healed and invigorated the old man, and he had risen to his feet,
clothed with a new strength. He set about searching in the king’s
wardrobe for suitable garments for his young prince, and in a cedar
chest he found vestments of somewhat ancient pattern, but of so rich
material and so delicately made that the ancient style did but add to
their beauty.
When he had made Hazen ready, there was never a fairer prince in the
world. Then the old man led him below stairs and showed him in a
forgotten room, of which he himself only had the key, a box containing
the jewels of the queen, his mother. So, bearing these, save one with
which he purchased a horse for his needs, Prince Hazen set out for the
palace of the princess.
It chanced that it was early morning when Prince Hazen entered the
palace grounds which he had left as a furnace boy. And you must know
that, since his leaving, years had elapsed; for though he had believed
himself to have stayed with the Merry Lad but one day, and with the
Bookman but a few days, and but a little time on the hills singing
songs, and in byways listening to the voices of Idleness, Strength, and
the rest, and lingering in that fair home where the Dwarf had sent him,
yet in reality with each one he had spent a year and more, so that now
he was like someone else.
But the princess’s father’s palace garden was just the same, and Hazen
entered by the east gate, which still no one could lock; and to be back
within the garden was as wonderful as bathing in the ocean or standing
on a high mountain or seeing the dawn. His horse bore him along between
the flowering shrubs and the hollyhocks; he heard the fountains
plashing and the song-sparrows singing and the village bells faintly
sounding; he saw the goldfish and the water-lilies gleam in the pool,
and the horses cantering about the paddock. And all at once it seemed
to him that the day was his and the world was his, to do with them what
he would.
So he galloped round the east wing of the palace, and looked up
eagerly and longingly toward the princess’s window. And there stood the
Princess Vista, watching. But when she saw him, she drew far back as if
she were afraid. And Prince Hazen, as he bowed low in his saddle, could
think of no word to say to her that seemed a word to be said. He could
only cry up to her:--
“Oh, Princess Vista. Come down! Come down! Come down--and teach me
about the whole world.”
He galloped straight to the great entrance way, and leaped from his
horse, and no one questioned him, for they all knew by his look that he
came with great authority. And he went to the king’s library, to that
room which was as wide as a lawn and as high as a tree, and filled with
mystery, and waited for her, knowing that she would come.
She entered the room almost timidly, as, once upon a time, the little
furnace boy had entered. And when she saw him waiting for her before
the window-seat, nothing could have exceeded her terror and her wonder
and her delight. And now her eyes were looking down, and she did _not_
ask him what he was doing there.
“Oh, Princess Vista,” he said softly, “I love you. I want to be loved!”
“Who are you--that want so much?” the princess asked--but her eyes
knew, and her smile knew.
“Someone who has brought back your picture-book,” said Prince Hazen. “I
pray you, teach it to me again.”
“Nay,” said the princess, softly, “I have taught you a wrong thing. For
I have taught you that there are many suns. And instead there is only
one sun, and it brings only one day--and that day is this day!”
It was so that she welcomed him back.
They went to the king, her father, and told him everything. And when he
knew that his daughter loved Prince Hazen, he restored his kingdom to
him, and named him his own successor. And Hazen was crowned king, with
much magnificence, and his father’s courtiers, who were living, were
returned to his court, and that wise, wonderful old man, who had shown
him the inside of his own head, was given a place of honour near the
king.
But on the day of the coronation, louder than the shouts of the people,
and nearer even than the voice of his queen, sounded that voice of the
wise and good Self, which was but the Thought, deep within the soul of
the king:--
“Hail to Hazen--King of All His Selves!”
XVI
THE WALK
“What’s the latest you ever stayed up?” Delia demanded of Mary
Elizabeth and me.
“I sat up till ten o’clock once when my aunt was coming,” I boasted.
“Once I was on a train that got in at twelve o’clock,” said Mary
Elizabeth, thoughtfully, “but I was asleep till the train got in. Would
you call that sitting up till twelve o’clock?”
On the whole, Delia and I decided that you could not impartially call
it so, and Mary Elizabeth conceded the point. Her next best experience
was dated at only half past nine.
