Fairy Tales for Young Readers (2 page)

“You are,” said Benevola. “You're every inch a princess, my dear, like your dear mother before you. Let's see: have you got everything?—fan, gloves, handkerchief?”

Yes, Cinderella had them all.

“But my shoes,” she said shyly, looking down at her poor old black slippers.

“Bless me! I nearly forgot the shoes,” said the fairy. “Here they are—dear little magic glass ones. No one at the ball will dance like my goddaughter!” And she plunged her arm into her big pocket and pulled out a dear little pair of glass slippers. Real glass they were, and shone like the
drops on a crystal chandelier. And yet they were soft as any kid glove.

“Put them on, my darling, and enjoy yourself in them,” she said; “but remember you mustn't stay later than half-past eleven, or twenty to twelve at the very most, because the magic won't last after midnight. You'll remember, won't you?”

Cinderella promised to remember. Then Benevola set the pumpkin, the rat, the mice, and the lizards in the road opposite the front door, waved that wonderful wand of hers, and instantly the pumpkin was a golden coach more splendid than the King's, the mice were six white horses, the lizards six footmen in green and gold liveries, and the old rat was the stoutest and most respectable coachman who ever wore a three-cornered hat, and gold lace on his coat.

Cinderella kissed her godmother and thanked her again and again. Then she jumped into the coach and snuggled in among soft satin cushions. Benevola gave the order, “To the palace,” and the white horses bounded forward.

In the palace everyone was enjoying himself very much indeed. All the ladies looked their very prettiest, and all the gentlemen thought so, and all the ladies knew that the gentlemen thought so. And when this is the case a party is usually a success.

One of the Court gentlemen, who had gone out to stand on the palace steps for a breath of fresh air, caught a glimpse of Cinderella, and rushed off to the Prince.

“I say, your Highness,” he whispered, “the loveliest princess in all the world has just driven up in a golden coach drawn by six white horses. Oughtn't some one to go and welcome her?”

“
I will
,” said Prince Charming eagerly; “there's no sense in disturbing the King and Queen.”

And so it happened that Cinderella, in her dress of dew and mist and moonlight, was received at the very door of the palace by Prince Charming himself, in his Court suit of cloth of gold sewn with topazes. As he handed her up the
marble steps of the grand staircase every one murmured, “What a handsome pair!”

But the Prince was saying to himself, “Oh, you dear little Princess! Oh, you pretty little Princess! I'll never marry any one but you—never, never, never!” While aloud, to her, he was saying the dullest, politest things about the weather, and the music, and the state of the roads that led to the palace.

Cinderella looked so lovely that no one could take their eyes off her, and even her unkind sisters, who did not recognise her in the least, owned that she was the most beautiful lady they had ever seen.

The Prince danced with her, and took her in to supper, and as the evening went on he began to talk of other things than the weather. He told her that her eyes were stars, and her mouth a flower, and things like that—quite silly things, because, of course, no one's eyes are like stars or their mouths like flowers—quite silly, but still she liked to hear them. And at last he said in that blunt, downright manner which is permitted to princes, “There is no one like you in the world. Will you marry me?”

She was just going to say, “Yes, please,” for, indeed, she thought there was no one like
him
in the world, when the palace clock struck the half after eleven. She turned in a flash and ran down the corridor—and the magic glass slippers that had made her dancing the wonder of all the Court now made her running as swift as the wind's going, so that she had reached her coach and jumped in before the Prince, pursuing her, had turned the first corner in the grand staircase.

She got home just as the clock struck twelve, and at the last stroke coach and horses, coachman and footman, turned into what they had been before, and she herself was once more the shabby, dusty little Cinderella who had sat and cried into the ashes.

When her sisters came home she had to listen to their tales of the ball, and of the strange Princess who was so
beautiful that she took everybody's breath away, and as she listened, yawning, she could hardly believe that she herself had really been that lovely lady.

