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The Blue Moon

L >> Laurence Housman >> The Blue Moon



This etext was prepared by A Elizabeth Warren MD, Sacramento, CA
aewarren2@aol.com





The Blue Moon

by Laurence Housman




CONTENTS


THE BLUE MOON
A CHINESE FAIRY-TALE
THE WAY OF THE WIND
A CAPFUL OF MOONSHINE
THE MOON-STROKE
HOW LITTLE DUKE JARL SAVED THE CASTLE
THE WHITE DOE
THE GENTLE COCKATRICE
THE RAT-CATCHER'S DAUGHTER
WHITE BIRCH



The Blue Moon


Nillywill and Hands-pansy were the most unimportant and happy pair of lovers
the world has ever gained or lost.

With them it had been a case of love at first blindness since the day when
they had tumbled into each other's arms in the same cradle. And Hands-pansy,
when he first saw her, did not discover that Nillywill was a real princess
hiding her birthright in the home of a poor peasant; nor did Nillywill, when
she first saw Hands, see in him the baby-beginnings of the most honest and
good heart that ever sprang out of poverty and humble parentage. So from her
end of their little crib she kicked him with her royal rosy toes, and he from
his kicked back and laughed: and thus, as you hear, at first blindness they
fell head over ears in love with one another.

Nothing could undo that; for day by day earth and sun and wind came to rub it
in deeper, and water could not wash it off. So when they had been seven years
together there could be no doubt that they felt as if they had been made for
each other in heaven. And then something very big and sad came to pass; for
one day Nillywill had to leave off being a peasant child and become a princess
once more. People very grand and grown-up came to the woodside where she
flowered so gaily, and caught her by the golden hair of her head and pulled
her up by her dear little roots, and carried her quite away from Hands-pansy
to a place she had never been in before. They put her into a large palace,
with woods and terraces and landscape gardens on all sides of it; and there
she sat crying and pale, saying that she wanted to be taken back to Hands-
pansy and grow up and marry him, though he was but the poor peasant boy he had
always been.

Those that had charge of Nillywill in her high station talked wisely, telling
her to forget him. "For," said they, "such a thing as a princess marrying a
peasant boy can only happen once in a blue moon!"

When she heard that, Nillywill began every night to watch the moon rise,
hoping some evening to see it grow up like a blue flower against the dusk and
shake down her wish to her like a bee out of its deep bosom.

But night by night, silver, or ruddy, or primrose, it lit a place for itself
in the heavens; and years went by, bringing the Princess no nearer to her
desire to find room for Hands-pansy amid the splendours of her throne.

She knew that he was five thousand miles away and had only wooden peasant
shoes to walk in; and when she begged that she might once more have sight of
him, her whole court, with the greatest utterable politeness, cried "No!"

The Princess's memory sang to her of him in a thousand tunes, like woodland
birds carolling; but it was within the cage which men call a crown that her
thoughts moved, fluttering to be out of it and free.

So time went on, and Nillywill had entered gently into sweet womanhood--the
comeliest princess that ever dropped a tear; and all she could do for love was
to fill her garden with dark-eyed pansies, and walk among their humble
upturned faces which reminded her so well of her dear Hands--Hands who was a
long five thousand miles away. "And, oh !" she sighed, watching for the blue
moon to rise, "when will it come and make me at one with all my wish?"

Looking up, she used to wonder what went on there. She and Hands had stolen
into the woods, when children together, and watched the small earth-fairies at
play, and had seen them, when the moon was full, lift up their arms to it,
making, perhaps, signals of greeting to far-off moon-brothers. So she thought
to herself, "What kind are the fairies up there, and who is the greatest
moon-fairy of all who makes the blue moon rise and bring good-will to the sad
wishers of the human race? Is it," thought Nillywill, "the moon-fairy who then
opens its heart and brings down healing therefrom to lovers upon earth?"

And now, as happens to all those who are captives of a crown, Nillywill
learned that she must wed with one of her own rank who was a stranger to her
save for his name and his renown as the lord of a neighbouring country; there
was no help for her, since she was a princess, but she must wed according to
the claims of her station. When she heard of it, she went at nightfall to her
pansies, all lying in their beds, and told them of her grief. They, awakened
by her tears, lifted up their grave eyes and looked at her.

"Do you not hear?" said they.

"Hear what?" asked the Princess.

