married to me, you cannot be married to him.”
“As to that,” said she, “I fear that to have outwitted him will but
make his malice all the greater against us!” Then she walked softly
among the moonbeams, bathing her hands in them, and letting them fall
upon the loveliness of her face; and as she stood in their light, tears
rained down out of her eyes.
In the morning it seemed as if her happiness had returned. The Prince,
as he toiled under the blazing sun, carrying water from the well to the
pool, felt her moving by his side, and heard her light shadowy laughter
when, just before sunset, the water flowed level to the pool’s brink.
And when dusk rose out of the grass, there she stood glowing with the
full Moon of her beauty and leaning in all the light of her loveliness
towards him.
The happy night drew round them; out of the East came the glow of the
full Moon as it rose; soon, soon it would cross the tops of the trees
and rest its face upon the quiet waters of the pool. They clung in each
other’s arms, entranced. “My beautiful,” said the Prince, “shall we not
take to your mother some of those jewels she loves--the green, and the
red, and the blue, and the pearl which was hers, the quest of which has
cost you so much?” He ran into one of the jewelled chambers where lay
the pearl, and caught from the walls the largest stones he could find.
Quickly he went and returned, for the Moon was now fast cresting the
avenues of the garden. He came bearing the jewels in his hands.
Princess Berenice stood no longer by the brink of the pool, though
therein lay the image of the Moon’s face, a circle of pale gold upon
the water. “Berenice,” called the Prince, and ran through the garden
searching for her. “Berenice!” he cried by the well; but she was not
there. “Berenice!” His voice grew trembling and weak, and quick fear
took hold of him. “O, my beautiful, my beloved, where are you?”
Only the silence stood up to answer him. Under his feet ran a Red Mole.
It scampered across the grass, and disappeared through a burrow in the
ground. Then the Prince knew that the worst had surely come, and that
his Princess had been taken away from him. Where she was he could not
know; within her former prison she was nowhere to be seen.
All night the Prince lay weeping by the brink of the pool, where she
had last stood before his sight; the print of her dear feet still
lay on the lawn where she had stayed waiting with him so long. “O,
miserable wretch that I am!” he cried, kissing the trodden grass. “Now
never again may I hope to behold you, or hear your dear voice!”
All the day following he wandered like a ghost from place to place,
filling the empty garden with memories of her presence, and sighing
over and over again the music of her name. All the flowers glowed
round him in their accustomed beauty; new buds came into life, and full
blooms broke and fell; not a thing seemed to sorrow for her loss except
himself. As for the flowers, he paid them little heed.
In his sleep that night a dream came to him, a dream as of something
that whispered and laughed in his ear. Over and over again it seemed to
be saying, “The Red Mole came, and the full Moon came, and the Princess
jumped down into the water!” Then his heart knocked so loud for joy
that he started awake, and saw the Red Mole scuffling away to its
borrow in the ground.
Then he feared that the dream was but a thing devised to cheat his
fancy, and get rid of him by making him go away and search for his
Princess in the land of the Moon, by the way that she had told him.
But he thought to himself, “If the Red Mole wants so much to get me
away, it means that my beloved is somewhere near at hand. Is she in the
well?” he began wondering; and as soon as it was light he went to where
lay the well in its corner under the shadow of the wall. But though he
searched long and diligently, there was no trace of her that he could
find.
Yet every time he came near to the well sorrow seemed to take hold of
him, and, mixed with it, a kind of joy, as though indeed the heart of
his beloved beat in this place. Near to the well stood a tall flower
with bowed head. It seemed to him the only one in the whole garden that
had any share in his sorrow: he wondered if the flower had grown up to
mark the sad place of her burial.
“O, my beloved Berenice, art thou near me now?” he murmured,
heart-broken, one day as he passed by: then it seemed to him that all
at once the flower stirred. He turned to look at it; it was like a
sunflower, but white even to its centre, and its head kept drooping as
if for pure grief. “Berenice, Berenice!” he wept, passing it.
At dusk he returned again; and now the flower’s head was lifted up, and
shone with a strange lustre. The Prince, as he went by on his way to
the well, saw the flower turn its head, bending its face ever towards
where he was. Then grief and joy stirred in his heart. “The flower
knows where she is!” he said.
