you on the coat. We shall go slowly. I am too old to travel very fast."
For a week they travelled. Every morning when Isal awoke she was
surprised to find herself in a new place; always with the Old Brown Coat
and the strange birds; they only travelled in the night time when Isal
was asleep; in the day time they rested on account of the Phoenix. At
last one morning, an hour before sunrise, they came to the Palace and
alighted in the garden just below the Prince's window. They laid Isal
on the Old Brown Coat upon the grass, and then the Phoenix bade the
Tufters fly away a few miles into the woods and wait his coming.
Rosedrop, however, he bade stay a while, when she tapped with her beak
upon the window of the Prince's chamber, and then flew away to join her
brothers.
The Prince heard the tapping upon the window, and said--"It is the
messenger-bird," and rose to see if it had brought him a billet. He
opened the window but no bird flew in, and he leaned upon the sill and
looked up to the beautiful sky; the morning-star was just disappearing;
he watched it till it was gone, and then cast his eyes on the green
grass below. What should he see there but a lovely girl lying asleep on
the grass, and a very magnificent bird standing beside her. He hastened
down and stooped over the beautiful maiden. "How lovely!" said he; "she
is more beautiful than the daughters of Calla. She is the morning-star
which I just saw disappear in the heavens." He bent his face to hers and
kissed her. With the kiss Isal awoke, and when she saw leaning over her
so grand a looking person, she was more wonderstruck than ever before.
"Surely he kissed me!" she murmured. Here the Phoenix broke in with a
remark.
"O Prince," said he, "I am the Phoenix. For nearly five hundred years
I have lived and guarded the Old Brown Coat. It was stolen, and I have
brought it back to you with the maiden you are to marry. But you have
taken no sort of notice of the coat. My great-great-great grandfather
made that coat. It is more valuable than a hundred lovely girls."
When the Prince heard the Phoenix speak, he turned and saw the grand
bird which he had overlooked. But he could not understand a word he
said, though the Phoenix spoke very loud and as he thought very
distinctly. "This is a very strange bird, indeed!" said the Prince. "Did
the bird fly with you from the heavens, Morning-Star!"
Isal said, half to herself, "It is very strange. I cannot understand it
at all. How did I come here! It is like a dream. And where are the other
birds with tufts on their heads?" She got up as she said this; the
Prince lifting her by the hand. Then the Prince saw the Old Brown Coat.
"Ah! you have brought me my precious coat again!" said he, and he took
it up joyfully. At this the Phoenix grew very much excited.
"He will tear it!" said he. "Where are the Sixteen Coat-Tails? This is
alarming!"
But the Prince, without heeding him, took Isal by the hand and led her
into the Palace, carrying, too, the Old Brown Coat. Then he made Isal
tell him all that she knew about it. The royal household gathered about,
mad with joy that the Old Brown Coat had been found again. The Sixteen
Coat-Tails came in very solemnly and took possession of it. Each of the
Sixteen in turn looked over it carefully, but could not find the least
rent or tear. "How wonderful!" said they, "but we are very glad to get
it again; we are so distinguished now." The bells of the city were rung
and crowds of people came to rejoice over the recovery of the coat.
Meanwhile the Phoenix walked about the garden.
"This is as it should be," said he, "as far as the Old Brown Coat is
concerned, but I don't receive the honour due to me. I am the Phoenix;
the only one of course in the world. I am five hundred years old,
nearly. When I was here a hundred years ago I was made very much of. But
the world is growing very degenerate." The gardener of the palace came
by just then.
"What have we here?" said he. "Can it be that this is the Phoenix? I
have heard my father describe the one that was here a century ago, and
it certainly was very much like this fine bird." He went into the Palace
and desired an audience with the Prince. "Does your majesty know," said
he, "that the Phoenix is here?"
At this all the people set up a shout. "The Phoenix! It is the royal
bird of Percan! Long live the Phoenix!"
