A Moonlight Fable

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

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

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

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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

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

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,

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

breathless into the highroad. "I am glad," he said, "beyond measure, that I had clothes that

fitted this occasion."

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