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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Village of Youth, by Bessie Hatton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Village of Youth
+       and Other Fairy Tales
+
+Author: Bessie Hatton
+
+Illustrator: W. H. Margetson
+
+Release Date: August 5, 2011 [EBook #36977]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VILLAGE OF YOUTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Delphine Lettau, Charlene Taylor and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+                   The Village
+                     of Youth
+              And Other Fairy Tales
+
+                        BY
+
+                  BESSIE HATTON
+            _Author of "Enid Lyle," etc._
+
+             With Numerous Illustrations
+                        BY
+                 _W. H. MARGETSON_
+
+                    London, 1895
+
+                   HUTCHINSON & CO
+
+                 _34 PATERNOSTER ROW_
+
+
+Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
+
+
+
+
+                      CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                    PAGE
+
+       I. The Village of Youth                        1
+
+      II. A Child of the Winds                       31
+
+     III. The Flower that reached the Sun-lands      72
+
+      IV. The Garden of Innocence                    96
+
+       V. A Christmas Rose                          124
+
+      VI. The Windflower                            144
+
+
+
+
+                   The Village of Youth
+
+[Illustration: The Village of Youth]
+
+  "Yet Ah! that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
+  That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!"
+
+
+                         I.
+
+There was a young King who ought to have been the happiest monarch in
+the world. He was blessed with everything a mortal could desire. His
+palace might have been designed by the Divine architect Himself, so
+perfect was it in all its parts; and it stood amidst gardens with its
+dependent village at its gates, like a dream of feudal beauty in a story
+of romance. Notwithstanding his good fortune, the King was oppressed
+with what he conceived to be a great trouble. From the happy ruler of a
+happy people he gradually became grave and anxious, as if an intense
+fear had taken possession of his soul; and so it had. It was the fear
+of Age. He could no longer bear to meet old people, and eventually grew
+to hate the hoary heads and time-worn faces of his venerable subjects.
+He therefore divided his kingdom into two parts. The elders lived in one
+half of the realm, under the government of his mother, while he was King
+of the young. Riding, hawking, or sailing along the grey river, he never
+saw a wrinkled visage. Hence his kingdom was called the Village of Youth.
+
+The King was betrothed to a fair Princess named Rowena. She loved her
+future husband dearly, though his strange malady and the exodus of the
+old people from his dominions had clouded her happiness, and made her
+long for some way of alleviating his suffering.
+
+When the lovers were together they held no gentle, tender discourse.
+Uriel would only gaze at his betrothed with mournful eyes, and when she
+besought him not to be sorrowful he would say, "Sweet lady, how can I be
+other than I am? Each loving word that falls from thy lips, each sweet
+smile that plays upon thy face, is as a dagger in my heart; for I
+remember how soon the bloom of youth will pass from thy cheeks and the
+softness from thy lips. Our village, too, will become the Village of
+Eld, grim with unlovely age."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Interviews of this kind saddened the Princess to such an extent, that
+while she sat sewing among her women tears would often fall upon the
+embroidery, and she would be obliged to leave her work.
+
+Among the many fair maidens who attended upon Rowena, the fairest of
+them all was the Lady Beryl. She grieved sincerely to see her mistress
+so dejected, and taxed her brain night and day for some plan by which
+she might save the Village of Youth. With this thought deep in her
+heart, she rose early one morning and rode away to seek advice from the
+people who lived in the Village of Eld. It was spring; the grass was
+green, the sky was blue. The sunshine gleamed on the maiden's hair and
+on her dove-coloured garments.
+
+As she rode into the village the inhabitants gathered around her. She
+found herself in the midst of a crowd of grey-headed men and women, many
+of whom touched her dress and kissed her hand, while others knelt down
+and almost worshipped her; she reminded them of their own early days, a
+sweet personification of the young spring. Beryl lifted up her voice,
+and said,--
+
+"Dear reverend people, you all know of the sadness of our sovereign and
+of its cause; and now our dear Princess shares his sorrow. We are
+ignorant and inexperienced, neither have we any wise men or women to
+counsel us; therefore I pray you tell me, is there any way to keep our
+youths and maidens always young, that they may never know age?"
+
+A long wailing cry was heard from the people of the village,--
+
+"There is no way--no way!" One old man, who was bent and tottering,
+raised his wrinkled face to the maiden's, and said,--
+
+"Spring gives place to summer, and summer to autumn, and autumn to
+winter. What would you? Age is beautiful; it is a time of peace, of
+meditation. Youth knows not rest; it is ever striving, fighting,
+suffering. When age comes upon us we cease to enjoy as keenly as the
+young, but we cease to suffer as bitterly as they who are in the spring
+of life. If the scent of the air is less fresh and the voice of the
+brook is less sweet, why, the thunder clouds are less dark and the storm
+is robbed of its fury."
+
+Beryl bowed her head and rode away. As she passed through the gate an
+old woman followed her, and whispered these words,--
+
+"An hour before sunset, on the longest day of summer, Time, in his
+chariot, rides through the Village of Youth. If each year thou canst
+prevent his doing so, the world will still grow old, but the Village
+of Youth will remain young for ever."
+
+"Alas, good dame, how can I hope to succeed in this endeavour?"
+
+"Sweet maiden, thou art beautiful, thou art in the April of life. Time
+is gentle and pitiful; throw thyself before his chariot. Thou wilt stay
+his flying feet, and thy sovereign will bless thee."
+
+Beryl returned, pondering over the woman's words. She entered that
+portion of the palace occupied by the Princess and her suite, and
+proceeded to her own chamber.
+
+The hangings were of white silk, and the floor was of ivory. Silver
+vases, filled with purple lilacs, perfumed the air. Presently three
+maidens entered, to attire their mistress for the evening banquet. One
+bathed her face and hands with spring-water, another combed her hair
+with a silver comb, and the third robed her in a gown of soft silk,
+edged with pearls.
+
+Beryl's cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled with excitement, as
+she hastened along the corridor to the apartments of the Princess. Her
+royal mistress was seated in the portico which looked on to the palace
+gardens. Never had Beryl seen the future Queen so sad. Forgetting her
+news in her anxiety, she threw herself at Rowena's feet, and besought
+her to say what ailed her.
+
+"It is the old trouble that afflicts me, dear child. The King grows
+worse, and I fear that if he cannot conquer his melancholy he will go
+mad."
+
+Then Beryl, in hurried words, told Rowena of her visit to the Village
+of Eld, and of the woman's message.
+
+The Princess became deeply interested in the recital, and as her
+handmaiden unfolded her plan of waiting for Time on the longest day of
+summer, she gradually caught her excitement.
+
+"Young for ever," she murmured, with a sigh, "young for ever in a summer
+world! It is too good to be true, Beryl; besides, if it were not, how
+could I let thee depart upon such a quest? Better far that I should go
+myself."
+
+"Nay, sweet lady; thou art espoused to our lord, the King, but I have no
+lover who would grieve for me. Besides, I can but fail; and so thou wilt
+pity my unsuccess, I shall be content."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The air was filled with the scent of spring flowers, and of the many
+roses which had clambered over the portico. Beryl sat at the Princess'
+feet, and lifted up a pair of beseeching eyes to her face. At that
+moment the young King entered. He was made acquainted with the question
+in dispute. On hearing of Beryl's plan a joyful expression lighted up
+his sad features, and at his earnest entreaty Rowena gave her consent
+to the undertaking.
+
+
+                            II.
+
+Summer had laid her hands upon the land, broadening with vigorous
+strokes the delicate colours of the faded spring. Fields of corn and
+barley were ripening, and far away on the uplands crimson poppies lay
+sleeping in the sunlight.
+
+Beryl waited outside the village on the longest day of the year. In
+white robes and silken cap she watched for the passing of Time. Before
+the day began to wane a chariot, drawn by the Winds, dashed along the
+road which led to the Village of Youth. The maiden, though half dead
+with terror, flung herself down before the gates with a loud cry. She
+felt herself raised from the ground, and on opening her eyes found that
+she was in the arms of a ragged youth. His face was beautiful beyond all
+description, though its expression was full of sorrow; his garments were
+smirched with mud and hung in tatters, but they were jewelled from
+shoulder to hem with diamonds, whiter and more brilliant than any she
+had ever seen. Awed and wondering, Beryl laid her finger softly upon
+one of the gems. But it dissolved and vanished at her touch; and she
+realised that Time's garments were jewelled with the world's tears.
+
+Presently the youth addressed her, and his voice was the saddest of all
+the music that she had ever heard,--
+
+"Maiden, what wouldst thou with me?"
+
+"Good sir, I pray thee to spare the Village of Youth. Let its young days
+last for ever."
+
+"For ever!" he sighed. "What spell is there in this 'for ever' that
+mortals must always crave after it? I am the spirit of Time, the king of
+change. The Winds are my servants. My palace is built on the shores of
+Eternity; and yet, for one hour passed in the Village of Youth, or for
+knowledge of the peace which reigns in the Village of Eld, I would lay
+down my immortality without a pang. In my flight through the world I see
+little joy. I ring the bells of birth, of marriage, and of death. Upon
+my garments the tears of humanity gather fast. Still, my task is not all
+unhappy, in that a day comes when I have healed their wounds with my
+touch, though scars remain, which even I, an Immortal, cannot efface.
+Alas, sweet maiden! I dare not leave the Village of Youth unvisited,
+even at the prayer of the fairest of its daughters."
+
+Nevertheless, after many a sigh and many a tear, Beryl touched the
+changeful heart of Time; and because she was so beautiful the youth
+loved her, and he bore her away in his chariot, leaving the Village
+of Youth unvisited.
+
+Desolate, and misty, and grey, was the country of Time, and rugged the
+castle built on the shores of Eternity. Strange, colourless flowers
+bloomed in the garden, and the paths were heavy and wet. In the great
+hall of the palace there were tables laden with fruit and wine, and
+after Beryl had eaten she felt refreshed. The place was lonely. There
+was not a sigh nor a token of any living creature within its walls.
+
+Some of the sorrow seemed to pass out of the youth's face as he watched
+the maiden. And when she looked up at him and smiled all the tears on
+his dress melted away.
+
+"Sweet lady," he presently said, "I did unwisely to bring thee here, for
+when thou art gone I shall feel more lonely than ever before. Until I
+met thee, I had never exchanged words with an earthly maid. Thy presence
+gives me much comfort; I am so weary of travel, so tired of this grim
+country. I must, nevertheless, leave thee at sunrise. Remain here until
+I return, and I will not pass through the Village of Youth."
+
+Beryl's heart leapt with gratitude. Her mission was accomplished. Then a
+sudden fear smote her. Must she remain alone in this weird place, and
+walk continually in this garden of colourless flowers?
+
+"Good my lord, how long wilt thou be gone?" she tremblingly inquired.
+
+"A year, though it will seem but as a day to thee, for here time counts
+not; this is his resting-place. In his palace there is no change; it is
+built on the everlasting shore."
+
+As the youth finished speaking Beryl observed that the hall was full of
+weird shades, in jewelled cloaks of tears; but amongst them there was
+one whose garments were of shining white, gemmed with violets.
+
+"These," said Time, "are the hours of to-day."
+
+The shades flitted past, bending before their King. Beryl noticed that
+the sadness in their faces was akin to that of Time, with one exception.
+He of the white garments wore an expression that was smiling and happy,
+and the violets on his dress filled the hall with perfume.
+
+"Good my lord, why doth this last shadow look so different from all the
+rest?" asked Beryl.
+
+At a sign from Time the shadow spoke,--
+
+"I am the death-hour of a great poet. He died happily, having enriched
+the world with his song. The moon kissed his lips as he breathed his
+last in my arms."
+
+"Whither are they going?" asked Beryl, as the hours floated through the
+hall.
+
+"I will show thee," said the youth, leading her into the open.
+
+The air was keen. In the distance, Beryl could hear the sound of the
+sea. Heavy clouds of mist hung around the castle. The maiden stooped to
+pluck one of the colourless flowers that bloomed in the garden. To her
+surprise, she could not break its stalk. She hurried after the youth,
+who was standing on a jutting piece of rock, some paces away.
+
+"Look," he said, "yonder, to westward."
+
+The maiden saw the winged hours floating over the sea. Far away she
+beheld a dim coast-line of a distant country. The sky on that far shore
+was a mass of rosy clouds, rosier still to Beryl's eyes, accustomed as
+she had become to the greyness and mist of the country of Time.
+
+"The sea which lies beneath us is the sea of Eternity, and yonder land
+is the Garden of the Past. The sun always shines there; the past forges
+its own halo."
+
+Beryl watched in silence the flying shadows floating over the Eternal
+Sea. The hours of her earliest days were there, in that Garden of the
+Past. If she went thither, should she find them, and with them the
+playmates and the innocence of childhood?
+
+Time noticed the sorrowful expression of her face, and pitied her.
+
+"Maiden," he said, "thou must not look backwards. Let the aged dream of
+the days that are gone; thy future is before thee. It waits for thee,
+yonder behind the sun that is rising on the world. Wilt thou go with me
+and give up thy wish, content to let the Village of Youth grow old, as
+is the fate of all things mortal? Thou wilt be happier in thine own
+country. Far away, in its valleys, the flowers and the summer call for
+thee. Come."
+
+He stepped into his chariot, and held out his arms towards her.
+
+"Nay, good my lord; I will await thee here, and try to forget the
+flowers and the summer, remembering only thee and thy promise."
+
+The youth waved his hand in token of adieu, and vanished from her sight.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+After her companion's departure she roamed about the garden. That
+portion of it which surrounded the palace was bare and treeless, but in
+the distance she could see forests of white poplars. She found some
+grey poppies in the garden not unlike those that bloomed in the Village
+of Youth, excepting that these of the country of Time had thick pulpy
+stems, resembling the water-lily. A straggling plant attracted her
+notice; it looked like hemlock, only that the flower was of a deep
+purple. Lifting her face from the gloom of the floral beds, her eyes
+rested on the Garden of the Past. The wish to explore it, and to find in
+its green mazes her early days once more, was irresistible.
+
+Trembling with excitement, she sought for a path that should lead her to
+the seashore. With much difficulty, she succeeded in clambering down the
+steep descent. Upon the strand she found a tiny boat, with quaint
+paddles, in which she made for the shining coast. The skiff progressed
+rapidly. As it neared the land, Beryl noticed a great change in the
+atmosphere. The cold and mist of the country of Time were left behind
+her. Resting upon her oars, she cooled her hands in the sea. To her
+astonishment, she discovered that the water was not salt; it tasted as
+fresh and as pure as the crystal stream that flowed through the Village
+of Youth. Great as was her desire to enter the wonderful garden that lay
+stretched before her, she almost regretted this last adventure. The heat
+became intense. There was no longer a ripple on the sea. Everything lay
+dead still. When close in shore, all suddenly she could make no further
+progress; the more she plied her paddles, the further she drifted
+backwards. At length exhausted, she lost consciousness.
+
+On recovering Beryl was surprised to find herself in the misty garden
+again, Time bending over her with a pitying expression on his face.
+
+"Thou shouldst not have gone to seek the Garden of the Past; even I
+cannot gain access to its groves," he said, when she had revived.
+
+"I am grieved, and wish I had not ventured thither."
+
+Touched by her sorrowful contrition, the youth held up a bunch of faded
+red poppies and said soothingly,--
+
+"I thought of thee as I passed by the Village of Youth."
+
+"Tell me, my dear lord, why is it that the sea washing the shores of the
+Garden of the Past is not salt, but fresh as a mountain spring?" said
+Beryl, taking the dead flowers and holding them tenderly in her hand.
+
+"All bitterness is purged from the Past, my child; therefore the waters
+that wash its shores are sweet."
+
+
+                         III.
+
+So years and years fled by, but there was no change in the Village of
+Youth. It was always summer and always daylight. In the success of
+Beryl's scheme the King found the dearest wish of his heart gratified.
+His face regained its former beauty, and his manner its old charm. But
+at length, although he would not breathe the fact aloud, the unending
+season began to pall upon him.
+
+Always summer and always daylight! His wedding-day would never come, for
+the present time would never pass. At length the sun grew hateful to
+him. He longed for night, and he gazed with agony upon the face of his
+ever-youthful love. When he walked through the gardens he prayed that
+the flowers might wither. He was weary of seeing them always the same,
+shedding the same scent on the air, never less, never more. The lark
+soaring upwards sang the same song of liberty and hope all through the
+unending day. No change in the Village of Youth, young for ever.
+
+The Princess, however, felt differently. A maiden wants so little to
+make her happy. The eternal day was not long to her; her King was with
+her through its everlasting hours, and summer would never leave them and
+their love would never die. Had she only known whether Beryl was safe,
+her mind would have been quite at rest.
+
+Meeting her Lord one day in the palace gardens, she read the agony in
+his face; and after listening to his plaints, she gently, though
+fearlessly, reprimanded him.
+
+"Methinks, dear love, that we shall all be punished yet for thy
+discontent. Thou art placed upon the throne of a great kingdom as its
+sovereign. Thy subjects are true and loyal. Thy betrothed, as is well
+known, is neither clever enough nor good enough to fill the high post
+for which thou hast selected her; but she loves thee, and would lay down
+her life for thee without regret. She sends her favourite maiden on a
+quest which is fraught with much danger; on the accomplishment of that
+mission thy happiness depends. It succeeds; but the royal attendant does
+not return. Time visits the Village of Youth no more; and yet thou
+dwellest in its vernal freshness, ill-content."
