THE QUEEN’S WAND
[Illustration]
“One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four;
’Tis still one, two, three, four.
Mellow and silvery are the tones,
But I wish the bells were more.”
SOUTHEY.
Mopsa woke: she was rather too big to be nursed, for she was the size
of Jack, and looked like a sweet little girl of ten years, but she did
not always behave like one; sometimes she spoke as wisely as a grown-up
woman, and sometimes she changed again and seemed like a child.
Mopsa lifted up her head and pushed back her long hair: her coronet
had fallen off while she was in the bed of reeds; and she said to the
beautiful dame:
“I am a queen now.”
“Yes, my sweet Queen,” answered the lady, “I know you are.”
“And you promise that you will be kind to me till I grow up,” said
Mopsa, “and love me, and teach me how to reign?”
“Yes,” repeated the lady; “and I will love you too, just as if you were
a mortal and I your mother.”
“For I am only ten years old yet,” said Mopsa, “and the throne is too
big for me to sit upon; but I am a queen.” And then she paused, and
said, “Is it three o’clock?”
As she spoke, the sweet clear bell of the castle sounded three times,
and then chimes began to play; they played such a joyous tune that it
made everybody sing. The dame sang, the crowd of fairies sang, the boy
who was Jack’s double sang, and Mopsa sang--only Jack was silent--and
this was the song:
“The prince shall to the chase again,
The dame has got her face again,
The king shall have his place again
Aneath the fairy dome.
“And all the knights shall woo again,
And all the doves shall coo again,
And all the dreams come true again,
And Jack shall go home.”
“We shall see about that!” thought Jack to himself. And Mopsa, while
she sang those last words, burst into tears, which Jack did not like to
see; but all the fairies were so very glad, so joyous, and so delighted
with her for having come to be their queen, that after a while she
dried her eyes, and said to the wrong boy:
“Jack, when I pulled the lining out of your pocket-book there was a
silver fourpence in it.”
“Yes,” said the real Jack, “and here it is.”
“Is it real money?” asked Mopsa. “Are you sure you brought it with you
all the way from your own country?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “quite sure.”
“Then, dear Jack,” answered Mopsa, “will you give it to me?”
“I will,” said Jack, “if you will send this boy away.”
“How can I?” answered Mopsa, surprised. “Don’t you know what happened
when the door closed? Has nobody told you?”
“I did not see any one after I got into the place,” said Jack. “There
was no one to tell anything--not even a fawn, nor the brown doe. I have
only seen down here these fairy people, and this boy, and this lady.”
“The lady is the brown doe,” answered Mopsa; “and this boy and the
fairies were the fawns.” Jack was so astonished at this that he stared
at the lady and the boy and the fairies with all his might.
“The sun came shining in as I stepped inside,” said Mopsa, “and a long
beam fell down from the fairy dome across my feet. Do you remember
what the apple-woman told us--how it was reported that the brown doe
and her nation had a queen whom they shut up, and never let the sun
shine on her? That was not a kind or true report, and yet it came from
something that really happened.”
“Yes, I remember,” said Jack; “and if the sun did shine they were all
to be turned into deer.”
“I dare not tell you all that story yet,” said Mopsa; “but, Jack, as
the brown doe and all the fawns came up to greet me, and passed by
turns into the sunbeam, they took their own forms, every one of them,
because the spell was broken. They were to remain in the disguise of
deer till a queen of alien birth should come to them against her will.
I am a queen of alien birth, and did not I come against my will?”
“Yes, to be sure,” answered Jack. “We thought all the time that we were
running away.”
“If ever you come to Fairyland again,” observed Mopsa, “you can save
yourself the trouble of trying to run away from the old mother.”
“I shall not ‘come,’” answered Jack, “because I shall not go--not for a
long while, at least. But the boy--I want to know why this boy turned
into another ME?”
“Because he is the heir, of course,” answered Mopsa.
“But I don’t see that this is any reason at all,” said Jack.
