earth, there sprang up pretty little scarlet flowers, and whenever
she passed and saw them she remembered how she had been punished for
disobeying her master, and made up her mind never to do so again.
[Illustration: THE END]
[Illustration: THE GIPSY’S CUP]
IN a little village there lived a young potter, who made his living by
making all sorts of earthenware. He took the clay, and made it into
shapes on the wheel, and then baked his cups and jars in a kiln. He
made big jugs and little jugs, and basins and cups and saucers, and
indeed every sort of pot or jar that could be wanted. He was very
fond of his work, and was always thinking of how to make new shapes,
or colour his jars with pretty colours. It was a very tiny village
he lived in, and he worked at throwing his pots on his wheel by the
road-side, but people came from many other villages and towns to buy
his ware. Once a year there was a big fair, held in the town near, and
just before it, the potter was always very busy making new pots and
jugs to sell there. A few nights before the fair was to be held, he was
hard at work, trying to finish a number of little bowls, so he sat at
his wheel late in the evening after the sun was set. All day long the
road had been gay with folk coming to the fair, some were in carts,
and some were on foot, and there were a number of gipsies in caravans,
bringing all sorts of goods to sell. Most of them went through the
village and on to a big common a little further on, where they got out
of their carts and put up tents, to sleep in while the fair went on.
The potter was so busy with his little basins on his turning wheel
that he did not hear the sound of footsteps, and when he looked up, he
was surprised to see a young gipsy girl standing near, watching him.
She was quite young, and had big black eyes, and rosy round cheeks,
and her black hair was twisted up in little red beads and chains. She
was dressed in some very gay stuff, and round her neck was a gold
necklace, and on her fingers and arms were rings and bracelets.
“That should be a fine cup,” said the girl, “since you keep your eyes
on it and can look at nothing else.”
“I keep my eyes for my work, that I may do it well,” said the potter,
“for I live by my work, and neither by stealing nor begging.”
“But I fancy many others can do your work as well, or better than you,”
answered the gipsy. “What can your cups do when they are finished? I
don’t hear you say anything to them, so I should think they would be
stupid cups—only fit to drink out of.”
“And what else should they be for?” asked the potter angrily. “What do
you mean by saying that you don’t hear me saying anything to my cups?
I don’t think you know what you are talking about. It is nonsense, and
you are talking nonsense.”
“My grandfather used to make pots on a wheel,” said the gipsy, and she
laughed low, and showed her white teeth in the moonlight; “ah! but he
knew how to do them, and he had charms to say to them when he threw
them. And one of his cups would make you wise if you drank out of it,
and another would give you your true love’s heart if she drank from it,
and another would make you forget everything—yes, even your true love,
and all your mirth and all your sorrow, and I think that was the best
cup of all;” and again the gipsy laughed in the moonlight, and sang a
little song to herself as she sat herself down before the potter.
“Now this is real child’s talk,” said the potter very impatiently.
“’Tis easy to say your grandfather knew how to do all this, but why
should I believe you? and because your grandfather may have been able
to throw a bowl upon the wheel, that doesn’t make you know anything
about the craft, or how it is done.”
“Nay, but he taught me too,” said the gipsy. “Give me a piece of your
clay, and let me come to your wheel and you shall see.”
At first the potter thought she was talking nonsense, but to his great
surprise she took hold of the clay in her little brown hands, and
moulded and modelled it with the greatest skill. Then she placed it on
the wheel and threw a little jug, and he wondered to see how deft she
was.
“Now I will make you a little bowl,” she said, and then she made jugs
and pots and jars, far more quickly and skilfully than the potter could
have done. “And now I will colour them too,” she cried. “See, I shall
catch the colour from the moon, and to-morrow you can put them into
your kiln and bake them, and you may be sure that you have never had
such pots there before.” Then she put her little brown hands out into
the moonlight, and they were covered with rings which glittered and
shone, but as she held up her palms to the moon’s rays, it seemed to
the potter as if they too were full of some strange glittering liquid.
“And now,” she said, “see, I will put it on to your pots, and I should
think I had taught you that I know more about your trade than you do
yourself.” And she took the pots in her hands and rubbed her palms over
them, and she traced patterns on them with her fingers.
