So down and up and on they mounted,-the black beggar man and his
cavalcade of Death and Pain, and then a space; and then a lone, black
hound that nosed and whimpered as he ran, and then a space; and then the
king of Yonder Kingdom in his robes, and then a space; and last the
princess of the Hither Isles, with face set sunward and lovelight in her
eyes.
And so they marched and struggled on and up through endless years and
spaces and ever the black beggar looked back past death and pain toward
the maid and ever the maid strove forward with lovelit eyes, but ever
the great and silken shoulders of the king of Yonder Kingdom arose
between the princess and the sun like a cloud of storms.
Now, finally, they neared unto the hillsides topmost shoulder and there
most eagerly the king bent to the bowels of the earth and bared its
golden entrails,-all green and gray and rusted-while the princess
strained her pitiful eyes aloft to where the beggar, set 'twixt Death
and Pain, whirled his slim back against the glory of the setting sun and
stood somber in his grave majesty, enhaloed and transfigured,
outstretching his long arms, and around all heaven glittered jewels in a
cloth of gold.
A while the princess stood and moaned in mad amaze, then with one wilful
wrench she bared the white flowers of her breast and snatching forth her
own red heart held it with one hand aloft while with the other she
gathered close her robe and poised herself.
The king of Yonder Kingdom looked upward quickly, curiously, still
fingering the earth, and saw the offer of her bleeding heart.
"It's a Negro!" he growled darkly; "it may not be."
The woman quivered.
"It's a nigger!" he repeated fiercely. "It's neither God nor man, but a
nigger!"
The princess stepped forward.
The king grasped his sword and looked north and east; he raised his
sword and looked south and west.
"I seek the sun," the princess sang, and started into the west.
"Never!" cried the king of Yonder Kingdom, "for such were blasphemy and
defilement and the making of all evil."
So, raising his great sword he struck with all his might, and more. Down
hissed the blow and it bit that little, white, heart-holding hand until
it flew armless and disbodied up through the sunlit air. Down hissed the
blow and it clove the whimpering hound until his last shriek shook the
stars. Down hissed the blow and it rent the earth. It trembled, fell
apart, and yawned to a chasm wide as earth from heaven, deep as hell,
and empty, cold, and silent.
On yonder distant shore blazed the mighty Empire of the Sun in warm and
blissful radiance, while on this side, in shadows cold and dark, gloomed
the Hither Isles and the hill that once was golden, but now was green
and slimy dross; all below was the sad and moaning sea, while between
the Here and There flew the severed hand and dripped the bleeding heart.
Then up from the soul of the princess welled a cry of dark
despair,--such a cry as only babe-raped mothers know and murdered loves.
Poised on the crumbling edge of that great nothingness the princess
hung, hungering with her eyes and straining her fainting ears against
the awful splendor of the sky.
Out from the slime and shadows groped the king, thundering: "Back--don't
be a fool!"
But down through the thin ether thrilled the still and throbbing warmth
of heaven's sun, whispering "Leap!"
And the princess leapt.