* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please
check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under
copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your
country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT
IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

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

Title: Collected Stories for Children -- The Riddle
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Date of first publication: 1947
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Faber & Faber, 1962 (reprint of 1957 edition)
Date first posted: 5 March 2008
Date last updated: 5 March 2008
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #93

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




The Riddle

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


So these seven children, Ann and Matilda, James, William and Henry,
Harriet and Dorothea, came to live with their grandmother. The house
in which their grandmother had lived since her childhood was built in
the time of the Georges. It was not a pretty house, but roomy,
substantial, and square; and a great cedar tree outstretched its
branches almost to the windows.

When the children were come out of the cab (five sitting inside and
two beside the driver), they were shown into their grandmother's
presence. They stood in a little black group before the old lady,
seated in her bow-window. And she asked them each their names, and
repeated each name in her kind, quavering voice. Then to one she gave
a work-box, to William a jack-knife, to Dorothea a painted ball; to
each a present according to age. And she kissed all her grand-children
to the youngest.

'My dears,' she said, 'I wish to see all of you bright and gay in my
house. I am an old woman, so that I cannot romp with you; but Ann must
look to you, and Mrs. Fenn too. And every morning and every evening
you must all come in to see your granny; and bring me smiling faces,
that call back to my mind my own son Harry. But all the rest of the
day, when school is done, you shall do just as you please, my dears.
And there is only one thing, just one, I would have you remember. In
the large spare bedroom that looks out on the slate roof there stands
in the corner an old oak chest; aye, older than I, my dears, a great
deal older; older than my grandmother. Play anywhere else in the
house, but not there.' She spoke kindly to them all, smiling at them;
but she was very old, and her eyes seemed to see nothing of this
world.

And the seven children, though at first they were gloomy and strange,
soon began to be happy and at home in the great house. There was much
to interest and to amuse them there; all was new to them. Twice every
day, morning and evening, they came in to see their grandmother, who
every day seemed more feeble; and she spoke pleasantly to them of her
mother, and her childhood, but never forgetting to visit her store of
sugar-plums. And so the weeks passed by....

It was evening twilight when Henry went upstairs from the nursery by
himself to look at the oak chest. He pressed his fingers into the
carved fruit and flowers, and spoke to the dark-smiling heads at the
corners; and then, with a glance over his shoulder, he opened the lid
and looked in. But the chest concealed no treasure, neither gold nor
baubles, nor was there anything to alarm the eye. The chest was empty,
except that it was lined with silk of old-rose, seeming darker in the
dusk, and smelling sweet of pot-pourri. And while Henry was looking
in, he heard the softened laughter and the clinking of the cups
downstairs in the nursery; and out at the window he saw the day
darkening. These things brought strangely to his memory his mother who
in her glimmering white dress used to read to him in the dusk; and he
climbed into the chest; and the lid closed gently down over him.

When the other six children were tired with their playing, they filed
into their grandmother's room for her good-night and her sugar-plums.
She looked out between the candles at them as if she were uncertain of
something in her thoughts. The next day Ann told her grandmother that
Henry was not anywhere to be found.

'Dearie me, child. Then he must be gone away for a time,' said the old
lady. She paused. 'But remember, all of you, do not meddle with the
oak chest.'

But Matilda could not forget her brother Henry, finding no pleasure in
playing without him. So she would loiter in the house thinking where
he might be. And she carried her wooden doll in her bare arms, singing
under her breath all she could make up about it. And when one bright
morning she peeped in on the chest, so sweet-scented and secret it
seemed that she took her doll with her into it--just as Henry himself
had done.

So Ann, and James, and William, Harriet and Dorothea were left at home
to play together. 'Some day maybe they will come back to you, my
dears,' said their grandmother, 'or maybe you will go to them. Heed my
warning as best you may.'

Now Harriet and William were friends together, pretending to be
sweethearts; while James and Dorothea liked wild games of hunting, and
fishing, and battles.

