The Tale of Hawthorn House (6 page)

But you must not think that Beatrix allowed herself to feel sad about something she could not change. If that had been the case, she must have been very melancholy indeed, for the same fairy godmother who had given her the farm had not given her everything she wanted. Not by any means! She had thought that happiness might be within her reach, but her fiancé, Norman Warne, had died suddenly, unexpectedly, and very tragically in 1905, just a month after their engagement and only a few months before she took possession of Hill Top.

Even her engagement was not the happy, uncomplicated event it should have been, for her parents had strenuously disapproved. Her mother and father, both of whom became more difficult as they grew older, took great pride in the knowledge that their daughter should never have to marry a man who worked for his living. And although Norman was certainly respected and respectable enough—he was Beatrix’s editor, in his family’s publishing house—he didn’t belong to their social class. He wasn’t “good enough,” in their terms, for their daughter, who ought not to marry “beneath her.” They refused their permission, quite selfishly, we would say now, although perhaps they didn’t think it was selfish, at least not consciously. They were behaving as many parents in their position behaved. They were keeping their beloved daughter from making an appalling mistake.

But Beatrix thought it
very
selfish. She loved Norman and she insisted on accepting his ring, which of course provoked a huge family row. Still, she owed a duty to her parents, so it was agreed that she and Norman would keep their engagement a secret and postpone their marriage to some indefinite future time. The prospect of postponement was painful, because every year that passed would make it less likely that they would have children. And Norman, boyish, ebullient Norman, was born to be a father. Coming from a large and happy family, he delighted in his nieces and nephews, loving nothing better than to build dollhouses for them and play games with them and read stories to them—
her
stories, of course. When Beatrix saw him with little Winifred and Eveline and Fred, she knew how much he wanted children and how much she wanted that for him.

Three years had gone by since Norman’s death—an infinity of time, it seemed. The day of his death seemed a terrible sword, cutting her off from her past and from her future, leaving her, alone and lonely, in some interminable present. What would have happened had he lived? The question had no answer, but when she forced herself to think of it truthfully, she had to admit that they might not have been happy. Norman would have urged their marriage, and her mother and father would have resisted. She would have been dreadfully torn, longing to marry Norman and leave her parents, yet feeling she could do neither. There would have been one awful argument after another, until she was thoroughly miserable and Norman had repented of his devil’s bargain.

She hated to think it, but perhaps things had turned out for the best. Anyway, this was the way it had turned out, and nothing she thought or did could change it. She would never have a husband. She would never have a child. But she had a farm, and she would make the best of it.

By the time Beatrix reached her front door, the storm clouds over the lake had turned a deep, greenish mauve and the air seemed to have a weight and texture of its own. The trees were waiting anxiously, leaning toward one another and whispering in leafy apprehension as they looked over their shoulders toward the darkening fells and braced themselves against the coming storm. The birds had gone quiet, and all that could be heard was the distant rattle of the whirligig at the fête and the happy shouts of the children running their egg race. But the rain still held off, only a few large drops splattering here and there on the dusty path.

Beatrix went inside and shut the windows, feeling quietly happy. Upstairs in her bedroom, she changed her clothes, deciding that she would skip tonight’s dance. She would rather spend the evening alone, reading and knitting—and anyway, she had plenty to keep her busy. Her brother Bertram was coming up from Ulverston in a day or two, and she would take him to all her favorite places. He had visited the village, of course—the Potters had spent several holidays in a large house on the road to Kendal. He had even visited Hill Top. But he had not been here since it became
her
farm, and she was looking forward to showing him all she had done.

Beatrix was tidying her hair when she heard a strange sound over her head, as if a hundred straw brooms were brushing across the slate roof. Stepping to the window, she saw the trees twisting and tossing and leaves and dry grass flying in wild flurries. In the barnyard, the three red hens— Mrs. Bonnet, Mrs. Shawl, and Mrs. Boots—briskly shooed their chicks to the shelter of the barn, while four white Puddle-ducks lifted their heads and opened their beaks, glad for a drink. Downstairs, the heavy oaken door banged sharply against the wall. She must have left it unlatched, and she hurried downstairs to close it before the rain could blow in.

