Edmund Dulac's Picture-Book for the French Red Cross

by Edmund Dulac

Yet the child endured it all patiently, and, when her work was done, which happened sometimes, she would sit in the chimney corner among the cinders, dreaming of things which no one knows. And it was from this habit of musing among the cinders that she got her name of Cinder-slut, which was afterwards softened, for some unknown reason, to Cinderella.

Now the day of a great festival drew near. It was the occasion of the king's son's coming of age, and it was spread abroad that he would select his bride from among the most beautiful attending the state ball. As soon as the elder sisters got breath of this they preeked and preened and powdered and anointed, and even ran to the door themselves at every knock, for they expected invitations; and they were not disappointed, for you will easily see that at a ball even beauty must have its plain background to set it off. Very proud they were of their gold-lettered invitation cards bearing the royal seal, and, when they rang for Cinderella, they held them in their hands to emphasise their orders. This must be ironed, just so; this must be pressed and set aside in tissue paper; this must be tucked and frilled and goffered in just such a fashion, and so on with crimping and pleating and tabbing and piping and boxing, until poor Cinderella began to wonder why the lot of some was so easy and the lot of others so hard. Nevertheless, she worked and worked and worked; and always in her drudgery came day-dreams of what she would wear if she were invited to the ball. She had it all planned out to the smallest frill,—but how absurd! She must toil at her sisters' bidding and, on the great night when they were there in their finery, she must sit among the cinders dreaming—in a faery world of her own—of the prince who came to claim her as his bride. Fool! what a wild fancy! What an unattainable dream!—and there was the bell ringing again: her sisters wanted something, and woe betide her if she dallied.

At last the night of the ball arrived. Early towards the evening there was no peace in the household. When the elder sister had fully decided, in spite of her complexion, to wear her velvet cramoisie trimmed à l'anglaise, and the younger had thought out her gold-flowered robe in conjunction with a jewelled stomacher, to say nothing of an old silk underskirt, which, after all, would be hidden; when they had squabbled over the different jewels they possessed, each complimenting the other on the set she desired least herself; when the milliner and the hairdresser had called and gone away exhausted; when the beauty specialist had reached the limit of his art and departed sighing heavily; then and not till then was Cinderella called up and allowed the great privilege of admiring the result.

Now Cinderella had, by nature, what one might call 'absolute taste.' She knew instinctively how one should look at a state ball, and she gave them her simple, but perfect, advice, with a deft touch to this and that, which made all the difference. She got no thanks, of course; but one of the sisters did unbend a little.

'Cinderella,' said she, 'wouldn't you like to be going to the ball?'

'Heigho!' sighed Cinderella. 'Such delights are not for me. I dream of them, but that is all.'

'Quite enough, too,' said the other sister. 'Fancy the Cinder-slut at a ball! How the whole Court would laugh!'

Cinderella made no reply, though the words hurt her. Pin after pin she took from her mouth and fixed it dexterously, where you or I might have done some accidental damage with it, and drawn blood. But not so Cinderella. She had no venom in her nature. When she had arrayed them perfectly she expected no thanks, but just listened to their fault-finding with a hidden smile. It was only when they had left the house, and she was going downstairs to the kitchen, that one word escaped her: 'Cats!' And if she had not said that she would not have been a girl at all, but only an angel. Then she sat down in her favourite place in the chimney corner to look into the fire and imagine things quite different from what they were.

The house was very still—so still that you could have heard a pin fall in the top room. The step-mother was on a visit to a maiden aunt, who was not only dying, but very rich, so the best thing to do was to show the dying aunt her invitation card to the ball and play another card—the ace of self-sacrifice. Yes, the house was very still. Cinderella, watching the pictures in the glowing embers, could almost hear what the prince of her dreams was saying.