The house of joy — Edition Insights

ess. 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

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.

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.

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.