Heidi

8 Strange Goings‐On

Next morning, just after Sebastian had opened the door to Mr Usher and shown him into the study, the front door bell rang again, this time so loudly that Sebastian dashed downstairs thinking it must be Mr Sesemann himself, come home unexpectedly. He flung open the door, and found there only a ragged boy with a hurdy‐gurdy on his back.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ snapped Sebastian. ‘What do you want? I’ll teach you to ring bells like that.’

‘I want to see Clara,’ said the boy.

‘You dirty little brat, don’t you even know enough to say “Miss Clara”? And what can the likes of you want with her, anyway?’

‘She owes me fourpence,’ was the reply.

‘Rubbish! How do you even know that there is a Miss Clara in this house?’

‘I showed her the way yesterday, for twopence, and then the way back for another twopence.’

‘You’re telling lies,’ said Sebastian. ‘Miss Clara never goes out. She can’t walk. Be off with you now, before I make you!’

The boy stood his ground, not in the least frightened by this threat. ‘I saw her in the street and I can tell you what she looks like,’ he said. ‘She’s got short, curly black hair, black eyes, and she was wearing a brown dress and she doesn’t talk like us.’

‘Oho,’ thought Sebastian with a grin. ‘The little miss again! What’s she been up to this time? All right,’ he said aloud to the boy, ‘come with me,’ and he led the way to the study door. ‘Now wait here until I come back, then, when I let you in, you play a tune. Miss Clara will like that.’ He knocked and went in.

‘There’s a boy here who wants to speak to Miss Clara personally,’ he announced. Clara’s eyes lit up at this highly unusual occurrence.

‘Bring him in at once,’ she said. ‘He can come, can’t he, Mr Usher?’

The boy was in fact already in the room and began to turn the handle of his organ. Miss Rottenmeier had gone to the dining‐room to avoid having to listen to a child learning the alphabet. Suddenly she pricked up her ears. Was that noise coming from the street? It sounded nearer but — there could never be a hurdy‐gurdy in the study! She ran to the door and there beheld the ragged street urchin calmly playing his organ. The tutor looked as though he wanted to say something, but couldn’t make up his mind to, while Clara and Heidi were listening to the music with obvious pleasure.

‘Stop, stop that at once!’ cried Miss Rottenmeier, but it was difficult to make her voice heard above the noise. She darted towards the boy, and all but tripped over something on the floor. Looking down, she saw, to her horror, a queer dark object at her feet. It was the tortoise. She leaped in the air to avoid it — leaped, and she hadn’t done that for years! Then she screamed at the top of her voice for Sebastian, and the boy stopped playing, for this time he heard her in spite of his music. Sebastian was standing just outside the door, doubled up with laughter. When at last he came in Miss Rottenmeier had collapsed on to a chair.

‘Get rid of that boy and his animal at once,’ she ordered.

The little organ player snatched up his tortoise and Sebastian led him away. On the landing, he put some coins into the boy’s hand, saying, ‘Here’s the money from Miss Clara, and a bit more for playing so nicely.’ Then he let him out at the front door.

When quiet had been restored in the study, lessons were resumed, but Miss Rottenmeier remained to prevent any more such unseemly happenings, and as she sat there, she made up her mind to find out what was at the bottom of it and to deal severely with whoever was responsible. Presently Sebastian came back to say that someone had just delivered a big basket which was to be given at once to Miss Clara.

‘To me?’ asked Clara in surprise, at once feeling most curious to know what it could contain. ‘Oh, bring it in at once.’ So Sebastian fetched in a closed basket, set it down before her, and went out again quickly.

‘You had better finish your lessons before opening it,’ remarked Miss Rottenmeier firmly, though Clara looked longingly at it.

Then, in the middle of a declension, she broke off to ask Mr Usher if she couldn’t have just a peep inside.

‘I could cite good reasons both for and against such a course of action,’ he began pompously. ‘In its favour is the fact that so long as your attention is entirely engaged…’ He got no further. The lid of the basket was not properly fastened, and suddenly the room seemed to be swarming with kittens. They jumped out one after another and rushed madly about, some biting the tutor’s trousers and jumping over his feet, others climbing up Miss Rottenmeier’s skirt. One scrambled on to Clara’s chair, mewing and scratching as it came. The whole room was in an uproar, and Clara was delighted.

‘Oh, aren’t they pretty little things! Just look at them jumping about!’ she exclaimed to Heidi, who was chasing after them from one end of the room to the other. Mr Usher was standing by the table, trying vainly to shake the kittens off his legs. Miss Rottenmeier, disliking all cats as she did, only found her voice again after an interval, and then called loudly for Sebastian and Tinette. She was afraid that if she moved all the horrid little creatures would jump up at her. The servants came quickly and Sebastian managed to catch the kittens and put them back into the basket. Then he carried them up to the attic where he had already made a bed for those Heidi had brought home the day before.

