The Glass Slipper

by Eleanor Farjeon

  “Of course it’s true!” said the Father.

  “True, true, true!” sang Ella, dancing round him. “It’s true, true, true!”

  “Sh! Sh! Sh!” whispered the Father.

  “SH! SH! SH!” whispered Ella very loud, at the three snoring ladies. She dropped on her knees again beside the Father. “And was she the prettiest?”

  “Much the prettiest.” He nodded.

  “The prettiest you ever saw?” she urged.

  He shook his head. “I may be an old silly, but you know, Ella, you yourself have always seemed to me—”

  “Oh no, Father! Not as pretty as the Princess from Nowhere. The Princess was the prettiest you ever saw—say it, Father!—wasn’t she?”

  He confessed reluctantly, “The Princess was the prettiest I ever saw.”

  “Oh, Father!” She hugged him. How her heart was beating! “And the Prince—what did the Prince do?”

  “He never took his eyes off her.”

  “Oh, Father! And her dress?”

  “Her dress?” He had to scratch his head again. “Let me see—it was all—I’m not much of a hand at describing dresses, Ella, but—yes, it was just such a dress as I should like to be able to give you—that describes it exactly—just such a dress as I should like to give you. And all I have to give you is a sugarplum.”

  Her arms stole round his neck. “Oh, Father—you have given me more than that.”

  CHAPTER XXV

  The Glass Slipper

  AN ALARUM OF trumpets woke the three snorers with a start. They sat up, crying, “Good gracious!” and the Stepmother sat up so suddenly that her wig fell off. Nobody knew till this moment that she hadn’t a hair on her head, and as she went to bed in her wig she had forgotten it herself. The Herald’s red and gold flashed past the window. The Sisters rubbed their knuckles in their eyes, muttering, “It can’t be another ball!” and the Stepmother groped to recover her wig before it was too late; but she was still as bald as an egg when the door burst open and the Herald, followed by the Trumpeter and the Footman, stood bowing before her.

  “Ladies!” He made his most elegant flourish.

  “Sir!” The Sisters made their clumsiest curtsies in their disarray.

  The Stepmother, deeply embarrassed, began to babble, “You find us—as it were—once again—as it were—very much—as it were—”

  The Herald turned his head away from the sorry sight she presented. “Say no more. Courtesy averts an eye. Good manners are myopic. Permit me.” Stooping for the wig, he presented it to her with his back turned.

  “I am covered, sir, with confusion,” said the Stepmother, putting it on.

  “That you should be covered with anything, madam, is a matter for universal rejoicing,” said the Herald.

  “Sir!” curtsied the ladies.

  The Herald waved a peremptory hand, closing the incident. “Dalliance delays. Duty demands. Once again I come from His Royal Highness the Prince on a mission, a commission, a charge, an errand, an embassy—”

  “To us?” asked the delighted Sisters.

  “The Prince,” joined in the Stepmother, “sends you to us?”

  “The Prince, ladies, has deputed me to announce his inviolable, unimpeachable, immovable, irreprovable, immutable, and most suitable choice—of a Bride.”

  “It’s me!” crowed Arethusa, going as purple as a beetroot.

  “’Tisn’t, it’s me!” Araminta went as red-and-white as radishes.

  The Stepmother, dizzy with pride, did her best to live up to the occasion. “You come, sir, to announce this auspicious, this delicious, and, if I may say so, this highly propitious news to us?”

  “To you, to you, ladies!” fluted the Herald. “Ladies, ladies, to you!”

  “I’m all of a tremble,” said Arethusa. “Which one of us is it?”

  The Herald raised his hand. “Eschew prematurity.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Araminta. “Me or Thusy?”

  “I will be plain.” The Herald signed to the Footman to deliver a scroll, from which he read in his most polished diction:

  “Proclaim it far! Proclaim it wide!

  Let one and all be notified,

  With pride and pomp, and pomp and pride,

  The Prince has chosen for his bride,

  His fate, his mate, his nuptial guide,

  In wedded bliss to be allied,

  Whoever, when this shoe is tried,

  Can get both toe and heel inside.”

