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_Broomsticks_ was written by Walter de la Mare
(1873-1956), and was included in his _Collected Stories for Children_ (1947).

Title: Collected Stories for Children -- Broomsticks
Date of first publication: 1947
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Date first posted: 31 December 2007
Date last updated: 31 December 2007
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #53

This ebook was produced by: David T. Jones, Beth Trapaga, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                              Broomsticks

by Walter de la Mare (from his _Collected Stories for Children_) [1947]

Miss Chauncey's cat, Sam, had been with her many years before she
noticed anything unusual, anything _disturbing_, in his conduct. Like
most cats who live under the same roof with but one or two humans, he
had always been more sagacious than cats of a common household. He had
learned Miss Chauncey's ways. He acted, that is, as nearly like a small
mortal dressed up in a hairy coat as one could expect a cat to act. He
was what is called an 'intelligent' cat.

But though Sam had learned much from Miss Chauncey, I am bound to say
that Miss Chauncey had learned very little from Sam. She was a kind,
indulgent mistress; she could sew, and cook, and crochet, and make a
bed, and read and write and cipher a little. And when she was a girl
she used to sing 'Kathleen Mavourneen' to the piano. Sam, of course,
could do nothing of this kind.

But then, Miss Chauncey could no more have caught and killed a mouse or
a blackbird with her five naked fingers than she could have been Pope
of Rome. Nor could she run up a six-foot brick wall, or leap clean from
the hearthmat in her parlour on to the shelf of her chimneypiece
without disturbing a single ornament, or even tinkling one crystal
lustre against another. Unlike Sam, too, she could not find her way in
the dark, or by her sense of smell; or keep in good health by merely
nibbling grass in the garden. If, moreover, she had been carefully held
up by her feet and hands two or three feet above the ground and then
dropped, she would have at once fallen plump on her back; whereas when
Sam was only three months old he could have managed to twist clean
about in the air in twelve inches and come down on his four feet, as
firm as a table.

While then Sam had learned a good deal from Miss Chauncey, she had
learned nothing from him. And even if she had been willing to be
taught, and he to teach her, it is doubtful if she would have proved a
promising pupil. What is more, she knew much less about Sam than he
knew about his mistress--until, at least, that afternoon when she was
doing her hair in the glass. And then she could hardly believe her own
eyes. It was a moment that completely changed her views about Sam--and
nothing after that experience was ever quite the same again....

Sam had always been a fine upstanding creature, his fur jet-black and
silky, his eyes a lambent gold, even in sunshine, and at night aglow
like green topazes. He was now full five years of age, and had an
unusually powerful miaou. Living as he did quite alone with Miss
Chauncey at Post Houses, it was natural that he should become her
constant companion. For Post Houses was a singularly solitary house,
standing almost in the middle of Haggurdsdon Moor, just where two
wandering by-ways cross each other like the half-closed blades of a
pair of shears or scissors.

She was well over a mile from her nearest neighbour, Mr. Cullings, the
carrier; and yet another mile from the straggling old village of
Haggurdsdon itself. Its roads were extremely ancient. They had been
sheep-tracks long before the Romans came to England and had cut _their_
roads from shore to shore. But for many years few travellers on horse
or foot, or even sheep with their shepherd had come Miss Chauncey's
way. You could have gazed from her windows for days together without
seeing so much as a tinker's barrow or a gipsy's van.

Post Houses too was perhaps the ugliest house there ever was. Its four
corners stood straight up on the moor like a pile of nursery bricks.
From its flat roof on a clear day the eye could see for miles and miles
across the moor, Mr. Cullings's cottage being out of sight in a shallow
hollow. It had belonged to Miss Chauncey's respectable ancestors for
generations. Many people in Haggurdsdon indeed called it Chauncey's.
And though in a blustering wind it was as full of noises as an organ,
though it was cold as a barn in winter, and though another branch of
the family had as far back as the 'seventies gone to live in the Isle
of Wight, Miss Chauncey still remained faithful to the old walls. In
fact she loved the ugly old place. Had she not lived in it ever since
she was a little girl, with knickerbockers showing under her skirts,
and pale-blue ribbon rosettes at her shoulders.

This fact alone made Sam's conduct the more reprehensible, for never
cat had kinder mistress. Miss Chauncey herself was now about sixty
years of age--fifty-five years older than Sam. She was tall and gaunt,
and straight as a ramrod. On weekdays she wore black alpaca, and on
Sundays a watered silk. Her large round steel spectacles straddling
across her high nose gave her a look of being keen as well as cold. But
truly she was neither. For even so stupid a man as Mr. Cullings could
take her in over the cartage charge for a parcel--just by looking
tired, or sighing as he glanced at his rough-haired, knock-kneed mare.
And there was the warmest of hearts under her stiff bodice.

Post Houses being so far from the village, milk and cream were a little
difficult. But Miss Chauncey could deny Sam nothing--in reason. She
paid a whole sixpence a week to a little girl called Susan Ard, who
brought these dainties from the nearest farm. They were dainties
indeed, for though the grasses on Haggurdsdon Moor were of a dark sour
green, the cows that grazed on it gave an uncommonly rich milk, and Sam
flourished on it. Mr. Cullings called once a week on his round, and had
a standing order to bring with him a few sprats or fresh herrings, or
any toothsome fish that was in season, Miss Chauncey would not even
withhold her purse from whitebait, if no other cheaper wholesome fish
were procurable. And Mr. Cullings would eye Sam fawning about his
cartwheel, or gloating up at his dish, and say, ''Ee be a queer animal,
Mum, shure enough; 'ee be a wunnerful queer animal, 'ee be.'

