They tasted her breath of rose.
"Do not die!" they said simply.
"I have lived three hundred years," she answered. "Now I must die. I am
the Luck of the Roses, but I must leave them and die."
"When must you die?" said her man and his wife.
The little lady said: "Before the last roses are over; the chills of
night take me, the first frost will kill me. Soon I must die. Now I must
dwindle and dwindle, for little life is left to me, and only so can I
keep warm. As life and heat grow less, so must I, till presently I am no
more."
She was a little thing already--not old, she did not seem old, but
delicate as a snowflake, and so weary. She laid her head in the hand of
the gardener's wife, and sobbed hard.
"You dear people, who belong so much to me too, I have watched over
you."
"Let us watch over you!" said they. They lifted her like a
feather-weight, and carried her into the house. There, in the
ingle-nook, she sat and shivered, while they brought rose-leaves and
piled round her; but every hour she grew less and less.
Presently the sun shone full upon her from the doorway: its light went
through her as through coloured glass; and her man and his wife saw,
over the ingle behind her, shadows fluttering as of falling rose-petals:
it was the dying rose of her life, falling without end.
All day long she dwindled and grew more weak and frail. Before sunset
she was smaller than a small child when it first comes into the world.
They set honey before her to taste, but she was too weary to uncurl her
tiny hands: they lay like two white petals in the green lap of her gown.
The half-filled panniers of roses stood where they had been set down in
the porch: the good couple had taken nothing to the market that day. The
luck of the house lay dying, for all their care; they could but sit and
watch.
When the sun had set, she faded away fast: now she was as small as a
young wren. The gardener's wife took her and held her for warmth in the
hollow of her hand. Presently she seemed no more than a grasshopper: the
tiny chirrup of her voice was heard, about the middle of the night,
asking them to take her and lay her among the roses, in the heart of one
of the red roses, that there she and death might meet sweetly at the
last.
They went together into the dark night, and felt their way among the
roses; presently they quite lost her tiny form: she had slipped away
into the heart of a Jane Janet rose.
The gardener and his wife went back into the house and sat waiting: they
did not know for what, but they were too sad at heart to think just then
of sleep.
Soon the first greys of morning began to steal over the world; pale
shivers ran across the sky, and one bird chirped in its sleep among the
trees.
All at once there rang a soft sound of lamentation among the roses in
the rose-garden; again and again, like the cry of many gentle wounded
things in pain. The gardener and his wife went and opened the door: they
had to tell the bees of the fairy's death. They looked out under the
twilight, into the garden they loved. "Drip," "drip," "drip" came the
sound of steady weeping under the leaves. Peering out through the
shadows they saw all the rose-trees rocking softly for grief.
"Snow?" said his wife to her man.
But it was not snow.
Under the dawn all the roses in the garden had turned white; for they
knew that the fairy was dead.
The gardener and his wife woke the bees, and told them of the fairy's
death; then they looked in each other's faces, and saw that they, too,
had become white and grey.
With gentle eyes the old couple took hands, and went down into the
garden to gather white roses for the market.