Part 7

He went on from one to another, and of each he kissed the hand, saying that she was too fair to marry him.

He came to Lyneth, and knelt down at her feet. “Lyneth,” he said, “will you give the poor cobbler back his shoe?”

Lyneth, looking in his eyes, saw all that he meant. “And myself in it,” she said, “for you love me dearly!” She put her arms round his neck, and whispered, “You marry me because I am a fright, and have no hair!”

But Lubin said, “I have your hair all wound round my heart, making it warm!”

So they were married, and lived together more happily than cobbler and princess ever lived in the world before. And the cobbler dropped mending shoes: only his wife’s shoes he always mended. Very soon Lyneth’s hair grew again, more shining and beautiful than before; but the Princess Royal remained pale, and thin, and was bald to the day of her death.

THE MOON FLOWER

_TO_ EVA AND KATIE

[Illustration]

THE MOON-FLOWER

Princess Berenice sat by a window of her father’s palace, looking out of the Moon. In her hand she held a great white pearl, and smiled, for it was her mother’s birthday gift. The chamber in which she sat was of pure silver, and in the floor was a small window by which she could see out of the Moon and right down on to the Earth, where the moonbeams were going. There it lay like a great green emerald; and wherever the clouds parted to let the moonbeams go through, she could see the tops of the trees, and broad fields with streams running by.

“Yonder is the land of the coloured stones,” she said to herself, “that the merchants go down the moonbeams and bring home and sell.” And as she bent lower and lower and gazed with curious eyes, the great pearl rolled from her hand and fell out of the Moon, and went slipping and sliding down a moonbeam, never stopping till it got to the Earth.

“My mother’s pearl!” cried the Princess, “the most beautiful of all her pearls that she gave me. I must run down and bring it back; for if I wait it will be lost. And as to-night is the full-moon down there upon Earth, I can return before anyone finds out that I am gone.”

The Earth was sparkling a brighter green under the approach of night. “Oh, land of the coloured stones!” cried the Princess; and, slipping through the window, she stepped out of the Moon, and went running down the same moonbeam by which the pearl had fallen.

Night came; and the Earth and the Moon lay looking at each other in the midst of heaven, like an emerald and a pearl; but through the palace, and within, over all its gardens and terraces there began to be callings on the Princess Berenice; and presently there were heart-searchings and fear, for they found the empty room with its open window: and the Princess Berenice was not there.

Now, not long before this, upon our own Earth there had lived and died a King who had four sons, but only three kingdoms. So when he came to die he gave to each of his three eldest sons a kingdom apiece; but to the youngest, having nothing else left to give, he gave only a pair of travelling shoes, and said: “Wear these, and some day they will take you to fortune!”

So, when the King was dead, the young Prince wore the shoes night and day, hoping that some time or another they would take him to fortune. His brothers laughed at him, and said: “Our father was wise to play those old shoes off upon you! If it had been either of us we would have gone and bought ourselves an army and fought for a just share in the inheritance. But you seem pleased, so we ought to be.”

Now one day the Prince went out hunting in the forest, and there, having become separated from all his friends, he thoroughly lost his way. Wherever he turned the wood seemed to grow denser, the thickets higher, and the solitude more than he ever remembered before. Night came on, and, there being nothing else that he could do, he lay down and wrapped himself in his cloak and slept.

When he awoke it was day, but the woods were as still as death; no bird sang, and not a cricket chirped among the grass. As he sat up he noticed that the shoe was gone from his left foot, nor could he see it anywhere near. “Tis the half of my inheritance gone!” he said to himself, and got up to search about him. But still no shoe could he find. At last he gave up the search as useless, and set off walking without it. Then as it seemed to him so ridiculous to go limping along with only one shoe on, he took off the remaining one, and threw it away, saying: “Go, stupid, and find your fellow!”

To the Prince’s great astonishment, it set off at a rapid pace through the wood, all of its own accord. The Prince, barefoot except for his stockings, began to run after it.

Presently he found that he was losing his breath. “Hie, hie!” he called out, “not quite so fast, little leather-skins!” But the shoe paid him no heed and went on as before. It skipped through the grass and brushwood, as if a young girl’s foot were dancing inside it; and whenever it came to a fallen tree, or a boulder of rock, it was up and over with a jump like a grasshopper.

