News of this wonder spread fast, and by the following spring visitors from all over the world – even from cities as remote as Guanojuato and Seringapatam – came flocking into Warwickshire merely to gaze a while at the sleeping Chimney-Sweeps: at 6d. a time. After which a fair proportion of them went on to Stratford to view the church where lie William Shakespeare’s honoured bones. Indeed Mrs Giles, the old woman who set up an apple and ginger-bread stall beside the Museum, in a few years made so much money out of her wares that she was able to bring up her nine orphaned grandchildren all but in comfort, and to retire at last at the age of sixty to a four-roomed cottage not a hundred yards from that of Anne Hathaway’s herself.
In course of time the Lord-Lieutenant and the Sheriffs and the Justices of the Peace and the Bishop and the mayors of the neighbouring towns, jealous no doubt of this fame and miracle in their midst, did their utmost to persuade and compel the Mayor and Corporation of Cheriton to remove the Boys to the county-town – the Earl himself promising to lodge them in an old house not a stone’s-throw distant from the lovely shrine of his ancestors, Beauchamp Chapel. But all in vain. The people of Cheriton held tight to their rights: and the Lord Chief Justice after soberly hearing both sides at full length wagged his wigged head in their favour.
For fifty-three years the Sleeping Boys slept on. During this period the Town Council had received One Hundred and Twenty Three Thousand, Five Hundred and Fifty-Five sixpences in fees alone (i.e. £3,088 17s. 6d.). And nearly every penny of this vast sum was almost clear profit. They spent it wisely too – widened their narrow chimneys, planted lime-trees in the High Street and ash and willow beside the river, built a fountain and a large stone dove-cot, and set apart a wooded meadowland with every comfort wild creatures can hope to have bestowed on them by their taskmaster, Man.
Then, one fine day, the curator – the caretaker – of the Museum, who for forty years had never once missed dusting the ’prentices’ glass case first thing in the morning, fell ill and had to take to his bed. And his niece, a pretty young thing, nimble and high-spirited, came as his deputy for a while, looked after the Museum, sold the tickets, and kept an eye on the visitors in his stead. She was only seventeen; and was the very first person who had ever been heard to sing in the Museum – though of course it was only singing with her lips all but closed, and never during show-hours.
And it was summer-time, or rather the very first of May. And as each morning she opened the great door of the Museum and ascended the wide carved staircase and drew up the blinds of the tall windows on the upper floor, and then turned – as she always turned – to gaze at the Three Sleepers (and not even a brass farthing to pay), she would utter a deep sigh as if out of the midst of a happy dream.
‘You lovely things!’ she would whisper to herself. ‘You lovely, lovely things!’ She had a motherly heart; and the wisps of her hair were as transparent as the E-string of a fiddle in the morning light. And the glance of her blue eyes rested on the glass case with such compassion and tenderness that if mere looking could have awakened the children they would have been dancing an Irish jig with her every blessed morning.
Being young, too, she was inclined to be careless, and had even at times broken off a tiny horn of coral, or a half-hidden scale from the mermaid’s tail for a souvenir of Cheriton to any young stranger that particularly took her fancy. Moreover, she had never been told anything about the magicry of keys or horseshoes or iron or ash or elder, having been brought up at a School where wizardry and witchcraft were never so much as mentioned during school hours. How could she realize then that the little key of the glass case and the great key of the Museum door (which, after opening both, she had dropped out of her pocket by accident plump into the garden well) could keep anybody or anything out, or in, even when the doors were wide open? Or that water can wash even witchcraft away?
That very morning there had been such a pomp of sunshine in the sky, and the thrushes were singing so shrilly in the new-leafed lime trees as she came along to her work, that she could resist her pity and yearning no longer. Having drawn up the blinds on the upper floor, in the silence she gently raised the three glass lids of the great glass case and propped them back fully open. And one by one – after first listening at their lips as stealthily as if in hope of hearing what their small talk might be in their dreams – she kissed the slumbering creatures on their stone-cold mouths. And as she kissed Harry she fancied she heard a step upon the stair. And she ran out at once to see.
