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Title: The luck of the bean-rows
Author: Charles Nodier
Illustrator: Claud Lovat Fraser
Release date: December 5, 2023 [eBook #72332]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Daniel O'Connor, 1921
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Tim Lindell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LUCK OF THE BEAN-ROWS ***
THE LUCK OF THE BEAN-ROWS
A FAIRY TALE TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF
CHARLES NODIER
_Illustrated by_
CLAUD LOVAT FRASER
[Illustration: [Boy]]
LONDON
DANIEL O’CONNOR
90 GREAT RUSSELL ST., W.C.
[Illustration: [Princess]]
[Illustration: [House]]
[Illustration: [Elderly couple]]
Once upon a time
there was a man and his wife who were poor and very old. They had never
had any children, and this was a great trouble to them, for they foresaw
that in a few years more they would not be able to grow their beans and
take them to market.
One day while they were weeding in their field (that with a little cabin
was all they possessed—I wish _I_ owned as much!)—one day, I say, while
they were getting rid of the weeds the old woman spied in a corner,
where they grew thickest, a small bundle very carefully tied up; and
what should she find in it but a lovely boy, eight or ten months old to
look at, but quite two years in intelligence! He had been weaned; at all
events he needed no pressing to partake of boiled beans, which he raised
to his mouth very prettily.
[Illustration: [Woman and boy]]
On hearing his wife’s cries of surprise, the old man hurried from the
end of the field; and when he too had gazed at the beautiful child God
had given them these old people embraced each other with tears of joy,
and then returned quickly to their cabin lest the falling dew should
hurt their boy. When they were snug in the chimney corner it was a fresh
delight to them to see the little fellow reach out his hands to them,
laughing winsomely, and calling them _mamma_ and _pappa_, as though he
had known no other father or mother.
The old man took him on his knee and danced him gently up and down, in
“the way the ladies ride in the Park,” and said all sorts of droll
things to amuse him; and the child responded in his own prattling
fashion, for who would like to seem backward in such jolly talk?
[Illustration: [Man and boy]]
Meanwhile the old woman lit up the house with a fire of dry bean pods,
which gladdened the little body of the newcomer, and prepared an
excellent bean-pap which a spoonful of honey made delicious eating. Then
she laid him to sleep in his fine white night clothes in the best bed of
bean-chaff in the house; for these poor folk knew nothing of
feather-beds and eider-downs. When he was fast asleep, “There is one
thing that bothers me,” said the old man to his wife, “and that is what
we are to call this bonny boy, for we know neither his parents nor where
he comes from.”
[Illustration: [Bed]]
“We must call him,” said the old woman, for though she was but a simple
peasant she was quickwitted, “The Luck of the Bean-rows, for it was in
our bean field he came to us, the best of luck, to comfort us in our old
age.”
“There could not be a better name,” the old man agreed.
It would make the story too long to tell what happened in the days and
in all the years that followed; it is enough to know that the old people
kept getting older and older, while one could almost see Luck of the
Bean-rows putting on strength and good looks. Not that he was mighty of
his inches, for at twelve he was only two and a half feet, and when he
was at work in the bean field, of which he was very fond, you could
hardly have seen him from the road, but his small figure was so shapely,
and he was so winning in his looks and ways, so gentle, and yet so sure
of his words, and he appeared so gallant in his sky-blue smock, red belt
and gay Sunday bonnet with bean blossoms for feathers, that people
wondered at him and many believed that he was really an elf or a fairy.
Many things, I grant, encouraged this notion. First of all, the cabin
and the bean field—the bean field in which a few years ago a cow would
have found nothing to graze on—had become one of the fine estates of the
country-side; and not a soul could tell how it had happened. Well, to
see beanstalks sprouting, to see them flowering, to see the blossom
fading and the beans swelling ripe in the pods—there is nothing out of
the common in that, but to see a whole bean field expanding, spreading
out, with never a strip of land added, whether bought or knavishly taken
from a neighbour’s holding—that gets beyond understanding.
[Illustration: [Boy]]
And all the while the bean field went on growing and spreading. It
spread to the south wind, it spread to the north wind, it spread towards
the dawn, it spread towards the sunset. And the neighbours measured
their land to no purpose; they always found it full measure with a rod
or two to the good, so they naturally concluded that the whole country
was getting bigger. Then again the beans bore so heavily that the cabin
could never have contained the crop, had it not also grown larger. And
yet for more than five leagues round the bean-crop failed, so that beans
had become priceless because of the quantities sought for the tables of
lords and kings.
In the midst of this abundance the Luck of the Bean-rows saw to
everything himself, turning the soil, sorting the seed, cleansing the
plants, weeding, digging, hoeing, harvesting, shelling, and, over and
above, trimming hedges and mending wattle fences. What time was left he
spent bargaining with the market people, for he could read, write and
keep accounts, though he had had no schooling. He was indeed a very
blessing of a boy.
