The Field of Clover Part 1

The Field of Clover.

by Laurence Housman.

THE BOUND PRINCESS

I

THE FIRE-EATERS

A long time ago there lived a man who had the biggest head in the world. Into it he had crammed all the knowledge that might be gathered from the four corners of the earth. Every one said he was the wisest man living. "If I could only find a wife," said the sage, "as wise for a woman as I am for a man, what a race of head-pieces we could bring into the world!"

He waited many years before any such mate could be found for him: yet, at last, found she was--one into whose head was bestowed all the wisdom that might be gathered from the four quarters of heaven.

They were both old, but kings came from all sides to their wedding, and offered themselves as G.o.d-parents to the first-born of the new race that was to be. But, to the grief of his parents, the child, when he arrived, proved to be a simpleton; and no second child ever came to repair the mistake of the first.

That he was a simpleton was evident; his head was small and his limbs were large, and he could run long before he could talk or do arithmetic. In the bitterness of their hearts his father and mother named him Noodle, without the aid of any royal G.o.d-parents; and from that moment, for any care they took in his bringing-up, they washed their wise hands of him.

Noodle grew and prospered, and enjoyed life in his own foolish way.

When his father and mother died within a short time of each other, they left him alone without any friend in the world.

For a good while Noodle lived on just what he could find in the house, in a hand-to-mouth sort of way, till at last only the furniture and the four bare walls were left to him.

One cold winter's night he sat brooding over the fire, wondering where he should get food for the morrow, when he heard feet coming up to the door, and a knock striking low down upon the panel. Outside there was a faint chirping and crackling sound, and a whispering as of fire licking against the woodwork without.

He opened the door and peered forth into the night. There, just before him, stood seven little men huddled up together; three feet high they were, with bright yellow faces all shrivelled and sharp, and eyes whose light leaped and sank like candle flame before a gust.

When they saw him, they shut their eyes and opened famished mouths at him, pointing inwards with flickering finger-tips, and s.h.i.+vering from head to foot with cold, although it seemed to the youth as if the warmth of a slow fire came from them. 'Alas!' said Noodle, in reply to these signs of hunger, 'I have not left even a crust of bread in the house to give you! But at least come in and make yourselves warm!' He touched the foremost, making signs for them all to enter. 'Ah,' he cried, 'what is this, and what are you, that the mere touch of you burns my finger?'

Without answer they huddled tremblingly across the threshold; but so soon as they saw the fire burning on the hearth, they yelped all together like a pack of hounds, and, throwing themselves face forwards into the hot embers, began ravenously to lap up the flames. They lapped and lapped, and the more they lapped the more the fire sank away and died. Then with their flickering finger-tips they stirred the hot logs and coals, burrowing after the thin tapes and swirls of vanis.h.i.+ng flame, and fetching them out like small blue eels still wriggling for escape.

After each blue wisp had been gulped down, they sipped and sucked at their fingers for any least tricklet of flavour that might be left; and at the last seemed more famished than when they began.

'More, more, O wise Noodle, give us more!' they cried; and Noodle threw the last of his fuel on the embers.

They breathed round it, fanning it into a great blaze that leaped and danced up to the rafters; then they fell on, till not a fleck or a flake of it was left. Noodle, seeing them still famished, broke up a stool and threw that on the hearth. And again they flared it with their breath and gobbled off the flame. When the stool was finished he threw in the table, then the dresser, and after that the oak-chest and the window-seat.

Still they feasted and were not fed. Noodle fetched an axe, and broke down the door; then he wrenched up the boards from the floor, and pulled the beams and rafters out of the ceiling; yet, even so, his guests were not to be satisfied.

'I have nothing left,' he said, 'but the house itself; but since you are still hungry you shall be welcome to it!'

He scattered the fire that remained upon the hearth, and threw it out and about the room; and as he ran forth to escape, up against all the walls and right through the roof rose a great crackling sheaf of flame. In the midst of the fire, Noodle could see his seven guests lying along on their bellies, slopping their hands in the heat, and lapping up the flames with their tongues. 'Surely,' he thought, 'I have given them enough to eat at last!'

After a while all the fire was eaten away, and only the black and smouldering ruins were left. Day came coldly to light, and there sat Noodle, without a home in the world, watching with considerate eye his seven guests finis.h.i.+ng their inordinate repast.

They all rose to their feet together, and came towards him bowing; as they approached he felt the heat of their bodies as it had been seven furnaces.

