“Vacate your seat!” commanded the Herald, in tones that would have blighted a rhinoceros, while the ladies, as one woman, insisted, “For chits in chairs who choose to cheat, there’s nothing at all, so leave your seat.”
Arethusa left her seat, wishing she hadn’t come.
“Thank heaven for that,” breathed the Prince. The Zany fell upon his knees and thanked heaven. “But where,” cried the Prince, “where is my Princess?” The Zany looked up at the ceiling, and down at the floor, and felt in both his pockets. The Princess of Nowhere wasn’t anywhere, and the Zany, in his grief, heaved a sigh so heavy that the curtains began to wave wildly all round the room.
The Herald observed, “There’s a wind rising.”
“A monsoon!” said the Footman. The ladies were clutching their skirts to hold them down.
“A simoon!” declared the Trumpeter. The chandeliers were chattering like teeth.
“A typhoon!” boomed the Toastmaster, for now everything and everybody in the room was billowing and bellowing and swirling and whirling, and curling and unfurling, and rotating and gyrating and circulating, and in short, thought the Herald, circumnavigating as though Chaos were come again, and the universe were in a process of recreation.
Which, in a sort of a way, was just what was happening.
CHAPTER XXX
The Hand of Cinderella
THE WIND STOPPED blowing, the curtains stopped flowing, the Zany stopped spinning like a teetotum, the ladies stopped running round in circles and began to smooth their ruffled curls and straighten their ruffled furbelows. The throne room looked just as it did before the hullabaloo.
But did it? In the middle of the floor was a little old woman who had certainly not been there before, a Crone in a ragged shawl crouched over a crutch; and, in a strange way that nobody could explain, her presence seemed to make a great deal of difference. Where had she come from, and how had she got there?
While everybody was thinking these questions, the Prince was asking them.
“Who are you? What have you come for? Where have you come from? What is your name?”
The Crone wagged her head and chuckled.
“What is my name?
What is my name?
I’m only a hob-hob-hobbledy dame.
Who be I?
Lack-a-day-dee!
Nobody, nobody,
That’s who I be.
Why do I come
With crutch in hand?
I come for nothing
You’d understand.
Whence do I come
In tattery shawl?
I come from nowhere
At all, at all.”
“From Nowhere?” cried the Prince.
“At all, at all,” said she.
“You come from Nowhere?”
“What I say once is true.”
“You know the Princess of Nowhere?”
“Which princess?” asked she.
“There can be but one,” said the Prince.
“Hoity-toity!” She chuckled. “Nowhere is chock-a-block with princesses.”
“Mine,” said the Prince, “is the most beautiful.”
“Beauty,” said the Crone, “is a matter of opinion. What is she like?”
“Her eyes are like stars, her teeth are like pearls, her hair is like silk, her skin is like milk. Her mouth is like a rose.”
The old woman said, “All princesses are like stars, pearls, silk, milk, and roses. How was she dressed?”
“As the fairest princess in the world should be dressed,” said the Prince.
“H’m,” said the Crone. “That’s a pity.”
“Why?”
“The only princess in my pocket is in rags,” said the Crone.
“No better than our Cinders!” exclaimed Arethusa.
“My princess had glass slippers on her feet,” said the Prince.
“My princess goes barefoot,” said the Crone.
“Just like our Cinders!” exclaimed Araminta.
The Prince asked impatiently, “What are you talking of? Who is this Cinders?”
The Herald deigned to explain. “Their Stepsister, I presume—Miss Ella.”
“Ella? What Ella?” The Prince looked round the room. “Why isn’t she here?”
“Her!” cried Arethusa.
“Here?” cried Araminta.
“My Royal Proclamation said everybody,” cried the Prince.
“But she’s a slavey,” said Arethusa.
“Everybody.”
“But she’s a nobody,” said Araminta.
The Crone remarked, “The Princess of Nowhere should be a Nobody.”
The Prince turned to her quickly. “You are wise, old woman.” He clasped his hands. “Help me!”
“Tweet-tweet!” chirped she.
And now something more surprising than the windstorm filled the room—it was filled with the fluttering of thousands of wings, and the chirpings and twitterings from thousands of tiny throats; the light grew dark with feathers, and for a few moments nobody could see anything. Then the twittering ceased, the wings flew away—and there, in the gilt chair, sat Ella herself, Ella in her rags and tangled hair, with one little bare foot on the gold stool; and the Prince was kneeling before her. He looked up at her, and she down on him, with joy and wonder.
“Am I really here?” she asked.
“You are really here.”
“Is this really me?”
“It is really you.”
“And is that really you?” She bent down closer and asked him, “I’m not dreaming?”
“Your eyes are wide, wide awake,” he promised her; and she said, “Put on the slipper.”
