Chapter I: Part 1

THE HOUSE OF JOY

THE HOUSE
OF JOY

BY LAURENCE
HOUSMAN

1895

LONDON: KEGAN PAUL
TRENCH TRÜBNER & CO.]

CONTENTS

THE PRINCE WITH THE NINE SORROWS _Page_ 1

THE LUCK OF THE ROSES 23

THE WHITE KING 35

THE STORY OF THE HERONS 51

SYRINGA 85

THE TRAVELLER’S SHOES 101

THE MOON-FLOWER 135

HAPPY RETURNS 169

THE PRINCE WITH THE NINE SORROWS

_TO_
CLARE AND IDA

THE PRINCE WITH THE NINE SORROWS

_Eight-white peahens went down to the gate:_
_“Wait!” they said, “little sister, wait!”_
_They covered her up with feathers so fine;_
_And none went out, when there went back nine._

A long time ago there lived a King and a Queen, who had an only son. As soon as he was born his mother gave him to the forester’s wife to be nursed; for she herself had to wear her crown all day and had no time for nursing. The forester’s wife had just given birth to a little daughter of her own; but she loved both children equally and nursed them together like twins.

One night the Queen had a dream that made the half of her hair turn grey. She dreamed that she saw the Prince her son at the age of twenty lying dead with a wound over the place of his heart; and near him his foster-sister was standing, with a royal crown on her head, and his heart bleeding between her hands.

The next morning the Queen sent in great haste for the family Fairy, and told her of the dream. The Fairy said, “This can have but one meaning, and it is an evil one. There is some danger that threatens your son’s life in his twentieth year, and his foster-sister is to be the cause of it; also, it seems she is to make herself Queen. But leave her to me, and I will avert the evil chance; for the dream coming beforehand shows that the Fates mean that he should be saved.”

The Queen said, “Do anything; only do not destroy the forester’s wife’s child, for as yet at least, she has done no wrong. Let her only be carried away to a safe place and made secure and treated well. I will not have my son’s happiness grow out of another one’s grave.”

The Fairy said, “Nothing is so safe as a grave when the Fates are awake. Still, I think I can make everything quite safe within reason, and leave you a clean as well as a quiet conscience.”

The little Prince and the forester’s daughter grew up together till they were a year old; then, one day, when their nurse came to look for them, the Prince was found, but his foster-sister was lost; and though the search for her was long, she was never seen again, nor could any trace of her be found.

The baby Prince pined and pined, and was so sorrowful over her loss that they feared for a time that he was going to die. But his foster-mother, in spite of her grief over her own child’s disappearance, nursed him so well and loved him so much that after a while he recovered his strength.

Then the forester’s wife gave birth to another daughter, as if to console herself for the loss of the first. But the same night that the child was born the Queen had just the same dream over again. She dreamed that she saw her son lying dead at the age of twenty; and there was the wound in his breast, and the forester’s daughter was standing by with his heart in her hand and a royal crown upon her head.

The poor Queen’s hair had gone quite white when she sent again for the family Fairy, and told her how the dream had repeated itself. The Fairy gave her the same advice as before, quieting her fears, and assuring her that however persistent the Fates might be in threatening the Prince’s life, all in the end should be well.

Before another year was passed the second of the forester’s daughters had disappeared; and the Prince and his foster-mother cried themselves ill over a loss that had been so cruelly renewed. The Queen, seeing how great were the sorrow and the love that the Prince bore for his foster-sisters, began to doubt in her heart and say, “What have I done? Have I saved my son’s life by taking away his heart?”

Now every year the same thing took place, the forester’s wife giving birth to a daughter, and the Queen on the same night having the same fearful dream of the fate that threatened her son in his twentieth year; and afterwards the family Fairy would come, and then one day the forester’s wife’s child would disappear, and be heard of no more.

At last when nine daughters in all had been born to the forester’s wife and lost to her when they were but a year old, the Queen fell very ill. Every day she grew weaker and weaker, and the little Prince came and sat by her, holding her hand and looking at her with a sorrowful face. At last one night (it was just a year after the last of the forester’s children had disappeared) she woke suddenly, stretching out her arms and crying. “Oh, Fairy,” she cried, “the dream, the dream!” And covering her face with her hands, she died.

The little Prince was now more than ten years old, and the very saddest of mortals. He said that there were nine sorrows hidden in his heart, of which it could not get rid; and that at night, when all the birds went home to roost, he heard cries of lamentation and pain; but whether these came from very far away, or out of his own heart he could not tell.

