glass house, placed in a large pot, and lifted up on to a pedestal,
and left in a delicious atmosphere, with patrician plants all around
her with long Latin names, and strange, rare beauties of their own.
She bore bud after bud in this crystal temple, and became a very crown
of blossom; and her spirit grew so elated, and her vanity so supreme,
that she ceased to remember she had ever been a simple Rosa Damascena,
except that she was always saying to herself, “How great I am! how
great I am!” which she might have noticed that those born ladies,
the Devoniensis and the Louise de Savoie, never did. But she noticed
nothing except her own beauty, which she could see in a mirror that was
let into the opposite wall of the greenhouse. Her blossoms were many
and all quite perfect, and no knife touched them; and though to be sure
she was still very scantily clothed so far as foliage went, yet she was
all the more fashionable for that, so what did it matter?
One day, when her beauty was at its fullest perfection, she heard
all the flowers about her bending and whispering with rustling and
murmuring, saying, “Who will be chosen? who will be chosen?”
Chosen for what?
They did not talk much to her, because she was but a new-comer and a
parvenu, but she gathered from them in a little time that there was to
be a ball for a marriage festivity at the house to which the greenhouse
was attached. Each flower wondered if it would be chosen to go to it.
The azaleas knew they would go, because they were in their pink or rose
ball-dresses all ready; but no one else was sure. The rose-tree grew
quite sick and faint with hope and fear. Unless she went, she felt that
life was not worth the living. She had no idea what a ball might be,
but she knew that it was another form of greatness, when she was all
ready, too, and so beautiful!
The gardener came and sauntered down the glass house, glancing from one
to another. The hearts of all beat high. The azaleas only never changed
color: they were quite sure of themselves. Who could do without them in
February?
“Oh, take me! take me! take me!” prayed the rose-tree, in her foolish,
longing, arrogant heart.
Her wish was given her. The lord of their fates smiled when he came to
where she stood.
“This shall be for the place of honor,” he murmured, and he lifted her
out of the large vase she lived in on to a trestle and summoned his
boys to bear her away. The very azaleas themselves grew pale with envy.
As for the rose-tree herself, she would not look at any one; she was
carried through the old garden straight past the Banksiæ, but she would
make them no sign; and as for the blackbird, she hoped a cat had eaten
him! Had he not known her as Rosa Damascena?
She was borne bodily, roots and all, carefully wrapped up in soft
matting, and taken into the great house.
It was a very great house, a very grand house, and there was to be a
marvellous feast in it, and a prince and princess from over the seas
were that night to honor the mistress of it by their presence. All
this Rosa Indica had gathered from the chatter of the flowers, and
when she came into the big palace she saw many signs of excitement and
confusion: servants out of livery were running up against one another
in their hurry-scurry; miles and miles, it seemed, of crimson carpeting
were being unrolled all along the terrace and down the terrace steps,
since by some peculiar but general impression royal personages are
supposed not to like to walk upon anything else, though myself I think
they must get quite sick of red carpet, seeing so very much of it
spread for them wherever they go. To Rosa Indica, however, the bright
scarlet carpeting looked very handsome, and seemed, indeed, a foretaste
of heaven.
Soon she was carried quite inside the house, into an immense room with
a beautiful dome-shaped ceiling, painted in fresco three centuries
before, and fresh as though it had been painted yesterday. At the end
of the room was a great chair, gilded and painted, too, three centuries
before, and covered with velvet, gold-fringed and powdered with golden
grasshoppers. “That common insect here!” thought Rosa, in surprise,
for she did not know that the chief of the house, long, long, long ago,
when sleeping in the heat of noon in Palestine in the first crusade,
had been awakened by a grasshopper lighting on his eyelids, and so had
been aroused in time to put on his armor and do battle with a troop of
attacking Saracen cavalry, and beat them; wherefore, in gratitude, he
had taken the humble field-creature as his badge for evermore.
They set the roots of Rosa Indica now into a vase--such a vase! the
royal blue of Sèvres, if you please, and with border and scroll work
and all kinds of wonders and glories painted on it and gilded on
it, and standing four feet high if it stood one inch! I could never
tell you the feelings of Rosa if I wrote a thousand pages. Her heart
thrilled so with ecstasy that she almost dropped all her petals, only
her vanity came to her aid, and helped her to control in a measure her
emotions. The gardeners broke off a good deal of mould about her roots,
and they muttered one to another something about her dying of it. But
Rosa thought no more of that than a pretty lady does when her physician
tells her she will die of tight lacing; not she! She was going to be
put into that Sèvres vase.
This was enough for her, as it is enough for the lady that she is
going to be put into a hundred-guinea ball-gown.
In she went. It was certainly a tight fit, as the gown often is, and
Rosa felt nipped, strained, bruised, suffocated. But an old proverb has
settled long ago that pride feels no pain, and perhaps the more foolish
the pride the less is the pain that is felt--for the moment.
They set her well into the vase, putting green moss over her roots, and
then they stretched her branches out over a gilded trellis-work at the
back of the vase. And very beautiful she looked; and she was at the
head of the room, and a huge mirror down at the farther end opposite to
her showed her own reflection. She was in paradise!
“At last,” she thought to herself, “at last they have done me justice!”
The azaleas were all crowded round underneath her, like so many
kneeling courtiers, but they were not taken out of their pots; they
were only shrouded in moss. They had no Sèvres vases. And they had
always thought so much of themselves and given themselves such airs,
for there is nothing so vain as an azalea--except, indeed, a camellia,
which is the most conceited flower in the world, though, to do it
justice, it is also the most industrious, for it is busy getting ready
its next winter buds whilst the summer is still hot and broad on the
land, which is very wise and prudent in it and much to be commended.