"We are low in the ground: we hear!" said the pansies. "Stoop down your head
and listen!"

The Princess let her head go to the ground; and "click, click," she heard
wooden shoes coming along the road. She ran to the gate, and there was Hands,
tall and lean, dressed as a poor peasant, with a bundle tied up in a blue
cotton handkerchief across his shoulder, and five thousand miles trodden to
nothing by the faithful tramping of his old wooden shoes.

"Oh, the blue moon, the blue moon!" cried the Princess; and running down the
road, she threw herself into his arms.

How happy and proud they were of each other! He, because she remembered him
and knew him so well by the sight of his face and the sound of his feet after
all these years; and she, because he had come all that way in a pair of wooden
shoes, just as he was, and had not been afraid that she would be ashamed to
know him again.

"I am so hungry!" said Hands, when he and Nillywill had done kissing each
other. And when Nillywill heard that, she brought him into the palace through
the pansies by her own private way; then with her own hands she set food
before him, and made him eat. Hands, looking at her, said, "You are quite as
beautiful as I thought you would be!"

"And you--so are you!" she answered, laughing and clapping her hands. And "Oh,
the blue moon," she cried--"surely the blue moon must rise to-night!"

Low down in the west the new moon, leaning on its side, rocked and turned
softly in its sleep; and there, facing the earth through the cleared night,
the blue moon hung like a burning grape against the sky. Like the heart of a
sapphire laid open, the air flushed and purpled to a deeper shade. The wind
drew in its breath close and hushed, till not a leaf quaked in the boughs; and
the sea that lay out west gathered its waves together softly to its heart, and
let the heave of its tide fall wholly to slumber. Round-eyed, the stars looked
at themselves in the charmed water, while in a luminous azure flood the light
of the blue moon flowed abroad.

Under the light of many tapers within drawn curtains of tapestry, and feasting
her eyes upon the happiness of Hands, the Princess felt the change that had
entranced the outer world. "I feel," she said, "I do not know how--as if the
palace were standing siege. Come out where we can breathe the fresh air!"

The light of the tapers grew ghostly and dim, as, parting the thick hangings
of the window, they stepped into the night.

"The blue moon!" cried Nillywill to her heart; "oh, Hands, it is the blue
moon!"

All the world seemed carved out of blue stone; trees with stems dark-veined as
marble rose up to give rest to boughs which drooped the altered hues of their
foliage like the feathers of peacocks at roost. Jewel within jewel they burned
through every shade from blue to onyx. The white blossoms of a cherry-tree had
become changed into turquoise, and the tossing spray of a fountain as it
drifted and swung was like a column of blue fire. Where a long inlet of sea
reached in and touched the feet of the hanging gardens the stars showed like
glow-worms, emerald in a floor of amethyst.

There was no motion abroad, nor sound: even the voice of the nightingale was
stilled, because the passion of his desire had become visible before his eyes.

"Once in a blue moon!" said Nilly-will, waiting for her dream to become
altogether true. "Let us go now, she said, "where I can put away my crown!
To-night has brought you to me, and the blue moon has come for us: let us go!"

"Where shall we go?" asked Hands.

"As far as we can," cried Nillywill. "Suppose to the blue moon! To-night it
seems as if one might tread on water or air. Yonder across the sea, with the
stars for stepping-stones, we might get to the blue moon as it sets into the
waves."

But as they went through the deep alleys of the garden that led down to the
shore they came to a sight more wonderful than anything they had yet seen.

Before them, facing toward the sea, stood two great reindeer, their high horns
reaching to the overhead boughs; and behind them lay a sledge, long and with
deep sides like the sides of a ship. All blue they seemed in that strange
light.

There too, but nearer to hand, was the moon-fay himself waiting--a great
figure of lofty stature, clad in furs of blue fox-skin, and with heron's wings
fastened above the flaps of his hood; and these lifted themselves and clapped
as Hands and the Princess drew near.

"Are you coming to the blue moon ?" called the fay, and his voice whistled and
shrewed to them like the voice of a wind.

Hands-pansy gave back answer stoutly: "Yes, yes, we are coming!" And indeed
what better could he say?

"But," cried Nillywill, holding back for a moment, "what will the blue moon do
for us?"

"Once you are there," answered the moon-fay, "you can have your wish and your
heart's desire; but only once in a blue moon can you have it. Are you coming?"

"We are coming!" cried Nillywill. "Oh, let us make haste!"

