Fairy Tales for Young Readers (3 page)

And Cinderella and Charming and the sisters and their husbands all lived exactly as long as was good for them, and loved each other more and more every day of their lives. And no one can ask for a better fate than that!

T
HERE WAS ONCE a rich merchant, who had a “town house replete with every modern convenience,” and a “country house standing in its own grounds of seventeen acres, agreeably situated in the most delightful rural scenery, with vineries, pineries, conservatories, palm-houses, stabling, piggeries, henneries, and accommodation for 300,000 full-grown bees.” At least, that is what the auctioneer said about the houses when he came to sell them. For the merchant was unlucky. A great storm swept the sea and wrecked his six ships, that were coming home to him full of priceless stuffs; a band of robbers attacked his caravans as they came across the desert laden with the richest gems of the East. It was all quite sudden. He went to bed rich, happy, and contented. He opened his newspaper next morning, and in half a minute knew that he was a ruined man. His debts, though not more than a man in his position is accustomed to incur, and is able to pay in due course, were enough to swallow up all the money he had in the bank, as well as what he got by the sale of the two houses and all the rest of it, including his horses and carriages, and the beautiful clothes and jewels of his three daughters. Their mother had died years before, and now for the first time their father was glad of it. “At least,” he said, “
she
will not have to suffer the pinch of poverty.”

His daughters, however, had to suffer it with him. The two elder ones, as is usual in fairy stories, were proud,
vain, and unattractive. They had had several offers of marriage, because it was known that their father would give them a good dowry, but they had refused every offer with scorn. Nothing short of an admiral or a duke would satisfy their ambition, and dukes were scarce just then, and all the admirals were already married. The youngest daughter was so lovely that from her childhood she had been called “Beauty.” She was as pretty as a picture, and as good as she was pretty. Every one, except her sisters, agreed that she was a perfect dear.

A few of the merchant's old friends clubbed together and bought him a cottage in the country, and made him a present of enough money every year for him and his daughters to live on, if he was very careful. It was a nice little house, called Rose Cottage, with a vine and climbing honeysuckle and jasmine growing all over it, and there was a good garden, with fruit trees and flowers.

“Now,” said the merchant cheerfully, when they were dumped down with a few odds and ends of furniture in the empty cottage, “the world is full of ups and downs, and we are in the downs just now. If we are to live here comfortably we must all work, for we can't afford a servant.”

“
We
won't work,” said the two elder sisters. “It's too much to expect us to soil our hands with anything so low as
work.
”

“My dears,” said the merchant, “if we do have to work for a year or two, it's only what nine-tenths of our fellow creatures have to do all their lives long. And Fortune's wheel will very likely take another turn, if we're patient, and lift us up again.”

But the elder sisters only sniffed superior, and sat apart in a window-seat, remarking on the smallness of the honeysuckle and the poor quality of the jasmine flowers, while Beauty and her father arranged the furniture, got the beds ready, swept up the dust and straw scattered by the men who had done the removing, set the table, and cooked some steak for supper.

The sisters did nothing but grumble, even saying that the steak was tough, which it wasn't, and that the plates were not clean, which they were.

And as they began so they went on. They spent all their time in reading and re-reading a lot of odd numbers of the
Real Lady
'
s Home Journal,
which an old housemaid had sent them out of pity, and trying to imagine new dresses, silks and satins and lace—to be made from the cut-out paper patterns given away with the
Real Lady.

The merchant took off his coat and turned up his shirt sleeves and went to work like a man. He cleaned the boots and knives, carried coals, blacked the grates, drew water from the well, and did all the heavy work that women ought never to be allowed to do. Besides all that, he kept the garden in perfect order, so that not a weed showed its head there, and lupins, leopard's bane, larkspur, gardener's garters, goat's rue, columbines, poppies and lilies and sweet williams all grew as if they had been born there. But there were no roses, and, of course, there was no money to spare for rose-bushes. I suppose it was called Rose Cottage so as to have at least one “rose” there—on the gate-post, where the name was painted.