As for Miss Chauncey herself, she was a niggardly eater, though much
attached to her tea. She made her own bread and cookies. On Saturday a
butcher-boy drove up in a striped apron with her Sunday joint; but she
was no meat-lover. Her cupboards were full of home-made jams and
bottled fruits and dried herbs--everything of that kind, for Post
Houses had a nice long strip of garden behind it, surrounded by a high
old yellow brick wall.

Quite early in life Sam, of course, had learned to know his
meal-times--though how he 'told' them was known only to himself, for he
never appeared even to glance at the face of the grandfather's clock on
the staircase. He was punctual, a dandy in his toilet, and a prodigious
sleeper. He had learned to pull down the latch of the back door, if, in
the months when an open window was not to be found, he wished to go
out. Indeed, he often seemed to prefer the latch. He never slept on
Miss Chauncey's patchwork quilt unless his own had been placed over it.
He was fastidious almost to a foppish degree in his habits, and he was
no thief. He had a mew on one note to show when he wanted something to
eat; a mew a semitone or two higher if he wanted drink (that is, cold
water, for which he had a natural taste); and yet another mew--gentle
and sustained--when he wished, so to speak, to converse with his
mistress.

Not, of course, that the creature talked _English_. He liked to sit up
on one chair by the fireside, especially in the kitchen--for he was no
born parlour cat--and to look up at the glinting glasses of Miss
Chauncey's spectacles, and then down a while at the fire-flames
(drawing his claws in and out as he did so, and purring the while),
almost as if he might be preaching a sermon, or reciting a poem.

But this was in the happy days when all seemed well. This was in the
days when Miss Chauncey's mind was innocent of doubts and suspicions.

Like others of his kind, too, Sam had delighted in his youth to lie in
the window and idly watch the birds in the apple-trees--tits, thrushes,
blackbirds, bullfinches--or to crouch over a mousehole, for hours
together. Such were his house amusements (he never ate his mice), while
Miss Chauncey with cap and broom, duster and dish-clout, went about her
work. But he also had a way of examining things in which cats are not
generally interested. He as good as told Miss Chauncey one afternoon
that moths were at work in her parlour carpet. For he walked to and fro
and back and forth with his tail up, until she attended to him. And he
certainly warned her, with a yelp like an Amazonian monkey, when a
red-hot coal had set her kitchen mat on fire.

He would lie or sit with his whiskers to the north before noon-day, and
due south afterwards. In general his manners were perfection. But
occasionally, when she called him, his face would appear to knot itself
into a frown--at any rate to assume a low sullen look, as if he
expostulated: 'Why must you be interrupting me, Madam, when I was
attending to something else?' And now and then, Miss Chauncey fancied,
he would deliberately secrete himself or steal out of (and into) Post
Houses unbeknown.

Miss Chauncey too would sometimes find him trotting from room to room
as if on a visit of inspection. On his second birthday he had carried
in an immense mouse and laid it beside the shiny toecap of her boot as
she sat knitting by the fire. She smiled and nodded merrily at him, as
usual, but on this occasion he looked at her intently, and then
deliberately shook his head. After that he never paid the smallest
attention to mouse or mousehole or mousery, and Miss Chauncey was
obliged to purchase a cheese-bait trap, else she would have been
overrun.

Almost any domestic cat may do things of this nature, and all this of
course was solely on Sam's domestic side. For he shared house with Miss
Chauncey and, like any two beings that live together, he was bound to
keep up certain appearances. He met her half-way, as the saying goes.
When, however, he was 'on his own', he was no longer Miss Chauncey's
Sam, he was no longer merely the cat at Post Houses, but just
_himself_. He went back, that is, to his own free independent life; to
his own private habits.

Then the moor on which he roved was his own country, and the 'humans'
and their houses on it were no more to him in his wild privy existence
than mole-hills or badgers' earths or rabbit warrens are to ourselves.
Of this side of his life his mistress knew practically nothing. She did
not consider it. She supposed that Sam behaved like other cats, though
it was evident that at times he went far afield, for he now and again
brought home a young Cochin China pullet, and the nearest Cochin China
fowls were at the vicarage, a good four miles off. Sometimes of an
evening, too, when Miss Chauncey was taking a little walk herself, she
would see him--a swiftly moving black speck--far along the road,
hastening home. And there was more purpose expressed in his gait and
appearance than ever Mr. Cullings or even the vicar showed!

It was pleasant to observe, too, when he came within miaouing distance,
how his manner changed. He turned at once from being a Cat into being a
Domestic Cat. He was instantaneously no longer the Feline Adventurer,
the Nocturnal Marauder and Haunter of Haggurdsdon Moor (though Miss
Chauncey would not have so expressed it), but simply his mistress's
spoiled pet, Sam. She loved him dearly. But, as again with human beings
who are accustomed to live together, she did not _think_ very much
about him. It could not but be a shock then that late evening, when
without the slightest warning Miss Chauncey discovered that Sam was
deliberately deceiving her.

She was brushing her thin brown front hair before her looking-glass. At
this moment it hung down over her face like a fine loose veil. And as
she always mused of other things when she was brushing her hair, she
was somewhat absent-minded the while. On raising her eyes from her
reverie behind this screen of hair, she perceived not only that Sam's
reflection was in sight in the looking-glass, but also that something a
little mysterious was happening. Sam was sitting up as if to beg. There
was nothing in that. It had been a customary feat of his since he was a
few months old. Still, for what might he be begging, no one by?

