Ella dropped down on her knees to pick up the mess. She saw them disappearing through the door, on their way to the ball. “Have a good time!” she called in a trembling voice. They didn’t seem to hear. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the top of the stairs. Their trains were swishing into the passage below, the trains that would soon be swishing up the Palace steps. “Good-by!” she called down the staircase well. “Have a good time.”
The front door banged.
CHAPTER XI
Bells Over the Snow
SHE STOOD AND listened to the horses’ bridle bells ringing over the snow.
For the past hour she had been listening to the jingle of thousands of horse bells, as coaches and carriages, sleighs and sledges, berlines and barouches rolled silently along the coaching road in the snow that muffled the trot of the horses’ hoofs and the grind of the wheels. The ground was soundless under its thick white blanket, but in the crystal air the bridle bells tinkled like icicles, and the coachmen’s whips cracked sharp as ice splitting on a frozen pond. The bells she had heard were ringing hundreds of girls to the ball. Inside their conveyances they sat in all their beauty, dressed in silk and gauze and satin and brocade, adorned with pearls and moonstones and diamonds, shod in gold and silver, wrapped in velvet and furs. Pretty as pictures, they sat up stiff and still, that their glossy curls, befeathered and beflowered, might not be disarranged. In her mind’s eye she had seen them every one, all so lovely that how could the Prince choose among them? The bells were like a tinkling chain linking her with the Royal Palace, her only link with the ball where she would have been the happiest of them all, if she might only crouch behind a pillar in the corner and look on.
Then for a little while the bells stopped ringing, for the ladies had started in good time and were out of hearing. Now they must nearly all be riding up the sweeping carriage drive, alighting at the marble steps to the Palace doors, mounting them daintily in their gilded slippers, brushing the snow crystals a little with the edges of their ermine mantles, entering the glittering hall on purple carpets. Now they were hearing their names called at the entrance to the ballroom, beyond which stood the Prince, bathed in light, waiting for them all, yet waiting for only one. She had never seen the Palace or the staircase or the lights, she had never seen a ball of any sort, but she could imagine every detail as she listened to the bells over the snow. The one thing she could not imagine was the Prince.
When the ringing ceased, when the last vehicle from far away had passed far away again, she was too busy attending to the Sisters to imagine anything: so late they were, such a to-do there was! But even helping them with their heavy gowns of maroon and mustard yellow, powdering them, dressing their hair, finding things for them—even that was still a little part of the ball she wasn’t allowed to go to. She could hardly bear it as the departure grew nearer, and so she had dared to plead that she might just see the people going in. She could have crouched outside in the dark and listened to the music and the laughing—and that would still have been a part of the ball. When she was refused, she clung to the last few minutes of the spilled finery, the hasty scramble out of the house, the little squeaks and shrieks on the slippery path: “It’s freezing! It’s freezing! Go carefully! Hang on to me! Stop gripping me! You’re tripping me! Oops! Ma was nearly down that time! I’m petrified! I’m paralyzed! Stop dragging me! Stop nagging me! I’m dithery! It’s slithery! OOPS! Ma was really down that time! We’ll be late, we’ll be late! Look alive, look alive! The horses are waiting at the end of the drive. . . .” It was still a part, a little part, of the ball. . . .
No more slipping and slithering, no more squeaks and shrieks . . . The carriage door banged, the coachman cracked his whip, the bells began again, jingling fainter, fainter, fainter over the snow.
She pressed her ear to the cold windowpane. She could still hear them . . . still hear them . . . hear them . . . now they were gone, the last bells ringing ladies to the ball.
CHAPTER XII
Ella All Alone
IT IS DIFFICULT, sitting alone in a dark vaulted kitchen, with all the rooms of an empty house overhead, and all the silence of the night outside—it is very difficult to pretend that you are not alone. It seemed to Ella, with her head on her arms on the table, that she had never been quite so alone in all her life. Nobody upstairs, ran her thoughts, nobody downstairs, nobody inside, nobody outside, nobody anywhere at all but me.
