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[Illustration: TWO CHRISTMAS ANGELS.--p. 122.]
THE TAPESTRY ROOM
A Child's Romance
By MRS. MOLESWORTH
AUTHOR OF 'CARROTS,' 'CUCKOO CLOCK,' 'GRANDMOTHER DEAR,' 'TELL ME A
STORY,' ETC.
[Illustration: 'DUDU']
'What tale did Iseult to the children say,
Under the hollies, that bright winter's day?'
MATTHEW ARNOLD
ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER CRANE
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1899
(By Permission.)
TO
H.R.H. VITTORIO EMANUELE
PRINCE OF NAPLES
CROWN PRINCE OF ITALY
ONE OF THE KINDLIEST OF MY YOUNG READERS
MAISON DU CHANOINE,
_October_ 1879.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
MADEMOISELLE JEAN 1
CHAPTER II.
PRINCE CHÉRI 20
CHAPTER III.
ON A MOONLIGHT NIGHT 37
CHAPTER IV.
THE FOREST OF THE RAINBOWS 56
CHAPTER V.
FROG-LAND 75
CHAPTER VI.
THE SONG OF THE SWAN 94
CHAPTER VII.
WINGS AND CATS 114
CHAPTER VIII.
"THE BROWN BULL OF NORROWA" 135
CHAPTER IX.
THE BROWN BULL--(_Continued_) 158
CHAPTER X.
THE END OF THE BROWN BULL 177
CHAPTER XI.
DUDU'S OLD STORY 197
CHAPTER XII.
AU REVOIR 218
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
"DUDU" _Vignette on Title-Page._
"ISN'T IT A FUNNY ROOM, CHÉRI?" _To face Page_ 25
IT WAS DUDU " 51
ONWARDS QUIETLY STEPPED THE LITTLE PROCESSION " 75
TWO CHRISTMAS ANGELS " 122
STORY SPINNING " 141
THE BROWN BULL OF NORROWA " 162
"IS THIS A NEW PART OF THE HOUSE?" " 201
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
MADEMOISELLE JEANNE.
"Maitre Corbeau, sur un arbre perché."
LA FONTAINE.
It was so cold. Ah, so very cold! So thought the old raven as he hobbled
up and down the terrace walk at the back of the house--the walk that was
so pleasant in summer, with its pretty view of the lower garden, gay
with the bright, stiffly-arranged flowerbeds, so pleasantly warm and yet
shady with the old trees overhead, where the raven's second cousins, the
rooks, managed their affairs, not without a good deal of chatter about
it, it must be confessed. "Silly creatures," the raven was in the habit
of calling them with contempt--all to himself, of course, for no one
understood the different tones of his croaking, even though he was a
French raven and had received the best of educations. But to-day he was
too depressed in spirit by the cold to think of his relations or their
behaviour at all. He just hopped or hobbled--I hardly know which you
would call it--slowly and solemnly up and down the long walk, where the
snow lay so thick that at each hop it came ever so far up his black
claws, which annoyed him very much, I assure you, and made him wish more
than ever that summer was back again.
Poor old fellow! he was not usually of a discontented disposition; but
to-day, it must be allowed, he was in the right about the cold. It was
_very_ cold.
Several others beside the raven were thinking so--the three chickens who
lived in a queer little house in one corner of the yard thought so, and
huddled the closer together, as they settled themselves for the night.
For though it was only half-past three in the afternoon, they thought it
was no use sitting up any longer on such a make-believe of a day, when
not the least little ray of sunshine had succeeded in creeping through
the leaden-grey sky. And the tortoise _would_ have thought so too if he
could, but he was too sleepy to think at all, as he "cruddled" himself
into his shell in the corner of the laurel hedge, and dreamt of the nice
hot days that were past.
And upstairs, inside the old house, somebody else was thinking so too--a
little somebody who seemed to be doing her best to make herself,
particularly her nose, colder still, for she was pressing it hard on to
the icy window-pane and staring out on to the deserted, snow-covered
garden, and thinking how cold it was, and wishing it was summer time
again, and fancying how it would feel to be a raven like old "Dudu," all
at once, in the mixed-up, dancing-about way that "thinking" was
generally done in the funny little brain of Mademoiselle Jeanne.