Now the window to the right of the chintz-valanced dressing-table was
open at the top. Outside, it was beginning to grow dark. All
Haggurdsdon Moor lay hushed and still in the evening's thickening
gloom. And apart from begging when there was nothing to beg for, Sam
seemed, so to speak, to be gesticulating with his paws. He appeared,
that is, to be making signs, just as if there were someone or something
looking in at the window at him from out of the air--which was quite
impossible. And there was a look upon his face that certainly Miss
Chauncey had never seen before.

She stayed a moment with hair-brush uplifted, her long lean arm at an
angle with her head. On seeing this, Sam had instantly desisted from
these motions. He had dropped to his fours again, and was now
apparently composing himself for another nap. No; this too was a
pretence; for presently as she watched, he turned restlessly about so
that his whiskers were once again due south. His backward parts towards
the window, he was now gazing fixedly in front of him out of a far from
friendly face. Far indeed from friendly for a creature that had lived
with her ever since he opened the eyes of his blind kittenhood.

As if he had read her thoughts, Sam at that moment lifted his head to
look at his mistress; she withdrew her eyes to the glass only in the
nick of time, and when she turned from her toilet there sat he--so
serene in appearance, so puss-like, so ordinary once more that Miss
Chauncey could scarcely believe anything whatever had been amiss. Had
her eyes deluded her--her glass? Was that peculiar motion of Sam's
fore-paws (almost as if he were knitting), was that wide excited stare
due only to the fact that he was catching what was, to her, an
invisible fly?

Miss Chauncey having now neatly arranged her 'window-curtains'--the
sleek loops of hair she wore on either side her high forehead--glanced
yet again out of the window. Nothing there but the silence of the Moor;
nothing there but the faint pricking of a star as the evening darkened.

Sam's supper cream was waiting on the hearthrug in the parlour as usual
that evening. The lamp was lit. The red blinds were drawn. The fire
crackled in the grate. There they sat, these two; the walls of the
four-cornered house beside the crossroads rising up above them like a
huge oblong box under the immense starry sky that saucered in the wide
darkness of the Moor.

And while she sat so--with Sam there, seemingly fast asleep--Miss
Chauncey was thinking. What had occurred in the bedroom that early
evening had reminded her of other odd little bygone happenings. Trifles
she had scarcely noticed, but which now returned clearly to memory. How
often in the past, for example, Sam at this hour would be sitting as if
fast asleep (as now) his paws tucked neatly in, looking very much like
a stout alderman after his dinner. And then suddenly, without warning,
as if a distant voice had called him, he would leap to his feet and run
straight out of the room. And somewhere in the house--door ajar or
window agape, he would find his egress and be up and away into the
night. This had been a common thing to happen.

Once, too, Miss Chauncey had found him squatting on his hindquarters on
the window-ledge of a little room that had been entirely disused since,
years ago, Cousin Milly had stayed at Post Houses when Miss Chauncey
was a child of eight. She had cried out at sight of him, 'You foolish
Sam, you; come in, sir! You will be tumbling out of the window next!'
And she remembered as though it were yesterday that though at this he
had stepped gingerly in at once from his dizzy perch, he had not looked
at her. He had passed her without a sign.

On moonlight evenings, too--why, you could never be sure _where_ he
was! You could never be sure from what errand he had _returned_. Was
she sure indeed where he was on _any_ night? The longer she reflected,
the gloomier grew her doubts and misgivings. This night, at any rate,
Miss Chauncey determined to keep watch. But she was not happy in doing
so. She hated all manner of spying. They were old companions, Sam and
she; and she, without him in bleak Post Houses, would be sadly
desolate. She loved Sam dearly. None the less, what she had witnessed
that evening had stayed in her mind, and it would be wiser to know all
that there was to be known, even if for Sam's sake only.

Now Miss Chauncey always slept with her bedroom door ajar. She had
slept so ever since her nursery days. Being a rather timid little girl,
she liked in those far-away times to hear the grown-up voices
downstairs and the spoons and forks clinking. As for Sam, he always
slept in his basket beside her fireplace. Every morning there he would
be, though on some mornings Miss Chauncey's eyes would open gently to
find herself gazing steadily into his pale green ones as he stood on
his hind paws, resting his front ones on her bedside, and looking into
her face. 'Time for breakfast, Sam?' his mistress would murmur. And Sam
would mew, as distantly almost as a seagull in the heights of the sky.

To-night, however, Miss Chauncey only pretended to be asleep. It was
difficult, however, to keep wholly awake, and she was all but drowsing
off when there came a faint squeak from the hinge of her door, and she
realised that Sam was gone out. After waiting a moment or two, she
struck a match. Yes, there was his empty basket in the dark silent
room, and presently from far away--from the steeple at Haggurdsdon
Village--came the knolling of the hour.

Miss Chauncey placed the dead end of the match in the saucer of her
candlestick, and at that moment fancied she heard a faint _whssh_ at
her window, as of a sudden gust or scurry of wind, or the wings of a
fast-flying bird--of a wild goose. It even reminded Miss Chauncey of
half-forgotten Guy Fawkes days and of the sound the stick of a rocket
makes as it slips down through the air--while its green and ruby lights
die out in the immense vacancy above. Miss Chauncey gathered up her
long legs in the bed, got up, drew on the blue flannel dressing-gown
that always hung on her bedrail, and lifting back the blind an inch or
two, looked out of the window.

