Wonder-Box Tales Part 6

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE NEXT MOMENT A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE CREATURE STOOD UPON HIS HAND."]

"Struck with astonishment, the boy kept silence. She lifted up her face, and opened her lips more than once. He expected her to say some wonderful thing; but, when at length she did speak, she only said, 'Child, are you happy?'

"'No,' said the boy, in a low voice, 'because I want to paint, and I cannot.'

"'How do you know that you cannot?' asked the fairy.

"'Oh, fairy,' replied the boy, 'because I have tried a great many times.

It is of no use trying any longer.'

"'What if I were to help you?' said the fairy.

"'There would then indeed be some pleasure in the work and some chance of success,' said the boy.

"'I was just closing my leaves for the night,' answered the fairy, 'when you drew me out of the water; and I should have made you feel the effects of my resentment if it had not happened that you are the favorite of our race. Under the water, at the bottom of this lake, are our palaces and castles; and when, after visiting the upper world, we wish to return to them, we close one of these lilies over us, and sink in it to our home. The wish that I heard you utter just now induced me to appear to you. I know a powerful charm which will ensure your success and the accomplishment of your highest wishes; but it is one which requires a great deal of care and patience in the working, and I cannot put you in possession of it unless you will promise the most implicit obedience to my directions.'

"'Spirit of a water-lily!' said the boy, 'I promise with all my heart.'

"'Go home, then,' continued the fairy, 'and you will find lying on the threshold a little key: take it up.'

"'I will,' answered the boy; 'and what then shall I do?'

"'Carry it to the nearest pine-tree,' said the fairy, 'strike the trunk with it, and a keyhole will appear. Do not be afraid to unlock that magic door. Slip in your hand, and you will bring out a wonderful palette. I have not time now to tell you half its virtues, but they will soon unfold themselves. You must be very careful to paint with colors from that palette every day. On this depends the success of the charm.

You will find that it will soon give grace to your figures and beauty to your coloring; and I promise you that, if you do not break the spell, you shall not only in a few years be able to produce as beautiful a copy of these flowers as can be wished, but your name shall become known to fame, and your genius shall be honored, and your pictures admired on both sides the Atlantic.'

"'Can it be possible?' said the boy; and the hand trembled on which stood the fairy.

"'It shall be so, if only you do not break the charm,' said the fairy; 'but lest, like the rest of your ungrateful race, you should forget what you owe to me, and even when you grow older begin to doubt whether you have ever seen me, the Lily you gathered will never fade till my promise is accomplished.'

"So saying, she gathered around her the folds of her robe, crossed her arms, and dropping her head on her breast, trembled slightly; and, before the boy could remark the change, he had nothing in his hand but a flower.

"He looked up. All the beautiful rosy flowers were faded to a shady gray. The gold had disappeared from the water, and the forest was dense and gloomy. He arose with the lily in his hand, went slowly home, laid it in a casket to protect it from injury, and then proceeded to search for the palette, which he shortly found; and, lest he should break the spell, he began to use it that very night.

"Who would not like to have a fairy friend? Who would not like to work with a magic palette? Every day its virtues become more apparent. He worked very hard, and it was astonishing how soon he improved. His deep, heavy outlines soon became light and clear; and his coloring began to a.s.sume a transparent delicacy. He was so delighted with the fairy present that he even did more than was required of him. He spent nearly all his leisure time in using it, and often pa.s.sed whole days beside the sheet of water in the forest. He painted it when the sun shone, and it was spotted all over with the reflection of fleeting white clouds; he painted it covered with water-lilies rocking on the ripples; by moonlight, when two or three stars in the empty sky shone down upon it; and at sunset, when it lay trembling like liquid gold.

"But the fairy never came to look at his work. He often called to her when he had been more than usually successful; but she never made him any answer, nor took the least notice of his entreaties that he might see her again.

"So a long time--several years--pa.s.sed away. He was grown up to be a man, and he had never broken the charm; he still worked every day with his magic palette.

"No one in these parts cared at all for his pictures. His mother's friends told him he would never get his bread by painting; his mother herself was sorry that he chose to waste his leisure so; and the more because the pictures on her walls were brighter far than his, and had clouds and trees of far clearer color, not like the common clouds and misty hills that he was so fond of painting, and his faintly colored distant forest, with uncertain and variable hues, such as she could see any day when she looked out at her window.

"It made the young man unhappy to hear all this fault found with his proceedings, but it never made him leave off using the fairy's palette, though about this time he himself began to doubt whether he should ever be a painter. One evening he sat at his easel, trying in vain to give the expression he wished to an angel's face, which seemed to get less and less like the face in his heart with every touch he gave it. On a sudden he threw down his brush, and with a feeling of bitter disappointment upbraided himself for what he now thought his folly in listening to the fairy, and accepting her delusive gift. What had he got by it hitherto? Nothing but his mother's regrets and the ridicule of his companions. He threw himself on his bed. It grew dark; he could no longer be vexed with the sight of his unfinished angel; and presently he fell asleep and forgot his sorrow.

"In the middle of the night he suddenly awoke. His chamber was full of moonlight. The lid of the casket where he kept the lily had sprung open, and his fairy friend stood near it.

"'American painter,' she said, in a reproachful voice, 'since you think I have been rather a foe than a friend to you, I am ready to take back my gift.'

"But sleep had now cooled the young painter's mind, and softened his feelings of vexation, so that he did not find himself at all willing to part with the palette. While he hesitated how to excuse himself, she further said, 'But if you still wish to try what it can do for you, take this ring which _my sister_ sends you; wear it, and it will greatly a.s.sist the charm.'