Inside the room it was getting dark, and the white snow outside seemed
to make it darker.
"Mademoiselle Jeanne," said a voice belonging to a servant who just then
opened the door; "Mademoiselle Jeanne, what are you doing at the window?
You will catch cold."
Jeanne gave a little start when she heard herself spoken to. She had
been all alone in the room for some time, with not a sound about her.
She turned slowly from the window and came near the fire.
"If I did catch cold, it would not be bad," she said. "I would stay in
bed, and you, Marcelline, would make me nice things to eat, and nobody
would say, 'Don't do that, Mademoiselle.' It would be charming."
Marcelline was Jeanne's old nurse, and she had been her mother's nurse
too. She was really rather old, how old nobody seemed exactly to know,
but Jeanne thought her _very_ old, and asked her once if she had not
been her grandmother's nurse too. Any one else but Marcelline would have
been offended at such a question; but Marcelline was not like any one
else, and she never was offended at anything. She was so old that for
many years no one had seen much difference in her--she had reached a
sort of settled oldness, like an arm-chair which may once have been
covered with bright-coloured silk, but which, with time and wear, has
got to have an all-over-old look which never seems to get any worse. Not
that Marcelline was dull or grey to look at--she was bright and cheery,
and when she had a new clean cap on, all beautifully frilled and crimped
round her face, Jeanne used to tell her that she was beautiful, quite
beautiful, and that if she was _very_ good and always did exactly what
Jeanne asked her, she--Jeanne--would have her to be nurse to her
children when she had grown up to be a lady, married to some very nice
gentleman.
And when Jeanne chattered like that, Marcelline used to smile; she never
said anything, she just smiled. Sometimes Jeanne liked to see her
smile; sometimes it would make her impatient, and she would say, "Why do
you smile like that, Marcelline? _Speak!_ When I speak I like you to
speak too."
But all she could get Marcelline to answer would be, "Well,
Mademoiselle, it is very well what you say."
This evening--or perhaps I should say afternoon, for whatever hour the
chickens' timepiece made it, it was only half-past three by the great
big clock that stood at the end of the long passage by Jeanne's room
door;--this afternoon Jeanne was not quite as lively as she sometimes
was. She sat down on the floor in front of the fire and stared into it.
It was pretty to look at just then, for the wood was burning redly, and
at the tiniest touch a whole bevy of lovely sparks would fly out like
bees from a hive, or a covey of birds, or better still, like a thousand
imprisoned fairies escaping at some magic touch. Of all things, Jeanne
loved to give this magic touch. There was no poker, but she managed just
as well with a stick of unburnt wood, or sometimes, when she was _quite_
sure Marcelline was not looking, with the toe of her little shoe. Just
now it was Marcelline who set the fairy sparks free by moving the logs a
little and putting on a fresh one behind.
"How pretty they are, are they not, Marcelline?" said Jeanne.
Marcelline did not speak, and when Jeanne looked up at her, she saw by
the light of the fire that she was smiling. Jeanne held up her
forefinger.
"Naughty Marcelline," she said; "you are not to smile. You are to
_speak_. I want you to speak very much, for it is so dull, and I have
nothing to do. I want you to tell me stories, Marcelline. Do you hear,
you naughty little thing?"
"And what am I to tell you stories about then, Mademoiselle? You have
got all out of my old head long ago; and when the grain is all ground
what can the miller do?"
"Get some more, of course," said Jeanne. "Why, _I_ could make stories if
I tried, I daresay, and I am only seven, and you who are a hundred--are
you _quite_ a hundred, Marcelline?"
Marcelline shook her head.
"Not _quite_, Mademoiselle," she said.
"Well, never mind, you are old enough to make stories, any way. Tell me
more about the country where you lived when you were little as I; the
country you will never tell me the name of. Oh, I do like that one about
the Golden Princess shut up in the castle by the sea! I like stories
about princesses best of all. I do wish I were a princess; next to my
best wish of all, I wish to be a princess. Marcelline, do you hear? I
want you to tell me a story."
Still Marcelline did not reply. She in her turn was looking into the
fire. Suddenly she spoke.
"One, two, three," she said. "Quick, now, Mademoiselle, quick, quick.
Wish a wish before that last spark is gone. Quick, Mademoiselle."