But just outside the door, on the porch, sat a large woven basket, covered with a hand-woven blue-and-white-checked cloth.

How kind, Beatrix remarked to herself, thinking that someone had left her some squashes or an eggplant—a natural assumption, since this sort of thing happened often. Several of the villagers felt that Miss Potter (who had no husband to take care of her) wanted looking after. They liked to share their garden bounty, especially when there was a surfeit of squashes.

Now, you have been reading this story, so you know what the basket contains (at least I hope you do!) and who put it there, and why. But Beatrix was not present when Mrs. Overthewall encountered Deirdre and the three young Suttons, and she lacks your advantage. She put the basket on the table and lifted the blue-checked cover, expecting to uncover an eggplant or some zucchini or cauliflower, or more happily, a loaf of fresh bread and a pot of raspberry jam—a large pot, judging from the basket’s weight.

But what she uncovered instead was a baby doll, wearing a cleverly knitted pink cap and securely wrapped in pink flannel. And then the doll opened its very blue eyes, waved a tiny fist, and yawned, the prettiest, most perfect little round O of a yawn that anyone has ever seen.

Beatrix gasped in sheer astonishment. “A baby!” she cried.

She stared down at the baby for a moment, her heart beating fast. Of all the things in the world that might have been in that basket, a baby was the very last thing she would have thought of. And then, suddenly recollecting herself, she ran out onto the porch, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever had left it.

And what did she see?

Why, exactly what you might have predicted. A small, round, gray-haired old lady wrapped in an untidy bundle of scarves and shawls was climbing over the garden wall. At the top, she turned and waved at Beatrix. Then she vanished.

And at that moment, the heavens opened and it began to pour with rain.

5

The True Tale of Jemima Puddle-duck

 
 
The downpour delighted the ducks, annoyed the hens, and prompted Kep the collie and Mustard, the old yellow dog, to seek refuge in the Hill Top barn. They sprawled on the earthen floor just inside the door and watched the rain pelting in gusty, wind-spun sheets across the garden. They also took notice of the old woman who was just going over the wall.

“Haven’t seen that one in quite a while,”
Mustard remarked in his broad country dialect.
“Those Hawthorn Folk mostly keep to themselves on Broomstick Lane. They moved house when they was evicted, back some while ago.”

“Hawthorn Folk?”
Kep asked curiously. A brown collie with a shawl of white fur around his shoulders, four white paws, and a white tip to his full tail, he had been brought from Low Longmire by Farmer Jennings to help Mustard with the herding. The older dog was getting on in years. He was fine with the cows (who were slow and deliberate) but no longer spry enough to go after Miss Potter’s nimble-footed sheep.

“Thorn Folk are like t’ Oak and Beech and Willow Folk,”
Mustard replied, licking a paw.
“Fairy folk tree dwellers, y’know. This lot was evicted from t’ hawthorns at Hawthorn House when t’ trees was chopt down.”

“Chopt down!”
Kep barked, aghast.
“Where I come from, taking down a thorn is the worst sort of luck. Unless it’s done right,”
he added.
“With proper notice and apologies. And even then, the Folk may take offence.”

“ ’Tweren’t done right at Hawthorn House,”
Mustard replied.
“An Army man bought t’ place. Arrived one day, ordered t’ thorns chopt down t’ next. Said they stood in the way o’ his lookin’ out o’er t’ lake.”
He shook his head darkly.
“Gave t’ Thorn Folk no notice, no by-your-leave, not even ‘I’m sorry.’ T’ thorns was chopt down and carted off, with t’ Folk running after, cryin’ and sobbin’ as if their hearts ’ud break. Not that t’ Army man noticed, o’ course. Some humans doan’t, worse fer them.”

Kep was somber.
“I’ve heard people say that Hawthorn House is haunted.”