Before long the Prince’s stockings were in nothing but holes and tatters; as he ran they fluttered from his legs like ribbons. He had lost his hat, and his cloak was torn into patterns, and he felt from head to foot like a house all doors and windows. He was almost on his last gasp when he saw that the shoe was making straight for a strange little house of green bronze, shut in by a high wall, and showing no windows; and in the middle of the wall was a bronze door shut fast. As he came near he found that outside, on the doorstep, stood his other shoe as if waiting to be let in. “So it was worth running for!” thought he; and then, putting on both shoes again, he began knocking at the door.

As he knocked the door opened. It opened in such a curious way, flat down like a swing-bridge or like the lid of a box. For some time he was half afraid to walk in on the top of it. Presently, however, he summoned up his courage and stepped across it.

The door closed behind him like a trap, and he found himself in a beautiful house; all its walls were hung with gold and precious stones, but everywhere was the emptiness and the silence of death.

He went from room to room seeking for any that lived there, but could see no one. In one place he found thrown down a fan of white feathers and pearl; and in another flowers, fresh plucked, lying close by a cushion dinted and hollowed, as though the weight of a head or arm had rested there. But beyond these there was no sign of a living thing to be found.

Through the windows he saw deep bowery gardens hemmed in by high walls, within which grew flowers of the loveliest kinds. All the paths were of smooth grass, and everywhere were the traces of gentle handiwork; but still not a soul was to be seen.

It seemed to the Prince now and then that there was something in the garden which moved, distinct from the flowers, and shifting with a will of its own. Though the sun shone full down, casting clear shadows across the lawns, this that he saw was altogether misty and faint. Now it seemed like a feather blown to and fro in the wind, and now like broken gossamer threads, or like filmy edges of clouds melting away in the heat. Where it went the flowers moved as though to make way for it, swaying apart and falling together again as it passed.

The Prince watched and watched. He tired his eyes with watching, yet he could see no more; and no way could he find to the garden, for all the doors leading to it were locked fast and barred.

There was another strange thing he noticed which seemed to him to have no meaning. All over the garden, between the trees and the sky, was stretched a silver net, so fine that it showed only as a faint film against the blue; but a net for all that. Here and there, the light of the sun catching it, hung sparkling in its silver meshes. It was like the net that a gardener throws over strawberry beds or currant bushes to keep off the birds from the fruit. So was it with this net; through it no bird could enter the garden, and no bird that was in the garden could leave it.

All day the Prince had these two things before his eyes to wonder about, till the sun went down and it began to get dusk.

At the moment when the sun sank below the earth there was a sound of opening doors all over the house. The Prince ran and found one of the doors leading into the garden wide open, and through it he could see the stir of leaves, and the deep colours of the flowers growing deeper in the dusk; only the evening primroses were lighting their soft lamps.

From a distant part of the garden came the sound of falling water, and a voice singing. As he approached he saw something shining against the dark leaves higher than the heads of the flowers; and before he well knew what he saw, he found before his eyes the most lovely woman that the mind of man could believe in.

In her hand hung a watering-can, with the water falling from it in sprays on to the flower beds beneath. Her head was bent far down, yet how she looked slender and tall! She was very pale, yet a soft light seemed to grow from her, the light of a new moon upon a twilight sky. And now the Prince heard clearly the sweet voice, and the words that she was singing:

“Listen, listen, listen, O heart of the sea! I am the Pearl of pearls, I am the Mother of pearls, And the Mother of thee. Glisten, glisten, glisten, O bed of the sea! Lost is the Pearl of pearls, And all the divers for pearls Are drowning for me.”

He stood enchanted to hear her; but the words of the song ended suddenly in a deep sigh. The singer lifted her head; her eyes moved like grey moths in the dusk, amid the whiteness of her face. At sight of him they grew still and large, widening with a quiet wonder. Then the beautiful face broke into smiles, and the Princess stretched out her hands to him and laughed.

“Have you come,” she said, “to set me free?”

“To set you free?” asked the Prince.

“I am a prisoner,” she told him.

“Alas, then!” answered the Prince, “I am a prisoner also, and can free no one; but were I now free to go wherever I would, I should be a prisoner still, for I have seen the face of the loveliest heart on earth!”

