CHAPTER X.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON.
"That after supper time has come,
And silver dews the meadow steep.
And all is silent in the home,
And even nurses are asleep,
That be it late, or be it soon,
Upon this lovely night in June
They both will step into the moon."
"Very well," said the cuckoo. "You would like to look about you a little on the way, perhaps, Griselda, as we shall not be going down chimneys, or anything of that kind just at present."
"Yes," said Griselda. "I think I should. I'm rather tired of shutting my eyes, and I'm getting quite accustomed to flying about with you, cuckoo."
"Turn on your side, then," said the cuckoo, "and you won't have to twist your neck to see over my shoulder. Are you comfortable now? And, by-the-by, as you may be cold, just feel under my left wing. You'll find the feather mantle there, that you had on once before. Wrap it round you. I tucked it in at the last moment, thinking you might want it."
"Oh, you dear, kind cuckoo!" cried Griselda. "Yes, I've found it. I'll tuck it all round me like a rug—that's it. I am so warm now, cuckoo."
"Here goes, then," said the cuckoo, and off they set. Had ever a little girl such a flight before? Floating, darting, gliding, sailing—no words can describe it. Griselda lay still in delight, gazing all about her.
"How lovely the stars are, cuckoo!" she said. "Is it true they're all great, big suns? I'd rather they weren't. I like to think of them as nice, funny little things."
"They're not all suns," said the cuckoo. "Not all those you're looking at now."
"I like the twinkling ones best," said Griselda. "They look so good-natured. Are they all twirling about always, cuckoo? Mr. Kneebreeches has just begun to teach me astronomy, and he says they are; but I'm not at all sure that he knows much about it."
"He's quite right all the same," replied the cuckoo.
"Oh dear me! How tired they must be, then!" said Griselda. "Do they never rest just for a minute ?"
"Never."
"Why not?"
"Obeying orders," replied the cuckoo.
Griselda gave a little wriggle.
"What's the use of it?" she said. "It would be just as nice if they stood still now and then."
"Would it?" said the cuckoo. "I know some body who would soon find fault if they did. What would you say to no summer; no day, or no night, whichever it happened not to be, you see; nothing growing, and nothing to eat before long? That's what it would be if they stood still, you see, because"
"Thank you, cuckoo," interrupted Griselda. "It's very nice to hear you—I mean, very dreadful to think of, but I don't want you to explain. I'll ask Mr. Kneebreeches when I'm at my lessons. You might tell me one thing, however. What's at the other side of the moon?"
"There's a variety of opinions," said the cuckoo.
"What are they? Tell me the funniest."
"Some say all the unfinished work of the world is kept there," said the cuckoo.
"That's not funny," said Griselda. "What a messy place it must be! Why, even my unfinished work makes quite a heap. I don't like that opinion at all, cuckoo. Tell me another."
"I have heard," said the cuckoo, "that among the places there you would find the country of the little black dogs. You know what sort of creatures those are?"
"Yes, I suppose so," said Griselda, rather reluctantly.
"There are a good many of them in this world, as of course you know," continued the cuckoo. "But up there, they are much worse than here. When a child has made a great pet of one down here, I've heard tell the fairies take him up there when his parents and nurses think he's sleeping quietly in his bed, and make him work hard all night, with his own particular little black dog on his back. And it's so dreadfully heavy—for every time he takes it on his back down here it grows a pound heavier up there—that by morning the child is quite worn out. I dare say you've noticed how haggard and miserable some ill-tempered children get to look—now you'll know the reason."
"Thank you, cuckoo," said Griselda again; "but I can't say I like this opinion about the other side of the moon any better than the first. If you please, I would rather not talk about it any more."
"Oh, but it's not so bad an idea after all," said the cuckoo. "Lots of children, they say, get quite cured in the country of the little black dogs. It's this way—for every time a child refuses to take the dog on his back down here it grows a pound lighter up there, so at last any sensible child learns how much better it is to have nothing to say to it at all, and gets out of the way of it, you see. Of course, there are children whom nothing would cure, I suppose. What becomes of them I really can't say. Very likely they get crushed into pancakes by the weight of the dogs at last, and then nothing more is ever heard of them."
"Horrid!" said Griselda, with a shudder. "Don't let's talk about it any more, cuckoo; tell me your own opinion about what there really is on the other side of the moon."
The cuckoo was silent for a moment. Then suddenly he stopped short in the middle of his flight.
"Would you like to see for yourself, Griselda?" he said. "There would be about time to do it," he added to himself, "and it would fulfil her other wish, too."
