The Field of Clover Part 5

'Ah! if I had only known _that_!' cried the queen. '_Now_ I know what a wicked woman I am!'

Just then, the trap-door in the roof of the dungeon opened, and a voice called down, 'Tell us where is the king's son! If you do not tell us, you shall stay here and starve.'

'The king's son is here!' cried the queen.

'A likely story!' answered the gaolers. 'Do you think we are going to believe that?' And they shut-to the trap.

The queen's son cried, 'Dear brother, come and take back your crown, it p.r.i.c.ks so!' But the king's son only undid the queen's bonds and his brother's. 'Now,' said he, 'you are free: you can kill me now.'

'Oh!' cried the queen, 'what a wicked woman I must be! Do you think I could do it now?' Then she cried, 'O little son, bring your poor head to me, and I will take off the crown!' and she took off the crown and gave it back to the king's son. 'When I am dead,' she said, 'remember, and be kind to him!'

The king's son put the crown upon his own head.

Suddenly, outside the palace, all the land broke into leaf; there was a rus.h.i.+ng sound in the river of fishes swimming up from the sea, and all the air was loud and dark with flights of returning birds. Almost at the same moment the foxes began to disappear and diminish, and cease to be like locusts in the land.

People came running to open the door of the deepest and darkest dungeon in the palace: 'For either,' they cried, 'the queen is dead, or the king's son has been found!'

'Where is the king's son, then?' they called out, as they threw wide the door. 'He is here!' cried the king; and out he came, to the astonishment of all, wearing his crown, and leading his step-mother and half-brother by the hand.

He looked at his step-mother, and she was quite white; as white as the mouse that had jumped upon the king's bed at midnight bidding him fly for his life. Not only her face, but her hair, her lips, and her very eyes were white and colourless, for she had gone blind from gazing too hard into her crystal ball, and hunting the king's son to death.

So she remained blind to the end of her days; but the king was more good to her than gold, and as for his brother, never did half-brothers love each other better than these. Therefore they all lived very happily together, and after a long time, the queen learned to forget what a wicked woman she had been.

THE WIs.h.i.+NG-POT

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE WIs.h.i.+NG-POT

Tulip was the son of a poor but prudent mother; from the moment of his birth she had trained him to count ten before ever he wanted or asked for anything. An otherwise reckless youth, he acquired an intrinsic value through the practice of this habit. Only once, just as he was reaching, but had not quite reached, years of discretion, did his habit of precaution fail him; and this same failure became in the end the opening of his fortunes.

Bathing one day in the river, to whose banks the woods ran down in steep terraces, he heard a voice come singing along one of the upper slopes; and looking up under the boughs of cedar and sycamore, he saw a pair of green feet go dancing by, up and down like gra.s.shoppers on the prance.

There was such rhythm in them, and such sweetness in the voice, that his heart was out of him before he could harness it to the number ten, and he came out of the water the most natural and forlorn of lovers.

Before he was dressed the green feet and the voice were gone, and before he got home his health and his appet.i.te seemed to have gone also. He pined industriously from day to day, and spent all his hours in searching among the woods by the river side for his lady of the dear green feet. He did not know so much as the size or colour of her face; the sound of her voice alone, and the running up and down of her feet, had, as he told his mother, 'decimated his affections.'

In his trouble he could think of only one possible remedy, and that he counted well over, knowing its risk. Away in the loneliest part of the forest there lived a wise woman, to whom, now and then, folk went for help when everything else had failed them. So he had heard tell of a certain Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot that was hers in which people might see the thing they desired most, and into which for a fee she allowed lovers and other poor fools of fortune to look. One thing, however, was told against the virtues of this Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot, that though many had had a sight of it, and their wishes revealed to them therein, others had gone and had never again returned to their homes, but had vanished altogether from men's sight, nor had any news ever been heard of them after. There were some wise folk who held that they had only gone elsewhere to seek the fortune that the Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot had shown to them.

Nevertheless, for the most part the wise woman and her Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot had an ill name in that neighbourhood.

To a lover's heart risk gives value; so one fine morning Tulip kissed his mother, counted ten, and set out for the woods.

Towards evening he came to the house of the witch and knocked at the door. 'Good mother,' said he, when she opened to him, 'I have brought you the fee to buy myself a wish over the Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot.' 'Ay, surely,'

answered the crone, and drew him in.

In one corner of the room stood a great crystal bowl. Nearly round it was, and had a small opening at the top, to which a man might place his eye and look in. To Tulip, as he looked at it, it seemed all coloured fires and falling stars, and a soft crackling sound came from it, as though heat burned in its veins. It threw long shapes and l.u.s.tres upon the walls, and within innumerable things writhed, and ran, and whiffed in the floating of its vapours.

