"While he is thinking of all this, comes the goldsmith's daughter, for she has heard that the young man has failed, and she is sad, and wants to talk to some one. Perhaps, too, she wants to know something. They talk about to-morrow, of course, and the shoemaker tells her that the town clerk means to sing for the prize. At that the prize herself gets quite alarmed, for she likes the town clerk no better than you or I do. 'But why should he not win?' the shoemaker says; 'there will not be many bachelors there to try.'
"'And might not a widower try?' she asks slyly.
"Now, the shoemaker knows that she means himself, but he says no, he is too old. And then the absurd girl actually urges him to try, though she does not want him the least bit, and does not want anybody except the young knight, who makes such beautiful songs that are all out of shape. When you get to be a woman, perhaps you will know why she does this; but I confess I do not. Perhaps she thinks that the shoemaker would not be half so bad as the town clerk, or perhaps she only wants to find out if the shoemaker really does mean to sing, so that she may know whether he is the knight's friend or his enemy. At any rate, he pretends to be not half so much the friend of the young people as I know he really is, and when she is beginning to get quite angry with him her maid comes and tries to lead her into the house. But just at this moment the knight himself is seen coming down the street, and not a step toward the house does she go after that.
"The shoemaker has gone into his shop now, and the lovers are alone. He tells her how he sang his very best, that he might be a master, because that was the only way to win her, and it was of no use. But she does not care whether he failed or not. She declares that he is a poet, that she will give the prize herself and to nobody but him; so now what do you suppose it matters to him if all the masters in the world said that his songs were wrong? He will not sing for them, and they need not listen.
"There is just one way now, as anybody can see, for him to make sure of the prize, and that is to take it while he has it. And that is just what he is about to do. But I am sorry to see that the cobbler, behind the door of his shop, has been impolite enough to listen to all this important talk about poets and songs; and he sees that if he lets these two run away together now, there will be no prize and no singing for to-morrow. So he sets a lamp in his window, right there where the fire is kind enough to burn for us a little at last, and sends the light streaming out across the street, and the lovers know that if they try to pass they will be seen. And while they are helping each other think what they can do, somebody else comes slowly down the street, walking in the shadows and looking around to see if he is watched, like a burglar. It is the town clerk, and he has come here just to sing under the window of the goldsmith's daughter the song that he means to sing to-morrow, to see if she will like it and if she will probably give it the prize. Oh, he is a good, honest poet and faithful lover, and he means to leave nothing untried that can help him. One does not get a chance to marry a goldsmith's daughter every day.
"All this is annoying enough, but there is nothing for the lovers to do but to wait for the town clerk to sing and go away; so they get into the deepest shadow, and then they put their arms around each other so that they can stand closer and not be seen so easily. It is a good plan for another reason, too, because some people can wait much more patiently in that position than in any other. But things are getting worse and worse, for the shoe-maker seems bound to have his part of the fun too; and just as the town clerk is about to sing he begins to work again and to hammer on his last. This is the most impolite shoemaker, I suppose, that this polite old town ever saw, if he is a poet. Think of a man who will hammer on a shoe when a town clerk is going to sing, and a song that he made himself, too. Something must be done, of course; so the town clerk comes and talks with the cobbler, and pretends that he is very anxious to get his opinion of the song he is going to sing. That seems natural enough, because everybody knows that the cobbler is the best poet in town. So they agree that whenever the town clerk breaks a rule in his song the cobbler shall strike one blow on his last, just as if he were marking the mistakes on the slate, the way the town clerk himself did with the knight.
"Oh, but he must be a good town clerk, he knows so many tricks, and can always arrange everything so well to make it go his way. The town is lucky to have such a clerk. Yet, strange to say, the minute he begins to sing, he makes more mistakes than even the poor young knight did, and it is really a question whether his song or the shoemaker's pounding makes the more noise. Mind, I say noise, not music; if it were a question of music the shoemaker would be far ahead. Well, between them, they wake up the shoemaker's prentice, and he comes to the window of the shop, to see what is the matter. He is the same prentice whom we saw in the church, who looked at the goldsmith's daughter's maid in such a strange way, you remember. And now, as he looks across at the house opposite, he sees the goldsmith's daughter's maid again, standing at the window. She is standing there in one of her mistress's gowns, to make the town clerk think that the mistress herself is listening to his song; and he does think so, but the poor prentice knows who she is very well indeed. And since he knows who she is, of course he makes up his mind at once that the town clerk is singing to her, that he loves her, and that just as likely as not she loves him. No doubt you think he might know better; and perhaps he might, if he were not so much in love with the goldsmith's daughter's maid; but when a man is in love he is always ready to believe anything that it is particularly uncomfortable for him to believe.
"So, what does the shoemaker's prentice do but jump right out of the window, fetch the good town clerk one blow under the chin, that shuts his mouth and stops his singing, and begin just as lively a fight with him as any we ever saw among our knights and giants and dragons. They make so much noise that more people wake up, and come out of their houses into the street; and, since the old town is usually a bit dull and quiet, they find this just the sort of thing they like, and they all begin fighting, too, with a jolly good will. Of course, not one of them has the slightest notion of what he is fighting about; but that makes no difference to any good, honest fighter, and there is a fine breaking of heads and kicking of shins. Just as everything is in the most delightful confusion possible, the knight and the goldsmith's daughter try to make their way through the crowd and escape; but the troublesome old shoemaker, who has been watching them from the very beginning, runs quickly out, pushes the girl to her own door, where her father stands to receive her, drags the knight into his shop, seizes his prentice too, and shuts his door behind him. Somebody cries that the watchman is coming; the people scatter right and left, and, by the time that little flame there under the andiron has burned up and shown itself to me as the old watchman's lantern, it shines on nothing but the quiet, empty street.
"But there is more light than the watchman's lantern, for our new stick is beginning to burn now. The night must be past, and, if the night is past, it is Midsummer Day. It is not so bright yet as it might be. Let us put on still another stick, and have all the Midsummer weather we can. I see a room now, not very handsome or rich, but very comfortable and cheerful, with flowers in the window and more flowers scattered about. It is the old shoemaker's shop, and the old shoemaker himself sits at the window, pretending to read, but really thinking, as usual, about the young knight who sings to please himself and not to obey other people's rules, and about the goldsmith's daughter; and he is trying, also as usual, to plan some way to make the prize go as he wants it to go. He does not quite see how it is to be done, but he has a comfortable feeling that it will all come out right; and while he is studying over it, the knight himself comes put of the room where he has slept to say good-morning.
"He tells the shoemaker that he has had a beautiful dream, and the shoemaker asks him what it was, saying that it is the true business of a poet to have dreams and to tell them, so that everybody may know them. So the knight tells his dream, making it into a song as he goes along, and now and then the shoemaker stops him quietly to tell him what are the rules of the masters for making such songs as this. The knight always asks why such rules should be, and the shoemaker gives him some pretty reason for each one, and he shows that the rules are not so bad after all, if only one knows how to use them and to make the most of them. The dream was about a beautiful garden with a tree that bore fruit of gold, and as the dreamer looked at it there came a lovely maiden, who you may be sure was the goldsmith's daughter, and she embraced him and then pointed to the fruit of the tree, and when she pointed to it, it was golden fruit no longer, but stars, and the tree itself was a laurel-tree.