[Illustration: [Boy]]
One night, when the Luck was asleep, the old man said to his wife:
“There is Luck of the Bean-rows now, who has done so much to make us
comfortable that we can spend the few years that are left us in peace
and without labour. In making him heir to all we own we have given him
only what is already his; and we should be thankless indeed if we did
not try to secure him a more becoming position in life than that of a
bean-merchant. A pity he is too modest for a professor’s chair in the
universities, and he is just a trifle too short for a general.”
“It’s a pity,” said the old woman, “he hasn’t studied enough to pick up
the Latin names for five or six diseases. Eh, but they would be glad to
make him a doctor right off!”
“Then as to law-suits,” the old man went on, “I am afraid he has too
much brains and good sense to clear up one of them.”
“I have always had a fancy,” said the old woman, “that when he came of
age he would marry Pea-Blossom.”
“Pea-Blossom,” rejoined the old man, shaking his head, “is far too great
a princess to marry a poor foundling, worth no more than a cabin and a
bean field. Pea-Blossom, old dear, is a match for a squire or a justice
of the peace, or for the king himself, if he came to be a widower. We
are talking of a serious matter, do speak sense.”
“Luck of the Bean-rows has more sense than both of us together,” said
his wife after a moment’s thought. “Besides, it is his business, and it
would not be proper to press it further without asking his opinion.”
Whereupon the old couple turned over and went to sleep.
Day was just breaking when the Luck leaped out of bed to begin work in
the field as usual. Who but he was surprised to find his Sunday clothes
laid out on the chest where he had left his others at bedtime? “It is a
week-day, anyway,” he said to himself, “if the almanack hasn’t gone
wrong. Mother must be keeping some holiday of her own to have set out my
best things. Well, let it be as she wishes. I would not cross her in
anything at her great age, and after all it is easy to make up for an
hour or two by rising earlier or working later.”
So after a prayer to God for the health of his parents and the progress
of the beans, he dressed as handsomely as he could. He was about to go
out of doors if only to cast an eye at the fences before the old couple
awoke, when his mother appeared on the threshold with a bowl of good
steaming porridge, which she placed with a wooden spoon on his little
table.
“Eat it up, eat it up!” she said; “do not be sparing of this porridge
sweetened with honey and a pinch of green aniseed, just as you liked it
when you were a little fellow; for the road is before you, laddie, and
it is a long road you will travel to-day.”
“That is good to hear,” said Luck of the Bean-rows, looking at her in
surprise; “and where are you sending me?”
The old woman sat down on a stool, and with her two hands on her knees,
replied with a laugh: “Into the world, into the wide world, little Luck.
You have never seen anyone but ourselves, and a few poor market folk you
sell your beans to, to keep the house going, good lad. Now one day, one
day, you will be a big man if the price of beans keeps up, so it will be
well for you, dearie, to know some people in good society. I must tell
you there is a great city four or five miles away where at every step
one meets lords in cloth of gold and ladies in silver dresses with
trails of roses. Your bonnie little face, so pleasant and so lively,
will be sure to win them; and I shall be much mistaken if the day goes
by without your getting some distinguished appointment at court or in
the public offices, where you may earn much and do little. So eat it up
and do not spare the good porridge sweetened with honey and a pinch of
green aniseed.
[Illustration: [Ladies]]
“Now as you know more about the price of beans than about the value of
money,” the old woman went on, “you are to sell in the market these six
quart measures of choice beans. I have not put more lest you should be
overburdened. Besides, with beans as dear as they are now, you would be
hard set to bring home the price even if they paid you only in gold. So
we propose, father and I, that you should keep half of what you get to
enjoy yourself properly, as young people should, or in buying yourself
some pretty trinket to wear of a Sunday, such as a silver watch with
ruby and emerald seals, or an ivory cup and ball or a Nuremberg
humming-top. The rest of the money you can put in the bank.
[Illustration: [Gifts]]
“So away with you, my little Luck, since you have finished your
porridge; and be sure that you do not lose time chasing butterflies, for
we should die broken-hearted if you were not home before nightfall. And
keep to the roads for fear of the wolves.”
“I will do as you bid me, mother,” replied the Luck of the Bean-rows,
hugging the old woman, “though for my part I would sooner spend the day
in the field. As for wolves, they don’t trouble me with my
weeding-hook.”
So saying he slung his pronged hoe in his belt, and set out at a steady
pace.
“Come back early,” the old woman kept calling after him; she was already
feeling sorry that she had let him go.
Luck of the Bean-rows tramped on and on, taking huge strides like a
five-foot giant, and staring left and right at the strange things he saw
by the way. He had never dreamed that the world was so big and so full
of wonders.
When he had walked for an hour or more, as he reckoned by the height of
the sun, and was puzzled that he had not yet reached the great city at
the rate he was going, he thought he heard someone calling after him:
“Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, twee! Please do stop, Master Luck of the
Bean-rows.”
