After that all went easy for many a day. There was plenty to eat, Jack’s mother bought herself a new bonnet and jacket, and a fine time they had together in the market town, coming home laden with parcels, besides what were sent by the carrier, while Jack’s pockets bulged with more things he fancied than he had ever even dreamed of having his whole life long.
But though the days passed pleasantly enough, it was impossible for Jack to get the Beanstalk out of his head. It grew denser and greener every day, and now its flowers had begun to open. Even when he sat at his window making a boat out of a block of wood with his new knife, or spying at things through the enlarging glass he had bought, the fragrance of the beanflowers was always in the air, and as soon as the sun was that way their shadow was on the sill.
He longed beyond telling to be up on high again and to have just another peep at that strange, still, silent country. At last, one night as he lay in bed, he made up his mind that early the very next morning he would make another start, and perhaps climb only half-way, or having gone on to the top, merely take a look to see that the Ogre’s Castle was still there, and wasn’t a dream—even though it was perfectly certain the money was not!
This time, in case the woman of the Castle should know him again, he put on a different cap and jacket—an old blue cut-away jacket that his mother had bought from a sailor many years ago.
It was not yet six and a fine morning, though there was a thick heat-mist over the fields, when Jack began to climb the Beanstalk the second time. He climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed until at last he stepped off and found himself yet again in the strange country of smooth-sloping hills and dark-green valleys. When late in the afternoon, but earlier than before, he reached the Castle and pulled at the rusty bell, the woman appeared as before at the little cut-out door and asked what he wanted.
A fine story he told her. But she answered again and again that she durst on no account let him in. Only a few weeks before, she told him, she had taken pity on a poor boy—and a boy much of the same looks and height as himself, though younger—who had come begging for food and lodging, and all the rascal had done in return for her kindness was to steal some of the Ogre’s money and run away in the dark. But Jack persisted—still muffling and altering his voice and whining a little, as if he were dead-beat with his long journey—and entreated her so piteously that at last he persuaded her to let him in.
She gave him a good supper, too, and this time when the Ogre came home, hid him in the oven, for, there being only porridge and cold meat for the Ogre, there was scarcely more than a smoulder of fire left in the grate. The walls of the kitchen trembled at his tread. He seemed to be in a raging bad temper, too; the noise of him was like wagons rattling over cobblestones; and the instant he put his head in at the kitchen door he snuffed and snuffed and snuffed, and bawled:
“Fee, fi, fo, fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he living or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”
“Tssh! Peace, peace!” said the woman. “You cry for a fleabite. It’s nought but the ravens on the roof-top. They have fetched home a bit of tainted meat for their young.” But it took some time to quiet him down.
When the Ogre had set to his dish of half-raw victuals and drunk his fill, he bade the woman bring him in his little Hen. Now this Hen was no common hen but a marvellous hen, and the Ogre seemed to have a particular fondness for the little creature. He smoothed her feathers with his clumsy finger, and stooping down his head, pursed up his mouth to softly whistle to her, until to see his great face and the little Hen so close together, and this huge Ogre so endearing, was enough to make a cat laugh. He even began at last to whisper actual words to the little Hen, and Jack listened with all his ears.
“Henny-penny,” began the Ogre—
“Henny-penny, henny-penny, henny-penny, hey!
Cl’kk, cl’kk, cackle, cackle, lay, lay, lay!”
At this the little Hen clucked and cackled, and cackled and clucked, and lo and behold, before a clock could tick a minute, in the platter of hay the Ogre had put ready for her she had laid an egg of solid gold. Jack peered out at the Hen, his eyes almost bolting out of his head. Yet she was but a little hen and not much bigger than a bantam, though her feathers shone like sunbeams in water, and her comb was redder than the finest coral, and her claws like old ivory.
“Ah,” thought he to himself in the oven, “what wouldn’t mother give for a sight of that!”