So he bent, whispering, “Where, then, is Berenice?” and the flower
lifted its head, and hung quite still, looking at him.
Then the Prince whispered again, “The Red Mole came, and the full Moon
came, and the Princess jumped down into the water?”
But the flower swayed its head from side to side, and the Prince found
that it had answered “No.”
Then he had it in his mind to ask of it further things; but, as he was
about to speak, he beheld its face all brimming over with tears, that
suddenly broke and fell down in a shower over its leaves.
At that his heart leaped, and his voice choked as he cried, “Art _thou_
my beloved, my Berenice?” And all at once the flower swayed down, and
leaned, and fell weeping against his breast.
So at last he knew! And joy and grief struggled together in him for
mastery.
All that night he knelt with the flower’s head upon his heart, stroking
its soft leaves, and letting it rest between his hands; till, towards
dawn, it seemed to him that peace was upon it and sleep.
All through the day it hung faint upon its stem; but when evening came
it lifted its head and shone in moon-like beauty; and so deep for it
was the Prince’s love and compassion that he could hardly bear to be
absent from its side one moment of the day or night.
And, when he was very weary, he lay down under its shadow to sleep; and
the Moon-flower bent down and rested its head upon his face.
All night long in dreams Berenice came back to him. He seemed to hear
how the Red Mole had come, and changed her to a rooted shape, lest the
full Moon in the water should carry her away from him back into her own
land. Yet it was only a dream, and the Prince could learn nothing there
of the way by which he might set her free.
A month went by, and he said to his Flower, “To-night is the night of
the full Moon: now, if I drew you from the ground, and carried you
down, and called for the Moon’s face to open to us, would you not
be free from the enchantment, when you were come again to your own
people?” But the Moon-flower shook its head, as if to bid him still
wait and watch patiently.
Now, as the Prince came and went day by day, he began to notice that
the Moon-flower had its roots in a small green mound, no bigger than a
mole-hill; and he thought to himself, “surely that mound was not there
at first: the Red Mole must be down below at work!” So he watched it
from day to day; and at last he knew for certain that, as time went on,
the mound grew larger.
Month by month the mound upon which the Moon-flower had root increased
in size; yet the Flower thrived, and its beauty shone brighter as each
full Moon approached, so that at last the Prince’s fear lest the Red
Mole were working mischief against its life, passed away.
Once, on the night of a full Moon, as the Prince lay with his head
upon Earth, and the Moon-flower bowed over his face, he heard under
the mound a peal of silvery laughter; and at the sound of it the
Moon-flower started, and stood erect, and a stir of delight seemed to
take hold of its leaves. Again the laughter came, and the soft earth
moved at the sound of it.
The Prince started up, and ran and fetched a spade, and struck it down
under the loose soil of the mound. When he lifted up the earth, out
sprang a tiny child like a lobe of quicksilver, laughing merrily with
its first leap into the light. But even then its laughter changed into
a cry; for out after it darted the Red Mole, with fury in its whiskers,
and wrath flashing out of its eyes.
The quicksilver child sprang away, darting swiftly over the grass
towards the margin of the pool. There lay the full Moon’s image upon
the clear stillness of the water; and the child leapt down the bank,
and laughed as it sprang safely away. Then there followed a tiny
splash; and the Prince, amid the rings upon the water’s surface, saw,
like a door of pearl, the Moon’s face open and close again. And the
Red Mole went down into the earth gnashing its teeth for rage.
The Prince ran back to the Moon-flower, and found it bent forwards
and trembling with fear. Then he drew its head towards his heart, and
whispered “The Red Mole came, and the full Moon came, and the silver
child jumped down into the water!” And at that the Flower lifted its
head and began clapping its leaves for joy.
A month went by, and the green mound had disappeared from beneath the
Moon-flower’s roots; and still every night the Prince lay down under
the shadow of its leaves; and the Flower bent over him, and laid its
head against his face.
As he lay so, one night, and watched the full Moon travelling high
overhead, he saw a shadow begin to cross over it; and he knew that it
was the eclipse, which is the shadow of the Earth passing over the face
of the Moon; then he rose softly, leaving the Moon-flower asleep, and
went and stood by the brink of the pool.