Mopsa laughed. “That’s because you don’t know how to argue,” she
replied. “Why, the thing is as plain as possible.”
“It may be plain to you,” persisted Jack, “but it’s no reason.”
“No reason!” repeated Mopsa, “no reason! when I like you the best of
anything in the world, and when I am come here to be queen! Of course,
when the spell was broken he took exactly your form on that account;
and very right too.”
“But why?” asked Jack.
Mopsa, however, was like other fairies in this respect--that she knew
all about Old Mother Fate, but not about causes and reasons. She
believed, as we do in this world, that
“That that is, is,”
but the fairies go further than this; they say:
“That that is, is; and when it is, that is the reason that it is.”
This sounds like nonsense to us, but it is all right to them.
So Mopsa, thinking she had explained everything, said again:
“And, dear Jack, will you give the silver fourpence to me?”
Jack took it out; and she got down from the dame’s knee and took it in
the palm of her hand, laying the other palm upon it.
“It will be very hot,” observed the dame.
“But it will not burn me so as really to hurt, if I am a real queen,”
said Mopsa.
Presently she began to look as if something gave her pain.
“Oh, it’s so hot!” she said to the other Jack; “so very hot!”
“Never mind, sweet Queen,” he answered; “it will not hurt you long.
Remember my poor uncle and all his knights.”
Mopsa still held the little silver coin; but Jack saw that it hurt
her, for two bright tears fell from her eyes; and in another moment
he saw that it was actually melted, for it fell in glittering drops
from Mopsa’s hand to the marble floor, and there it lay as soft as
quick-silver.
“Pick it up,” said Mopsa to the other Jack; and he instantly did
so, and laid it in her hand again; and she began gently to roll it
backwards and forwards between her palms till she had rolled it into a
very slender rod, two feet long, and not nearly so thick as a pin; but
it did not bend, and it shone so brightly that you could hardly look at
it.
Then she held it out towards the real Jack, and said, “Give this a
name.”
“I think it is a----” began the other Jack; but the dame suddenly
stopped him. “Silence, sire! Don’t you know that what it is first
called that it will be?”
Jack hesitated; he thought if Mopsa was a queen the thing ought to be a
sceptre; but it certainly was not at all like a sceptre.
“That thing is a wand,” said he.
“You are a wand,” said Mopsa, speaking to the silver stick, which
was glittering now in a sunbeam almost as if it were a beam of light
itself. Then she spoke again to Jack:
“Tell me, Jack, what can I do with a wand?”
Again the boy-king began to speak, and the dame stopped him, and again
Jack considered. He had heard a great deal in his own country about
fairy wands, but he could not remember that the fairies had done
anything particular with them, so he gave what he thought was true, but
what seemed to him a very stupid answer:
“You can make it point to anything that you please.”
The moment he had said this, shouts of ecstasy filled the hall, and all
the fairies clapped their hands with such hurrahs of delight that he
blushed for joy.
The dame also looked truly glad, and as for the other Jack, he actually
turned head over heels, just as Jack had often done himself on his
father’s lawn.
Jack had merely meant that Mopsa could point with the wand to anything
that she saw; but he was presently told that what he had meant was
nothing, and that his words were everything.
“I can make it point now,” said Mopsa, “and it will point aright to
anything I please, whether I know where the thing is or not.”
Again the hall was filled with those cries of joy, and the sweet
childlike fairies congratulated each other with “The Queen has got a
wand--a wand! and she can make it point wherever she pleases!”
Then Mopsa rose and walked towards the beautiful staircase, the dame
and all the fairies following. Jack was going too, but the other Jack
held him.
“Where is Mopsa going? and why am I not to follow?” inquired Jack.
“They are going to put on her robes, of course,” answered the other
Jack.
“I am so tired of always hearing you say ‘of course,’” answered Jack;
“and I wonder how it is that you always seem to know what is going to
be done without being told. However, I suppose you can’t help being odd
people.”
The boy-king did not make a direct answer; he only said, “I like you
very much, though you don’t like me.”