+
+"Thou hast good cause to reproach me, dear one, erring only when thou
+dost affirm that she whom I love is not worthy to be my Queen. Were I
+but fit to tie her sandal or kiss the hem of her robe, I were glad
+indeed."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He took her in his arms and pressed her to his heart, while the hot sun
+beat down upon the weary village.
+
+It was thus that Beryl returned to her sovereign's kingdom, on the same
+day and at the same hour she had left it, though the world was older by
+forty years. She walked through the streets, a bent, grey-haired woman.
+Everywhere smiling youth met her gaze. Little children had remained
+little. They gathered round her, pulling at her dress, and gazing
+wonderingly into her lined and worn face.
+
+"Where art thou going, good dame?" a girl inquired.
+
+"To the palace. I wish to see the King."
+
+"In good sooth, they will never admit thee into the palace; and did his
+majesty know that thou wert in the village he would have thee conducted
+thence."
+
+"Ah, maiden! I know of his folly, which will be punished yet, rest
+assured. I was once a girl like thee, had hair like thine, and smooth
+white skin."
+
+"That must have been a long time ago."
+
+"It seems but as yesterday," said Beryl.
+
+She dragged her tired limbs to the palace gates, and stood there, bent
+and tottering. The guard who kept the door refused her admittance,
+saying that his master would not allow the aged within the precincts of
+the village; but the King happened to overhear the argument, and at once
+gave orders to have the woman brought before him. Although she appeared
+quite unknown to him, he fell upon her neck and embraced her, so wearied
+was he of the perpetual youth around him. But when she told them who she
+was, and her story, they greatly marvelled.
+
+"Why didst thou leave the Palace of Time, dear Beryl?" asked Rowena.
+
+"Sweet Princess, I learned to love the Spirit, forgetting how great, how
+godlike he was. And little understanding the difference between us, I
+grew unhappy because he never embraced me. What would you? I was but a
+woman, still chained to earth, though the companion of an Immortal in
+the courts of Eternity. I grew to believe that he did not love me; and
+he, seeing sorrow in my face, thought that I longed to go back to the
+world. I gave him my love, which was all I had of spiritual to give, and
+he was happy; but I lived within his home ill-content. One night, when
+he returned from his yearly circle, I threw my arms around him and
+kissed him. All the palace shook, and he looked at me with strange,
+wistful eyes. I felt tired and weak; and I remember nothing more until I
+awoke, as from a long dream, and found that I was lying on the banks of
+the stream yonder. I arose and washed in the river, and realised that
+I was bent, and grey. Then I knew that the fault had been mine; his
+unwilling lips had given me age, and taken my youth for ever."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+They led her within the palace, and she was clothed and fed. Rowena
+looked at her, and marvelled. In the worn, faded face she tried to trace
+some of the beauty that had been Beryl's; but all in vain. Once they
+were of the same years, but now Beryl was old and the Princess was in
+the springtime of life.
+
+During the watches of the night the aged woman heard the wings of Time
+sweeping through the silent village. Hurrying from the palace, she
+stretched out her arms to him in mute entreaty.
+
+There was a tone of sorrow in his voice as he cried, "Too late--too
+late; only Youth with its beacon-light of Hope can stay the flying feet
+of Time!"
+
+Morning came in the full glory of the risen sun, but the Village of
+Youth was no more. It was as a dream that had passed. Again old age
+gossiped in the streets and sat serene at its board of council. The King
+bowed his head, and accepted his punishment with a dignified humility.
+In the autumn of his life he found joy his youth had never known. He
+became wise in judgment, patient in sorrow, and was beloved by all his
+subjects. In latter years his kingdom grew large and prosperous, and it
+was no longer known as the Village of Youth, but was called the City of
+Content.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                         A CHILD OF THE WIND
+
+[Illustration: A CHILD OF THE WINDS]
+
+  "Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
+  By some cold morning glacier"
+                                            Lord Tennyson
+
+
+                                 I.
+
+When Sorrow was a little child and the Sea yet nursed pale Grief on her
+breast, there lived in a distant country a great and wise King. Renowned
+for justice, he was both loved and revered by his subjects, and if God
+had blessed him with a child to inherit his lands he could have died
+without a regret. However, time passed, and it seemed that his wish was
+to remain ungratified. Being a noble and sagacious man, he reconciled
+himself to the will of his Creator; but his Queen still hoped against
+hope. The King's time was fully occupied. Each day brought its
+different tasks. There was much state business to be discussed in
+council, and the administration of justice made great demands on the
+monarch's leisure. His spouse, on the other hand, had little to do,
+excepting to tend her flowers and to ply her needle. She took to
+brooding and wishing impiously for what God evidently did not intend she
+should have. Unknown to the King, she visited all the magicians in his
+realm, and sought their help to aid her in the fulfilment of her wish;
+but in vain.
+
+When very much depressed, it was the Queen's habit to wander by the sea
+and speak her thoughts aloud. One day, feeling more wretched than she
+had ever done before, she left the palace secretly, and walked some
+miles along the coast, unburdening her mind as she went.
+
+It was late autumn. The approaching death of the year struck her majesty
+painfully. The ocean was a dull green under the heavy sky. She turned,
+and looked at the silver spires of the palace which lay in the distance.
+"Ah! what a difference it would have made in our dear home," she said,
+"had we been blessed with a child." She clasped her hands in a frenzy of
+desire. It seemed to her agitated mind that the sea too was perturbed,
+that its rippling waves kissed her sandalled feet lovingly. At
+length, tired with her walk, she lay down and wept herself to sleep.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When she awoke it was evening. The woodlands and mountains lay in deep
+shadow.
+
+The Queen started up, scarcely remembering where she was. When she quite
+realised her position she drew her hooded cloak more tightly around her,
+and prepared to return home. She had scarcely made any progress, when
+suddenly, a few feet from her, she observed in the sea a face of
+surpassing beauty. The hair lay floating on the waves like red weed; the
+eyes were as green as emeralds, with a fierce tenderness in them. The
+Queen stood transfixed with amazement, gazing at the woman's face. She
+was uncertain what to do, whether to remain where she was, or whether to
+fly homewards along the shore. The royal lady had been reared in the
+simplest manner; she had been taught to distrust her imagination, so she
+rubbed her eyes, expecting that when she looked again the vision would
+have vanished. But she was mistaken; moreover, the apparition began to
+address her in throbbing bursts of song.
+
+"Mortal, I am here to grant thy desire. I have heard thy plaints and
+caught thy tears, and I have sorrowed for thee and tried to soothe thy
+woe, for I too have known bitterness and despair. I was once the love
+of the North Wind. He wooed me amidst the ice-plains, in a world of
+crystal glaciers. He chased me through space, until we lay panting on
+the shores of Africa. But he has left me for the South Wind, with her
+golden hair and her hot breath. They have made their home on a
+mountain-top, where the snow-flowers bloom in profusion, where the sea
+can never go. Four years since he came, bearing a child in his arms. He
+laid it on my breast, saying that I was to keep it and rear it for his
+sake. That child I will give to thee. She knows nothing of her
+parentage, and it would be best that thou shouldst never tell her to
+whom she owes her being."
+
+"But when the North Wind finds that thou hast parted with thy precious
+charge what will he do?" panted the Queen.
+
+"He will storm and tear and lash my waves into mountains, and moan round
+continent and island, and search my ocean from the North to the South
+Pole. His spouse will scorch me with her breath till I am forced to dive
+down to cool crystal caverns, where, upon a bed of seaweed, I shall
+laugh loud and long, a conqueror."
+
+The Queen held her breath in terror. She would have liked to escape from
+the fierce Sea, whose face wore a look of wild triumph; but her anxiety
+to see the Child of the Winds overcame her fear, and she waited
+patiently, her hands clasped tightly together to quell her rising
+agitation.
+
+By this time it was quite dark; the sky was starless, there was not a
+breath of air. In her imagination the Queen seemed to see the Winds in
+their mountain home, unconscious of the peril of their daughter. The Sea
+had disappeared, and was so long absent that the Queen began to think
+she had been dreaming, when suddenly, by invisible hands, a child was
+placed in her arms.
+
+"Thou must call her Myra," said a voice, "for she hath known only
+bitterness on the breast of her foster-mother."
+
+The Queen looked around, but saw no one. Pressing the burden to her
+heart, she started homewards. She dared not look at the little one; but
+she felt the tiny arms clasped confidingly round her neck, and the sweet
+mouth pressed against her cheek gave her more happiness than she had
+ever known.
+
+The Sea followed her, washing the shore with phosphorescent waves to
+light her steps homewards. The royal lady flew along with the agility of
+early youth, and the burden in her arms was made light by love.
+
+At length the marble steps were reached. She hurried up them and through
+the golden gates--along winding passages and across alabaster halls,
+until at length, breathless and trembling with excitement, she burst
+into the King's apartments, where she placed Myra in the arms of her
+amazed and happy husband.
+
+Cognisant of his just and upright nature, she did not tell him of the
+child's parentage, knowing that he would have been the first to restore
+it to its rightful owners. She said that she had found the little
+creature on the shore, and that fearing it would be drowned by the
+incoming tide, she had borne it to the palace, hoping that, should it be
+unclaimed, her royal lord would, in pity of her loneliness, and in
+consideration of their desire for a daughter, allow her to keep and rear
+it as their own.
+
+Long into the night they sat, admiring the lovely waif.
+
+"She must be royally born, my love," said the King. "Washed overboard,
+perhaps, from some regal ship. Be sure she will be claimed of thee."
+
+Suddenly Myra awoke, and the Queen set her on her feet, that they might
+the better observe her.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+She was about four years old. Heavy black hair fell around her face,
+which was lit with wild, pale eyes. Her small seamless garment was
+embroidered with pearls and shells, and through its transparent folds
+the little body looked like a blush rose with the dew upon it. The
+Queen, in an ecstasy of happiness, drew Myra's hands within her own
+and kissed them; her heart went out in motherly tenderness to the poor
+babe, hitherto unkissed by mortal lips, though born of the Winds and
+rocked by the Sea. Yet, as she gazed into the child's sorrowful face, a
+strange fear smote her, and she almost wished that she had left the
+eerie creature in its salt sea home, or that she had told her husband
+the story of its birth. Still, she could not go back now.
+
+In the night a great storm arose. The Queen lay trembling in her
+chamber. Myra's powerful father had learned of the loss of his daughter.
+He lashed the Sea from Pole to Pole; it thundered on the shore, and
+burst into wild shrieks of triumph. The night was long and tempestuous;
+whole towns were destroyed, and many ships were sunk; but towards
+morning the North Wind subsided into low wails of pain, which were
+answered by the languorous sighs of the South, as they returned to their
+mountain home sad and desolate, while in a marble palace a Queen awoke
+pressing their child to her breast. She had taken the weird sea-tossed
+thing to her heart, for weal or woe.
+
+
+II.
+
+Myra's first years in her new home were trying ones to her
+foster-parents. Nothing in the palace seemed to please her. Not that she
+ever in any way testified her dislike of anybody or anything; but there
+was a wistful look in her face, and she had a listless way of sitting
+for hours on the floor, her elbows resting on her knees and her hands
+supporting her chin. Asked what she thought about at these times her
+reply was an odd one, and always gave the Queen a creepy feeling. "I am
+not thinking; I am only seeing things," she would say.
+
+A spacious nursery had been built for the child's use in the grounds of
+the palace. It had a walled-in garden of its own, in which there were
+flowers, fruit trees, soft lawns, and sparkling fountains. All the
+toy-makers in the kingdom had been employed to furnish the nursery with
+ingenious inventions. There were dolls by the hundred, tea and dinner
+services, farmyards, woolly animals, games innumerable, everything that
+the heart of the most petted child could desire; yet Myra took no
+pleasure in them. The only playthings she appeared to care for were a
+collection of shells, which had been gathered for her on the beach and
+pierced with holes; these she would string and re-string for hours.
+
+Time passed, and Myra grew into a lovely woman. The King was exceedingly
+proud of her, and he made her heiress to his crown and estates. One
+thing alone troubled him deeply. Myra would not consent to marry any of
+the great nobles who had frequented his court. All the high-born princes
+of his realm had wooed her in vain, and many others from distant lands
+had failed to please her. The King had often heard of princesses who set
+so high a value on themselves that they did not think any man good
+enough for them in the light of a husband, but Myra was not proud. She
+was of a very gentle nature, and he could not believe that she was
+cold-hearted; yet she appeared to be so, for none of her noble lovers
+could boast the smallest word of encouragement from her sweet lips. She
+moved through the palace, a slim, dark beauty, in her pale draperies,
+her hair half hidden beneath her jewelled head-dress, her face, though
+calm and serene, still lit by the strange, wistful eyes which had so
+struck the Queen on that night seventeen years ago when the Winds had
+lost their daughter.
+
+As she grew to womanhood Myra delighted in her garden. She often sat
+there most of the day, reading or sewing or talking with the flowers.
+It amused the Princess to find that, from simple daisy to proud
+tiger-lily, they were all in love. With one exception.
+
+Near the wall there grew a purple Hollyhock or Rose-Mallow. The Princess
+preferred to call him by his latter name, because it seemed to her the
+grander and also the more euphonious of the two. He, of all the flowers
+in the enclosure, was her favourite, and he alone had not yet found a
+lady upon whom to bestow his affections.
+
+Myra always attended upon the garden herself. She cut off the dead
+blossoms, raked the soil with a golden rake, and gave the plants water
+out of a golden pitcher when the heat of the sun had been oppressive.
+Therefore, she participated in all their secrets. She knew that,
+although the Rose-Mallow was not in love with any inmate of the garden,
+there was an humble Violet which grew at his feet, in whose eyes he was
+the rarest and most lovely flower in the world. It amused Myra to see
+the Violet peep from its green leaves at the stately Mallow, and then,
+if he chanced to be looking, which, of course, was just what the Violet
+wanted, she would hide herself, in a strange tremor of excitement.
+
+"I feel so happy, and yet so miserable, to-day," said the Rose-Mallow to
+the Princess one morning. "Last night, when all the others were asleep,
+I heard, from over the wall, a sweet voice singing a hymn to Night. I
+asked the Poplar who it was, and he said it was the Evening Primrose;
+that there were none of her race in our garden, and that she was more
+beautiful than daylight."
+
+"And why should that knowledge distress thee?" asked the Princess,
+sitting down at his feet.
+
+"Because I love her. Her voice is music. I am pining to see her."
+
+He trembled as he spoke. The Princess rose, laughing.
+
+"Well, this is a strange garden," she said. "I did think my Rose-Mallow
+was sensible. What is it," she cried aloud, "what is this Love, for
+which all Nature pines?"
+
+There was no answer; but the sun shot down a handful of golden sunbeams
+upon her face, which dazzled her and made her laugh again.
+
+"Ah! thou wilt know ere long," said the Rose-Mallow, much hurt at her
+want of sympathy. "Do not think, Princess, that the most beautiful of
+women will be allowed to go unscathed."
+
+Myra threw her arms around him, to make up for her unfeeling remarks,
+and then in soft tones advised him to climb the wall and look over at
+his lady-love.
+
+"But it will take so long, and be so hard!" he replied.
+
+"Still, thy reward may be great, sweet flower. Look higher than the
+homely flowers of thy home, for the blossom beyond the walls may be far
+more rare, and may outshine them all."
+
+So the Rose-Mallow prepared to follow the Princess's advice, and to
+leave the lilies, and lupins, and all the sweets of the garden behind
+him.
+
+As Myra turned to go, she noticed that the Violet had drooped and lay
+panting. She hurried to fetch it some water, for which it returned her
+modest thanks. She wondered what ailed it to faint in the cool of the
+morning, when the earth was yet damp with early rain. Then it struck her
+that the Violet's love for the Rose-Mallow would be of no use if he
+found the Evening Primrose. "And I suppose that would make her unhappy,"
+she said aloud, as she plucked a bunch of heartsease and placed it in
+her dress, the wonder in her eyes deepening into an expression of grave,
+severe thoughtfulness.
+
+
+                           III.
+
+Protected by a hedge of myrtle, in the heart of a mighty forest, Love
+had fashioned his bower. His couch was strewn with honey-flowers and
+rose-leaves. Stately red chrysanthemums made splashes of crimson
+brilliance against the dark green of the scented myrtle. Pink
+carnations, roses of every hue, sweetbriar, ambrosia, balsams,
+forget-me-nots, and every flower sacred to the great god, Love, grew in
+profusion, to make his bower into a resting-place worthy of him.
+
+He lay tossing on his fragrant couch in a fit of anger. For some time
+Princess Myra's disdain of all the great princes and nobles whom he had
+sent to woo her had offended him deeply. But on this particular
+afternoon his messengers had informed him of the maiden's morning
+interview with the Rose-Mallow, and of the question she had asked with
+regard to himself. Unable to forget the Princess's impertinence, he lay
+brooding and fretting, until the position of the sun warned him that the
+day was passing away.