No one. Instead, as she stood on the wide staircase listening, her young face tilted and intent, there came a waft up it as of spiced breezes from the open spaces of Damascus. Not a sound, no more than a breath, faint and yet almost unendurably sweet of spring – straight across from the bird-haunted, sheep-grazed meadows skirting the winding river: the perfume of a whisper. It was as if a distant memory had taken presence and swept in delight across her eyes. Then stillness again, broken by the sounding as of a voice smaller than the horn of a gnat. And then a terrible sharp crash of glass. And out pell-mell came rushing our three young friends, the chimney-sweeps, their dream-shapes home at last.
Now Old Nollykins by this time had long been laid in his grave. So even if anyone had been able to catch them, Tom, Dick, and Harry would have swept no more chimneys for him. Nor could even the new Mayor manage it. Nor the complete Town Council. Nor the Town Crier, though he cried twice a day to the end of the year: ‘O-yess! O-yess!! O-yess!!! Lost, stolen, or strayed: Three World-Famous and Notorious Sleeping Boys of Warwickshire.’ Nor even the Lord-Lieutenant. Nor even the mighty Earl.
As for the mound by the pollard willows – well, what clever Wide-awake would ever be able to give any news of that?
* As printed in CSC (1947). First published in Virginia Quarterly Review, October 1925.
The Lovely Myfanwy*
In an old castle under the forested mountains of the Welsh Marches there lived long ago Owen ap Gwythock, Lord of Eggleyseg. He was a short, burly, stooping man with thick black hair on head and face, large ears, and small restless eyes. And he lived in his great castle alone, except for one only daughter, the lovely Myfanwy.
Lovely indeed was she. Her hair, red as red gold, hung in plaits to her knees. When she laughed, it was like bells in a far-away steeple. When she sang, Echo forgot to reply. And her spirit would sit gently looking out of her blue eyes like cushats out of their nest in an ivy bush.
Myfanwy was happy, too – in most things. All that her father could give her for her ease and pleasure was hers – everything indeed but her freedom. She might sing, dance, think and say; eat, drink, and delight in whatsoever she wished or willed. Indeed her father loved her so dearly that he would sit for hours together merely watching her – as you may watch wind over wheat, reflections in water, or clouds in the heavens. So long as she was safely and solely his all was well.
But ever since Myfanwy had been a child, a miserable foreboding had haunted his mind. Supposing she should some day leave him? Supposing she were lost or decoyed away? Supposing she fell ill and died? What then? The dread of this haunted his mind day and night. His dark brows loured at the very thought of it. It made him morose and sullen; it tied up the tongue in his head.
For this sole reason he had expressly forbidden Myfanwy even to stray but a few paces beyond the precincts of his castle; with its battlemented towers, its galleries and corridors and multitudinous apartments, its high garden and courtyard, its alleys, fountains, fish-pools and orchards. He could trust nobody. He couldn’t bear her out of his sight. He spied, he watched, he walked in his sleep, he listened and peeped; and all for fear of losing Myfanwy.
So although she might have for company the doves and swans and peacocks, the bees and butterflies, the swallows and swifts and jackdaws and the multitude of birds of every song and flight and feather that haunted the castle; humans, except her father, she had none. The birds and butterflies could fly away at will wherever their wings could carry them. Even the fishes in
the fish-pools and in the fountains had their narrow alleys of marble and alabaster through which on nimble fin they could win back to the great river at last. Not so Myfanwy.
She was her father’s unransomable prisoner; she was a bird in a cage. She might feast her longing eyes on the distant horizon beyond whose forests lay the sea, but knew she could not journey thither. While as for the neighbouring township, with its busy streets and market-place – not more than seven country miles away – she had only dreamed of its marvels and dreamed in vain. A curious darkness at such times came into her eyes, and her spirit would look out of them not like a dove but as might a dumb nightingale out of its nest – a nightingale that has had its tongue cut out for a delicacy to feed some greedy prince.
