The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

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

  “Believe me, madam,” said the Luck, “it is not my way to count the cost when I can help. Whatever I have is yours to command, except these three quart measures of beans on my staff; they are not mine, they belong to father and mother. Mine I have just given away to a venerable owl, to a saintly wolf, who is preaching like a hermit, and to the most charming of mountain does. I have not a bean left that I can offer you.”

  “You are laughing at me,” returned Pea-Blossom, somewhat displeased. “Who spoke of beans, sir? I have no need for your beans; they are not known in my household. The service you can do me is to turn the door handle of my carriage and throw back the hood—it is nearly smothering me.”

  “I shall be delighted, madam,” said Luck of the Bean-rows, “if I could only discover your carriage. No trace of a carriage here! And no room to drive on such a narrow path. Still I shall soon find it, for I can hear that you are quite close to me.”

  “What!” she cried with a merry laugh, “You cannot see my carriage! Why you almost trampled on it, running up in your wild way. It is right in front of you, dear Luck of the Bean-rows. You can tell it by its elegant appearance, which is something like a dwarf pea.”

  “It is so like a chick pea,” thought the Luck as he bent down, “that if I hadn’t looked very close I should have taken it for nothing but a chick pea.”

  One glance, however, showed him that it was really a very large dwarf pea, round as an orange, yellow as a lemon, mounted on four little golden wheels, equipped with a dainty “boot,” or hold-all, made of a tiny peaspod as bright and green as morocco.

  He touched the handle; the door flew open; and Pea-Blossom sprang out like a grain of touch-me-not, and lighted nimbly and gaily on her feet.

  The Luck stood up in amazement, never had he conceived of anyone so lovely as Pea-Blossom. Her face, indeed, was the most perfect a painter could have imagined—sparkling almond eyes of a wonderful violet, and a small frolicsome mouth which showed glimpses of bright teeth as white as alabaster. Her short dress, slightly puffed out and brocaded with sweet peas, came just below the knee. She wore tight stockings of white silk; and her adorable little feet why, one envied the lucky shoemaker who shod them in satin.

  “What can you be staring at?” she asked, which shows, by the way, that Luck of the Bean-rows was not making a very brilliant appearance.

  The Luck blushed, but quickly recovered himself. “I was wondering,” he said modestly, “how so beautiful a princess, just about my own size too, could possibly find room in a dwarf pea.”

  “What a mistake to speak so slightingly of my carriage, Luck of the Bean-rows. It is a most comfortable carriage when it is open. And it is quite by chance that I have not my equerry, my almoner, my tutor, my secretary, and two or three of my ladies-in-waiting with me. But I like driving alone, and this fancy of mine caused the accident that has happened to me to-day.

  “I don’t know whether you have met the king of the crickets in company; no one could mistake his glittering black mask, like Harlequin’s, with two straight movable horns, and his shrill sing song whenever he speaks. The king of the crickets condescended to fall in love with me. He was quite well aware that I come of age to-day, and that it is the custom for the princesses of our house to choose a husband when they are ten years old. So he put himself in my way—that too is the custom—and beset me with a frightful racket of piercing declarations. I answered him—also according to custom—by stopping my ears.”

  “Oh, joy!” exclaimed the Luck in rapture. “You are not going to marry the king of the crickets?”

  “I am not going to marry him,” Pea-Blossom declared with dignity. “My choice is made. But no sooner had I given my decision than the odious Crik-Crik (that is his name) flung himself on my carriage like a wild monster, and slammed down the hood. ‘Get married now, saucy minx,’ he shrieked, ‘get married if anyone ever comes a-wooing you in this plight. I don’t care a chick pea either for your kingdom or yourself.’ ”

  “But do tell me,” cried Luck of the Bean-rows, indignantly, “in what hole this king of the crickets is skulking. I will quickly ho him out and fling him bound hand and foot to your mercy. And yet,” he continued, as he rested his head on his hand, “I can understand his desperation. But is it not my duty, princess, to escort you to your realm and protect you from pursuit?”