It was a high starry night; and a brightening in the sky above the roof
seemed to betoken there must be a moon over the backward parts of the
house. Even as she watched, a streak of pale silver descended swiftly
out of the far spaces of the heavens, and fading into the darkness
dwindled and vanished away. It was a meteorite; and at that very
instant Miss Chauncey fancied she heard again a faint remote dwindling
_whssh_ in the air. Was _that_ the meteorite too? Could she have been
deceived? Was she being deceived in everything? She drew back.

And then, as if in deliberate and defiant answer, out of the distance
and from what appeared to be the extreme end of her long garden
where grew a tangle of sloe bushes, there followed a prolonged and
as if half-secret caterwaul: very low--contralto, one might
say--_Meearou-rou-rou-rou-rou!_

Heaven forbid! Was _that_ Sam's tongue? The caterwauling ceased. Yet
still Miss Chauncey could not suppress a shudder. She knew Sam's voice
of old. But surely not that! Surely not that!

Strange and immodest though it was to hear herself, too, in that
solitary place calling out in the dead of night, she nevertheless at
once opened the window and summoned Sam by name. There was no response.
The trees and bushes of the garden stood motionless; their faint
shadows on the ground revealing how small a moon was actually in the
sky, and how low it hung towards its setting. The vague undulations of
the Moor stretched into the distance. Not a light to be seen except
those of the firmament. Again, and yet again, Miss Chauncey cried 'Sam,
Sam! Come away in! Come away in, sir, you bad creature!' Not a sound.
Not the least stir of leaf or blade of grass.

When, after so broken a night, Miss Chauncey awoke a little late the
next morning, the first thing her eyes beheld when she sat up in bed
was Sam--couched as usual in his basket. It was a mystery, and an
uneasy one. After supping up his morning bowl, he slept steadily on
until noonday. This happened to be the day of the week when Miss
Chauncey made bread. On and on she steadily kneaded the dough with her
knuckled hands, glancing ever and again towards the motionless
creature. With fingers clotted from the great earthenware bowl, she
stood over him at last for a few moments, and eyed him closely.

He was lying curled round with his whiskered face to one side towards
the fire. And it seemed to Miss Chauncey that she had never noticed
before that faint peculiar grin on his face. 'Sam!' she cried sharply.
An eye instantly opened, wide and ferocious, as if a mouse had
squeaked. He stared at her for an instant; then the lid narrowed. The
gaze slunk away a little, but Sam began to purr.

The truth of it is, all this was making Miss Chauncey exceedingly
unhappy. Mr. Cullings called that afternoon, with a basket of some
fresh comely young sprats. 'Them'll wake his Royal Highness up,' he
said. 'They'm fresh as daisies. Lor, m'm, what a Nero that beast be!'

'Cats _are_ strange creatures, Mr. Cullings,' replied Miss Chauncey
reflectively; complacently supposing that Mr. Cullings had misplaced an
_h_ and had meant to say, _an hero_. And Sam himself, with uplifted
tail, and as if of the same opinion, was rubbing his head gently
against her boot.

Mr. Cullings eyed her closely. 'Why, yes, they be,' he said. 'What I
says is is that as soon as they're out of your sight, you are out of
their mind. There's no more gratitood nor affection in a cat than in a
pump. Though so far as the pump is concerned, the gratitood should be
on our side. I knew a family of cats once what fairly druv their
mistress out of house and home.'

'But you wouldn't have a cat _only_ a pet?' said Miss Chauncey faintly;
afraid to ask for further particulars of this peculiar occurrence.

'Why, no, m'm,' said the carrier. 'As the Lord made 'em, of they be.
But I'll be bound they could tell some knotty stories is they had a
human tongue to their heads!'

Sam had ceased caressing his mistress's foot, and was looking steadily
at Mr. Cullings, his hair roughed a little about the neck and
shoulders. And the carrier looked back.

'No, m'm. We wouldn't keep 'em,' he said at last, 'if they was _four_
times that size. Or, not for long!'

Having watched Mr. Cullings's little cart bowl away into the distance,
Miss Chauncey returned into the house, more disturbed than ever. Nor
did her uneasiness abate when Sam refused even to sniff at his sprats.
Instead, he crawled in under a low table in the kitchen, behind the old
seaman's chest in which Miss Chauncey kept her kindling wood. She
fancied she heard his claws working in the wood now and again, and once
he seemed to be expressing his natural feelings in what vulgar people
with little sympathy for animals describe as 'swearing'.

Her caressing 'Sam's, at any rate, were all in vain. His only reply was
a kind of sneeze which uncomfortably resembled 'spitting'. Miss
Chauncey's feelings had already been hurt. It was now her mind that
suffered. Something the carrier had said, or the way he had said it, or
the peculiar look she had noticed on his face when he was returning
Sam's stare in the porch, haunted her thoughts. She was no longer
young, was she becoming fanciful? Or must she indeed conclude that for
weeks past Sam had been steadily circumventing her, or at any rate
concealing his wanderings and his interests? What nonsense. Worse
still: was she now so credulous as to believe that Sam had in actual
fact been making signals--and secretly, behind her back--to some
confederate that must either have been up in the sky, or in the moon!

Whether or not, Miss Chauncey determined to keep a sharper eye on him.
Their future was at stake. She would at least make sure that he did not
leave the house that night. But then: Why not? she asked herself. Why
shouldn't the creature choose his own hour and season? Cats, like owls,
_see_ best in the dark. They go best a-mousing in the dark, and may
prefer the dark for their private, social, and even public affairs.
Post Houses, after all, was only rather more than two miles from
Haggurdsdon Village, and there were cats there in plenty. Poor fellow,
her own dumb human company must sometimes be dull enough!

