YOU may fancy, if you can, what joy there was in Fairnilee when Randal
came home. They quite forgot the hunger and the hard times, and the
old nurse laughed and cried over her bairn that had grown into a tall,
strong young man. And to Lady Ker it was all one as if her husband had
come again, as he was when first she knew him long ago; for Randal had
his face, and his eyes, and the very sound of his voice. They could
hardly believe he was not a spirit, and they clasped his hands, and hung
on his neck, and could not keep their eyes off him. This was the end of
all their sorrow, and it was as if Randal had come back from the dead;
so that no people in the world were ever so happy as they were next day,
when the sun shone down on the Tweed and the green trees that rustle in
the wind round Fairnilee. But in the evening, when the old nurse was out
of the way, Randal sat between his mother and Jean, and they each held
his hands, as if they could not let him go, for fear he should vanish
away from them again. And they would turn round anxiously if anything
stirred, for fear it should be the two white deer that sometimes were
said to come for people escaped from Fairyland, and then these people
must rise and follow them, and never return any more. But the white deer
never came for Randal.
[Illustration: Page 290]
So he told them all his adventures, and all that had happened to him
since that midsummer night, seven long years ago.
It had been with him as it was with Jean He had gone to the Wishing
Well, and wished to see the Fairy Queen and Fairyland. And he had seen
the beautiful castle in the well, and a beautiful woman’s face had
floated up to meet his on the water. Then he had gathered the white
roses, and then he heard a great sound of horses’ feet, and of bells
jingling, and a lady rode up, the very lady he had seen in the well.
She had a white horse, and she was dressed in green, and she beckoned
to Randal to mount on her horse, with her before him on the pillion. And
the bells on the bridle rang, and the horse flew faster than the wind.
[Illustration: Page 291]
So they rode and rode through the summer night, and they came to a
desert place, and living lands were left far behind. Then the Fairy
Queen showed him three paths, one steep and narrow, and beset with
briars and thorns: that was the road to goodness and happiness, but it
was little trodden or marked with the feet of people that had come and
gone.
And there was a wide smooth road that went through fields of lilies, and
that was the path of easy living and pleasure.
The third path wound about the wild hillside, through ferns and heather,
and that was the way to Elfland, and that way they rode. And still
they rode through a country of dark night, and they crossed great black
rivers, and they saw neither sun nor moon, but they heard the roaring
of the sea. From that country they came into the light, and into the
beautiful garden that lies round the castle of the Fairy Queen. There
they lived in a noble company of gallant knights and fair ladies. All
seemed very mirthful, and they rode, and hunted, and danced; and it was
never dark night, nor broad daylight, but like early summer dawn before
the sun has risen.
There Randal said that he had quite forgotten his mother and Jean, and
the world where he was born, and Fairnilee.
But one day he happened to see a beautiful golden bottle of a strange
shape, all set with diamonds, and he opened it. There was in it a
sweet-smelling water, as clear as crystal, and he poured it into his
hand, and passed his hand over his eyes. Now this water had the power to
destroy the “glamour” in Fairyland, and make people see it as it really
was. And when Randal touched his eyes with it, lo, everything was
changed in a moment. He saw that nothing was what it had seemed. The
gold vanished from the embroidered curtains, the light grew dim and
wretched like a misty winter day.
[Illustration: Page 293]
The Fairy Queen, that had seemed so happy and beautiful in her bright
dress, was a weary, pale woman in black, with a melancholy face and
melancholy eyes. She looked as if she had been there for thousands of
years, always longing for the sunlight and the earth, and the wind and
rain. There were sleepy poppies twisted in her hair, instead of a golden
crown. And the knights and ladies were changed. They looked but half
alive; and some, in place of their gay green robes, were dressed in
rusty mail, pierced with spears and stained with blood. And some were in
burial robes of white, and some in dresses torn or dripping with water,
or marked with the burning of fire. All were dressed strangely in some
ancient fashion; their weapons were old-fashioned, too, unlike any that
Randal had ever seen on earth. And their festivals were not of dainty
meats, but of cold, tasteless flesh, and of beans, and pulse, and such
things as the old heathens, before the coming of the Gospel, used to
offer to the dead. It was dreadful to see them at such feasts, and
dancing, and riding, and pretending to be merry with hollow faces and
unhappy eyes.
And Randal wearied of Fairyland, which now that he saw it clearly looked
like a great unending stretch of sand and barren grassy country, beside
a grey sea where there was no tide. All the woods were of black cypress
trees and poplar, and a wind from the sea drove a sea-mist through them,
white and cold, and it blew through the open courts of the fairy castle.
So Randal longed more and more for the old earth he had left, and the
changes of summer and autumn? and the streams of Tweed, and the hills,
and his friends. Then the voice of Jeanie had come down to him, sounding
from far away. And he was sent up by the Fairy Queen in a fairy form,
as a hideous dwarf, to frighten her away from the white roses in the
enchanted forest.
But her goodness and her courage had saved him, for he was a christened
knight, and not a man of the fairy world. And he had taken his own form
again beneath her hand, when she signed him with the Cross, and here he
was, safe and happy, at home at Fairnilee.
[Illustration: Chapter Eleven]