  “That would certainly be advisable if I were far from the frontier,” answered Pea-Blossom, “but yonder is a field of sweet-peas which my enemy dare not approach, and where I can count upon my faithful subjects.”

  As she spoke she struck the ground with her foot, and fell, clinging to two swaying stalks, which bent under her and then sprang up again, scattering their fragrant blossom over her hair.

  As Luck of the Bean-rows watched her with delight—and I assure you I would have been delighted too—she pierced him with her bright eyes, and he was so spell-bound in the maze of her smile that he would have been happy to die watching her. At the least he might have been still standing there had she not spoken.

  “I have delayed you too long already,” she said, “for I know what a stirring business the trade in beans must be just at present; but my carriage—or rather your carriage—will enable you to recover the time you have lost. Please do not hurt my feelings by refusing so slight a gift. I have a thousand carriages like it in the corn-lofts of the castle, and when I would like a new one I pick it out of a handful and throw the rest to the mice.”

  “The least of your highness’s favors would be the pride and joy of my life,” replied the Luck of the Bean-rows, “but you have forgotten that I have luggage. I can easily imagine that however closely my bean measures may be filled I could manage to find room for your carriage in one of them, but to get my measures into your carriage, that would be impossible.”

  “Try it,” laughed the princess as she swung up and down on the sprays of the sweet peas; “try it, and do not stand amazed at everything, as if you were a little child who had seen nothing.”

  And indeed Luck of the Bean-rows had no difficulty in getting his three quart-measures into the body of the carriage—it could have held thirty and more, and he felt rather mortified.

  “I am ready to start, madam,” he said, as he took his place on a plump cushion, which was large enough to let him sit comfortably in any position, or even to lie at full length if he had been so minded.

  “I owe it to my kind parents,” he continued, “not to leave them in suspense as to what has become of me this first time of my ever leaving them; so I am waiting only for your coachman, who fled, no doubt in terror at the outbreak of the king of the crickets, and took the horses and shafts with him. I shall then leave this spot with everlasting regret that I should have seen you without hope of ever seeing you again.”

  The princess did not appear to notice the marked feeling of the Luck’s last words.

  “Why,” she said, “my carriage does not need either coachman, shafts, or horses; it goes by steam, and at any hour it can easily do fifty thousand miles. You see you will have no trouble in getting home whenever it suits you. You have just to remember the gesture and words with which I start it.

  “In the boot you will find various things that may be useful on the journey; they are every one of them yours. You open the boot as you would shell a green pea. There you will see three caskets, the shape and size of a pea, each fastened by a thread which keeps them in their cases like peas in a pod, so that they cannot jolt against each other when you travel or when you remove them. It is a wonderful contrivance!

  “They will open at the pressure of your finger like the hood of my carriage. Then all you have to do is to make a hole in the ground with your hoe, and sow some of their contents in it, to see whatever you may wish spring up, sprout and blossom. Is not that wonderful?

  “Only remember this!—when the third casket is empty I have nothing else to offer you; for I have only t
hree green peas, just as you had three measures of beans; and the prettiest girl in the world can give you no more than she has.

  “Are you ready to set out now?”

  The Luck of the Bean-rows bowed; he felt that he could not speak. Pea-Blossom snapped her thumb and middle finger: “Off, chick pea!” she cried; and the field of sweet peas was left nine hundred miles behind while Luck of the Bean-rows was still turning this way and that, looking in vain for Pea-Blossom.

  “Alas!” he sighed.

  It would be doing scant justice to the speed of the magic carriage to say that it shot through space at the rate of a rifle bullet. Woods, towns, mountains, seas swept by quicker than magic lantern pictures. Far away horizons had scarcely risen in outline from the deep-down distance before they had plunged under the flying carriage. The Luck would have striven in vain to see them; when he turned to look back—flick! they had gone. At last, when he had several times outraced the sun, swept round the globe, caught it up and again outstripped it, with rapid changes from day to night and from night to day, it suddenly struck the Luck of the Bean-rows that he had passed the great town he was going to and the market for his beans.