  The Footman stepped forward and presented a cushion covered with cloth of gold, on which reposed a slipper made of glass, the very tiniest slipper ever seen.

  “Let me look! Let me look!” Ella darted from the back of the kitchen with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. Now there could be no doubt that it was true!

  The Stepmother slapped at her, saying sharply, “Cinders!”

  “Oh, get out of my way!” cried the excited child, pushing the Stepmother aside.

  “How dare you!” she thundered, and slapped again, leaving one of Ella’s cheeks redder than the other.

  The Herald stepped between them. “Young person,” he said to Ella, “your chance will come in its appointed turn.”

  “Her chance!” protested the wrathful Stepmother.

  The Herald said coldly, “The Prince’s decree covers every unmarried female in the land.”

  “Do you mean to say,” pouted Arethusa, “he didn’t send you special to us?”

  The Herald began, “He sent me special to—” stopped short, and went on icily, “The Prince sent me especially to everybody. All at the ball are bidden to bring their toes to the trial. Whom the shoe fits, let her wear it.”

  “Hide those boots!” hissed the Stepmother in the Father’s ear.

  “What for, my dear?”

  “They give a bad impression.”

  The Father gathered up the three pairs of huge snowboots. He could not make head or tail of the situation. Even his little Ella had bewildered him. But he was used to doing meekly what he was told. The Stepmother covered his departure with her sweeping skirts and asked, “At what hour, sir, does His Royal Highness expect us?”

  “When the coffee is cold, when the toast is stiff, when the eggshell is empty, and when the marmalade is no more—in brief, plump after breakfast.” The Herald rolled up his scroll. “Time passes. I must dispatch. I have my duties. I perform them. Ladies—your servant.”

  “Sir!”

  He bowed. They curtsied. The Footman sprang to the door. The Herald passed through it. The Trumpeter sounded a fanfare. The door closed behind them.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Alas for the Things!

  THE STEPMOTHER CLAPPED her hands briskly. “Up with you, girls! Upstairs!”

  “What for?” asked Arethusa.

  “To squeeze your feet.”

  “What for?” asked Araminta.

  “For a husband, ninny! Have you no eyes in your head?”

  “Yes, I have,” said Araminta pertly, “but I don’t see—”

  “You don’t see, don’t you? But I see,” said the Stepmother. “I see your feet, and I see Thusy’s feet, and I saw that slipper, the smallest slipper I ever set eyes on. And if one of you two don’t get your great galumphing clodhoppers into it by hook or by crook, I’ll know the reason why.”

  “But Ma, you know about my big toe,” complained Arethusa.

  “It’s not as big as mine,” boasted Araminta, who couldn’t bear anybody to have anything more than she had. “I know what! I shall take my shoehorn! I can get anything on with my shoehorn.”

  “I know a trick worth two of that,” said Arethusa. “I’m going to soap my heel.”

  “Up with you, up!” The Stepmother shooed them up the stairs and turned back into the kitchen. Ella was standing by the door, with her little handkerchief tied over her head. The Stepmother asked sharply, “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going out,” said Ella.

  “Where to?”

  �
�I’m going to the Palace.”

  “You?” The Stepmother gave a nasty laugh. “I think not.”

  “The Prince said everybody—like last time.” Ella tugged desperately at the door to make her escape; but she wasn’t quick enough.

  The Stepmother caught her petticoat and dragged her back, saying, “And it’s going to be like last time.”

  “All right, it is,” said Ella. (Lovely last time! The thought of it gave her courage.) “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, more boldly than she had ever dared to speak before.

  “You—” said the Stepmother menacingly, “are not—afraid—of me?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Slut!”

  “I’m not.”

  “Don’t you contradict me!” cried the Stepmother.

  Ella answered excitedly, “I’m not your daughter.”

  “Indeed, indeed you’re not my daughter!” She advanced on Ella as she spoke.

  “I’m Father’s daughter,” said Ella, backing away. She darted round the table, keeping it between them as she continued to defy her enemy. “Father doesn’t like you!”