Up in the Moon the silver child felt the shadow of the Earth fall upon
the face of the Moon; and he came and touched the Earth’s shadow with
his lips, crying, “Open, open to me, for I am an Earth-child!” Then
the Earth’s shadow that was upon the Moon opened, and the silver child
sprang through.
The Prince, watching the veiled image of the Moon’s face in the water,
saw the Earth’s shadow open like a door, so that for an instant the
brightness of the Moon shone through, and out sprang the quicksilver
child, up to the surface of the pool.
He leapt laughing up the bank, and went running over the grass to where
the Moon-flower was standing. He reached up his arms, and caught the
Flower by the head.
“O mother, mother, mother!” he cried as he kissed it.
And at the touch of his lips the Moon-flower opened and changed,
growing wondrously tall and fair; and the flower turned into a face,
and the leaves disappeared, till it was the beautiful Princess Berenice
herself, who stooped down and took the quicksilver child up into her
arms.
She cried, fondling him, “Did they give you your name?”
And the child laughed. “They call me Gammelyn,” he said.
The Prince caught them both together in his arms. “Come, come!” he
shouted and laughed, “for yonder is the full Moon waiting for us!” And,
lifting them up, he ran with them to the borders of the pool.
And the Red Mole came, and the full Moon came; and the Prince, and the
Princess, and the silver child jumped down into the water.
Then the Prince laid his lips against the reflection of the Earth’s
shadow, crying, “Open, open to me, for I am a child of the Earth!”
And the shadow opened like a door to let them pass through. Then they
pressed their lips against the reflection of the Moon’s face crying,
“Open, open to us, for we are Moon-children!” And the Moon opened her
face like a door of pearl, so that they sprang through together, and
were safe.
And when the Moon drew its reflection out of the pool, they found
themselves in the land of the Moon, in the silver chamber with the
round window, in the palace of Princess Berenice’s father.
Looking out through the window, down at the end of a long moonbeam they
saw the Red Mole gnashing his whiskers for rage. Then the Prince took
off his shoes, and threw them with all his might down the moonbeam at
the Mole.
As the shoes fell, they went faster, and faster, and faster, till they
came to earth; and they struck the Mole so hard upon the head that he
died.
Now as for Gammelyn and the shoes we may hear of them again elsewhere;
but as for the Prince and his beautiful Princess Berenice, the
happiness in which they lived for the rest of their days is too great
even to be told.
THE WHITE KING
Many years ago there lived a Queen who could not keep count of the
countries over which she ruled. Her wealth and her wonderful beauty
made her an apple of discord to all the kings who lived round about her
borders. For love of her they waged perpetual war upon one another,
and every King who proved victorious made a gift to the Queen of the
country of the one whom he had conquered, in the hopes of thereby
strengthening his claim to her favour. Thus it came about that she
could no longer keep count of the lands which had fallen under her
rule; yet still of all her suitors she chose none.
Now at this time there was one King, and only one, who had not
succeeded in losing his heart to the Queen’s majesty, in spite of her
wealth and power, and all her wonderful beauty. And so, during a long
time, since his fancy was thus free, he was left in undisturbed peace
and prosperity, while other kings fought out their jealous battles, and
stole away each other’s lands. And because his reign was so quiet and
his country in such rest, his people for a pet-name and for their pride
in him, named him the White King.
Now after a time the Queen took it as an insult that anyone should be
so indifferent to the power of her charms, and she began to threaten
him with war for this reason and for that, wishing thereby to cajole
him into becoming her suitor. But the White King saw through all
the disguises with which she covered her meaning, and understood the
arrogance of her claim; so one day he sent to her as a gift a statue of
himself with his sword sheathed, and all his armour covered over with
the cloak of peace. Round the base of it was written
“When a heart in stone doth move,
Then your lover I may prove;
But until the marvel’s done,
Fruitlessly your wars are won.”
The Queen looked once at the statue, and for a long time after never
looked away; and when at last she did her heart had been taken captive.
Then she looked at the words beneath, and the red flush that rose to
her face was not gone when the last of her army passed out of the city
gates to carry war into the country of the man who had dared thus to
speak scorn of her.