The potter looked at her and felt almost angry, but she only laughed in
his face.
“And now one last thing,” she cried, “and that is, that I will make
you a cup that has a spell in it, and it shall be a present for you
to remember me by. It will be very plain, and there will be no gay
colours in it, but when you give it to your true love to drink from,
if once you have drunk from it yourself, you will have all her heart,
but beware that she doesn’t take a second draught. For though the first
draught that she drinks will be drunk to love, the second draught will
be drunk to hate, and though she have loved you more than all else on
earth, all her love will turn to hate when she drinks again. And as you
are so ignorant how to make bowls and cups, you will not know how to
fashion one so as to win back her love again.”
The potter stared in silence, while the gipsy took another bit of
clay and placed it upon the wheel, and then she bent her head, which
glittered with beads and coins, low over it, and placing her rosy lips
close to the mouth of the cup, sang some words into it, while she
moulded it with her hands, and turned the wheel with her foot. It was
in some strange language that the potter had never heard before.
“Good-bye,” she said presently. “Now, there, that is for you, and be
sure you do not sell the little brown cup, but keep it and give it to
your true love to drink out of; but only one draught, for if there
are two maybe you will need the gipsy’s help again.” Then she laughed,
and nodding her head over her shoulder, tripped lightly away in the
moonlight while the potter stared after her.
At first he thought he had been asleep, but there around him stood the
little rows of jugs and pots which the gipsy had made, and truly they
were beautifully done. He took them up, and turned them over in his
hand, and wondered at their shape and workmanship.
“To-morrow,” he said, “I will put them into the kiln, and see how they
come out. She certainly was a clever wench, and knew her work; but as
for her talk about having coloured them, that was all nonsense, and as
for breathing spells and charms into the cups, why it is like baby’s
talk.”
But next day when the pots were baked, the potter was even more
surprised, for they had the most wonderful colours that he had ever
seen: silver, blue, grey and yellow, in all sorts of patterns, all save
the little brown cup, which was the last the gipsy had made. But when
he looked at it the potter felt a little uncomfortable, and began to
wonder if it really did contain the charm as she had declared.
When the fair began, the potter placed all the gipsy’s wares on a stall
with his own, and marked them with very high prices, but had he asked
three times as much he could have got it, for there were some rich folk
from the big houses who came to the fair, and they at once bought them
all up, declaring that such pots and jugs they had never seen. At this
the potter was well pleased, and found that he had made more money than
he had earned in many a long month past; but when people wanted him to
make them more like them, he was obliged to shake his head, and say,
“That he was very sorry, but he had had them coloured from afar, and he
did not know where he could now have them done.” Of the gipsy he saw
nothing more, though he looked for her everywhere during the three days
in which the fair lasted, but she was not to be seen, and when the fair
was over, and the other people were packing their carts and vans to go
on their way, he saw very many gipsies, and supposed that she had gone
with some of them, without giving him the chance of speaking to her
again.
Years went by, and the potter never heard anything more of the gipsy,
indeed he would have thought it had all been a dream if it had not been
for the little brown pot standing on the shelf. Sometimes he took it
up, and looked at it, and wondered when he saw how well and cleverly it
was made. He still laughed when he remembered what the gipsy had said
about leaving a charm in it, for though he himself had drunk out of it
many times, he never thought it had brought any spell on him.
One year when the fair was being held, the potter was at his place
as usual with his stall covered with pots, and there came and placed
herself beside him at the next stall a woman with some spinning-wheels.
