And well they might be.
There was something strangely unreal about this room—
furnished with doll's house furniture of every shape and size, none of it matching or in proportion. There were chairs upholstered in rep or velvet, some of them too small to sit in and some too steep and large; there were chiffoniers which were too tall and occasional tables far too low; and a toy fireplace with color plaster coals and its fire irons stuck down all-of-a-piece with the finder; there were two make-believe windows with curved pelmets and red satin curtains, each hand-painted with an imitation view—one looked out on a Swiss mountain scene, the other a Highland glen (Eggletina did them, Aunt Lupy boasted in her rich society voice. "We're going to have a third when we get the curtains—a view of Lake Como from Monte S. Primo"); there were table lamps and standard lamps, flounced, festooned and tasseled, but the light in the room, Arrietty noticed, came from the humble, familiar dips like those they had made at home.
Everybody looked extraordinarily clean and Arrietty became even shyer: she threw a quick glance at her father and mother and was not reassured: none of their clothes had been washed for weeks nor, for some days, had their hands and faces. Pod's trousers had a tear in one knee and Homily's hair hung down in snakes. And here was Aunt Lupy, plump and polite, begging Homily please to take off her things, in the kind of voice, Arrietty imagined, usually reserved for feather boas, opera cloaks and freshly-cleaned white kid gloves.
But Homily, who back at home had so dreaded being "caught out" in a soiled apron, knew one worth two of that. She had, Pod and Arrietty noticed with pride, adopted her woman-tried-beyond-endurance role backed up by one called yes-I've-suffered-but-don't-let's-speak-of-it-now; she had invented a new smile, wan but brave, and had—in the same good cause—plucked the two last hairpins out of her dust-filled hair. "Poor dear Lupy," she was saying, glancing wearily about, "what a lot of furniture! Whoever helps you with the dusting?" And swaying a little, she sank on a chair.
They rushed to support her, as she hoped they might. Water was brought and they bathed her face and hands. Hendreary stood with the tears in his brotherly eyes. "Poor valiant soul," he muttered, shaking his head. "Your mind kind of reels when you think of what she's been through...."
Then, after quick wash and brush-up all round and a brisk bit of eye-wiping, they all sat down to supper. This they ate in the kitchen which was rather a come-down except that, in here, the fire was real: a splendid cooking range made of a large, black door-lock; they poked the fire through the key-hole, which glowed handsomely, and the smoke, they were told, went out through a series of pipes to the cottage chimney behind.
The long, white table was richly spread: it was an eighteenth century finger-plate off some old drawing-room door —white-enameled and painted with forget-me-nots, supported firmly on four stout pencil stubs where once the screws had been; the points of the pencils emerged slightly through the top of the table; one was copying ink and they were warned not to touch it in case it stained their hands.
There was every kind of dish and preserve—both real and false; pies, puddings, and bottled fruits out of season—all cooked by Lupy—and an imitation leg of mutton and a desk of plaster tarts borrowed from the dolls' house. There were three real tumblers as well as acorn cups and a couple of green glass decanters.
Talk, talk, talk ... Arrietty, listening, felt dazed. She saw, now, why they had been expected. Spiller, she gathered, having found the alcove bootless and its inmates flown, had salvaged their few possessions and had run and told young Tom. Lupy felt a little faint suddenly when they mentioned this person by name and had to leave the table. She sat awhile in the next room on a frail gilt chair placed just inside the doorway—"between drafts" as she put it—fanning her round red face with a lark's feather.
"Mother's like this about humans," explained the eldest cousin. "It's no good telling her he's tame as anything and wouldn't hurt a fly!"
"You never know," said Lupy darkly, from her seat in the doorway. "He's nearly full grown! And that, they say, is when they start to be dangerous...."
"Lupy's right," agreed Pod. "I'd never trust 'em meself."
"Oh, how can you say that?" cried Arrietty. "Look at the way he snatched us up right out of the jaws of death!"
"Snatched you up?" screamed Lupy from the next room. "You mean—WITH HIS HANDS?"
Homily gave her brave little laugh, listlessly chasing a globule of raspberry around her too slippery plate. "Naturally..." She shrugged. "It was nothing, really."
"Oh dear..." stammered Lupy faintly. "Oh, you poor thing ... imagine it! I think," she went on, "if you'll excuse me a moment, I'll just go and lie down..." And she heaved her weight off the tiny chair, which rocked as she left it.
"Where did you get all this furniture, Hendreary?" asked Homily, recovering suddenly now that Lupy had gone.
"It was delivered," her brother told her, "in a plain white pillowcase. Someone from the big house brought it down."
"From our house?" asked Pod.