“Who is it calling me?” cried Luck of the Bean-rows, clapping his hand
on his pronged hoe.
“Please do stop at once. Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, twee! It is I who am
calling you.”
“Can it be possible?” asked Luck, raising his eyes to the top of an old
pine, hollow and half dead, on which a great owl was swaying in the
wind. “What is it we two can settle together, my bonnie bird?”
[Illustration: [Owl]]
“It would be indeed a wonder if you recognised me,” answered the owl,
“for you had no notion that I was ever helping you, as a modest and
honest owl should, by devouring at my own risk the swarms of rats which
nibbled away half your crops, good year and bad year. That is why your
field now brings you in what will buy you a pretty kingdom, if you know
when you have enough. As for me, who have paid dearly for my care of
others, I have not one wretched lean rat on the hooks of the larder
against daylight, for now at night, with my eyes grown so dim in your
service, I can scarcely see where I am going. So I called to you,
generous Luck of the Bean-rows, to beg of you one of those good quart
measures of beans hanging from your staff. It will keep me alive till my
oldest son comes of age, and on his loyalty to you you may reckon.”
“Why that, Master Owl,” cried Luck of the Bean-rows, taking one of his
own three quart measures from the end of his staff, “is a debt of
gratitude, and I am glad to repay it.”
The owl darted down on the measure, caught it in his claws and beak, and
with one flap of the wing carried it off to the tree-top.
“My word, but you are in a hurry to be off!” said the Luck. “May I ask,
Master Owl, if I am still far from the great town mother is sending me
to?”
“You are just going into it,” answered the owl, as he flitted off to
another tree.
Luck of the Bean-rows went on his way with a lighter staff; he felt sure
he must be near the end of his journey, but he had hardly gone a hundred
steps when he heard someone else calling:
“Behh, behh, bekky! Please stop, Master Luck of the Bean-rows!”
“I think I know that voice,” said the Luck, turning round. “Why, yes, of
course! It is that bare-faced rogue of a mountain she-goat, which prowls
around my field with her kids for a toothsome snack. So it is you, is
it, my lady raider?”
“What is that about raiding, fair Master Luck? I guess your hedges are
too thick, your ditches too deep, your fences too close for any raiding.
All one could do was to nip a few leaves that pushed through the chinks
of the wattles, and our pruning makes the stalks thrive. You know the
old saying:
_Sheeps’ teeth, loss and trouble,
Goats’ teeth pay back double.”_
“Say no more,” broke in Luck of the Bean-rows; “and may all the ill I
wished you fall upon my own head. But why did you stop me, and what can
I do to please you, Madame Doe?”
“Misery me!” she sobbed, dropping big tears, “Behh, behh, bekky! it was
to tell you that the wicked wolf had killed my husband, the buck; and
now my little orphan and I are in sore need, for he will forage for us
no more; and I fear my poor little kid will die of hunger if you cannot
help her. So I called to you, noble Master Luck of the Bean-rows, to beg
of pity one of those good quart measures of beans hanging from your
staff. It will keep us till we get help from our kinsfolk.”
“What you ask, Lady Doe,” said the Luck, taking one of his two measures
from his staff, “is an act of compassion and good will, and I am glad to
do it for you.”
[Illustration: [Goat]]
The goat caught up the measure in her lips, and one bound carried her
into the leafy thicket.
“My word, but you are in a hurry to be off!” cried Luck of the
Bean-rows. “May I ask you, dear lady, if I am still far from the great
town mother is sending me to?”
“You are there already,” answered the goat as she buried herself deep
among the bushes.
Once more the Luck went on his way, his staff the lighter by two quart
measures. He was looking out for the walls of the big town when he
noticed by a rustling along the skirt of the woods that someone was
following him closely. He turned quickly towards the sound, with his
pronged hoe gripped hard in his hand. Well for him that the prongs were
open, for the prowler that was tracking him was a grim old wolf whose
appearance promised no good.
[Illustration: [Wolf]]
“So it is you, evil beast!” cried Luck. “You hoped to give me the place
of honour at your evening spread! By good fortune my two iron teeth,”
and he glanced at his hoe, “are worth all yours together, though I would
not belittle _them_; so you may take it as settled, old crony, that you
are to sup this evening without me. Consider yourself in luck, too, if I
do not avenge the husband of the she-goat and the father of the kid who
have been brought into pitiful straits by your cruelty. Perhaps I ought
to, and it would only be justice, but I have been brought up with such a
horror of blood that I am loth to shed even a wolf’s.”
So far the wolf had listened in deep humility; now he suddenly broke
into a long and lamentable howl and turned up his eyes to heaven as if
calling on it to bear witness.