'You may have two wishes,' said the old witch, 'a one and a two.' And she said the spell that undid the secret of the Pot to the wisher.

Then Tulip bent down his head and looked in, counting softly to himself, and at ten, he let the wish go to his lady of the dear green feet.

The colours changed and sprang, as though stirred and fed with fresh fuel; and down in the depths of the Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot he saw the feet of his Beloved go by in twinkling green slippers.

As soon as he saw that he began counting ten in great haste for the second wish. 'O to be inside the Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot with her!' was his thought now. He had got to nine, and the wish was almost on his tongue, when he caught sight of the old woman's eye looking at him.

And the eye had become like a large green spider, with great long limbs that kept clutching up and out again!

His heart queegled to a jelly at the sight; but the green feet lured him so, that he still thought how to get to them and yet be safe.

Surely, to be in the Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot and out by the sound of the next Angelus became the shape of his wish. He shut his eyes, cried ten upon the venture, and was in the Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot!

The little green feet were trebling over the gla.s.s with a sound like running water; and he himself began running at full speed, shot off into the Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot like a pellet from a pop-gun. Nothing could he see of his dear but her wee green feet. But above them as they ran he heard showery laughter, and he knew that his lady was there before him, though invisible to the eye.

The Pot, now he was in it, seemed bigger than the biggest dome in the world; to run all round it took him two or three minutes. Away in the centre of its base stood a great opal k.n.o.b, like the axle to a wheel round which he and the green feet kept circling.

However much he wished and wished, the green feet still kept their distance, for now he was _in_ the Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot wishes availed him nothing. The green feet flew faster than his; the light laugh rang further and further away; right across to the other side of the hall his lady had pa.s.sed from him now.

The magic fires of the crystal leapt and crackled under his tread; now it seemed as if his feet ran on a green lawn, out of which broke crocuses and daffodils, and now roses reddened in the track, and now the purple of grapes spurted across the path like spilled wine. The sound of the green feet and the running of overhead laughter, as they distanced him in front, came nearer and nearer behind him from across the hall. He felt that he must follow and not turn, however beaten he might be.

Presently a voice, that he knew was his Beloved's, cried,--

'Heart that would have me must hatch me!

Feet that would find me must catch me!

Man that would mate me must match me!'

Oh, how? wondered spent feet, and failing heart, and reeling brain.

He stumbled slower and slower in the race, till presently with quick innumerable patterings the green feet grew closer, and were overtaking him from the rear.

Warm breath was in his hair,--lips and a hand; he turned, open armed, to s.n.a.t.c.h the mischievous morsel, but all that he clasped was a gust of air; and he saw the green feet scudding out and away on a fresh start before him.

Again, with laughter, the voice cried,--

'Lap for lap you must wind me: Equal, before you can find me!

You are a lap behind me!'

Where they raced the surface of the gla.s.s sloped slightly to the upward rise of its walls; Tulip s.h.i.+fted his ground, and ran where the footing was leveller toward the centre, and the circle began to go smaller. So he began to gain, till the green slippers, seeing how the advantage had come about, s.h.i.+fted also in their turn.

Thus they ran on; there were no inner posts to mark the course, only the great opal standing in the centre of all formed the pivot of the race, and round and round it, a great way off, they ran.

All at once a big thought came into Tulip's head; he waited not to count ten, but, before Green Slippers knew what he was after, he had reached the opal centre, and was circling it. Then quickly all the laughter stopped; the green feet came twinkling sixteens to the dozens, so as to get round the post before him and away.

One lap, he was before her; two laps, he turned again to her coming, and found her falling into his arms. She blossomed into sight at his touch: from top to toe she was there! All rosy and alive he had her in his clasp, laughing, crying, clinging, yet struggling to be free. She made a most endless handful, till Tulip had caught her by the hair and kissed her between the eyes.

All round and overhead the magic crystal reared up arches of fire, to a roof that dropped like rain, while Tulip and his prize sank down exhausted on the great hub of opal to rest. As he touched it all the secret wonders of the Wis.h.i.+ng-Pot were opened and revealed to his gaze.

Crowds and crowds of faces were what he most saw; everywhere that he turned he saw old friends and neighbours who, he thought, had been dead and gone, looking sadly, and shaking long sorrowful faces at him. 'You here too, Tulip?' they seemed forever to be saying. 'Always another, and another; and now you here too!'