The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

On hearing his wife’s cries of surprise, the old man hurried from the end of the field; and when he too had gazed at the beautiful child God had given them these old people embraced each other with tears of joy, and then returned quickly to their cabin lest the falling dew should hurt their boy. When they were snug in the chimney corner it was a fresh delight to them to see the little fellow reach out his hands to them, laughing winsomely, and calling them mamma and pappa, as though he had known no other father or mother.

  The old man took him on his knee and danced him gently up and down, in “the way the ladies ride in the Park,” and said all sorts of droll things to amuse him; and the child responded in his own prattling fashion, for who would like to seem backward in such jolly talk?

  Meanwhile the old woman lit up the house with a fire of dry bean pods, which gladdened the little body of the newcomer, and prepared an excellent bean-pap which a spoonful of honey made delicious eating. Then she laid him to sleep in his fine white night clothes in the best bed of bean-chaff in the house; for these poor folk knew nothing of feather-beds and eider-downs. When he was fast asleep, “There is one thing that bothers me,” said the old man to his wife, “and that is what we are to call this bonny boy, for we know neither his parents nor where he comes from.”

  “We must call him,” said the old woman, for though she was but a simple peasant she was quick-witted, “The Luck of the Bean-rows, for it was in our bean field he came to us, the best of luck, to comfort us in our old age.”

  “There could not be a better name,” the old man agreed.

  It would make the story too long to tell what happened in the days and in all the years that followed; it is enough to know that the old people kept getting older and older, while one could almost see Luck of the Bean-rows putting on strength and good looks. Not that he was mighty of his inches, for at twelve he was only two and a half feet, and when he was at work in the bean field, of which he was very fond, you could hardly have seen him from the road, but his small figure was so shapely, and he was so winning in his looks and ways, so gentle, and yet so sure of his words, and he appeared so gallant in his sky-blue smock, red belt and gay Sunday bonnet with bean blossoms for feathers, that people wondered at him and many believed that he was really an elf or a fairy.

  Many things, I grant, encouraged this notion. First of all, the cabin and the bean field—the bean field in which a few years ago a cow would have found nothing to graze on—had become one of the fine estates of the country-side; and not a soul could tell how it had happened. Well, to see beanstalks sprouting, to see them flowering, to see the blossom fading and the beans swelling ripe in the pods—there is nothing out of the common in that, but to see a whole bean field expanding, spreading out, with never a strip of land added, whether bought or knavishly taken from a neighbor’s holding—that gets beyond understanding.

  And all the while the bean field went on growing and spreading. It spread to the south wind, it spread to the north wind, it spread towards the dawn, it spread towards the sunset. And the neighbors measured their land to no purpose; they always found it full measure with a rod or two to the good, so they naturally concluded that the whole country was getting bigger.

  Then again the beans bore so heavily that the cabin could never have contained the crop, had it not also grown larger. And yet for more than five leagues round the bean-crop failed, so that beans had become priceless because of the quantities sought for the tables of lords and kings.

  In the midst of this abundance the Luck of the Bean-rows saw to everything himself, turning the soil, sorting the seed, cleansing the plants, weeding, digging, hoeing, harvesting, shelling, and, over and above, trimming hedges and mending wattle-fences. What time was left he spent bargaining with the market people, for he could read, write and keep accounts, though he had had no schooling. He was indeed a very blessing of a boy.

  One night, when the Luck was asleep, the old man said to his wife: “There is Luck of the Bean-rows now, who has done so much to make us comfortable that we can spend the few years that are left us in peace and without labor. In making him heir to all we own we have given him only what is already his; and we should be thankless indeed if we did not try to secure him a more becoming position in life than that of a bean-merchant. A pity he is too modest for a professor’s chair in the universities, and he is just a trifle too short for a general.”

  “It’s a pity,” said the old woman, “he hasn’t studied enough to pick up the Latin names for five or six diseases. Eh, but they would be glad to make him a doctor right off!”

