[Illustration: [See page 48
OFTEN SHE WOULD LIFT THE LID OF THE GOLDEN COFFER AND LOOK AT THE
TATTERED ROBE]
THE
MAKER OF RAINBOWS
AND OTHER FAIRY-TALES AND FABLES
BY
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
AUTHOR OF
"AN OLD COUNTRY HOUSE"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN
[Illustration]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXII
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1912
I · M
THAT THIS VOLUME SHALL BE ENTIRELY IN KEEPING WITH ITS FAIRY-TALE
CONTENTS, I DEDICATE IT TO MY GOOD FRIENDS, ITS PUBLISHERS, MESSRS.
HARPER & BROTHERS IN REMEMBRANCE OF KINDLY RELATIONS BETWEEN THEM
AND ITS WRITER SELDOM FOUND OUT OF A FAIRY-TALE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE OLD COAT OF DREAMS 1
II. THE MAKER OF RAINBOWS 7
III. THE MAN WITH SOMETHING IN HIS EYE 14
IV. MOTHER-OF-PEARL 17
V. THE MER-MOTHER 27
VI. THE SLEEPLESS LORD 29
VII. THE MAN WITH NO MONEY 39
VIII. THE RAGS OF QUEEN COPHETUA 42
IX. THE WIFE FROM FAIRY-LAND 51
X. THE BUYER OF SORROWS 54
XI. THE PRINCESS'S MIRROR 60
XII. THE PINE LADY 73
XIII. THE KING ON HIS WAY TO BE CROWNED 75
XIV. THE STOLEN DREAM 88
XV. THE STERN EDUCATION OF CLOWNS 103
ILLUSTRATIONS
OFTEN SHE WOULD LIFT THE LID OF THE GOLDEN COFFER
AND LOOK AT THE TATTERED ROBE _Frontispiece_
A SUDDEN STRANGE NEW LIGHT WOULD SHINE OUT OF ITS
PAGES _Facing p._ 30
HE WENT FORTH INTO THE DAWN SLEEPLESS " 36
THE HERALD ONCE MORE SET THE TRUMPET TO HIS LIPS AND BLEW " 56
HER ONLY CARE WAS TO GAZE ALL DAY AT HER OWN FACE " 60
THE MAKER OF
RAINBOWS
THE OLD COAT OF DREAMS
A PROLOGUE
People in London--not merely literary folk, but even those "higher
social circles" to which a certain publisher, whose name--or race--it is
hardly fair to mention, had so obsequiously climbed--often wondered
whence had come the wealth that enabled him to maintain such an
establishment, give such elaborate "parties," have so many automobiles,
and generally make all that display which is so convincing to the modern
mind.
Of course they were not seriously concerned, because, so long as it is a
party, and the _chef_ is paid so much, and the wines are as old as they
should be, not even the rarest blossom on the most ancient and
distinguished genealogical tree cares whose party it is, or, indeed,
with whom she dances. There is only one democracy, and that is
controlled by gentlemen with names that hardly sound beautiful enough
to mention in fairy tales--that democracy of money to which the fairest
flower of our aristocracy now bows her coroneted head.
Strange--but we all know that so it is. Therefore, all sorts of
distinguished and beautiful people came to the publisher's "parties."
It would have made no difference, really, to their hard hearts, could
they have known where all the champagne and conservatories and music
came from--they would have gone on dancing all the same, and eating
_pâté de foie gras_ and sherbets; yet it may interest a sad heart here
and there to know how it was that that publisher--whose name I forget,
but whose nose I can never forget--was able to pay for all that music
and dancing, strange flowers, and enchanted food, none of which he, of
course, understood.
* * * * *
Aristocrats in London, of course, know nothing of a northern district of
New York City called Harlem, with so many streets that a learned
arithmetician would be needed to number them: a district which, at the
first call of spring, becomes vocal with children on door-steps and
venders of every vegetable in every language. In this district, too, you
hear strange trumpets blow, announcing knife and scissors grinders, and
strange bells ringing from strings suspended across carts, whose
merchandise is bottles and old newspapers. You will hear, too, just when
the indomitable sweet smells from the terrible eternal spring are
blowing in at your window, and the murmur of rich happy people going
away is heard in the land, a raucous cry in the hot street--a cry full
of melancholy, even despair: it goes something like this--"Cash clo'!
Cash clo'!"
Well, it was just then that a young poet, living in one of those highly
arithmetical streets, was wondering, as all the sad spring murmur came
to his ears, how he could possibly buy a rose for the bosom of his
sweetheart, with whom he was to dance that night at a local ball.
Everything he had in the world had gone. He had sold everything--except
his poems. All his precious books had gone, sad one by one. Little
paintings that once made his walls seem like the Louvre had gone. All
his old silver spoons and all the little intaglios he loved so well, and
yes! he had even sold the old copper chest of the Renaissance, all
studded nails, with three locks, in which ... well, all had gone. Only,
where was that rose for the bosom of his sweetheart--where was it
growing? Where and how was it to be bought?
Just as he was at his wit's end, he heard a cry through the window. It
had meant nothing to him before. Now--strange as it may sound--it meant
a rose!
"Cash clo'! Cash clo'!"
He had an old dress-suit in his wardrobe. Perhaps that would buy a rose!
So, leaning through the window, he called down to the voice to "come
up."