Beauty, for her part, kept the house clean and pretty, washed, starched, ironed, baked, brewed, and sewed, and she and her father were as happy as the days were long, except for the grumblings of the sisters, and even these the two workers got used to in time, so that they hardly noticed them—just as people who live near a railway get used to the rattling and screaming and thundering of the trains, and people who live in towns get used to the voices of poor people saying, “I am starving. Give me a penny, for the love of God!” You'll agree with me that if you can get used to the noise of railways and the voices of your starving brothers you can get used to anything. So the disagreeableness of the sisters almost ceased to be a worry, and everything went on getting pleasanter and pleasanter for a year—and it came to be jasmine-time again.

And then one morning when Beauty was shaking the door-mats at the front gate, with a blue handkerchief over her head to keep the dust from her hair, the postman came along the road; and oh, wonderful! he had a letter in his hand—the first they had had since they came to live at Rose Cottage.

“It's for your father,” said the postman. “Thank God for a beautiful day.”

“Yes,” said Beauty, and took the letter to her father, who was digging a dish of new potatoes for dinner.

He opened it.

“What is it?” asked Beauty, for he looked glad.

He did not answer. And “
Oh,
what is it?” Beauty asked, for now he looked sorry.

“I almost wish it hadn't happened,” he said slowly, scraping the earth off the fork with the edge of his boot. “For we've been very happy together here, my Beauty. But I suppose I ought to go—if it's only for the sake of your poor sisters.” He handed her the letter, which told how two of the merchant's ships, which were supposed to be lost, had come safely to port, laden with rich treasure, so that he was now a wealthy man again; and please would he hurry up and take his goods away, for they were littering up the quays, and the Municipal Council could not allow the roadway to be obstructed by the strewn-about bales of any merchant.

Well, of course he set out at once. The two sisters got up, half dressed and with their hair in curl-papers, to say goodbye to him. Beauty gave him a good breakfast; and if she did drop a tear or two into his coffee cup as she filled it, nobody was the worse or the wiser.

“Goodbye, my dears,” he said, as he stood by the gate waiting for the coach. “I'll bring you each a present. What would you like?”

“A purse full of money—quite full,” said the eldest.

“A casket of jewels,” said the second.

“And what shall I bring for my Beauty?” the old man asked fondly, for she had said nothing.

“Oh, bring me a rose,” said Beauty, who didn't want him to bother about presents for her, when she knew how busy he would be clearing up his bales and things.

But when he came to the city he found that there were no ships, and no bales, and no anything at all for him but disappointment. The letter was just a hoax, planned by some of the young men whom the elder sisters had treated so rudely long ago. He shrugged his shoulders and turned to go home again, not too unhappy, after all, because he had still his best treasure at home—his dear Beauty.

He found that no coach went past Rose Cottage till next morning, and he was afraid that if he did not get home that night Beauty would be unhappy and anxious, so he decided to travel by the Flying Serpent, a coach which would set him down about tea-time at a town ten miles from home. He would walk those ten miles and be home for supper.

And sure enough he started to walk those ten miles. But he did not get home to supper.

Thinking of Beauty and of his pleasant, busy life with her, he forgot to read the sign-posts with proper care, and so wandered quite out of the right road. The path got rough and stony, and the boughs of the trees hung low over it. At last even the absent-minded merchant could not help seeing that it was not the high-road that he was on. Also he now noticed that it was nearly dark—so dark that he could not see to read the next sign-post, and had actually to climb up it before he could make out that it was trying to say to him, “This is the right way.”

He was quite sure that the sign-post was wrong, but there did not seem to be any other that knew better, so he went on, quite soon through inky darkness, only guided by a blue light that shone ahead like a sick star. It led him through a garden, where he stumbled among trellises and against statues, and blundered up steps, till at last he came to a great house; and over its front door was the blue lamp that had guided him.