"Stands to reason," said Hendreary. "It's all stuff from that doll's house, remember, they had upstairs in the schoolroom. Top shelf of the toy cupboard, on the right hand side of the door."
"Naturally I remember," said Homily, "seeing that some of it's mine. Pity," she remarked aside to Arrietty, "that we didn't keep that inventory"—she lowered her voice—"the one you made on blotting paper, remember?"
Arrietty nodded: there were going to be fireworks later—she could see that. She felt very tired suddenly; there seemed too much talk and the crowded room felt hot.
"Who brought it down?" Pod was asking in a surprised voice. "Some kind of human being?"
"We reckon so," agreed Hendreary. "It was lying there t'other side of the bank—soon after we got turned out of the badger's set and had set up house in the stove...."
"What stove was that?" asked Pod. "Not the one by the camping site?"
"That's right," Hendreary told him. "Two years we lived there, off and on."
"A bit too close to the gypsies for my liking," said Pod! He cut himself a generous slice of hot boiled chestnut and spread it thickly with butter.
"You got to be close," Hendreary explained, "like it or not, when you got to borrow."
Pod, about to bite, withdrew the chestnut: he seemed amazed. "You borrowed from caravans?" he exclaimed. "At your age!"
Hendreary shrugged slightly and was modestly silent.
"Well, I never," said Homily admiringly. "There's a brother for you! You think what that means, Pod—"
"I am thinking," said Pod. He raised his head. "What did you do about smoke?"
"You don't have none," Hendreary told him, "not when you cook on gas."
"On gas!" exclaimed Homily.
"That's right. We borrowed a bit o' gas from the gas company: they got a pipe laid all along that bank. The stove was resting on its back, like, you remember? We dug down behind through a flue—a good six weeks we spent in that tunnel. Worth it in the end, though: three pin-hole burners we had down there."
"How did you turn 'em on and off?" asked Pod.
"We didn't—once lit, we never let them out. Still burning they are to this day."
"You mean that you still go back there?"
Hendreary, yawning slightly, shook his head (they had eaten well and the room felt very close). "Spiller lives there," he said.
"Oh," exclaimed Homily, "so that's how Spiller cooked! So that's what those bones were! He might have told us," she went on, looking about in a hurt way, "or, at any rate, asked us in—"
"He wouldn't do that," said Hendreary, "once bitten, twice shy, as you might say."
"How do you mean?" asked Homily.
"After we left the badger's set—" began Hendreary and broke off—slightly shamefaced, he seemed, in spite of his smile. "Well, that stove was one of his places: he asked us in for a bite and a sup and we stayed a couple o' years...."
"Once you'd struck gas, you mean," said Pod.
r /> "That's right," said Hendreary. "We cooked and Spiller borrowed."
"Ah—" said Pod. "Spiller borrowed? Now I understand.... You and me, Hendreary, we got to face up to it—we're not as young as we was. Not by a long chalk."
"Where is Spiller now?" asked Arrietty suddenly.
"Oh, he's gone off," said Hendreary vaguely; he seemed a little embarrassed and sat there frowning and tapping the table with a pewter spoon (one of a set of six, Homily remembered angrily: she wondered how many were left).
"Gone off where?" asked Arrietty.
"Home, I reckon," Hendreary told her.
"But we haven't thanked him," cried Arrietty. "Spiller saved our lives!"
Hendreary threw off his gloom. "Have a drop of blackberry cordial," he suggested suddenly to Pod. "Lupy's own make. Cheer us all up...."
"Not for me," said Homily firmly, before Pod could speak. "No good never comes of it as we've found out to our cost."
"But what will Spiller think," persisted Arrietty, and there were tears in her eyes. "We haven't even thanked him?"
Hendreary looked at her, surprised. "Spiller? He don't hold with thanks. He's all right..." and he patted Arrietty's arm.
"Why didn't he stay for supper?"
"He don't ever," Hendreary told her. "Doesn't like company. He'll cook something on his own."
"Where?"
"In his stove."
"But that's miles away!"
"Not for Spiller—he's used to it. Goes part way by water."
"And it must be getting dark," Arrietty went on unhappily.
"Now don't you fret about Spiller," her uncle told her. "You eat up your pie...."
Arrietty looked down at her plate (pink celluloid, it was, part of a tea-service which she seemed to remember): somehow she had no appetite. She raised her eyes. "And when will he be back?" she asked anxiously.
"He don't come back much. Once a year for his new clothes. Or if young Tom sends 'im special."
Arrietty looked thoughtful. "He must be lonely," she ventured at last.
"Spiller? No ... I wouldn't say he was lonely. Some borrowers is made like that. Solitary. You get 'em now and again." He glanced across the room to where his daughter, having left the table, was sitting alone by the fire. "Eggletina's a bit like that ... Pity, but you can't do nothing about it. Them's the ones as gets this craze for humans—kind of man-eaters, they turns out to be..."
