smiling countenance, and two long lances slung over his back, made his
appearance at the palace and demanded admittance to the maze. Half
the population streamed out to meet him, for it was many years since
the last wooer had come and vanished never to return. The country
remembered its importance, and gave him a great welcome. “Look what
long lances he has!” shouted the crowd. And then the doors of the maze
closed on him, and they went back to their work.
When the Prince had made some way into the maze, he fastened his horse
to a tree, took down his lances and--chopped off their points. Lo, and
behold! he had turned them into stilts, great high stilts, so that by
mounting them he could see far away over the windings of the maze into
the very heart of it.
Far off he could see the silver glint of fountains like grey willows
blown slantwise in the wind. That way with a pleasant tune in his heart
he straddled merrily along. If he found himself in a blind alley, or
being carried back by the windings of the road, he stood on one stilt
and went “leg over” with the other; thus his goings prospered.
Here and there, he came upon dead men lying in their armour; some of
them were quite old, others had long lances by their sides; they must
have been hard of understanding and foolish. He passed them all by.
For the whole long day he travelled, till towards evening he came upon
a little wood, and saw through the tree-boles the grey stones of the
little tower, and felt on his face the spray of the fountains carried
by the wind. Also he heard the sound of pleasant voices, and the stroke
of a spade in the earth.
Free of the wood the path led straight on, till at the end of it,
over a high hedge, lay a dainty bright garden. A man and a woman were
bending together over a border of flowers. Their faces were close
together, full of smiles as their hands gathered sprays of rosemary;
their hair was wet with the drift of the fountains.
Both were in the early middle-age of life, the woman tall and
broad-bosomed, her hair like a plaited crown of gold.
The man, as her face brushed his, laughed and began singing:
“What shall I do for my rose of the roses?
Build her a window that looks at the sky,
Fashion a door to her bower that so closes,
No man shall open or enter but I.”
The Prince came and looked over the hedge; at the end of the song the
gardener and his wife had raised themselves; the woman had her face
resting on the man’s shoulder, and her arms about his waist. As she
stood, her eyes came straight upon the intruder, who hung a laughing
head and shoulders over the garden hedge. Her mouth and eyes went wide
open, but breath was wanting for speech. She pinched her husband to
make him look round.
The Prince smiling, addressed them with the utmost courtesy, “Good Sir
and Madam, can you tell me whether the Princess is at home?” As he
spoke he lifted a stilt and planted it down on the flower-bed inside.
One more stride and he was in. There was a sudden clapping of hands.
“He’s a humorist!” cried the gardener’s wife.
“Please,” said he, as he climbed down from his height and stood once
more on his own feet, “please, I am come for the Princess; and I hope
she is not tired of waiting, and is as beautiful, and as young, as
report has led me to believe.”
The gardener’s wife laughed and ran into the tower. Presently from roof
to floor it was filled with a great rustling sound, and all the windows
shone with the colour of fire. Then out of the door came a lovely girl
blazing with jewels and drawing behind her a wonderful great train.
“Here is your Princess,” said her mother. How beautiful she was, how
radiant, how young! She came softly towards the Prince, laughing
and holding out her hand. He took it, and as he did so the whole of
the maze disappeared, and only the little tower with its fountains
remained. So the young couple went back to the palace and were married,
but the other couple stayed at home; and there they lived happily ever
after.
THE MOON-FLOWER
Princess Berenice sat by a window of her father’s palace, looking out
of the Moon. In her hand she held a great white pearl, and smiled, for
it was her mother’s birthday gift. The chamber in which she sat was of
pure silver, and in the floor was a small window by which she could see
out of the Moon and right down on to the Earth, where the moonbeams
were going. There it lay like a great green emerald; and wherever the
clouds parted to let the moonbeams go through, she could see the tops
of the trees, and broad fields with streams running by.
“Yonder is the land of the coloured stones,” she said to herself, “that
the merchants go down the moonbeams and bring home and sell.” And as
she bent lower and lower and gazed with curious eyes, the great pearl
rolled from her hand and fell out of the Moon, and went slipping and
sliding down a moonbeam, never stopping till it got to the Earth.
“My mother’s pearl!” cried the Princess, “the most beautiful of all her
pearls that she gave me. I must run down and bring it back; for if I
wait it will be lost. And as to-night is the full-moon down there upon
Earth, I can return before anyone finds out that I am gone.”