Such were Miss Chauncey's reflections; and as if to reassure her, Sam
himself at that moment serenely entered the room and leapt up on to the
empty chair beside her tea-table. As if, too, to prove that he had
thought better of his evil temper, or to insinuate that there had been
nothing amiss between himself and Mr. Cullings, he was licking his
chops, and there was no mistaking the odour of fish which he brought in
with him from his saucer.

'So you have thought better of it, my boy?' thought Miss Chauncey,
though she did not utter the words aloud. And yet as she returned his
steady feline gaze, she realized how difficult it was to read the
intelligence behind those eyes. You might say that, Sam being only a
cat, there was no meaning in them at all. But Miss Chauncey knew
better. There could be meaning enough if such eyes had looked out of a
_human_ shape at her.

Unfortunately, and almost as if Sam had overheard his mistress's
speculations regarding possible cat friends in the village, there came
at that moment a faint wambling mew beneath the open window. In a flash
Sam was out of his chair and over the window-ledge, and Miss Chauncey
rose only just in time to see him in infuriated pursuit of a slim sleek
tortoiseshell creature that had evidently come to Post Houses in hope
of a friendlier reception, and was now fleeing in positive fear of its
life.

Sam returned from his chase as fresh as paint, and Miss Chauncey was
horrified to detect--caught up between the claws of his right
forefoot--a tuft or two of tortoiseshell fur, which, having composed
himself by the fire, he promptly removed by licking.

Still pondering on these disquieting events, Miss Chauncey took her
usual evening walk in the garden. Candytuft and virginia stock were
seeding along the shell-lined path, and late roses were already
beginning to blow on the high brick wall which shut off her narrow
strip of land from the vast lap of the Moor. Having come to the end of
the path, Miss Chauncey pushed on a little further than usual, to where
the grasses grew more rampant, and where wild headlong weeds raised
their heads beneath her few lichenous apple-trees. Still further down,
for hers was a long, though narrow, garden--there grew straggling
bushes of sloe and spiny whitethorn. These had blossomed indeed in the
moor's bleak springs long before Post Houses had raised its chimney
pots into the sky. Here, too, flourished a frowning drift of
nettles--their sour odour haunting the air.

It was in this forlorn spot that--just like Robinson Crusoe, before
her--Miss Chauncey was suddenly brought to a standstill by the
appearance of what might be nothing other than a footprint in the
mould. But not only this. A few inches away there showed what might be
the mark of a walking-cane or even of something stouter and heavier--a
crutch. Could she be deceived? The footprint, it was true, was of a
peculiar kind. 'A queer shoe that!' thought Miss Chauncey. Could the
resemblance be accidental? _Was_ it a footprint?

Miss Chauncey glanced furtively across the bushes towards the house. It
loomed gaunt and forbidding in the moorland dusk. And she fancied she
could see, though the evening light might be deluding her, the cowering
shape of Sam looking out at her from the kitchen window. To be watched!
To be herself spied upon--and watched!

But then, of course, Sam was always watching her. What oddity was there
in that? Where else would his sprats come from, his cream, his saucer
of milk, his bowl of fresh well-water? Nevertheless, Miss Chauncey
returned to her parlour gravely discomposed.

It was an uncommonly calm evening, and as she went from room to room
locking the windows, she noticed there was already a moon in the sky.
She eyed it with misgiving. And at last bedtime came; and when Sam, as
usual, after a lick or two, had composed himself in his basket, Miss
Chauncey, holding the key almost challengingly within view,
deliberately locked her own bedroom door.

When she awoke next morning Sam was asleep in his basket as usual, and
during the day-time he kept pretty closely to the house. So, too, on
the Wednesday and the Thursday. It was not until the following Friday
that having occasion to go into an upper bedroom that had no fireplace,
and being followed as usual by Sam, Miss Chauncey detected the faint
rank smell of soot in the room. No chimney, and a smell of soot! She
turned rapidly on her companion: he had already left the room.

And when that afternoon she discovered a black sooty smear upon her own
patchwork quilt, she realized not only that her suspicions had been
justified, but that for the first time in his life Sam had deliberately
laid himself down there in her absence. At this act of sheer defiance
she was no longer so much hurt as exceedingly angry. There could be no
doubt. Sam was now openly defying her. No two companions could share a
house on such terms as these. He must be taught a lesson.

That evening, in full sight of the creature, having locked her bedroom
door, she stuffed a large piece of mattress ticking into the mouth of
her chimney and pulled down the register. Having watched these
proceedings, Sam rose from his basket, and with an easy spring, leapt
up on to the dressing-table. Beyond the window, the Moor lay almost as
bright as day. Ignoring Miss Chauncey, the creature crouched there,
steadily and sullenly staring into the empty skies, for a vast gulf of
them was visible from where he sat.

Miss Chauncey proceeded to make her toilet for the night, trying in
vain to pretend that she was entirely uninterested in what the animal
was at. A faint sound--not exactly mewings or growlings--but a kind of
low inward caterwauling, hardly audible, was proceeding from his
throat. But whatever these sounds might imply, Sam himself can have
been the only listener. There was not a sign of movement at the window
or in the world without. And then Miss Chauncey promptly drew down the
blind. At this Sam at once raised his paw for all the world as if he
were about to protest, and then, apparently thinking better of it, he
pretended instead that the action had been only for the purpose of
beginning his nightly wash.