  “The springs of this carriage are a trifle lively,” he thought to himself (he was nimble-witted, remember); “it started off on its giddy race before Pea-Blossom could tell me whither I was bound. I don’t see why this journey should not last for ages and ages, for that lovely princess, who is young enough to be something of a madcap, told me how to start the carriage, but had no time to say how I was to stop it.”

  The Luck of the Bean-rows tried all the cries he had heard from carters, wagoners, and muleteers to bring it to a standstill, but it was all to no purpose. Every shout seemed but to quicken its wild career.

  It sped from the tropics to the poles and back from the poles to the tropics, across all the parallels and meridians, quite unconcerned by the unhealthy changes of temperature. It was enough to broil them or to turn them to ice before long, if the Luck had not been gifted, as we have frequently remarked, with admirable intelligence.

  “Ay,” he said to himself, “considering that Pea-Blossom sent her carriage flying through the world with ‘Off, chick pea!’ it is just possible we can stop it by saying the exact opposite.”

  It was a logical idea.

  “Stop, chick pea!” he cried, snapping his finger and thumb as Pea-Blossom had done.

  Could a whole learned society have come to a more sensible conclusion? The fairy carriage came to a standstill so suddenly, you could not have stopped it quicker if you had nailed it down. It did not even shake.

  The Luck of the Bean-rows alighted, picked up the carriage, and let it slip into a leather wallet which he carried at his belt for bean samples, but not before he had taken out the hold-all.

  The spot where the flying carriage was pulled up in this fashion has not been described by travelers. Bruce says it was at the sources of the Nile. M. Douville places it on the Congo, and M. Saillé at Timbuctoo. It was a boundless plain, so parched, so stony, so wild that there was never a bush to lie under, not a desert moss to lay one’s head upon and sleep, not a leaf to appease hunger or thirst. But Luck of the Bean-rows was not in the least anxious. He prized open the hold-all with his fingernail, and untied one of the three little caskets which Pea-Blossom had described to him. He opened it as he had opened the magic carriage, and planted its contents in the sand at the points of his hoe.

  “Come of this what must come!” he said, “but I do badly want a tent to shelter me to-night, were it only a cluster of peas in flower; a little supper to keep me going, were it but a bowl of pea-soup sweetened, and a bed to lie upon, if only one feather of a hummingbird—and all the more as I cannot get back home to-day I am so worn out with hunger and aching fatigue.”

  The words had scarcely left his lips when he saw rising out of the sand a splendid pavilion in the shape of a pergola of sweet-peas. It grew up, it spread; from point to point it was supported upon ten props of gold; it dropped down leafy curtains strewn with pea-blossom; it curved into numberless arches, and from the center of each hung a crystal luster set with perfumed wax lights. The background of this arcade was lined with Venetian mirrors, which reflected a blaze of light that would have dazzled a seven-year-old eagle a league away. From overhead a pea leaf dropped by chance at the Luck’s feet. It spread out into a magnificent carpet variegated with all the colors of the rainbow and many more. Around its border stood little round tables loaded with pastry and sweetmeats; and iced fruits in gilded porcelain cups encircled a brimming bowl of sweet-pea soup, sprinkled over with currants black as jet, green pistachio nuts, coriander comfits and slices of pineapple. Amid all this gorgeous show the Luck quickly discovered his bed, and that was the hummingbird’s feather which he had wished for. It sparkled in a corner like a jewel dropped from the crown of the Grand Mogul, although it was so tiny that a grain of millet might have concealed it.

  At first he thought this pigmy bed was not quite in keeping with the rich furnishing of the pavilion, but the longer he looked at it, the larger it grew, till hummingbirds’ feathers were soon lying knee-deep on the floor a dream-couch of topazes so soft, sapphires so yielding, opals so elastic, that a butterfly would have sunk deep if he had lighted on them.

  “That will do, that will do,” cried the Luck of the Bean-rows; “I shall sleep too soundly as it is.”

  I need not say that our traveler did justice to the feast that was spread for him, and lost no time in preparing for bed. Thoughts of love ran through his mind, but at twelve years of age, love does not keep one awake; and Pea-Blossom, of whom he had had only a glimpse, had left him with no more than the impression of a delightful dream, the enchantment of which could only return in sleep. Another good reason for going to sleep if you have remembrances like mine.