“I was up till eleven o’clock lots of times.” Delia threw out
carelessly.
We regarded her with awe. Here was another glory for her list. Already
we knew that she had slept in a sleeping car, patted an elephant, and
swum four strokes.
“What’s the earliest you ever got up?” Delia pursued.
Here, too, we proved to have nothing to compete with the order of
Delia’s risings. However, this might yet be mended. There seemed never
to be the same household ban on getting up early that there was on
staying up late.
“Let’s get up some morning before four o’clock and take a walk,” I
suggested.
“My brother got up at half past three once,” Mary Elizabeth announced.
“Well,” I said, “let’s get up at half past three. Let’s do it to-morrow
morning.”
Mary Elizabeth and I had stretched a string from a little bell at
the head of her bed to a little bell at the head of my bed. This the
authorities permitted us to ring so long as there was discernible a
light, or any other fixed signal, at the two windows; and also after
seven o’clock in the morning. But of course the time when we both
longed most frantically to pull the cord was when either woke at night
and lay alone in the darkness. In the night I used to put my hand on
the string and think how, by a touch, I could waken Mary Elizabeth,
just as if she were in my room, just as if we were hand in hand. I
used to think what joy it would be if all little children on the same
side of the ocean were similarly provided, and if no one interfered.
A little code of signals arose in my mind, a kind of secret code which
should be heard by nobody save those for whom they were intended--for
sick children, for frightened children, for children just having a bad
dream, for motherless children, for cold or tired or lonely children,
for all children sleepless for any cause. I used to wish that little
signals like this could be rung for all unhappy children, night or day.
Why, with all their inventions, had not grown people invented this? Of
course they would never make things any harder for us than they could
help (we thought). But why had they not done this thing to make things
easier?
The half past three proposal was unanimously vetoed within doors: We
might rise at five o’clock, no earlier. This somewhat took edge from
the adventure, but we accepted it as next best. Delia was to be waked
by an alarm clock. Mary Elizabeth and I felt that, by some mysterious
means, we could waken ourselves; and we two agreed to call each other,
so to say, by the bells.
When I did waken, it was still quite dark, and when I had found light
and a clock, I saw that it was only a little after three. As I had
gone to bed at seven, I was wide awake at three; and it occurred to me
that I would stay up till time to call Mary Elizabeth. This would be
at half past four. Besides, stopping up then presented an undoubted
advantage: It enabled me to skip my bath. Clearly I could not, with
courtesy, risk rousing the household with many waters.
I dressed in the dark, braided my own hair in the dark--by now I could
do this save that the plait, when I brought it over my shoulder, still
would assume a jog--and sat down by the open window. It was one of the
large nights ... for some nights are undeniably larger than others.
When I was on the street with my hand in a grown-up hand, the night
was invariably bounded by trees, fences, houses, lawns, horse-blocks,
and the like. But when I stepped to the door alone at night, I always
noticed that it stretched endlessly away. So it was now. I could slip
out the screen, as I had discovered earlier in the season when I had
felt the need of feeding a nest of house-wrens in the bird-house below
my sill--and I took out the screen now, and leaned out in the darkness.
The stars seemed very near--I am always glad that I did not know how
far away they are, for they looked so friendly near. If only, I used
to think, the clouds would form _behind_ the stars and leave them all
shiny and blurry bright in the rain. What were they? How came they to
be in our world’s sky?
I suppose that I had been ten minutes at the window that morning when
I saw a light briefly flash in Mary Elizabeth’s window. Instantly, I
softly pulled my bell. She answered, and then I could see her, dim in
the window once more dark.
“It isn’t time yet!” she called softly--our houses were very near.
“Not yet,” I answered, “but I’m going to stay up.”
Mary Elizabeth briefly considered this.
“What for?” she propounded.
I had not thought what for.
“To--why to be up early,” I answered confidently. “I’m all dressed.”
The defence must have carried conviction.
“I will, too,” Mary Elizabeth concluded.