The Prince and people passed into the garden and stood looking at the
Phoenix. "Now I am respected;" said he. "This is as it should be." It
was a great day for the Phoenix and a great day for the people. The
Poet recited a long ode in his honour. The musicians played a great deal
of music; the wise men, moreover, all got together and held a discussion
for several hours about his age; but the people did not care much for
this. The Phoenix was given a place above the throne. And not only
that, but upon that very day the Prince of Percan, son of Shahtah the
Great, the former king, was throned king and took for his queen the
beautiful Isal, daughter of a woodman. He wore the Old Brown Coat, and
it fitted him very well; it took the Sixteen Coat-Tails only an hour,
with all their care, to get it upon him. When it was nightfall, the
Phoenix came majestically down from his high perch, and hovering for a
few minutes about the King and Queen, gave them a great deal of good
advice which they could not understand, and then sailed grandly away,
joined the Tufters in the woods, and flew back to his eyrie, far off. In
the Palace lived the Prince and his beautiful Queen, the good Isal.
The Sacrifice.
[Illustration]
The Prince and Isal had now been married nearly five years, so that Isal
was then eighteen years old and even more beautiful than when the prince
found her in the garden. The royal family was at first displeased that
the Prince should marry a peasant maiden, but Isal was so good that one
could not help loving her, and soon every one said that there never had
been such a Queen in Percan. As for the Prince, he loved her more than
the whole of his kingdom; he always called her his Morning-Star. And
Isal loved the Prince and was very happy in the palace where she had
everything she could desire; but often in the five years did she
remember the woodman's hut on the bank of the great blue river where she
had spent her childhood; often she thought of her father living there
alone, reft of his little daughter, the one comfort of his life. Then
would the Prince come with his kind love, and quite drive away such sad
thoughts. As the years went by she thought less of her former life;
indeed it was so different from the present that she persuaded herself
that she had died in her cot the night after finding the Old Brown Coat,
that now she was in the Paradise she had heard her father tell about,
and that the birds--the Phoenix and the Tufters--were the winged
spirits that brought her there.
The Phoenix was now very nearly five hundred years old; in a few weeks
he would have to build his nest and die. The Tufters too were five years
older; but five years makes a great deal more difference with them than
it does with the Phoenix. It makes them much wiser; even the one that
had been rash was quite prudent now. They waited still on the old bird
and brought him all the information they could find about the affairs of
the world.
"I wonder how the Old Brown Coat does," said the Tufter who had once
been rash, as they all stood round the Phoenix one night. "That was a
very grand event we brought about--the marriage of the Prince with Isal.
If it had not been for us, Isal might still have been only a woodman's
daughter and not a Queen at all!" Here the Phoenix spoke, but with a
very muffled voice; his age prevented him from talking very loud or much
at a time; he was apt to repeat himself, too, sometimes, and to ramble
in his remarks. But the Tufters always listened very respectfully to
whatever he had to say: he was so old and so wise; everything he said
would bear reflection.
"You are a goose. My great-great-great grandfather made the Old Brown
Coat. He was called Phoenix the Tailor. The world is growing very
degenerate. I am five hundred years old very nearly. I don't know what
will become of it when I die. The Prince is very well, but he did not
know me when he saw me in the garden. I was respected, though. The
gardener knew me, and the people shouted. My great--"
The Phoenix was going on with some of his reminiscences, or perhaps
beginning again, when just at this point there was a rustling in the
bushes, and in burst the oldest of the Tufters who had been away hunting
for news. All the rest bustled about him as he smoothed his feathers to
make his manners to the Phoenix.
"I have some very important news!" began he, with great dignity. "Isal's
father, the woodman is dying."
"Is he, indeed!" exclaimed the rest in chorus, except the Phoenix, who
stood with one eye shut, painfully distracted between the desire to
administer a rebuke and to hear further.
"That may be," said he, finally, "but you should not have interrupted me
while I was speaking. Besides you have not told us yet the particulars."
"I was flying up the river," proceeded the eldest Tufter, respectfully,
"when I happened to recollect little Isal, and how we brought her away
from her house. I was passing the very spot, so I just flew in for a
moment, and there I saw the woodman, her father, lying upon his bed very
sick. There was no one with him."
"How sad!" said Rosedrop, mournfully.
"The cot from which we took Isal," added the Tufter, "was there still,
just as we left it, in precisely the same spot."
"How remarkable!" said the rash Tufter, who had become prudent.
While all this cackling was going on, the Phoenix maintained a stiff
silence. At last he stroked his beak with a claw. "Hush!" said the
second Tufter, "we shall hear something now." And surely the Phoenix
did speak.