"You may guess that the poor old masters never heard such a song as this. As the knight sings it the shoemaker writes it down on a bit of paper and tells the knight to remember the melody, and then they go away together. Scarcely have they gone when the door opens softly and in a treacherous-looking sort of way that must be strange to the shoemaker's door, and in comes the town clerk. Ridiculous enough he looks in his gorgeous holiday clothes, and limping along, because of the beating that the prentice gave him last night. And angry enough he is, too, with the shoemaker and the prentice and the knight and the world in general, except himself, with whom it might be reasonable for him to be angry. You can see a wicked red glow, right there in the middle of the fire, where he stands. But he has not forgotten about the prize—oh, not in the least. He is still plotting and contriving how he can best make sure of it, and so it does not take long for his sharp little eyes to find the song lying on the table, where the shoemaker left it when he went out.
"Now, there is one peculiar thing about these people who can see through mill-stones, and that is, that they sometimes think they are seeing through one when there is really no mill-stone there at all; just as you and I might think we were looking through a glass window when it was only an empty sash. Just see, for instance, how much cleverer the town clerk is than there is any sort of need for him to be. He sees that this song is a song; well, anybody could see that. He sees that it is in the shoemaker's handwriting; anybody who knew the shoemaker's handwriting could see that. But now he takes the liberty of guessing that the shoemaker made this song himself, and that he is going to sing it himself for the prize. So he gets more angry still, for he knows that the shoemaker is the best poet in all this dear old town, where anybody can be a poet by learning the rules, and he knows that if the shoemaker tries to win the prize he will probably do so. But he hears the shoemaker coming back and he has just time to hide the song in his pocket.
"Now he boldly accuses the shoemaker of meaning to sing for the prize. It may seem to you that it is no affair of his whether the shoemaker means to sing or not, and it may seem so to me too, but we are not town clerks. Yet the shoemaker assures him that he does not mean to sing, accuses him in turn of stealing the song, and then, to prove his own words, gives it to him. With that the town clerk is altogether delighted, for he is one of those shallow people who think that when one man has done a good thing, another man can do just as well as he by doing the same thing. He feels sure that if he sings one of the shoemaker's songs he cannot fail to win the prize, and he makes the shoemaker promise that, whatever happens, he will not claim the song as his. The shoemaker is quite ready to promise anything, because he is a wise old soul and he knows that it is not altogether what one does, but pretty largely how one does it, as a cobbler or as a town clerk or as a singer, that wins him fame and honor—and Midsummer Day prizes.
"The town clerk hobbles away, and now who should come in but the goldsmith's daughter herself? Well, no one could wonder at her lover's having pleasant dreams, for she is as pretty a prize as ever a poet sang a song for, or to, or about. With her best gown and her flowers and her jewels, and especially with herself, I don't think you could find any prize that a poet would rather have, even in a town twice as big as this. It seems there is something wrong about the shoe that the cobbler has made for her to wear to-day, and she has come to get him to mend it. I wonder, by the way, if she knows that the knight was the shoemaker's guest last night. She says that when she wants to standstill the shoe insists on walking, and when she wants to walk the shoe makes up its mind to stand still. You see yourself what a remarkable and improper way this is for a shoe to behave. It is so strange that I am inclined to doubt if it is the fault of the shoe at all, or if she really knows whether she wants to walk or stand still. You see it is not easy for us to tell just how a girl would feel at being put up for a prize.
"While the cobbler is at work on the shoe, the knight too appears, and the cobbler hints that he should like to hear the rest of the dream that the young man began to tell him before. So he sings more of his song and tells how the stars among the branches of the laurel-tree formed a crown for the lovely maiden's head, how her eyes, as he looked into her face, were to him brighter than all of them, and how then she twined with her own hand, about his head, the wreath of the star-fruit of the laurel-tree, and still and always he saw her eyes brighter than the stars.
"After he has sung this they all seem to understand one another better. The goldsmith's daughter's maid comes in to look for her mistress, the prentice tumbles in to look for the maid, or for something else, and away they all start for the fields outside the town, where all who will—that is, if they are masters and may—are to sing for the prize.
"At last the fire is burning as it ought, and we can see all the life and light that we care to enjoy. Those flames that stream up so far must mean that the sun has mounted his very highest to mark the noon of Midsummer Day, and the floods of merry sparks that pour up the chimney are not brighter or merrier than the throngs of people, men and women, boys and girls, that walk and run, and caper and dance, and tumble out of the city gates and into the meadows where the singing is to be. But there is more gravity all at once when the masters come. They are mighty and important persons at any time, and above all they are so to-day, when they are to decide who is to have this wonderful prize. They have a higher place to sit than the rest of the meadow, and the common people of the town, who do not pretend to be poets at all, can stand wherever they can find room. The goldsmith and his daughter have the highest seats of all, and the shoemaker is next to them, for he is supposed to know a good song when he hears it. All the other masters have good places too, including the town clerk. The knight is somewhere in the crowd of people who know nothing about poetry.
[Illustration: "HE SAW HER EYES BRIGHTER THAN THE STARS."]
"When everything is ready the town clerk is the first to sing his song for the prize, because he is the oldest of those who are to try, and indeed he seems to be about the only one, with the knight quite out of the race, because he did so badly in the church yesterday. So the town clerk stands forth, and after a little opening plink-plunk on his guitar, he tries to sing the knight's own song, which the shoemaker gave him, knowing well that he would get into trouble with it. And indeed, the dream that he tells about must have been a nightmare, though nobody who hears him knows what it is about, and the poor town clerk seems to know least of all. He has the song under his coat and tries to look at it now and then, but he reads it wrong and sings nonsense, and in a moment all the people are laughing at him, even those who do not know a good song when they hear it, for they seem to know a bad song very well when they hear it.
"At that he gets angry, stops singing, and says that the song is not his at all but the shoemaker's, and he is to blame. Here is a fine state of things, for the shoemaker is supposed, as I said before, to know more about songs than any of the other people in town, and indeed he knows more about most things than all of them put together. He says that the song is not his, but that it is good enough, if only it could be sung right, and he asks if there is anybody here who knows how to sing it.
"This is the time for the young knight, and he comes forward from the crowd and says that he will try. But first, the shoemaker makes all the masters promise that if he sings the song well and if it is a good song he shall have all the honor just as if he were a master. Now the young man takes his place and everybody is still. He looks straight at the goldsmith's daughter; he does not know that there are any others around him; and now he sings. And what a glorious song it is, full of hope and happiness and victory and joy! He did not sing like this to the masters in the church yesterday; not even to the shoemaker this morning did he sing like this. It is not hard to see the reason. Yesterday he tried to be a master, and when he sang he was wondering how these fussy old fellows would measure his song with their rhyme-gauges and their foot- rules. How could anybody sing when he was thinking of that? Even then it was not a bad song and the goldsmith's daughter would have known it if she had been the judge. The shoemaker, with his warm old spring-time heart, knew it as it was, but the masters were too learned ever to know anything. But now the goldsmith's daughter is the judge and the young poet sings only to her, only for her, only about her. If one smile curves her pretty lips as he sings, it is more to him than the shouts of all the people. That is the way to sing, and that is why, when he is done, all the people do shout, and do clap their hands and wave their hats, and do cry out that he must have the prize.
