CHAPTER XXXVIII
UNDER THE MOOR
It was June, but it had been like March for many miles upon the rough moor until, with the dawn, I came to a lowland where there were mossy fields with clear rain pools among the flowering gorse; and meadows cut into two planes by small, perpendicular cliffs of stone, so that on one the cattle were already feeding in the early light and on the other still lying down; and wheat fields that had islands of stone in their midst; and then at last an immense meadow sloping down towards fresh oak woods and the sea, and rising out of it rounded beechen knolls which, Druid-like, preserved the night under their domes of foliage, though all the grass was flooded by the slow tides of dawn. The white cow-parsley flowers hovered around me on invisible stems and gave out the thick summer flavours of nettles and myriad grasses. And lying down and sleeping in the sun until morning was hot, I awoke and seemed to hear a tale of the south as the air grew mazy with the scent of elder and thyme and the colour of bird’s-foot lotus and all the grass, and the sky leaned down upon the earth in milky purples. It was just such a change from the poor land to the rich as is expressed in the ancient tale of Cherry of Zennor told by Hunt in his _Popular Romances of the West of England_.
The girl, Cherry of Zennor, could not contentedly put up with her life at home, because her parents were poor, living on potatoes and fish, and she, though she was pretty and could run like a hare, had never a ribbon for her curls nor a new frock to go to church or to fair in. So she set out to get a servant’s place somewhere in the “low countries.”
The road was long and she was homesick by the time she had reached a four-went way. There she sat down and cried, but had scarcely recovered when she saw a gentleman coming up to her. He bade her “good-morning” and asked her whither she went; and when she said that she was off to look for a servant’s place, he told her that he was in search of just such a clean and handsome girl for his own house. So Cherry went off with him, to milk his cow and look after his child; and she was to have good clothes when she got there.
They went down and down for a long way; the road was clouded over by trees and was growing darker and darker, when suddenly the man opened a gate in a wall and told her that there it was that he lived. She had never seen a garden so rich in fruit and flowers and singing birds. Was it enchanted? But no, the man was no fairy; he was too big. Presently his child appeared, a boy with piercing and crafty eyes, and an old hag, called “Aunt Prudence,” who prepared a choice supper for the girl; and she ate of it heartily. Cherry slept with the child at the top of the house and was told that, even if she could not sleep, she was to keep her eyes shut up there and not to speak to the boy; at dawn she was to wash him at a spring in the garden and rub his eyes--never her own--with an ointment; then she was to milk the cow and give the boy a bowl of the last milk; she was at all times to avoid curiosity.
All this she did until it came to milking the cow. But Cherry saw no cow and was calling “Pruit! Pruit! Pruit!” when out she came from among the trees as if from nowhere. All day, but it was easy work, she scalded milk, made butter, cleaned platters and bowls with water and sand, picked the fruit, weeded the garden. Sometimes the man kissed her for her pains.
A year passed. Aunt Prudence was sent away because she took Cherry into one of the forbidden rooms, where the floor was like glass and it was full of people turned to stone. Sometimes the master went away and left Cherry alone with the child.
The ointment was still a puzzle--but surely it made the child’s eyes see many things! So one day she anointed her own eyes with it. It burned her painfully, and running to the spring to wash it away she learned its power. For there, at the bottom of the water, was a world of little people at play and among them her master; and looking up she saw that the branches of the trees and the flowers and the grass were crowded with the same joyous people. Another day she looked through the keyhole of one of the forbidden rooms and saw her master there, and many ladies too, all singing, and one of these who looked like a queen he kissed. So when, as they were fruit gathering some time afterwards, the master leaned forward to kiss her, she struck him on the face, saying, that he might kiss the small people under the water. Next morning very early he called her from her bed, led her by the light of a lantern up the dark lane for a long way, and then disappeared, after telling her that at times she would still be able to see him on the hills; and when she had recovered from her sorrow she went home.