Presently the Ogre, having put the egg in his side pocket, with his great finger once more smoothed the plumage of the little Hen as she crouched in the hay, and then, sitting back in his chair, fell asleep, and was presently snoring so loud Jack could hardly hear himself think. This time (having swallowed the deepest breath of his life), Jack stepped even more softly and cautiously than before out of the oven, and across the flagstones. He had to climb on to a three-legged stool, too, to reach the table. Then he snatched up the little Hen, clapped her tight under his arm, and away he went.
The Hen squawked as loud as her small tongue would let her, but by good luck the Ogre’s snoring drowned her cries, and Jack, having taken things easy the last mile or two—even stopping to rest for an hour or so at the foot of one of the low green hills in the first beams of sunrise—got safely down the Beanstalk a little before breakfast.
Even when he showed his mother the Hen—though she agreed it was the neatest, nattiest and sprightliest little hen she had ever seen—she could hardly believe Jack’s story.
“Lor! mother,” said Jack at last, “you’re just like a woman. I’d like to have seen you in the oven! But if you can’t and don’t and won’t believe, then watch!” Stooping over the little Hen, he held out his finger above her tiny head and whispered as if in secret:
“Henny-penny, henny-penny, henny-penny, hey!
Cackle, cackle, cackle, cackle, lay, lay, lay!”
To his dismay, nothing whatever happened. He went cold all over. The little Hen merely looked at Jack with her beady red eye as if he were nothing more than a lumping boy in a jacket and breeches, with no more power over her than the old man in the moon.
His mother glanced at Jack, then at the Hen again. “It’s all right, Jack,” she said. “I think she’s the nicest and wonderfullest little hen I’ve ever seen, and it don’t matter about the eggs one single mite, it don’t.”
“Matter!” said Jack scornfully. “Peace, mother!” And he tried again, but this time the words came a little differently, and he whispered:
“Henny-penny, henny-penny, henny-penny, hey!
Cl’kk, cl’kk, cackle, cackle, lay, lay, lay!”
At that every gold-edged feather on the little Hen seemed to stir and shimmer; her eye gleamed like a carbuncle. She clucked and cackled, cackled and clucked, and lo and behold, in less than a minute Jack took out from beneath her gentle wings a tiny golden egg, about the size of a damson.
“There,” said Jack, “what did I tell you, mother? That’s solid gold.”
Now, as Jack’s mother took endless care of the little Hen, there was never any need at all for Jack to go off on his travels again. Yet—such was the way of him now—he simply couldn’t be happy long at home, but pined for fresh adventures, thinking and dreaming night and day of the Castle and of the treasures he had seen in it, of the Ogre and the far silent country in which he lived.
So at last, one early morning, without saying a word to his mother, he started off again to climb the Beanstalk. He climbed and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed—and almost without pausing—until he reached the top and found himself again where he had longed to be.
This time, though he had once more dressed himself differently, in a dark pepper-and-salt jacket, trousers that had belonged to his father and been cut down, and a red neckerchief, he began to fear that the woman would never be persuaded to let him in. He begged and pleaded and implored. He squeezed his knuckles into his eyes, as he sto
od crouching and shivering under the bell-pull, to make the tears come.
“Not once, but twice,” she kept telling him, “and within the last two months I took pity on just such a ragamuffin as you who came here begging for food. And with just such a way with him too—thieving rascal! But never again. The first went off with a bag of the Ogre’s money, and the last stole his little magic Hen. If he sets eyes on him he’ll skin him alive, and if another such viper cringes his way into this Castle, I shall never see morning again.”
At this Jack stopped his whimpering, gave a sort of groan, and turned away. “Well, all I can say, mum,” he said, “is this: that if that old Ogre is such a cruel wicked wretch as to lay hands on a beautiful lady like you, he deserves to be boiled he does. It’s my belief, mum, he eat up them two poor hungry boys you’re speaking of and his chicken too, and didn’t like to say so, so went and told a lie. Thank you, mum, but after what you’ve been telling me, I’d rather sleep in a ditch, I would, than go in there, and p’raps I shan’t mind anything by morning.”