+
+"What is this Love for which the whole earth pines?" he murmured, as he
+bounded from his couch into a cluster of forget-me-nots. "Ah! I will
+teach thee. Thou shalt learn, ere the day is dead, what Love is. In the
+semblance of an earthly prince, I will woo thee myself. I will adore
+thee, sweet Myra, gaze into thine eyes, and pretend that there is only
+one woman in all the world for me. I will do as men do--pet thee, and
+coax thee, and win thy affections by the thousand little nothings that
+make up a courtship. When I have conquered thee, and thy heart is mine,
+I will break it and trample it under foot, and leave thee all thy life a
+remembrance of the power of Love. Thou shalt never hear sweet music, but
+a desperate longing for my presence shall come over thee. Thou shalt
+never see a rose, but thy heart shall bleed. The sight of a lark,
+winging his morning flight heavenwards, shall draw tears to thy weary
+eyes. Ah! woe betide the mortal maid when Eros is her lover!"
+
+"These," he said, choosing a hundred chrysanthemums, "shall be my
+escort."
+
+As he spoke, the flowers were transformed into a hundred gallant
+knights; their dresses were of crimson brocade, and on their heads were
+caps of chrysanthemum petals. Then Love took up honey-flowers and
+rose-leaves, and changed them into a suit of rich purple silk.
+
+Meanwhile the King had been having a far from pleasant interview with
+Her Majesty on the subject of their daughter.
+
+"Indeed, it is not my fault," the Queen had said. "I cannot help it if
+our child's heart is still whole."
+
+"But, my dear love, thou never givest her any counsel. If thou wert to
+tell her that it is meet she should marry one of the many lords who
+desire her I feel assured she would do thy will."
+
+The Queen burst into tears. Knowing the girl's parentage as she did, how
+could she advise her to accept a mortal for her husband? Yet she dared
+not tell the King of Myra's birth; she must always keep the hateful
+secret to herself. Oh that she had chosen the straight path when the
+choice had been hers!
+
+The King was distressed to see her weep. But just at that moment he
+observed a small fleet with crimson sails flying up the river towards
+the royal landing-stage.
+
+"Why, that must be another suitor for our daughter's hand!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+All the flowers remarked the pretty boats scudding along in the late
+afternoon sunlight. The Rose-Mallow alone was too busily employed in
+climbing the wall to observe what circumstance was disturbing the
+flower-garden. The ladies of the palace, the lords and the pages, were
+aware of the visit of the Prince long before he had landed. The
+household was greatly agitated. Their Majesties hurried to the audience
+chamber, to find the Court already assembled to receive the high-born
+visitor. Myra alone was unconscious of the advent of another suitor. Had
+she known of it, the fact would only have annoyed her somewhat, and
+made her eyes a trifle more wistful than they usually were.
+
+Suddenly the Queen entered the Princess's room trembling with
+excitement.
+
+"My child, my child! thou must proceed at once to the audience chamber,
+by the King's commands. A great Prince has come to woo thee."
+
+Myra was robed in a loose gown of fine linen, her dark hair hung upon
+her shoulders, and a book which she had been reading lay open on her
+knee.
+
+"Oh, come, let me clothe thee!" cried the Queen, assisting the girl to
+her feet and hurrying her into the adjoining room, where, with nervous
+fingers, she bound up the thick hair in embroidered bands of opals and
+diamonds. Then, opening a cedar chest which stood at the end of the
+apartment, she drew forth a dress, and was about to slip it over the
+Princess's head, when Myra started back in amazement.
+
+"My royal Queen, I cannot wear that garment," she said. "Why, it cost
+the King, my father, over a hundredweight in gold. I was warned to keep
+it only for great occasions."
+
+"Foolish girl, is not thy betrothal a great occasion? Ah! I do not jest.
+Pause until thou hast seen the youth who awaits thee. He is handsome
+beyond all men that even I, old as I am, have ever looked upon."
+
+The Princess was struck by the Queen's enthusiasm. She allowed herself
+to be attired in the superb robe which had been a present from the King.
+It was fashioned of rich silk, and had a design of lilies round the hem
+and on the sleeves, each flower being worked with opals and diamonds.
+Twenty maidens had been employed for twenty months embroidering the
+costly pattern. In sunlight the fabric was pale sea-green, bordering on
+silver-grey; but when the sky was dull there were faint purple tones in
+its folds, like the soft bloom on the fruit of the plum-tree.
+
+When Myra entered the hall a murmur of admiration fell from the lips of
+the assembly. She had never looked so lovely. She seemed to stand in a
+halo of light; the opals on her dress reflected themselves in the
+diamonds, making a haze of pale fantastic colour, strange as it was
+beautiful. As she entered, the Prince was talking apart with the King;
+so she had a moment in which to observe him before he knew of her
+advent. He appeared to be a merry youth, with golden curls and blue eyes
+that were full of mirth and the love of fun. He turned and saw her, and
+fell on one knee and took her hand, lifting up his face to hers. Then,
+as he gazed upon her, the brightness and the mirth that had illuminated
+his lovely countenance died away. She looked down to see his eyes filled
+with a new meaning, a wondrous expression of mingled tenderness and pain
+shadowed them. She looked down to see large tears furrowing his cheeks.
+She looked down to love him!
+
+
+                               IV.
+
+"In good sooth, sweet lady, thou art beautiful beyond all women that I,
+old as I am, have ever seen," said the Prince, in curious repetition of
+the Queen's description of himself, as he and Myra walked in the palace
+gardens that night.
+
+"But thou art not old, thou art very young, my lord; and perhaps it is
+thy lack of experience which makes thee think so," answered the
+Princess, modestly hanging her head and seeking to hide her face.
+
+A deep shadow passed over his countenance, and his heart bled at the
+thought of the pain that his trick would cause the maiden by his side.
+Of the everlasting wound it would inflict on him he dared not think.
+
+"And thou hast lived here all thy life?" he asked, desirous of changing
+the subject.
+
+"All my life," she answered.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"And art thou quite happy?"
+
+"Good sir, I thought I was; I never wished to change my lot until
+to-day."
+
+"Ah! I have heard of thy dislike of the many suitors who sought thy
+hand."
+
+"Not my dislike, but my indifference. I did not believe in Love. Though
+it was all around me in Nature, still I had never known it; and there
+was something so imperfect, so earthly, in the great princes who wished
+to marry me. Until to-day I was blindly ignorant."
+
+"Until to-day!" reiterated the Prince, gazing at her with eyes
+indescribably tender and yearning.
+
+"But since thou hast asked my father for my hand, and he hath given his
+consent, I may tell thee all I feel, may I not?"
+
+"Ah, sweet Princess! I know all that thou dost feel; I feel all that
+thou wouldst say."
+
+Then they were silent for some time. The moon shone, and the floor of
+heaven was studded with silver stars. The flowers were asleep, excepting
+the Evening Primrose. Myra saw her in the arms of Night, and heard their
+gentle voices. She thought of the Rose-Mallow, and pondered with
+new-born sympathy on the Violet's pain.
+
+"Dear one, we must part now," said the Prince, as they paused before
+the palace gates. "But ere thou goest, tell me, wouldst thou be very
+unhappy if I never came to thee again?"
+
+A cold fear entered the Princess's heart.
+
+"My dear lord," she said, "I was only born to-day. My past was not life,
+therefore I am as a little child, and cannot answer thee with wisdom;
+but inquire of the flowers, whether they would be sad should the sun
+rise no more. Ah! would they not perish? Would not the world lie down
+and die from cold? Then, good my lord, and thou lovest me, ask me not so
+cruel a question."
+
+"It is fate," he murmured, as he held her in his arms and soothed away
+her pain with tender words.
+
+The Princess awoke the next morning to find the Queen seated beside her
+bed. Myra was too much in love to notice things which would have
+impressed her under ordinary circumstances, else she would have thought
+her royal mother's manner unnecessarily excitable, and would have
+wondered what secret trouble had suddenly so changed the stately Queen's
+appearance.
+
+"My child, thy lover waits for thee in thy workroom, therefore rise and
+robe thee. But before thou goest to him I want thee to refuse the gift
+with which he will present thee. I am sure it will bring thee
+ill-luck."
+
+"But good my mother, the Prince loves me too well to offer me aught that
+could be a source of sorrow to me. What is the gift?"
+
+"It is an AEolian harp," said the Queen, in a whisper.
+
+"An AEolian harp! I have never seen one. Methinks it must be a sweet
+instrument."
+
+The Queen sighed heavily. She feared that her sin against truth would
+overtake her at last.
+
+Myra found the Prince and his attendants engaged in fixing the wind harp
+outside her casement.
+
+"There," he said, as he bent his knee and saluted her hand, "when I am
+away this will discourse to thee of love."
+
+"But why place it outside the casement, good my lord? I cannot learn to
+play upon it there."
+
+"Sweet Princess, thou couldst never play upon it, nor could I. The Wind
+alone can draw music from its heart. When he sweeps the strings the
+melody is as the very breath of love, so tender and yet so wailing is
+the strain."
+
+"The Wind!" exclaimed the Princess. "Hast ever seen the Wind?"
+
+"Ay, and romped with him and flown with him over sea and earth."
+
+"Ah! now thou art pleased to be merry, as thou wert yesterday when I
+saw thee talking to the King, ere we had met. Thy countenance was full
+of mirth and sunlight then. Tell me, why art thou changed? Wherefore art
+thou sad?"
+
+"Dear one, I am not sad when I have thy companionship. It is only the
+thought of losing thee that shadows my face."
+
+So they passed out of the chamber into the garden.
+
+Thus the time wore away. Summer began to wane. The nights grew longer
+and the days more brief.
+
+The King's impatience to see his daughter married increased hourly. Yet
+the Prince daily put him off with excuses when asked to fix the date of
+the wedding. At length His Majesty grew angry at the delay.
+
+"It is time," he said to Myra, "that thou wast settled in life. We are
+old, and in all probability have little longer to live. Thy good lord
+seemeth all he should be. In grace of form and beauty of face he stands
+unsurpassed. But methinks, for all that, he means thee ill."
+
+"Indeed, my father, thou art wrong to say so," replied the Princess,
+with difficulty suppressing her anger. "He is truth itself, and he loves
+me."
+
+"But he will not marry thee!" the King muttered.
+
+"There, again, thou art mistaken, my lord. He will marry me to-day--at
+once, so thou stand pleased withal!"
+
+"Bring him before us, then, and let us hear his vow."
+
+Myra made a deep obeisance, and left the King's closet.
+
+Immediately she had gone His Majesty despatched a page to summon the
+Queen and Council. They were all assembled before Myra entered with her
+lover. She had not told him for what reason she had been sent in search
+of him; therefore, when he saw the grave faces of those present, he was
+surprised. The King rose and addressed him in dignified words, Myra
+making her way to her royal mother's side.
+
+"Good my lord, our daughter tells us that thou art willing thy nuptials
+should be celebrated as soon as we consider meet. We have conferred with
+these grave counsellors, and they think with us that the ceremony should
+take place to-day."
+
+"To-day, most powerful sovereign! Is not to-day somewhat soon? Methinks
+it were not well to hurry the Princess."
+
+"Our child hath given her consent, noble sir. Hast thou not, my
+daughter?"
+
+"An' it please my dear lord, I have," was the low reply.
+
+There was a long silence in the chamber. Every eye was fixed on Myra's
+lover. He stood gazing on the beautiful face of her whom he
+worshipped--a gloomy figure in his purple garments, his eyes full of
+infinite sorrow.
+
+"It seemeth that the Prince hesitateth," said the King, in a threatening
+voice.
+
+Myra left the Queen, and with bent head approached her love.
+
+"My good knight," she said, "methinks I do but dream; or, if I am awake,
+then hast thou changed, or some trouble hath befallen thee. Speak; my
+father awaits thine answer. Shall our wedding be to-day?"
+
+"Fair lady, nothing could change my love, nor hath any trouble befallen
+me; and yet, our marriage ceremony cannot be solemnised to-day."
+
+"Then to-morrow, good sir," said the King, "or the week after?"
+
+"Your Majesty, the daughters of earth will never see the celebration of
+our nuptials."
+
+The King turned grey with wrath, and gasped for breath as if death was
+upon him. The Council rose; the Queen rushed to her royal consort's
+side. Myra sank down in a heap at her lover's feet. He knelt beside her
+for one brief second.
+
+"Forgive me," he murmured, "forgive me, in that I shall suffer
+eternally, whilst thy pain will end in the grave. Farewell, dear one;
+would I were mortal for thy sake. Love bids thee farewell."
+
+When the King recovered his senses the Prince had disappeared. The
+country was scoured for miles round, but not a trace of him nor his
+followers could be found. No member of the royal household noticed a
+hundred beautiful red chrysanthemums, which had suddenly rooted
+themselves in the palace garden.
+
+
+                              V.
+
+Myra wandered about the precincts of her home like one distraught with
+sorrow. The sun of her life had gone out, and left all dark and cold and
+desolate. The flowers had lost their rare colours, and had clothed
+themselves in sombre tints of red and purple. The river had lost its
+merry voice, and went sobbing through the grounds. Many days passed, and
+life became one long memory. With brooding and sorrowing over her lost
+Love she grew pale and thin. Her eyes became wan and hollow, and misery
+closed her lips.
+
+Some weeks after the Prince had disappeared she visited her garden. The
+flowers had grown tall and straggling, the walks were weedy, the lawn
+had lost its velvet softness, and all was desolation. As she walked,
+weeping, beside the once brilliant border, she saw the Rose-Mallow lying
+half-dead across her path.
+
+"Alas, sweet flower! what aileth thee?" she said, lifting his head and
+looking into his face.
+
+"My dear mistress, I am hurt to death," he murmured.
+
+"Speak. Tell me thy sorrow."
+
+"I worked by day and by night to climb the wall of the garden, and after
+much labour I reached the summit, just as the sun was setting. There I
+saw the lady whose melodious voice had won my heart. Ah, fair Princess!
+she was more beautiful than dawn or daylight. I gazed at her, and told
+her that I loved her; but she would not even look at me; she spread
+forth her pale blossoms with sweet pride. 'I love the Night alone, and
+only raise my face to his,' she said. Then I drooped and drooped with
+pain. I am indeed hurt to death," he moaned.
+
+She threw her arms around him, while her tears fell on his poor faded
+leaves; and when the moon had risen her favourite lay dead in the once
+happy garden.
+
+The Princess fetched her golden spade, and dug his grave where he had
+lived. Then she bent down and plucked a little cluster of flowers from
+the Violet whose love had been wasted, to place upon the earth above
+his resting-place; and from each blossom a tear-drop flowed from the
+Violet's heart.
+
+"Ah! if I had not advised him to seek his love away from those with whom
+his life had been passed," moaned Myra. "He could have cared for one of
+the flowers in the garden before he saw the Evening Primrose; his life
+was spoilt through my counsel, and ended in pain. And, oh! that I had
+been as other women, and had taken a knight of my father's court for
+husband. If only I had put up with little imperfections, then this
+trouble had not come upon me. But now life is over, and I can never know
+happiness again."
+
+That night Fate told the North Wind the story of his child. On his
+mountain home he learned of the Queen's treachery, of Myra's early life,
+and of Love's hateful blunder.
+
+Spreading his powerful wings, by Fate's command, he flew earthwards, to
+bear his daughter to the halls of that dread arbiter of destiny. He was
+oppressed with sorrow. The snow-flowers hid their heads as he rushed,
+sobbing, down the mountain; the earth shook at his voice as he shrieked
+through village and valley; the dead leaves sighed as he scattered them
+in thousands before him. But when he gained the palace gardens and
+approached his daughter's window his fierce sorrow abated, and he
+touched the strings of her harp with gentle fingers. The first strains
+were more like the voice of the South Wind than that of the wilder
+North. Then followed long wailing strains of melody, as of a soul in
+distress.
+
+Myra, sitting brooding on her misery, became strangely roused, as she
+heard the weird instrument played upon by a master hand. Often the sad
+music seemed to be the voice of her lover; then the tones softened to a
+sigh; it was the Rose-Mallow's dying sob.
+
+An overmastering wish seized her to open the casement. She must admit
+those pleading tones, or her heart would break. Unable to quell the
+desire, she threw wide the window.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There stood a tall, winged man. His shaggy hair was heavy and black, his
+face was gaunt and wild. He was sweeping the harp-strings with long,
+bony fingers. Strange and uncouth and terrible as he looked, there was
+such strength about the great figure, such power in the face, that the
+Princess, though terror-stricken, was drawn towards him. And when he saw
+her leaning from her casement, so gentle an expression crossed his worn
+visage, that her fear of him departed instantly, and she said:--
+
+"I know thee, great master. Thou art the Wind, and thou hast met my
+Love. Ah, in mercy take me to him!"
+
+"Wilt thou not be afraid to entrust thyself to my arms?" he whispered.
+
+"Good sir, carry me all over the earth, through frozen worlds of endless
+ice, so thou layest me at my lord's feet at last, and I shall not know a
+moment's fear. I love him!" she said simply.
+
+The Wind clasped her in his arms and flew away, lulling her to sleep as
+he went.
+
+When the Princess awoke she was standing in a gloomy cavern. The walls
+were of black onyx. A stream of crystal water ran gurgling at her feet.
+
+When her eyes became more accustomed to the haze and dimness of the
+place, she saw a sight which made her wish to shriek aloud; but her
+voice seemed to have gone, and she stood powerless and terror-stricken.
+As she gazed a light seemed to break upon her mind.