  The Luck of the Bean-rows, however, was too cautious to yield to these idle fancies until he had made sure that all was safe outside the pavilion, the very splendor of which was likely to attract all the thieves and vagabonds for miles round. You will find them in every country.

  So, with his weeding-hook in his hand as usual, he passed out of the magic circle, to make the round of his tent and see that all was quiet.

  No sooner had he reached the limit of the grounds, a narrow ravine washed out by running water that a kid might have cleared at a bound, than he was brought to a standstill by such a shiver as a brave man feels, for the most valiant has his moments of fright which he can master only by his resolute will. And, faith, there was enough to make one hesitate in what he saw.

  It was a battle-front where in the darkness of a starless night glistened two hundred fixed and burning eyes; and along the ranks, from right to left, from left to right, there ran incessantly two keen slanting eyes which bespoke an extremely alert commander.

  Luck of the Bean-rows knew nothing of Lavater or Gall or Spurzheim, he had never heard of phrenology, but within him he felt the natural instinct which teaches every living creature to sense an enemy from afar. At a glance he recognized in the leader of this horde of wolves the wheedling coward who had tricked him, with his talk of enlightenment and self-control, out of his last measure of beans.

  “Master Wolf has lost no time in setting his lambs on my track,” said Luck of the Bean-rows; “but by what magic have they overtaken me, every one of them, if these ruffians too have not travelled by chick pea? It is possible,” he added with a sigh, “that the secrets of science are not unknown to scoundrels, and I dare not be sworn, when I think of it, that it is not they who have invented them so as to persuade simple souls the more easily to take part in their hateful schemes.”

  Though the Luck was cautious in doing, he was quick in planning. He drew the hold-all hastily from his wallet, untied the second pea-casket, opened it as he had done the first, and planted the contents in the sand at point of his weeding-hook.

  “Come of this wha
t must come!” said he; “but to-night I do badly want a strong wall, were it no thicker than a cabin wall, and a close hedge if only as strong as my wattle fence, to save me from my good friends the wolves.”

  In a twinkle walls arose, not cabin walls, but walls of a palace; hedges sprung up before the porches, not wattle fences, but a high lordly railing of blue steel with gilded shafts and spear-heads that never a wolf, badger or fox could have tried to clear without bruising himself or pricking his pointed muzzle. With the art of warfare at the stage it had then reached among the wolves there was nothing to be done. After testing several points the invaders retired in confusion. Thankful for this relief, the Luck returned to his pavilion. But now he passed on over marble pavements, along pillared walks lit up as if for a wedding, up staircases which seemed to ascend forever and through galleries that were endless. He was overjoyed to come upon his pavilion of pea-blossom in the midst of a vast garden, green and blooming, which he had never seen before, and to find his bed of hummingbirds’ feathers, where, I take it, he slept happier than a king and I never exaggerate. Next day the first thing he did was to explore the gorgeous dwelling which had sprung out of a little pea. The beauty of the most trifling things in it filled him with astonishment; for the furnishing of it was admirably in keeping with its outward appearance.

  He examined, one after another, his gallery of pictures, his cabinet of antiques, his collections of medals, insects, shells, his library, each of them a wonder and a delight quite new to him.

  He was especially pleased at the admirable judgment with which the books had been chosen. The finest works in literature, the most useful in science had been gathered together for the entertainment and instruction of a long life—among them the Adventures of the ingenious Don Quixote; fairy tales of every kind, with beautiful engravings; a collection of curious and amusing travels and voyages (those of Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe so far the most authentic); capital almanacks, full of diverting anecdotes and infallible information as to the phases of the moon and the best times for sowing and planting; numberless treatises, very simply and clearly written, on agriculture, gardening, angling, netting game, and the art of taming nightingales—in short, all one can wish for when one has learned to value books and the spirit of their authors. For there have been no other scholars, no other philosophers, no other poets, and for this unquestionable reason that all learning, all philosophy, all poetry are to be found in their pages, and to be found only there. I can answer for that.