Part 2

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

[Illustration]

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.