The Earth was sparkling a brighter green under the approach of night.
“Oh, land of the coloured stones!” cried the Princess; and, slipping
through the window, she stepped out of the Moon, and went running down
the same moonbeam by which the pearl had fallen.
Night came; and the Earth and the Moon lay looking at each other in
the midst of heaven, like an emerald and a pearl; but through the
palace, and within, over all its gardens and terraces there began
to be callings on the Princess Berenice; and presently there were
heart-searchings and fear, for they found the empty room with its open
window: and the Princess Berenice was not there.
Now, not long before this, upon our own Earth there had lived and died
a King who had four sons, but only three kingdoms. So when he came to
die he gave to each of his three eldest sons a kingdom apiece; but to
the youngest, having nothing else left to give, he gave only a pair of
travelling shoes, and said: “Wear these, and some day they will take
you to fortune!”
So, when the King was dead, the young Prince wore the shoes night and
day, hoping that some time or another they would take him to fortune.
His brothers laughed at him, and said: “Our father was wise to play
those old shoes off upon you! If it had been either of us we would have
gone and bought ourselves an army and fought for a just share in the
inheritance. But you seem pleased, so we ought to be.”
Now one day the Prince went out hunting in the forest, and there,
having become separated from all his friends, he thoroughly lost his
way. Wherever he turned the wood seemed to grow denser, the thickets
higher, and the solitude more than he ever remembered before. Night
came on, and, there being nothing else that he could do, he lay down
and wrapped himself in his cloak and slept.
When he awoke it was day, but the woods were as still as death; no
bird sang, and not a cricket chirped among the grass. As he sat up he
noticed that the shoe was gone from his left foot, nor could he see
it anywhere near. “’Tis the half of my inheritance gone!” he said to
himself, and got up to search about him. But still no shoe could he
find. At last he gave up the search as useless, and set off walking
without it. Then as it seemed to him so ridiculous to go limping along
with only one shoe on, he took off the remaining one, and threw it
away, saying: “Go, stupid, and find your fellow!”
To the Prince’s great astonishment, it set off at a rapid pace through
the wood, all of its own accord. The Prince, barefoot except for his
stockings, began to run after it.
Presently he found that he was losing his breath. “Hie, hie!” he
called out, “not quite so fast, little leather-skins!” But the shoe
paid him no heed and went on as before. It skipped through the grass
and brushwood, as if a young girl’s foot were dancing inside it; and
whenever it came to a fallen tree, or a boulder of rock it was up and
over with a jump like a grasshopper.
Before long the Prince’s stockings were nothing but holes and tatters;
as he ran they fluttered from his legs like ribbons. He had lost his
hat, and his cloak was torn into patterns, and he felt from head to
foot like a house all doors and windows. He was almost on his last
gasp when he saw that the shoe was making straight for a strange little
house of green bronze, shut in by a high wall, and showing no windows;
and in the middle of the wall was a bronze door shut fast. As he came
near he found that outside, on the doorstep, stood his other shoe as if
waiting to be let in. “So it was worth running for!” thought he; and
then, putting on both shoes again, he began knocking at the door.
As he knocked the door opened. It opened in such a curious way, flat
down like a swing-bridge or like the lid of a box. For some time he
was half afraid to walk in on the top of it. Presently, however, he
summoned up his courage and stepped across it.
The door closed behind him like a trap, and he found himself in a
beautiful house; all its walls were hung with gold and precious stones,
but everywhere was the emptiness and the silence of death.
He went from room to room seeking for any that lived there, but could
see no one. In one place he found thrown down a fan of white feathers
and pearl; and in another flowers, fresh plucked, lying close by a
cushion dinted and hollowed, as though the weight of a head or arm had
rested there. But beyond these there was no sign of a living thing to
be found.
Through the windows he saw deep bowery gardens hemmed in by high walls,
within which grew flowers of the loveliest kinds. All the paths were of
smooth grass, and everywhere were the traces of gentle handiwork; but
still not a soul was to be seen.