"And he does have the prize. She crowns his head with a wreath of laurel, which he cares for only because she sets it there, and the goldsmith himself brings him the gold chain that makes him a master. This the young man would put aside, but the wise old shoemaker bids him take this too, and to honor the masters and their art; for, he says, though the Holy Roman Empire should vanish in smoke, yet art will remain. And I think he means by this that all the kingdoms of the earth may be lost and may fall into dust and ashes, as our fire here will do when we leave it to-night, but that the happy young people, with their stirring hearts of spring, and the kindly old people, with their ripe hearts of autumn, will still sing songs and still tell stories."
The fire had been out for weeks. Somebody who came from the country had almost filled the fireplace with a huge bouquet of wild roses. They made it look very pretty for a few days, but now the roses had all faded and fallen to pieces too, and nobody cared enough even to sweep up the dry, dead leaves and throw them out. It all looked forsaken and desolate enough. But it was no more desolate than I. We were lonely and unhappy for the same reason, the poor fireplace and I, because the little girl had gone away with her mother down to the sea and would not be back for more weeks and weeks yet. The city was so hot and dull and stupid! It made me feel dull and stupid to stay in it, except when it made me angry. Yet perhaps the fireplace was even a little worse off than I, though it was not more forsaken and alone, for it had no work to do, while I had plenty. Then again the fireplace, in spite of all the wonderful and beautiful things we had seen in it sometimes, had never been anywhere except just where it was now, and it knew nothing about the sea. But I had been in several other places; and even in the city, with the heat pouring down from the sky and quivering up from the pavements, one can dream of "waters, winds, and rocks," and dreams are good things to have for those who can have nothing else.
And I had the dreams and something else. For the little girl and her mother had said that I might come down to the sea too, whenever I thought the city could get on without me. What surprised me was that the city got on at all, but all the time I thought more and more that I was of no use to it, and it was of no use to me, and finally I left all my work in it to take care of itself and fled away to the sea. Oh, how lovely it was! That first long unbroken sight of the line where the sky and the water met made me feel, as I always feel at such times, that it was worth half the year's worry and care just to see this ocean and this heaven, to breathe this free, salt air, to smell the flowers by the roadside, and to gaze and gaze again at the two great tracts of peaceful blue. How wonderful is this calm rest of a thing that can rage and destroy when it will! The peace of a field of daisies is pretty and sweet; the peace of the ocean is like that of God.
The little girl and I had a long walk along the beaches, over the rocks, and through the tall, salt grass. We hunted among the smooth, round pebbles for the smoothest and the roundest; we studied the jelly- fish that was borne up the beach by the wave and then glided swiftly back again with it, as if it had forgotten something, till one wave, higher than the others, would leave it lying on the sand at our feet, where we could study it as much as we liked; we wondered if the jelly- fish ever did forget anything and if he had remembered it now, so that he did not want to go back any more. We caught little crabs and made them run races, laying huge wagers on our favorites; I filled my pocket, and the little girl filled her handkerchief with the tiny, pointed shells that can be strung into such pretty necklaces. Then we found a great, bright, curly ribbon of seaweed, as wide as two hands, so long that when the little girl held it by the middle she could scarcely lift the ends off the sand, and rich and beautiful in color like dark-red tortoise-shell. The little girl looped one end of it around her head and wound the rest about her body, so that she looked a true little sea princess.
All day a fresh, cool breeze came up from the sea, so different from the air of the dreadful city. Toward evening it grew cooler yet. The wind blew more, and little shreds and patches of fog, and then larger clouds of it, hurried along over the fields. We could see them coming, away off over the water, then they reached the shore and hid the walls and the pastures, then they wrapped us up within themselves and passed us, and we saw them flying off again as if they were trying to carry a chill from the sea as far into the land as they could. And it was chilly after the sun was quite gone—not very cold, but just cool enough so that everybody thought it would be pleasant to have a bit of fire on the hearth. And when we thought a fire would be pleasant we always had it.
Of course down there we never think of making a fire of anything but driftwood. It makes the most wonderful, magical fire in the world. One could dream out stories for a whole evening from the wood alone. Here is a stick that must have been a part of a spar. Was it blown away from the mast in a gale? Now hold your breath and think if some poor sailor was blown off into the waves with it. Did he catch at this very stick as he sank? Did his wife wait and wait for him at home, till his shipmate came and told her? Here is a little piece of smooth board, with a bit of cornice fastened to the end. It must be from the wall of a cabin. Did the captain's daughter and the young mate sit under it and whisper stories to each other in the calm evenings of the voyage? There is a piece of barrel-stave. Perhaps it once held rum for the sailors' grog; it burns as if it did. There again is a float from a fisherman's net. Was the net torn when it broke away, and did the fisherman lose some fish? And because of that did his sweetheart perhaps lose a ribbon or a trinket? Then here is a broken fragment of a lobster pot. Even this might be some loss to a poor man. And not only are all these things and a hundred times as many more to be thought of, but all this wood has been soaked in the salts of the sea, and when it burns the flames are of all sorts of strange and beautiful and ghostly colors— white and red and green and blue and yellow and violet.
Everybody feels the charm of a driftwood fire. The little girl surely could not help feeling it, and she came and sat on the stool at my feet, leaned her head against my knee, and gazed at the flames without saying a word. But I answered her thought. "Yes," I said, "we may see almost anything in that fire. Look at that strip of cocoanut husk. Does it not tell of green palm-groves and sunny skies and warm breezes? Yet as it lies there on its curved side, with the two ends lifted from the hearth, has it not the shape of a galley, like those in which the rude old pirates of the North used to sweep over the sea, bringing terror to all who came in their way? It is all burnt and blackened, and right over it rises a tall flame of bright red. It is a black ship, with sails all of the color of blood. The strangest of ships it is, and it has the strangest of stories.
"Long, long years ago, in a fearful storm, the captain tried to sail this ship around the cape. The captain of another ship hailed him and asked him if he did not mean to find a harbor for the night. But he swore a terrible oath that he would sail around the cape in spite of Davy Jones, if it took till doomsday. At this Davy Jones was angry, and swore on his part that it should take till doomsday, that the captain should sail in the storm till then and should never get around the cape. Do you know who Davy Jones is? He is the wicked spirit of the sea. When the winds and the waves rage and tear away the sails of the ships, or sink the ships or drive them upon the reefs, it is his work; when it is all smooth and calm and sparkling, as we saw it to-day, then the good fairies of the sea are there and are making everything about it calm and happy.