“Oh, power divine, who clothed me as a wolf,” he sobbed, “you know if
ever I felt wicked desires in my heart. However, my lord,” he added,
with a bow of resignation towards Luck of the Bean-rows, “it lies with
you to dispose of my wretched life. I place it at your mercy without
fear and without remorse. If you think it right to make my death atone
for the crimes of my race I shall die at your hands without repining;
for ever since I fondled you in your cradle with pure delight, when your
lady mother was not there, I have ever loved you dearly and truly
honoured you. Then you grew so handsome, so stately, that, only to look
at you, one might have guessed you would become a great and magnanimous
prince, as you have. Only I beg you to believe, before you condemn me, I
did not stain these claws in the blood of the doe’s luckless mate.
“I was brought up on principles of restraint and moderation; my fell is
sprinkled with grey, but through all the years I have never swerved from
them. At the time you mention I was abroad among my scattered
tribesfolk, proclaiming sound moral doctrines in the hope of leading
them by word and example to a frugal standard of living, that high aim
of wolfish character. I will go further, my lord; that mountain goat was
my good friend. I encouraged promising qualities in him; often we
travelled together, discoursing by the way, for he had a bright wit and
eagerness to learn. In my absence a sad quarrel for precedence (you know
how touchy these rock people are on this point) was the cause of his
death, which I have never got over.”
The wolf wept—from the very depth of his heart it seemed, as
inconsolable as the doe herself.
“For all that and all that,” said the Luck of the Bean-rows, who had
kept the prongs of his weeding-hook open, “you were stalking me.”
“Following you, following you, yes,” replied the wolf in wheedling
tones, “in the hope of interesting you in my benevolent purpose, but in
some more suitable place than this for conversation. Ah, I said to
myself, if my lord Luck of the Bean-rows, whose reputation is spread far
and wide, would but share in my scheme of reform, he would have to-day a
splendid opportunity. I warrant that one quart measure of those dainty
beans hanging from his staff would convert a tribe of wolves, wolflings
and cubs to a vegetable diet, and preserve countless generations of
bucks, does and kids.”
“It is the last of my measures,” thought the Luck to himself, “but what
do I want with cups and balls, rubies and humming-tops? And who would
put child’s play before something really useful?”
“There are your beans,” he said as he took the last measure his mother
had given him for his amusement. All the same he did not shut the prongs
of his hoe.
“It is all that was left of my own,” said he, “but I don’t regret it;
and I shall be grateful to you, friend wolf, if you put it to the good
use you have promised.” The wolf snapped his fangs on it and bounded
away to his den.
“My word,” said Luck of the Bean-rows, “you are in a hurry to be off!
May I ask, Master Wolf, if I am still far from the great town mother is
sending me to?”
“You have been there for long enough,” replied the wolf, laughing out of
the corner of his eyes; “and stay there a thousand years you will see
nothing new.”
[Illustration: [Boy]]
Yet once more Luck of the Bean-rows went on his way, and kept looking
about for the town walls, but never a glimpse of them was to be seen. He
was beginning to feel tired when he was startled by piercing cries which
came from a leafy by-path. He ran towards the sound.
“What is it?” he shouted, and gripped his weeding-hook. “Who is it
crying for help? Speak; I cannot see you.”
[Illustration: [Carriage]]
“It is I, it is Pea-Blossom,” replied a low, sweet voice. “Oh, do come
and get me out of this fix, Master Luck of the Bean-rows. It is easy as
wishing and will cost you nothing.”
“Believe me, madam,” said the Luck, “it is not my way to count the cost
when I can help. Whatever I have is yours to command, except these three
quart measures of beans on my staff; they are not mine, they belong to
father and mother. Mine I have just given away to a venerable owl, to a
saintly wolf, who is preaching like a hermit, and to the most charming
of mountain does. I have not a bean left that I can offer you.”
“You are laughing at me,” returned Pea-Blossom, somewhat displeased.
“Who spoke of beans, sir? I have no need for your beans; they are not
known in my household. The service you can do me is to turn the door
handle of my carriage and throw back the hood—it is nearly smothering
me.”
“I shall be delighted, madam,” said Luck of the Bean-rows, “if I could
only discover your carriage. No trace of a carriage here! And no room to
drive on such a narrow path. Still I shall soon find it, for I can hear
that you are quite close to me.”
“What!” she cried with a merry laugh, “You cannot see my carriage! Why
you almost trampled on it, running up in your wild way. It is right in
front of you, dear Luck of the Bean-rows. You can tell it by its elegant
appearance, which is something like a dwarf pea.”
“It is so like a chick pea,” thought the Luck as he bent down, “that if
I hadn’t looked very close I should have taken it for nothing but a
chick pea.”
One glance, however, showed him that it was really a very large dwarf
pea, round as an orange, yellow as a lemon, mounted on four little
golden wheels, equipped with a dainty “boot,” or hold-all, made of a
tiny peascod as bright and green as morocco.
He touched the handle; the door flew open; and Pea-Blossom sprang out
like a grain of touch-me-not, and lighted nimbly and gaily on her feet.
