The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
across the creaking boards, for fear that he might wake the sleeping
house, to the big dark clothes-press wherein his beautiful suit lay
folded, and he took it out garment by garment, and softly and very eagerly
tore off its tissue-paper covering and its tacked protections until there
it was, perfect and delightful as he had seen it when first his mother had
given it to him--a long time it seemed ago. Not a button had tarnished,
not a thread had faded on this dear suit of his; he was glad enough for
weeping as in a noiseless hurry he put it on. And then back he went, soft
and quick, to the window that looked out upon the garden, and stood there
for a minute, shining in the moonlight, with his buttons twinkling like
stars, before he got out on the sill, and, making as little of a rustling
as he could, clambered down to the garden path below. He stood before his
mother's house, and it was white and nearly as plain as by day, with every
window-blind but his own shut like an eye that sleeps. The trees cast
still shadows like intricate black lace upon the wall.
The garden in the moonlight was very different from the garden by day;
moonshine was tangled in the hedges and stretched in phantom cobwebs from
spray to spray. Every flower was gleaming white or crimson black, and the
air was a-quiver with the thridding of small crickets and nightingales
singing unseen in the depths of the trees.
There was no darkness in the world, but only warm, mysterious shadows,
and all the leaves and spikes were edged and lined with iridescent jewels
of dew. The night was warmer than any night had ever been, the heavens
by some miracle at once vaster and nearer, and, spite of the great
ivory-tinted moon that ruled the world, the sky was full of stars.
The little man did not shout nor sing for all his infinite gladness. He
stood for a time like one awestricken, and then, with a queer small cry
and holding out his arms, he ran out as if he would embrace at once the
whole round immensity of the world. He did not follow the neat set paths
that cut the garden squarely, but thrust across the beds and through the
wet, tall, scented herbs, through the night-stock and the nicotine and the
clusters of phantom white mallow flowers and through the thickets of
southernwood and lavender, and knee-deep across a wide space of
mignonette. He came to the great hedge, and he thrust his way through it;
and though the thorns of the brambles scored him deeply and tore threads
from his wonderful suit, and though burrs and goose-grass and havers
caught and clung to him, he did not care. He did not care, for he knew it
was all part of the wearing for which he had longed. "I am glad I put on
my suit," he said; "I am glad I wore my suit."
Beyond the hedge he came to the duck-pond, or at least to what was the
duck-pond by day. But by night it was a great bowl of silver moonshine all
noisy with singing frogs, of wonderful silver moonshine twisted and
clotted with strange patternings, and the little man ran down into its
waters between the thin black rushes, knee-deep and waist-deep and to his
shoulders, smiting the water to black and shining wavelets with either
hand, swaying and shivering wavelets, amidst which the stars were netted
in the tangled reflections of the brooding trees upon the bank. He waded
until he swam, and so he crossed the pond and came out upon the other
side, trailing, as it seemed to him, not duckweed, but very silver in
long, clinging, dripping masses. And up he went through the transfigured
tangles of the willow-herb and the uncut seeding grasses of the farther
bank. He came glad and breathless into the high-road. "I am glad," he
said, "beyond measure, that I had clothes that fitted this occasion."
The high-road ran straight as an arrow flies, straight into the deep-blue
pit of sky beneath the moon, a white and shining road between the singing
nightingales, and along it he went, running now and leaping, and now
walking and rejoicing, in the clothes his mother had made for him with
tireless, loving hands. The road was deep in dust, but that for him was
only soft whiteness; and as he went a great dim moth came fluttering round
his wet and shimmering and hastening figure. At first he did not heed the
moth, and then he waved his hands at it, and made a sort of dance with it
as it circled round his head. "Soft moth!" he cried, "dear moth! And
wonderful night, wonderful night of the world! Do you think my clothes are
beautiful, dear moth? As beautiful as your scales and all this silver
vesture of the earth and sky?"
And the moth circled closer and closer until at last its velvet wings just
brushed his lips...
* * * * *
And next morning they found him dead, with his neck broken, in the bottom
of the stone pit, with his beautiful clothes a little bloody, and foul and
stained with the duckweed from the pond. But his face was a face of such
happiness that, had you seen it, you would have understood indeed how that
he had died happy, never knowing that cool and streaming silver for the
duckweed in the pond.