Stories of Childhood Part 7

Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed, because not only the river was not turned into gold, but its waters seemed much diminished in quant.i.ty. Yet he obeyed his friend the dwarf, and descended the other side of the mountains, toward the Treasure Valley; and, as he went, he thought he heard the noise of water working its way under the ground. And when he came in sight of the Treasure Valley, behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft of the rocks above it, and was flowing in innumerable streams among the dry heaps of red sand.

And as Gluck gazed, fresh gra.s.s sprang beside the new streams, and creeping plants grew, and climbed among the moistening soil. Young flowers opened suddenly along the river sides, as stars leap out when twilight is deepening, and thickets of myrtle, and tendrils of vine, cast lengthening shadows over the valley as they grew. And thus the Treasure Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance, which had been lost by cruelty, was regained by love.

And Gluck went and dwelt in the valley, and the poor were never driven from his door; so that his barns became full of corn, and his house of treasure. And, for him, the river had, according to the dwarf's promise, become a River of Gold.

And to this day the inhabitants of the valley point out the place where the three drops of holy dew were cast into the stream, and trace the course of the Golden River under the ground, until it emerges in the Treasure Valley. And, at the top of the cataract of the Golden River, are still to be seen two BLACK STONES, round which the waters howl mournfully every day at sunset; and these stones are still called, by the people of the valley,

THE BLACK BROTHERS.

THE LADY OF SHALOTT.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.

It is not generally known that the Lady of Shalott lived last summer in an attic, at the east end of South Street.

The wee-est, thinnest, whitest little lady! And yet the brightest, stillest, and withal such a smiling little lady!

If you had held her up by the window,--for she could not hold up herself,--she would have hung like a porcelain transparency in your hands. And if you had said, laying her gently down, and giving the tears a smart dash, that they should not fall on her lifted face, "Poor child!" the Lady of Shalott would have said, "O, don't!" and smiled. And you would have smiled yourself, for very surprise that she should outdo you; and between the two there would have been so much smiling done that one would have fairly thought it was a delightful thing to live last summer in an attic at the east end of South Street.

This perhaps was the more natural in the Lady of Shalott because she had never lived anywhere else.

When the Lady of Shalott was five years old, her mother threw her down stairs one day, by mistake, instead of the whiskey-jug.

This is a fact which I think Mr. Tennyson has omitted to mention in his poem.

They picked up the Lady of Shalott and put her on the bed; and there she lay from that day until last summer, unless, as I said, somebody had occasion to use her for a transparency.

The mother and the jug both went down the stairs together a few years after, and never came up at all,--and that was a great convenience, for the Lady of Shalott's palace in the attic was not large, and they took up much unnecessary room.

Since that the Lady of Shalott had lived with her sister, Sary Jane.

Sary Jane made nankeen vests, at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen.

Sary Jane had red hair, and crooked shoulders, and a voice so much like a rat-trap which she sometimes set on the stairs that the Lady of Shalott could seldom tell which was which until she had thought about it a little while. When there was a rat caught, she was apt to ask "What?"

and when Sary Jane spoke, she more often than not said, "There's another!"

Her crooked shoulders Sary Jane had acquired from sitting under the eaves of the palace to sew. That physiological problem was simple. There was not room enough under the eaves to sit straight.

Sary Jane's red hair was the result of sitting in the sun on July noons under those eaves, to see to thread her needle. There was no question about that. The Lady of Shalott had settled it in her own mind, past dispute. Sary Jane's hair had been--what was it? brown? once. Sary Jane was slowly taking fire. Who would not, to sit in the sun in that palace?

The only matter of surprise to the Lady of Shalott was that the palace itself did not smoke. Sometimes, when Sary Jane hit the rafters, she was sure that she saw sparks.

As for Sary Jane's voice, when one knew that she made nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen, that was a matter of no surprise. It never surprised the Lady of Shalott.

But Sary Jane was very cross; there was no denying that; very cross.

And the palace. Let me tell you about the palace. It measured just twelve by nine feet. It would have been seven feet post,--if there had been a post in the middle of it. From the centre it sloped away to the windows, where Sary Jane had just room enough to sit crooked under the eaves at work. There were two windows and a loose scuttle to let in the snow in winter and the sun in summer, and the rain and wind at all times.

It was quite a diversion to the Lady of Shalott to see how many different ways of doing a disagreeable thing seemed to be practicable to that scuttle. Besides the bed on which the Lady of Shalott lay, there was a stove in the palace, two chairs, a very ragged rag-mat, a shelf with two notched cups and plates upon it, one pewter teaspoon, and a looking-gla.s.s. On washing-days Sary Jane climbed upon the chair and hung her clothes out through the scuttle on the roof; or else she ran a little rope from one of the windows to the other for a drying-rope. It would have been more exact to have said on washing-nights; for Sary Jane always did her washing after dark. The reason was evident. If the rest of us were in the habit of wearing all the clothes we had, like Sary Jane, I have little doubt that we should do the same.