“O,” she sighed, “and can you not set me free?”

“Tell me,” he said, “what makes you a prisoner here?”

She pointed to the net over their heads, to the walls that stood on all sides of them, and to the ground beneath their feet. “That,” she said, “and that, and this.”

“Who are you?” he asked, “and where do you come from? and whose power is it that now holds you captive?”

She led him on to a terrace, from which they could see out towards the west; and there lay the new Moon, low down in the sky. “Yonder,” she said, pointing to it, “is my home!” She wept. “Shall I ever return to it?”

The Prince, gazing at her in wonder, cried, “Are you one of a Fairy race?”

“No, oh, no!” she sighed, “I am but mortal like yourself; only my home is there, while yours is here. We, who dwell in the Moon, are as you are, but the sun has greater power over us; the light of it falling on us makes us pale and unsubstantial, so that we weigh not so much as a gossamer and become transparent as thin fleeces of cloud. Then we can go where you cannot go, treading the light as it flies; but at sunset we regain our strength, and our bodies come to us again; and we are as you see me now—no different from yourselves, the inhabitants of the Earth.”

“Tell me,” said the Prince, “of yourself, and the dwellers in the Moon! Is it not cold there, and barren?”

She answered smiling, for the memory of her home was sweet to her, “Outside, the Moon is cold and barren; but within it is very warm and rich and fertile; more beautiful than any place I have seen on Earth. It is there we live; and we have flocks, and herds, and woods, and rivers, and harbours, and seas. Also we have great cities built inside the Moon’s crust, for the Moon is a great hollow shell, and we walk upon its inner surface and are warm. The sunlight comes to us through craters and clefts in the ground; and the beams of it are like solid pillars of gold that quiver and sway as they shoot upwards into the opal twilight of our world; and the shine and the warmth of it come to us, and colour the air above our heads; but we are safe from its full light falling on us, for the ground is between us and it. Only when we pass through to the outer side do we become pale and faint, a mere whisper of our former selves. And then we are so light that if we step upon a moonbeam it will bear our weight; and the moonbeam carries us swiftly as its own light travels, till it reaches the Earth: so we come. But to return there is another way.”

And when the Prince asked her, she told him of the other way back into the Moon.

“When we wish to return,” she went on “(for the falling light of a moonbeam cannot carry us back), we must go where there is a pool of still water, and wait for the reflection of the Moon to fall on it; and when the Moon is full, and throws its image into the water, then we dive down, and with our lips touch the reflection of its face, crying, ‘Open, open to me, for I am a Moon-child!’ And the Moon will open her face like a door of pearl, and let us pass in; and when she draws her reflection out of the pool, we find ourselves once again among our own people and in our own land. Many of us have so come and so returned,” she sighed deeply, “but I fear that I shall never again return.”

Then the Prince asked her further whose power it was that held her captive; and she told him how she had dropped the pearl that her mother had given her, and had come down seeking it. Then she said, “In the Moon we have many jewels, for we have opals and onyxes, and pearls and moonstones, but we have no rubies, or emeralds, or sapphires, or stones of a single colour, such as you have. Therefore, we have a passion for these things, and our merchants come down and bring them back to us at a great price.

“Now it chanced that in my search I came upon a gnome who had dealings with our merchants and had many jewels to sell, and he, seeming to be kind, helped me until my pearl was found. Then he took me to see his own treasures, and, alas, while my eyes were feasting on the colours of the stones he showed to me, my poor beauty inflamed the avarice of his evil heart, and the desire to have me for his wife became great. So when I asked him the price of his jewels, he vowed that the only price at which he would let them go was that of my own hand in marriage. Alas, I am young and innocent, and without subtlety, nor did I know how great was his power and wickedness. As I laughed at his request his face grew dark with rage, and I saw that I had incurred the undying enmity of his cruel heart. And now for a whole year he has held me in his enchantment, striving to break me to his will by the length and weariness of my captivity; and lest search or any help should come for me from my father’s people, he has covered me in with a net, and surrounded me with walls; and here there is no pool into which the full Moon may fall, and at the mere touch of my lips upon its face, open and draw me free from my enchantment, and back into the heart of my own land. Only yonder, in the corner of the garden is a deep well, where the Moon never shines; so there is no way here left for me by which I may get free.”