Yet he grew slenderly and well, and had such grace and tenderness in his nature that all who saw him loved him. His foster-mother, when he spoke to her of his nine sorrows, tried to comfort him, calling him her own nine joys; and, indeed, he was all the joy left in life for her.

When the Prince neared his twentieth year, the King his father felt that he himself was becoming old and weary of life. “I shall not live much longer,” he thought: “very soon my son will be left alone in the world. It is right, therefore, now that he should know what is the danger that threatens his life.” For till then the Prince had not known anything; all had been kept a secret between the Queen and the King and the family Fairy.

The old King knew of the Prince’s nine sorrows, and often he tried to believe that they came by chance, and had nothing to do with the secret that sat at the root of his son’s life. But now he feared more and more to tell the Prince the story of those nine dreams, lest the knowledge should indeed serve but as the crowning point of his sorrows, and altogether break his heart for him.

Yet there was so much danger in leaving the thing untold that at last he summoned the Prince to his bedside, meaning to tell him all. The King had worn himself so ill with anxiety and grief in thinking over the matter, that now to tell all was the only means of saving his life.

The Prince came and knelt down, and leaned his head on his father’s pillow; and the King whispered into his ear the story of the dreams, and of how for his sake all the Prince’s foster-sisters had been spirited away.

Before his tale was done he could no longer bear to look into his son’s face, but closed his eyes, and, with long silences between, spoke as one who prayed.

When he had ended he lay quite still, and the Prince kissed his closed eyelids and went softly out of the room.

“Now I know,” he said to himself; “now at last!” And he came through the wood and knocked at his foster-mother’s door. “Other mother,” he said to her, “give me a kiss for each of my sisters, for now I am going out into the world to find them, to be rid of the sorrows in my heart.”

“They can never be found!” she cried, but she kissed him nine times. “And this,” she said, “was Monica, and this was Ponica, and this was Veronica,” and so she went over every name. “But now they are only names!” she wept, as she let him go.

He went along, and he went along, and he went along. “Where may you be going to, fair sir?” asked an old peasant at whose cabin the Prince sought shelter when night came to the first day of his wanderings. “Truly,” answered the Prince, “I do not know how far or whither I need to go; but I have a finger-post in my heart that keeps pointing me.”

So that night he stayed there, and the next day he went on.

“Where to so fast?” asked a wood-cutter when the second night found him in the thickest and loneliest parts of the forest. “Here the night is so dark and the way so dangerous, one like you should not go alone.”

“Nay, I know nothing,” said the Prince, “only I feel like a weather-cock in a wind that keeps turning me to its will!”

After many days he came to a small long valley rich in woods and water-courses, but no road ran through it. More and more it seemed like the world’s end, a place unknown, or forgotten of its old inhabitants. Just at the end of the valley, where the woods opened into clear slopes and hollows toward the west, he saw before him, low and overgrown, the walls of a little tumble-down grange. “There,” he said to himself when he saw it, “I can find shelter for to-night. Never have I felt so tired before, or such a pain at my heart!”

Before long he came to a little gate and a winding path that led in among lawns and trees to the door of an old house. The house seemed as if it had been once lived in, but there was no sign of any life about it now. He pushed open the door, and suddenly there was a sharp rustling of feathers, and nine white peahens rose up from the ground and flew out of the window into the garden.

The Prince searched the whole house over, and found it a mere ruin; the only signs of life to be seen were the white feathers that lifted and blew about over the floors.

Outside, the garden was gathering itself together in the dusk, and the peahens were stepping daintily about the lawns, picking here and there between the blades of grass. They seemed to suit the gentle sadness of the place, which had an air of grief that has grown at ease with itself.

The Prince went out into the garden, and walked about among the quietly stepping birds; but they took no heed of him. They came picking up their food between his very feet, as though he were not there. Silence held all the air, and in the cleft of the valley the day drooped to its end.

Just before it grew dark, the nine white peahens gathered together at the foot of a great elm, and lifting up their throats they wailed in chorus. Their lamentable cry touched the Prince’s heart; “where,” he asked himself, “have I heard such sorrow before?” Then all with one accord the birds sprang rustling up to the lowest boughs of the elm, and settled themselves to roost.