He put the slipper on. “It fits!” he cried.
“And here is its mate,” said Ella, drawing the other slipper out of her skirt.
He put on that one too, and the whole Court shouted, “It fits!”
Ella wanted but one thing more to complete her great happiness. The Prince knew it, without knowing what it was. “What do you want?” he asked.
Ella whispered shyly, “Will you—kiss my hand?”
The Prince took Ella’s grubby little hand, still dirty with the morning’s cinders, and kissed it as tenderly as if it had been the white hand of the Princess of Nowhere. Then he sprang to his feet and cried in a ringing voice, “Let all present kiss the hand of Cinderella!”
The Herald marshaled the ladies into place, and conducted them, one after the other, to the dais where Ella was standing beside the Prince; and, one after the other, each kissed her hand, curtsied deeply, and passed on. Meanwhile the Toastmaster, his heart melted once and for all, sang his song for the bride.
“Blue eyes, yellow hair,
Our Queen is fair.
Little hands, tiny feet,
She is sweet.
Sun, shine! Birds, be gay
For her today.
Life give her joy, love give her flowers,
This Queen of ours.”
“Life, give her joy! Love, give her flowers!” sang the ladies. They did not grudge her her good fortune; how could anyone not love someone who looked so like a flower?
Yes, how could anyone—even Arethusa and Araminta? They came slowly at the end of the procession, approaching the dais last of all, with hanging heads and faces burning with shame. Then their courage failed them; they dared not come farther, and stopped halfway, with their eyes fixed on the ground. Now they were going to get their deserts for all their unkindness.
And Ella from the dais looked at them, the Sisters who had been so cruel and harsh and greedy and thoughtless—thoughtless! Perhaps, perhaps that was all it was, just thoughtlessness. She was so happy—and everything must be lovely when everything is lovely!
She jumped down from the dais and ran to the Sisters. “Thusy!” She kissed Arethusa on the right cheek. “Minty!” She kissed Araminta on the left, and ran back to the Prince.
The Sisters lifted their heads a little and stared at each ot
her. Could they believe it? They had been kissed by a Princess! Nobody noticed them as they stole away home.
On the dais the Prince had taken Ella’s hands in his and was saying, “I wish—I wish—”
“What do you wish?” asked the old Crone, whom everybody had completely forgotten.
“Do you wish for the Kingdom of Nowhere,
Where to dream is the same as to do?
Do you wish to be happy forever, and go where Your wishes come true?”
“Please, old woman,” said the Prince.
“Please, Granny,” said Ella.
The Crone tossed her crutch in the air.
“Zany, Zany, witless and wise,
Show your Prince where Nowhere lies—”
As the Zany caught the crutch it changed in his hand to a rod of silver light, tipped with a star. Gleeful as a child let loose among its fancies, he began to spin round and round the room like a top, humming as he spun, slapping his wand on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, to which he floated up like a balloon. Wherever the wand pointed, and whatever it touched, changed into something different: the Crone took wings like a bird, the Toastmaster tumbled about like a clown, the Footman tripped over him like a pantaloon, the Trumpeter became an Oriental magician dispensing charms and spells, the Herald a slashing, dashing Spanish buccaneer, an all-conquering Don Juan. The ladies turned into butterflies, the lords into dragonflies, the Palace into a comet which flew with them all three times round the sun, where the Prince, looking very like a Harlequin, found the rosy heart that had flown away at the ball, and presented it to Ella, looking very like a Columbine, who clutched it so tight that it couldn’t ever fly away again. . . .
The Zany was spinning slower, the humming was lower, the top was running down. . . .
The magic ended all in an instant, as it had begun. Ladies and lords were themselves again, Herald and Toastmaster, Footman and Trumpeter, resumed their own shapes and went on performing their duties. The Zany was exactly what he had always been. The Crone had vanished, and the Palace had come back to earth.
Only Ella and the Prince had left a part of themselves in Nowhere, where wishes come true.
About the Author
Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) was a British author of children’s stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire. She lived much of her life among the literary and theatrical circles of London and her friends included D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare and Robert Frost. She won many literary awards and the prestigious Eleanor Farjeon Award for children’s literature is presented annually in her memory by the Children’s Book Circle.
Also by Eleanor Farjeon
The Tale of Tom Tiddler
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field
Perkin the Pedlar
Jim at the Corner
Kaleidoscope
The Old Nurse’s Stocking-Basket
The New Book of Days
Nursery Rhymes of London Town
THE GLASS SLIPPER
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17176 7
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2013
First published by Oxford University Press 1955
Copyright © The Miss E Farjeon Will Trust, 1955
Cover design copyright © Janene Spencer, 2013
Red Fox Classics 9781849419352 2013
The right of Eleanor Farjeon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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