At this the woman twisted quite the other way about. She assured Jack she hadn’t meant to blame him for what the other wicked boys had done; and maybe the Ogre had made a mistake. And though Jack still pretended he was frightened to death at the thought of setting foot within her gates, she put her hand kindly on his shoulder, entreated him not to shiver and shake any more, and simply compelled him to follow her down the stone steps into the kitchen.
It was hot supper to-night, and an immense tortoiseshell cat lay in the fire-corner in a bushel basket when Jack sat down on his log, but by good fortune she was asleep. The woman treated him as if he were a long-lost son. She gave him a basin of broth, a saucer of hot meat and a drink out of a little barrel, and promised him—as soon as the Ogre had gone to bed—one of her pillows to sleep on by the fire. So Jack was feeling more comfortable outside and in when the Ogre himself came home again, though the sound of him was like a storm coming up out of the east.
This time the woman hid Jack in the copper, with the lid nearly all over him; and yet the moment the Ogre put his nose inside the kitchen door, he snuffed about him like a dog after a rabbit, and roared:
“Fee, fi, fo, fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he living or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread”
He was so hungry and in so evil a temper, that, in spite of all the woman could say—that the cat had just caught a mouse, that her needle had pricked her thumb, that there were fresh pig bones in the larder—he wouldn’t be pacified, and with his huge club in his hand began to rummage round searching and searching for what he had sniffed out. Luckily for Jack, though the Ogre looked everywhere else, even into the great green soup tureen, the wood box, and his old top-boots, he forgot the copper.
At last, in a worse temper than ever, he sat down to his supper, and swilled and gourmandized as he had never swilled before. Two whole dishes of his half-cooked meat he golloped up before he was satisfied. At that rate, Jack reckoned, the old glutton must finish off a flock of sheep in less than a fortnight.
When the Ogre had finished he sighed and seemed better, and sat smiling like a mummy, then told the woman to bring him his Harp. Jack heard the woman go out of the kitchen and come back, but before even, it seemed, the Ogre could have had time to lay a finger upon it, so marvellous clear and enchanting a music welled up between the stone walls of the kitchen—a music of scarcely more sound yet sweeter than water gurgling over ice or of birds warbling in the mountain-tops—that Jack (crouched up in the copper) couldn’t help lifting his head for an instant above its rim just to see what the Harp looked like. Yet, though this music was like none he had ever even in sleep heard before, the Harp in size was less than half that of any ordinary harp, and seemed to be made only of wood and wires and catgut. But what amazed Jack most was that the Ogre was not so much as looking at its strings. The Harp’s music welled up solely of itself. Jack bobbed his head down again, but never in all his life had he wished for anything so much as for this Ogre’s Harp.
When at last the Ogre had wearied of its discoursing, he silenced the Harp by touching a little spring which Jack could not see, lay back, and soon, as of old, was fast asleep and snoring in his chair, his great head lolling and jerking to and fro on his shoulders, awful to behold. In due time, thinking his moment had come, Jack crept out of the copper, drew near the Ogre’s chair, climbed up on to the three-legged stool, and, putting out his hand, gingerly lifted the Harp and turned to run off with it.
But, as he might have guessed, at first touch of his fingers on its wood, its strings began to resound again, as if a spirit resided within it and were calling for help:
“Master! master! master! master!
The robber runs, but run thou faster!”
So shrill and sad and piercing were its notes that though the Ogre’s snoring was like the yowling and growling of a hundred hungry dragons, it woke him instantly in his chair.
At sight of him Jack was off like a knife. But the Ogre had caught a vanishing glimpse of him in the doorway, and with a bellow of rage came trundling after him. Away went Jack, away went the Ogre; out of the kitchen, up the steps, out through the Castle gateway and into the night. Lucky it was for Jack there was a fleece of cloud over the sky, particularly as this night the moon was shining. A thin ground-mist, too, had risen in the valleys, which hid him at times as first he dodged this way and next he dodged that. But still the Ogre came after him, with his club up ready and yelling as he ran.