The Prince went back to the house, to find some corner amid its half-ruined rooms to sleep in. But there the air was close, and an unpleasant smell of moisture came from the floor and walls: so, the night being warm, he returned to the garden, and folding himself in his cloak lay down under the tree where the nine peahens were at roost.

For a long time he tried to sleep, but could not, there was so much pain and sorrow in his heart.

Presently when it was close upon midnight, over his head one of the birds stirred and ruffled through all its feathers; and he heard a soft voice say:

“Sisters, are you awake?”

All the other peahens lifted their heads, and turned toward the one that spoke, saying, “Yes, sister, we are awake.”

Then the first one said again, “Our brother is here.”

They all said, “He is our enemy; it is for him that we endure this sorrow.”

“To-night,” said the first, “we may all be free.”

They answered, “Yes, we may all be free! Who will go down and peck out his heart? Then we shall be free.”

And the first who had spoken said, “I will go down!”

“Do not fail, sister!” said all the others. “For if you fail you can speak to us no more.”

The first peahen answered, “Do not fear that I shall fail!” And she began stepping down the long boughs of the elm.

The Prince lying below heard all that was said. “Ah! poor sisters,” he thought, “have I found you at last; and are all these sorrows brought upon you for me?” And he unloosed his doublet, and opened his vest, making his breast bare for the peahen to come and peck out his heart.

He lay quite still with his eyes shut, and when she reached the ground the peahen found him lying there, as it seemed to her fast asleep, with his white breast bare for the stroke of her beak.

Then so fair he looked to her, and so gentle in his youth, that she had pity on him, and stood weeping by his side, and laying her head against his, whispered, “O, brother, once we lay as babes together and were nursed at the same breast! How can I peck out your heart?”

Then she stole softly back into the tree, and crouched down again by her companions. They said to her, “Our minute of midnight is nearly gone. Is there blood on your beak! Have you our brother’s heart for us?” But the other answered never a word.

In the morning the peahens came rustling down out of the elm, and went searching for fat carnation buds and anemone seeds among the flower-beds in the garden. To the Prince they showed no sign either of hatred or fear, but went to and fro carelessly, pecking at the ground about his feet. Only one came with drooping head and wings, and sleeked itself to his caress, and the Prince, stooping down, whispered in her ear, “O, sister, why did you not peck out my heart.”

At night, as before, the peahens all cried in chorus as they went up into the elm; and the Prince came and wrapped himself in his cloak, and lay down at the foot of it to watch.

At midnight the eight peahens lifted their heads, and said, “Sister, why did you fail last night?” But their sister gave them not a word.

“Alas!” they said, “now she has failed, unless one of us succeed we shall never hear her speak with her human voice again. Why is it that you weep so,” they said again, “now when deliverance is so near?” For the poor peahen was shaken with weeping, and her tears fell down in loud drops upon the ground.

Then the next sister said, “I will go down! He is asleep. Be certain, I will not fail!” So she climbed softly down the tree, and the Prince opened his shirt and laid his breast bare for her to come and take out his heart.

Presently she stood by his side, and when she saw him, she too had pity on him for the youth and kindness of his face. And once she shut her eyes, and lifted her head for the stroke; but then weakness seized her, and she laid her head softly upon his heart and said, “Once the breast that gave me milk gave milk also to you. You were my sister’s brother, and she spared you: so how can I peck out your heart?” And having said this she went softly back into the tree, and crouched down again among her sisters.

They said to her, “Have you blood upon your beak? Is his heart ours?” But she answered them no word.

The next day the two sisters, who because their hearts betrayed them had become mute, followed the Prince wherever he went, and stretched up their heads to his caress. But the others went and came indifferently, careless except for food; for until midnight their human hearts were asleep; only now the two sisters who had given their voices away had regained their human hearts perpetually.

That night the same thing happened as before. “Sisters,” said the youngest, “to-night I will go down, since the two eldest of us have failed. My wrong is fresher in my heart than theirs! Be sure I shall not fail!” So the youngest peahen came down from the tree, and the Prince laid his heart bare for her beak, but the bird could not find the will to peck it out. And so it was the next night, and the next, until eight nights were gone.

So at last only one peahen was left. At midnight she raised her head, saying, “Sisters, are you awake?”

They all turned, and gazed at her weeping, but could say no word.