The gentleman from Palestine came up.
It would be easy to describe the contempt with which he surveyed the
distinguished though somewhat ancient garments thus offered to him--in
exchange for a rose!--how he affected to examine linings and seams,
knowing all the time the distinguished tailor that had made them, and
what a bargain he was about to drive.
Of course, they weren't, well ... really ... practically ... they
weren't worth buying....
The poet wondered a moment about the cost of a rose.
"Are they worth the price of a rose?" he asked.
The gentleman from Palestine didn't, of course, understand.
"You see," said he, finally; "I'd like to give you more, but you know
how it is ... look at these linings and buttonholes! Honestly, I don't
really care about them at all--but--really a dollar and a half is the
best I can do on them...." And he eyed the poet's clothes with contempt.
"A dollar seventy-five," said the poet, standing firm.
"All right," at last said the gentleman from Palestine, "but I don't see
where I am to make any profit; however--" And he handed out the small,
dirty money.
Then the poet bowed him out gently, saying in his heart:
"Now I can buy my rose!"
When the Palestinian dealer in old dress-suits went home--after sadly
leaving behind him that dollar seventy-five--he made an astonishing
discovery.
In the necessary process of re-examining the "goods," something fell out
of one of the pockets, something the poet, after his nature, had quite
forgotten. The old-clothes man, now a publisher, picked them up from the
floor and gazed at them in delight. The poet, in his grandiose
carelessness, had forgotten to empty his pockets of various old dreams!
Now, to be fair to the gentleman from Palestine, he belonged to a race
that loves dreams, and, to do him justice, he forgot all about the
profit he was to make of the poor poet's clothes, as he sat,
cross-legged, on the floor, and read the dreams that had fallen from the
pocket of the poet's old dress-suit. He read on and read on, and laughed
and cried--such a curious treasure-trove, such an odd medley of fairy
tales and fables and poems had fallen out of the poet's pocket--and it
was only later that the thought came to him that he might change from an
old-clothes man into a publisher of dreams.
Now, these are some of the dreams that fell out of the poet's pocket.
THE MAKER OF RAINBOWS
It was a bleak November morning in the dreary little village of
Twelve-trees. Nature herself seemed hopeless and disgusted with the
universe, as the chill mists stole wearily among the bare trees, and the
boughs dripped with a clammy moisture that had nothing of the energy of
tears.
Twelve-trees was a poor little village at the best of times, but the
past summer had been more than usually unkind to it, and the lean
wheat-fields and the ragged orchards had been leaner and more ragged
than ever before--so said the memory of the oldest villagers.
There was very little to eat in the village of Twelve-trees, and
practically no money at all. Some of the inhabitants found consolation
in the fact that at the Inn of the Blessed Rood the cider-kegs still
held out against despair.
But this was no comfort to the gaunt and shivering children left to
themselves on the chill door-steps, half-heartedly trying to play their
innocent little games. Even the heart of childhood felt the shadows that
November morning in the dreary little village of Twelve-trees, and even
the dogs and the cats of the village seemed to be under the same spell
of gloom, and moved about with a dank hopelessness, evidently expecting
nothing in the shape of discarded fish or transfiguring smells.
There was no life in the long, disheveled High Street. No one seemed to
think it worth while to get up and work. There was nothing to get up
for, and no work worth doing. So, naturally, in all this echoing
emptiness, this lack of excitement, anything that happened attracted a
gratefully alert attention--even from those cats and dogs so sadly
prowling amid the dejected refuse of the village.
Presently, amid all the November numbness, the blank nothingness of the
damp, deserted street, there was to be seen approaching from the south a
curious little figure of an old man, trundling at his side a strange
apparatus resembling a knife-grinder's wheel, and he carried some
forlorn old umbrellas under one arm. Evidently he was an itinerant
knife-grinder and umbrella-mender. As he proceeded up the street, he
called out some strange sing-song, the words of which it was impossible
to distinguish.
But, though his cry was melancholy, his old puckered and wizened face
seemed to be alight with some inner and inextinguishable gladness, and
his electrical blue eyes, startlingly set in a network of wrinkles, were
as full of laughter as a boy's. His cry attracted a weary face here and
there at window and door; but, seeing nothing but an old knife-grinder,
the faces lost interest and immediately disappeared. The children,
however, being less sophisticated, were filled with a grateful curiosity
toward the stranger, and left the chill door-steps and trooped about him
in wonder.
A little girl, with tears making channels down her pale, unwashed face,
caught the old man's eye.
"Little one," he said, with a magical smile, and a voice all reassuring
love, "give me one of those tears, and I will show you what I can make
of it."
And he touched the child's face with his hand, and caught one of her
tears on his finger, and placed it, glittering, on his wheel. Then,
working a pedal with his foot, the wheel began to move so swiftly that
one could see nothing but its whirling; and as it whirled, wonderful
colored rays began to rise from it, so that presently the dreary street
seemed full of rainbows. The sad houses were lit up with a fairy
radiance, and the faces of the children were all laughter again.
"Well, little one," he said, when the wheel stopped whirling, "did you
like what I made out of that sad little tear?"
And the children laughed, and begged him to do some other trick for
them.