"Children, Isal must know of this. We took her away on the Old Brown
Coat. My great-great-great grandfather made the coat. He was called
Phoenix the Tailor." It was very hard for the Phoenix to avoid
speaking of this whenever the Old Brown Coat was mentioned, and he
continued for some time to wander upon the subject, till they all
thought he was through, and the Tufter, who had once been rash asked:
"And who shall tell Isal?" The Phoenix was not really through, though.
He was just in the midst of the sentence, "The world is growing very
degenerate--" only the last word stuck in his throat--and he was
exceedingly vexed that he should be interrupted by an upstart Tufter.
"You--" are a goose, he tried to say, but the difficulty in his throat
occurred again, and prevented any word beyond the first, and the Tufter
taking it for a command to carry the news--he was too quick
sometimes,--set off for the palace as fast as his wings could carry him.
"How provoking!" said the oldest; "he will spoil it all with his
rashness!" The Phoenix now recovered himself, and having finished his
two broken sentences together, "degenerate--are a goose," for he never
left anything undone, told Rosedrop to fly faster and carry the news
before the other. Rosedrop sped swiftly, and overtaking her brother,
went with him in company and soon persuaded him, for he was a
good-natured fellow, to let her undertake the message. So when they
reached the palace garden, while her brother remained without, Rosedrop
flew in at the open window where she had tapped nearly five years ago,
and hovering over Isal as she lay asleep, told her the sad message, and
flying out rejoined her bother.
"Did she hear you?" asked he.
"Oh, yes," said Rosedrop. "I told her all about it, and she looked very
sad indeed. How sorry I am for her. I am sure I shall feel dreadfully
when the Phoenix dies."
Now Isal really did hear all that Rosedrop told her; for as the Tufter
flew through the open window, a suggestion entered the open window of
her mind as she lay asleep, and this is what it showed her:--A lonely
woodman's hut in the forest upon the bank of a great blue river; in the
hut a solitary man, pale and thin, worn out with sickness and sorrow
stretched upon a bed; not a living thing about the house; the axe lying
rusty from disuse by the trunk of a fallen tree; one little bed deserted
in the other corner of the room, toward which the sick man is turned
with longing look, while his lips move but refuse to speak the name his
heart dwells upon. And just as the Tufter flew out, having told her
message, so did the picture vanish from Isal's mind, and in its place
followed others in quick succession, all of them centering about one
person--a maiden, who is now playing by the same hut, now surrounded
mysteriously by strange birds, now waking to find herself kissed by a
noble-looking man, who marries her and makes her Queen of the land. With
this she awoke, and saw the Prince leaning over her.
"What were you dreaming about, Morning-Star, that made you look so sad
just before I kissed you?" said the Prince. Then Isal told him her
dream.
"My father is sick unto death," she said sorrowfully, when she had
finished, "and longs to see his daughter." But the Prince comforted her,
and told her that he would send messengers who should travel over the
whole country to find her father and bring her word of him. So the
messengers were sent out in search of the woodman. But the Prince did
not know nor Isal, that he lived so far away and so hidden that it
would not be possible to reach him before he died.
Meanwhile the Phoenix and the Tufters kept watch over the whole
matter. The eldest Tufter returned one night from a visit to the palace
where he had seen his friend, the Rabbit. "The Peacock," said he, "would
have nothing to do with me since I took to calling on the Rabbit; but I
am not sorry, for he is very tiresome and is for ever talking about his
tail. The Rabbit is much more sensible, though he has some strange
tastes. Do you know, he is very fond of chewing parsley? Is it not
queer? I asked the Rabbit what the news was. He said he would ask the
Mouse and proposed to me to go and call on him. I was afraid to at
first; the Mouse is so learned; but then the Rabbit is on very good
terms with him and promised to introduce me. So I got the Squirrel to
brush me down--he always carries a whisk brush with him and is very
obliging--and went with the Rabbit to call on the Mouse. The Rabbit did
not seem at all disconcerted. He was chewing parsley all the way; but I
was trying to think what it was proper to say upon entering."
