by Howard Pyle
“Now, then,” said Hans Krout, “there comes a good bar of light on the top of yonder wave. Remember the Moon-Angel — quick! — step out like a soldier. There you are — now, then!”
David did think of the Moon-Angel, and he stepped upon the wave almost without knowing what he was doing. This time he was not afraid, and the next moment there he was standing upon the bar of light. It seemed to slip and slide under his feet as though it were alive. He nearly fell, but he did not remember to be afraid. Another wave came with another twisting, wriggling bar of light upon the top of it. David stepped upon it just in time to save himself from falling. Then another wave came, and he stepped upon it; then another and another wave. Each broken piece of light was closer and closer to him than the one he had left, and almost before he knew it he found himself running across what was no longer broken bars of light but what seemed to him to be shifting, changing gravel of shining gold.
He looked up; the moon had not risen any further out of the water. There it hung, almost round and almost full, just above the edge of the horizon — a great bubble of brightness. Now then David was away even from the gravel, and he found himself running across what seemed to be a great field of light covered all over with soft sparkles of silver grass. Everything shimmered, and quivered, and glistened around him, and he felt the light rise up against his eyes and his face. The breeze blew through his hair. He felt so happy, he did not know what to do. He skipped and capered just as a little lamb skips and capers on the grass. It seemed to David as though the moon was coming towards him; it appeared to grow bigger and bigger — he was really getting closer and closer to the moon. It was no longer like a bubble; it was like a great round globe of light. Then, almost before he knew, he was at the edge of the horizon, with nothing beyond him but emptiness. And there was the great moon rising above him as big as a church.
David stood quite still and looked up at it. Click-clack! What was that? Suddenly a halfdoor opened and there stood a little old man, as gray as the evening, with long white hair and queer clothes, and a face covered all over with cobwebs of silver wrinkles. It was the Man-in-the-moon, and he was smoking a long pipe of tobacco.
“How do you do, David?” said he. “Will you come in?”
“Why, yes”, said David, “I would like to.”
“That is good,” said the Man-in-the-moon, and he opened the other half of the door. “Now! Give me your hand.”
The Man-in-the-moon reached down to David, and David reached up to the Man-in-the-moon. “Now, then! — A long step,” said the Man-in-the-moon — and there was David in the doorway of the moon-house.
Then the moon rose slowly, slowly, up into the sky and floated away, and the Man-in-the-moon shut the door — click! — clack!
VI. The Moon-House
UPON MY WORD, I sometimes think I would rather go to the moon-house than almost anywhere else I know of. I have read all about it in the Moon-Angel’s book, and know pretty well just what it is like — that is why I would like so well to see it. Some people are dreadfully afraid of the moon-house; it seems to them to be white and cold and awful. That is because they only see the outside of it, and do not know what is within. It is not what such people fancy it to he; it is a calm, beautiful, lovely place, from the backdoor of which you step into the other side of nowhere. I used to be just as much afraid of the moon-house as the most foolish of them. Sometimes I would dream about it at night, and it seemed to me to be a great white emptiness, from which you could see nothing at all, and in which you could not hear anything, or feel anything, or know anything. Then one day the Moon-Angel came to me with his book under his arm. “Would you like to know about the moon-house?” said he.
“Yes; I would,” said I.
“Very well,” said he, “then look!”
He opened his book, and I looked over his shoulder and read it. It was all about the moon-house, and I read, and read, and read. Since then I have never been afraid of the moon-house, for now I know pretty well what it is, and that it is a most wonderful, strange, curious, odd, fanciful, beautiful place, that one can get into for the sake of getting out again.
For, of course, no one wants to live in the moon-house forever — that is, no one except the Man-in-the-moon, and he does not mind it any more than, a cat minds living in the kitchen.
The Man-in-the-moon led David up the front stairs into the moon, and everything shone as white as bright light. Up the stairs they went, and up the stairs, a long, long way. By and by they came out into a great round room, and it was the first floor of the moon-house. It was the moon-kitchen, and there the Man-in-the-moon does all his cooking and brewing and patching and mending, for it is full of all sorts of odds and ends of things that men have seen and heard about and forgotten — and they are ten thousand times more numerous than the things that men have seen and heard about and remembered.
There the Man-in-the-moon sat down and looked at David, and David stared at the Man-in-the-moon. There was something about him that looked — looked — David did not know whether it was like Hans Krout or the Moon-Angel — and yet he looked like neither. He was just the Man-in-the-moon, and he looked no more like Hans Krout or the Moon-Angel than I do.
Then the Man-in-the-moon began laughing. “Well,” said he, “here you are, David.”
“Yes,” said David, “here I am.”
“And how do you like it?” said the Man-in-the-moon.
David looked all around him. “I like it very well,” said he—” if only I were sure of somebody to look after the baby down below there.”
“Have no fear of that,” said the Man-in-the-moon. “You have left a part of yourself down there behind you, and that will look after the baby as well as you ever were able to do yourself.”
“What do you mean?” said David. “What part of me have I left down there?”