How criss-cross a thing is the heart of man. Solely because this lord loved his daughter so dearly, if ever she so much as sighed for change or adventure, like some stubborn beast of burden he would set his feet together and refuse to budge an inch. Beneath his heavy brows he would gaze at the brightness of her unringleted hair as if mere looking could keep that gold secure; as if earth were innocent of moth and rust and change and chance, and had never had course to dread and tremble at sound of the unrelenting footfall of Time.
All he could think of that would keep her his own was hers without the asking: delicate raiment and meats and strange fruits and far-fetched toys and devices and pastimes, and as many books as would serve a happy scholar a long life through. He never tired of telling her how much he loved and treasured her. But there is a hunger of the heart no thing in the world can ever satisfy. And Myfanwy listened, and sighed.
Besides which, Myfanwy grew up and grew older as a green-tressed willow grows from a sapling; and now that she had come to her eighteenth spring she was lovelier than words could tell. This only added yet another and sharper dread and foreboding to her father’s mind. It sat like a skeleton at his table whenever he broke bread or sipped wine. Even the twittering of a happy swallow from distant Africa reminded him of it like a knell. It was this: that some day a lover, a suitor, would come and carry her off.
Why, merely to see her, even with her back turned – to catch a glimpse of her slim shoulders, of her head stooping over a rose-bush would be enough. Let her but laugh – two notes – and you listened! Nobody – prince nor peasant, knight nor squire – brave, foolish, young or weary, would be able to resist her. Owen ap Gwythock knew it in his bones. But one look, and instantly the looker’s heart would be stolen out of his body. He would fall in love with her – fall as deep and irrevocably as the dark sparkling foaming water crashing over into the gorge of Modwr-Eggleyseg, scarcely an arrow’s flight beyond his walls.
And supposing any such suitor should tell Myfanwy that he loved her, might she not – forgetting all his own care and loving-kindness – be persuaded to flee away and leave him to his solitude? Solitude – now that old age was close upon him! At thought of this, for fear of it, he would sigh and groan within: and he would bid the locksmiths double their locks and bolts and bars; and he would sit for hours watching the highroad that swept up past his walls, and scowling at sight of every stranger who passed that way.
He even at last forbade Myfanwy to walk in the garden except with an immense round mushroom hat on her head, a hat so wide in the brim that it concealed from any trespasser who might be spying over the wall even the glinting of her hair – everything of her indeed except her two velvet shoes beneath the hem of her dress as they stepped in turn – and softly as moles – one after the other from blossoming alley to alley and from lawn to lawn.
And because Myfanwy loved her father almost as dearly as he loved her, she tried her utmost to be gay and happy and not to fret or complain or grow pale and thin and pine. But as a caged bird with a kind mistress may hop and sing and flutter behind its bars as if it were felicity itself, and yet be sickening at heart for the wild wood and its green haunts, so it was with Myfanwy.
If only she might but just once venture into the town, she would think to herself; but just to see the people in the streets, and the pedlars in the market-place, and the cakes and sweetmeats and honey-jars in the shops, and strangers passing to and fro, and the sunshine in the high gables, and the talking and the laughing and the bargaining and the dancing – the horses, the travellers, the bells, the starshine.
Above all, it made her heart ache to think her father should have so little faith in her duty and love for him that he would not consent to let her wander even a snail’s journey out of his sight. When, supper over, she leaned over his great chair as he sat there in his crimson – his black hair dangling on his shoulders, his beard hunched up on his chest – to kiss him good-night, this thought would be in her eyes even if not on the tip of her tongue. And at such times he himself – as if he knew in his heart what he would never dare to confess – invariably shut down his eyelids or looked the other way.
Now servants usually have long tongues, and gossip flits from place to place like seeds of thistledown. Simply because Myfanwy was never seen abroad, the fame of her beauty had long since spread through all the countryside. Minstrels sang of it, and had even carried their ballads to countries and kingdoms and principalities far beyond Wales.