For a whole year the White King fought with the forces she sent against
him; but when all the other kings came to her aid, then, stronghold by
stronghold, all his cities were taken, and his lands were laid waste
and their villages burnt, and nothing but defeat and ruin remained.
Yet in the last battle, when his enemies thought to have him a
safe prisoner, all of a sudden they found that the White King had
disappeared.
Back came the Queen’s armies in triumph with their allies, and the
conquered territory was added as one more to the many that formed her
realm. But the Queen sighed as she looked at the White King’s statue,
and her triumph grew bitter to her. Day by day, as she looked at the
calm marble face, her love for it increased, and she owned sadly to
herself, “He whom I have conquered has conquered me!”
Of the lost King himself no tidings could be learned, though search was
made far and wide. Minstrels came to the court, and sang of his great
deeds in fighting against odds, but of his end they sang variously.
Some sang that he lay buried beneath the thickest of the slain; others
that from his last battle he had been carried by good fairies, and that
after he had been healed of his wounds, he would return in a hundred
years and recover his kingdom.
One minstrel came to stay at the court who sang of ruined homes and
wasted fields, and a happy land laid desolate, and how its King
wandered friendless and unknown through the world, hiding himself in
disguise, sometimes in the cottages of the poor, and sometimes in the
dwellings of the rich. But from no one could the Queen learn any news
that satisfied her or gave hope that he would at last bend down his
pride, and come and sue to her for forgiveness.
Wishing to have a hiding place for her grief, she caused the statue to
be set up in a green glade in the most lonely part of the gardens; and
there often she would go and gaze on the calm noble face (whose closed
eyes seemed even now to disdain her love), and would wonder how long a
queen’s heart took to break.
But after a time she thought, “Though I may never win the love of the
White King for my own, is there no way by which my passion can assuage
itself, when by lifting my finger I can summon half fairyland to my
aid?”
So she called to her the most powerful fairy she knew, and taking her
into the green glade, began sighing and weeping in front of the White
King’s statue. “This,” she said, “is the image of the only man on earth
I can love! But the man himself is lost, gone I know not where; and my
heart is breaking for grief! Give this statue a life and a heart, and
teach it to love me, else soon I shall surely be dead!”
The Fairy said to her, “All the might of Fairyland could not do so
much; but a little of it I can do; and if Fate is kind to you, Fate may
bring the rest of it to pass.”
“How much can you do?” asked the Queen.
“This only,” said the Fairy, “but even that you must do for yourself.
I can but show you the way. Stone is stone, and out of stone I cannot
make a heart; but a heart may grow into it, and this is the way to
compass it.
“You must find first a man who is loved, but does not love (for if
he loves, the statue’s heart when it wakes will turn from you); and
him you must kill with your own hand, and take out his heart and bury
it beneath the feet of the statue. Then I will work my charms, and
gradually, as a flower draws its life out of the ground, so the statue
will draw life out of the human heart buried below. And after a little
time you will see it move, and in a little time more its senses will
come, and it will be able to hear, and see, and speak. But full life
will not come to it until it has learned to love. Then, so soon as it
learns to love, it will become no longer stone, but a human being.”
But the Queen said, “Supposing its love were to turn from me to
another, where should I be then?”
“Surely,” said the Fairy, “the secret will be your own, and the
watching of its life as it grows will be yours. Your voice it will
hear, your face it will see; whom, then, will it learn to love more
than you?”
“Wait, then, till I have found the man,” said the Queen, “and we will
do this thing between us!”
She searched long among her court for some man whose heart was whole,
but who was himself loved. Generally, however, she found it was all the
other way. There was not a man at the court who was not in love, or did
not think himself so; and if there were one who had no thought of love,
he was too poor and mean for the love of any woman to be his.
But one day the Queen heard a minstrel in the palace courtyard singing
and making merry against love. It was that same minstrel who sang only
sad songs of the White King’s lands laid waste and himself a wanderer:
a fellow with a dark sunburnt face, and thick hair hanging over his
eyes. And as he sang and rattled his jests at the courtiers who stood
by to listen, the Queen noticed one of her waiting-women looking out of
a small lattice, who, as she watched the singer’s face, and listened to
his words, had tears running fast down out of her eyes.