“Worse ’n haunted,”
Mustard said with a sigh.
“Curst. T’ garden won’t grow, t’ well’s dried up, and there’s to be no babes.”

Kep whistled softly and cast a glance at the spot where the woman had scaled the wall and disappeared.
“And that was one of them?”

Not having heard Mrs. Overthewall’s conversation with the children or seen what she left on Miss Potter’s doorstep, the dogs were at a loss. So we shall turn our attention to another creature in the barn: the would-be mother duck whose misadventure with a certain fox was chronicled in Miss Potter’s story
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck
. I’m sure you have read it but perhaps a long time ago. So that you can understand what Jemima is doing in the barn, I will relate the tale to you here, although the story will include some details Miss Potter omitted from her book, perhaps in deference to the youthful innocence of her audience.

When
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck
begins, we learn that the farmer’s wife has been thwarting the duck’s desires to fulfill her maternal destiny. Each day, Mrs. Jennings sends her son, young Sammy, to collect the duck eggs and give them to the hens to hatch. (You may see a picture of Sammy taking Jemima’s eggs from under the rhubarb on page 12 of
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck.
You will also see the box-hive that Miss Potter placed in an alcove of the garden fence. The box was built for a swarm of bees that were knocked out of a tree by a storm. Miss Potter found the swarm, brought them home, and installed them in the box, where they have lived happily ever after.)

But back to Mrs. Jennings, who did not think much of ducks as mothers. “Ducks is lazy sitters,” she told Miss Potter. “We gets more ducklings wi’ less bodderment when t’ chickens is put in charge, and that’s a fact.”

This arrangement met with the enthusiastic approval of most of the female ducks. (The drakes had no opinion, since their part of the business was already done.) Rebecca Puddle-duck, Jemima’s sister-in-law, was delighted to leave the hatching to the chickens, and advised Jemima to do the same.

“I don’t have the patience QUACK to spend twenty-eight days on a nest,”
Rebecca said. She shuddered.
“Not to mention the danger from weasels and QUACK! stoats.”
(Ducks, as you may know, have a habit of nesting away from the civilized safety of the barnyard, in wild places where they are vulnerable to ambush.)
“Let the Bonnet and Boots and Shawl hatch the duCKLUCKLINGS,”
she added, with a careless flip of her wing.
“I have no laCK of things to do with my time, Jemima. I am content to sit baCK and let the hens taCKle it, and so should you be.”

But Jemima felt deep in her heart that motherhood was both a duty and a privilege, and scorned the suggestion that the hens could do a better job. So she hid her eggs as cleverly as she could, under a rhubarb leaf, in the middle of a blackberry thicket, or among the ferns on the bank of Wilfin Beck. But she was never quite clever enough, for Sammy Jennings stole each one. And twenty-eight days later, a smug red hen was parading around the barnyard with Jemima’s ducklings quacking along beside her. It was enough to drive a duck to distraction!

Which is why Jemima, desperate to start her family, put on her best blue poke bonnet, tied her paisley shawl over her shoulders, and flew across the fields, searching for a nesting site so far away that Sammy couldn’t find it. She landed on a neatly clipped lawn where, to her surprise, she came face to face with a sporting gentleman with a narrow, sharpish face and the handsomest sandy whiskers she had ever seen. Dressed in smart green tweeds and a salmon-colored waistcoat with brass buttons, he was lounging in a wicker chair, sipping a cup of fine coffee, smoking a fat Manila cheroot, and studying the racing form in the
Times.
(These last few details, reported to me by Jemima, are not in the book. It must be assumed that Miss Potter omitted them so as not to corrupt the morals of her youngest readers.)

This sporting gentleman, who seemed to be of a cheerful and sympathetic temperament, lived in a summer-house built of faggots and turfs in a casually elegant style, like the holiday home of a Turkish pasha. (Miss Potter was apparently not impressed by the house, calling it “dismal-looking.”) Its name, and its owner’s, were engraved on a small gold plate under the bell-pull beside the door:

 
Foxglove Close
R. V. Vulpes, Esq.