+
+Fate, robed in lowering mists, sat gazing into a divining glass, with
+keen, prophetic eyes; with her right hand she held Love in strong and
+terrible grasp. In the crouching, penitent figure, Myra recognised, with
+bursting heart, that her Prince and Love were one. Then she became
+conscious of the deep voice of Fate ringing through the gloom in
+threatening tones.
+
+"Thou didst think thou couldst play with her affections as thou dost
+with those of a mortal maid, couldst win her love and break her heart by
+thy desertion! But, trickster as thou art, in thine own net art thou
+caught. See, where each tear she lets fall, a lily springs."
+
+Myra's eyes followed Fate's pointing finger. Love looked up and saw the
+Princess standing in a cluster of white lilies.
+
+"Know that she is a spirit, immortal as thyself; a child of the Winds,
+nursed on the salt Sea's breast. Therefore, as thou only canst feel
+punishment in her agony, she shall be called Grief. Henceforth, in all
+Love there shall be much of bitterness. Parting from the thing loved
+shall be the keenest pang of human pain. She shall visit her
+foster-parents but once again, and mingle her sobs with theirs. She
+shall pursue thee through the ages, and fear of her coming shall lessen
+thy rapture. Disappointment, despair, and misery, shall walk in her
+train. Man shall weep tears of blood in that thou hast created Grief!"
+
+Love shrieked aloud in pain, and flinging aside the cruel hand of Fate,
+threw his arms about the shrinking girl. They stood in the misty gloom
+together, his brilliant form regained its strength. Grief lifted her
+brimming eyes to his and caught their power.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A great wave of tenderness broke over the mournful face of Fate; her
+calm glance rested prophetically on the two figures as she addressed
+them for the last time.
+
+"But her love of thee shall endure until the Lilies of Grief are lost in
+the Roses of Love; for Love shall be king of Grief, and of Time, and of
+Eternity."
+
+[Illustration: UNTIL THE LILIES OF GRIEF ARE LOST IN THE ROSES OF LOVE]
+
+
+
+
+                The Flower that reached the Sun-lands
+
+[Illustration: The Flower that reached the Sun-lands]
+
+  "No star is ever lost we once have seen
+  We always may be what we might have been"
+                                  Adelaide Procter
+
+
+                                I.
+
+Though only a miserable little waif, born in sorrow and nurtured in
+poverty, George Ermen had resolved to be a great man.
+
+He earned six shillings a week at sorting rags and paper, adding
+frequently to this a smaller sum gained by cleaning pots at a
+public-house. It was a miserable pittance. He and his mother could
+hardly be said to live upon it, they only existed; and they found this
+still more difficult when George's father, a lazy, ne'er-do-well, came
+to visit them.
+
+The boy and his mother dwelt in a garret in Paradise Court. It was a
+bare, miserable room, its only furniture an old iron bedstead, a rickety
+table, and two chairs. Opening out of the attic was a tiny chamber with
+a mattress in one corner, on which George slept. He had no bed-clothes,
+and was in the habit of covering himself with papers during the chill
+winter nights.
+
+On the wall hung a small plaster crucifix. A sprig of box was thrust
+through the ring by which the cross was suspended. The window looked out
+upon a wilderness of chimneys and grimy tenement houses.
+
+It seemed to George that God had been very good to him, although he was
+poor and ragged and half starved, for besides his old mother, whom he
+loved above everything, he had three good friends--Father Francis, the
+Roman Catholic priest; Miss Brand, who was devoting both time and money
+to the suffering poor in the district; and Maggie Reed, his little
+sweetheart, who was as poverty-stricken and as tattered as himself.
+
+George sang in the choir at the church. He possessed a beautiful voice,
+and the priest felt sure that were it possible to procure him an
+efficient musical training he would have a future. But it seemed rash to
+even hope for a chance for the boy among the squalor and misery and sin
+which surrounded the poor. Father Francis, however, did not lose heart,
+because he was a good man, believing in God, and feeling convinced that
+He would stretch forth His hand to the waif and help him in His own
+good time. The lad himself was even more hopeful than the priest,
+because he was young, and had resolved that death alone should prevent
+the fulfilment of his vow.
+
+Not that poor George Ermen had much idea of what the term "a great man"
+meant, excepting that they usually dressed in frock coats, wore gaiters
+over their boots, and drove about in a carriage, all of which seemed
+very pleasant and most desirable to the bare-footed waif.
+
+Strangely enough, he was frequently pondering over very material things
+when he sang his best and when his eyes seemed most dreamy.
+
+"What were you a-thinking of this mornin' in church when you was singin'
+the _Ave Maria_?" his mother had once inquired.
+
+"Why, didn't I sing it well?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Yaas, better than ever before, and yer faice looked loike an angel's."
+
+"Well, I was promisin' God that if ever I got rich enough to ride about
+in a carriage like the lords do that come and lay foundation stones and
+opens schools and things, I'd invite all the little children what's so
+miserable to tea and muffins."
+
+Mrs. Ermen smiled sadly. She had no belief in her son ever rising to be
+anything better than a wretched waif, fated to live and die in Paradise
+Court. But as long as he was honest, and brave, and true to his friends,
+she must not complain. She was content, almost happy indeed, when she
+looked around her and saw boys of George's age swearing and fighting and
+drinking, while George was sober, well behaved, and industrious.
+
+Maggie Reed knew in her young soul that George would surely live to be a
+great man, and often when they roamed about the weary streets together,
+she would cheer him with her childish confidence.
+
+"We'll live on 'Ampstead 'Eath, George, when you're rich and we're
+married, at one of them big 'ouses by the pond, and we'll 'ave donkey
+rides and bicycles and things."
+
+"Yes, darling," George would answer.
+
+By the advice of Father Francis they often spent hours in the parks and
+squares, where the air was sweeter than that of Paradise Court; but
+frequently George's little sweetheart grew so tired that he had to carry
+her on his back most of the way home again.
+
+It was a cold day in early spring. Mrs. Ermen sat shivering in a corner
+of their garret, when her boy bounded into the room carrying a geranium
+in a pot.
+
+"Mother, mother," he cried in wild excitement, "Miss Brand is gettin' up
+a geranium show! It's ter come off in July. Four hundred plants have
+been given out to the children this morning. They are to keep them,
+water them, attend to them, make them grow and flower, and when the day
+comes round for the show the plants must be taken to the schoolroom, and
+the best will get a prize."
+
+"Who is ter judge?" asked Mrs. Ermen, catching George's excitement.
+
+"A lord!"
+
+"A lord?"
+
+"Yes, one of them that wears gaiters over their boots. And I am going to
+win the first prize!" he added firmly, his sharp face wearing an
+expression of happy anticipation.
+
+"I 'ope you will, my dear," she answered, kissing him, and breathing a
+prayer from her poor ignorant soul for the good woman whose unselfish
+devotion had brought that look into her boy's face.
+
+Time passed, and the bitter, easterly winds proved to be more than Mrs.
+Ermen could bear. She became too weak to rise, and when George grew
+alarmed she tried to comfort him by saying that she felt warmer in bed;
+and when June came she should be about again, and he must not distress
+himself for her sake.
+
+Supposing she should die! Men and women died frequently in Paradise
+Court. Their bodies were carried out of the squalid dwellings and
+rattled over the streets to the crowded burial ground. The thought smote
+him painfully, and made a burning flush mount to his face. She must not
+die! What would riches and greatness mean to him unless she were there
+to share in his good fortune?
+
+
+                                 II.
+
+The geranium was not at all happy in her new quarters. Although George
+attended to her wants most carefully she still thought with bitter
+regret of the greenhouse where she had been reared, and of the old
+gardener who had ministered to her. Here on the window sill of George's
+attic thousands of smuts settled daily upon her leaves, and the air was
+heavy. So great was her discomfort that she would have most certainly
+ceased to live had not a sunbeam lost his way among the narrow courts of
+the city, and while darting in and out of the grimy streets in his
+endeavours to find the sun, espied the unhappy flower. He immediately
+climbed up his golden ladder, and rested among the broad green leaves,
+much to her delight.
+
+She confided her pitiful history to this new-found friend, who was so
+kind and sympathetic that the geranium grew warm and happy. Presently
+the sun shone out in the murky sky, and immediately the sunbeam glided
+along his golden thread and rejoined his parent. He did not, however,
+forsake the plant which had sheltered him, but frequently visited her,
+so that she forgot her struggle for life, and grew into a fine healthy
+geranium, much to the delight of her young master.
+
+As time passed George began to realise that his mother would never rise
+from her bed again. Father Francis had gently told him that there was
+little hope of her recovery, and that when the great blow fell upon him
+he must reconcile himself to the will of the Almighty.
+
+The poor waif suffered many hours of agony alone in his garret. Kneeling
+before the crucifix, he would beg God to spare the one thing he loved in
+all the world.
+
+"I have so few comforts, dear Lord," he would say, "no clothes, little
+food; I can stand want if only you will not take her away." But when he
+was tired out with pain, he would raise his lips to the pierced feet,
+and kissing them, murmur, "Thy will be done."
+
+His imagination had so often realised the picture that one morning, on
+finding his mother dead in her bed, he was hardly shocked.
+
+The doctor said that death had resulted from syncope, accelerated by
+want of nourishment and neglect.
+
+So the waif was left alone. His bright look departed. The wish for
+greatness was forgotten in his sorrow, and even his little sweetheart
+failed to comfort him.
+
+On hearing of George's sad plight his father returned to live with him.
+The boy's saddened face touched Ermen's hard heart, and for a time the
+son's misery was alleviated by his parent's kindness. His father was
+decently dressed, and evidently had a little money, for food was more
+plentiful in the garret than it had ever been during George's
+remembrance.
+
+Thanks to the sunbeam's care, the geranium continued to thrive
+marvellously, and as show day drew near she approached her prime.
+
+Miss Brand gave George a clean collar and a decent jacket, and Father
+Francis bought him his first pair of shoes for the great occasion.
+
+On the morning of the distribution he was up at five o'clock, for at
+that early hour he had been told to take his geranium to the schoolroom,
+and enter it for the competition.
+
+Very gently he watered the leaves, taking care that not a drop should
+fall upon one of the five brilliant blossoms. As he stood admiring the
+plant he was surprised to hear footsteps in the adjoining room. His
+father had been away some days. He thought he must have returned earlier
+than he had expected. He therefore hurried to the door, and opened it, a
+joyful expression on his face. But it was the landlady, who stood there
+holding a dirty-looking letter in her hand.
+
+"Look 'ere, sonnie, your father's been took ter gaol. 'E was on 'is way
+'ome when the perlice took 'im in charge for that big jewel robbery at
+Manchester. 'E's wrote me this letter," she said, pausing to unfold the
+dirty piece of paper, while George stood pale to the lips with terror.
+
+"'E sends you this message: 'Tell my son not ter grieve for me. It's all
+quite true what they says against me. I am a scamp, and always have
+been.'"
+
+"'E'll get a lifer, that's a certainty," she observed to the lodgers
+downstairs when she had left the horror-stricken boy alone.
+
+George couldn't weep at this last blow. He had not shed a tear since his
+mother's death. The agony in his heart was therefore all the more
+unbearable. He clenched his hands in pain.
+
+Hours passed, the bitterest he had ever spent. Whatever suffering the
+future held for him he never experienced such anguish again.
+
+At last he raised his head. His face was white, his eyes were heavy and
+dull.
+
+"Everything is against me," he moaned. "My mother's dead; my father, who
+had become so kind, taken and thrown into gaol. Why should I suffer
+hunger and cold and disgrace and beggary? Other boys, through no merit
+of theirs, are born rich. Why wasn't I a lord's son instead of a waif of
+the streets? Why should my mother die of neglect, when others have all
+they need? Oh! I'll ask God to kill me; death ain't so very terrible.
+I've seen lots of boys of my age fished out of the river. It's only a
+few moments' pain, and Jesus wouldn't be 'ard on a little chap what's
+ben drove to it."
+
+The geranium trembled with fear as she heard the boy's wild words. She
+spread out her blossoms and endeavoured to attract his attention.
+
+Suddenly the garret was brilliantly illuminated. The sunbeam had glided
+down his golden ladder, and stood on the window sill.
+
+George was amazed. He must be dreaming! What was this beautiful tiny
+creature enveloped in a haze of glory?
+
+"The angels are sad when you despair, little boy. Gather your energies.
+Receive your prize! You are ungrateful to the flower which has grown
+into so beautiful a plant for your sake. You are ungrateful to your God
+thus to abandon hope when you possess one of His greatest gifts."
+
+"What gift?"
+
+"Youth, a magic watchword that can open the enchanted gates in the land
+of genius."
+
+"Genius?" said the boy wonderingly. "I have never heard of it."
+
+"Live your life. Lose not a moment. At your years time flies. Be a great
+and a good man. Persevere. Out of the mire of this wilderness a golden
+flower shall rear its head, and grow in beauty day by day. It may even
+reach the Sun-lands."
+
+
+                                III.
+
+The schoolroom looked like a little paradise to the poor waifs assembled
+there. Many flags hung from the roof, and festoons of evergreens
+decorated the walls. A raised platform was covered with scarlet cloth.
+On this were many well-dressed ladies, the seat of honour being filled
+by Lord Eltonville, who had consented to distribute the prizes. The
+geraniums were displayed around the room. Some amongst them were frail
+and sickly looking,--they had not been able to thrive in their squalid
+and sunless abodes,--others appeared more promising, and a few
+amongst the number had grown strong and handsome.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Of the four hundred plant cuttings thirty alone had not been returned
+for competition.
+
+At one side of the platform was a table upon which the prizes were
+arranged. They consisted of workboxes, paints, tops, knives, drums,
+books, blotters, aprons, pencils, etc.
+
+Miss Brand, much distressed at the news of Ermen's arrest, and at his
+son's nonappearance, had told the story to some of the visitors, and a
+great deal of interest and sympathy were excited in his favour.
+
+Father Francis had just uncovered the prizes. The crowd of children
+pushed and scrambled to get a look at the good things; but at a word
+from their lady chief even the most turbulent grew quiet.
+
+Some lovely countenances were discernible among the little gathering.
+Under ordinary circumstances they would hardly have been noticed for the
+dirt and grime which covered them; but this was a gala day, and, thanks
+to Miss Brand's kind care, each child's face and hands had been washed,
+and their white collars lent an air of cleanliness even to the most
+ragged and worn dress.
+
+Suddenly there was a stir in the room. A boy was seen advancing through
+the crowd holding a magnificent geranium in his arms.
+
+Father Francis welcomed George in a quiet, kindly way. His plant was
+placed upon the platform for inspection, and it was universally agreed
+that had it been in time for the competition George would have taken the
+first prize.
+
+Grieved that her little friend should be too late, Miss Brand hastily
+unfastened a silver compass from her watch chain and gave it to Lord
+Eltonville, to whom she said a few private words.
+
+The atmosphere was stifling, and George was faint for want of food. Many
+of the children's mothers were present holding infants in their arms.
+Their worn, anxious faces beamed with delight as Lord Eltonville rose to
+distribute the prizes.
+
+"George Ermen, in consideration of your misfortune, Miss Brand wishes to
+overlook the fact that your geranium was not entered for the competition
+this morning. I have, therefore, the great pleasure of awarding you a
+special extra prize, the presentation of which shall have precedence in
+our day's business."
+
+George walked to the platform and received the pretty silver compass, a
+flush of pride and delight colouring his pale cheek.
+
+"Let me advise you to cultivate smilax round your window," added his
+lordship, doubtless thinking of his magnificent greenhouses, and little
+realising the misery and squalor in which the waifs of the great city
+dwelt.
+
+"Smilax!" murmured George wonderingly.
+
+"Yes, it is a beautiful creeper, and ought to grow nicely round your
+window and make you quite a little bower."
+
+The excitement of the children could no longer be curbed. Miss Brand was
+heartily glad when the distribution was over, and she could see the poor
+waifs happy with their little presents. It would be difficult to
+describe their joy. Many of their number had never possessed anything
+before. To have a book, a doll, a top, a pencil--something that was
+their very own--seemed like a delightful dream.
+
+Father Francis had resolved to strike a blow for his _protege_ before
+the day was over. Just as Lord Eltonville was preparing to depart, he
+told him that there was a little chorister among his flock who had a
+lovely voice, and that if his lordship would oblige him by staying
+through the short prayer with which they were about to end the day's
+pleasure he would hear the boy sing.
+
+The nobleman graciously complied, and stood, hat in hand, while the
+priest said a Paternoster and three Aves, the children joining in
+fervently. Then Father Francis rose and sat at the harmonium. His
+lordship watched George take his place beside his spiritual director. He
+noticed the lad's pale, worn face, his ragged clothes, and his air of
+utter helplessness, and felt sorry that the good priest should have
+prevailed upon him to stay and witness the poor little fellow's failure.
+
+There was not a sound in the schoolroom. The grand ladies held their
+breath in pity. Miss Brand looked anxious. The children longed for the
+success of their gentle comrade, and Maggie's heart beat with suppressed
+excitement.
+
+"_Te Deum Laudamus, te Dominum confitemur._"
+
+The voice seemed to pierce the heavens, so fresh and pure was its tone.
+Lord Eltonville's heart stood still. The waif's face had changed with
+those first words of praise; it had become illuminated with a great
+light, his insignificant little figure had gained a king's dignity.