The truth was that even Ella wasn't there; her tired little body was, but her heart had flown away through the night to try to peep in at the golden windows of the Palace. No wonder the little body felt alone, without even its own heart to keep it company.
The tiniest scratching sound under the wainscot fell on her ear, just by the corner where the mousehole was.
“Mousey, mousey!” Very softly Ella got down on her knees on the floor. “Would you come on my hand?” She crept toward the hole, as secretly as the mouse itself, holding her hand out. Would it come? “Would you, mousey?”
But the mouse, who had ventured forth as Ella approached, disappeared like a shadow into the other shadows in the room. Ella dropped her hand and tried not to feel disappointed. “I expect she’s run away to a grand Mouse Ball. Yes, of course. There will be a King Mouse, and a Queen Mouse, and a Prince Mouse and all, and a Lady Mouse, and a Slavey Mouse, dancing at the ball.”
The unexpected rhyme at the end cheered her up a little and set her thoughts dancing. “They must have some mouse music,” she decided. She knew just the thing, too. Among the broken ornaments on the high mantelpiece was a toy musical box that long ago had tinkled pretty tunes. It still had a tinkle or two left in it, if you turned the handle carefully, and although they stuck a trifle here and there, the tunes were pretty still. Quite gay now, Ella carried the musical box to the table, and as she turned the handle, she imagined the scrubbed tabletop was a shining dancing floor in a grand mouse palace. She began to describe it to herself, speaking aloud to the jerky, tinkly tune.
“First comes the King Mousey,
With a gold crown on his head. . . .
Next comes the Queen Mousey,
Looking very sleek and well fed. . . .
Then comes the Prince Mousey
In a wee pink satin coat,
And a wee rose in his paw,
And a wee squeak in his throat. . . .
All round the kitchen ballroom the mousey ladies twitter,
And scatter and scutter and skitter.
‘Will the Prince ask me, ask me, ask me,
Will the Prince ask me to dance?’
But the Prince doesn’t give one of them,
Not one of them,
Even a glance.
‘Please, please, Miss Mouse,
Miss Slavey Mouse,
Will you have a spin?’
‘Yes, yes, Prince Mouse, yes, yes,
Do let’s begin!’
Round and round and round and round and round!
The Lady Mousies squeak, ‘Oh dear! Well I never! What a pity!’
But the King Mousey and the Queen Mousey squeak, ‘Isn’t she pretty!
Isn’t she pretty! Isn’t she pretty! Isn’t she . . .’”
Something stuck in the musical box, and something stuck in Ella’s throat, and neither of them could go on. Ella stifled the choke in her throat and buried her face in her hands, where the choke turned into a sob or two. “I want to be upstairs like I used to be,” sobbed Ella.
A voice behind her said, “I used to be upstairs too.”
She didn’t have to look round to know who that was. “Did you, Grandpa?”
“You wouldn’t remember,” said the Clock. “You couldn’t so much as walk when your father brought back that gilt clock from Paris. So downstairs I came. I think I’ve had a sort of pain in my pendulum ever since.”
Now Ella did look round, saying sympathetically, “Oh dear!”
“And it was oh-dear, I can tell you,” said the Clock.
“The maids us
ed to treat me without any respect. Yes, yes, it was oh-dear till you came downstairs too.”
“Me, Grandpa?”
“It’s horrid for you in the kitchen, we know. But if it isn’t nice for you, it is for us.”
“Nice for you?” said Ella wonderingly.
“Much nicer than what we might have. Much nicer than what we have had. Your hands are so kind when you polish me. What do you say, Chair?”
“Your body is so light when you sit on me,” said the Rocking Chair. “What do you say, Fire?”
“Your eyes are so bright when you look in me,” said the Fire. “I like seeing my little flames in your eyes.”
All round the room the voices of the Things were saying, “We like having you about, we like having you about.”
“You’re kind to Things,” said the Clock.