"Tread softly," whispered the moon-fay, "and stoop well under these boughs,
for if anything awakes to behold the blue moon, the memory of it can never
die. On earth only the nightingale of all living things has beheld a blue
moon; and the triumph and pain of that memory wakens him ever since to sing
all night long. Tread softly, lest others waken and learn to cry after us; for
we in the blue moon have our sleep troubled by those who cry for a blue moon
to return." He looked towards Nillywill, and smiled with friendly eyes.
"Come!" he said again, and all at once they had leapt upon the sledge, and the
reindeer were running fast down toward the sea.

The blue moon was resting with its lower rim upon the waters. At that sight,
before they were clear of the avenues of the garden, one of the reindeer
tossed up his great branching horns and snorted aloud for joy. With a soft
stir in the thick boughs overhead, a bird with a great trail of feathers moved
upon its perch.

The sledge, gliding from land, passed out over the smoothed waters, running
swiftly as upon ice; and the reflection of the stars shone up like glow-worms
as Nillywill and Hands-pansy, in the moon-fay's company, sped away along its
bright surface.

The still air whistled through the reindeers' horns; so fast they went that
the trees and the hanging gardens and the palace walls melted away from view
like wreaths of smoke. Sky and sea became one magic sapphire drawing them in
towards the centre of its life, to the heart of the blue moon itself.

When the blue moon had set below the sea, then far behind upon the land they
had left the leaves rustled and drew themselves sharply together, shuddering
to get rid of the stony stillness, and the magic hues in which they had been
dyed; and again the nightingale broke out into passionate triumph and
complaint.

Then also from the bough which the reindeer had brushed with its horns a
peacock threw back its head and cried in harsh lamentation, having no sweet
voice wherewith to acclaim its prize. And so ever since it cries, as it goes
up into the boughs to roost, because it shares with the nightingale its grief
for the memory of departed beauty which never returns to earth save once in a
blue moon.

But Nillywill and Hands-pansy, living together in the blue moon, look back
upon the world, if now and then they choose to remember, without any longing
for it or sorrow.



A Chinese Fairy Tale


Tiki-pu was a small grub of a thing; but he had a true love of Art deep down
in his soul. There it hung mewing and complaining, struggling to work its way
out through the raw exterior that bound it.

Tiki-pu s master professed to be an artist: he had apprentices and students,
who came daily to work under him, and a large studio littered about with the
performances of himself and his pupils. On the walls hung also a few real
works by the older men, all long since dead.

This studio Tiki-pu swept; for those who worked in it he ground colours,
washed brushes, and ran errands, bringing them their dog chops and bird's-nest
soup from the nearest eating-house whenever they were too busy to go out to it
themselves. He himself had to feed mainly on the breadcrumbs which the
students screwed into pellets for their drawings and then threw about upon the
floor. It was on the floor, also, that he had to sleep at night.

Tiki-pu looked after the blinds, and mended the paper window-panes, which were
often broken when the apprentices threw their brushes and mahl-sticks at him.
Also he strained rice-paper over the linen-stretchers, ready for the painters
to work on; and for a treat, now and then, a lazy one would allow him to mix a
colour for him. Then it was that Tiki-pu's soul came down into his
finger-tips, and his heart beat so that he gasped for joy. Oh, the yellows and
the greens, and the lakes and the cobalts, and the purples which sprang from
the blending of them! Sometimes it was all he could do to keep himself from
crying out.

Tiki-pu, while he squatted and ground at the colour-powders, would listen to
his master lecturing to the students. He knew by heart the names of all the
painters and their schools, and the name of the great leader of them all who
had lived and passed from their midst more than three hundred years ago; he
knew that too, a name like the sound of the wind, Wio-wani: the big picture at
the end of the studio was by him.

That picture! To Tiki-pu it seemed worth all the rest of the world put
together. He knew, too, the story which was told of it, making it as holy to
his eyes as the tombs of his own ancestors. The apprentices joked over it,
calling it "Wio-wani's back-door," "Wio-wani's night-cap," and many other
nicknames; but Tiki-pu was quite sure, since the picture was so beautiful,
that the story must be true.

Wio-wani, at the end of a long life, had painted it; a garden full of trees
and sunlight, with high-standing flowers and green paths, and in their midst a
palace. "The place where I would like to rest," said Wio-wani, when it was
finished.