+
+"_Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur._"
+
+Lord Eltonville's imagination was fired by the music. He seemed to be in
+a little church of his own that was full of the perfume of incense. The
+low of distant oxen and the ripple of the river came through the open
+window. His only son, who died at about George's age, lay buried in the
+churchyard; the small grave was yellow with early primroses. He, too,
+had an angel's voice, stilled for ever excepting in his father's memory.
+
+"_Tu Rex gloriae, Christe._"
+
+Tears fell from the nobleman's eyes. Nor song of lark, nor rustle of
+waving grass, nor anything he had ever heard in all nature, had touched
+him so deeply as the waif's rendering of that hymn of praise.
+
+As the last words died away Lord Eltonville stepped forward with
+outstretched hand; but George's strength was exhausted, the flush died
+away from his face, and he fell backwards into the priest's arms.
+
+
+                              IV.
+
+Time and circumstances change men, some for good and some for ill. It is
+an acknowledged fact that success often spoils the best natures,
+although to those on whom Fortune seldom smiles, this is hard to
+realise.
+
+Thanks to Lord Eltonville's generosity and kind care, George Ermen had
+become a great man. His wish had been gratified; he had earned money and
+position.
+
+Twenty years had passed since the geranium show. The ragged waif of that
+day had owned a sweet, loving nature, which seemed lost in the great
+musician of St. James's.
+
+His father had died in prison. His mother's memory had scarcely
+survived. He never spoke of his early days, and looked upon them as a
+disgrace. Miss Brand's name seldom occurred to him, Father Francis was
+forgotten, and Maggie Reed languished in poverty.
+
+In a gorgeous mansion, replete with every luxury, the musician sat at
+dinner with his young wife. The room was elegantly furnished; the walls
+were hung with fine oil-paintings. The table was decorated with
+hot-house flowers. Outside it was snowing, and the night was bitterly
+cold.
+
+There was a great hush in the house. In the morning they had buried
+their only child. She had lived a year, and the first snow of winter had
+covered her grave.
+
+George Ermen's selfish heart had been deeply touched by the loss of the
+little one, and somehow, when dinner was over, and he sat alone in his
+study, the remembrance of his childhood came over him like a forgotten
+strain of music.
+
+The snow, every now and then, fell hissing into the fire which blazed
+upon the hearth.
+
+The musician sat down to the organ and sang a few snatches from his
+Mass, which was to be given for the first time on Christmas Day.
+
+"There is a poor woman at the door, dear," said his wife, coming in
+silently and standing near him, a pathetic figure in her black dress.
+
+"Oh, Mary, I can't see anybody to-day," he answered, placing his arm
+round her with unwonted gentleness.
+
+"Gordon tried to dismiss her, George; but she seemed so distressed, and
+begged so hard to be allowed to speak with you, that he came to me, and
+when I saw her----"
+
+"I understand, dear, I know your tender heart. If I gave in to you we
+shouldn't have a penny in the world----"
+
+"We are so rich, George, we could give and give, and never feel it----"
+
+"Well, well, don't cry, Mary. What is the woman's name?"
+
+"Maggie Reed!"
+
+Maggie Reed. The little face seemed to rise up before him as an angel's
+among the squalid surroundings of his childhood.
+
+"Let her come in, dear," he said, with a tenderness in his voice that
+she had seldom heard of late.
+
+Presently Maggie stood before him, ragged and wet, her pale face worn
+with want and suffering. She must have been about twenty-eight; but she
+looked ten years older.
+
+"Maggie!" he cried, taking her hand, and placing her in a chair.
+
+"Mr. Ermen. I came ter ask yer somethin, not ter beg. Don't think I've
+come ter beg. I want yer ter let Father Francis say yer Mass. 'E's seen
+all about it in the papers, how it's ter be sung on Christmas Day. 'E's
+an old man, and he would never ask yer 'imself, but 'e always thinks of
+yer, and prays for yer."
+
+"And do you?" murmured George.
+
+What a low cur he had been to let this poor girl suffer all her life!
+And his other humble friends, too, whom he had vowed never to forsake!
+
+"I hev' prayed for yer every night and morning since yer left us. I've
+said, 'God bless him, and make him great.' Yer see, sir, women don't
+forget."
+
+
+                                V.
+
+It was Christmas Day. The church was filled with great and fashionable
+people. Among the gorgeous crowd were to be seen Miss Brand and Maggie
+Reed, the latter in a warm dress of grey cloth.
+
+Nearer the altar knelt George and his wife, his eyes often seeking the
+place where his friends were seated.
+
+Father Francis, assisted by two other priests, was officiating.
+
+George looked happier to-day. The presence of his hitherto forgotten
+companions had revived him, and the good father had spoken soothing
+words to him about his child's death. George had been overcome, and
+unaccustomed tears coursed down his face as he clasped the father's
+hand, and said,--
+
+"Ah! one's early friends are true. Their love makes life worth having."
+
+While the choir sang the _Gloria in Excelsis_, the musician's thoughts
+had strayed to his early days. He was thinking of the sunbeam, and
+wondering whether its visit was a dream. If so, it must have been a
+dream straight from God, for that day had gained him his career.
+
+The golden flower had reared its head very near to the Sun-lands. Would
+it ever reach them?
+
+He remembered a secret drawer in his escritoire, in which there was a
+small plaster crucifix, a faded geranium leaf, and a silver compass. He
+had kept these little relics, and yet he had ceased to remember the
+friends who had smoothed the rough pages of his childhood and pencilled
+his name in the book of fortune.
+
+But Father Francis and Maggie and Miss Brand should be safe now; they
+should know no further sorrow!
+
+The sun burst forth in the winter sky, shone into the church, and
+brightened the gloomy corners.
+
+George knew well in his heart that it was not his care that had made the
+geranium thrive. The sunbeam which he pretended to treat as a dream had
+nourished it. However, if that chapter in his life was blurred and
+misty, to-day's was clear.
+
+The Mass that was being sung was his masterpiece. It was the outpouring
+of his soul. He would compose still greater religious works. What more
+wonderful theme could he have than a God's agony!
+
+"_Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus!_" muttered the priest. The consecration
+drew near, the people bent their heads.
+
+Still the musician remained lost in his thoughts. All over the world the
+advent of the Babe of Bethlehem was being celebrated. What a wonderful
+story it was! The star in the East, the wise men, the Infant wrapped in
+swaddling clothes and cradled in a manger. His unrecorded childhood, His
+love for little children, the more forsaken and forlorn, the greater His
+love. And he had been rich and prosperous, and yet had never given a
+thought to those poor little waifs whose life he himself had once lived.
+Happy in the love of his own child, he had forgotten the woes of others.
+God had taken her away; but he would accept the Divine warning, and
+follow in the Divine footsteps. He would open his heart to the children
+of the poor; he would clothe them and give them bread.
+
+The priest lifted the chalice. On the incense veiled altar the musician
+saw a sunbeam dart into the Holy Cup, and he heard the well-remembered
+voice breathe forth a glorious message,--
+
+"Clothe them and give them bread. In that last vow the flower has
+reached the Sun-lands."
+
+[Illustration: "THOU SHALT CLOTHE THEM AND GIVE THEM BREAD"]
+
+
+
+
+                      THE GARDEN OF INNOCENCE
+
+[Illustration: THE GARDEN OF INNOCENCE]
+
+  "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough
+  A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou
+  Beside me singing in the Wilderness
+  Ah, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"
+                                Omar Khayyam
+
+
+                                   I.
+
+Many a year ago, in a land that was washed by the sea, there lived a
+King who had an only son whom he loved very dearly.
+
+Fertile gardens surrounded the palace. They extended for miles and
+miles. In the distance the sapphire sea looked like a calm lake. The
+gardens were rich in flowers, which bloomed all the year in this land of
+perpetual summer. There were lilies and violets, hyacinths, carnations,
+cyclamens, and orchids; but the rose was mistress of the land, and they
+called it the "Rose Islands." The trees were filled with song-birds, and
+the air was fragrant with perfume tempered by the sea.
+
+If ever mortal man was framed for happiness, the Prince of the Rose
+Islands was he--a youth of a gallant disposition, his golden hair
+hanging from beneath his jewelled cap, his brown eyes half hidden by
+their long lashes. His doublet was of white brocade, his hose and
+pointed shoes of silk; he was the _beau ideal_ of a prince in form and
+figure, and brave as he was amiable, two royal qualities.
+
+The King, his father, observing that he appeared to be sad when it
+seemed to him he should be most happy, asked Ulric what troubled him.
+
+"I am lonely, so please your Grace, and I would fain have a friend."
+
+"I am thy friend, sweet son. Have I done aught that should forfeit me
+thy friendship?"
+
+"My lord the King, I am always thine--thine in true obedience, thine in
+the sight of God, thine in filial love, but not in friendship. Though I
+dream of it night and day, I have never known friendship; sometimes,
+indeed, I fear that it cannot exist," replied the Prince sadly.
+
+"Nay, Ulric, in good sooth, thou art mistaken. Look about thee, in the
+palace. The noble lords of our Court, the high-born pages who minister
+to thy wants, are all thy humble and devoted friends."
+
+"Father, prithee pardon me for my temerity in differing from thy
+gracious word; but those of whom thou speakest are not my friends. They
+know that I am all-powerful with thee. They are but fawning sycophants,
+who feed upon thy bounty. If the sentiment they profess to cherish for
+me be friendship, then indeed my dreams of the meaning of the word are
+hollow, as hollow as is my life in this paradise of beauty."
+
+The King laid his hand upon his son's head, and looked into his sad
+face.
+
+"My poor child," he said, "God knows I love thee better than myself. Art
+thou not my successor to these fair islands? Tell me, what can a King do
+for thy comfort?"
+
+"Prithee, good my lord, send for the Lady Christabel, the daughter of
+the great Earl, thy subject, and for Prince Winfred, the heir of that
+land yonder, which reflects itself in our sea; let them live here for a
+time, and help me to discover the meaning of that magic word
+friendship."
+
+The King gave orders that an escort should start at once to bring the
+Lady Christabel to his palace. He also commanded that a ship should be
+built, in which to fetch Prince Winfred of the Sea Islands.
+
+Lady Christabel arrived in the evening of the next day. She was mounted
+on a white steed, and was clad in a silken robe of opaline hue, her
+cloak and cap jewelled with moonstones. Ulric stood on the steps of the
+palace to receive her. She knelt and kissed his hand, and then looked
+upwards into his face. He noted the abundance of her dark hair and the
+strange beauty of her changing eyes, which were grey and blue by turn,
+as were the hues of her silken gown.
+
+"Welcome, sweet Christabel, to our palace," said the Prince. "Dost think
+thou canst be happy here?"
+
+"Ah, my dear lord, ask me if I could be happy in Paradise."
+
+Ulric flushed with pleasure, and led her up the marble steps to the
+King's audience chamber. As the doors unclosed a sweet melody floated on
+the air, increased in volume for a brief space, then grew fainter and
+died away. Christabel found herself in an immense room. The walls were
+set with rubies, the floor was of rock crystal, strewn with pink and
+white rose-leaves. In the centre of the hall, upon a dais covered with
+cloth of gold, sat the King, in his robes of state. The ladies of the
+Court, the lords and the pages, were clad in silks of various colours.
+Prince Ulric led Christabel to the foot of the throne.
+
+"Welcome to our Court, my child," said the King. "Our dear son is
+lonely; wilt thou befriend him? Wilt thou teach him the solace of
+friendship? Wilt thou prove to him that it is a reality and not a
+dream?"
+
+"Most gracious King," replied Christabel, "I will teach him all I know
+of selfless, sacrificing, eternal friendship."
+
+"It does exist, then?" asked the Prince eagerly.
+
+"Do the stars exist, my good lord, or the sun or the roses?"
+
+"The roses wither, sweet lady, even here, in paradise."
+
+"But friendship, good my lord, is a deathless rose; its leaves are
+immortal."
+
+
+                                II.
+
+At last Prince Ulric was happy. The days passed freighted with golden
+hours. He roamed with Christabel among the Rose Islands, and showed her
+the wonders thereof. Every day they inspected the progress made in the
+building of the ship which was to carry Prince Winfred to their shores.
+At length the vessel was finished, and she sailed away, the two
+companions watching her from the beach until her rosy flag and
+glittering figure-head were but specks in the distance. Then the Prince
+handed Christabel into a boat that spread its silken sails to the
+breeze, and they sailed along the coast.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Art thou quite happy now, my gracious lord?" asked Christabel.
+
+"Ay, in good sooth, sweet lady. Have I not found solace in thy
+companionship? Do I not at length possess the white rose of friendship?"
+
+"My dear Prince, I am indeed thy true, though humble, friend for ever."
+
+"For ever!" sighed Ulric. "Ah, Christabel, I was so sad before thou
+camest. Thou hast saved me. I lived in doubt of honest friendship until
+now."
+
+Ulric gazed into her face. She took up her lute and sang to him, a song
+of youth and springtime.
+
+Some days afterwards the ship which bore Prince Winfred anchored off the
+Rose Islands, and for the first time the two Princes met. Winfred, as
+became a son of the sea, was clothed in a garb of emerald tone,
+embroidered with shells. His cap was woven of strange sea-flowers. Great
+was the rejoicing in the Rose Islands over the advent of Prince Winfred.
+And as time went by great was the happiness of Ulric, for now he had
+another friend, a youth like unto himself.
+
+Months passed, scarcely making a ripple on the sea of Time. The three
+companions basked in an eternal sunshine. Sometimes they sailed over the
+blue water, sometimes they sat among the flowers, while Winfred told
+them tales of his life and home--of strange caverns along the coast, of
+yellow sand-dunes covered with sea-flowers, of moorlands where purple
+heather bloomed, of long days passed in fishing, of stress and storms,
+of a sea that was often stern and angry, with crested waves beating
+shoreward. Ulric would gaze at his guest in wonder, but Christabel's
+eyes swam in a mist of tears, and when Winfred's hand touched hers she
+would tremble. He gazed into her eyes, and understood their meaning. As
+time went by Winfred grew silent, but each day he looked oftener at
+Christabel.
+
+The roses withered, and bloomed again. Morning followed evening, hour
+succeeded hour. One day, as Prince Ulric wandered in the forest, he came
+suddenly upon his two friends. They did not see him, and he was
+spell-bound by the picture that met his gaze. Christabel was standing
+under a rose-bush, her hair falling from beneath a crown of flowers, and
+at her feet knelt Winfred, with upturned wondrous eyes. They remained
+long thus, in a blaze of sunlight from no earthly sun.
+
+Ulric stole away, hurt to death. "Alas! I have been deceived," he
+moaned. "This is friendship, but I have never known it. They have found
+it; but not I--not I!"
+
+Prince Winfred sailed away to his own land, with the Lady Christabel and
+many of the noblest members of the King's Court. Ulric would not
+accompany them. He preferred to be alone now that his companions had
+failed to teach him the secret of that friendship, the existence of
+which he had discovered in the forest. Furthermore, neither Winfred nor
+Christabel were solicitous for Ulric to journey with them to the Sea
+Islands. They had latterly grown strangely oblivious of their host's
+presence. The young Prince, however, only blamed himself. He felt that
+his was not a nature to inspire friendship, but he longed for the great
+gift more and more, until his life became almost unbearable. Seeking for
+the white rose among the people of his father's realm, he saw that they
+were only kind to him either through fear of his power or from motives
+of self-interest.
+
+One day, as he rode through the kingdom attended by his pages, he came
+upon a garden where a young girl was gathering fruit. Ulric, thinking
+she had not observed his approach, dismounted hastily, and throwing his
+dark cloak around him, entered the garden. The maiden was well pleased
+to see the youth, in whom she recognised her future King. She had used
+all her feminine arts to entertain her guest, when suddenly the Prince's
+cloak slipped from his shoulders, and he stood before her in all the
+radiance of his princely garments.
+
+For a moment the maiden feigned surprise, and her companion observed a
+new expression upon her face. He had almost guessed her thoughts before
+she threw herself upon her knees, and said, "Most gracious lord, prithee
+give me some jewels like unto these which adorn thy doublet."
+
+Ulric cast down his cap in sorrow, for he remembered that it had
+remained undisguised upon his head all through the interview. From the
+first the maiden must have guessed his high degree. It was revealed by
+the royal badge of the pink rose, which glittered among its jewelled
+ornaments.
+
+"She only was good to me because I could be of use to her," mused the
+Prince, as he rode homewards. "She flattered me and smiled upon me
+because I am supposed to be one of the lucky ones of the earth. Had I
+been a poor man's son it had been different."
+
+The thought was an inspiration to him. Why should he not search for the
+deathless rose, disguised, that none might seek his friendship falsely?
