THE ENCHANTED COW
For some reason, not altogether clear, there was no comment for a time
after the Farmer had finished his account of the affair of Jason and the
girl and the Southdown sheep. Perhaps it was because of the
grotesqueness of the idea that a man working so faithfully for and so
dreaming of his love--a practical man--could have left absolute
possession of her to the unreal, while making his hobby at hand the
real. The silence was broken by the Young Lady:
"That is very strange life history, it seems to me. How could any man, a
real man, forget the girl he cared for in such a way? It seems all
wicked and unnatural."
"But, my dear young lady," explained the Professor, banteringly
ponderous, "he did not forget her. In fact, from the account he appears
to have been a most devoted lover. What he forgot was time. Besides," he
continued, "taking the broader point of view, how much better it is for
all of us that, in one region at least, we have better mutton than that
Jason should have raised a family!"
"Bother the mutton!" was the indignant and somewhat irreverent answer,
and then the Colonel intervened:
"My dear Miss," he explained ingratiatingly, "I am confident that it is
neither the Professor's lack of heart nor sympathy nor gallantry that
has spoken, but, instead, his superior and appreciative judgment in the
matter of mutton. It may be that he is braver than some of us. However,
it doesn't matter, because your sensibilities are going to be soothed
and fed on caramels just now. I am most confident of that, since I am
about to commandeer the Poet. Mr. Poet, there is no alternative."
There is something anomalous about the successful modern poets. They are
usually disguised as citizens. They do not have shaven faces and long
hair and another world expression upon their countenances. Sometimes
they have even a stubby mustache and a bad look. This particular poet
chanced to be good-looking, but that proves nothing. He responded easily
enough:
"Vocalism is difficult to me. I'd rather write this out. I can tell you
a story, though, of the region where, it is said, were sowed the
Dragon's Teeth from which sprang the men who later owned the Eastern
Hemisphere. The story of the Enchanted Cow has the merit that it is
true."
THE ENCHANTED COW
It is odd how often when from some legendary source a fairy story comes,
we find fact mixed with the fancy. This tale, for instance, might just
as well be called "Single Hoof and Double Hoof" or the "Wild Ride for
Caviare," as to be named "The Enchanted Cow." Certainly every one should
know about caviare, and why some beasts have split hoofs and some round,
unyielding ones, but that enchantment should have anything to do with it
is curious.
Into the Danube far southwest of Buda-Pesth once ran a deep, still
stream which babbled when it began in the hills, became more quiet as it
reached the plain, and was almost sluggish when it entered the Black
Tarn, as the broad sheet of water was called, though it was in fact a
lake surrounded by sedgy marshes. The stream after feeding and passing
through the Black Tarn became a deep river, and broadened as it poured
itself into the Danube, the father of waters of all the region. To the
north of the Black Tarn was the Moated Grange where lived the Lady
Floretta Beamish, that is the lady whose name would have been that if
translated into English, for the country in which she lived was Hungary.
The streams which would, in English, have been called Ken Water after
flowing through the Black Tarn as told, went on through the estate of
Sir Gladys Rhinestone. It is true that Gladys is usually accepted as the
name of a gentlewoman, but this time it belonged to a gentleman, and one
of high degree. He explained his name himself by frankly confessing that
he had been named after his mother.
In the days referred to people of the class of the Lady Floretta Beamish
and Sir Gladys Rhinestone were generally under the immediate sovereignty
of a prince, and the prince in their case was scarce a model. The one to
whom all of that part of Hungary owed allegiance was Prince Rugbauer,
and he was hardly of a type to be called gentle or considerate. In fact
none of the people of the lands about were accustomed to pronounce the
name of Prince Rugbauer above a whisper. Whenever it became necessary to
allude to the prince, the inhabitants of the country were used to make
the motion, hand on throat, of strangling. This was a direct allusion
to the prince's system of taxation, and was understood by the humblest
knave in the whole valley of Ken Water. Even the prince knew the meaning
of this gesture, though when first told of it he but laughed grimly and
no one ever spoke to him again about it. It was the witch of Zombor who
told the prince. Anything malicious might be expected from her.
It was because of the witch that the cow was in trouble. The witch had
enchanted the cow for a thousand years, and the seven hundredth year was
passing when this tale begins. It may be said straightforwardly of the
witch, that she was one of the worst of a disagreeable class of beings
now, happily, becoming rare. She lived in a sort of hutch, a round
mud-walled den on a hill which would be called Endbury Moon in English,
and throughout the day she lay curled up in this den like a snail in its
shell, but at night she came out regularly to work such mischief as she
might in the country round about. Wherever she found there was no
trouble she proceeded at once to brew some. There was no end to her
pernicious activity.