  “Then as to law-suits,” the old man went on, “I am afraid he has too much brains and good sense to clear up one of them.”

  “I have always had a fancy,” said the old woman, “that when he came of age he would marry Pea-Blossom.”

  “Pea-Blossom,” rejoined the old man, shaking his head, “is far too great a princess to marry a poor foundling, worth no more than a cabin and a bean field. Pea-Blossom, old dear, is a match for a squire or a justice of the peace, or for the king himself, if he came to be a widower. We are talking of a serious matter, do speak sense.”

  “Luck of the Bean-rows has more sense than both of us together,” said his wife after a moment’s thought. “Besides, it is his business, and it would not be proper to press it further without asking his opinion.”

  Whereupon the old couple turned over and went to sleep.

  Day was just breaking when the Luck leaped out of bed to begin work in the field as usual. Who but he was surprised to find his Sunday clothes laid out on the chest where he had left his others at bedtime? “It is a week-day, anyway,” he said to himself, “if the almanack hasn’t gone wrong. Mother must be keeping some holiday of her own to have set out my best things. Well, let it be as she wishes. I would not cross her in anything at her great age, and after all it is easy to make up for an hour or two by rising earlier or working later.”

  So after a prayer to God for the health of his parents and the progress of the beans, he dressed as handsomely as he could. He was about to go out of doors if only to cast an eye at the fences before the old couple awoke, when his mother appeared on the threshold with a bowl of good steaming porridge, which she placed with a wooden spoon on his little table.

  “Eat it up, eat it up!” she said; “do not be sparing of this porridge sweetened with honey and a pinch of green aniseed, just as you liked it when you were a little fellow; for the road is before you, laddie, and it is a long road you will travel to-day.”

  “That is good to hear,” said Luck of the Bean-rows, looking at her in surprise; “and where are you sending me?”

  The old woman sat down on a stool, and with her two hands on her knees, replied with a laugh: “Into the world, into the wide world, little Luck. You have never seen anyone but ourselves, and a few poor market folk you sell your beans to, to keep the house going, good lad. Now one day, one day, you will be a big man if the price of beans keeps up, so it will be well for you, dearie, to know some people in good society. I must tell you there is a great city four or five miles away where at every step one meets lords in cloth of gold and ladies in silver dresses with trails of roses. Your bonnie little face, so pleasant and so lively, will be sure to win them; and I shall be much mistaken if the day goes by without your getting some distinguished appointment at court or in the public offices, where you may earn much and do little. So eat it up and do not spare the good porridge sweetened with honey and a pinch of green aniseed.

  “Now as you know more about the price of beans than about the value of money,” the old woman went on, “you are to sell in the market these six quart measures of choice beans. I have not put more lest you should be overburdened. Besides, with beans as dear as they are now, you would be hard set to bring home the price even if they paid you only in gold. So we propose, father and I, that you should keep half of what you get to enjoy yourself properly, as young people should
, or in buying yourself some pretty trinket to wear of a Sunday, such as a silver watch with ruby and emerald seals, or an ivory cup and ball or a Nuremberg humming-top. The rest of the money you can put in the bank.

  “So away with you, my little Luck, since you have finished your porridge; and be sure that you do not lose time chasing butterflies, for we should die broken-hearted if you were not home before nightfall. And keep to the roads for fear of the wolves.”

  “I will do as you bid me, mother,” replied the Luck of the Bean-rows, hugging the old woman, “though for my part I would sooner spend the day in the field. As for wolves, they don’t trouble me with my weeding-hook.”

  So saying he slung his pronged hoe in his belt, and set out at a steady pace.

  “Come back early,” the old woman kept calling after him; she was already feeling sorry that she had let him go.

  Luck of the Bean-rows tramped on and on, taking huge strides like a five-foot giant, and staring left and right at the strange things he saw by the way. He had never dreamed that the world was so big and so full of wonders.