"But the fairies never came near this ship. She was always driven about, and there was a storm wherever she went. Never could her captain bring her into any port and never could he round the cape. Only for years and years he sailed and sailed in the storm, and found no harbor and no rest. At first he was bold and tried to sail on and gain his port; then he was angry and raged again, and swore that he would not be beaten; then he was in despair; and at last he grew so weary with the storm and the sea and the clouds and again the wind and the sky and the ocean and yet the rain and the waves and the fog, that he longed only to die and to be at peace.
"But he did not die, and no one of his crew died. The sailors all grew old, and their hair and their beards were white, and they looked like ghosts, and their ship was like the ghost of a ship; but they were not ghosts; they were real men and they sailed in a real ship. Sometimes the crews of other ships saw them. Sometimes they hailed the crews of the other ships and begged them to take letters to their friends at home. They said that their almanac had been blown away and they did not know how long they had been from home. They would lower a boat and row to the ship they had hailed, in a sea that would swamp any other boat in half a minute, and so they would bring their letters on deck. Those who knew their story refused to take the letters, and then the sailors would nail them to the mast or lay them on the deck, with a heavy weight to keep them from blowing away, and go back to their own ship. So the letters sometimes reached their homes, for it was said to bring bad luck either to take their letters willingly or to throw them away when they were left on the ship.
"But oh, what of those to whom the letters were sent? Once a captain brought a packet of them to the port from which the strange ship had sailed. Not one of those to whom they were directed could be found, and he opened some of them, hoping that the letters themselves might tell him some way of finding the sailors' friends. One of the sailors had written to his father that after this voyage he meant to live on the land with him and never to go to sea again. When the captain took this letter to its address, he found a man of the right name, but the man said: 'No, no, the letter is not for me; no son of mine is a sailor. None of our family ever went to sea except one, for there is an old story that my great-grandfather's brother once went away in a ship and that the ship was never heard of again. For years his old father used to dream about him and to declare that his ship still floated, and he died believing that his boy was yet alive. No, that is my name on the letter, but it is not for me' One sailor had sent a bank-note to his sister, but where her house stood there was a church, and it had been there for a hundred years. Another in his letter sent a pressed tropical flower to his sweetheart. It was of the color that looked pretty in her hair, but the poor fellow forgot that pressing it would spoil it for that. The captain, despairing of delivering the letters, went into the church, and there, on one of the stones of the floor, he read the sweetheart's name. It said that she was ninety years old when she died, and the words were almost worn away by the feet that had crossed them. The captain dropped the flower upon the stone, and the next morning it was swept away.
"So the sailors grew so old that it seemed they could not grow any older. Then slowly they began to know what they had always refused to believe, that they had been sailing for years and for hundreds of years, and that all who ever knew them and loved them had been long, long dead. Then their eyes grew more hollow, and their hair and their long beards thinner, and their faces more wrinkled and withered, and it was as if all the blood had dried out of their hearts. Perhaps it was when the blood went out of their hearts that it stained the sails that dreadful red. So much for the crew, but it was different with the captain. Davy Jones was preparing something worse yet for him, or thought he was. He was tired of seeing him simply wander hopelessly on the ocean; he wanted to plague him more. He could do this, he thought, by giving him now and then a little hope and then shattering it and sinking it to the bottom of the sea, and dragging the man's heart to the bottom of the sea, too, with a leaden load of despair.
"The captain had never grown to look old, and now, to carry out his wicked plan, Davy Jones promised that once in every seven years he might enter a port and go on shore, and if ever he should find a good woman who would love him and give her life for him, he might rest and never sail again; but when he failed to find such a woman he must go on board his ship again and sail through the storm and the wind and the waves for seven years more. Now, Davy Jones would never have promised this if he had thought that there could be such a good and loving woman, but being only a wicked spirit of the sea he did not know much about good women.
"And for a long time his plan did succeed and the poor captain was more wretched than ever. Once in seven years he would go on shore to seek that true woman, and as often he would return to his ship and sail away. Good women he found many, but none of them would love him. Then his heart would fill with bitterness, for he saw them loving and giving their lives to men who, he could not but know, were less brave and patient and worthy of them than he; faithless men who forgot them, cruel men who misused them, dull men who knew not their own blessings. Why should they love such men as these and never him? Now, you and I, who are so wise, know, of course, that such thoughts were selfish and wicked. For what was he to any woman that she should give her life, or even an hour of it, for him? Was his life or his peace better than another's, that another's should be given for his? Why should any woman love him when there were so many others for her to love?
"But he never thought of these things, so he would rage against all women and he would steer his ship into the most awful waves and whirlpools, hoping that she would be wrecked and sunk, but his ship was never harmed; and he would steer toward pirates, hoping that they would kill him for the chests of gold he had, but even the pirates, when they saw his blood-red sails, would cross themselves and flee from him. Then the seven years would pass and he would go on shore, and now, perhaps, a woman would say that she loved him; yet when the time came she would not give her life for him, and he would throw himself down upon his face on the deck of his ship and steer nowhere, but still drive on through the wind, the black waves, the black storm, and his own blacker despair."
"Oh, my!" said the little girl, "that's awfully nice and ghosty, but I thought this was the best fire we ever had, and now you don't see anything in it at all."
"Oh, yes, I do," I replied, "I have seen the ship all the time, that black ship with its sail of red flame. I have seen it tossing upon the sea, sweeping up till the flame of its sail almost touched the clouds, and then plunging down into the black water, but always, always rushing on with the storm around it and with never any rest. And I have seen the angry clouds tearing across the sky; you can see them yourself when the smoke flies up the chimney, and then when the white flames are flickering and flashing up and then dying down, you can think that you see the lightning. Yes, and you cannot help hearing the wind, whistling up there around the top of the chimney as it would whistle through the rigging of a ship.
"The seven years have passed again, and now the ship has come to land, that the captain may try the little chance once more that has failed him so often. The red flame has dropped down, for the sails are furled, and the wind has stopped for a minute, too, while the ship is at anchor, and there is no need for the storm to pursue it. I see the captain walking on the shore and talking with the master of another ship that is anchored near by. The master tells him that he lives only a few miles away, and asks him if he will come and spend the night with him on shore. The captain replies that for a little rest at his house he will give the master untold treasures from his ship. He makes a sign to his men and they bring a big chest. He opens it and shows the master that it is full to the top of gold and pearls and rubies and emeralds, that flash and shine with all the colors that ever our driftwood fire can show us.
[Illustration: "THROUGH THE BLACK STORM AND HIS OWN BLACKER DESPAIR."]
"Such a price for a night's or a year's lodging the master never dreamed of. He cannot believe that such wealth is all for him, and he asks what he can ever do for the captain to earn it. 'Have you not a daughter?' the captain asks. You see he knows how to go about his work without loss of time, even though he has never been very lucky in it.
"'Indeed I have,' the master answers, 'a good, true, lovely girl.'
"'Give her to me,' says the captain, 'for my wife; that is all I ask.'
"The master thinks that is a good deal to ask, but not too much, when he looks at the chest again, and he says, joyfully enough: 'You shall have her, indeed; I know such a man as you will make a good son-in-law; come home with me quickly.'
"So each goes on board his own ship. The master sails first to lead the way, and then the red flaming sail springs up again and the black ship is off the shore. And the storm howls again too; the waves rise, the clouds tear across the sky, and in a minute the ship has passed out of sight.
