Bookman, gently, “and sometimes we have to travel a long way to make
them so. If you think of the princess long and hard enough, I daresay
that you will go to her some day--and there she will be, solid.”
But of course as soon as Hazen began thinking of the princess long and
hard, he wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be doing
something that should hasten the time of seeing her, which could not
well be until he had made his fortune. So thereupon he told the Bookman
that he must be leaving the garden.
“I knew that the day must come,” said the Bookman, sadly. “_Could_ you
not stay?”
And when he said that, Hazen wanted so very much to stay there in the
enchantment of the place, that it seemed as if a voice in his own
head were echoing the words. And while he hesitated at the gate of
the garden, he knew what that other voice was! It was within his head
indeed, and it was the voice of that strange, fascinating Self from
which he had found that he could hardly look away--the Knowledge Self
itself. And then he knew that all this time in this garden, it was
this voice that he had been obeying and it had been guiding him. He
himself had not been king of the Selves at all. So when he knew that,
he hesitated not a moment, for he saw that although the Bookman was
far finer than the Merry Lad, still neither must be king, but only he
himself must be king.
“Alas!” he cried, as he left the garden, “I am not nearer to making my
fortune now than I was at the beginning!”
XV
KING (_continued_)
So Hazen left the garden and the gentle Bookman, who was loath to let
him go, and hurried out into the world again.
He travelled now for many days, hearing often of far countries which
held what he sought, but never reaching any of them. Always he did what
tasks came to his hand, for this seemed a good way toward fortune. But
sometimes the Envy Self and the Discontented Self spoke loudly in his
head so that he thought that it was he himself who was speaking, and
he obeyed them, and stopped his work, and until the chance to finish
it was lost, he did not know that it was these Selves who had made
him cease his task and lose his chance and be that much farther from
fortune. For that was the way of all the Selves--they had a clever
fashion of making Hazen think that their voices were his own voice, and
sometimes he could hardly tell the difference.
At last, one night, he came to a hill, sloping gently as if something
beautiful were overflowing. Its trees looked laid upon the mellow
west beyond. The turf was like some Titan woman’s embroidery, sheared
and flowered. Hazen looked at it all, and at the great sky and the
welcoming distance, and before he knew whether it came as a thought or
as a song, he had made a little rhyme:--
Do you wish you had a world of gold
With a turquoise roof on high,
And a coral east and a ruby west
And diamonds in the sky?
Do you wish there were little doors of air
That a child might open wide,
Where were emerald chairs and a tourmaline rug
And a moonstone moon beside?
Do you wish the lakes were silver plates
And the sea a sapphire dish?
What a wonderful, wonderful world it is--
For haven’t you got your wish?
He liked to sing this, and he loved the hill and the evening. He lay
there a long time, making little rhymes and loving everything. Next
day he wandered away in the woods, and asked for food at a hut, and
offered the bewildered woman a rhyme in payment, and at night he
returned to his hill, and there he lived for days, playing that he
was living all alone in the world--that there was not another person
anywhere on the earth.
But one night when he was lying on the hillside, composing a song to
the Littlest Leaf in the Wood, suddenly the voice of his song was not
so loud as a voice within him which seemed to say how much he delighted
to be singing. And then he knew the voice--that it was the voice of the
Beauty Self in his own head, that it was that voice that had made him
linger on the hillside and had commanded him to sing about the beauty
in the world _and to do nothing else_. And all this time it had been
king of the Selves, and not he!
He rose and fled down the hillside, and for days he wandered alone,
sick at heart because this fair Beauty Self had tricked him into
following her _and no other_, even as the Fun Self and the Knowledge
Self had done. But even while he wandered, grieving, again and again
the Idle Self, the Strong Self, the Discontented Self, deceived him
for a little while and succeeded in making their own voices heard, and
now and again the little shadowy Selves--the Malice and Cruel and Envy
Selves drew very near him and tried to speak for him. And they all
fought to keep him from being king and to deceive him into thinking
that they spoke for him.