“Why do you like me?” asked Jack.
So he opened his eyes wide with surprise: “Most boys say Sire to me,”
he observed; “at least they used to do when there were any boys here.
However, that does not signify. Why, of course I like you, because I
am so tired of being always a fawn, and you brought Mopsa to break the
spell. You cannot think how disagreeable it is to have no hands, and
to be all covered with hair. Now look at my hands; I can move them and
turn them everywhere, even over my head if I like. Hoofs are good for
nothing in comparison: and we could not talk.”
“Do tell me about it,” said Jack. “How did you become fawns?”
“I dare not tell you,” said the boy; “and listen!--I hear Mopsa.”
Jack looked, and certainly Mopsa was coming, but very strangely, he
thought. Mopsa, like all other fairies, was afraid to whisper a spell
with her eyes open; so a handkerchief was tied across them, and as she
came on she felt her way, holding by the banisters with one hand, and
with the other, between her finger and thumb, holding out the silver
wand. She felt with her foot for the edge of the first stair; and Jack
heard her say, “I am much older--ah! so much older, now I have got my
wand. I can feel sorrow too, and _their_ sorrow weighs down my heart.”
Mopsa was dressed superbly in a white satin gown, with a long, long
train of crimson velvet which was glittering with diamonds; it reached
almost from one end of the great gallery to the other, and had hundreds
of fairies to hold it and keep it in its place. But in her hair were no
jewels, only a little crown made of daisies, and on her shoulders her
robe was fastened with the little golden image of a boat. These things
were to show the land she had come from and the vessel she had come in.
So she came slowly, slowly down stairs blindfold, and muttering to her
wand all the time:
“Though the sun shine brightly,
Wand, wand, guide rightly.”
So she felt her way down to the great hall. There the wand turned half
round in the hall towards the great door, and she and Jack and the
other Jack came out into the lawn in front with all the followers and
trainbearers; only the dame remained behind.
Jack noticed now for the first time that, with the one exception of the
boy-king, all these fairies were lady-fairies; he also observed that
Mopsa, after the manner of fairy queens, though she moved slowly and
blindfold, was beginning to tell a story. This time it did not make him
feel sleepy. It did not begin at the beginning: their stories never do.
These are the first words he heard, for she spoke softly and very low,
while he walked at her right hand, and the other Jack on her left:
“And so now I have no wings. But my thoughts can go up (Jovinian and
Roxaletta could not think). My thoughts are instead of wings; but they
have dropped with me now, as a lark among the clods of the valley.
Wand, do you bend? Yes, I am following, wand.
“And after that the bird said, ‘I will come when you call me.’ I have
never seen her moving overhead; perhaps she is out of sight. Flocks of
birds hover over the world, and watch it high up where the air is thin.
There are zones, but those in the lowest zone are far out of sight.
“I have not been up there. I have no wings.
“Over the highest of the birds is the place where angels float and
gather the children’s souls as they are set free.
“And so that woman told me--(Wand, you bend again, and I will turn at
your bending)--that woman told me how it was: for when the new king
was born, a black fairy with a smiling face came and sat within the
doorway. She had a spindle, and would always spin. She wanted to teach
them how to spin, but they did not like her, and they loved to do
nothing at all. So they turned her out.
“But after her came a brown fairy, with a grave face, and she sat on
the black fairy’s stool and gave them much counsel. They liked that
still less; so they got spindles and spun, for they said, ‘She will go
now, and we shall have the black fairy again.’ When she did not go they
turned her out also, and after her came a white fairy, and sat in the
same seat. She did nothing at all, and she said nothing at all; but she
had a sorrowful face, and she looked up. So they were displeased. They
turned her out also; and she went and sat by the edge of the lake with
her two sisters.
“And everything prospered over all the land; till, after shearing-time,
the shepherds, because the king was a child, came to his uncle, and
said, ‘Sir, what shall we do with the old wool, for the new fleeces are
in the bales, and there is no storehouse to put them in?’ So he said,
‘Throw them into the lake.’