"Listen to the wind around the chimney. It was roaring and whistling a minute ago, but now it is not so loud. It grows fainter still, till its sound is no more a roar or a whistle, but only the lightest humming of a wind, and to me all the wind seems gone now and it is the hum of whirling spinning wheels that I hear. And what I see is a room where a dozen girls sit spinning and singing songs about their wheels and about their lovers. But one among them does not spin. She lets her wheel stand idle and only sits and looks at a picture that hangs on the wall. It is of a dark man with black hair, a black beard, and deep, piercing eyes; it is the captain whom we have seen so much already. The other girls laugh at her, say that she is in love with the picture, and ask her why she does not sing with them. She cannot sing their happy songs, she says. Then they ask her to sing by herself, and she sings them a song about the captain. It tells them his story, as we know it already, and as she sings they all stop their wheels and begin to gather around her, and in spite of all their merriment it moves them at last, as such a sad story ought to move anybody.
"And when she has finished they all say, 'Ah, poor fellow, if only some good woman would save him from his dreadful lot! But who would do it and give up her own life?'
"'I would do it,' she replies, 'and I hope that the winds may blow him here, so that I can tell him that I am ready to love him and to save him.'
"The others, who are very charming girls, no doubt, but just now not quite so noble and resolute as this one, are almost frightened to hear her talk so, and when somebody says that her father is coming they all slip away and leave her to meet him alone, while they chatter among themselves about what a strange girl she is to want to give her life for a man whose black hair and piercing eyes she has never even seen except in a picture. Her father is the shipmaster whom we saw, as you have guessed by this time, and he has brought the stranger captain home with him. 'This is my daughter,' he says; 'is she not all and more than all that I told you?'
"Then, having always found her, no doubt, a good and obedient child, he tells her at once that the captain is to stay with them, and that he expects her to be his wife. Some girls do not like to be ordered to marry even the men they love; but she is so true and simple and kind that she means to love the captain with all her heart, and even her father's wish that she shall do so cannot change her. The father thinks very wisely that they will get on better without him, so he leaves them, and they do get on better at once. First they gaze for a long time into each other's eyes, those deep, piercing, sad eyes of the captain, and those true, soft, young eyes of the master's daughter. Then he thinks that her face is not strange to him, as he remembers, dimly at first and then more clearly, that he has seen this face in dreams many times, when it was the face of an angel who was to save him from his long weariness. And the dreams were not far wrong, for she looks into his eyes with no thought for herself, but only: 'This is one who has suffered for many years and must suffer for many years more, unless I love him and save him.'
"He asks her if she can give herself wholly to him, and she answers that, whatever his fate may be and whatever hers, she will take it all and will be all his own forever. 'If you knew what it would cost you to be true to me,' he says, 'you would shrink away from me and try to save yourself.' 'Never,' she answers; 'let it cost what it will, I will be true to you till death.'
"I see the shore and the sea again. This time it is near the master's house, and the two ships are moored not far apart. The red sails are furled, but on the ship there is the little pale blue flame of a ghostly watch-fire. The captain comes out of the house and strides up and down along the shore. All the gladness that he had when we saw him last is gone—no, not all, but there is doubt and perplexity with it now. The fact is that the captain has learned something now that he never knew before. All these weary years he has been longing and hoping for some good woman to love him, but he has never thought much about loving any good woman. What right had he to expect anything when he meant to give nothing? He has never thought of this before, but he thinks of it now. And the reason is that now, when he has found a woman who loves him and will gladly die for him, he finds too that he loves her as well; and if he loves her, how can he let her die for him? She is so good and unselfish that perhaps it would be a happiness to her to do it, but it is the more to his credit that he does not think of that.
"That is why he paces up and down the shore and fights hard with himself. Only think of it. For all these many years, while other men were living happy lives and growing old, and their children and their grand-children were growing old too, the angry winds and waves have driven him about and have given him no rest; now this woman could save him, but his love tells him that he ought to save her instead. Can he save her and go back again to the rage of the storm and live in it forever, live in it till doomsday? Oh, it is a hard fight, but at last he answers yes; all that he has borne so long he can bear still longer. The sea shall swallow his ship and cast it up again, the clouds shall sink down upon it, the winds shall drive it over the whole ocean, but she shall not die because of him. And it will not be with him quite as it was before; now he will remember through all the hundreds of years that are to come that she loved him once, he will think of her always, and thinking of her he will wait for doomsday.
"I see him go on board his ship again; he is calling to his men; they are hoisting the sails; see the red flame spring up again. The storm comes again too. Look at the black smoke that is like flying clouds, and hear the wind up there around the chimney. But now out of her father's house comes the master's daughter. She sees the ship speeding away, and in an instant she knows all the reason; she knows it because she would have done the same if she had been the captain. Then she runs to a high rock that stands out into the sea; she calls through the loud wind that drowns her voice that she will come to him and will be true to him till death, and then she leaps from the rock into the rough, raging waves. But look; the waves that very instant are rough and raging no more; the sea is all still; the clouds are gone, and the wind is silent. The ship with the blood-red sails is sinking out of sight. See how the red flame dies down and the black hull is breaking to pieces. And right where it was I can see the captain and the master's daughter rising out of the sea together, with a beautiful light around them, as beautiful as all the colors of our fire can make it. They seem to float along the water, away and away, and I think the good fairies of the sea must be taking them to Fairyland or to some pleasant island, where they will always live happily together."
The fire blazed up brighter than ever for a minute and then dropped down again. "Come here to the window," I said; "see how the fog has all cleared away and has left the moon shining down upon the sea. What a broad track of light it makes from the shore here where it is nearest us, away off to the edge of the sky! How the little flecks and sparkles of light run and dance and chase one another, and how happy and glad they seem, riding the little ripples of waves in the light of the moon! Are they the sea fairies, dancing and playing together and calming the water, to bring the sailors safe back to their homes, do you think?"
There was a beautiful moon and everybody said it was a pity to have it wasted. So indeed it was, and everybody asked everybody else what we should do to prevent its being wasted. A few, who had made the best possible use of more moons than the rest of us, were in favor of simply sitting on the rocks and looking at the moon and the sea under it. That was really not a bad plan at all. When you sit with somebody beside you and the rest of the party not too near, on a high rock that runs far out into the water, and look at the big white moon and the soft colors of the sky around it, and then at the stretch of water, unobstructed to the horizon, with the moon's reflection broken by the waves into a million dancing sparkles, when you turn and look toward the beach, seeing the black surges rolling swiftly up to the shore and then breaking into gleaming foam, but still plunging on, like banks of tumbling snow—then indeed you can think of wonderful things and say wonderful things if you like. But perhaps you may prefer to say nothing at all, and that is a very good and pleasant way too, for at such a time it seems really not quite right to talk unless you can talk in poetry, and that is not easy to do, no matter how much you may feel like doing it.