It seemed to the Prince now and then that there was something in the
garden which moved, distinct from the flowers, and shifting with a
will of its own. Though the sun shone full down, casting clear shadows
across the lawns, this that he saw was altogether misty and faint. Now
it seemed like a feather blown to and fro in the wind, and now like
broken gossamer threads, or like filmy edges of clouds melting away in
the heat. Where it went the flowers moved as though to make way for it,
swaying apart and falling together again as it passed.
The Prince watched and watched. He tired his eyes with watching, yet he
could see no more; and no way could he find to the garden, for all the
doors leading to it were locked fast and barred.
There was another strange thing he noticed which seemed to him to have
no meaning. All over the garden, between the trees and the sky, was
stretched a silver net, so fine that it showed only as a faint film
against the blue; but a net for all that. Here and there, the light of
the sun catching it, hung sparkling in its silver meshes. It was like
the net that a gardener throws over strawberry beds or currant bushes
to keep off the birds from the fruit. So was it with this net; through
it no bird could enter the garden, and no bird that was in the garden
could leave it.
All day the Prince had these two things before his eyes to wonder
about, till the sun went down and it began to get dusk.
At the moment when the sun sank below the earth there was a sound of
opening doors all over the house. The Prince ran and found one of the
doors leading into the garden wide open, and through it he could see
the stir of leaves, and the deep colours of the flowers growing deeper
in the dusk; only the evening primroses were lighting their soft lamps.
[Illustration]
From a distant part of the garden came the sound of falling water, and
a voice singing. As he approached he saw something shining against the
dark leaves higher than the heads of the flowers; and before he well
knew what he saw, he found before his eyes the most lovely woman that
the mind of man could believe in.
In her hand hung a watering-can, with the water falling from it in
sprays on to the flower beds beneath. Her head was bent far down, yet
how she looked slender and tall! She was very pale, yet a soft light
seemed to grow from her, the light of a new moon upon a twilight sky.
And now the Prince heard clearly the sweet voice, and the words that
she was singing:
“Listen, listen, listen,
O heart of the sea!
I am the Pearl of pearls
I am the Mother of pearls,
And the Mother of thee.
Glisten, glisten, glisten,
O bed of the sea!
Lost is the Pearl of pearls,
And all the divers for pearls
Are drowning for me.”
He stood enchanted to hear her; but the words of the song ended
suddenly in a deep sigh. The singer lifted her head; her eyes moved
like grey moths in the dusk, amid the whiteness of her face. At sight
of him they grew still and large, widening with a quiet wonder. Then
the beautiful face broke into smiles, and the Princess stretched out
her hands to him and laughed.
“Have you come,” she said, “to set me free?”
“To set you free?” asked the Prince.
“I am a prisoner,” she told him.
“Alas, then!” answered the Prince, “I am a prisoner also, and can
free no one; but were I now free to go wherever I would, I should be
a prisoner still, for I have seen the face of the loveliest heart on
earth!”
“Alas!” she sighed, “and can you not set me free?”
“Tell me,” he said, “what makes you a prisoner here?”
She pointed to the net over their heads, to the walls that stood on all
sides of them, and to the ground beneath their feet. “That,” she said,
“and that, and this.”
“Who are you?” he asked, “and where do you come from? and whose power
is it that now holds you captive?”
She led him on to a terrace, from which they could see out towards the
west; and there lay the new Moon, low down in the sky. “Yonder,” she
said, pointing to it, “is my home!” She wept. “Shall I ever return to
it?”
The Prince, gazing at her in wonder, cried, “Are you one of a Fairy
race?”
“No, oh, no!” she sighed. “I am but mortal like yourself; only my home
is there, while yours is here. We, who dwell in the Moon, are as you
are, but the sun has greater power over us; the light of it falling on
us makes us pale and unsubstantial, so that we weigh not so much as a
gossamer and become transparent as thin fleeces of cloud. Then we can
go where you cannot go, treading the light as it flies; but at sunset
we regain our strength, and our bodies come to us again; and we are as
you see me now--no different from yourselves, the inhabitants of the
Earth.”
“Tell me,” said the Prince, “of yourself, and the dwellers in the Moon!
Is it not cold there, and barren?”
She answered smiling, for the memory of her home was sweet to her,
“Outside, the Moon is cold and barren; but within it is very warm and
rich and fertile; more beautiful than any place I have seen on earth.
