Part 3

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

[Illustration]

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.”

She went, leaving the King and Queen deeply stricken with grief over the harm which had befallen their daughter. They did not dare to present even themselves before her eyes lest love for them, fatal and consuming, should drive her to distraction. In utter darkness the Queen would sit and cherish her daughter, clasping her to her breast, and calling her by all sweet names; but the little face, except by stealth when it was sound asleep, she never dared to see, nor did the baby-Princess know the face of the mother who loved her.

By and by, however, the family Fairy came again, saying: “Now, I have a plan by which your child may enjoy the delights of seeing, and no ill come of it.” And she caused to be made a large chamber, the whole of one side of which was a mirror. High up in the opposite wall were windows so screened that from below no one could look out of them, but across on to the mirror came all the sweet sights of the world, glimpses of wood and field, and the sun and the moon and the stars, and of every bird as it flew by. So the little Princess was brought and set in a screened place looking towards the mirror, and there her eyes learned gradually all the beautiful things of the world. Over the screen, in the glass before her, she learned to know her mother’s face, and to love it dearly in a gentle child-like fashion; and when she could talk she became very wise, understanding all that was told her about the danger of looking at anything alive, except by its reflection in the glass.

When she went out into the open air for her health, she always wore a bandage over her eyes, lest she should look, and love something too well: but in the chamber of the mirror her eyes were free to see whatever they could. The good Fairy, making herself invisible, came and taught her to read and make music, and draw; so that before she was fifteen she was the most charming and accomplished, as well as the most beautiful Princess of her day.

At last the Fairy said that the time was come for her world of reflections to be made real, and she went away to fetch the ideal Prince that the Princess might at first sight fall in love with him.

The very day after she was gone, as the morning was fine, the Princess went out with one of her maids for a walk through the woods. Over her patient eyes she wore a bandage of green silk, through which she felt the sunlight fall pleasantly.

Out of doors the Princess knew most things by their sounds. She passed under rustling leaves, and along by the side of running water; and at last she heard the silence of the water, and knew that she was standing by the great fish-pond in the middle of the wood. Then she said to her waiting-woman, “Is there not some great bird fishing out there, for I hear the dipping of his bill, and the water falling off it as he draws out the fish?”

And just as she was saying that, the wicked Fairy, who had long bided her time, coming softly up from behind, pushed the waiting-woman off the bank into the deep water of the pond. Then she snatched away the silk bandage, and before the Princess had time to think or close her eyes, she had lost her heart to a great heron, that was standing half-way up to his feathers fishing among the reeds.

The Princess, with her eyes set free, laughed for joy at the sight of him. She stretched out her arms from the bank and cried most musically for the bird to come to her; and he came in grave stately fashion, with trailing legs, and slow sobbing creak of his wings, and settled down on the bank beside her. She drew his slender neck against her white throat, and laughed and cried with her arms round him, loving him so that she forgot all in the world beside. And the heron looked gravely at her with kind eyes, and, bird-like, gave her all the love he could, but not more; and so, presently, casting his grey wings abroad, lifted himself and sailed slowly back to his fishing among the reeds.

The waiting-woman had got herself out of the water, and stood wringing her clothes and her hands beside the Princess. “O, sweet mistress,” she cried, with lamentation, “now is all the evil come about which it was our whole aim to avoid! And what, and what will the Queen your mother say?”

But the Princess answered, smiling, “Foolish girl, I had no thought of what happiness meant till now! See you where my love is gone? and did you notice the bend of his neck, and the exceeding length of his legs, and the stretch of his grey wings as he flew? This pond is his hall of mirrors, wherein he sees the reflection of all his world. Surely I, from my hall of mirrors, am the true mate for him!”

Her maid, seeing how far the evil had gone, and that no worse could now happen, ran back to the palace and curdled all the court’s blood with her news. The King and the Queen and all their nobility rushed down, and there they found the Princess with the heron once more in her arms, kissing and fondling it with all the marks of a sweet and maidenly passion. “Dear mother,” she said, as soon as she saw the Queen, “the happiness, which you feared would be sorrow, has come; and it is such happiness I have no name for it! And the evil that you so dreaded, see how sweet it is! And how sweet it is to see all the world with my own eyes and you also at last!” And for the first time in her life she kissed her mother’s face in the full light of day.