"Oh dear, what shall I wish?" exclaimed Jeanne. "When you tell me to be
quick it all goes out of my head; but I know now. I wish----"
"Hush, Mademoiselle," said Marcelline, quickly again. "You must not say
it aloud. Never mind, it is all right. You have wished it before the
spark is gone. It will come true, Mademoiselle."
Jeanne's bright dark eyes glanced up at Marcelline with an expression of
mingled curiosity and respect.
"How do you know it will come true?" she said.
Marcelline's old eyes, nearly as bright and dark still as Jeanne's own,
had a half-mischievous look in them as she replied, solemnly shaking her
head,
"I know, Mademoiselle, and that is all I can say. And when the time
comes for your wish to be granted, you will see if I am not right."
"Shall I?" said Jeanne, half impressed, half rebellious. "Do the fairies
tell you things, Marcelline? Not that I believe there are any
fairies--not now, any way."
"Don't say that, Mademoiselle," said Marcelline. "In that country I have
told you of no one ever said such a thing as that."
"Why didn't they? Did they really _see_ fairies there?" asked Jeanne,
lowering her voice a little.
"Perhaps," said Marcelline; but that was all she _would_ say, and Jeanne
couldn't get her to tell her any fairy stories, and had to content
herself with making them for herself instead out of the queer shapes of
the burning wood of the fire.
She was so busy with these fancies that she did not hear the stopping of
the click-click of Marcelline's knitting needles, nor did she hear the
old nurse get up from her chair and go out of the room. A few minutes
before, the _facteur_ had rung at the great wooden gates of the
courtyard--a rather rare event, for in those days letters came only
twice a week--but this, too, little Jeanne had not heard. She must have
grown drowsy with the quiet and the heat of the fire, for she quite
started when the door again opened, and Marcelline's voice told her that
her mother wanted her to go down to the salon, she had something to say
to her.
"O Marcelline," said Jeanne, rubbing her eyes, "I didn't know you had
gone away. What does mamma want? O Marcelline, I am so sleepy, I would
like to go to bed."
"To go to bed, Mademoiselle, and not yet five o'clock! Oh no, you will
wake up nicely by the time you get down to the salon."
"I am so tired, Marcelline," persisted Jeanne. "These winter days it is
so dull. I don't mind in summer, for then I can play in the garden with
Dudu and the tortoise, and all the creatures. But in winter it is so
dull. I would not be tired if I had a little friend to play with me."
"Keep up your heart, Mademoiselle. Stranger things have happened than
that you should have some one to play with."
"What do you mean, Marcelline?" said Jeanne, curiously. "Do you know
something, Marcelline? Tell me, do. Did you know what my wish was?" she
added, eagerly.
"I know, Mademoiselle, that Madame will be waiting for you in the
salon. We can talk about your wish later; when I am putting you to bed."
She would say no more, but smoothed Jeanne's soft dark hair, never very
untidy it must be owned, for it was always neatly plaited in two tails
that hung down her back, as was then the fashion for little girls of
Jeanne's age and country, and bade her again not to delay going
downstairs.
Jeanne set off. In that great rambling old house it was really quite a
journey from her room to her mother's salon. There was the long corridor
to pass, at one end of which were Jeanne's quarters, at the other a room
which had had for her since her babyhood a mingled fascination and awe.
It was hung with tapestry, very old, and in some parts faded, but still
distinct. As Jeanne passed by the door of this room, she noticed that it
was open, and the gleam of the faint moonlight on the snow-covered
garden outside attracted her.
"I can see the terrace ever so much better from the tapestry room
window," she said to herself. "I wonder what Dudu is doing, poor old
fellow. Oh, how cold he must be! I suppose Grignan is asleep in a hole
in the hedge, and the chickens will be all right any way. I have not
seen Houpet all day."
"Houpet" was Jeanne's favourite of the three chickens. He had come by
his name on account of a wonderful tuft of feathers on the top of his
head, which stuck straight up and then waved down again, something like
a little umbrella. No doubt he was a very rare and wonderful chicken,
and if I were clever about chickens I would be able to tell you all his
remarkable points. But that I cannot do. I can only say he was the
queerest-looking creature that ever pecked about a poultry-yard, and how
it came to pass that Jeanne admired him so, I cannot tell you either.