The Lady Floretta Beamish was an orphan and sole mistress of the
two-towered Grange and all the lands and waters a mile either up and
down the deep Ken Water. But the land was far from rich, and the
revenues of the lady came mostly from the sturgeon in the river which
were caught each year in the same manner as in the Danube itself. The
Lady Floretta was a very beautiful creature. Her hair was of a pale
golden hue, and her eyes were blue. Her cheeks were like June roses. She
was tall and fair, and walked around the walled Grange in a long white
satin robe embroidered with gold, and down her back rippled the golden
hair, even to the hem of her trailing gown.
It required the services of seven maidens and seven hours daily to comb
and brush the Lady Floretta's hair, but they did not mind it. The seven
maids had nothing else to do, so they combed and they combed, and they
brushed and they smoothed the pale golden treasure of their mistress'
hair, fastening each shining braid of it at last to the hem of her
trailing gown, with pins sparkling with diamonds, moonstones, rubies and
emeralds. Why the Lady Floretta did not dispose of some of these jewels
when the strait came, which will be told of, it is not easy to
understand. It may be they were all heirlooms and so not to be parted
with.
A year of trial came at last for both the Lady Floretta and Sir Gladys
Rhinestone. No fish were caught and that was a disaster which affected
everything. The fish were the fortune of the country, for from the eggs
of the great sturgeon was made the caviare, without which no true-born
noble of the realm could make a tolerable meal. The caviare was shipped
away to all parts of the civilized world as it is now, and it will be
seen that to have the stream fail of fish was a calamity of first
magnitude.
It was a wonderful thing to see the manner of fishing in those days, and
they fish in the same way upon the Danube now. They cut a great gap
through the ice in the winter, the gap extending across the stream, and
in it they set monster nets. Then, miles above the nets, a band of
horsemen ranged themselves straight across the river on the ice, which
would bear an army, and at a signal blast come thundering down at utmost
speed. The noise was terrific. "Ohe! ohe! a hun! a hun!" yelled the wild
horsemen, there was a blare of trumpets and the strong ice trembled
beneath the impact of the mighty hoofs. The timid sturgeon fled beneath
the ice before the pursuing shock, and at last rushed blindly into the
awaiting nets, to be taken by thousands and tens of thousands. But from
Ken Water, though the horsemen rode as in the past, no fish were found.
The stewards explained that the stream had run very low, and that the
fish had gone either to the Danube or the depths of the Black Tarn. The
case was very bad. Prince Rugbauer announced that Sir Gladys and Lady
Floretta were false traitors both, and announced as well that he would
cancel their ownership of their lands and castles, and hold them no
better than common folk themselves unless the heavy annual taxes were
paid within a week.
And so it came to pass one night that from his castle Sir Gladys paced
with bowed head along Ken Water, around the Black Tarn toward the
witch's hut on Endbury Moor, and at the same time, the moon over her
right shoulder, came to the desolate hill-top Lady Floretta, each bent
on consulting the Witch as to what should be done about the fish that
had left Ken Water.
The Witch, seated on top of her hut, gave what is called in old stories,
an eldritch laugh when she saw Sir Gladys advancing on one side of the
Moor, and Lady Floretta, more slowly climbing up the other.
When the Lady Floretta heard the strange laugh of the Witch, she was
startled and alarmed and stood still for the space of a full half-hour,
while her seven maidens coaxed her to go on, and so Sir Gladys, who was
less affected by the eldritch laugh than she and who, moreover, was
alone, arrived first at the Witch's haunt and secured audience at once.
He gave the Witch a gold-plated candlestick and two sugar spoons of
silver, then explained his woeful plight, and asked advice and counsel.
The Witch clutched the articles eagerly in her claw-hands, climbed down
from the little hut, and standing in her low door croaked out:
"By the light of yonder moon,
Look and see your fortune soon!"
She thrust the candlestick and sugar spoons into a bag at her girdle,
and, curling up within her hut, fell fast asleep without ceremony,
leaving Sir Gladys peering doubtfully in at the door which she had left
open. What she had said was certainly vague and unsatisfactory and he
felt that he had been imposed upon. He tried in vain to arouse the
creature and tiring at last of shouting into the hut at a figure
apparently of stone, he turned away but to meet, fair and full, the
beautiful Lady Floretta Beamish attended by the seven maidens carrying
seven lighted horn lanterns, and followed by a gentle snow-white cow
with golden horns and hoofs.
