A Moonlight Fable by H. G. Wells There was once a little man whose mother made
him a beautiful suit of clothes. It was green and gold and woven so that I cannot describe
how delicate and fine it was, and there was a tie of orange fluffiness that tied up under
his chin. And the buttons in their newness shone like stars. He was proud and pleased
by his suit beyond measure, and stood before the long looking-glass when first he put it
on, so astonished and delighted with it that he could hardly turn himself away.
He wanted to wear it everywhere and show it to all sorts of people. He thought over all
the places he had ever visited and all the scenes he had ever heard described, and tried
to imagine what the feel of it would be if he were to go now to those scenes and places
wearing his shining suit, and he wanted to go out forthwith into the long grass and the
hot sunshine of the meadow wearing it. Just to wear it! But his mother told him, "No."
She told him he must take great care of his suit, for never would he have another nearly
so fine; he must save it and save it and only wear it on rare and great occasions. It was
his wedding suit, she said. And she took his buttons and twisted them up with tissue paper
for fear their bright newness should be tarnished, and she tacked little guards over the cuffs
and elbows and wherever the suit was most likely to come to harm. He hated and resisted
these things, but what could he do? And at last her warnings and persuasions had effect
and he consented to take off his beautiful suit and fold it into its proper creases and
put it away. It was almost as though he gave it up again. But he was always thinking of
wearing it and of the supreme occasion when some day it might be worn without the guards,
without the tissue paper on the buttons, utterly and delightfully, never caring, beautiful
beyond measure.
One night when he was dreaming of it, after his habit, he dreamed he took the tissue paper
from one of the buttons and found its brightness a little faded, and that distressed him mightily
in his dream. He polished the poor faded button and polished it, and if anything it grew duller.
He woke up and lay awake thinking of the brightness a little dulled and wondering how he would
feel if perhaps when the great occasion (whatever it might be) should arrive, one button should
chance to be ever so little short of its first glittering freshness, and for days and days
that thought remained with him, distressingly. And when next his mother let him wear his
suit, he was tempted and nearly gave way to the temptation just to fumble off one little
bit of tissue paper and see if indeed the buttons were keeping as bright as ever.
He went trimly along on his way to church full of this wild desire. For you must know
his mother did, with repeated and careful warnings, let him wear his suit at times,
on Sundays, for example, to and fro from church, when there was no threatening of rain, no
dust nor anything to injure it, with its buttons covered and its protections tacked upon it
and a sunshade in his hand to shadow it if there seemed too strong a sunlight for its
colours. And always, after such occasions, he brushed it over and folded it exquisitely
as she had taught him, and put it away again.
Now all these restrictions his mother set to the wearing of his suit he obeyed, always
he obeyed them, until one strange night he woke up and saw the moonlight shining outside
his window. It seemed to him the moonlight was not common moonlight, nor the night a
common night, and for a while he lay quite drowsily with this odd persuasion in his mind.
Thought joined on to thought like things that whisper warmly in the shadows. Then he sat
up in his little bed suddenly, very alert, with his heart beating very fast and a quiver
in his body from top to toe. He had made up his mind. He knew now that he was going to
wear his suit as it should be worn. He had no doubt in the matter. He was afraid, terribly
afraid, but glad, glad.
He got out of his bed and stood a moment by the window looking at the moonshine-flooded
garden and trembling at the thing he meant to do. The air was full of a minute clamor
of crickets and murmurings, of the infinitesimal shouting of little living things. He went
very gently 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 and 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 aquiver 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 awe-stricken, and then, with a queer small cry and holding out his arms,
he ran out as if he would embrace at once the whole warm 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 southern-wood
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 burs and goosegrass 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, amid 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 grass of the farther bank. And so he came glad and
breathless into the highroad. "I am glad," he said, "beyond measure, that I had clothes
that fitted this occasion."
The highroad 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 the cool and streaming
silver for the duckweed in the pond.