But her mother hung sobbing upon her neck, “O, my darling, my beautiful,” she wept, “does your heart belong for ever to this grey bird?”

Her daughter answered, “He is more than all the world to me! Is he not goodly to look upon? Have you considered the bend of his neck, the length of his legs, and the waving of his wings; his skill also when he fishes: what imagination, what presence of mind!”

“Alas, alas,” sorrowed the Queen, “dear daughter, is this all true to you?”

“Mother,” cried the Princess, clinging to her with entreaty, “is all the world blind but me?”

The heron had become quite fond of the Princess; wherever she went it followed her, and, indeed, without it nowhere would she go. Whenever it was near her, the Princess laughed and sang, and when it was out of her sight she became sad as night. All the courtiers wept to see her in such bondage. “Ah,” said she, “your eyes have been worn out with looking at things so long; mine have been kept for me in a mirror.”

When the good family Fairy came (for she was at once sent for by the Queen, and told of all that had happened), she said, “Dear Madam, there are but two things you can do: either you can wring the heron’s neck, and leave the Princess to die of grief; or you can make the Princess happy in her own way, by——” Her voice dropped, and she looked from the King to the Queen before she went on. “At her birth I gave your daughter love for my gift; now it is hers, will you let her keep it?”

The King and the Queen looked softly at each other. “Do not take love from her,” said they, “let her keep it!”

“There is but one way,” answered the Fairy.

“Do not tell me the way,” said the Queen weeping, “only let the way be!”

So they went with the Fairy down to the great pond, and there sat the Princess, with the grey heron against her heart. She smiled as she saw them come. “I see good in your hearts toward me!” she cried. “Dear godmother, give me the thing that I want, that my love may be happy!”

Then the Fairy stroked her but once with her wand, and two grey herons suddenly rose up from the bank, and sailed away to a hiding-place in the reeds.

The Fairy said to the Queen, “You have made your daughter happy; and still she will have her voice and her human heart, and will remember you with love and gratitude; but her greatest love will be to the grey heron, and her home among the reeds.”

So the changed life of the Princess began; every day her mother went down to the pool and called, and the Princess came rising up out of the reeds, and folded her grey wings over her mother’s heart. Every day her mother said, “Daughter of mine, are you happy?”

And the Princess answered her, “Yes, for I love and am loved.”

Yet each time the mother heard more and more of a note of sadness come into her daughter’s voice; and at last one day she said, “Answer me truly, as the mother who brought you into the world, whether you be happy in your heart of hearts or no?”

Then the heron-Princess laid her head on the Queen’s heart, and said, “Mother, my heart is breaking with love!”

“For whom, then?” asked the Queen astonished.

“For my grey heron, whom I love, and who loves me so much. And yet it is love that divides us, for I am still troubled with a human heart, and often it aches with sorrow because all the love in it can never be fully understood or shared by my heron; and I have my human voice left, and that gives me a hundred things to say all day, for which there is no word in herons’ language, and so he cannot understand them. Therefore these things only make a gulf between him and me. For all the other grey herons in the pools there is happiness, but not for me who have too big a heart between my wings.”

Her mother said softly, “Wait, wait, little heron-daughter, and it shall be well with you!” Then she went to the Fairy and said, “My daughter’s heart is lonely among the reeds, for the grey heron’s love covers but half of it. Give her some companions of her own kind that her hours may become merry again!”

So the Fairy took and turned five of the Princess’s lady’s-maids into herons, and sent them down to the pool.

The five herons stood each on one leg in the shallows of the pool, and cried all day long; and their tears fell down into the water and frightened away the fish that came their way. For they had human hearts that cried out to be let go. “O, cruel, cruel,” they wept, whenever the heron-Princess approached, “see what we suffer because of you, and what they have made of us for your sake!”

The Princess came to her mother and said, “Dear mother, take them away, for their cry wearies me, and the pool is bitter with their tears! They only awake the human part of my heart that wants to sleep; presently, may be, if it is let alone, it will forget itself.”

Her mother said, “It is my coming every day also that keeps it awake.” The Princess answered, “This sorrow belongs to my birthright; you must still come; but for the others, let the Fairy take them away.”