[Illustration: [Princess]]
The Luck stood up in amazement, never had he conceived of anyone so
lovely as Pea-Blossom. Her face, indeed, was the most perfect a painter
could have imagined—sparkling almond eyes of a wonderful violet, and a
small frolicsome mouth which showed glimpses of bright teeth as white as
alabaster. Her short dress, slightly puffed out and brocaded with sweet
peas, came just below the knee. She wore tight stockings of white silk;
and her adorable little feet—why, one envied the lucky shoemaker who
shod them in satin.
“What can you be staring at?” she asked, which shows, by the way, that
Luck of the Bean-rows was not making a very brilliant appearance.
The Luck blushed, but quickly recovered himself. “I was wondering,” he
said modestly, “how so beautiful a princess, just about my own size too,
could possibly find room in a dwarf pea.”
“What a mistake to speak so slightingly of my carriage, Luck of the
Bean-rows. It is a most comfortable carriage when it is open. And it is
quite by chance that I have not my equerry, my almoner, my tutor, my
secretary, and two or three of my ladies-in-waiting with me. But I like
driving alone, and this fancy of mine caused the accident that has
happened to me to-day.”
[Illustration: [King]]
“I don’t know whether you have met the king of the crickets in company;
no one could mistake his glittering black mask, like Harlequin’s, with
two straight movable horns, and his shrill singsong whenever he speaks.
The king of the crickets condescended to fall in love with me. He was
quite well aware that I come of age to-day, and that it is the custom
for the princesses of our house to choose a husband when they are ten
years old. So he put himself in my way—that too is the custom—and beset
me with a frightful racket of piercing declarations. I answered him—also
according to custom—by stopping my ears.”
“Oh, joy!” exclaimed the Luck in rapture. “You are not going to marry
the king of the crickets?”
“I am not going to marry him,” Pea-Blossom declared with dignity. “My
choice is made. But no sooner had I given my decision than the odious
Crik-Crik (that is his name) flung himself on my carriage like a wild
monster, and slammed down the hood. ‘Get married now, saucy minx,’ he
shrieked, ‘get married if anyone ever comes a-wooing you in this plight.
_I_ don’t care a chick pea either for your kingdom or yourself.’”
“But do tell me,” cried Luck of the Bean-rows, indignantly, “in what
hole this king of the crickets is skulking. I will quickly hoe him out
and fling him bound hand and foot to your mercy. And yet,” he continued,
as he rested his head on his hand, “I can understand his desperation.
But is it not my duty, princess, to escort you to your realm and protect
you from pursuit?”
“That would certainly be advisable if I were far from the frontier,”
answered Pea-Blossom, “but yonder is a field of sweet peas which my
enemy dare not approach, and where I can count upon my faithful
subjects.”
As she spoke she struck the ground with her foot, and fell, clinging to
two swaying stalks, which bent under her and then sprang up again,
scattering their fragrant blossom over her hair.
As Luck of the Bean-rows watched her with delight—and I assure you I
would have been delighted too—she pierced him with her bright eyes, and
he was so spell-bound in the maze of her smile that he would have been
happy to die watching her. At the least he might have been still
standing there had she not spoken.
[Illustration: [Boy]]
“I have delayed you too long already,” she said, “for I know what a
stirring business the trade in beans must be just at present; but my
carriage—or rather your carriage—will enable you to recover the time you
have lost. Please do not hurt my feelings by refusing so slight a gift.
I have a thousand carriages like it in the corn-lofts of the castle, and
when I would like a new one I pick it out of a handful and throw the
rest to the mice.”
“The least of your highness’s favours would be the pride and joy of my
life,” replied the Luck of the Bean-rows, “but you have forgotten that I
have luggage. I can easily imagine that however closely my bean measures
may be filled I could manage to find room for your carriage in one of
them, but to get my measures into your carriage, that would be
impossible.”
[Illustration: [Princess]]
“Try it,” laughed the princess as she swung up and down on the sprays of
the sweet peas; “try it, and do not stand amazed at everything, as if
you were a little child who had seen nothing.”
And indeed Luck of the Bean-rows had no difficulty in getting his three
quart measures into the body of the carriage—it could have held thirty
and more, and he felt rather mortified.
“I am ready to start, madam,” he said, as he took his place on a plump
cushion, which was large enough to let him sit comfortably in any
position, or even to lie at full length if he had been so minded.
“I owe it to my kind parents,” he continued, “not to leave them in
suspense as to what has become of me this first time of my ever leaving
them; so I am waiting only for your coachman, who fled, no doubt in
terror at the outbreak of the king of the crickets, and took the horses
and shafts with him. I shall then leave this spot with everlasting
regret that I should have seen you without hope of ever seeing you
again.”
The princess did not appear to notice the marked feeling of the Luck’s
last words.
“Why,” she said, “my carriage does not need either coachman, shafts, or
horses; it goes by steam, and at any hour it can easily do fifty
thousand miles. You see you will have no trouble in getting home
whenever it suits you. You have just to remember the gesture and words
with which I start it.