She disappeared and, after a suitable time, reappeared at the window,
presumably fully clothed. I detached the bell from my bed and sat with
it in my hand, and I found afterward that she had done the same. From
time to time we each gave the cord a slight, ecstatic pull. The whole
mystery of the great night lay in those gentle signals.
It is unfortunate to have to confess that, after a time, the mystery
palled. But it did. Stars, wide, dark, moonless lawn, empty street,
all these blurred and merged in a single impression. This was one of
chilliness. Even calling through the night at intervals, and at the
imminent risk of being heard, lost its charm, because after a little
while there was nothing left to call. “How still it is!” and “Nobody
but us is up in town,” and “Won’t Delia be mad?” lose their edge when
repeated for about the third time each. Moreover, I was obliged to face
a new foe: I was getting sleepy.
Without undue disturbance of the cord, I managed to consult the clock
once more. It was five minutes of four. There remained more than an
hour to wait! It was I who capitulated.
“Mary Elizabeth,” I said waveringly, “would you care very much if I was
to lay down just a little to rest my eyes?”
“No, I wouldn’t care,” came with significant alacrity. “I will, too.”
I lay down on the covers and pulled a comforter about me. As I drifted
off I remember wondering how the dark ever kept awake all night. For it
was awake. To know that one had only to listen.
We all had a signal which we called a “trill,” made by tongue and
teeth, with almost the force of a boy and a blade of grass. This,
produced furiously beneath my window, was what wakened me. Delia stood
between the two houses, engaged with such absorption in manufacturing
this sound that she failed to see me at the window. A moment after
I had hailed her, Mary Elizabeth appeared at her window, looking
distinctly distraught.
Seeing us fully dressed, Delia’s indignation increased.
“Why didn’t you leave me know you were up?” she demanded shrilly. “It’s
a quarter past five. I been out here fifteen minutes.”
We were assuring her guiltily that we would be right down when there
came an interruption.
“_Delia!_”
Delia’s father, in a gray bath-robe, stood at an upper window of their
house across the street.
“What do you mean by waking up the whole neighbourhood?” he inquired,
not without reason. “Now I want you to come home.”
“We were going walking,” Delia reminded him.
“You are coming home at once after this proceeding,” Delia’s father
assured her. “No more words please, Delia.”
He disappeared from the window. Delia moved reluctantly across the
street. As she went, she threw a resentful glance at Mary Elizabeth and
me, each.
“I’m sorry, Delia!” we called softly in chorus. She made no reply. Mary
Elizabeth and I were left staring at each other down our bell-rope,
no longer taut, but limp, as we had left it earlier.... Even in that
stress, the unearthly sweetness of the morning smote me--the early sun,
the early shadows. It all looked so exactly as if it had expected you
not to be looking. This is the look of outdoors that, _now_, will most
quickly take me back.
“It wouldn’t be fair to go walking without Delia,” said Mary Elizabeth,
abruptly and positively.
“No,” I agreed, with equal decision. Then, “We might as well go back to
bed,” I pursued the subject further.
“Let’s,” said Mary Elizabeth.
XVII
THE GREAT BLACK HUSH
On that special night, which somehow I remember with tenderness, I
sometimes think now--all these years after--that I should like to have
been with those solitary, sleepy little figures, trying so hard to get
near to mystery. I should think that a Star Story must have come in
anybody’s head to tell them. Like this:--
* * * * *
Once, when it didn’t matter to anybody whether you were late or early,
or quick or slow, not only because there wasn’t anybody and there
wasn’t any you, but because it was back in the beginning when there
were no lates and earlies and quicks and slows, _then_ things began to
happen in the middle of the Great Black Hush which was all there was to
everything.
The Great Black Hush reached all the way around the Universe and in
directions without any names, and it was huge and humble and superior
and helpless and mighty and in other ways it was very much indeed like
a man. And as there was nothing to do, the Great Black Hush was bored
past extinction and almost to creation. For there wasn’t anything else
about save only the Wind, and the Wind would have nothing whatever to
do with him and always blew right by.