  When he had walked for an hour or more, as he reckoned by the height of the sun, and was puzzled that he had not yet reached the great city at the rate he was going, he thought he heard someone calling after him: “Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, twee! Please do stop, Master Luck of the Bean-rows.”

  “Who is it calling me?” cried Luck of the Bean-rows, clapping his hand on his pronged hoe.

  “Please do stop at once. Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, twee! It is I who am calling you.”

  “Can it be possible?” asked Luck, raising his eyes to the top of an old pine, hollow and half dead, on which a great owl was swaying in the wind. “What is it we two can settle together, my bonnie bird?”

  “It would be indeed a wonder if you recognised me,” answered the owl, “for you had no notion that I was ever helping you, as a modest and honest owl should, by devouring at my own risk the swarms of rats which nibbled away half your crops, good year and bad year. That is why your field now brings you in what will buy you a pretty kingdom, if you know when you have enough. As for me, who have paid dearly for my care of others, I have not one wretched lean rat on the hooks of the larder against daylight, for now at night, with my eyes grown so dim in your service, I can scarcely see where I am going. So I called to you, generous Luck of the Bean-rows, to beg of you one of those good quart measures of beans hanging from your staff. It will keep me alive till my oldest son comes of age, and on his loyalty to you may reckon.”

  “Why that, Master Owl,” cried Luck of the Bean-rows, taking one of his own three quart measures from the end of his staff, “is a debt of gratitude, and I am glad to repay it.”

  The owl darted down on the measure, caught it in his claws and beak, and with one flap of the wing carried it off to the tree-top.

  “My word, but you are in a hurry to be off!” said the Luck. “May I ask, Master Owl, if I am still far from the great town mother is sending me to?”

  “You are just going into it,” answered the owl, as he flitted off to another tree.

  Luck of the Bean-rows went on his way with a lighter staff; he felt sure he must be near the end of his journey, but he had hardly gone a hundred steps when he heard someone else calling:

  “Behh, behh, bekky! Please stop, Master Luck of the Bean-rows!”

  “I think I know that voice,” said the Luck, turning round. “Why, yes, of course! It is that bare-faced rogue of a mountain she-goat, which prowls around my field with her kids for a toothsome snack. So it is you, is it, my lady raider?”

  “What is that about raiding, fair Master Luck? I guess your hedges are too thick, your ditches too deep, your fences too close for any raiding. All one could do was to nip a few leaves that pushed through the chinks of the wattles, and our pruning makes the stalks thrive. You know the old saying:

  Sheeps’ teeth, loss and trouble,

  Goats’ teeth pay back double

  “Say no more,” broke in Luck of the Bean-rows; “and may all the ill I wished you fall upon my own head. But why did you stop me, and what can I do to please you, Madame Doe?”

  “Misery me!” she sobbed, dropping big tears, “Behh, behh, bekky! it was to tell you that the wicked wolf had killed my husband, the buck; and now my little orphan and I are in sore need, for he will forage for us no more; and I fear my poor little kid will die of hunger if you cannot help her. So I called to you, noble Master Luck of the Bean-rows, to beg of pity one of those good quart measures of beans hanging from your staff. It will keep us till we get help from our kinsfolk.”

  “What you ask, Lady Doe,” said the Luck, taking one of his two measures from his staff, “is an act of compassion and good will, and I am glad to do it for you.”

  The goat caught up the measure in her lips, and one bound carried her into the leafy thicket.

  “My word, but you are in a hurry to be off!” cried Luck of the Bean-rows. “May I ask you, dear lady, if I am still far from the great town mother is sending me to?”

  “You are there already,” answered the goat as she buried herself deep among the bushes.

  Once more the Luck went on his way, his staff the lighter by two quart measures. He was looking out for the walls of the big town when he noticed by a rustling along the skirt of the woods that someone was following him closely. He turned quickly towards the sound, with his pronged hoe gripped hard in his hand. Well for him that the prongs were open, for the prowler that was tracking him was a grim old wolf whose appearance promised no good.