Her stall was covered with fine linen cloths woven in pretty patterns,
and so fine and well wrought were they, that many people wanted
to buy them. With her were her two daughters, and one sat at the
spinning-wheel and spun the flax, and the other had a hand-loom and
wove it when it was spun to show the good folk how the cloths were
made. Both were pretty girls, but the girl who had the hand-loom had
the sweetest face the potter had ever seen. Her eyes were very blue,
and her hair was like golden corn, and when she smiled, it was as if
the sun shone. The potter watched her as she sat weaving, and could
not keep his eyes from her or attend properly to his own pots, or to
the people who wanted to buy them. Every day he watched the young girl
at her work, for the fair lasted for a week, and the more he looked at
her the more he wanted to look, till at last he said to himself that
somehow or other he must get her for his wife; so when the fair was
done he begged her to marry him, and to remain with him, and he said he
would always work for her, and she should want for nothing. The mother
was a poor widow, and she and her daughters made their bread by going
about the country spinning and weaving, and she would have been quite
willing that the potter should marry her daughter, but the girl only
laughed, and said that she scarcely knew the potter, but when she came
back again the next year to the fair, she would give him his answer. So
the widow and her two daughters went away, and no sign of them was left
with the potter, save a lock of golden hair, which he had begged from
the daughter.
The year passed away, but to the potter it seemed the longest year he
had ever lived. He pined for the time to come when the fair should
be held, and the widow and her daughters should return. As the time
drew near he got down the brown cup, and looked at it again and again.
“Nay,” he said, “what harm could it do? the gipsy said it would give me
my true love’s heart if she drank out of it after I had drunk, and I
have drunk out of it many a time. I don’t believe it, but all the same
it would be no harm for her to drink from it.”
And so when the fair was opened, he took the brown cup down with him,
and stood it upon the stall with his other ware. The spinning woman and
her two daughters came back with their fine cloths, and their wheel
and their loom, and when he saw the golden-haired girl, he loved her
still more than before, for he thought her eyes were bluer and her
smile was brighter. He watched her all the time as she sat weaving, but
said nothing, but when the fair was over, and they were packing their
goods to go on their way, he pressed the maid for her answer. Still
she hesitated, and then the potter took the little brown cup off his
stall, and poured into it some choice wine, and said to her,
“If then you wish to go away, and never see me again, I pray you drink
one draught, in remembrance of the happy days we have had together.”
The young girl took the cup, but no sooner had she tasted it than she
put it down and turned her eyes on the potter, and said in a low voice,
“I will stay with you always, if you want me, and will be a true wife
to you, and love you better than anything on earth.”
So the potter married her, and she went to live in his little cottage.
Time passed, and the potter and his young wife lived together very
happily, and every day he thought her fairer and sweeter. And they had
a little baby girl with blue eyes like its mother’s, and the potter
thought himself the happiest man on earth, and the little brown pot
stood on the shelf, and the potter looked at it, and still he would not
believe about the charm, for he said to himself, “My wife loved me for
my own sake, and not for any silly charm or nonsense.”
[Illustration: “I pray you drink one draught, in remembrance of the
happy days we have had together.”]
So for a time all things went well, but there came a day when the
potter had to go to a neighbouring town and leave his wife at home
alone all day. When he was gone she sat by the window with her little
child, and presently there came up outside a dark, rough-looking man,
with a wicked face, and he looked at her as she sat rocking the cradle,
and thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen on earth.
When he looked at her the potter’s wife was frightened, but when he
told her he was very hungry, and begged her for food and drink, she
rose, for her heart was tender, and she fetched him bread and meat, and
spread them on the table before him. So the rough man came into the
cottage and sat at the table, and ate the potter’s bread and meat, and
drank his wine. “And who is your husband, and where is he?” he said. “I
am sure he is a lucky man to have such a wife and such a home.”
“Yes, truly,” said the potter’s wife. “We are very happy, and we love
each other dearly, and we really have nothing else to wish for.”
Then the gipsy man said, “But your dress is plain, and your rooms are
bare; now, were you the wife of some wealthy man, he would give you
pearls and diamonds for your neck, and beautiful silks and satins.”
“No, but I don’t want them,” said the potter’s wife smiling. “My
husband works very hard, and he gives me all he can, and I am quite
content with it.”
“And you say he is a potter; then what sort of things does he make?”
asked the gipsy man as he cast his eyes about the room, and they lit
upon the little brown jug standing upon the shelf. “And did he make the
little bowl there?”
“I don’t know,” said his wife, and she took it down and turned it about
in her hand. “I suppose so, but he has told me it was very old.”
The gipsy man seized it eagerly, and poured wine in it, and looked
inside it, and then he laughed, and stooping his head over it, said a
few words, and then laughed again.