She dreamed all night of the Prince. And next day the herald came round with the King's compliments, and would every one who had been at the ball last night kindly come round to the Palace again that evening?

And everything happened as before. The others drove off early, the fairy godmother came and waved her wand, and the Prince, anxiously watching at the head of the grand staircase, saw his Princess threading her way through the crowd like a moonbeam through dark water.

That night every one saw that it was going to be a match. The King and Queen were as pleased with Cinderella's pretty manners as Prince Charming was with her pretty face and the dear self that looked out of her eyes.

“Tell me your name, loveliest and dearest,” he said. “Give me your hand and tell me the name of my bride.”

And Cinderella, pale with happiness, and with eyes that really did look rather starry, gave him her hand and said:

“Dear Prince, my name is——” And then, boom, boom, boom!—the great clock in the palace tower began to strike midnight.

“Let me go—let me go!” cried Cinderella, and tore her hands from the Prince's, and ran, the magic slippers helping her all they could. But they could not help enough. Before she could get out of the palace grounds her beautiful dress had turned to rags, and as she reached the gate the only traces left of her grand coach and six and her fine servants were six scampering mice, six furtive lizards, a fat old running rat, and a big yellow pumpkin bowling along the road as hard as it could go, all by itself.

The night had changed its mind and turned out wet, and she had to run all the way home in the mud; and it was very difficult, because she had dropped one of her glass slippers in her haste to get away, and:

            
“
You know how hard it is to run
With one shoe off and one shoe on.
”

When the Prince, wild with anxiety and disappointment, rushed out to ask the sentries about the magnificent Princess who had driven away, they told him that no one had passed out except a ragged beggar girl, running like a mad thing. So he went back to the palace with despair in his heart, and his dancing shoes wet through.

He did not sleep a wink all night, and next morning he sent for the herald, who was a very good fellow, and rather clever in his way.

“My dear herald,” said the Prince, sitting on the edge of his bed in his blue satin dressing-gown sewn with seed-pearls, and waggling the toes of his gold-embroidered slippers, “you saw that strange Princess last night...? Well...”

“Bless you, your Highness,” said the herald, who was about the same age as the Prince, “I know all about it. Lost lady. Love of a life. No expense spared. Return and all will be forgotten and forgiven. You want to find her?”

“I should think I did!”

“Well, it's quite simple. What's that sparklety thing sticking out of the breast pocket of your dressing-gown?”

“Yes,” said the Prince oddly, and drew out Cinderella's slipper.

“Well, then!” said the herald, and unfolded his idea, which pleased Prince Charming so much that within an hour the herald had set out, with the glass slipper borne before him on a blue cushion with a fringe of peacock's feathers, and the trumpets blowing like grampuses, and the pennons flying like pretty pigeons all about him, to find the lady whose foot that slipper would fit. For in those days shoes were not sold ready-made in shops, but were made specially to fit the people who were to wear them. And besides, the glass slipper was magic, and so had too much sense to have fitted any one but its owner, even if the country had been full of shops selling Rats' Ready-made Really Reliable Boots.

The herald called at every house, great and small, and every girl in every house had to try on the slipper. At last, when it was evening, and he was getting very tired of the whole business, and was beginning to wish that shoes had never been invented at all, he came to the house where Cinderella lived.

Blow, blow! went the trumpets; flutter, flutter, went the pennons; and the herald's voice, rather faint and husky, cried:

“Oyez, oyez, oyez! Prince Charming offers his hand and heart to the lady who can wear this little glass slipper. Who'll try? Who'll try? Who'll try? Will ye try? Will ye try? Will ye try, try, try?” So that he sounded like a butcher in the Old Kent Road of a Saturday night, only they say “buy” instead of “try.”

Dressalinda and Marigolda pushed and hustled Cinderella to make her open the door quickly. She was quite as anxious as they were to open it, for reasons of her own—reasons which you know as well as she did.

So the door was thrown open, and in came the herald, and the trumpeters and men-at-arms grouped themselves picturesquely about the doorsteps, to the envy and admiration of the neighbours.

