AFTER THE PARTY.
_Stephano._--This will prove a brave kingdom to me,
Where I shall have my music for nothing.
_The Tempest._
When breakfast was over, the guests got up, one after the other,
without taking the least notice of the Queen; and the tent began to
get so thin and transparent that you could see the trees and the sky
through it. At last, it looked only like a colored mist, with blue,
and green, and yellow stripes, and then it was gone; and the table and
all the things on it began to go in the same way. Only Jack, and the
apple-woman, and Mopsa were left, sitting on their chairs, with the
Queen between them.
Presently, the Queen's lips began to move, and her eyes looked
straight before her, as she sat upright in her chair. Whereupon the
apple-woman snatched up Mopsa, and, seizing Jack's hand, hurried him
off, exclaiming, "Come away! come away! She is going to tell one of
her stories; and if you listen, you'll be obliged to go to sleep, and
sleep nobody knows how long."
Jack did not want to go to sleep; he wished to go down to the river
again, and see what had become of his boat, for he had left his cap
and several other things in it.
So he parted from the apple-woman,--who took Mopsa with her, and said
he would find her again when he wanted her at her apple-stall,--and
went down to the boat, where he saw that his faithful hound was there
before him.
"It was lucky, master, that I came when I did," said the hound, "for a
dozen or so of those one-foot-one fellows were just shoving it off,
and you will want it at night to sleep in."
"Yes," said Jack; "and I can stretch the bit of purple silk to make a
canopy over head,--a sort of awning,--for I should not like to sleep
in tents or palaces that are inclined to melt away."
So the hound with his teeth, and Jack with his hands, pulled and
pulled at the silk till it was large enough to make a splendid canopy,
like a tent; and it reached down to the water's edge, and roofed in
all the after part of the boat.
So now he had a delightful little home of his own; and there was no
fear of its being blown away, for no wind ever blows in Fairyland. All
the trees are quite still, no leaf rustles, and the flowers lie on the
ground exactly where they fall.
After this Jack told the hound to watch his boat, and went himself in
search of the apple-woman. Not one fairy was to be seen, any more than
if he had been in his own country, and he wandered down the green
margin of the river till he saw the apple-woman sitting at a small
stall with apples on it, and cherries tied to sticks, and some
dry-looking nuts. She had Mopsa on her knee, and had washed her face,
and put a beautiful clean white frock on her.
"Where are all the fairies gone to?" asked Jack.
"I never take any notice of that common trash and their doings," she
answered. "When the Queen takes to telling her stories they are
generally frightened, and go and sit in the tops of the trees."
"But you seem very fond of Mopsa," said Jack, "and she is one of them.
You will help me to take care of her, won't you, tills she grows a
little older?"
"Grows!" said the apple-woman, laughing. "Grows! Why you don't think,
surely, that she will ever be any different from what she is now?"
"I thought she would grow up," said Jack.
"They never change so long as they last," answered the apple-woman,
"when once they are one-foot-one high."
"Mopsa," said Jack, "come here, and I'll measure you."
Mopsa came dancing towards Jack, and he tried to measure her, first
with a yard measure that the apple-woman took out of her pocket, and
then with a stick, and then with a bit of string; but Mopsa would not
stand steady, and at last it ended in their having a good game of
romps together, and a race; but when he carried her back, sitting on
his shoulder, he was sorry to see that the apple-woman was crying
again, and he asked her kindly what she did it for.
"It is because," she answered, "I shall never see my own country any
more, nor any men and women and children, excepting such as by a rare
chance stray in for a little while as you have done."
"I can go back whenever I please," said Jack. "Why don't you?"
"Because I came in of my own good-will, after I had had fair warning
that if I came at all it would end in my staying always. Besides, I
don't know that I exactly wish to go home again: I should be afraid."
"Afraid of what?" asked Jack.
"Why, there's the rain and the cold, and not having anything to eat
excepting what you earn. And yet," said the apple-woman, "I have three
boys of my own at home; one of them must be nearly a man by this time,
and the youngest is about as old as you are. If I went home I might
find one or more of those boys in jail, and then how miserable I
should be."
"But you are not happy as it is," said Jack. "I have seen you cry."
"Yes," said the apple-woman; "but now I live here I don't care about
anything so much as I used to do. 'May I have a satin gown and a
coach?' I asked, when first I came. 'You may have a hundred and fifty
satin gowns if you like,' said the Queen, 'and twenty coaches with six
cream-colored horses to each.' But when I had been here a little time,
and found I could have everything I wished for, and change it as
often as I pleased, I began not to care for anything; and at last I
got so sick of all their grand things that I dressed myself in my own
clothes that I came in, and made up my mind to have a stall and sit at
it, as I used to do, selling apples. And I used to say to myself, 'I
have but to wish with all my heart to go home, and I can go, I know
that;' but oh dear! oh dear! I couldn't wish enough, for it would come
into my head that I should be poor, or that my boys would have
forgotten me, or that my neighbors would look down on me, and so I
always put off wishing for another day. Now here is the Queen coming.