"See the moon for myself, do you mean?" cried Griselda, clasping her hands. "I should rather think I would. Will you really take me there, cuckoo?"
"To the other side," said the cuckoo. "I couldn't take you to this side."
"Why not? Not that I'd care to go to this side as much as to the other; for, of course, we can see this side from here. But I'd like to know why you couldn't take me there."
"For reasons," said the cuckoo drily. "I'll give you one if you like. If I took you to this side of the moon you wouldn't be yourself when you got there."
"Who would I be, then?"
"Griselda," said the cuckoo, "I told you once that there are a great many things you don't know. Now, I'll tell you something more. There are a great many things you're not intended to know."
"Very well," said Griselda. "But do tell me when you're going on again, and where you are going to take me to. There's no harm my asking that?"
"No," said the cuckoo. "I'm going on immediately, and I'm going to take you where you wanted to go to, only you must shut your eyes again, and lie perfectly still without talking, for I must put on steam—a good deal of steam—and I can't talk to you. Are you all right?"
"All right," said Griselda.
She had hardly said the words when she seemed to fall asleep. The rushing sound in the air all round her increased so greatly that she was conscious of nothing else. For a moment or two she tried to remember where she was, and where she was going, but it was useless. She forgot everything, and knew nothing more of what was passing till—till she heard the cuckoo again.
"Cuckoo, cuckoo; wake up, Griselda," he said.
Griselda sat up.
Where was she?
Not certainly where she had been when she went to sleep. Not on the cuckoo's back, for there he was standing beside her, as tiny as usual. Either he had grown little again, or she had grown big—which, she supposed, it did not much matter. Only it was very queer!
"Where am I, cuckoo?" she said.
"Where you wished to be," he replied. "Look about you and see."
Griselda looked about her. What did she see? Something that I can only give you a faint idea of, children; something so strange and unlike what she had ever seen before, that only in a dream could you see it as Griselda saw it. And yet why it seemed to her so strange and unnatural I cannot well explain; if I could, my words would be as good as pictures, which I know they are not.
After all, it was only the sea she saw; but such a great, strange, silent sea, for there were no waves. Griselda was seated on the shore, close beside the water's edge, but it did not come lapping up to her feet in the pretty, coaxing way that our sea does when it is in a good humour. There were here and there faint ripples on the surface, caused by the slight breezes which now and then came softly round Griselda's face, but that was all. King Canute might have sat "from then till now" by this still, lifeless ocean without the chance of reading his silly attendants a lesson—if, indeed, there ever were such silly people, which I very much doubt.
Griselda gazed with all her eyes. Then she suddenly gave a little shiver.
"What's the matter?" said the cuckoo. "You have the mantle on—you're not cold?"
"No," said Griselda, "I'm not cold; but somehow, cuckoo, I feel a little frightened. The sea is so strange, and so dreadfully big; and the light is so queer, too. What is the light, cuckoo? It isn't moonlight, is it?"
"Not exactly," said the cuckoo. "You can't both have your cake and eat it, Griselda. Look up at the sky. There's no moon there, is there?"
"No," said Griselda; "but what lots of stars, cuckoo. The light comes from them, I suppose? And where's the sun, cuckoo? Will it be rising soon? It isn't always like this up here, is it?"
"Bless you, no," said, the cuckoo. "There's sun enough, and rather too much, sometimes. How would you like a day a fortnight long, and nights to match? If it had been daytime here just now, I couldn't have brought you. It's just about the very middle of the night now, and in about a week of your days the sun will begin to rise, because, you see"
"Oh, dear cuckoo, please don't explain!" cried Griselda. "I'll promise to ask Mr. Kneebreeches, I will indeed. In fact, he was telling me something just like it to-day or yesterday—which should I say?—at my astronomy lesson. And that makes it so strange that you should have brought me up here to-night to see for myself, doesn't it, cuckoo?"
"An odd coincidence," said the cuckoo.
"What would Mr. Kneebreeches think if I told him where I had been?" continued Griselda. "Only, you see, cuckoo, I never tell anybody about what I see when I am with you."
"No," replied the cuckoo; "better not. ('Not that you could if you tried,' he added to himself.) You're not frightened now, Griselda, are you?"
"No, I don't think I am," she replied. "But, cuckoo, isn't this sea awfully big?"
"Pretty well," said the cuckoo. "Just half, or nearly half, the size of the moon; and, no doubt, Mr. Kneebreeches has told you that the moon's diameter and circumference are respec"
"Oh don't, cuckoo!" interrupted Griselda, beseechingly. "I want to enjoy myself, and not to have lessons. Tell me something funny, cuckoo. Are there any mermaids in the moon-sea?"