At that moment there came down the street a poor old half-witted woman,
indescribably dirty and bedraggled, talking to herself and laughing in a
creepy way. The village knew her as Crazy Sal, and the children were
accustomed to make cruel sport of her. As she came near they began to
jeer at her, with the heartlessness of young, unknowing things.
But the strange old man who had made rainbows out of the little girl's
tear suddenly stopped them.
"Stay, children," he said, "and watch."
And, as he said this, his wheel went whirling again; and as it whirled a
light shot out from it, so that it illuminated the poor old woman, and
in its radiance she became strangely transfigured. In place of Crazy
Sal, whom they had been accustomed to mock, the children saw a
beautiful young girl, all blushes and bright eyes and pretty ribbons;
and so great was the murmur of their surprise that it drew to the
door-steps their fathers and mothers, who also saw Crazy Sal as none of
them had ever seen her before--except a very old man who remembered her
as a beautiful young girl, and remembered, too, how her mind had gone
from her as the news came one day that her sweetheart, a sailor, had
been drowned in the North Sea.
"Who and what are you?" said this old man, stepping out a little in
front of the gathering crowd. "Are you a wizard, that you change a
child's tears into laughter, and turn an old half-witted woman back to a
young girl? You must be of the devil...."
"Give me an ear of corn from your last harvest," answered the old
knife-grinder, "and let me put it on my wheel."
An ear of corn was brought to him, and once more his wheel went
whirring, and again that strange light shot out from it, and spread far
past the houses over the fields beyond; and, lo! to the astonished sad
eyes of the weary farmers, they appeared waving with golden grain,
waiting for the scythe.
And again, as the wheel stopped whirring, the old man who had
remembered Crazy Sal as a young girl spoke to the knife-grinder; again
he asked:
"What and who are you? Are you a wizard that you change a child's tears
into laughter, and turn an old half-witted woman back to a young girl,
and make of a barren glebe a waving corn-field?"
And the man with the strange wheel answered:
"I am the maker of rainbows. I am the alchemist of hope. To me November
is always May, tears are always laughter that is going to be, and
darkness is light misunderstood. The sad heart makes its own sorrow, the
happy heart makes its own joy. The harvest is made by the
harvestman--and there is nothing hard or black or weary that is not
waiting for the magic touch of hope to become soft as a spring flower,
bright as the morning star, and valiant as a young runner in the dawn."
But the village of Twelve-trees was not to be convinced by such words
made out of moonshine. Only the children believed in the laughing old
man with the strange wheel.
"Rainbows!" mocked their fathers and mothers--"rainbows! Much good are
rainbows to a starving village."
The old maker of rainbows took their taunts in silence, and made ready
to go his way; but as he started once more along the road he said, with
a cynical smile:
"Have you never heard that there is a pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow?..."
"A pot of gold?" cried out the whole village of Twelve-trees.
"Yes," he answered, "a pot of gold! I know where it is, and I am going
to find it."
And he moved on his way.
Then the villagers looked at one another, and said over and over again,
"A pot of gold!"
And they took cloaks and walking-staves and set out to accompany the old
visitor; but when they reached the outskirts of the village there was no
sign of him. He had mysteriously disappeared.
But the children never forgot the rainbows.
THE MAN WITH SOMETHING IN HIS EYE
Once on a time toward the end of February, when the snow still festered
in the New York streets, and the wind blew cruelly from river to river,
a strange figure made a somewhat storm-tossed progress along
Forty-second Street, walking toward the East Side. He was a tall,
distinguished, curiously sad-looking man, with longish hair growing
gray, and clothes which, though they had been brushed many times, still
proclaimed aloud a Bond Street tailor. As he walked along he had
evidently some trouble with one of his eyes, which he rubbed from time
to time, as though a cinder, perhaps, from the Elevated Railroad had
lodged there, and at last he held a handkerchief to it as he walked
along. But whatever the trouble was, it did not seem to interfere with a
keen and kindly vision that noted every object and character of the
thronged street. Now and again, strangers in that noisy and bewildering
quarter would ask direction from him, and he never failed to stop with
an aristocratic painstaking courtesy and set them on their way. Nervous
old women with bundles at perilous crossings found his arm ready to
pilot them safely to the other side. There was about him a curious
gentleness which, after a while, did not fail to attract the attention
of enterprising boys and observing beggars, for whom, as he walked
along, evidently sorely troubled with his eye, he did not fail to find
pennies and kind words.
At last he had become so noticeable for these oddities of behavior that,
as he went along, he had collected quite an escort of miscellaneous
individuals, ragged children with pale, precocious faces, voluble old
Irishwomen with bedraggled petticoats, sturdy beggars on crutches, and a
sprinkling of so-called "respectable" people, curiously hovering on the
skirts of the strange crowd. From some of these last came at length
unkindly comments. The man was evidently crazy--more probably he was
drunk. But it was plainly evident that he had something the matter with
his eye.
At last a kindly individual suggested that he should go to a drug-store
and get the drug clerk to look at his eye. To this the stranger
assented, and, accompanied by his motley escort, he entered a
drug-store and put himself into the hands of the clerk, while the crowd
thronged the door and glared through the windows, wondering what was the
matter with the eccentric gentleman, who, after all, was very free with
his pence and had so kind a tongue. A policeman did not, of course, fail
to elbow himself into the store, to inquire what was the matter.
Meanwhile the drug clerk proceeded to lift up the stranger's eyelid in a
professional manner, searching for the extraneous particle of pain.