“You have left your hat and clothes and shoes,” said the old man, “and nobody down there knows otherwise than that you are in them.”
“And will they look after the baby as well as I would do?” asked David.
“They will,” said the Man-in-the-moon.
“Then I shall like it here very well,” said David, “at least for a while.”
“Would you like to go up-stairs and look out of the windows?” said the old man. “That is the first thing that all the folk who come here ask to do.”
“And what do they see?” said David.
“They see the inside-of-nothing-at-all,” said the Man-in the-moon.
“I would like to see that,” said David.
“Come along, then,” said the Man-in-the-moon.
He led the way up another flight of stairs to the second story. There was a great room with a floor as level and as smooth as glass, and there were twelve great windows of crystal that looked out of it. From the windows you could see all that you ever heard tell of and more beside, for from those windows you can, as the Man-in-the-moon said, see the inside-of-nothing-at-all.
“Come here,” said the Man-in-the-moon, “and you may look out of this window.”
He raised the curtain as he spoke, and David came and looked out.
Now, when you look out of a window of a common house, you see things far away. That is because you are not in the moon-house looking out of a moon-window. When David looked out of the window, he saw things very close at hand. That was because he was in the moon-house looking out of the moon-window, and not in a common house looking out of a common window.
He found himself suddenly upon a wide river, the stream moving slowly and sluggishly between the banks, where the grass and weeds stood straight and as tall as a man’s head. Overhead was a cloudless sky, in which the sun shone as hot as a flame of fire. There was a boat coming down the river with a queer crooked sail, spread in hopes of catching a breeze, though there was no wind blowing. Three men were rowing the boat, and the oars dipped and flashed in the sunlight.
It was all very strange to David, and yet it was all singularly familia
r to him. He could not think why it should be so familiar until he remembered that he had heard Ned Strong, the sailor-man, tell his father about this very place, which he had seen in his travels, and all that had happened there. Then David knew it was a place called Africa.
Dear, dear; how hot the sun shone! David wished he had brought his hat. When you looked out across the tall grass, the level stretch seemed to tremble, and quiver in the heat. It was all grass, grass as far as the eye could see.
The boat came nearer and nearer, just as Ned Strong had said. Then it was very close, and David could see everything in it, just as though he were looking over the side of a ship as Ned Strong had done. In the boat, beside those who were rowing, were a great lot of black people — men and women — each without a single stitch of clothes upon his or her body. All the poor black people were fastened together with great, long ropes, and each wore a collar of wood, to which the rope was fastened.
David remembered that Ned Strong had said that these were slaves, and he felt almost more sorry for them than he had felt in all his life before. The poor slaves sat there staring straight before them. They looked scared and starved and thin, and their ribs were like barrel hoops, just as Ned Strong had said, their bodies hollow, and their arms and necks like skin and bones. But there they sat patiently without moving, and the flies crawled over them, and they did not have the spirit to brush them away. There was one young woman who sat with her baby lying upon her knees. She sat the most quietly and patiently of all, for she was dead, though nobody knew it. By and by, a man dressed in a loose robe, and with a fez on his head, came down the long board that ran the length of the boat. When he came to the woman he stopped and looked at her, and saw that she was dead, though the baby was still alive. Then he called to some of his men, who came and loosened the rope about her, for it was of no use to keep the woman any longer, and so they threw her overboard. David was crying.
The baby still lay in the boat, and then the man with the loose robe and the fez picked it up, and threw it also into the water after the mother, for it too was of no use. David screamed aloud.
Then, lo and behold! everything was gone like a flash. What David saw now was the bottom of the river, and all around was nothing but water. There were great beds of long water grass twisting and moving slowly as the slow river water drifted past. Overhead David could see the round bottom of the boat as it moved slowly away, the oars still dipping and making round golden rings on the smooth surface of the river overhead. It was very cool and pleasant down there at the bottom of the river, under the water, and the black woman and the black baby lay not far from one another, each in a bed of soft green water grass.
Then somebody came walking along through the beds of long, cool water grasses. It was the Moon-Angel. He came to where the black woman lay, and he took her by the hand. Then she arose and stood looking about her. The Moon-Angel picked up the baby and laid it in her arms. “Come,” said he, “we must be going.”
The negro mother, with her baby in her arms, followed the Moon-Angel as he led them up out of the water into a garden, where there were children playing. They stopped playing as the Moon-Angel led the black woman with the baby through the garden. David looked about him; it was a very wonderful garden. There were flowers everywhere, and there was a meadow in the distance, and a row of trees along by a river, and far away beyond that, a great city, sparkling white in the sunlight against the still blue sky. Then David understood that the children belonged to the city, and that their teacher had brought them out into the garden to play.
(He did not then know that it was one of the gardens behind the moon.)
The children joined David, and followed along after the black woman and her baby and the Moon-Angel, and their teachers did not forbid them. The black woman looked around at the children and laughed, and they also laughed.
“Where are you going?” called David to the black woman. “Where is the Moon-Angel going to take you?”
The woman answered him, but even though he was a moon-calf, David could not understand what she said, for she spoke in no words that fitted to any speech except the speech of a very few.