"Not exactly," said the cuckoo.
"What a stupid way to answer," said Griselda. "There's no sense in that; there either must be or must not be. There couldn't be half mermaids."
"I don't know about that," replied the cuckoo. "They might have been here once and have left their tails behind them, like Bopeep's sheep, you know; and some day they might be coming to find them again, you know. That would do for 'not exactly,' wouldn't it?"
"Cuckoo, you're laughing at me," said Griselda. "Tell me, are there any mermaids, or fairies, or water-sprites, or any of those sort of creatures here?"
"I must still say 'not exactly,'" said the cuckoo. "There are beings here, or rather there have been, and there may be again; but you, Griselda, can know no more than this."
His tone was rather solemn, and again Griselda felt a little "eerie."
"It's a dreadfully long way from home, any way," she said. "I feel as if, when I go back, I shall perhaps find I have been away fifty years or so, like the little boy in the fairy story. Cuckoo, I think I would like to go home. Mayn't I get on your back again?"
"Presently," said the cuckoo. "Don't be uneasy, Griselda. Perhaps I'll take you home by a short cut."
"Was ever any child here before?" asked Griselda, after a little pause.
"Yes," said the cuckoo.
"And did they get safe home again?"
"Quite," said the cuckoo. "It's so silly of you, Griselda, to have all these ideas still about far and near, and big and little, and long and short, after all I've taught you and all you've seen."
"I'm very sorry," said Griselda humbly; "but you see, cuckoo, I can't help it. I suppose I'm made so."
"Perhaps," said the cuckoo, meditatively.
He was silent for a minute. Then he spoke again. "Look over there, Griselda," he said. "There's the short cut."
Griselda looked. Far, far over the sea, in the silent distance, she saw a tiny speck of light. It was very tiny; but yet the strange thing was that, far away as it appeared, and minute as it was, it seemed to throw off a thread of light to Griselda's very feet—right across the great sheet of faintly gleaming water. And as Griselda looked, the thread seemed to widen and grow, becoming at the same time brighter and clearer, till at last it lay before her like a path of glowing light.
"Am I to walk along there?" she said softly to the cuckoo.
"No," he replied; "wait."
Griselda waited, looking still, and presently in the middle of the shining streak she saw something slowly moving—something from which the light came, for the nearer it got to her the shorter grew the glowing path, and behind the moving object the sea looked no brighter than before it had appeared.
At last—at last, it came quite near—near enough for Griselda to distinguish clearly what it was.
It was a little boat—the prettiest, the loveliest little boat that ever was seen; and it was rowed by a little figure that at first sight Griselda felt certain was a fairy. For it was a child with bright hair and silvery wings, which with every movement sparkled and shone like a thousand diamonds.
Griselda sprang up and clapped her hands with delight. At the sound, the child in the boat turned and looked at her. For one instant she could not remember where she had seen him before; then she exclaimed, joyfully—
"It is Phil! Oh, cuckoo, it is Phil. Have you turned into a fairy, Phil?"
But, alas, as she spoke the light faded away, the boy's figure disappeared, the sea and the shore and the sky were all as they had been before, lighted only by the faint, strange gleaming of the stars. Only the boat remained. Griselda saw it close to her, in the shallow water, a few feet from where she stood.
"Cuckoo," she exclaimed in a tone of reproach and disappointment, "where is Phil gone? Why did you send him away?"
"I didn't send him away," said the cuckoo. "You don't understand. Never mind, but get into the boat. It'll be all right, you'll see."
"But are we to go away and leave Phil here, all alone at the other side of the moon?" said Griselda, feeling ready to cry.
"Oh, you silly girl!" said the cuckoo. "Phil's all right, and in some ways he has a great deal more sense than you, I can tell you. Get into the boat and make yourself comfortable; lie down at the bottom and cover yourself up with the mantle. You needn't be afraid of wetting your feet a little, moon water never gives cold. There, now."
Griselda did as she was told. She was beginning to feel rather tired, and it certainly was very comfortable at the bottom of the boat, with the nice warm feather-mantle well tucked round her.
"Who will row?" she said sleepily. "You can't, cuckoo, with your tiny little claws, you could never hold the oars, I'm"
"Hush!" said the cuckoo; and whether he rowed or not Griselda never knew.
Off they glided somehow, but it seemed to Griselda that somebody rowed, for she heard the soft dip, dip of the oars as they went along, so regularly that she couldn't help beginning to count in time—one, two, three, four—on, on—she thought she had got nearly to a hundred, when