I should mention that there was no sink in the Lady of Shalott's palace; no water. There was a dirty hydrant in the yard, four flights below, which supplied the Lady of Shalott and all her neighbors. The Lady of Shalott kept her coal under the bed; her flour, a pound at a time, in a paper parcel, on the shelf, with the teacups and the pewter spoon. If she had anything else to keep, it went out through the palace scuttle and lay on the roof. The Lady of Shalott's palace opened directly upon a precipice. The lessor of the house called it a flight of stairs. When Sary Jane went up and down she went sidewise to preserve her balance.

There were no bannisters to the precipice, and about once a week a baby patronized the rat-trap, instead. Once, when there was a fire-alarm, the precipice was very serviceable. Four women and an old man went over.

With one exception (she was eighteen, and could bear a broken collar-bone), they will not, I am informed, go over again.

The Lady of Shalott paid one dollar a week for the rent of her palace.

But then there was a looking-gla.s.s in the palace. I think I noticed it.

It hung on the slope of the rafters, just opposite the Lady of Shalott's window,--for she considered that her window at which Sary Jane did not make nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen.

Now, because the looking-gla.s.s was opposite the window at which Sary Jane did _not_ make vests, and because the rafters sloped, and because the bed lay almost between the looking-gla.s.s and the window, the Lady of Shalott was happy. And because, to the patient heart that is a seeker after happiness, "the little more, and how much it is!" (and the little less, what worlds away!) the Lady of Shalott was proud as well as happy.

The looking-gla.s.s measured in inches 10 X 6. I think that the Lady of Shalott would have experienced rather a touch of mortification than of envy if she had known that there was a mirror in a house just round the corner measuring almost as many feet. But that was one of the advantages of being the Lady of Shalott. She never pa.r.s.ed life in the comparative degree.

I suppose that one must be the Lady of Shalott to understand what comfort there may be in a 10 X 6 inch looking-gla.s.s. All the world came for the Lady of Shalott into her looking-gla.s.s,--the joy of it, the anguish of it, the hope and fear of it, the health and hurt,--10 X 6 inches of it exactly.

"It is next best to not having been thrown down stairs yourself!" said the Lady of Shalott.

To tell the truth, it sometimes occurred to her that there was a monotony about the world. A garret window like her own, for instance, would fill her sight if she did not tip the gla.s.s a little. Children sat in it, and did not play. They made lean faces at her. They were locked in for the day and were hungry. She could not help knowing how hungry they were, and so tipped the gla.s.s. Then there was the trap-door in the sidewalk. She became occasionally tired of that trap-door. Seven people lived under the sidewalk; and when they lifted and slammed the trap, coming in and out, they reminded her of something which Sary Jane bought her once, when she was a very little child, at Christmas time,--long ago, when rents were cheaper and flour low. It was a monkey, with whiskers and a calico jacket, who jumped out of a box when the cover was lifted; and then you crushed him down and hasped him in. Sometimes she wished that she had never had that monkey, he was so much like the people coming in and out of the sidewalk.

In fact, there was a monotony about all the people in the Lady of Shalott's looking-gla.s.s. If their faces were not dirty, their hands were.

If they had hats, they went without shoes. If they did not sit in the sun with their heads on their knees, they lay in the mud with their heads on a jug.

"Their faces look blue!" she said to Sary Jane.

"No wonder!" snapped Sary Jane.

"Why?" asked the Lady of Shalott.

"Wonder is we ain't all dead!" barked Sary Jane.

The people in the Lady of Shalott's gla.s.s died, however, sometimes,--often in the summer; more often last summer, when the attic smoked continually, and she mistook Sary Jane's voice for the rat-trap every day.

The people were jostled into pine boxes (in the gla.s.s), and carried away (in the gla.s.s) by twilight, in a cart. Three of the monkeys from the spring-box in the sidewalk went, in one week, out into the foul, purple twilight, away from the looking-gla.s.s, in carts.

"I'm glad of that, poor things!" said the Lady of Shalott, for she had always felt a kind of sorrow for the monkeys. Princ.i.p.ally, I think, because they had no gla.s.s.

When the monkeys had gone, the sickly twilight folded itself up, over the spring-box, into great feathers, like the feathers of a wing. That was pleasant. The Lady of Shalott could almost put out her fingers and stroke it, it hung so near, and was so clear, and gathered such a peacefulness into the looking-gla.s.s.

"Sary Jane, dear, it's very pleasant," said the Lady of Shalott. Sary Jane said it was very dangerous, the Lord knew, and bit her threads off.

"And, Sary Jane, dear!" added the Lady of Shalott, "I see so many other pleasant things."

"The more fool you!" said Sary Jane.

But she wondered about it that day over her tenth nankeen vest. What, for example, _could_ the Lady of Shalott see?