“In the boot you will find various things that may be useful on the
journey; they are every one of them yours. You open the boot as you
would shell a green pea. There you will see three caskets, the shape and
size of a pea, each fastened by a thread which keeps them in their cases
like peas in a pod, so that they cannot jolt against each other when you
travel or when you remove them. It is a wonderful contrivance!
“They will open at the pressure of your finger—like the hood of my
carriage. Then all you have to do is to make a hole in the ground with
your hoe, and sow some of their contents in it, to see whatever you may
wish spring up, sprout and blossom. Is not that wonderful?
“Only remember this!—when the third casket is empty I have nothing else
to offer you; for I have only three green peas, just as you had three
measures of beans; and the prettiest girl in the world can give you no
more than she has.
“Are you ready to set out now?”
The Luck of the Bean-rows bowed; he felt that he could not speak.
Pea-Blossom snapped her thumb and middle finger: “Off, chick pea!” she
cried; and the field of sweet peas was left nine hundred miles behind
while Luck of the Bean-rows was still turning this way and that, looking
in vain for Pea-Blossom.
“Alas!” he sighed.
It would be doing scant justice to the speed of the magic carriage to
say that it shot through space at the rate of a rifle bullet. Woods,
towns, mountains, seas swept by quicker than magic lantern pictures. Far
away horizons had scarcely risen in outline from the deep-down distance
before they had plunged under the flying carriage. The Luck would have
striven in vain to see them; when he turned to look back—flick! they had
gone. At last, when he had several times outraced the sun, swept round
the globe, caught it up and again outstripped it, with rapid changes
from day to night and from night to day, it suddenly struck the Luck of
the Bean-rows that he had passed the great town he was going to and the
market for his beans.
“The springs of this carriage are a trifle lively,” he thought to
himself (he was nimble-witted, remember); “it started off on its giddy
race before Pea-Blossom could tell me whither I was bound. I don’t see
why this journey should not last for ages and ages, for that lovely
princess, who is young enough to be something of a madcap, told me how
to start the carriage, but had no time to say how I was to stop it.”
The Luck of the Bean-rows tried all the cries he had heard from carters,
wagoners, and muleteers to bring it to a standstill, but it was all to
no purpose. Every shout seemed but to quicken its wild career.
It sped from the tropics to the poles and back from the poles to the
tropics, across all the parallels and meridians, quite unconcerned by
the unhealthy changes of temperature. It was enough to broil them or to
turn them to ice before long, if the Luck had not been gifted, as we
have frequently remarked, with admirable intelligence.
“Ay,” he said to himself, “considering that Pea-Blossom sent her
carriage flying through the world with ‘Off, chick pea!’ it is just
possible we can stop it by saying the exact opposite.”
It was a logical idea.
“Stop, chick pea!” he cried, snapping his finger and thumb as
Pea-Blossom had done.
Could a whole learned society have come to a more sensible conclusion?
The fairy carriage came to a standstill so suddenly, you could not have
stopped it quicker if you had nailed it down. It did not even shake.
The Luck of the Bean-rows alighted, picked up the carriage, and let it
slip into a leather wallet which he carried at his belt for bean
samples, but not before he had taken out the hold-all.
The spot where the flying carriage was pulled up in this fashion has not
been described by travellers. Bruce says it was at the sources of the
Nile. M. Douville places it on the Congo, and M. Saillé at Timbuctoo. It
was a boundless plain, so parched, so stony, so wild that there was
never a bush to lie under, not a desert moss to lay one’s head upon and
sleep, not a leaf to appease hunger or thirst.
But Luck of the Bean-rows was not in the least anxious. He prized open
the hold-all with his fingernail, and untied one of the three little
caskets which Pea-Blossom had described to him. He opened it as he had
opened the magic carriage, and planted its contents in the sand at the
points of his hoe.
“Come of this what must come!” he said, “but I do badly want a tent to
shelter me to-night, were it only a cluster of peas in flower; a little
supper to keep me going, were it but a bowl of pea soup sweetened, and a
bed to lie upon, if only one feather of a hummingbird—and all the more
as I cannot get back home to-day I am so worn out with hunger and aching
fatigue.”
[Illustration: [Pavilion]]
The words had scarcely left his lips when he saw rising out of the sand
a splendid pavilion in the shape of a pergola of sweet peas. It grew up,
it spread; from point to point it was supported upon ten props of gold;
it dropped down leafy curtains strewn with pea-blossom; it curved into
numberless arches, and from the centre of each hung a crystal lustre set
with perfumed wax lights.
The background of this arcade was lined with Venetian mirrors, which
reflected a blaze of light that would have dazzled a seven-year-old
eagle a league away.