  “So it is you, evil beast!” cried Luck. “You hoped to give me the place of honor at your evening spread! By good fortune my two iron teeth,” and he glanced at his hoe, “are worth all yours together, though I would not belittle them; so you may take it as settled, old crony, that you are to sup this evening without me. Consider yourself in luck, too, if I do not avenge the husband of the she-goat and the father of the kid who have been brought into pitiful straits by your cruelty. Perhaps I ought to, and it would only be justice, but I have been brought up with such a horror of blood that I am loth to shed even a wolf’s.”

  So far the wolf had listened in deep humility; now he suddenly broke into a long and lamentable howl and turned up his eyes to heaven as if calling on it to bear witness.

  “Oh, power divine, who clothed me as a wolf,” he sobbed, “you know if ever I felt wicked desires in my heart. However, my lord,” he added, with a bow of resignation towards Luck of the Bean-rows, “it lies with you to dispose of my wretched life. I place it at your mercy without fear and without remorse. If you think it right to make my death atone for the crimes of my race I shall die at your hands without repining; for ever since I fondled you in your cradle with pure delight, when your lady mother was not there, I have ever loved you dearly and truly honored you. Then you grew so handsome, so stately, that, only to look at you, one might have guessed you would become a great and magnanimous prince, as you have. Only I beg you to believe, before you condemn me, I did not stain these claws in the blood of the doe’s luckless mate.

  “I was brought up on principles of restraint and moderation; my fell is sprinkled with grey, but through all the years I have never swerved from them. At the time you mention I was abroad among my scattered tribesfolk, proclaiming sound moral doctrines in the hope of leading them by word and example to a frugal standard of living, that high aim of wolfish character. I will go further, my lord; that mountain goat was my good friend. I encouraged promising qualities in him; often we travelled together, discoursing by the way, for he had a bright wit and eagerness to learn. In my absence a sad quarrel for precedence (you know how touchy these rock people are on this point) was the cause of his death, which I have never got over.”

  The wolf wept—from the very depth of his heart it seemed, as inconsolable as the doe herself.

  “For all that and all that,”
said the Luck of the Bean-rows, who had kept the prongs of his weeding-hook open, “you were stalking me.”

  “Following you, following you, yes,” replied the wolf in wheedling tones, “in the hope of interesting you in my benevolent purpose, but in some more suitable place than this for conversation. Ah, I said to myself, if my lord Luck of the Bean-rows, whose reputation is spread far and wide, would but share in my scheme of reform, he would have to-day a splendid opportunity. I warrant that one quart measure of those dainty beans hanging from his staff would convert a tribe of wolves, wolflings and cubs to a vegetable diet, and preserve countless generations of bucks, does and kids.”

  “It is the last of my measures,” thought the Luck to himself, “but what do I want with cups and balls, rubies and humming-tops? And who would put child’s play before something really useful?”

  “There are your beans,” he said as he took the last measure his mother had given him for his amusement. All the same he did not shut the prongs of his hoe. “It is all that was left of my own,” said he, “but I don’t regret it; and I shall be grateful to you, friend wolf, if you put it to the good use you have promised.”

  The wolf snapped his fangs on it and bounded away to his den.

  “My word,” said Luck of the Bean-rows, “you are in a hurry to be off! May I ask, Master Wolf, if I am still far from the great town mother is sending me to?”

  “You have been there for long enough,” replied the wolf, laughing out of the corner of his eyes; “and stay there a thousand years you will see nothing new.”

  Yet once more Luck of the Bean-rows went on his way, and kept looking about for the town walls, but never a glimpse of them was to be seen. He was beginning to feel tired when he was startled by piercing cries which came from a leafy by-path. He ran towards the sound.

  “What is it?” he shouted, and gripped his weeding-hook. “Who is it crying for help? Speak; I cannot see you.”

  “It is I, it is Pea-Blossom,” replied a low, sweet voice. “Oh, do come and get me out of this fix, Master Luck of the Bean-rows. It is easy as wishing and will cost you nothing.”