tiny charcoal settings on the pit-steads? 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 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 farmsteading; 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 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 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.
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, 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 doorjamb.
She sat before the hot wood ash and purred.
‘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 terra!’ 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 cartkist, 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 hay-stack 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.
Chapter 19
Mary Ellen
Mary Ellen was a fat tabby cat with sore eyes, and white paws, and an unnecessarily purry manner. If people only looked at her she purred, and scrubbed her head against them. She meant well; but she drove Paddy Pig wild. ‘Was it a leetle sick piggy-wiggy? was it cold then?’ purred Mary Ellen, working her claws into the horseblanket and squirming it upwards. The result was that the top of the blanket got into Paddy Pig’s mouth, whilst his hind feet were left bare and cold.
‘Bless its little pettitoes! No, it must not kick its blanket off its beddee beddee!’ ‘What, what, what? I’m snuffocated! Sandy! Sandy! Take away this cat! I’m skumfished!’ ‘Was it a leetle fidgetty pidgetty –’ ‘Sandy, I say! Take away this awful cat!’ screamed Paddy Pig.
At that moment Cheesebox entered the stable carrying a jug of rue tea, ‘He sounds very fractious. Keep him flat, Mary Ellen.’ Paddy Pig sat up violently under the blanket, ‘Bring me a bucketful of pig-wash! None of your cat lap!’ ‘Rue tea,’ purred Mary Ellen; ‘my Mrs. Scales always prescribes nice rue tea in a little china cuppy cuppy, for poor sick piggy-wiggies with tummyakies.’
Paddy Pig swallowed the rue tea, under protest. He was sick immediately in spite of the expostulations of the two cats. Maggret, the mare in the next stall, blew her nose and stamped. After he had exhausted himself with kicking and squealing, Paddy Pig sank into uneasy slumber. But every time he turned over he kicked off the blanket, and there was another cat fight.
Towards midnight he grew quieter. The cats sat up all night; wide awake and watchful. There were noises of rats in the old walls of the stable; and noises of night birds without. Twice during the small hours of the morning Sandy’s black nose appeared under the stable door. He listened to the patient’s uneasy breathing, and then returned to his straw bed underneath the caravan.
At 2 a.m. the cats made themselves a dish of tea (proper tea, made of tea leave
s). It enlivened them to endless purring conversations. They gossiped about other cats of their acquaintance. About our cat Tamsine, and her fifteenth family of kittens. And how Tamsine once was lost for a whole week, and came home very thin. And after all, she had been no further off than the next-door house, which was shut up empty, while the tenants had gone away for a week’s holiday. But what had Tamsine been doing to get herself locked up in the next-door pantry, I wonder? ‘Perhaps she was catching dear little mousy mousies,’ purred Mary Ellen. ‘She did not look as though she had eaten many. And to think that her people had heard her mewing, and had searched for her high and low, never guessing that the next-door house was locked up unoccupied!’