Jack ran twice as fast that night as he had ever run in his life before, but still clutching tight hold of the magic Harp. And, what with the fleecy gleam of the moonlight up above and the music of the harp-strings and the roaring and bellowing of the Ogre down below, it was as if he were running in an unbelievable nightmare among a thousand silver waterfalls.
Indeed, if at last by good chance he had not pressed the secret spring of the magic Harp and so stopped its music (which up till then the Ogre could hear even when Jack himself was out of sight), and if the Ogre had not devoured such a prodigious supper and been less fuddled with sleep, he would certainly have caught Jack as easily as a cat a mouse.
Still the Ogre came after him . . . yelling as he ran.
Even as it was, he reached the top of the Beanstalk when Jack himself was not more than half-way down, and when Jack was rejoicing to think he had got safely away. But Jack soon realized his mistake; for suddenly the Beanstalk began to sway and tremble, as if in a whirlwind far above his head, and he could hear a breathing (for the Ogre had stopped yelling now) like the soughing of sea-water in a blowhole. He knew what that meant, and could scarcely cling on to the bines of the Beanstalk for sheer fright.
Having once looked up, indeed, and caught sight of the enormous great shoes of the Ogre descending one after the other like huge mill-stones over his head, he looked up no more. No monkey ever slipped down out of a tree in a forest so quick as Jack slipped down that Beanstalk; but still he held tight on to the magic Harp.
The very instant he got to ground, he rushed to the woodshed, caught up an axe, doubled back to the Beanstalk, and hacked and hacked and hacked and hacked. But only just in time. Down at last came the Beanstalk, down toppled the Ogre, and with such a thump his neck was broken there and then, and he never stirred more.
But it had been a near thing, and for a long time afterwards Jack was well content to stay quietly at home with his mother. Of summer evenings they would often sit together a little beyond the porch of the cottage, with its clump of jasmine, and when the stars began to blink in the heavens Jack would lay his hand softly on the wood of the Ogre’s Harp. So sweet were its strains that even the little Hen, with her head tucked in beneath her gold-fringed feathers under the roof of her hutch, would cluck softly out of her dreams as if in reply.
But, strangest thing of all, as thus the two of them, Jack and his mother, sat one evening—and this was some six months a
fter the springing up of the Beanstalk—in the midst of this pining music there suddenly sounded out a hollow Moo! And what should they see gazing over the garden-hedge at them but their old cow come back—and with a garland of wild briony and traveller’s joy twisted about its horns. Who could have entwined that garland—except the man Jack had met coming along the road that first fine morning—Nobody knows. But then, Nobody can’t say.
The Turnip
Once upon a time there were two brothers, or rather half-brothers, for they had had the same father, but different mothers; and no two human beings could be more unlike one another.
The elder brother was as sly as a fox, and had no more pity or compassion than a weasel. Almost as soon as he could tell a groat from a rose noble, he had scrimped together every bit of money he could get. As he grew up he had always bought cheap and sold dear. He would rub his hands together with joy to lend a poor neighbour money, for he knew he was sure of getting ten times as much paid back. Oh, he was a villain, and no mistake!
Yet he lived in a fine big house full of fine furniture, with stone gateposts and a high wall all round his garden. He dressed in a gown of velvet when he sat down to supper, with two men in breeches behind his chair to wait on him. There were never less than seven different dishes on his supper table—all smoking hot; besides tarts, jellies, and kickshaws. Up in a high gallery, all set about with wax candles, stood fiddlers playing as fast as they could with their bows on their fiddles, until he had finished picking his bones and sopping up his gravy down below.
Yet though this brother was so rich he had very few real friends, and most of such people as might have been his friends hated him, chiefly because he was a mean and merciless greedyguts. The one thing he wanted was to rise in the world and have everybody else bow and scrape before him; and his one inmost hope was that some day the King would hear of him and of all his money, and invite him to come and dine with him at his Palace, and perhaps make him a nobleman. After that, he thought, he could die happy!
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