Long after her candle had been extinguished, Miss Chauncey lay
listening. Every stir and movement in the quiet darkness could be
easily understood. First there came a furtive footing and tapping at
the register of the fireplace, so clearly showing what was happening
that Miss Chauncey could positively see in her imagination Sam on the
hearthstone, erecting himself there upon his hind legs, vainly
attempting to push the obstacle back.

This being in vain, he appeared to have dropped back on to his fours.
There came a pause. Had he given up his intention? No: now he was at
the door, pawing, gently scratching. Then a leap, even, towards the
latch: but only one--the door was locked. Retiring from the door, he
now sprang lightly again on to the dressing-table. What now was he at?
By covertly raising her head a little from her pillow, Miss Chauncey
could see him with paw thrust out, gently drawing back the blind from
the moon-flooded window-pane. And even while she listened and watched,
she heard yet again--and yet again--the faint _whssh_ as of a wild swan
cleaving the air; and then what might have been the night-cry of a
bird, but which to Miss Chauncey's ears resembled a thin shrill pealing
cackle of laughter. At this Sam hastily turned from the window, and
without the least attempt at concealment pounced clean from the
dressing-table on to the lower rail of her bed.

This unmannerly conduct could be ignored no longer. Poor Miss Chauncey
raised herself in her sheets, pulled her nightcap a little closer down
over her ears, and thrusting out her hand towards the chair beside the
bed, struck a match and relit her candle. It was with a real effort
that she then slowly turned her head and faced her night-companion. His
hair was bristling about his body as if he had had an electric shock.
His whiskers stood out at stiff angles with his jaws. He looked at
least twice his usual size, and his eyes blazed in his head, as
averting his face from her regard he gave vent to a low sustained
_Miariou-rou-rou-rou!_

'I say you shall _not_,' cried Miss Chauncey at the creature. At the
sound of her words, he turned slowly and confronted her. And it seemed
that until that moment Miss Chauncey had never actually seen Sam's
countenance as in actual fact it really was. It was not so much the
grinning tigerish look it wore, but the morose assurance in it not only
of what he wanted but that he meant to get it.

All thought of sleep was now out of the question. Miss Chauncey could
be obstinate too. The creature seemed to shed an influence on the very
air which she could hardly resist. She rose from her bed and thrusting
on her slippers made her way to the window. Once more a peculiar inward
cry broke out from the bedrail. She raised the blind and the light of
the moon from over the moor swept in upon her little apartment. And
when she turned to remonstrate with her pet at his ingratitude, and at
all this unseemliness and the deceit of his ways, there was something
so menacing and stubborn and ferocious in his aspect that Miss Chauncey
hesitated no more.

'Well, mark me!' she cried in a trembling voice, 'go out of the _door_
you shan't. But if you enjoy soot, soot it shall be.'

With that she thrust back the register with the poker and drew down the
bundle of ticking with the tongs. Before the fit of coughing caused by
the smotheration that followed had ceased, the lithe black shape had
sprung from the bedrail, and with a scramble was into the hearth, over
the firebars, up the chimney, and away.

Trembling from head to foot, Miss Chauncey sat down on a cane
rocking-chair that stood handy to reflect what next she must be doing.
_Wh-ssh! Wh-ssh!_ Again at the window came that mysterious rushing
sound; but now, the flurrying murmur as of a rocket shooting up with
its fiery train of sparks thinning into space, rather than the sound of
its descending stick. And then in the hush that followed, there sounded
yet again like a yell of triumph from the foot of the garden, a
caterwauling piercing and sonorous enough to arouse every sleeping cock
in the Haggurdsdon hen-roosts, and for miles around. Out of the
distance their chanticleering broke shrill on the night air; to be
followed a moment afterwards by the tardy clang of midnight from the
church steeple. Then once more, silence; utter quiet. Miss Chauncey
returned to her bed, but that night slept no more.

Her mind overflowed with unhappy thoughts. Her faith in Sam was gone.
Far worse, she had lost faith even in her affection for him. To have
wasted that! All the sprats, all the whitebait in the wide, wide seas
were as nothing by comparison. That Sam had wearied of her company was
at last beyond question. It shamed her to think how much this meant to
her--a mere animal! But she knew what was gone; knew how dull and
spiritless the day's round would seem--the rising, the housework, the
meals, her toilet in the afternoon, her evening slippers, book or
knitting, a dish of tea, her candle, prayers, bed. On and on. In what
wild company was her cat, Sam, now? At her own refusal to answer this
horrid question, it was as if she had heard the hollow clanging slam of
an immense iron door.

Next morning--still ruminating on these strange events, grieved to the
heart at this dreadful rift between herself and one who had been her
trusted companion for so many years; ashamed too that Sam should have
had his way with her when she had determined not to allow him to go out
during the night--next morning Miss Chauncey, as if merely to take a
little exercise, once again ventured down to the foot of her garden. A
faint, blurred mark (such as she had seen on the previous evening) in
the black mould of what _might_ be a footprint is nothing very much.
But now--in the neglected patch beyond the bushes of whitethorn and
bramble--there could be no doubt in the world--appeared many strange
marks. And surely no cats' paw-prints these! Of what use, indeed, to a
cat could a crutch or a staff be? A staff or a crutch which--to judge
from the impression it had left in the mould--must have been at least
as thick as a broomstick.