"The Mouse lives in a very small house; he had to come out to the door to
us; it was quite impossible for us to enter. He looked very venerable
indeed, and very learned. His hair was brushed back over his forehead,
and his whiskers were grown very long. I noticed the Rabbit wore his so;
he told me afterwards that it was the fashion among learned men, and
though he did not presume to call himself a learned man, yet he thought
it best to be in the fashion. I hardly knew what to say to the Mouse; I
had been trying all the way to think of some book I might mention, but
the Rabbit opened the way very easily. He told the Mouse where I was
from and mentioned my connection with you, sir," (turning to the
Phoenix; the Phoenix bowed--"Yes, I am well known," he said.) "Ah,
indeed," said the Mouse. "The Phoenix? yes. I came across an account
of the Phoenicians in a book the other day; the book was elegantly
bound; the Phoenicians are a very enterprising race."
"The Phoenicians! indeed!" broke in the angry Phoenix. "There is but
one Phoenix. I am the only Phoenix, I am nearly five hundred years
old. My great-great-great-grandfather made the Old Brown Coat." And he
went on with his reminiscences till he was quite exhausted. After that
the Tufter hardly dared mention the Mouse, and, indeed, began to suspect
that he was not so very learned after all; but he proceeded to state how
he had gathered that the Prince had sent messengers to find the woodman,
Isal's father.
"It is in vain," said the Phoenix, who had recovered himself, and was
really growing very wise, as the days of his life neared their end. "It
is in vain, children, you must go again to the Palace--all of you. I
would go myself, but I am getting too old, and besides, I must begin to
gather my spices and make my dying nest. This you must tell Isal. Her
father longs to see her once before he dies. Yet if she chooses to go to
him she must die after him, for she has worn the Old Brown Coat. If she
remains with the Prince she shall be happy for many years, and be
beloved by her husband and king. If she decide to go, then do you four
bear her away to her father."
Away flew the Tufters to the Palace. Again did Rosedrop fly through the
window, and hovering over the bed, unknown to the Prince give her
message to the sleeping Isal. Again, and at the same time, did a
suggestion fly through the open window of the Queen's mind, showing her
in succession two pictures:--In one she saw a maiden sitting by the
bedside of a dying man in a lonely woodman's hut by the banks of a great
blue river; the woodman's eyes are bent on her and all his pain and
sorrow are gone; gently he closes his life in the sleep of death; and
the maiden alone, with only the dead man upon the bed, sickens also, and
lying upon the other cot, slowly, painfully closes her life with no one
to hold her hand. Then Isal saw another picture--a Queen in the Palace
honored by the people, having everything that she could desire, dearly
loved and cherished by the King her husband, and living thus for many
years, and when dying at last, wept over by all and kissed at the very
moment of death by the good Prince. Then Isal woke up just as before by
the kiss of the Prince, who was leaning over her. "You are sad again, my
Morning-Star," said he. "Be comforted; your father will be found." But
Isal did not tell him her dream this time.
"What is she going to do?" asked the rather forward Tufter of Rosedrop,
as she came forth through the window again.
"She is perplexed," said Rosedrop. "We will come for her answer
to-morrow night." All that day did Isal think over the two pictures she
had seen, until at last the second one quite faded from view; only the
first remained. "I will go," said she to herself, "even if I must die."
The next night when the Tufters came for the answer, they found the
window closed. Rosedrop tapped upon it with her beak. Isal within heard
it. "It is the summons for me to go," said she. She leaned over the
prince; he was asleep; she longed to give him a last kiss. "I will kiss
him very gently," said she, but first she opened the window. There were
the strange birds again; the beautiful one upon the sill; the rest
hovering close by; she went back and lightly kissed the Prince. "Quick!"
she said to herself as he stirred. "He is awaking!" She hastened to the
window; she stood upon the sill; the birds floated in front of her, and
letting herself sink upon their soft downy backs, and throwing her arms
round Rosedrop's neck, off they flew, swifter than the rushing wind.
The Prince awakened by the kiss and the rustling opened his eyes only to
see his Queen rising like a white cloud to the sky.
"Ah! she is gone! my Morning-Star has returned again to the sky!" he
wailed, and stretching his supplicating hands he cried, "Come back to
me! My Love! My Morning-Star!" And Isal heard him as she was swiftly
borne, and her hot tears fell on Rosedrop's neck.
Just when the morning-star disappeared from the sky before the dawn, the
Tufters laid Isal upon her cot in the woodman's hut, and fluttering
around her for a moment, they flew away to the Phoenix, leaving
Rosedrop only to keep watch. In the hut upon his pallet lay stretched
the lonely woodman, who was dying. Day and night did Isal sit by his
side and hold his hand while he gazed in her face, too weak to speak.