+The idea haunted him. At length he discussed it with the King, who,
+seeing that the Prince was nearly desperate with grief, consented to his
+plan. Ulric dressed himself as a minstrel, and having received his
+father's blessing, left the palace and rode through the territory of
+the Rose Islands, opening his purse to the poor, and comforting the
+sorrowful with the strains of his lyre. As long as his supply of gold
+lasted he was well received; when it was gone his troubles commenced. He
+was hungry, and none would give him to eat or to drink. Moreover, he had
+crossed the sea, and had left the Islands of Summer behind him. The
+kingdom in which he was now travelling was a land of mist and storm. He
+rode bravely on, nevertheless. Often, when he asked for help at the
+cottagers' doors, they laughed at him, and the children beat him with
+sticks. Winter was severe in the land of mist and storm, and the Prince
+turned his horse's head southwards. After some days the character of the
+scenery changed. The climate became warm and sunny. One morning he led
+his steed through the mazes of a great forest. It was springtime; the
+birds were singing, the valleys were blue with wild hyacinths, and here
+and there Ulric came upon clusters of late primroses. Looking up, he
+could scarcely see the sky, so thick was the tracery of foliage between
+him and the heavens. They had no spring in the Rose Islands, no faint
+greens, no tender buds, but always the full glory of summer, with its
+vivid colouring and its drowsy breath. He was so enchanted with the
+beauty of this forest, the like of which he had never seen before, that
+for awhile he had actually forgotten his quest, when suddenly, right in
+front of him, he saw a beautiful youth. Small and delicately made, his
+dress was entirely fashioned of pink rose-leaves, and he had golden
+wings. The Prince stood amazed, the apparition was so sudden, there had
+not been a sound; he rubbed his eyes, but the stranger did not vanish,
+he was a reality.
+
+"What dost thou here, son of a King?" asked the youth.
+
+Ulric was still more surprised at being recognised under a disguise that
+had served him well so far; he could not speak for astonishment.
+
+"Thou seekest the 'deathless rose of friendship,' is it not so?" asked
+the unknown.
+
+"Ay, good sir. Perhaps thou canst aid me in my search?"
+
+"Fair Prince, I can indeed advise thee how to proceed. First of all, hie
+thee out of this forest with all speed."
+
+"Why, good sir, methinks it is a lovely place. The air is softer here
+than any I have known before, the birds sing sweeter songs, the flowers
+breathe a rarer perfume; for the first time in my life I feel happy;
+everything is fresh and young, and full of hope."
+
+"Ay, royal minstrel, many love my land. Beware, nevertheless, of
+journeying through it. It is enchanted; and if thou wouldst indeed
+follow thy quest, hie thee from the shelter of its trees and from the
+scent of its flowers; but ere thou goest, I will tell thee what the word
+_friendship_ means. Friends should be as bells upon a hyacinth, fed with
+the same rain, nourished by the same dew, warmed by the same sun, rocked
+by the same wind; equal, placid, and calm in their lives; above all,
+they should possess the virtue of unselfishness. Self-interest is the
+death of friendship."
+
+"Good sir, I have ever felt thus; and being of this mind, I threw off my
+habit of a Prince and started in search of the great gift; but I have
+ridden now for a whole year, and I find it not, neither have I met in
+all my travels any who possess this 'deathless rose.'"
+
+"Thou wast but a youth when thou didst leave thy father's palace; now
+thou art a man, and the King mourns thee as dead."
+
+When Ulric heard this he was greatly grieved, and at once resolved to
+return to the Rose Islands.
+
+"Tell me, before we part, good my lord, hast any proof that this 'rose
+of friendship' exists?"
+
+Then Ulric told him the story of Winfred and Christabel, and described
+the scene which he had witnessed in the forest. The youth broke into
+peals of laughter, and the hues of his flower-dress became so vivid that
+the Prince's eyes were dazzled. Presently the stranger, assuming a
+serious manner, said,--
+
+"I will tell thee where the Fairy Friendship dwells. She is my twin
+sister. Thou shalt make one last attempt to find her. She holds her
+Court in the clouds of the setting sun. Ere nightfall, go to the
+seashore, stretch forth thy hands to the garments of departing day, and
+say, 'Good Fairy Friendship, bring me unto thy chambers of light. If
+thou canst say this with no thought of self, no longing for a friend
+because of the pleasure that friendship bestows, but with the same
+feeling that the hyacinth bells have for each other, then a ladder will
+be let down from the regions of the sunset, and Friendship will give
+thee her deathless rose, which is so rare, so scarce a blossom, so
+seldom possessed by man or woman, so precious beyond all things, that
+once attained, it will be the most priceless flower in thy kingly
+crown."
+
+"I thank thee, from my heart," said Ulric.
+
+"If thou wouldst succeed, leave this land of mine; it will not bring
+thee unto the courts of friendship. Give up thy quest, and I will show
+thee something that is far sweeter than friendship, and far easier to
+win."
+
+"Nay, fair youth, I will endeavour once more to find what I have so long
+sought in vain; but, before I bid thy beautiful country farewell, wilt
+thou tell me why the roses upon thy dress so far surpass those that
+bloom in my father's kingdom?"
+
+"Good Ulric, hast never heard of Love? Love, who comes to mortals
+without their knowledge, ay, without their asking; Love, whose voice is
+sweeter than the nightingale's; Love, who was born of God in the Garden
+of Eden, and was clothed with the deathless roses that bloomed there?"
+
+He did not wait for Ulric's answer, but vanished; and his laughter
+echoed through the forest like a peal of silver bells.
+
+
+                                   III.
+
+At sunset the Prince stood upon the shore and stretched forth his hands
+heavenwards, uttering the words specified by Love. He never knew whether
+his mind had not the selfless quality enjoined by the youth, or whether
+the roses of friendship were all withered and dead; but the sunset and
+its glory was suddenly hidden from his sight by a veil of mist. When the
+mist cleared it was night. Ulric lay down upon the sand and wept, for
+he knew that the gift for which he had sought so long was not for him.
+
+Towards morning he retraced his steps, hoping to meet the youth and to
+tell him how completely he had again failed in his quest; but he could
+not find the way to the forest. About mid-day, however, he came upon a
+hedged-in garden surrounding a lonely villa. Through the maze of boughs
+and foliage the Prince could see a beautiful maiden. She was clad in
+white, and her only ornament was a white rose. Ulric had never beheld so
+pure nor so lovely a maid. Hardly knowing what he did, he dismounted and
+leaped the hedge. When he was inside the garden he noticed that the
+trees were white with bloom, and that the path glittered with the fallen
+blossoms. He saw, too, that no coloured flowers grew in the floral beds;
+they were all white. As he gazed around, a silvery mist arose, and he
+could see nothing excepting the maiden, until it seemed to him that the
+enclosure was filled with her image. Then the mist cleared; the spell
+was broken, and he was alone.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Prince was deeply sorry at having lost sight of the beautiful girl;
+moreover, he hardly dared to seek her in the depths of the snowy garden.
+An atmosphere of peace, which he feared to disturb, seemed to brood over
+the place. Before leaving the maiden's home he plucked a rose, as a
+memento of the fair vision he had seen; but to his surprise it was
+entirely without perfume. As he examined it, wondering at the strange
+phenomenon, some one addressed him from outside the hedge. Looking up,
+he recognised the youth with whom he had conversed in the forest. Ulric
+hurried towards him, with a cry of joy.
+
+"That scentless bloom is not the rose of friendship, fair Prince," said
+the youth, taking the flower from Ulric's hand.
+
+"Thou sayest true; I have not yet found it. Nevertheless, methinks I am
+on the right path. Hope stirs in my heart and whispers 'Courage!' But
+now, I saw a maiden here, beautiful as an angel. If I only dare seek her
+yonder, my soul tells me that I may discover in her the deathless rose
+for which I long."
+
+"Then go, thou King's son. Most like thou art right. Seek her."
+
+"Wilt thou not go too, good youth? In all my travels I have never known
+fear until now; and yet here, in this land of white flowers and whiter
+mists, Hope's gentle spur notwithstanding, I am overawed, I dare not
+venture."
+
+"Ah, my Prince! if thou wilt find what thou desirest thou must be brave,
+and advance with faith and courage. I cannot lead thee, neither can I
+follow thee; but yonder the edge of this garden joins my land, the
+forest where I met thee yesterday. If thou findest not the maiden, seek
+me there. Farewell. See," he added, "see how sudden red thy white rose
+hath blushed!"
+
+And vanishing, he dropped Ulric's rose at the Prince's feet. It was of a
+brilliant red, and gave forth a strangely powerful perfume.
+
+Notwithstanding the encouragement of his unknown preceptor, the Prince
+would never have ventured far along the glittering path. The Fates
+seemed to check his progress. If the maiden, whom his heart prompted him
+to seek, had not left her bower to meet him, his quest, even so near
+upon success, might yet have ended in disappointment. But with gracious
+step the maid approached, and, holding forth her hand quite simply,
+herself led him through the garden.
+
+Ulric walked on, looking into her eyes. His heart beat, and the
+flower-strewn way seemed to melt from beneath his feet.
+
+"Good minstrel, who art thou?" asked the maiden.
+
+"I am thy devoted servant," murmured the Prince. "Prithee, tell me thy
+name, gracious lady?"
+
+"I am called Innocent, and I am the Princess of the Garden of
+Innocence."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Is this the Garden of Innocence?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is that the reason why the flowers are all white and scentless here?"
+
+"Are they ever different, fair sir?" she asked wonderingly.
+
+"In my land, sweet maiden, they are red, pink, purple, gold, and of
+every colour. But now, I had one of your own white roses which had
+changed to red."
+
+The Princess looked at Ulric in amazement as he searched for his rose.
+There it lay at his feet; but it had again become as white and as
+scentless as all the other flowers in the garden. The Prince was sorely
+puzzled. Had he only dreamed that the rose had changed to red in the
+youth's hands?
+
+They walked on in silence for many a long hour, their eyes meeting in a
+sympathy too great for words.
+
+"At last," thought the Prince, "I have found the 'white rose of
+friendship,' the leaves whereof are immortal. I shall never part from
+it; it will be with me all my life, great, sacrificing, eternal
+friendship, straight from God."
+
+He told Innocent of his grief, and of the bitter troubles that he had
+encountered in his search.
+
+"Poor minstrel!" she said softly. "Be happy now, for thy sorrow is
+ended. I feel this deathless friendship for thee."
+
+"God be thanked, that my quest is crowned with success; but since thou
+art my true friend, since thou art noble enough to hold me dear, though
+in thy eyes I seem but a poor beggar, know that I am the Prince of the
+Rose Islands, which yield the many-coloured flowers I have told thee
+of."
+
+"Good my lord, that does not make thee more precious to me. Wert thou
+poor and despised, hated of all the world, weary and sick unto death, I
+could but hold thee more dear. Didst thou ask me for my life, I could
+but lay it willingly at thy feet."
+
+Tears stole down her cheeks, and she looked up at Ulric with eyes of
+doglike fidelity.
+
+"Ah, this is friendship!" sighed the Prince; "this is what Christabel
+and Winfred discovered in the forest. Come, sweet Innocent, I will take
+thee to the King, my father, and show him the 'deathless rose.'"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+As Ulric finished speaking, he folded her in his arms and kissed her.
+The air was suddenly filled with ringing peals of laughter, and on the
+path, close to them, stood the youth who had not dared to venture inside
+the garden but a few hours before. Why had he come into the depths of
+the white country now? He waved his arms, and all the flowers changed to
+a brilliant red. Innocent's white rose fell from her hair, and in its
+place lay a crimson bloom, the wondrous perfume of which ascended like
+incense heavenwards.
+
+"Fair Prince, thy search is fruitless," chanted the youth, in low
+penetrating tones. "Thou hast indeed found a rose which is deathless;
+but it is the sweet red rose of Love."
+
+
+
+
+                             A CHRISTMAS-ROSE
+
+[Illustration: A CHRISTMAS-ROSE]
+
+  "Small service is true service while it lasts
+  Of friends, however humble, scorn not one
+  The daisy by the shadow that it casts
+  Protects a lingering dew-drop from the sun."
+                                       -WORDSWORTH-
+
+
+I.
+
+It was in a desolate London lodging-house that Marietta's courage gave
+way. In Italy she could live and be merry on the most frugal fare. A
+little polenta, a handful of grapes, and a piece of bread sufficed for a
+good meal. Not so in London; nor were there grapes or polenta even if
+she desired nothing else. The poor little heart needed nourishment
+against the gloom and harass of the great dull city. So she laid her
+head upon her brother's breast in a fit of despair and wept bitterly.
+
+Marietta was seventeen. She had only arrived in England at the end of
+November. It was now nigh upon Christmas. Her brother Rica had lived in
+London over a year. He had been engaged by a great artist to sit to him
+as a model, and to no other.
+
+Rica had saved every penny, being content with the bare necessities of
+life, so that Marietta might go and stay with him for a few months
+before she commenced her novitiate, prior to taking the veil at the
+convent where she had been educated. The nuns had adopted her when the
+children became orphans, and as time passed she had grown to long for
+the day which should make her one of the black-robed sisters of the
+Visitation. Unfortunately, a little time after Marietta's arrival in
+England, Rica's master had suddenly died, and the two children were left
+friendless and almost penniless in the great city.
+
+It was Christmas Eve. The snow lay thick upon the ground. There was
+neither fire on the hearth nor bread in the cupboard, and the night was
+bitterly cold.
+
+Rica smoothed away the dark hair from his sister's face and tried to
+comfort her. He could endure want and misery much better than she could.
+The beautiful face had become delicately _spirituelle_ through the
+rigour of privation.
+
+"Dearest Marietta, I will go and beg some food for you; don't cry any
+more."
+
+"Oh, I shall die in this gloomy place! Take me back to the kind
+sisters!" she moaned, giving way to hysterical sobs.
+
+"Have patience, we shall return to Italy some day; but believe me, when
+once winter goes, England is not such a dreadful country. In summer it
+is beautiful, and the flowers compare well with those at home."
+
+"Flowers! I don't believe there are any here, not at least in this cruel
+city, with its yellow fogs and its sunless abodes."
+
+Rica sighed deeply as he kissed her, and turned to go out into the snowy
+night. It grieved him to see Marietta utterly broken down. She had
+failed in her first trial. But then, she was so beautiful, she ought to
+have been a princess instead of the daughter of a poor fisherman. It was
+all a mistake.
+
+
+II.
+
+In the garden of a house that was inscribed "To Let" there grew a sad
+and solitary Christmas Rose, that lifted up pathetic complaint to the
+leaden sky.
+
+Night heard her, and went to comfort her. He was enchanted with her
+beauty, and she lifted her face to receive his soft caresses.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Sweet flower," he murmured, "have you forgotten that it is still
+winter? Why do you bloom in this dreary garden while the snow yet covers
+the ground?"
+
+"I am a Christmas Rose, and I blossom on the eve of Jesus' birthday. I
+was planted a year ago by the people who dwelt here; they left soon
+afterwards. No human eyes have ever gazed on my face, and yet my heart
+is full of love for them. A Christmas Rose, I long to help them, to give
+my life in their service, as did my Infant Master," she said, as a
+melted drop of snow ran down the white petals into her heart.
+
+"Do not grieve," whispered Night, rocking her in his arms; "but learn to
+rest all through the winter and be a Summer Rose."
+
+"Ah! my only charm is that I bloom when June's flowers are sleeping;
+besides, I should lose my birthright, my dedication to the Child Jesus,
+if I did as you advise."
+
+"Remain then as you are, sweet one. It is midnight. I must proclaim the
+gracious news of the coming of Christ. When His birthday wanes I will
+visit you again."
+
+He kissed her tenderly, and there was a lull in his song as he gathered
+his strength, spread his mighty wings, and took flight.
+
+The flower was lonelier than before, now that her friend had departed.
+Daylight came. The bells rang out their old story of peace and gladness.
+Children passed, some with sprigs of holly in their coats.
+
+There was a summons at the gate in the garden of the next house; a voice
+said, "A Merry Christmas," and another answered, "God bless you to-day
+and always!"
+
+"Ah, if human lips would say that to me!" thought the flower. "If I
+could only bring a little joy into a human life!" Her heart ached, for
+she knew that she would die when the clocks tolled midnight, announcing
+that Christ's birthday had passed away.
+
+What was that? Are stars visible in the daytime? A little brown face was
+pressed against the railings, and two brilliant eyes gazed at her. It
+was a boy dressed in ragged velveteen breeches, and thin discoloured
+shirt. Curls of black hair surrounded his face. He climbed over the
+railings, knelt down on the sodden grass, and gazed at the Christmas
+Rose.
+
+"Ah!" thought Rica, "at last, here is something to remind Marietta of
+Italy, although this fair blossom breathing here in a London garden is
+far sweeter than Italy's flowers. It must be the Infant Jesus' rose
+which blooms on His birthday." His brown fingers closed round the stalk,
+and the flower felt a thrill of joy as he plucked her; but all the
+leaves bowed to the ground, and rent the air with sad moans.
+
+Rica carried the Christmas Rose far away from her birthplace, past the
+Park, through the slushy streets, on--on--until the character of the
+houses changed. Everything grew gradually sordid. Drunken men reeled
+against each other, and ill-clad children played about at the mouths of
+foul alleys.
+
+The Christmas Rose clung tighter to the little brown hand, and drew
+comfort from the tender grasp. As Rica turned the corner of the street
+which led to his wretched home he ran against an artist who was
+sketching some crazy old houses.
+
+"Mind where you are going, my boy! Why! What a beautiful Christmas Rose!
+How much do you want for it?" he asked, looking at the flower, and not
+noticing Rica's handsome face.
+
+"I cannot part with it, sir. It is for my sister. She only came from
+Italy in November, and she has been fretting so because we are in
+trouble. I think that this beautiful flower may comfort her."