Well, there was Rosa Indica at the head of the room in the Sèvres vase,
and very proud and triumphant she felt throned there, and the azaleas,
of course, were whispering enviously underneath her, “Well, after all,
she was only Rosa Damascena not so _very_ long ago.”
Yes, _they knew_! What a pity it was! They knew she had once
been Rosa Damascena and never would wash it out of their minds--the
tiresome, spiteful, malignant creatures!
Even aloft in the vase, in all her glory, the rose could have shed
tears of mortification, and was ready to cry, like Themistocles, “Can
nobody give us oblivion?”
Nobody could give that, for the azaleas, who were so irritated at
being below her, were not at all likely to hold their tongues. But
she had great consolations and triumphs, and began to believe that,
let them say what they chose, she had never been a common garden-wall
rose. The ladies of the house came in and praised her to the skies;
the children ran up to her and clapped their hands and shouted for joy
at her beauty; a wonderful big green bird came in and hopped before
her, cocked his head on one side, and said to her, “Pretty Poll! oh,
_such_ a pretty Poll!”
[Illustration: “PRETTY POLL! OH, SUCH A PRETTY POLL!”]
“Even the birds adore me here!” she thought, not dreaming he was only
talking of himself; for when you are as vain as was this poor dear
Rosa, creation is pervaded with your own perfections, and even when
other people say only “Poll!” you feel sure they are saying “You!” or
they ought to be if they are not.
So there she stood in her grand Sèvres pot, and she was ready to cry
with the poet, “The world may end to-night!” Alas! it was not the
world which was to end. Let me hasten to close this true heart-rending
history.
There was a great dinner as the sun began to set, and the mistress of
the house came in on the arm of the great foreign prince; and what did
the foreign prince do but look up at Rosa, straight up at her, and over
the heads of the azaleas, and say to his hostess, “What a beautiful
rose you have there! A Niphétos, is it not?”
And her mistress, who had known her long as simple Rosa Damascena,
answered, “Yes, sir; it is a Niphétos.”
Oh to have lived for that hour! The silly thing thought it worth all
her suffering from the gardener’s knife, all the loss of her robust
health and delightful power of flowering in all four seasons. She was
a Niphétos, really and truly a Niphétos! and not one syllable hinted
as to her origin! She began to believe she had been _born_ a
tea-rose!
The dinner was long and gorgeous; the guests were dazzling in jewels
and in decorations; the table was loaded with old plate and rare china;
the prince made a speech and used her as a simile of love and joy and
purity and peace. The rose felt giddy with triumph and with the fumes
of the wines around her. Her vase was of purple and gold, and all the
voices round her said, “Oh, the beautiful rose!” No one noticed the
azaleas. How she wished that the blackbird could see for a minute, if
the cat would gobble him up the next!
The day sped on; the châtelaine and her guests went away; the table was
rearranged; the rose-tree was left in its place of honor; the lights
were lit; there was the sound of music near at hand; they were dancing
in other chambers.
Above her hung a chandelier--a circle of innumerable little flames and
drops that looked like dew or diamonds. She thought it was the sun come
very close. After it had been there a little while it grew very hot,
and its rays hurt her.
“Can you not go a little farther away, O Sun?” she said to it. It was
flattered at being taken for the sun, but answered her, “I am fixed in
my place. Do you not understand astronomy?”
She did not know what astronomy was, so was silent, and the heat hurt
her. Still, she was in the place of honor: so she was happy.
People came and went; but nobody noticed her. They ate and drank, they
laughed and made love, and then went away to dance again, and the music
went on all night long, and all night long the heat of the chandelier
poured down on her.
“I am in the place of honor,” she said to herself a thousand times in
each hour.
But the heat scorched her, and the fumes of the wines made her faint.
She thought of the sweet fresh air of the old garden where the Banksiæ
were. The garden was quite near, but the windows were closed, and there
were the walls now between her and it. She was in the place of honor.
But she grew sick and waxed faint as the burning rays of the artificial
light shining above her seemed to pierce through and through her like
lances of steel. The night seemed very long. She was tired.
She was erect there on her Sèvres throne, with the light thrilling and
throbbing upon her in every point. But she thought of the sweet, dark,
fresh nights in the old home where the blackbird had slept, and she
longed for them.
The dancers came and went, the music thrummed and screamed, the
laughter was both near and far; the rose-tree was amidst it all. Yet
she felt alone--all alone! as travellers may feel in a desert. Hour
succeeded hour; the night wore on apace; the dancers ceased to come;
the music ceased, too; the light still burned down upon her, and the
scorching fever of it consumed her like fire.
Then there came silence--entire silence. Servants came round and put
out all the lights--hundreds and hundreds of lights--quickly one by
one. Other servants went to the windows and threw them wide open to
let out the fumes of wine. Without, the night was changing into the
gray that tells of earliest dawn. But it was a bitter frost; the grass
was white with it; the air was ice. In the great darkness that had now
fallen on all the scene this deadly cold came around the rose-tree and
wrapped her in it as in a shroud.
She shivered from head to foot.
The true glacial coldness crept into the hot banqueting-chamber, and
moved round it in white, misty circles, like steam, like ghosts of the
gay guests that had gone. All was dark and chill--dark and chill as any
grave!
What worth was the place of honor now?
Was this the place of honor?
The rose-tree swooned and drooped! A servant’s rough hand shook down
its worn beauty into a heap of fallen leaves. When they carried her
out dead in the morning, the little Banksia-buds, safe hidden from the
frost within their stems, waiting to come forth when the summer should
come, murmured to one another:
“She had her wish; she was great. This way the gods grant foolish
prayers, and punish discontent!”
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.