It is there we live; and we have flocks, and herds, and woods, and
rivers, and harbours, and seas. Also we have great cities built inside
the Moon’s crust, for the Moon is a great hollow shell, and we walk
upon its inner surface and are warm. The sunlight comes to us through
craters and clefts in the ground; and the beams of it are like solid
pillars of gold that quiver and sway as they shoot upwards into the
opal twilight of our world; and the shine and the warmth of it come to
us, and colour the air above our heads; but we are safe from its full
light falling on us, for the ground is between us and it. Only when
we pass through to the outer side do we become pale and faint, a mere
whisper of our former selves. And then we are so light that if we
step upon a moonbeam it will bear our weight; and the moonbeam carries
us swiftly as its own light travels, till it reaches the Earth: so we
come. But to return there is another way.”
And when the Prince asked her, she told him of the other way back into
the Moon.
“When we wish to return,” she went on “(for the falling light of a
moonbeam cannot carry us back), we must go where there is a pool of
still water and wait for the reflection of the Moon to fall on it; and
when the Moon is full, and throws its image into the water, then we
dive down, and with our lips touch the reflection of its face, crying,
‘Open, open to me, for I am a Moon-child!’ And the Moon will open her
face like a door of pearl, and let us pass in; and when she draws her
reflection out of the pool, we find ourselves once again among our own
people and in our own land. Many of us have so come and so returned,”
she sighed deeply, “but I fear that I shall never again return.”
Then the Prince asked her further whose power it was that held her
captive; and she told him how she had dropped the pearl that her mother
had given her, and had come down seeking it. Then she said, “In the
Moon we have many jewels, for we have opals and onyxes, and pearls and
moonstones, but we have no rubies, or emeralds, or sapphires, or stones
of a single colour, such as you have. Therefore, we have a passion for
these things, and our merchants come down and bring them back to us at
a great price.
“Now it chanced that in my search I came upon a gnome who had dealings
with our merchants and had many jewels to sell, and he, seeming to be
kind, helped me until my pearl was found. Then he took me to see his
own treasures; and, alas, while my eyes were feasting on the colours
of the stones he showed to me, my poor beauty inflamed the avarice of
his evil heart, and the desire to have me for his wife became great. So
when I asked him the price of his jewels, he vowed that the only price
at which he would let them go was that of my own hand in marriage.
Alas, I am young and innocent, and without subtlety, nor did I know how
great was his power and wickedness. As I laughed at his request his
face grew dark with rage, and I saw that I had incurred the undying
enmity of his cruel heart. And now for a whole year he has held me in
his enchantment, striving to break me to his will by the length and
weariness of my captivity; and lest search or any help should come
for me from my father’s people, he has covered me in with a net, and
surrounded me with walls; and here there is no pool into which the full
Moon may fall, and at the mere touch of my lips upon its face, open and
draw me free from my enchantment, and back into the heart of my own
land. Only yonder, in the corner of the garden is a deep well, where
the Moon never shines; so there is no way here left for me by which I
may get free.”
“Does not the gnome ever come to see you in your captivity?” asked the
Prince. “If so, I may by some means be able to entrap him, and force
him to let you go.”
“Twice in the year he has visited me,” answered the Princess. “He comes
up out of the ground in the form of a Red Mole; but he looks at me
wickedly and cunningly with the eyes of a man, seeming to say, ‘Will
you have me yet?’ And when I shake my head he burrows under again, and
is gone till another six months shall be past.”
The Prince thought for a while and said, “I do not know whether I have
the power or the wit to make you free; if love only were needed for the
work, to-morrow would see you as free as a bird.”
The Princess, between smiles and sighs, said, “I have been most lonely
here; already you make my imprisonment seem less.” Then she led him
within doors, from room to room, showing him the splendours of her
prison. Wherever they went, out of the floor before them rose burning
jewels that hung hovering over their heads to light them as they
passed; and when she struck her hands together, up from the ground rose
a table covered with fruit and dainties of all sorts; and when she and
the Prince had eaten, she clapped her hands again, and they disappeared
by the same way that they had come.
The Prince was struck with admiration at the delicacy of these marvels.
“When I think of the Red Mole, they sicken me!” said the Moon-Princess.