So beautiful was it then, that the Emperor himself had come to see it; and
gazing enviously at those peaceful walks, and the palace nestling among the
trees, had sighed and owned that he too would be glad of such a resting-place.
Then Wio-wani stepped into the picture, and walked away along a path till he
came, looking quite small and far-off, to a low door in the palace-wall.
Opening it, he turned and beckoned to the Emperor; but the Emperor did not
follow; so Wio-wani went in by himself, and shut the door between himself and
the world for ever.

That happened three hundred years ago; but for Tiki-pu the story was as fresh
and true as if it had happened yesterday. When he was left to himself in the
studio, all alone and locked up for the night, Tiki-pu used to go and stare at
the picture till it was too dark to see, and at the little palace with the
door in its wall by which Wio-wani had disappeared out of life. Then his soul
would go down into his finger-tips, and he would knock softly and fearfully at
the beautifully painted door, saying, "Wio-wani, are you there?"

Little by little in the long-thinking nights, and the slow early mornings when
light began to creep back through the papered windows of the studio, Tiki-pu's
soul became too much for him. He who could strain paper, and grind colours,
and wash brushes, had everything within reach for becoming an artist, if it
was the will of fate that he should be one.

He began timidly at first, but in a little while he grew bold. With the first
wash of light he was up from his couch on the hard floor, and was daubing his
soul out on scraps, and odds-and-ends, and stolen pieces of rice-paper.

Before long the short spell of daylight which lay between dawn and the arrival
of the apprentices to their work did not suffice him. It took him so long to
hide all traces of his doings, to wash out the brushes, and rinse clean the
paint-pots he had used, and on the top of that to get the studio swept and
dusted, that there was hardly time left him in which to indulge the itching
appetite in his fingers.

Driven by necessity, he became a pilferer of candleÄends, picking them from
their sockets in the lanterns which the students carried on dark nights. Now
and then one of these would remember that, when last used, his lantern had had
a candle in it, and would accuse Tiki-pu of having stolen it. "It is true," he
would confess ; "I was hungry--I have eaten it." The lie was so probable, he
was believed easily, and was well beaten accordingly. Down in the ragged
linings of his coat Tiki-pu could hear the candle-ends rattling as the
buffeting and chastisement fell upon him, and often he trembled lest his hoard
should be discovered. But the truth of the matter never leaked out and at
night, as soon as he guessed that all the world outside was in bed, Tiki-pu
would mount one of his candles on a wooden stand and paint by the light of it,
blinding himself over his task, till the dawn came and gave him a better and
cheaper light to work by.

Tiki-pu quite hugged himself over the results; he believed he was doing very
well. "If only Wio-wani were here to teach me," thought he, "I would be in the
way of becoming a great painter!"

The resolution came to him one night that Wio-wani should teach him. So he
took a large piece of rice-paper and strained it, and sitting down opposite
"Wio-wani's back-door," began painting. He had never set himself so big a task
as this; by the dim stumbling light of his candle he strained his eyes nearly
blind over the difficulties of it; and at last was almost driven to despair.
How the trees stood row behind row, with air and sunlight between, and how the
path went in and out, winding its way up to the little door in the palace-wall
were mysteries he could not fathom. He peered and peered and dropped tears
into his paint-pots; but the secret of the mystery of such painting was far
beyond him.

The door in the palace-wall opened; out came a little old man and began
walking down the pathway towards him.

The soul of Tiki-pu gave a sharp leap in his grubby little body. "That must be
Wio-wani himself and no other!" cried his soul.

Tiki-pu pulled off his cap and threw himself down on the floor with reverent
grovellings. When he dared to look up again Wio-wani stood over him big and
fine; just within the edge of his canvas he stood and reached out a hand.

"Come along with me, Tiki-pu!" said the great one. "If you want to know how to
paint I will teach you."

"Oh, Wio-wani, were you there all the while?" cried Tiki-pu ecstatically,
leaping up and clutching with his smeary little puds the hand which the old
man extended to him.

"I was there," said Wio-wani, "looking at you out of my little window. Come
along in!"

Tiki-pu took a heave and swung himself into the picture, and fairy capered
when he found his feet among the flowers of Wio-wani's beautiful garden.
Wio-wani had turned, and was ambling gently back to the door of his palace,
beckoning to the small one to follow him; and there stood Tiki-pu, opening his
mouth like a fish to all the wonders that surrounded him. "Celestiality, may I
speak?" he said suddenly.