At last he found something, and made a strange announcement. The
something in the stranger's eye was--Pity.
No wonder it had caused such a sensation in the most pitiless city in
the world.
MOTHER-OF-PEARL
There was once a poet who lived all alone by the sea. He had built for
himself a little house of boulders mortised in among the rocks, so
hidden that it was seldom that any wayfarer stumbled upon his retreat.
Wayfarers indeed were few in that solitary island, which was for the
most part covered with thick beech woods, and had for its inhabitants
only the wild creatures of wood and water and the strange unearthly
shapes that none but the poet's eyes could see. The nearest village was
miles away on the mainland, and for months at a time the solitude would
be undisturbed by sound of human voice or footstep--which was the poet's
idea of happiness. The world of men had seemed to him a world of sorrow
and foolishness and lies, and so he had forsaken it to dwell with
silence and beauty and the sound of the sea.
For him the world had been an uncompanioned wilderness. Here at last his
spirit had found its home and its kindred. The speech of men had been
to him a vain confusion, but here were the voices he had been born to
understand, the elemental voices of earth and sea and sky, the secret
wisdom of the eternal. From morning till night his days were passed in
listening to these voices, and in writing down in beautiful words the
messages of wonder they brought him. So his little house grew to be
filled with the lovely songs that had come to him out of the sky and the
sea and the haunted beeches. He had written them in a great book with
silver clasps, and often at evening, when the moon was rising over the
sea, he would sing them to himself, for joy in the treasure which he had
thus hoarded out of the air, as a man might weigh the grains of gold
sifted from some flowing river.
One night, as he thus sat singing to himself in the solitude, he was
startled by a deep sigh, as of some human creature near at hand, and
looking around he was aware of a lovely form, half in and half out of
the water, gazing at him with great moonlit eyes from beneath masses of
golden hair. In awe and delight he gazed back spellbound at the
unearthly vision. It was a fairy woman of the sea, more beautiful than
tongue can tell. Over her was the supernatural beauty of dreams and as
he looked at her the poet's heart filled with that more than mortal
happiness that only comes to us in dreams.
"Beautiful spirit," at length he cried, stretching out his arms to the
vision; but as he did so she was gone, and in the place where she had
been there was nought but the lonely moonlight falling on the rocks.
"It was all a trick of the moonlight," said the poet to himself, but,
even as he said it, there seemed to come floating to him the cadences of
an unearthly music of farewell.
In his heart the poet knew that it had not been the moonlight, but that
nature had granted him one of those mystic visitations which come only
to those whose loving meditation upon her secrets have opened the hidden
doors. She had drawn aside for a moment the veil of her visible beauty,
and vouchsafed him a glimpse of her invisible mystery. But the veil had
been drawn again almost instantly, and the poet's eyes were left empty
and hungered for the face that had thus momentarily looked at him
through the veil. Yet his heart was filled with a high happiness, for,
the vision once his, would it not be his again? Did it not mean that
through the long initiation of his solitary contemplation he had come at
length to that aery boundary where the wall between the seen and the
unseen grows transparent and the human meets the immortal face to face?
Still, days passed, and the poet watched in vain for the beautiful woman
of the sea. She came not again for all his singing, and his heart grew
heavy within him; but one day, as he walked the seashore at dawn, it
gave a great bound of joy, for there in mystical writing upon the silver
sand was a message which no eyes but his could have read. But the poet
was skilled in the secret script of the elements. To him the patterns of
leaves and flowers, the traceries of moss and lichen, the markings on
rocks and trees, which to others were but meaningless decorations, were
the letters of nature's hidden language, the spell-words of her runic
wisdom. To other eyes the message he had found written on the sand would
have seemed but a tangle of delicate weeds and shells cast up by the
sea. To him, as he turned it into our coarser human speech, it said:
"Seek me not,--unsought I come,--
Daughter of the moonlit foam,
Near and far am I to thee,
Near and far as earth and sea,
As wave to wave, as star to star,
Near and far, near and far."
And that night, when the poet sat and sang, with full heart, in the
moonlight--lo! the vision was there once more.... But again, as he
stretched out his arms, she was gone. But this time the poet did not
grieve as before, for he knew that she would come again, as indeed it
befell. When she appeared to him the third time she had stolen so near
to his side that he could gaze deep into her strange eyes, as into the
fathomless, moonlit sea, and at the ending of his song she did not fade
away as before, but her long hair fell all about him like a net of
moonbeams, and she lay like the moon herself in his enraptured arms.
To the passionate lover of nature, the anchorite of her solitudes, there
often comes, in the very hour of his closest approach to her, an aching
sense of incomplete oneness with her, a human desire for some responsive
embodiment of her mysterious beauty; and there are ecstatic moments in
which nature seems on the tremulous verge of sending us a magic
answer--moments of intense reverie when the woods seem about to reveal
to us the inner heart of their silence, in some sudden shape of
unimaginable enchantment, or the infinite of the starry night take form
at our side in some companionable radiance. We long, as it were, to
press our lips to the forehead of the dawn, to crush the leafy abundance
of summer to our breast, and to fold the infinite ocean in our embrace.