Indeed, however secret and silent men may be concerning rare beauty and goodness, somehow news of it sows itself over the wide world. A saint may sit in his cave or his cell, scarcely ever seen by mortal eye, quiet as sunshine in a dingle of the woods or seabirds in the hollows of the Atlantic, doing his deeds of pity and loving-kindness, and praying his silent prayers. And he may live to be a withered-up, hollow-cheeked old man with a long white beard, and die, and his body be shut up in a tomb. But nevertheless, little by little, the fame of his charity, and of the miracles of his compassion will spread abroad, and at last you may even chance on his image in a shrine thousands of leagues distant from the hermitage where he lived and died, and centuries after he has gone on his way.
Like this it was with the loveliness and gentleness of Myfanwy. That is why, when the Lord of Eggleyseg himself rode through the streets of the neighbouring town, he perceived out of the comer of his eye strangers in outlandish disguise who he suspected at once must be princes and noblemen from foreign climes come thither even if merely to set eyes on his daughter. That is why the streets were so full of music and singing that of a summer evening you could scarcely hear the roar of its cataracts. That is why its townsfolk were entertained with tumblers and acrobats and fortune-tellers and soothsayers and tale-tellers almost the whole year long. Ever and again, indeed, grandees visited it without disguise. They lived for weeks there, with their retinues of servants, their hawks and hounds and tasselled horses in some one of its high ancient houses. And their one sole hope and desire was to catch but a glimpse of the far-famed Myfanwy.
But as they came, so they went away. However they might plot and scheme to gain a footing in the castle – it was in vain. The portcullis was always down; there were watchmen perpetually on the look-out in its turrets; and the gates of the garden were festooned with heavy chains. There was not in its frowning ancient walls a single window less than twenty feet above the ground that was not thickly, rustily, and securely barred.
Nonetheless, Myfanwy occasionally found herself in the garden alone. Occasionally she stole out if but for one breath of freedom, sweeter by far to those who pine for it than that of pink, or mint, or jasmine, or honeysuckle. And one such early evening in May, when her father – having nodded off to sleep, wearied out after so much watching and listening and prying and peering – was snoring in an arbour or summerhouse, she came to its western gates, and having for a moment lifted the brim of her immense hat to look at the sunset, she gazed wistfully a while through its bars out into the green woods beyond.
The leafy boughs in the rosy light hung still as pictures in deep water. The skies resembled a tent of silk, blue as the sea. Deer were browsing over the dark turf; and a wonderful charm and carolling of birds was rising out of the glades and coverts of
the woods.
But what Myfanwy had now fixed her dark eyes on was none of these, but the figure of a young man leaning there, erect but fast asleep, against the bole of a gigantic beech tree, not twenty paces distant from the gate at which she stood. He must, she fancied, have been keeping watch there for some little time. His eyelids were dark with watching; his face pale. Slim and gentle does were treading close beside him; the birds had clean forgotten his presence; and a squirrel was cracking the nut it held between its clawed forepaws not a yard above his head.
Myfanwy had never before set eyes on human stranger in this valley beyond the gates. Her father’s serving men were ancients who had been in his service in the castle years before she was born. This young man looked, she imagined, like a woodman, or a forester, or a swine-herd. She had read of them in a hand-written book of fantastic tales which she had chanced on among her mother’s belongings.
And as Myfanwy, finger on brim of her hat, stood intently gazing, a voice in her heart told her that whoever and whatever this stranger might be, he was someone she had been waiting for, and even dreaming about, ever since she was a child. All else vanished out of her mind and her memory. It was as if her eyes were intent on some such old story itself, and one well known to her. This unconscious stranger was that story. Yet he himself – stiff as a baulk of wood against the beech-trunk, as if indeed he had been nailed to its bark – slumbered on.
So he might have continued to do, now so blessedly asleep, until she had vanished as she had come. But at that moment the squirrel there, tail for parasol immediately above his head, having suddenly espied Myfanwy beyond the bars of the gate, in sheer astonishment let fall its nut, and the young man – as if at a tiny knock on the door of his mind – opened his eyes.
Short Stories for Children Page 20