Then she said, “You have all failed, having all tried but me. Now if I fail we shall remain mute and captive for ever, more undone by the loss of our last remaining gift of speech than we were at first. But I tell you, dear sisters, I will not fail; for the happiness of you all lies with me now!”

Then she went softly down the tree; and one by one they all went following her, and weeping, to see what the end would be.

They stood some way apart, watching with upturned heads, and their poor throats began catching back a wish to cry as the little peahen, the last of the sisters, came and stood by the Prince.

Then she, too, looked in his face, and saw the white breast made bare for her beak; and the love of him went deep down into her heart. And she tried and tried to shut her eyes and deal the stroke, but could not.

She trembled and sighed, and turned to look at her sisters, where they all stood weeping silently together. “They have spared him,” she said to herself: “why should not I?”

But the Prince, seeing that she, too, was about to fail like the rest of them, turned and said, as if in his sleep, “Come, come, little peahen, and peck out my heart!”

At that she turned back again to him, and laid her head down upon his heart and cried more sadly than them all.

Then he said, “You have eight sisters, and a mother who cries for her children to return!” Yet still she thought he was dreaming, and speaking only in his sleep. The other peahens came no nearer, but stood weeping silently. She looked from him to them. “O,” she cried, “I have a wicked heart, to let one stand in the way of nine!” Then she threw up her neck and cried lamentably with her peafowl’s voice, wishing that the Prince would wake up and see her, and so escape. And at that all the other peahens lifted up their heads and wailed with her: but the Prince never turned, nor lifted a finger, nor uttered a sound.

Then she drew in a deep breath, and closed her eyes fast. “Let my sisters go, but let me be as I am!” she cried; and with that she stooped down, and pecked out his heart.

All her sisters shrieked as their human shapes returned to them. “O, sister! O, wicked little sister!” they cried, “What have you done!”

The little white peahen crouched close down to the side of the dead Prince. “I loved him more than you all!” she tried to say: but she only lifted her head, and wailed again and again the peafowl’s cry.

The Prince’s heart lay beating at her feet, so glad to be rid of its nine sorrows that mere joy made it live on, though all the rest of the body lay cold.

The peahen leaned down upon the Prince’s breast, and there wailed without ceasing: till suddenly, piercing with her beak her own breast, she drew out her own living heart and laid it in the place where his had been.

And, as she did so, the wound where she had pierced him closed and became healed; and her heart was, as it were, buried in the Prince’s breast. In her death agony she could feel it there, her own heart leaping within his breast for joy.

The Prince, who had seemed to be dead, flushed from head to foot as the warmth of life came back to him; with one deep breath he woke, and found the little white peahen lying as if dead between his arms.

Then he laughed softly and rose (his goodness making him wise), and taking up his own still beating heart he laid it into the place of hers. At the first beat of it within her breast, the peahen became transformed as all her sisters had been, and her own maiden form came back to her. And the pain and the wound in her breast grew healed together, so that she stood up alive and well in the Prince’s arms.

“Dear heart!” said he: and “Dear, dear heart!” said she; but whether they were speaking of their own hearts or of each other’s, who can tell? for which was which they themselves did not know.

Then all round was so much embracing and happiness that it is out of reach for tongue or pen to describe. For truly the Prince and his foster-sisters loved each other dearly, and could put no bounds upon their present contentment. As for the Prince and the one who had plucked out his heart, of no two was the saying ever more truly told, that they had lost their hearts to each other; nor was ever love in the world known before that carried with it such harmony as theirs.

And so it all came about according to the Queen’s dream that the forester’s daughter wore the royal crown upon her head, and held the Prince’s heart in her hand.

Long before he died the old King was made happy because the dream that he had feared so much had become true: and the forester’s wife was happy before she died: and as for the Prince and his wife and his foster-sisters, they were all rather happy: and none of them is dead yet.

THE LUCK OF THE ROSES

_TO_
CLEMENCE

THE LUCK OF THE ROSES

Not far from a great town, in the midst of a well-wooded valley, lived a rose-gardener and his wife. All round the old home green sleepy hollows lay girdled by silver streams, long grasses bent softly in the wind, and the half fabulous murmur of woods filled the air.

Up in their rose-garden, on the valley’s side facing the sun, the gardener and his wife lived contentedly sharing toil and ease. They had been young, they were not yet old; and though they had to be frugal they did not call themselves poor. A strange fortune had belonged always to the plot of ground over which they laboured; whether because the soil was so rich, or the place so sheltered from cold, or the gardener so skilled in the craft, which had come down in his family from father to son, could not be known; but certainly it was true that his rose-trees gave forth better bloom and bore earlier and later through the season than any others that were to be found in those parts.