One brooding noonday, as Hazen was travelling, alone and tired, on the
highroad, a carriage overtook him, and the gentleman within, looking
sharply at him, ordered the carriage stopped, and asked him courteously
if he was not the poet whose songs he had sometimes heard, and of whose
knowledge and good-fellowship others had told him. It proved that it
was no other than Hazen whom he meant, and he took him with him in
his carriage to a great, wonderful house overlooking the valley, and
commanding a sovereign mountain on whose very summit stood a deserted
castle. It seemed as if merely looking on that wonderful prospect would
help one to be wise and _really_ good and beautiful and worthy to be
loved.
At once Hazen’s host, the Gentleman of the Carriage, began showing
him his treasures and all that made life for him. The house was
filled with curious and beautiful things, pictures, ivories, marbles,
and tapestries, and with many friends. In the evenings there were
always festivities; mirth and laughter were everywhere, and Hazen
was laden with gifts of these and other things, and delighted in the
entertainment. But by day, in a high-ceiled library and a cool study,
the two spent hours pouring over letters and science, finding out
the secrets of the world, getting on the other side of words, saying
sentences, and thinking thoughts that became solid; or they would
wander on the hillsides and carry rare books and dream of the beauty in
the world and weave little songs. Now they would be idle, now absorbed
in feats of strength, and now they would descend into the town and
there delight in its great sport. And in all this Hazen had some part
and earned his own way, because of his cleverness and willingness to
enter in the life and belong to it.
One day, standing on a balcony of the beautiful house, looking across
at the mountain and the deserted castle, Hazen said aloud:--
“This is the true life. This is fortune. For now I hear all the voices
of all my Selves, and I give good things to each, and I am king of
them all!”
But even as he spoke he heard another voice sounding within his own,
and it laughed, and cracked as it laughed, so that it sounded like
something being broken that could never be mended.
“I told you so, Hazen! I told you so!” it cried. “Being loved and
_really_ good do not mean making our fortune. Just one thing means
fortune, and that is being rich. To be rich, _rich_, means good times
and learning and beauty and idleness. I’ve fought every one of the
others, and now you’ve got all that they had to offer, because you have
let me be king--_me and no other_.”
To his horror, Hazen recognized the voice of the dwarf, the Riches
Self, and knew that he was deceived again, that he himself was ruler of
nothing, and that the dwarf was now king of all his Selves.
When he realized this, it seemed to Hazen that his heart was pierced
and that he could not live any longer. Suppose--ah, suppose that he did
get back to the Princess Vista now--what had he to take to her? Could
he give her himself--a Self of which not he but the dwarf was the
owner?
Somehow, in spite of their protestations and persuadings, Hazen said
good-bye to them all, to his host and to those who had detained him,
and he was off down into the valley alone--not knowing where he was
going or what he was going to do, or what hope now remained that he
should ever be any nearer the fortune for which he had so hopefully set
out.
It was bright moonlight when he came to the edge of a fair, green,
valley meadow. The whiteness was flooding the world, as if it would
wash away everything that had ever been and would begin it all over
again. And in the centre of the meadow, all the brightness seemed to
gather and thicken and glitter, as if something mysterious were there.
It drew Hazen to itself, as if it were so pure that it must be what
he was seeking, and he broke through the hedge and stepped among the
flowers of the lush grass, and he stood before it.
It was a fountain of water, greater than any fountain that Hazen had
ever seen or conceived. It rose from the green in pure strands of
exquisite firmness, in almost the slim lines and spirals of a stair;
and its high, curving spray and its plash and murmur made it rather
like a gigantic white tree, with music in its boughs--the tree of life
itself.
Hazen could no more have helped leaping in the fountain than he could
have helped his joy in its beauty. He sprang in the soft waters as
if he were springing into arms, and it drew him to itself as if he
belonged to it. The waters flowed over him, and he felt purified, and
as if a healing light had shone through him, body and mind.
But to his amazement, he did not remain in the fountain’s basin.
Gently, as if he were upborne by unseen hands, he mounted with the rise
of the fountain, in its slim lines and spirals, until he found himself
high above the meadow in a silvery tower that was thrown out from the
fountain itself. And there, alone in that lofty silence, it was as if
he were face to face with himself and could see his own heart.
