Children’s Stories - Oscar Wilde (that summer book txt) 📗

And at last he spoke to her, and his voice was hard and bitter. “If in very truth thou art my mother,” he said, “it had been better hadst thou stayed away, and not come here to bring me to shame, seeing that I thought I was the child of some Star, and not a beggar’s child, as thou tellest me that I am. Therefore get thee hence, and let me see thee no more.”

“Alas! my son,” she cried, “wilt thou not kiss me before I go? For I have suffered much to find thee.”

“Nay,” said the Star-Child, “but thou art too foul to look at, and rather would I kiss the adder or the toad than thee.”

So the woman rose up, and went away into the forest weeping bitterly, and when the Star-Child saw that she had gone, he was glad, and ran back to his playmates that he might play with them.

But when they beheld him coming, they mocked him and said, “Why, thou art as foul as the toad, and as loathsome as the adder. Get thee hence, for we will not suffer thee to play with us,” and they drave him out of the garden.

And the Star-Child frowned and said to himself, “What is this that they say to me? I will go to the well of water and look into it, and it shall tell me of my beauty.”

So he went to the well of water and looked into it, and lo! his face was as the face of a toad, and his body was sealed like an adder. And he flung himself down on the grass and wept, and said to himself, “Surely this has come upon me by reason of my sin. For I have denied my mother, and driven her away, and been proud, and cruel to her. Wherefore I will go and seek her through the whole world, nor will I rest till I have found her.”

And there came to him the little daughter of the Woodcutter, and she put her hand upon his shoulder and said, “What doth it matter if thou hast lost thy comeliness? Stay with us, and I will not mock at thee.”

And he said to her, “Nay, but I have been cruel to my mother, and as a punishment has this evil been sent to me. Wherefore I must go hence, and wander through the world till I find her, and she give me her forgiveness.”

So he ran away into the forest and called out to his mother to come to him, but there was no answer. All day long he called to her, and, when the sun set he lay down to sleep on a bed of leaves, and the birds and the animals fled from him, for they remembered his cruelty, and he was alone save for the toad that watched him, and the slow adder that crawled past.

And in the morning he rose up, and plucked some bitter berries from the trees and ate them, and took his way through the great wood, weeping sorely. And of everything that he met he made inquiry if perchance they had seen his mother.

He said to the Mole, “Thou canst go beneath the earth. Tell me, is my mother there?”

And the Mole answered, “Thou hast blinded mine eyes. How should I know?”

He said to the Linnet, “Thou canst fly over the tops of the tall trees, and canst see the whole world. Tell me, canst thou see my mother?”

And the Linnet answered, “Thou hast clipt my wings for thy pleasure. How should I fly?”

And to the little Squirrel who lived in the fir-tree, and was lonely, he said, “Where is my mother?”

And the Squirrel answered, “Thou hast slain mine. Dost thou seek to slay thine also?”

And the Star-Child wept and bowed his head, and prayed forgiveness of God’s things, and went on through the forest, seeking for the beggar-woman. And on the third day he came to the other side of the forest and went down into the plain.

And when he passed through the villages the children mocked him, and threw stones at him, and the carlots would not suffer him even to sleep in the byres lest he might bring mildew on the stored corn, so foul was he to look at, and their hired men drave him away, and there was none who had pity on him. Nor could he hear anywhere of the beggar-woman who was his mother, though for the space of three years he wandered over the world, and often seemed to see her on the road in front of him, and would call to her, and run after her till the sharp flints made his feet to bleed. But overtake her he could not, and those who dwelt by the way did ever deny that they had seen her, or any like to her, and they made sport of his sorrow.

For the space of three years he wandered over the world, and in the world there was neither love nor loving-kindness nor charity for him, but it was even such a world as he had made for himself in the days of his great pride.

And one evening he came to the gate of a strong-walled city that stood by a river, and, weary and footsore though he was, he made to enter in. But the soldiers who stood on guard dropped their halberts across the entrance, and said roughly to him, “What is thy business in the city?”

“I am seeking for my mother,” he answered, “and I pray ye to suffer me to pass, for it may be that she is in this city.”

But they mocked at him, and one of them wagged a black beard, and set down his shield and cried, “Of a truth, thy mother will not be merry when she sees thee, for thou art more ill-favoured than the toad of the marsh, or the adder that crawls in the fen. Get thee gone.