There was once a little man whose mother made him a beautiful suit of
clothes. It was green and gold and woven so that I cannot describe how
delicate and fine it was, and there was a tie of orange fluffiness that
tied up under his chin. And the buttons in their newness shone like
stars. He was proud and pleased by his suit beyond measure, and stood
before the long looking-glass when first he put it on, so astonished
and delighted with it that he could hardly turn himself away.
He wanted to wear it everywhere and show it to all sorts of people. He
thought over all the places he had ever visited and all the scenes he
had ever heard described, and tried to imagine what the feel of it
would be if he were to go now to those scenes and places wearing his
shining suit, and he wanted to go out forthwith into the long grass and
the hot sunshine of the meadow wearing it. Just to wear it! But his
mother told him, “No.” She told him he must take great care of his
suit, for never would he have another nearly so fine; he must save it
and save it and only wear it on rare and great occasions. It was his
wedding suit, she said. And she took his buttons and twisted them up
with tissue paper for fear their bright newness should be tarnished,
and she tacked little guards over the cuffs and elbows and wherever the
suit was most likely to come to harm. He hated and resisted these
things, but what could he do? And at last her warnings and persuasions
had effect and he consented to take off his beautiful suit and fold it
into its proper creases and put it away. It was almost as though he
gave it up again. But he was always thinking of wearing it and of the
supreme occasion when some day it might be worn without the guards,
without the tissue paper on the buttons, utterly and delightfully,
never caring, beautiful beyond measure.
One night when he was dreaming of it, after his habit, he dreamed he
took the tissue paper from one of the buttons and found its brightness
a little faded, and that distressed him mightily in his dream. He
polished the poor faded button and polished it, and if anything it grew
duller. He woke up and lay awake thinking of the brightness a little
dulled and wondering how he would feel if perhaps when the great
occasion (whatever it might be) should arrive, one button should chance
to be ever so little short of its first glittering freshness, and for
days and days that thought remained with him, distressingly. And when
next his mother let him wear his suit, he was tempted and nearly gave
way to the temptation just to fumble off one little bit of tissue paper
and see if indeed the buttons were keeping as bright as ever.
He went trimly along on his way to church full of this wild desire. For
you must know his mother did, with repeated and careful warnings, let
him wear his suit at times, on Sundays, for example, to and fro from
church, when there was no threatening of rain, no dust nor anything to
injure it, with its buttons covered and its protections tacked upon it
and a sunshade in his hand to shadow it if there seemed too strong a
sunlight for its colours. And always, after such occasions, he brushed
it over and folded it exquisitely as she had taught him, and put it
away again.
Now all these restrictions his mother set to the wearing of his suit he
obeyed, always he obeyed them, until one strange night he woke up and
saw the moonlight shining outside his window. It seemed to him the
moonlight was not common moonlight, nor the night a common night, and
for a while he lay quite drowsily with this odd persuasion in his mind.
Thought joined on to thought like things that whisper warmly in the
shadows. Then he sat up in his little bed suddenly, very alert, with
his heart beating very fast and a quiver in his body from top to toe.
He had made up his mind. He knew now that he was going to wear his suit
as it should be worn. He had no doubt in the matter. He was afraid,
terribly afraid, but glad, glad.
He got out of his bed and stood a moment by the window looking at the
moonshine-flooded garden and trembling at the thing he meant to do. The
air was full of a minute clamor of crickets and murmurings, of the
infinitesimal shouting of little living things. He went very gently
across the creaking boards, for fear that he might wake the sleeping
house, to the big dark clothes-press wherein his beautiful suit lay
folded, and he took it out garment by garment and softly and very
eagerly tore off its tissue-paper covering and its tacked protections,
until there it was, perfect and delightful as he had seen it when first
his mother had given it to him—a long time it seemed ago. Not a button
had tarnished, not a thread had faded on this dear suit of his; he was
glad enough for weeping as in a noiseless hurry he put it on. And then
back he went, soft and quick, to the window and looked out upon the
garden and stood there for a minute, shining in the moonlight, with his
buttons twinkling like stars, before he got out on the sill and, making
as little of a rustling as he could, clambered down to the garden path
below. He stood before his mother’s house, and it was white and nearly
as plain as by day, with every window-blind but his own shut like an
eye that sleeps. The trees cast still shadows like intricate black lace
upon the wall.
The garden in the moonlight was very different from the garden by day;
moonshine was tangled in the hedges and stretched in phantom cobwebs
from spray to spray. Every flower was gleaming white or crimson black,
and the air was aquiver with the thridding of small crickets and
nightingales singing unseen in the depths of the trees.
There was no darkness in the world, but only warm, mysterious shadows;
and all the leaves and spikes were edged and lined with iridescent
jewels of dew. The night was warmer than any night had ever been, the
heavens by some miracle at once vaster and nearer, and spite of the
great ivory-tinted moon that ruled the world, the sky was full of
stars.
The little man did not shout nor sing for all his infinite gladness. He
stood for a time like one awe-stricken, and then, with a queer small
cry and holding out his arms, he ran out as if he would embrace at once
the whole warm round immensity of the world. He did not follow the neat
set paths that cut the garden squarely, but thrust across the beds and
through the wet, tall, scented herbs, through the night stock and the
nicotine and the clusters of phantom white mallow flowers and through
the thickets of southern-wood and lavender, and knee-deep across a wide
space of mignonette. He came to the great hedge and he thrust his way
through it, and though the thorns of the brambles scored him deeply and
tore threads from his wonderful suit, and though burs and goosegrass
and havers caught and clung to him, he did not care. He did not care,
for he knew it was all part of the wearing for which he had longed. “I
am glad I put on my suit,” he said; “I am glad I wore my suit.”
Beyond the hedge he came to the duck-pond, or at least to what was the
duck-pond by day. But by night it was a great bowl of silver moonshine
all noisy with singing frogs, of wonderful silver moonshine twisted and
clotted with strange patternings, and the little man ran down into its
waters between the thin black rushes, knee-deep and waist-deep and to
his shoulders, smiting the water to black and shining wavelets with
either hand, swaying and shivering wavelets, amid which the stars were
netted in the tangled reflections of the brooding trees upon the bank.
He waded until he swam, and so he crossed the pond and came out upon
the other side, trailing, as it seemed to him, not duckweed, but very
silver in long, clinging, dripping masses. And up he went through the
transfigured tangles of the willow-herb and the uncut seeding grass of
the farther bank. And so he came glad and breathless into the highroad.
“I am glad,” he said, “beyond measure, that I had clothes that fitted
this occasion.”
The highroad ran straight as an arrow flies, straight into the deep
blue pit of sky beneath the moon, a white and shining road between the
singing nightingales, and along it he went, running now and leaping,
and now walking and rejoicing, in the clothes his mother had made for
him with tireless, loving hands. The road was deep in dust, but that
for him was only soft whiteness, and as he went a great dim moth came
fluttering round his wet and shimmering and hastening figure. At first
he did not heed the moth, and then he waved his hands at it and made a
sort of dance with it as it circled round his head. “Soft moth!” he
cried, “dear moth! And wonderful night, wonderful night of the world!
Do you think my clothes are beautiful, dear moth? As beautiful as your
scales and all this silver vesture of the earth and sky?”
And the moth circled closer and closer until at last its velvet wings
just brushed his lips . . . . .
And next morning they found him dead with his neck broken in the bottom
of the stone pit, with his beautiful clothes a little bloody and foul
and stained with the duckweed from the pond. But his face was a face of
such happiness that, had you seen it, you would have understood indeed
how that he had died happy, never knowing the cool and streaming silver
for the duckweed in the pond.