Then the Thought spoke to him which had spoken to him long ago that
morning in the king’s kitchen, and again on that first night in the
wood.
“Hazen!” it said, “you are not wise or _really_ good or loved or
beautiful. Why don’t you become so?”
“I!” said Hazen, sadly. “I have lost my chance. I came out to find my
fortune and I have thrown it away.”
But still the Thought spoke to him, and said the same thing over and
over so many times that at last he answered:--
“What, then, must I do?” he asked.
And then he listened, there in the night and the stillness, to hear
what it was that he must do. And this was the first time that ever he
had listened like this, or questioned carefully his course. Always
before he had done what seemed to him the thing that he wished to do,
without questioning whether his fortune lay that way.
“Bravely spoken, Hazen,” said the Thought, then. “Someone near is in
great need. Find him and help him.”
Instantly Hazen leaped lightly to the ground, and ran away through
the moonlit meadow, and he sought as never in his life had he sought
anything before, for the one near, in great need, whom he was to find
and help. All through the night he sought, and with the setting of
the moon he was struggling up the mountain, because it seemed to him
that he must do some hard thing, and this was hard. In the early dawn
he stood on the mountain’s very summit, and knocked at the gate of the
deserted castle there. And it was the forsaken castle of his father,
the king, whom the Princess Vista’s father had conquered; but this
Hazen did not know.
No sound answered his summons, so he swung the heavy gate on its broken
hinges and stepped within. The court yard was vacant and echoing and
grass-grown. Rabbits scuttled away at his approach, and about the
sightless eyes of the windows, bats were clinging and moving. The clock
in the tower was still and pointed to an hour long-spent. The whole
place breathed of things forgotten and of those who, having loved them,
were forgotten too.
Hazen mounted the broad, mossy steps leading to the portals, and he
found one door slightly ajar. Wondering greatly, he touched it open,
and the groined hall appeared like a grim face from behind a mask.
On the stone floor, not far beyond the threshold, lay an old man,
motionless. And when, uttering a little cry of pity and amazement,
Hazen stooped over him, he knew him at once to be that old man who had
greeted him at the entrance to the wood on the evening of the day on
which he himself had left the king’s palace.
What with bringing him water and bathing his face and chafing his
hands, Hazen at last enabled the old man to speak, and found that he
had been nearly all his life-time the keeper of the castle and for
some years its only occupant. He was not ill, but he had fallen and
was hurt, and he had lain for several days without food. So Hazen, who
knew well how to do it, kindled a fire of fagots in the great, echoing
castle kitchen, and, from the scanty store which he found there,
prepared broth and eggs, and then helped the old man to his bed in the
little room which had once been a king’s cabinet.
“Lad, lad!” said the old man, when he had remembered Hazen. “And
have you found your fortune? And are you by now wise, _really_ good,
beautiful, and loved?”
“Alas!” said Hazen, only, and could say no more.
The old man nodded. “I know, I know,” he said sadly. “The little
Selves have been about, ruling here and ruling there. Is it not so? Sit
here a little, and let us talk about it.”
Then Hazen told him all that had befallen since that night when they
sat together in the wood. And though his adventures seemed to Hazen
very wonderful, the old man merely nodded, as if he were not hearing
but only remembering.
“Ay,” he said, at the last, “I have met them all--the Merry Lad, the
Bookman, and all the rest, and have dwelt a space with some. And I,
too, have come to the fountain in the night, and have asked what it was
that I should do.”
“But tell me, sir,” said Hazen, eagerly, “how was it that I was told at
the fountain that there was one near in great need. Did the fountain
know you? Or did my Thought? And how could that be?”
“Nay, lad,” said the old man, “but always, for everyone, there is
someone near in need--yet. One has only to look.”
Then he talked to Hazen more about his fortune, and again the old man’s
meaning was in his mere presence, so that whether he talked about the
stars or the earth or the ways of men, he made Hazen know fascinating
things about them all. And now Hazen listened far differently from the
way that he had listened that other time when they had talked, and it
was as if the words had grown, and as if they meant more than once they
had meant.