To the poet, reward of his lonely vigils and endless longing, nature had
granted this marvel. How often, as he had gazed at the moon rising out
of the sea, had he dreamed of a shining shape that came to him along her
silver pathway. And to-night the mystery of the moonlit sea was in his
arms. No longer a lovely vision calling him from afar--an unapproachable
wonder, a voice, a gleam--but a miraculously embodied spirit of the
elements, supernaturally fair.
The poet was, more than all men, learned in beautiful words, but he
could find no words for this strange happiness that had befallen him;
indeed, he had now passed beyond the world of words, and as he gazed
into those magic eyes, that seemed like sea-flowers growing out of the
air, they spoke to each other as wave talks to wave, or the leaves
whisper together on the trees.
So it was that the poet ceased to be alone in his solitude, and the
fairy woman from the sea became his wife, and very wonderful was their
happiness. But, as with all happiness, theirs, too, was not without its
touch of sorrow. For, marvelously wedded though they were, so closely
united that they seemed veritably one rather than two beings, there had
been a deep meaning to that little song which the poet had found written
in seaweed upon the sand:
"Near and far am I to thee,
Near and far as earth and sea,"
it had said,
"Near and far, near and far."
For not even their love could cast down for them one eternal barrier.
They could meet and love across it, but it was still there. They were
children of two diverse elements, and neither could cross from one into
the other--she a child of the blue sea, he a child of the green earth.
She must always leave him at the edge of the mysterious woods in which
her heart ached to wander, and, however far out into the wide waters he
would swim at her side, there would always be those deep-sea grottoes
and flower-gardens whither he could never follow. Down into these
enchanted depths he would watch her glide her shimmering way, but never
might he follow her to the hidden kingdoms of the sea. He must await her
out there, an alien, in the upper sunshine, and watch her glittering
kindred stream in and out the rainbowed portals--till again she was at
his side, her hands filled for his consolation with the secret treasures
of the sea.
So would she, from the shore, with despair in her eyes, watch him
disappear among the beech-trees to gather for her the waxen flowers and
the sweet-smelling green leaves and grasses she loved more than any that
grew in the sea. Thus across their barrier would they make exchange of
the marvels that grew on either side, and thus, indeed, the barrier grew
less and less by reason of their love. Sometimes they asked each other
if that other mystery, Death, would remove the barrier altogether....
But at the heart of the woman Life was already whispering another
answer.
"What," said she, as they watched the solemn stars in the still water
one summer night, "what if a little being were born to us that should
belong to both our worlds, to your green earth and to my blue sea? Would
you seem so lonely then? A little being that could run by your side in
the meadows, and swim with me into the depths of the sea!..."
"Would you be so lonely then?" he echoed.
And lo! after a season, it was this very marvel that came to pass; for
one night, as she came along the moon-path to his side, she was not
alone, but a tiny fairy woman was with her--a little radiant creature
that, as her mother had dreamed, could gather with one hand the flowers
that grow in the deeps of the wood and with the other the flowers that
grow in the deeps of the sea.
Like any other mortal babe she was, save for this: around her waist ran
a shimmering girdle--of mother-of-pearl.
So the poet and his wife called her Mother-of-Pearl; and she became for
them, as it were, a baby-bridge between two elements. In her mysterious
life their two lives became one, as never before. So near she brought
them to each other that often there seemed no barrier at all. And thus
days and years passed, and very wonderful was their happiness.
But by this the world which the poet had forgotten had grown curious
regarding the life which he lived alone among the rocks. Many of his
songs, as songs will, had escaped from his solitude, and floated singing
among men; and weird rumors grew of the strange happiness that had come
to him. Some of the more curious had spied upon him in his seclusion,
and had brought back to the town marvelous accounts of having seen him
in the moonlight with his fairy wife and child at his side. And, after
its fashion, the world had decided that here was plainly the work of the
devil, and that the poet was a wizard in league with the powers of
darkness. So the ignorant world has ever interpreted the beauty it could
not understand, and the happiness it could not give.
Thus a cloud began to gather of which the poet and his mer-wife and
little Mother-of-Pearl knew nothing, and one evening at moonrise, as
they were disporting themselves in their innocent happiness by the sea,
it burst upon them from the beech-trees with a gathering murmur and a
sudden roar.
A great mob, uttering cries and waving torches, broke from the wood and
ran toward them.
"Death to the wizard!" they cried. "Death! Death!"
As the poet heard them, he turned to his wife and little
Mother-of-Pearl. "Fear not," he cried, "they cannot hurt us."
Then, as again the cry went up, "Death to the wizard!" a sudden light
shone in his face.
"Death ... yes! That is the last door of the barrier...." and he plunged
into the moonlit water.
And when the rabble at length reached the shore with their torches, the
poet and his loved ones were already lost in the silver pathway that
leads to the hidden kingdoms of the sea.
THE MER-MOTHER
One day, walking by the sea,
I heard a sweet voice calling me:
I looked--but nothing could I see;
I listened--but no more I heard;
Only the sea and the sea-bird
And the blue sky were there with me.
But on another happier day,
When all the sea was sun and spray,
And laughing shout of wind and foam,
I seemed to hear the voice once more,--
Wilder and sweeter than before,
O wild as love and sweet as home.
I looked, and lo! before me there
A maiden sat in seaweeds drest,
Sea-flowers hiding in her breast,
And with a comb of deep-sea pearl
She combed, like any other girl,
Her golden hair--her golden hair.
