Mopsa the Fairy Part 12

AFTER THE PARTY.

_Stephano._--This will prove a brave kingdom to me, Where I shall have my music for nothing.

_The Tempest._

When breakfast was over, the guests got up, one after the other, without taking the least notice of the Queen; and the tent began to get so thin and transparent that you could see the trees and the sky through it. At last, it looked only like a colored mist, with blue, and green, and yellow stripes, and then it was gone; and the table and all the things on it began to go in the same way. Only Jack, and the apple-woman, and Mopsa were left, sitting on their chairs, with the Queen between them.

Presently, the Queen's lips began to move, and her eyes looked straight before her, as she sat upright in her chair. Whereupon the apple-woman s.n.a.t.c.hed up Mopsa, and, seizing Jack's hand, hurried him off, exclaiming, "Come away! come away! She is going to tell one of her stories; and if you listen, you'll be obliged to go to sleep, and sleep n.o.body knows how long."

Jack did not want to go to sleep; he wished to go down to the river again, and see what had become of his boat, for he had left his cap and several other things in it.

So he parted from the apple-woman,--who took Mopsa with her, and said he would find her again when he wanted her at her apple-stall,--and went down to the boat, where he saw that his faithful hound was there before him.

"It was lucky, master, that I came when I did," said the hound, "for a dozen or so of those one-foot-one fellows were just shoving it off, and you will want it at night to sleep in."

"Yes," said Jack; "and I can stretch the bit of purple silk to make a canopy over head,--a sort of awning,--for I should not like to sleep in tents or palaces that are inclined to melt away."

So the hound with his teeth, and Jack with his hands, pulled and pulled at the silk till it was large enough to make a splendid canopy, like a tent; and it reached down to the water's edge, and roofed in all the after part of the boat.

So now he had a delightful little home of his own; and there was no fear of its being blown away, for no wind ever blows in Fairyland. All the trees are quite still, no leaf rustles, and the flowers lie on the ground exactly where they fall.

After this Jack told the hound to watch his boat, and went himself in search of the apple-woman. Not one fairy was to be seen, any more than if he had been in his own country, and he wandered down the green margin of the river till he saw the apple-woman sitting at a small stall with apples on it, and cherries tied to sticks, and some dry-looking nuts. She had Mopsa on her knee, and had washed her face, and put a beautiful clean white frock on her.

"Where are all the fairies gone to?" asked Jack.

"I never take any notice of that common trash and their doings," she answered. "When the Queen takes to telling her stories they are generally frightened, and go and sit in the tops of the trees."

"But you seem very fond of Mopsa," said Jack, "and she is one of them.

You will help me to take care of her, won't you, tills she grows a little older?"

"Grows!" said the apple-woman, laughing. "Grows! Why you don't think, surely, that she will ever be any different from what she is now?"

"I thought she would grow up," said Jack.

"They never change so long as they last," answered the apple-woman, "when once they are one-foot-one high."

"Mopsa," said Jack, "come here, and I'll measure you."

Mopsa came dancing towards Jack, and he tried to measure her, first with a yard measure that the apple-woman took out of her pocket, and then with a stick, and then with a bit of string; but Mopsa would not stand steady, and at last it ended in their having a good game of romps together, and a race; but when he carried her back, sitting on his shoulder, he was sorry to see that the apple-woman was crying again, and he asked her kindly what she did it for.

"It is because," she answered, "I shall never see my own country any more, nor any men and women and children, excepting such as by a rare chance stray in for a little while as you have done."

"I can go back whenever I please," said Jack. "Why don't you?"

"Because I came in of my own good-will, after I had had fair warning that if I came at all it would end in my staying always. Besides, I don't know that I exactly wish to go home again: I should be afraid."

"Afraid of what?" asked Jack.

"Why, there's the rain and the cold, and not having anything to eat excepting what you earn. And yet," said the apple-woman, "I have three boys of my own at home; one of them must be nearly a man by this time, and the youngest is about as old as you are. If I went home I might find one or more of those boys in jail, and then how miserable I should be."