Sir Gladys swept the heather with his plumed hat, as he bowed before the
Lady Floretta.
"Madam," he said, with deep respect, "upon what quest do you come upon
this lonely moor by the uncertain light of the moon feebly aided by the
seven lanterns carried by your maidens?"
The Lady Floretta could not speak. Her embarrassment and confusion were
such that she could scarcely stand even when supported by her maidens.
She looked around for a chair.
Sir Gladys took from his shoulders his cloak of purple velvet, and
spread it at the lady's feet. "Rest," he said, "rest, and recover your
strength, fair and honored Lady! I will await your pleasure, meanwhile
examining the unusual specimen of the animal kingdom which I see
following your gracious footsteps."
He took a step or two toward the Enchanted Cow--for it was she--but she
shook her golden horns, and he remained standing near the Lady Floretta,
who sat down, affably and quite comfortably, upon the cloak of purple.
"Hark to the thunder!" said the Lady Floretta. "It is going to rain!"
and she began to chide the maids for not bringing umbrellas. Each it is
true had a small parasol to ward off moon-stroke, but there was not one
umbrella worthy of the name among them all.
"It is not thunder that you hear, sweet lady," said Sir Gladys. "'Tis
but the stertorous and unseemly breathing of the foul Witch in the den."
"Oh, is she asleep? And no one dares awaken her!" sighed the Lady
Floretta. "I have walked a weary distance to consult her," she
explained, as she became convinced that the sounds she had heard indeed
came from the Witch's hut.
Sir Gladys came nearer, the seven maidens drew nearer, the Enchanted Cow
herself walked closer to Lady Floretta, as she sat upon the cloak spread
upon the heather, and there in the summer night the Lady Floretta and
Sir Gladys exchanged confidences and condolences about their sore
strait, and often made the dread gesture as they talked, for neither
thought best to name the Prince Rugbauer and both were too well-bred to
whisper in company.
The seven maidens sitting there on the heather, fell asleep, each
nodding over her horn lantern. The Enchanted Cow, however was wide
awake, and, from her expression, appeared to sympathize deeply with the
two distressed mortals whose troubles were so freely poured forth in her
presence. They spoke of the disastrous happening of the winter, and of
the probable hopelessness of an attempt to retrieve their fortunes at
this time of the year.
"The outlook is black indeed," remarked Sir Gladys, and the Lady
Floretta agreed with him dejectedly.
"It is the Split Hoof that you need," said a soft deep voice; and the
two turning their heads saw the Enchanted Cow looking upon them
earnestly. It was she who had spoken.
Sir Gladys and Lady Floretta were dumb with astonishment. After a brief
silence, the Enchanted Cow continued: "Last winter when you rode
furiously upon the frozen stream the thunder of your horses' hoofs
scared no fish into your nets, and when spring came the water was as low
as it had been the summer before and is still shallow. But I know where
the fish are hidden and that they have not spawned. I stand, during the
heat of these summer days, knee deep in the water in the shallows of the
Black Tarn, and I see what I see."
"Dear Enchanted Cow," said the Lady Floretta, "please tell us what you
see!"
"This one night in the year," resumed the Enchanted Cow, without
appearing to notice what the Lady Floretta has said, "this one night in
the year, and the only one night in the year, yonder crafty Witch must
sleep. She cannot awaken until midnight and this is the one night in the
year that the Witch's spell is lifted from me, and I am given the power
of speech until the clock strikes twelve."
"Oh! however can you stand it to be dumb so much of the time?" exclaimed
the pitying Lady Floretta.
The Enchanted Cow looked at the Lady in surprise, for it is a great and
beneficent thing to a cow to be allowed to speak at all.
"It is getting late," said Sir Gladys, looking at his watch by the light
of one of the lanterns, and then, addressing the White Cow: "You were
making an interesting observation concerning fish in the Black Tarn, if
I mistake not."
"The Black Tarn is full of the great fish," the Enchanted Cow declared.
"They have taken refuge there, Ken Water being so low. You have but to
stretch your nets, draw them, and reap your harvest."
"But, my dear madam," urged Sir Gladys, "the Black Tarn is surrounded by
fens and marshes. Our horses were mired in trying to take out boats and
nets this spring, when the ice first broke and we thought to fish in the
Black Tarn, at a venture."