“Is this a case,” thought the Queen, “of a man who is loved but who
does not love?”
She sent for the minstrel, and said to him, when he stood bending his
head before her, “Is this pretty scorn that you cast on love earnest or
jest?”
“Nay,” he answered, “I jest in good earnest; for to speak of love in
earnest is to jest about it.”
“So,” said the Queen, “you are heart-whole?”
“Why,” said the minstrel, “I doubt if a mouse could find its way in;
and if I am heart-whole in your presence, I ought to be safe from all
the world!”
“Now,” thought the Queen, “if only my waiting-woman answers the test,
here is the heart I will have out!”
Then she bade the minstrel follow her to where stood the White King’s
statue, bidding him sit down under it and sing her more of his rhymes
about love.
So the minstrel crossed his legs in the long grass and sang. His song
became bitter to the Queen’s ears, for he took the words that were
round the statue, and rhymed them and chimed them, and threw them
laughing in the Queen’s face. She hated him so that she could have
poisoned him; but she remembered that his life was necessary for her
experiment to reach its end. So she sent instead for a sleepy wine,
which she gave him to drink, and presently his voice grew thick and his
head dropped down upon his breast, and his legs slid out and brought
him down level with the grass. When night came on she left him soundly
sleeping with his head between the feet of the White King’s statue.
Then she sent for the waiting-woman and said, “Go down to the White
King’s statue, and find for me my handkerchief which I have dropped
there.” But as the girl went, the Queen stole secretly after her, and
watched her come to where the minstrel lay asleep.
[Illustration]
And when the waiting-maid saw him lying so, with his face thrown back,
she knelt down in the grass by his side, and putting her arms softly
about him, kissed him upon the lips over and over again as though she
could never come to an end; and her tears dropped down on to his face,
and, as if her mind were gone mad for love of him, the Queen heard her
sighing, “Oh, White King, my White King, my Beloved, whom I love, but
who loves me not!”
As soon as the waiting-maid was gone, the Queen came softly to the
place, and with a sharp knife she cut out the minstrel’s heart and
buried it at the base of the statue.
In the morning the minstrel was found lying dead with his heart gone;
and when they washed the dead face and put back the hair that covered
the eyes, they found that it was the White King himself.
That day, and for many days after, there were two women weeping in the
palace: one was the Queen and the other was the waiting-woman. But the
body of the White King they buried close by the statue in the green
glade.
Now presently, when the first violence of her grief was over, the Queen
came to look at the place; and, sure enough, the Fairy had been there
with her spells. When the wind blew the statue swayed gently like a
tree in the wind.
The Queen caused gates and barriers to be put up so that no one should
enter the glade but herself; only Love found a way, and at night, when
all the world was asleep, the waiting-woman crept through a loose pale
in the barriers, and came to moan over the place where her lover had
been slain.
All night she would lie with her arms round the feet of the White
King’s statue, and dream of the dead minstrel whom she had loved and
known through all his disguise. And all night long her lips would
murmur his name, and whisper over and over again the sad story of her
love.
And presently, as the statue drew life from the heart buried beneath
its feet, its ears were opened and it heard.
In the daytime the Queen would come and sit before it and whisper words
of love, offering it all the gifts of riches and power that are in the
hands of kings to give; but at night came the waiting-woman and offered
it only love.
Out of the ground the Queen saw grow a small plant, that began to creep
upwards and to wind itself round the base of the statue; and when she
saw that its flower was the deadly nightshade, her heart trembled and
her conscience made her afraid.
But the waiting-maid, when she saw it, picked the sad blossoms and made
a crown for the statue’s head as of pale amethyst and gold: for she
said to herself, “Down below my dear lies dead, and the roots of this
flower are in his hair.”
One day as the Queen came into the glade, she heard the dead minstrel’s
voice, and her heart shook with terror as she saw the statue open its
white lips and sing, and recognised the tune and the words as those
which had made her heart feel so bitter against him; for she thought,
“What if he knows that it is I who have slain him?”
Now that she saw that the stone had its five senses, and could see and
speak and hear, she pleaded to it all day out of the greatness of her
grief and her love. But the statue never returned her a word.