“I have seen cups like this before,” he said. “And they are worth a
mint of money, though you would not think it. And have you never drunk
out of it? Has it not been used?”
“I don’t drink from it,” said the potter’s wife, “but I believe I did
so once, and that was on the day when I promised my husband I would be
his wife.”
Then the gipsy laughed again and again. “See,” he said, “I am going a
long way off, perhaps to die by cold and hunger by the road-side, while
you and your husband are cosy and warm. You set small store by this
cup, but it may be that in foreign countries I could sell it for what
would keep me for many a long day. Give it to me, I pray you, that I
may take it with me.”
The potter’s wife hesitated and trembled. She was afraid of the man,
and she thought he had a hard, bad face, but she did not want to seem
unkind.
“Well, take it,” she said; “but why should you want it?”
Then the gipsy man came and caught her by the arm. “Now,” he said,
“you are the fairest woman I have ever seen, and I am going away, and
shall never see you again. So I beg you wish me God-speed, and drink my
health out of the little brown cup you have given me. And if your lips
have touched it, it will be the dearest thing I have on earth!”
Then the potter’s wife was still more frightened, and trembled more
than before. But the man looked so dark and threatening, that she did
not like to refuse him, and she took the cup in her hand,
“And then you will go on your way,” she said.
“And then I shall go on my way,” cried the gipsy. “And you will wait
here till your husband comes, whom you love more than anything else on
this earth.”
Then the potter’s wife bent her head and tasted the wine out of the
cup, and wished the gipsy happiness. And when she had done so he
laughed again, long and low, till her heart sank with fear, and he
picked up the cup and put it into his bundle, and went his way. Then
the potter’s wife sat down by the cradle, and almost cried, she knew
not why, and the whole room seemed cold, and when she looked out at the
sunshine it looked dark, and she bent over the baby in the cradle with
her tears falling.
“Alack!” she cried, “why doesn’t my husband come home? Where is he
gone? How cruel it is to leave me all alone here, so that any rough
man may come into the house. In truth I don’t think he can love me
much, since all he thinks of is to go away and leave me; and as for me,
surely I could have had many a better husband, and one who should have
loved me more. How foolish I was to marry him.”
Thus she sat and lamented all day, and in the evening, when the potter
drove up to his door and cried out “Wife, wife,” she wouldn’t go out
to receive him. And when he came in to their little sitting-room, he
found her with tears in her eyes, sitting lamenting and complaining.
When he went up to her to take her in his arms and kiss her, she turned
away from him and would not let him touch her, and the potter, who had
never seen his wife cross or angry, knew that there must be something
wrong. She must be ill, he thought; to-morrow or the next day she will
be well again. So he urged her to rest well, and took no notice of her
angry words; but the next day, and the next, there was no change, and
things were growing from bad to worse. For now the wife wouldn’t speak
to him at all, and when she came nigh him she looked at him with anger,
and would not even suffer him to touch the hem of her dress. Then the
potter began to think of the little brown cup, and he looked up at the
shelf and saw that it was not there, and he began to feel very much
alarmed.
“Why,” he said, “what has become of my little old brown cup that used
to stand up on the shelf?”
“I gave it to a gipsy man,” she answered scornfully. “He seemed to like
it, and I didn’t see that I was obliged to keep all the rubbish that
you had in the house.”
Then the potter groaned within himself and said,
“But did you just take it off the shelf and give it to him, and did he
ask you for it? Why did he want it?”
“Of course he asked for it,” said the wife very angrily, “and I just
gave it him when I had drunk his health out of it, as he wished me to.”
Then the potter was stricken with deadly fear, and remembered the words
of the gipsy. “The first draught she will drink to your love, and the
second draught she will drink to your hate,” and he knew in his heart
that the words were true, and that the cup carried with it a charm.
[Illustration]
He sat and thought and thought, and waited many days, hoping that his
wife would change, and love him as before, but she remained cold and
hard. Then the potter packed a wallet full of clothes, and put some
money in his pocket, and he went to his wife and said, “Wife, there is
a man somewhere who has done me a great wrong, and perhaps he did it
unwittingly. I am going out to find him, and to make him right it, and
though you do not love me, you will bide here quietly with your baby
till I come back. And I do not know if that will be in months or in
years.” Then the potter’s wife fell a-crying.