The good couple accepted what came to them, simply and gladly, thanking God. Perhaps it was from the kindness of fortune, or perhaps because the sweet perfume of the roses had mixed itself in their blood, that her man and his wife were so sweet-tempered and gentle in their ways. The colour of the roses was in their faces, and the colour of the rose was in their hearts; to her man she was the most beautiful and dearest of sweethearts, to his wife he was the best and kindest of lovers.

Every morning, before it was light, her man and his wife would go into the garden and gather all the roses that were ripe for sale; then with full baskets on their backs they would set out, and get to the market just as the level sunbeams from the east were striking all the vanes and spires of the city into gold. There they would dispose of their flowers to the florists and salesmen of the town, and after that trudge home again to hoe, and dig, and weed, and water, and prune, and plant for the rest of the day. No man ever saw them the one without the other, and the thought that such a thing might some day happen was the only fear and sorrow of their lives.

That they had no children of their own was scarcely a sorrow to them. “It seems to me,” said her man after they had been married for some years, “that God means that our roses are to be our children since He has made us love them so much. They will last when we are grown grey, and will support and comfort us in our old age.”

All the roses they had were red, and varied little in kind, yet her man and his wife had a name for each of them; to every tree they had given a name, until it almost seemed that the trees knew, and tried to answer when they heard the voices which spoke to them.

“Jane Janet, and you ought to blossom more freely at your age!” his wife might say to one some evening as she went round and watered the flowers; and the next day, when the two came to their dark morning’s gathering, Jane Janet would show ten or twelve great blooms under the light of the lantern, every one of them the birth of a single night.

“Mary Maudlin,” the gardener would say, as he washed the blight off a favourite rose, “to be sure, you are very beautiful, but did I not love you so, you were more trouble than all your sisters put together.” And then all at once great dew-drops would come tumbling down out of Mary Maudlin’s eyes at the tender words of his reproach. So day by day the companionable feet of the happy couple moved to and fro, always intent on the tender nurturing of their children.

In their garden they had bees too, who drew all their honey from the roses, and lived in a cone-thatched hive close under the porch; and that honey was famous through all the country-side, for its flavour was like no other honey made in the world.

Sometimes his wife said to her man, “I think our garden is looked after for us by some good Spirit; perhaps it is the Saints after whom we have named our rose-children.”

Her man made answer, “It is rich in years, which, like an old wine, have made it gain in flavour; it has been with us from father to son for three hundred years, and that is a great while.”

“A full fairy’s lifetime!” said his wife. “’Tis a pity we shall not hand it on, being childless.”

“When we two die,” said her man, “the roses will make us a grave and watch over us.” As he spoke a whole shower of petals fell from the trees.

“Did no one pass, just then?” said his wife.

Now one morning, soon after this, in the late season of roses, her man had gone before his wife into the garden, gathering for the market in the grey dusk before dawn; and wherever he went moths and beetles came flocking to the light of his lantern, beating against its horn shutters and crying to get in. Out of each rose, as the light fell on it, winged things sprang up into the darkness; but all the roses were bowed and heavy as if with grief. As he picked them from the stem great showers of dew fell out of them, making pools in the hollow of his palm.

There was such a sound of tears that he stopped to listen, and, surely, from all round the garden came the “drip, drip” of falling dew. Yet the pathways under foot were all dry: there had been no rain and but little dew. Whence was it, then, that the roses so shook and sobbed? For under the stems, surely, there was something that sobbed; and suddenly the light of the lantern took hold of a beautiful small figure, about three feet high, dressed in old rose and green, that went languidly from flower to flower. She lifted up such tired hands to draw their heads down to hers; and to each one she kissed she made a weary little sound of farewell, her beautiful face broken up with grief; and now and then out of her lips ran soft chuckling laughter, as if she still meant to be glad, but could not.

The gardener broke into tears to behold a sight so pitiful; and his wife had stolen out silently to his side, and was weeping too.

“Drip, drip” went the roses: wherever she came and kissed, they all began weeping. The gardener and his wife knelt down and watched her; in and out, in and out, not a rose-blossom did she miss. She came nearer and nearer, and at last was standing before them. She seemed hardly able to draw limb after limb, so weak was she; and her filmy garments hung heavy as chains.