These people who had made the best of so many moons knew all this, but some of the others thought that this moon was worthy of a greater effort and a more deep-laid plan. All the things that are usually done on moonlight nights were rejected one by one. Then one of those strange persons who are always noticing things said, not at all as if he thought it had anything to do with the subject, that there was an uncommon quantity of wood scattered along the shore. Then it was decided, just because nothing better could be thought of, that there should be a bonfire down on the shore, and nothing else, except the moon. So in the forenoon the daily bathing party started for the shore a little earlier than usual, and instead of spending our extra time in lying on our backs with the sun in our eyes, in the hope of getting sunburned, we spent it in gathering wood for the fire.
Picking up driftwood for a bonfire is not very easy work, but there were so many of us that we soon had two good piles, one for the fire at the start and one to feed it as it burned. Among the wood there were two whole barrels, and one of them had had tar in it, so we were sure of a splendid fire. Then we all went home, and after it was dark we all came back again. The fire was lighted; the bright-colored flames of the driftwood played together and grew and streamed up above our heads, crackled and roared and sent up torrents of black smoke mixed with golden sparks. For a little while nobody was tired of feeding it and watching it, but by and by we let a few attend to keeping it up, while the rest of us made a very little fire among the stones and let it quickly die down to a bed of red embers for toasting marshmallow drops. The man up at the village who keeps the shop with everything in it, and the post-office, must have a notion that city people live chiefly on marshmallow drops, that is, if he ever lets himself be troubled by any notions except those he keeps to sell.
After that the most of the people strolled away along the shore. Some said they wanted to see how the fire looked from a distance, and others, I think, were trying to get nearer to the moon. At last the little girl and I were left alone. We made cushions of folded coats and shawls, and sat leaning against a big rock, looking at the fire.
"We scarcely need the fire to-night," I said; "if we try a little we can see pictures through it and all around it, as well as in it. See that big, black rock, that stands almost in the edge of the water, like an old castle, built upon the shore. Then look away across the water to the island over yonder. I see a ship coming from the island toward our shore; perhaps you do not see it yet. As it gets nearer I can see a knight standing in the bow. He is a big, bold, fine-looking fellow, and he is all in black armor. The ship reaches the shore and the knight and his men go toward the castle, where the King lives, while the King and all his court come out to meet him. Some people may tell you, or you may some time find out for yourself, that this King is a very wicked man, mean, cruel, and treacherous. Perhaps he is, but all I can tell you is that now he does not seem so to me; on the contrary he seems as kind and generous as you could wish.
"The knight in the black armor marches proudly up to him and tells him that he has been sent by his brother, the King of the island over there from which he came, to get the tribute which the king here has owed to him for years, and it must be paid, or else the king or some one of his knights must fight with him to see whether it shall be paid or not. The black knight is such a big man and looks like such a good fighter that the men about the King seem to think it would be a pretty good thing to pay the tribute and let him go home with it. Not one of them says a word about wanting to fight with him, for a little while; but by and by, when all the rest have had a fair chance, a young man comes forward and asks the King if he may try. He is as big a man as the black knight himself, and as handsome and brave looking as any you ever dreamed of seeing, but he is so young that he cannot have fought many battles, and one would think that he would be afraid to set himself against the big black knight, unless one looked at his face, as I do, and saw that he could not possibly be afraid of anything."
"Is he braver than the one that killed the dragon?" the child asked.
"Why, no, I suppose not; nobody could be braver than he, because, you know, he could not learn what fear meant, and did not even know whether it was something to feel or something to eat or something to wear, but this young knight is just as brave as there is any need for anybody to be, and when he asks the King to let him try to beat the black knight, all the other knights say at once, 'By all means, let him try,' and they are really quite eager about it, and almost all of them change their minds about giving the tribute. So the King says that he may fight the battle if he will, and he puts on his armor, which is all of green, and mounts his horse.
"The black knight is on his horse too, and they ride far apart and then face each other and hold their long spears before them, ready for the battle. All the people stand far off at the sides, the heralds blow their trumpets, and the two knights run together with all the speed of their horses. The points of their spears are down and they are both well aimed, but each catches the other's spear fairly in the middle of his shield, and they rush together so hard that there is a great crash, and both the knights and both the horses fall to the ground with a terrible clatter of arms. But the knights are both on their feet again in a moment, and are falling upon each other with their swords, cutting and slashing and warding and advancing and retreating, till it is hard to tell which is the black knight and which the green, or whether they are not both black and both green. First one seems to be getting a little the better of the fight and then the other. The black knight is better trained, but the green knight is so much younger and fresher that he keeps his strength better, and by and by the black knight sees that he is surely gaining a little. Then he rushes upon the green knight and fights with all his strength and all his skill, and at last he gives him a wound on the shoulder. Then the green knight sees that if he is ever to do anything in this fight he must do it now, and he uses all his strength and all his skill too, and he brings down such a blow with his sword on the head of the black knight that it cuts through the helmet, and the edge of the sword is broken, and with another clash and clatter of arms the black knight falls to the ground.
"The black knight's men run to him and carry him to his ship, and sail away as quickly as they can toward their island. I can see them all the way, though it is a little dark out there, in spite of the moon, and I can see everything they do after they get there; I have to, you know, or it would spoil the story. They carry him to the King's castle, and the Queen and her daughter, who know all about medicines, and even some things that are stronger than medicines, dress his wound and nurse him and watch him day and night. But it is all of no use; nothing can cure the black knight's wound, and so he dies; but in dressing the wound the princess has found in it a little piece of steel that was broken from the edge of the green knight's sword.
"Now you ought to know, before we go any farther, that this princess is probably altogether the most beautiful princess that you ever heard a story about."
"Oh, that's the way they always are," said the little girl; "is she beautifuller than the one that had the fire all round her?"
"Perhaps not, but she was not a princess, you know; she was a goddess till her father kissed her, and then she was nothing at all till her lover came and kissed her, and after that she was a woman, which was altogether the best thing she could possibly be. But when we first saw her she was a goddess, and we have a right to expect more of her than of a princess. So I say again that this is quite the most beautiful princess that you have ever heard a story about, and you must believe it, if you please, or I shall not tell you any more about her."
"Oh, I believe anything you say," said the child, "but where is the green knight?"
"He is still here on the shore, in the King's castle, and his wound is a very bad one too, and after all the doctors have tried to cure it and have failed, one of them says that it can never be cured at all except in the country of the black knight who gave it to him. Now it is not very safe for the knight to go over to that island, where so many people would probably be glad to kill him for killing the black knight, so he disguises himself as much as he can before he goes. And he goes straight to the King's castle, just as the black knight did, and the Queen and the princess take care of him just as they took care of the black knight, only this time they have better luck, and in a little while he gets well.
"But long before he gets well the princess, who is watching by his side, sees the sword that he brought lying near by, and having nothing better to do, she looks first at the jewels in the hilt and then slowly draws the sword out of its scabbard to let her eye run along the polished blade, with its smooth, sharp edge. And then her eye quickly comes to a break in the smooth, sharp edge, and in an instant she thinks of the splinter of a sword edge that she found in her uncle's wound. At that she quickly drops the sword. Then she gets the splinter, which she has kept, and finds that it just fits the broken place in the sword, so she knows that this knight whom she is nursing and curing of his wound is the one who killed her uncle when he was fighting for her father. For a moment she thinks that she will kill him, and she lifts the sword above him, but when she sees the helpless look in his eyes she has not the heart to do it, and she lets the sword fall again. If the truth were told, I think she is already a little in love with him, and if he were any kind of knight except a green one, he would be in love with her too.