  “What!”

  “Father doesn’t like you—not really.”

  The Stepmother grabbed at Ella across the table and then rushed round after her; but Ella, far the nimbler, was on the other side before the Stepmother could say “Knife!” Oh, Ella’s blood was up now! Nothing, nothing should stop her from going to the Palace to try on the slipper, her own darling glass slipper. She had defied the Stepmother, and nothing had happened! What could the Stepmother do to her, after all? Her Mother’s miniature was safe inside her bodice, and there was no invitation card to tear up this time!

  But the Stepmother was looking dangerous. “Come here!”

  “I shan’t.”

  “All right, young lady, we’ll see!” The angry woman seized the first weapon to hand; it happened to be the Broom. She’d lay that about the girl’s shoulders in fine style. Brandishing the Broom, she flew after Ella again—but before she could reach her the Broom twisted in her hand and hit her in the face. She dropped it with a cry, to clap her hand to her cheek, and the Broom began bumping up and down in front of her, thumping sturdily.

  “The Broom, the Broom,

  The bristly Broom

  Is kind to the girl

  Who is kind to the room.”

  “Thank you, thank you!” cried Ella gratefully.

  “I’ll give you thank you,” snarled the Stepmother. “A red-hot poker will be even better.” She snatched the iron Poker from the hearth and uttered a screech. The handle had turned red-hot as she grasped it. “Ai! Ai! Ai!” she wailed, while the Fire flickered brightly.

  “The Fire, the Fire,

  The crackly Fire,

  Is burning to do

  What you desire.”

  “Thank you, oh, thank you!” cried Ella joyfully.

  “Jabber, jabber, stop that jabber!” screamed the Stepmother, snatching up the rolling pin, and once more she made a dash at Ella, threatening her. “I’ll jab you, young lady, I’ll jab you!” But as she passed the Grandfather Clock, the pendulum swung clean out of the case and laid her flat on the floor.

  “The Clock, the Clock,

  The clickety Clock,

  Knows how to strike

  And is good for a knock.”

  And while Grandpa ticked and tocked, everything in the kitchen began thumping and rattling and creaking and clattering, calling to one another in their many voices:

  “The Things, the Things,

  The brotherly Things,

  Help Cinderella!

  HELP, HELP CINDERELLA!”

  The Stepmother got on her hands and knees, glaring on all sides. So the Things were against her, were they? Ha, ha, she’d soon settle their little hash! She seized a pitcher of water out of the sink, and flung it onto the hearth—and the Fire died with a long hiss in a smother of smoke.

  “Oh, stop!” implored Ella.

  “No more red-hot pokers from you, I fancy!” sneered the Stepmother at the Fire. “Now for the Broom.”

  In a moment she had snapped it over her knee and was tearing out the bristles.

  “Please!” cried Ella. “Please!”

  “So much for you!” jeered the Stepmother, throwing the fragments into a corner. “And now—”

  Her vindictive glance fell on the Clock. “Now to pluck the heart out of you, my fine friend!”

  She wrenched the weights and chains and plucked out the pendulum.

  “Grandpa!” called Ella, in agony for her best friend, but he had no voice to answer with. He had stopped ticking.

  “Oh, Things, Things, Things!” whispered Ella. One after another her friends had died, and if they had not been her friends they would still be alive.

  “That settles the Things,” said the Stepmother. “And now to settle you.”

  But instead of making for Ella, she rushed round the room, bolting the windows, locking the doors, and pocketing the keys.

  “You shan’t stop me, you shan’t—” sobbed Ella as each way of escape was sealed against her. Her spirit of defiance oozed away; she knew herself in the Stepmother’s power again. When all was done, and the fireless, shuttered kitchen was as dark as night, the Stepmother raised her arm, pointing a long thin finger at the sobbing girl.

  “Back!” she commanded. “Into your bunk with you!”

  “You’re going to lock me in my bunk?” whispered Ella.

  “Back!” commanded the Stepmother.

  “No, no, no!”