A little voice said in their ears, “Kiss me, I am dying!”

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 dress. 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 at last she might die and pass into nothing.

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 themselves 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.

THE WHITE KING

_TO_
KATE

THE WHITE KING

Long years ago there was living a Queen who could not keep count of the countries over which she ruled. Her wealth and her wonderful beauty made her an apple of discord to all the kings who lived round about her borders. For love of her they waged perpetual war upon one another, and every king who proved victorious made a gift to the Queen of the country of the one whom he had conquered, in the hopes of thereby strengthening his claim to her favour. Thus it came about that she could no longer keep count of the lands which had fallen under her rule; yet still of all her suitors she chose none.

Now at this time there was one King, and only one, who had not succeeded in losing his heart to the Queen’s majesty, in spite of her wealth and power, and all her wonderful beauty. And so, during a long time, since his fancy was thus free, he was left in undisturbed peace and prosperity, while other kings fought out their jealous battles, and stole away each other’s lands. And because his reign was so quiet and his country in such rest, his people, for a pet-name and for their pride in him, named him “the White King.”

Now after a time the Queen took it as an insult that any one should be so indifferent to the power of her charms, and she began to threaten him with war for this reason and for that, wishing thereby to cajole him into becoming her suitor. But the White King saw through all the disguises with which she covered her meaning, and understood the arrogance of her claim; so one day he sent to her as a gift a statue of himself with his sword sheathed, and all his armour covered over with the cloak of peace. Round the base of it was written

“When a heart in stone doth move,
Then your lover I may prove;
But until the marvel’s done,
Fruitlessly your wars are won.”

The Queen looked once at the statue, and for a long time after never looked away; and when at last she did her heart had been taken captive. Then she looked at the words beneath, and the red flush that rose to her face was not gone when the last of her army passed out of the city gates to carry war into the country of the man who had dared thus to speak scorn of her.

For a whole year the White King fought with the forces she sent against him; but when all the other kings came to her aid, then, stronghold by stronghold, all his cities were taken, and his lands were laid waste and their villages burnt, and nothing but defeat and ruin remained.

Yet in the last battle, when his enemies thought to have him a safe prisoner, all of a sudden they found that the White King had disappeared.

Back came the Queen’s armies in triumph with their allies, and the conquered territory was added as one more to the many that formed her realm. But the Queen sighed as she looked at the White King’s statue, and her triumph grew bitter to her. Day by day, as she looked at the calm marble face, her love for it increased, and she owned sadly to herself, “He whom I have conquered has conquered me!”

Of the lost King himself no tidings could be learned, though search was made far and wide. Minstrels came to the court, and sang of his great deeds in fighting against odds, but of his end they sang variously. Some sang that he lay buried beneath the thickest of the slain; others that from his last battle he had been carried by good fairies, and that after he had been healed of his wounds, he would return in a hundred years and recover his kingdom.

One minstrel came to stay at the court, who sang of ruined homes and wasted fields, and a happy land laid desolate, and how its King wandered friendless and unknown through the world, hiding himself in disguise, sometimes in the cottages of the poor, and sometimes in the dwellings of the rich. But from no one could the Queen learn any news that satisfied her, or gave hope that he would at last bend down his pride, and come and sue to her for forgiveness.

Wishing to have a hiding place for her grief, she caused the statue to be set up in a green glade in the most lonely part of the gardens; and there often she would go and gaze on the calm noble face (whose closed eyes seemed even now to disdain her love), and would wonder how long a queen’s heart took to break.

But after a time she thought, “Though I may never win the love of the White King for my own, is there no way by which my passion can assuage itself, when by lifting my finger I can summon half fairyland to my aid?”

So she called to her the most powerful Fairy she knew, and taking her into the green glade, began sighing and weeping in front of the White King’s statue. “This,” she said, “is the image of the only man on earth I can love! But the man himself is lost, gone I know not where; and my heart is breaking for grief! Give this statue a life and a heart, and teach it to love me, else soon I shall surely be dead!”

The Fairy said to her, “All the might of fairyland could not do so much; but a little of it I can do; and if Fate is kind to you, Fate may bring the rest of it to pass.”

“How much can you do?” asked the Queen.

“This only,” said the Fairy, “but even that you must do for yourself: I can but show you the way. Stone is stone, and out of stone I cannot make a heart; but a heart may grow into it, and this is the way to compass it.