"If he only would fall in love now it might save a good deal of trouble afterwards, but because of his habit of wearing green clothes and green armor, or for some other reason, he does not, and when his wound is quite cured he sails cheerfully away again, just as if it were an everyday affair to be nursed by a queen and a princess. He sails back here to our own shore now, to the King's castle, and the King and everybody else are as glad as possible to see him. He tells them all about the Queen and the princess, and how beautiful she is, for it seems he did notice that, till by and by, when the knights of the court find that he is talking about her only in the way he would talk about a picture that pleased him, they whisper to the King that such a princess, who is so beautiful, and knows so much about curing wounds, would no doubt make a good queen, and they advise him to send for her and marry her. The green knight himself hears these whispers, and he says, 'Yes, by all means; I will go and get her; she will be glad to come, and her father and mother will be delighted to have her.' Did you ever hear of such absurd conduct from a young man dressed in green?
"Away he sails again, over to the island, and when he tells his errand the King and the Queen are delighted indeed. The princess is not so much delighted as some young women might be at the prospect of being married to a king, but she pretends to be very well pleased and says that she will go. This time it is she who makes a sad mistake, for if she would only say, right out aloud, 'I do not want to be married to this King; I want to be married to the green knight,' again it might save a good deal of trouble afterwards. She need not say it to him, but she might say it to her mother, and if he did not love her the Queen would know very well how to make him, as you shall see by and by. Still, if there were no trouble there would be no story, so we might better not complain, as long as the trouble will not be ours. So the princess sails away with the knight, and the Queen, before she goes, like a careful mother, gives her a little box of medicines such as she uses herself. That is to say, medicines and other things. One of the other things is a poison that kills anybody who drinks it, in just about a minute, and it looks and tastes just like wine. Another is a stranger mixture yet, for when a man and a woman drink it together it makes them, from that instant, love each other as long as they live, more than they love life or honor or their country or anything or anybody else in the world. And this, too, looks and tastes just like wine. It would not be easy to find two more dangerous drinks than these together.
"I see the knight and the princess now on board the ship, coming here to our shore. The knight stands near the helmsman, looking away at the sea and the sky, and thinking of nothing more sensible than how glad his King will be when he sees his bride, and how much his King will thank him for finding for him and bringing to him such a lovely princess. But the princess, who is sitting far away from him, at the other end of the ship, is thinking a great deal, and of such bitter things that she does not look at the beautiful sea and sky at all. The end of half her thoughts is that in a very little while now she will have to be the wife of a king whom she has never seen and never wants to see, because she loves the green knight, and the end of the other half of her thoughts is that she hates the knight who has brought her to this, as she could never in the world hate anybody except one whom she loved.
"And this is how her thoughts come, for you know I can see thoughts just as plainly as I can see castles and ships and battles: she thinks of her uncle, whom she loved, who fought for her father and for her country, who was wounded, and whose life she could not save; she thinks of the unknown knight who came to her, wounded too, whom she nursed and did save; she thinks how she began to love him, for the most of us love better those whom we help than those who help us; she thinks of that time when she saw his sword and knew that it was he who had killed her uncle, how her anger rose against him for that and because he had dared to come to her for help, how she had been about to kill him, and how she saw that helpless look in his eyes and had not the heart to do it. It is now that her thoughts grow bitter, for she thinks how he went away again and never dreamed of loving her for healing his wound and saving his life, and then sparing his life and loving him, when she ought to hate him and kill him, because he killed her uncle. She is beautiful enough to be loved, she thinks. Then comes a maddening thought of how this man whom she loved not only cared no more for her than for one of her father's dogs, but himself came back to ask her hand for another. This seems an insult to her and it makes her whole soul burn. She wishes she had killed him when she had his sword in her hands, and the madness fills her mind and burns her soul till she resolves that she will kill him now.
"She not only thinks all this but says it to her maid, and she orders her to take the poison out of the box of medicines that her mother gave her, and put it into a goblet, and she says that the knight shall drink some of it and that she will drink the rest herself, and so punish her enemy and be rid of the King who is to be her husband, for she will gladly die rather than be married to him. Of course this throws the poor maid into a terrible fright, for she is not a princess, and poisoning and cutting off heads, and such things seem like serious matters to her, so she would gladly save the knight and her mistress too, if she could. If you were in her place I know very well what you would do. You would give the princess some wine instead of the poison, and before she could find out what you had done, she and the knight would be on shore and would be saved. But this poor girl is so frightened that she can think of nothing to do but to give her mistress and the knight the love drink instead of the poison.
"The princess calls the knight to her and frowns upon him as dreadfully as she knows how. Can you think how a bunch of sweet, fresh, red and white roses would look if it should get terribly angry? Well, that is about the way the princess frowns. But it is not her fault. She was not made to frown. She tells the knight that he has been very cruel and very untrue to her, and that she ought to have killed him for killing her uncle; but now she says she will forgive him, and to show that they are friends she asks him to drink this wine with her. And now you may see how brave this green knight really is, for he sees well enough that she does not forgive him at all and means to kill him; yet he takes the goblet from her hand without a tremor of his own and drinks. Then she snatches the goblet from him and drinks the rest herself, and cries, 'Now we shall both die; I have my revenge upon you, and you shall not marry me to your King!'
"But, oh, it is the drink of love, and instead of dying the two stand and gaze at each other as if they could never gaze enough, then they stretch their arms toward each other, and so they meet, and now, whatever happens to either of them, they must always love each other as long as they live, more than they love life or honor or their country or anything or anybody else in the world.
"How they ever get on shore I don't know, but I do know that when they are there they make another great mistake, for they hide from the King that they love each other, and they let him think still that the princess means to be married to him, when I am sure she can mean nothing of the kind. He is a very good sort of King, who wants everybody to be as happy as possible, and he never has seen this princess before, so what can he really care for her? If they would only tell him I am sure he would be glad to help them, instead of standing in their way, but they are just as foolish as they have both been all along, and they say nothing about it.
"The princess is in the garden of the castle with her maid and they are waiting for the knight to come. The King and all his men have ridden a- hunting. It is night, and a torch burns at the castle door; at last we can see something in the fire. The knight will not come till they put out the torch, for that is the signal they have arranged, and they will not put out the torch till the hunting party is far away. You see they are still so absurdly secret about it! The maid tells the princess that she might better not put out the torch at all, for a treacherous friend of the knight has watched them, suspects their love, and has told the King; that the hunting party is only a trap, and that the King will soon come back. If it were a real hunt it would be strange for the green knight himself not to go, for he is the best huntsman in the whole country. All this is quite true; for the King, kind and generous as he is, does not like to be deceived any better than anybody else, and he wants people to keep the promises that they make to him.