And, as each shining yellow curl
Flickered like sunshine through the pearl,
She laughed and sang--but not for me:
Three little babies of the sea
Were diving in and out for joy--
Two mer-girls and a small mer-boy.
That fairy song was not for me,
Nor those green eyes, nor that gold hair;
Deep in the caves beneath the foam
There was a husband and a home--
It was a mermaid taking care
Of her small children of the sea.
[Illustration]
THE SLEEPLESS LORD
There was once a great lord. He was lord of seven castles, and there
were seven coronets upon his head. He was richer than he ever gave
himself the trouble to think of, for, north, south, east, and west, the
horizon even set no bounds to his estates. A thousand villages and ten
thousand farms were in the hollow of his hand, and into his coffers
flowed the fruitfulness and labor of all these. Therefore, as you can
imagine, he was a very rich lord. He had more beautiful titles, denoting
the various principalities over which he was lord, than the
deepest-lunged herald could proclaim without taking breath at least
three times. In person he was most noble and beautiful to look upon, and
his voice was like the rippling of waters under the moon, save when it
was like the call of a golden trumpet. He stood foremost in the counsels
of his realm, not only for his eloquence, but for his wisdom. Also, God
had given him a good heart.
Only one gift had been denied him--the gift of sleep. By whatever means
he might weary himself in the day--in study, in sport, in recreation, or
in the business of the realm--night found him sleepless, and all the
dark hours the lights burned in his bedchamber and in his library, as he
would pace from one to the other, with eyes tragically awake and brain
torturingly alert and clear.
Every means known to science by which to bring sleep to the eyes of
sleepless men had been tried in vain. Learned physicians from all parts
of the world had come to my lord's castle, and had gone thence,
confessing that their skill had availed nothing. All strange and
terrible drugs that have power over the spirit of man had failed to
conquer those stubborn eyelids. My lord still paced from his bedchamber
to his library, from his library to his bedchamber--sleepless.
[Illustration: A SUDDEN STRANGE NEW LIGHT WOULD SHINE OUT OF ITS PAGES]
Sometimes in his anguish he had thrown himself on his knees in prayer
before a God whom he had not always remembered--the God who giveth His
beloved sleep--but his prayers had remained unanswered; and in his
darkest moments he had dreamed of snatching by his own hands that sleep
perpetual of which a great Latin poet he loved had sung. Often, as he
paced his library, he would say over and over to himself, _Nox est
perpetua una dormienda_--and in the still night the old words would
often sound like soft dark voices calling him away into the endless
night of the endless sleep. But he was not the man to take that way of
escape. No; whatever the suffering might be, he would fight it out to
the end, and so he continued sleepless, trying this resource and that,
but, most of all, that first and last resource--courage. It is seldom
that courage fails to wrest for us some recompense from the hardest
situation, and the sleepless man, as night after night he fought with
his fate, did not miss such hard-wrung rewards. Often, as in the deepest
hush of the night he wearily took up some great old book of philosopher
or poet familiar to him from his youth, a sudden strange new light would
shine out of its pages, as of some inner radiance of truth which he had
missed in his daylight reading. At such times an exaltation would come
over him, and it would almost seem as though the curse upon him was
really a blessing of initiation into the world of a deeper wisdom, the
gate of which is hidden by the glare of the sun. In the daylight the
eternal voices are lost in the transitory clamor of human business; it
is only when the night falls, and the stars rise, and the noise of men
dies down like the drone of some sleeping insect, that the solemn
thoughts of God may be heard.
Other compensations he found when, weary of his books and despairing of
sleep, he would leave his house and wander through the silent city,
where the roaring thoroughfares of the daytime were silent as the
pyramids, and the great warehouses seemed like deserted palaces haunted
by the moon. Night-walkers like himself grew to find his figure
familiar, and would say to themselves, or to each other, "There goes the
lord who never sleeps"; and the watchmen on their rounds all knew and
saluted the man whose eyelids never closed. Enforced as these nocturnal
rambles were, they revealed to him much beautiful knowledge which those
more fortunate ones asleep in their beds must ever miss. Thus he came in
contact with all the vast nocturnal labor of the world, the toil of
sleepless men who keep watch over the sleeping earth, and work through
the night to make it ready for the new-born day; all that labor which is
put away and forgotten with the rising of the sun, and of which the day
asks no questions, so that the result be there. This brought him very
near to humanity and taught him a deep pity for the grinding lot of
man.
Then--was it no compensation for this sleepless one that he thus became
a companion of all the ensorceled beauty of Night, walking by her side,
a confidant of her mystic talk, as he gazed into her everlasting eyes?
Was it nothing to be the intimate of all her sibylline moods, learned in
every haunted murmur of her voice, intrusted with her lunar secrets, and
a friend of all her stars?
Yes! it was much indeed, he often said to himself, as he turned homeward
with the first flush of morning, and met the great sweet-smelling wains
coming from the country, laden with fruits and flowers, and making their
way like moving orchards and meadows through the city streets.
The big wagoners, too, were well acquainted with the great lord who
never slept, and would always stop when they saw him, for it was his
custom to buy from them a bunch of country flowers.
"The country dew is still on them," he would say; "it will have dried
long since when the people sleeping yonder come to buy them," and, as he
slipped back into his house, he would often feel a sort of pity for
those who slept so well that they never saw the stars set and the sun
rise.