“You must find first a man who is loved, but does not love (for if he loves, the statue’s heart when it wakes will turn from you); and him you must kill with your own hand, and take out his heart and bury it beneath the feet of the statue. Then I will work my charms, and gradually, as a flower draws its life out of the ground, so the statue will draw life out of the human heart buried below. And after a little time you will see it move, and in a little time more its senses will come, and it will be able to hear, and see, and speak. But full life will not come to it until it has learned to love. Then, so soon as it learns to love, it will become no longer stone, but a human being.”

But the Queen said, “Supposing its love were to turn from me to another, where should I be then?”

“Surely,” said the Fairy, “the secret will be your own, and the watching of its life as it grows will be yours. Your voice it will hear, your face it will see; whom, then, will it learn to love more than you?”

“Wait, then, till I have found the man,” said the Queen, “and we will do this thing between us!”

She searched long among her court for some man whose heart was whole, but who was himself loved. Generally, however, she found it was all the other way. There was not a man at the court who was not in love, or did not think himself so; and if there were one who had no thought of love, he was too poor and mean for the love of any woman to be his.

But one day the Queen heard a minstrel in the palace court-yard singing and making merry against love. It was that same minstrel who sang only sad songs of the White King’s lands laid waste and himself a wanderer: a fellow with a dark sunburnt face, and thick hair hanging over his eyes. And as he sang and rattled his jests at the courtiers who stood by to listen, the Queen noticed one of her waiting-women looking out of a small lattice, who, as she watched the singer’s face, and listened to his words, had tears running fast down out of her eyes.

“Is this a case,” thought the Queen, “of a man who is loved but who does not love?”

She sent for the minstrel, and said to him, when he stood bending his head before her, “Is this pretty scorn that you cast on love earnest or jest?”

“Nay,” he answered, “I jest in good earnest; for to speak of love in earnest is to jest about it.”

“So,” said the Queen, “you are heart-whole?”

“Why,” said the minstrel, “I doubt if a mouse could find its way in; and if I am heart-whole in your presence, I ought to be safe from all the world!”

“Now,” thought the Queen, “if only my waiting-woman answers the test, here is the heart I will have out!”

Then she bade the minstrel follow her to where stood the White King’s statue, bidding him sit down under it and sing her more of his rhymes about love.

So the minstrel crossed his legs in the long grass and sang. His song became bitter to the Queen’s ears, for he took the words that were round the statue, and rhymed them and chimed them, and threw them laughing in the Queen’s face. She hated him so that she could have poisoned him; but she remembered that his life was necessary for her experiment to reach its end. So she sent instead for a sleepy wine, which she gave him to drink, and presently his voice grew thick and his head dropped down upon his breast, and his legs slid out and brought him down level with the grass. When night came on she left him soundly sleeping with his head between the feet of the White King’s statue.

Then she sent for the waiting-woman and said, “Go down to the White King’s statue, and find for me my handkerchief which I have dropped there.” But as the girl went, the Queen stole secretly after her, and watched her come to where the minstrel lay asleep.

And when the waiting-maid saw him lying so, with his face thrown back, she knelt down in the grass by his side, and putting her arms softly about him, kissed him upon the lips over and over again as though she could never come to an end, and her tears dropped down on to his face, and, as if her mind were gone mad for love of him, the Queen heard her sighing, “Oh, White King, my White King, my Beloved, whom I love, but who loves me not!”

As soon as the waiting-maid was gone, the Queen came softly to the place, and with a sharp knife she cut out the minstrel’s heart and buried it at the base of the statue.

In the morning the minstrel was found lying dead, with his heart gone; and when they washed the dead face and put back the hair that covered the eyes, they found that it was the White King himself.

That day, and for many days after, there were two women weeping in the palace: one was the Queen and the other was the waiting-woman. But the body of the White King they buried close by the statue in the green glade.

Now presently, when the first violence of her grief was over, the Queen came to look at the place; and, sure enough, the Fairy had been there with her spells. When the wind blew the statue swayed gently like a tree in the wind.

The Queen caused gates and barriers to be put up so that no one should enter the glade but herself; only Love found a way, and at night, when all the world was asleep, the waiting-woman crept through a loose pale in the barriers, and came to moan over the place where her lover had been slain.