"But you are not happy as it is," said Jack. "I have seen you cry."

"Yes," said the apple-woman; "but now I live here I don't care about anything so much as I used to do. 'May I have a satin gown and a coach?' I asked, when first I came. 'You may have a hundred and fifty satin gowns if you like,' said the Queen, 'and twenty coaches with six cream-colored horses to each.' But when I had been here a little time, and found I could have everything I wished for, and change it as often as I pleased, I began not to care for anything; and at last I got so sick of all their grand things that I dressed myself in my own clothes that I came in, and made up my mind to have a stall and sit at it, as I used to do, selling apples. And I used to say to myself, 'I have but to wish with all my heart to go home, and I can go, I know that;' but oh dear! oh dear! I couldn't wish enough, for it would come into my head that I should be poor, or that my boys would have forgotten me, or that my neighbors would look down on me, and so I always put off wis.h.i.+ng for another day. Now here is the Queen coming.

Sit down on the gra.s.s and play with Mopsa. Don't let her see us talking together, lest she should think I have been telling you things which you ought not to know."

Jack looked, and saw the Queen coming slowly towards them, with her hands held out before her, as if it was dark. She felt her way, yet her eyes were wide open, and she was telling her stories all the time.

"Don't you listen to a word she says," whispered the apple-woman; and then, in order that Jack might not hear what the Queen was talking about, she began to sing.

She had no sooner begun than up from the river came swarms of one-foot-one fairies to listen, and hundreds of them dropped down from the trees. The Queen, too, seemed to attend as they did, though she kept murmuring her story all the time; and nothing that any of them did appeared to surprise the apple-woman,--she sang as if n.o.body was taking any notice at all:--

When I sit on market-days amid the comers and the goers, Oh! full oft I have a vision of the days without alloy, And a s.h.i.+p comes up the river with a jolly gang of towers, And a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"

There is busy talk around me, all about mine ears it hummeth, But the wooden wharves I look on, and a dancing, heaving buoy, For 'tis tidetime in the river, and she cometh--oh, she cometh!

With a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"

Then I hear the water was.h.i.+ng, never golden waves were brighter, And I hear the capstan creaking--'tis a sound that cannot cloy.

Bring her to, to s.h.i.+p her lading, brig or schooner, sloop or lighter, With a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haule, yoy! heave, hoy!"

"Will ye step aboard, my dearest? for the high seas lie before us."

So I sailed adown the river in those days without alloy.

We are launched! But when, I wonder, shall a sweeter sound float o'er us Than yon "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"

As the apple-woman left off singing, the Queen moved away, still murmuring the words of her story, and Jack said,--

"Does the Queen tell stories of what has happened, or of what is going to happen?"

"Why, of what is going to happen, of course," replied the woman.

"Anybody could tell the other sort."

"Because I heard a little of it," observed Jack. "I thought she was talking of me. She said 'So he took the measure, and Mopsa stood still for once, and he found she was only one foot high, and she grew a great deal after that. Yes, she can grow.'"

"That's a fine hearing, and a strange hearing," said the apple-woman; "and what did she mutter next?"

"Of how she heard me sobbing," replied Jack; "and while you went on about stepping on board the s.h.i.+p, she said, 'He was very good to me, dear little fellow! But Fate is the name of my old mother, and she reigns here. Oh, she reigns! The fatal F is in her name, and I cannot take it out!'"

"Ah!" replied the apple-woman, "they all say that, and that they are fays, and that mortals call their history fable; they are always crying out for an alphabet without the fatal F."

"And then she told how she heard Mopsa sobbing too," said Jack; "sobbing among the reeds and rushes by the river side."

"There are no reeds, and no rushes either, here," said the apple-woman, "and I have walked the river from end to end. I don't think much of that part of the story. But you are sure she said that Mopsa was short of her proper height?"

"Yes, and that she would grow; but that's nothing. In my country we always grow."

"Hold your tongue about you country!" said the apple-woman, sharply.

"Do you want to make enemies of them all?"