"Poor Houpet!" she repeated, as she ran across the tapestry room to the
uncurtained window; "I am sure he must have been very sad without me all
day. He has such a loving heart. The others are nice too, but not half
so loving. And Grignan has no heart at all; I suppose tortoises never
have; only he is very comical, which is nearly as nice. As for Dudu, I
really cannot say, he is so stuck up, as if he knew better than any one
else. Ah, there he is, the old fellow! Well, Dudu," she called out, as
if the raven could have heard her so far off and through the closely
shut window; "well, Dudu, how are you to-day, my dear sir? How do you
like the snow and the cold?"
Dudu calmly continued his promenade up and down the terrace. Jeanne
could clearly distinguish his black shape against the white ground.
"I am going downstairs to see mamma, Dudu," she went on. "I love mamma
very much, but I wish she wasn't my mother at all, but my sister. I wish
she was turned into a little girl to play with me, and that papa was
turned into a little boy. How funny he would look with his white hair,
wouldn't he, Dudu? Oh, you stupid Dudu, why won't you speak to me? I
wish you would come up here; there's a beautiful castle and garden in
the tapestry, where you would have two peacocks to play with;" for just
at that moment the moon, passing from under a cloud, lighted up one side
of the tapestry, which, as Jeanne said, represented a garden with
various curious occupants. And as the wavering brightness caught the
grotesque figures in turn, it really seemed to the little girl as if
they moved. Half pleased, half startled at the fancy, she clapped her
hands.
"Dudu, Dudu," she cried, "the peacocks want you to come; they're
beginning to jump about;" and almost as she said the words a loud croak
from the raven sounded in her ears, and turning round, there, to her
amazement, she saw Dudu standing on the ledge of the window outside,
his bright eyes shining, his black wings flapping, just as if he would
say,
"Let me in, Mademoiselle, let me in. Why do you mock me by calling me if
you won't let me in?"
Completely startled by this time, Jeanne turned and fled.
"He must be a fairy," she said by herself; "I'll never make fun of Dudu
any more--_never_. He must be a fairy, or how else could he have got up
from the terrace on to the window-sill all in a minute? And I don't
think a raven fairy would be nice at all; he'd be a sort of an imp, I
expect. I wouldn't mind now if Houpet was a fairy, he's so gentle and
loving; but Dudu would be a sort of ogre fairy, he's so black and
solemn. Oh dear, how he startled me! How did he get up there? I'm very
glad _I_ don't sleep in the tapestry room."
But when she got down to the brightly-lighted salon her cheeks were so
pale and her eyes so startled-looking that her mother was quite
concerned, and eagerly asked what was the matter.
"Nothing," said Jeanne at first, after the manner of little girls, and
boys too, when they do not want to be cross-questioned; but after a
while she confessed that she had run into the tapestry room on her way
down, and that the moonlight made the figures look as if they were
moving--and--and--that Dudu came and stood on the window-sill and
croaked at her.
"Dudu stood on the window-sill outside the tapestry room!" repeated her
father; "impossible, my child! Why, Dudu could not by any conceivable
means get up there; you might as well say you saw the tortoise there
too."
"If I had called him perhaps he _would_ have come too; I believe Dudu
and he are great friends," thought Jeanne to herself, for her mind was
in a queer state of confusion, and she would not have felt very much
astounded at anything. But aloud she only repeated, "I'm sure he was
there, dear papa."
And to satisfy her, her kind father, though he was not so young as he
had been, and the bad weather made him very rheumatic, mounted upstairs
to the tapestry room, and carefully examined the window inside and out.
"Nothing of the kind to be seen, my little girl," was his report.
"Master Dudu was hobbling about in the snow on his favourite terrace
walk as usual. I hope the servants give him a little meat in this cold
weather, by the by. I must speak to Eugène about it. What you fancied
was Dudu, my little Jeanne," he continued, "must have been a branch of
the ivy blown across the window. In the moonlight, and with the
reflections of the snow, things take queer shapes."
"But there is no wind, and the ivy doesn't grow so high up, and the ivy
could not have _croaked_," thought Jeanne to herself again, though she
was far too well brought up a little French girl to contradict her
father by saying so.