Dressalinda sat down in the big carved chair in the hall, and stuck out a large stout foot.

“No good,” said the herald. “I'm sorry, miss. It's a fine foot—as fine as ever I saw—but it's not just the cut for the glass slipper.”

And even Dressalinda had to own that it wasn't.

Then Marigolda tried. And though she had had time to slip upstairs and put on her best fine silk stockings the little glass slipper would not begin to go on to her long flat foot.

“It's the heel, miss,” said the herald. “I'm sorry, but it's not my fault, nor yours either. We can't help our heels, nor yet other people's. So now for the other girl.”

“What other girl?” “There
is
no other girl,” said the two sisters together.

But the herald said, “What about the one who opened

the door?”

“Oh, that was only Cinderella,” “Just a kitchen wench,” said Marigolda and Dressalinda, tossing their heads.

“There's many a pretty foot under a ragged skirt,” said the herald; and he went to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called “Cinderella! Cinderella!”—not because he thought it at all possible that the slipper would fit a kitchen wench, but because he had undertaken to try it on
all
girls. Also, he disliked the elder sisters as much as any one possibly could on so short an acquaintance. When you knew them better, of course, it was different.

So poor Cinderella came, all ragged and dusty, but with her bright beauty shining through the dust and the rags like the moon through clouds. And the herald knew that she was the lost Princess, even before she slipped on the little glass shoe, pulled the other one from her pocket, slipped that on too, and stood up in the pair of them.

“Found!” cried the herald. “Oh, joy! the long-lost Princess! You are to come with me at once to the palace.”

“I can't come like this,” said Cinderella, looking at her rags. “I can't, and I won't!”

But the fairy godmother appeared most opportunely from the cupboard under the stairs where the boots and galoshes were kept, and with one wave of her wand clothed Cinderella from head to foot in cloth-of-splendour.

Then Cinderella looked at her unkind sisters, and said timidly, “Goodbye.”

And the sisters looked at her, and frowned, and “Goodbye” said they.

Then the fairy smiled, and, pointing her wand at them, said, “Speak the truth.” And there in the presence of Cinderella and the fairy and the herald and each other and the hat-and-umbrella-stand they had to speak it.

“I have been very unkind and hateful to Cinderella,” said Dressalinda, “and I am very sorry. I have been sorry since the night before last, but I was ashamed to say so. I
am sorry because on that night I lost my heart to a good gentleman, who lost his to me, and I hate the thought of all the wickedness that makes me unworthy of him.”

“That's right,” said the herald kindly. “‘A fault that's owned, is half atoned.' And what does the other lady say?”

“I say the same as my sister,” said Marigolda, “and I hope Cinderella will forgive us.”

“Of course I do,” said Cinderella heartily. So that was settled.

They all went to Court—the fairy godmother made the pumpkin coach again in a moment—and Prince Charming met Cinderella at the steps of the palace, and kissed her before the whole crowd there assembled, and every one cheered, and a chorus of invisible fairies sang:

            
“
Take her, O Prince, faithful and true;
That little foot was just made for the shoe.
We are so glad! Every one knew
That little Princess was just made for you.

            
“
Shout for the pair, Army and Fleet!
Lonely policeman, hurrah on your beat!
May life be long, joy be complete,
Rose-strewn the path of those dear little feet!
”

The two noble gentlemen rushed forward, as soon as politeness to the Prince allowed, to greet their dear ladies, who had been the wicked sisters, and who now were so sorry and ashamed, because love had taught them to wish to be good.

They were all married the next day, and when Marigolda and Dressalinda confessed to their father how horrid they had been to Cinderella, he said, “Dear, dear! And I never noticed! How remiss of me!” and went back to his books.

But the cruel step-mother, who had brought up her children so badly, and who was not sorry at all, was sent to a Home for the Incurably Unkind. She is treated kindly,
but she is not allowed the chance of being unkind to any one else.