"Was there still another set of fairies, invisible to the eye? I felt myself lifted by unseen arms, and could feel harmonious breaths around me like an atmosphere which I was inhaling through every pore, and which was swelling every fibre with a thrill of lightness, until I only touched the ground like a bird ready to fly. I raised the wand, and a strain from an unseen band lifted on its wings the whole a.s.sembly surrounding the green, who nodded, and waved, and swayed with the opening movement as if catching the time of a tune to which they were to dance; the flute and the violin catching, like a flame, from one to the other, the tortuous wreathing of the ba.s.s-viol, with labored ease possessing their limbs, and the bugle and the trumpet, with a gush of melody in which all the rest joined, leaving their graceful heads floating in the loveliest confusion of harmony. Then a pause fell like a shadow, pointing across the greensward; and when it ended, faint as figures in a deep valley, burst forth a chorus of tiny voices, and there were the fairies themselves, in groups on groups, and wreath involved in wreath, dancing to their own song, countless as the fireflies in a meadow on a summer evening.
""If I were only small enough to dance with them!" said I, listening so intently that I felt myself contracting into the compa.s.s of their song, and the wand diminishing in my hand, till there we were, myself and the loveliest little fairy queen dancing together through the mazes of the tiny troop, bewildered by the grace of the faces that pa.s.sed us like dreams of beauty, and the soft crush of bewitching dresses that wafted, as they swept by us, such dizzy perfumes as only the bee or the b.u.t.terfly could imagine. The songs to which we danced, every group singing a different one, and yet all in harmony, were without words; but our feet, pattering, innumerable as the drops of a silver rain, or the softest piano and flute accompaniment, echoed with their meaning, and every step was the understanding of emotions, for which language had no name. For we were so slight and pure that there was no interval between the music and the meaning, but our forms, which were only the harmony and enjoyment of both, sparkling into life each moment our footsteps touched the ground.
""The dance for thought, the waltz for love," said my fairy queen, looking at me with velvet eyes, and wreathing her arms around my waist. Then we floated off on the violin accompaniment, that seemed to fly from under our feet at every step, gliding through the sinuous mazes of a movement interweaving and unfolding into newer and newer combinations, till we swam in a delirium of uncomprehended harmony, buoyed up so lightly, as if on half-open wings, that our feet only occasionally touched the ground to remind us of the earth.
""O, let us fly!" I exclaimed.
""The fairies belong to the earth, like yourselves," she answered; "but would you learn the dance?"
""O, yes; and I will love you and live with you forever!"
""Till when?"
""Till I have learned it, and can take it home with me."
""Dear child," said she, "the fairies have no homes but yours, and we can only come down to them on your feet. Without you we are only eyes without a smile. But if we cannot come down to you of ourselves, how happy are we when one comes to us who can carry us back with her! How did you come hither?"
""I sailed up on the stream."
""Then take me down with you," she said, sinking upon my face with a kiss, into which she dissolved like a mist, and I closed my eyes to clasp her to my heart forever.
"When I opened them, the stream was rippling at my feet, and my brother was raising his face from mine with a smile that left me in doubt if I was not still in Fairyland. "Now tell me, Violet Eyes,"
said he, "all about the fairies."
""How do you know I have been there?" I asked.
""Have you never heard that whoever looks first into the eyes of one who has been there, catches a glimpse of Fairyland? But tell me quick, before you forget. You know you promised to break the twigs as you went, to mark the place for me."
""O, I forgot all about it!" said I.
""Never mind," said he; "but tell me what you remember."
"So I told him all I could, and much more than I have told you now, for he had such a comical look on his face when I was describing the best part of it all,--after betraying me, too, as he had, into telling it, with the greatest appearance of interest,--that I resolved I never would tell it again; so you must blame him, and not me, if I have left the best part out."
"O, we all know the best part of a story is always left out!" said Kate, "particularly by those who have taken the most pains to put every thing in. But there goes the school bell. I wonder if the fairies ever come down so far into the world as to visit the school room. Fancy Ella dancing with her fairy queen, with an "Algebra" under one arm, and an "Elements of Criticism" under the other."
"There is nothing so heavy that the fairies cannot make it dance,"
said Ella. "The trouble is to get their a.s.sistance. And what a capital story it would make,--the fairies coming at night and setting our books to waltzing on the school room floor! There is no end to the funny contrasts it suggests."
"The best stories always come when it is too late to tell them," said Anna.