Sit down on the grass and play with Mopsa. Don't let her see us
talking together, lest she should think I have been telling you things
which you ought not to know."
Jack looked, and saw the Queen coming slowly towards them, with her
hands held out before her, as if it was dark. She felt her way, yet
her eyes were wide open, and she was telling her stories all the
time.
"Don't you listen to a word she says," whispered the apple-woman; and
then, in order that Jack might not hear what the Queen was talking
about, she began to sing.
She had no sooner begun than up from the river came swarms of
one-foot-one fairies to listen, and hundreds of them dropped down from
the trees. The Queen, too, seemed to attend as they did, though she
kept murmuring her story all the time; and nothing that any of them
did appeared to surprise the apple-woman,--she sang as if nobody was
taking any notice at all:--
When I sit on market-days amid the comers and the goers,
Oh! full oft I have a vision of the days without alloy,
And a ship comes up the river with a jolly gang of towers,
And a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"
There is busy talk around me, all about mine ears it hummeth,
But the wooden wharves I look on, and a dancing, heaving buoy,
For 'tis tidetime in the river, and she cometh--oh, she cometh!
With a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"
Then I hear the water washing, never golden waves were brighter,
And I hear the capstan creaking--'tis a sound that cannot cloy.
Bring her to, to ship her lading, brig or schooner, sloop or
lighter,
With a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haule, yoy! heave, hoy!"
"Will ye step aboard, my dearest? for the high seas lie before us."
So I sailed adown the river in those days without alloy.
We are launched! But when, I wonder, shall a sweeter sound float
o'er us
Than yon "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"
As the apple-woman left off singing, the Queen moved away, still
murmuring the words of her story, and Jack said,--
"Does the Queen tell stories of what has happened, or of what is going
to happen?"
"Why, of what is going to happen, of course," replied the woman.
"Anybody could tell the other sort."
"Because I heard a little of it," observed Jack. "I thought she was
talking of me. She said 'So he took the measure, and Mopsa stood
still for once, and he found she was only one foot high, and she grew
a great deal after that. Yes, she can grow.'"
"That's a fine hearing, and a strange hearing," said the apple-woman;
"and what did she mutter next?"
"Of how she heard me sobbing," replied Jack; "and while you went on
about stepping on board the ship, she said, 'He was very good to me,
dear little fellow! But Fate is the name of my old mother, and she
reigns here. Oh, she reigns! The fatal F is in her name, and I cannot
take it out!'"
"Ah!" replied the apple-woman, "they all say that, and that they are
fays, and that mortals call their history fable; they are always
crying out for an alphabet without the fatal F."
"And then she told how she heard Mopsa sobbing too," said Jack;
"sobbing among the reeds and rushes by the river side."
"There are no reeds, and no rushes either, here," said the
apple-woman, "and I have walked the river from end to end. I don't
think much of that part of the story. But you are sure she said that
Mopsa was short of her proper height?"
"Yes, and that she would grow; but that's nothing. In my country we
always grow."
"Hold your tongue about you country!" said the apple-woman, sharply.
"Do you want to make enemies of them all?"
Mopsa had been listening to this, and now she said, "I don't love the
Queen. She slapped my arm as she went by, and it hurts."
Mopsa showed her little fat arm as she spoke, and there was a red
place on it.
"That's odd, too," said the apple-woman; "there's nothing red in a
common fairy's veins. They have sap in them: that's why they can't
blush."
Just then the sun went down, and Mopsa got up on the apple-woman's
lap, and went to sleep; and Jack, being tired, went to his boat and
lay down under the purple canopy, his old hound lying at his feet to
keep guard over him.
The next morning, when he woke, a pretty voice called to him, "Jack!
Jack!" and he opened his eyes and saw Mopsa. The apple-woman had
dressed her in a clean frock and blue shoes, and her hair was so long!
She was standing on the landing-place, close to him. "O Jack! I'm so
big," she said. "I grew in the night; look at me."
Jack looked. Yes, Mopsa had grown indeed; she had only just reached to
his knee the day before, and now her little bright head, when he
measured her, came as high as the second button of his waistcoat.
"But I hope you will not go on growing so fast as this," said Jack,
"or you will be as tall as my mamma is in a week or two,--much too big
for me to play with."