+
+Edward Thornhill was touched, and as he looked into the boy's face he
+was almost startled by its beauty. It belonged to the sunny skies of
+Italy, with its brilliant eyes, olive skin, luxuriant hair, and red
+lips. As he scanned the little Italian's countenance, he also remarked
+his poverty, and placing his hand on Rica's shoulder he asked,--
+
+"Are you very poor, my child?"
+
+"Oh, sir, we are starving! I don't care for myself, but for my sister.
+She is beautiful; and she can't stand misery. I am sure God did not mean
+her to suffer; it's all a mistake," cried the boy, breaking down under
+the kind glance and the sympathetic words.
+
+"I seem to know your face," said the artist. "Why, of course I do; you
+were poor Godfrey's model?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I had been in his studio a year when he died. I served him
+entirely, and now that he is gone I am quite friendless."
+
+"Does your sister sit?"
+
+"Not hitherto, sir. She has not thought of it. Nor have I told her how
+she might perhaps obtain employment, even easier than I, because I
+somehow felt that the nuns to whom she owes everything might not like
+it."
+
+"Did they say they would object?"
+
+"Not in words; but, you see, Marietta has promised to return in May. She
+came to London to say good-bye to me. I was able to send her money for
+her passage, being well provided by Mr. Godfrey. She is to take the veil
+soon after her return, and then, you know, I lose her altogether."
+
+"You don't like that?"
+
+"She will be taken care of," the boy replied, "and she desires to
+dedicate her life to God, so you see I must be content."
+
+"Poor little chap! But I can help you in your present need. Let the
+Christmas Rose be a harbinger of joy to both of you. Give it to your
+sister, and bring her to this address within an hour. You shall have
+food and warmth, anyhow, and I will help you further."
+
+Rica sped up the court to their miserable quarters. Marietta was
+watching anxiously for him at the window. He had been out all night, and
+she was almost in despair.
+
+"Look, dearest, isn't it lovely?" he cried, as he rushed into the room
+and held up the Christmas Rose for her to see.
+
+She took it in her thin fingers, and her eyes dwelt on its beauty until
+they filled with tears, which dropped on the rose's face and sank into
+her grateful heart.
+
+"How exquisite, Rica! The Infant Jesus must have brought it from
+heaven."
+
+Then her face gradually lost its transient glow, and in a fit of despair
+she threw the flower on the ground, and cried,--
+
+"But it cannot help us; of what good is it? I thought you went out to
+beg bread."
+
+"Ah, Marietta! don't scorn it; be grateful all your life that I found
+the Christmas Rose. It has saved us!"
+
+On hearing her brother's story she was overjoyed. She picked up the
+trembling flower, and hastily covering her head with a shawl, prepared
+to accompany Rica.
+
+On the presentation of Thornhill's card they were shown into his studio.
+
+The Christmas Rose thought she was in Fairyland. The room was decorated
+with festoons of evergreens, wreaths of holly, and bunches of mistletoe.
+On the platform was a small Christmas tree hung with sweets, crackers,
+silver ornaments, and coloured beads, surmounted by a fairy doll dressed
+in white and studded with silver stars. Marietta stood gazing round the
+studio, holding the trembling Rose in her hand. But what was this? The
+Fairy Prince off the tree come to life? They had never seen anything so
+fair before. A boy had risen from a seat by the stove, where he had been
+amusing himself with a picture book. A slim little fellow, with dreamy,
+hazel eyes set in a pale spiritual face, and what wonderful hair. It was
+like golden sunbeams. Angel was the artist's son. His mother had died
+two years ago. He was just six years old, a sweet, delicate child.
+Often he was very lonely, for his father was frequently away, and he was
+not strong enough to go to school.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+How much he missed his mother, and how the memory of her dwelt in his
+young soul, even his father scarcely guessed. At night he cried himself
+to sleep thinking of her, and wondering where she was. It had occurred
+to the child that she had not been very happy, and that his father did
+not love her as he did.
+
+"I have been watching for you," said Angel, putting out his small hand.
+"Oh, what a pretty flower! I have never seen one like it before."
+
+"It is a Christmas Rose, dear," said Thornhill, who had entered as the
+boy spoke.
+
+Marietta placed it in his hair. He looked at her gravely, and then held
+up his face to be kissed.
+
+The Christmas Rose nearly swooned with joy, for she thought that Angel
+was the Infant Jesus; and as she was set in the place of honour amongst
+that golden glory, her heart throbbed with gratitude.
+
+Edward Thornhill had been accustomed to the society of pretty women all
+his life; but in the presence of this convent girl he was absolutely
+nervous. Her beauty fascinated him. He longed to take his brush, to
+portray that face on canvas.
+
+Marietta was shy to a fault, and it was a long time before he could get
+anything excepting monosyllables from her in conversation.
+
+Christmas dinner was served in another part of the studio. It was not a
+very grand one. The absence of a woman's hand in the household
+arrangements had been keenly felt by the artist since his wife's death.
+But there was a piece of roast beef and a plum-pudding, with dates,
+apples, and oranges to follow. The two Italians had eaten nothing but a
+little bread for two days, so to them it was a feast for the Gods.
+
+Later the tree was stripped of its ornaments. Angel pressed nearly all
+the presents on Rica. He was a kind-hearted little fellow, and very
+unselfish.
+
+"And so you are going to be a nun, my child?" said the artist, when by
+sympathetic questioning he had elicited Marietta's story.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Do you think you will be happy?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+There was a slight hesitation in her manner. And yet, when she had
+entered the studio only two hours ago, she had resolved to ask Edward
+Thornhill to lend her enough money to pay her fare back to the convent,
+so that she could begin her novitiate at once.
+
+"Your mind is quite made up, nothing could change it?"
+
+"I think not."
+
+How quickly her listener detected the little tremor in her voice, which
+told him much more than the uncertainty implied in her words.
+
+"And yet I believe you might be happy here. I can help you both; you
+shall not want for work. Your brother tells me that you have never been
+a model, but perhaps you would be kind enough to favour me by sitting
+for my Academy picture. The subject is to be the Annunciation."
+
+She did not answer, and he continued talking,--
+
+"You must remember that the city is not always as gloomy as it looks
+to-night. We have picture galleries, parks and squares, and the country
+is beautiful at all seasons. Do you not think you could be content to
+stay a little?"
+
+"Perhaps a little."
+
+"I will get you some needlework to do, and Rica shall find in me as good
+a master as the one he has just lost.
+
+"You are very kind," she said, looking up at him with tearful eyes.
+
+"The nuns won't be angry with you for staying a little while with your
+brother; they will consent to receive you later, will they not?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And will you sit for my picture?"
+
+"Yes, as soon as you wish."
+
+Before Marietta left she kissed the Christmas Rose, and whispered, "Dear
+Infant Jesus, guard the flower which has saved us."
+
+And it murmured:--
+
+"I am happy. My Master is pleased that I have followed in His footsteps,
+and His reward is beyond all price."
+
+But Marietta did not hear.
+
+Before Angel went to rest he placed the Christmas Rose in a goblet of
+water, and it lifted up its innocent face and breathed a sweet, faint
+perfume. The hours flew by, and towards midnight a curious pink hue
+stole over its white petals, the fragrance died away, the luxuriant stem
+withered up, and it breathed its last as Christ's birthday passed away.
+
+The star of Bethlehem was alone in the heavens when Night visited the
+garden to greet the beauteous flower of the morning, but it had
+vanished. In its place was a tear which sparkled like a diamond, the
+tear it had shed when yearning to help suffering humanity.
+
+
+III.
+
+Four months afterwards Marietta received a letter from the superior of
+her convent. She sat reading it in a clean and comfortably furnished
+room. Though to all appearances perfectly happy, her face wore an
+expression of sadness, and tears fell on the missive in her hand.
+
+At length she rose, placed the letter in the pocket of her gown, and
+after packing up a costume she had just finished making for Edward
+Thornhill, made her way to his studio.
+
+He praised her work. He had never found anybody so clever at carrying
+out suggestions as Marietta; but to-day his commendation brought no
+pleasure into her face, and the artist was quick to notice her changed
+manner.
+
+"You are sad, Marietta?"
+
+"No," she answered hastily, turning to leave the studio.
+
+"Why no, when you mean yes?" he asked, following her.
+
+She did not reply, but the tears gathered in her eyes and fell upon her
+dress.
+
+"Tell me what grieves you. I helped you once, and may be able to do so
+again."
+
+She took the Reverend Mother's letter from her pocket and placed it in
+his hand. It contained a few lines, saying that they would expect their
+child back in a fortnight's time.
+
+"Then you are going to leave us after all?"
+
+"It is better so."
+
+"But it makes you sad the thought of going?"
+
+"Yes," she said, with downcast face.
+
+"The sisters would not wish you to take the veil if you or they doubted
+your vocation for such a surrender?"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Your heart must be in this sacrament, your whole heart, you must have
+no longings after the world. Is it not so?"
+
+"Oh yes," she said, her voice trembling, tears in her eyes.
+
+"Have you any longings that might be a shadow on your nun's life, my
+child? Have you? Nay, don't be afraid to speak."
+
+"Oh, don't ask me," she said, repressing her sobs.
+
+"You do not think your life here involves a sin? You have enabled me to
+paint a heavenly image that might, so far as the pure spirit of it goes,
+decorate the fairest church. I do not say the work, Marietta, but the
+intention, the inspiration."
+
+She found this question too subtle for her comprehension, but there was
+something in the artist's tone and manner that thrilled her, something
+that was like the influence of the _Magnificat_ in the great choir of
+the cathedral. She turned her wondering eyes towards him, and he took
+her hands in his.
+
+"You have been happy here?" he asked, his voice trembling.
+
+"Yes, very."
+
+"Then why leave me? Put up with the gloom and fog for my sake, Marietta.
+Be the artist's little wife as well as his model."
+
+The sun came streaming into the studio as he bent over her fair hands
+and kissed them.
+
+"It is not all gloom and fog," she replied. "To-day the London sun is as
+bright and warm as it was in Italy when I was a child."
+
+It was not alone the London sun, it was the sunshine of the heart; and
+it lasted all through the remainder of Marietta's life.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE WINDFLOWER
+
+[Illustration: THE WINDFLOWER]
+
+  "One.will.crown.thee.king
+  Far.in.the.spiritual.city"
+                       Lord Tennyson
+
+
+I.
+
+Lady Mercy sat writing of love in the early hours of morning. She had
+been christened Mercy, but the people called her the "Windflower." She
+was born in a high March wind, which had once more wooed her sisters
+into life. They lay like a fall of snow in the adjacent forests.
+
+As the girl grew the title of the "Windflower" suited more and more her
+long fair hair and clear grey eyes.
+
+She had never known any home beyond this beautiful palace. Here, in the
+heart of a pastoral country, the birds sang and the flowers bloomed all
+through the year. It was a haven of peace, of glorious morning dawns and
+wind-swept evening skies.
+
+Her mother, the widowed Countess, wished to keep her among the flowers
+and meadows, and she had reached her seventeenth summer without ever
+having been in a city. She had, indeed, many learned teachers, and had
+heard and read of the great world which lay beyond the hills surrounding
+her home, but had no longing in her heart to go there. She found hosts
+of friends in nature--the flowers, birds, dogs, horses, golden fish in
+the fountain, and the sun; but most of all the wind. It seemed as though
+the poetic title, given to her by the good people of the village, had
+already exercised an influence upon her life. She loved the wind,
+whether he came from the icefields of the north or the sun-plains of the
+equator, whether his breath were redolent of western seas or of spices
+and Arabian perfumes.
+
+To feel his kisses on her face, to have him whirl her round in his
+strength, to bend before his mighty wings as did her sisters, the
+Windflowers, this was her delight. Her play hours were passed in
+dreamland peopled with her own mystical creations. What should she know
+of love? She was, indeed, an utter stranger to it, and yet she wrote of
+love, and called her hero "Terah."
+
+But the time had come when the Countess thought her daughter ought to
+begin to realise that the great world was not an ideal one like that of
+her dreams.
+
+"Mercy," she said, "why do you always write of 'Terah' as you call him?
+He seems to be the hero of all your stories, and he is quite impossible.
+You must not imagine that people in the great world are as lovely in
+their lives as your flowers are. 'Terah' is an ideal."
+
+"An ideal?"
+
+"Yes, there is no such man."
+
+"In what way is he not true?" asked the girl, her eyes full of wonder.
+
+"Describe him again, and I will explain."
+
+"His name speaks for him; it means that he was a breather of good like
+the wind, only he was always gentle. Then he drove away sorrow. He was a
+comforter; his face was most beautiful; he was all mercy, all love; and
+he had thought of others so much that self was quite dead in him. Is
+that impossible in that wide world yonder?"
+
+The Countess sighed as she answered, "Do not make him so handsome,
+Mercy, and then perhaps he will be a more probable character, the man
+enriched by Providence with perfect beauty such as your hero cannot help
+being self-imbued. It is the old story of Narcissus, every glass greets
+him with the picture he likes best to see; even the eyes of the woman he
+loves are dimmed by the reflection of his image."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Months passed, and a great change was noticed in Lady Mercy. She grew
+paler and paler; she wrote no more stories; and all her studies were
+stopped. She rose very early, and walked miles in the woods and by the
+river, as if seeking for something. The "Windflower" seemed to have been
+bruised by a rough tempest.
+
+A renowned doctor came from the metropolis and pressed her to say what
+ailed her.
+
+"I am looking for 'Terah.' Mother said he was an ideal, merely the
+creature of my brain, and since then I have lost him," she moaned. "Ask
+her to take me to the great city that I may seek him, for I think he has
+gone there to prove that he is true."
+
+And so the "Windflower" was uprooted from among her kith and kin. She
+journeyed to the distant town, past the river and over the hills.
+
+And all was changed. She was thrust into the world of fashion. Dressed
+in costly silks with long flowing trains, her hair was not allowed to
+hang loosely over her shoulders any more. She was "out," so it was
+dressed high on her head by a French _coiffeur_. She was forbidden to
+walk unattended in the great city. Even in the parks she was always
+accompanied by a chaperon. It was not correct to be seen alone, and
+comfort and freedom had to be sacrificed.
+
+
+II.
+
+Society made much of the ethereal-looking girl. Society took to her
+title of the "Windflower"; it was so romantic, so "old world." She went
+for rides in the Row, drove in the Park, visited the opera and theatres,
+was present at evening receptions, and at ladies' "tea and scandal"
+parties--weak tea and strong scandal. Here she learned to fear her own
+sex.
+
+She was presented at Court in a low dress on a foggy afternoon; she went
+everywhere in a sort of dream seeking her ideal, but she found no trace
+of "Terah," the breather of good; and as time passed she grew sick at
+heart, seeing on all hands the lust of self. Men battled for their idol
+everywhere, women bartered away their souls to crown self with a diadem
+of gold.
+
+Presently she was permitted to go about unattended, a freedom that
+inspired her with new hopes. She went down to the busy part of the city
+and stood in the surging crowd that battled for life. The "Windflower"
+was alone in a world of anxious men whose all-consuming passion was
+self. Time was precious. All was hurry. Everybody had business on hand;
+even at luncheon they seemed to be racing. Not a minute was to be lost;
+hesitate but for an instant, and they were pushed aside, the great race
+of self against self, pursuing its course without them. A few attained
+the goal, but many were stricken down by the way. Those who reached it
+bowed their heads to the ground and worshipped at the glittering shrine
+where Gold and Self were throned kings of the human heart.
+
+Her quest seemed to be failing entirely. Among the poor, who learned to
+love her, she now and then found a trace of her lost "Terah," but it was
+only a straggling ray of light in a nightmare of darkness and sin.
+
+One night she was present at a great ball given in her honour by an
+intimate friend of the Countess.
+
+The room was filled with sweet perfumes, the mantel-pieces heaped with
+lilies of the valley and white lilacs. All the wealth of spring flowers
+lay fainting in the hot atmosphere. Not a drop of water to cool them,
+not a breath of air to ease their pain. The band shrieked out its cheap
+melodies, the dancers danced beneath the glare of electric lights. The
+fashionable throng enjoyed itself. But one out of its number felt as
+weary as the flowers. Dressed in clinging folds of soft satin, her hair
+was arranged low in her neck, and in her hand she held a few loose
+roses. She looked like a garden lily which had strayed from its home,
+and grieved to find that it had exchanged the evening air and the
+silence of the night for the glare of electric globes, the heat of a
+crowded room, and the hubbub of countless voices.
+
+"And so you do not like society?" said her partner, a young fellow whom
+she had often met before, and whom she greatly interested.
+
+"From what I know of it I do not. I think, too, that people who live in
+cities are cruel. Look at the poor lilacs and lilies massed together to
+faint and die. In my home we never think of letting flowers remain
+without water. We look upon them as living things. Every blossom has a
+life of its own; it knows pain and thirst. When I see them, torn from
+hedge and meadow by careless hands and thrown on to the roads to die in
+the dust, I know that for each flower an angel weeps."
+
+"Do not talk of things that make you sad. I want you to be happy
+to-night. You are enjoying yourself, are you not?" the young fellow
+inquired wistfully. Dangerous question to ask the grave idealist, but he
+had taken a great fancy to her, he sympathised with many of her
+feelings. "If you cannot say that you are enjoying yourself, please
+leave my question unanswered," he added hastily.