'Enough, O wise Noodle!' said they, 'we have had enough!' 'That,'

answered Noodle, 'is the least thing left me to wonder at. Go your ways in peace; but first tell me, who are you?' They replied, 'We are the Fire-eaters: far from our own land, and strangers, you have done us this service; what, now, can we do to serve you?' 'Put me in the way of a living,' said Noodle, 'and you will do me the greatest service of all.'

Then the one of them who seemed to be chief took from his finger a ring having for its centre a great firestone, and threw it into the snow, saying, 'Wait for three hours till the ring shall have had time to cool, then take it, and wear it; and whatever fortune you deserve it shall bring you. For this ring is the sweetener of everything that it touches: bread it turns into rich meats, water into strong wine, grief into virtue, and labour into strength. Also, if you ever need our help, you have but to brandish the ring, and the gleam of it will reach us, and we will be with you wherever you may be.'

With that they bowed their top-knots to the ground and departed, inverting themselves swiftly till only the s.h.i.+ning print of seven pairs of feet remained, red-hot, over the place where they had been standing.

Noodle waited for three hours; then he took up the firestone ring, and putting it on his finger set out into the world.

At the first door he came to, he begged a crust of bread, and touching it with the ring found it tasted like rich meats, well cooked and delicately flavoured. Also, the water which he drew in the hollow of his hand from a brook by the roadside tasted to him like strong wine.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

II

THE GALLOPING PLOUGH

Noodle went on many miles till he came near to a rich man's farm.

Though it was the middle of winter, all the fields showed crops of corn in progress; here it was in thin blade, and here green, but in full ear; and here it was ripe and ready for harvest. 'How is this,'

he said to the first man he met, 'that you have corn here in the middle of winter?' 'Ah!' said the man, 'you have not heard of the Galloping Plough; you too have to fall under bondage to my master.'

'What is your master?' inquired Noodle, 'and in what bondage does he bind man?'

'My master, and your master that shall soon be,' answered the old man, 'is the owner of all this land and the farmer of it. He is rich and sleek and fat like his own furrows, for he has the Galloping Plough as his possession. Ah, that! 't is a very miracle, a wonder, a thing to catch at the heartstrings of all beholders; it s.h.i.+nes like a moonbeam, and is better than an Arab mare for swiftness; it warms the very ground that it enters, so that seeds take root and spring, though it be the middle of winter. No man sees it but what he loses his heart to it, and sells his freedom for the possession of it. All here are men like myself who have become slaves because of that desire. You also, when you see it, will become slave to it.'

Noodle went on through the summer and the spring corn, till he came to bare fields. Ahead of him on a hill-top he saw the farmer himself, sleek and rosy, and of full paunch, lolling like a lord at his ease; yet with a working eye in the midst of his leisure.

To and fro, up to him and back, shot a silver gleam over the purple brown of the fields; and Noodle's heart gave a thump at the sight, for the spell of the Galloping Plough was on him.

Now and then he heard a clear sound that startled him with its note.

It was like the sweet whistling cry of a bird many times multiplied.

Ever when the silver gleam of the Plough had run its farthest from the farmer, the cry sounded; and at the sound the gleam wavered and stayed and flew back dartingly to the farmer's side. So Noodle understood how this was the farmer's signal for the Plough to return; and the Plough knew it as a horse its master's voice, and came so fast that the wind whistled against its silver side.

As he watched, Noodle's heart went down into the valley and up the hillside, following in the track of the Galloping Plough. 'I can never be happy again,' thought he; 'either I must possess it, or must die.'

He came to the farmer where he sat calling his Plough to him and letting it go; and the farmer smiled, the wide indulgent smile of a man who knows that a bargain is about to fall his way.

'What is the price,' asked Noodle, 'of yonder Galloping Plough, that runs like an Arab mare, and returns to you at your call?'

Said the farmer, 'A year's service; and if the Plough will follow you, it is yours; if not, then you must be my bondman until you die!'

Noodle looked once the way of the Galloping Plough, and his heart flapped at his side like a sail which the wind drops and lets go; and he had no thought or will left in him but to be where the Galloping Plough was. So he closed hands on the bargain, to be the farmer's servant either for a year, or for his whole life.

For a year he worked upon the farm, and all the while plotted how he might win the Galloping Plough to himself. The farmer kept no watch upon it, nor put it under lock and key, for the Plough recognised no voice but his own, nor went nor came save at his bidding. In the night Noodle would go down to the shed or field where it lay, and whistle to it, trying to put forth notes of the same magical power as those which came through the farmer's lips.

But no sound that came from his lips ever stroked life into its silver sides. The year was nearly run out, and Noodle was in despair.