Now, inasmuch as everything that is now was then going to be created,
it was all waiting somewhere to be created; and nothing is clearer than
that. Lines and colours and musics and tops and blocks and flame and
Noah’s arks and mechanical toys and mountains and paints and planets
and air and water and alphabets and jumping-jacks, all, all, were
waiting to be created, and among them waited people. I cannot tell you
where they waited, because there was no where; but they were waiting,
as anybody can see, for time to be begun.
Among the people who were waiting about was one special baby, who was
just big enough to reach out after everything and to try to put it in
his mouth, and they had an awful time with him. He put his little hands
on coloured things and on flame things and on air and on water and on
musics, and he wanted to know what they all were, and he tried to put
them in his mouth. And his mother was perfectly distracted, and she
told him so, openly.
[Illustration: “TO SEE WHAT RUNNING AWAY IS REALLY LIKE.”]
“Special Baby,” she said to him openly, “I don’t see why every hair
in my head is not pure white. And if you don’t stop making so much
trouble, I’ll run away.”
“Run away,” thought the Special Baby. “Now what thing is that?”
And he stretched out his little hand to see, but there wasn’t anything
there, and he couldn’t put it in his mouth; so without letting anybody
know, he started off all by himself to see what running away is really
like.
He ran and he ran, past lines and colours and blocks and flame and
music and paint and planets, all waiting about to begin, till he began
to notice the Great Black Hush, where it lay all humble and important,
and bored past extinction and almost to creation.
“What thing is that?” thought the Special Baby, and put out his little
hand to get it and put it in his mouth.
So he touched the Great Black Hush, and under the little hand the Great
Black Hush felt as never he had felt before. For the Special Baby’s
hand was soft and wandering and most clinging--any General Baby’s hand
will give you the idea if you care to try. And it made it seem as if
there were something to do.
All through his huge, helpless, superior, and mighty being the Great
Black Hush was stirred, and when the Special Baby was frightened and
would have gone back, the Great Black Hush did the most astonishing
things to try to keep him. He plaited the darkness up like a ruffle
and waved it like a flag and opened it like a flower and shut it like
a door and poured it about like water, all to keep the Special Baby
amused. But though the Special Baby tried to put most of these and
_all_ the dark in his mouth, still on the whole he was badly frightened
and wanted his mother, and he began to cry to show how much he wanted
her. And then the Great Black Hush was at his wits’ end.
“Now, who is there to be the mother of this Special Baby?” he cried in
despair, for there wasn’t anything else anywhere around, save only the
Wind, and the Wind always blew right by. But the blowing by must have
been because the Great Black Hush had never spoken before, for these
were the first words that ever he had said; and the Wind, on hearing
them, stopped still as a stone, and listened.
“Would I do?” the Wind asked, and the Great Black Hush was so
astonished that he almost dropped the Special Baby.
“Would I do?” asked the Wind again, and made the dark like blown
garments and like long, blown hair and tender motions, such as women
make. And she took the Special Baby in her arms and rocked him as
gently as boughs, so that he laughed with delight and tried to put the
wind in his mouth and finally went to sleep, with his beads on.
“_Now_ what’ll we do?” said the Great Black Hush, hanging about, all
helpless and mighty.
“We can get along without a cradle,” said the Wind, “because I will
rock him to sleep in my arms.” (This was before time began and before
they laid them down to go to sleep alone in a dark room.) “But we
ought, we _ought_,” she added, “to have something for him to play with
when he wakes up.” (This was before time began and before anybody ate.
But they always played. That came first.)
“If he had something to play with, what would that look like?” asked
the Great Black Hush, all helpless.
“It musn’t have points like scissors, or ends like string, and the
paint mustn’t come off. I think,” said the Wind, “it ought to look like
a shining ball.”
“By my distance,” said the Great Black Hush, all mighty, “that’s what
it shall look like.”
Then he began to make a plaything, and he worked all over him and all
over everywhere at the fashioning. I don’t know how he did it, because
I wasn’t there, and I can’t reckon how long it took him, because there
wasn’t any time, but I know some things about it all, and one is that
he finally got it done.
“Look!” the Great Black Hush cried to the Wind,--for she paid more
attention to the Special Baby now than she did to him. And when she
looked, there hung in the sky, a great, enormous, shining ball.