"The youth held out his hand and took the ring. As he cast his eyes upon it, the fairy vanished. He turned it to the moonlight, and saw that it was set with a stone of a transparent blue color. It had the property of reflecting everything bright that came near it; and there was a word engraven upon it. He thought--he could not be sure--but he thought the word was 'Hope.'

"After this, and during a long time, I can tell you no more about him: whether he finished the angel's face, and whether it pleased him at last, I do not know. I only know that, in process of time, his mother died--that he came to Europe--and that he was quite unknown and very poor.

"The next thing recorded of him is this, that on a sudden he became famous. The world began to admire his works, and to seek his company. He was considered a great man, and wealth and honors flowed in upon him. It happened to him that one day in travelling he came to a great city, where there was a large collection of pictures. He went to see them, and among them he saw many of his own pictures; some of them he had painted before he had left his forest home; others were of more recent date. All the people and all the painters praised them. But there was one that they liked better than the others; and when he heard them call it his masterpiece, he went and sat down opposite to it, that he might think over again some of the thoughts that he had had when he painted it.

"It was a picture of a little child, holding in its hands several beautiful water-lilies; and the crowd that gathered round it praised the lightness of the drapery, the beauty of the infant form, the soft light shed down upon it, and, above all, the innocent expression of the baby features.

"He was pleased, but not elated. He called to mind the words of his fairy benefactress, and acknowledged to himself that at length they were certainly fulfilled.

"And then it drew toward evening, and the people one by one disappeared, till he was left alone with his masterpiece. The excitement of the day had made him anxious for repose. He was thinking of leaving the place, when suddenly he fell asleep, and dreamed that he was standing behind the sheet of water in his native country, and lingering, as of old, to watch the rays of the setting sun as they melted away from its surface.

He thought, too, that his beautiful lily was in his hand, and that while he looked at it the leaves withered and fell at his feet. Then followed a confused recollection of his conversation with the fairy; and after that his thoughts became clearer, and, though still asleep, he remembered where he was, and in what place he was sitting. His impressions became more vivid. He dreamed that something lightly touched his hand. He looked up, and his fairy benefactress was at his side, standing on the arm of his chair.

"'O wonderful enchantress!' said the dreaming painter, 'do not vanish before I have had time to thank you for your magic gift. I have nothing to offer you but my grat.i.tude in return; for the diamonds of this world are too heavy for such an ethereal being, and the gold of this world is useless to you who have no wants that it can supply. The fame I have acquired I cannot impart to you, for few of my race believe in the existence of yours. What, then, can I do? I can only thank you for your goodness. But tell me at least your name, if you have a name, that I may cut it on a ring, and wear it always on my finger.'

"'My name,' replied the fairy, 'is Perseverance.'"

"Well!" said the children, looking at each other, "she has cheated us after all!"

A LOST WAND

More than a hundred years ago, at the foot of a wild mountain in Norway, stood an old castle, which even at the time I write of was so much out of repair as in some parts to be scarcely habitable.

In a hall of this castle a party of children met once on Twelfth-night to play at Christmas games and dance with little Hulda, the only child of the lord and lady.

The winters in Norway are very cold, and the snow and ice lie for months on the ground; but the night on which these merry children met it froze with more than ordinary severity, and a keen wind shook the trees without, and roared in the wide chimneys like thunder.

Little Hulda's mother, as the evening wore on, kept calling on the servants to heap on fresh logs of wood, and these, when the long flames crept around them, sent up showers of sparks that lit up the brown walls, ornamented with the horns of deer and goats, and made it look as cheerful and gay as the faces of the children. Hulda's grandmother had sent her a great cake, and when the children had played enough at all the games they could think of, the old gray-headed servants brought it in and set it on the table, together with a great many other nice things such as people eat in Norway--pasties made of reindeer meat, and castles of the sweet pastry sparkling with sugar ornaments of ships and flowers and crowns, and cranberry pies, and whipped cream as white as the snow outside; but nothing was admired so much as the great cake, and when the children saw it they set up a shout which woke the two hounds who were sleeping on the hearths, and they began to bark, which roused all the four dogs in the kennels outside who had not been invited to see either the cake or the games, and they barked, too, shaking and shivering with cold, and then a great lump of snow slid down from the roof, and fell with a dull sound like distant thunder on the pavement of the yard.

"Hurrah!" cried the children, "the dogs and the snow are helping us to shout in honor of the cake."

All this time more and more nice things were coming in--fritters, roasted grouse, frosted apples, and b.u.t.tered crabs. As the old servants came shivering along the pa.s.sages, they said, "It is a good thing that children are not late with their suppers; if the confects had been kept long in the larder they would have frozen on the dishes."

n.o.body wished to wait at all; so, as soon as the supper was ready, they all sat down, more wood was heaped on to the fire, and when the moon shone in at the deep cas.e.m.e.nts, and glittered on the dropping snowflakes outside, it only served to make the children more merry over their supper to think how bright and warm everything was inside.

This cake was a real treasure, such as in the days of the fairies, who still lived in certain parts of Norway, was known to be of the kind they loved. A piece of it was always cut and laid outside in the snow, in case they should wish to taste it. Hulda's grandmother had also dropped a ring into this cake before it was put into the oven, and it is well known that whoever gets such a ring in his or her slice of cake has only to wish for something directly, and the fairies are bound to give it, _if they possibly can_. There have been cases known when the fairies could not give it, and then, of course, they were not to blame.

On this occasion the children said: "Let us all be ready with our wishes, because sometimes people have been known to lose them from being so long making up their minds when the ring has come to them."

"Yes," cried the eldest boy. "It does not seem fair that only one should wish. I am the eldest. I begin. I shall wish that Twelfth-night would come twice a year."

"They cannot give you that, I am sure," said Friedrich, his brother, who sat by him.

"Then," said the boy, "I wish father may take me with him the next time he goes out bear-shooting."