The good youth used all his arts to cheer her, promising to devote
himself, and if need be his life, to the task of setting her free. And
now and then she laughed and was almost merry again, forgetting the
walls that still held her spell-bound from her own people and her own
land.
She showed the Prince a chamber where he might sleep; and so soft and
warm was the couch after his last hard night on the ground, that it
was full day before he awoke. The Princess Berenice appeared before him
misty and faint, for the sunlight threw a veil upon her beauty; but
still as he looked at her he did not love her less, and it still seemed
to him that hers was the face of the loveliest heart on earth.
All day he watched her drifting about the garden, seeming to feed
herself on the scent of the flowers. In the evening, when the sun set,
her body grew strong and her face shone out to him like the new Moon
upon a twilight sky.
Then he drew water for her from the well, and watched her as she
watered the flowers which were her only delight. Presently he said,
“There is much water in the well, for the rope goes down into it many
fathoms; and yet I find no bottom.”
“Yes,” answered the Princess, “I doubt not that the well is deep.”
“Before many days are over,” said the Prince, “the well shall become a
pool.”
The Princess wondered to hear him. “Is there,” he went on, “no such
thing as a spade for me to dig with?” Then she led him to a shed, where
lay all the needed implements for gardening. So his eyes brightened,
while he cried, “O, beautiful Princess Berenice, as I love you, before
many weeks are over you shall be free!”
The next morning he arose very early, and in the centre of the garden,
where the ground hollowed somewhat, he marked out a space and set to
work to dig.
All day the Princess went to and fro, faint and pale as a mist,
watching him at his work. At dusk her beauty shone full upon him, and
she said, “What is this that you are doing?” He answered, “What I am
making shall presently become a pool; then when the pool is full, and
the full Moon comes and shines on it, you shall go down into the water,
and shall kiss the face of its reflection with your lips, and be free
from your enchantment.”
Princess Berenice looked long at him, and her eyes clung to his like
soft moths in the gloom. “But you?” she said, “You are no Moon-child,
and this will never set you free.”
“Ever since I saw you,” said the Prince, “I have not thought of
freedom; my dearest wish is but to set you free.”
The Princess gave him her hand. “And mine,” she said, “my dearest wish
henceforth is to set you free also. Yet I know but one way, and I
cannot name it.” She smiled tenderly on him, and bowed her face into
the shadow of her hair.
The Prince caught her in his arms, “One way is my way!” he cried. “Your
way,” she said, “is my way.” Then, when he had finished kissing her,
she said, “Look, on my finger is a ring; this ring is for him to whom
I give myself in marriage. Surely, it opens to him the heart of my own
people, and he becomes one of us, a child of the Moon.” She showed him
an opal ring, full of fires. “If your way is my way,” she said, “draw
this off my finger, and put it upon your own, and take me to be your
wife!”
So the Prince drew off the ring from her finger, and set it upon his
own; and as he did so he felt indeed the heart of the Moon-people
become his own, and the love of the Moon strike root in him. Yet did
the love of the Earth remain his as well, making it seem as if all the
love in his heart had but doubled itself.
So he and the most beautiful Berenice were married there by the
light of the new Moon, and all thought of sorrow or danger from the
encirclement that bound them was lost in their great joy.
During the whole of the next day the Prince went on with his digging,
making a broad shallow in the ground. “Before the full Moon comes,” he
said, “I will make it deep.” And he worked on, refusing to take any
rest.
The Princess loved him more and more as she watched him; and his love
for her daily increased, for every day, while the Moon grew full, her
beauty shone in greater perfection and splendour. “Here,” she said to
him, “the coming of the full Moon is like the coming of Spring to me: I
feel it in my blood. After the full Moon my beauty will wane and grow
paler. But in my own land I do not feel these changes, for there it is
always the full Moon.” The Prince answered her, “To me your beauty,
though it grows more, will not ever grow less.”
At last, on the day before that of the full Moon, the pit which he had
dug was broad and deep; then he began to fill it with water from the
well. “To-morrow,” he said to his wife, when the pool was nearly full,
as she came and stood by his side at sunset in the full blaze of her
beauty, “to-morrow we shall be free; and you will carry me away with
you into your own land.”
“I do not know,” said the Princess; “I begin to be afraid!” and she
sighed heavily. “Any day the Red Mole may come: one day is not too soon
for him to be here.”