Once again Clara’s lesson‐time had been far from boring. That evening, when Miss Rottenmeier had recovered a little from the morning’s disturbance, she summoned Sebastian and Tinette to the study to question them about what had happened. Of course it came out that everything was the result of Heidi’s escapade the day before. Miss Rottenmeier was so angry she could not at first find words to express herself. She sent the servants away and then turned to Heidi who was standing calmly beside Clara’s chair, quite unable to understand what she had done wrong.

‘Adelheid,’ said Miss Rottenmeier very sternly, ‘I can think of only one punishment for such a little savage as you. Perhaps a spell in the dark cellar among the bats and rats will tame you, and stop you having any more such ideas.’

Heidi was very surprised at Miss Rottenmeier’s idea of punishment. The only place she knew as a cellar was the little shed in which her grandfather kept their supplies of cheese and milk and where she had always been glad to go. And she had never seen any bats or rats.

Clara, however, protested loudly. ‘Oh, Miss Rottenmeier! Wait till Papa comes home! He’ll be here quite soon, and I’ll tell him everything and he’ll decide what’s to be done with Heidi.’ Miss Rottenmeier could make no objection to this, and besides Clara must never be crossed.

‘Very well, Clara,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I also shall speak to your father.’ With that she left the room.

The next few days passed uneventfully, but Miss Rottenmeier’s nerves remained on edge. The sight of Heidi kept her reminded how she had been deceived over the child’s age, and how she had so upset the household that it seemed as though things would never be the same again. Clara, on the other hand, was very cheerful and no longer found her lessons dull. Heidi always managed to provide some amusement. For one thing, she invariably got the letters of the alphabet so muddled up, it seemed as though she would never learn them, and when Mr Usher tried to make things easier for her by comparing letters to familiar objects such as a horn or a beak, she thought of the goats at home, or the hawk on the mountain and that did not help her at all with her lesson.

In the evenings Heidi used to tell Clara about her life in the hut, but it made her feel so homesick that she often ended by exclaiming, ‘Oh I must go home again. I must go tomorrow.’ Clara tried to comfort her then by saying, ‘Stay at least until Papa arrives and then we’ll see what will happen.’ Heidi seemed to cheer up at that, but secretly she was consoling herself with the thought that every day she stayed meant two more white rolls for Peter’s Grannie. She had been putting them in her pocket at dinner and supper regularly since the day of her arrival and now had quite a pile hidden away. She wouldn’t eat a single one herself, because she knew how much Grannie would enjoy them instead of her usual hard black bread.

After dinner Heidi always sat alone in her room for a time. She had been made to realize that she could not simply run out‐of‐doors in Frankfurt as she had done at home, so she never tried again. Miss Rottenmeier had forbidden her to talk to Sebastian, and she would never have dreamed of starting a conversation with Tinette. Indeed she avoided her as much as possible for Tinette either spoke to her in the most disdainful way, or mimicked her, and Heidi knew quite well that she was being made fun of. So she had plenty of time every day to think how the snow would by now have melted on the mountain and of how beautiful it would be at home with the sun shining on the grass and the flowery slopes and over the valley below. She felt so homesick, she could hardly bear it. Then she remembered that her aunt had said she could go back if she wanted to. So one afternoon she wrapped up the rolls in her big red scarf, put on her old straw hat and went downstairs. But she had only got as far as the front door when she ran straight into Miss Rottenmeier returning from an outing. That forbidding person stared at Heidi in amazement and her sharp eyes came to rest on the red bundle.

‘And what does this mean?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you dressed up like that? Haven’t I forbidden you to go running about the streets alone, or to go out without permission? Yet here I find you trying it again and looking like a beggar’s child into the bargain.’

‘I wasn’t going to run about,’ murmured Heidi, a little frightened. ‘I only want to go home to see Grandfather and Grannie.’

‘What’s that? You want to go home?’ Miss Rottenmeier threw up her hands in horror. ‘You’d simply run off like that? What would Mr Sesemann say? I can only hope he’ll never hear of it. What’s wrong with this house, pray? Have you ever lived in such a fine place before, or had such a soft bed or such good food? Answer me that.’

‘No,’ said Heidi.

‘You have everything you can want here. You’re an ungrateful little girl who doesn’t know when she’s well off.’

This was too much for Heidi and she burst out, ‘I want to go home because while I’m here Snowflake will be crying, and Grannie will be missing me too. And here I can’t see the sun saying goodnight to the mountains. And if the hawk came flying over Frankfurt he’d croak louder than ever because there are such a lot of people here being horrid and cross, instead of climbing high up where everything’s so much nicer.’

‘Merciful heavens! The child’s out of her mind!’ exclaimed Miss Rottenmeier and ran swiftly upstairs, bumping violently into Sebastian who was going down. ‘Bring that wretched child up here at once,’ she ordered.