"Perhaps so, dear papa," was all she said.
But her parents still looked a little uneasy.
"She cannot be quite well," said her mother. "She must be feverish. I
must tell Marcelline to make her a little tisane when she goes to bed."
"Ah, bah!" said Jeanne's white-headed papa. "What we were speaking of
will be a much better cure than tisane. She needs companionship of her
own age."
Jeanne pricked up her ears at this, and glanced at her mother
inquiringly. Instantly there started into her mind Marcelline's prophecy
about her wish.
"The naughty little Marcelline!" she thought to herself. "She has been
tricking me. I believe she knew something was going to happen. Mamma, my
dear mamma!" she cried, eagerly but respectfully, "have you something to
tell me? Have you had letters, mamma, from the country, where the
little cousin lives?"
Jeanne's mother softly stroked the cheeks, red enough now, of her
excited little daughter.
"Yes, my child," she replied. "I have had a letter. It was for that I
sent for you--to tell you about it. I have a letter from the grandfather
of Hugh, with whom he has lived since his parents died, and he accepts
my invitation. Hugh is to come to live with us, as his mother would have
wished. His grandfather can spare him, for he has other grandchildren,
and we need him, do we not, my Jeanne? My little girl needs a little
brother--and I loved his mother so much," she added in a lower voice.
Jeanne could not speak. Her face was glowing with excitement, her breath
came quick and short, almost, it seemed, as if she were going to cry.
"O, mamma!" was all she could say--"O mamma!" but her mother understood
her.
"And when will he come?" asked Jeanne next.
"Soon, I hope. In a few days; but it depends on the weather greatly. The
snow has stopped the diligences in several places, they say; but his
grandfather writes that he would like Hugh to come soon, as he himself
has to leave home."
"And will he be always with us? Will he do lessons with me, mamma, and
go to the château with us in summer, and always be with us?"
"I hope so. For a long time at least. And he will do lessons with you at
first--though when he gets big he will need more teachers, of course."
"He is a year older than I, mamma."
"Yes, he is eight."
"And, mamma," added Jeanne, after some consideration, "what room will he
have?"
"The tapestry room," said her mother. "It is the warmest, and Hugh is
rather delicate, and may feel it cold here. And the tapestry room is not
far from yours, my little Jeanne, so you can keep your toys and books
together. There is only one thing I do not quite understand in the
letter," went on Jeanne's mother, turning to her husband as she always
did in any difficulty--he was so much older and wiser than she, she used
to say. "Hugh's grandfather says Hugh has begged leave to bring a pet
with him, and he hopes I will not mind. What can it be? I cannot read
the other word."
"A little dog probably," said Jeanne's father, putting on his spectacles
as he took the letter from his wife, "a pet--gu--ga--and then comes
another word beginning with 'p.' It almost looks like 'pig,' but it
could not be a pet pig. No, I cannot read it either; we must wait to see
till he comes."
* * * * *
As Marcelline was preparing to put Jeanne to bed that night, the little
girl suddenly put her arms round her nurse's neck, and drew down her old
face till it was on a level with her own.
"Look in my face, Marcelline," she said. "Now look in my face and
confess. Now, didn't you know that mamma had got a letter to-night and
what it said, and was not that how you knew my wish would come true?"
Marcelline smiled.
"That was one way I knew, Mademoiselle," she said.
"Well, it shows I'm right not to believe in fairies any way. I really
did think at first that the fairies had told you something, but----"
suddenly she stopped as the remembrance of her adventure in the tapestry
room returned to her mind. "Dudu may be a fairy, whether Marcelline has
anything to do with fairies or not," she reflected. It was better
certainly to approach such subjects respectfully. "Marcelline," she
added, after a little silence, "there is only one thing I don't like. I
wish the little cousin were not going to sleep in the tapestry room."
"Not in the tapestry room, Mademoiselle?" exclaimed Marcelline, "why, it
is the best room in the house! You, who are so fond of stories,
Mademoiselle--why there are stories without end on the walls of the
tapestry room; particularly on a moonlight night."
"_Are_ there?" said Jeanne. "I wonder then if the little cousin will be
able to find them out. If he does he must tell them to me. Are they
fairy stories, Marcelline?"
But old Marcelline only smiled.