“Does not the gnome ever come to see you in your captivity?” asked the Prince. “If so, I may by some means be able to entrap him, and force him to let you go.”

“Twice in the year he has visited me,” answered the Princess. “He comes up out of the ground in the form of a Red Mole; but he looks at me wickedly and cunningly with the eyes of a man, seeming to say, ‘Will you have me yet?’ And when I shake my head he burrows under again, and is gone till another six months shall be past.”

The Prince thought for a while and said, “I do not know whether I have the power or the wit to make you free; if love only were needed for the work, to-morrow would see you as free as a bird.”

The Princess, between smiles and sighs, said, “I have been most lonely here; already you make my imprisonment seem less.” Then she led him within doors, from room to room, showing him the splendours of her prison. Wherever they went, out of the floor before them rose burning jewels that hung hovering over their heads to light them as they passed; and when she struck her hands together, up from the ground rose a table covered with fruit and dainties of all sorts; and when she and the Prince had eaten, she clapped her hands again, and they disappeared by the same way that they had come.

The Prince was struck with admiration at the delicacy of these marvels. “When I think of the Red Mole, they sicken me!” said the Moon-Princess. The good youth used all his arts to cheer her, promising to devote himself, and if need be his life, to the task of setting her free. And now and then she laughed and was almost merry again, forgetting the walls that still held her spell-bound from her own people and her own land.

She showed the Prince a chamber where he might sleep; and so soft and warm was the couch after his last hard night on the ground, that it was full day before he awoke. The Princess Berenice appeared before him misty and faint, for the sunlight threw a veil upon her beauty; but still as he looked at her he did not love her less, and it still seemed to him that hers was the face of the loveliest heart on earth.

All day he watched her drifting about the garden, seeming to feed herself on the scent of the flowers. In the evening, when the sun set, her body grew strong and her face shone out to him like the new Moon upon a twilight sky.

Then he drew water for her from the well, and watched her as she watered the flowers which were her only delight. Presently he said, “There is much water in the well, for the rope goes down into it many fathoms; and yet I find no bottom.”

“Yes,” answered the Princess, “I doubt not that the well is deep.”

“Before many days are over,” said the Prince, “the well shall become a pool.”

The Princess wondered to hear him. “Is there,” he went on, “no such thing as a spade for me to dig with?” Then she led him to a shed, where lay all the needed implements for gardening. So his eyes brightened, while he cried, “O, beautiful Princess Berenice, as I love you, before many weeks are over you shall be free!”

The next morning he arose very early, and in the centre of the garden, where the ground hollowed somewhat, he marked out a space and set to work to dig.

All day the Princess went to and fro, faint and pale as a mist, watching him at his work. At dusk her beauty shone full upon him, and she said, “What is this that you are doing?” He answered, “What I am making shall presently become a pool; then when the pool is full, and the full Moon comes and shines on it, you shall go down into the water, and shall kiss the face of its reflection with your lips, and be free from your enchantment.”

Princess Berenice looked long at him, and her eyes clung to his like soft moths in the gloom. “But you?” she said, “You are no Moon-child, and this will never set you free.”

“Ever since I saw you,” said the Prince, “I have not thought of freedom; my dearest wish is but to set you free.”

The Princess gave him her hand. “And mine,” she said, “my dearest wish henceforth is to set you free also. Yet I know but one way, and I cannot name it.” She smiled tenderly on him, and bowed her face into the shadow of her hair.

The Prince caught her in his arms, “One way is my way!” he cried. “Your way,” she said, “is my way.” Then, when he had finished kissing her, she said, “Look, on my finger is a ring; this ring is for him to whom I give myself in marriage. Surely, it opens to him the heart of my own people, and he becomes one of us, a child of the Moon.” She showed him an opal ring, full of fires. “If your way is my way,” she said, “draw this off my finger, and put it upon your own, and take me to be your wife!”

So the Prince drew off the ring from her finger, and set it upon his own; and as he did so he felt indeed the heart of the Moon-people become his own, and the love of the Moon strike root in him. Yet did the love of the Earth remain his as well, making it seem as if all the love in his heart had but doubled itself.