When Lupy returned, refreshed from her rest, it all began again: talk, talk, talk ... and Arrietty slipped unnoticed from the table. But, as she wandered away toward the other room, she heard it going on: talk about living arrangements, about the construction of a suite of rooms upstairs; about what pitfalls there were in this new way of life and the rules they had made to avoid such pitfalls-how you always drew the ladder up last thing at night but that it should never be moved while the men were out borrowing; that the young boys went out as learners, each in turn, but that, true to borrowing tradition, the women would stay at home. She heard her mother declining the use of the kitchen. "Thank you, Lupy," Homily was saying, "it's very kind of you but we'd better begin as we mean to go on, don't you think, quite separate."
And so it starts again, thought Arrietty, as entering the next room she seated herself in a stiff armchair. But no longer quite under the floor—up a little, they would be now, among the lath and plaster: there would be ladders instead of dusty passages and that platform, she hoped, might do instead of her grating.
She glanced about her at the over-furnished room: the doll's house leftovers suddenly looked silly—everything for show and nothing much for use; the false coals in the fireplace looked worn as though scrubbed too often by Lupy and the painted views in the windows had finger-marks round the edge.
She wandered out to the dim-lit platform; this, with its dust and shadows—had she known of such things—was something like going backstage. The ladder was in place, she noticed—a sign that someone was out—but in this case, not so much "out" as "gone." Poor Spiller ... solitary, they had called him. Perhaps, thought Arrietty self-pityingly, that's what's the matter with me....
There was a faint light, she saw now, in the chasm below her; what at first had seemed a lessening of darkness seemed now a welcoming glow. Arrietty, her heart beating, took hold of the ladder and set her foot on the first rung. If I don't do it now, she thought desperately, this first evening—perhaps, in the future, I should never dare again; there seemed too many rules in Aunt Lupy's house, too many people, and the rooms seemed too dark and too hot. There may be compensations, she thought—her knees trembling a little as rung after rung she started to climb down—but I'll have to discover them myself.
Soon she stood once again in the dusty entrance hall; she glanced about her and then nervously she looked up; she saw the top of the ladder outlined against the light and the jagged edge of the high platform. It made her feel suddenly dizzy and more than a little afraid: suppose someone, not realizing she was below, decided to pull it up?
The faint light, she realized, came from the hole in the wainscot: the log-box, for some reason, was not laid flush against it—there might well be room to squeeze through. She would like to have one more peep at the room in which, some hours before, young Tom had set them down—to have some little knowledge, however fleeting, of this human dwelling which from now on would compose her world.
All was quiet as she stole toward the gothic-shaped opening. The log-box, she found, was a good inch and a half away. It was easy enough to slip out and ease her tiny body along the narrow passage left between the side of the box and the wall. Again a little frightening: suppose some human being decided suddenly to shove the log-box into place; she would be squashed, she thought, and found long afterwards glued to the wainscot, like some strange, pressed flower. For this reason, she moved fast, and reaching the box's corner, she stepped out on the hearth.
She glanced about the room. She could see the rafters of the ceiling, the legs of a Windsor chair and the underside of its seat. She saw a lighted candle on a wooden table, and, by its leg, a pile of skins on the floor—ah, this, she realized, was the secret of Spiller's wardrobe.
Another kind of fur lay on the table, just beyond the candle, above a piece of cloth—tawny yellow and somehow rougher. As she stared it seemed to stir. A cat? A fox? Arrietty froze to stillness but she bravely stood her ground. Now the movement became unmistakable: a roll over and a sudden lifting up.
Arrietty gasped—a tiny sound but it was heard.
A face looked back at her, candle-lit and drowsed with sleep, below its thatch of hair. There was a long silence. At last, the boy's lips curved softly into a smile—and very young, he looked, after sleeping, very harmless. The arm on which he had rested his head lay loosely on the table and Arrietty, from where she stood, had seen his fingers relax. A clock was ticking somewhere above her head; the candle flame rose, still and steady, lighting the peaceful room; the coals gave a gentle shudder and settled in the grate.
"Hallo," said Arietty.
"Hallo," replied young Tom.
Books by Mary Norton
available in paperback editions
from Harcourt
THE BORROWERS
THE BORROWERS AFIELD
THE BORROWERS AFLOAT
THE BORROWERS ALOFT
THE BORROWERS AVENGED
BED-KNOB AND BROOMSTICK
ARE ALL THE GIANTS DEAD?
Footnotes
* "Tom Thumb Edition of Shakespeare's Tragedies, with foreword on the Author."
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Mary Norton, The Borrowers Afield
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