Such were some of the compensations with which he strove to strengthen
his soul--not all in vain. So time passed; but at length the strain of
those interminable nights began to tell upon the sleepless man, and
strange fancies began to take possession of him. His vigils were no
longer lonely, but inhabited by spectral voices and shadowy faces.
Rebellion against his fate began to take the place of courage; and one
night, in anger against his unending ordeal, he said to himself: "Am I
not a great lord? It is intolerable that I should be denied that simple
thing which the humblest and poorest possess so abundantly. Am I not
rich? I will go forth and buy sleep."
So saying, he took from a cabinet a great jewel of priceless value. "It
is worth half my estate," he said. "Surely with this I can buy sleep."
And he went out into the night.
As if in irony, the night was unusually wide-awake with stars, and the
moon was almost at its full. As the sleepless one looked up into the
firmament, it almost seemed as though it mocked him with his brilliant
wakefulness. From horizon to horizon, in all the heaven, there was to be
seen no downiest feather of the wings of sleep. To his upturned eyes,
pleading for the mercy of sleep, the stars sent down an answer of
polished steel. And so he turned his eyes again upon the earth.
Everything there also, even the keenly cut shadows, seemed pitilessly
awake. It almost seemed as though God had withdrawn the blessing of
sleep from His universe.
But no! Suddenly he gave a cry of joy, as presently, by the riverside,
stretched in an angle of its granite embankment, as though it had been a
bed of down, he came upon a great workman fast asleep, with his arms
over his head and his face full in the light of the moon. His breath
came and went with the regularity of a man who has done his days work
and is healthily tired out. He seemed to be drinking great draughts of
sleep out of the sky, as one drinks water from a spring. He was poorly
clad, and evidently a wanderer on the earth; but, houseless as he was,
to him had been granted that healing gift which the great lord who gazed
at him had prayed for in vain for months and years, and for which this
night he was willing to surrender half--nay, the whole--of his wealth,
if needs be--
Only a little holiday of sleep,
Soft sleep, sweet sleep; a little soothing psalm,
Of slumber from Thy sanctuaries of calm.
A little sleep--it matters not how deep;
A little falling feather from Thy wing:
Merciful Lord--is it so great a thing?
The sleepless one gazed at the sleeper a long time, fascinated by the
mystery and beauty of that strange gift that had been denied him. Then
he took the jewel in his hand and looked at it, picturing to himself the
sleeping man's surprise when he awoke in the morning and found so
unexpected a treasure in his possession, and all that the sudden
acquisition of such wealth would mean to him. But, as I said at the
beginning, God had given him a good heart, and, as he gazed on the man's
sleep again, a pang of misgiving shot through him. After all, what were
worldly possessions compared with this natural boon of which he was
about to rob the sleeping man? Would all his castles be a fair exchange
for that? And was he about to subject a fellow human being to the
torture which he had endured to the verge of madness?
For a long time he stood over the sleeper struggling with himself.
"No!" at last he said. "I cannot rob him of his sleep," and turned and
passed on his way.
[Illustration: HE WENT FORTH INTO THE DAWN SLEEPLESS]
Presently he came to where a beautiful woman lay asleep with a little
child in her arms. They were evidently poor outcasts, yet how tranquilly
they lay there, as if all the riches of the earth were theirs, and as if
there was no hard world to fight on the morrow. If sleep had seemed
beautiful on the face of the sleeping workman, how much more beautiful
it seemed here, laying its benediction upon this poor mother and child.
How trustfully they lay in its arms out there in the shelterless night,
as though relying on the protection of the ever-watchful stars. Surely
he could not violate this sanctuary of sleep, and think to make amends
by exchange of his poor worldly possessions. No! he must go on his way
again. But first he took a ring from his finger and slipped it gently
into the baby's hand. The tiny hand closed over it with the firmness of
a baby's clutch. "It will be safe there till morning," he said to
himself, and left them to their slumbers.
So he passed along through the city, and everywhere were sleeping forms
and houses filled with sleepers, but he could not bring himself to carry
out his plan and buy sleep. Sleep was too beautiful and sacred a thing
to be bought with the most precious stone, and man was so piteously in
need of it at each long day's end.
Thus he went on his way, and at last, as the dawn was showing faint in
the sky, he found himself in a churchyard, and above one of the graves
was growing a shining silver flower.
"It is the flower of sleep," said the sleepless one, and he bent over
eagerly to gather it; but as he did so his eyes fell upon an inscription
on the stone. It was the grave of a beautiful girl who had died of
heart-break for her lover.
"I may not pluck it," he said. "She needs her sleep as well."
And he went forth into the dawn sleepless.
THE MAN WITH NO MONEY
A FABLE FOR CAPITALISTS
Once upon a time there was a man who found himself, suddenly and sadly,
without any money. I am aware that in these days it is hard to believe
such a story. Nowadays, everybody has money, and it may seem like a
stretch of the imagination to suggest a time when a man should search
his pockets and find them empty. But this is merely a fairy tale; so, I
trust that the reader will help me out by taking so apparently
preposterous a statement for granted.
The man had been a merchant of butterflies in Ispahan, and, though his
butterflies had flitted all about the flowered world, the delight of
many-tongued and many-colored nations, he found himself at the close of
the day a very poor and weary man.