More disquieted and alarmed than ever over this fresh mystery, Miss
Chauncey glanced up and back towards the chimneypots of the house
clearly and sharply fretted against the morning light of the eastern
skies. And she realized what perils even so sure-footed a creature as
Sam had faced when he skirred up out of the chimney in his wild effort
to emerge into the night. Having thus astonishingly reached the rim of
the chimney--the wild burning stars above and the wilderness of the
moor spread out far beneath and around him--he must have leaped from
the top of the low pot to a narrow brick ledge not three inches wide.
Thence on to the peak of the roof and thence down a steep, slippery
slope of slates to a leaden gutter.

And how then? The thick tod of ivy, matting the walls of the house,
reached hardly more than half-way up. Could Sam actually have plunged
from gutter to tod? The very thought of such a peril drew Miss
Chauncey's steps towards the house again, in the sharpest anxiety to
assure herself that he was still in the land of the living.

And lo and behold, when she was but half-way on her journey, she heard
a succession of frenzied yelps and catcalls in the air from over the
Moor. Hastily placing a flower-pot by the wall, she stood on tiptoe and
peered over. And even now, at this very moment, in full flight across
the nearer slope of the Moor, she descried her Sam, not now in chase of
a foolishly trustful visitor, but hotly pursued by what appeared to be
the complete rabblement of Haggurdsdon's cats. Sore spent though he
showed himself to be, Sam was keeping his distance. Only a few lank
tabby cats, and what appeared to be a grey-ginger Manx (unless he was
an ordinary cat with his tail chopped off) were close behind.

'Sam! Sam!' Miss Chauncey cried, and yet again, 'Sam!' but in her
excitement and anxiety her foot slipped on the flower-pot and in an
instant the feline chase had fallen out of sight. Gathering herself
together again, she clutched a long besom or garden broom that was
leaning against the wall, and rushed down to the point at which she
judged Sam would make his entrance into the garden. She was not
mistaken, nor an instant too soon. With a bound he was up and over, and
in three seconds the rabble had followed, in vehement pursuit.

What came after Miss Chauncey could never very clearly recall. She
could but remember plying her besom with might and main amid this
rabble and mellay of animals, while Sam, no longer a fugitive, turned
on his enemies and fought them man to man. None the less, it was by no
means an easy victory. And had not the over-fatted cur from the
butcher's in Haggurdsdon--which had long since started in pursuit of
this congregation of his enemies--had he not at last managed to
overtake them, the contest might very well have had a tragic ending.
But at sound of his baying, and at sight of teeth fiercely snapping at
them as he vainly attempted to surmount the wall, Sam's enemies turned
and fled in all directions. And faint and panting, Miss Chauncey was
able to fling down her besom and to lean for a brief respite against
the trunk of a tree.

At last she opened her eyes again. 'Well, Sam,' she managed to mutter
at last, 'we got the best of them, then?'

But to her amazement she found herself uttering these friendly words
into a complete vacancy. The creature was nowhere to be seen. His cream
disappeared during the day, however, and by an occasional rasping sound
Miss Chauncey knew that he once more lay hidden in his dingy resort
behind the kindling-wood box. There she did not disturb him.

Not until tea-time of the following day did Sam reappear. And
then--after attending to his hurts--it was merely to sit with face
towards the fire, sluggish and sullen and dumb as a dog. It was not
Miss Chauncey's 'place' to make advances, she thought. She took no
notice of the beast except to rub in a little hog's-fat on the raw
places of his wounds. She was rejoiced to find, however, that he kept
steadily to Post Houses for the next few days, though her dismay was
reawakened at hearing on the third night a more dismal wailing and
wauling than ever from the sloe-bushes, even though Sam himself sat
motionless beside the fire. His ears twitched; his fur bristled; he
sneezed or spat but otherwise remained motionless.

When Mr. Cullings called again, Sam at once hid himself in the coal
cellar, but gradually his manners towards Miss Chauncey began to
recover their usual suavity. And within a fortnight after the full
moon, the two of them had almost returned to their old friendly
companionship. He was healed, sleek, confident and punctual. No
intruder of his species had appeared from Haggurdsdon. The night noises
had ceased. Post Houses to all appearance--apart from its strange
ugliness--was as peaceful and calm as any other solitary domicile in
the United Kingdom.

But alas and alas. With the very first peeping of the crescent moon,
Sam's mood and habits began to change again. He mouched about with a
sly and furtive eye. And when he fawned on his mistress, purring and
clawing, the whole look of him was a picture of deceit. If Miss
Chauncey chanced to enter the room wherein he sat, he would at once
leap down from the window at which he had been perched as if in the
attempt to prove that he had _not_ been looking out of it. And once,
towards evening, though she was no spy, she could not but pause at the
parlour door. She had peeped through its crack as it stood ajar. And
there on the hard sharp back of an old prie-Dieu chair that had
belonged to her pious great-aunt Miranda, sat Sam on his hind quarters.
And without the least doubt in the world he was vigorously signalling
to some observer outside with his forepaws. Miss Chauncey turned away
sick at heart.

From that hour on Sam more and more steadily ignored and flouted his
mistress, was openly insolent, shockingly audacious. Mr. Cullings gave
her small help indeed. 'If I had a cat, m'm, what had manners like
that, after all your kindness, fresh fish and all every week, and
cream, as I understand, not skim, I'd--I'd _give_ him away.'

'To whom?' said poor Miss Chauncey.

'Well,' said the carrier, 'I don't know as how I'd much mind to who.
Beggars can't be choosers, m'm.'

'He seems to have no friends in the village,' said Miss Chauncey, in as
light a tone as she could manage.