By and by David found that the children were no longer following the Moon-Angel and the woman with her baby. Then he heard somebody calling him. He looked around; it was the Man-in-the-moon. “Stop!” called the Man-in-the-moon. “Come back! You must go no further.”
“Why not?” said David.
“Because you’ve got to the end of nowhere,” said the Man-in-the-moon, “and no one can go further than that unless the Moon-Angel takes him.”
“But I’d like to see where she goes,” said David. Then the Man-in-the-moon ran forward and caught him by the coat and pulled him back. As he did so, there suddenly came a flash of great light that shone all around and dazzled David’s eyes. In the blinding light, David could see nothing at all, and he stood there quite still, trembling and frightened. Then he heard something like the sound of thunder in the distance. But it was not that; it was the sound of thousands and thousands of voices, singing in a multitudinous cadence, that was like the rushing of many waters, and like the vast hum of far-away music, and like the distant pealing of thunder. The Moon-Angel and the woman and the baby were gone, and there was nothing but the light and the sound.
Ah! yes, little child. For there is as much joy and gladness over one poor black woman who enters into that place as there is over the whitest empress who ever walked the earth of Christendom.
Suddenly something was closed, and David found himself inside the moon-house. The Man-in-the-moon had drawn the curtain over the window, — that was all.
“But where did the woman and the baby go?” asked David.
“That,” said the Man-in-the-moon, “you will have to ask the Moon-Angel himself sometime when you meet him. But tell me, did you like what you saw?”
“It was very beautiful,” said David. “But Ned Strong did not tell my father about all that I have seen. He only told about those poor slaves, and how the woman and the little baby were thrown into the water.
The Man-in-the-moon laughed. “Aye, aye,” said he, “that was because he saw the outside of things. If Ned Strong could only come here to the moon-house, and look out of the second story window, as you have done, he would not have bothered himself about the outside, which is no more to the inside of things than the shell of the egg is to the meat.”
“But,” said David, “why did there have to be such an outside? Why did the poor black woman have to he ill-treated, and starve and die, and why did the poor little, black baby have to be thrown alive into the water? The other part was beautiful, but that was dreadful and sad.”
The Man-in-the-moon laughed again. “Because,” said he, “everything that has an inside must have an outside as well, for there can be no inside unless there is an outside. And this is true, little child: the more sad the outside, the more beautiful almost always is the inside. But, come, you must go to work now. You have spent enough time looking out of the window. To-morrow night you shall see something else, but now it is time to go to work.”
Then the Man-in-the-moon led David up to the third story of the moon-house, where there was nothing above him except the hollow, empty sky. The first thing David saw was a great basket full of stars of all sorts and sizes and kinds. Some shone white, and some blue, and some rosy red. The light shone from them so that all about was a mist of brightness.
David stared with all his eyes, as well he might, for there are few indeed who get into the third story of the moon-house and see what David saw — that great basket full of bright stars.
Beside the basket was a bundle of lamb’s-wool. “There is your work,” said the Man-in-the-moon. “It is to polish the stars with lamb’s-wool, so that they may shine brightly when the moon wanes and the sky is dark once more.”
David sat down on the wooden bench and took up a big blue star. He blew his breath upon it and rubbed it with the lamb’s-wool, and as he rubbed it it gr
ew brighter and brighter, and pulsed and glowed and throbbed with light as though it were alive. David did not know how beautiful a star could be until he held it in his own hand and rubbed it with lamb’s-wool.
I dare say that you will hardly believe that this is the truth. I dare say there are some wise folk, each of whom wears two pairs of spectacles upon his nose, who will tell you that it is all nonsense. Well, well, maybe it is all nonsense, but sometimes there is more solid truth in a little nonsense than in a whole peck of potatoes. All that you have to do is to look up into the sky when the moon is full, and there you will see for yourself that there are scarcely any stars to be seen, and those few so dull and dim that they hardly twinkle at all. That is because somebody in the moon is polishing the others with lamb’s-wool to make them bright for the time when the sky is dark again.
There are some few stars that even those in the moon do not polish. Those are given to the sun children to burnish in the sun-oven.
This is not all nonsense.
VII. The Moon-Garden
SO DAVID LIVED in the moon-house for twelve days, and every day, when he had no work to do, he looked out of a moon window. And each time he looked out of a window he saw something different from that which he had seen the day before. One time he saw a tropical forest, where the liana vines hung from the trees like great curtains, covered all over with red and yellow and blue flowers, and out beyond the edge of the forest was the sea, where the mangroves grew down by the water’s edge, and where black crabs, with little red spots peppered over their bodies, twiddle their legs and crawled in and out among the tall, thin roots. The wind rushed and rattled through the palm leaves, and all sorts of birds and strange insects flitted and hummed and buzzed about him. For it was not at all like looking out of a common window. It seemed to David as though he were walking in the forest itself with all these living things buzzing and humming and moving about him. Ah! it is something worth while to look out of a moon window, I can tell you, little child. You yourself will see how it is some day, for everybody looks out of a moon window sooner or later, and this is not all nonsense either.