From overhead a pea leaf dropped by chance at the Luck’s feet. It spread
out into a magnificent carpet variegated with all the colours of the
rainbow and many more. Around its border stood little round tables
loaded with pastry and sweetmeats; and iced fruits in gilded porcelain
cups encircled a brimming bowl of sweet-pea soup, sprinkled over with
currants black as jet, green pistachio nuts, coriander comfits and
slices of pineapple. Amid all this gorgeous show the Luck quickly
discovered his bed, and that was the hummingbird’s feather which he had
wished for. It sparkled in a corner like a jewel dropped from the crown
of the Grand Mogul, although it was so tiny that a grain of millet might
have concealed it.
At first he thought this pigmy bed was not quite in keeping with the
rich furnishing of the pavilion, but the longer he looked at it, the
larger it grew, till humming-birds’ feathers were soon lying knee-deep
on the floor—a dream-couch of topazes so soft, sapphires so yielding,
opals so elastic, that a butterfly would have sunk deep if he had
lighted on them.
“That will do, that will do,” cried the Luck of the Bean-rows; “I shall
sleep too soundly as it is.”
I need not say that our traveller did justice to the feast that was
spread for him, and lost no time in preparing for bed. Thoughts of love
ran through his mind, but at twelve years of age, love does not keep one
awake; and Pea-Blossom, of whom he had had only a glimpse, had left him
with no more than the impression of a delightful dream, the enchantment
of which could only return in sleep. Another good reason for going to
sleep if you have remembrances like mine.
The Luck of the Bean-rows, however, was too cautious to yield to these
idle fancies until he had made sure that all was safe outside the
pavilion, the very splendour of which was likely to attract all the
thieves and vagabonds for miles round. You will find them in every
country.
So, with his weeding-hook in his hand as usual, he passed out of the
magic circle, to make the round of his tent and see that all was quiet.
No sooner had he reached the limit of the grounds—a narrow ravine washed
out by running water that a kid might have cleared at a bound—than he
was brought to a standstill by such a shiver as a brave man feels, for
the most valiant has his moments of fright which he can master only by
his resolute will. And, faith, there was enough to make one hesitate in
what he saw.
[Illustration: [Boy]]
It was a battle-front where in the darkness of a starless night
glistened two hundred fixed and burning eyes; and along the ranks, from
right to left, from left to right, there ran incessantly two keen
slanting eyes which bespoke an extremely alert commander.
Luck of the Bean-rows knew nothing of Lavater or Gall or Spurzheim, he
had never heard of phrenology, but within him he felt the natural
instinct which teaches every living creature to sense an enemy from
afar. At a glance he recognised in the leader of this horde of wolves
the wheedling coward who had tricked him, with his talk of enlightenment
and self-control, out of his last measure of beans.
“Master Wolf has lost no time in setting his lambs on my track,” said
Luck of the Bean-rows; “but by what magic have they overtaken me, every
one of them, if these ruffians too have not travelled by chick pea? It
is possible,” he added with a sigh, “that the secrets of science are not
unknown to scoundrels, and I dare not be sworn, when I think of it, that
it is not they who have invented them so as to persuade simple souls the
more easily to take part in their hateful schemes.”
Though the Luck was cautious in doing, he was quick in planning. He drew
the hold-all hastily from his wallet, untied the second pea-casket,
opened it as he had done the first, and planted the contents in the sand
at point of his weeding-hook.
“Come of this what must come!” said he; “but to-night I do badly want a
strong wall, were it no thicker than a cabin wall, and a close hedge if
only as strong as my wattle fence, to save me from my good friends the
wolves.”
In a twinkle walls arose, not cabin walls, but walls of a palace; hedges
sprung up before the porches, not wattle fences, but a high lordly
railing of blue steel with gilded shafts and spear-heads that never a
wolf, badger or fox could have tried to clear without bruising himself
or pricking his pointed muzzle. With the art of warfare at the stage it
had then reached among the wolves there was nothing to be done. After
testing several points the invaders retired in confusion. Thankful for
this relief, the Luck returned to his pavilion. But now he passed on
over marble pavements, along pillared walks lit up as if for a wedding,
up staircases which seemed to ascend for ever and through galleries that
were endless. He was overjoyed to come upon his pavilion of pea-blossom
in the midst of a vast garden, green and blooming, which he had never
seen before, and to find his bed of humming-birds’ feathers, where, I
take it, he slept happier than a king—and I never exaggerate.
[Illustration: [Castle]]
Next day the first thing he did was to explore the gorgeous dwelling
which had sprung out of a little pea. The beauty of the most trifling
things in it filled him with astonishment; for the furnishing of it was
admirably in keeping with its outward appearance.
[Illustration: [Parrots]]
He examined, one after another, his gallery of pictures, his cabinet of
antiques, his collections of medals, insects, shells, his library, each
of them a wonder and a delight quite new to him.