All night she would lie with her arms round the feet of the White King’s statue, and dream of the dead minstrel whom she had loved and known through all his disguise. And all night long her lips would murmur his name, and whisper over and over again the sad story of her love.

And presently, as the statue drew life from the heart buried beneath its feet, its ears were opened and it heard.

In the daytime the Queen would come and sit before it and whisper to it of love, offering it all the gifts of riches and power that are in the hands of kings to give; but at night came the waiting-woman and offered it only love.

Out of the ground the Queen saw grow a small plant, that began to creep upwards and to wind itself round the base of the statue; and when she saw that its flower was the deadly nightshade, her heart trembled and her conscience made her afraid.

But the waiting-maid, when she saw it, picked the sad blossoms and made a crown for the statue’s head as of pale amethyst and gold: for she said to herself, “Down below my dear lies dead, and the roots of this flower are in his hair.”

One day as the Queen came into the glade, she heard the dead minstrel’s voice, and her heart shook with terror as she saw the statue open its white lips and sing, and recognised the tune and the words as those which had made her heart feel so bitter against him; for she thought, “What if he knows that it is I who have slain him?”

Now that she saw that the stone had its five senses, and could see and speak and hear, she pleaded to it all day out of the greatness of her grief and her love. But the statue never returned her word.

At night, lying with her face bowed between the White King’s statue’s feet, the waiting-woman knew nothing of all this change; only the statue heard and saw and knew. And at last one day as her tears dropped on them, she felt the feet grow warm between her hands; and a voice over her head that she remembered and loved, said, “Little heart, why are you weeping so?”

In the morning the Queen came and found the statue gone. There on the pedestal was only the print of his feet, half covered by the deadly nightshade which had climbed up to his knees and fallen. There it lay heavy and half-withered, clasping the hollows where his feet had been.

The Queen knelt down and caught the bare stone pedestal in her arms. “Oh, Love,” she cried, “have you left me? Oh, White King, my White King, have you betrayed me?” And as she clung there weeping, her lips touched the deadly nightshade; and the nightshade thrilled, and felt joy give new life down into its roots.

It reached up and laid its arms about the Queen, about her throat, and about her feet and about her waist. “Dearly, dearly we love each other,” said the nightshade, “do we not?”

At night the courtiers came, and found only a dead Queen lying, and the statue gone.

But the White King had gone home to his own land to marry the waiting-woman.

THE STORY OF THE HERONS

_TO_
AUDREY AND VERONICA

THE STORY OF THE HERONS

A long time ago there lived a King and a Queen who loved each other dearly. They had both fallen in love at first sight; and as their love began so it went on through all their life. Yet this, which was the cause of all their happiness, was the cause also of all their misfortunes.

In his youth, when he was a beautiful young bachelor, the King had had the ill-luck to attract the heart of a jealous and powerful Fairy; and though he never gave her the least hope or encouragement, when she heard that his love had been won at first sight by a mere mortal, her rage and resentment knew no bounds. She said nothing, however, but bided her time.

After they had been married a year the Queen presented her husband with a little daughter; before she was yet a day old she was the most beautiful object in the world, and life seemed to promise her nothing but fortune and happiness.

The family Fairy came to the blessing of the new-born; and she, looking at it as it lay beautifully asleep in its cradle, and seeing that it had already as much beauty and health as the heart could desire, promised it love as the next best gift it was within her power to offer. The Queen, who knew how much happiness her own love had brought her, was kissing the good Fairy with all the warmth of gratitude, when a black kite came and perched upon the window-sill crying: “And I will give her love at first sight! The first living thing that she sets eyes on she shall love to distraction, whether it be man or monster, prince or pauper, bird, beast or reptile.” And as the wicked Fairy spoke she clapped her wings, and up through the boards of the floor, and out from under the bed, and in through the window, came a crowd of all the ugliest shapes in the world. Thick and fast they came, gathering about the cradle and lifting their heads over the edge of it, waiting for the poor little Princess to wake up and fall in love at first sight with one of them.

Luckily the child was asleep; and the good Fairy, after driving away the black kite and the crowd of beasts it had called to its aid, wrapped the Princess up in a shawl and carried her away to a dark room where no glimmer of light could get in.

She said to the Queen: “Till I can devise a better way, you must keep her in the dark; and when you take her into the open air you must blindfold her eyes. Some day, when she is of a fit age, I will bring a handsome Prince for her; and only to him shall you unblindfold her at last, and make love safe for her.”