“I do not love you, nay, I hate you, and shall be glad when you have
gone, but perhaps it may be because I am a wicked woman; and I do not
know what has come over me, that now I want to fly away from you, when
I used to think that I had the best husband on all this earth.” The
potter sighed bitterly, but he kissed her cheeks, which felt as cold as
ice, and then he said good-bye to his baby, and started on his way with
the tears filling his eyes.
When the potter had gone the wife cried sorely, but still she was glad
that she had not to see him, and for some time she lived with her baby
happily enough. She kept the house, and mended and swept and cleaned as
before, and thought little of the potter or where he had gone; but by
and by all her money began to be spent, and she knew that unless the
potter returned she would soon be very poor, and the winter was coming
on, and she feared cold and hunger for her little one. So she went into
a garret where she kept her old weaving loom, and she brought it out,
and she bought flax, and sat down to weave just as she used to, when
she went round the country with her sister who spun the flax. And she
found that she could still weave her cloths very skilfully, and she
began to sell them to the passers by, and in this way she earned her
bread.
The winter set in very cold and hard, and the potter’s wife felt very
sad. “But perhaps,” she said, “it is thinking of the poor things
who are starving around with no homes,” for she never thought of
her husband at all. And the flax began to be very dear, and she had
difficulty in buying it. “Instead of doing all these cheap clothes,”
she said, “it would be better to get very fine flax, and do a very very
fine cloth; it will be the finest cloth I have ever woven, and I will
sell it to some very rich lady.” So she bought the finest flax that
money could bring her, and when she had woven a little bit of it, she
sat and looked at it in her room, and she saw a tress of her own golden
hair lying upon it, and she thought how beautiful it looked. Then she
said—
“There is no one now who loves me or my hair, so I will weave it into
a cloth with this very fine flax, and I must sell it for a very large
sum of money, or else I shall have nothing left to go on with.” But
she couldn’t think of any pattern in which the hair looked well with
the fine linen flax, till at last she hit on one in which there was a
cup with a heart on the top of it. The cup she made of the gold hair,
and the heart also. She worked at it for many long days, and when she
had finished it she looked at it, and was very much pleased, and said
indeed it was the most beautiful cloth she had ever made; and now she
must make haste and take it in to the town and sell it for a great deal
of money, or she and her child would begin to do badly for food and
fire.
The snow was lying heavily upon the ground, as the potter’s wife stood
by the window looking at her cloth, when there crawled up outside the
window a poor gipsy woman leading a little boy by the hand. She had
big black eyes and a brown face, but her cheeks were so thin that the
colour scarcely showed in them, and the potter himself would have had
much ado to recognize her as the gipsy girl who made the cup years
before; and her clothes all hung upon her in rags, and her little boy
was crying bitterly with the cold. She knocked against the window with
her poor thin hands. “Take me in,” she cried, “and have pity on me,
for I can go no further.” Then the potter’s wife opened the door, and
the gipsy woman entered the room with her little boy by her side, and
crouched by the fire.
“Where is the potter who lived here?” said the gipsy. “It is long years
ago since I saw him, and now I have come back to pray that he would
give me food, for I am starving.”
“No,” said the wife, “I know not where he is, for he is my husband, and
he has left me, and right glad of it am I; but if you will stay here I
will give you food and drink and attend to you, for, poor woman, you
seem to me to be very ill; so stay here and I will attend to you till
you are well enough to go your way.”
“There is only one way that I shall ever go,” said the gipsy, and she
looked into the fire with her big black eyes, “and that is the road
which leads to the churchyard. But if he was your husband, why do you
say that you are glad he is away? Is he not kind to you?”
“He was very kind to me,” said the potter’s wife, “he gave me
everything I wanted, and money and to spare, but for all that I could
not love him, and I am glad he has gone, and left me alone with my baby
girl.”
“You are a foolish woman,” said the gipsy. “If you had a husband who
loved you and worked for you well, you should have loved him and
cherished him. My husband beat me, and was cruel to me, and stole all I
had. And now that I am dying, he has deserted me to die as I may.”