"Speak," replied Wio-wani; "what is it?"

"The Emperor, was he not the very flower of fools not to follow when you told
him?"

"I cannot say," answered Wio-wani, "but he certainly was no artist."

Then he opened the door, that door which he had so beautifully painted, and
led Tiki-pu in. And outside the little candle-end sat and guttered by itself,
till the wick fell overboard, and the flame kicked itself out, leaving the
studio in darkness and solitude to wait for the growings of another dawn.

It was full day before Tiki-pu re- appeared; he came running down the green
path in great haste, jumped out of the frame on to the studio floor, and began
tidying up his own messes of the night and the apprentices' of the previous
day. Only just in time did he have things ready by the hour when his master
and the others returned to their work.

All that day they kept scratching their left ears, and could not think why;
but Tiki-pu knew, for he was saying over to himself all the things that
Wio-wani, the great painter, had been saying about them and their precious
productions. And as he ground their colours for them and washed their brushes,
and filled his famished little body with the breadcrumbs they threw away,
little they guessed from what an immeasurable distance he looked down upon
them all, and had Wio-wani's word for it tickling his right ear all the day
long.

Now before long Tiki-pu's master noticed a change in him; and though he
bullied him, and thrashed him, and did all that a careful master should do, he
could not get the change out of him. So in a short while he grew suspicious.
"What is the boy up to?" he wondered. "I have my eye on him all day: it must
be at night that he gets into mischief."

It did not take Tiki-pu's master a night's watching to find that something
surreptitious was certainly going on. When it was dark he took up his post
outside the studio, to see whether by any chance Tiki-pu had some way of
getting out; and before long he saw a faint light showing through the window.
So he came and thrust his finger softly through one of the panes, and put his
eye to the hole.

There inside was a candle burning on a stand, and Tiki-pu squatting with
paint-pots and brush in front of Wio-Wani's last masterpiece.

"What fine piece of burglary is this?" thought he; "what serpent have I been
harbouring in my bosom? Is this beast of a grub of a boy thinking to make
himself a painter and cut me out of my reputation and prosperity?" For even at
that distance he could perceive plainly that the work of this boy went head
and shoulders beyond his, or that of any painter then living.

Presently Wio-wani opened his door and came down the path, as was his habit
now each night, to call Tiki-pu to his lesson. He advanced to the front of his
picture and beckoned for Tiki-pu to come in with him; and Tiki-pu's master
grew clammy at the knees as he beheld Tiki-pu catch hold of Wio-wani's hand
and jump into the picture, and skip up the green path by Wio-wani's side, and
in through the little door that Wio-wani had painted so beautifully in the end
wall of his palace!

For a time Tiki-pu's master stood glued to the spot with grief and horror.
"Oh, you deadly little underling! Oh, you poisonous little caretaker, you
parasite, you vampire, you fly in amber!" cried he, "is that where you get
your training? Is it there that you dare to go trespassing; into a picture
that I purchased for my own pleasure and profit, and not at all for yours?
Very soon we will see whom it really belongs to!"

He ripped out the paper of the largest window-pane and pushed his way through
into the studio. Then in great haste he took up paint-pot and brush, and
sacrilegiously set himself to work upon Wio-wani's last masterpiece. In the
place of the doorway by which Tiki-pu had entered he painted a solid brick
wall; twice over he painted it, making it two bricks thick; brick by brick he
painted it, and mortared every brick to its place. And when he had quite
finished he laughed, and called "Good-night, Tiki-pu!" and went home to bed
quite happy.

The next day all the apprentices were wondering what had become of Tiki-pu;
but as the master himself said nothing, and as another boy came to act as
colour-grinder and brush-washer to the establishment, they very soon forgot
all about him.

In the studio the master used to sit at work with his students all about him,
and a mind full of ease and contentment. Now and then he would throw a glance
across to the bricked-up doorway of Wio-wani's palace, and laugh to himself,
thinking how well he had served out Tiki-pu for his treachery and presumption.

One day--it was five years after the disappearance of Tiki-pu--he was giving
his apprentices a lecture on the glories and the beauties and the wonders of
Wio-wani's painting--how nothing for colour could excel, or for mystery could
equal it. To add point to his eloquence, he stood waving his hallds before
Wio-wani's last masterpiece, and all his students and apprentices sat round
him and looked.

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