He had but one consolation and companion left--a strange, black
butterfly, which he kept in a silver cage, and only looked at now and
again, when he was quite sure that he was alone. He had sold all his
other butterflies--all the rainbow wings--but this dark butterfly he
would keep till the end.
Kings and queens, in sore sorrow and need, had offered him great sums
for his black butterfly, but it was the only beautiful thing he had
left--so, selfishly, he kept it to himself. Meanwhile, he starved and
wandered the country roads, homeless and foodless: his breakfast the
morning star, his supper the rising moon. But, sad as was his heart, and
empty as was his stomach, laughter still flickered in his tired eyes;
and he possessed, too, a very shrewd mind, as a man who sells
butterflies must. Making his breakfast of blackberries one September
morning, in the middle of an old wood, with the great cages of bramble
overladen with the fruit of the solitude, an idea came to him. Thereupon
he sought out some simple peasants and said: "Why do you leave these
berries to fall and wither in the solitude, when in the markets of the
world much money may be made of them for you and for your household?
Gather them for me, and I will sell them and give you a fair return for
your labor."
Now, of course, the blackberries did not belong to the dealer in
butterflies. They were the free gift of God to men and birds. But the
simple peasants never thought of that. Instead, they gathered them, east
and west, into bushel and hogshead, and the man that had no money, that
September morning, smiled to himself as he paid them their little wage,
and filled his pockets, that before had been so empty, with the money
that God and the blackberries and the peasants had made for him.
Thus he grew so rich that he seldom looked at the dark butterfly in the
silver cage--but sometimes, in the night, he heard the beating of its
wings.
THE RAGS OF QUEEN COPHETUA
When the first dazzle of bewildered happiness in her new estate had
faded from her eyes, and the miracle of her startling metamorphosis from
a wandering beggar-maid to a great Queen on a throne was beginning to
lose a little of its wonder and to take its place among the accepted
realities of life, Queen Cophetua became growingly conscious of some dim
dissatisfaction and unrest in her heart.
Indeed, she had all that the world could give, and surely all that a
woman's heart is supposed to desire. The King's love was still hers as
when he found her at dawn by the pool in the forest; and, in exchange
for the tattered rags which had barely concealed the water-lily
whiteness of her body, countless wardrobes were filled with garments of
every variety of subtle design and exquisite fabric, textures light as
the golden sun, purple as the wine-dark sea, iridescent as the rainbow,
and soft as summer clouds--the better to set off her strange beauty for
the eyes of the King.
And, every day of the year, the King brought her a new and priceless
jewel to hang about her neck, or wear upon her moonbeam hands, or to
shine in the fragrant night of her hair.
Ah! what a magical wooing that had been in the depths of the forest,
that strange morning! The sun was hardly above the tops of the trees
when she had awakened from sleep at the mossy foot of a giant beech, and
its first beams were casting a solemn enchantment across a great pool of
water-lilies and filling their ivory cups with strange gold. She had
lain still a while, watching through her sleepy eyelids the unfolding
marvel of the dawn; and then rousing herself, she had knelt by the pool,
and letting down her long hair that fell almost to her feet had combed
and braided it, with the pool for her mirror--a mirror with water-lilies
for its frame. And, as she gazed at herself in the clear water, with a
girlish happiness in her own beauty, a shadow fell over the pond; and,
startled, she saw beside her own face in the mirror the face of a
beautiful young knight, so it seemed, bending over her shoulder. In fear
and maiden modesty--for her hair was only half braided, and, whiter than
any water-lily in the pond, her bosom glowed bare in the morning
sunlight--she turned around, and met the eyes of the King.
Without moving, each gazed at the other as in a dream--eyes lost
fathom-deep in eyes.
At last the King found voice to speak.
"You must be a fairy," he had said, "for surely you are too beautiful to
be human!"
"Nay, my lord," she had answered, "I am but a poor girl that wanders
with my lute yonder from village to village and town to town, singing my
little songs."
"You shall wander no more," said the King. "Come with me, and you shall
sit upon a throne and be my Queen, and I will love you forever."
But she could not answer a word, for fear and joy.
And therewith the King took her by the hand, and set her upon his horse
that was grazing hard by; and, mounting behind her, he rode with her in
his arms to the city, and all the while her eyes looked up into his
eyes, as she leaned upon his shoulder, and his eyes looked deep down
into hers--but they spake not a word. Only once, at the edge of the
forest, he had bent down and kissed her on the lips, and it seemed to
both as if heaven with all its stars was falling into their hearts.
As they rode through the city to the palace, surrounded by wondering
crowds, she nestled closer to his side, like a frightened bird, and like
a wild birds were her great eyes gazing up into his in a terror of joy.
Not once did she move them to right or left, for all the murmur of the
people about them. Nor did the King see aught but her water-lily face as
they wended thus in a dream through the crowded streets, and at length
came to the marble steps of the palace.
Then the King, leaping from his horse, took her tenderly in his arms and
carried her lightly up the marble steps. Upon the topmost step he set
her down, and taking her hand in his, as she stood timidly by his side,
he turned his face to the multitude and spake.
"Lo! my people," he said, "this is your Queen, whom God has sent to me
by a divine miracle, to rule over your hearts from this day forth, as
she holds rule over mine. My people, salute your Queen!"