He knocked, but as no one answered he lifted the latch and went in. There was a hall, beautiful and big, and beyond that another, still bigger and more beautiful. This hall had a pleasant wood fire, and a sideboard loaded with the nicest kind of cold supper. A little table near the fire was laid for one.

The merchant ventured to sit down by the fire and try to dry himself. He looked longingly at the pleasant things on the sideboard, and at last he could not bear his hunger any longer, for he had had nothing since breakfast. “When the master of the house comes in I'm sure he will forgive me,” he said, and instantly ate a cold partridge. Then he had some pickled salmon, a game pie, three fat buns, some cherry pie, and a cream cheese. Then he did not feel so hungry, but he was strangely sleepy, so he looked about for a place to rest, and, finding a nice little room opening out of the hall, he pulled off his wet clothes and crept between the cool clean sheets and fell fast asleep.

The sun woke him next morning. A bath was set out ready for him, and also a new suit of clothes exactly like his old ones.

“Oh, I see,” he said, “this is a poor-house, where the State takes care of poor travellers who haven't money to spend on hotels. I am very lucky to have found it. And how delicately it's all done! The Guardians of the Poor arrange everything so beautifully, and then keep out of the way to avoid being thanked.” When he had had breakfast in the hall, still seeing no one, he started to walk home, and on his way through the gardens he remembered Beauty's wish, and stopped to gather her a rose from one of the flower-covered trellises.

Then suddenly with a fierce and frightening howl a great shaggy beast leapt out from behind a magnolia tree, and shook a knobbly club in his face.

“Ungrateful wretch!” growled the Beast. “You have been treated like a prince in my house, and in return you steal my roses. Prepare to die.”

“Oh, please don't!” said the merchant. “I am so sorry. I never meant... Oh, my lord, spare me!”

“I'm not a lord—I'm a beast,” said the creature; and so he was—something between a bear and a hyena, with a dash of monkey and something of the elephant.

“Good Beast,” said the merchant through chattering teeth, “I only just took one rose for my daughter. She is so fond of roses.”

“How many daughters have you?” asked the Beast.

“Three,” said the merchant. “Oh, spare me for their sakes!”

“Very well,” said the Beast, “I'll let you off this time if one of your daughters will come here and die instead of you. That's all I have to say. Good-morning. If you or your daughter aren't here by tea-time tomorrow—I shall call at your house and take the whole family.”

“I am at your mercy,” said the poor merchant. “I will come back myself tomorrow, in plenty of time for your tea. Of course, I sha'n't allow my daughters to sacrifice themselves for me.”

“Humph!” said the Beast. “I'll order a carriage for you—you'll get home quicker; and it can call for you tomorrow and bring you back—you or your daughter.”

The carriage was very comfortable, but the merchant was on thorns. The only comfort was that the Beast had insisted on his taking a big chest of gold, and the thought that this was now on the box beside the coachman, and would presently be a handsome dowry and livelihood for his daughters, consoled him a little.

When he got home he sent away the carriage, and kissed his children.

“What's in the chest, father?” said the elder ones, speaking both at once and in a very great hurry. “Is it our presents?”

“It is the money for you to live on when I am dead,” said the father. “That is the only present I have brought; that and this rose for my Beauty, which has cost her father's life.”

And he told them what had happened.

“Ah,” said the eldest sister, “this is your doing! If you hadn't tried to be so extra humble and unselfish
this
wouldn't have happened. You might at least cry, like us.”

“I've nothing to cry about,” said Beauty, hugging her father; “it's my rose, and I'm going to pay for it.”

“I shouldn't dream of allowing such a thing,” said the merchant crossly.

“I'd much sooner die all in a minute,” said Beauty, “than be miserable all my life long at the thought that I'd caused my father's death.”

“Nonsense,” said her father. “I shall go back tomorrow, as I said.”

“If you do,” said Beauty, “I shall go with you. And if you go without me, I shall follow you.”