Now, whoever has stood for the first time in a great, empty castle
knows that there is one thing that he longs to do above all other
things, and this is to explore. And when the afternoon lay brooding
upon the air, and slanting sun fell through the dusty lattices, Hazen
asked the old man eagerly if he might wander through the rooms.
“As freely,” answered the old man, willingly, “as if you were the
castle’s prince.”
Thus it chanced that, after all the years, Hazen, though he was far
from dreaming the truth, was once more roaming through the rooms of his
birthplace and treading the floors that had once echoed the step of his
father, the king.
It was a wonderful place, the like of which Hazen thought he had never
seen before, save only in the palace of the father of the princess.
Above stairs the rooms had hardly been disturbed since that old day of
the hurried flight of all his father’s court. There was a great room
of books, as rich in precious volumes as the king’s library which he
already knew, and there, though this he could not guess, his own father
had been wont to sit late in the night, consulting learned writers and
dreaming of the future of his little son. There was the chapel, where
they had brought Hazen himself to be christened, in the presence of all
the court; there the long banqueting room to which he had once been
carried so that the nobles might pledge him their fealty, the arched
roof echoing their shouts. The throne room, the council room, the state
drawing rooms--through all these, with their dim, dusty hangings and
rich, faded furnishings, Hazen footed; and at last, up another stair,
he came to the private apartments of the king and queen themselves.
Breathing the life of another time the rooms lay, as if partly
remembering and partly expecting. In the king’s room was the hunting
suit that he had thrown off just before the attack, the book that he
had been reading, the chart that he had consulted. In the queen’s
room were tarnished golden toilet articles and ornaments, and in her
wardrobe her very robes hung, dusty and mouldering, the gold thread and
gold fringes showing black and sad.
And then Hazen entered a room which seemed to have been a child’s
room--and it was his room, of his first babyhood. Something in him
stirred and kindled, almost as if his body remembered, though his mind
could not do so. Toys lay scattered about--tops, a football, books, and
a bank. The pillow of the small white bed was indented as if from the
pressure of a little head, and a pair of tiny shoes, one upright, one
overturned, were on the floor. Hazen picked up one little shoe and held
it for a minute in his hand. He wondered if some of the little garments
of the child, whoever he was, might not be in the hanging room. And he
opened the closed door.
The door led to a closet and, as he had guessed, little garments were
hanging there. But it was not these that caught his eye and held him
breathless and spellbound on the threshold. On the high shelf of the
closet stood a small glass casket. And in the casket was a little bit
of live thing that fluttered piteously, as if begging to be released,
and frantic with joy at the coming of light from without.
Hazen’s heart beat as he took the casket in his hand. It was the most
wonderful little box that ever he had seen. And the little living thing
was something like a fairy and something like a spirit and so beautiful
that it seemed to Hazen that he must have it for his own. Something
stirred and kindled in his mind so that it was almost a memory, and he
said to himself:--
“I have seen a casket like this. I have _had_ a casket like this. Nay,
but the very earliest thing that ever I can remember is a casket like
this from which no one knew how to release this little living spirit.”
For the little spirit was fast in the crystal prison, and if one broke
the casket, one would almost certainly harm the spirit--but what other
way was there to do?
With the casket in his hand and the little spirit fluttering within,
Hazen ran back below stairs to the old man.
“Look!” Hazen cried. “This casket! It is from the closet shelf of some
child’s room. I remember a casket such as this, and within it a little
living spirit. I have _had_ a casket such as this! What does it mean?”
Then the old man, who had been keeper there when the castle was taken,
trembled and peered into Hazen’s face.
“Who are you?” the old man cried. “Who are you--and what is your name?”
“Alas,” said Hazen, sadly, “I was but the furnace boy to the king of a
neighbouring country, and who I am I do not know. But as for my name,
that is Hazen, and I know not what else.”
Then the old man cried out, and tried to bow himself, and to kiss
Hazen’s hand.
“Prince Hazen!” cried he. “You are no other. Ah, God be praised. You
are the son of my own beloved king.”