'When they're as black as that, with them saucer eyes, you can never
tell,' said Mr. Cullings. 'There's that old trollimog what lives in
Hogges Bottom. She've got a cat that might be your Sam's twin.'

'Indeed no, he has the mange,' said Miss Chauncey, loyal to the end.
The carrier shrugged his shoulders, climbed into his cart, and bowled
away off over the Moor. And Miss Chauncey, returning to the house, laid
the platter of silvery sprats on the table, sat down, and burst into
tears.

It was, then, in most ways a fortunate thing that the very next
morning--five complete days, that is, before the next full-moon-tide--she
received a letter from her sister-in-law in Shanklin, in the Isle of
Wight, entreating her to pay them a long visit.

    'My dear Emma. You must sometimes be feeling very lonely [it ran]
    shut up in that grate house so far from any neighbours. We often
    think of you, and particularly these last few days. It's very nice
    to have that Sam of yours for company, but after all, as George
    says, a pet's only a pet. And we do all think it's high time you
    took a little holiday with us. I am looking out of my window at
    this very moment. The sea is as calm as a mill-pond, a sollem
    beautiful blue. The fishing boats are coming in with their brown
    sails. This is the best time of the year with us, because the
    _tripper_ season is drawing to a close and there are fewer of those
    horrid visitors to be seen, and no crowds. George says you _must_
    come. He joins with me in his love as would Maria if she weren't
    out shopping, and will meet you at the station in the trap. And we
    shall all be looking forward to seeing you in a few days. Emmie is
    now free of her cough--only hooping when the memory takes her, and
    never sick. Yours affec., (Mrs.) Gertrude Chauncey.'

At this kindness, and with all her anxieties, Miss Chauncey all but
broke down. When the butcher drove up in his cart an hour or two
afterwards, he took a telegram for her back to the village, and on the
Monday her box was packed, and all that remained was to put Sam in his
basket in preparation for the journey. But I am bound to say it took
more than the persuasions of his old protectress to accomplish this.
Indeed Mr. Cullings had actually to hold the creature down with gloved
hands and none too gently, while Miss Chauncey pressed down the lid and
pushed the skewer in to hold it close. 'What's done's durned done,'
said the carrier, as he rubbed a pinch of earth into his scratches.
'And what _I_ says is, better done for ever. Mark my words, m'm!'

Miss Chauncey took a shilling out of her large leather purse; but made
no reply.

Indeed, all this trouble proved at last in vain. Thirty miles distant
from Haggurdsdon, at Blackmoor Junction, Miss Chauncey had to change
trains. Her box and Sam's basket were placed together on the station
platform beside half a dozen empty milk-cans and some fowls in a crate,
and Miss Chauncey went to make inquiries of the station-master in order
to make sure of her platform.

It was the furious panic-stricken cackling of these fowls that brought
her hastily back to her belongings, only to find that by hook or by
crook Sam had managed to push the skewer of the basket out of its cane
loops. The wicker lid gaped open--the basket was empty. Indeed one poor
gasping hen, its life fluttering away from its helpless body, was proof
enough not only of Sam's prowess but of his pitiless ferocity.

A few days afterwards, as Miss Chauncey sat in the very room to which
her sister-in-law had referred in her invitation, looking over the
placid surface of the English Channel, the sun gently shining in the
sky, there came a letter from Mr. Cullings. It was in pencil and
written upon the back of a baker's bag.

'Dear madam i take the libberty of riteing you in reference to the
Animall as how i helped put in is bawskit which has cum back returned
empty agenn by rail me having okashun to cart sum hop powles from
Haggurdsden late at nite ov Sunday. I seez him squattin at the parlour
windy grimasin out at me fit to curdle your blood in your vanes and
lights at the upper windies and a yowling and screetching as i never
hopes to hear agen in a Christian lokalety. And that ole wumman from
Hogges Botom sitting in the porch mi own vew being that there is no
good in the place and the Animall be bewhitched. Mister flint the
boutcher agrees with me as how now only last mesures is of any use and
as i have said afore i am willing to take over the house the rent if so
be being low and moddrit considering of the bad name it as in these
parts around haggurdsden. I remain dear madam waitin your orders and
oblige yours truely William Cullings.'

To look at Miss Chauncey you might have supposed she was a strong-minded
woman. You might have supposed that this uncivil reference to the bad
name her family house had won for itself would have mortified her
beyond words. Whether or not, she neither showed this letter to her
sister-in-law nor for many days together did she attempt to answer it.
Sitting on the esplanade, and looking out to sea, she brooded on and on
in the warm, salt, yet balmy air. It was a distressing problem. But
'No, he must go his own way,' she sighed to herself at last; 'I have
done my best for him.'

What is more, Miss Chauncey never returned to Post Houses. She sold it
at last, house and garden, and for a pitiful sum, to the carrier, Mr.
Cullings. By that time Sam had vanished, had never been seen again. He
had gone his way.

Not that Miss Chauncey was faithless to his memory. Whenever the faint
swish of a seagull's wing whispered through the air above her head; or
the crackling of an ascending rocket for the amusement of visitors
broke the silence of the nearer heavens over the sea; whenever even she
became conscious of the rustling frou-frou of her Sunday watered-silk
gown as she sallied out to church from the neat little villa she now
rented on the Shanklin Esplanade--she never noticed such things without
being instantly transported in imagination to her old bedroom at Post
Houses, and seeing again that strange deluded animal, once her Sam,
squatting there on her bed, and as it were knitting with his fore-paws
the while he stood erect upon his hind.

[End of _Broomsticks_ by Walter de la Mare]