On a silent afternoon in October, Harriet and William were talking
softly together, looking out over the slate roof at the green fields,
and they heard the squeak and frisking of a mouse behind them in the
room. They went together and searched for the small, dark hole from
whence it had come out. But finding no hole, they began to finger the
carving of the chest, and to give names to the dark-smiling heads,
just as Henry had done. '_I_ know! let's pretend you are Sleeping
Beauty, Harriet,' said William, 'and I'll be the Prince that squeezes
through the thorns and comes in.' Harriet looked gently and strangely
at her brother but she got into the box and lay down, pretending to be
fast asleep, and on tiptoe William leaned over, and seeing how big was
the chest, he stepped in to kiss the Sleeping Beauty and to wake her
from her quiet sleep. Slowly the carved lid turned on its noiseless
hinges. And only the clatter of James and Dorothea came in sometimes
to recall Ann from her book.

But their old grandmother was very feeble, and her sight dim, and her
hearing extremely difficult.

Snow was falling through the still air upon the roof; and Dorothea was
a fish in the oak chest, and James stood over the hole in the ice,
brandishing a walking-stick for a harpoon, pretending to be an
Esquimau. Dorothea's face was red, and her wild eyes sparkled through
her tousled hair. And James had a crooked scratch upon his cheek. 'You
must struggle, Dorothea, and then I shall swim back and drag you out.
Be quick now!' He shouted with laughter as he was drawn into the open
chest. And the lid closed softly and gently down as before.

Ann, left to herself, was too old to care overmuch for sugar-plums,
but she would go solitary to bid her grandmother good-night; and the
old lady looked wistfully at her over her spectacles. 'Well, my dear,'
she said with trembling head; and she squeezed Ann's fingers between
her own knuckled finger and thumb. 'What lonely old people, we two
are, to be sure!' Ann kissed her grandmother's soft, loose cheek. She
left the old lady sitting in her easy chair, her hands upon her knees,
and her head turned sidelong towards her.

When Ann was gone to bed she used to sit reading her book by
candlelight. She drew up her knees under the sheets, resting her book
upon them. Her story was about fairies and gnomes, and the
gently-flowing moonlight of the narrative seemed to illumine the white
pages, and she could hear in fancy fairy voices, so silent was the
great many-roomed house, and so mellifluent were the words of the
story. Presently she put out her candle, and, with a confused babel of
voices close to her ear, and faint swift pictures before her eyes, she
fell asleep.

And in the dead of night she rose out of her bed in dream, and with
eyes wide open yet seeing nothing of reality, moved silently through
the vacant house. Past the room where her grandmother was snoring in
brief, heavy slumber, she stepped lightly and surely, and down the
wide staircase. And Vega the far-shining stood over against the window
above the slate roof. Ann walked into the strange room beneath as if
she were being guided by the hand towards the oak chest. There, just
as if she were dreaming it was her bed, she laid herself down in the
old rose silk, in the fragrant place. But it was so dark in the room
that the movement of the lid was indistinguishable.

Through the long day, the grandmother sat in her bow-window. Her lips
were pursed, and she looked with dim, inquisitive scrutiny upon the
street where people passed to and fro, and vehicles rolled by. At
evening she climbed the stair and stood in the doorway of the large
spare bedroom. The ascent had shortened her breath. Her magnifying
spectacles rested upon her nose. Leaning her hand on the doorpost she
peered in towards the glimmering square of window in the quiet gloom.
But she could not see far, because her sight was dim and the light of
day feeble. Nor could she detect the faint fragrance as of autumnal
leaves. But in her mind was a tangled skein of memories--laughter and
tears, and children long ago become old-fashioned, and the advent of
friends, and last farewells. And gossiping fitfully, inarticulately,
with herself, the old lady went down again to her window-seat.


[End of _The Riddle_ by Walter de la Mare]