“We like you, we like you, we like you,” said the Things.
Ella looked round at the Cups and the Plates and the Taps and the Fire Irons and the Brooms, and said, “I like you—all of you.”
“And we’re sorry you’re not going to the ball,” said the Clock.
The voices chimed in, “Very sorry, very sorry, we’re very, very, very sorry.”
“Don’t remind me!” Ella implored them. “Don’t remind me! I did want to go to the ball! Why can’t I? I want to go to the ball like my sisters. Oh, Grandpa, ten o’clock!” she cried, turning her face toward his. “Just on ten o’clock! It’s beginning, and I’m not there.”
“Steady,” said the Clock. “I’m just going to strike.”
“Don’t strike, Grandpa, don’t!” begged Ella.
“My dear, I can’t help it.”
“Can’t you? Please! Couldn’t you hold in?”
“It would hurt.”
“Badly?”
“Very badly. And then—I shouldn’t even be in the kitchen.”
“Go on—” Ella gulped down her tears. “Strike!”
The Grandfather Clock began striking ten. At the fourth stroke, something happened.
CHAPTER XIII
She Is Dressed for the Ball
“TWEET-TWEET! TWEET-TWEET!”
Ella rubbed her ears, and then she rubbed her eyes. The glass in the clock case had lit up like a lamp, and crouched in the light was the funny old Crone Ella had met that morning in the woods.
“Why, Grandpa—Granny,” she whispered.
“Tweet-tweet!” twittered the Crone, and then the light went out as suddenly as it had appeared.
“I’m dreaming.” Ella pinched herself; she must be dreaming. “Did you say anything, Grandpa?” she asked timidly.
But he only went on striking the hour, and at the last stroke of ten the clock case lit up again—and this time, instead of the Crone, an enchanting Fairy hovered in the light, with butterfly wings and a star-pointed wand.
“I am dreaming,” whispered Ella.
The Fairy stepped out of the clock. “Why dreaming?” she asked.
“It’s so wonderful,” said Ella. “Waking things are sad.”
“Waking things can be wonderful too,” said the Fairy.
Ella gazed at her in bewilderment. “You mean you’re true?”
“As true,” said the Fairy, “as that you are going to the ball.”
“I—? Going to the—? Like my sisters?”
“Not at all like your sisters,” said the Fairy rather tartly. “As if I couldn’t do better than that!”
“But my dress,” stammered Ella. “Look at me! My hands—look at them! My hair—look at it! Don’t you see—”
“Of course I see,” chuckled the old Crone’s voice. “I got eyes in me head, an’t I?”
“Granny?” gasped Ella. The voice had undoubtedly come out of the Fairy’s pretty throat. “Granny, Granny! Oh,” she said, abashed, “I beg your pardon, madam.”
“If you call me madam I’ll slap you,” said the Fairy.
Unable to contain herself for joy, Ella danced about the room, laughing, “Slap me, slap me, do what you like to me, I love you, Granny, tweet-tweet!”
“That’s better,” said the Fairy.
“But—” Ella shook her puzzled head. “You look so young for a granny.”
“I’m as old as the hills,” said the Fairy. “I was old when your granny was a baby.”
“Did you know her?” asked Ella, wondering.
“Yes.”
“And my Mother?”
“Yes.”
“You knew my Mother!”
“She left you in my care,” said the Fairy.
“She—! Me—! You—!”
“And so,” said the Fairy, “you are going to the ball.”
Ella clasped her hands, saying sorrowfully, “I haven’t got an invitation card.”
“Really?” said the Fairy. “What’s that you are clasping so tightly in your hands?”
Ella undid her fingers, and there, between them, was an ivory card printed in gold letters. “‘The King commands your presence—’” she read in a daze. “I’m going to the ball! How wonderful!” Laughter rippled through her lips again. “I’m going to the ball!” Waving her precious invitation card, she danced round the kitchen, curtsying to the Rocking Chair, to the Fire Irons, to the Brooms, to all the Things in turn. “I’m going to the ball!”