So the Fairy came and released the five lady’s-maids whom she had changed into herons. And they came up out of the water, stripping themselves of their grey feather-skins and throwing them back into the pool. The Fairy said, “You foolish maids, you have thrown away a gift that you should have valued; these skins you could have kept and held as heirlooms in your family.”

The five maids answered, “We want to forget that there are such things as herons in the world!”

After much thought the Queen said to the Fairy, “You have changed a Princess into a heron, and five maids into herons and back again; cannot you change one heron into a Prince?” But the Fairy answered sadly, “Our power has limits; we can bring down, but we cannot bring up, if there be no heart to answer our call. The five maids only followed their hearts, that were human, when I called them back; but a heron has only a heron’s heart, and unless his heart become too great for a bird and he earn a human one, I cannot change him to a higher form.” “How can he earn a human one?” asked the Queen. “Only if he love the Princess so well that his love for her becomes stronger than his life,” answered the Fairy. “Then he will have earned a human body, and then I can give him the form that his heart suits best. There may be a chance, if we wait for it and are patient, for the Princess’s love is great and may work miracles.”

A little while after this, the Queen watching, saw that the two herons were making a nest among the reeds. “What have you there?” said the mother to her daughter. “A little hollow place,” answered the heron-Princess, “and in it the moon lies.” A little while after she said again, “What have you there, now, little daughter?” And her daughter answered, “Only a small hollow space; but in it two moons lie.”

The Queen told the family Fairy how in a hollow of the reeds lay two moons. “Now,” said the Fairy, “we will wait no longer. If your daughter’s love has touched the heron’s heart and made it grow larger than a bird’s, I can help them both to happiness; but if not, then birds they must still remain.”

Among the reeds the heron said in bird language to his wife, “Go and stretch your wings for a little while over the water; it is weary work to wait here so long in the reeds.” The heron-Princess looked at him with her bird’s eyes, and all the human love in her heart strove, like a fountain that could not get free, to make itself known through them; also her tongue was full of the longing to utter sweet words, but she kept them back, knowing they were beyond the heron’s power to understand. So she answered merely in heron’s language, “Come with me, and I will come!”

They rose, wing beating beside wing; and the reflection of their grey breasts slid out under them over the mirror of the pool.

Higher they went and higher, passing over the tree tops, and keeping time together as they flew. All at once the wings of the grey heron flagged, then took a deep beat; he cried to the heron-Princess, “Turn, and come home, yonder there is danger flying to meet us!” Before them hung a brown blot in the air, that winged and grew large. The two herons turned and flew back. “Rise,” cried the grey heron, “we must rise!” and the Princess knew what was behind, and struggled with the whole strength of her wings for escape.

The grey heron was bearing ahead on stronger wing. “With me, with me!” he cried. “If it gets above us, one of us is dead!” But the falcon had fixed his eye on the Princess for his quarry, and flew she fast, or flew she slow, there was little chance for her now. Up and up she strained, but still she was behind her mate, and still the falcon gained.

The heron swung back to her side; she saw the anguish and fear of his downward glance as his head ranged by hers. Past her the falcon went, towering for the final swoop.

The Princess cried in heron’s language, “Farewell, dear mate, and farewell, two little moons among the reeds!” But the grey heron only kept closer to her side.

Overhead the falcon closed in its wings and fell like a dead weight out of the clouds. “Drop!” cried the grey heron to his mate.

At his word she dropped; but he stayed, stretching up his wings, and, passing between the descending falcon and its prey, caught in his own body the death-blow from its beak. Drops of his blood fell upon the heron-Princess.

He stricken in body, she in soul, together they fell down to the margin of the pool. The falcon still clung fleshing its beak in the neck of its prey. The heron-Princess threw back her head, and, darting furiously, struck her own sharp bill deep into the falcon’s breast. The bird threw out its wings with a hoarse cry and fell back dead, with a little tuft of the grey heron’s feathers still upon its beak.

The heron-Princess crouched down, and covered with her wings the dying form of her mate; in her sorrow she spoke to him in her own tongue, forgetting her bird’s language. The grey heron lifted his head, and, gazing tenderly, answered her with a human voice:

“Dear wife,” he said, “at last I have the happiness so long denied to me of giving utterance in the speech that is your own to the love that you have put into my heart. Often I have heard you speak and have not understood; now something has touched my heart, and changed it, so that I can both speak and understand.”