As well as he could for his joy and agitation, the old man told Hazen
everything: how the castle had been taken by that king of a neighbour
country--who did _not_ know that neighbours are nearly one’s own
family--how Hazen had been made prisoner, and how he was really heir
to this kingdom and to all its ample lands. And how the magic casket,
which after all these years the old man now remembered, was to make
Hazen, and no other, wise and _really_ good and loved and beautiful,
if only the little spirit could be freed.
“But how am I to do that?” Hazen cried. “For to break the casket would
be to harm the spirit. And what other way is there to do?”
“Alas,” answered the old man, “that I do not know. I think that this
you must do alone. As for me, my life is almost spent. And now that I
have seen you, my prince, the son of my dear sovereign, there is left
to me but to die in peace.”
At this, Hazen, remembering how much he owed the wonderful old man for
that enchanted talk in the wood, when he had taught him fascinating
things about the stars and the earth and the ways of men, and had shown
him the inside of his own head and all those Selves of his and he their
king if he would be so--remembering all these things Hazen longed to do
something for him in return. But what could he do for him, he the heir
of a conquered kingdom and a desolate palace? Yet the old man had been
his father’s servant; and it was he whom the Thought at the fountain
had bidden him to help; but chiefly Hazen’s heart overflowed with
simple pity and tenderness for the helpless one. And in that pity the
Thought spoke again:--
“Give him the casket,” it said.
Hazen hesitated--and in an instant his head was a chaos of voices. It
was as if all the little Selves, even those which had now long been
silent, were listening, were suddenly fighting among themselves in open
combat to see what they could make Hazen do.
“That beautiful thing!” cried the Beauty Self. “Keep it--keep it,
Hazen!”
“You will never have another chance at a fortune if you give it up!”
cried the Discontented Self.
“If you throw away your chance at a fortune, your life will be a life
of hard work--and where will your good time come in?” cried the little
Fun Self, anxiously.
“You will have only labour and no leisure for learning--” warned the
Knowledge Self.
“What of the Princess Vista? Do you not owe it to her to keep the
casket? And is it not _right_ that you should keep the casket and grow
wise and _really_ good and loved and beautiful?” they all argued in
turn. And above them all sounded the terrible, cracked voice of the
dwarf, not laughing now, but fighting for his life:--
“Fool! Nothing counts but your chance at fortune. If you part with the
casket, you part with _me!_”
But sweet and clear through the clamour sounded the solemn insisting of
the Thought:--
“Give him the casket--give him the casket, Hazen.”
Quickly Hazen knelt beside the old man, and placed the magic casket in
his hands.
“Lo,” said Prince Hazen, “I have nothing to give you, save only this.
But it may be that we can yet find some way to release the spirit and
that then you can have the good fortune that this will give. Take the
casket--it is yours.”
In an instant, and noiselessly, the magic casket fell in pieces in
Hazen’s hands, and vanished. And with a soft sound of escaping wings
the little spirit rose joyously and fluttered toward Hazen, and
alighted on his breast. There were sudden sweetness and light in all
the place, and a happiness that bewildered Hazen--and when he looked
again, the little spirit had disappeared--but his own breast was filled
with something new and marvellous, as if strange doors to himself had
opened, and as if the spirit had found lodging there forever.
In the clear silence following upon the babel of the little voices
of all the mean and petty Selves, Hazen was aware of a voice echoing
within him like music; and he knew the Thought now better than he knew
himself, who had so many Selves, and he knew that when it spoke to him
softly, softly, he would always hear.
“If you had kept the magic casket for yourself,” it said, “the spirit
would have drooped and died. _It was only by giving the casket away
that the spirit could ever be free._ It was only when the spirit became
yours that you could hope to be wise and good and beautiful and worthy
to be loved. And now where is the Princess Vista’s picture-book?”
All this time Hazen had not lost the picture-book of the princess,
and now it was lying on the floor near where he was that night
to have slept. He caught it up and turned the pages, and the old
familiar pictures which the princess had shown him that morning in the
window-seat made him long, as he had not longed since he had left the
palace, to see her again.
He turned to the old man.
“There is a certain princess--” he began.
“Ay,” said the old man, gently, “so there is always, my prince. Go to
her.”