+
+Lady Mercy looked up in surprise, then partly comprehending his words,
+she said,--
+
+"I like to talk with you; but I have had to converse with so many others
+who have nothing to say that I am weary--men who asked me whether I had
+seen this or that play, if I had been on the great wheel, did I approve
+of bicycling for women? Had I tried golfing? And then, having finished
+their stock of small talk, they taxed their poor ingenuity to pay me
+compliments."
+
+"I am not surprised," was the grave reply.
+
+"Oh! I wish you had not said that. Why should a man seek to flatter a
+woman; in short, to insult her?"
+
+"I would not offend you for the world!" he cried. "Indeed I am sorry."
+
+"And I am grieved to have spoken bitterly. Pardon me, I do not know how
+to talk even to you, and everything is so strange," she said, flushing
+deeply.
+
+"Tell me of what you like most yourself; that will interest me beyond
+all other subjects."
+
+"I cannot speak of that," she answered, a gentle light playing on her
+face. "I can only think about it. The remembrance of it is rooted in my
+heart; it is a part of me."
+
+"Mercy," he cried, his face flushing and his eyes becoming strangely
+brilliant, "the Countess has told me of your dream, of your search for
+some one who has never existed. Ah! give it up. Do you not know that
+the bitterest chapter in the book of life is that which is headed
+'Broken Ideals'? The pages are written in blood, they are blistered with
+tears. The reader must decipher that chapter alone, the shattered
+remains of what was once his divinity, his sunshine feeding on his
+heart, and poisoning even his memory."
+
+"But humanity should not let its ideals be broken. It should fight for
+them, lock them safe in the inmost chamber of its mind. It should never
+suffer a profane hand to destroy that which is dearer than itself," she
+answered, with a fixed, far-away look in her eyes.
+
+"Ah, my dear Mercy, believe me, should you appear to find he whom you
+seek, you will but dream, and then awake to learn that your young, fresh
+life has been wasted, and that your Ideal is false. Then age will be
+passed in useless longing and vain regrets."
+
+"I shall find him. I did know him once, and he left me, but he will come
+back again." Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked so spiritual, so
+beautiful, that her companion could contain himself no longer.
+
+"Mercy, I love you!" he whispered.
+
+The breathless words brought her back from dreamland, with its mists and
+its dim beauties--back to a London ballroom, back to fading humanity
+and faded flowers. The utter weariness and cheapness of it all struck
+her painfully, the passionate cry of love associated itself in her mind
+with the rustle and frippery of fashion.
+
+"My life is his of whom we have spoken," she said gently in response to
+his beseeching glance, as her hostess, a bright, fashionable woman,
+hurried up and whispered effusively: "Wait here a moment, dear. I have
+at last found some one whom I am sure will please you. He is very rich
+and handsome, quite a king in the world of fashion, and yet a Christian
+gentleman--and oh, so wise! We call him our Ideal."
+
+She came back accompanied by a tall, fine man. Everybody thought him
+beautiful--"pure Greek, you know"; but Lady Mercy started back in
+terror, recovering herself the next minute. To her he was hideous--his
+mouth misshapen, his eyes a dull red. Was it because her own soul was so
+pure that she saw people's minds, not their faces, and when a mind was
+evil its chief vice shone through its fleshly covering like a beacon?
+
+"Delighted to meet you, Lady Mercy; will you dance?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"We will sit it out, then, and talk. By the way, our mutual friend, Lady
+R----, tells me that you are much distressed over the condition of the
+unemployed in our great city?"
+
+"Yes, I want mother to devise a scheme for helping them. I have seen so
+much suffering since I have been here."
+
+"Money thrown away, I assure you; they are a rascally set. If a man is
+willing to work there is work to be had."
+
+"I disagree, sir; work is most difficult to obtain. A character is
+needed. Many of these poor, suffering creatures have no recommendation
+that might entitle them to recognition at the hands of Christ's
+followers. And most of them are not in a condition to work. They have
+neither clothes, nor health, nor hope. Could you build with your feet
+through your boots? Could you lift heavy weights with no strength in
+your body and no hope in your soul?"
+
+"You forget I am not one of the unemployed," he said, smiling.
+
+"No? What do you do then?"
+
+"Well, I do not exactly do anything."
+
+"Then you are unemployed."
+
+"I have no regular work; but I try to follow in Christ's steps. I am a
+Christian like yourself. I believe that He was God, and worship Him as
+such."
+
+"Sir, I fear His would have been a poor, useless martyrdom if you were
+indeed a Christian. Go home and read His life; see what He says about
+the poor whom you despise. There, forgive me, I did not mean to say so
+much. But I think you are in the wrong. Good-night."
+
+"What an awful girl you introduced me to, Lady R----! She was positively
+insulting; a regular windbag, not a flower."
+
+"Didn't it make any impression? Poor Popsie," she replied, patting him
+with her fan, "I hoped she would interest you; she is in search of the
+Ideal. What a pity she did not recognise you! Never mind, I will
+introduce you to Baby Joy, the music-hall singer who married Lord Clare.
+You know? Come along."
+
+
+III.
+
+Years passed. Lady Mercy's first youth was over; her eyes had lost the
+light of hope--a wild, sorrowful expression filled them. She had never
+gone back to the country; she could not return to the happy home of her
+childish ideals, the joyless, broken-hearted creature she was now.
+
+She drove out one day in September. Gaily dressed women were shopping.
+Flower stalls of roses, carnations, marguerites, gave a foreign look to
+the city. A wild west wind, fragrant with the breath of autumn, rushed
+through the streets.
+
+Suddenly there was some confusion in the road. A policeman battled among
+a host of prancing horses and grand carriages. A victoria containing two
+gorgeously dressed ladies had run over a mongrel dog. One of its owners,
+a ragged girl, sobbed on the pavement, as her half-starved brother
+elbowed his way to the officer's side.
+
+"Our paw Jack; 'is leg's broke."
+
+"You should not let him run about in crowded streets," said one of the
+smart occupants of the victoria.
+
+"End yer shouldn't let yer cussed 'osses droive over the paw beast,"
+replied the boy, taking it in his arms and trying to soothe its cries.
+
+"I was going to give you money, boy, but I shall not for your
+impertinence."
+
+Lady Mercy stood on the pavement comforting the little girl.
+
+"Never moind, Puddles," said her brother, coming up with the dog in his
+arms. "Our Prince will cure 'im."
+
+"Prince is doying, brother, you know thet."
+
+"Who is Prince, my boy?" asked Lady Mercy.
+
+"'E's our only friend. 'E's father and mother to all hus poor."
+
+"Is he beautiful?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"What, in the faice? Rather not."
+
+"Ah! then it cannot be he," said Lady Mercy sadly. "Why do you call him
+Prince?"
+
+"Becos 'e is Prince--the Prince of Pity. 'E's ill now; but 'e says 'e
+can't doi till something 'appens."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oi der know. Somethink."
+
+"Where does he live?"
+
+"Hover there," said the boy, with a vague wave of his hand.
+
+"I will take you there if you will let me. Will you get into the
+carriage?"
+
+"What, in there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Rather. Come on, Puddles."
+
+Lady Mercy helped the two forlorn creatures into her carriage, and
+placed the dog tenderly on the front seat.
+
+"Will you tell the coachman where to go?"
+
+"Yaas, droive ter Greenleaf Court."
+
+The Prince of Pity lay dying of want in one of the poorest quarters of
+the great city. His face was gaunt and weather-beaten, his eyes glazed
+and dull. A young child sat on the floor nursing a half-starved
+cat--both waifs of the street rescued from utter misery by the good
+Samaritan.
+
+Sorrow was always with the poor of Greenleaf Court; but now their
+affliction was more bitter than ever. Their dear master, who had devoted
+his life to them, and had given away all his worldly goods until he was
+as poor and destitute as they, the man who told them of sweet flowers
+and green meadows and silver streams, he who made peace in their
+quarrels, divided his scanty earnings among them, taught the children,
+he, their only stay in a world of suffering and want, was leaving them
+for ever.
+
+The Prince of Pity lay drowsing away to "poppied death."
+
+The wind wailed and sobbed round the house, and burst in at the door as
+Lady Mercy entered.
+
+She saw the man. His clothes were worn and old, but she beheld only his
+face; that face which even the poor who almost worshipped him thought
+ugly, was beautiful to her; it told of love and charity. She knew his
+life had been lived for others.
+
+"Ah, you have come at last!" he cried. "Welcome. I so feared I should
+die without any one to continue my work, and I asked the Wind that
+sprung up in the early hours to waft me some one hither."
+
+"He has obeyed you. I am named the Windflower; but, sir, you too have a
+beautiful title; they call you the Prince of Pity. Who are you?"
+
+"I am an unworthy follower of the man Christ."
+
+"You are then a Christian?"
+
+"I said the _man_ Christ. I belong to no Church. I profess no creed."
+
+"What do you do?"
+
+"My child," he said, and his voice sounded sorrowful like the sobbing of
+the sea, "my life's work is all in these simple lines,--
+
+"'Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.'"
+
+"You are then he whom I seek. You are Terah, the breather of good. But,
+sir, you seem ill. Can I help you?"
+
+"Yes, care for my poor. Be to them all the Wind is to you; rock them
+into life, soothe them into death; sob with them in grief, shout with
+them in joy. I am going away."
+
+"Whither?"
+
+"To the earth, to rest and peace at last."
+
+"Not to heaven?"
+
+"My child, have you lived in the great city and not learned that we can
+imagine no heaven so lovely as the joy of our hearts when we do a good
+action? I am on the verge of that sleep which knows no awakening. The
+Halls of Death lead not unto Life."
+
+Mercy was dazed with the beauty of the man's soul. It filled his eyes
+with a radiance which overwhelmed her.
+
+"I have found Terah," she cried, looking heavenwards, and clasping her
+hands in an ecstasy of happiness. "The world is bright again. My ideal
+is true. Beautiful, merciful; and self an immolated sacrifice. Why have
+I lost my youth in seeking him to lose him now?"
+
+A distant voice seemed to float on the wind. "Had he lived you must have
+died. The good action has its reward here and hereafter. He has passed
+through the Halls of Death unto the House of Life. Be content, you have
+been much blessed. The Ideal is realised in heaven."
+
+The room was filled with a perfume as of many flowers. The wind sobbed
+out a requiem. Lady Mercy's face shone with a great light. She looked
+down. The Prince of Pity lay dead.
+
+On the site of Greenleaf Court a beautiful house now stands, every
+window full of flowers. Designed by a great architect, all the poor of
+the district were employed to help in its erection. It is called the
+"House of Pity." In the large hall, where the hungry are fed and the
+sorrowful are comforted, the following inscription is wrought on the
+wall in letters of gold, wreathed with windflowers:--
+
+[Illustration: REJOICE WITH THEM THAT DO REJOICE AND WEEP WITH THEM THAT
+WEEP]
+
+
+
+
+                         _SECOND EDITION._
+
+                       THE GOLDEN FAIRY BOOK.
+
+                     FAIRY TALES OF OTHER LANDS.
+
+                                BY
+
+       GEORGE SAND, MORITZ JOKAI, ALEXANDRE DUMAS, VOLTAIRE,
+              DANIEL DARE, XAVIER MARMIER, Etc., Etc.
+
+         _In crown 4to, richly gilt, and gilt edges, 6s._
+
+           With 110 Illustrations by H. R. Millar.
+
+A FEW PRESS OPINIONS.
+
+"'The Golden Fairy Book' is brimful of charm, and must be cordially
+welcomed. The book is one to be bought. It is rarely that fairy stories
+by such important authors come together. Young people are to be
+congratulated upon the provision of such a boon companion as 'The Golden
+Fairy Book,' to which Mr. H. R. Millar has contributed over one hundred
+artistic and amusing illustrations."--_Gentlewoman._
+
+"An excellent collection of charming tales by famous authors. The volume
+is prettily bound, and excellently printed, with a profusion of
+illustrations."--_Times._
+
+"'The Golden Fairy Book' need not be considered inferior to any. In
+appearance it is possibly ahead of all. Mr. Millar's illustrations
+are spirited and clever, and the tales in themselves have been selected
+with great judgment from writers of all countries. If any find the old
+tales at all tiresome, let them take this 'Golden Book' in
+preference."--_Daily Graphic._
+
+"A new and delightful departure ... this most attractive gift-book,
+which one may safely prophesy will be a sure delight to its many
+possessors."--_St. James' Budget._
+
+"'The Golden Fairy Book' is as good as can be, and the illustrations are
+refined and attractive. The stories are gathered from many nations--a
+particular charm to this excellent collection."--_Westminster Gazette._
+
+"Not only the little folk, but we 'children of a larger growth' will
+also be delighted with this collection of wondrous fairy tales. The book
+is beautifully illustrated."--_The Lady._
+
+"Among the prettiest books of the season is 'The Golden Fairy Book.'
+Admirably illustrated, this volume is pleasing within and
+without."--_Globe._
+
+"Boundless variety and that of the best.... 'The Golden Fairy Book' is
+well calculated to charm and satisfy the most omnivorous youthful
+appetite for imagined wonders."--_Sketch._
+
+           London: HUTCHINSON & CO., 34, Paternoster Row.
+
+
+With over 60 Full-page and other Illustrations by Harry Furniss and
+Dorothy Furniss.
+
+                           THE WALLYPUG OF WHY.
+                            A Fanciful Story.
+
+                             By G. E. FARROW.
+
+  _In crown 4to, handsomely bound in cloth gilt, and gilt edges, 5s._
+
+Contents.
+
+  The Way to Why.
+  The Fish with a Cold.
+  Breakfast for Tea.
+  Girlie Sees the Wallypug.
+  What is a Goo?
+  The Wallypug's fancy Dinner Party.
+  The Invisible Joke.
+  Can a Pig Perch?
+  Buying an Excuse.
+  The Ride with the Alphabet.
+  Girlie is Cartwrecked.
+  The Sphinx and the Bathing-Machine Woman.
+  What Happened at Why.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                   With 84 Illustrations by H. R. Millar.
+
+                           THE SILVER FAIRY BOOK.
+                        Fairy Tales of Other Lands.
+
+                                    BY
+
+SARAH BERNHARDT, E. P. LARKEN, HORACE MURREIGH, HEGESIPPE MOREAU,
+VOLTAIRE, QUATRELLES, EMILE DE GIRARDEN, WILHELM HAUF, XAVIER MARMIER,
+LOUIS DE GRAMONT, Etc.
+
+             _In crown 4to, silvered cloth and silvered edges, 6s._
+
+
+                 London: HUTCHINSON & CO., 34, Paternoster Row.
+
+                            The Boys' Golden Library.
+
+Each Volume in crown 8vo, handsome cloth gilt binding, bevelled boards
+and gilt edges, with Illustrations on Plate Paper, 3_s._ 6_d._ per Volume.
+
+_By PROFESSOR CHURCH._
+  Pictures from Greek Life and Story.
+  Pictures from Roman Life and Story.
+
+_By DANIEL DE FOE._
+  Robinson Crusoe.
+
+_By EDWARD A. RAND._
+  Our Clerk from Barkton.
+  Fighting the Sea.
+  Up North in a Whaler.
+  Making the Best of It.
+
+_By DR. GORDON STABLES, R.N._
+  The Cruise of the Crystal Boat.
+
+_By FLORENCE MARRYAT._
+  The Little Marine.
+
+_By W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS._
+  The Warriors of the Crescent.
+
+_By JULES VERNE._
+  Round the World in Eighty Days, and Adventures in Southern Africa.
+    (Double Volume.)
+  Five Weeks in a Balloon, and A Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
+    (Double Volume.)
+  The English at the North Pole, and The Desert of Ice. (Double Volume.)
+
+
+                 London: HUTCHINSON & CO., 34 Paternoster Row.
+
+                             New Library for Girls.
+
+                           THE GIRLS' GOLDEN LIBRARY.
+
+Each Volume in crown 8vo, handsome cloth gilt binding, bevelled boards
+and gilt edges, with Illustrations on Plate Paper, 3_s._ 6_d._ per Volume.
+
+_By SARAH TYTLER._
+  A Bubble Fortune.
+
+_By AMELIA E. BARR._
+  A Singer from the Sea.
+  Love for an Hour is Love for Ever.
+
+_By E. WETHERELL._
+  The Wide, Wide World.
+
+_By E. S. CUMMINS._
+  The Lamplighter.
+
+_By S. DOUDNEY._
+  Where Two Ways Meet.
+  The Family Difficulty.
+  A Child of the Precinct.
+
+_By MRS. J. KENT SPENDER._
+  No Humdrum Life for Me.
+
+_By ANNA E. LISLE._
+  Winnie Travers.
+  Self and Self-Sacrifice.
+
+_By W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS._
+  The Maid of Orleans.
+
+_By M. C. HALIFAX._
+  Among the Welsh Hills.
+
+_By MARGARET HAYCRAFT._
+  The Clever Miss Jancy.
+
+_By MRS. G. LINNAEUS BANKS._
+  Miss Pringle's Pearls.
+
+_By EVELYN EVERETT GREEN._
+  My Cousin from Australia.
+
+_By LOUISA M. ALCOTT._
+  Little Women and Nice Wives.
+
+
+             London: HUTCHINSON & CO., 34 Paternoster Row.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Village of Youth, by Bessie Hatton
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