  But it was useless. The Stepmother drove her trembling to the bunk, thrust her inside, slid the panel that shut it into the wall, and bolted it. In vain Ella beat frantically on the panel. “Let me out, oh, let me out!” she sobbed.

  “Not till the Prince has chosen his bride, my girl.”

  The dreadful woman drew a deep breath of triumph. Now she would slip upstairs, locking the door behind her, and by the time Minty or Thusy had been chosen for the bride, perhaps that little minx would be properly tamed. But just a minute first to sit down and get her breath.

  The Rocking Chair was the one Thing she hadn’t broken. In a dim crack of light from a broken shutter she felt her way to where it stood with its back to her. Before she reached it, it began, very, very gently, to rock. She stared uneasily. Here she was, alone in the room, and yet—

  From the upper floor she heard her daughters’ shrill voices yelling, “Ma, Ma, aren’t you never coming?”

  “Don’t wait for me, pets. Run along. I’ll follow.”

  Who said that? She hadn’t uttered a word—yet the voice was her own voice, and it came from the Rocking Chair.

  “All right, don’t be long!” called Thusa and Minta. “Good-by, Ma.”

  “Good-by, my precious pets.”

  Who—said—that? Who had stolen her voice? The Stepmother was too petrified to speak above a whisper.

  “Who said that?” she asked.

  “Tweet-tweet!” answered the voice in the Rocking Chair.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  “Padlocks and Keys”

  THE ROCKING CHAIR swung slowly round. The dim light showed a little figure huddled into it, the figure of an old woman who peered up at the Stepmother through the fringes of a ragged shawl. The old eyes were as bright as those of a bird, and they were fixed without blinking on the face of the frightened woman, while the Chair continued to rock gently, gently, to and fro.

  The sense of fear was new to the Stepmother. Had she ever been really afraid of anything in her life? But she was now. She must turn the tables, she must make this queer little creature be afraid of her. Yet she couldn’t quite control the tremor in her voice as she spluttered, “You old vagrant! You old tramp! Be off with you! I’ll have you locked up for trespassing.”

  “You’ll have me locked up,” chuckled the old woman. “What do you think I’ve come for?”

  “To steal, I expect,” snorted the Stepmother.

  “To steal?”
The old woman chuckled again, and went on rocking softly. “On the contrary”—and now she got out of the Chair and talked in a different voice altogether—“I have come to restore your Things.”

  “My—?”

  “The Things you have just destroyed.”

  The old woman began to hobble round the room, pointed her knotty crutch imperiously here and there. First at the fireplace:

  “Burn, Fire, burn!

  Luck is on the turn!

  Flame, flicker,

  Faster! quicker!

  Burn, Fire, burn!

  Instantly the Fire broke into lambent flames, which lit up the queer little figure as it uttered its spells.

  Next, the Broom!

  “Mend, Broom, mend!

  Trouble now shall end!

  Besom, hustle!

  Bristle, bustle!

  Mend, Broom, mend!”

  And the Broom bumped up and down, as whole as ever.

  Now, the Grandfather Clock—

  “Go, Clock, go!

  Time shall conquer woe!

  Daytime, nighttime,

  Tell the right time!

  Go, Clock, go!”

  “Tick-tock! Tick-tock!” The weights pulled on the chain, the pendulum swung to and fro; Grandfather was himself again.

  What next? The old woman was hobbling faster than ever, hither and thither, pointing her crutch at the windows and the doors.

  “Shoot, Bolt, shoot!

  Shutter follow suit!

  Kitchen, brighten!

  Laugh and lighten!

  Shoot, Bolt, shoot!”

  And although the keys were deep in the Stepmother’s pocket, the doors flew open and the shutters swung away from the windows, and the morning sun filled the kitchen with light. The shadows fled away into the corners. The kitchen seemed alive with joy and laughter.

  The Stepmother could now see the little figure plainly. What was there to frighten her in this tiny crooked creature bent over its crutch? But the Stepmother was afraid, fearfully afraid, and her fear redoubled when the old woman raised her crutch again and pointed it at the bunk in which Ella had been locked. The panel slid away—and there was nobody in it.