He was especially pleased at the admirable judgment with which the books
had been chosen. The finest works in literature, the most useful in
science had been gathered together for the entertainment and instruction
of a long life—among them the Adventures of the ingenious Don Quixote;
fairy tales of every kind, with beautiful engravings; a collection of
curious and amusing travels and voyages (those of Gulliver and Robinson
Crusoe so far the most authentic); capital almanacks, full of diverting
anecdotes and infallible information as to the phases of the moon and
the best times for sowing and planting; numberless treatises, very
simply and clearly written, on agriculture, gardening, angling, netting
game, and the art of taming nightingales—in short, all one can wish for
when one has learned to value books and the spirit of their authors. For
there have been no other scholars, no other philosophers, no other
poets, and for this unquestionable reason, that all learning, all
philosophy, all poetry are to be found in their pages, and to be found
only there. I can answer for that.
While he was thus taking account of his wealth, the Luck of the
Bean-rows was struck by the reflection of himself in one of the mirrors
with which all the apartments were adorned. If the glass was not fooling
him, he must have grown—oh, wonder of wonders!—more than three feet
since yesterday. And the brown moustache which darkened his upper lip
plainly showed that he was passing from sturdy boyhood to youthful
manliness.
[Illustration: [Boy]]
He was puzzling over this extraordinary change, when, to his great
regret, a costly time-piece, between two pier-glasses, enabled him to
solve the riddle. One of the hands pointed to the date of the year, and
the Luck saw, without a shadow of doubt, that he had grown six years
older.
“Six years!” he exclaimed. “Unfortunate creature that I am! My poor
parents have died of old age, and perhaps in want. Oh, pity me, perhaps
they died of grief, fretting over the loss of me. What must they have
thought in their last hours of my deserting them or of the misfortune
that had befallen me!
[Illustration: [Clock]]
“Now I understand, hateful carriage, how you came to travel so fast;
days and days were swallowed up in your minutes. Off, then; off, chick
pea!” he continued as he took the magic coach from the wallet and flung
it out of the window; “out of my sight, and fly so far that no eye may
ever look on you again!”
And to tell the truth, so far as I know, no one has ever since cast eyes
on a chick pea in the shape of a post-chaise that went fifty leagues an
hour.
Luck of the Bean-rows descended the marble steps more sorrowfully than
ever he went down the ladder of his bean-loft. He turned his back on the
palace without even seeing it; he traversed those desert plains with
never a thought of the wolves that might have encamped there to besiege
him. He tramped on in a dream, striking his forehead with his hand and
at times weeping.
“What is there to wish for now that my parents are dead?” he asked
himself as he listlessly turned the little hold-all in his fingers, “now
that Pea-Blossom has been married six years?—for it was on the day I saw
her that she came of age, and then the princesses of her house are
married. Besides, she had already made her choice. What does the whole
world matter—my world which was made up of no more than a cabin, a bean
field—which you, little green pea,” and he untied the last of the
caskets from its case, “will never bring back to me. The sweet days of
boyhood return no more!
“Go, little green pea, go whither the will of God may carry you, and
bring forth what you are destined to bring, to the glory of your
mistress. All is over and done with—my old parents, the cabin, the bean
field and Pea-Blossom. Go, little green pea, far and far away.”
He flung it from him with such force that it might have overtaken the
magic carriage had it been of that mind; then he sank down on the sand,
hopeless and full of sorrow.
[Illustration: [Boy]]
[Illustration: [Boy]]
When Luck of the Bean-rows raised himself up again the entire appearance
of the plain was changed. Right away to the horizon it was a sea of
dusky or of sunny green, over which the wind rolled tossing waves of
white keel-shaped flowers with butterfly wings. Here they were flecked
with violet like bean-blossom, there with rose like pea-blossom, and
when the wind shook them together they were lovelier than the flowers of
the loveliest garden plots.
Luck of the Bean-rows sprang forward; he recognised it all—the enlarged
field, the improved cabin, his father and mother alive, hastening now to
meet him as eagerly as their old limbs would carry them, to tell him
that not a day had passed since he went away without their receiving
news of him in the evening, and with the news kindly gifts which had
cheered them, and good hopes of his return, which had kept them alive.
[Illustration: [Elderly couple]]
The Luck embraced them fondly, and gave them each an arm to accompany
him to his palace. Now they wondered more and more as they approached
it! Luck of the Bean-rows was afraid of overshadowing their joy, yet he
could not help saying: “Ah, if you had seen Pea-Blossom! But it is six
years since she married.”
“Since I married you,” said a gentle voice, and Pea-Blossom threw wide
the iron gates: “My choice was made then, do you not remember? Do come
in,” she continued, kissing the old man and the old woman, who could not
take their eyes off her, for she too had grown six years older and was
now sixteen; “Do come in! This is your son’s home, and it is in the land
of the spirit and of day dreams where one no longer grows old and where
no one dies.”
[Illustration: [Princess]]
It would have been difficult to welcome these poor people with better
news.
The marriage festivities were held with all the splendour befitting such
high personages; and their lives never ceased to be a perfect example of
love, constancy and happiness.
This is the usual lucky ending of all good fairy tales.
[Illustration: Finis.]
THE WESTMINSTER PRESS
411a HARROW ROAD
LONDON, W
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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