Slowly the pain and the sorrow left his face, and instead came a smile
of holy joy which never left him. For seven days and seven nights did
Isal sit beside him. Then he died, and she, just able to reach her old
cot, lay down upon it, weak and suffering. For seven days and seven
nights did she lie there, racked with pain. This was a sad exchange for
her happy life in the Palace; but she never repented; she could not when
she saw the dead face with its heavenly smile still upon it.
"Isal is fast dying," said little Rosedrop sadly, as she flew back from
the hut to the Phoenix and her brothers. "Oh! she suffers dreadfully."
"That must be so," said the Phoenix wisely. "It could not be
otherwise." The Phoenix now was so old that in an hour he would die.
He had gathered his spice and built his nest; already had he taken his
seat upon it, and was awaiting the last moment of the five hundredth
year, while the Tufters stood around sorrowfully, each upon one leg,
manifesting their respect to the old bird by making their manners
constantly; it pleased the Phoenix so much. And the grand bird as he
neared his end grew more and more wise and prophetic.
"Rosedrop!" said he to his favorite Tufter. "Go quickly to Isal's cot.
She will die; but when she dies, watch for her spirit and bear it hither
ere I die." Swiftly sped Rosedrop to the hut by the river. There she
watched by Isal's bedside; saw her go through terrible suffering, but at
last the struggle was over, and Rosedrop saw through her tears, which
she shed for the first and only time, Isal's spirit floating upward. She
clasped it to her bosom and darted to the Phoenix.
"It is the hour!" said the Bird, before Rosedrop had returned. "My life
is closed. I have lived five hundred years." He plucked a golden feather
from his breast, and lighted the nest of spices on which he reclined.
The smoke rose slowly, enveloping him in it, while the Tufters, overcome
with grief, forgot their manners, and stood on both legs peering into
the smoke. At that moment Rosedrop, with the spirit of Isal, darted into
the circle. The Phoenix saw her.
"Lay the spirit in the nest," said he, and Rosedrop heedless of the fire
which burned her beautiful body, laid Isal's spirit in the nest by the
Phoenix.
"It is enough!" said the Phoenix. "I am perishing, but another
Phoenix shall arise and the spirit of Isal shall live in it. Isal is
the Phoenix that is to be. I die but she shall live."
As he said it, there was a smouldering in the nest; a heap of embers
enveloped in smoke lay before the Tufters; in a moment the smoke parted
and out of the embers soared with crimson and golden plumage the new
Phoenix!
* * * * *
But the new Phoenix remembered still the life that belonged to him
when he was a maiden. The Phoenix, moreover, is a most wonderful bird.
It can change itself into many shapes. Every New Year's Day did this
Phoenix visit the Palace and present itself at the Festivity of the
Old Brown Coat, and every New Year's night, after the Sixteen Coat Tails
had robed and unrobed the lonely Prince with the greatest care, did the
Phoenix visit the Prince alone, and for one night he returned to the
old shape of the beautiful Isal. And when the Prince died he was changed
into a palm-tree, and the Phoenix dwelt in the branches.
[Illustration]
New Year's Day in the Garden.
Morning.
[Illustration]
It may not generally be known, yet so it is, that New Year's Day in the
Garden varies each year, but is established by one sure sign--the
blooming of the Lilac. When this takes place it is the custom of the
inhabitants of the Garden to celebrate their New Year's Day. In the year
when this happened which I am about to tell, the Lilac was later than
usual, and there was great impatience felt at its slowness. Some of the
younger ones, in fact, had serious doubts whether it would come to
flower at all, and that they agreed would be a calamity, but the older
ones bade them wait, for the time certainly would come. The old
Buttonwood tree that stood in the corner of the Garden, and who was said
to be the oldest inhabitant, grew very tiresome, for he counted up on
his branches the number of years that he had seen the Lilac blow, and
declared twenty times a day, as if he had not said it at all, that he
had never known the bush to be so tardy. But on the night before the
twentieth of May there was a plenteous shower; the next morning the sun
rose splendidly upon the fresh earth, and the Lilac sent its strong
perfume all over the Garden. It was unanimously agreed that New Year's
Day had come at last, and that there should be an unusual celebration of
it.