“That’s big enough so he can’t get it in his mouth,” she said
approvingly. “It’s really ginginatic.”
“You mean gigantic, dear,” said the Great Black Hush, all superior. But
the Wind didn’t care because words hadn’t been used long enough to fit
closely, and besides he had said “dear” and she knew what _that_ meant.
“Dear” came before “gigantic.”
“Now wake him up,” said the Great Black Hush, “to play with it.”
But this the Wind would by no means do. She said the Special Baby must
have his sleep out or he’d be cross. And the Great Black Hush wondered
however she knew that, and he went away, all humble, and amused himself
making more playthings till the baby woke up. And all the playthings
looked like shining balls, because that was the only kind of plaything
the Wind had told him to make and he didn’t know whether anything
else would do. So he made them by the thousands and started them all
swinging because he thought the Special Baby would like them to do that.
By-and-by--there was always by-and-by before there was any time, and
that is why so many people prefer it--when he couldn’t stay any longer,
he went back where the Wind waited, cuddling the Special Baby close.
“Sh-h-h-h,” said the Wind, but she was too late, and the Special Baby
woke up, with wide eyes and a smile in them.
But he wasn’t cross. For the minute he opened his eyes he saw all
the thousands of shining balls hanging in the darkness and swinging,
swinging, and he crowed with delight and stretched out his little hands
for them, but they were so big he couldn’t put them in his mouth and so
he might reach out all he pleased.
“_Ho_,” said the Great Black Hush, “now everything is as it never was
before.”
But the Wind sighed a little.
“I wish everything were more so,” she said. “I ought to have a place to
take the Special Baby and make his clothes and mend his socks and tie
on his shoes and rub his little back. Also, I want to learn a lullaby,
and this is so public.”
Then the Great Black Hush thought and thought, and remembered that away
back on the Outermost Way and beneath the Wild Wing of Things, there
was a tidy little place that might be just the thing. It was _not_ up
to date, because there wasn’t any date, but still he thought it might
be just the thing.
“By the welkin,” he said, “I know a place that is the place. I’ll go
and sweep it out.”
“Not so fast,” said the Wind, gently. “I go also. I want to be sure
that there are enough closets--” or whatever would have corresponded to
that before there was any Modern at all.
So the three went away together and groped about on the Outermost Way
and beneath the Wild Wing of Things, and there the Wind swept it out
tidily and there they made their home. And when it was all done,--which
took a great while because the Wind kept wanting additions put
on,--they came out and sat at the door of the place, the Great Black
Hush and the Wind and the Special Baby between.
And as they did that a wonderful thing was true. For now that the
Great Black Hush had withdrawn to his new home, lo, all the swinging
plaything balls were shining through space, and there was light. And
the man and the woman and the child at the door of the first home
looked in one another’s faces. And the man and the woman were afraid of
the light and their look clung each to the other’s in that fear; but
the Special Baby stretched out his little hands and tried to put the
light in his mouth.
“Don’t, dear,” said the woman, and her voice sounded quite natural.
“Pay attention to me and not to the Baby,” said the man, and _his_
voice sounded quite natural, and very mighty, so that the woman
obeyed--until the Special Baby wanted her again.
And that was when she made her lullaby, and it was the first song:--
WIND SONG[B]
Horn of the morning!
And the little night pipings fail.
The day is launched like a hollow ship
With the sun for a sail.
The way is wide and blue and lone
With all its miles inviolate
Save for the swinging stars we’ve sown
And a thistle of cloud remote and blown.
Oh, I passion for something nearer than these!
How shall I know that this live thing is I
With only the morning for proof and the sky?
I long for a music more soft to its keys,
For a touch that shall teach me the new sureties.
Give me some griefs and some loyalties
And a child’s mouth on my own!
Lullaby, lullaby,
Babe of the world, swing high,
Swing low.
I am a mother you never may know,
But oh
And oh, how long the wind will know you,
With lullabies for the dead night through.
Babe of the earth, as I blow ...
Swing high,
To touch at the sky,
And at last lie low.
Lullaby....
[B] Reproduced by permission of _The Craftsman_.