‘Very good,’ said Sebastian.

Heidi hadn’t moved. She was trembling all over and her eyes were blazing. ‘Well, what have you done this time?’ asked Sebastian cheerfully. Still she didn’t stir, so he patted her shoulder and added sympathetically, ‘Come now, don’t take it so much to heart. Keep smiling, that’s the best thing to do. She bumped into me so hard just now she nearly knocked my head off. But don’t you worry. Come along. We’ve got to right‐about‐turn and upstairs again. She said so.’ Heidi went slowly with him, looking so very dejected that Sebastian felt really sorry for her.

‘Cheer up,’ he said, ‘don’t be downhearted. I’ve never seen you cry yet and I know you’re a sensible little girl. Later on, when Miss Rottenmeier’s out of the way, we’ll go and look at the kittens, shall we? They’re having a fine time up in the attic and it’s fun to watch them playing together.’

Heidi gave a subdued little nod and went to her room, leaving him looking after her with real kindliness.

At supper Miss Rottenmeier hardly spoke, but every now and then she glanced sharply at Heidi as though expecting her to do something unheard‐of at any moment. But the little girl sat as quiet as a mouse, eating and drinking nothing, though she managed to put her roll in her pocket as usual.

Next morning, when Mr Usher arrived, Miss Rotten‐meier beckoned him mysteriously into the dining‐room and told him she feared the change of air and the new way of life, with all its unusual experiences, had affected Heidi’s mind. She told him how the child had tried to run away and repeated the extraordinary things she had said. Mr Usher tried to calm her.

‘I assure you,’ he said, ‘that although in some ways Adelheid is rather peculiar, in others she seems quite normal and it should be possible, with careful treatment, to steady her quite satisfactorily in the end. I am really more worried by the fact that she seems to find such difficulty in learning the alphabet. So far we have made no progress at all.’

Miss Rottenmeier felt somehow satisfied by that and let him go to his pupils. Later in the day she remembered the strange garments Heidi had put on to go home in, and decided she ought to give her some of Clara’s outgrown clothes before Mr Sesemann came home. She spoke to Clara about it and she agreed at once that Heidi could have several of her dresses, hats, and other garments. So Miss Rottenmeier went off to Heidi’s room to look at her clothes and decide what was worth keeping and what should be thrown away. In a few minutes she returned, looking more put out than ever.

‘Adelheid’ she cried, ‘what do I find in your wardrobe? Can I believe my eyes? Just think of it, Clara, at the bottom of the cupboard — a cupboard meant for clothes, Adelheid — I found a great pile of stale dry rolls. Fancy hoarding food away like that!’ Then she raised her voice and called Tinette. ‘Go to Miss Adelheid’s room,’ she told her, ‘and get rid of the rolls in the cupboard, and throw the old straw hat that’s on the table into the dustbin!’

‘Oh, no,’ Heidi wailed, starting up, ‘I must keep my hat, and the rolls are for Grannie.’ She tried to run after Tinette but Miss Rottenmeier caught hold of her.

‘You’ll stay here. That rubbish is going to be thrown away,’ she said firmly.

Heidi threw herself down beside Clara’s chair and began to cry bitterly. ‘Now Grannie won’t get any nice white bread,’ she sobbed. ‘The rolls were all for her and now they’re going to be thrown away.’ She wept as if her heart would break, and Miss Rottenmeier hurried out of the room. Clara was very upset by all the commotion.

‘Heidi, don’t cry so,’ she begged. ‘Listen to me. If you’ll only stop, I promise to get you just as many rolls as you had saved, or even more, to take to Grannie when you go home. And they’ll be soft, fresh ones. Those you’d saved must have got quite hard already. Come on, Heidi, please don’t cry any more.’

It was a long time before Heidi could stop, but she understood what Clara was promising and was comforted at last, though she still wanted to be assured that Clara meant it.

‘Will you really give me as many rolls as I had saved?’ she asked in a still tearful voice.

‘Of course I will. Now do cheer up.’

Heidi came to supper that night with red eyes, and when she saw the roll beside her plate, a lump came in her throat. But she managed not to cry for she knew that would not do at table. Sebastian kept making strange signs whenever he came near her, pointing first to his head, then to hers, nodding and winking as he did so, as though to convey to her something very secret, and when she went to bed she found her battered old straw hat under the quilt. She caught it up and squashed it a little more in her pleasure at seeing it again. Then she wrapped it up in a big old handkerchief and hid it right at the back of the wardrobe.

That was what Sebastian had been trying to tell her at supper. He had heard what Tinette had been told to do, and had heard Heidi’s despairing cry. So he had gone after the girl and waited till she came out of Heidi’s room carrying the hoard of rolls, with the hat perched on top of them. He had snatched away the hat, saying, ‘I’ll get rid of this,’ and so had been able to save it.