"But the princess is in such haste to see the green knight again that she will not heed the maid's warning. She sends her up to the tower to watch, as soon as she thinks the hunters are far enough away, and then she throws the torch down upon the ground and puts it out. Then the green knight comes. But they have scarcely sat down on the grassy bank to tell each other how much they love each other, and to forget all about the poor King, when the maid cries out from the tower that the huntsmen are coming back, the knight's old servant comes running with his sword drawn to his master and begs him to save himself, and in a minute they all come, the treacherous friend of the green knight leading the way, and the King next after him. The knight is standing before the princess, not thinking of himself, and the traitor, who could never match him for a moment in a fair fight, rushes upon him and wounds him, but before he can do more the King himself holds him back. The old servant raises the knight from the ground where he has fallen, drags him quickly to the shore and puts him in a ship that is there, and once more they sail away.
[Illustration: "AS IF THEY COULD NEVER GAZE ENOUGH."]
"The rock there by the water is no longer the castle of the King. It is the green knight's castle now, in another country, across the sea. The old servant has brought the knight here, away from his enemies, to try to heal his wound. All his care seems useless. The poor knight has all the time grown worse. But his faithful old servant has remembered who it was that cured another wound of his before, and he has sent a ship with secret messengers to bring the princess if they can. That he may know as soon as he sees the ship whether the princess is on board, he has told the sailors to hoist white sails if they bring her with them, and black sails if they do not. He is watching now for the ship to come back.
"It is the court-yard of the castle that I see, and a sweet, calm, lovely picture it is. The knight and his servant have been so long away that the place has been neglected, but it is all the prettier for that. The grass has grown long, and, as the light winds breathe upon it, it sways and sinks and rises in waves, as if it tried to be like the sea down there below it. The gray old walls and ramparts of the castle have bright green moss upon them, and from the crannies hang little plants and vines. High up, where a rough stone projects a little from the tower, a cluster of bluebells swings in the breeze and nods to the other flowers and the grass and the trees down below. Are the bluebells trying to say to the grass that up there on their airy lookout they can see away over the shining water, that the ship is not yet in sight, but that they know she will come? Beyond and away, clear to the edge of the sky, just as it is here before us now, lies the sea. Smooth and peaceful it is, as if it were resting all through this calm day. Over it all the sun is sending a flood of light, fifty times as bright as the light of this splendid moon of ours. But now and then it is dimmed a little, for far away on the sea lies a strip of shade, the shadow of a cloud; slowly it moves toward the land, as the cloud sails through the blue sky, and as it comes it is seen plainer and moves faster, till the shadow reaches the shore and rests for an instant on the castle and the court-yard, and then it passes away into the land and everything is sunny again.
"Yet in all this light and peaceful beauty there is something that seems like sadness. In the court-yard, on his couch, lies the knight, in the cool shade. He does not know where he is, and he does not know his servant, who stands beside him, with the tears in his faithful old eyes, but he must know that he is in a beautiful place. Does everything in the place know that he is here, too, and feel sad to see him lying sick and wounded and weak and weary? The sun veils his face oftener than he does on some of our bright days, and when there is no cloud he shines with a soft, mellow light, the sea throws shades of purple over its blue and silver, and its waves break against the shore with only a soft little sound, and a sort of hushed song that is like a moan and is like a lullaby too. You can hear it down there among the pebbles around the rock. The bluebells swing softly, as if they were afraid to ring out aloud and disturb the sleeping knight. The hard walls look softer for their coverings of moss; the grass waves slowly and bends toward the wounded man, seeming to listen to his breathing. A shepherd leans over the rampart and plays a soft, sad, sleepy little air on his pipe. 'Is the knight awake?' he calls to the servant.
"'No,' the servant answers, 'and unless the princess comes I fear he will never wake; watch for the ship.'
"'I will watch,' the shepherd says, 'and if I see the ship I will play a lively tune on my pipe to tell you of it.'
"The knight begins to wake and stir; he asks where he is, and the servant tells him that he is at his own castle. He has been dreaming of the princess, and the servant says, 'I have sent the ship for her; she will come to-day.' But the knight is so weak that he cannot understand or talk of one thing very long, and he falls half asleep again and dreams of the princess, and because he has heard of a ship he dreams of other ships. He has his old wound now and is lying, just as he lies here, in that ship which bore him the first time toward the princess; now she is with him and his face grows lighter. She is looking at his sword; she raises it again, as she did so long ago, to kill him; but she sees again the helpless look in his eyes and has not the heart to do it, and she lets the sword fall again. He is on a second ship, sailing toward the princess to bring her for the King's bride; now the ship is sailing back and they are together on the deck. She holds out to him that goblet of strange wine; they both drink, they gaze into each other's eyes, the dream is too happy to last, and he awakes and cries, 'Has the ship come? Can you not see her yet?'
"'Not yet,' the servant answers; 'but she must come soon.'
"The knight is in the garden of the castle—the other castle—waiting for the princess to put out the torch, that he may come to her. The torch falls upon the ground, he runs toward the place, and they are together yet again. It is another happy dream that cannot stay. 'Is the ship nowhere in sight?'
"Before the servant can answer he hears the merry tune from the shepherd's pipe and knows that the ship is coming now, indeed. He looks away across the sea and tells his master how swiftly it flies over the water toward them, with its white sails, for the sails are white and the princess is on board. The time seems long to the knight and his servant, yet it is really short, for the wind is fair. The ship comes nearer and nearer, it passes the dangerous reef, it is so near that the servant can see the faces of the princess and the helmsman and the sailors. Now it is at the very shore and the princess is at the gate. Ah, it was not medicines that the knight needed. With the very knowledge that the princess is there, he raises himself from his couch and walks toward the gate. Then his little strength fails again and he would fall, but the princess herself catches him in her arms and holds him. This time it is no dream.
"She leads him back to the couch, he sinks upon it, and she bends over him. But suddenly the shepherd runs to the rampart and cries that another ship is coming, the King's ship. Are the King's men coming then to carry back the princess, perhaps to kill the knight? The servant calls the men of the castle and they try to barricade and guard the gate. But they are too late; the King's men and the King himself break through the barriers and are in the courtyard. The very first of them is the knight's treacherous friend; the old servant instantly cuts him down with his sword, and there is one good stroke at least. Then the King calls to all to hold their hands and to strike no more; he has come only to give the princess to the knight. He has heard of the love drink, and knows at last that they were not to blame for what they did, and that they never meant to be false to him.
"But still the knight lies there on his couch and the princess kneels by his side and bends over him, and neither of them speaks or moves."
"And will the knight get well again?" the little girl asked.
"Let us not try to find out any more now," I said. "The knight and the princess are both here, and I know that they are happier together than they have ever been before. That is enough, is it not?"
All at once there were voices behind us, three voices at least.
"Hello, there! who's attending to the fire? You're letting it all go out, and there's plenty of wood left."
"What are you two doing here all alone? Don't you know you'll catch your death o' cold sitting here so long?"
"Are there any marshmallows left?"
"No," said the little girl, answering the last question, "we don't care about marshmallows any way," and I really believe just then she thought she did not care about them, though usually she likes them almost as well as anybody.