"As I remarked at the beginning of this conversation," said the White
Cow, somewhat testily, "it is the split hoof that you need--"
Just then the distant Church clocks of the Saag could be heard, all
striking the hour of twelve.
The White Cow turned at once and walked in the direction of the Black
Tarn, and Sir Gladys, the Lady Floretta and the seven maidens, now fully
awake, followed, the more speedily because of a screech from the Witch,
as she burst from the door, her inevitable yearly nap at an end.
But no word could be heard from the Enchanted Cow. She looked meaningly
at Sir Gladys, though, and that gallant gentleman seemed plunged in
thought as the little party of wanderers left the white figure standing
on the edge of the swampy ground which surrounded the Black Tarn. Sir
Gladys escorted the Lady Floretta home, and what the two said to each
other as they hurried over the moor toward the Moated Grange is what no
one need consider. They were companions in misfortune, and so drawn
closely. Having bowed to the ground at the Great Gate, and having seen
it close on the disappearing forms of the lady and her seven maidens,
Sir Gladys hied him home, with quickened step. All the while he was
thinking deeply. He had been from boyhood a student of natural history.
[Illustration: "SIR GLADYS ESCORTED THE LADY FLORETTA HOME"]
Away back in the past so dim and distant that only the most learned can
talk of it intelligently, away in the time after the earth had risen
from the warm waters and when the great reptiles had given place to
animals, something like those which exist to-day, the hoofs of all the
quadrupeds were split. The land was low and marshy then, and the split
hoof best supported its owner on the yielding surface. As the earth
protruded more and more, and dry and sometimes rocky land uprose, such
beasts as frequented the hills found that their hoofs were changing
slowly with the centuries. Hard and round the hoofs became as was best
for the hill dwellers, but the beasts of the shores and lowlands
retained the split hoof and still can tread the morass. This the
Enchanted Cow knew. This, Sir Gladys Rhinestone, who had studied natural
history, knew as well.
It was four in the morning by the great clock of the Castle when Sir
Gladys stood in the center of the stone-paved courtyard and wound his
horn. At the sound every man in the Castle and its surrounding
buildings, and on the farms about, became astir, and soon Sir Gladys had
his trusty henchmen a dozen deep about him. His words of command sent
them scattering in all directions, and sunrise beheld a sturdy band,
headed by Sir Gladys, leaving the Castle Gate and turned in the
direction of the Black Tarn. With the men marched fifty of the great red
oxen of Rhinestone, and upon their mighty shoulders they bore the heavy
nets and boats of the once lucky fisherman of Ken Water.
Sir Gladys had taken the White Cow's hint, and set the split hoof to do
what the whole hoof could not accomplish.
A messenger was sent to the Moated Grange requesting the Lady Floretta
to visit the shore of the Black Tarn, and thither the procession moved
and soon the Tarn was reached. Then followed a scene of which the story
was told for years, for it was something worth the seeing. The great
tractable oxen, encouraged doubtless by the Enchanted Cow who stood
knee-deep in the oozy margin awaiting them, bore out bravely into the
black waters through reeds and sedge and yielding mud and made a mighty
splashing toward the center of the lake where in a semicircle were
gathered the fishermen with their boats and nets. The waters near the
shore were churned into a foam, and the watchers looking outward could
see the long wakes of the frightened sturgeon as they fled to certain
capture.
And the nets were filled to the overflowing; so heavy were they that the
great oxen could scarcely draw them to firm land. So the great work was
accomplished, the Lady Floretta and her maidens coming in time to see it
all. There were fish enough to furnish caviare enough it would seem for
half the world.
It was well that their two estates joined, for while during the fishing,
the Lady Floretta and Sir Gladys had been sitting on the strand of the
Black Tarn--Sir Gladys' cloak around the Lady, for the day grew
chill--they had declared each to the other their determination to join
their lives and their fortunes together from that hour, and so it came
to pass that, by the time the fish eggs were turned into caviare and
sold and the money was in hand to pay Prince Rugbauer's taxes, Sir
Gladys Rhinestone had made the Lady Floretta Beamish his bride, and
what was good or ill fortune for one was the same for the other.
And this is also told, that, as for the Enchanted Cow, ever afterward
she wandered at will on the moors in summer, and was well cared for at
the castle or the Moated Grange in winter. And ever on the night of the
Witch's sleep, the cow was visited in state by fair Sir Gladys and Lady
Floretta, for nothing is more excellent than gratitude.