“Now listen to me,” said the Fairy.
“How wonderful, how wonderful!” said Ella, curtsying to the Clock.
“Child! Are you listening?”
“I don’t know—I think I am—I don’t know,” said Ella.
“If you don’t listen, you’ll be sorry,” the Fairy warned her.
“I’ll never be sorry again. How wonderful!”
The Fairy held up her hand. “The wonder will last till exactly twelve o’clock. No less and no longer. Isn’t that so, Grandpa?”
“That—is—so. That—is—so,” ticked the Clock.
“When you get to the ball—” the Fairy went on.
“Oh!” cried Ella. “But when I get there my stepmother and my stepsisters—”
“Won’t know you,” said the Fairy. “No one will know you. No one will guess that the Princess from Nowhere is the slavey from the kitchen. Isn’t that so, Grandpa?”
“That—is—so,” ticked the Clock. “That—is—so.”
“The Princess from Nowhere? Me? But Granny—” Suddenly Ella remembered the cruel mockery the Stepmother had poured upon her, and she hung her head. “Look at me! I don’t want to stand among the silks and satins with all the people laughing at me. I don’t want to be called a little slut before them all. I don’t want—”
“You don’t want this, and you don’t want that! What do you want? Make up your mind.”
“I do want to go to the ball.”
“Then suppose you leave it to me,” said the Fairy.
She lifted her wand and began to speak in a voice like music, that was not the voice of either the old Crone or the fairy voice in which she had been speaking till this moment. It was a magic voice, like one heard perhaps in a lovely dream, forgotten as soon as one wakes. While she spoke, music streamed out of the air and the fire on the hearth, and down from the ceiling and up from the stone flags on the floor; and the star on the wand, moving up and down and in and out, glowed now green, now blue, now silver, now gold, and what a moment before had been a cold dark vault became veined like a rainbow as the Fairy summoned her spirits.
“Earth, air, water, fire,
This child attire.
Gold fire, silver water,
Dress your daughter.
Green earth, blue air,
Make her fair.
Water give grace, fire give light
To her tonight.
Air give her joy, earth give her flowers,
She is ours.
Earth, air, water, fire,
Our child attire.”
Down from the vaulted ceiling, up from the flagged floor, out of the taps over the sink, and the flames on the hearth, floated the spirits, blue a
nd green and silver and gold, enveloping Ella in light. She did not know what was happening, only, as in the lovely dream, she felt her rags fall away, and saw her hands and arms and feet become as white as snow, and her hair as smooth as sunlight on a rippling sea; and while the charm went on around her, the spirit voices sang in her ears such music as she had never even imagined.
“Gold fire, silver water,
Dress our daughter.
Green earth, blue air,
Make her fair.
Jeweled fire, silken water,
Dress our daughter.
Flowered earth, feathered air,
Make her fair.
Glittering fire, shimmering water,
Dress our daughter.
Flowering earth, fluttering air,
Make her fair.”
Marvelous things were happening to Ella. Garments of materials so exquisite and so fine, jewels so pure and so sparkling, such as were to be found nowhere in the world, arrayed and adorned the little Princess from Nowhere. And Ella, standing as still as a snow statue, let it happen, only sighing, “Oh, oh, oh! I’m losing my senses.”
Through the rainbow cloud came the Fairy’s warning voice. “Keep your senses, Ella. You will need them.”
And somewhere beyond the cloud she heard Grandpa booming, “Twelve o’clock! Remember twelve o’clock!”
Then the voices that had been singing so radiantly turned sad and pale.
“Cold fire, frozen water,
Poor daughter!
Withering earth, shivering air,
Where? . . . Where? . . .”
Ella felt a shiver pass through her body from head to foot. “What is it, Granny? Oh, Grandpa, what is it?”
“Nothing to fear,” came the Fairy’s voice through the cloud that was thinning away like mist. “You will dance and be happy, you will sing and be gay—”
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