“And while they threw them in, a great flock of finches flew to them,
and said, ‘Give us some of the wool that you do not want; we should be
glad of it to build our nests with.’
“They answered, ‘Go and gather for yourselves; there is wool on every
thorn.’
“Then the black fairy said, ‘They shall be forgiven this time, because
the birds should pick wool for themselves.’
“So the finches flew away.
“Then the harvest was over, and the reapers came and said to the
child-king’s uncle, ‘Sir, what shall we do with the new wheat, for the
old is not half eaten yet, and there is no room in the granaries?’
“He said, ‘Throw that into the lake also.’
“While they were throwing it in, there came a great flight of the wood
fairies, fairies of passage from over the sea. They were in the form of
pigeons, and they alighted and prayed them, ‘O cousins! we are faint
with our long flight; give us some of that corn which you do not want,
that we may peck it and be refreshed.’
“But they said, ‘You may rest on our land, but our corn is our own.
Rest awhile, and go and get food in your own fields.’
“Then the brown fairy said, ‘They may be forgiven this once, but yet it
is a great unkindness.’
“And as they were going to pour in the last sackful, there passed a
poor mortal beggar, who had strayed in from the men and women’s world,
and she said, ‘Pray give me some of that wheat, O fairy people! for I
am hungry, I have lost my way, and there is no money to be earned here.
Give me some of that wheat, that I may bake cakes, lest I and my baby
should starve.’
“And they said, ‘What is starve? We never heard that word before, and
we cannot wait while you explain it to us.’
“So they poured it all into the lake; and then the white fairy said,
‘This cannot be forgiven them;’ and she covered her face with her hands
and wept. Then the black fairy rose and drove them all before her--the
prince, with his chief shepherd and his reapers, his courtiers and his
knights; she drove them into the great bed of reeds, and no one has
ever set eyes on them since. Then the brown fairy went into the palace
where the king’s aunt sat, with all her ladies and her maids about her,
and with the child-king on her knee.
“It was a very gloomy day.
“She stood in the middle of the hall, and said, ‘Oh, you cold-hearted
and most unkind! my spell is upon you, and the first ray of sunshine
shall bring it down. Lose your present forms, and be of a more gentle
and innocent race, till a queen of alien birth shall come to reign over
you against her will.’
“As she spoke they crept into corners, and covered the dame’s head with
a veil. And all that day it was dark and gloomy, and nothing happened,
and all the next day it rained and rained; and they thrust the dame
into a dark closet, and kept her there for a whole month, and still not
a ray of sunshine came to do them any damage; but the dame faded and
faded in the dark, and at last they said, ‘She must come out, or she
will die; and we do not believe the sun will ever shine in our country
any more.’ So they let the poor dame come out; and lo! as she crept
slowly forth under the dome, a piercing ray of sunlight darted down
upon her head, and in an instant they were all changed into deer, and
the child-king too.
“They are gentle now, and kind; but where is the prince? where are the
fairy knights and the fairy men?
“Wand! why do you turn?”
Now while Mopsa told her story the wand continued to bend, and Mopsa,
following, was slowly approaching the foot of a great precipice, which
rose sheer up for more than a hundred feet. The crowd that followed
looked dismayed at this: they thought the wand must be wrong; or even
if it was right, they could not climb a precipice.
But still Mopsa walked on blindfold, and the wand pointed at the rock
till it touched it, and she said, “Who is stopping me?”
They told her, and she called to some of her ladies to untie the
handkerchief. Then Mopsa looked at the rock, and so did the two Jacks.
There was nothing to be seen but a very tiny hole. The boy-king
thought it led to a bees’ nest, and Jack thought it was a keyhole, for
he noticed in the rock a slight crack which took the shape of an arched
door. Mopsa looked earnestly at the hole. “It may be a keyhole,” she
said, “but there is no key.”
[Illustration: But still Mopsa walked on blindfold.]